The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity Part 2

[Ingenieur]

Starting a new thread in case the first fills up.

Where's the scientific evidence that everyone has a gender identity? Especially given lots of people say they don't. And there is no tangible evidence of gender identity in other mammals. Indeed lots of unhappiness when mammals such as dogs can smell the difference between human adult males and females and don't recognize gender identity.

There's plenty of scientific evidence backing up the two sexes in humans fact and despite their protestations, the gender ideologues tend to know what a biological woman is when they need a surrogate.

It's a belief......

I appreciate it feels real to anyone who studies celestial bodies and sees a link between these and events that happen on earth. But it's a belief. Not everyone believes it's true.

It's very much like my belief in ghosts. I know it's real because I heard a ghost joining in a conversation I was in. Another person in the conversation heard it too. Even though I was the only woman in the room (and I know I didn't say the words), unfortunately the other person doesn't believe it happened (they think I laughed, then said "oh dear"). I accept that others don't believe me and that many (most?) people don't believe in ghosts.

Hopefully you accept that many people don't believe in astrology?

I've just seen this post now.... This point answers my previous question about whether you accept that not everyone believes in it. Thank you for confirming.

You can believe, or disbelieve, what you like about it, of course.

But (and I'm so sorry if this comes across as blunt).... this bit....

I refuse to sit, by, though, and have people dismiss something so central in my life and work - without any real understanding of it themselves.

... illustrates the point I was making upthread. People who believe in gender identity see any pushback about it as offensive. I'm pleased for you that it's central to your life and work. That's great. But me saying I don't believe it's true isn't me not understanding it. I understand enough to know I don't believe in it. Same as with god and with gender identity.

I'm sorry that this feels dismissive. That's presumably how gender identity believers feel too.

On a plus note, I don't think anyone is trying to base laws on astrological predictions. Just as nobody is trying to base laws on the existence of ghosts. So we can all rub along together in society.

Precisely.

Which is why we shouldn't teach it as fact in schools, or bake it in to laws, sports, prisons etc as if it's true.

I'm gob smacked your aggression and hostility. For a person of normally voluminous verbosity, how else can a one word reponse be interpreted? Ever considered that i maybe mis-read your meaning or intent?

Of course, I'm more than aware of that......which is why I normally keep it to myself.

Given the nature of the thread I think you are misreading...

Do you mind if i opt out of this dialogue with you now.....it seems pointess and is just creating unnecessary enmity. Feel free to repond further, of course, but I won't be.

So back to the Senate toilet, do we think this has been done deliberately to demonstrate that the Democrats are still going to make the rights of trans identifying males the most important issue?

If so that's fascinatingly clever.

They do seem to be enactng things now, ahead of the new administration, to either signal intent, or to try to disrupt what they anticipate may be the new agenda.

Or the Republicans have found an issue which their research has determined is a vote / popularity loser for the Democrats, and they want to keep it constantly in the media spotlight and at the forefront of the public's mind.

I swear there are non-human species with a higher IQ than Trump. The same is not true of the Republicans' PR wonks.

If so that's fascinatingly clever.

If they are, it is. Although as demonstrated on this thread, when one person holds a belief they know to be "true" (whether that's in gender identity, ghosts, astrology or whatever) it can create a whole different conversation when they hear something that they perceive to be dismissive about their belief. Including whether the belief is a belief or a fact (that not everyone knows/understands).

This is a microcosm of the problem that has been happening with gender identity. As an analogy, if UK Christians within parliament successfully passed a law that everyone needs to go to church on Sundays, they would get pushback from the public. Some Christians would oppose it, some might welcome it (they might talk about how beneficial it is for everyone to take time out and be a community etc.... Be Kind). Some atheists might welcome it on the same basis. The opposition from atheists would be a mix of a) people saying it's wrong to impose this on everyone, because not everyone believes in god and b) people getting angry at the overreach and saying that god doesn't exist. That's what's happening here with the "playing make-believe" comment.

The question is, will the reaction to the "playing make-believe" comment be a loud conversation that overshadows the real issue, so that people spend time arguing about whether it was kind or offernsive? There will always be people who believe that we all have a gender identity, just like any of the other beliefs above.

Edited for clarity.

Ps everyone is welcome to tell me that ghosts aren't real.

Imposing a compulsory gender identity on those of us who don't have one is deeply, deeply, deeply shitty.

Hopefully!

Nancy Mace does, though, seem to be attracting a lot of very strongly worded push-back about her poposed new bill. Saying how quickly it moved on from fairness in women's sports to " outright transphobia"

'transphobia' is such a silly word. I suppose words for bugaboos and monsters under the bed always are.

