The Transgender deulusion
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@precious
If you copy and paste keywords of the headline in the link and search for it, it'll bring that link up as well as many other similar. You are correct, I didn't read that specific link but read others similar to it
"@precious"
Lol!
"If you copy and paste keywords of the headline in the link and search for it, it'll bring that link up as well as many other similar. You are correct, I didn't read that specific link but read others similar to it"
So what precisely do you disagree with the article?
@LogicForTW
“What you really mean is no one is giving answers you like. You are not searching for truth at all as your name implies, you are searching for answers that you like and conform to your world view.” – On the contrary, as a theist, do you really think I would be here looking for someone to conform to my world view? Actually, my main reason for coming to this forum is because I know for a fact that the majority will disagree with. I like it when people disagree with me because it gets me to look at things from a different point of view, which I then use to challenge myself and see which makes more sense. Sometimes I have learned and actually changed how I view things while other times it only reaffirmed what I initially believed. Oh, and if i was looking for people to simply agree with me i would not on a forum where the majority have disagreed with me while a few others constantly insult me. Although, seeing how many of them probably believe that morality is subjective, it's hard to take them seriously.
“When is the last time a transgender hurt you or anyone you know. And no, being upset because they are transgender does not count. Just like being upset someone has brown hair and dyes it blonde does not mean brown hair people cause real harm to people for switching to blonde.” I think you are still missing the point of my posts. This has 0 to do with fear. To answer, I have never been hurt in any way, shape or form by a transgender and I do not personally know anyone who has. This has nothing to do with that, the same way me asking you when did a Buddhist ever hurt you? Even if one transgender person did hurt me, what does that prove? Nothing because if one trans person hurt me what does that have to do with the rest of them? People here seem to busy trying to be PC than actually say anything relevant.
Well guess you are going to have to take me not seriously, because I absolutely very confidently believe that morality is subjective not objective. But I been down that word game rabbit hole multiple times on these boards in the past so I wont get into that here.
So, if you are here to hear other opinions different from your own, (good for you! .. seriously!) and you do not fear or get upset by transgenders, why are you not all for supporting transgenders? It seems clear to all of us they can use all the support and understanding from all of us as much as possible.
Buddhist certainly never hurt me directly, religion has some, indirectly, but theist in general do not have high suicide rates and face lots of persecution and non acceptance, people that identify atheist certainly have though. Religious folks biggest source of persecution is from other religions! A different issue, do not want to get side tracked.
@Someone Doing the X-Files Thing (The truth is out there)
Morality is subjective. Completely. Absolutely. Utterly.
Even if you cite a religious text as holding a supposed "objective" morality, that morality is actually subjective in accordance to your chosen deity. There is no such thing as absolute or objective morality. Morality is always SUBJECTIVE in accordance to the one who is making up that morality.
rmfr
Never. However, if you change it to Islamic, then yes. It is known as "9-11". An uncle of mine was killed in the first tower that collapsed.
As Forrest Gump would say, "And that is all I have to say about that."
rmfr
@arakish
Islamic? It's called islam. Anyway, just FYI, all non Muslims extremists also disagree and hate what happen on 9/11. So other than point out your islamaphobic point of view and clear lack of understanding in what islam is, I don't know what your point is
Yes, a bunch of Muslims who committed an act of terror that killed thousands of people have nothing to do with Islam. Nevermind the fact that they did it in Allah's name, or that hundreds of other attacks have been perpetrated by similar criminals with identical motivations, or that certain groups exist as Islamic cults that believe killing infidels will earn them paradise.
You are not a terrorist, because your interpretation of your book is far less bloody and craven. But you can't deny the fact that others are not so docile. Speaking out against Islamic terrorism is not Islamaphobia. That would be if he said that all Muslims are terrorists, or that he hated Muslims. But we must also bear in mind that hating Islam is not the same as hating Muslims. I love Muslims because they are people; I hate Islam because it's dogma.
@ LogicForTW
“But I been down that word game rabbit hole multiple times on these boards in the past so I wont get into that here.” – Agreed.
“So, if you are here to hear other opinions different from your own, (good for you! .. seriously!) and you do not fear or get upset by transgenders, why are you not all for supporting transgenders? It seems clear to all of us they can use all the support and understanding from all of us as much as possible” – Mainly because I do not think it completely solves the “problem” for everyone. By everyone I mean the 0.6% trans as well as the 99.4% that are “normal”.
