“Irreversible Damage” (2020) by Abigail Shrier is subtitled “The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”. The cover shows a little girl with a huge hole where her womb would be. The fearmongering never lets up: the introduction is called “The Contagion” – which strangely echoes Nazi propaganda about homosexuals (which then included trans people). It is published by Regnery Press, which puts out gems like Michelle Malkin’s “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror” (2004).
The Economist named “Irrreversible Damage” a “book of the year” in 2020. Despite the book’s heavy use of transphobic language, it detected “not a drop of animosity in the book”. Even worse, it dangerously repeats its misinformation.
ContraPoints calls it “a transphobic screed of a book”.
Psychology Today, in a column by Jack Turban MD MHS, who unlike Shrier is an actual medical journalist, said it was “full of irresponsible journalistic practices and outright falsehoods.” Maybe worst of all, the book:
“tells parents to reject their children’s gender identity, which is one of the greatest predictors of suicide attempts among transgender kids.”
The book is highly misleading. Shrier seems to come with the facts – interviews, statistics, scientific studies and all that. But it is all one-sided, supported by anecdotes and twisted facts. The science is either cherry-picked or misrepresented. The medical and scientific consensus is dismissed as “gender ideology”.
Even the cover is misleading: the actual cases of irreversible damage reported in the book were done on adults, not on girls, and certainly not on little girls.
Transphobic bubble: Shrier has plenty of interviews quoted in the book and she herself has done plenty of media interviews since – but almost the whole time she is talking to transphobes!!! People like Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Jordan Peterson, but most especially, at the heart of her book, parents who oppose the gender transition of their trans sons. She thinks their sons are deluded – and calls them by their deadnames and she/her pronouns – but comes to this conclusion without ever talking to them! It is all based on parent report. As is the Lisa Littman study the book is largely based on.
Note that “transphobe” is itself a loaded term, like “gender ideology”, but the fact remains that Shrier is getting only half the picture. If that.
It is like writing a book about Black people based on Stormfront or Fox News. If she wrote a book about runaway slaves in 1855, she would have mainly interviewed slave owners and blamed the increase in runaway slaves on “abolitionist ideology” or drapetomania.
The argument of the book: Troubled teenage girls are getting swept up into a transgender craze being pushed by Tumblr and YouTube on the Internet and spread by “peer contagion”. It is the new anorexia. Meanwhile doctors, teachers, and scientists are being cowed by trans activists into supporting “gender ideology”. Gender transition is practically being forced on these hapless girls, leading to high rates of regret – because anecdotes!
Maybe parents would like to believe this instead of taking the trans identity of their children seriously, but it does not seem to be true in the vast majority of cases.
– Abagond, 2022.
Update (June 2nd 2022): As bad as Regnery Press is, it was never owned by a neo-Nazi, as an earlier version of this post stated. I had mixed up Henry Regnery with his nephew William Regnery II, who used Richard Spencer as a mouthpiece. Sorry for the mistake. Henry was on the American First Committee, which opposed war against Nazi Germany, but as far as I know he was never anything more than hard-right. In any case, the Regnery family sold the Press in 1993. Thanks to Lemmy for catching this mistake!
See also:
- gender identity
- Richard Spencer
- Candace Owens
- anorexia
- drapetomania
- The Economist
- ContraPoints
- Michelle Malkin
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Abagond 
” – because anecdotes!” is spot on. folks rely on BS anecdotes and try to run it as fact. so sickening, the harm trash like this does! great post.
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A question to all the black people on this site: would you be offended if I started saying the n-word because I know identify as black?
Yes, I know that every cell in my body has European DNA (just as every cell in, say, Bruce Jenner’s body has a Y-chromosome), but that seems to no longer matter, since you can identify as whatever you want these days.
Long story short, it is impossible to truly change your gender.
Once you can change the chromosomes in every cell to match your gender of choice AND create functioning reproductive organs from the gender of choice that produce the proper gametes, then I will accept your gender identity.
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This is pure evil, and the Bible is clear about God’s stance on deviant sexuality, including the “abomination” of wearing the wrong gender’s clothing ( https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/22-5.htm ) . Many of you probably remember going to school with some “tomboys” when you were young. Maybe one came out as a lesbian later on. However, by and large these young ladies moved on, became normal heterosexual women, had families, etc.
Now they are encouraged to remove their breasts and their ability to have kids… it’s revolting.
It was only 10 years ago that Obama felt comfortable “coming out” about his support for gay marriage (he still hasn’t come out about his personal predilections, but that’s a different matter). Then it was support for trans people being left alone to do their thing. Now, it’s teaching young kids in school to be trans and not tell their parents. What will be the next perversions if the degeneracy (aka progress) continues its trajectory? Bestiality and necrophelia are shocking, but pedophilia is the next big one.. people are already talking about “minor attracted persons” as if it’s just another cool orientation.
And many on the left say “they are born that way”, but that’s not really accurate. Some are born with predilections, sure, but society plays a big role in molding young minds. Recently, there’s a school in Seattle claiming 80% of its students identify as LGBTQ+. https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/05/16/seattle-high-school-claims-that-80-percent-of-its-students-identify-as-lgbtq-non-binary-or-transgender/. That’s not natural at all. And it’s only getting worse all over the country/world, as more people are implicitly taught that hetero/White/male/cis is bad bad bad. They are identifying as deviant sexually, which sets them on a course to being unable to live a normal life and reproduce.
It’s child abuse. The middle class in this country is dead and so many young people can’t see a future settling down and having a family. They are fertile ground for this kind of predatory teaching. Abagond thinks he is doing a good deed by supporting it and criticizing a book revealing this pathology, but he’s really just facilitating the worst kind of child abuse/grooming that causes depression/suicide and destroys families and future generations.
More and more normal Americans are waking up to what the country is becoming and would rather burn it all down and start from scratch again than tolerate this degeneracy being forced on their kids.
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Biff is the most based commentator I’ve seen on this site so far.
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@ Biff
“including the ‘abomination’ of wearing the wrong gender’s clothing”
Biblically, the correct male clothing is a robe — i.e., a caftan or a long tunic. Glad to know that Biff doesn’t wear trousers. I’m confident he also makes sure his caftans only consist of one type of fabric (Deut 22:11, Lev 19:19).
“Now they are encouraged to remove their breasts and their ability to have kids”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_pregnancy
“What will be the next perversions if the degeneracy (aka progress) continues its trajectory? Bestiality and necrophelia are shocking, but pedophilia is the next big one.”
This lie has been circulating for decades. Liberals overwhelming support the necessity of full and informed consent between sex partners. Children and animals (and corpses) are unable to give meaningful consent, end stop.
“people are already talking about ‘minor attracted persons’ as if it’s just another cool orientation.”
Not true. The term does exist, but within academia where a handful of researchers use it specifically to differentiate those individuals who never act on their pedophiliac attraction. Even within academia, it is a highly controversial term and concept. Its use has resulted in at least one firing recently. I’m sure there are pedophiles who want it to be seen as “just another cool orientation,” but that isn’t happening. Believe it or not, there are many CSA survivors on the left, and they push back hard against anyone who dares to try to normalize pedophilia.
“Recently, there’s a school in Seattle claiming 80% of its students identify as LGBTQ+. That’s not natural at all.”
It’s an alternative high school in a large city which provides a safe haven for LGBTQ+ students who were being harassed elsewhere. These students already knew they identified as gender/sexual minorities before they applied to transfer to this school.
“More and more normal Americans are waking up to what the country is becoming and would rather burn it all down”
I thought burning stuff down was the worst thing someone could do? I guess it’s okay now to burn down cities if your kid is trans and that makes you feel bad.
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https://helloclue.com/articles/lgbt/what-it-s-like-to-be-pregnant-as-a-transmasculine-person
https://time.com/4475634/trans-man-pregnancy-evan/
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Solitaire:
You’re defending extreme evil and degeneracy again. There’s no point in a back and forth with you, as I’ve previously explained.
Yes, I know that one high school is an outlier, but it’s indicative of a national trend. https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup . Apparently, over 20% of Gen Z adults now identify as LGBTQ+ (while it’s less than 1% for people born before 1946), and it’s only getting much much worse. Clear trend lines generally don’t stop without a reason. So no, it’s not just 5 or 10% of the population who are “born that way”, as the media used to try to say. It’s impressionable kids who are being encouraged to throw their lives away.
Do you believe God was wrong for burning down Sodom and Gomorrah? Rhetorical.
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@ Biff
From your own source:
Some people incorrectly believe that bisexuals can’t be sexually fulfilled without constantly having sex with both male and female partners. This actually isn’t true, and there are many bisexuals in committed, monogamous marriages to a spouse of the opposite sex.
From a strictly biological viewpoint, bisexuality may well be the default among humans:
(citations removed for readability)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6976918/
Your own source also says:
That is, the numbers are increasing because people don’t feel they have to hide anymore, not because it’s become more prevalent. I think it’s especially obvious that more young adults are identifying as bisexual than ever before, which does not mean that they’re ruling out marrying a member of the opposite sex or having children or otherwise “throwing their lives away” as you contend.
“Do you believe God was wrong for burning down Sodom and Gomorrah? Rhetorical.”
Do you believe Lot was right in offering up his own daughters to the mob?
Also, Ezekiel 16:49–50:
Additionally, if anyone is interested in an overview of the various theological commentaries about the exact nature of the transgression of the cities of the plains:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah
“There’s no point in a back and forth with you, as I’ve previously explained.”
You have the right to remain silent. 🤐 I’m not stopping you.
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@ biff
Define “normal Americans”.
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Afrofem:
Normal Americans are people of any political party, many of whom are just fine with adults doing whatever they want sexually as long as they don’t push it on other people, who strongly object to their young kids being groomed/taught sexually degenerative stuff.
