With the way the transphobes blew up yesterday's comment section, I forsee the same thing happening today.
For those transphobes who show up: biological sex in humans is bimodal, not binary. It is a spectrum in the same way that sexual orientation is. Gender is a social construct, and is also a largely bimodal spectrum. If you cannot accept that trans women are women, trans men are men, and nonbinary individuals exist, then you can fick right off. Then keep fucking off until you come all the way around back here. Then fuck off.
As someone who has ACTUALLY experienced sharing a ladies room with a trans woman, may I just say that I was more creeped out by the men hanging around outside the women's restroom to 'protect' me than I was by the very nice, polite trans lady in the room with me.
One of my closest friends is a trans woman. I've used her bathroom....same basic plumbing and stuff as virtually every other bathroom I've been in. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about.
The only thing that was bad about my experience was having to comfort someone left crying by the hooligans outside the restroom. That should never have happened.
It should. The same playbook gets repeated over and over each time a new scapegoat is ID'd. 'Hyper sexual aggression', the 'need to protect our women folk'. It's hope someday we can finally drive a stake through the heart of this bigoted bullshit. And salt the earth.
Bingo. I clearly remember that "Black girls in bathrooms" was one of the panic points by white parents when my school district opened the first racially integrated high school. In 1967. (Note: they should have been more concerned about the white girl gangs who used the bathrooms to beat up "outcast" girls. But, of course, that was never on their radar.) Stakes and salt sound like a good idea.
I get that vibe too, the hysteria, the lies passing as fact, that are nowhere near the truth, but it is so easy to rile up people who are gullible, and won't take 5 minutes to Google the reality.
I'm afraid I would have gone off on those "heroes." My niece would have been the ones they'd be "protecting" me from, and I get fierce if I feel like she's being threatened. I may be 74, but I am a BADASS 74.
I've done that too. And I survived using a toilet in men's room. When do I get a medal?
Some more things, I survived growing up with female friends, with male friends, with non binary friends, with lesbian and homosexual friends, weird cousins and other crazy relatives.
There ain't a woman alive who hasn't used the men's room when out partying because the line to the ladies' room was too long. I've stood guard while friends used the men's loo, and vice versa.
I was at a concert once and you can imagine the lines. One woman gathered her friends and issued an invitation to anyone else to join her in the men's room. We stood in the privacy entrance as our leader bellowed "WARNING! LADIES COMING IN! You don't have anything we haven't seen, but we still promise not to look."
We entered with our hands ostentatiously shielding our eyes from the urinal area, proceeded to the stalls and did our business. As we left to wash our hands in the ladies', she announced "THANK YOU, GENTLEMEN!"
The women who didn't join us were still in line, of course, and undoubtedly missed at least the first song after intermission.
I was a beginner short and long-distance runner in the early 70’s. When we went to compete at some 5K-10K events, they would only open the guy’s restrooms. The 2-5 women who were there would there would yell “Close your eyes, Guys. You might not want to see our faces if we look at you.”
Same, several times, and never an issue. I was much more creeped out by the pimp who tried to talk me up and waited outside the bathroom while I was waiting for a bus (true story that happened in my youth. I suppose it didn’t help that I looked age 13 with a Dorothy from Kansas suitcase).
I'm a woman and have no problem with a Trans Woman in the Ladies Room. We have booths with doors unlike male public urinals and there's absolutely no problem. I don't expect to see anyone else doing their thing when in a Woman's Restroom. I am also educated enough to have heard about people with XXY, YYX, and other configurations and respect the decisions of people as to who they are. The only problem I see is the participation in women's sports having a possible unfair advantage in strength. Currently Congress questioned the head of Professional Athletes and he represented over 500,000 athletes. He said that there were 10 or less Trans Women Athletes in the organization. All this hysteria is over 10 people. Ridiculous.
Also that is a non-problem because sports-medicine persons like my stepdaughter are trained in how to evaluate if there is an unfair advantage with muscle-mass etc. Just leave it up to the scientific/medical experts who evaluate on a case by case basis. There is no need for hysterical layman who seem to want genital inspections or something. No! keep your pervy stuff to yourself.
That's been my experience, too, Natalie. I just felt awful that day because a perfectly nice lady was brought to tears by a bunch of yahoos creeping around the door the ladies' room to 'protect' all the women. THEY were the ones we needed to be afraid of. Assholes!
Yep, they are trying to score political points by lying to women about how transpersons having rights, gives them less rights, It doesn't make sense, rights are not pie. Everyone should have rights.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
If they do show up again, the best thing to do is not respond to them directly. Talk around them. If you must respond, give them a one-and-done and let them know they'll get no further response from you.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You know NOTHING about me, yet you somehow decided without KNOWING me at all or KNOWING the stances I have taken that I’m a misogynist (not that you could be bothered to actually do a little research before you typed (my posting history is quite open). But that would be too much like work and it would upset your prejudices.
I’ve been at Friendly Atheist for more than 10 years and I’ll be here long after you’ve gone off to make an ass of yourself somewhere else. If I’d truly been the hater of women you claim I’d have been bounced from this site long ago. The powerful women here eviscerate trolls. Like you.
Oh, and by the way? There’s nothing “new” about atheism. It predates all religions.
Don’t expect me to keep feeding your sad need. I’ve said all I’m going to say to you. I’ll not waste any further effort on you.
John, if violence against women bothers you so much...why aren't you putting your effort into where it's happening most? The simplest inquiry will show you that women are most in danger from their spouses and partners in terms of homicide. I can't speak about anyone's trans experience directly; but as a cis woman who's been on the receiving end of "average" experience, I (and millions of other women) can tell you that from harassment to sexual assault to full-blown violence - it's the cis straight men we know well; people we thought were friends, partners, boyfriends - that populate our memories (or that we remember for those women who are no longer with us because they were murdered.)
I see any awful lot of "rational" men who have suddenly started caring about women's safety - as though it's a new issue that came into existence 10 years ago, when transgender and non-binary people were now in the focus of mainstream media.
John, what did you do to protect women against actual violence - not the spectre of the "transwoman in the ladies' room!!" tabloid fodder, but actual violence and murder - BEFORE trans rights were in the spotlight?
Did you say "not all men"? Did you say "none of my friends are rapists, I'd know"? Did you ever follow an organisation that tallies up the rate of women killed each week by men they knew?
If you did... you'd know that the vast majority of cis women; plenty of us who are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, who have lost a beloved woman to cis/heterosexual male violence - those of us who are in general good faith just going about our lives - know that the concrete threat will always be that small but lethal cohort; cis, straight men who've inherited their entitlement to violence from centuries of misogyny.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
One of our kids is nonbinary. It's a bit hard to deny their existence or their reality abiut who they are while living in the same house. Anyone who thinks my kid isn't properly human can indeed fuck right off and keep fucking off.
I have followed these discussions now, in some detail, for many years now and I have to say, of all the claims I have heard, I have never heard anyone claim that individuals who identify as "non-binary" are not "properly human", whatever that even means.
If you're serious, go fuck yourself. My kid came out in their mid 30s. They've never been trendy about anything for three decades. If that was a joke, write more clearly. The first trans person I knew was in the 70s. A guy in the trades doesn't travel to Sweden for surgery and return a woman unless there is actual shit going on. It's asking for a life of abuse on the job. There was no industry of which you speak then (and still there isn't, or there wouldn't be a shortage of docs).
Yup you can fuck off. And keep right on fucking off. I know who I've lived with for decades. You do not. I hope you get that cranial anusectormy you so desperately need soon.
Sorry, that ship has sailed - the gender ideology lot have lost the argument hands down. Most people, now they realise there is a choice (having previously been told that to disagree with gender ideology was to be an off-the-scale awful person), simply aren't going along with it. I'm talking UK here, I know some other countries are a bit behind the curve on this. That doesn't mean not being nice to people who identify as the opposite sex, and doesn't mean they shouldn't get protections from discrimination and so on. But it does mean we have to say no to the idea they have literally changed sex, with all the negating of the hard-won rights of women that that brings. There are choices here.
Women's rights aren't human rights. Women's human rights are human rights but to claim women's rights (or trans rights) are all human rights is to elevate the status of all their rights to "human rights".
Everyone's human rights are human rights. Even mass murderers. Everyone, trans people included, also have rights that are not human rights.
Actually, not all putative rights aren't being protected under the law (which is different from respecting* them), only some rights for traits and ideologies that have been wielded as weapons against people. It's a game of legal catch up. As each new protection is added, bigots, particularly religious ones, will shift to something else to identify and single out "the others" for discrimination.
* Respect, aka grant courtesy to, people's right to self-determination. Anyone who can't is indicating that their own right to self-determination should be curtailed.
It does seem off to me that Hemant Mehta likes to claim the moral high ground on this issue and yet he has no issue with some disturbed poster repeatedly telling people to go and die, whilst other posts on this comment section have clearly been removed for content.
The idea that people who disagree with you need to die is one we have come across many times in modern history it is fair to say you are in fairly famous (if grotesque) company.
As an aside, you and your fellow shitstains showed up to dehumanize and erase trans people. Don't begin to believe you have any moral ground upon which to stand.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
There’s no such thing as “gender ideology”. It’s called reality. “Gender ideology” is a far right dogwhistle, and comes from the religion of anti-trans ideology, a hybrid religion of the Catholic anti-gender movement, radical feminism, and Nazi phrenology.
No one “identifies as the opposite sex”. Trans people are their gender. That’s it.
We have been changing sex since the discovery and isolation of sex hormones in the 30s. Your medical knowledge is about a century out of date.
And denying rights to a demographic of women you don’t like does not actually protect the rights of women.
Well said. The same types are quick to throw the rest of us under the bus as soon as someone tells them to, over abortion, and other reproductive rights. They are bad allies to ALL women like you said. And who the hell is stupid enough to turn down allies, against the REAL enemy the Patriarchy and the uptight right christian Nationalists?
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Biological sex only works as a binary, though. How many hermaphrodites are able to both be pregnant and impregnate others?
Yes, gender is a social construct, but the entire purpose of gender is to tell people what sex you are, so it doesn't make sense to separate the two.
So ,no, transwomen aren't women and trans men aren't men. Anyone who says otherwise isn't scientific. Can we try to accept that science is based on evidence, not on social views?
Transphobia is a treatable illness. Please consult with a licensed mental health care professional for more information and help. You don't have to suffer.
Hitler knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Stalin knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Mao knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Joe King knows that dissent can never be tolerated.
At the risk of being told, somewhat disturbingly, by you that I need to go and die, I have to take issue with your comment here.
"biological sex in humans is bimodal, not binary. It is a spectrum in the same way that sexual orientation is."
I think this a real misunderstanding/misportrayal of biological sex and conflates the accidental properties of sex with the essential properties.
If we are prepared to do that then we can even claim that a mathematical binary isn't a binary because we can write 1's and 0's in different fonts! Parrots, tricorn hats and eye patches may be properties we associate with pirates but your status as a pirate, to any degree, is not dependent on these things as they are accidental, not essential properties of being a pirate.
Agreed, most accidental properties, those we regard as male or female by association, ARE bimodal or not even that (height is often claimed to be bimodal but actually overlaps too much for this) but these are not what define male and female. The essential properties (with the arguable and very rare exception of ovotestes) are resolutely binary: there are only two gamete types in sexual reproduction, after all.
Breasts are only regarded as female because we observe females as typically having breasts, not the other way round. Crests, manes and elaborate plumage are, in some species, regarded as male characteristics in the same way. Human males are not somewhere "down a spectrum" for not having them!
To conflate any and all of this with the binary process of reproductive roles and pathways is ridiculous. Males from ethnic groups that are less hirsute are not "less male" or somewhere down some spectrum of maleness because hirsuteness is only seen as male by association. An individual, human or otherwise, who develops zero body hair but has testes is every bit as male as one who looks like a yeti!
In my view, this conversation generally cannot move on until we all get away from EITHER insisting sex is binary or not binary without first acknowledging the conflation of essential and accidental properties and being explicit as to which we are referring to.
That is true and the definition extends across sexually reproducing organisms.
However, we have to be cognisant that some, probably most, conversations where we need to factor in "sex", with respect to humans and social issues, it isn't technical biological sex (gametes, gonads) that are relevant but some of the accidental properties associated with the sexes..... and these aren't binary.
Hence it behooves both sides to be explicit and understand what it is they are claiming and what they are not because otherwise they end up arguing past one another and/or making clearly incorrect statements.
Sport policy is a primary example of that, whereupon the relatively recent concept of "sport sex" is a more valuable metric, in many people's view, than technical biological sex.
Sport sex typically looks at the factors associated with biological sex that are the basis for the protected female category, rather than the brute fact of maleness.
So, primarily, the emphasis is on the virilising effect of testosterone, that testosterone having come from male gametes and a body that is responsive to androgens.... as opposed to means of producing small motile gametes (which directly does not influence sports performance.
Hence, a male with CAIS would classify as a "sport sex" of female as their body is not virilised by testosterone and (at least this is the theory) they have not undergone male puberty or benefit from male androgen levels, despite having testes.
Yes of course there are only two. Like in Highlander, "There can be only one." - sorry - "...two!"
XY begets penis. XX begets vagina.
Except when they don't.
Women (lacking a penis, thus not male) who have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome have XY genes and produce testosterone, but they didn't develop male bodies because their genes and physiology do not react to testosterone. They may not even have ovaries, a womb, or a vagina, but their genitals present as female and this they were assigned woman at birth. They have what is known as Differences in Sexual Development (DSD), often referred to as intersex. Some of them don't like being called intersex, so please respect their wishes.
These people exist, so how do we classify them? By their genes? Or their physiology? Their gametes? What about people without gametes? Is woman who is sterile and lacks the necessary parts to procreate not a woman? I have been told that answer to that last question is "no." What do you think?
How come we never ask, "What is a man?"?
This is just one of several ways that nature deviates from human classification of sex. Nature is the final arbiter of how nature functions. We can only try to figure it out and develop a progressively better understanding of nature. Nature doesn't follow man's rules, man can only predict how nature will function.
Technically, what sex you are depends on whether you produce eggs or sperm. Generally, we tend to include infertile people in whatever sex their body otherwise resembles.
I think that the issue is that with trans people, you are taking someone who is fertile and then saying that they are the other sex. Even if you do "bottom surgery" on them, you still can't go from a person that produces working sperm to a person that produces working eggs (or visa versa). Until we have the technology to do that, I don't think it is fair to say that they are the sex that they feel mentally that they are.
Your transphobia is a treatable illness. Please consult with a licensed mental health care professional for more information and help. You don't have to continue to suffer.
1. I have studied CAIS, so you're not telling me anything I don't already know.
2. The phenotype (observable characteristic) presents as female. They're assigned female at birth.
3. Their gonad streaks (the tissue that develops into testes or ovaries, often don’t develop into either. There is a lot of variance in the development.
4. Saying that genes are the only factor that determine sex is both ignorant and incorrect. It demonstrates an incredible amount of stupidity and goes against all of biology. I’m going to trust the experts, not you.
5. You don’t get to determine how a woman with CAIS identifies.
6. Another condition called Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS), can result in even more variation of the phenotype from both genders.
7. There are people with XX genes without a uterus as well, therefore, by your standard they are not women.
8. There are people with XX genes that are sterile and cannot give birth, therefore, by your standard they are not women.
9. Nature does not give a damn about human categories.
10. You are not a biologist. But, if you are (I won't believe you if you claim you are), then you need to get a refund and change jobs. McDonald's is hiring.
I am tempted to skip past this sideshow, but I will give you a pared down response:
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You are almost there...
What you got right: There are two sexes.
Where you are almost there: the difference between binary and bimodal. (you didn't read the article I linked, did you?)
Binary: two sexes, strictly separated. Imagine a Venn diagram, 2 circles, no overlap.
Bimodal: two sexes, some overlap. Intersex people are one group that sit in that overlap. They have phenotypes from both groups.
