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A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

economist.com

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Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#881
post #848

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…

Not endorsing it per-se or suggesting it should be accepted wholesale but good reading on this is _ Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters_

https://www.amazon.com/Irreversible-Damage-Transgender-Seduc...

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#882
post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also important noting, semi-related to your post, that nobody is pushing for trans-surgeries for teenagers -- they are pushing for puberty blockers . What this means is that puberty is medically halted until the teenager is a legal age, when they will be able to decide which puberty they want. This avoids a lot of dysphoria-provoking secondary sexual characteristics from progressing, and also avoids accidentally…

Because giving hormone suppressors to developing kids could have massive implications to their physical and mental development? Has there really been enough research on the subject to come up with a valid cost-benefit analysis? > How can there be any emphatically-cogent argument…? Because drugging little kids should be a last resort. Using big words doesn't change the need to be extremely cautious in doing something…

That's why we leave it up to the doctors to prescribe them?

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#883
post #787

Any form of dogma, no matter which side of the isle it comes from, is poison. Even things that seem silly like pronouns can be the seed from which serious problems arise. It’s because dogma is the absence of rational thought, and in that absence irrational beasts can grow very large.

Yet "Any form of dogma, no matter which side of the isle it comes from, is poison." is itself a dogma. Curious. Hoffstädter might have enjoyed this strange loop.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#884
post #878
post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No doubt. But we knew back then we had gays and lesbians among us. We had them as friends and acquaintances so we knew the population existed and that there were quite a few people in our circles who happened to be. But trans seems a bit different.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#885
post #860
post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

Okay so we can't ask today's 30 or 40 year olds about their feelings growing up?

This makes your theory conveniently unfalsifiable.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#886

I'm not going to read or respond to any of the comments in this thread because I don't want to self-harm today. However, I have to comment on the site linked in the article, noconflicttheysaid.org, because it's absolutely hilarious. It has stories about the supposed negative impact of trans women in women's spaces. I'm not cherry-picking; from the top, the stories on the first two pages are: 1. A woman and her two da…

Thanks for picking that out.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was ironically one of the things that was hardest about coming out as gay, for me. Nobody ever treated me the same way again. I was either uncomfortably praised or silently judged, with practically no in-between. Suffice to say, my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.

And the reverse: your sexuality - or anybody else's who is not my mate - is not on my list of 'want-to-know'. I simply do not care about the choices and/or attributes of other people though I believe they should be 100% free to make whatever choice they want and be whoever they are, and have gone out of my way to ensure that this is the case for people who find their life's choices frustrated or their reality denied…

I think the issue is that a gay man probably wants to be comfortable answering "what did you do last night?" with "I went out to dinner with my boyfriend", but can't be with a new friend who doesn't know about their sexuality.

As much as we'd like to believe we have no biases, we do. Straight is the societal default. People who are not straight and just want to answer a question about their dinner run the risk of a bad reaction if the person they're talking to just happens to be homophobic.

Someone might prefer to get that reaction in a controlled setting, when they've emotionally prepared themselves for it, not during the course of answering a routine question about dinner. So that's why someone you're just starting to get to know might prefer to specifically tell you that they're gay, rather than waiting for it to just come up as an incidental fact during conversation.

This isn't about them assuming that you specifically care about their sexuality. It's about them being able to determine if you are a person with whom is safe to share details about their life... innocuous details that a straight person would take for granted as being safe to share.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#888
post #867
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.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2021/6/22/why-a...

“The proportion of mental health–related emergency department visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased 31 percent in 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, the report said. Visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls aged 12-17 then jumped 50 percent from February to March 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. The increase among boys the same age over the same period was just 3.7 percent.“

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#889

My view on gender is the same as anything else. We should accept the cards we're dealt and focus on our strengths. Nobody is making you focus on your problems, you can choose what to focus on. If you were born as the wrong gender, why would you focus on that? You will probably never win that battle. You can never be satisfied because you will never have what most other people have. You should try to focus on other th…

While this adopting this positive attitude will improve anyone's situation it might in fact only lead to a local Optima in the wellbeing of certain people and I find it unfair to restrict them away from a path leading to better solution for them. Not everyone works as you do.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#890

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…

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