Amazon will not sell books that 'frame sexual identity as mental illness'
bbc.com
bbc.com
There is a movement to stop any kind of discussion about therapy on gender dysphoria other than transition. Trans activists seek to cast all therapeutic interventions other than transitioning in the same light as conversion therapy.
I think we will deal with the fallout of this activism for decades to come: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...
The only disingenuous framing is hormone blockers as "transition".
I'm extremely cynical about Amazon's move qua their own ethics, here but I also understand where the internal pressure is coming from given how rapidly the UK mainstreamed such deep transphobia.
Some adults do regret the long-term effects of their hormone treatments. Many more adults regret not getting access to hormone treatments sooner. Others regret going off hormones for personal or professional reasons and then not being able to start again because their doctor says they must not really be trans.
The solution for all these problems is easier and more flexible access to the treatments and a society more open to all modes of gender. Not a "but the children" moral panic.
> Some adults do regret the long-term effects of their hormone treatments.
Even a single child regretting this when they're older is enough for me to say this is morally ambiguous, but I bet you those numbers will go up in decades to come.
We could just, never treat anyone for anything, then nobody would ever regret any treatment.
Which is that they're not mentally developed enough to consent to those things.
A child can get put on lithium and kill their emotions for years with less hassle. And no court involved. That should tell you the priorities of the people who tell you it is a good idea to prevent kids from accessing medicine that is widely agreed to be safe and effective.
It wasn’t easy for children to be put on puberty blockers before and it’s worse now.
If you can’t see how it’s fucked that all this isn’t enough, and we must make it even more impossible for doctors to do their jobs, I don’t know what to say.
But inaction is always more moral than action, even when it harms people, right? When we see that we’re about to run over 5 people, but we could instead run over 1 by pulling a lever, we shouldn’t pull the lever?
This is a quote from a recent article in the Economist[0].
>One big worry is that puberty blockers seem to reliably lead to cross-sex hormones, in what doctors call a “cascade of interventions”. The best estimate, from studies starting in the 1970s, is that around 80% of gender-dysphoric children who are allowed to express themselves as they wish, but who do not socially transition—change their clothes, pronouns and the like to present as members of the opposite sex—will, as they grow up, become reconciled to their biological sex. Yet puberty blockers seem to prevent that reconciliation.
[0] https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/20/...
Can you please unpack this sentence a little more? I'm just trying to understand things better.
My understanding of therapy is that it is used for healing and / or to cure a disorder.
And so I can see why using the word "therapy" in this context is problematic, because it implies that there exists something which needs to be healed, or a disorder which needs to be cured.
I'd value your thoughts on this. Thanks.
- Gender dysphoria is classified in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
- When it manifests in young people, there can be various reasons, for example, coming to terms with being gay.
- Therapy can explore the reasons for this and help understand how to best help the patients
- For some patients, the right course of action is to have gender affirming surgery and transition
- For other patients, this is a temporary discomfort with their identity that passes or can be resolved otherwise (e..g by accepting sexual identity etc). <--- This is the controversial part. Trans right activists see this position as an erasure of trans identity/denying their right to exist, etc pp. They seek to suppress any kind of research investigating e.g. the rapid rise in gender dysmorphia in teenagers as a medical phenomenon (e.g. in https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/an-interview-with-lisa-litt...), and seek to ban any books/research/open debate in this area.
I have no idea on the biological or psychological reasons, but I object to any suppression of research on medical phenomena.
So, will Amazon now de-list diagnostic manuals?
> This is the controversial part. Trans right activists see this position as an erasure of trans identity/denying their right to exist, etc pp. They seek to suppress any kind of research investigating
Does this mean _all_ Trans rights activists?
I'm wondering if there is discourse from Trans rights activists who are activists for reasons other than those associated with medical research - and who possibly object to this attempt by a subset of Trans rights activists to suppress said research.
I only have one Trans friend that I actively engage with on this topic, and I get the impression that even within the Trans community there is a lot of disagreement in terms of what's best for society (and how to best raise our children).
Which is perfectly normal - especially given the deeply nuanced nature of this discussion.
I'm just trying to wrap my mind around why Amazon took this step.
