Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#871

Post by slg »

mc32 wrote: post #867
slg wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In other words, we can ask 30 or 40 year olds, did you feel unhappy with your identity as much as today's youth feel about their identities but couldn't wouldn't express it? This won't be accurate for a few reasons. First, there are certainly people in denial about these feelings. A society that is more hostile to trans people will yield a society that has more trans people denying their true identity. That should b…

According to parent comment a significant fraction of the cohort are experiencing some form of unhappiness with their identities. If that is true, and a handful of commenters are making similar claims, then we could have seen alarming numbers of suicides amongst teenage girls, but we have not, so we'd have plenty of survivors to interview and understand better.

It doesn't follow that the rate would need to be "alarming" previously. Imagine 1% of teenagers are trans and 5% of suicides of teenager are trans. It wouldn't matter what the suicide rate would be and it would still have an impact on the total trans rate among 40 year olds.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#872

Post by throwkeep »

fallat wrote: post #715
jfengel wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Olympics has been dealing with the question of womanhood for a very long time. For a while they were literally stripping and groping female athletes. Later they did chromosome testing, until they discovered intersex individuals who confound that theory. Even their current testosterone-levels theory is imperfect, since some people have obviously female bodies but inordinately high testosterone levels. So they seem…

I've basically had a thought recently about this. The Olympics will eventually become a contest of the best humans, regardless of sex / gender. This is already how it is more or less today: people born with the right body types, into the right families, etc, will make it to the top. Thank for you attending my TED talk.

That would be the end of females in the Olympics. Male High School Athletes beat Female Olympians in most events:

https://boysvswomen.com

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#873

Post by CRConrad »

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #744
motohagiography wrote: post #147

One shouldn't expect courage from The Economist, but it's always wise to bet on their prudence. I don't read The Economist for facts or details so much as to get a sense of what topics a current establishment can no longer afford to ignore. The details are secondary to the neccessity that a writer, a sub-editor, and a senior editor with tremendous personal stake in maintaining access to the circles that define establ…

> I don't think direct discourse on the topic improves the discussion on gender because the participants use a critical theory in which the promise of discourse is just bait to corner political targets for their mobs. Are you suggesting that we should leave gender to the scientists and when The Economist has spoken, it should be recognized as the moment that “the science is in”? I could understand your first paragrap…

> Are you suggesting that we should leave gender to the scientists and when The Economist has spoken, it should be recognized as the moment that “the science is in”?

I read it more as “The Economist has started speaking about the subject, so it's an established science -- now we can start to expect actual results from it”.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#874

Post by erklik »

CRConrad wrote: post #862
erklik wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really fairness is an issue when considering MtF, but not FtM? why exactly?

Transitioning female to male doesn't make you more likely to win Olympic weightlifting competitions in your new gender, so you'd be vanishingly unlikely to do it for the sake of gaining an advantage.

Ah. We are only considering physical advantages then. There can be many other advantages that are not physical.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#875

Post by plerpin »

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

At my university, the fratboys were far, far, FAR more disruptive than the LGBT groups. But we go with it; fratboy are an accepted pupal stage of American men it seems

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#876

Post by HWR_14 »

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon to create distractions by purposefully treating a small group badly. And the solution can neither be to allow it to dominate all the bandwidth nor to ignore it.

Meanwhile, unlike Alzheimers, amputations or blindness, there doesn't really need to be any scientific breakthroughs to handle this. We just need to somehow fix society. It's at least controllable.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#877

Post by freemint »

throwkeep wrote: post #439
a1369209993 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just try to avoid meat space. This is really the best solution, to the extent possible. On the internet no one knows you're a dog, as the saying goes.

This is changing tho, with avatars and pronouns and emojis that display skin color. Now a thumbs up in Slack is segregated by color. Why people don't see this as an incredibly bad idea, I don't know.

The Lego colored thumb is still an option.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#878

Post by btilly »

mc32 wrote: post #848
NikolaNovak wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to wade into a controversial topic where I'm under-educated and have limited info/opinions; but for what little it is worth to add to anecdata - the current cohort of 12-15 year old girls in my friend/family circle are virtually all in some level of gender dysphoria. Most of their parents are supportive and loving but... panicked, I guess - completely uncertain what to do, how best to help them, and without ro…

I think this raises a few questions. Has anything changed in the last 10 or 20 years? Why does this affect as many youths as it does today? No doubt there was unhappiness with one's identity in the past, but I doubt it was at the level it is today. And, in addition, I doubt it's at the same elevated level in all countries. In other words, we can ask 30 or 40 year olds, did you as a kid feel unhappy with your identity…

Has anything changed in the last 10 or 20 years?

Yes. We as a society have become dramatically more accepting of gay and trans people.

Gay marriage is a reasonable proxy. Back in 2008, and even a relatively liberal state like California passed a proposition to ban gay marriage. Today popular opinion supports gay marriage. Not just popular opinion in California, or nationwide, but even popular opinion nationwide AMONG REPUBLICANS.

This is why the parents that I know today with children identifying as trans are figuring out how to best support and help their children. The parents of trans people that I knew a few years back wound up becoming homeless as teenagers because of the reactions of their parents. A typical such reaction having been, "You are murdering my son!"

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#879

Post by colechristensen »

tylerchr wrote: post #683
colechristensen wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the mechanism of this oscillation is people joining and leaving a movement. In the beginning the radical idea is a basic kind of equality where some kind of person shouldn't be disadvantaged for some characteristic. There is then a growth phase where many people join and small specific victories turn into general victories. There is then a shrinking phase where people leave the movement or lose zeal as general vi…

Did you get this framework from somewhere you can refer me to? It’s facially intriguing and I’d like to see it more fully explored.

While I probably have many influences, the thoughts there are,I think, mostly my own.

While in tech i’ve been gently exploring the idea of freaking out my thoughts into something publishable.

Sometimes HN is an exercise in attempting to communicate how i think and getting feedback.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#880

Post by [deleted] »

dmje wrote: post #637
drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

Couldn't agree more. The airtime on this topic is insane. People's email signatures filled with their pronouns. The anger. The division. I get it's an emotive conversation but then so are gay rights, gender rights, race rights, democratic rights, inequality, and about a gazillion other topics. That's not belittling trans as an issue, but it's so incredibly noisy. IMO the wider question here is nothing to do with tran…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN