I wish people would make a stronger distinction between trans people and trans activists. Trans people really are marginalized and deserve a great deal more respect and safety than they currently receive. Trans activists like Strangio, by contrast, are self-aggrandizing blowhards and cultural imperialists who believe that they alone should dictate how the rest of the world uses language. Trans people deserve better advocates.
Are they really marginalized, though? At this point I’m having a difficult time coming up with actual examples of the alleged marginalization trans people are facing.
That being said. I think you’re very much correct about there being a distinction between trans people who just want to live their lives and be left the hell alone (Not unlike the vast majority of humans in general) and the rabid activists are probably making things worse for the people for whom they claim to be advocating.
Trans people face a much higher unemployment rate than cisgender people. Gender non-conforming and transgender youths are vastly overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, as well as in the homeless population. Average incomes for trans people are lower than comparable cisgender incomes.
The numbers may get exaggerated by woke twitter ("1 in 12 trans women of color are murdered!!!!") and Twitter trans activists are often intellectually dishonest and hypocritical but the reality is that being transgender does have a detrimental effect on someone's ability to maintain employment and avoid criminalization.
All true, and frankly not that surprising, but I don't think it means that those issues are just because the person is trans and the world wants to punish them for it. Take the youth incarceration/homelessness for example. What did those stats look like 20 years ago? Heck, even 10 years ago? Children who were once just kids with behavioral/mental health issues that put them at risk for run-ins with the law are now kids who are being indoctrinated online into thinking that their mental instability is the result of being born in the wrong body, and are self-identifying into transhood without ever having their underlying mental illness treated.
Same would apply to unemployment in adults. I know it sounds shitty to admit it, but a trans identity is not a normal variation of the human condition, and I mean 'normal' in the statistical sense. It is a mental health issue, and there are likely other mental health issues at play in a person who identifies as trans which also contribute to having difficulty holding down a job, avoiding criminal run-ins, etc.
This does not mean that the world hates trans people, and it does not mean that trans people don't deserve respect and decency. I just think it's ridiculous to have to pretend like it's all fine and normal... again, normal in the statistical sense, not necessarily good or bad. Trying to deny reality is not helping anyone. It is especially not benefitting the people who are most in need of help.
How many trans people do you actually know? It sounds like you don't know many of them, and that the ones you might know are vocal Online types.
I do think a few things can all be true: being trans doesn't necessarily indicate having anxiety, depression, substance abuse issues, personality disorders, etc. that lead to run-ins with the law and unemployment. Being trans is often comorbid with mental health issues, both because being trans exposes some people to discrimination and violence that exacerbates or causes mental health issues, and because being mentally ill may push someone to identify as trans when they otherwise wouldn't. Some people - like you, it sounds like - make the assumption that the trans people they meet are mentally ill; some of those people are people with power, like employers. Both actual mental illness and the presumption that you're going to be symptomatic of mental illness, litigious, "weird" or disturbing to others can lead to compounding issues maintaining both mental health and employment and housing.
My work with the criminal justice system, including the juvenile justice system, also supports my conclusion that the statistics about gender non-conforming youth being disproportionately represented are true. It also supports that basically none of these kids in juvie are Tumblr kids spending all their time socializing on the internet. They're just not online enough for that to be the source of their "indoctrination."
And honestly, the statistics DID look that bad ten years ago. I was working in this field ten years ago! Trans youth were still overrepresented in the homeless youth and juvie population, they just weren't the front pages of the NYT. It sounds like you don't have a lot of personal experience with this topic area.
I clearly don't know as many as you. But if you would look to my original comment on this thread, it was my first point that the majority of trans people just want to live their lives in peace and not all of them are vocal online types. So no- I do not make the assumption that they're all crazy, ligitious, symptomatically mentally ill, or otherwise, but I get your point about employers having those concerns.
And I do agree with your larger point about their overrepresentation in the justice system, homelessness, etc. I just said those statistics are not surprising to me given that trans people are also over represented when it comes to mental illness. So I guess it comes down to what I think of when I think of the term "marginalized", which started this whole discussion. To me, that means other people forcing you into an unfair situation, and my point is that I do not believe that disdain for trans people is motivating society to 'marginalize' them.
I realize there are always exceptions, but I believe there are many internal, personal factors in a person that are much stronger contributors when it comes to a person having ongoing issues with unemployment, homelessness, criminal run-ins, substance abuse, etc.
My apologies, I misread the "there are likely other mental health issues at play in a person who identifies as trans" as you applying that to trans people in general as opposed to just those that are running into financial and legal issues.
I don't believe your conclusion on the other factors being stronger is supported, though, or at least not that those factors are so strong that they negate the existence of discrimination against trans people. Even if they are factors, even if they are the largest predictors of unemployment/homelessness/criminal issues - which isn't proven, just a supposition* - that doesn't mean discrimination against trans people doesn't exist. If you do have resources that support the conclusion that after adjusting for mental health issues, trans and cis people have the same outcomes, I would love to see it, sincerely.
*It goes against the experience of every trans person I know and several advocacy organizations, but like you, I don't trust the advocacy organizations. I do trust my friends and family when they say that they've experienced threats, poor treatment, workplace hostility and harassment due to being trans.
I would tend to also look at the other conditions of the person’s life that factor into unemployment. The argument that trans ppl face x y or z really only isolates one variable and there are more factors holistically that are at play.
Yeah, an odd thing about trans acceptance at the moment is just how insanely polarized it is. It's really true that in spaces dominated by left sensibilities (especially young left sensibilities), trans people are more likely to be celebrated than marginalized. But there are still plenty of other places in which a cold shoulder is just about the best reaction that trans people can expect.
These are all due to the obvious mental illness that most trans have. Mentally ill people do not get jobs, because they are unable to fit in to normal society.
Eh, to answer the question of if Trans people are actually marginalized, think about it this way. I'm a guy, would I feel safe dressing like a women and walking around most places? As in, looking like a non-passing trans women? Maybe in some places, and probably more than 5-10 years ago, but I imagine in most of America and the world this would be a pretty stressful experience.
In reality, the current assistant secretary of health is a non passing trans woman (who previously led a state health dept). A non passing trans woman was named woman of the year by glamour, a major women’s magazine. A teacher in my child’s elementary school is a non passing trans woman.