While I'm sure you could find someone on tumblr posting about how all 3 year old boys who play with dolls should immediately be given HRT, all mainstream thought (by trans people and medical professionals) I've seen is that children who exhibit gender dysphoria should be given puberty blockers while thorough psychological analyses etc are carried out.
EDIT: But also to answer your question - if you think a 10 year old child might be suffering from gender dysphoria but you decide to leave it 8 years to see how things turn out, you then have to spend an enormous amount of money undoing the puberty they went through and performing various surgeries (eg mastectomy).
However if you put that child on puberty blockers and give them therapy, it should become obvious very quickly if they're just faking it for attention and they can be taken off them again.
No, this is untrue. Trans people all accept that questioning is a valid part of treatment. The controversial bit is that transphobes say that the only allowable treatment is questioning and denial, and that any attempt to support someone to transition is abusive.
> etc pp. They seek to suppress any kind of research investigating e.g. the rapid rise in gender dysmorphia in teenagers as a medical phenomenon
Linking to Quilette lowers your credibility. Littman did not interview any trans children. She went to an online forum for "gender critical parents" and asked if their children's transition was a sudden. Unsurprisingly, many of those parents said yes. Turns out if you go to conspiracy theory forums you find people who believe conspiracy theories. That doesn't make them true. It's a bit weird to see people on HN suckered into this so easily, but here we are. Her "study" has been widely debunked by experts.
> and seek to ban any books/research/open debate in this area.
No they don't.
Here, OTOH, is a young woman talking about how she was temporarily convinced she was a trans man: https://youtu.be/r57wGbiK3U8
That really helped frame things in a more constructive light for me.
Thank you.
Transition of minors does not seem to be a morally clear cut topic to me, given that they aren't allowed to do a lot of other life changing things. You can argue for the opposite, but too many trans activists are painting their opponents as stupid, disingenious or even hateful and want to silence them by force.
This will blow back on them.
(If you can't answer this question without googling it shows that maybe you need to slow down before posting, to avoid spreading misinformation.)
If we are going to let them do that we should at least let them put their genitals where they feel like before then.
The hypocrisy is the problem. You can't both have children be too immature to decide to have sex, yet be mature enough to make decisions about their sex which will impact them for the rest of their lives.
This is disingenuous moral panic and a good example of the motte-and-bailey approach the UK press uses to discredit proper medical treatment of trans youth.
It's really simple:
You are either OK with kids having control of their bodies up to and including invasive surgery and having sex with who they want or you are not.
Anything in between is either pedophiles trying to push the narrative on their side, or idiots not understanding what they are doing.
It is currently against any kind of recommended practice to perform genital surgery on children. It is not approved nor is it practiced. This kind of intentionally hyperbolic language is the sort of thing that is the stuff of tabloid headlines, not reasoned discussion.
Also: is there any indication that this is (in the sense that people need transition or otherwise kill themselves) is a problem in other societies than ours (or just with a bunch of apes). Because I still think that we should maybe change our society before we do hardly reversible things to people to make them fit in (very unpopular and quite influenced by conservative christianity (though I'm not affiliated))
Because you've been lied to. You've been duped by hate groups, and now you're happily spreading their disinfo.
> Also: is there any indication that this is (in the sense that people need transition or otherwise kill themselves) is a problem in other societies than ours (or just with a bunch of apes). Because I still think that we should maybe change our society before we do hardly reversible things to people to make them fit in (very unpopular and quite influenced by conservative christianity (though I'm not affiliated))
It's not a problem in other cultures because other cultures just let people transition. Without transition we do see increased rates of distress, including higher rates of attempted suicide and deaths by suicide.
ok, this is three people in a very left-wing german publication: https://www.zeit.de/2020/22/transsexualitaet-lgtbq-geschlech... - one of them states that more people are coming to him. The intro states that the number in Sweden multiplied 15-fold. I'm sorry, but I miss the hate-group disinformation aspect here? (unless, everyone not agreeing with your PoV is a hate group. Which is interesting but in the past this behaviour usually led to violent conflict...)
> It's not a problem in other cultures because other cultures just let people transition.
oook. So which culture except Iran (which is certainly influenced by western capitalism) does/did this? To my knowledge the typical instruments of physical transition are only available in the western capitalism influenced sphere nowadays?