Why would people be eager to tell you that "gosts aren't real", though, if you were not pushing it on them in the first place? That's the difference, isn't it. People are free to identify or feel about themselves however they wish so long as they don't enforce it on other people, or expect other people to alter their habits and behaviours on account of it.

Your experience of, or belief in, ghosts doesn't by its nature demand that others accept that reality and change theirs on account of it; and what would be gained by others denouncing you or calling you silly - since there is no material impact upon them in your belief? People in your private life probably know of your belief and most likely feel relaxed with just letting you hold it.

I knew it was going to be this! DP was telling me about this the other day.

Agreed.

That's the point I'm making.

Perhaps badly, I'll accept!

But as you said above, some people are now saying that Mace has gone too far and is being transphobic. In other words, the conversation is perhaps in danger of being overshadowed by a public discussion about whether she's being offensive or not. Rather than the fact that she's standing up against an enforcement of gender identity belief as fact.

People who go against the grain of established beliefs or accepted 'facts' often attract opprobrium; they get called conspiracists or charlatans or wackos.

Some of the Republican vote this time around came from people for whom the Covid lockdown and the authoritarianism of the pro/enforced vaccine lobby contravened their long held feelings, attitudes and practices around diet, health, well being and bodily autonomy.

They also didn't take well to being called idiots or reality deniers, either. There was a lot of social pressure and shaming that went on during Covid - with some people seeing themselves as arbiters of what was good and morally right......and if you were against mandatory vaccines then you ought to be socially excluded, forbidden from travel, or even censured from discussing the issue on line.

Some types of belief system are seen as being naturally superior to others - and the God of Pharmacology and established allopathic medicine was one of them. People reacted against that type of ideological certainty and censure. It tended to be the Left here, and Democrats in the States that were most fervent in calling for harsher penalties for non compliance, harsher, longer lockdowns etc

But as you said above, some people are now saying that Mace has gone too far and is being transphobic. In other words, the conversation is perhaps in danger of being overshadowed by a public discussion about whether she's being offensive or not.

I think it's a positive thing, to have these discussions. The more discussions the better.

It certainly seems to have ignited a blaze......which will, of course, bring the issue more to the fore, but also most likely simply reinforce existing prejudices.

This really is a battle of fundamentally clashing ideological beliefs. One lot will try to enforce, the other lot will push back or cancel.........I really think it will only be the passage of time and the growing emergence of a body of evidence - regarding consequences - which will really turn the tide.

Hopefully things will gradually move away from the extremes towards the centre where sensible and responsible accommodations can be sought and enacted.

I think the whole concept of an innate "gender" that is based on sex but can be separate from sex is sexist and incoherent. As pp said the fact that I'm thinking about it at all indicates that it's being imposed on me in some way. I'm not having someone else's belief in ghosts imposed on me so it's not as important whether they exist (I'm agnostic about them)

So when this imposition happens I'm going to make it quite clear that to me that the belief itself is offensive and misogynistic, as well as incoherent, and an attack on women's rights. Im perfectly happy to explain why if asked. I'm not going to participate in legitimising it in any way. I think it's actively harmful.

It is quite odd. In the beginning, they said/ say it is separate from biological sex. But then these men just must go into the places and spaces where women and girls are in a state of undress, or vulnerable. And where it will cause women and girls to avoid or feel uncomfortable. Then, use their biologially male bodies to do women out of fair competition, scholarships and prizes in sports etc. Then they place their biologically male bodies on women’s places on political parties quotas.

I won’t even say how revolted I am that a rape crisis centre placed traumatised women (their whole supposed raison d’etre) below the wishes and desires of these biological men. There is no limit to how little a biological woman and girl matter if a man wishes to trample their boundaries.

If it is basically a self declared feeling in the man’s water, why does he get to transgress all decency in the treatment of women and girls? With everyone cheering him on, and changing the law to let him do it more easily. While they have the brass neck to call the women and girls the bad ones if they don’t play along with this nonsense.

Tbh I am finding your post a little vague - what do you think it is they are likely to do so far as deporting illegal immigrants that you think people don't want?

I suspect that what he will actually do is likely to be a lot less than what many would prefer, for pragmatic reasons.

But I also think that most people who are looking for tighter border control, including HIspanic Ametican supporters, think that there should be a very straightforward, consistent response to people who aren't there legally, which is to say they should be returned to where they came from.

Are you saying that there are people who voted for Trump and tighter border controls who don't in fact want that?

Hmm, but facts are just statements about the material world.

Things like moral precepts, or constructs like human rights, are not facts in that sense.

Policies, say about the environment, or economics, or covid lockdowns, aren't mainly about facts, they are about values - whatever the facts, our actions are around the outcomes we want, and these are based on values.

A heck of a lot of what states do is encode and act on values and beliefs.