Solitaire:
You can never just admit that you don’t believe in the Bible or that you at least don’t believe it literally and believe you can pick and choose whatever feels good to you (cue the “but you don’t follow the ancient Jewish ceremonial law anymore, therefore homosex, transsex and abortion must be okie dokie with the Almighty” ridiculous argument). You try to twist different passages, as if the Bible weren’t clear about God’s feelings on homosexuality and other sexual degeneracy. You can almost hear the serpent hissing, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
As he says, maybe it’s more normal to be LGBTQ than not. Totally normal. No issue if the number identifying that way rise to over 50% of young people.
Filth! Abomination!
Actually, people who are 76+ (coming in at 0.8% LGBTQ self-identifying in the survey noted in my earlier post) have had a lifetime to learn about their sexuality. They are retired and often widowed, so no harm in identifying however they want in a random phone interview. Plenty are politically liberal. Yet, for some reason, they almost all think they are “cisgender” and straight. They must be terribly oppressed! So oppressed they never even knew it for their whole lives. What a terrible thing to have their childhood in the 50s before the sexual revolution!
It’s absurd. Solitaire will have more weasel words, no doubt (he always has to have the last word), but I hope those who are wise have eyes to see and ears to hear them for what they are, an attempted justification of evil and degeneracy.
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biff:
What’s considered “sexually degenerative” varies from culture to culture and historical period to historical period.
I understand that it’s really hard for you to wrap your head around this biological fact:
Sexual minorities aka LGBTQI folks are born, not made.
Children raised in Gay and Lesbian households are majority heterosexual.
Children raised in heterosexual households are minority same-sex loving.
In both types of households, children are around adults modeling certain sexual and gender behaviors (“grooming” in your parlance). Yet, in neither case do the children automatically follow the modeling of their parents.
They go their own way, following their inborn predilections like all other adults.
The majority are heterosexual and bisexual. A minority are exclusively same sex loving.
I also understand that the rightwing of this country never let facts get in the way of their “moral panic” smear campaigns. They figuratively stick their fingers in their ears and double down on their talking points.
Even if the rightwing could realize their fantasy of erasing all known LGBTQI folk, the very next generation would have the same percentages of sexual minorities. Those children would be born in heterosexual households.
And they would find each other….
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Afrofem said:
This book is a good example of that. Abigail Shrier has no background in science or medicine or even has a transgender relative that I know of. Her stock in trade is writing right-wing opinions, currently for the Wall Street Journal.
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@ Biff
“You … believe you can pick and choose whatever feels good to you”
And you think you don’t — but you do.
It’s nearly impossible to tease out “ancient Jewish ceremonial law” (I noticed how you threw “ceremonial” in there to devalue the laws you don’t follow) from the rest, they’re so intertwined.
The verse you alluded to about not wearing the clothing of the opposite sex is in the same chapter as the verse I brought up about not mixing two types of fabric in one garment. They are only six verses apart! The very next verse commands you to wear tassels on all four corners of your garment. Right after that, still in the same chapter, it begins discussing sexual matters, including fornication. Nowhere in Deut. 22 does it say the laws about clothing are less important than the laws about sexual behavior.
You brought up Deut. 22:5 because you believe wearing pants, coat, and tie is male attire, but there’s no biblical basis for that belief. Both men and women then wore what would in this country be considered women’s garb by today’s standards. If you believe God’s opinion about appropriate clothing has changed enough so that it’s now okay for you to wear pants instead of a caftan, why not also for women?
Yes, you in fact do pick and choose when you say everyone needs to adhere to Deut. 22:5 but then you don’t care about 22:11 or 12. Those tassels in verse twelve are intended to be a constant reminder of the commandments of God, and as such are holy. What basis do you have for discarding the sacred tassels that God commanded his people to wear?
And it isn’t just the “ancient Jewish ceremonial law” where you pick and choose. For instance, Jesus commanded you to love your neighbor, but you hate your non-White neighbors so much you want to kick them out of their homes and their country.
“Filth! Abomination!”
Lot was going to turn his daughters over to a mob to be gang raped. Is that not degenerate? An abomination?
Also:
“Actually, people who are 76+ (coming in at 0.8% LGBTQ self-identifying in the survey noted in my earlier post) have had a lifetime to learn about their sexuality. They are retired and often widowed, so no harm in identifying however they want in a random phone interview. Plenty are politically liberal. Yet, for some reason, they almost all think they are ‘cisgender’ and straight.”
You brought up the 5 – 10% number earlier, but that’s always been based on self-reporting. Researchers have always known that number was affected by societal norms and taboos, and that it would change over time if society became more accepting.
But the older someone is, the more rigid their self-concept has become, and the less able they are to cope with the cognitive dissonance it requires to accept and integrate new insights — to the point that they also rarely adjust to new trends in music.
I saw something similar when I worked with dyslexic people, many of whom were newly diagnosed. The older they were, the more difficult it was for them to integrate their diagnosis into their sense of self. They would say things like, “Ahh, I’m just dumb. Always have been.” Or lazy or obstinate or whatever negative label had been stuck on them in their youth.
Accepting and embracing their diagnosis as dyslexic would’ve actually improved their lives by providing the key to the problems they’d struggled with since their youth, invigorating them with new motivation to overcome their reading difficulties and enabling them to find the proper tools to do so. But it was next to impossible for some of these individuals to give up those old self-identifications, no matter how oppressive, inaccurate, and ill-fitting the labels were.
I mean, this is a scientifically studied phenomenon, in the general sense of older folks having more difficulty accepting and self-integrating innovations, whether concrete or abstract. If you want, I can try to find some links not behind paywalls.
I also am reminded of a conversation I had many years ago where the participants were mostly straight cis liberal Gen X and Boomers. The general consensus of the group was that almost all the participants had experienced same-sex attraction — but because they had never acted on it, had never publicly identified as bisexual, had never been active in the LGBT community, and had always lived an outwardly straight life with the unearned privileges that entails, they didn’t feel comfortable identifying as bisexual because it seemed like co-opting or appropriation. That attitude appears to be changing with the younger generations.
“They must be terribly oppressed! So oppressed they never even knew it for their whole lives.”
https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/145884
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/11/discrimination
“Solitaire … always has to have the last word”
Just another admission that you’re not actually here for discourse. You really care who gets the last word? Are you keeping score? SMH.
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@ Biff
Also, about this:
“maybe it’s more normal to be LGBTQ than not. Totally normal. No issue if the number identifying that way rise to over 50% of young people.”
If you’re referring to the number I quoted:
“57% of LGBTQ Americans identify as bisexual”
Please pay attention. That’s not all young people. It’s 57% out of the subgroup who identify as LGBTQ, which is ~20% of all Gen Z adults.
Math question for you:
If 20% of all Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ…
And 57% of that 20% identify as B…
What percentage of all Gen Z adults identify as LGTQ but not B?
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Afrofem:
I believe the evidence clearly shows that LGBTQ people are not close to 100% genetically made only and that early environment/education has a profound effect on how people self-identify later. Maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I’ve tried to look for things we can agree on, like ending the American empire, as I think those will be more productive discussions.
Solitaire:
You bring up so much crap, honestly. I don’t want to continue the back and forth with you, but I don’t want to let obvious falsehoods go unchallenged. It’s easy to tell the difference between moral guidelines and ceremonial guidelines, and we have church history for thousands of years to help with that as well. It’s not about the specific clothes, it’s about trying to dress up like the opposite sex.
What Lot did is not relevant to God’s commandments. He was a sinful man (actually, even most godly men in the Bible are portrayed as having major sins, which is comforting, since, except for Jesus who is God, we all fall far short of the glory of God) who impregnated his own daughters. He was in a home invasion scenario where everyone would very likely have been killed. FWIW, yes, the context does imply that male on male rape was perceived as even worse than male on female rape because it was unnatural.
You try to do another gotcha with “math”. What I said is the trend lines continue, so it doesn’t stop with 20%+ LGBTQ, it keeps going up till something stops it.
However, the “maybe it’s more normal to be LGBTQ than not” comes directly from your comment, “From a strictly biological viewpoint, bisexuality may well be the default among humans.” No math needed, bruh.
You act like bisexuality is just fine. “Yeah I like women and I’m sure I’ll get married and have a wonderful family some day, but sometimes I just wanna get screwed in the butt by a handsome, strong guy.” I won’t use more vulgar terminology (though it would sell the example better), but if you can’t see this is disgusting and not something that should be the “default” in a healthy society, you have no eyes to see.
Older folks who overwhelmingly identify as straight, and largely missed out on the sexual revolution, but had a much better chance to marry earlier and pair bond, were much happier, particularly with their love lives than later generations. Anyone who has known people in these generations knows this is 100% true. To argue the opposite is incredibly dishonest and frankly a form of child abuse in practice. You should be ashamed of yourself. But you have no shame.
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well i still think transgendering is body mod? maybe I can speak to my child (tres apropos!) when I go to family court next week, it’s kind of a chicken/egg scenario for me, ie “why” == moot
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@ Biff
“You bring up so much crap, honestly.”
Like the command to love thy neighbor? Because I notice you didn’t address that.
“It’s easy to tell the difference between moral guidelines and ceremonial guidelines”
Okay, let’s talk about some of those obvious moral guidelines. Sticking with Deut. 22, we are told that:
▪️pre-marital sex is a capital offense and should be punished by execution
▪️adultery is a capital offense and should be punished by execution
▪️if a man rapes a unbetrothed virgin, she has to marry him and remain married to him for life
Is the Bible clear on God’s stance here?
“It’s not about the specific clothes, it’s about trying to dress up like the opposite sex.”