And I could keep going.
Trans people are everywhere in society in all positions. Their status is socially and legally protected vociferously by an entire political party, almost the entirety of corporate America, celebrated and promoted in media and medical organizations.
Yes. Our societal norms have been established such that a giant swath of our public and institutions have immersed themselves into the fiction that ppl have changed their sex. But material harm has come to women and girls as a result.
My point being that the great majority are men for whom it’s a fetish. The same percent don’t get surgery or hormones- which w self id laws makes the entrance into womens only spaces a danger. I guess w you saying as a guy, would you feel safe set off the safety of women for me.
Trans folks are not marginalized. They are whiners however, and they whine themselves into a position of whining marginalization. Most are pretty poor specimens of person - confused about appearance, social cues, etc. I go way out of my way to avoid them.
For us Michaganders, anyway, there's a kind of fascinating subtext to Tlaib's participation in all of this. She's spent her first two terms in Congress representing Michigan's 13th District, which covers a big chunk of Detroit and some inner-ring suburbs, and was one of the safest Democratic seats in the country (the district was the creation of Michigan Republicans, who were packing as many urban Democrats into one district as possible). But in 2020 Michigan voters amended their constitution to eliminate party involvement in redistricting, and Tlaib's old district got cut in two, with downtown Detroit in one district (still the 13th) and a chunk of the western inner-ring suburbs in another (the new 12th). Tlaib, who's always had relatively soft numbers among Detroiters, has chosen to run this year in the 12th rather than the 13th -- which means she's facing a much more mixed electorate (assuming she wins the primary, this will be her first time running in a general election that she could plausibly lose). Her new district is still pretty blue on economic issues but also has large populations of very religious voters, many of them with pretty conservative social views (a mix of Catholics, Coptic Christians, Muslims and Protestants). She's also got three primary challengers. Not to be entirely cynical, but it seems like LGBTQIA+ justice is one of the planks she's using to distinguish herself in the primary, even though it seems like kind of an odd play given her new district; I guess she might also be looking for national attention to build up an out-of-district donor base to help with the general.
Good to know she might be unseated. It is possible there are worse who are just not as notorious as her, but I find her to be, hands down, the most noxious member of congress- a difficult feat given her company. I truly don’t understand how anyone can support her. She’s so openly hateful.
Catholics, Coptic Christians, Muslims, and "mainline conservative" Protestants tend to be socially moderate-to-conservative and fiscally liberal-to-moderate.
She probably thinks she can win the primary by appealing to the core of her most activism-oriented liberal supporters by making it clear that she stands with them on LGBTQ issues. I think moderate voters are usually less likely to vote in primaries.
Even if she loses her seat, losing the primary might be worse for her political career.
“Current treatment protocols for people with gender dysphoria are likely to lead to suboptimal outcomes for some patients” = “trans people don’t have the right to exist”? BS.
I just looked at your linked tweets. It's so strange to me how these progressives that claim to be so ANTI-BULLYING are the biggest damn bullies. All they do is send their followers at people they don't like. Twitter is such a cesspool.
Also, I too miss when the ACLU was about free speech
I was involved in a sports league w an ACLU lawyer and she was intolerable. Thought police at every turn. No room for considering, much less being ok, with other ppls view points. Woof.
While it is true that many organizations on the left are "pushing for reproductive rights for women", they are simultaneously pushing to deny women the right to free association. They universally support (as do all Democrats in Congress) the Equality Act, which would allow any man to enter any women's space, place, organization, event, or competition at will, and make it illegal under federal law to stop him (and vice versa of course).
I am a 66 year old lifelong Democrat who has worked, over the decades, as a volunteer on multiple Democrat campaigns, and yet I voted straight Republican in the recent California primary, precisely because of this neo-miscogyny of Democrats, which I simply cannot bring myself to support.
I’m a California democrat and have the same concerns. TIM are already in womens prisons. CA solution? Give women inmates condoms. Wtf? I am horrified at self id and the dangers to women and children. I also do not appreciate as a teacher that I have to call a student whatever they want, however many name changes they want and I cannot tell the parents if they don’t want me to. Who are the adults here? It’s so counter to good education.
What is a "trans kid"? A little boy who likes to play with girl toys, wear pink? It is this liberal, nonsensical notion that continues to be repeated as though it is truth. It is a made-up bull sh!t moniker. I am a parent of a child who for 2 years was persistent that she was a "he", but when I swam upstream and fought against every medical professional (that sounds quite like the satanic panic ilk of two decades ago). She went through endogenous puberty unencumbered by experience medicine and grew out of her delusion. (It wasn't quite as simple as that.) The NYT barely scratched the surface of truth, and you reiterate the falsehood that a child can be born in the wrong body. Jesse, you are smarter than that. Want to talk to parents? desisters, detransitioners? DM me.
The NYT had story after story from parents. I was interviewed for hours, supplied Emily with countless documents, gave her contact after contact. But the article spotlighted WPATH without an investigation as to who is WPATH and its high ranking members. A quick review will show the fetish nature of that group. WPATH promotes Eunuchs and lower the age for young girls to slice off their breasts to 15. The ACLU pretends to care about women but cannot define them. The world is upside down, but this lawyer will not be silent. Yes, this lawyer will protect the truly marginalized - the children being told that there is something wrong with them that only a surgeon's knife will fix.
Rashida Tlaib is expressing the standard TRA view. If you don’t buy into every single TRA obsession, you are ‘transphobic’. Since the NYT dared to publish the opinions of folks who are not TRAs, the NYT is (by definition) ‘transphobic’. So are J.K. Rowling and a long list of other folks. According to the identity politics far-left, the world is full of dangerous ‘transphobes’ who must be suppressed.
Reality is transphobic at this point which makes sense since post modernism holds that reality is only in our head and we construct it thru language only. Nothing exists materially.
All of this is more than slightly ironic. It turns out that the inventors of post modernism (Derrida, Foucault) never believed in it. They (Derrida, Foucault) never believed any of it. They were (at times) conventional Marxists who thought (correctly) that post modernism would be a useful tool for tearing down the world around them.
