What’s the most batshit belief you’ve ever known someone to hold

[Ifyouwannabe1]

just met up with a long time friend (lovely, but utterly away with the fairies) who honestly believes the earth is flat as well as a whole host of other similarly crazy things. It got me thinking what’s the most batshit thing you’ve ever known anyone to think?

Again, it seems that people want to police what other people are allowed to believe. I think believing you can change sex is batshit, like the other people who have posted on the thread. It's equally as offensive to express this as the comments about Labour, Brexit, eating meat and religion. You can't tell people what they can and can't find batshit. This thread was always going to get some "controversial" answers as well as the "lighthearted" because not all beliefs people think are odd or irrational are "lighthearted" but of course it's fine to offend literally anyone else.

Out of interest was it the same poor man who was brought into the last thread?

I can't imagine the difficulties they must already have faced, to be wheeled out over and over again in a "lets all scrutinise this person because it will not prove my point" kind of way. Especially when they've asked to not be related to this discussion in any way.

And then it's all for naught because it's straight away disproven anyway

Out of interest was it the same poor man who was brought into the last thread?

I don't know, was this the thread that got taken down that I didn't see as I was busy arguing why women should have basic privacy and dignity?

Oh sorry, yes it was on that thread.

Thinking a hippo is a mythical creature or that the Queen is a lizard - that's batshit crazy and, I suspect, the kind of funny answers the OP was looking for. But no, the thread has been used to bash trans people in the guise of scientific objectivity.

It's still a thread to mock people, because you've decided that certain beliefs don't merit respect. Just like other people are free to make their own judgement about your pet beliefs.

@Ereshkigalangcleg just gone back a page or two and re-read, I'm sure this guy was brought up in Trying20's thread. Maybe my brain is now just fizzled lol

When Imperato-McGinley investigated the Guevedoces she discovered the reason they don't have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.

This deficiency seems to be a genetic condition, quite common in this part of the Dominican Republic, but vanishingly rare elsewhere. So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.

I think, though I might be wrong, that this is the same condition athlete Caster Semenya has.

No they don't. In a few very very rare cases where modern medicine is not available they are presumed to be one sex but at puberty it becomes apparent they are not that sex. If they were born in first-world hospitals then their correct sex would have been identified at birth. They do not change sex.

What was the reason Trying's thread got taken down - anyone?

That black people can't float They can learn to swim but not float.

I laughed because I thought she was joking.

The idea that a pigment in your skin can stop you floating is ridiculous.

What about the brain and whether this has developed in a more typically male or female way?

There is no such thing as male and female brains. That was invented to keep women out of, well anything and everything.

People with intersex conditions are not trans, they are either male or female. You cannot change sex. You can have surgery and hormone treatment to make you resemble the other sex but your sex will still be whatever you DNA says it is.

It's quite dangerous to tell people they can change sex, it can push people down a road they cannot reverse out of without having 'informed concent'.

Believing humans can change sex is just as batshit as believing the queen is a lizard or hippos are mythical creatures, or that calling people with disorders of sexual development 'intersex' somehow means there are not two sexes. Even animals that do change sex or are hermaphroditic only have two gametes - male gametes (small and motile) and female gametes (large and immotile). It is impossible for humans to change from producing one set to having the other or vice versa (we don't produce ova as adults, we have all we will ever have when we are born).

I think it was reported for being a troll as the OP was so batshit.

The deletion message said they were taking it down to have a look behind the scenes which usually means they suspect a troll.

Believing you can change sex is not only batshit, it is a dangerous illusion. No doctor should carryout any treatment to 'affirm gender' on any individual who believes this as they are quite clearly unable to consent and have a false understanding of what the treatment is. As I understand it, it used to be the case that in order to get cosmetic surgery to appear more like the opposite sex you used to have to sign a form to say you understood this would not change your sex. That is important.

@LuluBlakey1 100%

Spontaneous genitalia change? That sounds like another one for the list of batshit beliefs.

Any chance you could explain what exactly you mean by that? Would it be a penis suddenly inverting perhaps, or testes waiting until no-one is looking and quickly jumping up into the abdomen?

That’s not spontaneously then, and it’s very well known that pretty much everyone’s genitals change at puberty.

It's a particular DSD where the outward appearance is female until puberty then testosterone kicks in. They don't have a female reproductive system.

My husband’s colleague refuses to pay any bills as they aren’t legally binding

Does he/she get away with it, @Namek?

Will be interesting to see how that plays out...

I think part of the reason gender identity springs to mind for so many, when asked about batshit beliefs, is the way something so impossible is not just believed, but believed to the extent that it’s taken over large areas of society and policy (often illegally) so that saying “humans can’t change sex” can cause you a lot of problems and make you the subject of vicious attacks or endanger your job, but a man saying “a I’m a woman because I say I am” is celebrated and called special and brave and the police/NHS/girl guides/schools/many venues like gyms etc will side with that person even if they are obviously flashing etc.

it’s doubly amazing - not just the batshittery but its amazing success in being adopted despite a total lack of evidence.

then we have on the thread people who have swallowed the sophistical and false claims that have been used to convince people of this, telling us not to discuss this phenomenon and that’s mindblowing too. Not only is it wrong that defining sex is complicated - it’s also irrelevant, even if it was true. The existence of DSDs and ambiguous looking genitals has nothing to do with an unambiguously male or female person magically “being” the opposite sex just by saying so and magically having access to all their spaces, awards, rights etc (which only really matters one way around as it generally only advantages males, and where it would advantage a female trans man like inheritance situations , whaddyaknow, they are not treated as if a sex change has taken place, amazing huh).

It’s amazing and batshit that people seem so unable to join the dots. “sex is a spectrum/ ambiguous/hard to define/more complex than you think”. SO WHAT? Why have you got so bogged down in trying to is when, even if you were right, it doesn’t mean you can change sex? Why are you so desperate to prove sex is a spectrum/complex when many other things (race/age/disability etc) ARE a spectrum and yet you don’t think you can change your race or age on a whim or somehow magically “be” a different one inside form what you are?

autism is a spectrum, and complex, it doesn’t mean if I have HF autism I can identify as being severely disabled and non-verbal and it’s true if I do a convincing act?

why can’t you see that this whole ‘sex is complicated” thing is a distracting and confusing tactic?

I think in the past people thought changing your genitals meant that you had actually changed sex, and why would you do that unless you truly felt you were a woman. Leaving aside that you still haven't changed your biological sex, the same people and people who don't pay much attention but want to be progressive and nice don't realise how much the criteria for "being a woman" have changed, and that however unlikely the case, everyone is expected to go along with it at all times.

it’s doubly amazing - not just the batshittery but its amazing success in being adopted despite a total lack of evidence.

It is. It's scary, as a pp said.

I find it quite terrifying.

why can’t you see that this whole ‘sex is complicated” thing is a distracting and confusing tactic?

It's how modern political discourse works. Deflection and sophistry.