“but theist in general do not have high suicide rates and face lots of persecution and non acceptance, people that identify atheist certainly have though. Religious folks biggest source of persecution is from other religions! A different issue, do not want to get side tracked.” While it is a different issue, it’s actually a great point. While I will not act like the 41% suicide rate in the trans community has 0 to do with not being accepted, I also don’t think simply becoming accepting of it will magically send that number down to 0. By the way, black slaves faced far harsher persecution, discrimination and hate than the trans community does today. Jews under Nazi Germany also faced far harsher times as well. People living in Ghaza today (and Palestine as a whole but mainly Ghaza) that are trying to live a normal life still have way harsher lives than the trans community does in America. You don’t hear about them having committing suicide. Do you? That is one of the reasons I think that not being accepted can’t be the reason behind the extremely high suicide rates, which do not even decrease post surgeries.
By the way, just to clarify, I am NOT against trans people as people, I believe any and every person deserves love, compassion and respect (well except for rapists and pedophiles) and we as humans have an obligation to protect our “fellow man”. With that said, I do not believe the current solution of just simply “accept and understand” will work for everyone and there is not enough evidence to suggest otherwise, at least not that I have seen.
I do not think it would solve the "problem" either entirely, but I do think it would be a big step towards reducing the suicide rates, if everyone was much more accepting, like you say, it probably would reduce the rate, and that is a good thing.
Except they usually did not face that discrimination from within their only family, and they usually lived in communities of like people, where as transgenders often face much difficulty even from their own family and closest community.
People in Ghaza do have higher suicide rates then the norm, not as high as transgender people do, but certainly elevated. Again they at least have the support of their own families and the communities they typically are a part of.
Not sure where you got your transgender suicide numbers and post surgery suicide numbers, but I can certainly see why post surgery does not magically fix everything for the transgender. They may have unrealistic expectations. Humans are very very good at detecting the most subtle signs outward appearance. It is why we can detect a computer rendered image of a face so easily, even though a well designed digital face are extremely similar terms of how they look compared to a real face. A transgender person may go into surgery thinking they will finally have an outward appearance that matches how they feel they want to look. And like any cosmetic surgery quite often it is not able to make those lofty expectations. This can be very difficult.
"Accept and understand." Will not fix the issue for everything related to transgender, but if you think that the current bigotry and hate and fear many transgender people face quite often from their own families is not a major MAJOR contributing factor to suicide rates, you are sorely mistaken.
@LogicForTW
"Accept and understand." Will not fix the issue for everything related to transgender, but if you think that the current bigotry and hate and fear many transgender people face quite often from their own families is not a major MAJOR contributing factor to suicide rates, you are sorely mistaken. "
Yes, I agree.
“Accept and understand” will not fix everything for me. I had to get over the trauma from simply being raised in the wrong gender. It actually gave me C-PTSD. And though I have healed considerably, I will never be the same as a person who was raised in an atmosphere of acceptance. “Accept and understand” will help future children come out and tell their parents, before repression and C-PTSD set in.
In case anyone here hasn’t read about Kristina Olson and her work with trans kids:
https://www.washington.edu/news/2016/02/26/transgender-children-supporte...
Admins/Mods: I apologize in advance, he did light that fuse on that stick of dynamite...
And here is my post you responded to:
Just to keep everything in perspective. And I guess I lied again with that Forrest Gump saying.
And THANK YOU Jared. You said a lot of I am about to say. If I quote you verbatim, then sorry. But I am not copying and pasting your words. These are wholly my words.
First off. I am NOT an Islamphobe. That implies I fear Islam. I do not fear Islam. I hate the religious dogma it holds on to. I hate its suppression and oppression of women. I hate its ideology that it places it beliefs system as the only true truth. I hate its bigotry. And everything I just said, and about to say, about Islam, is also true about Christianity. I despise them both because ultimately, both are the most hateful and violent religions to ever be created by man. And, yes. ALL religions have been created by man.
And no where did I say ALL Islamics (Muslims) are terrorists...
You have to remember that I am an equal opportunity anti-religionist.
I despise them all. Specifically the lies, falsehoods, faerie tales, plagiarized stories and myths and legends. There is very little truth in any religion. And not all ideas in religions are bad. There are some good ideas. However, overall, ALL religions are nothing more than a means for those who seek power to subjugate, oppress, suppress, and enslave all of humanity to their level of illitracy, beliefs, mental rape, emotional molestation, psychological terrorism, irrationality, illogic, totalitarianism, rejection of facts, apologetics, beguiling dialetical semantics, distortion and perversion of hard empirical data,... Damn, cannot think of anything else, but I may later.
And yes, I do NOT hate the Muslim people in general. I am very certain many of them actually are moral humans.