Like the Hegel dialectic? Woof it’s been a minute since I studied these guys in college! I’ve been reading a lot of gender identity analysis so am more familiar wi Judith Butler. I have two history of philosophy books en route so excited to go back and review. Derrida and Foucault didn’t believe that reality was only in perception and that things only exist after we name them? That was later ppl?
Chase Stangio is an extremist and a nutcase. She said that the book Irreversible Damage should not even be allowed in bookstores of libraries because it showed some of the downsides of transitioning such as long term effect of cross sex hormones. Imagine that ACLU that famously supported Nazis right to March in Skokie Ill, home at the time yto many Holocaust survivors now has one of their lawyers advocating banning books. So much for freedom of speech is you even dare to suggest that there may be some issues involving the trans activism that need to be discussed. I used to support the ACLU but as long as they insist that of trans trump everything else or the rights of biological women including refusing to use the word women, suing so men who identify as women whether or not they still have their penis,can share women’s prisons cells and play or swim on Womens sports teams, etc they will not get a penny from me.
As much a piece of work as Rashida Tlaib is, Chase Strangio is more of a piece of work. He is very strange indeed. I don't think he is deranged, I think he is a performative clown. Things have really gone to hell at the ACLU, a skulk is in charge of the henhouse there.
Anthony Romero, Strangio, and their like-minded illiberal colleagues, should be turned out at the ACLU. Can we p-l-e-a-s-e have Ira Glasser back? I know, he's 84, but I can dream.
There are too many nemeses like Chasio afoot in the land at present, who want to totally shut down what they don't like. You can just picture them in their schoolyards back in the day with their fingers in the ears, saying "Nana nana nana, I can't hear you," when confronted when things they did not want to hear.
"I am an advocate, not a politician or journalist."
I think this statement tells you everything you need to know about the post-liberal left (PLL). The PLLs don't care about intellectual curiosity, or fairness, or empiricism; they're promoting the interests of the groups with whom they sympathize, and that's that. Whatever position they have to take, they'll take, and those liberals who refuse to accede will be treated as heretics. In this, PLLS are no different from the religious right.
Another similarity between PLLs and conservatives is the reaction to charges of hypocrisy. These rarely ruffle right-wingers, because they simply don't care about being seen as unfair or inconsistent. Fairness and consistency are not conservative values, and conservatives don't try to embody them.
Liberals, on the other hand, are driven to distraction by accusations of hypocrisy, and we'll spend an eternity either trying to explain why we are actually not being inconsistent, or else working to achieve a consistency that never satisfies our critics. That's probably why we call conservatives hypocrites; we expect them to react as we do. PLLs have moved rightward on this, because they, too, do not care if they are seen as hypocritical. Point out their hypocrisy and they'll probably tell you that consistency and fairness are the hallmarks of white supremacy. They simply do not value what liberals value, even if their goals are mostly the same.
That's my view, anyway. Feel free to criticize, to ensure I have not vanished into my own skull.
Not many people, fall into the category of “genuinely evil people”. Chase Strangio is one of them. He is (in)famous for tweeting “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on”. What book was he tweeting about? That would be “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier. Of course, by one (very demented) standard, Strangio is actually one of the better people. Believe it or not, but a UC Berkeley professor (Grace Lavery) actually proposed to burn the book (safely of course).
I can see how this behavior from Strangio and Tlaib could be viewed as a threat to other outlets who might report on the subject. But is it that scary of a threat? "We're gonna get you a bunch of outrage clicks on your articles, and you can take the chance to respond with a new article, which will in turn get you a shit ton of clicks." In the current economy for journalism, this seems more like a favor than a threat.
I can see what you're saying, and I doubt that the NYT bigwigs are spending much time worrying what Chase Strangio thinks. However, I worry about the continuing corrosive effect this stuff has on leftist discourse. It's already difficult enough to pick your way through the minefield of progressive spaces without Strangio and Tlaib laying down more explosives.
I heard the term "post-liberal leftists" online, and it's maybe the best thing to come out of Twitter. These folks don't value empiricism or intellectual curiosity or fairness; they're simply concocting and enforcing dogma. It makes me both angry and sad.
But the threat isn't aimed at the outlets or their owners, it's aimed at any journalist or writer who may decide to address the Trans issue. They are trying to send a very clear message to us all that if we deviate in any way publicly from their dogma, they will subject us to Twitter mob justice and attempt to harm us in any way they can, personally or professionally or both.
And, in addition, Bazelon and some of the experts she quoted were acutely cognizant of the way what they said could and would unfortunately be misused by right wing politicians. I found that to be one of the many good things about her article. Also I found it interesting that so many of the most-liked reader comments were grateful to her for writing such a balanced piece. Not all, but most. So I hope the NYT doesn’t back off publishing pieces that are from neither extreme.
I don't have a problem with trans surgeries for adults but I worry about children who may be deciding based on childish reasoning. I think children should be taught about LGBTQ according to their age and parents should be involved in any interventions by teachers and such.
The chance of me not being vaxed causing illness in others would be small even if the vax worked. But we are now seeing that the vax does little to nothing or worse, that the vaxes have never been fully approved and never will be, and that the covid vaxes cause grievous injury to about 1% of recipients.
The bottom line is: You cause your own repression if you repress others. All of this BS has reduced my support for LGBTQ and abortions. Once LGBTQ and women were victims: Now they strive to be victimizers. And of course: Nobody even knows who women are anymore, so what does that do to woman's rights?
I was sick (felt like the flu) for one day after the vaccine. I would not call it 'grievous injury'. The actual number of 'grievous injuries' is small (but not zero).
"But we are now seeing that the vax does little to nothing or worse, that the vaxes have never been fully approved and never will be, and that the covid vaxes cause grievous injury to about 1% of recipients."
Source?
It's not nearly as good at preventing transmission as we'd have hoped, which does greatly undercut the argument for a mandate - I continue to support a measles vaccine mandate but don't feel the same way about the covid vaccine but AFAIK your claims are simply wrong. "Does little to nothing <about transmission>" might be true, but the rest?
Both the covid vaccines and covid itself carry myocarditis risk. So while yes, the vaccine does seem to lead to heart problems in a small % of people who take it, that risk is probably at worst a wash given that every covid infection/reinfection carries the same risk.
