While mutilating people over 18 is less bad than under 18, it all feels grotesque and evil to me.
People who do transgender surgeries should have about the same level of societal status as meth dealers. They try to take advantage of peoples weakness to advance their own interest and leave them dramatically worse off (often dead), providing whatever rationalizations they wish as a cover for their own callous self interest.
It's a good thing no one does that. Trans kids are not allowed to have surgeries on their genitals until they are adults. The chemical treatments performed on trans kids are reversible. If a kid stops taking puberty blockers they will undergo puberty as normal.
Why do anti-trans activists insist on portraying medical interventions for kids as far more severe than they actually are? Is it because it's the only way to get people to oppose them?
Taking hormones during puberty is only fully reversible if you’re only taking them for a short time. Take them long enough and the effects are undeniably irreversible.
Furthermore, it's not obvious why chopping off kids' genitals should be considered abuse, while other trans mutilations such as chopping of girls' breasts shouldn't be considered abuse.
>The chemical treatments performed on trans kids are reversible.
Maybe the puberty part is reversible, but the giving little girls osteoporosis part likely isn't.
Jazz Jennings is a woman. I can understand people who have issues with the idea that trans woman are somehow metaphysically women, and therefore should be referred to with female pronouns before they have had surgery or done other interventions; or that they should retroactively be referred to with female pronouns when discussing past events that took place before they even realized that they were trans. However, once a trans woman has a female phenotype it seems frankly delusional to still say she is a man. It would be like saying a man with hair plugs is still bald, or that a woman with E-cup breast implants still has tiny breasts
Plastic surgery is not mutilation. If someone wants to have surgery to change their body then they are not being mutilated. In order for a surgery to count as mutilation it needs to be unwanted. To a woman who enjoys having large breasts, a breast reduction is an act of mutilation. To one who does not, it is cosmetic surgery.
Random strangers don't get to call surgeries mutilations because it's not what they would want. If there existed some culture somewhere where cleft palates were considered normal I am sure that they would condemn American parents for "mutilating" their children by getting surgery to give them normal palates. I think the reason that this "mutilation" rhetoric is so common among social conservatives and radical feminists is that they are they sort of people who fly into fits of rage at the very suggestion that somebody might want different things for their body than they do.
Teenage girls get breast reductions for all kinds of reasons, only a small percentage of which are for gender dysphoria. If someone wants smaller breasts because they cause back pain, or, because they cause gender dysphoria, is immaterial. Pain is pain. The fact that the same people condemning their "mutilation" have not been doing the same thing for all the many other reasons adolescents get breast reductions is a pretty big red flag.
Puberty blockers, like most medical treatments, do contain risks. However, that is true of pretty much any medical intervention. It is also true that failing to use puberty blockers also contains risks, in particular the risk that someone might grow up with a body they find repulsive. Medical professionals have decided that for many kids the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the risks of not taking them. A bunch of conservative and radical feminists on the Internet have claimed otherwise because they cruelly and recklessly ignore the risks of not using them and only focus on the risks of use.
In general, the problem with arguments to the effect of "They are just kids/teenagers who might regret this treatment later" is that they are symmetrical. It's true they might regret getting this treatment later, but it's also true they might regret not getting it. Instead of just saying "they might regret it" you need to weigh the risks. Anti-trans activists don't weigh risks, they ignore one risk and hyper-focus on the other.
Jazz Jennings is just as much a man as arnold schwarzenegger or any other man on the planet. anyone who doesnt think so is biased against GNC ppl.
gender ideology is a mens rights movement that erases the rights of women, gays, kids ect. its main goals are the misogynistic destruction of women's rights and homophobic sterilizing gay kids to address normal psych issues most grow out of.
Every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. Including the garbage you parrot.
"Medical professionals have decided that for many kids the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the risks of not taking them."
This is a lie. Every gov review ever done on earth found that these meds don't help anything and cause severe harm. yes, i know activist orgs claim otherwise. they are lying. and so are you.
its also true that 85% of kids grow out of gender dysphoria without meds. so its child abuse to give meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function to address normal psych issues most grow out of.
"If someone wants to have surgery to change their body then they are not being mutilated."
No, it just needs to make them worse off.
You know my kids have a Dr. Suess story about Gertrude McFuzz. She was a girl bird with just one small little tale. But she was jealous of another girl bird called Lo La Le Lui, who had two pretty tails. So she talked to her uncle the doctor who said she could eat berries off a bush to get more tails. So she did. She ate one and then she had a two tails like Lo La Le Lui. So she ate another to have three, more than her. Then she ate more and more, hoping when Lo La Le Lui saw her she would drop dead of jealousy. When she was done she had so many tails she couldn't fly anymore. She had to be hauled away and have them removed.
Had she stopped maybe it would be alright. It would have made her life better. But she continued until it made her life worse. We can find examples of people obsessed with plastic surgery that have such outcomes. Here is one right now:
So I would say "mutilation" is an objective measure and not based on whether someone desires it or not. Sometimes people desire things that are objectively terrifying.
In the case of plastic surgery addicts, they usually have a logically incoherent desire. There is some switch in their brain that is stuck so that they will always think they look wrong no matter how they look. The desires of transpeople are generally coherent, they want to look a certain definable way and are happier once they do.
In the case of McFuzz, what makes her desire bad isn't that she wants something that is "objectively terrifying," it is that her desire to have more tails conflicts with a different desire she has, the desire to move around easily. Most of the time when we say someone wants something bad for them, what we mean is that the fulfillment of that want will thwart many other wants that person has, especially very basic wants like health and staying alive.
The case of the trans teacher reminds me of a documentary I saw a number of years ago about a cisgender woman stripper who got similarly sized implants. They seemed to enhance her career and make her happy. Would you say she was fine because she worked as a stripper instead of as a teacher, and therefore her appearance didn't conflict with her career ambitions? I certainly don't think it's transphobic to ask that teacher to wear less revealing clothes, I think they'd ask a cis woman with gigantomastia the same thing.
> In order for a surgery to count as mutilation it needs to be unwanted.
So reality is out and emotion is in? Thus there is no human nature? And anything is anything because emotion creates reality? Your claim is literally the product of an unfocused mind. Existence IS identity. There is no metaphysical split between that something is and what it is. Both mystics and subjectivists regard the concrete,material universe as not real, a mere illusion caused by consciousness, with their basic difference over which consciousness, Gods or mans. To paraphrase blues guitarist extraordinare, Johnny Winter, Realitys sneakin' up on you. Its gonna get you wherever you go. There has never been a sustainable subjectivist culture. They always collapse into mysticism as people seek relief from a disintegrated mind and the chronic anxiety which warns man of danger. Eg, Heiddeger said dread, allegedly part of human nature, is approaching and receding. Even the pseudo-integration of mysticism is better than subjectivism. Thus the current return of religion. And who now values the alternative to mysticism and subjectivism, ie, the focused mind?
Emotions are part of reality. In other places you have written against dualism, but you don't seem to have fully understood what that means. Setting up reality and emotions as opposites is dualism.
>And anything is anything because emotion creates reality
Emotion does not create reality. Emotion creates the motivation for us to act to change reality so that it suites us better.
>Thus there is no human nature?
It is human nature to try to better ourselves and our environment. And something is defined as "better" by how good a job it does of fulfilling our desires. Making your body look more the way you want it to is part of human nature. I imagine that in the Stone Age there was probably someone like you who condemned people for making axes out of flint, because a rock is a rock and it can't be an axe no matter how much you "mutilate" it.
> Your claim is literally the product of an unfocused mind. Existence IS identity.... And who now values the alternative to mysticism and subjectivism, ie, the focused mind?
How exactly does any of that metaphysics relevant to my point? If someone wants their body to change in a certain way that is good, all other things being equal. If they don't it isn't. It doesn't matter if reality is an illusion or real. If it's reality then changing that reality is good. If it's an illusion people should try to improve the illusion.
If someone went to the gym to try to be a bodybuilder, would you condemn them because right now they exist as a 98-pound weakling, and "existence IS identity?" I guarantee you are fine with 99% of the ways people change reality. It's only for trans people that you are suddenly different. All that metaphysics is just a cover.
> It doesn't matter if reality is an illusion or real.
Do you teach at Harvard or Stanford? I prefer the coffehouse in the student center at Stanford. I met a Brazilian woman there. Well,good talkin'to ya. I really must be on my way.
So, just to clarify: you do not support bottom surgery or facial feminization (or masculinization) surgery before 18? Because there's an awful lot of "that doesn't happen" yelling coming from your side, but then a lot of tv shows that indicate that you actually think it's totally fine for minors to get that surgery if it weren't for us "cruel" people.
This is an interesting way of thinking about it, for males with male enhancement is a form of gender affirming surgery that swings further in their initial biological direction. Trans would be the opposite direction of this; but we wouldn't go around having a moral panic if a guy wanted to go from 6'' to 8'', that seems par for the course with most males. Perhaps the larger concern is that the medical science is not good enough yet (evidences by why men still tend to stick with what they got, but by the numbers many have body dysmorphia). For instance its easier to augment penis size, rather than transplant a fully functioning organ. So it might be prudent for instance to not chop them off until we get to a point where we can 3d print and replace the organs, at least not for children...Again the complaint seems to be centered more around our medical capabilities or lack thereof than anything else.
One side hopes these treatments will ultimately help the patients, the other side is afraid they won't. The truth at this point is not obvious. It may differ in each case.
