What are your thoughts on the trans movement? Is there merit and extremes?

[Druid]

I like to think of this issue as a spectrum, you can support it, to an extent. My personal belief is that there are actually some deep seated issues with people who base their entire lives and identity on gender. I acknowledge that it's probably very hard to fit in if you're trans. I find it very hard to be a normal dude day to day already. We all have deep seated issues sometimes. My thinking is that to try and change the views of other people just so you can feel good about yourself is not the solution. I think we need to find love and belief and confidence within ourselves. And whether someone else calls me or validates my gender is not important.

most people, at least to an extent, base their "entire lives and identity" on gender. you seem like a cis guy? the way to think of being trans isn't like, what if you wanted to be a woman - conceptualizing gender/dysphoria like that is hard. instead imagine if you felt the exact same in every way but everyone else perceived you as a woman. and your name's like Jessica or something, and strangers call you miss or ma'am, and straight men keep hitting on you (and harassing you, catcalling you, etc), and you were put in the girls gym class at school, and maybe when you wear the clothes you like people would give you funny looks, and so on. if that would all genuinely not bother you, you may be agender? but for most of us, even though gender's a social construct, it's a big part of the trajectory of our lives. if the one you're assigned feels wrong it feels wrong.

and when you say "change the views of other people" you mean.. changing their views away from discriminating against or acting violently toward trans people? I would love it if there was no need for a "trans movement" because everyone could mind their business and behave nicely, but unfortunately that's not the situation we're in. trans people can have all the love and belief and confidence and peace within themselves in the world, but that's not enough to just like, ~bounce back~ from systemic, structural, constant transphobia.

if you mean change other peoples' views of like, what their own gender is via transitioning or dressing how they like, that's uhhh abhorrent. what do cis people lose by fostering a world where all people can present how they feel and dress how they like? let them live. transness as a "deep seated issue" only makes sense in the cisnormative social construction of the western world, but gender isn't that simple. that binary, genitals-based view of gender rose to prominence through puritan christianity as a mechanism of control, and we just like.. don't have to live like that.

---------- Post added at 11:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:40 PM ----------

I was definitely on the fence about posting anything in here because it's a fine line to walk - but I figure open discussion is never a bad thing.

The only thing I dislike about this current issue are the discussions stemming into teaching sex and gender to children in school. It's hard for me to imagine my child being in elementary school learning about heterosexuality/homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. Just teach my child how to be a productive member of society. Teach them to read, teach them science and math. Teach them about history and reading, while they build their social skills amongst their peers. I'm not interested in some teacher who I don't truly know as a person pushing their views and opinions off on my children. Granted that's not how every school/teacher is, but it does happen. My wife and I are very careful with what family and friends may say around our child. Children are innocent and bigotry starts at home, so we want to do our part to raise a more accepting next generation.
On the flip side(extreme), somebody in my family is a teacher and they have students who literally get violent if somebody doesn't use their pronouns - their pronouns being "goat" or "pony" - wearing goat hooves and a pony tail around school. The admins have no option but to allow this and make special accommodations for them. I'm sorry, but that's where I draw the line in my own head. I can support people being who they are and being proud of who they are, but I can't support delusional thoughts like that. At that point I wonder if that's where their head is really at or if they are playing at something else.

but heterosexuality is already way, way in there. I think the "-sexuality" suffixes here throw people? but kids have (cis) gender and (het) orientation information thrown at them constantly, from day 1, well before The Talk. these are girl toys there are boy toys, sisters wear dresses but brothers don't, the prince and the princess are in love, sisters and brothers have different private parts - that's how we know who's which, everybody has a mommy and a daddy (barring the mortality/divorce conversations lol), mommies grow babies in their tummies, most boys at school play teams sports or do martial arts but it's rare for them to dance or ride horses, most girls at school play maybe soccer or basketball + one of the girly sports but it's rare that they play hockey or football, aww Tyler's always bugging Stacey I bet he has a crush on her!, girls mature faster, boys are rowdy, for special fun-with-colour dress up girls can paint their nails and boys can spike up the front of their hair with that temp coloured gel... I'll chill but I could genuinely go on for hours.