Hi A.D. Here is the FDA data sheet showing that the vaxes in use only have an emergency use authorization, not a final authorization. (Strangely one vax did receive full authorization but it was never released to the public!!) https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download
There is a ton of info on injuries. I like the dailyskeptic.com since it tries hard to look at studies that go both way and it maintains a scienctific rigor. Its search works well. Here is a sample of injury info: https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/03/vaccine-safety-update-25/ Another interesting fact is that excess non covid deaths went way up (30%) after vaccination started, Insurance companies are freaking out. Search for info on DS.
"up to January 19th, the MHRA reports a total of 3,039 adverse event reports, comprising 2,754 Pfizer, 253 AstraZeneca, 17 Moderna and 15 unspecified from 3,014,300 children vaccinated." - this means adverse events for 0.1% of the population.
"January 21st reports a total of 1,071,856 reports of adverse events following Covid vaccines, including 22,607 deaths and 178,994 serious injuries." On January 21, 2022, 250 million doses of the vaccine had been given out. That's 0.4% for an adverse events, which doesn't indicate severity. VAERS is generally an underreport, but it also is a way to catalogue correlation without causation, and big things like death and hospitalization are more likely to be reported.
"DAEN Australia – the equivalent of the Yellow Card reporting system – has logged (up to January 19th) 104,214 reports of adverse events, including 746 deaths." 21 million doses had been given in Australia at that point, giving us the same 0.4% as the VAERS stuff.
"Military medical whistleblowers have reported a 300% increase in Defense Medical Epidemiology Database codes registered for miscarriages in the military in 2021 over the five-year average,". This link looked interesting! I followed it and found nothing but this: "Editor's Note: After publication of this opinion piece, the Department of Defense reported the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database underreported the number of medical conditions between 2016 and 2020. The opinion piece below was written before information for years 2016 through 2020 was amended in the database. In the interest of accuracy, we have removed the rest of the post."
"42,748 adverse events have been reported across all vaccines up to January 19th from 36,668,441 people vaccinated, suggesting a reporting rate of one adverse event per 858 doses." That's 0.1%.
Literally nothing you've linked supports a 1% "grievous injury" rate.
The FDA has been changing its tune every other week. There is no reason to trust what they say.
They keep on extending vax usage even when their own scientists say not to. It is solely political.
I included them to show that the vax was under EUA. Daily Skeptics has reams of injury data. Yes, reading and thought is required. Only lies come wrapped in a ribbon.
There are multiple vaccines. Moderna is under EUA. Pfizer is fully authorized for adults. You have been stating straight up incorrect facts and now you're moving the goalposts by starting the argument with "the FDA said X" and responding to my "actually the FDA said Y" with "well you can't trust the FDA anyway!"
I did read your Daily Sceptics article, I did crunch numbers, and the numbers don't add up to your conclusion that 1% of people who get vaccinated have grievous injuries.
I attached an FDA fact sheet date June 2022 that said they were under EUA. I am not responsible for them contradicting themselves. As I noted a vax that is not the one we use was approved. That might have something to do with it.
Here's Fauci with his latest version of the truth: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fauci-admits-vaccines-dont-protect-overly-well-against-covid-infection. The vaccine injury calculation requires reading through the site. I wish they had a consolidated explainer but I guess they don't feel like keeping it updated. I am sure that what you doubt today will be in the NY Times in a year, like so many other supposed conspiracy theories.
In any case, I was a little hot under the collar today. Actually I spend most of my time on conservatives sites saying the same thing: If you want freedom, you have to give freedom. Any freedom that is just for you and your side will not persist.
What other link? I looked at all three that you linked: the emergency use authorization fact sheet for Moderna, the general homepage of Daily Sceptic, and the vaccine injury roundup page that doesn't support your conclusion.
Abortion never kills babies. Fetuses are not people. They don't count in the census, you can't get a child tax credit for one, they don't get funerals or tombstones when they're miscarried, you celebrate your birthday not your conception day.
Those are strangely weak reasons, having nothing to do with fetuses per say, just incidental ways they are treated, which don't apply in all societies. I guess you think that oppressed people that aren't given the rights of humans are not human either. Nazis treated Jews as subhuman, so they were?
Fetuses are souls, number one. They are little humans that become big humans. How could something that isn't human turn human? When does this magic happen? Once they are a 5 or 6 weeks old they have a heartbeat. They are sucking and swallowing at 16 weeks. The brain starts to develop at 6 weeks. And most of all to me, the fetus is the innocent little being who thinks they are in a wonderful, safe place inside their mother. It takes a psychopath to disregard that and betray them lighty. Do you kill kittens and puppies too, excusing yourself because some cultures eat them as food?
Having said that: I am not king of the universe. I would normally not push my views on this, except for the fact that the same people who claim bodily autonomy don't give the same consideration with the vax. If the 100% probability of killing a fetus is ok, then the unlikely chance that me not taking a pretty useless medicine might lead to somebody possibly catching something they might not even know they have is REALLY OK..
And I say lightly, Sometimes the mother's heath is at risk and that is different. Sometimes people act to abort very early, as fast as they can, and I can understand that. Sometimes there are overriding issues. Certainly we should support mothers in hard situations. Society has a responsibility here too.
I wish people would make a stronger distinction between trans people and trans activists. Trans people really are marginalized and deserve a great deal more respect and safety than they currently receive. Trans activists like Strangio, by contrast, are self-aggrandizing blowhards and cultural imperialists who believe that they alone should dictate how the rest of the world uses language. Trans people deserve better advocates.
Are they really marginalized, though? At this point I’m having a difficult time coming up with actual examples of the alleged marginalization trans people are facing.
That being said. I think you’re very much correct about there being a distinction between trans people who just want to live their lives and be left the hell alone (Not unlike the vast majority of humans in general) and the rabid activists are probably making things worse for the people for whom they claim to be advocating.
Trans people face a much higher unemployment rate than cisgender people. Gender non-conforming and transgender youths are vastly overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, as well as in the homeless population. Average incomes for trans people are lower than comparable cisgender incomes.
