To get to the rest of this, you still haven't gotten that one sentence, and I'm not giving up on you understanding yet. "bullying children into gender stereotypes and then drugging them if they don't fit cleanly enough." Who is the target of the bullying? Children, all of them. What part of this references trans individuals? The part about drugging. Who is being drugged? The people who were not successfully bullied into gender stereotypes. That is not saying bullied into transitioning. The medical transition is the alternative method for getting gender and sex characteristics to match in individuals who would not have their behavior changed to match existing sex characteristics.
We've been through this. You're making a distinction without difference, akin to saying that the kid whose family moved to escape the bullying he was receiving was therefore not bullied, unlike the kids the bully is still taking the lunch money of. The difference is not whether or not the decision is the result of bullying, just how the bullying was coped with.
You are quibbling over the semantics of what I said without actually disputing the meaning of it, and your surrounding posts only confirm that meaning. Let's review:
"Ok, but you understand that in this context, in order to point to the contradiction, you are appealing to the sensibilities of transphobes.
The logic of sex reassignment is identical to the logic of transphobes, that specific elements of physical presentation preclude people from societal roles."
"
I'm saying the outside circumstances of a society fixated on gender roles puts people into the situation where it is logical to try to present as the opposite sex because of a real dissonance between their self-image and their experience of gender in society. Prescribing transitions further reinforces the societal obsession with gender roles that causes the dissonance in the first place."
"I'm telling you that
the state of society at present has made transitioning a game-theory optimal decision, and you're making that into calling people "confused". I would prefer a world where that isn't the case,
where honest self-expression didn't require chopping off penises."
"Medical transitions, specifically in youth, are the only things I've said to limit,
because prescribing such a thing is telling a child that their sex should match their gender. My "approach"
does not match a dictate that sex must match gender, it specifically challenges that dictate."
Or how about this one from a few months ago? "But the suffering does not stem from a medical problem, it stems from a societal problem, a society that has latched gender markers onto things needlessly and
tied them conceptually to sex such that people who do not often match up with those markers are constantly being signaled to that their existence is wrong. That's where the inability to accept oneself comes from. That's where the suicidality comes from...
I think it's a horrible thing that people are conditioned to not be able to live as they are, based on arbitrary standards, and so often choose suicide to escape it. But transitions are themselves a parallel to suicide. Obviously preferable out of the two, but it's still killing the person they are in a certain sense. "
You balk at the use of the phrase "bullied into transitioning" but that is
exactly what you have been arguing: that transitioning is the function of society refusing to accept these people as they are and thus applying continuous pressure to conform, thereby artificially creating a scenario wherein the individual is conditioned to believe that transitioning is their only viable option - one you imply they would not have otherwise chosen - to alleviate that pressure. That is to say: bullied into the decision.
You consider that alternative a good thing, you think that's the opposite of bullying. I think those options are both equally stupid. If an adult sees a little girl doing stereotypical boy things and tries to make her stop because she's a girl, that's stupid. If the same adult sees the same girl and thinks she might need puberty blockers, that is also stupid. These are both products of a society that considers gender norms to be social obligations, thus I described both in one sentence. And then you combined the two alternatives into one phrase.
And that's a strawman, a fiction that you fixate on because - once again - you confuse your preconceptions about what must be happening with reality. Puberty blockers
aren't prescribed simply because someone is seen doing things stereotypically associated with the opposite sex. The benchmark for it even to be considered is much higher than that. In order for them to be prescribed, a kid must, and there's a list:
1) Show a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria
2) Have gender dysphoria that began or worsened at the start of puberty
3) Address any psychological, medical or social problems that could interfere with treatment
4) Have entered the early stage of puberty
5) Provide informed consent
And before you start, that is not an "any or some of the above", mind you, that's an "
all of the above".
Moreover...considering how you're invoking them, I'm not convinced that you understand the purpose of puberty blockers. Your invocation implies that you're thinking of them like the first step of Hormone Replacement Therapy. In actuality, it's a 'pause button' that temporarily inhibits the production of testosterone or estrogen so as to delay the development of secondary sexual characteristics. This is done for the sake of making transitioning easier if and when the kid decides to go through with it after coming of age. If they decide otherwise? They stop taking the blockers, production goes back to the body's default, and they develop those characteristics then, no worse for the wear. It's like pausing a download to your computer. It doesn't change the files, just when they're delivered and allows you to completely stop the download later if so inclined rather than having to uninstall it.
And then yada yada yada ranted about how pathetic I am, because that's all you really want, you want anyone who disagrees with you to be pathetic. But I have not given up on you understanding.
No. I don't want that. Point of fact, it was
your deflection I called pathetic, not you.
You want me to want that because that would make me misguided and irrational rather than simply being fed up with you specifically after literal years of mostly turning a blind eye to your holier-than-thou attitude and trying not to directly engage with you in the hopes that you'd eventually grow out of it. I've argued with many people on these boards - sometimes quite vigorously - and most of them can attest that I'm usually reasonably pleasant about it, spend a lot of time during a disagreement clarifying my own intended position under the presumption that I expressed myself poorly, and almost never make allegations about the opposing party, instead focusing on the arguments.
Houseman was a major exception to that rule because - like yourself - he managed to finally wear out my patience with his argumentation tactics (the rod that finally shattered the camel's back in his case being him trying - a mere day after Congress was stormed on Jan 6, 2021 - to handwave said storming and characterize the negative reaction to it as political theater and much ado about nothing). But users across the board and political spectrum can attest that - while I'm perhaps an opinionated bastard - I'm almost always civil, impersonal, and focused on the argument, and it takes a
long buildup to make me blow my top.
Me losing my temper with you is similarly the exception, not the rule, and directly attributable to both the tactics you've been employing to argue your points - not the least of which is the consistent heavy use of spin and self-serving supposition - and your stubborn refusal to even so much as do your due diligence during an exchange. Never mind the consistent assumptions of malice that you bring out when you fail to convince people of your point; to hear you tell it, failure to agree with you can only stem from hatred!
Now, I will admit that my lashing out was poor form. While it doesn't excuse it, it's been a stressful few weeks and I vented a bit on you. That said I have also been frustrated with you for some time now. In all frankness, you come off as openly contemptuous of the people on these boards and - while you're obviously not unintelligent - you have an annoying tendency to mistake your preconceptions about a subject with expertise or wisdom -
especially on sociopolitical matters - concluding that, since you believe it, it must be an obvious truth. This gets quite grating when you're championing...bizarrely unsupported ideas like saying that the average person's gender identity is "who cares", or defining your own position as contrasting your misrepresentative presumptions of the other side. Never mind your repeated condescension of assuring everyone else that they're deluded and you're the
real good guy and they don't realize that by your logic they're really the bad guys - before hypocritically claiming that
they're the ones holding that same self-righteous attitude and are only disagreeing with you because of it - or the sheer arrogance in declaring that anyone who gets tired of dealing with your antics
really means they're "tired of getting embarrassed" by you.
Listen, this is going nowhere and it will only end up getting one or both of us banned. If you want to try and bury the hatchet, I'm willing to give it another shot, but I say all the above because unless you can understand your own contribution to this and start at least making an effort to account for the above faults, we're going to end up right back here again.