so gender and romance/relationships, at an extremely G-rated level, are like, embedded in every facet of children's lives. it's extremely harmful to keep that to just straight and just cis, for several reasons:

1. the way to end bigotry is familiarity. in a diverse world, why shelter kids from diversity? what if a classmate has same sex parents? isn't it better for everyone if that's not a shock because the other kids already know gay people exist? teachers aren't out there trying to recruit for the queer community - the concept "sometimes people who we thought were girls turn out to be boys" (and vice versa) isn't going to make anybody trans, it's just going to make them a) feel safe if that is something they're already feeling, and b) not freak out if/when they meet a trans person down the line.

2. queer people start as queer kids - without that information they feel alone and broken but don't know why. seeing the future that's expected of you and knowing it won't fit but not having an alternative can make you feel like there is no future. I knew I didn't want a husband long before I could articulate that I was gay, and the gap between that and realizing I could maybe build a life with another woman one day was like.. almost 10 years? spending that long as a child/teen with like, contextless, secret, underlying knowledge that I'd end up alone for sure fucked me up in ways I'm still unpacking - that kind of damage is so avoidable! not in a sex talk, not even on an individual basis - if Arthur or Lizzie McGuire or the kids in a couple of my picture books had had two moms, I'd have understood that that's a way it's possible to live. (media representation is important too, and it's getting better, but it's still something you have to seek out rather than like, just a way some of the Disney protagonists are. schools are a good equalizer to make sure as many kids as possible see the full range of ways to be a person)

3. it's literally just manners. if there's a non binary person in your life, does it make more sense to dodge questions about why grown-ups keep saying "they" and have your children misgender them? or to say "some people aren't boys or girls" and "a lot of words only have boy versions and girl versions, so it can get tricky: So-and-so likes to be called ____"


lastly, that child sounds either neurodivergent and in need of better guidance, or spoiled/entitled and playing with control in a way that makes a mockery of genderqueerness - either way, the school board is not handling that well, and that is not the result of conveying this kind of information to kids in a normal way.

[aymo]

I think it is more important now to teach sexuality in elementary school than it was 25+ years ago because some girls are starting their periods even younger nowadays, there are 3rd 4th and 5th graders getting their periods. Meaning they can get pregnant. If there's a possibility of pregnancy, having a really basic sex-ed class is important. Ideally the parents would be teaching this stuff, but not all parents are attentive if we're being realistic, especially with ipads and such these days.

Sex ed classes are also important to stop the spread of diseases like HPV, HIV, etc. This applies to heterosexual / homosexual acts so both need to be discussed to prevent bad consequences.

I had a health class in high school that didn't talk about homosexual sex at all. One day a boy asked something like "what does it mean when there are gay people?" because it was literally missing from our curriculum and he was probably curious. The teacher responded "Oh, Gay is just a choice", and the student replied "oh! ok!" and nodded his head and wrote that down.

This was a while ago because i'm a millennial, but i'm just using it as an example of how kids and teenagers ask a lot of questions if stuff is missing from the curriculum, and then because the teachers weren't prepared they get bad information. If a kid asks what transgender is because they saw it on youtube or whatever, it's probably important for the teacher to have a simple but correct answer.

I think teaching about sexuality and gender early would also stop bullying! When I was a teenager, guys who wore feminine clothing to school got bullied really badly. If kids are educated on how some people are different than them earlier on, maybe they won't grow up to bully different people.

That's my thoughts on that!

[Alister]

@(you need an account to see links) - I wanted to say thank you for such a thoughtful and informative reply earlier this week! I need to sit and write a proper reply when I have some time this weekend but wanted to say, I really appreciate your candor and willingness to share your perspective and it's gotten me doing some self-introspection and realizing how privileged I've been without realizing it, and how that's been influencing my outlook ("why can't everyone just scoff at gender stereotypes? I do, it's easy!" says someone who never had to learn to break free of assigned and constantly reinforced expectations).