However, sex isn't just phenotypes, it's complex, interwoven layers involving phenotype, genotype, observable characteristic, gametes (and more, like hormones). And this is just the biological side. The social side (gender, often just called sex) has it's own underlying complexities that is often informed by, but distinct from, biology.
Human desire for simplicity boils down a massive amount of complexity into a single word: male or female.
So, trying to ask, "What is a woman?" is a loaded question made by dishonest actors, as well as limiting to strict definitions (like child bearer, and home maker, aka tradwife). "What is a man?" is a different question that isn't seeking the same types of answers as for women, and it's asked less, and practically not at all, because society, via religion, has already answered that question: The Superior.
If you honestly want to know more, I recommend you read the book Inferior by Angela Saini (in fact, all three of her books are fantastic). If you do read that, then I recommend the book Invisible Women.
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However, this is all a sideshow.
Anchoring the broader issue strictly to biology ignores the science of neurology, as well as psychology and sociology. Some assholes, e.g. Dawkins, Coyne, Michael Shermer, Pinker, and many more ivory tower elitists, like to appeal to nature (logical fallacy) via science, but only focus on the science of biology. Neurology is also a science, but they ignore that. Psychology, not quite a science but it tries, has a lot to say about the mental conditions and states of people who want to transition (you know, the thing - people - that sparked this entire debate). And sociology informs us on the broader issues of society. We are, after all, social creatures living in a society. Dawkins, Coyne, et al. ignore everything that is inconvenient to the topic. Their main purpose isn't to inform the public, that's just the sheep's clothing, they are trying to remain relevant in a world that has long passed the hills they established. Essentially, they're grifters for attention and money.
The main attraction we're being distracted from:
There are thousands of dishonest actors (I'm not saying you are) engaging with this topic to muddy the waters. These people, often conservative think tanks, religious figures, too many academics, and influencers, keep the conversation anchored to the one convoluted area* the public thinks it knows well, but really doesn't understand to any meaningful degree: biology.
The people deeper down are after one thing (of several): trans people should not exist, and those that do should never be seen in public except to be held up for ridicule and to demonstrate what is wrong with society. It's a complex amalgamation of two things: old man yells at cloud and religious abominations.
By fearmongering, painting everything they don't like (below) as social contagions, a lot of honest and well meaning people, like yourself, take up the mantle to protect society from itself.
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This is a long game.
Trans people are the least powerful group, so they get attacked the most. Once they are pushed out of polite society and into the shadows,... Homosexuals are next.
The idea is not to eliminate them entirely, christian need demons to scare them into doing the right thing.
However, this isn't a 12-step plan. It's a multipronged attack on the world that is working on several areas. Trans, LGB, minorities, and women. Each has it's place in the hierarchy of society and they need to learn to stay where they belong. The tactics that prove successful against one group will be deployed against the others.
Once this is achieved, we are on the cusp of utopia: Heaven on Earth.
God will cast the atheists and non-christians into Hell to burn forever.
In the meantime, god gave us prosperity gospel to reward the good people for fighting the good fight.
* When I address people talking about phenotypes, they switch to genes, when I address genetics, they switch to gametes. Talking biology is a round robin of moving goalposts that never ends. Or if it does end, it's usually to strip people of their humanity, like a sterile woman with no gametes isn't a woman. She's also, obviously, not a man. People with genetic anomalies aren't human, so they don't matter. Umm... yeah.... How fucked up is that?
BLUF: We agree on a massive amount of stuff. Women are given short shrift in our society. It’s a patriarchal system revolving around keeping women under the thumbs of men. Women should be allowed how they define themselves - not the word, what they want to do in life. I’m all for equal pay, equal recognition, equal awards, fairness and equity in everything to the best degree possible. Not just for women, but minorities as well. What we disagree on is what is actually going on. I shudder to think how much humanity has lost because smart and talented women and minorities were suppressed for the benefit of white boys in men's bodies.
: This attempt to muddy the clarity is part of a rhetorical strategy to erode the definition of 'woman', which itself is part of the effort to erode the barriers put around women's spaces - public amenities, awards, competitions, promotion quotas, and many others - so that male people can enter.
Actually, this is where the dishonesty I referred to comes in. I want to say here, I believe that you are being honest, which is different than the dishonest people feeding you false information.
No one is eroding the definition of “woman” because the dictionary isn’t what we use to define people. The dictionary doesn’t tell us how to use words (an authority decreeing what words will be used and how, like they do in France), it tells us how we use words (an observer).
I have to add one caveat, the problem isn't that the definition of women is being eroded, it's women are being limited to certain ways: Homemaker, giving up careers, less free time than men, more unpaid work than men.
The "definition" of women isn't the problem, it's limiting how women are allowed to define themselves.
: But a woman is a female adult,...
No dispute there.
: and those spaces are for the protection of female people.
This is where you are wrong. Completely and totally. Trans women didn’t transition to enter female spaces. You bought into the utter bullshit of the people manipulating you. Female spaces have been invaded by men (male adults) for all of human existence without the need to transition. Which president who owned Miss America pageants constantly entered women’s spaces, unchallenged, while they were changing and in various stages of undress? You know the answer.
This fight isn’t for women’s spaces, it’s to eradicate trans people, or at least push them into the shadows and use them to control people through fear. They used the Red Scare to do the same thing. Did communists exist? Yes. Were they infiltrating the gov’t? Yes. However, they were never as successful as scientologists at infiltrating the gov’t. Notice nobody talks about that?
: Female-only amenities increase the privacy and safety of women.
No disagreement there.
: Female-only awards challenge the historic invisibility of women.
No dispute there. You should read Inferior by Angela Saini as well as Invisible Women. Both great books. I found them to be eye-openers. And if women are as important to society as you (and I) believe, you’ll want to read them.
Did you know that Alice Ball, a black woman, invented a working treatment for leprosy? She died young and her male boss stole the credit. I know we agree that he was pretty shitty in doing that.
Rosalind Franklin was crucial to the discovery of DNA. No credit.
Beryl Burton beat set the women's cycling record for the 12-hour time trial. In the process of setting the women's record, she passed the man setting the men's record. It was 2 years before any man beat her record, and over 30 before a woman beat her record.
When modern computers were invented, women wrote the code because typing was "women's work." Women had to learn to program and as well as the mathematics that they were coding. Men took that from them as well.
: Female-only competitions provide a fair space for women to have our own champions.
More transwomen lose more than they win. But you will only be shown the winners because they are manipulating you. To be fair, sports organziations are trying to find ways to be fair to everyone. Not just women. Not just men (did you realize that?). Everyone, including trans women. We have divisions in boxing, why not a trans division? As society progresses, we are going to get things wrong. We always do. No solution is perfect, that's why we work on it. To make progress, we have to try. Failures are inevitable. If we avoid tacking problems because the first solution isn't perfect, we would never do anything, we would never progress.
The sickening part is society really doesn't give a shit about women’s sports, except to ogle. (Remember when the volley ball team was fined in the Olympics for wearing the “wrong” outfit - tiny shorts that reveal more than they hide? Was it to play better? If so, then why don't men wear them as well?) That’s what men care about in women’s sports. Yes, there are people genuinely interested in women’s sports. That’s the exception, not the norm. But when Koby Bryant is trying to figure out what to do with all his millions, Amy Womback is struggling to make her mortgage payments.
So the whole “we care about fairness in women’s sports” is utter bullshit. You care. The people telling you what to think don’t care. They never did. When they do watch, it’s for voyeurism.
: Female-only quotas challenge the historic hoarding of wealth and power in male hands.
I’m all for Affirmative Action. The focus isn’t “give men’s jobs to incompetent woman and blacks” like I’ve heard for decades. It’s not “reverse racism.” It’s about not discriminating against people based on sex, race, creed, and religion. Is it perfect? Not just “No.” HELL NO. We need it because people (not just white men) will discriminate against women and minorities. It’s not because they are racist or misogynists. It’s because, as you pointed out, we are fantastic and pattern recognition. We all have ideas that did not originate with us. It can be as simple as a boy never having encountered a doctor who is also a woman. Misogynist? No. Encountering the unexpected and not knowing what to do? Yes.
The reason white men oppose Affirmative Action isn’t because it’s unfair, it’s because lazy white boys in men’s bodies don’t like being forced to up their game, especially the bottom 5% who would lost out to more competent women and minorities. (Ironically, white women are the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. So, by destroying it, white men with white wives are hurting their own bottom line.)
: Hopefully you get the drift: these things are hard-earned protections for the female sex, …
You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know and don’t already support.
: … and now male people have found a way in after all that work.
This is where you are wrong. This whole biology talk isn’t about biology. It’s about manipulating what you think. And before you whip out the 21 transwomen who raped a woman in the bathroom over a 19 year period, yep, some do that and should be prosecuted. However, you’re ignoring all the Men-Will-Be-Men that rape women around the world, some of which was done in “women’s spaces.” And way more than transwomen.
: You will not agree with this, but you are helping cause harm to women's protections by obfuscating what a woman is.
I can agree partly, I’m not helping cause harm. The harm has been going on for millennia. For as long as men figured out how pregnancy worked and turned women into property. Men have to make sure the son is his and not his rivals. That is part of the purpose of the patriarchy. And to ensure women remain subordinate and subjugated to men. Men have never needed transpeople to subjugate women. Men who respect the Social Contract are what keeps men out of women’s spaces. There are too many men who will invade women’s spaces when it suits them and they think they’ll get away with it. No man has to transition to invade women’s spaces. It takes years to transition, is clostly, and involves a lot of pain. That’s more work than any man is willing to go through just to rape a woman.
You aren’t helping women by fighting against transpeople. But you are aligning yourself with the misogynists who also hate transpeople.
I hope you have read all of this. I hope you will look at the entire problem with a new perspective. It’s difficult, I know. We all want to believe we’re objective and everyone who thinks otherwise is biased. We’re all biased, The trick is to know when and how your biases are affecting your thinking. And just as important, when you are being manipulated. Don’t take my word for any of this. See what the “other side” is actually saying, not what your being told they are saying. There’s a big difference.
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Recommended reading:
Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe
The Scout Mindset
Inferior and The Patriarch
Invisible Women
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Put the work in to learn to thinking critically for yourself. Once you know, you know. And no one can take that away from you. It will benefit every aspect of your life.
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This is why I'm a Humanist. My religion evaporated when I made the choice to actually care about people and to learn about them from them.
So, I went ahead and read your entire reply, here is the first part:
: You have the honesty in this debate switched about.
Then you misunderstand everything.
: The straightforwardly honest statement is that there are two sexes, male and female, and the words man and women reference them in that order.
I never said there weren’t two sexes. That is your mischaracterization of what I said.
: The dishonesty is the rest of the noise you bring up.
That noise is called nature. Nature isn’t as clean as we like to think. You even go on and on about variances. You believe sex is cleaning defined, then go on about how it isn’t. I can’t even be sure you understand what you are saying.
: Intersex conditions do not falsify the fact that there are two sexes, just as aneuploidies do not falsify the fact that we are diploid.
Again, you misunderstand what I said. There are two sexes, phenotyping isn’t as clean as people think. Intersex people do not falsify two sexes, Binary is two sexes, no phenotype crossover. Bimodal is two sexes with phenotype crossover. The existence of intersex people proves sex is bimodal. Intersex is not a third sex. It doesn’t erase sex. It just proves sex is bimodal. The prefix “bi-” meaning two, or in number format: 2.
: Did you skip that entire section, or just summarily dismiss it?
Not everything you said is worth addressing. Since your exposition on variance is exactly what I was talking about. This shows me you didn’t read the article I linked. Or you didn’t understand it. I don’t know which.
: (Even more blatantly dishonest is your continued attempt to conflate - intentionally! - sex with gender, even though the post to which you replied spoke strictly of sex.)
Sex is related to gender. This is strange since the conversation is about sex (biology). Gender is the social construct that is derived from biological sex, but is currently undergoing social expansion. Some people support this (I do), and some people resist it.
: Some further details about the biology of sex for you:
*sigh*
: The sexes are the product of our reproductive method - irrespective of any individual's desire or ability to procreate themselves - and reproductive methods can be divided into two categories: sexual and asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is any in which the organism divides its own self into two to reproduce. By definition, it does not involve fusion of cells to create a zygote, and does not involve a change in the ploidy number.
This is all useless to the conversation. It does demonstrate that you can read. So, I don’t know what you skipped reading the article I linked. That would be the dishonesty on your part.
But let’s get on with a useless biology lesson…
: By contrast, sexual reproduction is any that involves the fusion of two (2) cells to create one new cell, with chromosomes being added together. (Notice the number two is already present.) Those two fusing cells are called gametes, and it has been noticed throughout animalia that those gametes are almost always distinct. In species that have distinct gametes, the larger slower one is called the ovum and is classified as female; the smaller faster one is called sperm and is classified as male.
: Each gamete is linked to certain anatomical structures that are not universal to the organism but are divided sharply between the two (2) distinct gamete producers; those that are found in association with ova are identified as female sex traits, those that are found in association with sperm are the male. When these are found in the same body, the organism is instead called a true or simultaneous hermaphrodite (if the sexes occur in the same body simultaneously), or a sequential hermaphrodite (if they occur in the same body but at different stages of life).
When these gametes and structures are found in separate bodies (overwhelmingly common), the organism is said to be gonochoric - defined as having two distinct body types, with each carrying one set of sex traits and its associated gamete.
This is called an appeal to nature, a logical fallacy. Yep, gametes are related to sex. Yep, gametes are necessary for reproduction. We’re not talking about reproduction. We're talking about biology, which is a distraction from the real topic. Yet, here we are.
Hermaphroditism used to be used to refer to people with DSD. It was taken from Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus. It’s considered derogatory to use when referring to people with DSD. Some of them don’t like the term intersex, and I personally wouldn’t call a person with DSD that if asked. It’s like when Anthony asks you no to call him Tony. It’s called respect. There are animals in nature that are hermaphroditic, but that is called an appeal to nature. We are talking about human beings. If we want to appeal to nature, lions sit around while lionesses do all the hunting and wait to have sex. Is that how human society should be conducted?
The term ‘hermaphrodite’ is still used in a few places when talking about people, but generally it has been abandoned. Like the term feebleminded, which was coined by eugenicists; it’s no longer used medically.
: We humans are just such a species.
Yet, you talked about things that refer more to animals.
: Behold, the two (2) sexes.
Okay. Whatever. This hasn’t actually been in dispute. And this is why you have wasted a lot of time, mine included.
: Note, this is not a matter of scientists making a decree and then demanding all other observations be ignored. This is simply observing, naming, and classifying on the basis of what is seen.
Indeed, and what you said about all this categorization supports biological sex being bimodal and not binary.
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: This attempt to muddy the clarity is part of a rhetorical strategy to erode the definition of 'woman', which itself is part of the effort to erode the barriers put around women's spaces - public amenities, awards, competitions, promotion quotas, and many others - so that male people can enter.
Now, we get to the actual revelation of your argument. I will address this in a separate response to keep this organized.
So, in case you misunderstand my position. Sex is bimodal, this is caused by genetic variances that result in phenotypes that blur the line between the two sexes.
Further, the overall importance of this is not just trans rights and bathrooms, or the handful of trans athletes (most of whom don't win). It's part of the larger argument that society treats women like second-class citizens. Their place is in the kitchen being the child bearer and carer, the madonna in society, mom to her husband and the whore in his bed. She is commonly called "tradwife." There is nothing wrong with being a tradwife. There is a problem when all women are supposed to be tradwives only.
To summarize, this is about trans rights, the right to self-determiniation, and equality for women who have been treated like property since men figured out that sex resulted in offspring. With that discovery, women went from being venerated as life-givers to chattel.
2. "THERE ARE ONLY TWO SEXES" is the tag line for sex is binary
3. Binary means one or the other.
4. My example demonstrate the over simplicification of people's misunderstanding of sex.
5. I go on to refute this simplicity and cite a source that demonstrates #6.
6. Bimodal means there are two sexes, but the line between them isn't as clean as too many people like to believe. That variance you go on and on about is why sex is bimodal and not binary.
