I mean I remember very clearly who in American politics was pushing civil unions and it wasn't really the people out in the streets or making the phone calls.
You're confusing a sequence of events with causation. You can say "well it was needed to make people comfortable" but civil unions did not stick around long. The notion that it was a brief spell of civil unions that softened everyone up needs better defending than you've offered.
Please do show me where you found a way to solve for humans, because the entire world could really use this information.
You're acting like civil unions were the only thing going on because its necessary for this assumed causation to make sense. In reality civil unions were a bunch of columnists and poll watching Dems while activists were orchestrating a full court press on American society. We pushed everywhere all the time. We didn't wait around for politicians or let them usurp activism. It wasn't the brief stain of "Separate but Equal" that won over American society so thoroughly, it was thousands of activists speaking with moral clarity on a simple message everywhere they could.
In a larger picture, the lesson from the gay marriage fight is that people want to be good. Everyone wants to think they live in the light, they just need to be shown where it is.
Facts we have:
1) Civil Unions happened.
2) Gay Marriage happened after.
The first same-gender marriage officially recognized in the United States was in 1971, while the first civil union law was passed in 2000.
And that doesn't even take into account the long history of same-gender common-law marriages in the US, marriages and partnerships in some Native cultures (eg, Cherokee), companionate unions in Europe, etc.
The reductionist timeline I've quoted here is inadvertantly reifying a false history: an idea that progress on sex and gender rights has followed a linear path, from more bigoted to more tolerant. History is much more complex than that.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It is a big claim that incrementalism is the superior option.
Big compared to what?
That’s not what I asked, you said it was better than a big change quickly. Honest question; what are you basing this on? I am interested in reading it as well
I have not made that argument, so I can't answer that. Perhaps I made it in that alternate reality where nobody bothered with civil unions first.
Making a small change is easier to do than making a big change. Making another change is easier if you've already made a small change. If you attempt to make a big change, you are more likely to be stopped from making any change at all. Hence my statement: "For a portion of liberals it was more 'this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead".' Also "slippery slopes" being talked about all the time with this stuff.
“There is a trend in human behavior that it's easier to get people who are comfortable with the status quo to change using small changes over time instead of changing things all at once, but it's a trend and not an absolute certainty, so while it's very often the case it's not really possible to prove one way or another. Everyone is just operating off of personal and shared experience, and possibly even myths.
In my experience, people on average do need to be introduced to new ideas slowly, but I also have a very low opinion of people”
This is what I was referring to. In your quoted post as well, you’re making some claims about change that I want to know more about. Where did you get that info? Definitely I’ve seen it applied to corporate change management, interested in some studies from about it applied more broadly than that
I mean I remember very clearly who in American politics was pushing civil unions and it wasn't really the people out in the streets or making the phone calls.
You're confusing a sequence of events with causation. You can say "well it was needed to make people comfortable" but civil unions did not stick around long. The notion that it was a brief spell of civil unions that softened everyone up needs better defending than you've offered.
Please do show me where you found a way to solve for humans, because the entire world could really use this information.
You're acting like civil unions were the only thing going on because its necessary for this assumed causation to make sense. In reality civil unions were a bunch of columnists and poll watching Dems while activists were orchestrating a full court press on American society. We pushed everywhere all the time. We didn't wait around for politicians or let them usurp activism. It wasn't the brief stain of "Separate but Equal" that won over American society so thoroughly, it was thousands of activists speaking with moral clarity on a simple message everywhere they could.
In a larger picture, the lesson from the gay marriage fight is that people want to be good. Everyone wants to think they live in the light, they just need to be shown where it is.
That is not how I'm "acting", that's your stereotyping in action. Do not try to infer things I haven't stated, you do not understand how I think. If I didn't think that activism was vital I'd say it. Please try asking questions instead of assuming.
Do you think that anything outside of activism, anything at all in all the world, had an influence on the outcome? It doesn't even have to be Democrats or liberals or whatever. Just, literally anything. If so, what?
It is a big claim that incrementalism is the superior option.
Big compared to what?
That’s not what I asked, you said it was better than a big change quickly. Honest question; what are you basing this on? I am interested in reading it as well
I have not made that argument, so I can't answer that. Perhaps I made it in that alternate reality where nobody bothered with civil unions first.
Making a small change is easier to do than making a big change. Making another change is easier if you've already made a small change. If you attempt to make a big change, you are more likely to be stopped from making any change at all. Hence my statement: "For a portion of liberals it was more 'this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead".' Also "slippery slopes" being talked about all the time with this stuff.
“There is a trend in human behavior that it's easier to get people who are comfortable with the status quo to change using small changes over time instead of changing things all at once, but it's a trend and not an absolute certainty, so while it's very often the case it's not really possible to prove one way or another. Everyone is just operating off of personal and shared experience, and possibly even myths.
In my experience, people on average do need to be introduced to new ideas slowly, but I also have a very low opinion of people”
This is what I was referring to. In your quoted post as well, you’re making some claims about change that I want to know more about. Where did you get that info? Definitely I’ve seen it applied to corporate change management, interested in some studies from about it applied more broadly than that
Personal and shared experiences. My interpretations of all the history I've read and culture I've absorbed. Decades of walking myself and other people with terrible ideas toward having better ones, and watching people in this very forum and elsewhere change over time bit-by-bit. A handful of psychology and sociology classes. My career. My relationships. Observing people in my social circles. Participating in the arts. Reading white papers on how humans become comfortable with technology and how they obtain technical literacy. Hell, even videos on how to argue with people on the internet based on psychological studies.
Ah okay, no worries. A lot of the literature I found most convincing argued for rapid, large scale changes. I think there are meaningful differences in the situations you describe and broad sociological changes. We’re sort of getting off topic here, but PM me if you’re interested in talking about readings and such
I would agree that *if you can get it through* you can have really good results by making a lot of change at once. Doing so prevents foot-dragging and makes it harder to put up barriers or to argue that the next step will then be too much change.