Until children become adults, their parents should make medical decisions for them. Other persons who think those decisions are abusive should sue for custody on that basis. If they are just busybodies criticizing other persons' decisions but not willing to take over from them, they should find a different hobby. Does saying that make me a busybody?
When do children become adults? The US mostly uses their chronological age to judge, but that is expedient at best. Some will be adults before they reach the arbitrary age, others may never really be adults, able to fulfill their obligations to others. In the ideal, we would know what attributes an adult has that a child lacks, and could perform a test. On an individual to individual basis, we can use judgement. Unfortunately, our society has too many encounters between strangers (and between children and persons who would exploit them) for that to suffice, so the arbitrary age thing almost seems excusable.
Is there anyone I haven’t offended yet? I could go on about medical licensure, but this comment is too long already.
every stat and claim by the gender industry is a lie, including the ones your parroting. no, puberty blockers taken for gender dysphoria arent reversible. 98% of kids who take blockers for dysphoria go onto hormones that cause permanent loss of sexual function, permanent sterility and life long health problems. puberty blocker use for dysphoria has nothing in common with when their taken for precocious puberty. one use is discontinued at the first stage of puberty and is FDA approved. the 2nd is the first step where kids are tricked into becomming life long lab rats to address normal psych issues most grow out of. what do you call this type of misinformation? fraud. what do you call it when proto gay persons are tricked into quack medicine with zero benefits that results in permanent sterilization? homophobia.
And should be severely punished. im amazed that parents who discover that govt has created such freaks and hidden it have not killed those responsible.
Given the exclamation marks, I assume you're being sarcastic. Why the sarcasm though? Infant circumcision is unquestionably mutilation and child abuse. Religious beliefs are not a defense.
It's neither and on the bright side, is actually beneficial for the child whereas if you want to talk genuinely harmful body modifications we allow patents to do their children, you need to look no farther than piercings and tattoos.
Yes, the coercive permanent removal of a portion of the body is mutilation and abuse.
Beneficial in what way? Because you like the way circumcised penises look? If it's truly beneficial, this would necessarily mean that refusing to circumcise one's child is abusive.
Sorry, "Yeah b-b-b-but we let parents do other things that are worse!" is not a a justification . Come up with an actual argument. I 100% agree that coercive piercings and tattoos are mutilation and abuse.
I would feel better with the "let's be polite and pretend" angle if transgender individuals also admitted they themselves are pretending (incidentally, many of them do). For example, instead of people claiming they are *literally* a different gender, they could say, "I FEEL AS IF I was born in the wrong body," or "I've chosen to live my life AS a woman." Instead, they insist on reality-denying language that they are no different than someone of their adopted gender when we know they are not. Obviously this has not worked well for the cause.
The part that really got me was when it was deemed, universally by all right-thinking people, not that Bruce Jenner had BECOME a woman, but that "she" is and ALWAYS HAS BEEN a woman. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Likewise, I recall people used to reference something called "sex-change surgery", but then, without ever seeing the memo, I learned this term was entirely improper and it was now "gender confirmation surgery." A phrase that I can't help but hear in the same tone as "re-education camp," "Berlin Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier," and "Freedom is Slavery."
Sometimes I feel as if I could vote for Trump or Biden. I lay down, put a warm towel on my forehead, access some Carol King on YouTube and wait for the shaking to stop. A little Jack Daniels usually hurries things along.
"Obviously this has not worked well for the cause."
What if mental illness and attention seeking *is the cause*.
I've long felt this way about the LBGT movement. It wasn't a movement to be left alone, but a movement to force people to affirm the choices of narcissists (and usually provide them subsidy for their behavior). I would say the mask has come off lately but I don't think it was that hard to see before.
You're avoiding the elephants in the room; I don't know if Walsh is also.
* Transwomen do not belong in female bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, or other areas involving nudity as long as they still have male equipment, especially when this involves children.
* Transwomen do not belong in female athletic events any more than professional athletes belong in high school athletic events.
* Teachers and other "in loco parentis" temporary guardians are absolutely failing their duty when they aid and abet transgenderism, especially when they go out of their way to hide this from parents.
African tribal female genital mutilation used to be a horror; now child genital mutilation is the woke fad of the day. Children are not capable of consent, that is why they are not adults.
To be nice to feminists we allowed them to run rampant claiming almost all differences were purely social and men and women are the same
This new set of transgender stuff is the end result of that mindset. There's a reason radical feminists who insist on biology push back the hardest while many more liberal "evolution ends at the neck" feminists are either floundering or folding. (Also why Mumsnet in the UK is the site of the resistance)
After all, if men and women are distinguished mainly by the expectations society places on them then why can't a man willing to take up the female set be a woman?
Falsehoods don't just breed unreasonable demands, they breed more unreasonable beliefs.
Man is a blank slate who requires a rational philosophy. Original Sin is merely the Devil made me do it. But all that modernists have provided is subjectivism. And when a rational philosophy is discovered, Left and Right join forces to attack Ayn Rands return to the focused mind.
Agreed. At the last Olympics Jacinda Adern was happy to support a man competing for NZ in weightlifting. The point, as you listed, is at what cost? There was no mention of the woman who lost her rightful place on the team and hence was denied the opportunity to compete at a prestigious event. Women’s rugby is really taking off and a lot of fans have made the point that if a young male seriously maimed or disabled a female opponent then what would happen then? The governing body and its leaders would likely be sued. Who would pay for the costs of the affected female player?
If a man does something inappropriate in a women’s facility the act cannot be undone. Even if a male didn’t do anything inappropriate the failure to understand what the guardians of girls responsibilities are underlines the one sided nature of the situation.
A key difference between transgenderism and parenting in Bryan's analogy is that the parent takes on a well defined set of duties. It is performing the duty of a parent that makes the foster/step/adoptive parent earn the title.
What is the equivalent for a transwoman or man? In other societies or years gone by this may have been clearer but in our current western equivalent it is not. In a country with a men-only military draft , then a transman opting into that and taking the specific duty seems more credible.
Another way to put this, is that the noun 'parent' has become a verb, as in 'parenting.' Thus, besides for a 'parent' being a direct biological progenitor, it is also 'one who parents.'
Although the usage of 'parent' for an adopted parent predates its usage as a verb, its later usage as a verb speaks to the obvious conceptual category of a parent to which the verb was later assigned.
We have no such verbs for 'man' and 'woman.' Not only do we not currently have such verbs, it is not obvious to what such verbs would refer.
Judith Butler suggests this by defining gender as a performance of expected behaviors, but in that case there is no need to “transition”, just practice other behaviors. The problem for transgenderism, however, is that either these behaviors are so fundamental to female biology (pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, etc.) that biological males are unable to perform them or are only suggestively (but not exclusively or necessarily) feminine (being nice, wearing certain clothes, walking in a certain way, etc.)
And the fact that parents have those duties, which are ignored, is a classic revealed preference. If a person who was pro-porting to be a man cannot see that their presence in a female facility with anxious parents waiting for their children isn’t a problem, then it’s hard to conclude they are not being wilfully ignorant.
I am given to understand that your proposed definitions is extremely offensive to trans people. Anything less than full metaphysical acceptance that trans women are women in the platonic form of a woman is heresy that convinces trans kids to commit suicide?
that was never the case. those statements have always been a false manipulation. they worked for decades to manipulate liberals, including me. the main goal of the mens rights movement promoting gender ideology is to erases the rights of women, kids, gays and others. the way they do this is by creating the myth of a "trans" child. but its all a lie. kids with gender dysphoria are experiencing psych issues due to trama, abuse or just normal dysphoria due to being proto gay. 85% grow out of it with puberty, as long as they dont take harmful gender meds. but even if they dont theres no evidence these meds help. every gov review ever done in the world found these meds cause harm and dont help anything. what these kids need is psych care. but big biz is trying to make that illegal to make more money and push activists agenda.
You admit 1) it's a contagious meme, 2) looks like child abuse. But you're a libertrian so you propose we do nothing. I'm a bit less libertrian than you, I believe in slowing things down, rather than making them illegal, friction is often good. For example it is unthinkable to have positive potrayals of bulimia in the media, it should be just as unthinkable to have positive portayals of transgenderism. Sometimes a world that feels free is better that a world that is free. I'm glad vegas exists, but I'm also glad my city doesn't have gambling. I feel free to gamble but in some sense I'm not. If we had only one place it was legal to get transgender surgies/hormones, and it was hard to get a spot, only the people really miserable without it would fight to get it done, that would be great.
This is the thing the well-meaning "well, if people want to chop off bits they can" take misses: even if we grant that, we generally don't make it easy.
The discussion here is not about some abstract "'do you have the right to take a saw to your hand?" discourse. It's asking if we're willing to allow sanctioned medical organizations to do it.
Now, the hardcore libertarian might bite the bullet. But it's totally fair for the rest of us to say "only if you meet the scrutiny that all other such extreme operations face."
It's strange how schizo modern culture is around the issue of children and young adults, on the one hand they are increasingly restricting behaviours deemed inappropriate or too adult, and also thereby delaying the age of psychosocial maturity. But at the same time increasing the amount of agency young people have with respects to certain issues such as relating to LGBT etc. Perhaps various interest groups are being dishonest in their motives, or alternatively view such issues relating to agency and consent etc. as being individually distinct, as opposed to being some part of a broader framework of maturity.
