What broader issues has the trans (lack of) debate opened your eyes to?

[FredFlintstonesTunic]

For me, it's really exposed how large media platforms (i.e., a few very rich and powerful people) can shape public perceptions (e.g., by blocking, shaming, nudging and belittling certain ideas and/or people, and promoting others).

I'm no longer so quick to dismiss other people's unusual opinions, or to label them "conspiracists" without looking as openly as possible into what they're talking about (including from sources associated with intelligent people not necessarily in the mainstream media). I don't trust Wikipedia (or Urban Dictionary) without question (which I shouldn't have anyway, but...). I have more respect for people who are willing to say unpopular things (e.g., left-wingers who don't like the EU). In general, I'm far more likely to take news stories with a pinch of salt.

Anyone else?

you're judging what people are based on their appearance.

Well yes, but judging someone to be male or female based on observable physical characteristics doesn't imply any sort of moral judgement. I'm not sure why you'd be so against it.

Have you thought of a word for me yet, by the way? And the ex is still on tenterhooks waiting to find out how he's allowed to identify.

I don't have that now even about papers I used to really respect.

I'm raising a can in memory of the high esteem in which I used to hold the Graun.

just because a randomer on the internet told me I should be.
That's really dismissive of the literally hundreds of studies into violence against women. It's not about demonising all men, it's about understanding toxic masculinity and its effects on men and women. You can't do this without looking at the facts.

Women do not get 'offended' for being mistaken for men.
Men don't seem to be able to grasp this.

Women do not get 'offended' for being mistaken for men.
Well, why would they? I know if someone mistook me for a man in RL, I'd just roll my eyes as I know I'm not one.
Your comparison would only be comparable if I was a woman who identified as a man and people kept telling me I wasn't a man, I was a woman.

Journalists were silenced on trans issues after the Lucy Meadows case.

The change of reporting rules in response to that tragedy was a substantial overcorrection. I'm struggling to see the public interest (not the public's nosiness, they are different things) in reporting that a primary teacher was undergoing gender reassignment. By contrast, there is enormous public interest in reporting the sex of criminal offenders correctly, especially when those offenders have committed violent or sexual crimes.

Can my ex be both trans and a man?

If your ex is biologically-male, we had a phrase for male humans in his position that acknowledged both the trans identity and the maleness. It's listed as a banned phrase in this policy so I can't repeat it in this post, but I've given a couple of hints if you read my post carefully.

Oh, I know, bd - if I used the words he uses to describe himself I'd doubtless be deleted!

But I do find it telling, that Lemonade is still ignoring the question.

I doubt a man would think "ooh, it's easier to become a woman now, I think I'll become a woman as I can still vote and nothing's taken away from me" sounds a bit of a drastic step to take

Yet this is precisely what we see happening and this is indeed my point. As Tyro and Goosefoot clarify. Whether to indulge AGP or MRA tendencies, males are suddenly claiming publically to actually be women at precisely that moment in history in the UK when there is finally nothing to lose for a male legally or economically by doing so. The timing is not a coincidence!

Yes it does seem drastic but here we are. An epidemic of males claiming to be women and grabbing gold medals, positions on women's sports teams, Women's Officer posts, candidacies on women only shortlists, media careers, and the title of Most Oppressed and Vulnerable People Ever.

Which leads me to another thing that my eyes have been opened to by all this - how drastically far males will go to pursue a sexual fetish or have it validated. The gaslighting of entire nations!

My eyes are also opened to the fact that men seem to be able to develop a sexual fetish about literally anything! As far as I am aware, women don't tend to. I never really thought much about this before. Are males like baby chicks, imprinting onto odd things around them at a crucial developmental time? Or is it more like dogs humping random cushions and passers by? Is there any research into this? Why isn't there more awareness of AGP and similar?