It's just the whole thing of actually getting it through is typically easier if the change is smaller, and then you can go from there.
By not simply voting for someone because they are the lesser evil and then brushing the dust off our voting hands and going "welp, that's that! Glad I was able to help democracy!"
Nobody's brushing anything off. Voting is a part of the solution, LGBT rights are in a stronger position now with Biden then a Republican president. This is a fact. There's more to do to push congress and Biden forward. If democracy isn't the route for fix gay rights what direction do you want the government to go in to solve this crisis?
But rather, by holding our elected officials accountable. Holding their feet to the fire and fucking demanding better of them. Drag them kicking and screaming towards more equitable and just decisions, and when they are forced to acquiesce to them, do not pat them on the head and give them a lollipop but hold them accountable for the fact that the only reason they did the right thing is that WE. TOLD. FORCED. THEM. TO.
How? Stopping politicians going elected? That opportunity pasted months ago, and won't be a factor for years - doing this during the presidential race cedes he presidency to Trump. Biden's president, he put in Garland - now what? Dragging politicians further is what activists are supposed to do, but that in itself won't fix LGBT rights over night. That's not how the system's built. Politicians are people, activism is influential but it's no like Biden hasn't been right occasionally with gay rights. It'd be great if he was more active on his issue. Does accountability mean something else? The world is more complicated than find or enemy, we're not talking about Trump here.
What strategies being done right now on LGBT rights is forcing the Biden administration? Do you think they're working? All his is far o vague for my liking, I think I know the gist of what you're saying with activism but I'm not going any details on anything concrete you're talking about.
Do not award them points for fixing the problems that they caused in the first place. Do not give them props for supporting progressive agendas under duress. Hold them accountable, always, and demand better of them, always.
How does not acknowledging progress help LGBT rights? Hold them accountable - again, what does this mean during a period when everyone is elected and the DOJ appointee is nominated by the president? Are the tactics he same for Biden and Trump's administration? Nobody's saying Biden's administration is perfect on LGBT rights. Civil rights wasn't won over night, and is still ongoing - why wouldn't LGBT rights not follow this path?
Trying to desperately handwave their past actions is exactly the opposite of how one should go about that. Defending them against legitimate criticism and minimizing their culpability in the creation of the status quo is counter to that. Pretending that lived history did not occur, and that those who suffered through it cannot accurately recount who told them progress was a long, arduous, and incremental path, and that they should be grateful that it isn't those other guys in charge right now.
Nobody is handwaving anything, merely acknowledging the progress being made. Calling this "legitimate criticism" is debatable. It's true, both parties have participated in creating his system against LGBT acceptance, but the individuals and organisations involved are incredibly more complex with endless moving parts and not all of them are wearing klan robes. Without allies in the DOJ, congress and the media the LGBT community are fucked.
Part of fighting is having a plan in place to solve problems, if he left doesn't have any ideas about putting their own in the DOJ Garland wasn't at any risk so how about doing something to put his position a risk? No risk means he get less pressure to go leftward on gay rights, so he won. How is this tactic "winning" for the LGB community?
What lived history is being debated here? At no point was anyone downplaying the atrocities the LGBT has been struggling with. Progress is a pain staking, horrific slow moving journey for all right, which are constantly being attacked and regressed. A fight which occurs on numerous fronts, not just in the streets by activists.
Acknowledging the Democrats being in power over Republicans over LGBT rights is real fact in politics. This is why the Republicans want us to fight each other, weaken the Democrats standing on LGBT rights and they win. That's the ball game in American politics, pick a side.
Hey folks. We had a lot of reports from this thread yesterday and if you're going to continue posting in it I'd like you to try to not yell quite so vociferously about THOSE PEOPLE, you know, the ones in the thread who don't agree with you 100% and are therefore pieces of shit. Maybe hold back on that post about how such and such a specific poster is terrible and you hate them as well, as no one's forcing you to engage with them.
None of the above should give someone the idea that transphobic or homophobic bullshit will be tolerated even when dressed up all fancy as "just asking questions" or "everything is up for debate" or whatever. Report that shit if you see it.
I sitll remember when “why can’t the jsut settle for civil unions” was a liberal stance. And I will not forget it.
I mean, for me it was more a "separate church from state" thing, but I am certainly willing to admit the other strategy worked.
Hmm, maybe you weren't participating in the discussions around same-sex marriage at the time? In that case, let me state for the record that "marriage" as it pertains to the government and the granting of licenses is a purely legal concept entirely divorced (teehee) from religion. Religion plays no part in it, except to serve as an excuse for bigotry.
For you to be logically consistent about a separation of church and state dictating that the government stay out of marriage, you would be insisting that all marriages be converted to "civil unions."
Which was something some people proposed, just to add on to this.
And it was crap then too, because all it did was allow the bigots room to maneuver because just about every secular individual understood marriage as a civil institution beyond just a religious ceremony.
It was always at best a compromise with bigots and at worse a way to get the community to stop making trouble for their liberal “allies”
For a portion of liberals it was more "this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead".
Well that at least turned out to be wrong, a lesson Im sure they all definitely learned.
You have insight into the alternate universe where they went for it whole hog from day one then, to be able to make this claim?
I don't need more evidence for pointing out what objectively occurred. Liberal concerns about trying to get too much ended up being unfounded.
After we incremented with civil unions first, which proved that society doesn't collapse if you let people love who they love.
If you believe that we could have skipped that step, hey, maybe you're right, but it's not a hypothesis we can really test.
Is there any basis for this? It seems like historical revisionism. A few states put into place civil unions then a couple more right before gay marriage was legalized. Your alleged causation isn't in evidence.
