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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

> > Many people against gender theory are former 'tomboys' that are healthy adults, don't conform to gender stereotypes, and are glad that breast binding, hormones and cosmetic surgery weren't foisted on them as children.

> What do you mean by "healthy adults"?

By healthy adults I mean they don't feel any need to conform to gender stereotypes, and are glad that breast binding, hormones and cosmetic surgery weren't foisted on them as children.

Edit reply due to rate limit: yes I edited because I realised I’d already written this in the comment you were replying to, you just hadn’t bothered to read the comment before replying. I wanted to highlight how foolish you were. I hope you understand now.

And yes mutilating one’s body is harming it, I have no qualms in telling you this in a very direct non-quiet fashion. Stop encouraging people to wreck their bodies.

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I see you edited from:

> Comfortable as the sex they were born with, acting however they like, without harming their bodies.

> I would have thought that was clear but if you were asking genuinely there’s your answer.

Yeah. It was clear to me that you were using "healthy" to assert that transgender people who transition are "unhealthy." That surgery is "harm." Your later edit

> > > Many people against gender theory are former 'tomboys' that are healthy adults, don't conform to gender stereotypes, and are glad that breast binding, hormones and cosmetic surgery weren't foisted on them as children.

> By healthy adults I mean they don't feel any need to conform to gender stereotypes, and are glad that breast binding, hormones and cosmetic surgery weren't foisted on them as children.

shows that you understand your initial statement to be a dog whistle, and that upon reflection, you decided not to say the quiet part loud.

The topic here is about principles and rights of free speech. You've swerved into a debate about the legitimacy of transgender existence. I'm not here for that debate; you can keep yammering if you like.

> shows that you understand your initial statement to be a dog whistle, and that upon reflection, you decided not to say the quiet part loud.

You seem to be making some very strong assumptions about intent [E] and have been since your first response in this thread. As an outside observer, those assumptions don't seem supported by the conversation up to this point.

Instead of assuming this person is strongly biased and bigoted, perhaps can you instead assume they simply did not make the point they were trying to make as clearly as they would have liked, and thus revised their statement accordingly?

Something something positive intent and the like. Assuming negative intent when there's very little signal to support that assumption speaks more to your own prejudices and biases than anything else.

> Something something positive intent and the like

Trust, but verify. It's one thing to recognize a dog whistle and flip out. It's quite another thing to hear a dog whistle, ask for elaboration, and nope out when negative intent is revealed.

What negative intent is there in not wanting children to harm their own bodies?

I agree with parent poster in their assumptions. Few posts up @nailer repeats anti-trans talking point that originated from 4chan.

The 'talking points' thing is a non argument. For the record, my sister - the same one from the Lesbian Mother's Group - counsels at-risk adolescents and I live near the Tavistock center which was shut down by the UK government after one of their doctors blew the whistle on 'gender affirming' care.

I'm not sure why you're bothering replying to someone who's misgendering someone in their previous comment?

As your comment-sibling suggests, it's good to at least try to assume good faith. Perhaps I wanted to give just a bit more rope for the commenter to hang theirself with. This is, perhaps, a counterintuitive argument for free speech: if you don't let them make asses of themselves in public, nobody will believe that they're doing it in private.

The ad-hominem response is little more than confirmation that I hold the higher ground.

I’m sorry what ad-hominem response? You labelled me a bigot for pointing out that gender theory harms children, which I guess you think isn’t ad hominem?

I told you to stop harming children and you think that is ad hominem and proves you have the moral high ground?

Kim Petras was abused as a 12 year old boy. You're welcome to your own newspeak but the rest of us don't have to revise history because you want us to.