The numbers may get exaggerated by woke twitter ("1 in 12 trans women of color are murdered!!!!") and Twitter trans activists are often intellectually dishonest and hypocritical but the reality is that being transgender does have a detrimental effect on someone's ability to maintain employment and avoid criminalization.
All true, and frankly not that surprising, but I don't think it means that those issues are just because the person is trans and the world wants to punish them for it. Take the youth incarceration/homelessness for example. What did those stats look like 20 years ago? Heck, even 10 years ago? Children who were once just kids with behavioral/mental health issues that put them at risk for run-ins with the law are now kids who are being indoctrinated online into thinking that their mental instability is the result of being born in the wrong body, and are self-identifying into transhood without ever having their underlying mental illness treated.
Same would apply to unemployment in adults. I know it sounds shitty to admit it, but a trans identity is not a normal variation of the human condition, and I mean 'normal' in the statistical sense. It is a mental health issue, and there are likely other mental health issues at play in a person who identifies as trans which also contribute to having difficulty holding down a job, avoiding criminal run-ins, etc.
This does not mean that the world hates trans people, and it does not mean that trans people don't deserve respect and decency. I just think it's ridiculous to have to pretend like it's all fine and normal... again, normal in the statistical sense, not necessarily good or bad. Trying to deny reality is not helping anyone. It is especially not benefitting the people who are most in need of help.
How many trans people do you actually know? It sounds like you don't know many of them, and that the ones you might know are vocal Online types.
I do think a few things can all be true: being trans doesn't necessarily indicate having anxiety, depression, substance abuse issues, personality disorders, etc. that lead to run-ins with the law and unemployment. Being trans is often comorbid with mental health issues, both because being trans exposes some people to discrimination and violence that exacerbates or causes mental health issues, and because being mentally ill may push someone to identify as trans when they otherwise wouldn't. Some people - like you, it sounds like - make the assumption that the trans people they meet are mentally ill; some of those people are people with power, like employers. Both actual mental illness and the presumption that you're going to be symptomatic of mental illness, litigious, "weird" or disturbing to others can lead to compounding issues maintaining both mental health and employment and housing.
My work with the criminal justice system, including the juvenile justice system, also supports my conclusion that the statistics about gender non-conforming youth being disproportionately represented are true. It also supports that basically none of these kids in juvie are Tumblr kids spending all their time socializing on the internet. They're just not online enough for that to be the source of their "indoctrination."
And honestly, the statistics DID look that bad ten years ago. I was working in this field ten years ago! Trans youth were still overrepresented in the homeless youth and juvie population, they just weren't the front pages of the NYT. It sounds like you don't have a lot of personal experience with this topic area.
I clearly don't know as many as you. But if you would look to my original comment on this thread, it was my first point that the majority of trans people just want to live their lives in peace and not all of them are vocal online types. So no- I do not make the assumption that they're all crazy, ligitious, symptomatically mentally ill, or otherwise, but I get your point about employers having those concerns.
And I do agree with your larger point about their overrepresentation in the justice system, homelessness, etc. I just said those statistics are not surprising to me given that trans people are also over represented when it comes to mental illness. So I guess it comes down to what I think of when I think of the term "marginalized", which started this whole discussion. To me, that means other people forcing you into an unfair situation, and my point is that I do not believe that disdain for trans people is motivating society to 'marginalize' them.
I realize there are always exceptions, but I believe there are many internal, personal factors in a person that are much stronger contributors when it comes to a person having ongoing issues with unemployment, homelessness, criminal run-ins, substance abuse, etc.
My apologies, I misread the "there are likely other mental health issues at play in a person who identifies as trans" as you applying that to trans people in general as opposed to just those that are running into financial and legal issues.
I don't believe your conclusion on the other factors being stronger is supported, though, or at least not that those factors are so strong that they negate the existence of discrimination against trans people. Even if they are factors, even if they are the largest predictors of unemployment/homelessness/criminal issues - which isn't proven, just a supposition* - that doesn't mean discrimination against trans people doesn't exist. If you do have resources that support the conclusion that after adjusting for mental health issues, trans and cis people have the same outcomes, I would love to see it, sincerely.
*It goes against the experience of every trans person I know and several advocacy organizations, but like you, I don't trust the advocacy organizations. I do trust my friends and family when they say that they've experienced threats, poor treatment, workplace hostility and harassment due to being trans.
I would tend to also look at the other conditions of the person’s life that factor into unemployment. The argument that trans ppl face x y or z really only isolates one variable and there are more factors holistically that are at play.
Yeah, an odd thing about trans acceptance at the moment is just how insanely polarized it is. It's really true that in spaces dominated by left sensibilities (especially young left sensibilities), trans people are more likely to be celebrated than marginalized. But there are still plenty of other places in which a cold shoulder is just about the best reaction that trans people can expect.
These are all due to the obvious mental illness that most trans have. Mentally ill people do not get jobs, because they are unable to fit in to normal society.
Eh, to answer the question of if Trans people are actually marginalized, think about it this way. I'm a guy, would I feel safe dressing like a women and walking around most places? As in, looking like a non-passing trans women? Maybe in some places, and probably more than 5-10 years ago, but I imagine in most of America and the world this would be a pretty stressful experience.
But consider 90% of trans id males are AGN.
Source?
who cares? The actual trans people who live their lives trans and are clearly identifiable are the ones that are marginalized by it.
You are completely imagining this.
In reality, the current assistant secretary of health is a non passing trans woman (who previously led a state health dept). A non passing trans woman was named woman of the year by glamour, a major women’s magazine. A teacher in my child’s elementary school is a non passing trans woman.
And I could keep going.
Trans people are everywhere in society in all positions. Their status is socially and legally protected vociferously by an entire political party, almost the entirety of corporate America, celebrated and promoted in media and medical organizations.
Yes. Our societal norms have been established such that a giant swath of our public and institutions have immersed themselves into the fiction that ppl have changed their sex. But material harm has come to women and girls as a result.
My point being that the great majority are men for whom it’s a fetish. The same percent don’t get surgery or hormones- which w self id laws makes the entrance into womens only spaces a danger. I guess w you saying as a guy, would you feel safe set off the safety of women for me.
Trans folks are not marginalized. They are whiners however, and they whine themselves into a position of whining marginalization. Most are pretty poor specimens of person - confused about appearance, social cues, etc. I go way out of my way to avoid them.