An epidemic of males claiming to be women

Maybe we're just seeing more trans people because now people are generally more accepting nowadays?
Your comment sounds an awful lot like someone I know who says everybody seems to be gay nowadays and I'm like ummm maybe that's because it's a lot more socially acceptable (for want of a better word) nowadays?

Why isn't there more awareness of AGP and similar?

I think there always has been a degree of awareness; we've just used other names for men who behave in that manner, and most people have found it too distasteful to really delve into the psychology behind it.

Was the voting bit your point first, Antibles? I fear I've inadvertently attributed it OldCrone. Sorry!

As for whether there's any research into why women don't seem to develop fetishes: I don't know, but if there is, my very first question is going to be "Was it authored by a man?" Because if it is, they're highly likely to bring their own cognitive sexist bias into it.

men seem to be able to develop a sexual fetish about literally anything! As far as I am aware, women don't tend to. I never really thought much about this before. Are males like baby chicks, imprinting onto odd things around them at a crucial developmental time? Or is it more like dogs humping random cushions and passers by

Oh, good point. That is certainly food for thought!

Your comment sounds an awful lot like someone I know who says everybody seems to be gay nowadays

What has being gay got to do with being trans? I can't see any similarity at all.

If you want to compare transgenderism to another 'identity', it would be more appropriate to compare it to other 'trans' identities, like trans racial or trans age.

What's your opinion on Rachel Dolezal or Emile Ratelband? People seem to have been less accepting of Rachel Dolezal than they are of men who identify as women. Why is that do you think?

What has being gay got to do with being trans? I can't see any similarity at all

Trans has nothing to do with being gay at all, way to spectacularly miss my point!
Which was that if someone is saying "there's an epidemic of trans people nowadays" that's exactly the same what some people say about gay people.
Why is it OK to say it about one group but not another?

Maybe we're just seeing more trans people because now people are generally more accepting nowadays?

I doubt there was much appeal in days when women were actively punished for being sexual and had no legal rights.

What's your opinion on Rachel Dolezal or Emile Ratelband? People seem to have been less accepting of Rachel Dolezal than they are of men who identify as women

I remember the Emile case in the news - I definitely remember him getting a lot of ridicule and rounded on as well
They both got a lot of flack.

Maybe we're just seeing more trans people because now people are generally more accepting nowadays?

Up until very recently, in children it was predominantly boys who identified as transgender. In the last few years an enormous number of teenage girls have started identifying as trans, but the increase has been much lower in boys. If it was simply about society being more accepting, I would expect the male-female ratio to have remained approximately the same with similar proportional increases amongst boys and girls.

In adults the majority of trans people are male. If we assume that in the past there were enormous numbers of teenage girls who didn't identify as trans because of a lack of acceptance (assuming the large numbers of trans identifying teenage girls of today are 'really' trans), I would expect there to be a corresponding huge number of middle aged women who would now be coming out as trans. Where are they?

I think what has happened in terms of acceptance is that it is now 'acceptable' to flaunt your fetish in public (AGP males). I'm not sure that many people realise exactly what they are being accepting of.

Just out of interest, what does a rum cream and milk look like? Not often I run across a mixed drink I haven't heard of!

There have no doubt always been people who didn't like some/all of the sex role stuff expected of them, and the extent to which societies accommodated nonconformity has varied, but only a minority of countries ever had the concept of what we might now call trans, and it's significant that it's tended to be the ones where the lowest degree of nonconformity is tolerated. So really it's a symptom of sex roles that are so strict that they essentially shove some people out into an "other" category, which makes it interesting and relevant that there's been such a dramatic leap in young women saying they're not actually women/girls recently. Also, the societies that did historically have an "other" category didn't think the people in it actually changed sex, because that's daft. The idea that some actual change is happening is tied up in medical and surgical stuff and thus very recent.

My big question is "if they can get away with telling a lie so big and obvious, what else are the media and policy makers lying to us about?"

Oh yeah, this has been the big question lingering for me too. Especially now when we're watching the Chinese government develop a lie about coronavirus for propaganda purposes in real time in a way that wouldn't have been possible to do without modern media and the internet.

