“I didn’t see it therefore it never existed” is the most insane fucking logic to me
Agreed, yet it’s one of the most common logical fallacies.
And stupid when obviously the only question one would need to ask in this context is “are there trans people over 30?” And the answer is “absolutely fucking yes”
My dad’s best friend from high school transitioned…I can’t remember when I first met him (used to be “her”), but it had to be sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I was just a teenager. He had fully transitioned by that point. I remember thinking that made sense. It was before the culture war types discovered trans people and decided they were the literal devils. To me it sounded simple–as a kid Tracy always felt like she was a boy. So when she could afford it, she got surgery to fix her body to match what her brain was, since that’s easier and less risky than changing your brain to match your body. It sounded to me like getting a prosthetic if you’re born without a limb or something. Or getting an amputation if you’re born with an extra limb. Like, you were born with something wrong with your body and you fixed it, not a big deal.
It wasn’t until much much later that I realized how rare Tracy was for that time period…not just because the kind of biological mistake he fixed is statistically rare (which I understood as a kid), but because the vast, vast majority of people born that way hide it (which I did not understand). I also didn’t really have a concept of “gender” as a different thing than “sex” at that point…I don’t think the vocabulary for that really existed except maybe in a few academic circles. So to me, she was a she until she transitioned, then she became he. She had a problem, now he doesn’t.
It also confused the fuck out of me when people started saying hateful shit about trans people. Like, no, I know a trans person, he’s cool as hell, we went kayaking together.
So when she could afford it, she got surgery to fix her body to match what her brain was, since that’s easier and less risky than changing your brain to match your body.
Just a small point. If we had any medical/scientifically validated method to “change her brain to match her body”, Conservatives would be railing non-stop to only allow that instead of allowing/promoting what we currently know as gender transition. It would still be wrong because it would literally be brainwashing.
Schools always did this.
Never expelling the bullies, always expelling the kid that was bullied to their breaking point when they retaliated.
I am convinced that the people who choose to be teachers (and especially principals) also tend to be the kind of people who like and relate to bullies.
In general a lot of them seen to enjoy bullying as a method of “correcting” other people to align with your will. A method some of them seem to feel they are unjustly restrained from utilizing fully.
I graduated in '89. Queer as a $3 bill always was, but you didn’t say that shit in high school back then. Just being gay was dangerous enough, can’t imagine how being trans would have gone over.
If you did try to be who you were, you ended up ostracized at best, dead in a ditch at worst. I chose the lunch tray route, but outside of school…
'89 here as well. If people think gay folk have it bad now, friends and neighbors, I can tell stories.
Gay rights jumped 900% in relatively few years. It’s why the conservatives are shitting themselves. Now they’re told they have to, at least, tolerate the people they used to hate. Can’t stomach it.
In 1999 my boyfriend wouldn’t hold my hand or show any affection outside the house for fear. Gays now don’t even know what the pride rallies are for
I was born in the early 90s and there was an AFAB person who very early on insisted they were actually a boy. I do remember thinking it was weird when I was a kid but the more they presented masculine the more it became “That’s just the way they are” and I accepted it.
They were masculine presenting as early as 4th grade if I remember correctly. They were a beacon of light in high school for other queer people who hadn’t figured themselves out yet. And they were super nice and friendly so everyone liked them.
They waited until our first year of college before asking us to refer them with he/him pronouns. It just made sense. I had a better understanding of gender and its spectrum by this point so it I remember thinking “finally.”
Unfortunately he was in a car accident not too long after, and passed away. The world is sincerely lesser from his passing.
Absolutely true. No one (well, very few, even the obvious ones) was even openly gay before the 2000s
People who weren’t around as at least a teen before 2000s have no clue how silent anyone was on being gay. It just about never was discussed
It was not a safe thing to admit. Being trans would be significantly worse for them I’m sure
The original question is just groomer-accusing trash, probably by someone who indoctrinates children religiously and are scared another group “with an agenda” might get to them first
Yep. Nobody was out in the 90s. None. The one goth kid that wore a tiny bit of eyeliner was a big fucking deal and he was straight (had a big tiddy goth gf).
You’re going too far. There were definitely plenty of kids out in the 90s. Not as many as today, but maybe one or two per school, depending on the school.