Which is something that changes over time and place. If you took a modern woman wearing a modestly cut pantsuit and transported her back two hundred years, she most definitely would’ve been seen as trying to dress up like the opposite sex.
“What Lot did is not relevant to God’s commandments.”
He wasn’t married to his daughters, so even disregarding the incest, it was pre-marital sex and he should have been stoned to death.
“most godly men in the Bible are portrayed as having major sins, which is comforting, since, except for Jesus who is God, we all fall far short of the glory of God”
All Lot’s wife did was look back as they fled, and for that God killed her, turning her into a pillar of salt. No comfort for her that God still found her worthy despite her great sin, which was apparently a much worse sin than offering up one’s daughters to be gang raped, considering the variance in their punishments.
“the context does imply that male on male rape was perceived as even worse than male on female rape because it was unnatural”
You’re arguing male on female rape is natural?
“He was in a home invasion scenario where everyone would very likely have been killed.”
You think his daughters would have survived? There’s a very similar story in Judges 19-20, and that woman does not survive.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/concubine-of-levite-bible
Also, please note that God rained down destruction on everyone in Sodom. The children were killed. Even granting that there were not ten righteous men in the city, nor women either, how had the children sinned? Were the children of Sodom greater sinners than Lot?
“You try to do another gotcha with ‘math’.”
My point was, it’s bisexuality which has risen so markedly. If you factor that out, the numbers are still within the 5 -10% range you brought up.
“‘Yeah I like women and I’m sure I’ll get married and have a wonderful family some day, but sometimes I just wanna get screwed in the butt by a handsome, strong guy.’ I won’t use more vulgar terminology (though it would sell the example better), but if you can’t see this is disgusting”
At the risk of TMI, anal sex in any form or configuration is not something I’ve personally ever been interested in. But get real, it isn’t only gay men who have anal sex. Also, anal sex is not the only type of intercourse that gay men engage in. Do you think oral sex is also disgusting? What about the various types of non-penetrative sex?
What types of sexual activity does God allow or condemn between a husband and a wife?
You do understand that someone can identify as straight, gay, or bi without ever actually having had any sexual partners?
And I really hope you understand that we aren’t discussing my personal orientation, sex life, or marital history, nor are my opinions informed by any of those factors.
“Older folks who overwhelmingly identify as straight, and largely missed out on the sexual revolution, but had a much better chance to marry earlier and pair bond, were much happier, particularly with their love lives than later generations. Anyone who has known people in these generations knows this is 100% true.”
The WW2 generation and especially the Silents who followed them were the ones who ushered in the huge jump in divorce rates and the societal normalization of divorce.
Click to access sr21_024.pdf
Maybe you aren’t old enough to remember the huge wave of 20+ year marriages falling apart in the 1970s.
“To argue the opposite is incredibly dishonest and frankly a form of child abuse in practice.”
The way you throw around the term “child abuse” and blatantly misuse the term “grooming” is, quite frankly, a form of minimization and highly disrespectful to survivors.
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Solitaire:
Yes, gender appropriate clothing would change over time and in different societies.
Yes, premarital sex should be strongly discouraged in a healthy society (and traditionally has been). Specific punishments have varied a lot, but that doesn’t change the principle.
Seems you are taking issue with what God has decided/done. You can just admit you don’t believe in the Bible.
The huge wave of divorces happened in the 70s as you said, after the sexual revolution. I guess some older folks got hit by that tornado too. Doesn’t change the central point at all.
So sad that you think I’m being “disrespectful” by calling LGBTQ indoctrination of kids child abuse. =(
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@ Biff
“Yes, premarital sex should be strongly discouraged in a healthy society (and traditionally has been). Specific punishments have varied a lot, but that doesn’t change the principle.”
Deut. 22 calls it evil.
Apparently you’re also taking issue with what God has decided, because you’re picking and choosing. You’ve been clutching your pearls over gender-coded garments and yelling “Abomination!” But I don’t see you yelling “Evil!” about fornication or adultery.
“So sad that you think I’m being ‘disrespectful’ by calling LGBTQ indoctrination of kids child abuse.”
I agree with Afrofem on this. “Turning kids gay” is another decades-old lie that has no basis in scientific fact. If anything, LGBTQ youth are at great risk of abuse by parents who try to “beat the gay out of them” or kick them out of the house onto the streets.
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Solitaire:
Alright, great. And end in sight.
You’ve said, “I agree with Afrofem on this. “Turning kids gay” is another decades-old lie that has no basis in scientific fact. If anything, LGBTQ youth are at great risk of abuse by parents who try to “beat the gay out of them” or kick them out of the house onto the streets.”
I presented evidence that was never refuted (the “scientific fact”) showing over 20% of the recent generation is identifying as LGBTQ and that trend is rapidly increasing. You think it’s totally normal (even if it goes much higher), as you believe maybe bisexuality should be the ‘”default” about humans.
I think, instead, that the evidence clearly shows that the constant LGBTQ indoctrination of young people is changing their sexuality in ways that are extremely dangerous for them and society. I believe this, and your continued justification of all of this, is evil and from the Devil. I’m confident that most Christians would agree with me on this.
Readers can see above and read the Bible (if they care about that). Then make their own decision. Let he who has eyes to see see.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_sexual_orientation
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
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Wikipedia is controlled by godless leftists. If you trust it over the Bible on matters of morality you deserve what you get.
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@ Biff
You wanted scientific fact. The wiki articles provide a good general overview with links to many scientific studies.
Wikipedia is open source. I don’t know why you think only godless leftists are allowed to participate. You don’t even have to log in to edit.
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https://phys.org/news/2022-05-weaponized-grooming-rhetoric-toll-lgbtq.html
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1096623939/accusations-grooming-political-attack-homophobic-origins
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@ Abagond
“Abigail Shrier has no background in science or medicine…Her stock in trade is writing right-wing opinions, currently for the Wall Street Journal.”
Unfortunately, Abigail Shrier needs no scientific background or bonafides in today’s America. Many Americans are more than willing to swallow baseless assertions because they no longer have any interest in facts.
I recently read a magazine interview with a veteran of the ACT UP movement from the 1980s. Toward the end of the interview, he was asked about how ACT UP would fare if the AIDS crisis happened today assuming the same levels of homophobia.
The veteran activist made this observation:
Karl Rove, Bush 43’s handler once boasted that the Republican party didn’t have to worry about facts because they could create their own reality.
We see the result of those attitudes in the way the rightwing totally ignores facts. We’ve all had the experience of presenting factual information, including video evidence, to rightwing colleagues, acquaintances, neighbors and family members only to have them ignore, deny or weave fantastical tales about why the information we’re sharing couldn’t be right.
They have retreated into an alternate reality propped up by rightwing media and opportunistic politicians.
Like other people who retreat into alternate realities (like drug addicts), they will insist their reality is the only true reality.
At some point, the weight of factual reality will crash into their fantasy world in the form of cold, hard consequences.
Until that day, they will continue to create pain and hardship for the rest of us.
And they will continue to figuratively stick their fingers in their ears and double down on their talking points like Abigail Shrier does in the WSJ and in the propagandistic book Irreversible Damage.
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@ Afrofem:
I do not think it is already a minority, but I agree this is a huge problem. Shrier herself has not ventured much beyond the Republican Bubble in promoting her book.
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@ biff
Shrier’s book spreads fear and misinformation. Regardless of what is the truth of transgenderism, it is not helping, but just making things worse. And, as stated in the post, it will likely lead to more suicide attempts.
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https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/may/11/why-its-not-grooming-what-research-says-about-gend/
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Also, I’m getting really tired of Biff saying that I “believe maybe bisexuality should be the ‘default’ about humans.”
What I said is that biologically it may well be the case that bisexuality is the default. Research is ongoing, but the science seems to be indicating a high probability that this is the case. Just like biologically among humans (and really all mammals as far as I’m aware) females are the default, or the template. A biological default/template cannot be reset just because someone “believes” it should be one way or the other.
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Solitaire:
“Research is ongoing”. Lolz!!! 😂
Yes, thousands of years of recorded human history isn’t enough to tell us about human nature. We need some scientists from elite universities to do more research. Yes, they will continue to get promoted, and get massive grants, if they support the LGBTQ agenda, and they will get fired/defunded if they oppose it, but who cares, we know they couldn’t be biased.
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And let’s quote leftists rags like Politifact and NPR. But I really wonder what Buzzfeed and WaPo would say? Hmmmm 🤔 . Again the fact that the folks working at all these places would be fired if they did anything against the LGBTQ agenda really isn’t relevant of course.
Here’s a “biological” fact for Solitaire. Men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes. The very few who have genetic abnormalities are the exception that proves the rule. No amount of surgery or hormones can change that. Archaeologists can look at fossil remains and easily differentiate between men and women.
A leftist rag I googled just said, “Data indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.” Taking that at face value, these are clearly mentally ill individuals.
In years past, they could get psychological, and more importantly spiritual, help and would be much less likely to be suicidal and attempt suicide. Giving them hormones and getting them to cut their junk off, only for them to still look and act like men, only makes them more likely to kill themselves (contrary to what abagond and others state). They should be getting help instead of facilitating their irreversible self-mutilation. The idea that “transphobia” is somehow responsible for all the recent suicides is ridiculous and it’s the exact opposite. Of course “researchers” who will be fired for opposing the LGBTQ agenda won’t admit that, but it’s obvious.
I personally knew a guy who came out as transgender after he had become a father. Growing up, he acted totally masculine and he wasn’t born “a woman”. His decision to come out as trans had devastating effects on him and his family. It was very sad. He would have been better off in an earlier era where he could maybe dress up in front of the mirror by himself every once in a while if he wanted to get off like that, but not mess up his family, including his relationships with his parents, siblings, grandparent and his young kid. He personally doesn’t seem happier either.