Like with many of these cases, it's mostly not the same people. The weird sex stuff is coming from political and media elites, including many people who don't have kids, trying to impose it upon kids. I think there's only a certain activist class of weirdo parents that are trying to impose it on their own kids. Parents as a group lean right (and continue to lean further right as time goes on), and most parents, even ones that vote Democrat, aren't interested in encouraging their kids to adopt avant-garde sexual behavior.
Helicopter parenting, meanwhile, is just a cycle of behavior that has emerged from parents as a side effect of various social changes. I don't think anyone is trying to impose it upon parents; people without kids don't care about helicoptering one way or the other.
Increased autonomy related to LGBT issues is not "weird sex stuff." Not all LGBT stuff is about sex. Gay people in chaste relationships are LGBT. Single trans people are LGBT. If some 5 year old girl gets a crush on another girl and they go on a cute little date where they hold hands that is LGBT, even though neither of them is even physiologically capable of being interested in sex yet.
What's going on is that some people are able to understand this, and some aren't. Talking about LGBT issues with kids is not inherently sexual in any way. You can tell kids that people of the same sex can fall in love, get married, and adopt kids without mentioning sex, the same way you can with straight people. You can say someone identifies as a different gender without mention how they have sex.
I think most people can understand, but for some reason there is a percentage of the population that cannot get it through their skulls. When they see someone talking to kids about LGBT issues, or see children's shows with LGBT characters, they go nuts, get hysterical, and start screaming about how kids are being "sexualized." This is insane, it would be like saying that watching "Snow White" sexualizes kids because Snow White is in love with Prince Charming and they will get married. I mean, most married people have sex eventually, but that doesn't mean all portrayals of marriage are sexual.
Some of this is also definitely coming from bigots who thought that even though they'd lost the war on gay marriage, the could still get away with stigmatizing gay people by lying and saying that their relationships are inappropriate for kids. They're pretty upset that people stopped falling for that, so they made up some cock and bull story about "groomers."
> Talking about LGBT issues with kids is not inherently sexual in any way.
There is zero possibility of honesty from Leftists. They are committed to the unfocused mind. This nihilist wants children, not yet sufficiently mature or educated to understand mans biopsychological heterosexuality, to be indoctrinated, out-of-context, with a rejection of that biopsychological heterosexuality. Its indoctrination because it starts with ideas split from concrete reality. Leftist/nihilists are guided by passing emotions as the absolute of the moment. They are so bizarre that even uneducated,anti-intellectual Rightists can identify their lack of realism.
If public (socialist) schools were abolished, Leftist parents could use private Leftist schools to destroy their own children (and wait for their children to mature and seek revenge).
gender ideology is a mens rights movement that erases the rights of women, kids, gays, dysphoric ppl and others. it doesnt give gays more autonomy. it forces gnc ppl into rigid gender stereotypes harming them with meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function and other life long medical issues. gays have less freedom when theyre tricked into becomming a life long lab rat. 85% of kids grow out of dysphoria without this fraud.
gender ideology isnt inclusive. it excludes gays from the right to life long health and romantic relationships. it excluded womem and girls from their own private spaces. it prevents dysphoric ppl from getting care evidence shows helps, like psych care, and pushes them into quack care every gov review ever done found doesnt help anything. if gender ideology were truly inclusive it wouldnt force gnc ppl into a life of medical disaster. being inclusive means telling people they are ok as they are, not telling them they need to block their normal biology to be ok. this is based on another scam: the idea that gender "care" helps ppl. it doesnt. every gov review done ever on the entire planet found gender meds dont help anything and cause severe harm. thats why theyre illegal in many countries. the US has never done a review if this "care" works. it doesn't. its a lie pushed by a mens rights movement that harms kids and swallowed by democrats.
youre being lied to. gender biz policies are fascist and groom kids. not sure if you know what gender affirmation is. its a school policy that triangulates troubled kids away from their parents, promoting crazy theories about gender and hiding this all from parents. thats grooming. schools are teaching kids that puberty is optional while omitting that 98% of kids who take blockers for dysphoria go onto meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function, tricking kids into a health hazard.
gender dysphoria is caused by psych issues such as trama, abuse, being an orphan or just normal dysphoria due to being proto gay. these kids need psych care. the last thing they need are to be groomed away from their parents and tricked into taking meds that cause life long misery and permenent sterilization. yet this is the lie that you and others have been duped into and promote: the most homophobic and misogynistic thing of all time. congrats.
the goal of the mens rights movement pushing gender ideology has always been to create a legal path for kids to sterilize themselves. every stat and claim they promote is a lie. most kids grow out of gender dysphoria, unless they take gender meds. but even if they dont, the meds dont help anything. every gov review ever done on earth found these meds dont help anything. this actvist lobby and PR campaign financed by billionaires has spent 20 years tricking ppl into the most misogynistic, homophobic and fascist laws of all time.
You provide no standard, not even an invalid one, of psychosocial maturity, merely providing the strawman of "deemed inappropriate or too adult." Ideas are hierarchically contextual, w/the evidence of the senses or the wit and wisdom of Timothy Leary as base.
I'm still not sure what exactly you are objecting to, the definition of psychosocial maturity (if it wasn't immediately obvious upon inspection) is the standard account used within the relevant literature (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6551607/). What in principle would you regard as an appropriate account ? Are you looking for a list of necessary and sufficient conditions as to when psychosocial maturity is obtained ?
Truth is a product of the focused mind, not the arbitrary and conventional. I refer you to the relevant literature. An appropriate account would use the focused mind as context.
With the parenthood analogy, it seems significant that people use language like "you're no father to me" to refer to someone doing a bad job in the social role of parent. I think it's actually very common to use the term "parent" to refer to anyone who occupies the social role of parent, and to refuse to use it for those who have offspring but do a bad job of parenting. It isn't unusual to argue that a real parent is one who parents, not one who has given birth, regardless of the high correlation.
Similarly, a significant amount of casual usage of the concept of gender really does just mean "someone who occupies the social position of that gender". People say they do a bad job of occupying the role of a certain gender all the time, and when we use that language in other contexts, we often go so far as to say refusing to occupy the role means the label no longer applies.
The terms are overloaded and mean both things. That doesn't actually mean that, as trans activists claim, they can uncontroversially be reduced to the mere social element.
As you say, someone might say "you're not my father" but even there people will also say "my real/actual father" or "my roots".
In the case of sex-gender we clearly say people are bad Xes (e.g. a "bitch" for a weak man) but this didn't mean that we thought they became that thing (could such a man claim it on his passport before very recently?) any more than we believed that calling a woman a "snake" meant she was actually a snake, either biologically or socially.
Trans activists not only redefined language in other ways, they just brazenly lied that this was the case because it served their views.
But it isn't a fact. In casual parlance sex and gender have always been tied (the "ladies room" is the "female washroom") and it has not been the case that merely playing the role or stereotype means you count as that thing in a bunch of much broader contexts (like say...having the right to compete in combat sports with women...)
If this was the case then the whole concept of "traps" or "passing" (for both sex and race) wouldn't be a thing.
First, most words aren't understood in terms of a single definition and it's infamous that one famously smart philosopher couldn't give a definition for 'game' -- he correctly deduced that many words aren't defined b necessary and sufficient conditions but by family resemblance.
Second, If it's possible to give the answer that extends woman (or parent) to people who aren't literally women/parents then surely it's also possible to change what we mean by the word to include those cases. Initially adoptive parents probably weren't parents but then at some point that expansion became so widely accepted it became part of the meaning of the word. Why can't the same thing happen with woman?
Indeed, that's my general take on the issue. Some people are hurt by using a word in a certain way. If they wanted me to lie and accept a false fact never but definitions are choices so why not use one that doesn't upset them if it's not hard for me?
Note that whether or not being trans makes people happier doesn't really matter on this point. Plausibly either religion or atheism makes people less happy but no one is made more happy by demanding atheists pray at Thanksgiving or theists acknowledge the absence of deity. That just offends them.
It's interesting how a cultural practice has come full circle. The western world was and continues to be instrumental in discouraging genital mutilation in most part of the developing world. What is surgical removal of breasts/phallus, hormonal treatment, puberty disruption, if not a worse version of genital mutilation? It is worse because it's a mutilation of the whole reproductive system rather than just the genital. Like I told some colleagues today, it'd be less condemnable if it's not such a flawed and imperfect procedure that ends up creating purely artificial problems while trying to solve a natural one.
"Literally, a parent is a human who has sexually reproduced."
Are you sure? This does not sound right to me. Adoptive parent, step parent, foster parent, and the like are very old, if not original varieties of parent. Even Jesus had a foster father two thousand years ago. I think would be a lot more accurate to say "Literally, a biological parent is a human who has sexually reproduced." And obviously we do not call adoptive parents biological parents out of courtesy.
I don't think this is the great analogy you suggest, but would welcome any information that shows otherwise.