For us Michaganders, anyway, there's a kind of fascinating subtext to Tlaib's participation in all of this. She's spent her first two terms in Congress representing Michigan's 13th District, which covers a big chunk of Detroit and some inner-ring suburbs, and was one of the safest Democratic seats in the country (the district was the creation of Michigan Republicans, who were packing as many urban Democrats into one district as possible). But in 2020 Michigan voters amended their constitution to eliminate party involvement in redistricting, and Tlaib's old district got cut in two, with downtown Detroit in one district (still the 13th) and a chunk of the western inner-ring suburbs in another (the new 12th). Tlaib, who's always had relatively soft numbers among Detroiters, has chosen to run this year in the 12th rather than the 13th -- which means she's facing a much more mixed electorate (assuming she wins the primary, this will be her first time running in a general election that she could plausibly lose). Her new district is still pretty blue on economic issues but also has large populations of very religious voters, many of them with pretty conservative social views (a mix of Catholics, Coptic Christians, Muslims and Protestants). She's also got three primary challengers. Not to be entirely cynical, but it seems like LGBTQIA+ justice is one of the planks she's using to distinguish herself in the primary, even though it seems like kind of an odd play given her new district; I guess she might also be looking for national attention to build up an out-of-district donor base to help with the general.
Good to know she might be unseated. It is possible there are worse who are just not as notorious as her, but I find her to be, hands down, the most noxious member of congress- a difficult feat given her company. I truly don’t understand how anyone can support her. She’s so openly hateful.
Catholics, Coptic Christians, Muslims, and "mainline conservative" Protestants tend to be socially moderate-to-conservative and fiscally liberal-to-moderate.
She probably thinks she can win the primary by appealing to the core of her most activism-oriented liberal supporters by making it clear that she stands with them on LGBTQ issues. I think moderate voters are usually less likely to vote in primaries.
Even if she loses her seat, losing the primary might be worse for her political career.
“Current treatment protocols for people with gender dysphoria are likely to lead to suboptimal outcomes for some patients” = “trans people don’t have the right to exist”? BS.
Your use of the words dysphoria and suboptimal in the same sentence is literal violence.
I just looked at your linked tweets. It's so strange to me how these progressives that claim to be so ANTI-BULLYING are the biggest damn bullies. All they do is send their followers at people they don't like. Twitter is such a cesspool.
Also, I too miss when the ACLU was about free speech
I was involved in a sports league w an ACLU lawyer and she was intolerable. Thought police at every turn. No room for considering, much less being ok, with other ppls view points. Woof.
That's a bummer. It's a shame that they've drifted so far from their original mission.
I have my doubts that Abbott gives a single flying fuck about anything the NYT has to say.
While it is true that many organizations on the left are "pushing for reproductive rights for women", they are simultaneously pushing to deny women the right to free association. They universally support (as do all Democrats in Congress) the Equality Act, which would allow any man to enter any women's space, place, organization, event, or competition at will, and make it illegal under federal law to stop him (and vice versa of course).
I am a 66 year old lifelong Democrat who has worked, over the decades, as a volunteer on multiple Democrat campaigns, and yet I voted straight Republican in the recent California primary, precisely because of this neo-miscogyny of Democrats, which I simply cannot bring myself to support.
I’m a California democrat and have the same concerns. TIM are already in womens prisons. CA solution? Give women inmates condoms. Wtf? I am horrified at self id and the dangers to women and children. I also do not appreciate as a teacher that I have to call a student whatever they want, however many name changes they want and I cannot tell the parents if they don’t want me to. Who are the adults here? It’s so counter to good education.
The Women's Liberation Front is fighting back on the California prison issue:
https://www.womensliberationfront.org/chandler-v-cdcr
Awesome news!
What is a "trans kid"? A little boy who likes to play with girl toys, wear pink? It is this liberal, nonsensical notion that continues to be repeated as though it is truth. It is a made-up bull sh!t moniker. I am a parent of a child who for 2 years was persistent that she was a "he", but when I swam upstream and fought against every medical professional (that sounds quite like the satanic panic ilk of two decades ago). She went through endogenous puberty unencumbered by experience medicine and grew out of her delusion. (It wasn't quite as simple as that.) The NYT barely scratched the surface of truth, and you reiterate the falsehood that a child can be born in the wrong body. Jesse, you are smarter than that. Want to talk to parents? desisters, detransitioners? DM me.
The NYT had story after story from parents. I was interviewed for hours, supplied Emily with countless documents, gave her contact after contact. But the article spotlighted WPATH without an investigation as to who is WPATH and its high ranking members. A quick review will show the fetish nature of that group. WPATH promotes Eunuchs and lower the age for young girls to slice off their breasts to 15. The ACLU pretends to care about women but cannot define them. The world is upside down, but this lawyer will not be silent. Yes, this lawyer will protect the truly marginalized - the children being told that there is something wrong with them that only a surgeon's knife will fix.
Chase Strangio is dangerous and insane.
Rashida Tlaib is expressing the standard TRA view. If you don’t buy into every single TRA obsession, you are ‘transphobic’. Since the NYT dared to publish the opinions of folks who are not TRAs, the NYT is (by definition) ‘transphobic’. So are J.K. Rowling and a long list of other folks. According to the identity politics far-left, the world is full of dangerous ‘transphobes’ who must be suppressed.
Reality is transphobic at this point which makes sense since post modernism holds that reality is only in our head and we construct it thru language only. Nothing exists materially.
All of this is more than slightly ironic. It turns out that the inventors of post modernism (Derrida, Foucault) never believed in it. They (Derrida, Foucault) never believed any of it. They were (at times) conventional Marxists who thought (correctly) that post modernism would be a useful tool for tearing down the world around them.
Like the Hegel dialectic? Woof it’s been a minute since I studied these guys in college! I’ve been reading a lot of gender identity analysis so am more familiar wi Judith Butler. I have two history of philosophy books en route so excited to go back and review. Derrida and Foucault didn’t believe that reality was only in perception and that things only exist after we name them? That was later ppl?
And it is the "trans" activists who want to obliterate women's right to free association.