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@ Biff
“Yes, thousands of years of recorded human history isn’t enough to tell us about human nature.”
That’s right, it isn’t enough. Those records were written by people who didn’t use the scientific method, who were incapable of doing genetic research, and who were immersed in mythological beliefs (not necessarily talking about Christianity here; recorded human history encompasses multiple religions and belief systems).
For example, recorded human history tells us that many advanced societies prior to the scientific revolution believed that women were merely incubators in which male sperm developed and that objects a pregnant woman saw or dreams she had could affect the shape and health of the fetus.
For thousands of years, many advanced societies believed that human nature was determined by the four humors (bodily fluids), allowing individuals’ temperament, personality, and health status to be accurately predicted by their appearance.
I suppose you also think scientists at elite universities are supporting a pro-dinosaur agenda?
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/are-dinosaurs-mentioned-bible
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-do-creationists-explain-dinosaurs-1092129
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@ Biff
“And let’s quote leftists rags like Politifact and NPR.”
No one’s stopping you from countering with rightwing sources.
“folks working at all these places would be fired if they did anything against the LGBTQ agenda”
Can you prove this assertion?
“Men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes.”
You know who else has XY or XX chromosomes? A substantial percentage of intersex people, whose specific intersex condition is in fact directly related to hormones rather than chromosomal aberration.
“Archaeologists can look at fossil remains and easily differentiate between men and women.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/16/archaeology-sexual-revolution-bones-sex-dna-birka-lovers
“Taking that at face value, these are clearly mentally ill individuals.”
Suicidal ideation is not in and of itself a marker of mental illness. There are certain mental illnesses that are linked to a higher risk of suicidal ideation, but so are health conditions that cause chronic physical pain. However, illness whether physical or mental doesn’t need to be present; suicidal ideation often is linked to stressful events in an individual’s life which heighten feelings of hopelessness.
You also left out the part of the quote about how suicidal ideation was found to be markedly less when LGBTQ+ young adults had a supportive environment. That in and of itself is a strong indicator mental illness is not a root cause.
“Giving them hormones and getting them to cut their junk off, only for them to still look and act like men, only makes them more likely to kill themselves”
Recent research has found the exact opposite:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2779429
Where is your evidence that statistically MTF medical transition results overwhelmingly in individuals who “still look and act like men”?
“Growing up, he acted totally masculine”
Yes, I’m sure your observational data completely overrides this individual’s total lived experience, which you are not privy to.
“He would have been better off in an earlier era where he could maybe dress up in front of the mirror by himself every once in a while if he wanted to get off like that”
Being transgender is not a sexual fetish, nor is it directly linked to transvestic fetishism.
“but not mess up his family, including his relationships with his parents, siblings, grandparent and his young kid. He personally doesn’t seem happier either.”
It couldn’t possibly be the case that the family members are messing up the relationships, directly leading to your friend’s unhappiness?
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Biff wrote:
“A leftist rag I googled just said, ‘Data indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.'”
Today I learned that The Journal of Interpersonal Violence is a leftist rag:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260520915554
From the abstract:
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Even if allowing them to mutilate their bodies to satisfy their delusions reduce their suicide rate, would it be worth it? Is self-mutilation really that much better than suicide?
If (most) adult men can restrain themselves from acting on the attraction to teenage girls that pretty much all straight men feel, then transexuals can restrain themselves from mutilating their bodies because of their sick fetish.
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@ Biff
So is the Bible the only reliable source of information, or are there others? And if so, what are they? Because you seem to shoot down any source that disagrees with you as untrustworthy.
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abagond:
I’m done wasting my time on back and forth with Solitaire on this topic. However, I will respond to you here, as you haven’t asked much of me and the question is not really unreasonable (though to have to ask it implies that you think maybe I would only read the Bible to the exclusion of all sources of other info, which is ridiculous).
In terms of spiritual/moral truth, yes, I believe the Bible is the Word of God and is the only truly reliable source. There can be good commentators, but they are measured by how reliably they discuss the Bible and its principles.
Now there are plenty of other sources for various matters. Reliability all depends on what the subject is and what kind of bias may be involved. Something like the NYT will have gifted writers no doubt. If they are doing a write up of a football game it will be great and generally very accurate and informative.
If they are writing about transgender stuff, however, then they will follow what is politically correct without fail. So 30 years ago, they’d write something very different from what they’d write now, which would be parroting current pro LGBTQ party lines. The sources I noted above were all notably left leaning. On this topic, even “MSM” that purports to be right leaning is trying to justify LGBTQ stuff, so it also has an agenda.
What is interesting to me is that we have such developed gatekeeping mechanisms that function on both the right and the left. Special categories are sacred, including Jews, blacks, other “minorities”, women and LGBTQ people. Nothing critical of a sacred group is allowed in the MSM. The first thing mainstream gatekeepers would do if you cited Vox Day is not to engage with what he wrote, but instead to try to disqualify him as a “racist” (the best disqualification) and then not deal with what he says at all.
For stuff like Politifact and NPR, I’m exposed to it everyday. I know exactly what their position will be. They are repeating ruling party talking points. When they engage in that function (and they have to do so on many topics), they aren’t useful to me as a source at all. It’s telling that most of these sites got rid of their comment sections, ostensibly to create a “safe space”, but really to not allow any dissent, because when people understand that many(or even most) do not agree with a point, the propaganda effect is much less. That’s why it’s critical, for instance, that any MSM reference to the 2020 election completely dismiss allegations of widespread fraud and say there is no evidence of the same, which is ridiculous, since a whole movie was made providing evidence–you can take issue with some of it I suppose, but to say there was no evidence provided is an obvious lie–and a huge percentage of the country (certainly a majority of Republicans, and a lot of Independents and Democrats too) believes there is evidence of such fraud.
Anyway, quoting mainstream media propaganda on trans stuff (which is radically different than what it would have been even a couple decades ago) as if it is some factual “science” (when the the science for millennia in the West, and even now in most cultures and societies in the world, has been that trans stuff is a serious mental illness) is not going to convince me to change my mind on a fundamentally moral issue that the Bible is pretty clear on.
Hope that at least makes my position clearer.
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Re: thousands of years of recorded human history telling us about human nature, I overlooked one of the most egregious mistakes, which was blaming women for giving birth to girls instead of boys, because everyone knew men had nothing to do with that.
“The first thing mainstream gatekeepers would do if you cited Vox Day is not to engage with what he wrote, but instead to try to disqualify him as a ‘racist’ (the best disqualification) and then not deal with what he says at all.”
You didn’t even bother to try here. Who did you ever quote? You’re assuming a certain reaction, while engaging in that exact same thing. You automatically dismiss sources you don’t like instead of engaging with what they actually wrote.
I don’t remember the exact thread, but a couple years back you did in fact link to a video by Vox Day which defined western civilization. If I remember correctly both Abagond and I (possibly others as well) engaged with what Vox Day said in that video without resorting to ad hominem.
“quoting mainstream media propaganda on trans stuff … as if it is some factual ‘science’….”
The sources I linked to quoted scientists, researchers, experts on child abuse, archaeologists, etc. I also linked directly to scientific journals like JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Solitaire:
You can’t leave well enough alone. I was responding to abagond, but you make more false statements about me.
First, yes there have been scientific breakthroughs, but knowledge of character/human nature hasn’t really improved much in recent years. If anything, learning about chromosomes should show scientists that gender is immutable and encoded in all our cells. This recent trans stuff is not scientific. It is a current social affectation.
I didn’t say you and abagond were “mainstream gatekeepers”. You just follow their tune in what you believe. If the MSM hammers article after article sympathetic to minor attracted persons and their supposed sufferings over the next few years, you will suddenly find abagond making posts on them, and apologizing, as he did for transvestites, for not using the right terminology a few years prior.
All these prestigious journals are prohibited from presenting anything that could be seen as critical of sacred classes, which now include so called “trans people” (though a generation ago, they would not have). They are all the same. I gain nothing from seeing the same propaganda I’m exposed to on a daily basis by just looking at any supposedly neutral news feed. I’ve also engaged with that viewpoint at quite some length above.
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@ Biff
“You can’t leave well enough alone. I was responding to abagond….”
You were talking about me: e.g. “stuff like Politifact and NPR” — I’m the one who quoted those sources on this thread.
“First, yes there have been scientific breakthroughs, but knowledge of character/human nature hasn’t really improved much in recent years.”
This is apparently just your opinion. Does your opinion only apply to “trans stuff” or to other recent scientific research into the human genome, neurochemistry, etc.?
“If anything, learning about chromosomes should show scientists that gender is immutable and encoded in all our cells.”
And yet we now know that other factors in fetal development, like androgen insensitivity, can cause the reproductive organs to take on the opposite structure than the chromosomes are coded for. So gender is not immutable.
Your hypothesis is “gender is immutable” but you’ve already concluded that “learning about chromosomes should show scientists [this].” That’s not how the scientific method works.
Biff, you have one X chromosome. Out of all the genes on that chromosome, how many are involved in determining sex/gender?
“This recent trans stuff is not scientific. It is a current social affectation.”
You’ve yet to show hard scientific proof or cite any scientific studies to support this.
“I didn’t say you and abagond were ‘mainstream gatekeepers’.”
Then why don’t you cite your sources?
“If the MSM hammers article after article sympathetic to minor attracted persons and their supposed sufferings over the next few years, you will suddenly find abagond making posts on them, and apologizing, as he did for transvestites, for not using the right terminology a few years prior.”
And you have the gall to say I’m making false statements about you! You’re claiming Abagond will become an apologist for pedophiles!
