Sunday School

[DavisModerator]

I’m not ignoring your arguments. You are mostly just venting and venting isn’t an argument.

It’s sad that you can’t see that tactical decisions one dislikes will be needed in order to forestall major losses.

You seem to know little about how change is brought about. I’m not arguing this shit with you anymore. You are supportive sometimes, other times you show indifferent, trivialise injustices (or rationalise them) and resist admitting the scope of problems in your country. I leave you with this quote by Hitchens:

“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence”

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

You are supportive sometimes, other times you show indifferent, trivialise injustices (or rationalise them) and resist admitting the scope of problems in your country.

Yes, I perceive nuances and distinctions you ignore. As for assessing the scope of my country’s problems, read my AMERICA IS LOST post put up this morning.

Some good points about the trans phenomenon interspersed with some wit for you not to respond to:

 

[AutumnParticipant]

“Good points” I mean, yes if you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about and enjoy laughing at tired tropes about trans people that, funnily enough, rely entirely on stripping all nuance from the conversation to pluck the low-hanging fruit*.

*We can even let this be a gay pun for the cheap laugh to stay on theme.

[UnseenParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

“Good points” I mean, yes if you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about and enjoy laughing at tired tropes about trans people that, funnily enough, rely entirely on stripping all nuance from the conversation to pluck the low-hanging fruit*. *We can even let this be a gay pun for the cheap laugh to stay on theme.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” That’s what everybody says about people they disagree with.

[AutumnParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Autumn wrote:

“Good points” I mean, yes if you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about and enjoy laughing at tired tropes about trans people that, funnily enough, rely entirely on stripping all nuance from the conversation to pluck the low-hanging fruit*. *We can even let this be a gay pun for the cheap laugh to stay on theme.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” That’s what everybody says about people they disagree with.

It isn’t. And it’s true, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

LGBTQ population doubling every year; something is changing:
The biggest changes are almost certainly are social and we can point to two likely major factors in why the numbers skew that way:
i) The reduction of stigma and discrimination coupled with increased ability to find support and community
ii) The more expansive definitions within the 2SLGBTQ+ community include concepts that weren’t discussed or well understood in previous generations, so someone who might not have considered themselves part of the community had they grown up in the 1960s might in the 2020s as language and norms evolve.

People are allowed to ask ‘What’s up with that?”:
They always were and have been since back in the days of Elbe and Jorgensen. The problem arises when people keep asking the same question ad nauseam without listening to the answers given, then acting like it’s all such a big mystery. Furthermore, 2SLGBTQ+ people deal with a shit ton of disingenuous questions and we’re burnt out of having to repeat the same shit over and over ’cause y’all are too lazy to do a modicum of fucking research.

All the babies are in the wrong bodies?
Hyperbole or the punchline, I’m sure, but this does contribute to a belief in unscientific concepts such as ROGD. The highest estimates for trans population come in at 0.6% of the US population, and according to the Canadian census 0.3% of the Canadian population as two examples. So over 99% of babies are not “born in the wrong bodies” (a somewhat antiquated phrase). Those numbers may be underestimates of the total trans population, but it should be noted those numbers also include non-binary people, many of whom do experience gender dysphoria, but at least some of whom use the term as a rejection of socialized male and female categories. So even amongst the trans population, not all are “born in the wrong bodies”, and the majority of LGBQ+ people are fine in the body they have, at least with regard to sex and gender.

What do you want to be when you grow up? They meant profession:
Again, played to the punchline, but a joke incongruous with assessing gender incongruence in adults and children which again plays into prejudices regarding gender identity and expression.

[AutumnParticipant]

ACLU Tweet:
It’s disingenuous to imply the ACLU is ignoring women in the abortion rights debate or that they are making it all about 2SLGBTQ+ people. Talking about people being disproportionately affected means within the subset of those affected. Maher creates a false dichotomy by saying these disproportionately affected groups are more important than ‘breeders’ when the two groups overlap and one of the main concerns is intersectionality.

It’s not all about you:
Sayeth the man living in a society built up around people like him, which normalizes his existence, in which he had many rights above and beyond 2SLGBTQ+ people, and in which trans people are facing unprecedented waves of anti-trans legislation, we are aware. It’s actually rarely about us. His whole spiel here isn’t about us; it’s about him and his take on our experience to the exclusion of our actual experiences because it’s oh-so-fucking important we reduce 2SLGBTQ+ issues down to his unchallenged right to ask questions.

It’s okay to ask questions about something that’s very new and involves children:
It’s not very new. The heightened attention on it all is new, but the subject matter isn’t. We have decades and decades of various approaches to addressing gender incongruence in adults and children.

Anyone from a marginalized community is always right:
What the fuck is he talking about? It’s like he is entirely unaware of most of us were born wrong by societal standards and had to fight constantly for a shred of recognition and often still do. I know what it’s like to live as a man who is accepted as cisgender and hetero. The extent to which I am constantly challenged as a trans woman over just about everything is universes apart from the easy acceptance I got living as a cis-het man. Not only that, but instead of just being accepted by default, the progression to trans acceptance went through brutal steps of medicalization, scrutiny, palthologizing, and failed experiments to make us cis before—after decades—things began to turn more toward medical acceptance and general acceptance. Yet still arguments are frequently made to challenge our existence and place in society that are simply not made to cisdenger-heterosexual people.

