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The New Homophobia

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Re: The New Homophobia

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it's fair for the department of health to not allow adolescent therapists and psychiatrists to prescribe social transition—there are implications for a parent blocking access to something legally considered a medical treatment. from what i read it seems like parents still have some leeway to respond to their childrens' needs independently, at least on the social side. to be fair i don't think i've seen any po…

It doesn't say therapists and psychiatrists can't prescribe social transition, it says it should not be a treatment option , which means that prohibition applies to peers and family. While simultaneously saying they should provided social support by peers and family and seek counseling from a licensed provider , which kinda means support and counseling have can't take the form of allowing social transition. More gene…

> It doesn't say therapists and psychiatrists can't prescribe social transition, it says it should not be a treatment option, which means that prohibition applies to peers and family.

that's a very expansive reading of "treatment". a health department doesn't have the sort of authority you suggest. and if they think they do, best of luck to their legal teams in defining the threshold between treatment and ordinary child-rearing. like i said earlier, this should get pretty wacky over the next 20-30 years

> "from what I've read"... what have you been reading?

the link that shovel sent me to read.

> Fucking Idaho made it a crime to leave the state to get your kid affirmative care. Who has been splitting what hairs to make any of these seem like they're securing parents' rights?

settle down, i can tell you're provoked without the profanity. idk if you're trans too, but i've outright stated i've been out as a trans woman for a decade, and on top of that i want kids and have friends with kids, so i'd ask that you at least approach what i'm saying in good faith—i've been around, at least wrt this.

remember i said "The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information", and you projected that i was talking about legislation/regulation when i was really referring to social movements. for what it's worth, i voiced some criticism of the florida memo when shovel linked me to it.

the comment box is a pretty depersonalized medium, it encourages misunderstanding and hostility, maybe you need a break.

Re: The New Homophobia

#52

Article summary: "I care about gay rights because I'm gay, but I don't care about trans rights because I'm not trans." The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse tra…

I think the issue is most people can understand what gay means, because it's a clearly defined thing. You don't even have to accept it "morally" to know that a man who likes men is gay.

Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this point, it sounds like the new definition of gender is just...personality? So for most people there is nothing else to do than recognize it as such, and dismiss it as mostly nonsense.

Re: The New Homophobia

#53
post #47
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last line is the key, isn't it? Sex used to(?) mean something. People were exposed to each other, vulnerable, sharing themselves. It was even intensely powerful, in the sense that new life might actually spring out of it. But this is basically treating another unique, unrepeatable human person as a toy, and not even an exceptional one. I can't help but think we've lost something important and are that much the p…

Did it? Some cultures surely put meaning into it but did all of them?

It's not just "some" cultures, either. Long-term affectionate bonds, along the lines of marriage for people of different genders, or other forms of quasi-affinal kinship (e.g. sworn brotherhood, compadrazgo etc.) for same-gender pairings are effectively a human universal. Sexual orientation doesn't even enter into this all that much, the ubiquity goes beyond that.

Re: The New Homophobia

#54
post #52

Article summary: "I care about gay rights because I'm gay, but I don't care about trans rights because I'm not trans." The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse tra…

I think the issue is most people can understand what gay means, because it's a clearly defined thing. You don't even have to accept it "morally" to know that a man who likes men is gay. Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this p…

Gender expression is naturally fuzzy and murky, there's nothing strange about that. The problems start when people create an overlapping notion of "gender identity" aiming to try and put some bright lines on the inherent fuzziness of gender expression, only to confuse the matter even further. Now we're left with completely redundant descriptions like "genderfluid gender identity" which is both confusing and practically indistinguishable from what we used to more sensibly think of as expression.

Re: The New Homophobia

#55
post #52

Article summary: "I care about gay rights because I'm gay, but I don't care about trans rights because I'm not trans." The author would probably take issue with people assuming that his spouse is female. He wouldn't entertain for a second that it creates a burdon on other people to not assume he is straight as if such a thing is upending society's established paradigms of gender and sexuality. So why do we accuse tra…

I think the issue is most people can understand what gay means, because it's a clearly defined thing. You don't even have to accept it "morally" to know that a man who likes men is gay. Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this p…

Exactly. I understand some meanings of the word gender: the grammatical meaning, and the concept of “gender role”, which is a set of expectations of society. But there are people now speaking of gender as some kind of innate quality, such that a person can be born in the wrong body, or something. Sometimes the only way to begin to make sense of their descriptions is to suppose they’re talking about an immaterial soul with its own sex. It seems to be all gibberish. But there also seems to be a political movement that behaves as though this gibberish contains meaning.

Re: The New Homophobia

#56
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to believe that most people are like you and are just doing their best to make everyone productive and comfortable. I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated. I agree with you that t…

> I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated. Crikey. Anecdote, for sure, but I’m 47 and can’t think of a single person I interact with in my age group (and that’s the majority of my colleague…

To be fair, I'm also just drawing from limited personal experience and social media exposure; it never really happened until the past year or so when this topic became so polarizing. My parents have a more nuanced take of "I will try to be nice until the gays push their agenda on my children", which I guess they have.

Re: The New Homophobia

#58
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is most people can understand what gay means, because it's a clearly defined thing. You don't even have to accept it "morally" to know that a man who likes men is gay. Gender identity is intentionally murky & vague. For instance, how many genders are there? How does one transition to/from genders that aren't male/female? I can't even find a coherent and consistent definition of genders. So at this p…

Gender expression is naturally fuzzy and murky, there's nothing strange about that. The problems start when people create an overlapping notion of "gender identity" aiming to try and put some bright lines on the inherent fuzziness of gender expression, only to confuse the matter even further. Now we're left with completely redundant descriptions like "genderfluid gender identity" which is both confusing and practical…

No post body was provided.

Re: The New Homophobia

#60
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could all mostly ignore it if there wasn't a bunch of idiots in government passing laws every chance they get to ensure it continues being a very real human rights issue. The right initiates all this non-sense, they do some oppressing and the left has no choice but to react, because you can't just let that stuff slide, so both sides end up completely consumed by an issues most people aren't effected by.

Yes, the screeching radical left is completely innocent in derailing the political debate to an extent incomprehensible to anyone with a braincell left. Not that the right wing gonzos are not to blame for it too, but to offload all of the guilt onto a single side of the horseshoe is very much just as undifferentiated as you are calling your political enemy.

You know damn well it's not the same. They don't directly target marginalized people every chance they get, and if some non-sense does come up, they don't move in lockstep, at the expense of all personal integrity, like the right does.
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