The problem with "nice" people who extend "honorary membership" is that it's never enough. "Nice" people usually end up defaulting to carrying water for the "oppressed." They break with the freaks, every time. And they cooperate in un-personing people who live in reality and won't play nice.
theres a rights conflict between gender ideology and the rights of women, gays, kids and 10 more other groups. for example, men can either be allowed in womens restrooms or not. if men can go into womens restrooms then womens rights are set back 300 years. but if we keep gender activists out of womens restrooms then were not letting some dudes "live". the whole thing is a scam by a mens rights movement pushing a fraud.
the main goal of gender ideology is to erase the rights of others in favor of mostly white men. it is a mens rights movement. its biggest goal is to erase kids right to unmedicated puberty. it does this via the science fiction claim that some kids are born in the wrong body. this claim is based on a 1000 lies. no gov review has ever found gender "care" helps anything. but the $billion mens rights lobby promoting this fraud has tricked democrats otherwise.
gender ideology also erases the rights of a doz groups. dysphoric ppl are prevented from getting care evidence shows helps and instead are pushed into ideology care that causes life long misery and early death.
women and gays are erased as a class in law as are all their rights. this sets womens rights back 300 years. gender ideology is misogynistic telling women and girls theyre 2nd class citizens and their safety is less importnant than mens feelings. gender ideology is the most homophobic thing of all time by promoting meds that cause gays permanent loss of sexual function, permanent sterility and tons of other life long health problems to address normal kid issues most grow out of. gays and gay kids are the one most affected by this fraud "care". sterilizing gays = homophobia.
The list goes on and on. gender ideology also has become a fascist movement where the right to speak against this fraud being erased in law. every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. and the mens rights movement pushing this fraud is deathly afraid of anyone or anything that counters their propaganda.
Another answer they could give: being a woman is an innate neuropsychological trait not necessarily concordant with one’s body. In old times advocates of the validity of transgenderism would point out that, say, biological men who identified as woman had neurological features similar to women (they had more ‘female’ brains).
This certainly runs afoul of extreme gender constructivism, but I think most fully transgender people themselves actually dislike gender constructivism precisely because it reduces their situation to a lifestyle choice rather than a biological phenomenon. One can then argue that we ought to usually defer to self-identification as it’s the best observable symptom of transgenderism. A bit like seizures and epilepsy. We can safely assume people who have shaking fits are genuine epileptics without measuring their brains. Only in rare circumstances, such as when someone with no history of seizures has an unconvincing fit right after being conscripted into the army, might we doubt the symptom as being fakery; likewise, when a guy with a beard enrolls in a sports competition for women with a cash prize, we might question his identification as a woman as being insincere.
The big ‘drawback’ of this answer, from a progressive standpoint, is it accepts the idea of male and female brains and depends on acceptance of significant neurological differences between the sexes, which doubtless contradicts mainstream feminism.
1. How does he feel about parents who allow their children to have surgeries for non-gender dysphoria reasons? The example I'm thinking of is the actress Soleil Moon Frye, who had a breast reduction when she was 15 because they made her physically uncomfortable, and because she was upset that she was only being offered roles as "sexy" characters.
Thousands of minors get breast reductions every year for reasons besides gender dysphoria. The fact that the same people who freak out about how transgender children are being "mutilated" have had nothing to say about this indicates to me that concern for child welfare is just a fig leaf. Their real motive is to be cruel and bigoted towards trans people.
The reason I am focusing on breast reductions in particular is that this is the only type of surgery for gender dysphoria that is performed on minors. The frequent claim by ant-trans activists that minors are being surgically castrated is a lie. (A lot of them seem to use a Motte and Bailey type argument where they lie and say kids are be castrated and then back up and claim they are talking about breast reductions when you call them on it)
2. What would you say about chemical treatments that are reversible like puberty blockers? The issue is that if you aren't sure if your child will continue to have dysphoria as an adult, or if their dysphoria will subside, it's prudent to delay development of sexual characteristics that might cause them distress for the rest of their lives.
It seems pretty obvious to me that a good parent should provide this treatment to a child. It's reversible if a child's dysphoria subsides. If their dysphoria does not subside it has the potential make the adult the child grows into much happier with themselves. If you have ever seen pictures of adult transpeople who have used puberty blockers, the difference is amazing. Attempts to ban this kind of treatment seem blatantly evil.
3. I would recommend analyzing anti-trans discourse using Bryan's "missing mood" arguments. The correct mood for a pro-gender-affirming treatment for minors activist is "Some kids can really benefit from these treatment. Some will undergo it by mistake when if they waited their dysphoria will subside. We believe the benefits outweigh the risks." The correct mood for someone who opposes such treatment is the reverse, that the risks outweigh the benefits.
Using the missing moods analysis, it seems obvious that people who oppose gender-affirming treatments for minors are really, really bad people. They never talk about the risks outweighing the benefits, because they seem mentally incapable of conceiving that benefits could exist at all. They are cruelly dismissive of adult trans people who are dysphoric about their bodies, while using histrionic terms like "mutilated" to refer to surgeries. They also can't seem to stop lying and exaggerating, they frequently claim surgeries are being performed on the genitals of minors.
By contrast, the people who support gender affirming treatments for minors come off, not perfectly, but pretty well. There are some who recklessly downplay the risks that a child might stop being dysphoric. But for every person like that, there are two or three who have the correct mood and talk in terms of benefits outweighing costs.
1 is false. Minors do get genital surgery. It’s rare, yes, but it happens. Also, it’s rarity is almost certainly partially due to anti-trans-activist work.
2 is also false. Puberty blockers have a wide range of effects, and given a certain treatment horizon, some may be reversible while others aren’t, and other’s reversibility is unknown.
1) I think genital surgery for minors is more likely to be rare because medical professionals tend to be cautious people who don't want to harm their patients. Anti-trans activists, as I mention in point 3, are incredibly morally reckless and not capable of rationally weighing the costs and benefits of such surgery, as evinced by their missing mood.
I don't think it particularly weakens my point to go from "this doesn't happen" to, "this is incredibly rare," especially since official procedure bars genital surgery on minors. In general it seems like the idea that minors are frequently getting surgery is a bugaboo used to scare people:
2) I was speaking about the reversibility of the main effect of puberty blockers, delayed puberty. It is true that, like all medical treatments, they can have side effects which are not always reversible. I somehow think that the patient, their parents, and their physician are more capable of evaluating the costs and benefits of side effects than anyone else.
> Literally, a woman is an adult human female. But to be nice, we extend honorary woman status to biological males with strong gender dysphoria.
While this initially seems odd, we’re just treating the word “woman’ the same way we’ve long treated the word “parent.” Literally, a parent is a human who has sexually reproduced. But to be nice, we extend honorary parent status to people who adopt kids. Strictly speaking, they’re not “real parents.” But it’s rude to say so, and even ruder to make a big deal out of it.
There are some parallels to the refusal to "build a wall around the welfare state" (preferring total restriction and making non-immigrants worse off). It seems people are just deontologically uncomfortable with multi-level categories.
Adoptive parents also don't ask for access to spaces where biology is the main justification for the inclusion of parents. For example: adoptive parents don't demand rights to OBGYNs for their four year old orphan. Meanwhile, trans activism has maximalist goals that include competing with women in sports (including combat sports) where clearly biology is the dividing line not social niceties.
Adoptive parents generally aren't assumed to react with hostility to being asked in medical contexts if kids are adopted, leading to clunky and offensive terms for "real" parents similar to "uterus-haver".
In fact, there isn't a general attempt to obscure the basic reality of the category. I don't recall anyone ever stating that we can't tell what a parent is without deep expertise in biology. We can both admit what a parent is and have an asterisk for adoptive ones without this obscurantism.
Bryan, let’s not mince words: surgical or chemical castration of minors does not “look like child abuse” - it is child abuse.
While mutilating people over 18 is less bad than under 18, it all feels grotesque and evil to me.
People who do transgender surgeries should have about the same level of societal status as meth dealers. They try to take advantage of peoples weakness to advance their own interest and leave them dramatically worse off (often dead), providing whatever rationalizations they wish as a cover for their own callous self interest.
That seems unfair to meth dealers/retailers.
It's a good thing no one does that. Trans kids are not allowed to have surgeries on their genitals until they are adults. The chemical treatments performed on trans kids are reversible. If a kid stops taking puberty blockers they will undergo puberty as normal.
Why do anti-trans activists insist on portraying medical interventions for kids as far more severe than they actually are? Is it because it's the only way to get people to oppose them?
Taking hormones during puberty is only fully reversible if you’re only taking them for a short time. Take them long enough and the effects are undeniably irreversible.
>It's a good thing no one does that. Trans kids are not allowed to have surgeries on their genitals until they are adults
This is false. Jazz Jennings is a famous example. His genital surgery was performed when he was 17. And he was not unique: https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/18/doctors-performing-sex-change-surgeries-children-minors-transgender-boston-childrens-hospital/.
Furthermore, it's not obvious why chopping off kids' genitals should be considered abuse, while other trans mutilations such as chopping of girls' breasts shouldn't be considered abuse.
>The chemical treatments performed on trans kids are reversible.
Maybe the puberty part is reversible, but the giving little girls osteoporosis part likely isn't.
Jazz Jennings is a woman. I can understand people who have issues with the idea that trans woman are somehow metaphysically women, and therefore should be referred to with female pronouns before they have had surgery or done other interventions; or that they should retroactively be referred to with female pronouns when discussing past events that took place before they even realized that they were trans. However, once a trans woman has a female phenotype it seems frankly delusional to still say she is a man. It would be like saying a man with hair plugs is still bald, or that a woman with E-cup breast implants still has tiny breasts
Plastic surgery is not mutilation. If someone wants to have surgery to change their body then they are not being mutilated. In order for a surgery to count as mutilation it needs to be unwanted. To a woman who enjoys having large breasts, a breast reduction is an act of mutilation. To one who does not, it is cosmetic surgery.