The basis is that it was the sequence of events that actually happened.
If you think that the civil unions had no influence on the sequence events, I mean I can't prove you wrong. It's literally impossible to test, like any other alternate history scenario.
Its your hypothesis!
Facts we have:
1) Civil Unions happened.
2) Gay Marriage happened after.
My Statement:
"For a portion of liberals it was more "this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead"."
Your response:
"Well that at least turned out to be wrong,"
Correlation is not causation
Your argument may have merit if th route for gay marriage had been incremental through legislation
But that’s not what happened
Instead it was achieved through the courts directly arguing on the merits of marriage equality
I sitll remember when “why can’t the jsut settle for civil unions” was a liberal stance. And I will not forget it.
I mean, for me it was more a "separate church from state" thing, but I am certainly willing to admit the other strategy worked.
Hmm, maybe you weren't participating in the discussions around same-sex marriage at the time? In that case, let me state for the record that "marriage" as it pertains to the government and the granting of licenses is a purely legal concept entirely divorced (teehee) from religion. Religion plays no part in it, except to serve as an excuse for bigotry.
For you to be logically consistent about a separation of church and state dictating that the government stay out of marriage, you would be insisting that all marriages be converted to "civil unions."
Which was something some people proposed, just to add on to this.
And it was crap then too, because all it did was allow the bigots room to maneuver because just about every secular individual understood marriage as a civil institution beyond just a religious ceremony.
It was always at best a compromise with bigots and at worse a way to get the community to stop making trouble for their liberal “allies”
For a portion of liberals it was more "this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead".
Well that at least turned out to be wrong, a lesson Im sure they all definitely learned.
You have insight into the alternate universe where they went for it whole hog from day one then, to be able to make this claim?
I don't need more evidence for pointing out what objectively occurred. Liberal concerns about trying to get too much ended up being unfounded.
After we incremented with civil unions first, which proved that society doesn't collapse if you let people love who they love.
If you believe that we could have skipped that step, hey, maybe you're right, but it's not a hypothesis we can really test.
Is there any basis for this? It seems like historical revisionism. A few states put into place civil unions then a couple more right before gay marriage was legalized. Your alleged causation isn't in evidence.
The basis is that it was the sequence of events that actually happened.
If you think that the civil unions had no influence on the sequence events, I mean I can't prove you wrong. It's literally impossible to test, like any other alternate history scenario.
Its your hypothesis!
Facts we have:
1) Civil Unions happened.
2) Gay Marriage happened after.
My Statement:
"For a portion of liberals it was more "this is the best we can do, if we push too hard we get nothing instead"."
Your response:
"Well that at least turned out to be wrong,"
Correlation is not causation
Your argument may have merit if th route for gay marriage had been incremental through legislation
But that’s not what happened
Instead it was achieved through the courts directly arguing on the merits of marriage equality
"Instead" is a stance that isn't provable and which can be applied to anything outside of the court cases, like protests, demonstrations, and social change. I doubt you think that the only barrier to social change is nobody bothering to take it to the courts, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
The courts respond to events and social context, which is why different legal outcomes occur at different points of history. The legal system is composed of humans making decisions.
Ah okay, no worries. A lot of the literature I found most convincing argued for rapid, large scale changes. I think there are meaningful differences in the situations you describe and broad sociological changes. We’re sort of getting off topic here, but PM me if you’re interested in talking about readings and such
Is some of that the difference between convincing an individual of a thing, and shifting an entire institution's official position?
Ah okay, no worries. A lot of the literature I found most convincing argued for rapid, large scale changes. I think there are meaningful differences in the situations you describe and broad sociological changes. We’re sort of getting off topic here, but PM me if you’re interested in talking about readings and such
Is some of that the difference between convincing an individual of a thing, and shifting an entire institution's official position?
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. The tactics and strategy are different person to person vs large groups of people
Bad news: See the SCOTUS thread for the recent decision in Fulton v Philly. A bigoted adoption agency gets to get taxpayer money despite city policy against it. Good news: This was a weird-ass decision that doesn't go anywhere near as far as the right wanted it to, and the city can fix it. They have, for some reason*, a policy of allowing exemptions to their anti-discrimination policy. The SCOTUS ruled that made it violate religious freedom. However! Remove the exemptions and they're probably good to go.
*I guess intended for "oh god we have 30,000 extra kids to handle some reason" situations?
DOJ filed two statements of interest today regarding the rights of transgender youths: One in West Virginia involving the rights of a transgender student athlete, the other in Arkansas against the state ban on gender-affirming medical care.
DOJ in Arkansas: “Rather than rely on the judgment of medical professionals and evidence-based treatment guidelines, Arkansas has inserted itself within one of the most confidential and personal of relationships: the physician-patient relationship.” Link: https://documentcloud.org/documents/2095
DOJ in WV: “Though the law purports to bar only transgender girls… every girl in West Virginia may be subject to having her eligibility for a single-sex team challenged merely because some other student claims the girl in question is not a “real” girl." https://documentcloud.org/documents/20951164-west-virginia
The budget that was approved by the Ohio Senate today included language inserted at the last minute that would give healthcare providers the ability to refuse care if they feel that care conflicts with their “moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.”
“This amendment would essentially give free rein to anyone in the healthcare field to deny services to LGBTQ+ people by simply claiming that doing so would violate their religious beliefs,” said Alana Jochum, Executive Director of Equality Ohio in a statement.
Amendment SC3909 (“Medical Practitioner Conscience Clause”) was added without the opportunity for public comment.
This still has to be approved by the House, which passed a different budget, so they recommend anyone in Ohio get very loud at their House reps and the governor.
This Alliance Defending Freedom attorney just shows up to her daughter’s high school sports games and picks out a random girl on the other team and decides she’s trans.