Other quick thing I want to say, I've always been skeptical of children having hormone treatments. This thread taught me that some cis women are prescribed blockers for testosterone and it is a very normal, accepted practice. I never knew, and I realize I was wrong in thinking blockers are this universally risky process for children. There's a whole lot more gray area to it than I had known and I'm glad to have learned it from you guys.

[aymo]

@(you need an account to see links) - I wanted to say thank you for such a thoughtful and informative reply earlier this week! I need to sit and write a proper reply when I have some time this weekend but wanted to say, I really appreciate your candor and willingness to share your perspective and it's gotten me doing some self-introspection and realizing how privileged I've been without realizing it, and how that's been influencing my outlook ("why can't everyone just scoff at gender stereotypes? I do, it's easy!" says someone who never had to learn to break free of assigned and constantly reinforced expectations).

Other quick thing I want to say, I've always been skeptical of children having hormone treatments. This thread taught me that some cis women are prescribed blockers for testosterone and it is a very normal, accepted practice. I never knew, and I realize I was wrong in thinking blockers are this universally risky process for children. There's a whole lot more gray area to it than I had known and I'm glad to have learned it from you guys.

The New York Times has a pretty nice un-biased article about puberty blockers

(you need an account to see links)

The long and short of it is, the only major health risk is loss of bone density, but if the patient takes calcium supplement and the doctors closely monitor bone density growth with regular scans, the risk is fairly mitigated. If the patient got scanned every 6 months for example, and one scan showed bad bone density growth, the doctors at that point can just pull the patient off the medication.

[Mothman]

@(you need an account to see links) - I wanted to say thank you for such a thoughtful and informative reply earlier this week! I need to sit and write a proper reply when I have some time this weekend but wanted to say, I really appreciate your candor and willingness to share your perspective and it's gotten me doing some self-introspection and realizing how privileged I've been without realizing it, and how that's been influencing my outlook ("why can't everyone just scoff at gender stereotypes? I do, it's easy!" says someone who never had to learn to break free of assigned and constantly reinforced expectations).

Other quick thing I want to say, I've always been skeptical of children having hormone treatments. This thread taught me that some cis women are prescribed blockers for testosterone and it is a very normal, accepted practice. I never knew, and I realize I was wrong in thinking blockers are this universally risky process for children. There's a whole lot more gray area to it than I had known and I'm glad to have learned it from you guys.

Aww, I'm so glad! I have trouble with threads like these sometimes because it does feel like a bit of debating whether I should be allowed to exist in a public way sometimes - but when people are able to learn and grow it makes it worth the anxiety of posting. I appreciate the fact that you were able to process through that and in a non-defensive way It's a really difficult thing to examine so if it means anything, you have one internet stranger that is proud of you for doing that!

[DavidDavidson]

I think the movement and awareness it is productive to society as a whole but struggles under the conditions of modern pop culture and social media. Contemporary society has sort of been building up to these movements about sexuality if you look at the last few decades of sex in media (big claim, no evidence, no I will not provide any lol). Unfortunately from my perspective, sometimes it feels like if you're not taking something and making it exclusively about trans people, then others will get upset. Please don't think I'm some asshole who gets mad at Cheerios commericals featuring interracial families or thinks theres "too many purple haired black lesbians in videogames". The phenomena I'm referring to is similar to BLM (used to be consistent but then Twitterlites), Ukraine, Free Palestine (this one is a bit more consistent) where people get really passionate about something they didn't care about before but algorithms have made their focus for the next few weeks or months but their time being an ally is finite. It's super annoying how every single social movement is seen as just some trend now. I do my part by my making my classroom and afterschool club a safe place for LBGTQ students.

[pppp3]

the fact that this is even "up for debate" is laughable in my opinion. a movement that involves the liberation of an oppressed group of people who have existed since the dawn of humanity, that 99.9% of the time doesn't directly affect cis people (like myself) in ANY WAY shouldn't even be a question. trans rights are human rights, end of story.
tHe TrAnS dEbAtE is just the new "ooooh scary" thing right wing bigots and main stream media is using to conquer and divide us. it's giving.... the 1970s "gay debate" lmao. anita bryant eat your heart out *eyeroll*