Random strangers don't get to call surgeries mutilations because it's not what they would want. If there existed some culture somewhere where cleft palates were considered normal I am sure that they would condemn American parents for "mutilating" their children by getting surgery to give them normal palates. I think the reason that this "mutilation" rhetoric is so common among social conservatives and radical feminists is that they are they sort of people who fly into fits of rage at the very suggestion that somebody might want different things for their body than they do.
Teenage girls get breast reductions for all kinds of reasons, only a small percentage of which are for gender dysphoria. If someone wants smaller breasts because they cause back pain, or, because they cause gender dysphoria, is immaterial. Pain is pain. The fact that the same people condemning their "mutilation" have not been doing the same thing for all the many other reasons adolescents get breast reductions is a pretty big red flag.
Jennings appears to be an outlier. 18 is the common and recommended age for such surgeries. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/10/ron-desantis/transition-related-surgery-limited-teens-not-young/
Puberty blockers, like most medical treatments, do contain risks. However, that is true of pretty much any medical intervention. It is also true that failing to use puberty blockers also contains risks, in particular the risk that someone might grow up with a body they find repulsive. Medical professionals have decided that for many kids the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the risks of not taking them. A bunch of conservative and radical feminists on the Internet have claimed otherwise because they cruelly and recklessly ignore the risks of not using them and only focus on the risks of use.
In general, the problem with arguments to the effect of "They are just kids/teenagers who might regret this treatment later" is that they are symmetrical. It's true they might regret getting this treatment later, but it's also true they might regret not getting it. Instead of just saying "they might regret it" you need to weigh the risks. Anti-trans activists don't weigh risks, they ignore one risk and hyper-focus on the other.
Jazz Jennings is just as much a man as arnold schwarzenegger or any other man on the planet. anyone who doesnt think so is biased against GNC ppl.
gender ideology is a mens rights movement that erases the rights of women, gays, kids ect. its main goals are the misogynistic destruction of women's rights and homophobic sterilizing gay kids to address normal psych issues most grow out of.
Every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. Including the garbage you parrot.
"Medical professionals have decided that for many kids the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the risks of not taking them."
This is a lie. Every gov review ever done on earth found that these meds don't help anything and cause severe harm. yes, i know activist orgs claim otherwise. they are lying. and so are you.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4070174-why-europe-and-america-are-going-in-opposite-directions-on-youth-transgender-medicine/amp/
its also true that 85% of kids grow out of gender dysphoria without meds. so its child abuse to give meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function to address normal psych issues most grow out of.
"If someone wants to have surgery to change their body then they are not being mutilated."
No, it just needs to make them worse off.
You know my kids have a Dr. Suess story about Gertrude McFuzz. She was a girl bird with just one small little tale. But she was jealous of another girl bird called Lo La Le Lui, who had two pretty tails. So she talked to her uncle the doctor who said she could eat berries off a bush to get more tails. So she did. She ate one and then she had a two tails like Lo La Le Lui. So she ate another to have three, more than her. Then she ate more and more, hoping when Lo La Le Lui saw her she would drop dead of jealousy. When she was done she had so many tails she couldn't fly anymore. She had to be hauled away and have them removed.
Had she stopped maybe it would be alright. It would have made her life better. But she continued until it made her life worse. We can find examples of people obsessed with plastic surgery that have such outcomes. Here is one right now:
https://nypost.com/2022/09/21/canadian-school-backs-trans-teacher-with-giant-fake-boobs/
So I would say "mutilation" is an objective measure and not based on whether someone desires it or not. Sometimes people desire things that are objectively terrifying.
In the case of plastic surgery addicts, they usually have a logically incoherent desire. There is some switch in their brain that is stuck so that they will always think they look wrong no matter how they look. The desires of transpeople are generally coherent, they want to look a certain definable way and are happier once they do.
In the case of McFuzz, what makes her desire bad isn't that she wants something that is "objectively terrifying," it is that her desire to have more tails conflicts with a different desire she has, the desire to move around easily. Most of the time when we say someone wants something bad for them, what we mean is that the fulfillment of that want will thwart many other wants that person has, especially very basic wants like health and staying alive.
The case of the trans teacher reminds me of a documentary I saw a number of years ago about a cisgender woman stripper who got similarly sized implants. They seemed to enhance her career and make her happy. Would you say she was fine because she worked as a stripper instead of as a teacher, and therefore her appearance didn't conflict with her career ambitions? I certainly don't think it's transphobic to ask that teacher to wear less revealing clothes, I think they'd ask a cis woman with gigantomastia the same thing.
> In order for a surgery to count as mutilation it needs to be unwanted.
So reality is out and emotion is in? Thus there is no human nature? And anything is anything because emotion creates reality? Your claim is literally the product of an unfocused mind. Existence IS identity. There is no metaphysical split between that something is and what it is. Both mystics and subjectivists regard the concrete,material universe as not real, a mere illusion caused by consciousness, with their basic difference over which consciousness, Gods or mans. To paraphrase blues guitarist extraordinare, Johnny Winter, Realitys sneakin' up on you. Its gonna get you wherever you go. There has never been a sustainable subjectivist culture. They always collapse into mysticism as people seek relief from a disintegrated mind and the chronic anxiety which warns man of danger. Eg, Heiddeger said dread, allegedly part of human nature, is approaching and receding. Even the pseudo-integration of mysticism is better than subjectivism. Thus the current return of religion. And who now values the alternative to mysticism and subjectivism, ie, the focused mind?
>So reality is out and emotion is in?
Emotions are part of reality. In other places you have written against dualism, but you don't seem to have fully understood what that means. Setting up reality and emotions as opposites is dualism.
>And anything is anything because emotion creates reality
Emotion does not create reality. Emotion creates the motivation for us to act to change reality so that it suites us better.
>Thus there is no human nature?
It is human nature to try to better ourselves and our environment. And something is defined as "better" by how good a job it does of fulfilling our desires. Making your body look more the way you want it to is part of human nature. I imagine that in the Stone Age there was probably someone like you who condemned people for making axes out of flint, because a rock is a rock and it can't be an axe no matter how much you "mutilate" it.
> Your claim is literally the product of an unfocused mind. Existence IS identity.... And who now values the alternative to mysticism and subjectivism, ie, the focused mind?
How exactly does any of that metaphysics relevant to my point? If someone wants their body to change in a certain way that is good, all other things being equal. If they don't it isn't. It doesn't matter if reality is an illusion or real. If it's reality then changing that reality is good. If it's an illusion people should try to improve the illusion.
If someone went to the gym to try to be a bodybuilder, would you condemn them because right now they exist as a 98-pound weakling, and "existence IS identity?" I guarantee you are fine with 99% of the ways people change reality. It's only for trans people that you are suddenly different. All that metaphysics is just a cover.
We live in sad cultural times. People are weirder.
> It doesn't matter if reality is an illusion or real.
Do you teach at Harvard or Stanford? I prefer the coffehouse in the student center at Stanford. I met a Brazilian woman there. Well,good talkin'to ya. I really must be on my way.
Youre gone, babe. Youre over the hill. Youre shot your wad. Can you tie your shoelaces or use a fork?
> all other things being equal
Ay, theres the rub. Hows your head? You could transition into a bottle of Jack Daniels.
So, just to clarify: you do not support bottom surgery or facial feminization (or masculinization) surgery before 18? Because there's an awful lot of "that doesn't happen" yelling coming from your side, but then a lot of tv shows that indicate that you actually think it's totally fine for minors to get that surgery if it weren't for us "cruel" people.
The lies don't help your case.
This is an interesting way of thinking about it, for males with male enhancement is a form of gender affirming surgery that swings further in their initial biological direction. Trans would be the opposite direction of this; but we wouldn't go around having a moral panic if a guy wanted to go from 6'' to 8'', that seems par for the course with most males. Perhaps the larger concern is that the medical science is not good enough yet (evidences by why men still tend to stick with what they got, but by the numbers many have body dysmorphia). For instance its easier to augment penis size, rather than transplant a fully functioning organ. So it might be prudent for instance to not chop them off until we get to a point where we can 3d print and replace the organs, at least not for children...Again the complaint seems to be centered more around our medical capabilities or lack thereof than anything else.
> male enhancement... that swings further
Now we're talkin'...
LOL, Exactly! You get it!
One side hopes these treatments will ultimately help the patients, the other side is afraid they won't. The truth at this point is not obvious. It may differ in each case.
Until children become adults, their parents should make medical decisions for them. Other persons who think those decisions are abusive should sue for custody on that basis. If they are just busybodies criticizing other persons' decisions but not willing to take over from them, they should find a different hobby. Does saying that make me a busybody?
When do children become adults? The US mostly uses their chronological age to judge, but that is expedient at best. Some will be adults before they reach the arbitrary age, others may never really be adults, able to fulfill their obligations to others. In the ideal, we would know what attributes an adult has that a child lacks, and could perform a test. On an individual to individual basis, we can use judgement. Unfortunately, our society has too many encounters between strangers (and between children and persons who would exploit them) for that to suffice, so the arbitrary age thing almost seems excusable.
