A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities • Hacker News Board

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#921

Post by sepin4 » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 6:38 AM UTC

KittenInABox wrote: post #882

nahnahno wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

like the doctors don't have incentive to prescribe drugs...

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#922

Post by gorgoiler » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

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…

Adult percentages are too blunt an instrument. With young adults and children this is a big issue.

In the school where I teach, sex, gender, and most importantly gender identity come sharply into focus during puberty and I have several students taking a time-limited therapy course to help them with gender id questions. That puts us into the 5% to 10% range, though that is of course purely anecdotal and from a tiny sample size.

Puberty hasn’t suddenly become more complex and access to these ideas and therapies may be driving gender-identity as a fashionable topic amongst the kids. But from what I’ve seen it’s a genuine need with most of them who ask for it.

Puberty is fascinating: it is a time of identity turmoil for every human being and while in the majority of cases that means going down a difficult but pre-determined path, for many others it throws up a huge number of questions about how to match their genetic/hormonal programming and the way they think, with the society in which they live. Intersex itself is a spectrum, for example.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#923

Post by gorgoiler » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

caeril wrote: post #302

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…

There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. The two primary components are: 1. Parents and sexual violence victims concerned about the non-falsifiability of trans-identification and the related concerns of sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have to gain access to private spaces of women and girls. 2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a…

I’ve always regarded transitioning gender — and how it is focused so much on men moving away from being a man — being equivalent to someone saying I am uncomfortable and I want off this ride, where the rollercoaster is testosterone. That’s what I’ve picked up anyway, from my friends who have transitioned.

I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#924

Post by teatree » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

throwaway284534 wrote: post #446

teakettle42 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one presents in both dress and phenotype. If you were responsible for compiling a dictionary, what is the accurate definition of "woman" that you would provide?

I must admit that I’m apprehensive to give an answer given this thread’s…liveliness, but I’ll do my best. “Woman” describes a collection of chromosomal and phenological traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens. A human is often perceived as a woman when she simultaneously embodies a variety of these traits, especially so when those traits contrast that which is considered male. Much like the concep…

Apologies if this question is too stupid, I mean no disrespect, just trying to understand things better.

If gender is a complete social construct and 'man' and 'woman' are something that is traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens, then why not create another of your own?

Most problems that I see in this debate are due to one group wanting to widen the scope of a existing understanding, the other wanting to preserve it.

Wouldn't creating a 3rd gender and legislating it as a valid legal entity with compelled equal facilities solve the problem for both groups?

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#925

Post by ben_w » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 7:02 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #907

ben_w wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the original comment by @caeril as saying that Feminists are TERFs, which would not be accurate as the expansion of the acronym is “ Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”. From what I’ve seen reported, cis women are on average more relaxed than cis men about trans women.

Aren't a majority of the TERFs specifically 2nd wave Feminists who who do not like the idea of 'passing' as a female being reinforced. This as because they spent their lives fighting so that women did not have to abide by social norms enforced on them. From their POV, since gender is social, a trans-gender person reinforcing the need for transition to enjoy social aspects of being a woman is actively hostile to their…

I am unfamiliar with any survey specifically focusing with that much depth on people who exclude trans people, do you have a link?

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#926

Post by nec4b » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

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…

"I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better."

That has not been true anywhere in the world where a left wing (the) party dominated the discourse. No socialist or communist party has ever had tolerance to an opposing view.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#927

Post by cryptica » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

freemint wrote: post #889

cryptica wrote: post #643

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.

In my case, I focused away from my personal complexes for so long that nowadays I don't care about them at all. The negative emotion is completely gone. When I was younger, I was obsessed with my appearance and the sound of my voice. Thinking about them constantly and always feeling terrible about myself 24/7. Stuck in a loop. This led to a constant sense of self-loathing and kept my self-esteem low which probably made things worse.

I had to bury myself in something difficult for years and really struggle at it in order to escape these negative feedback loops.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#928

Post by whoooooo123 » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

otde wrote: post #857

whoooooo123 wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bogeyman stories about rapists in prisons As I said in another comment, this is far from a bogeyman story - there was already a case in the UK of a male-bodied convicted rapist being housed in a woman's prison because "she" decided post-conviction that "she" identified as female. She then went on to sexually assault multiple female inmates. Look up the name Karen White. I put "she" in quotes not because I have a pr…

Here’s what I mean when I asked us to consider perspectives of trans people —- I want you to understand us not just as potential perpetrators of violence here, but also as recipients. Trans women are subject to prison rape at apparently disproportionate levels [1][2] when housed in men’s prisons. Instead of framing this as “is it ethical to move a woman to a women’s prison on the off chance she’s a man gaming the sys…

That's a fair point, and I don't know what the solution is. Thanks for engaging with my post in good faith.

Self-ID in particular is a salient issue in the UK because the Conservative government had plans to implement it, but recently scrapped those plans in favour of the existing system (trans people in the UK can get legal recognition of their gender change but it's a medicalised process that takes one year; the proposed changes would have made it as easy as signing a single piece of paper.) I don't know what the perfect system looks like, but we need to be able to talk about edge cases.

By the way, Karen White wasn't suspected of being a "secret rapist" - she was a rapist. The reason she was in jail in the first place was that she had been convicted of raping women.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#929

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

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…

Very important, because it affects education of children:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YWuD9RwJD4

This is a video from a source I normally don't trust. But if we really want to learn something about bias, I think it is worth a watch. This is about racism, but I think we see similar problem with gender.

This is a real problem, especially since a too strong backlash would hurt too. But at this point I don't think it is sustainable to feed pupils wrong or ideological information.

Honestly, I would have difficulties deciding to send my kids to a school this or a pious catholic boarding school. In both cases countermeasures might be helpful.

For the topic itself I agree with you. There are countless issues that should get more exposure compared to these topics.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#930

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #370

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…

That is hard to say. In a world full of discrimination against trans folks, who knows how many people who would prefer being trans have failed to be identified? But the topic is much bigger than that. You see, the ideology being pushed says that everyone who has gender dysphoria should be assumed to be trans. But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. Wh…

> But anecdotally I have a 12 year old with gender dysphoria.

I think this isn't solved by education, it is caused by it and consequently the peer pressure among pupils.

The reason is probably not that trans-people are discriminated against. That is very unlikely.