> Without transition we do see increased rates of distress, including higher rates of attempted suicide and deaths by suicide.
So, you for sure have numbers for that. But no, that can't be, because the number of people transitioning is constant!
Increased numbers of people seeking treatment just means more people understand gender incongruence and are prepared to seek treatment for it.
so let's subsume the results of my critical gender theory instructions today:
- hate groups are everywhere. everything which doesn't think physical intervention is the only solution is transphobic and you don't have to argue there.
- specifically: _every_ culture treats gender dysphoria by operating/hormones and the problem is not related to any social structures
- there is no increase in adolescents transitioning (despite publications and people who obviously are very transphilic saying otherwise) but we know that the rate of suicide is very high with people experiencing gender dysphoria. I wonder how you measure the last because if there's no change and everyone is oppressed by TERFs and the patriarchy I am not sure how you can reliably associate a constant rate of suicides to a specific condition.
If I look at this list, it looks awfully like the usual conspiracy theory, allowing me to assign the following properties:
- mental illness unrelated to the cause seems widespread between most modern "activists"
- most conspiracy theorists have no clue which actual kind of forces they and the society are subject to
- logic is the instrument of the powerful thus be done with it.
You're also saying stuff which I know can be sourced to organisations like LGB Alliance or the Heritage Foundation. You might not know that because, again, you don't know what you're talking about, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
In particular, you appear to be completely ignorant of the UK context and that's causing you to make a number of errors across your post. You're not interested in learning what those errors are nor correcting those errors because ... well, I'll let you complete that sentence.
In fact I don't care very much about what happens in the UK, because I don't live there and I don't see how any points are specific to there.
I indeed have serious doubts that humanity will survive with our current societies, so I'd like to change them - same as you do and I'd really like you to be on my side because you're profile doesn't look like an idiot.
Though honestly you don't seem to be too interested in a logical and coherent discussion on this topic. I just noticed that I only talked to one person (I thought it was two), who first told me (within a short timeframe) that 1) no there's not more children wanting to transition than before and 2) of course nowadays more people transition. If you think that's a coherent worldview: fine, but then you're no better than the heritage foundation OR you seem to have serious problems with your brain (which probably a lot of the heritage foundation people have too).
In this case there's a group of transsexuals, who feel, perhaps rightly so, that society haven't been sufficiently helpful or protective. They just fail to understand that not all who identify as transsexual at an yearly age grow up to be transsexual. Some end up being comfortable with the gender they where born with, why other turn out to just be homosexual. Exposing these groups to a non-critical treatment and not discussing other options will hurt a group of people much larger than those you are currently denied help with transition.
It's just hard to argue with a well meaning minority, without being cast as being against them.
Trans people that transition do not do that to assume the opposite gender (at least as Gender is used today especially in the same circles), they are attempting to assume the primary secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex.
I never got a good explanation why transsexual was changed to transgender other than the fact that you can’t change your biological sex.
The whole sex vs gender debate is a literal mess. On one hand gender is a social construct if so transgenderism would never be an issue, if gender is so fluid and a “choice” then why convention therapy can’t work (I don’t think it can, and I also don’t think that gender / sexual orientation is particularly fluid or a choice).
Personally I started to look at sex or well sexuality as the social construct these days, it’s clearly a tool to form societal structures as seen in places like prisons for example.
Gender on the other hand for me is the heuristics that arise from biological constraints due to the (biological) sexual dimorphism of humans.
As far as “black” vs “African American” that seems to be an utterly American thing.
In the U.K. Black British for example is literally an acceptable way to call a black person, if they are black British that is since there are plenty of other black minorities in the U.K. like black Caribbean etc. I’ve never seen anyone saying African British.
There’s some more history and a bunch of bigotry involved, but that’s the core of it.
> The whole sex vs gender debate is a literal mess. On one hand gender is a social construct if so transgenderism would never be an issue, if gender is so fluid and a “choice” then why convention therapy can’t work (I don’t think it can, and I also don’t think that gender / sexual orientation is particularly fluid or a choice).
I agree with the "it is a mess" part.
> Personally I started to look at sex or well sexuality as the social construct these days, it’s clearly a tool to form societal structures as seen in places like prisons for example.