Is there anyone I haven’t offended yet? I could go on about medical licensure, but this comment is too long already.
every stat and claim by the gender industry is a lie, including the ones your parroting. no, puberty blockers taken for gender dysphoria arent reversible. 98% of kids who take blockers for dysphoria go onto hormones that cause permanent loss of sexual function, permanent sterility and life long health problems. puberty blocker use for dysphoria has nothing in common with when their taken for precocious puberty. one use is discontinued at the first stage of puberty and is FDA approved. the 2nd is the first step where kids are tricked into becomming life long lab rats to address normal psych issues most grow out of. what do you call this type of misinformation? fraud. what do you call it when proto gay persons are tricked into quack medicine with zero benefits that results in permanent sterilization? homophobia.
https://statsforgender.org/puberty-blockers/
And should be severely punished. im amazed that parents who discover that govt has created such freaks and hidden it have not killed those responsible.
Like circumcision
Some people may regard "mince", in this topic, as insult. ;<)
Given the exclamation marks, I assume you're being sarcastic. Why the sarcasm though? Infant circumcision is unquestionably mutilation and child abuse. Religious beliefs are not a defense.
It's neither and on the bright side, is actually beneficial for the child whereas if you want to talk genuinely harmful body modifications we allow patents to do their children, you need to look no farther than piercings and tattoos.
Yes, the coercive permanent removal of a portion of the body is mutilation and abuse.
Beneficial in what way? Because you like the way circumcised penises look? If it's truly beneficial, this would necessarily mean that refusing to circumcise one's child is abusive.
Sorry, "Yeah b-b-b-but we let parents do other things that are worse!" is not a a justification . Come up with an actual argument. I 100% agree that coercive piercings and tattoos are mutilation and abuse.
Ive read that Jews believe it "brings one closer to God," ie, it reduces pleasure.
When you are a desert tribe, you need a way to mark your men so they can’t run away to the city
Theres a certain truth in that. But its metaphysical not political
True, but corned beef on rye almost makes up for it.
I would feel better with the "let's be polite and pretend" angle if transgender individuals also admitted they themselves are pretending (incidentally, many of them do). For example, instead of people claiming they are *literally* a different gender, they could say, "I FEEL AS IF I was born in the wrong body," or "I've chosen to live my life AS a woman." Instead, they insist on reality-denying language that they are no different than someone of their adopted gender when we know they are not. Obviously this has not worked well for the cause.
The part that really got me was when it was deemed, universally by all right-thinking people, not that Bruce Jenner had BECOME a woman, but that "she" is and ALWAYS HAS BEEN a woman. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Likewise, I recall people used to reference something called "sex-change surgery", but then, without ever seeing the memo, I learned this term was entirely improper and it was now "gender confirmation surgery." A phrase that I can't help but hear in the same tone as "re-education camp," "Berlin Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier," and "Freedom is Slavery."
If Jenner has always been a woman, should Jenner hold the female 400m world record?
2+2=5
Leftists are Progressive...Jesus is love...
Sometimes I feel as if I could vote for Trump or Biden. I lay down, put a warm towel on my forehead, access some Carol King on YouTube and wait for the shaking to stop. A little Jack Daniels usually hurries things along.
"Obviously this has not worked well for the cause."
What if mental illness and attention seeking *is the cause*.
I've long felt this way about the LBGT movement. It wasn't a movement to be left alone, but a movement to force people to affirm the choices of narcissists (and usually provide them subsidy for their behavior). I would say the mask has come off lately but I don't think it was that hard to see before.
When a man says he feel like a woman, ask how he knows how a woman feels.
I feel as if I was born in the wrong culture. Any advice on surgery, drugs, therapy, political activism?
I think this is a fantastically reasonable analysis of the documentary, and I am hopeful more and more people share its reasonable conclusions.
You're avoiding the elephants in the room; I don't know if Walsh is also.
* Transwomen do not belong in female bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, or other areas involving nudity as long as they still have male equipment, especially when this involves children.
* Transwomen do not belong in female athletic events any more than professional athletes belong in high school athletic events.
* Teachers and other "in loco parentis" temporary guardians are absolutely failing their duty when they aid and abet transgenderism, especially when they go out of their way to hide this from parents.
African tribal female genital mutilation used to be a horror; now child genital mutilation is the woke fad of the day. Children are not capable of consent, that is why they are not adults.
Once you agree to deny the truth to be polite, the lie will be used to make a lot of unreasonable demands.
Hence, we have to insist on the truth up front.
I'm very Hanania-pilled, so I'd argue that the original "lie" was blank slateism which has led not just to these problems but others:https://www.richardhanania.com/p/hitler-demi-moore-and-other-pedophiles
To be nice to feminists we allowed them to run rampant claiming almost all differences were purely social and men and women are the same
This new set of transgender stuff is the end result of that mindset. There's a reason radical feminists who insist on biology push back the hardest while many more liberal "evolution ends at the neck" feminists are either floundering or folding. (Also why Mumsnet in the UK is the site of the resistance)
After all, if men and women are distinguished mainly by the expectations society places on them then why can't a man willing to take up the female set be a woman?
Falsehoods don't just breed unreasonable demands, they breed more unreasonable beliefs.
> blank slateism
Man is a blank slate who requires a rational philosophy. Original Sin is merely the Devil made me do it. But all that modernists have provided is subjectivism. And when a rational philosophy is discovered, Left and Right join forces to attack Ayn Rands return to the focused mind.
Truth?! Thats so...intolerant. On the other hand, its best to confront it head on before it bites one in the ass.
Walsh is trying to lay the foundation in the documentary. On his twitter, as Bryan notes, he's very upfront about being against all of these things.
Agreed. At the last Olympics Jacinda Adern was happy to support a man competing for NZ in weightlifting. The point, as you listed, is at what cost? There was no mention of the woman who lost her rightful place on the team and hence was denied the opportunity to compete at a prestigious event. Women’s rugby is really taking off and a lot of fans have made the point that if a young male seriously maimed or disabled a female opponent then what would happen then? The governing body and its leaders would likely be sued. Who would pay for the costs of the affected female player?
If a man does something inappropriate in a women’s facility the act cannot be undone. Even if a male didn’t do anything inappropriate the failure to understand what the guardians of girls responsibilities are underlines the one sided nature of the situation.
My sense was that he wanted to keep the focus narrow.
A key difference between transgenderism and parenting in Bryan's analogy is that the parent takes on a well defined set of duties. It is performing the duty of a parent that makes the foster/step/adoptive parent earn the title.
What is the equivalent for a transwoman or man? In other societies or years gone by this may have been clearer but in our current western equivalent it is not. In a country with a men-only military draft , then a transman opting into that and taking the specific duty seems more credible.
Another way to put this, is that the noun 'parent' has become a verb, as in 'parenting.' Thus, besides for a 'parent' being a direct biological progenitor, it is also 'one who parents.'
Although the usage of 'parent' for an adopted parent predates its usage as a verb, its later usage as a verb speaks to the obvious conceptual category of a parent to which the verb was later assigned.
We have no such verbs for 'man' and 'woman.' Not only do we not currently have such verbs, it is not obvious to what such verbs would refer.
Judith Butler suggests this by defining gender as a performance of expected behaviors, but in that case there is no need to “transition”, just practice other behaviors. The problem for transgenderism, however, is that either these behaviors are so fundamental to female biology (pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, etc.) that biological males are unable to perform them or are only suggestively (but not exclusively or necessarily) feminine (being nice, wearing certain clothes, walking in a certain way, etc.)
And the fact that parents have those duties, which are ignored, is a classic revealed preference. If a person who was pro-porting to be a man cannot see that their presence in a female facility with anxious parents waiting for their children isn’t a problem, then it’s hard to conclude they are not being wilfully ignorant.
I am given to understand that your proposed definitions is extremely offensive to trans people. Anything less than full metaphysical acceptance that trans women are women in the platonic form of a woman is heresy that convinces trans kids to commit suicide?
Is that still the case or am I out of date?
It does seem to be offensive to trans _activists_.
Metaphysics? Metaphysics! We don' need no steekin' metaphysics!
that was never the case. those statements have always been a false manipulation. they worked for decades to manipulate liberals, including me. the main goal of the mens rights movement promoting gender ideology is to erases the rights of women, kids, gays and others. the way they do this is by creating the myth of a "trans" child. but its all a lie. kids with gender dysphoria are experiencing psych issues due to trama, abuse or just normal dysphoria due to being proto gay. 85% grow out of it with puberty, as long as they dont take harmful gender meds. but even if they dont theres no evidence these meds help. every gov review ever done in the world found these meds cause harm and dont help anything. what these kids need is psych care. but big biz is trying to make that illegal to make more money and push activists agenda.
https://statsforgender.org/suicide/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4070174-why-europe-and-america-are-going-in-opposite-directions-on-youth-transgender-medicine/amp/
You admit 1) it's a contagious meme, 2) looks like child abuse. But you're a libertrian so you propose we do nothing. I'm a bit less libertrian than you, I believe in slowing things down, rather than making them illegal, friction is often good. For example it is unthinkable to have positive potrayals of bulimia in the media, it should be just as unthinkable to have positive portayals of transgenderism. Sometimes a world that feels free is better that a world that is free. I'm glad vegas exists, but I'm also glad my city doesn't have gambling. I feel free to gamble but in some sense I'm not. If we had only one place it was legal to get transgender surgies/hormones, and it was hard to get a spot, only the people really miserable without it would fight to get it done, that would be great.
This is the thing the well-meaning "well, if people want to chop off bits they can" take misses: even if we grant that, we generally don't make it easy.
