The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity

[Ingenieur]

An interesting article in The Atlantic today, and a sign the tide might be turning in the USA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-dishonest-gender-conversation-2024-election/680604/

Most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

Baby steps

She certainly does. And I think that she is desperately clinging to trying to hold that there is this 'middle ground', just like Hannah Barnes to some degree. Because to discover that there really is no such thing as a child who needs any type of chemical or surgical treatment for their belief that they are somehow 'wrong' and that you have supported it ever, would be a really hard thing to admit.

So, I think that she needs to keep her blind spots to maintain her position.

Whereas, I cannot quite see how there would be a 'middle ground' that did not continue to allow harm to women and children.

So what brings you to these boards?

You can't answer the most basic of questions so what's your end game? I can't imagine having the time or inclination to hang about the trans Reddit boards.. What a monumental waste of my time that would be.

"We want the law to refrain from reifying sexist gender concepts, and remove social stigma so people do not feel they have to perform a medical or social ritual of "transition" to be who they actually always where."

Aww, you're so caring towards transgender people.

(Although you've never actually met any or ever listened to anything they've ever told you about how they feel about their decision to transition, unless it's someone who regrets transitioning, in which case you're all over it).

What transman or transwomen is at the end of the process @izimbra ?

Name one that is actually now the opposite sex and therefore has changed sex?

Nah. Not defending Trump - merely pointing out to the flat earthers that pretending sex change is possible, sterilising children desirable, believing that women's sport should be full of men and promoting the rights of men to have access to unconsenting women when undressed / vulnerable are shit values. They upturn the social contract and remove the rights of children and women to be safeguarded from predatory men.

And it seems that populations world wide are waking up to this and are (finally) voting accordingly.

You've really misunderstood what @FlirtsWithRhinos wrote haven't you?

In full view of everyone.

Embarrassing.

I hope you keep posting your wonderfully insightful posts. It does far more good for this deranged echo chamber than if you didn't.

@izimbra there is a low bar for counter arguments.

I mean ok.. I'm not sure this is helping you build a coherent argument

To be fair - there's not a lot to work with. "Middle aged men need access to teenage girls in changing rooms because...." "Kamala Harris sent that letter to Dylan Mulvaney congratulating him on being a woman for 100 days because..... " etc..🙄

There have always been transgender people just like there have always been gay people.

Bollocks.

There have always been people who were same-sex attracted. That's an actual aspect of reality.

There has never been anyone who isn't the sex they are. So people who claim to be should accept that reality and not expect others to agree with them. It's nothing like being gay, it's much much more like being religious, because it's a belief based on no evidence.

This "it's just like being gay" and "bigots opposed gayness just like they now oppose transness" thing is a lie that is used to smear people with perfectly reasonable doubts and worries about men being able to just delcare they are women and get given whatever they want on a plate, as bigots and meanie-pegs.

Haven't you ever wondered why these supposedly atavistic, unliberal bigots are largely made up of feminists and lesbians - you know, people who were not opposed to gayness at all? Can't you see that telling lesbians and gay men they have to be attracted to someone's declared gender and not their sex is massively homophobic?

Oh and you know when a child or teen says they think they might be gay? You can say "Great, you do you, you might change your mind, you might not, I love you whatever." I think that's kind of different from what happens to children who say they might be trans. A vast amount of harm comes from that - especially if everyone is forced to immediately affirm it - and then they aren't able to change their mind.

See the difference?

The only thing I can work out from days of trying to follow this fuckwittery is that those things all happened..... but without bots we would never have know about it.

Bots have taken over not just all social media, but also traditional media too. We would not know anything except for social media bots that control social media content.

I mean... hell.... I am a marcomms person from old and fuck... I need to get me some of those bots, I could retire and just let them do every fucking thing.

Or, as many of us suspect, using the power of the internet, women and girls have been speaking out and it is WOMEN who are amplifying their voices. WOMEN who are spreading the news stories, and making the submissions to committees and organisations and getting other women to join in. And women who are standing up and talking and being heard.

And it is women discussing it with each other in person from seeing the events happen on TV, and traditional media.

But Oh... that's right.... bots control the internet and we would not have discovered each other without those bots....

‘But you haven’t even MET a trans person’!

What difference do they think it would make if we had met lots of trans people?

We don't make law and policy on the basis of people that we know.

Exactly. As @izimbra knows, I’ve met a couple of trans people. One was a rapist and one a nice person (as far as I could tell from the few interactions as they were a colleague).

Neither changes anything.

😂I know. I always tick off my tra bingo card when that accusation is thrown around. Show me that you've no clue about the lives of women and mothers when you roll out that little trope.

"There have always been transgender people just like there have always been gay people."

While I think that the argument about 'there have always been transgender people' relies on quite substantial twisting of cultural and societal histories, I think that your attempt to compare the rights of those who are same sex attracted and those who claim to be the opposite sex is a false comparison.

I have noticed in discussions that those saying it is a rights issue don’t like to acknowledge that it about the additional privileges (often described as rights) that the extreme transgender rights activists want. Because equal rights is what they already have.