It is the extremists (including the Christian Apologists) I despise for they are ones who believe, "You shall believe the way I do or you will be killed." Perhaps not killed in person, but they believe I am condemned to Hell forever where I shall have my flesh burned from my bones only to be regrown and burned again and again and again for all eternity. The ultimate in immorality. If you have not done so, then you should go back to that post where I provided links about my moral standing about people in general. The ONLY bigotry I possess is a bigotry against bigots.
I believe that ALL human beings have integrity, dignity, and worth. I do not need a silly sky-faerie to tell me that. I can arrive at that truth with my own cognitive abilities. Should I list them again? Empathy, rationality, logic, reason, deduction, critical thinking, sympathy, analytical thought, and the greatest one of all, LOVE. Something no religion has.
Basically, both Christianity and Islam firmly believe that ALL humans are worthless, sick, immoral, wicked demons. That none can be good, moral, ethical, and treat others as being worthy of being treated as equals without some form of sky-faerie telling them how to live their lives and what they can and cannot think. Both teaches me that I cannot be good to others without some form of special permission from your sky-faerie. And, to get that special permission, all I have to do is to kneel and bow down and kiss his ass. This robs me of my self-worth, my dignity, my self-esteem, my mental faculties, my morality, and teaches me that all human beings are wretched and wicked things, needing an imaginative sky-faerie to heal them. Why is it that you can make judgment calls and dictate what is right and wrong, and I cannot?
As for my lack of understanding what Islam truly is... Believe me, kind sir, I know what Islam is about. I have READ the Qu'ran and the Hadiths. Ultimately, Islam is nothing more than a totalitarian beliefs system that boils down to, "You shall live in peace and love and brotherhood only with those of like mind (beliefs). All others are to be put to the sword (killed)." Christianity is also based on that ideology, except it is worded, "You shall belief as we do and do as we say or you are condemned to burn in Hell forever." Both are nothing more than means to enslave the entire human species.
And none shall ever be able to disprove those facts.
Ultimately your Absolutist religions have...
Murdered, Raped, Tortured, Lied, Extorted, Sacrificed, Ravaged, Swindled, Exploited, Plundered, Abused, Coerced, Pillaged, Tormented, Harassed, Rampaged, Insulted, Endangered, Threatened, Oppressed, Persecuted, Committed Ethnic Cleansings, Terrorized, Mutilated Genitalia, Enslaved, Molested and Raped Children, Corrupted, Committed Genocidal Cleansings
...in the name of God for centuries around the world to spread such a theological message.
(Did I miss any? How many?)
But I am the one going to Hell for not believing in that bullshit?
Yes. I have my Fourth Commandment which states, "You shall respect the right of ALL persons to believe whatsoever they wish to believe; even if contradictory to your beliefs. You may discuss beliefs; however, forcing your beliefs onto others is condemnable."
For clarification. Just because I respect your RIGHT to have your own beliefs does NOT mean I have to respect your BELIEFS.
And before you ask...
My Ten Commandments
And the "ALL living things" in #8 includes ALL living things, not just humans.
Summation: I have NOTHING against any other humans. However, I have nothing but a brutal dislike for religions.
rmfr
@Searching for...
" How can someone that is 100% biologically a male, logically say they are female? "
Here's the deal: I proffer that I am NOT 100% biologically one sex. I am like an intersex person. You simply can't prove or disprove that because brain science is in it's infancy.
So, since were not hurting anyone, I suggest you give us the benefit of the doubt. Calling us mentally ill, when you can't prove or disprove us being a type of intersex, is like being assumed guilty before proven innocent.
@ SfT
Just to help you out, here's some more wisdom from Assigned Male Comics...
Attachments
Attach Image/Video?:
The latest acronym is SAGA, which means Sexuality and Gender Acceptance. All inclusive, simple, easy to remember. In my opinion, it's just all around better than the wild and confusing alphabet soup of an acronym we used before.
Hey, Searching for truth.
You still around?
Here is a video that demonstrates how oppressive Islam is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9lYth8LvrU
rmfr
Looking thru all the posts I realize that even well-meaning people have bad information.
For example, desistance studies. The most quoted desistance study wasn’t even a study of desistance! They were studying how much dysphoria a child had to have to grow up to be transsexual. So naturally they had a wide range of dysphoria, with some children saying they were the other gender, and others were just gender non-conformists.
You’ve really got to pick apart studies… know who authored them… and why… and what the point of the study was… and how old the study was. And you’ve got to look closely at the data.
For example: one study said that they could pick out transsexuals from a brain scan. But when looking at the data I saw that, while the RANGES for the data matched the ranges for female and male, the ranges overlapped. Meaning for one particular person you probably couldn’t tell.