7. The people in the article believe sex is binary and you "can't change your biology." They're wrong on the first part, and fail on the second part.
Why they are wrong: sex is bimodal
Why they fail: People aren't changing their genes, no one ever made this claim.
People can change their biological presentation through surgery.
People can change how their body functions through hormone treatment.
We haven't reached a point where a male can transition to a female and give birth. Only women can give birth, but not giving birth isn't who we classify sex, otherwise sterile women would be classified as male, which no one excapt assholes do. Those assholes believe sex is binary, and that crowd fall almost exclusively on the right, but aren't respresentative of the right, nor people who think sex is binary.
Now, while I can't say they are wilfully ignorant, one is a biologist, one is a geneticist, and the third is a linguist. Two of them should know better. But, they're old white guys that yell at clouds to remain relevant and make money. One is an atheist that identifies as "cultural christian." WTF? Why? Speculation here, it helps smooth over his past with his previous targets who are now his target audience. That's called grifting.
You're probably talking to me. Well, I hope you read my other responsed to Anna in full. But I'll summarize:
There are two sexes. They are not binary (2 sexes distinctly separate in all things), they are bimodal (2 sexes with some crossover).
I completely agree, women have been treated like shit ever since men figured out how pregnancy worked, turned women in to property, and used religion and lies to control them.
I am all for women's safety. The whole idea that men are going through years of medical and hormonal treatment, and undergoing surgery in order to sneak into women's bathrooms to rape them is ludicrous. Are there bad actors? Sure, rapist have used every opportunity, trick, and form of deception they can to rape women with impunity. Then blame them, and justify it. Society believes them and it takes a dozen women to even get society to entertain the idea that a man raped them. Men use power, money, position, and every opportunity (from passed out drunk to date rape drugs in drinks) to rape women. I was attacked (verbally abused and ridiculed by a screaming coworker in front of the entire shop) at work by a man defending Bill Cosby. Not one coworker intervened or reported the incident. That's how powerful rape culture is.
This isn't about sports, too many men don't give a shit about women sports, except to ogle. They are paid less. And one of the greatest women soccer players, Amy Womback, struggled to pay her mortgage while famous men struggled with how to invest their millions.
This isn't really about sports, nor is it about fairness, or women's safety (they are indeed very imprtant things), this is about eradticating trans people and proping them up as villains to control the way you think through fear and outrage. Your ethics and inate sense of fairness is being weaponized to manipulate you.
Whether a moderator removes a comment isn't proof that the person removed was wrong. I don't know what they said because the comment was removed, but I certainly don't trust moderators to always get it right when deciding whether a comment is worthy of being removed.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
While I don't see what comment you responded to, I can see your comment and I definitely think yours should have been removed. It is just an insult, a violent one at that, and adds nothing to the conversation.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
It would seem to me that Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker are trying to set themselves up as supposed AUTHORITIES regarding the issue of human gender, without having ANY serious expertise in that area of study. They wish to obviate current understandings regarding gender dysphoria in favor of a simplistic one-or-the-other view which is about as absurd as what the fundamentalist religious community is doing.
And they deserve to be called on it. Where is their research, where are their studies, where are their findings and what peer review has vetted all of that? Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins are, for all intents and purposes, TALKING OUT OF THEIR ASSES.
And those who take such matters far more seriously need to confront them about that.
They also ignore the difference between sex, which is biological, and gender, which is not. It's clear that people asserting their right to break out of gender norms that harm them is triggering for these white guys of a certain age. They've grown too accustomed to having their opinions deferred to and so react like screaming toddlers when they're challenged. Reminds us once again of the old adage that 'for those accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.'
There are some interesting nuances to this, because "biological sex" can be a pretty messy matter all by itself. When you have not just XX and XY but XXY or XYY, never mind physiological hermaphroditism in the mix, the supposed "binary" of male or female is not only a false dichotomy but just purely WRONG. Throw in the self-perception of of a given person as to what THEY think they are and whether their self-identity is consonant with their physiology, and you have a multi-dimensional gradient field which would flummox any attempt at reductive thinking. I'm not even a biologist and I just came up with this in a few minutes.
And yet Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker think all of the above is irrelevant? SERIOUSLY???
The correct name for intersex, used by those who are intersex, is intersex. Whether you like it or not. There are plenty of people whose biological is indeterminate, also whether you like it or not. So, buzz off.
Let me add to my statement: "Pissed off old white men with archaic views on sex and gender that are grievously outdated."
I was leafing through some old textbooks from college (throw, or no?) and a lot of the info in them is so outdated, I think they are no longer of use to today's students, might be good for starting bonfires.
As a side note, FFRF is focused on religion and its intrusion into secular society. I don't know why the gender issue is even relevant here. It has nothing to do with religion, aside from echoing noise from the christianists. It stirs up divisiveness and discord. The kind of thing one might wish to impose on an organization inconvenient to religious power and influence. So there's that.
So, three old white guys left in a snit? So mote it be, lol. I hope from now on, FFRF stays focused on the issues at hand without wandering out into the MAGA distractions wafting around us these days.
It's simply not binary. Your assertion that it is has zero foundation, you've provided zero credible evidence.
As for the rest of your rant, go fick yourself. If you wanted to find me, you would. It's easy, even someone of your limited cognitive abilities should be able to. But we both know you won't, so your bringing it up is merely embarrassing to your gene puddle.
Since we almost always assign sex based on dominant phenotype, people with XX chromosomes and a penis are invariably assigned male at birth. De La Chapelle syndrome can cause said males to undergo female puberty later in life though.
I used to resist the terminology of "assigning" sex at birth.
Then I educated myself. I did some research on intersex people. Like, WOW! There is actually a high percentage of cases where it's not entirely clear (large clitoris or micro penis?).
Worse, all of the stuff that the right is fearmongering about? Well, it is going on. Only to a small group of invisible people that receive no protection from the right.
Intersex people have long been isolated, told they were the only person like that, subjected to invasive checks as children (and photographed for non-medical reason - child porn anyone?), undergoing multiple operations to make them conform to social norms, and often not even told why (doctors tell the parents not to say anything to their child). They know, none of their peers are undergoing so many unexplained operations, and they wonder why they are different. They only know that "something is wrong with them."
THIS IS REAL LIFE PHYSICAL, SEXUAL, MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE. And not one person on the right has shown a shred of concern or even knowledge. Worse, they discount intersex people as not relevant to the conversation. Right-wing assholes prefer ambiguous, abstract fearmongering to retain control of society, aka Satanic Panics.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
I dont understand Dawkins if he is being triggered. He was in the Uk in the 1980's when 'gender norms' for men were challenged everywhere. I dont remember hearing him complaining then.
I would argue that gender absolutely is biological. You’re mistaking gender expression for gender identity. John Money’s horrific experiments proved, if nothing else, that gender identity is inborn and immutable and not a mater of socialization.
Sex is a function of biology. Gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation aren't biological functions. They're deeply ingrained, but that has nothing to do with biology. There's every reason to think that people are 'born that way', but not because of biology.
Dawkins is an honours biologist. He actually does know
Nobody can change their sex or gender. Period. They can live as the opposite sex but they aren't and never will be the opposite sex. That is fact not hate
They are living embodiments of appeal to authority, ivory tower elitist snobs.
I also think they do their grifts to remain relevant in a time when society has moved beyond the hills they have staked. Basically, "old man yells at cloud," only with real world consequences they neither suffer nor acknowledge happening to people beyond the abstract. Sometimes, people have to get out of their own heads (and ivory towers) and look around at the world to see what is actually going on.
First, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Second, everything you mention is literally shit some fucking christians made up, but you're too fucking stupid to understand that. Not one single idea in your head originated with you. You are nothing more than a banal repeater of bullshit, devoid of original thought.
Third, it's fucking rightwing nuts like you that want women subjugated and serving men. What the hell to you think tradwives are for? To take care of the husband and raise his kids. A tradwife is nothing more than the mom you get to fuck.
Fourth, abortion is slated for the chopping block because women's purpose in life, according to fuckwits like you is to bear children and be a cum dump for her husband.
Fifth, you are Shrodinger's rapist. A women never knows if you are or aren't going to rape her.
So, when you want to talk about something, educate yourself first, instead of speaking from ignorance. Maybe try to think for yourself instead regurgitating bullshit you got off some christian racist misogyny podcast or sermon.
Your objection is basically the same as back in the day when Christians would claim that these guys were setting themselves up as experts on God when none of them had a degree in theology
I think that often times people will criticize others on the same "side" (in this cases, atheists criticizing other atheists) because they expect better of them (this goes for both people like Coyne and people like Hemant). They already know Fundamentalists are crazy, but they don't expect other Atheists to be crazy (or what they believe is crazy).
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
I agree. The work of FFRF is needed because of politics! The right wing Nationalist-sedition-supporting, felon-supporting, rapist-supporting losers want to control every inch of our lives but scream when they think their deadly guns could be taken to save others including numerous school children!
There's being involved in issues in the political sphere, and then there's advancing political culture war nonsense. We definitely need the former. Coyne did the latter, when what is needed is the former.
For some reason, it's always the old white guys who go doctrinaire on the trans issue, particularly on trans women. It's like they feel personally affronted by the very existence of trans women. It's just plain weird. Secondly, their argument [one could even say their dogma] is that anything sex or gender-related is ONLY a matter of biology while ignoring the psychology and sociology that accompany sex and gender and often inform it. But even on the biology, these dogmatic preachers of the anti-trans Book of Old White Men gospel 24:7, get it wrong. Sex isn't as cleanly and neatly biologically defined as they would have people believe, as they ignore the very existence of intersex people. We also shouldn't ignore their attempts to use science to validate their bigotry by employing exactly the same arguments that people like them used for decades to demonize gays and lesbians - and that very much includes the debunked myth of hyper sexual aggression among gay men.
FFRF owes its supporters a much more in-depth explanation for allowing Coyne's article to be published on their site in the first place as well as why it was ultimately removed. It sad to see the reputation of a good organization being tarnished by a bad decision. That's why it's imperative that FFRF give a fulsome explanation. And FAST.
Attacking trans people is safe for them. They can't go doctrinaire on ciswomen, there's already too much (growing) evidence against such old school bullshit. They need a target to remain relevant in a society that has long pioneered new hills well past the one's they pioneered back in the day.
Does Dawkins even write about atheism anymore?
The position is appealing for two reasons:
1. Science, or cherry-picked "science." They can garner support from the left by appealing to science (abusing science).
2. Less attacks from the right. The people they once attacked and who fight back now have a reason to align themselves with these grifters.
This, me think, they believe will increase their sphere of influence, provide consolation from people who agree with them (supporting their bias confirmation), and reduces any cognitive dissonance ("If 'everyone' disagrees with me, then I must be right.")
Darwin also used evolution to supplant religion to explain women's inferiority. Coyne attacked a woman for even writing about that fact. It was a very nuanced piece, apparently much deeper than Coyne was able to fathom, so he totally mischaracterized her article, and then shot me down for pointing it out. Coyne is amongst the most intellectually dishonest ivory tower elitists out there, he never engages with the topic, only shifts it into his target zone to bolster his intellectual fragility.
Dawkins recently started calling himself a 'cultural christian', so that might explain his drift away from writing about atheism. But I think the root of their problem is relevance, specifically their loss of it. Being anti-trans is an attention getter right now, here in the US and in the UK. It appears these old white guys have jumped on that bandwagon to sate their thirst for attention.
Yes. Thanks for the reminder. I think "cultural christian" is a bit of linguistic prestidigitation. What exactly does that mean? To live in a region that is predominantly christian? To identify with christian ideology?
But, yes, there is a strong case for relevance. I think they're performing the intellectual version of "old man yells at cloud" and making money off it at the same time.
Having read The God Delusion, I rate myself an 8 (I think his scale was 1-7), I know god only exists in the mind and on paper. I am definitely not a cultural christian. christianity has stolen culture (and morality, and social cohesion) and proclaimed itself as the one true source.
I've occasionally claimed to be a "cultural Xtian" in that I live in a heavily Xtian-influenced culture but don't ascribe to the idea that the mythology is anything more than that: mythology.
I'm not 'giving away' anything, and I don't you or anyone to set my boundaries for me. Thank you very much. Gender isn't a theology any more than atheism is. Once again, buzz off with your transphobia. Women are quite capable of taking care of themselves. And each other.
Trans women have been around since decades before I was born, I've had zero issues with the very few individuals I've dealt with personally, and I am deeply suspicious of all attempts to make me feel threatened by them.
I was going with my dad up to his office downtown. We got on an elevator with a couple of very elegant, tall women. When we got off I said, "Wow, those women were taller than you!"
Dad said, "Those were men." He explained transvestites. And that was that, no big deal. Hell, I was 13 and I thought, "I could use some tips from them," lol. Dad lead by example.
I have a lot of thoughts about this. They will take a while to get out in all of their glory. But I’ll start with this one:
“ This was in fact the third time that I and others have tried to warn the FFRF about the dangers of expanding its mission into political territory.”
The reason there is a freedom from religion foundation is because religion has been busy expanding its mission into political territory for the entirety of my adult life. We won’t even get into the intrusion of religion, specifically Islam and Christianity, Into politics, Literally over centuries, literally over millennia.
As a gay man, It has been my experience— Putting it mildly— That religion’s intent of dominating my life, controlling my participation in society, Defining my humanity in terms of what somebody may have said about something 2000 to 3000 years ago is precisely what religion has been doing…
Insisting that its purely theological concerns Should be inserted into the civil law that governs everyone.
The very nature of the freedom from religion foundation is inherently political, because it stands in opposition to this. It’s very name, Containing the very political word FREEDOM, Stands in opposition to The insertion of purely theological concerns into civil law.
As I have said many times, anti-trans people are simply repeating the tactics and the arguments of anti gay people, And these tactics and arguments were used in various forms against Jewish people, Black people, and women people.
I decided to add an addendum to my original posting: one of the arguments used in support of don’t ask don’t tell, which meant don’t allow gay men into the military, was that gay men don’t know how to live with straight men, and will be constantly assaulting, ogling, coming onto all of those poor innocent straight boys, who just want to take a shower and not look at each other’s dicks.
Those were literally the arguments being put forth by the Republicans and the Christian right. The thing is, we gay men do know how to behave ourselves. We have lived with straight men our entire lives. The vast majority of trans people also know how to live with cisgender people. And none of this was a problem until the Christian right failed with gay people. Then they needed a new target.
“one of the arguments used in support of don’t ask don’t tell, which meant don’t allow gay men into the military, was that gay men don’t know how to live with straight men, and will be constantly assaulting, ogling, coming onto all of those poor innocent straight boys”
Nailed it.
I’ve often thought the reason straight men are so afraid of being around gay men is because they’re worried gay men will treat them the way straight men treat women i.e harass and coerce them for sex or simply overpower and rape them.
That behaviour is fine only when it’s directed at women, it seems.
I'm not sure that the reasons given fully reflect reality. They're not implausible, but I have doubts as to how prominent they are.
As social beings, we possess ideas that did not originate with us. So, when someone suggests something that seems plausible enough and we don't know anything to the contrary, we accept it, generally without thinking critically about it.
I'm going to speak from anecdote here, but I suspect that my general experience isn't just limited to me.
Growing up as a teen, gay bashing was just a thing. We would deride Boy George on MTV (back when it played music), and secretly enjoy his songs. I only ever knew one person, a family member, who was gay, and I was fine with that. I was too young to understand the collision of thoughts (cognitive dissonance) between knowing a gay man who was a great person and deriding gay people I did not know. Society was just inundated with anti-gay messaging, and my mind wasn't developed enough to move beyond separating one person from the abstract "herd" that I was programmed to think about and hate.
I was in the military and group-showered with guys on several occasions. You don't look, but you see things. The greater concern than "Is anyone here secretly gay and ogling me?" was "I don't really like my body and I hope no one points out all the bad shit with it. More importantly, I hope this feeling doesn't turn into a full-on erection. I wont' be able to hide it, and I don't want to be labelled as gay." It was a terrifying experience that I had to act nonchalant about.