> Gender on the other hand for me is the heuristics that arise from biological constraints due to the (biological) sexual dimorphism of humans.
For me it is the other way around. With animals, we're talking about the sex they have, not their gender. So to me it seems that "sex" is the term that describes the biological morphisms that arise from the expression of various reproductive strategies, whereas I've only ever heard "gender" to be used in human social or linguistic context (e.g. to different names for female or male individuals of a species)
Many languages don’t even have different words for sex and gender, Hebrew and German come to mind.
I also find sex as in the act to be quite different.
At least when it comes to male on male sex “sadomy” was complicated through history, it was used to show dominance even in societies where homosexuality wasn’t acceptable especially in adulthood - this is an example of a Japanese propaganda poster following the battle of Port Arthur https://imgur.com/a/t9RtebX
In general it seems that same sex sexual activity has more to do than just sexual orientation, it’s far more common in sexually segregated environments wether it being prison or boarding schools.
And it’s just as commonly used to establish an intimate human connection as it is to assert power.
However I don’t particularly see this as related to what we normally call homosexuality which seems have much more to do with proper sexual attraction and sexual mating.
1) Trans people hate tavi, and want the contract taken off them.
2) Tavi's child services don't provide access to surgery or cross sex hormones
3) Most of tavi's child patients don't get puberty blockers.
This is an area with considerable disinfo. Most people on HN are woefully unprepared to deal with that, which is why this thread is full of inaccurate info.
Or do they hope to buy themselves lenience from progressive politicians in coming cartel investigations? Will AOC (who famously helped to kill a NY Amazon project) start to love Amazon now that books that 'frame sexual identity as mental illness' are banished from its pages?
The thing is, classical mob that collects "pizzo" money is vertically structured and can actually promise the payer real safety in exchange for money paid. That is not the case of the Twitter mob, anyone can start a shitstorm against anyone else.
Folding to their demands won't do anything useful, the nebulous 'woke' will make progressively more demands. If they can choose what Amazon does and doesn't sell, why stop at books nobody cares about? Keep going until actual resistance is met!
This kind of topics tends to be discussed by tiny, though passionate minorities. I would expect Amazon to have some TERFs, too.
There will almost certainly be more gays and lesbians than transsexuals in a random set of thousands of people.
Or do you want to say that the rest of the three letters are expected to have uniform opinions on said matters?
No I'm not saying that, don't be daft.
The high-value workers and executives for Amazon are located exclusively in progressive areas. They probably raised a fuss and Amazon didn't want another Tim Bray situation. Given that the corporation loses nothing and gains a degree of loyalty from its employees, it wins.
Do you believe that? I would say such decisions are far from riskless, they can even jumpstart potential competitors and drag Amazon et al into future antitrust litigations. This kind of power being exercised wantonly tends to attract hostile attention.
"Corporations are made of employees... They have opinions and preferences of all sorts!"
They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog.
I guarantee you that Amazon is still going to be here in ten years. At most for antitrust, it would have AWS and the core shopping business split up. But that would happen anyway. It's not really wantonly to take an ethical stand, even if the ethical stand is mostly for show, or even if it's outright wrong. Especially not in a field like bookselling, that Amazon has nowhere close to a monopoly in.
> They are, but we do not really know how many employees would prefer X or Y. There wasn't any internal ballot on this topic, AFAIK. It may well be the case of a tail wagging the dog.
We pretty much know for Amazon, though. Its valuable employees are rich people on the coasts. Overwhelmingly, this demographic is pro-LGBT and against getting put in a higher tax bracket. They aren't going to vote against liberalism.
Book selling is highly symbolic for Amazon, because they grew out of this niche. Also, banning books has a specific bad taste associated, because that is what authoritarians over the ages have done and liberal people resented such bans.
Banning books isn't a particularly controversial thing; this isn't even banning them, it's just...not selling them.
I know that they once removed 1984 from Kindles due to a copyright issue. Some people noticed even then. But a momentum of interest takes some time to build up. If Amazon starts expanding their blacklists frequently, it will attract more and more attention.
It is unlikely that every employee gets their input valued. The game of favoritism is older than Amazon, even older than the written word. Usually, a small clique gets to the top and gets their input valued quite a lot - at the expense of everybody else. Some people are more talented in office politics than others.