So, I know you’re all very interested in figuring me out. (LOL) But be careful with interpreting studies. I’m very interested too. I’ve been interested since I was 5. I’m now 52. I’ve formulated a hypothesis on how I came to be. But it’s very complicated. Most people can’t understand things if it won’t fit on a bumper sticker! But I’ll tell you my hypothesis:
(A) We know that hormones affect the fetal body and brain at different times. You could get sufficient testosterone for the body, but not enough for the brain, and vice versa.
(B) If your brain is sufficiently virialized you will be PRONE to identification with the boy-gender. Not sufficiently virialized -> girl-gender. This applies to all people.
(C) Gender identification happens between the ages of 18 months to 3 years, from the studies I’ve seen.
(D) After gender identification a child will gender-socialize with their same gender, learning how to be there gender… learning gender roles. Children will SELF-socialize; no one else has to say “You’re a boy so do this”. They learn the gender associated with THEIR identification, not what other people think their identification should be.
(E) And interesting thing happens when you learn something at a very early age. Your brain is developing so fast… it’s almost like formatting a disk drive. What you learn becomes a part of you, kind of like your native language becomes a part of you. That is why they can’t figure out how to “cure” us. Our gender becomes the foundation on which everything else is built.
I welcome you to think about this hypotheses, and pick it apart.
Although I have had quite a bit of psychology while in college, I am far from being an expert. However, I also seem to have a much better understanding of psychology than a certain other person who actually currently studying for his Masters in psychology. Or, so he says.
I can totally understand your hypothesis and the logic behind it. I am not very conversant on the "gender" thing when it comes to psychology. What I specialized in was Child Psychology, PTSD, Major Depressive, Bipolar, Narcissistic Personality, Schizophrenia, Inferiority Complex, Social Anxiety. And these I mostly studied because I do suffer with Adult ADHD and C-PTSD, with some slight Bipolarism and Schizophrenia. A nasty combination. Just in researching the C-PTSD, it has given me the knowledge similar to "forewarned is forearmed."
But I totally get where you are coming. When dating the transgender I dated, she told me right up front she had been a he. My reply was, "Okay. So what?" And it completely shocked her. Probably because everyone she had been with before had been nothing more than sorry ass discriminative shits.
If you ain't seen my other posts, I could care less how a person wants to view themselves. I do not have the right nor the province to dictate such. The only thing I ask is for such persons to work with me due to the many decades of bullshit I had to endure and conform to.
Take Care.
rmfr
Lol well for starters, the only other person I believe knows more than me on these topics would be David Killen's wife, whose a clinical psychologist. My specialty is cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics.
What I saw back in your inferiority/narcissist post wasn't someone who understands psychology. You're taking several separate concepts and mixing it into one. In the words of my professor, when you extract bits and pieces of different theories, you typically end up with no theory at all.
Let's hope that isn't the case since you can't even get the basics right.
Ironically, if there's one thing I do know its the basics of clinical psychology. One such basic principle is that distress and impairment are integral components to diagnosing almost every disorder, not just gender dysphoria. The absence of distress does not imply the absence of a problem, just the absence of a diagnosis.
Gender dysphoria definitely occurs on a continuum, beginning with the feeling of being wrongly embodied or that your bodily sex is inconsistent with who you are; and at the other end are those that feel trapped and wish to change their bodies. I said before that gender dysphoria is a diagnostic term and transgender is a personal identity. The inconsistency between your sex and gender, qualifies you for gender dysphoria. The only other way I can think of that someone can be transgender but not have gender dysphoria, is if the person doesn't feel a disconnect between their gender and their sex, and merely want to be the other gender of a host of other reasons.
Unfortunately, you get your information from the most uninformative of places. In this case, from the Q&A page. Find me something more descriptive, more explanatory, and more up to date, and then we'll talk.
Actually I was told that by 3 doctors (3 clinical psychologists) and numerous other mental health professionals at the charity I volunteer for (which specializes in LGBTQ issues), but I looked it up to make sure because I didn't want to look stupid.
But let's check the DSM V (which I happen to have on my desk):
Isn't it odd that someone like me who has never really studied psychology (I did "phone in" the psy101 class in a community college) seems to know the field better than you?
That quote from the DSM is saying what I'm saying. Once again, gender dysphoria is a clinical diagnosis, and transgender is a personal identity. A person who is grieving isn't going to be diagnosed with clinical depression due to the context, but what they are experiencing is synonymous with depression. A transgender person who isn't distressed or impaired has no need to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but the act of feeling like you're in the wrong body is synonymous with gender dysphoria.
Distress is the least interesting aspect of any psychology problem. It is a side effect of the problem and not the problem itself; the same goes with impairment. The root of the problem in gender dysphoria is the disconnect between your sex and your identity, and that is what all transgender people experience.