Years later, and with a lot of growth and introspection, developing critical thinking, and greatly expanding my sexuality (Hey! Why let restrictions keep me from pleasure?), I came to realize that it was pretty stupid and shitty behavior, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. I just did it because everyone did.
It took years for me to realize that being antigay wasn't actually who I was. I'm not proud of it, but I own it and I learned from it. It took much longer for me to realize that I was latently part of the group that I derided (which explains what was going on in the shower). Once I started exploring my sexuality, it took even longer to get over the post-sex shame I experienced as a backlash of my religious upbringing.
I suspect a lot people have no idea why they "hate" LGBTQAI+ people, and the Dunning-Kruger effect enables heuristic thinking that results in them picking from a plethora of reasons propagated by religious hate-mongers to bias society and justify having that hatred.
A lot of people parse those they meet (and have a human face), like I did, from the group they are told they should hate. Fewer expand that parsing to those they haven't met, and those from other marginalized and hated groups.
Nowadays, I work to be more reflective of what I think; to own what I know and comprehend what I've only heard, but don't fully know. I also understand that no matter how well researched I am, I don't know it all, or even enough. I can only work with what I know, and update what I think and believe when I receive new information or ways to perceive something. I'm not perfect, but I try to make progress when and where I can.
“… but try to make progress when and where I can.”
Which is exactly the right and proper way to approach it. I’ve written about all of this before, but I was bullied a lot from the fifth grade until the eighth grade, or more accurately, until I started fighting back and didn’t care whether I was hurt. I was the Jewish kid. I was the somewhat weird kid. And I was getting called a faggot long before I knew what that was, as you wrote about.
And, also like you, I could see that same kind of behavior developing in myself when I was 13. I just started to become a bully as a means of feeling better about myself, as a means of protecting myself. But you might say that my heart wasn’t in it, and it didn’t go anywhere.
My entire life changed when my parents finally moved from the hell hole that was Long Beach to Northeast LA, and I met the boy that became my best friend. His family became my family, even though I was still a part of my own mockery of a family. And there was one set of things I learned: bullies were bullies, their behaviors set either by their own deficiencies or the deficiencies of their communities.
And what I learned above all was that bullies must always be stood up to, and never agreed with. People who act like bullies, people who denigrate others for their own benefit, denigrate whole groups of people— these are the people who are the true threat to society and human betterment.
Being a gay man in a homophobic society, being a Jewish (heritage, not in practice or interest) man in an antisemitic and/or fundamentalist society, being my own man in a world that wants me to be someone else…
I am sorry for all that you experienced. No one should ever go through that shit. I am glad that you were able to form a family that supported you better.
One thing I learned is never try to change people's minds, only they can do that. When l pushback on certain types of people, it's so that anyone who stumbles across it can get a more informed opinion and choose a better course.
I absolutely agree with that assessment, at least for part of what’s going on. The other part of it is I think that a lot of allegedly heterosexual men are worried first that they might not be entirely heterosexual, and second, they are deathly afraid of anyone associating homosexuality with them simply because they have absorbed the vicious, ancient, and durable prejudice they have been taight. And that may have a lot to do with the first thing as well.
In our culture, fathers are afraid to kiss their sons lest someone get the wrong idea. Or the right idea, as the case may be. I used to kiss my father when I was a boy, but I stopped probably when I was about 16, not because it made me uncomfortable, but because it clearly made my father uncomfortable.
This explains my experience (more detailed comment below) more than I don't want to be treated the shitty way women are treated. No one wants shitty treatment, but too many men don't think they're treating women shitty.
In regard to the attacks, the thinking goes, "Why stop using a tried and true method of attack that has withstood the test of time." Fear creates engagement, people never research anything (they don't have the time), we rely on the gov't to know, and, of course, repeat repeat repeat, say it often enough it becomes "true."
I was in the military when "Don't ask. Don't tell." came into effect. It was most definitely not a good position. However, prior to that, the reaction was either dishonorable discharge (maybe general at best) or prison. I watched it happen. Two soldiers were caught, one was discharged, the other went to prison when he got caught a second time before his discharge was completed.
"DA.DT" was actually a step in the right direction, because every journey begins with a single step. Thankfully it was not the end of progress. Society still had yet to catch up. It was a shitty policy, just less shitty.
"The moral arc bends ever toward justice." It is imperative that we make progress with the understanding that progress is never complete.
I won’t disagree with you, because it wasn’t in the military. But if I recall, it wasn’t an automatic discharge. There was some discretion available. I think the man who showed that was Perry Watkins, but it was a long time ago, and I don’t really remember. Clinton trying to end the ban on gay people in the military was what led to the compromise that was known as don’t ask don’t tell. It was better, but still not any good. I remember that there was a big to do at one of the language translator schools run by the military. A bunch of gay men were kicked out, leading to a shortage of Farsi and Arabic translators, which led to the deaths of a lot of Soldiers, mostly heterosexual men. And of course, it was all really for nothing as all of the garbage being put forth Was lies.
There will certainly be exceptions, but the general rule during my time was discharge, and going back further it was imprisonment.
I'm not aware of what happened at DLI, but that doesn't surprise me. I guess for some, certain principles are more important than resultant deaths, which are just abstract for a lot of people anyway. Just look at the backlash against the videos revealing police brutality. Black people are saying, "We've been telling you about this for decades," and people are still in denial, or they justify it, or they view it as a one-off incident. "A few bad apples." Finish the cliché! Would you buy a bag of apples if there was a rotten one in it?
Hell, before Columbine, there was an average of 26 school shootings a year, yet we never heard about them. It was written off as an "inner-city" problem and where we expected it anyway, so why should anyone care? I mean, they did care, that's why they sent thoughts and prayers.
“Don’t wade into political territory” is also the height of hypocrisy given the fact that COYNE brought this topic up! To him, “politics” is someone objecting to his opinion.
It is good to be reminded every now and again that while bigotry and religious faith are part of the massive overlap in the middle of a Venn diagram, there are (a) a few religious people who are not bigots--we lost one of them today and (b) an alarming number of atheists who are bigots for non-religious reasons. As a humanist, I'm happy to see all atheist groups defend basic human rights for all people, but especially for a group that has been villified and abused for too long.
Maybe we should focus on explaining to people that while there is almost no risk to your children from trans people, letting religious figures take care of your children is an open invitation to abuse.
Another meddlesome kkkrister superstitionist. I am not pushing ghosts and goblins. I am not pushing slavery to imaginary gods. Your goddcamned bible started the hatred. So FUCK YOU,holy troika of hate
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Human rights are not up for debate. Atheists who are supposed to be known for critical thinking, going down the anti-trans rabbit hole, don't belong on any board of non-believers, honorary or not. The actual science supports the treatment of gender dysphoria via gender transition. The XX/XY genetic determination of sex & gender has been updated with a lot more information showing there are many other variations in the human genome. People who look at others as nothing more than genitals are the ones who need the conversion therapy! I'm all for free speech. FFRF could have at least posted a disclaimer when allowing the post, and even better it could have have had post debunking this archaic thinking and use of fake & disproven 'studies'. It sure does suck seeing people you admired become the exact type of ghouls you've been fighting for years.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
“distinguished scientist from the relevant field of Biology.” Ha! There have been plenty of scientists who denounced the covid vaxx too. I’m not about to give credit where it’s not due.
There's a big difference between they're right because they're distinguished (appeal to authority), and they're right because that's what the evidence says (science). And, so far, nature is the final arbiter of who nature functions.
I see three old white men who let the bigotry of their privilege blind them to nuance. They are more to be pitied than vilified, although there is justification for the vilification.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
Anytime someone is advocating for a group of people - any group of people, it doesn't matter which group - to be treated as lesser they're on dangerous ground at best. The fact that these men, who should know better, advocated for treating trans individuals as lesser says volumes about their lack of real character.
The biology at play is not the point. Humanity expresses a wide variety of biological variance, and expecting that one person's physical experience will match another's is ridiculous. No great mental leap is needed to figure out that my personal experience of 'female' is going to be unique to me, and someone else's will likewise be unique to them. Get the $*@# over it, and learn to treat folks you don't like or find 'icky' like the people they are, not an enemy at the gates.
I am gender fluid. I identify as both male and female. I also identify as straight, Bi and Gay. All this in a matter of hours. I am physically male and I remember as a child wondering why god had stuck boy parts on me. I thought it was cruelty on the part of god.
I take umbrage when/if someone says I am wrong and need to change. I tried. I also failed spectacularly. As the inimitable Molly Ivins put it, the "squat to pee crowd" was me. Even today at nearly 80 I want to carry a man's baby. Since childhood I have wanted to feel a baby growing inside me. Even playing "house" I wanted to be the mommy.
Here in the UK, they have Mothering Sunday (which often gets called Mother's Day). The idea is that a mother is anyone who fills that role, not just a mother. It can be a man. It can be grandparents. It can be anyone.
I know there are some spelling differences between the UK and the US but I'm pretty sure you meant role and not roll. Unless you were referring to a mother sandwich.
I find it (not) surprising that so many of the trolls here have no likes, posts or any activity other than this site . Why, it’s like they just made their account! 🙄
I'd like to know how these - and for that matter Jordan Peterson fanbois - find out their hero is being criticised. Is there an app? Do they have a special FingerspitzenGefühl? A phone tree? They seem to only come out when this happens, and then disappear when we move on.
Anti-trans people falsely accuse trans folks of subscribing to some anti-trans-invented “Trans ideology.” Looks like it’s the anti-trans crowd who are the ones with an ideology.
I know, right! What is with this sexed* soul bullshit? Where did they get that? Like a bunch of what they’re saying is straight up straw pulled right from their asses.
Hemant is well-known enough to get mentioned on other social media accounts. His post about the childish Christian sign board was recently mentioned directly on ComicSands.
With the way the transphobes blew up yesterday's comment section, I forsee the same thing happening today.
For those transphobes who show up: biological sex in humans is bimodal, not binary. It is a spectrum in the same way that sexual orientation is. Gender is a social construct, and is also a largely bimodal spectrum. If you cannot accept that trans women are women, trans men are men, and nonbinary individuals exist, then you can fick right off. Then keep fucking off until you come all the way around back here. Then fuck off.
As someone who has ACTUALLY experienced sharing a ladies room with a trans woman, may I just say that I was more creeped out by the men hanging around outside the women's restroom to 'protect' me than I was by the very nice, polite trans lady in the room with me.
One of my closest friends is a trans woman. I've used her bathroom....same basic plumbing and stuff as virtually every other bathroom I've been in. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about.
The only thing that was bad about my experience was having to comfort someone left crying by the hooligans outside the restroom. That should never have happened.
Ummm, does the "trans bathroom panic" remind anyone in the US about the "Black bathroom panic" back in the day?
It should. The same playbook gets repeated over and over each time a new scapegoat is ID'd. 'Hyper sexual aggression', the 'need to protect our women folk'. It's hope someday we can finally drive a stake through the heart of this bigoted bullshit. And salt the earth.
Bingo. I clearly remember that "Black girls in bathrooms" was one of the panic points by white parents when my school district opened the first racially integrated high school. In 1967. (Note: they should have been more concerned about the white girl gangs who used the bathrooms to beat up "outcast" girls. But, of course, that was never on their radar.) Stakes and salt sound like a good idea.
Cut off the head and turn it face-down. add a garlic necklace and sprinkle the ground with holy water. (I guess vampires are allergic to shit)
I fucking hope so!
Yup. It has echoes of the "Satanic Panic", too.
Not to mention the Red and Lavendar Scares.
I get that vibe too, the hysteria, the lies passing as fact, that are nowhere near the truth, but it is so easy to rile up people who are gullible, and won't take 5 minutes to Google the reality.
Absolutely, they use the same arguments too.
I'm afraid I would have gone off on those "heroes." My niece would have been the ones they'd be "protecting" me from, and I get fierce if I feel like she's being threatened. I may be 74, but I am a BADASS 74.
OMG YOU USED A GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOM AND LIVED???
Get me the smelling salts, stat! /s
I have 2 gender neutral bathrooms in my house.
Every airliner has gender equal bathrooms! Horror! /snark
You mean gender equal broom closets.
I know, right I actually have three, if you count the outdoor shower.
Ditto
I've done that too. And I survived using a toilet in men's room. When do I get a medal?
Some more things, I survived growing up with female friends, with male friends, with non binary friends, with lesbian and homosexual friends, weird cousins and other crazy relatives.
There ain't a woman alive who hasn't used the men's room when out partying because the line to the ladies' room was too long. I've stood guard while friends used the men's loo, and vice versa.
I’ve used ladies rooms and I’m not trans. I used them because I really needed to ‘take care of business’ and there wasn’t a woman in sight, :)
I was at a concert once and you can imagine the lines. One woman gathered her friends and issued an invitation to anyone else to join her in the men's room. We stood in the privacy entrance as our leader bellowed "WARNING! LADIES COMING IN! You don't have anything we haven't seen, but we still promise not to look."
We entered with our hands ostentatiously shielding our eyes from the urinal area, proceeded to the stalls and did our business. As we left to wash our hands in the ladies', she announced "THANK YOU, GENTLEMEN!"
The women who didn't join us were still in line, of course, and undoubtedly missed at least the first song after intermission.
I was a beginner short and long-distance runner in the early 70’s. When we went to compete at some 5K-10K events, they would only open the guy’s restrooms. The 2-5 women who were there would there would yell “Close your eyes, Guys. You might not want to see our faces if we look at you.”
At the St Patricks Day parade, we ladies skipped all the lines and squatted behind the nearest bldg, keeping an eye out in turn!
(Snort.) And a gender-neutral communal shower/locker room. Repeatedly.
Are you saying that transpeople are people just like everyone else?
#sarcasm (of course they are)
Same, several times, and never an issue. I was much more creeped out by the pimp who tried to talk me up and waited outside the bathroom while I was waiting for a bus (true story that happened in my youth. I suppose it didn’t help that I looked age 13 with a Dorothy from Kansas suitcase).
I'm a woman and have no problem with a Trans Woman in the Ladies Room. We have booths with doors unlike male public urinals and there's absolutely no problem. I don't expect to see anyone else doing their thing when in a Woman's Restroom. I am also educated enough to have heard about people with XXY, YYX, and other configurations and respect the decisions of people as to who they are. The only problem I see is the participation in women's sports having a possible unfair advantage in strength. Currently Congress questioned the head of Professional Athletes and he represented over 500,000 athletes. He said that there were 10 or less Trans Women Athletes in the organization. All this hysteria is over 10 people. Ridiculous.
Also that is a non-problem because sports-medicine persons like my stepdaughter are trained in how to evaluate if there is an unfair advantage with muscle-mass etc. Just leave it up to the scientific/medical experts who evaluate on a case by case basis. There is no need for hysterical layman who seem to want genital inspections or something. No! keep your pervy stuff to yourself.
Yeah, I've shared a bathroom with many transladies at the local drag bar, they always compliment my goth dress and makeup. They are pretty chill.
That's been my experience, too, Natalie. I just felt awful that day because a perfectly nice lady was brought to tears by a bunch of yahoos creeping around the door the ladies' room to 'protect' all the women. THEY were the ones we needed to be afraid of. Assholes!
The reich-wingers can fuck straight off. 😁
Yep, they are trying to score political points by lying to women about how transpersons having rights, gives them less rights, It doesn't make sense, rights are not pie. Everyone should have rights.
Are you sure chocolate chip cookies aren't really cookies?
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Go fuck yourself.
But first, have some cake! 🎂
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
Sorry, we don't mean to make you sad that no one will fuck you. You can always go and fuck yourself. 😁
You know, if person after person tells you to GFY, it might be you...
They'll still write a reddit IATA piece to garner support for their fragile egos.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
I'm sure red wine pairs better with beef.
Ain't no hate like christian love.
So true. They used to at least try in the 60's.
You have a problem with Elon's advice?
I'd tell you to eat shit and die, but the eating shit part is optional. 😘
I'm not gonna kink-shame you, but you should really get consent first.