Furthermore, “transvestite” is not the same as “transgender.” I don’t remember Abagond writing anything much at all about transvestites.
“All these prestigious journals are prohibited from presenting anything that could be seen as critical of sacred classes”
Proof, please.
Also, these “sacred classes” of yours apparently encompass all of humanity who aren’t straight cis White Christian males — the ones who’ve been controlling the narrative of the mainstream media (and the history books) for hundreds of years.
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Solitaire:
You said, “straight cis White Christian males — the ones who’ve been controlling the narrative of the mainstream media”. I concede. It’s obvious that Christian control of the MSM is the central problem of our times. Lolz! Honk Honk! 🤡 🤡 🤡
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@ Biff
I said “for hundreds of years,” not “our times.”
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https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/sry/
If a sex-determining gene can mutate in such a way as to allow a “gender switch,” then gender is not immutable. Immutable means it never changes, no exceptions.
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https://theconversation.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-so-what-will-happen-to-men-90125
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https://www.livescience.com/y-chromosome-dying.html
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@ biff
Transgender people are as old as dirt. They go back at least 5,000 years. But information about them has been suppressed.
For example:
In the 1930s, much of the research on transgender people was lost due to Nazi book burnings. It took decades to recover from that. Look up Magnus Hirschfeld, if you are curious.
In the 1980s, Johns Hopkins, which for decades ran the only gender clinic in the US, gave sex change operations to only 1.2% of those applied, and only to those who would be super passable, blending invisiblly into society. The invisibilty was by design.
Also in the 1980s (or maybe late 1970s) I remember seeing trans women (then called “transsexuals”) on Phil Donahue’s talk show. They came across as freaks with serious mental problems. Very different than they do now on YouTube on their own channels where they hold the mike and handle the framing. But for decades that one Donahue show accounted for most of what I knew about “transsexuals”. Partly because Donahue seemed so sympathetic, fair-minded and well-informed!
Also:
I would not try to determine what is “natural” when it comes to human sexuality based on Christian norms or a Christianized culture. As both the Romans and Iroquois found out, Christians are scarily anti-sex. Their beliefs go against human nature! Any Christian who has “struggled against sin” knows this first-hand.
Christians stamped out all trace of transgenderism (or, really, just forced it into the closet) within Christendom – only to find it again when they explored the Americas. Look up berdache or two-spirit, if you are curious.
So:
You do not trust NPR and Politifact because you believe they are distorted – but so have the past decades and millennia that you rely on! Even what we have of the ancient Greeks and Romans, nearly all of it comes to us through a filter of Christian and Muslim scribes and book-burners.
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“As both the Romans and Iroquois found out, Christians are scarily anti-sex. Their beliefs go against human nature!”
So, So True!
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The link below is an article that traces how the X and Y chromosomes came to be labeled the “sex chromosomes” in the first place. For the first few decades, there was disagreement among scientists about whether to use this label because even then they knew it was a gross oversimplification. And as the article notes, that misguided labeling has led to bad science, like the now-disproven theory that XYY individuals were more prone to violent crime because their additional Y chromosome made them “extra masculine” — something I remember being taught as fact in at least three college classes, one of which was Intro to Genetics. But then I graduated before the SRY gene was discovered and before the Human Genome Project began.
https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2015/02/sex-isn-t-chromosomes-story-century-misconceptions-about-x-y
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https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a#ref-CR1
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abagond:
I thought you considered yourself a Christian? You are “othering” them with your language, e.g. “their” rather than “our”. I do think it’s good if people like you, Solitaire and Afrofem can acknowledge that your current beliefs aren’t in line with Biblical Christianity. Without doing that there’s no possibility of genuine repentance. Even after all this time it’s not too late. Don’t trust your own wisdom before God’s.
“As both the Romans and Iroquois found out, Christians are scarily anti-sex. Their beliefs go against human nature!”
Of course. That’s the whole point of Christianity! Human nature is sinful (since the fall), and that’s why we need Jesus. The abominations committed by the referenced Romans and so called “native Americans”, e.g., multitudinous live human sacrifices, show the horribly sinful nature of man in his natural state.
1930s Germany was incredibly wicked. Lots of LGBTQ filth and child prostitution. That and the very real communist threat (communists killed over 100 million in the Soviet Union and China, so many more than the Nazis are accused of by their worse enemies) led to the rise of the literal Nazis and a cleansing fire to get rid of the filth that had accumulated in that society. It seems we may be getting close to a similar inflection point in our current Western society.
Yes, of course there have always been some with LGBTQ impulses. However, these are wicked and unnatural and shouldn’t be “encouraged”. People are born with certain impulses yes, but there’s a lot of malleability in sexual expression. It’s why victims of sexual abuse are more likely to abuse themselves. If you told 1,000 kids from birth that homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuality wrong and degenerate and showed them constant propaganda to reinforce that you’d get a lot of people from that group who identified as homosexual. You think that race (nature/genes) don’t mean anything in terms of intelligence–that it’s all differences in environment/culture (nurture), but in sexuality you think the complete opposite. Weird, when the evidence clearly shows it’s both nature and nurture. Again, referencing the previously mentioned surveys, society is much better off (and the vast majority of the individuals involved as well) when 0.8% of people in a generation identify as LGBTQ, rather than 20%+ (and maybe 30% for the next generation if trends continue).
“They came across as freaks with serious mental problems. Very different than they do now on YouTube on their own channels where they hold the mike and handle the framing.”
Lolz! At least you can be refreshingly honest honest sometimes! I guarantee you that the Phil Donahue show was more authentic than those heavily curated YouTube channels. Pro tip: If you’ve ever met a woman from online, you really want some pics of her taken by a third party. If she’s holding the camera and taking pics only from flattering angles, you will see something very unexpected when the two of you meet in real life. 😂
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@ biff
I do consider myself Christian, but I also try to talk about groups in the third person, even those I belong to.
I do not think you made that case. You quoted from the Mosaic law but most of that does not apply to Christians, especially the tassel sort of stuff.
Wicked maybe but not necessarily unnatural. Lots of “natural” things are wicked as you yourself admitted.
Race is almost literally just skin deep genetically speaking. Sexuality and gender go way deeper.
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“the rise of the literal Nazis and a cleansing fire to get rid of the filth that had accumulated in that society.”
That’s an interesting way to describe the Holocaust.
https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/gay-people/
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biff:
” If you told 1,000 kids from birth that homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuality wrong and degenerate and showed them constant propaganda to reinforce that you’d get a lot of people from that group who identified as homosexual.”
The ancient Greeks (especially the Athenians) considered sex between two men as the highest form of love. They considered heterosexual relationships a necessary evil to maintain family bloodlines.
Ditto for the ancient Persians and Pashtuns (Afghans).
Even with those strongly held beliefs and loads of same sex loving “propaganda”, the majority of Greek men were unabashedly heterosexual.
They adored the women in their lives and loved creative ways of pleasuring them and being pleasured in return.
So much for the effects of “constant propaganda”. Even their gods (both male and female) were constantly on the prowl for humans of the opposite sex to connect with in myriad ways.
Sex is a basic human drive. Various societies try to channel that basic drive in the same ways some humans try to control rivers.
What every society eventually finds out is sexual expression, like river water will find a way under, over or around man-made structures. And it is usually male-dominated or patriarchal societies that try hardest to control natural forces like sex and rivers.
biff, in a sense, you’ve proven your own hypothesis wrong. Thousands (actually millions) of children are subjected from birth to propaganda that proclaims heterosexuality as the one and only way to express sexuality and same sex loving or non-binary gender expression as wrong and “degenerate”.
Yet, the same rough percentages of people are LGBTQI in such societies as in societies without pervasive anti-LGBTQI propaganda (I’m thinking of East Asians who don’t get their knickers in a twist about same sex loving).
In spite of your railing against same sex loving and non-binary gender expression, people will continue to be born and grow up to express their sexuality in a variety of ways whether “approved” or “disapproved”.
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“It’s why victims of sexual abuse are more likely to abuse themselves.”
https://livingwell.org.au/managing-difficulties/addressing-the-victim-to-offender-cycle/
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abagond,
You’ve rejected the moral tenets that Christians for many many centuries espoused in favor of views shared by atheists and satanists. Those closest to Jesus’ time certainly didn’t think that homosexuality/transsexuality was morally permissible. Their holiness stood in stark contrast to the sexual degeneracy of the Roman empire.
There are different definitions of “natural”. Your point is not without merit that if human nature is evil than all kinds of evil could be “natural”. However, there is a longstanding usage of “unnatural” that is basically “perverse” or against what normal human nature should be.
Solitaire:
I’m shocked that your source can only come up with 10,000 gay men sent to the concentration camps. How about adding a couple zeros there, bruh. BTW, don’t ever mention that independent researchers who did forensic studies on the concentration camps found that they didn’t have evidence of, and couldn’t have had, gas chambers. You can get thrown in prison for that in many countries. It’s a sacred fact that must never be critically examined, as is the 6 million figure (except that it’s just fine to say it could have been more than 6 million–I had been taught that 5 million non-Jews, including homosexuals, also died in the camps, though that seems to be fictional as well).
Afrofem:
We don’t know how many of the Romans might have identified as bisexual or partaken in homosexual acts. We do know a lot about the sexual degeneracy and wickedness of the ruling class generally. Their primary god, Zeus, abducted and raped a boy (Ganymede), so maybe they thought that was OK, and they have a rich tradition of man-boy love that organizations like NAMBLA still celebrate. https://www.nambla.org/
No, the study I showed demonstrates that recent generations where kids are told White, cis, hetero, male = bad are more likely to get people identifying as LGBTQ to get away from that. In previous years where there really was pro-straight teaching, the vast vast majority of people identified as normal sexually (non-LGBTQ). No, homosexuality is not nearly as prevalent in East Asian countries like Korea or Japan as it is in places like Thailand (really South-East Asian) where there is some tradition of that. It’s really not the same at all from society to society. The data don’t back that up at all.