Being “out” as in everyone knew it publicly, or just some rumors going on and maybe their closest friends actually being in on it?
In my highschool of 600 people in the 2000s i am not aware if a single person that was officially out. Instead for most of the people you’d suspect it, it later became official.
Heather is, unfortunately, very typical. It didn’t happen in her world so therefore it wasn’t really a “thing”
I’m always surprised at how people can’t seem to imagine a world that isn’t a mirror image of their reality.
I’ve always wanted to tell this kind of story in fiction:
Someone goes 90% of the path down a ‘Joker’ story - they’re mistreated and abandoned by society, unable to live, much less achieve their dreams, basically because of their lot in life. They’ve caused extreme, grievous harm that could genuinely be categorized as self-defense. Then, just as they’re planning some final, very climactic action with some strong weaponry to remove someone that makes them feel unsafe, someone DOES hear them out - and saves them from the path of becoming a full anti-hero, establishing in a large venue of society that every “heinous” action of his was a necessary act for human sanity, and could have been avoided by countless people in their path. Those who wronged him receive due punishment, and the cruelty he’s been exposed to is revealed to society at large.
Granted, that kind of thing does sound like a hero power fantasy; but when 90% of the anime I see these days is trash isekai “I’m overpowered in this alternate world” type of stuff, it feels like a fantasy we want to have these days.
A story where the protagonist is swayed from violence to gain revenge is desperately needed
Media really promotes violence and revenge as proper things to do
The real power fantasy is being able to help people. Because that’s the worst sort of helplessness, seeing bad shit happen and knowing deep in your heart that there’s very little you can do about it.
And America wonders why there’s so many school shootings and suicides.
So Heather thinks that no one talked about it because it simply hadn’t occurred to anyone rather than being afraid?
Or is Heather saying she preferred it when they suffered in silence?
Heather is stupid.
I think Heather is saying that it’s either a fad, or a deliberate corruption spread by Those People. Either way, it’s not real and trans people are either evil or stupid, and Life Was Better before we had this evil and/or stupidity in it.
Not being aware of something existing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You are not the center of the world. Jesus christ.
I used to have a group of kids follow me home throwing rocks at me every day for like a week. No adult did anything about it. So eventually, I picked up a rock and threw it back and hitting one of them in the face.
I was punished by the school, even though this didn’t even happen at school. I was punished by my parents. The bullies were not punished ever, and they never stopped.
To everyone who went to school before the heliocentric model was introduced, do you remember anyone talking about how they thought the Earth may not be the center of the galaxy? No… Me neither.
People didn’t talk about wanting a sex change, but loads of us hated our bodies and wanted to wake up in different ones. Given the option and institutional support and reassurance that transitioning would help us, many of us probably would have been convinced to do so
This is actually one of my primary concerns regarding transgenderism in the modern day. I think it’s a tool in the toolbelt for when it’s necessary. I also think it’s a tool we reach for much more often than is necessary.
The comparable example I like to give is adhd. It isn’t binary. You don’t just have it or don’t have it. Some people have symptoms that need no intervention. Some people have symptoms but are misdiagnosed as adhd. Other people get by with therapy alone. Yet others find medication necessary to be functional.
Giving gender affirming care to all people with gender or body dysphoria is like giving high dose Adderall to all people who have trouble paying attention in history class. It’s the nuclear option, and you’re using it on someone who may not even have adhd, or may not require such a strong intervention.
I know everyone hates this word, but starting with more conservative treatments first is the norm throughout healthcare for exactly this reason. We’ve made an exception for transgender people for political reasons, not scientific ones.
You already have to go through tons of therapy and other conservative treatments before you get a sex change operation. That exists TODAY. Same with abortion.
No one can get it on a whim. Doctors require requisites to make sure it’s right for you, and it should stay up to the doctors’ discretion.
It’s nonsense saying it’s overused as if doctors and the patient don’t know what they’re about to go through.
I’m not the guy you responded to, but I have a similar concern…not with institutional gender affirming care, I don’t know enough about that to comment on it. My concern is with the social aspect, especially with kids. There’s no such thing as a feminine man anymore; now if you’re anything less than hypermasculine there’s pressure to announce yourself as trans. It’s silly, and it’s a fad, and I hope (and assume) our medical/therapy professionals are willing and able to see past it.