They never understand consent.
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
If they do show up again, the best thing to do is not respond to them directly. Talk around them. If you must respond, give them a one-and-done and let them know they'll get no further response from you.
Starve the trolls.
This was my pre-emptive one and done. Trolls get nothing.
One has already put in an appearence and made a fool of itself with a single post.
With the ignorant bullshit they spew, I can't see any other result.
I can't argue with your logic.
The banhammer has fallen.
They never learn.
They're probably used to twatter where they spew all the toxic waste they can.
You do realise just because someone puts testable reality over ideology, does not mean that they are a troll?
https://www.sarapnow.com/cdn/shop/products/spam-brand-canned-goods-spam-hot-spicy-28848266510423.png
Historically, they used to carve little statues with giant penises and breasts.
Oh yes the Larco Erotic Pottery Museum in Lima is full of such artifacts.
https://www.museolarco.org/en/exhibition/erotic-room/online-exhibition/introduction/
Adding this to the bucket list.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. ~ Oscar Wilde
Here's your chocolate pudding. 💩
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Eat shit and die. 😘
To infinity and beyond!
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
My sole reply to you, New Meat…
You know NOTHING about me, yet you somehow decided without KNOWING me at all or KNOWING the stances I have taken that I’m a misogynist (not that you could be bothered to actually do a little research before you typed (my posting history is quite open). But that would be too much like work and it would upset your prejudices.
I’ve been at Friendly Atheist for more than 10 years and I’ll be here long after you’ve gone off to make an ass of yourself somewhere else. If I’d truly been the hater of women you claim I’d have been bounced from this site long ago. The powerful women here eviscerate trolls. Like you.
Oh, and by the way? There’s nothing “new” about atheism. It predates all religions.
Don’t expect me to keep feeding your sad need. I’ve said all I’m going to say to you. I’ll not waste any further effort on you.
John, if violence against women bothers you so much...why aren't you putting your effort into where it's happening most? The simplest inquiry will show you that women are most in danger from their spouses and partners in terms of homicide. I can't speak about anyone's trans experience directly; but as a cis woman who's been on the receiving end of "average" experience, I (and millions of other women) can tell you that from harassment to sexual assault to full-blown violence - it's the cis straight men we know well; people we thought were friends, partners, boyfriends - that populate our memories (or that we remember for those women who are no longer with us because they were murdered.)
I see any awful lot of "rational" men who have suddenly started caring about women's safety - as though it's a new issue that came into existence 10 years ago, when transgender and non-binary people were now in the focus of mainstream media.
John, what did you do to protect women against actual violence - not the spectre of the "transwoman in the ladies' room!!" tabloid fodder, but actual violence and murder - BEFORE trans rights were in the spotlight?
Did you say "not all men"? Did you say "none of my friends are rapists, I'd know"? Did you ever follow an organisation that tallies up the rate of women killed each week by men they knew?
If you did... you'd know that the vast majority of cis women; plenty of us who are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, who have lost a beloved woman to cis/heterosexual male violence - those of us who are in general good faith just going about our lives - know that the concrete threat will always be that small but lethal cohort; cis, straight men who've inherited their entitlement to violence from centuries of misogyny.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65c4850a984dce3f08ba5e57/ea84d50a-0a37-4565-9a64-d795f5aa4dd7/2023.04.29.SPAM.Jam_002.jpg
I like that picture, with the surfing exhibit!
It reminds me it's been too long since I went to the Hawaiian BBQ place. Spam musubi is excellent.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
Uga Choka
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
One of our kids is nonbinary. It's a bit hard to deny their existence or their reality abiut who they are while living in the same house. Anyone who thinks my kid isn't properly human can indeed fuck right off and keep fucking off.
I have followed these discussions now, in some detail, for many years now and I have to say, of all the claims I have heard, I have never heard anyone claim that individuals who identify as "non-binary" are not "properly human", whatever that even means.
If you're serious, go fuck yourself. My kid came out in their mid 30s. They've never been trendy about anything for three decades. If that was a joke, write more clearly. The first trans person I knew was in the 70s. A guy in the trades doesn't travel to Sweden for surgery and return a woman unless there is actual shit going on. It's asking for a life of abuse on the job. There was no industry of which you speak then (and still there isn't, or there wouldn't be a shortage of docs).
Yup you can fuck off. And keep right on fucking off. I know who I've lived with for decades. You do not. I hope you get that cranial anusectormy you so desperately need soon.
Sorry, that ship has sailed - the gender ideology lot have lost the argument hands down. Most people, now they realise there is a choice (having previously been told that to disagree with gender ideology was to be an off-the-scale awful person), simply aren't going along with it. I'm talking UK here, I know some other countries are a bit behind the curve on this. That doesn't mean not being nice to people who identify as the opposite sex, and doesn't mean they shouldn't get protections from discrimination and so on. But it does mean we have to say no to the idea they have literally changed sex, with all the negating of the hard-won rights of women that that brings. There are choices here.
Until you accept that women's rights and trans rights are HUMAN rights, you will achieve neither.
Cheating (at sports) is a fundamental human right. Everyone knows that.
That isn't true though is it?
Women's rights aren't human rights. Women's human rights are human rights but to claim women's rights (or trans rights) are all human rights is to elevate the status of all their rights to "human rights".
Everyone's human rights are human rights. Even mass murderers. Everyone, trans people included, also have rights that are not human rights.
Actually, not all putative rights aren't being protected under the law (which is different from respecting* them), only some rights for traits and ideologies that have been wielded as weapons against people. It's a game of legal catch up. As each new protection is added, bigots, particularly religious ones, will shift to something else to identify and single out "the others" for discrimination.
* Respect, aka grant courtesy to, people's right to self-determination. Anyone who can't is indicating that their own right to self-determination should be curtailed.
Fuck straight off and die.
It does seem off to me that Hemant Mehta likes to claim the moral high ground on this issue and yet he has no issue with some disturbed poster repeatedly telling people to go and die, whilst other posts on this comment section have clearly been removed for content.
The idea that people who disagree with you need to die is one we have come across many times in modern history it is fair to say you are in fairly famous (if grotesque) company.
As an aside, you and your fellow shitstains showed up to dehumanize and erase trans people. Don't begin to believe you have any moral ground upon which to stand.
*YOU*. *CAME*. *HERE*. *TO*. *SPEW*. *HATE*.
Try that shit in person. Please. FAFO.
Hemant is friendly. I'm fucking hostile to shitstains such as yourself. Does that clear it up for you, shitstain?
Eat shit and die. 😘
Jesus loves me this I know, 'cause the school board tells me so.
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
There’s no such thing as “gender ideology”. It’s called reality. “Gender ideology” is a far right dogwhistle, and comes from the religion of anti-trans ideology, a hybrid religion of the Catholic anti-gender movement, radical feminism, and Nazi phrenology.
No one “identifies as the opposite sex”. Trans people are their gender. That’s it.
We have been changing sex since the discovery and isolation of sex hormones in the 30s. Your medical knowledge is about a century out of date.
And denying rights to a demographic of women you don’t like does not actually protect the rights of women.
Well said. The same types are quick to throw the rest of us under the bus as soon as someone tells them to, over abortion, and other reproductive rights. They are bad allies to ALL women like you said. And who the hell is stupid enough to turn down allies, against the REAL enemy the Patriarchy and the uptight right christian Nationalists?
You know gender and sex are different, right?
Fuck straight off and die.
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. ~ Oscar Wilde
Here's your chocolate pudding. 💩
Shit. I'm running out of ideas.
You are doing great.
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
Biological sex only works as a binary, though. How many hermaphrodites are able to both be pregnant and impregnate others?
Yes, gender is a social construct, but the entire purpose of gender is to tell people what sex you are, so it doesn't make sense to separate the two.
So ,no, transwomen aren't women and trans men aren't men. Anyone who says otherwise isn't scientific. Can we try to accept that science is based on evidence, not on social views?
Transphobia is a treatable illness. Please consult with a licensed mental health care professional for more information and help. You don't have to suffer.
Dear Joe King. I disagree to your absurd claims. Your comment suggests that the issue has indeed become religious.
Hitler knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Stalin knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Mao knew that dissent can never be tolerated. Joe King knows that dissent can never be tolerated.
At the risk of being told, somewhat disturbingly, by you that I need to go and die, I have to take issue with your comment here.
"biological sex in humans is bimodal, not binary. It is a spectrum in the same way that sexual orientation is."
I think this a real misunderstanding/misportrayal of biological sex and conflates the accidental properties of sex with the essential properties.
If we are prepared to do that then we can even claim that a mathematical binary isn't a binary because we can write 1's and 0's in different fonts! Parrots, tricorn hats and eye patches may be properties we associate with pirates but your status as a pirate, to any degree, is not dependent on these things as they are accidental, not essential properties of being a pirate.
Agreed, most accidental properties, those we regard as male or female by association, ARE bimodal or not even that (height is often claimed to be bimodal but actually overlaps too much for this) but these are not what define male and female. The essential properties (with the arguable and very rare exception of ovotestes) are resolutely binary: there are only two gamete types in sexual reproduction, after all.
Breasts are only regarded as female because we observe females as typically having breasts, not the other way round. Crests, manes and elaborate plumage are, in some species, regarded as male characteristics in the same way. Human males are not somewhere "down a spectrum" for not having them!
To conflate any and all of this with the binary process of reproductive roles and pathways is ridiculous. Males from ethnic groups that are less hirsute are not "less male" or somewhere down some spectrum of maleness because hirsuteness is only seen as male by association. An individual, human or otherwise, who develops zero body hair but has testes is every bit as male as one who looks like a yeti!
In my view, this conversation generally cannot move on until we all get away from EITHER insisting sex is binary or not binary without first acknowledging the conflation of essential and accidental properties and being explicit as to which we are referring to.
That is true and the definition extends across sexually reproducing organisms.
However, we have to be cognisant that some, probably most, conversations where we need to factor in "sex", with respect to humans and social issues, it isn't technical biological sex (gametes, gonads) that are relevant but some of the accidental properties associated with the sexes..... and these aren't binary.
Hence it behooves both sides to be explicit and understand what it is they are claiming and what they are not because otherwise they end up arguing past one another and/or making clearly incorrect statements.
Sport policy is a primary example of that, whereupon the relatively recent concept of "sport sex" is a more valuable metric, in many people's view, than technical biological sex.
Sport sex typically looks at the factors associated with biological sex that are the basis for the protected female category, rather than the brute fact of maleness.
So, primarily, the emphasis is on the virilising effect of testosterone, that testosterone having come from male gametes and a body that is responsive to androgens.... as opposed to means of producing small motile gametes (which directly does not influence sports performance.
Hence, a male with CAIS would classify as a "sport sex" of female as their body is not virilised by testosterone and (at least this is the theory) they have not undergone male puberty or benefit from male androgen levels, despite having testes.
Lunatic.
Yes of course there are only two. Like in Highlander, "There can be only one." - sorry - "...two!"
XY begets penis. XX begets vagina.
Except when they don't.
Women (lacking a penis, thus not male) who have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome have XY genes and produce testosterone, but they didn't develop male bodies because their genes and physiology do not react to testosterone. They may not even have ovaries, a womb, or a vagina, but their genitals present as female and this they were assigned woman at birth. They have what is known as Differences in Sexual Development (DSD), often referred to as intersex. Some of them don't like being called intersex, so please respect their wishes.
These people exist, so how do we classify them? By their genes? Or their physiology? Their gametes? What about people without gametes? Is woman who is sterile and lacks the necessary parts to procreate not a woman? I have been told that answer to that last question is "no." What do you think?
How come we never ask, "What is a man?"?
This is just one of several ways that nature deviates from human classification of sex. Nature is the final arbiter of how nature functions. We can only try to figure it out and develop a progressively better understanding of nature. Nature doesn't follow man's rules, man can only predict how nature will function.
To learn more about how sex is bimodal read: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/#:~:text=Bimodal%20means%20that%20there%20are,hence%20bimodal%2C%20but%20not%20binary.
Technically, what sex you are depends on whether you produce eggs or sperm. Generally, we tend to include infertile people in whatever sex their body otherwise resembles.
I think that the issue is that with trans people, you are taking someone who is fertile and then saying that they are the other sex. Even if you do "bottom surgery" on them, you still can't go from a person that produces working sperm to a person that produces working eggs (or visa versa). Until we have the technology to do that, I don't think it is fair to say that they are the sex that they feel mentally that they are.
Your transphobia is a treatable illness. Please consult with a licensed mental health care professional for more information and help. You don't have to continue to suffer.
Your imaginary friend isn't “biological facts”, shitstain.
Eat shit and die. 😘
1. I have studied CAIS, so you're not telling me anything I don't already know.
2. The phenotype (observable characteristic) presents as female. They're assigned female at birth.
3. Their gonad streaks (the tissue that develops into testes or ovaries, often don’t develop into either. There is a lot of variance in the development.
4. Saying that genes are the only factor that determine sex is both ignorant and incorrect. It demonstrates an incredible amount of stupidity and goes against all of biology. I’m going to trust the experts, not you.
5. You don’t get to determine how a woman with CAIS identifies.
6. Another condition called Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS), can result in even more variation of the phenotype from both genders.
7. There are people with XX genes without a uterus as well, therefore, by your standard they are not women.
8. There are people with XX genes that are sterile and cannot give birth, therefore, by your standard they are not women.
9. Nature does not give a damn about human categories.
10. You are not a biologist. But, if you are (I won't believe you if you claim you are), then you need to get a refund and change jobs. McDonald's is hiring.
I am tempted to skip past this sideshow, but I will give you a pared down response:
-----
You are almost there...
What you got right: There are two sexes.
Where you are almost there: the difference between binary and bimodal. (you didn't read the article I linked, did you?)
Binary: two sexes, strictly separated. Imagine a Venn diagram, 2 circles, no overlap.
Bimodal: two sexes, some overlap. Intersex people are one group that sit in that overlap. They have phenotypes from both groups.
However, sex isn't just phenotypes, it's complex, interwoven layers involving phenotype, genotype, observable characteristic, gametes (and more, like hormones). And this is just the biological side. The social side (gender, often just called sex) has it's own underlying complexities that is often informed by, but distinct from, biology.
Human desire for simplicity boils down a massive amount of complexity into a single word: male or female.
So, trying to ask, "What is a woman?" is a loaded question made by dishonest actors, as well as limiting to strict definitions (like child bearer, and home maker, aka tradwife). "What is a man?" is a different question that isn't seeking the same types of answers as for women, and it's asked less, and practically not at all, because society, via religion, has already answered that question: The Superior.
If you honestly want to know more, I recommend you read the book Inferior by Angela Saini (in fact, all three of her books are fantastic). If you do read that, then I recommend the book Invisible Women.
----
However, this is all a sideshow.
Anchoring the broader issue strictly to biology ignores the science of neurology, as well as psychology and sociology. Some assholes, e.g. Dawkins, Coyne, Michael Shermer, Pinker, and many more ivory tower elitists, like to appeal to nature (logical fallacy) via science, but only focus on the science of biology. Neurology is also a science, but they ignore that. Psychology, not quite a science but it tries, has a lot to say about the mental conditions and states of people who want to transition (you know, the thing - people - that sparked this entire debate). And sociology informs us on the broader issues of society. We are, after all, social creatures living in a society. Dawkins, Coyne, et al. ignore everything that is inconvenient to the topic. Their main purpose isn't to inform the public, that's just the sheep's clothing, they are trying to remain relevant in a world that has long passed the hills they established. Essentially, they're grifters for attention and money.
The main attraction we're being distracted from:
There are thousands of dishonest actors (I'm not saying you are) engaging with this topic to muddy the waters. These people, often conservative think tanks, religious figures, too many academics, and influencers, keep the conversation anchored to the one convoluted area* the public thinks it knows well, but really doesn't understand to any meaningful degree: biology.