For the "everybody else", it means either curry favour with the clique or get out.
America is definitely not that anymore. What a joke.
One of those changes would have cost them real money.
With Amazon they probably want to score some cheap progressive points to paper over those awkward and possibly illegal union busting tactics that threaten their bottom line.
But they put a rainbow logo on and now all is cool.
Regarding worker rights I think that central banks destroying money by printing ,,infinite amount of dollars'' are the ones to blame, companies are generally in a hard position, that's why they can get away with inhuman tactics :(
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-l...
Maybe electric is an eco net positive compared to combustion. But we are yet to find out. And the Tesla solar roofs, where are they? I'm afraid the roofs were merely a way to get good eco PR on the Tesla brand. And doing Tesla with one hand while putting rockets full of fuel on the other makes Mr Musk even more contradicting.
Please read either the link below or a book called “the history of money” to know why you’re wrong in this statement. Central banks printing money has saved these workers you speak of.
https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/06/fiat-curre...
But the thousands of middle managers with non-technical degrees need to justify their existence. They always need to check some bullet points in their performance evaluations.
This is why you see HR moving to a "new" online HR platform every year and inventing nonsense like 360 degree reviews.
They can claim that they have "done" something!
Same here: This ban will have been discussed for at least a week, so another week is secure for their performance evaluations.
Another benefit of the culture wars is that they can be used to suppress the productive parts of the population. Especially technical people are intimidated easily (not in online comments but in real life), so if the parasites establish a sufficient number of taboos and enforce them, they control the actual workers.
Taboos have been a ruling class tool since the dawn of time.
There is plenty of money to make and we all know this is the only thing that matter for corporations.
How exactly?
This is where I am skeptical.
15-20 years ago, working in tech was a good job in the sense that being a mechanical engineer, doctor, or lawyer was a good job.
Today, these are the most powerful, richest, and most influential companies in the world, and people who like power are involving themselves more than they used to.
15-20 years ago, these companies were more meritocratic in a domain knowledge sense: the "nerds" were powerful because they had knowledge and could build stuff.
Nowadays "politicians" (in the corporate sense, people good at office politics) have realized they cannot compete with the nerds who've been building stuff since they were kids, so to get a piece of the pie there's a political fight to redefine what's important.
Now "values" are important instead. Those who have the values have the power and influence.
I'm personally looking to move to a different industry than the tech companies. Some industry with less power and less prestige. Those will attract more interesting people who care about what's important.
I get the historic roots of it being linked with anti-gay/LGBT activities and it being problematic about 'fixing' what essentially are healthy sexual functioning (e.g. it's fine to be gay).
But it's not black and white and surely 'some' gay/bi men and women suffer distress and would prefer to be straight.
And likewise for 'trans' children and adults - perhaps there are effective ways to reduce/eliminate gender dysphoria. Do such methods really always have to seem bad.
Note: I am neutral on this / have many gay friends. It's purely from a theoretical perspective.
All of these things seem to counsel against conversion therapy being an accepted practice.
That's what the American Psychiatric Association says: "https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-reiter..."
To add to it, my only thoughts were for people who wanted to be straight /cis gendered but were having very distressing thoughts/feelings that they might be gay/trans. But I realise what I may be describing might better be described as an anxiety disorder and so a seperate point. I'm sure doctors would pick up on this too. Hmmmm ok I'll do some thinking.
This is an interesting point, will they "burn" e-books already sold, like they did with "1984" (due to licensing issues)?
The vast majority of decisions at amazon don't attract media attention. They're just decisions. Sell this. Promote that. Reorder. Don't reorder. If you control 75% of the book market... you are censor-ish. even if these decisions are neutral, they still shape the book business in a censor-like way.
Amazon are sitting in a censorial seat. So are the other, content-centric monopolies like google & facebook. Youtube videos, websites, blogs, books, etc. When you go to produce one of these, you consider: what will google/fb/amzn think? Will it appear in feeds? Will it rank? Will it get an 18+ rating?. What makes or doesn't make that censorship is market share. A "true" censor, censors all the papers. An editor only edits one. If there is only one magazine, magazine censorship is default.