What they want is additional rights.

They want to be able to coerce other people to comply with their philosophical belief. Such as in the way they wish people to use language around them.

They want to receive additional rights to access spaces and opportunities set aside for the sex they are not. For instance, a male person demanding to be placed in a female prison has the right to be placed in a male prison and female prison if they want to (and are not rapists in the UK). A male demanding to be treated as a female person wants to play sports in a sports category that they should not be playing in. They are not female athletes. So again, they want to have access to the male and the female sports categories.

And then there are the gender fluid male people who demand to be female one day and male the next.

And the only commonality between people with transgender identities is philosophical belief. No medical condition needed.

What other philosophical belief gets additional privileges that no one else in the population gets?

And what other people in the population has medical treatment available at public expense where their healthy bodies are subject to extreme body modifications to suit their philosophical belief? Surgical and chemical?

Whereas, when people who were same sex attracted were campaigning for "rights on them that allow them to live life on their own terms", they really were asking for equality. And rightfully. Equality of recognition of their relationships under the same opportunities that heterosexual couples had. And for people to not be discriminated against for being same or both sex attracted when compared with heterosexual people.

Allowing these same and both sex rights did not change the access to rights for heterosexual people. It really was a question of equality being sought and rightfully gained.

I think the discussion in rights is generally avoided these days by posters who understand that the mantras around ‘trans rights’ don’t get the response they want. They don’t like the objective reality stripped of all the emotional manipulation. And they don’t seem to be able to counter the arguments pointing this out. They have nothing but the same emotionally manipulative statements that convinced them. And yet, we still see it occasionally.

im still convinced @izimbra is a deep cover, secret GC agent dedicated to showing up the absolute fatuousness of the TRA position with every post

It's darkly hilarious when someone who thinks men can be women calls us "deranged".

I look forward to seeing them.

Usually they entail : access to single sex spaces / sports when the person is NOT the sex the protected spaces and sports are created for and the world comply with a demand to act as if it believes in the same philosophical belief that the person with a gender identity has.

In other words: privileges. Not rights. Privileges.

Well you believe that we should treat some men socially and legally as women because they say so. You KNOW that they are not biological women, you owned that on another thread.

You are simply a misogynist. You understand full well what the situation is and come on to these threads simply for a reaction.

It's just boring.

No one sane who is not a misogynist (whether it's internalised or not) believes that it is progressive to give men MORE rights than women or to remove healthy body parts from children. There is no comparison to gay rights, gay people are taking nothing from anyone else, nor are they mutilating children.

Women are fucked in the USA they are surrounded by misogynists on both sides. They preferred the 'pussy grabbing one' to the one who has thrown their rights away & persists with a post truth agenda which is harming ALL women and children.

As the title says if the Democrats want to gain back those swing voters thy need an honest conversation. The impact on Gender was more important than the Abortion issue and they were too fucking blinded by their own ideology and misogyny to see it.

Good argument well made. Thanks. I feel very corrected and educated.

Meanwhile in the real world, we've discussed on here many times how homosexuality has been used as a Trojan horse and it's simply not true. But then you'd have to partake in a conversation to address concerns of this nature.

It's funny how instead of talking to resolve conflicts, no one who is saying this can answer the question of why the LGB Alliance who were born of the left by the left, find trans rights so problematic and why they are so concerned about the Trojan horse being used to remove homosexual rights because without a definition of homosexual referring to sex, they lose their legal status and protections.

And it's even stranger how the LGB Alliance have ruffled quite so many feathers that a trans charity tried to get them removed as a charity.

And then they got targeted by activists in an attack which meets the legal UK definition of extremism.

Odd that.

It's almost as if this type of militant trans activist simply uses the Trojan horse of 'just like being gay' to legitimise attacks on homosexuals. Or as we like to call it here, are openly homophobic.

Hmm.

Thanks again.

Actually, many of us here are parents of people who have or do identify as trans.

After nearly 8 years of angst and trauma, my own child finally accepts that being lesbian, autistic, ADHD and really not wanting to wear her hair in a Katniss Everdene plait anymore doesn’t mean she’s born in the wrong body after all. Or that to slice into her arms to generate yet more scars (via A&E on occasion) or overdose on paracetamol won’t fast track her to happiness. Instead, she’s back at college and investing her focus and passion into her art and a future career but avoiding the blue haired kids with they/them pronouns… because most of them have never had any skin in the game (literally) and have cynically and selfishly played with her vulnerability before dumping her for the next ‘on trend’ cause.

She’s not there yet, but fortunately the only semi-permanent damage she has to show for her journey is a forearm of slash-marks. Breasts intact and no hormone/puberty blocker damage.

Perhaps you should try walking in our shoes before making bigoted and uninformed judgements about a group of women who are desperately trying to keep their kids safe and change the world they live in into one where their non-conformity and natural fears about growing from a child into an adult will not be manipulated and weaponised by total fucking idiots.