This is insanity (and exactly what trans people said would happen)
I’m guessing this is why the model legislation the ADF wrote allows basically anyone to challenge a girl’s sex assigned at birth. They want witch hunts. They want moms to chatter and conspire from the sidelines. They want teenage girls to perform femininity just to compete.
Behind a very large number of these, even ones claiming to just be about "protecting woman" are ultra conservative Christian anti LGBT groups. They don't give a shit about women's sports, they just want a way to harass and legally fuck with people that don't meet their narrow ideas of what it's ok to be and do.
This Alliance Defending Freedom attorney just shows up to her daughter’s high school sports games and picks out a random girl on the other team and decides she’s trans.
This is insanity (and exactly what trans people said would happen)
I’m guessing this is why the model legislation the ADF wrote allows basically anyone to challenge a girl’s sex assigned at birth. They want witch hunts. They want moms to chatter and conspire from the sidelines. They want teenage girls to perform femininity just to compete.
Behind a very large number of these, even ones claiming to just be about "protecting woman" are ultra conservative Christian anti LGBT groups. They don't give a shit about women's sports, they just want a way to harass and legally fuck with people that don't meet their narrow ideas of what it's ok to be and do.
It's pretty much the same strategy used in anti-marriage and anti-abortion, but this time their opponents are too well organized and it would appear that the media is far more attuned to the manipulation.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The Harford County Sheriff’s Office raided the Bush River Books & Video store in Abington on May 20, arresting eight men accused of engaging in sexual acts with other men and one accused of soliciting prostitution from an undercover female deputy.
The indecent exposure charges are weird, given that they were in a locked room. The sodomy charges are just straight up unconstitutional.
Harford County is, like the Pennsylvania Dutch Country to its north, a strongly Republican region. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Harford County since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide of 1964. In the period before World War II Harford leaned strongly Democratic as it had sizeable Confederate sympathies, but during and since the Second World War the county has turned away from its traditional allegiances.
You have to remember (or don't, I actually don't care, they don't deserve compassion they aren't willing to give) that these are people that are essentially seeing all the institutions they believed were part of their cis-hetero/etc upbringing saying "hey uh... you completely missed the point", and the level of cognitive dissonance that generates is... something. They so dearly want to believe that it's the world changing all these things they clung to rather than those things having been saying these things the whole time JUST subtly enough to let them miss it, since their entire world view was about them and their experience.
To a large degree, there are two kind of people when presented with this. Those who go "oh.. holy crap, I need to re-evalutate" and those who go "uh... RAGE".
+1
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
As a reminder, progress is not natural nor inevitable. More Russians oppose same sex relationships than they did a decade ago due to heavy anti-gay propaganda by the Russian government. The measures they took are the same that many Republican US states have started to adopt, and which the UK has also started after the anti-gay forces successfully used TERFing as a wedge.
I've often said being a good person is not some ascended state of thought purity, but confronting the bad person in oneself when it bubbles unbidden to the surface. But Pratchett might legitimately have attained the former.
"If Florida Republicans’ new anti-gay bill passes, parents can sue a public school that “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in a manner that is not “developmentally appropriate.” If they win, parents get damages and attorneys’ fees."
- Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate.
Basically, as the thread illustrates, the vagueness of the bill, it does what the Texan bill does, and allow the citizenry (who are not known for restraint in their outrage) to sue if there's even a whiff of discussion*. It's not about actually winning these lawsuits. It's about having the pretext to sue, and tying up time and resources to the point that it's just not worth it to actually be put in a position to do so. Much like the Texan bill, it's about using fear to ban the thing they're not legally allowed to ban.
* which as someone in thread points out, could even just be an out LGBT teacher if it becomes a "classroom discussion", which you know some fuckknuckle parent will make their fuckknuckle child start, because spite is a predominant trait for these people.
If it wasn't for the consequences of their actions (and the fact still they KEEP FUCKING WINNING ELECTIONS!), I'd pity people so filled with rage, fear and hate, that they'd write bills like this. But no, because of the consequences of their actions on people who actually deserve my empathy, I fucking loathe them. Vile contemptible little shitbag legislators.
Good news: the Biden admin in November dropped objections and appeals to a Trump-era lawsuit arguing that same sex couples deserve Social Security survivor's benefits, even if they couldn't get married at the time. Because, you know, illegal discrimination.
Bad news: for some reason it has to be claimed manually, and the settlement is getting near nil publicity, so many people who could really use the money may not even know it exists.
But it’s no scam. The Biden administration is paying out substantial sums of money to the surviving partners of same-sex couples who were denied the right to marry. No one knows exactly how many people are eligible, though the best estimate reaches into the thousands (at a minimum), and the pot of money stretches into the millions. Unfortunately, few of these individuals know they’re entitled to these payouts, and many are elders of advanced age. So LGBTQ groups are in a race against time to identify and assist this population in vindicating their constitutional rights before it’s too late.
+5
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
So awhile ago the NCAA announced it would defer to national level organizations to design their policies with respect to trans people’s participation in sports.
So how’s that going?
Well USA Swimming instituted policies custom tailored to rule Lia Thomas ineligible for the NCAA championships and the rest of her career… and effectively made it impossible for anyone transitioning after 15 to participate. All without any actual data on, you know, trans people:
So awhile ago the NCAA announced it would defer to national level organizations to design their policies with respect to trans people’s participation in sports.
So how’s that going?
Well USA Swimming instituted policies custom tailored to rule Lia Thomas ineligible for the NCAA championships and the rest of her career… and effectively made it impossible for anyone transitioning after 15 to participate. All without any actual data on, you know, trans people:
With this who even needs all the state legislation in flight to ban trans kids from sports?
Fuckin' hell. People train their whole lives for this and it's gonna get yanked. Stake their existence on a sport and have it revoked for no fucking reason. That's... just emotional torture.
