Education is just that: We need to teach people about transgender people. This includes, in particular, that trans women are women and trans men are men, and that non-binary identities exist.

Also, it has been shown that people who know at least one LGBT person (or rather, know they know at least one LGBT person) are more accepting of them. Having at least one out transgender person give a talk at a school might help; better yet, if a teacher (or other authority figure in the school), preferably a popular one, is openly trans.

That sort of thing.

QFT.

Suddenly conversation here is a carbon copy of a university activist brochure. Do we have time for a group hug or does that have to wait until we've had our 'talk to the tree' session?

0_o

I'm away for the weekend and... sheesh...


I want to make two points.


To group A - notice why the topic of LGBT, transgenderism, etc... came up. It was not the others that started it. It was someone from your side, an individual that clearly cares a lot about this topic, an individual that is keeping a great tone throughout this thread, and has opened other threads focused on this issue in the past.

Many of you that are on his side on the specific issues would do great to follow their leadership, instead of the aggressive, conflictive posturing which seems to indicate you are more interested in insulting, shaming and attacking those that you disagree with rather than trying to convince or educate them, or the passive audience.


To group B - I don't have a black and white answer whether ignoring someone is better than disagreeing with them. When I talked about oversensitivity and defensiveness I also had some of you (and myself) in mind, and this almost obsessive compulsion that I see to answer every single comment, every single time, every single place really saddens me.

It saddens me because it is almost mobbing, despite intentions, and we as a group should perceive that the one person we all are addressing is obviously becoming stressed and aggravated and we should back off - especially if someone else is already making the same point. It saddens me because it shows what I already knew about groups of individuals - they lose perspective and humanity very easily, falling into the same groupthink trap of the others. Being right does not cleanse us of our sins.


I'd suggest everyone should make an effort to take from the others what you agree with and highlight it - you really believe you're better than the rest, so prove it by showing respect and decency and offer a starker contrast in how ethically you behave.

I have to disagree with you on this one, as someone who is indeed "ex-gay." You cannot simply post a survey from an "Ex-Gay Survivor's" webpage and act like that is the be-all and end-all to the many convolutions. I was gay until I was almost 30. In fact, I came very close to marrying a woman at age 24 (not legally, obviously, but in our own opinions it was a marriage-like relationship). I got married to a man (I'm female) at age 32. I've been married 20 years, have two kids, am happy as can be, and foresee being married to him until one of us dies. Also, the thought of having sex with a woman makes me feel kinda "icky" now.

Some people are not successful in changing something they wish to change. Some are. I personally know more than a dozen people with long-term changes in sexual orientation from gay to straight.

Pax

Outside of the wishful thinking of many Right-Wing Christian Conservatives there is little or no scientifically rigorous evidence that being gay is a choice that can willfully be renounced. There have been many cases of promiment figures in the Ex-Gay/Restorative Therapy movement caught in homosexual situations, and the stories of those who have have gone through the process of being "cured" of being gay (only to realize that they weren't "curable") [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-callahan/cured-of-being-cured-the-_b_6992208.html]legion. And that's even assuming that we're going to believe that aspects of human sexual identity and sexuality can be a condition likeable to cancer.

Heck, even one of the most prominent figures in the Southern Baptist Chtuch has criticized therapy aimed at changing people from being gay.

If the alternative is homophobia, I'll take the group hug, thanks.

Some of us still have class...

Both sides in this topic are hugely guilty of cherry picking - or properly stated, of confirmation bias. Studies based on selection bias, are suspect for obvious reasons to anyone that knows anything about scientific methodology: non representative samples.

Of course, your own experience is not universal proof, it just disproves the opposite generalization - falsifies would be the term used in epistemology.

The fundamental problem at the meta level goes back to the word class, and how it relates with classy behavior. Most of the individuals in the opposing groups are purposefully choosing to throw away "classy" in order to reinforce how distinct their class is from the others.

Is anyone actually interested in going back to that cooler level of discussion? Or are we too much into the entropic descent towards the object level arguments?

Edit: typo

Class is nothing more than economic stratification used by the patriarchy elite to keep us divided from each other so we don't unite together in the true revolution of Mother Gaia and eliminate evil male capitalism from the.... ah, shit. It's like the fucking flu! This nonsense is infectious, even I'm talking like them now.

Stay clas... er, I mean stay stratified, gog forum. Stay stratified.

100% agree. All I'm saying is that no one should place the blame entirely on society or on entirely on the victim. The blame game gets us nowhere and just promotes defensiveness rather than open discussion. I'm saying suicide shouldn't be normalized as an escape option or glorified as an act done by the brave who got to the edge of their capacity to cope and bravely controlled their life on their own terms. It is more often than not something done in the heat of the moment, especially when people are emotionally sensitive and unlike a tattoo or piercing, they can't realize their fault in the future.

Spamming? Not really. :-)

I think the moment I created this thread, the result was inevitable. I'm surprised it took as long as it did.

It reminds me of earlier on where folks were much more willing to show some restraint and try to understand the points they were addressing when posting. A little bit of civility and class goes a long way when handling touchy subjects.
Spoken as a bisexual man, I always wonder why it is that sexual orientation is a exception to the general rule about change. I doubt very much that I could change even if I wanted to and that even if I could, it probably would be immensely damaging to myself.

But, still I do wonder what it is about sexual orientation that makes atempts to change it more harmful than the social isolation, alienation and abuse that's all too common for folks that aren't straight.

You actually see something similar with attempts to change someone's handedness; i.e. by forcing a left handed person to write with her right hand. It's fortunately rare today, but I did recently read a news article where that happened. (Unfortunately, I don't have a link handy.)

It could be, but also keep in mind that the switch in handendess was done because certain people were considered to be unacceptable and it was done at a point in school that resulted in them being way behind the other students. That alone would cause people to get screwed up even in the absence of harm specifically from changing handedness.

Then on the other hand, you have folks like Leonardo that switched handedness and went on to be probably the most famous genius of all time, so it's not as clear as folks might think.

Ultimately, the main reason why the change was good is that it doesn't put lefties years behind the righties in school That alone is sufficient to justify abandoning the practice.