For me it was the extent of the medical malpractice that came as a surprise. I knew plastic surgeons had been allowed to harm patients with impunity, but what has been done to children by medical professionals came as a shocker.

My eyes are also opened to the fact that men seem to be able to develop a sexual fetish about literally anything! As far as I am aware, women don't tend to. I never really thought much about this before. Are males like baby chicks, imprinting onto odd things around them at a crucial developmental time?

Yes, there is a fair bit of research on this, and it seems to be a significant developmental difference between men and women. (Which might not sit well with the socialisation-only supporters.) The vast majority of fetishes belong to men, and there seems to be a period, usually in early adolescence or even childhood, where exposure to something that elicits a sexual response can create the fetish. It might be something that really is sexual, but not necessarily, it could also be something normally unrelated to sex. And it's not something the child does on purpose, the mechanism isn't really understood.

It happens occasionally with women but it's uncommon.

I've wondered if we haven't seen a real increase in this sort of thing as a result of sexual openness in the media for example. The assumption that kids don't understand certain images and so it won't affect them may simply not be the case for some kids, and it could go on to direct their sex life in a way that it otherwise might not. Porn now would obviously also fall into that.

As for why it happens, maybe there is some advantage to having a sort of imprinting of what would have at one time been a societies usual sexual practices - people used to have a lot less privacy and most young people would have some exposure to regular sex. It would allow the cultural mating behaviours across the species to be pretty flexible rather than very fixed. Fetishes might be what happens when that mechanism works a little too well. That's just a sort of guess about a possibility though, as far as I know there is no evidence of that.

Just out of interest, what does a rum cream and milk look like? Not often I run across a mixed drink I haven't heard of!

I'm not sure it's a real mixed drink, as such. It's just rum cream (I like J.D.Shore which is made locally to me) and as much milk as I want to add to it.

It's a nice crap weather drink.

Maybe we're just seeing more trans people because now people are generally more accepting nowadays?

Let’s test this by asking ourselves where all the middle aged women who are now able to reveal themselves as trans are. Where are the 52 year old married women with two children, suddenly telling the world that they always felt like a man and now that the world is more accepting, they are free to be their true selves? And being given a newspaper column in which to document their testosterone induced stubble and newfound love of the pub? Oh yes there are none. There are no women like this. No elderly women either. No females at all apart from the teenagers and 20somethings.

And yet there’s no end of men in this category - in fact they run the shop. Funny ain’t it...

For me, it's the way mystical, irrational beliefs can spread like wildfire and become unassailable even in modern society with all its knowledge. It makes me wonder what other ideas might spread in the future. Pretty much anything is possible.

At this point if people started arguing passionately that the little green men/lizard people have been here all along and it's them behind coronavirus I'm not sure I'd be surprised. This whole thing has been like a mass experiment in social compliance, one with rather worrying results.

I've seen a lot of policies that don't really make sense, but Self ID took the biscuit and really made me feel very anxious about what else governments can do. I have a friend who works in the civil service on policy making and she's entirely supportive of Self ID. She also believes in fate. Her belief is that whatever happens, is meant to be. I can't think of many beliefs less suitable for someone who's supposed to work out government policy. I've stopped having conversations with her about anything of importance because it is just depressing and deeply irritating - whatever it is (not just the trans issue) she will refuse to consider any conflicting interests or trade-offs.

This has made me wonder if the Dunning-Kruger effect has a big influence on governments & policies. I'd never have applied for a job making policies, because I would have thought about how complex and finely balanced a lot of the issues are, and decided there were better people than me for the job. But this woman I know had none of those qualms, because she has no appreciation of the difficulties - to her, whatever she first decides on, she'll stick with, because it was 'meant to be'.

After being involved with a political party for a while I have a similar opinion of political candidates - I think the Dunning-Kruger effect is (often, not always) selecting those with poor clarity of thought.