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https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/
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Wow, Biff is a Holocaust denier. Guess I should have seen that one coming.
“No, the study I showed demonstrates that recent generations where kids are told White, cis, hetero, male = bad are more likely to get people identifying as LGBTQ to get away from that.”
The survey doesn’t demonstrate anything of the sort. That is your interpretation of the data, based off of your own opinions. It was a Gallup poll, that’s it, not a peer-reviewed scientific study looking for correlations and/or causations. Here’s the link, taken from the Axios article:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx
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@ biff
Transsexuality too? Please give an example. A Christian one.
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Solitaire:
“Holocaust denier”, like “racist”, “homophobe”, etc. is just another clever way to avoid having to engage in a substantive review of the evidence, e.g.: https://www.unz.com/article/breaking-the-spell/
I believe millions of Jews probably died in WWII at the hands of the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. I just don’t believe it happened in the way commonly taught recently (interestingly, it was not taught like that at all immediately after WWII)–the narrative that now is not allowed to be questioned on pain of being flung out of decent society for doing so.
abagond:
I can’t think of examples of early Christian transsexuals. The fact that there were none (or if you somehow find one–it would be the exception that proves the rule) is pretty good evidence it wasn’t accepted in early Christian culture. There certainly were prominent transvestites/pedophiles in Roman history.
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@ Biff
We were talking about gay men in Nazi Germany. What methods do you believe the Nazis used to create the cleansing fire to get rid of the homosexual filth?
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OK, Solitaire, you can read the link I provided re: observable evidence re: the so-called Holocaust or not as you like, but I’m not getting into a long conversation about the Nazis with you on this thread. You asked a specific gotcha question about which I have limited info. However, I understand the Nazis burned gay pornography, including the archives of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, operated by a famous Jewish enabler of sexual deviancy. They broke up pedophile rings. Many prominent homosexuals (your source said around 10,000–I’ll just say that there’s incentive from the victors to over count the true number, rather than undercount it, though it doesn’t sound totally unreasonable) were sent to labor camps, where, due to harsh conditions, including a World War that ultimately killed tens of millions of people (who are much less important to history than the supposed six million Jews), and disease, many no doubt died.
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@ Biff
“but I’m not getting into a long conversation about the Nazis with you on this thread”
Excuse me, but in my previous comment I’m the one who brought the topic back to homosexuality, instead of taking you on about every last thing concerning the Holocaust. I looked at your link. Most of it was already familiar (it may surprise you to know I’ve read David Irving’s works), and of course I’m also familiar with the counterarguments. But that’s not the topic of this thread.
Okay, back on topic. After you made your comment about the cleansing fire of the Nazis vis-a-vis “LGBTQ filth,” you wrote:
“It seems we may be getting close to a similar inflection point in our current Western society.”
What form do you expect this will take? Do you forsee libraries and other buildings being burned down? LGBTQIA+ people rounded up into labor camps?
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Solitaire:
As to what form the inflection point re: sexual degeneracy tolerance will take in our lifetimes, I don’t have a flashy answer for you, I’m afraid, as I don’t pretend to be able to tell the future. It could be as simple as more states enacting regulations like Florida’s against the teaching of minors as life gets harder for people and they have less tolerance for ruling trash decadence (e.g., become Brazil, get a Bolsonaro), but it could be part of a larger collapse of the ruling regime. I fear things will get worse in the country before they get better. I don’t think you’d see libraries burning or LGBTQIAMF (I noticed you left out minor attracted persons and furries) rounded up, unless it was part of a total social breakdown, following something at least as bad as the Great Depression, or a civil war.
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biff:
“No, homosexuality is not nearly as prevalent in East Asian countries like Korea or Japan as it is in places like Thailand (really South-East Asian) where there is some tradition of that. It’s really not the same at all from society to society.”
LOL!!!
Just wishing doesn’t make it so. If you did actual research instead of railing against what you disapprove of, you would have come across this article in JSTOR Daily entitled In Han Dynasty China, Bisexuality Was the Norm.
https://daily.jstor.org/in-han-dynasty-china-bisexuality-was-the-norm/
Solitaire’s comment already covered the presence of same sex loving and non-binary gender expression in Japan. Korea was likely no different.
“Much of Asia” covers not only Southeast Asia, included are: Northeast Asia, Central Asia (the Stans) and West Asia (Persia/Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey).
Just because you are steeped in Abrahamic homophobia and have a narrow view of what’s “normal” doesn’t make it so for everyone globally in other time periods.
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Afrofem:
I don’t doubt that many cultures have had more prevalent sexual deviancy/degeneracy in different times and places. The point was that it’s not uniformly expressed in each society. So you could have societies where people freely self-identify as less than 1% LGBTQIAMF, and those where it’s 20-30% plus–and that’s just difference in America in a few generations (as evidenced by the abovereferenced survey)!
My point is that environment plays a big role in the prevalence of sexual deviancy/degeneracy, which goes against the “100% born this way” canard. Genetics certainly plays a role, but it’s not definitive for most people. Nothing people have cited (including you and Solitaire) has disproved that at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
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@ Biff
First you claim that thousands of years of recorded human history should be enough to tell us about human nature. But when you are confronted with evidence that much of the recorded human history doesn’t agree with your beliefs about human nature, you say those cultures were sexually degenerate. Do you see the inconsistency?
“My point is that environment plays a big role in the prevalence of sexual deviancy/degeneracy, which goes against the ‘100% born this way’ canard. Genetics certainly plays a role, but it’s not definitive for most people.”
WHERE are your citations? What scientific research backs your assertions?
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Solitaire:
Yes, history does tell us about human nature. There has been homosexual degeneracy in many societies in human history (even referenced in Genesis, which was discussed above), particularly near the height of empires that were starting to fall into decadence and decline. In most healthy societies it was recognized as degenerate and unhealthy for society and was not encouraged (the limited exceptions prove the rule).
“WHERE are your citations? What scientific research backs your assertions?”
OK, this is not coming in good faith. Since when have cites from either of us changed the other’s mind? It hasn’t happened. I spent a lot of time pointing out that current “scientific research” has to be LGBTQIAMF positive or at least neutral to retain funding/employment for the researchers. If I spend the time digging up some 50 or 100 years old studies opining that this behavior is a serious mental illness you will reject them and tell me how modern “science” has uncovered that being trans is 100% normal and healthy and scientists believe “trans women” should be able to compete with biological females and win all the women’s competitions and set all the women’s world records.
Don’t waste our time with this crap. Please give it a rest. You reject Biblical morality and accept the morality of Sodom and Gomorrah. You don’t believe in Hell, so surely you’ll be just fine.
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biff:
“My point is that environment plays a big role in the prevalence of sexual deviancy/degeneracy, which goes against the “100% born this way” canard. Genetics certainly plays a role,”
My point is that sexual preference and gender expression have little to do with environment or genetics.
From my reading and observation, sexual variance is more akin to a what determines which hand is dominant, fingerprint patterns or whether a person can curl their tongues.
None of those human variations are determined by environment, genetics, propaganda or trauma. They are simple human variations some people are born with, most are not.
What I find interesting is the types of people who insist on controlling the lives of others, who insist on conformity to one “approved” behavioral model usually find it difficult to control themselves. For example Republican politicians attending sex parties aka orgies while backing anti-Gay initiatives.
The sheer hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/31/cloud-of-notoriety-builds-over-cawthorn-builds-as-sex-and-drugs-comment-00022162
They rant and rave about perceived sexual immorality, deviancy, degeneracy and decadence yet promote grand larceny, horrific violence in the form rape, torture and genocide.
To me, even thinking of harming others because of inborn traits that manifest as private behavior between consenting adults is in itself depraved, immoral and degenerate. Not to mention extremely desperate for control.
So no, I don’t buy into ancient Hebrew tribal law as the best way for people to live their lives now.
Heck, those tribal laws weren’t all that great in 4000 BCE.
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@ Biff
Why don’t you stop wasting our time and admit your argument is based entirely on your feelings? Talk about arguing in bad faith!
You keep claiming that modern scientists are forced to produce results of a certain type or else lose their jobs and funding. I’ve repeatedly asked you for proof of this assertion and you’ve provided nothing.
Has it ever dawned on you that the science has progressed radically in the last 30 years? There’s been an enormous advance between what we knew in the late 1980s and what we know now, especially in genetics and neuroscience. Maybe that is the reason the scientific consensus is changing?! But no, it has to be some giant conspiracy to silence the voices that agree with your religious beliefs.
If you think 50-year-old studies prove your assertions, then you should be able to explain why in scientific terms. Demonstrate why those results are still scientifically valid.
“In most healthy societies it was recognized as degenerate and unhealthy for society and was not encouraged (the limited exceptions prove the rule).”
All of China for hundreds of years — and much of the rest of Asia, including India and Polynesia — is not a “limited exception.”
I would like to see a list of these “healthy societies.” You’ve been provided the names of some of the societies that accepted LGBT+ people. Please respond in kind.
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@ Afrofem
I think handedness is a good parallel. While there is no single gene that determines handedness, and scientists still do not fully understand what causes handedness, there appear to be multiple genes involved in a complex interaction.
As far as societal environment is concerned, left-handers can be forced to learn to write with their right hand, but they still retain their innate left-handedness:
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/22/7/2816
Moreover, the “converted” left-handers continue to demonstrate the neurological patterns of left-handers (from the same source as above):
Another neurological study found left-handedness to not only be persistent but even strengthened by conversion attempts:
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/29/7847
Part of the reason most schools in the USA no longer try to convert left-handers is because studies repeatedly showed a correlation to the development of stuttering, learning difficulties, and other harmful effects.