That fucking sucks.
God fucking dammit.
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Estrogen (more specifically estradiol) looks like this:
As you can tell, they are incredibly similar to each other. This makes sense as they are produced by, for all intents and purposes, the same organ (the gonads). What does make them different is the little fiddly bit on one end. When that end plugs into cells, depending on the shape, it will make the cell do different things.
When my friend was just one single cell, the genetic dice was rolled and she got an XY pair of sex chromosomes... but had no receptors that could react to the testosterone. Lucky for her, when the time came, her developing testicles could also produce estradiol which the growing cells happily took. 9 months later, out popped a healthy baby girl. During puberty she grew breasts and hips... No body hair though, which was strange, but petty cool. No armpit or leg shaving for her.
When she was 19 the fact she hadn't had her period yet began to bother her. That's when she went to the doctor and found out she was intersex.
The testes were up where the ovaries would of been. An adult version of a Mesonephric duct connected her gonads to where a cervix would of been. They removed the testicles as they were a cancer risk and put her on something akin to birth control pills. (or they were birth control pills. I didn't really find it appropriate to rifle though her medication)
Parents didn't take it well at all. There was a lot of guilt of the "not catching it early so they could of had a 'normal' kid". Never mind that she was a perfectly normal girl. (I met my friend about the time she had had enough of of her parent's grief and ditched them to live somewhere else.)
I was going to use this story as a preface about the nuances of hormones as it came to trans people and realized.. I really don't have enough information to speak about it (Being a cis guy). But I always like to have a chance to bring up my friend and her unique generic makeup.
Maybe this can be for people who don't know about ACIS, but just to let you know, there are girls out there who are XY and they are about a biological as they come, and very often, don't even know until later on in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if anyone tries to feed you that "XX = Girl and XY = boy because that's the way nature works", you can know that scientifically, they are full of shit.
Where that bites people is sports where they do blood testing to try and out doping or trans people. CAIS people will often have very very high levels of blood testosterone. Because it
s being made and not used up. So they gain no benefit but still get kicked out of sports.
I'd thought that was peak stupid but US Powerlifting up there manages to be worse.
Estrogen (more specifically estradiol) looks like this:
As you can tell, they are incredibly similar to each other. This makes sense as they are produced by, for all intents and purposes, the same organ (the gonads). What does make them different is the little fiddly bit on one end. When that end plugs into cells, depending on the shape, it will make the cell do different things.
When my friend was just one single cell, the genetic dice was rolled and she got an XY pair of sex chromosomes... but had no receptors that could react to the testosterone. Lucky for her, when the time came, her developing testicles could also produce estradiol which the growing cells happily took. 9 months later, out popped a healthy baby girl. During puberty she grew breasts and hips... No body hair though, which was strange, but petty cool. No armpit or leg shaving for her.
When she was 19 the fact she hadn't had her period yet began to bother her. That's when she went to the doctor and found out she was intersex.
The testes were up where the ovaries would of been. An adult version of a Mesonephric duct connected her gonads to where a cervix would of been. They removed the testicles as they were a cancer risk and put her on something akin to birth control pills. (or they were birth control pills. I didn't really find it appropriate to rifle though her medication)
Parents didn't take it well at all. There was a lot of guilt of the "not catching it early so they could of had a 'normal' kid". Never mind that she was a perfectly normal girl. (I met my friend about the time she had had enough of of her parent's grief and ditched them to live somewhere else.)
I was going to use this story as a preface about the nuances of hormones as it came to trans people and realized.. I really don't have enough information to speak about it (Being a cis guy). But I always like to have a chance to bring up my friend and her unique generic makeup.
Maybe this can be for people who don't know about ACIS, but just to let you know, there are girls out there who are XY and they are about a biological as they come, and very often, don't even know until later on in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if anyone tries to feed you that "XX = Girl and XY = boy because that's the way nature works", you can know that scientifically, they are full of shit.
This is one of like a half dozen human quirks I can name off the top of my head as counselor who specializes in (and is) trans/non-binary. The fact that my extremely limited medical knowledge is enough to be able to rattle these off is really telling to me at least. Sex is an extremely complex subject that people desperately want to simplify by ignoring some relatively simple biological facts.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Estrogen (more specifically estradiol) looks like this:
As you can tell, they are incredibly similar to each other. This makes sense as they are produced by, for all intents and purposes, the same organ (the gonads). What does make them different is the little fiddly bit on one end. When that end plugs into cells, depending on the shape, it will make the cell do different things.
When my friend was just one single cell, the genetic dice was rolled and she got an XY pair of sex chromosomes... but had no receptors that could react to the testosterone. Lucky for her, when the time came, her developing testicles could also produce estradiol which the growing cells happily took. 9 months later, out popped a healthy baby girl. During puberty she grew breasts and hips... No body hair though, which was strange, but petty cool. No armpit or leg shaving for her.
When she was 19 the fact she hadn't had her period yet began to bother her. That's when she went to the doctor and found out she was intersex.
The testes were up where the ovaries would of been. An adult version of a Mesonephric duct connected her gonads to where a cervix would of been. They removed the testicles as they were a cancer risk and put her on something akin to birth control pills. (or they were birth control pills. I didn't really find it appropriate to rifle though her medication)
Parents didn't take it well at all. There was a lot of guilt of the "not catching it early so they could of had a 'normal' kid". Never mind that she was a perfectly normal girl. (I met my friend about the time she had had enough of of her parent's grief and ditched them to live somewhere else.)
I was going to use this story as a preface about the nuances of hormones as it came to trans people and realized.. I really don't have enough information to speak about it (Being a cis guy). But I always like to have a chance to bring up my friend and her unique generic makeup.
