Hodad

Close. It really seems to be that transgender people shouldn't be allowed.

Can you imagine being such a deeply insecure loser that a company adding one trans influencer (out of dozens if not hundreds) to their roster, that it would deeply affect your brand affinity? Most people's identities and affections just aren't that fragile. Nah, this is just loud noise from the culture warriors. And if the conservative America is really this fragile I'm going to start a fund to have Mulvaney endorse AR-15s.

Personally, I think this whole story is silly. A case of post hoc ergo propter hoc. To believe it deliberate is to imagine, implausibly, that people care enough about a sponsored social media post from a little-known trans influencer is enough to get people to change their beer of choice or their investment strategy in a blue chip company. Are bud light drinkers so transphobic that this sponsorship will induce then to switch beers? Not at scale. Are InBev investors so transphobic that they will dump stock over a post - or do they believe Bud Light drinkers are so transphobic that they will switch brands over this? Not at scale. No this is just a stock blip that is being politicized by the transphobic culture warriors.

Once again, the GOP is making David Frum into a bona fide futurist. "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy," -- David Frum

Is it weird? No, not actually. News sources cover news. Actual information. Not conspiracy and innuendo. Luckily you've got a network that will insinuate and "just ask questions" that you find very super compelling. But to be fair, everyone that I've ever played golf with has told me the intricacies of their business dealings. That's definitely what we talk about. ? My absolute favorite part about all of this is that your vivid imagination is entirely partisan. The documented fact of Trump's campaign chair sharing proprietary polling (targeting) information with Russian intelligence operatives involved in election interference scheme is no big deal, not evidence of anything. But, Joe Biden playing a round of golf with his son and an associate means he's corrupt for sure and lying about everything!!!111!! -- You're such a joke.

^^ This just isn't grounded in any sort of reality. 1. It's not even clear what this sentence means, but I have never seen any trans activist trying to abolish men or women as a gender. Overwhelmingly they want to BE part of one gender or another. 2. "Feminizing men" deserves a huge. ? And inclusive language is precise specifically to make room for everyone. I don't particularly understand "chestfeeding" as necessary in that "breast" is not gendered term in the first place, but "menstruating person" makes plenty of sense in that there are people who menstruate who identify as men. So why not use language that includes those people? Is there any harm in it? Is it harder to say "menstruating person" than "menstruating woman"? Is that burning extra calories? Costing extra dollars? No. So what's the damn problem? The only consequence is that people in that category can be addressed and included as well. Great. 3. Yes, all this nonsense about the pain of social exclusion and the abuses they suffere and the heartwrenching desire to be accepted and tolerated in society is a clever ruse. Their real mission is to confuse you about what gender is (it's about you, of course, not them). It's all about the lolz. They're just trolling you. Some would say that gender reassignment surgery is too far to go for the sake of a practical joke, but these are some committed mischief makers. Epic farking prank.

Verbs are words. You're welcome!

Really? "He woke up?" ?

Their "agenda" of being treated with respect and dignity. As long as they don't want that, you'll let them be. What a mensch.

I told you from jump that LGBTQ people are at the most at risk of any group -- race, religion, class, creed whatever. That's pretty obvious. I don't think it should be treated as a controversial statement, but here: "The figures show that LGBT people are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews (8.3 divided by 3.5). In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures."

What they really need is a list of people who feel for something so obvious. Those folks shouldn't be voting or making any kinds of decisions.?

I can't be more clear about this. You are still trying to compare the count of ALL racially motivated hate crimes (when every person has a race) against the count of hate crimes against trans people, a diminutive population. It's just not useful or honest. It's like trying to convince people that skydiving is safer than sleeping because a lot more people die in their sleep every year.

You've made this "mistake" of reasoning before, so it's starting to feel less like a mistake and more like disinformation. You did the same thing with regard to hate crimes in this thread. Comparing the number of incidents within a large population vs incidents within a small population is useless, at best. To compare the groups honestly you must use rates.