Experimenting on children:
Experimenting has become such a bizarre anti-science buzzword. We were experimenting on children decades ago with therapeutic practices for gender non-conformity, and the results weren’t good. There is no way to get to sound medical protocols without practicing medicine to the best of our ability on people in need. Calling puberty blockers ‘experimental’ comes across as disingenuous. This same medication has already been safely used in the human population, including children treated for precocious puberty who were younger than those seeking care for incongruence of gender. The use of puberty blockers is evidence based, but the only way to gain data is by practicing medicine. Until more data is available, the protocols will be considered ‘experimental’, but that doesn’t mean unsupported by evidenced. Certainly it’s no less experimental than past approaches.

[AutumnParticipant]

Honestly, I’m a third of the way through and he’s pulling out Irreversible Damage which again, requires a really lengthy explanation for why it’s not a good resource and how it cites data known to be bad and fabricates narratives. Where am I supposed to find the time to counter every lazy ass, dumbfuck nonsense thing a cis person says just so I don’t hurt their widdle feelings about how they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about?

Just ejaculating into a complex and nuanced conversation isn’t something that warrants respect. It just takes up time and energy from people who are frankly, exhausted. I’m not here to wipe your ass just because you want to play at argument like you’re one of the grownups in the conversation.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Autumn, good critique of Maher. The guy is glib and sometimes amusing but an ersatz intellectual.

[UnseenParticipant]

@autumn

There’s a lot to process there which makes obvious the problem you have ahead of you if you hope for an acceptable level of change within the next hundred or more years. People just aren’t going to pay attention to a complex and nuanced problem that isn’t theirs. They have their own problems. Most people on the street couldn’t tell you what the difference between a L or G and a Q is, much less what the most recent addition, 2S, or the + stand for.

Now, I am not going to do a point-by-point response to everything you brought up for two reasons: First, there’s just so much and a lot of it is just you disagreeing with Maher without citing your sources, when you’re not simply offering a contrary opinion; second, I anticipate that it would end up being one of those almost interminable discussions that go on and on for pages with basically just two participants who are never going to agree.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Autumn,

Yes, I am already aware of complications surrounding the term Two-Spirit, and yet that remains a term some Indigenous people use. By saying 2SLGBTQ+ I am not insisting all Indigenous people get lumped into the 2S, but rather recognizing those who do feel alignment with the term.

Just bracing a fellow Forum membèr for whatever call-out storm comes. They tend to hit even good people by surprise.

There are many terms in the initialism that are awkward or have issues. I use ‘queer’ and ‘transgender’, both of which are considered problematic by some in the so-called ‘community’. There are many oddities in the terminology surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity likely stemming from how they evolved in a language that was poorly adopted to support the conversation. Attempts to improve the language used—especially around the clunky and inexhaustive ‘2sLGBTQ+’ initialism—are often made, but momentum behind existing terminology often carries old words and terms forward. It is what it is.

In the interests of Parsimony and Humanity, I’ll just say: “Individuals,” “Folks,” or as they always said on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, “Folk.”

Each of our pronouns are “I/Me/Mine,” Second Person, Polite and Familiar, are “You/You/Yours,” Collective, South of The Mason-Dixon Line, in-group and out-group, AM and FM, is “Ya’ll/Ya’ll/You’uns-es.” 😉

I don’t even know where to begin on how nonsensical this is. You’re trying to address a problem when you don’t even know what the problem is.

As of yesterday in Uvalde, TX, it should be abundantly clear to U.S. Citizens and indeed the World, what the problem is.

Adults teach children, by example, that it is morally all right to initiate force to get what they want, and with some children, the lesson sticks when they grow up.

Same as with Collumbine and every other incident of mass mayhem and murder in compulsorily-attended schools.

And the same as with every other incident of violence and bullying in compulsorily-attended schools.

Children who aren’t captive audiences are not only harder to bully and abuse, but also harder to murder. One day, everyone will get that.

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Closing Code

[AutumnParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Autumn, good critique of Maher. The guy is glib and sometimes amusing but an ersatz intellectual.

An opportunist to boot. It’s like homeopathy; it doesn’t have to make sense—it just has to find an audience that wants to believe it makes sense. Cognitive bias will handle the rest, and those willing can bank on having customers for some time to come.

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

In nearly every case the clash with women’s rights is much like the way abolition, desegregation, and racial equality clashed with white rights or the way women’s suffrage and the right to work clashed with men’s rights.

Is that not a false analogy?  Because women aren’t the oppressors of trans people: society in general is.

[AutumnParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

In nearly every case the clash with women’s rights is much like the way abolition, desegregation, and racial equality clashed with white rights or the way women’s suffrage and the right to work clashed with men’s rights.

Is that not a false analogy? Because women aren’t the oppressors of trans people: society in general is.

In simplified terms, cisgender/ transgender—when we talk about women’s rights versus trans rights, that’s the dynamic. When it’s claimed that trans rights clash with women’s rights, it’s usually to preserve a cissexist paradigm. Whether that is the motive or not, that’s the result.

 

[jakelafortParticipant]

I had a good opinion of Ricky until i saw dis.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/comedian-james-acasters-takedown-of-ricky-gervais-trends-following-anti-trans-netflix-special-1235154396/

[AutumnParticipant]

The jokes are one thing. I mean, some are fucked up, but whatever; I’ve heard worse and no longer expect better. But what really turned me off him in the end is he gets so whiny and self-aggrandizing about it after.

Acastor is much funnier in my opinion, though he’s a bit like Eddie Izzard in that you often don’t get the full pay off on the jokes until much later in the set. Gervais has felt like he’s been phoning it in for some time. I have to wonder if he’s afraid that without the ‘controversy’ his standup just won’t continue to draw crowds at the same level.

[Author]

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