Maybe this can be for people who don't know about ACIS, but just to let you know, there are girls out there who are XY and they are about a biological as they come, and very often, don't even know until later on in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if anyone tries to feed you that "XX = Girl and XY = boy because that's the way nature works", you can know that scientifically, they are full of shit.
This is one of like a half dozen human quirks I can name off the top of my head as counselor who specializes in (and is) trans/non-binary. The fact that my extremely limited medical knowledge is enough to be able to rattle these off is really telling to me at least. Sex is an extremely complex subject that people desperately want to simplify by ignoring some relatively simple biological facts.
I learned about this.. yesterday. From this post. I've generally been pretty accepting of intersex, non-binary, and other things. But I can't pretend to understand them. What I know is what I remember from high school biology, and that's shit.
People who willfully disregard gender preference are assholes. But there are an awful lot of folks like me who just have no idea because we've never learned any of it and are just coming to terms with "hey, not only was the history you were taught is wrong, so is the biology!"
Estrogen (more specifically estradiol) looks like this:
As you can tell, they are incredibly similar to each other. This makes sense as they are produced by, for all intents and purposes, the same organ (the gonads). What does make them different is the little fiddly bit on one end. When that end plugs into cells, depending on the shape, it will make the cell do different things.
When my friend was just one single cell, the genetic dice was rolled and she got an XY pair of sex chromosomes... but had no receptors that could react to the testosterone. Lucky for her, when the time came, her developing testicles could also produce estradiol which the growing cells happily took. 9 months later, out popped a healthy baby girl. During puberty she grew breasts and hips... No body hair though, which was strange, but petty cool. No armpit or leg shaving for her.
When she was 19 the fact she hadn't had her period yet began to bother her. That's when she went to the doctor and found out she was intersex.
The testes were up where the ovaries would of been. An adult version of a Mesonephric duct connected her gonads to where a cervix would of been. They removed the testicles as they were a cancer risk and put her on something akin to birth control pills. (or they were birth control pills. I didn't really find it appropriate to rifle though her medication)
Parents didn't take it well at all. There was a lot of guilt of the "not catching it early so they could of had a 'normal' kid". Never mind that she was a perfectly normal girl. (I met my friend about the time she had had enough of of her parent's grief and ditched them to live somewhere else.)
I was going to use this story as a preface about the nuances of hormones as it came to trans people and realized.. I really don't have enough information to speak about it (Being a cis guy). But I always like to have a chance to bring up my friend and her unique generic makeup.
Maybe this can be for people who don't know about ACIS, but just to let you know, there are girls out there who are XY and they are about a biological as they come, and very often, don't even know until later on in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if anyone tries to feed you that "XX = Girl and XY = boy because that's the way nature works", you can know that scientifically, they are full of shit.
This is one of like a half dozen human quirks I can name off the top of my head as counselor who specializes in (and is) trans/non-binary. The fact that my extremely limited medical knowledge is enough to be able to rattle these off is really telling to me at least. Sex is an extremely complex subject that people desperately want to simplify by ignoring some relatively simple biological facts.
It's a trip
You can also end up with XX men who can father XX daughters or XX sons, or (I'm pretty sure, though there are a lot of other conditions fucking up my search) the reverse. There are a bunch of things that can go wrong (for non morally valenced values of "wrong") resulting in arbitrary combinations of genitals, chromosomes, hormones, and secondary characteristics.
Also re: halkun's friend's parents, I'm mind boggled that they wish they'd caught it earlier so they could've had a "normal" kid, because in addition to her being just fine, there's no treatment that's going to actually change anything. People, man.
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You're acting like civil unions were the only thing going on because its necessary for this assumed causation to make sense. In reality civil unions were a bunch of columnists and poll watching Dems while activists were orchestrating a full court press on American society. We pushed everywhere all the time. We didn't wait around for politicians or let them usurp activism. It wasn't the brief stain of "Separate but Equal" that won over American society so thoroughly, it was thousands of activists speaking with moral clarity on a simple message everywhere they could.
In a larger picture, the lesson from the gay marriage fight is that people want to be good. Everyone wants to think they live in the light, they just need to be shown where it is.
The first same-gender marriage officially recognized in the United States was in 1971, while the first civil union law was passed in 2000.
And that doesn't even take into account the long history of same-gender common-law marriages in the US, marriages and partnerships in some Native cultures (eg, Cherokee), companionate unions in Europe, etc.
The reductionist timeline I've quoted here is inadvertantly reifying a false history: an idea that progress on sex and gender rights has followed a linear path, from more bigoted to more tolerant. History is much more complex than that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
“There is a trend in human behavior that it's easier to get people who are comfortable with the status quo to change using small changes over time instead of changing things all at once, but it's a trend and not an absolute certainty, so while it's very often the case it's not really possible to prove one way or another. Everyone is just operating off of personal and shared experience, and possibly even myths.
In my experience, people on average do need to be introduced to new ideas slowly, but I also have a very low opinion of people”
This is what I was referring to. In your quoted post as well, you’re making some claims about change that I want to know more about. Where did you get that info? Definitely I’ve seen it applied to corporate change management, interested in some studies from about it applied more broadly than that
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
That is not how I'm "acting", that's your stereotyping in action. Do not try to infer things I haven't stated, you do not understand how I think. If I didn't think that activism was vital I'd say it. Please try asking questions instead of assuming.
Do you think that anything outside of activism, anything at all in all the world, had an influence on the outcome? It doesn't even have to be Democrats or liberals or whatever. Just, literally anything. If so, what?
Personal and shared experiences. My interpretations of all the history I've read and culture I've absorbed. Decades of walking myself and other people with terrible ideas toward having better ones, and watching people in this very forum and elsewhere change over time bit-by-bit. A handful of psychology and sociology classes. My career. My relationships. Observing people in my social circles. Participating in the arts. Reading white papers on how humans become comfortable with technology and how they obtain technical literacy. Hell, even videos on how to argue with people on the internet based on psychological studies.