What you’ve said doesn’t really seem to me to be true in the slightest. There are many, many role models of feminine men around (F1nnst3r for a very obvious example), and the nuances of gender expression allow this so much more than in the past. We have clear conceptual differences between feminine men, non binary people, and trans women, and people are more than allowed to fit into any category they like (or build their own!).
This isn’t the divide between the Catholic and Protestant church.
Socially, strict gender roles are losing relevance. A well groomed man with long hair is just that. Nobody thinks it means he wants to be a woman unless they harbor the misogynistic opinion that women are defined by long hair.
It’s silly that this reasonable comment is being mass downvoted. Things that permanently change people should be done carefully and with a lot of safety checks. We can all agree on that.
For me all of this gets more important the younger the kid is.
I have no bone in this fight, but people shouting like we have all of this 100% figured out is simply wrong.
In fact what I’m seeing is, conservatives are anti trans, which is 100% wrong, so liberals are going 180 against them and claiming everyone should be transitioning.
I was listening to a discussion where a gay man was saying that when he was young, he might have been pushed to transition because he was effeminate, when really he was just gay and is now a happy gay man.
Anyway, I wish people would just come off the extremes and we bring in nuance and humility. Admitting that there is a lot about the human body and mind that we simply don’t understand yet.
many of us probably would have been convinced to do so
No one is being convinced of anything. People are being enabled to live as their true selves.
I also think it’s a tool we reach for much more often than is necessary.
There is no data to back this up, nor is there any reason to think it’s true. Trans people, even just considering the youngest generation, remain a very small percentage of the general population.
Giving gender affirming care to all people with gender or body dysphoria is like giving high dose Adderall to all people who have trouble paying attention in history class. It’s the nuclear option, and you’re using it on someone who may not even have adhd, or may not require such a strong intervention.
Any medical treatment should not be prescribed without a doctor’s due consideration. Gender affirming care, at any age, is no different. There is not a nuclear option available or used for minors expressing they want gender affirming care.
I know everyone hates this word, but starting with more conservative treatments first is the norm throughout healthcare for exactly this reason. We’ve made an exception for transgender people for political reasons, not scientific ones.
No such exception has been made, certainly not for trans kids.
So, that’s why the comment has some downvotes. And probably should have more. The comment isn’t a differing opinion; it’s factually incorrect.
Mind if I ask where you heard liberals are jumping to that extreme? If you talk to random people on the street, I doubt you’d find more than maybe 1/1000 people expressing that view (and even that many would be surprisingly high).
The right wing generally doesn’t want people to gain new freedoms. Conservatism, fascism, etc. are hierarchical ideologies. They require people to exist in a chain of command, where lower status people are controlled by those with higher status. One of the biggest tricks used to keep people playing this game is fear. Exaggerated or completely false claims are made and spread amongst their base. “The left wants to take all of your guns!” “The left wants you to worship satan!” “The gays want to …” etc.
Generally, all the left wants is for everyone to get to live their life without arbitrary restrictions/judgement. If a news source is claiming that “the left” wants to control how someone lives their life, take it with a huge grain of salt. All too often, the bold claims coming from the right are distorted confessions. And if real people on the left are calling for a restriction, the intent is to apply it to everyone, themselves included, and there is a reasoned argument behind that conviction.
True, I don’t know any trans people directly, but i certainly wonder if getting the transition is good for them. If i can’t see people discuss both points of view because it’s “transphobic”, i’m forced to draw my own conclusions.
Just to be 100% clear, I am gay and have had my fair share of biggotry, so i know what it’s like. But the fact that i need this disclaimer is concerning to me. I believe that overprotective censorship is responsible for a lot problems we have in 2023. People cannot learn if they cannot ask questions without being told they are evil.
That was pretty much my point. I’m 100% for bodily autonomy and freedom, but when it comes to children can we just take a minute to discuss things like adults without being labeled one thing or another.
Graduated near 2000 and yes I remember several and several more who waited until after they graduated to come out about it.
I think most people who “dont remember” are people from groups that it wouldn’t be kosher to come out around. I also image racist people didn’t have a lot of nonwhite friend’s go figure.