In any case, I find a lot of current anti-censorship discussions off-mark. There appears to be some cultural/moral/normative shifts in boardrooms. Are you unhappy with the power in those boardrooms, or with whatever specific decision got made last tuesday. I get the feeling that the latter is the main one.
https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-harry-became-sally-ryan-...
"they certainly have the right"
Expressing disagreement (or even dismay) with a company's decision isn't inconsistent with support for a free market, either.
- A number of folks invoke what they've heard people who call themselves activists say only to get a response from someone saying that's not a real activist. On one hand this is akin to no true Scotsman and on the other I can see the situation that invokes, "that doesn't represent me" as difficult to process. It might be helpful if HN users who are knowledgeable can educate the non-educated on who actual trans activists are so that when the non-educated are hearing a reactionary voice they are able to identify that to themselves and others.
- Russia has a very wide law that patently shuts down any conversation about trans-people and adjacently gay folks as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law
- Some non-zero amount of trans folk do not approve of the Tavistock Center in the NHS (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/calls-to-end-transgender-...). Earlier/easier access to hormone blockers seems to be one complaint, but ill-preparing patients for "immediate and long term consequences" seems to be another which a high court recently ruled on. (https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-01-20/tavistock-centre-...)
- Hormone blocking seems to be the main course of treatment in children while in therapy (that last part also seems very key). The intent behind this is that a child and their parents can make the choice to transition without having to undo the affects of puberty in the future which are costly and painful. The Mayo Clinic says that the only long term affects with puberty blockers has to do with bone density and fertility. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dyspho...)
- Some non-zero amount of kids struggle with gender identity because they're struggling with sexuality in societies that openly struggle with accepting more diverse sexuality (being gay). This points to a need for continued societal growth in order to impact the medical system less.
- The article centers around a book called When Harry Became Sally written by Ryan Anderson who is clearly a religious and conservative voice (https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-T-Anderson/e/B00A0P0MR6?ref=sr_n...)
Tavistock and Portman is hated by transphobes simply because it provides healthcare to trans children.
It's hated by trans people for a number of reasons. The wait list is over two years. The care is not very good. (the latest CQC inspection is concerning. It's likely Tavi will lose the contract at some point, we're just waiting to find out when that will be). There is excessive and intrusive psychological screening - that's supposed to be supportive but children often describe it as aggressively denying their transness.. They delay access to puberty blockers.
Here's the CQC report: https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/7ecf93b7-2b14-45ea-...
> Hormone blocking seems to be the main course of treatment in children while in therapy (that last part also seems very key)
No, absolutely not. The vast majority of children with gender incongruence get counselling and psycho-social support. Sometimes the child's gender incongruence subsides. Sometimes it doesn't, and the child is supported to go through a social transition. This doesn't involve any meds, it just means the child "lives as their acquired gender". For a very small number of children this isn't enough, and that tiny number of children go onto puberty blockers. 60 million people in the UK, 13 million age 16 or under. Fewer than 200 children prescribed PBs.
The court case you linked to is being appealed. It's an unusual decision. In England if someone is over 18 they can make their own medical decisions unless they lack capacity to do so. If they're 16 or 17 they can consent to treatment, but cannot decline life-saving medical treatment. If they're under 16 they're checked to see if they're competent to make decisions, and then they can consent to treatment but can't refuse life saving treatment. All of this can happen without the involvement of their parents. If the child can't consent their parents can consent on their behalf.
Tavistock's process was more complex. The child had to have capacity to consent, and had to consent. But also the parent had to consent. And the Tavistock psychiatrists and psychologist had to agree. And, finally, the endocrinologists had to agree. If any one of these parties didn't agree the treatment was blocked.
The court said that this rigorous consent process was not enough. This is more a reflection of how widespread transphobic attitudes are in the UK than it is of medical science.
Then allow me to surprise you: My first draft was trying to compare the use of Nazi iconography to Che Guevara T-Shirts, I deleted that paragraph because I wasn’t entirely sure what point I was trying to make with the comparison.
For all the talk about white supremacy, no one is really concerned about a resurgence of the Nazi movement in America, otherwise they would not let seminal works of the most prominent Nazi freely circulate.