The backlash is of the transmaximalists making, and they should acknowledge that it's their fault instead of being sullen protestors.
That would require some self-awareness....
Chase Stangio is an extremist and a nutcase. She said that the book Irreversible Damage should not even be allowed in bookstores of libraries because it showed some of the downsides of transitioning such as long term effect of cross sex hormones. Imagine that ACLU that famously supported Nazis right to March in Skokie Ill, home at the time yto many Holocaust survivors now has one of their lawyers advocating banning books. So much for freedom of speech is you even dare to suggest that there may be some issues involving the trans activism that need to be discussed. I used to support the ACLU but as long as they insist that of trans trump everything else or the rights of biological women including refusing to use the word women, suing so men who identify as women whether or not they still have their penis,can share women’s prisons cells and play or swim on Womens sports teams, etc they will not get a penny from me.
As much a piece of work as Rashida Tlaib is, Chase Strangio is more of a piece of work. He is very strange indeed. I don't think he is deranged, I think he is a performative clown. Things have really gone to hell at the ACLU, a skulk is in charge of the henhouse there.
Anthony Romero, Strangio, and their like-minded illiberal colleagues, should be turned out at the ACLU. Can we p-l-e-a-s-e have Ira Glasser back? I know, he's 84, but I can dream.
There are too many nemeses like Chasio afoot in the land at present, who want to totally shut down what they don't like. You can just picture them in their schoolyards back in the day with their fingers in the ears, saying "Nana nana nana, I can't hear you," when confronted when things they did not want to hear.
God, we live in a juvenile country.
Strangio is not a "he". Strangio is a female wearing the appearance of a male.
"I am an advocate, not a politician or journalist."
I think this statement tells you everything you need to know about the post-liberal left (PLL). The PLLs don't care about intellectual curiosity, or fairness, or empiricism; they're promoting the interests of the groups with whom they sympathize, and that's that. Whatever position they have to take, they'll take, and those liberals who refuse to accede will be treated as heretics. In this, PLLS are no different from the religious right.
Another similarity between PLLs and conservatives is the reaction to charges of hypocrisy. These rarely ruffle right-wingers, because they simply don't care about being seen as unfair or inconsistent. Fairness and consistency are not conservative values, and conservatives don't try to embody them.
Liberals, on the other hand, are driven to distraction by accusations of hypocrisy, and we'll spend an eternity either trying to explain why we are actually not being inconsistent, or else working to achieve a consistency that never satisfies our critics. That's probably why we call conservatives hypocrites; we expect them to react as we do. PLLs have moved rightward on this, because they, too, do not care if they are seen as hypocritical. Point out their hypocrisy and they'll probably tell you that consistency and fairness are the hallmarks of white supremacy. They simply do not value what liberals value, even if their goals are mostly the same.
That's my view, anyway. Feel free to criticize, to ensure I have not vanished into my own skull.
Extremists gonna extreme, no matter the value set. Readily apparent these days.
Not many people, fall into the category of “genuinely evil people”. Chase Strangio is one of them. He is (in)famous for tweeting “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on”. What book was he tweeting about? That would be “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier. Of course, by one (very demented) standard, Strangio is actually one of the better people. Believe it or not, but a UC Berkeley professor (Grace Lavery) actually proposed to burn the book (safely of course).
"he" - hehehe. Strangio is not a he.
Correct. Strangio is a she.
I muted strangino. The tweets seemed too hyperbolic.
I can see how this behavior from Strangio and Tlaib could be viewed as a threat to other outlets who might report on the subject. But is it that scary of a threat? "We're gonna get you a bunch of outrage clicks on your articles, and you can take the chance to respond with a new article, which will in turn get you a shit ton of clicks." In the current economy for journalism, this seems more like a favor than a threat.
I can see what you're saying, and I doubt that the NYT bigwigs are spending much time worrying what Chase Strangio thinks. However, I worry about the continuing corrosive effect this stuff has on leftist discourse. It's already difficult enough to pick your way through the minefield of progressive spaces without Strangio and Tlaib laying down more explosives.
I heard the term "post-liberal leftists" online, and it's maybe the best thing to come out of Twitter. These folks don't value empiricism or intellectual curiosity or fairness; they're simply concocting and enforcing dogma. It makes me both angry and sad.
I somewhat prefer "illiberal" to "post-liberal", but I think we're on the same page.
But the threat isn't aimed at the outlets or their owners, it's aimed at any journalist or writer who may decide to address the Trans issue. They are trying to send a very clear message to us all that if we deviate in any way publicly from their dogma, they will subject us to Twitter mob justice and attempt to harm us in any way they can, personally or professionally or both.
And, in addition, Bazelon and some of the experts she quoted were acutely cognizant of the way what they said could and would unfortunately be misused by right wing politicians. I found that to be one of the many good things about her article. Also I found it interesting that so many of the most-liked reader comments were grateful to her for writing such a balanced piece. Not all, but most. So I hope the NYT doesn’t back off publishing pieces that are from neither extreme.
Abortion kills babies. 100%. Every time.
I don't have a problem with trans surgeries for adults but I worry about children who may be deciding based on childish reasoning. I think children should be taught about LGBTQ according to their age and parents should be involved in any interventions by teachers and such.
The chance of me not being vaxed causing illness in others would be small even if the vax worked. But we are now seeing that the vax does little to nothing or worse, that the vaxes have never been fully approved and never will be, and that the covid vaxes cause grievous injury to about 1% of recipients.
The bottom line is: You cause your own repression if you repress others. All of this BS has reduced my support for LGBTQ and abortions. Once LGBTQ and women were victims: Now they strive to be victimizers. And of course: Nobody even knows who women are anymore, so what does that do to woman's rights?
2.5 million people have "grievous injury" from the vaccine? That's almost as hard to swallow as 40% of covid sufferers having long covid.
I was sick (felt like the flu) for one day after the vaccine. I would not call it 'grievous injury'. The actual number of 'grievous injuries' is small (but not zero).
I was sick as a dog after my booster for 48 hours, but yeah. Hardly "grievous injury."
I had a sore arm after the first of my three doses, does that count?
"But we are now seeing that the vax does little to nothing or worse, that the vaxes have never been fully approved and never will be, and that the covid vaxes cause grievous injury to about 1% of recipients."