For thousands of years, some societies — including the Abrahamic ones — have considered left-handedness unnatural, deviant, and even demonic. The word “sinister” comes from the Latin word for “left.” Historically, people who are innately left-handed have been stigmatized, discriminated against, and burned as witches.
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@ biff
This is all you got? This is what “Those closest to Jesus’ time certainly didn’t think that homosexuality/transsexuality was morally permissible” was based on when it came to transsexuality?
Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
After all, I could easily spin it the other way: Paul specifically condemns homosexuality but not transsexuality, even though you say it was “prominent” back then. You cannot have it both ways. It is not as if he was shy in talking about that kind of stuff.
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@ biff
It is far more likely that science simply disagrees with you than that trans activists put them up to it. Unless of course you have evidence to the contrary.
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One of the scientific arguments that comes up frequently in discussions about sexual orientation has to do with finger length and its possible connection to pre-natal testosterone exposure.
As the following link explains, researchers disagree whether this digit ratio actually has any scientific significance. I have never heard of anyone on the “nay” side being fired or losing funding. In fact, as the article notes, the one scientific journal that has engaged in anything possibly close to censorship is on the “nay” side, rejecting any papers which use “digit ratios [as] a proxy for hormone levels.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/talk-hand-scientists-try-debunk-idea-finger-length-can-reveal-personality-and-health
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@ Soltaire
Thanks for adding Indian and by extension other South Asian cultures to the mix. Ditto for Polynesian and Pinoy groups.
Also thanks for adding information about genetic studies. While I have a basic understanding of genetics, it’s never been my bailiwick.
I will have to do more reading about the genetic connection.
I’ve been hesitant to add genetics to the arguments because I have several same sex loving or bisexual relatives who were born to heterosexual parents.
They married people of the opposite sex and came out late in life.
Their children were all heterosexual (as far as I know). So I never thought of genetics as playing a role in sexual preference or gender expression.
It just seemed the way some people were born.
Most important to me, is strident anti-LBTQI people have never been able to prove social harm. They rant and rave about “the Bible says so”, fabricate non-existent harms to children or conflate sexual minorities with people who harm individual members of other species (beastiality). None of which is true.
Yet, they are never able to produce any objective proof of social harm. Their “proof” is usually in the form of anti-LGBTQI screeds written by people who share their views.
If you refute those decidedly non-objective and non-scientific talking points, they retreat into Old Testament Bible verses and threats of violence both against LGBTQI folk and anyone who has them on the rhetorical ropes.
I’m not just referring to biff here. I’ve been on other forums over the years and challenged other anti-LGBTQI commenters. They all follow the same pattern.
I’ve come to the conclusion that at the heart of the onion is deep and abiding fear. Fear of change. Fear of loss of male privilege (nearly all of the most strident ones online are male). Fear of loss of power and relevance.
Patriarchy structures their worldview and they can’t imagine life without it.
Anyone or anything that shakes that structure is seen as an existential threat and must be eliminated with violence or threats of violence.
What I find interesting is people who are willing to heap violence on others because they are different, fail to see their violence and threats of violence as more of a social harm than the people they want to attack.
But I do.
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@ Afrofem
I think that is the heart of it.
People try to rationalize the power structures they benefit from. That is why biff is racist, transphobic and all the rest. He tries to pretty it up with Bible verses or IQ tests or whatever, but what it all comes down to in the end is maintaining his own self-image, if only to himself.
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@ Afrofem
I think most of us learned basic Mendelian genetics, in an oversimplified version where a specific trait like brown or blue eye color is determined by one specific gene. It’s far more complex than that. One trait is often dependent on the interaction of several different genes.
There have been a number of studies, including of identical twins, that have strongly indicated a genetic component to homosexuality. Some have identified specific genes which appear to be involved, but nothing is fully understood yet. Most of the genetic markers associated with sexual orientation are not located on the X or Y chromosomes.
There may also be other physiological factors at play, such as the amount of maternal H-Y antibodies present during pregnancy.
From what I understand, the genetics wouldn’t be as simple as passing down a “gay gene.” There would need to be a specific combination of multiple genes, possibly interacting with the fetal environment as well.
This is actually how a number of other hereditary traits are known to be passed down — through hitting the right combination of several genes. And that fact goes a long way to explaining why some traits only manifest in a tiny percentage of the population.
Left-handedness appears to be much the same, based on not one but a combination of genes. Like homosexuality, left-handedness is approximated at about 10% of the population. Mixed-handedness (also called cross-dominance) is even rarer, estimated at about 1% of the population. (Although I believe it may be undercounted — how often have you ever filled out a medical form that has a box to tick for anything but right- or left-handed? I’ve always put down right-handed because that’s the hand I use to write with, and it’s just easier to tick off that box than make a fuss.)
“So I never thought of genetics as playing a role in sexual preference or gender expression.
“It just seemed the way some people were born.“
Understood. But something makes them born that way. Whether it’s genetic heredity or fetal environment or prenatal hormonal exposure, or a mix of all of these.
And while it’s currently just conjecture, I think this may end up explaining why some people are a hard Kinsey 0 or 6, while others fall along various spots in the continuum. It could have something to do with how many of the associated genes and other physiological factors any given individual is born with.
“I’m not just referring to biff here. I’ve been on other forums over the years and challenged other anti-LGBTQI commenters. They all follow the same pattern.”
As usual, Biff thinks he’s dropping knowledge when in reality it’s all stuff we’ve heard ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
“What I find interesting is people who are willing to heap violence on others because they are different, fail to see their violence and threats of violence as more of a social harm than the people they want to attack.”
Yes! Absolutely agree with this and all the rest of what you wrote.
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@ Abagond
biff made a major reveal in this comment snippet:
“it’s only getting worse all over the country/world, as more people are implicitly taught that hetero/White/male/cis is bad bad bad.”
Of course, no one is being “implicitly taught” anything.
What has happened is Black, Gay and other group communication has moved online. Group voices and experiences that were once internal and verbal are now accessible to everyone.
Experiences and opinions that were easily ignored by dominant groups like White, Christian heterosexual males in earlier times are now being written about by the people on the receiving end of centuries of abuse.
Historically abused groups speak their truth based on lived experience and the oral traditions of their elders. No need for implicit or explicit teaching.
Just being Black every day of your life is instructive enough.
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@ Solitaire
Thanks for that extra layer of detail!
Life is filled with complexity and nuance. More to learn everyday.
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You guys really don’t get it. You think I’m some sort of transphobic troglodyte who is “afraid” of the brave new world where White people are put in their place, the patriarchy is destroyed and trans people live happy, normal lives (the term “transaidia” would be more accurate, since its a natural disgust reflex–like stepping in dog crap, rather than a fear). I don’t know how old the three of you are, but you come across as having boomer self righteousness and naivete about the world. You don’t realize that things are falling apart in the US with the current “progressive” system. The last six years weren’t enough of a wake up call for you. Well, there will be much more to come. I can pretty much guarantee that.
Afrofem, you get that the US is an evil militaristic empire, but you can’t seem to understand that it’s tied directly to globohomo ideology. They took over Ukraine and Afganistan and tried to shove their globalist agenda and worldview, including sexual degeneracy, down their throats.
https://stormer-daily.rw/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ukraine-tranny-indoctrination-kindergarten-1.png.
If you think normal people support this for their kids, you’re very wrong.
The Globalist American Empire is failing fast. They won’t beat China and Russia in the long term. When economies tank, and ours will in a very major way, common people have much less tolerance for the degeneracy of the ruing trash.
Yes, it won’t happen overnight, but I guess time will tell and we’ll see whether you guys are wise in following modren “science”, rather than the Bible for issues of morality.
I do appreciate that abagond lets views counter to the Globalist Narrative be presented here. Most places on the left furiously scramble to delete any hint of dissidence. I’m done with this post, so you guys can do your worst, congratulating yourselves on your tolerance and goodness, with Solitaire sternly criticizing me for not finding a recent scientific study showing that researchers can’t say bad stuff about LGBTQIAMF people if they wanna stay employed/funded. 🤡
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Biff tries to pretend to be “a normal person” or as he often puts it, a normie. But then his true colors come out when he links to neo-Nazi websites, like The Daily Stormer in his most recent comment:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/06/18/the-daily-stormer/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer
He also often writes stuff like this:
“common people have much less tolerance for the degeneracy of the ruing trash”
What he apparently doesn’t realize is the “common people” also have family members and friends who are LGBTQ+. Afrofem isn’t a member of the ruling class. She’s written before on this blog about being the grandchild of sharecroppers. And she wrote above about her relatives who have come out as same-sex loving or bisexual.
“You don’t realize that things are falling apart in the US with the current ‘progressive’ system. The last six years weren’t enough of a wake up call for you.”
Four years of those were Trump’s administration, which I would hardly call progressive.
“I don’t know how old the three of you are, but you come across as having boomer self righteousness and naivete about the world.”
And here Biff once again is inconsistent, seeing how in his earliest comments on this thread he claimed the younger generations are the problem while the Boomers are staunchly heterosexual. For the record, I myself am Gen X.
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@ Solitaire
I wish I was suprised about the Daily Stormer links. biff and his “amen chorus” all default to threats of violence, including genocide whenever pressed for facts.
Plus the energy wasted promoting moral panic about the private behaviors of consenting adults that don’t produce social harms.
This is especially true when there are real serious issues to be tackled like climate change, dwindling fresh water supplies and resource depletion.
I think all of this dust up about same sex loving and non-binary gender expression is a distraction for many right-wingers. They use these non-issues to avoid the serious work of slowing down catastrophe in the natural world.