None of which can actually prove anything.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
It's just the whole thing of actually getting it through is typically easier if the change is smaller, and then you can go from there.
Nobody's brushing anything off. Voting is a part of the solution, LGBT rights are in a stronger position now with Biden then a Republican president. This is a fact. There's more to do to push congress and Biden forward. If democracy isn't the route for fix gay rights what direction do you want the government to go in to solve this crisis?
How? Stopping politicians going elected? That opportunity pasted months ago, and won't be a factor for years - doing this during the presidential race cedes he presidency to Trump. Biden's president, he put in Garland - now what? Dragging politicians further is what activists are supposed to do, but that in itself won't fix LGBT rights over night. That's not how the system's built. Politicians are people, activism is influential but it's no like Biden hasn't been right occasionally with gay rights. It'd be great if he was more active on his issue. Does accountability mean something else? The world is more complicated than find or enemy, we're not talking about Trump here.
What strategies being done right now on LGBT rights is forcing the Biden administration? Do you think they're working? All his is far o vague for my liking, I think I know the gist of what you're saying with activism but I'm not going any details on anything concrete you're talking about.
How does not acknowledging progress help LGBT rights? Hold them accountable - again, what does this mean during a period when everyone is elected and the DOJ appointee is nominated by the president? Are the tactics he same for Biden and Trump's administration? Nobody's saying Biden's administration is perfect on LGBT rights. Civil rights wasn't won over night, and is still ongoing - why wouldn't LGBT rights not follow this path?
Nobody is handwaving anything, merely acknowledging the progress being made. Calling this "legitimate criticism" is debatable. It's true, both parties have participated in creating his system against LGBT acceptance, but the individuals and organisations involved are incredibly more complex with endless moving parts and not all of them are wearing klan robes. Without allies in the DOJ, congress and the media the LGBT community are fucked.
Part of fighting is having a plan in place to solve problems, if he left doesn't have any ideas about putting their own in the DOJ Garland wasn't at any risk so how about doing something to put his position a risk? No risk means he get less pressure to go leftward on gay rights, so he won. How is this tactic "winning" for the LGB community?
What lived history is being debated here? At no point was anyone downplaying the atrocities the LGBT has been struggling with. Progress is a pain staking, horrific slow moving journey for all right, which are constantly being attacked and regressed. A fight which occurs on numerous fronts, not just in the streets by activists.
Acknowledging the Democrats being in power over Republicans over LGBT rights is real fact in politics. This is why the Republicans want us to fight each other, weaken the Democrats standing on LGBT rights and they win. That's the ball game in American politics, pick a side.
None of the above should give someone the idea that transphobic or homophobic bullshit will be tolerated even when dressed up all fancy as "just asking questions" or "everything is up for debate" or whatever. Report that shit if you see it.
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Correlation is not causation
Your argument may have merit if th route for gay marriage had been incremental through legislation
But that’s not what happened
Instead it was achieved through the courts directly arguing on the merits of marriage equality
"Instead" is a stance that isn't provable and which can be applied to anything outside of the court cases, like protests, demonstrations, and social change. I doubt you think that the only barrier to social change is nobody bothering to take it to the courts, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
The courts respond to events and social context, which is why different legal outcomes occur at different points of history. The legal system is composed of humans making decisions.
Is some of that the difference between convincing an individual of a thing, and shifting an entire institution's official position?
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. The tactics and strategy are different person to person vs large groups of people
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Bad news: See the SCOTUS thread for the recent decision in Fulton v Philly. A bigoted adoption agency gets to get taxpayer money despite city policy against it. Good news: This was a weird-ass decision that doesn't go anywhere near as far as the right wanted it to, and the city can fix it. They have, for some reason*, a policy of allowing exemptions to their anti-discrimination policy. The SCOTUS ruled that made it violate religious freedom. However! Remove the exemptions and they're probably good to go.
*I guess intended for "oh god we have 30,000 extra kids to handle some reason" situations?
Good news: The Department of Education has affirmed that anti-LGBT polices violate title IX, making them illegal discrimination.. Based on Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. So, still an administrative change that the next admin could reverse, but perhaps a little harder than usual.
The DoJ is also now weighing in, filing in support of two trans rights cases (Huffpo reporter):
EDIT: And because the Ohio GOP can't not be fuckwits for one day, more potential bad news:
https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2021/06/09/medical-practitioner-conscience-clause/
This still has to be approved by the House, which passed a different budget, so they recommend anyone in Ohio get very loud at their House reps and the governor.
https://mobile.twitter.com/transscribe/status/1410323673668591624
(Transcribe is a freelance reporter)
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/5152134001
Behind a very large number of these, even ones claiming to just be about "protecting woman" are ultra conservative Christian anti LGBT groups. They don't give a shit about women's sports, they just want a way to harass and legally fuck with people that don't meet their narrow ideas of what it's ok to be and do.
It's pretty much the same strategy used in anti-marriage and anti-abortion, but this time their opponents are too well organized and it would appear that the media is far more attuned to the manipulation.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/07/four-men-arrested-breaking-sodomy-law-maryland-police-raid/
The indecent exposure charges are weird, given that they were in a locked room. The sodomy charges are just straight up unconstitutional.
I'd say that explains it
Go fuck yourselves, TERFs, you'll never have him.
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Well I was not expecting to get so emotional by the end of that.
What a precious soul.
You must've been lying down.
Because dwarfs are very short, is the joke I'm saying.
The big villain in The Fifth Elephant has a rant that is essentially the TERF fucking argument:
I know I shouldn't be shocked that TERFs have poor comprehension but COME ON.
To a large degree, there are two kind of people when presented with this. Those who go "oh.. holy crap, I need to re-evalutate" and those who go "uh... RAGE".