The people deeper down are after one thing (of several): trans people should not exist, and those that do should never be seen in public except to be held up for ridicule and to demonstrate what is wrong with society. It's a complex amalgamation of two things: old man yells at cloud and religious abominations.
By fearmongering, painting everything they don't like (below) as social contagions, a lot of honest and well meaning people, like yourself, take up the mantle to protect society from itself.
-----
This is a long game.
Trans people are the least powerful group, so they get attacked the most. Once they are pushed out of polite society and into the shadows,... Homosexuals are next.
The idea is not to eliminate them entirely, christian need demons to scare them into doing the right thing.
However, this isn't a 12-step plan. It's a multipronged attack on the world that is working on several areas. Trans, LGB, minorities, and women. Each has it's place in the hierarchy of society and they need to learn to stay where they belong. The tactics that prove successful against one group will be deployed against the others.
Once this is achieved, we are on the cusp of utopia: Heaven on Earth.
God will cast the atheists and non-christians into Hell to burn forever.
In the meantime, god gave us prosperity gospel to reward the good people for fighting the good fight.
* When I address people talking about phenotypes, they switch to genes, when I address genetics, they switch to gametes. Talking biology is a round robin of moving goalposts that never ends. Or if it does end, it's usually to strip people of their humanity, like a sterile woman with no gametes isn't a woman. She's also, obviously, not a man. People with genetic anomalies aren't human, so they don't matter. Umm... yeah.... How fucked up is that?
I'm not bothering to read your tripe. You're wasting my time. You don't actually understand what is going on.
BLUF: We agree on a massive amount of stuff. Women are given short shrift in our society. It’s a patriarchal system revolving around keeping women under the thumbs of men. Women should be allowed how they define themselves - not the word, what they want to do in life. I’m all for equal pay, equal recognition, equal awards, fairness and equity in everything to the best degree possible. Not just for women, but minorities as well. What we disagree on is what is actually going on. I shudder to think how much humanity has lost because smart and talented women and minorities were suppressed for the benefit of white boys in men's bodies.
: This attempt to muddy the clarity is part of a rhetorical strategy to erode the definition of 'woman', which itself is part of the effort to erode the barriers put around women's spaces - public amenities, awards, competitions, promotion quotas, and many others - so that male people can enter.
Actually, this is where the dishonesty I referred to comes in. I want to say here, I believe that you are being honest, which is different than the dishonest people feeding you false information.
No one is eroding the definition of “woman” because the dictionary isn’t what we use to define people. The dictionary doesn’t tell us how to use words (an authority decreeing what words will be used and how, like they do in France), it tells us how we use words (an observer).
I have to add one caveat, the problem isn't that the definition of women is being eroded, it's women are being limited to certain ways: Homemaker, giving up careers, less free time than men, more unpaid work than men.
The "definition" of women isn't the problem, it's limiting how women are allowed to define themselves.
: But a woman is a female adult,...
No dispute there.
: and those spaces are for the protection of female people.
This is where you are wrong. Completely and totally. Trans women didn’t transition to enter female spaces. You bought into the utter bullshit of the people manipulating you. Female spaces have been invaded by men (male adults) for all of human existence without the need to transition. Which president who owned Miss America pageants constantly entered women’s spaces, unchallenged, while they were changing and in various stages of undress? You know the answer.
This fight isn’t for women’s spaces, it’s to eradicate trans people, or at least push them into the shadows and use them to control people through fear. They used the Red Scare to do the same thing. Did communists exist? Yes. Were they infiltrating the gov’t? Yes. However, they were never as successful as scientologists at infiltrating the gov’t. Notice nobody talks about that?
: Female-only amenities increase the privacy and safety of women.
No disagreement there.
: Female-only awards challenge the historic invisibility of women.
No dispute there. You should read Inferior by Angela Saini as well as Invisible Women. Both great books. I found them to be eye-openers. And if women are as important to society as you (and I) believe, you’ll want to read them.
Did you know that Alice Ball, a black woman, invented a working treatment for leprosy? She died young and her male boss stole the credit. I know we agree that he was pretty shitty in doing that.
Rosalind Franklin was crucial to the discovery of DNA. No credit.
Beryl Burton beat set the women's cycling record for the 12-hour time trial. In the process of setting the women's record, she passed the man setting the men's record. It was 2 years before any man beat her record, and over 30 before a woman beat her record.
When modern computers were invented, women wrote the code because typing was "women's work." Women had to learn to program and as well as the mathematics that they were coding. Men took that from them as well.
: Female-only competitions provide a fair space for women to have our own champions.
More transwomen lose more than they win. But you will only be shown the winners because they are manipulating you. To be fair, sports organziations are trying to find ways to be fair to everyone. Not just women. Not just men (did you realize that?). Everyone, including trans women. We have divisions in boxing, why not a trans division? As society progresses, we are going to get things wrong. We always do. No solution is perfect, that's why we work on it. To make progress, we have to try. Failures are inevitable. If we avoid tacking problems because the first solution isn't perfect, we would never do anything, we would never progress.
The sickening part is society really doesn't give a shit about women’s sports, except to ogle. (Remember when the volley ball team was fined in the Olympics for wearing the “wrong” outfit - tiny shorts that reveal more than they hide? Was it to play better? If so, then why don't men wear them as well?) That’s what men care about in women’s sports. Yes, there are people genuinely interested in women’s sports. That’s the exception, not the norm. But when Koby Bryant is trying to figure out what to do with all his millions, Amy Womback is struggling to make her mortgage payments.
So the whole “we care about fairness in women’s sports” is utter bullshit. You care. The people telling you what to think don’t care. They never did. When they do watch, it’s for voyeurism.
: Female-only quotas challenge the historic hoarding of wealth and power in male hands.
I’m all for Affirmative Action. The focus isn’t “give men’s jobs to incompetent woman and blacks” like I’ve heard for decades. It’s not “reverse racism.” It’s about not discriminating against people based on sex, race, creed, and religion. Is it perfect? Not just “No.” HELL NO. We need it because people (not just white men) will discriminate against women and minorities. It’s not because they are racist or misogynists. It’s because, as you pointed out, we are fantastic and pattern recognition. We all have ideas that did not originate with us. It can be as simple as a boy never having encountered a doctor who is also a woman. Misogynist? No. Encountering the unexpected and not knowing what to do? Yes.
The reason white men oppose Affirmative Action isn’t because it’s unfair, it’s because lazy white boys in men’s bodies don’t like being forced to up their game, especially the bottom 5% who would lost out to more competent women and minorities. (Ironically, white women are the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. So, by destroying it, white men with white wives are hurting their own bottom line.)
: Hopefully you get the drift: these things are hard-earned protections for the female sex, …
You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know and don’t already support.
: … and now male people have found a way in after all that work.
This is where you are wrong. This whole biology talk isn’t about biology. It’s about manipulating what you think. And before you whip out the 21 transwomen who raped a woman in the bathroom over a 19 year period, yep, some do that and should be prosecuted. However, you’re ignoring all the Men-Will-Be-Men that rape women around the world, some of which was done in “women’s spaces.” And way more than transwomen.
: You will not agree with this, but you are helping cause harm to women's protections by obfuscating what a woman is.
I can agree partly, I’m not helping cause harm. The harm has been going on for millennia. For as long as men figured out how pregnancy worked and turned women into property. Men have to make sure the son is his and not his rivals. That is part of the purpose of the patriarchy. And to ensure women remain subordinate and subjugated to men. Men have never needed transpeople to subjugate women. Men who respect the Social Contract are what keeps men out of women’s spaces. There are too many men who will invade women’s spaces when it suits them and they think they’ll get away with it. No man has to transition to invade women’s spaces. It takes years to transition, is clostly, and involves a lot of pain. That’s more work than any man is willing to go through just to rape a woman.
You aren’t helping women by fighting against transpeople. But you are aligning yourself with the misogynists who also hate transpeople.
I hope you have read all of this. I hope you will look at the entire problem with a new perspective. It’s difficult, I know. We all want to believe we’re objective and everyone who thinks otherwise is biased. We’re all biased, The trick is to know when and how your biases are affecting your thinking. And just as important, when you are being manipulated. Don’t take my word for any of this. See what the “other side” is actually saying, not what your being told they are saying. There’s a big difference.
-------
Recommended reading:
Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe
The Scout Mindset
Inferior and The Patriarch
Invisible Women
-----
Put the work in to learn to thinking critically for yourself. Once you know, you know. And no one can take that away from you. It will benefit every aspect of your life.
-----
This is why I'm a Humanist. My religion evaporated when I made the choice to actually care about people and to learn about them from them.
You simply are incapable of understanding anything outside your tiny worldview.
You are a waste of time.
So, I went ahead and read your entire reply, here is the first part:
: You have the honesty in this debate switched about.
Then you misunderstand everything.
: The straightforwardly honest statement is that there are two sexes, male and female, and the words man and women reference them in that order.
I never said there weren’t two sexes. That is your mischaracterization of what I said.
: The dishonesty is the rest of the noise you bring up.
That noise is called nature. Nature isn’t as clean as we like to think. You even go on and on about variances. You believe sex is cleaning defined, then go on about how it isn’t. I can’t even be sure you understand what you are saying.
: Intersex conditions do not falsify the fact that there are two sexes, just as aneuploidies do not falsify the fact that we are diploid.
Again, you misunderstand what I said. There are two sexes, phenotyping isn’t as clean as people think. Intersex people do not falsify two sexes, Binary is two sexes, no phenotype crossover. Bimodal is two sexes with phenotype crossover. The existence of intersex people proves sex is bimodal. Intersex is not a third sex. It doesn’t erase sex. It just proves sex is bimodal. The prefix “bi-” meaning two, or in number format: 2.
: Did you skip that entire section, or just summarily dismiss it?
Not everything you said is worth addressing. Since your exposition on variance is exactly what I was talking about. This shows me you didn’t read the article I linked. Or you didn’t understand it. I don’t know which.
: (Even more blatantly dishonest is your continued attempt to conflate - intentionally! - sex with gender, even though the post to which you replied spoke strictly of sex.)
Sex is related to gender. This is strange since the conversation is about sex (biology). Gender is the social construct that is derived from biological sex, but is currently undergoing social expansion. Some people support this (I do), and some people resist it.
: Some further details about the biology of sex for you:
*sigh*
: The sexes are the product of our reproductive method - irrespective of any individual's desire or ability to procreate themselves - and reproductive methods can be divided into two categories: sexual and asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is any in which the organism divides its own self into two to reproduce. By definition, it does not involve fusion of cells to create a zygote, and does not involve a change in the ploidy number.
This is all useless to the conversation. It does demonstrate that you can read. So, I don’t know what you skipped reading the article I linked. That would be the dishonesty on your part.
But let’s get on with a useless biology lesson…
: By contrast, sexual reproduction is any that involves the fusion of two (2) cells to create one new cell, with chromosomes being added together. (Notice the number two is already present.) Those two fusing cells are called gametes, and it has been noticed throughout animalia that those gametes are almost always distinct. In species that have distinct gametes, the larger slower one is called the ovum and is classified as female; the smaller faster one is called sperm and is classified as male.
: Each gamete is linked to certain anatomical structures that are not universal to the organism but are divided sharply between the two (2) distinct gamete producers; those that are found in association with ova are identified as female sex traits, those that are found in association with sperm are the male. When these are found in the same body, the organism is instead called a true or simultaneous hermaphrodite (if the sexes occur in the same body simultaneously), or a sequential hermaphrodite (if they occur in the same body but at different stages of life).
When these gametes and structures are found in separate bodies (overwhelmingly common), the organism is said to be gonochoric - defined as having two distinct body types, with each carrying one set of sex traits and its associated gamete.
This is called an appeal to nature, a logical fallacy. Yep, gametes are related to sex. Yep, gametes are necessary for reproduction. We’re not talking about reproduction. We're talking about biology, which is a distraction from the real topic. Yet, here we are.
Hermaphroditism used to be used to refer to people with DSD. It was taken from Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus. It’s considered derogatory to use when referring to people with DSD. Some of them don’t like the term intersex, and I personally wouldn’t call a person with DSD that if asked. It’s like when Anthony asks you no to call him Tony. It’s called respect. There are animals in nature that are hermaphroditic, but that is called an appeal to nature. We are talking about human beings. If we want to appeal to nature, lions sit around while lionesses do all the hunting and wait to have sex. Is that how human society should be conducted?
The term ‘hermaphrodite’ is still used in a few places when talking about people, but generally it has been abandoned. Like the term feebleminded, which was coined by eugenicists; it’s no longer used medically.
: We humans are just such a species.
Yet, you talked about things that refer more to animals.
: Behold, the two (2) sexes.
Okay. Whatever. This hasn’t actually been in dispute. And this is why you have wasted a lot of time, mine included.
: Note, this is not a matter of scientists making a decree and then demanding all other observations be ignored. This is simply observing, naming, and classifying on the basis of what is seen.
Indeed, and what you said about all this categorization supports biological sex being bimodal and not binary.
___
: This attempt to muddy the clarity is part of a rhetorical strategy to erode the definition of 'woman', which itself is part of the effort to erode the barriers put around women's spaces - public amenities, awards, competitions, promotion quotas, and many others - so that male people can enter.
Now, we get to the actual revelation of your argument. I will address this in a separate response to keep this organized.
You seemed like you might have a modicum of intelligence, but you definitely proved me wrong. I'm not wasting any more time on you.
Goodbye.
So, in case you misunderstand my position. Sex is bimodal, this is caused by genetic variances that result in phenotypes that blur the line between the two sexes.
Further, the overall importance of this is not just trans rights and bathrooms, or the handful of trans athletes (most of whom don't win). It's part of the larger argument that society treats women like second-class citizens. Their place is in the kitchen being the child bearer and carer, the madonna in society, mom to her husband and the whore in his bed. She is commonly called "tradwife." There is nothing wrong with being a tradwife. There is a problem when all women are supposed to be tradwives only.
To summarize, this is about trans rights, the right to self-determiniation, and equality for women who have been treated like property since men figured out that sex resulted in offspring. With that discovery, women went from being venerated as life-givers to chattel.
1. There are two sex.
2. "THERE ARE ONLY TWO SEXES" is the tag line for sex is binary
3. Binary means one or the other.
4. My example demonstrate the over simplicification of people's misunderstanding of sex.
5. I go on to refute this simplicity and cite a source that demonstrates #6.
6. Bimodal means there are two sexes, but the line between them isn't as clean as too many people like to believe. That variance you go on and on about is why sex is bimodal and not binary.
7. The people in the article believe sex is binary and you "can't change your biology." They're wrong on the first part, and fail on the second part.
Why they are wrong: sex is bimodal
Why they fail: People aren't changing their genes, no one ever made this claim.
People can change their biological presentation through surgery.
People can change how their body functions through hormone treatment.
We haven't reached a point where a male can transition to a female and give birth. Only women can give birth, but not giving birth isn't who we classify sex, otherwise sterile women would be classified as male, which no one excapt assholes do. Those assholes believe sex is binary, and that crowd fall almost exclusively on the right, but aren't respresentative of the right, nor people who think sex is binary.
Now, while I can't say they are wilfully ignorant, one is a biologist, one is a geneticist, and the third is a linguist. Two of them should know better. But, they're old white guys that yell at clouds to remain relevant and make money. One is an atheist that identifies as "cultural christian." WTF? Why? Speculation here, it helps smooth over his past with his previous targets who are now his target audience. That's called grifting.
Whether you used the word binary or not, you argue from a binary point. You're ignorance is extremely significant.
These are all just facts, but this is a sideshow, I responded to your other post.
You're probably talking to me. Well, I hope you read my other responsed to Anna in full. But I'll summarize:
There are two sexes. They are not binary (2 sexes distinctly separate in all things), they are bimodal (2 sexes with some crossover).
I completely agree, women have been treated like shit ever since men figured out how pregnancy worked, turned women in to property, and used religion and lies to control them.