Without a functional natural world—Planet Earth—all of this ranting about other people’s sex lives is meaningless.
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@ Afeofem
Exactly. Because other people get a say now, the sky is falling.
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@ Afrofem
To be honest, I’ve found it increasingly difficult the last few years to be optimistic or even hopeful about our chances of slowing down the catastrophic threats to our natural world. I’m sure the covid pandemic has magnified those feelings, but they were already there.
It doesn’t even feel like one step forward, two steps back anymore. It feels like one step forward, two steps backwards and OMG there’s a huge crater behind us, where did that come from?! And now we’re tumbling into it!
Doesn’t help that every single person I know who works in any aspect of science even remotely related to global climate change — including AgSci — have all been saying for the last decade that we’ve passed the tipping point. Like, we finally had to make a rule they couldn’t talk shop at social get-togethers because it always ended in existential despair.
Of course even past the tipping point, there are still steps the global community could take to lessen the impact, but it’s going to require an enormous commitment where all nations are working together. And the covid pandemic has pretty much shattered any illusions I might have still held about the possibility of that happening.
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@ biff
Russia? You need to check out the news. Long term they are even more screwed: a shrinking population spread out too thinly behind a long, militarily indefensible border. Or is that globohomo propaganda too?
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@ Solitare
I wrote a response to your climate change comment on the Open Thread:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-591635
I didn’t want to hijack this thread with a discussion way, way off topic like climate change.
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@ Abagond
Not only do other people like Black, Gay and Trans folk get a say, they get to speak their minds unfiltered by editorial boards, television producers and other media gatekeepers.
Plus in face to face interactions with White people, Black people tend to stay mum about their true feelings as a defense mechanism.
Even online, many Black people shy away from majority White forums to avoid trouble and raising their blood pressure any higher than necessary.
I think some White people who stray into Black online spaces are shocked at the lack of deference they encounter.
Some Black, Gay, Trans and Disabled bloggers I came across back in the day had explicit policies against White, male, heterosexual and able-bodied “splainers” commenting on their blogs.
One blog for the disabled pretty much wrote in their comment policy that only disabled people could comment, not their caregivers, parents, friends or doctors. Their reasoning was that the disabled are often silenced. Other people in their lives feel entitled to speak for them, but the disabled were/are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.
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@ Afrofem
Good call on moving to the Open Thread. I replied to yours there.
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@ Afrofem
Yes, “unfiltered”! For example, before the Internet I knew about police brutality in New York but not much of anything in other cities.
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To Abagond:
Regnery Press – whose owner uses neo-Nazi Richard Spencer as his mouthpiece.
Do you have link to this…? I did a search for Richard Spencer and Regnery Press as well as the current owner Salem Media Group and couldn’t find any association. However, they do have someone name Robert Spencer who works for them.
“The Contagion” – which strangely echoes Nazi propaganda about homosexuals..
In context she is referring to “Social Contagion” which is a recognized phenomenon in sociology (And arguably was a component of the rapid spread of Nazism itself in Germany in the 1930s). I’ve parsed through some of her interviews, certainly not an intellectual heavy weight and a bit shrill and polemic but in my opinion pretty far away from being a Nazi.
I think Debra Soh offers better commentary on the rapid rise of transgender diagnosis in children and has a more coherent nuanced approach to the subject (She considered herself gender non conforming in her teen years).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debra_Soh
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@ Lemmy
Thanks for catching this! I had mixed up Henry Regnery with William Regnery II. I corrected the post.
Thanks for the recommendation. Hopefully Soh is not so ridiculous as Shrier.
I doubt Shrier is a neo-Nazi. But readers should know this sort of attack has been tried before and who tried it.
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Update: As bad as Regnery Press is, it was never owned by a neo-Nazi, as an earlier version of this post stated. I had mixed up Henry Regnery with his nephew William Regnery II, who used Richard Spencer as a mouthpiece. Sorry for the mistake. Henry was on the American First Committee, which opposed war against Nazi Germany, but as far as I know he was never anything more than hard-right. In any case, the Regnery family sold the Press in 1993. Thanks to Lemmy for catching this mistake!
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To Abagond:
“Thanks for catching this! I had mixed up Henry Regnery with William Regnery II. I corrected the post.”
Sure, given the complex ties it’s an easy mistake, but given Abagail Shrier is Jewish as are several of the other authors they’ve published (Ben Shapiro, David Horwitz) I figured it was rather unlikely that it was a Neo-Nazi publication (Granted there are some self hating Jews who’ve gone down that road).
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FWIW, FInland and Sweden has stopped the use of puberty blockers:
(Need to register to read the Lancet but it’s free)
Click to access PIIS2352-4642(21)00235-2.pdf
The Karolinska Institute in Sweden,
long considered gold-standard in
providing transgender health care,
no longer uses puberty blockers;
nor does Finland promote their
use. Additionally, a judicial review
in the UK found puberty blockers to
be an inappropriate option for most
children younger than 16 years.
I’ll note that this issue hits close to home as I have a relative who went on puberty blockers at the age of 11 and hormone treatment at the age of 15. There was a lot of turmoil in the child’s life at the time they went on medication (divorce and a close friend had been sexually assaulted 3 months before) such that they openly started saying things like “It’s bad to be a girl..” Personally I thought the decision to medicate was premature and others agreed with me including someone who thought they were trans at one time in her life (And did a fair amount of research and therapy to be comfortable with her identity).
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I read some puberty blockers are the same drug used for chemical castration (not medical source)
https://www.city-journal.org/hormone-treatments-gender-dysphoric-children
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@ v8driver
Lupron is also used as part of the in vitro fertilization process and to treat endometriosis, fibroids, and prostate cancer.
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yeah it’s a trend, the biopharm co. will ‘repurpose’ an existing drug for other ‘symptoms,’ often it seems like a stretch, i don’t like chemistry too much
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@ v8driver
Or sometimes it’s the physicians specializing in a particular illness who realize the medication has the potential to help their patients. I happen to know that’s exactly the case with lupron and endometriosis.
The author of the article you linked to — perhaps you didn’t notice, but it was written by Abigail Shrier — obviously was trying to demonize the drug by focusing on chemical castration. My point is that she’s doing this on purpose for rhetorical reasons and ignoring the fact that lupron is also used both to save lives and create new life.
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@solitaire, I hadn’t noticed? This article popped up on one of my ‘conspiracy light’ sites, ie whatreallyhappened.com
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Something that dawned on me recently: one reason it’s so easy for conservatives to claim male and female are clearly, naturally demarcated is because women spend an inordinate amount of time removing their body hair, and especially their facial hair.
It is not uncommon for women (especially as they age, but not at all limited to older women) to have some amount of visible facial hair above their upper lip or on their chin — or it would be visible, if most women didn’t bleach, pluck, thread, wax, etc.
The following is an interesting article about one younger woman’s experience when she decided to stop removing her facial hair and how the negative reactions she got largely focused on gender presentation:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/02/female-facial-hair-is-not-uncommon-what-happens-when-we-make-it-visible
And this article takes a wider look, addressing racial aspects and impacts (interestingly Asian women, often stereotyped as the most feminine among the races, are actually the most hirsute):
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/nov/30/female-facial-hair-if-so-many-women-have-it-why-are-we-so-deeply-ashamed
For those readers who don’t bother to look at the articles: this isn’t Barnum & Bailey bearded ladies territory, but it isn’t just a few stray whiskers, either. Many women are constantly hiding what would otherwise be quite visible mustaches and soul patches or short goatees. Some also are hiding unibrows, back hair, chest hair, etc.
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Two words missing from every discussion of transgenderism: sexual dimorphism.
There is myriad evidence of sexual dimorphism across plants and animals, specifically humans. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species because there sex differences in size, bone structure, cartilage, blood cells, lung capacity, muscle density, fat storage/distribution, ability to fight infection, and even the way pain is felt, among other things. Further, there is zero evidence that any trans person is actually a different sex than what was “assigned at birth”. Transgender theory is wholly without scientific support for the idea that a male can be a female and I challenge anyone to show a shred of scientific evidence that a person can actually change their sex. Every study that seeks to prove that there is such a thing as a male brain or a female brain inevitably fails to prove anything and say more research is needed. That such a belief system can exist in the absence of evidence is by definition unscientific. Also, just because intersex people exist, does not mean that anyone can change sex.
Originally, the basis of transgender theory was to separate sex from gender, which was a game of semantics. Current transgender theory dictates that gender governs sex. It is really wild to think that someone can be something that person clearly is not. Can a wolf know what it is like to be human? Can a hummingbird know what it is like to be a tree?
The treatment for transgenderism is treating a delusion by forcing all of society to confirm the delusion. I am Napoleon, now set me on the throne of the Sun King. I joke, but really, transgenderism, particularly in children, has more in common with anorexia than people are willing to admit, let alone discuss. The way transgenderism spreads is like an idea travelling in groups of kids exposed to it. The situation where a person in a vacuum says “I am the opposite sex” is extremely rare and was almost always seen starting in toddler boys. Now the largest group of transgender individuals is girls entering puberty. If doctors were to start treating anorexic girls by telling them, “yeah, you could drop a few pounds” and then placing them on highly restrictive diets, everyone would rightfully freak out. Somehow telling a girl who is starting puberty and likely uncomfortable in her body that she should have her breasts and uterus removed is ok. I will never understand the need to attack people who say this is wrong for children. I will not even get into the scientific correlation between transgenderism and autism spectrum disorders or comparison to body identity integration disorder.
There is far more of a basis to suggest that the lines between races are blurred than then the lines between the sexes. Maybe, just maybe, if one believes that a female can truly be a male, then one must also believe that Rachel Dolezal really is black.
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