The discussion here is not about some abstract "'do you have the right to take a saw to your hand?" discourse. It's asking if we're willing to allow sanctioned medical organizations to do it.
Now, the hardcore libertarian might bite the bullet. But it's totally fair for the rest of us to say "only if you meet the scrutiny that all other such extreme operations face."
Do you think if society has a hard line for kids at 18 that would help?
That would be a good start. Yes
> I believe in slowing things down
Slow Nazism
It's strange how schizo modern culture is around the issue of children and young adults, on the one hand they are increasingly restricting behaviours deemed inappropriate or too adult, and also thereby delaying the age of psychosocial maturity. But at the same time increasing the amount of agency young people have with respects to certain issues such as relating to LGBT etc. Perhaps various interest groups are being dishonest in their motives, or alternatively view such issues relating to agency and consent etc. as being individually distinct, as opposed to being some part of a broader framework of maturity.
Like with many of these cases, it's mostly not the same people. The weird sex stuff is coming from political and media elites, including many people who don't have kids, trying to impose it upon kids. I think there's only a certain activist class of weirdo parents that are trying to impose it on their own kids. Parents as a group lean right (and continue to lean further right as time goes on), and most parents, even ones that vote Democrat, aren't interested in encouraging their kids to adopt avant-garde sexual behavior.
Helicopter parenting, meanwhile, is just a cycle of behavior that has emerged from parents as a side effect of various social changes. I don't think anyone is trying to impose it upon parents; people without kids don't care about helicoptering one way or the other.
Increased autonomy related to LGBT issues is not "weird sex stuff." Not all LGBT stuff is about sex. Gay people in chaste relationships are LGBT. Single trans people are LGBT. If some 5 year old girl gets a crush on another girl and they go on a cute little date where they hold hands that is LGBT, even though neither of them is even physiologically capable of being interested in sex yet.
What's going on is that some people are able to understand this, and some aren't. Talking about LGBT issues with kids is not inherently sexual in any way. You can tell kids that people of the same sex can fall in love, get married, and adopt kids without mentioning sex, the same way you can with straight people. You can say someone identifies as a different gender without mention how they have sex.
I think most people can understand, but for some reason there is a percentage of the population that cannot get it through their skulls. When they see someone talking to kids about LGBT issues, or see children's shows with LGBT characters, they go nuts, get hysterical, and start screaming about how kids are being "sexualized." This is insane, it would be like saying that watching "Snow White" sexualizes kids because Snow White is in love with Prince Charming and they will get married. I mean, most married people have sex eventually, but that doesn't mean all portrayals of marriage are sexual.
Some of this is also definitely coming from bigots who thought that even though they'd lost the war on gay marriage, the could still get away with stigmatizing gay people by lying and saying that their relationships are inappropriate for kids. They're pretty upset that people stopped falling for that, so they made up some cock and bull story about "groomers."
> Talking about LGBT issues with kids is not inherently sexual in any way.
There is zero possibility of honesty from Leftists. They are committed to the unfocused mind. This nihilist wants children, not yet sufficiently mature or educated to understand mans biopsychological heterosexuality, to be indoctrinated, out-of-context, with a rejection of that biopsychological heterosexuality. Its indoctrination because it starts with ideas split from concrete reality. Leftist/nihilists are guided by passing emotions as the absolute of the moment. They are so bizarre that even uneducated,anti-intellectual Rightists can identify their lack of realism.
If public (socialist) schools were abolished, Leftist parents could use private Leftist schools to destroy their own children (and wait for their children to mature and seek revenge).
gender ideology is a mens rights movement that erases the rights of women, kids, gays, dysphoric ppl and others. it doesnt give gays more autonomy. it forces gnc ppl into rigid gender stereotypes harming them with meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function and other life long medical issues. gays have less freedom when theyre tricked into becomming a life long lab rat. 85% of kids grow out of dysphoria without this fraud.
gender ideology isnt inclusive. it excludes gays from the right to life long health and romantic relationships. it excluded womem and girls from their own private spaces. it prevents dysphoric ppl from getting care evidence shows helps, like psych care, and pushes them into quack care every gov review ever done found doesnt help anything. if gender ideology were truly inclusive it wouldnt force gnc ppl into a life of medical disaster. being inclusive means telling people they are ok as they are, not telling them they need to block their normal biology to be ok. this is based on another scam: the idea that gender "care" helps ppl. it doesnt. every gov review done ever on the entire planet found gender meds dont help anything and cause severe harm. thats why theyre illegal in many countries. the US has never done a review if this "care" works. it doesn't. its a lie pushed by a mens rights movement that harms kids and swallowed by democrats.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4070174-why-europe-and-america-are-going-in-opposite-directions-on-youth-transgender-medicine/amp/
youre being lied to. gender biz policies are fascist and groom kids. not sure if you know what gender affirmation is. its a school policy that triangulates troubled kids away from their parents, promoting crazy theories about gender and hiding this all from parents. thats grooming. schools are teaching kids that puberty is optional while omitting that 98% of kids who take blockers for dysphoria go onto meds that cause permanent loss of sexual function, tricking kids into a health hazard.
gender dysphoria is caused by psych issues such as trama, abuse, being an orphan or just normal dysphoria due to being proto gay. these kids need psych care. the last thing they need are to be groomed away from their parents and tricked into taking meds that cause life long misery and permenent sterilization. yet this is the lie that you and others have been duped into and promote: the most homophobic and misogynistic thing of all time. congrats.
the goal of the mens rights movement pushing gender ideology has always been to create a legal path for kids to sterilize themselves. every stat and claim they promote is a lie. most kids grow out of gender dysphoria, unless they take gender meds. but even if they dont, the meds dont help anything. every gov review ever done on earth found these meds dont help anything. this actvist lobby and PR campaign financed by billionaires has spent 20 years tricking ppl into the most misogynistic, homophobic and fascist laws of all time.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/
> and also thereby delaying the age of psychosocial maturity
begging the question
Explain, I'm confused.
True.
You provide no standard, not even an invalid one, of psychosocial maturity, merely providing the strawman of "deemed inappropriate or too adult." Ideas are hierarchically contextual, w/the evidence of the senses or the wit and wisdom of Timothy Leary as base.
I'm still not sure what exactly you are objecting to, the definition of psychosocial maturity (if it wasn't immediately obvious upon inspection) is the standard account used within the relevant literature (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6551607/). What in principle would you regard as an appropriate account ? Are you looking for a list of necessary and sufficient conditions as to when psychosocial maturity is obtained ?
Truth is a product of the focused mind, not the arbitrary and conventional. I refer you to the relevant literature. An appropriate account would use the focused mind as context.
Link.
With the parenthood analogy, it seems significant that people use language like "you're no father to me" to refer to someone doing a bad job in the social role of parent. I think it's actually very common to use the term "parent" to refer to anyone who occupies the social role of parent, and to refuse to use it for those who have offspring but do a bad job of parenting. It isn't unusual to argue that a real parent is one who parents, not one who has given birth, regardless of the high correlation.
Similarly, a significant amount of casual usage of the concept of gender really does just mean "someone who occupies the social position of that gender". People say they do a bad job of occupying the role of a certain gender all the time, and when we use that language in other contexts, we often go so far as to say refusing to occupy the role means the label no longer applies.
The terms are overloaded and mean both things. That doesn't actually mean that, as trans activists claim, they can uncontroversially be reduced to the mere social element.
As you say, someone might say "you're not my father" but even there people will also say "my real/actual father" or "my roots".
In the case of sex-gender we clearly say people are bad Xes (e.g. a "bitch" for a weak man) but this didn't mean that we thought they became that thing (could such a man claim it on his passport before very recently?) any more than we believed that calling a woman a "snake" meant she was actually a snake, either biologically or socially.
Trans activists not only redefined language in other ways, they just brazenly lied that this was the case because it served their views.
But it isn't a fact. In casual parlance sex and gender have always been tied (the "ladies room" is the "female washroom") and it has not been the case that merely playing the role or stereotype means you count as that thing in a bunch of much broader contexts (like say...having the right to compete in combat sports with women...)
If this was the case then the whole concept of "traps" or "passing" (for both sex and race) wouldn't be a thing.
> social position of that gender
They evade the reality position of that gender. As 60s rocker, Marianne Faithfull, sang, "We've been trying to get high without having to pay."
First, most words aren't understood in terms of a single definition and it's infamous that one famously smart philosopher couldn't give a definition for 'game' -- he correctly deduced that many words aren't defined b necessary and sufficient conditions but by family resemblance.
Second, If it's possible to give the answer that extends woman (or parent) to people who aren't literally women/parents then surely it's also possible to change what we mean by the word to include those cases. Initially adoptive parents probably weren't parents but then at some point that expansion became so widely accepted it became part of the meaning of the word. Why can't the same thing happen with woman?
Indeed, that's my general take on the issue. Some people are hurt by using a word in a certain way. If they wanted me to lie and accept a false fact never but definitions are choices so why not use one that doesn't upset them if it's not hard for me?
Note that whether or not being trans makes people happier doesn't really matter on this point. Plausibly either religion or atheism makes people less happy but no one is made more happy by demanding atheists pray at Thanksgiving or theists acknowledge the absence of deity. That just offends them.