Germany, which has a real (though fringe) neo-Nazi movement, spends a lot of effort on suppressing Nazi symbolism and rooting out neo-Nazis from police and Bundeswehr - which is indicative of the fact that they consider the risk serious.
It's hilarious that liberals from SF and NYC will manage to make fascism cool.
So, internationally agreed science and medicine says that being trans is not a mental health condition.
This matters because people calling it mental illness are often trying to deny access to healthcare. They'll say that transition is complex, and that other things should be tried first. What they mean is transition is bad and that as many people as possible should be prevented from transition and that conversion therapy should be imposed on these people.
> In 1973, after intense lobbying by gay and lesbian groups and new scientific information from researchers like Evelyn Hooker and Kinsey, the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder[33] with a vote of 58% of the membership supporting the measure. [0]
I'm not saying that every lobbying effort was wrong - but you have to admit a couple things here:
1. Topics that are surrounded by controversy are way more susceptible the effects of political agendas. [1]
2. Psychology is a soft science. [2] So, it's even more susceptible.
[0] https://lgbt.wikia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology
Although I think that may be changing. Since we're slowly (maybe too slowly) transitioning into from a culture that has accepted that fact that reproduction does not have the primacy it once had, we can relax our collective fear of extincting for lack of children and focus our fear and panic where it actually belongs.
Come out and say it - “I would prefer you dead than have to work alongside you”.
You're continually bashing your sexuality and gender identity politics into people's faces and then complaining that they don't like you. Nobody else does this.
If I work with you, I would prefer to not know about your deeply personal issues at all.
I wish people did see it as a deeply personal issue and felt embarrassed about bringing it up, or trying to get their fingers into my healthcare as in the rest of this thread.
You cannot have it both ways - attempt to tell me to shut up when defending myself, while trying to tell me you know better than my doctor and me about my healthcare and gender.
That's an easy problem to fix. If dressing a particular way is causing harassment, start dressing differently.
I want to wear sweatpants to work, but nobody finds it acceptable. So you know what I do? I wear khakis now.
> I wish people did see it as a deeply personal issue and felt embarrassed about bringing it up, or trying to get their fingers into my healthcare as in the rest of this thread.
They absolutely wouldn't bring it up if they weren't prompted. Nobody goes around randomly making fun of people without cause because it's not fun to just make stuff up about people that's obviously not true. There has to be some hint of truth to it.
> You cannot have it both ways - attempt to tell me to shut up when defending myself, while trying to tell me you know better than my doctor and me about my healthcare and gender.
There would be nothing to defend against if nobody announced their personal issues by dressing a certain way and talking about it.
People in this thread are here voluntarily. If they don't like what's being said they can go to some other thread and stop talking about the thing that's causing them grief.
I also have breasts, can’t exactly hide those without causing damage. Visibly disabled folk get harassed at work too, they can’t hide their very personal problem, nor should we be asking them to.
This isn’t relevant in the workplace. I am legally recognised as a woman. If you don’t accept that - politics isn’t acceptable in the workplace, remember?
I have never seen anyone make fun of people who look like women for dressing like women.
Fat and unattractive people get made fun of and harassed the world over, starting in grade school. A cis woman who doesn't look like a woman is considered unattractive too as you mentioned below.
Honestly it just sounds like unattractive people problems to me. Perhaps we need a movement to protect fat and unattractive people too.
Point is - I am legally recognised as a woman. My legal name is a woman’s name. I have tits and a cunt. If you start asking me what my “real name” is, or suggesting to people that I might rape them if we share a bathroom, you’re the one bringing politics into work - I’m complying with the law. I want to be at work less than you do, I don’t have a choice, let me exist.
Being forced to wear men’s clothes, a binder, and be called Kevin would be literally torture - I would die before I did that. It is not at all the same thing as sweatpants or khakis. It’d be blood on your hands.
Misogyny sucks, transmisogyny is a special breed of that, sadly.
Heck, ugly and fat people have the same sorts of problems. Nobody wants to date them, they regularly get passed over for promotions if a beautiful person is competing and many get depressed to the point of contemplating suicide. [0]
EDIT: Have you heard of Tildes? It's considerably more friendly for trans people. Send me an email at dan dot bealecocks at gmail dot com and I'll send you an invite. Or email the invite link here: https://docs.tildes.net/contact