Terrible article from the Independent

[catgirl1976]

Here www.indy100.com/article/trans-lives-matter-shon-faye-juno-dawson-riley-carter-india-willoughby-travis-alabanza-annie-wallace-8099866

What can 'cis' people do to be better allies to transpeople in 2018.

I don't even know where to start with this.

That's the Guardian and the Independent off my list now. Politically homeless and driven to reading The Times.

So, in the eyes of trans allies, this person is simultaneously a child, an adolescent and an adult mature enough to take decisions on life-altering surgery? Reminds me a bit of Lily Madigan, who is also supposedly simultaneously a tender flower of a child in need of protection from all that nasty dissent stuff, and a mature adult who is totally qualified to be women's officer of a constituency Labour party.

Sounds a bit like having one's cake and eating it to me.

I’m sorry farfrom I’m not really understanding your point.
We do want to engage with people with different viewpoints but not when they are lying and saying it revenge porn of a naked picture of a child when actually it was a topless picture of a 20 year old adult who already put the photos in the public domain.
Being accurate is not point scoring.

The cloak of victimhood protects the trans agenda. Meanwhile women and girls are harassed, raped and murdered all over the world.

I saw an interesting comment elsewhere today along the lines of: the real goal here is to wreck/get rid of the Equalities Act. I've thought for a while that there is a degree of manipulation going on with the way the whole debate is so constantly being framed as a battle between transwomen and feminists - and we are all aware that there is a lot of deliberate fucking around with social media by and on behalf of rightwing headcases, and I think there may be something in this (basically that some immature, attention-seeking drama llamas who 'identify as trans' are being used to keep the pot boiling and make 'feminists' look spiteful and deranged - unfortunately there are some feminists who are self-righteous bullies, and this has always been the case... and once peak 'snowflake' has been reached then Sensible Reasonable Heterosexual Normal Men will just march in and take back control...)

services are changing due to recognition that under 25s are still adolescents.

One would think that if we are acknowledging that under 25s are adolescents then cross sex hormones and surgeries would not be available until 25 or older.

Then again we have kids age 10+ making the life changing decision to task puberty blockers, so I wouldn't hold my breath for any sense on this issue.

If under 25's are still adolescents, will parents be taken to court for sterilising their underage kids?

I do wonder though if many here want to point score rather than engage- even if in disagreement

As usual, the moment you suggest that talking about actual, empirical, externally verifiable facts might be a good starting point, we're told off.

Personally I think that those who won't provide verifiable facts, who refuse to even define the terms they're using, and who make shit up are the ones who are trying to point score and aren't engaging.

Yes I think so too sgb
The fact the Conservatives are pushing self I'D makes me think there is some benefit to it that isn't to trans people generally. The conservatives don't usually give a shit about marginalised people.
I had thought the end game was to demedicalise the condition so the NHS wouldn't have to cover the increasing costs of treating gender dysphoria. But hadn't considered the equalities act, that is us a good point. Rather than remove the act and cause uproar, just change the definitions of all the words so it no longer works as intended. See the Canadian breastfeeding case as an example.
www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination?redirect=blog/womens-rights/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination

I think there’s a chilling libertarian element to this which I think is funded by some extreme right wing nutcases. The fact that when you google “women killed in 2016” you get endless pages about trans people tells me someone determined and wealthy is doing this.

I suspect it does have something to do with eroding agreed social rules particularly those that protect women. I don’t think it’s the Tories though. They’ve just stupidly jumped on the bandwagon in their bid not to be the nasty party. Rather as David Cameron legalised gay marriage despite joining a deeply homophobic party in the 80s when Clause 28 was so high profile and hurting so many people. He and they don’t give a shit either way about gay people. And certainly not about women.

I think there’s a chilling libertarian element to this which I think is funded by some extreme right wing nutcases. The fact that when you google “women killed in 2016” you get endless pages about trans people tells me someone determined and wealthy is doing this.

You might be interested in this article that was just posted at Feminist Current:

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/01/03/considering-rapid-rise-trans-ideology-academia-follow-money/

With trans activism, we might do well to pay slightly less attention to structures, and quite a bit more to agents. Structures don’t organize repeated shutdowns of gender-critical blogs like GenderTrender, or, in a matter of days, accomplish the censoring of documentaries about transing children on the CBC, or endow university chairs. Particular agents do that stuff. Men, mostly.

That is interesting. I've heard George Soros's name before in connection with all this. But then there's also been some nasty antisemitic stuff about him too so it's hard to know what exactly is going on.

I couldn’t face reading the article either
farfrom would you therefore agree that no one under 25 should be allowed to take puberty blockers /cross sex hormones because presumably as adolescents they don’t have the emotional maturity to understand the lifelong consequences of these treatments?

Being an older adolescent (or even younger adolescent or child) does not equal incapable of making any decisions It does mean that we should understand that they are still in a state of rapid brain and emotional development and for some they will be more impulsive and less able to think things through than they will be a few years later. Which is why accidents and suicides are high in this age group. And I do think we should give them some slack if they behave in ways that show their developmental stage. That doesn’t mean that they are not Gillick competent.
And for the record I havent said they should or shouldn’t have hormone treatment.

What kind of slack should they get, and who decides when this applies?

Talking about the ability of teenagers who are legally children to consent is what leads to this kind of madness
metro.co.uk/2018/01/04/mothers-anger-two-men-spared-jail-sex-14-year-old-girls-7203852/
Because of that some factions have a vested interest in supporting the argument children should be allowed to consent to hormones/surgery. Logically, if they can consent to that, why can't they consent to sex with adults?
It's seedy and makes me very wary if those who push the "agency" angle

Yeah 'George Soros is behind it' is often more of a code for antisemitism (and futher water-muddying).

In some cases. But I think it's worth keeping an eye on what he does.

George Soros has invested a lot of money on this cause, as on many others. It's not a secret, it's advertised on the website. One page at random:

How do the Open Society Foundations promote equal legal recognition for trans people?
Trans activists and allies in every region of the world are advocating for their rights by introducing or changing national laws or regulations. The Open Society Foundations provide financial support to trans-led or LGBT organizations that promote progressive, rights-based processes for legal gender recognition.

These include the following: Transgender Europe, an umbrella network of European trans organizations, which aims to educate decision-makers and the public on the impact that legal gender recognition has on the daily lives of trans people;
...

www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/essential-legal-right-trans-people

IMO he's socially engineering. I'm not in any way antisemitic.

It's not sex discrimination because men can get pregnant too?

Every day I go to bed thinking I've seen and heard it all only to wake up and read something that tops the previous nonsense.

That's the logical endpoint, yes.

The Canadian breastfeeding case wasn't even about trans identifying females. But "some men can lactate" so the mother lost her case

So any criticism of George Soros is automatically Anti Semetic? Well that's handy for him isn't it

I wonder how many folk he put into poverty with his manipulation of the markets. The guy is a fully fledged scumbag, regardless of what God he follows.

Well that's handy for him isn't it

Yes I agree. I've seen criticism which doesn't come from antisemitic people shut down and dismissed as antisemitic propaganda.