I am all for women's safety. The whole idea that men are going through years of medical and hormonal treatment, and undergoing surgery in order to sneak into women's bathrooms to rape them is ludicrous. Are there bad actors? Sure, rapist have used every opportunity, trick, and form of deception they can to rape women with impunity. Then blame them, and justify it. Society believes them and it takes a dozen women to even get society to entertain the idea that a man raped them. Men use power, money, position, and every opportunity (from passed out drunk to date rape drugs in drinks) to rape women. I was attacked (verbally abused and ridiculed by a screaming coworker in front of the entire shop) at work by a man defending Bill Cosby. Not one coworker intervened or reported the incident. That's how powerful rape culture is.
This isn't about sports, too many men don't give a shit about women sports, except to ogle. They are paid less. And one of the greatest women soccer players, Amy Womback, struggled to pay her mortgage while famous men struggled with how to invest their millions.
This isn't really about sports, nor is it about fairness, or women's safety (they are indeed very imprtant things), this is about eradticating trans people and proping them up as villains to control the way you think through fear and outrage. Your ethics and inate sense of fairness is being weaponized to manipulate you.
Wrong.
Now fuck straight off and die
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. ~ Oscar Wilde
Here's your chocolate pudding. 💩
Go fuck yourself.
Go. Fuck. Yourself. 😘
I'm not sure that Popeye was a real person. Can you back that claim up?
Well blow me down!
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yours are up, trolly's aren't. 😄
I didn't know that streetcars write comments. Now I do.
Whether a moderator removes a comment isn't proof that the person removed was wrong. I don't know what they said because the comment was removed, but I certainly don't trust moderators to always get it right when deciding whether a comment is worthy of being removed.
Thanks for sharing. Your opinion is important to us. Please hold whole we fine someone who gives a rat's patootie about your opinion.........
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
I presume PC is shorthand for Piece of Crap.
Go fuck yourself.
But first, have some cake! 🎂
I'll bet you don't even know all life starts as female and doesn't differentiate until the second month.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4470128/#:~:text=Geneticists%20have%20discovered%20that%20all,maternal%20estrogens%20and%20maleness%20develops.
Shit! My email is going to be filled with likes.
Oh well.
It's self inflicted.
Love you guys.
🎯❤️
https://m.cj.co.kr/cj_files/advertise/202404/1713400200899_0.jpg
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
While I don't see what comment you responded to, I can see your comment and I definitely think yours should have been removed. It is just an insult, a violent one at that, and adds nothing to the conversation.
You, as with your fellow transphobic shitstains, are welcome to fuck straight off.
Happy Hogswatch Eve, shitstain. 😁
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. ~ Oscar Wilde
Here's your chocolate pudding. 💩
The last time I checked, beef came from cows. Now, if you're saying plant-based patties are beef, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
So eloquent! So profound! So enlightened! I am so impressed!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. ~ Oscar Wilde
Here's your chocolate pudding. 💩
Ooooo, cutting and pasting the same crap? Run out of thoughts already?
Have you ever asked yourself why you feel the need to support tyranny?
I'm happy to support "tranny's".... although "trans persons" is a much politer way of saying it, shitstain. 😘
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
I remember when the space shuttle Columbia exploded. It was a sad day for America.
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
You love Viking rowing as a hobby? I do to! We should meet up in the harbor some day.
The only thing I can say nicely is: you're a fucking idiot.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
It seems a snowflake has become to sensitive to own their words.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
Have you ever thought of pursuing watching cat videos as a hobby?
It certainly would be better for their blood pressure than hate-posting ignorant comments.
I can always count on you for great observations.
I think roller coasters are fun too. Which is your favorite?
Really? Same shit, same day
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
It appears Britton M has developed copy and paste skills.
Aaaand....it's gone. 😁
Would you be so kind as to delete your repetitive posts? Please. 🙏
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about theirs? 😉
Cute, isn't she! 🤣🤣🤣
"Shakespears monkeys" proves true once again
e=mc^2
Here's a superscript two ² you can copy/paste if you're interested in saving a caret. 🙂
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
It would seem to me that Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker are trying to set themselves up as supposed AUTHORITIES regarding the issue of human gender, without having ANY serious expertise in that area of study. They wish to obviate current understandings regarding gender dysphoria in favor of a simplistic one-or-the-other view which is about as absurd as what the fundamentalist religious community is doing.
And they deserve to be called on it. Where is their research, where are their studies, where are their findings and what peer review has vetted all of that? Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins are, for all intents and purposes, TALKING OUT OF THEIR ASSES.
And those who take such matters far more seriously need to confront them about that.
They also ignore the difference between sex, which is biological, and gender, which is not. It's clear that people asserting their right to break out of gender norms that harm them is triggering for these white guys of a certain age. They've grown too accustomed to having their opinions deferred to and so react like screaming toddlers when they're challenged. Reminds us once again of the old adage that 'for those accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.'
There are some interesting nuances to this, because "biological sex" can be a pretty messy matter all by itself. When you have not just XX and XY but XXY or XYY, never mind physiological hermaphroditism in the mix, the supposed "binary" of male or female is not only a false dichotomy but just purely WRONG. Throw in the self-perception of of a given person as to what THEY think they are and whether their self-identity is consonant with their physiology, and you have a multi-dimensional gradient field which would flummox any attempt at reductive thinking. I'm not even a biologist and I just came up with this in a few minutes.
And yet Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker think all of the above is irrelevant? SERIOUSLY???
Reductionists like Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker like to overlook the very existence of intersex people in their zeal to make a ludicrous point.
They (and Michael Shermer) all acknowledge the existence of, but dismiss anything in nature that non-conforming to their ideology.
The correct name for intersex, used by those who are intersex, is intersex. Whether you like it or not. There are plenty of people whose biological is indeterminate, also whether you like it or not. So, buzz off.
Let me add to my statement: "Pissed off old white men with archaic views on sex and gender that are grievously outdated."
I was leafing through some old textbooks from college (throw, or no?) and a lot of the info in them is so outdated, I think they are no longer of use to today's students, might be good for starting bonfires.
As a side note, FFRF is focused on religion and its intrusion into secular society. I don't know why the gender issue is even relevant here. It has nothing to do with religion, aside from echoing noise from the christianists. It stirs up divisiveness and discord. The kind of thing one might wish to impose on an organization inconvenient to religious power and influence. So there's that.
So, three old white guys left in a snit? So mote it be, lol. I hope from now on, FFRF stays focused on the issues at hand without wandering out into the MAGA distractions wafting around us these days.
Congratulations. You focus on the sex and forget the gender. You dwell on biology and completely ignore the psychology.
You get an "F."
Wrong. Next.
It's simply not binary. Your assertion that it is has zero foundation, you've provided zero credible evidence.
As for the rest of your rant, go fick yourself. If you wanted to find me, you would. It's easy, even someone of your limited cognitive abilities should be able to. But we both know you won't, so your bringing it up is merely embarrassing to your gene puddle.
Happy Hogswatch Eve! 😉
And XX with a penis? What are they?
Ummm ... penis owners? 😁
People to enjoy some time with.
Since we almost always assign sex based on dominant phenotype, people with XX chromosomes and a penis are invariably assigned male at birth. De La Chapelle syndrome can cause said males to undergo female puberty later in life though.
I used to resist the terminology of "assigning" sex at birth.
Then I educated myself. I did some research on intersex people. Like, WOW! There is actually a high percentage of cases where it's not entirely clear (large clitoris or micro penis?).
Worse, all of the stuff that the right is fearmongering about? Well, it is going on. Only to a small group of invisible people that receive no protection from the right.
Intersex people have long been isolated, told they were the only person like that, subjected to invasive checks as children (and photographed for non-medical reason - child porn anyone?), undergoing multiple operations to make them conform to social norms, and often not even told why (doctors tell the parents not to say anything to their child). They know, none of their peers are undergoing so many unexplained operations, and they wonder why they are different. They only know that "something is wrong with them."
THIS IS REAL LIFE PHYSICAL, SEXUAL, MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE. And not one person on the right has shown a shred of concern or even knowledge. Worse, they discount intersex people as not relevant to the conversation. Right-wing assholes prefer ambiguous, abstract fearmongering to retain control of society, aka Satanic Panics.
Must you keep proving Mrs. Gump correct?
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the square of the sides added together.
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
More pissed off old white men....
I dont understand Dawkins if he is being triggered. He was in the Uk in the 1980's when 'gender norms' for men were challenged everywhere. I dont remember hearing him complaining then.
Well said Jane, a most accurate observation.
Why thank you, Nat!
The entire purpose of gender is to tell people what sex you are. If we separate gender from sex, then we might as well get rid of gender entirely.
Not true.
I would argue that gender absolutely is biological. You’re mistaking gender expression for gender identity. John Money’s horrific experiments proved, if nothing else, that gender identity is inborn and immutable and not a mater of socialization.
Sex is a function of biology. Gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation aren't biological functions. They're deeply ingrained, but that has nothing to do with biology. There's every reason to think that people are 'born that way', but not because of biology.
Dawkins is an honours biologist. He actually does know
Nobody can change their sex or gender. Period. They can live as the opposite sex but they aren't and never will be the opposite sex. That is fact not hate
As if you could even define the terms you're attempting to use.
Fuck off now, move along, back to your CAFO lagoon…..
They are living embodiments of appeal to authority, ivory tower elitist snobs.
I also think they do their grifts to remain relevant in a time when society has moved beyond the hills they have staked. Basically, "old man yells at cloud," only with real world consequences they neither suffer nor acknowledge happening to people beyond the abstract. Sometimes, people have to get out of their own heads (and ivory towers) and look around at the world to see what is actually going on.
First, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Second, everything you mention is literally shit some fucking christians made up, but you're too fucking stupid to understand that. Not one single idea in your head originated with you. You are nothing more than a banal repeater of bullshit, devoid of original thought.
Third, it's fucking rightwing nuts like you that want women subjugated and serving men. What the hell to you think tradwives are for? To take care of the husband and raise his kids. A tradwife is nothing more than the mom you get to fuck.
Fourth, abortion is slated for the chopping block because women's purpose in life, according to fuckwits like you is to bear children and be a cum dump for her husband.
Fifth, you are Shrodinger's rapist. A women never knows if you are or aren't going to rape her.
So, when you want to talk about something, educate yourself first, instead of speaking from ignorance. Maybe try to think for yourself instead regurgitating bullshit you got off some christian racist misogyny podcast or sermon.
Now go away, little boy. Go away.
You're too wrapped up in your banal tropes believing you're some type of hero when all you are is a pathetic, impotent troll.
You're the reason women don't want anything to do with you.
Your objection is basically the same as back in the day when Christians would claim that these guys were setting themselves up as experts on God when none of them had a degree in theology
I think that often times people will criticize others on the same "side" (in this cases, atheists criticizing other atheists) because they expect better of them (this goes for both people like Coyne and people like Hemant). They already know Fundamentalists are crazy, but they don't expect other Atheists to be crazy (or what they believe is crazy).
Molte grazie! 😁
You don't seem to know anything about sex. Are you a biologist? Or just an incel?
Maybe he thinks he's a cunning linguist... 😝
Bot. One of the thousands of amateur AIs out there.
Oh, SWELL ... 😝
A cunning linguist who's bad at cunnilingus.
https://www.spam.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Web_900_SPAM-Less-Sodium-7-oz.png
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
I should get some sleep for work tonight.
But this is too fun....
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
Mechanic: You've blown a seal
You: Leave my private life out of it and just fix the damn thing.
🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
For Coyne to say that the FFRF shouldn't get involved in Politics is ridiculous.
The Xian Nationalists are ramping up efforts to proselytize the whole country.
Never has political action by the Freedom From Religion Foundation been needed more.
.
Good point. FFRF's mission is to uphold the separation of church and state, which is inherently political.
I agree. The work of FFRF is needed because of politics! The right wing Nationalist-sedition-supporting, felon-supporting, rapist-supporting losers want to control every inch of our lives but scream when they think their deadly guns could be taken to save others including numerous school children!
There's being involved in issues in the political sphere, and then there's advancing political culture war nonsense. We definitely need the former. Coyne did the latter, when what is needed is the former.
For some reason, it's always the old white guys who go doctrinaire on the trans issue, particularly on trans women. It's like they feel personally affronted by the very existence of trans women. It's just plain weird. Secondly, their argument [one could even say their dogma] is that anything sex or gender-related is ONLY a matter of biology while ignoring the psychology and sociology that accompany sex and gender and often inform it. But even on the biology, these dogmatic preachers of the anti-trans Book of Old White Men gospel 24:7, get it wrong. Sex isn't as cleanly and neatly biologically defined as they would have people believe, as they ignore the very existence of intersex people. We also shouldn't ignore their attempts to use science to validate their bigotry by employing exactly the same arguments that people like them used for decades to demonize gays and lesbians - and that very much includes the debunked myth of hyper sexual aggression among gay men.
FFRF owes its supporters a much more in-depth explanation for allowing Coyne's article to be published on their site in the first place as well as why it was ultimately removed. It sad to see the reputation of a good organization being tarnished by a bad decision. That's why it's imperative that FFRF give a fulsome explanation. And FAST.
Attacking trans people is safe for them. They can't go doctrinaire on ciswomen, there's already too much (growing) evidence against such old school bullshit. They need a target to remain relevant in a society that has long pioneered new hills well past the one's they pioneered back in the day.
Does Dawkins even write about atheism anymore?
The position is appealing for two reasons:
1. Science, or cherry-picked "science." They can garner support from the left by appealing to science (abusing science).
2. Less attacks from the right. The people they once attacked and who fight back now have a reason to align themselves with these grifters.
This, me think, they believe will increase their sphere of influence, provide consolation from people who agree with them (supporting their bias confirmation), and reduces any cognitive dissonance ("If 'everyone' disagrees with me, then I must be right.")
Darwin also used evolution to supplant religion to explain women's inferiority. Coyne attacked a woman for even writing about that fact. It was a very nuanced piece, apparently much deeper than Coyne was able to fathom, so he totally mischaracterized her article, and then shot me down for pointing it out. Coyne is amongst the most intellectually dishonest ivory tower elitists out there, he never engages with the topic, only shifts it into his target zone to bolster his intellectual fragility.
Dawkins recently started calling himself a 'cultural christian', so that might explain his drift away from writing about atheism. But I think the root of their problem is relevance, specifically their loss of it. Being anti-trans is an attention getter right now, here in the US and in the UK. It appears these old white guys have jumped on that bandwagon to sate their thirst for attention.
Yes. Thanks for the reminder. I think "cultural christian" is a bit of linguistic prestidigitation. What exactly does that mean? To live in a region that is predominantly christian? To identify with christian ideology?
But, yes, there is a strong case for relevance. I think they're performing the intellectual version of "old man yells at cloud" and making money off it at the same time.
Having read The God Delusion, I rate myself an 8 (I think his scale was 1-7), I know god only exists in the mind and on paper. I am definitely not a cultural christian. christianity has stolen culture (and morality, and social cohesion) and proclaimed itself as the one true source.
Old Men Yelling At Cloud should be the name of their new boy band.
I've occasionally claimed to be a "cultural Xtian" in that I live in a heavily Xtian-influenced culture but don't ascribe to the idea that the mythology is anything more than that: mythology.
I'm not 'giving away' anything, and I don't you or anyone to set my boundaries for me. Thank you very much. Gender isn't a theology any more than atheism is. Once again, buzz off with your transphobia. Women are quite capable of taking care of themselves. And each other.
Scarry's just spamming the same reply (he did it to me).
Trans women have been around since decades before I was born, I've had zero issues with the very few individuals I've dealt with personally, and I am deeply suspicious of all attempts to make me feel threatened by them.
I was going with my dad up to his office downtown. We got on an elevator with a couple of very elegant, tall women. When we got off I said, "Wow, those women were taller than you!"
Dad said, "Those were men." He explained transvestites. And that was that, no big deal. Hell, I was 13 and I thought, "I could use some tips from them," lol. Dad lead by example.
I have a lot of thoughts about this. They will take a while to get out in all of their glory. But I’ll start with this one:
“ This was in fact the third time that I and others have tried to warn the FFRF about the dangers of expanding its mission into political territory.”