V.S.
Convenient to leave out half the sentence: "A transgender person who isn't distressed or impaired has no need to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria ...but the act of feeling like you're in the wrong body is synonymous with gender dysphoria."
The only thing I retract is the intentionally lying portion; as I mentioned beforehand, perhaps someone just wants to be the opposite gender for reasons other than feeling like there is a mismatch between their sex and their identity.
What I don't get is this: If I had never been told that a man has to have a male body, and a woman has to have a female body, I would have never thought that. I would have thought that it was analogous to orientation. In other words, most men are attracted to women, but some are attracted to men. And in the same way most men are male, but some men are female.
Could it not be that we internalize the "male=man/female=woman", and that's why most trans are in such a rush to transform their bodies?
I have thought about old cultures that had/have different genders in them. They had a place in society for us. They accepted who we are. But they existed before medical treatments. Of course, I don't know, but I suspect they didn't have rampant suicides. Acceptance goes a long way.
I don't know. Maybe there IS something in my brain telling me I should be the other sex. But I can't pick that apart from my conditioning that "male=man/female=woman". When I was 5, I was read a story depicting the anatomical differences. From that I learned that WE ARE NOT OUR BODIES, because I knew I was one gender, but my body was called another gender. Perhaps dissociating from my body was the only way I could survive.
I agree with you partly. I don't think it's like orientation, but as I said before, the root of the condition is cognitive. At some point while information is coming in (socially or internally) and how it is being processed, the disconnect emerges.
It's almost impossible to distinguish between males and females psychologically. If all I gave you was information about how someone is behaving, you would resort to stereotypes to figure out their gender, rather than something more objective, and your conclusion will often be wrong.
That brings me to another interesting issue. You don't know what it's like to be me. The experiences of other people are inaccessible to us, it is impossible to step into another persons minds. It therefore follows that as a man, I have no way of knowing what it's like to be a woman, if a substantial difference even exists at all.
Interestingly, our brains do love labels. It likes to boil things down into stereotypes and prototypes. So I don't believe transgender people are "a woman stuck in a man's body." I think it is merely a brain labeling itself as such, feeling that it is so. In isolation, and without a need to label yourself, I don't think a disconnect in gender identity would emerge.
“It's almost impossible to distinguish between males and females psychologically."
Individually yes, but they have different though overlapping ranges.
“That brings me to another interesting issue. You don't know what it's like to be me."
True. That’s in part why I didn’t come out until I was 42.
Humor me for a little bit. I know you don’t believe this. I think you believe that your maleness makes you a man, and trans people somehow got on the wrong path. But what if something else made you a man. And that thing is VERY different from women. And, sure, we can all act the same way, but the underlying cause for being a man never goes away.
What if the sole reason you are a man is because you LEARNED that you were called a boy and you LEARNED male-gender-roles/rules in your VERY EARLY childhood, and not female-gender-role/rules. And even if you thought that was wrong as an adult, you couldn’t go back and correct it because you’ve passed the critical time period. Yes, I’m saying gender is imprinted.
Well, the overlapping differences are a statistical outcome. I don't know of any test that can tell which brains are male or female short of looking at the DNA.
Cognition and information processing are just fancy words for learning. Males definitely learn their gender roles by observing how other males behave, and then construct a gender identity based on such information. Learning that I am male is no different from learning that I am American.
I think I can describe how a trans person FEELS like their gender:
Imagine any average man and woman… they’ve grown up to learn diametrically opposite gender roles… they are in the same situation, doing the same Thing. The Thing is culturally defined as feminine. DO THEY FEEL THE SAME WAY about what they are doing? Probably not.
I believe that is what trans people are saying when they say they “feel like the other gender”. It’s not about “I like trucks” or ”I like dolls”. It’s the shame, pride and other feelings that gender evokes.
“ Learning that I am male is no different from learning that I am American.”
This is where we disagree. You learned that you were an American much later that you learn that you were a boy. “Boy” is learned by the time you’re 3. The earlier you learn something, the less plasticity you have in changing it.
Plus, I believe that gender is unique. It’s tied to sex in a unique way. Back in evolution, our ancestors only had instinct. We evolved to learn more, and rely less on instinct. It made us more adaptable. We did the same thing with sex… attraction is instinctual, but the learning part is called gender. THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS, if you’re going to separate the instinctual sex from the gender, you got to include a WAY of the baby knowing which sex to learn the gender from. It made it more complex. Complex things can go wrong easier.
The “WAY” part is what we are all interested now. But if evolution evolved it, it’s got to be BIOLOGICAL.
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