Ah, yes. Naked links. The refuge of those who have made up nonsense and then wish to *pretend* to validate it. The third naked link is the only one that nearly supports one of your claims, and of course the individual who exposed themselves in the spa room was arrested and charged with 5 felonies, exactly as any man who could walk into a locker room and expose themselves. So what's the issue? Look, it's just a culture war talking point. It's pure fantasy to think that men are just jumping into the trans lifestyle to score a few easy dubs in non-commercial sports or peep random women in locker rooms. It's like voter fraud: a made up crisis that's just not happening at any scale. It's HARD to live as a trans person. The cost-benefit analysis just isn't there.

The portion of the population actually committing hate crimes isn't really the issue. The actual crimes committed are a good barometer for how tolerant or intolerant society is of any given trait or behavior. Only a small subset of people are going to act violently on their biases. And are you really trying to nominally compare hate crimes against ALL races (every human has a "race") against hate crimes against the very small LGBTQ population? Suffice it to say that they are more likely to be victimized than any given race or religious affiliation. Nobody is organizing nationwide boycotts of Target stores for Jewish bathrooms. It just seems silly and shallow to complain about trans activists applying social pressure when the social pressure against trans rights is larger, better organized and got started hundreds of years earlier. Like, is it really "bullying" when a struggling minority group applies social pressure to try to stake out some expectation of decent treatment. Are you gonna tell me how Rosa Parks and the bus boycott were bullying the city of Montgomery? Was that "cancel culture" in action? Were the people protesting Strom Thurmond's speeches the bullies practicing cancel culture, or were the bullies those picking on a numerically powerless minority?

You cannot possibly have thought this through. LGBTQ people are more likely than any other group to be targeted by hate crimes, usually VASTLY more likely. The phrase "gay bashing" exists for a reason. Nobody dragged Matthew Shepard behind a truck because he had brown hair. Come on.

You've really jumped the shark on this one. The tone of your post implies that social pressure is something newly weaponized by trans activists. It's not new, not expected--hell, not even dominated by the left. Think about the the threats--the ever present threats--and the actual violence against the queer community (not to mention the extreme social pressure) that has forced closeting and repression in most societies. Anti-trans activists organize large scale, formalized boycotts of individuals and businesses who support trans rights (see Target). If anything, trans activists and allies have taken a small-scale play from the opposition playbook in gathering enough momentum to apply social pressure.

I'm mostly fine with this, though there may be a more nuanced position regarding puberty something something. Perfectly happy to let sports authorities and medical experts determine what is fair and safe for competitive sports. That's their entire function in society.

Many would call those completely fictional scenarios.

It's hard-won and jealousy defended because the world is full of people trying to strip them of that identity and even basic dignity. Social progress and acceptance is slow and painful. Definitely hard won.

Show your work. I showed mine.

Because that is how they identify--and because of the challenge and struggle of being trans in this society, that hard-won identity is more jealously protected. Just because it's a social construct doesn't mean the word without meaning, particularly on a personal level. I've known cis men who'd be inclined to punch you in the nose if you insisted on calling them a woman. Why would he be "getting all angry?" Identity matters, and to some more than others.

This is true on multiple levels. When you unpack it, that's what it really comes down to. You can be respectful and considerate about the feelings of other human beings, or you can choose to be a spiteful a-hole. And like those other things, society will respond in kind.

Thanks for the very thoughtful post. To be clear, I definitely did not intend for my short post to tackle the larger conversation about trans rights, etc., but rather to simply challenge the specific thought that gender has the same meaning as sex and has been immutable and binary up until this point of radical departure. Gender and biological sex have a long history of being distinct from one another within human conception and communication. Yes, there was a period of time when those words were largely interchangeable in the English speaking world, but that's a pretty narrow aperture. We didn't have a need to distinguish the social from the biological so we were casually lazy. But the need for precision is growing and the words are drifting apart again. The whole thing is a little like watching an astronomical transit.

Gender has been understood as a social construct rather than a biological observation since before you were born. Think about cultures with gendered language, in which words are assigned a gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) based on how those words relate to social expectations. As societies drift and shift so do the words and the ways they are employed.