I've often said being a good person is not some ascended state of thought purity, but confronting the bad person in oneself when it bubbles unbidden to the surface. But Pratchett might legitimately have attained the former.
Looks like Florida have taken the Texan Abortion bill, and weaponized it against LGBT.
"If Florida Republicans’ new anti-gay bill passes, parents can sue a public school that “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in a manner that is not “developmentally appropriate.” If they win, parents get damages and attorneys’ fees."
- Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate.
Basically, as the thread illustrates, the vagueness of the bill, it does what the Texan bill does, and allow the citizenry (who are not known for restraint in their outrage) to sue if there's even a whiff of discussion*. It's not about actually winning these lawsuits. It's about having the pretext to sue, and tying up time and resources to the point that it's just not worth it to actually be put in a position to do so. Much like the Texan bill, it's about using fear to ban the thing they're not legally allowed to ban.
* which as someone in thread points out, could even just be an out LGBT teacher if it becomes a "classroom discussion", which you know some fuckknuckle parent will make their fuckknuckle child start, because spite is a predominant trait for these people.
If it wasn't for the consequences of their actions (and the fact still they KEEP FUCKING WINNING ELECTIONS!), I'd pity people so filled with rage, fear and hate, that they'd write bills like this. But no, because of the consequences of their actions on people who actually deserve my empathy, I fucking loathe them. Vile contemptible little shitbag legislators.
Good news: the Biden admin in November dropped objections and appeals to a Trump-era lawsuit arguing that same sex couples deserve Social Security survivor's benefits, even if they couldn't get married at the time. Because, you know, illegal discrimination.
Bad news: for some reason it has to be claimed manually, and the settlement is getting near nil publicity, so many people who could really use the money may not even know it exists.
So how’s that going?
Well USA Swimming instituted policies custom tailored to rule Lia Thomas ineligible for the NCAA championships and the rest of her career… and effectively made it impossible for anyone transitioning after 15 to participate. All without any actual data on, you know, trans people:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/usa-swimming-announces-new-policy-elite-transgender-athletes-rcna14606
USA Powerlifting just banned all trans people, as well as anyone taking birth control or hormones for any medical reason:
https://barbend.com/uspa-bans-trans-athletes-and-anyone-using-hormones-from-tested-divisions/
With this who even needs all the state legislation in flight to ban trans kids from sports?
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Fuckin' hell. People train their whole lives for this and it's gonna get yanked. Stake their existence on a sport and have it revoked for no fucking reason. That's... just emotional torture.
That fucking sucks.
God fucking dammit.
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My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I have a friend who has CAIS or Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. The gist of the condition is as follows...
Testosterone looks like this:
Estrogen (more specifically estradiol) looks like this:
As you can tell, they are incredibly similar to each other. This makes sense as they are produced by, for all intents and purposes, the same organ (the gonads). What does make them different is the little fiddly bit on one end. When that end plugs into cells, depending on the shape, it will make the cell do different things.
When my friend was just one single cell, the genetic dice was rolled and she got an XY pair of sex chromosomes... but had no receptors that could react to the testosterone. Lucky for her, when the time came, her developing testicles could also produce estradiol which the growing cells happily took. 9 months later, out popped a healthy baby girl. During puberty she grew breasts and hips... No body hair though, which was strange, but petty cool. No armpit or leg shaving for her.
When she was 19 the fact she hadn't had her period yet began to bother her. That's when she went to the doctor and found out she was intersex.
The testes were up where the ovaries would of been. An adult version of a Mesonephric duct connected her gonads to where a cervix would of been. They removed the testicles as they were a cancer risk and put her on something akin to birth control pills. (or they were birth control pills. I didn't really find it appropriate to rifle though her medication)
Parents didn't take it well at all. There was a lot of guilt of the "not catching it early so they could of had a 'normal' kid". Never mind that she was a perfectly normal girl. (I met my friend about the time she had had enough of of her parent's grief and ditched them to live somewhere else.)
I was going to use this story as a preface about the nuances of hormones as it came to trans people and realized.. I really don't have enough information to speak about it (Being a cis guy). But I always like to have a chance to bring up my friend and her unique generic makeup.
Maybe this can be for people who don't know about ACIS, but just to let you know, there are girls out there who are XY and they are about a biological as they come, and very often, don't even know until later on in life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if anyone tries to feed you that "XX = Girl and XY = boy because that's the way nature works", you can know that scientifically, they are full of shit.
s being made and not used up. So they gain no benefit but still get kicked out of sports.
I'd thought that was peak stupid but US Powerlifting up there manages to be worse.
This is one of like a half dozen human quirks I can name off the top of my head as counselor who specializes in (and is) trans/non-binary. The fact that my extremely limited medical knowledge is enough to be able to rattle these off is really telling to me at least. Sex is an extremely complex subject that people desperately want to simplify by ignoring some relatively simple biological facts.
The irony is not lost on me.
I learned about this.. yesterday. From this post. I've generally been pretty accepting of intersex, non-binary, and other things. But I can't pretend to understand them. What I know is what I remember from high school biology, and that's shit.
People who willfully disregard gender preference are assholes. But there are an awful lot of folks like me who just have no idea because we've never learned any of it and are just coming to terms with "hey, not only was the history you were taught is wrong, so is the biology!"
It's a trip
You can also end up with XX men who can father XX daughters or XX sons, or (I'm pretty sure, though there are a lot of other conditions fucking up my search) the reverse. There are a bunch of things that can go wrong (for non morally valenced values of "wrong") resulting in arbitrary combinations of genitals, chromosomes, hormones, and secondary characteristics.
Also re: halkun's friend's parents, I'm mind boggled that they wish they'd caught it earlier so they could've had a "normal" kid, because in addition to her being just fine, there's no treatment that's going to actually change anything. People, man.