Source?
It's not nearly as good at preventing transmission as we'd have hoped, which does greatly undercut the argument for a mandate - I continue to support a measles vaccine mandate but don't feel the same way about the covid vaccine but AFAIK your claims are simply wrong. "Does little to nothing <about transmission>" might be true, but the rest?
Both the covid vaccines and covid itself carry myocarditis risk. So while yes, the vaccine does seem to lead to heart problems in a small % of people who take it, that risk is probably at worst a wash given that every covid infection/reinfection carries the same risk.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html
https://www.beaumont.org/health-wellness/blogs/myocarditis-risk-associated-with-covid-19-infection
Hi A.D. Here is the FDA data sheet showing that the vaxes in use only have an emergency use authorization, not a final authorization. (Strangely one vax did receive full authorization but it was never released to the public!!) https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download
There is a ton of info on injuries. I like the dailyskeptic.com since it tries hard to look at studies that go both way and it maintains a scienctific rigor. Its search works well. Here is a sample of injury info: https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/03/vaccine-safety-update-25/ Another interesting fact is that excess non covid deaths went way up (30%) after vaccination started, Insurance companies are freaking out. Search for info on DS.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine Full use authorization of the Pfizer vax.
Let's look at your numbers:
"up to January 19th, the MHRA reports a total of 3,039 adverse event reports, comprising 2,754 Pfizer, 253 AstraZeneca, 17 Moderna and 15 unspecified from 3,014,300 children vaccinated." - this means adverse events for 0.1% of the population.
"January 21st reports a total of 1,071,856 reports of adverse events following Covid vaccines, including 22,607 deaths and 178,994 serious injuries." On January 21, 2022, 250 million doses of the vaccine had been given out. That's 0.4% for an adverse events, which doesn't indicate severity. VAERS is generally an underreport, but it also is a way to catalogue correlation without causation, and big things like death and hospitalization are more likely to be reported.
"DAEN Australia – the equivalent of the Yellow Card reporting system – has logged (up to January 19th) 104,214 reports of adverse events, including 746 deaths." 21 million doses had been given in Australia at that point, giving us the same 0.4% as the VAERS stuff.
"Military medical whistleblowers have reported a 300% increase in Defense Medical Epidemiology Database codes registered for miscarriages in the military in 2021 over the five-year average,". This link looked interesting! I followed it and found nothing but this: "Editor's Note: After publication of this opinion piece, the Department of Defense reported the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database underreported the number of medical conditions between 2016 and 2020. The opinion piece below was written before information for years 2016 through 2020 was amended in the database. In the interest of accuracy, we have removed the rest of the post."
"42,748 adverse events have been reported across all vaccines up to January 19th from 36,668,441 people vaccinated, suggesting a reporting rate of one adverse event per 858 doses." That's 0.1%.
Literally nothing you've linked supports a 1% "grievous injury" rate.
The FDA has been changing its tune every other week. There is no reason to trust what they say.
They keep on extending vax usage even when their own scientists say not to. It is solely political.
I included them to show that the vax was under EUA. Daily Skeptics has reams of injury data. Yes, reading and thought is required. Only lies come wrapped in a ribbon.
There are multiple vaccines. Moderna is under EUA. Pfizer is fully authorized for adults. You have been stating straight up incorrect facts and now you're moving the goalposts by starting the argument with "the FDA said X" and responding to my "actually the FDA said Y" with "well you can't trust the FDA anyway!"
I did read your Daily Sceptics article, I did crunch numbers, and the numbers don't add up to your conclusion that 1% of people who get vaccinated have grievous injuries.
Minor correction: Moderna is also now under full approval (although it was after Pfizer)
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-takes-key-action-approving-second-covid-19-vaccine
(Edit: Forgot to say: But thanks for looking these all up!)
I attached an FDA fact sheet date June 2022 that said they were under EUA. I am not responsible for them contradicting themselves. As I noted a vax that is not the one we use was approved. That might have something to do with it.
Here's Fauci with his latest version of the truth: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fauci-admits-vaccines-dont-protect-overly-well-against-covid-infection. The vaccine injury calculation requires reading through the site. I wish they had a consolidated explainer but I guess they don't feel like keeping it updated. I am sure that what you doubt today will be in the NY Times in a year, like so many other supposed conspiracy theories.
In any case, I was a little hot under the collar today. Actually I spend most of my time on conservatives sites saying the same thing: If you want freedom, you have to give freedom. Any freedom that is just for you and your side will not persist.
It's the other link.
What other link? I looked at all three that you linked: the emergency use authorization fact sheet for Moderna, the general homepage of Daily Sceptic, and the vaccine injury roundup page that doesn't support your conclusion.
Abortion never kills babies. Fetuses are not people. They don't count in the census, you can't get a child tax credit for one, they don't get funerals or tombstones when they're miscarried, you celebrate your birthday not your conception day.
Those are strangely weak reasons, having nothing to do with fetuses per say, just incidental ways they are treated, which don't apply in all societies. I guess you think that oppressed people that aren't given the rights of humans are not human either. Nazis treated Jews as subhuman, so they were?
Fetuses are souls, number one. They are little humans that become big humans. How could something that isn't human turn human? When does this magic happen? Once they are a 5 or 6 weeks old they have a heartbeat. They are sucking and swallowing at 16 weeks. The brain starts to develop at 6 weeks. And most of all to me, the fetus is the innocent little being who thinks they are in a wonderful, safe place inside their mother. It takes a psychopath to disregard that and betray them lighty. Do you kill kittens and puppies too, excusing yourself because some cultures eat them as food?
Having said that: I am not king of the universe. I would normally not push my views on this, except for the fact that the same people who claim bodily autonomy don't give the same consideration with the vax. If the 100% probability of killing a fetus is ok, then the unlikely chance that me not taking a pretty useless medicine might lead to somebody possibly catching something they might not even know they have is REALLY OK..
And I say lightly, Sometimes the mother's heath is at risk and that is different. Sometimes people act to abort very early, as fast as they can, and I can understand that. Sometimes there are overriding issues. Certainly we should support mothers in hard situations. Society has a responsibility here too.