It's interesting how a cultural practice has come full circle. The western world was and continues to be instrumental in discouraging genital mutilation in most part of the developing world. What is surgical removal of breasts/phallus, hormonal treatment, puberty disruption, if not a worse version of genital mutilation? It is worse because it's a mutilation of the whole reproductive system rather than just the genital. Like I told some colleagues today, it'd be less condemnable if it's not such a flawed and imperfect procedure that ends up creating purely artificial problems while trying to solve a natural one.
"Literally, a parent is a human who has sexually reproduced."
Are you sure? This does not sound right to me. Adoptive parent, step parent, foster parent, and the like are very old, if not original varieties of parent. Even Jesus had a foster father two thousand years ago. I think would be a lot more accurate to say "Literally, a biological parent is a human who has sexually reproduced." And obviously we do not call adoptive parents biological parents out of courtesy.
I don't think this is the great analogy you suggest, but would welcome any information that shows otherwise.
The problem with "nice" people who extend "honorary membership" is that it's never enough. "Nice" people usually end up defaulting to carrying water for the "oppressed." They break with the freaks, every time. And they cooperate in un-personing people who live in reality and won't play nice.
Thanks for nothing.
Is there any way to form an equilibrium where the radical bullies are outside the Overton Window, but you can live and let live?
theres a rights conflict between gender ideology and the rights of women, gays, kids and 10 more other groups. for example, men can either be allowed in womens restrooms or not. if men can go into womens restrooms then womens rights are set back 300 years. but if we keep gender activists out of womens restrooms then were not letting some dudes "live". the whole thing is a scam by a mens rights movement pushing a fraud.
...I'm confused. You're saying the trans movement is a mens rights movement?
the main goal of gender ideology is to erase the rights of others in favor of mostly white men. it is a mens rights movement. its biggest goal is to erase kids right to unmedicated puberty. it does this via the science fiction claim that some kids are born in the wrong body. this claim is based on a 1000 lies. no gov review has ever found gender "care" helps anything. but the $billion mens rights lobby promoting this fraud has tricked democrats otherwise.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4070174-why-europe-and-america-are-going-in-opposite-directions-on-youth-transgender-medicine/amp/
gender ideology also erases the rights of a doz groups. dysphoric ppl are prevented from getting care evidence shows helps and instead are pushed into ideology care that causes life long misery and early death.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/958259
women and gays are erased as a class in law as are all their rights. this sets womens rights back 300 years. gender ideology is misogynistic telling women and girls theyre 2nd class citizens and their safety is less importnant than mens feelings. gender ideology is the most homophobic thing of all time by promoting meds that cause gays permanent loss of sexual function, permanent sterility and tons of other life long health problems to address normal kid issues most grow out of. gays and gay kids are the one most affected by this fraud "care". sterilizing gays = homophobia.
The list goes on and on. gender ideology also has become a fascist movement where the right to speak against this fraud being erased in law. every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. and the mens rights movement pushing this fraud is deathly afraid of anyone or anything that counters their propaganda.
I...think I agree with you, but that's a very strange way of looking at it.
thats the right way to look at it. its no different than when putin invades ukraine and then claims the area was part of russia the whole time.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/
Another answer they could give: being a woman is an innate neuropsychological trait not necessarily concordant with one’s body. In old times advocates of the validity of transgenderism would point out that, say, biological men who identified as woman had neurological features similar to women (they had more ‘female’ brains).
This certainly runs afoul of extreme gender constructivism, but I think most fully transgender people themselves actually dislike gender constructivism precisely because it reduces their situation to a lifestyle choice rather than a biological phenomenon. One can then argue that we ought to usually defer to self-identification as it’s the best observable symptom of transgenderism. A bit like seizures and epilepsy. We can safely assume people who have shaking fits are genuine epileptics without measuring their brains. Only in rare circumstances, such as when someone with no history of seizures has an unconvincing fit right after being conscripted into the army, might we doubt the symptom as being fakery; likewise, when a guy with a beard enrolls in a sports competition for women with a cash prize, we might question his identification as a woman as being insincere.
The big ‘drawback’ of this answer, from a progressive standpoint, is it accepts the idea of male and female brains and depends on acceptance of significant neurological differences between the sexes, which doubtless contradicts mainstream feminism.
Three major points for Bryan:
1. How does he feel about parents who allow their children to have surgeries for non-gender dysphoria reasons? The example I'm thinking of is the actress Soleil Moon Frye, who had a breast reduction when she was 15 because they made her physically uncomfortable, and because she was upset that she was only being offered roles as "sexy" characters.
Thousands of minors get breast reductions every year for reasons besides gender dysphoria. The fact that the same people who freak out about how transgender children are being "mutilated" have had nothing to say about this indicates to me that concern for child welfare is just a fig leaf. Their real motive is to be cruel and bigoted towards trans people.
The reason I am focusing on breast reductions in particular is that this is the only type of surgery for gender dysphoria that is performed on minors. The frequent claim by ant-trans activists that minors are being surgically castrated is a lie. (A lot of them seem to use a Motte and Bailey type argument where they lie and say kids are be castrated and then back up and claim they are talking about breast reductions when you call them on it)
2. What would you say about chemical treatments that are reversible like puberty blockers? The issue is that if you aren't sure if your child will continue to have dysphoria as an adult, or if their dysphoria will subside, it's prudent to delay development of sexual characteristics that might cause them distress for the rest of their lives.
It seems pretty obvious to me that a good parent should provide this treatment to a child. It's reversible if a child's dysphoria subsides. If their dysphoria does not subside it has the potential make the adult the child grows into much happier with themselves. If you have ever seen pictures of adult transpeople who have used puberty blockers, the difference is amazing. Attempts to ban this kind of treatment seem blatantly evil.
3. I would recommend analyzing anti-trans discourse using Bryan's "missing mood" arguments. The correct mood for a pro-gender-affirming treatment for minors activist is "Some kids can really benefit from these treatment. Some will undergo it by mistake when if they waited their dysphoria will subside. We believe the benefits outweigh the risks." The correct mood for someone who opposes such treatment is the reverse, that the risks outweigh the benefits.
Using the missing moods analysis, it seems obvious that people who oppose gender-affirming treatments for minors are really, really bad people. They never talk about the risks outweighing the benefits, because they seem mentally incapable of conceiving that benefits could exist at all. They are cruelly dismissive of adult trans people who are dysphoric about their bodies, while using histrionic terms like "mutilated" to refer to surgeries. They also can't seem to stop lying and exaggerating, they frequently claim surgeries are being performed on the genitals of minors.
By contrast, the people who support gender affirming treatments for minors come off, not perfectly, but pretty well. There are some who recklessly downplay the risks that a child might stop being dysphoric. But for every person like that, there are two or three who have the correct mood and talk in terms of benefits outweighing costs.
That is an awful lot of assertion and namecalling.
1 is false. Minors do get genital surgery. It’s rare, yes, but it happens. Also, it’s rarity is almost certainly partially due to anti-trans-activist work.
2 is also false. Puberty blockers have a wide range of effects, and given a certain treatment horizon, some may be reversible while others aren’t, and other’s reversibility is unknown.
1) I think genital surgery for minors is more likely to be rare because medical professionals tend to be cautious people who don't want to harm their patients. Anti-trans activists, as I mention in point 3, are incredibly morally reckless and not capable of rationally weighing the costs and benefits of such surgery, as evinced by their missing mood.
I don't think it particularly weakens my point to go from "this doesn't happen" to, "this is incredibly rare," especially since official procedure bars genital surgery on minors. In general it seems like the idea that minors are frequently getting surgery is a bugaboo used to scare people:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/10/ron-desantis/transition-related-surgery-limited-teens-not-young/
2) I was speaking about the reversibility of the main effect of puberty blockers, delayed puberty. It is true that, like all medical treatments, they can have side effects which are not always reversible. I somehow think that the patient, their parents, and their physician are more capable of evaluating the costs and benefits of side effects than anyone else.
> Literally, a woman is an adult human female. But to be nice, we extend honorary woman status to biological males with strong gender dysphoria.
While this initially seems odd, we’re just treating the word “woman’ the same way we’ve long treated the word “parent.” Literally, a parent is a human who has sexually reproduced. But to be nice, we extend honorary parent status to people who adopt kids. Strictly speaking, they’re not “real parents.” But it’s rude to say so, and even ruder to make a big deal out of it.
There are some parallels to the refusal to "build a wall around the welfare state" (preferring total restriction and making non-immigrants worse off). It seems people are just deontologically uncomfortable with multi-level categories.
>While this initially seems odd, we’re just treating the word “woman’ the same way we’ve long treated the word “parent.
Are we? "Biological parent" is not a problematic term compared to "biological males".
Adoptive parents are not insisting that they are biologically parents like outlets were saying about Rachel Levine being the "first female" four star admiral: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rachel-levine-transgender-four-star-admiral/
Adoptive parents also don't ask for access to spaces where biology is the main justification for the inclusion of parents. For example: adoptive parents don't demand rights to OBGYNs for their four year old orphan. Meanwhile, trans activism has maximalist goals that include competing with women in sports (including combat sports) where clearly biology is the dividing line not social niceties.
Adoptive parents generally aren't assumed to react with hostility to being asked in medical contexts if kids are adopted, leading to clunky and offensive terms for "real" parents similar to "uterus-haver".
In fact, there isn't a general attempt to obscure the basic reality of the category. I don't recall anyone ever stating that we can't tell what a parent is without deep expertise in biology. We can both admit what a parent is and have an asterisk for adoptive ones without this obscurantism.
These are all differences.