The reason there is a freedom from religion foundation is because religion has been busy expanding its mission into political territory for the entirety of my adult life. We won’t even get into the intrusion of religion, specifically Islam and Christianity, Into politics, Literally over centuries, literally over millennia.
As a gay man, It has been my experience— Putting it mildly— That religion’s intent of dominating my life, controlling my participation in society, Defining my humanity in terms of what somebody may have said about something 2000 to 3000 years ago is precisely what religion has been doing…
Insisting that its purely theological concerns Should be inserted into the civil law that governs everyone.
The very nature of the freedom from religion foundation is inherently political, because it stands in opposition to this. It’s very name, Containing the very political word FREEDOM, Stands in opposition to The insertion of purely theological concerns into civil law.
As I have said many times, anti-trans people are simply repeating the tactics and the arguments of anti gay people, And these tactics and arguments were used in various forms against Jewish people, Black people, and women people.
I decided to add an addendum to my original posting: one of the arguments used in support of don’t ask don’t tell, which meant don’t allow gay men into the military, was that gay men don’t know how to live with straight men, and will be constantly assaulting, ogling, coming onto all of those poor innocent straight boys, who just want to take a shower and not look at each other’s dicks.
Those were literally the arguments being put forth by the Republicans and the Christian right. The thing is, we gay men do know how to behave ourselves. We have lived with straight men our entire lives. The vast majority of trans people also know how to live with cisgender people. And none of this was a problem until the Christian right failed with gay people. Then they needed a new target.
Damned well said!
Thanks.
“one of the arguments used in support of don’t ask don’t tell, which meant don’t allow gay men into the military, was that gay men don’t know how to live with straight men, and will be constantly assaulting, ogling, coming onto all of those poor innocent straight boys”
Nailed it.
I’ve often thought the reason straight men are so afraid of being around gay men is because they’re worried gay men will treat them the way straight men treat women i.e harass and coerce them for sex or simply overpower and rape them.
That behaviour is fine only when it’s directed at women, it seems.
I'm not sure that the reasons given fully reflect reality. They're not implausible, but I have doubts as to how prominent they are.
As social beings, we possess ideas that did not originate with us. So, when someone suggests something that seems plausible enough and we don't know anything to the contrary, we accept it, generally without thinking critically about it.
I'm going to speak from anecdote here, but I suspect that my general experience isn't just limited to me.
Growing up as a teen, gay bashing was just a thing. We would deride Boy George on MTV (back when it played music), and secretly enjoy his songs. I only ever knew one person, a family member, who was gay, and I was fine with that. I was too young to understand the collision of thoughts (cognitive dissonance) between knowing a gay man who was a great person and deriding gay people I did not know. Society was just inundated with anti-gay messaging, and my mind wasn't developed enough to move beyond separating one person from the abstract "herd" that I was programmed to think about and hate.
I was in the military and group-showered with guys on several occasions. You don't look, but you see things. The greater concern than "Is anyone here secretly gay and ogling me?" was "I don't really like my body and I hope no one points out all the bad shit with it. More importantly, I hope this feeling doesn't turn into a full-on erection. I wont' be able to hide it, and I don't want to be labelled as gay." It was a terrifying experience that I had to act nonchalant about.
Years later, and with a lot of growth and introspection, developing critical thinking, and greatly expanding my sexuality (Hey! Why let restrictions keep me from pleasure?), I came to realize that it was pretty stupid and shitty behavior, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. I just did it because everyone did.
It took years for me to realize that being antigay wasn't actually who I was. I'm not proud of it, but I own it and I learned from it. It took much longer for me to realize that I was latently part of the group that I derided (which explains what was going on in the shower). Once I started exploring my sexuality, it took even longer to get over the post-sex shame I experienced as a backlash of my religious upbringing.
I suspect a lot people have no idea why they "hate" LGBTQAI+ people, and the Dunning-Kruger effect enables heuristic thinking that results in them picking from a plethora of reasons propagated by religious hate-mongers to bias society and justify having that hatred.
A lot of people parse those they meet (and have a human face), like I did, from the group they are told they should hate. Fewer expand that parsing to those they haven't met, and those from other marginalized and hated groups.
Nowadays, I work to be more reflective of what I think; to own what I know and comprehend what I've only heard, but don't fully know. I also understand that no matter how well researched I am, I don't know it all, or even enough. I can only work with what I know, and update what I think and believe when I receive new information or ways to perceive something. I'm not perfect, but I try to make progress when and where I can.
“… but try to make progress when and where I can.”
Which is exactly the right and proper way to approach it. I’ve written about all of this before, but I was bullied a lot from the fifth grade until the eighth grade, or more accurately, until I started fighting back and didn’t care whether I was hurt. I was the Jewish kid. I was the somewhat weird kid. And I was getting called a faggot long before I knew what that was, as you wrote about.
And, also like you, I could see that same kind of behavior developing in myself when I was 13. I just started to become a bully as a means of feeling better about myself, as a means of protecting myself. But you might say that my heart wasn’t in it, and it didn’t go anywhere.
My entire life changed when my parents finally moved from the hell hole that was Long Beach to Northeast LA, and I met the boy that became my best friend. His family became my family, even though I was still a part of my own mockery of a family. And there was one set of things I learned: bullies were bullies, their behaviors set either by their own deficiencies or the deficiencies of their communities.
And what I learned above all was that bullies must always be stood up to, and never agreed with. People who act like bullies, people who denigrate others for their own benefit, denigrate whole groups of people— these are the people who are the true threat to society and human betterment.
Being a gay man in a homophobic society, being a Jewish (heritage, not in practice or interest) man in an antisemitic and/or fundamentalist society, being my own man in a world that wants me to be someone else…
… THAT IS WHAT MATTERS.
Couldn't agree more.
I am sorry for all that you experienced. No one should ever go through that shit. I am glad that you were able to form a family that supported you better.
One thing I learned is never try to change people's minds, only they can do that. When l pushback on certain types of people, it's so that anyone who stumbles across it can get a more informed opinion and choose a better course.
I have often said the same thing. I don’t write to change a bigots mind, but to reach the people who aren’t yet bigots.
I absolutely agree with that assessment, at least for part of what’s going on. The other part of it is I think that a lot of allegedly heterosexual men are worried first that they might not be entirely heterosexual, and second, they are deathly afraid of anyone associating homosexuality with them simply because they have absorbed the vicious, ancient, and durable prejudice they have been taight. And that may have a lot to do with the first thing as well.
In our culture, fathers are afraid to kiss their sons lest someone get the wrong idea. Or the right idea, as the case may be. I used to kiss my father when I was a boy, but I stopped probably when I was about 16, not because it made me uncomfortable, but because it clearly made my father uncomfortable.
This explains my experience (more detailed comment below) more than I don't want to be treated the shitty way women are treated. No one wants shitty treatment, but too many men don't think they're treating women shitty.
It would never occur to the real assholes in the world to think that they might be real assholes. But that’s because they are real assholes.
Too true indeed.
Well, we might give the innocent, horny straight boys a six-pack and see what happens.
We can hear the unending refrain;
Christ was I drunk last night! I don’t remember a thing that happened.
BRAVO!!!
Thanks.
This!!!!
In regard to the attacks, the thinking goes, "Why stop using a tried and true method of attack that has withstood the test of time." Fear creates engagement, people never research anything (they don't have the time), we rely on the gov't to know, and, of course, repeat repeat repeat, say it often enough it becomes "true."
I was in the military when "Don't ask. Don't tell." came into effect. It was most definitely not a good position. However, prior to that, the reaction was either dishonorable discharge (maybe general at best) or prison. I watched it happen. Two soldiers were caught, one was discharged, the other went to prison when he got caught a second time before his discharge was completed.
"DA.DT" was actually a step in the right direction, because every journey begins with a single step. Thankfully it was not the end of progress. Society still had yet to catch up. It was a shitty policy, just less shitty.
"The moral arc bends ever toward justice." It is imperative that we make progress with the understanding that progress is never complete.
I won’t disagree with you, because it wasn’t in the military. But if I recall, it wasn’t an automatic discharge. There was some discretion available. I think the man who showed that was Perry Watkins, but it was a long time ago, and I don’t really remember. Clinton trying to end the ban on gay people in the military was what led to the compromise that was known as don’t ask don’t tell. It was better, but still not any good. I remember that there was a big to do at one of the language translator schools run by the military. A bunch of gay men were kicked out, leading to a shortage of Farsi and Arabic translators, which led to the deaths of a lot of Soldiers, mostly heterosexual men. And of course, it was all really for nothing as all of the garbage being put forth Was lies.
There will certainly be exceptions, but the general rule during my time was discharge, and going back further it was imprisonment.
I'm not aware of what happened at DLI, but that doesn't surprise me. I guess for some, certain principles are more important than resultant deaths, which are just abstract for a lot of people anyway. Just look at the backlash against the videos revealing police brutality. Black people are saying, "We've been telling you about this for decades," and people are still in denial, or they justify it, or they view it as a one-off incident. "A few bad apples." Finish the cliché! Would you buy a bag of apples if there was a rotten one in it?
Hell, before Columbine, there was an average of 26 school shootings a year, yet we never heard about them. It was written off as an "inner-city" problem and where we expected it anyway, so why should anyone care? I mean, they did care, that's why they sent thoughts and prayers.
“Don’t wade into political territory” is also the height of hypocrisy given the fact that COYNE brought this topic up! To him, “politics” is someone objecting to his opinion.
Well put. As a fellow cis gay man, I agree 100%.
It is good to be reminded every now and again that while bigotry and religious faith are part of the massive overlap in the middle of a Venn diagram, there are (a) a few religious people who are not bigots--we lost one of them today and (b) an alarming number of atheists who are bigots for non-religious reasons. As a humanist, I'm happy to see all atheist groups defend basic human rights for all people, but especially for a group that has been villified and abused for too long.
Maybe we should focus on explaining to people that while there is almost no risk to your children from trans people, letting religious figures take care of your children is an open invitation to abuse.
Damned skippy, Senator!
Another meddlesome kkkrister superstitionist. I am not pushing ghosts and goblins. I am not pushing slavery to imaginary gods. Your goddcamned bible started the hatred. So FUCK YOU,holy troika of hate
On what planet are S. Pinker, J. Coyne, and R. Dawkins members of the KKK? Not the one sometimes called 'Earth'.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
What if - just here me out here - what if vanilla was actually just vanilla? How would that affect BIG Ice Cream?
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
Po-ta-toes. You know. Mash 'em. Boil 'em. Put 'em in a stew.
Human rights are not up for debate. Atheists who are supposed to be known for critical thinking, going down the anti-trans rabbit hole, don't belong on any board of non-believers, honorary or not. The actual science supports the treatment of gender dysphoria via gender transition. The XX/XY genetic determination of sex & gender has been updated with a lot more information showing there are many other variations in the human genome. People who look at others as nothing more than genitals are the ones who need the conversion therapy! I'm all for free speech. FFRF could have at least posted a disclaimer when allowing the post, and even better it could have have had post debunking this archaic thinking and use of fake & disproven 'studies'. It sure does suck seeing people you admired become the exact type of ghouls you've been fighting for years.
Cheating (at sports) is a fundamental human right. Everyone knows that.
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
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a b c d e f g
h i j k elemenopee
q r s
t u v
w x
y and z
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
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Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg/640px-Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg
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lol
You must be wearing out the CTRL, C, and V keys on your keyboard.
I type each an every comment manually, ensuring that 'personal touch' my fans have come to expect. 🙂
lol
Masochist!
I respect that.
Britton M was here.
Long may we remember wossname. 🙂
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
“distinguished scientist from the relevant field of Biology.” Ha! There have been plenty of scientists who denounced the covid vaxx too. I’m not about to give credit where it’s not due.
There's a big difference between they're right because they're distinguished (appeal to authority), and they're right because that's what the evidence says (science). And, so far, nature is the final arbiter of who nature functions.
Watch these three assholes form their own religion: the religion of them.
I see three old white men who let the bigotry of their privilege blind them to nuance. They are more to be pitied than vilified, although there is justification for the vilification.
On the plus side, they are old and might not be around too much longer.
And that quickly get into a hair-pulling contest over which one gets to be god.
It's just more of the performative victimhood the right is well known for.
May they fade away like mist before a rising sun.
Before, during, after ...as long as they fade pronto!
Mr Roboto
(Eat Shit And)¹ Die
(¹ optional)
Kilroy was here
As an aside, my comments will be here tomorrow. How about yours, miss? 🤔
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting assertion, one with exactly zero corroborative evidence.
I'd invite you to repeat your assertion to me in person....I'd really enjoy the experience of providing you with an education your mother failed to provide. 😁
You're welcome to fuck straight off now. 😘
Shoulda held this article until tomorrow- we could've called it TERF Tuesday. TERF Monday just doesn't have that alliteration appeal.
TERF and surf Tuesdays. Although that could get expensive.
Are tacos involved on TERF Tuesday?
There's 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 a bad day for tacos!
Could do without the TERFs, though.
None of the gentlemen mentioned have expertise in modern neuroscience. No peer-reviewed research papers by them on the topic anywhere to be seen.
One should take the humble approach that they may not know as much as think they do.
Anytime someone is advocating for a group of people - any group of people, it doesn't matter which group - to be treated as lesser they're on dangerous ground at best. The fact that these men, who should know better, advocated for treating trans individuals as lesser says volumes about their lack of real character.
The biology at play is not the point. Humanity expresses a wide variety of biological variance, and expecting that one person's physical experience will match another's is ridiculous. No great mental leap is needed to figure out that my personal experience of 'female' is going to be unique to me, and someone else's will likewise be unique to them. Get the $*@# over it, and learn to treat folks you don't like or find 'icky' like the people they are, not an enemy at the gates.
I am gender fluid. I identify as both male and female. I also identify as straight, Bi and Gay. All this in a matter of hours. I am physically male and I remember as a child wondering why god had stuck boy parts on me. I thought it was cruelty on the part of god.
I take umbrage when/if someone says I am wrong and need to change. I tried. I also failed spectacularly. As the inimitable Molly Ivins put it, the "squat to pee crowd" was me. Even today at nearly 80 I want to carry a man's baby. Since childhood I have wanted to feel a baby growing inside me. Even playing "house" I wanted to be the mommy.
Here in the UK, they have Mothering Sunday (which often gets called Mother's Day). The idea is that a mother is anyone who fills that role, not just a mother. It can be a man. It can be grandparents. It can be anyone.
So, at nearly 80, you can still be a mommy.
I know there are some spelling differences between the UK and the US but I'm pretty sure you meant role and not roll. Unless you were referring to a mother sandwich.
Good catch. Corrected. I'm operating on a few hours of sleep and have one more night of work.
I find it (not) surprising that so many of the trolls here have no likes, posts or any activity other than this site . Why, it’s like they just made their account! 🙄
The one that just got the boot was also a sockpuppet, so...
Yeah, I usually check their bio before I use my space laser. L etc the other day, same shit
I'd like to know how these - and for that matter Jordan Peterson fanbois - find out their hero is being criticised. Is there an app? Do they have a special FingerspitzenGefühl? A phone tree? They seem to only come out when this happens, and then disappear when we move on.
They must spend their time searching for stuff to be nasty about
Google alerts, anytime their messiahs are mentioned in any social media post, blog, news article, google sends an alert. Then they converge.
Anti-trans people falsely accuse trans folks of subscribing to some anti-trans-invented “Trans ideology.” Looks like it’s the anti-trans crowd who are the ones with an ideology.
I know, right! What is with this sexed* soul bullshit? Where did they get that? Like a bunch of what they’re saying is straight up straw pulled right from their asses.
* edited for correct phrasing.
Hemant is well-known enough to get mentioned on other social media accounts. His post about the childish Christian sign board was recently mentioned directly on ComicSands.
The only other place they congregate is on anti-trans sites.
I have no activity or posts other than this site, but I am no troll.
No, tire not and you just didn’t make your account TO troll.
Edit: you’re