Though they are only 3
The deepities of India Willoughby are deep indeed.
“Children as young as 3 know they’re the opposite sex.” Hmmm, what could be a little off about that argument? Could it be the fact that children as young as 3 know a lot of things that aren’t true? Could it be that children as young as 3 know they are dinosaurs and tigers and flying warriors in capes? Could it be that children as young as 3 believe what adults tell them?
Children as young as 3 know lots of things that aren’t true because skepticism is a fairly sophisticated skill which toddlers are too young to develop.
Exactly! It’s reminiscent of that because that’s the kind of thing it is. Role playing begets more role playing.
Long discussion of gender/sex/trans stuff.
I admit to being out of my depth.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/
“In memorial” – omfg. Anyway, since sex is simply a name for the pattern of physical traits of the physical body, a person’s mind-state has no bearing here. Go ahead and ‘know who you are’ all you like, it’s as meaningless as a short person identifying as tall.
What’s occurred in every culture since “time in memorial” is gender nonconformity. Sometimes a society which has strict gender roles but is less strict policing them invent categories for, say, effeminate gay men. Nobody thinks they’re actually women, nor do they think they’re not men. The idea that an elaborate modern theory fine-tuned in the 21st century West on Tumblr is some universal Truth For All Time is ridiculous.
As for the it-came-out-of-avatar theory, I’ve seen it mentioned several places on the web. RPGs are particularly popular with young men who later realize that their female character isn’t just a character, but an expression on their inner self. Doc Stock’s theory of Trans as Immersive Fiction come to life, so to speak.
It’s “who”, because to be a man or woman is a matter of personality for these bizarre sexists, and everyone who goes along with it is a formerly latent sexist.
Mike B @ 1
Not much of a discussion. There was a big to-do on that site, you may remember, in 2021 over Harriet Hall’s review of Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage”. (It was discussed on this blog in several posts.) I see that nothing has changed at so-called Science-Based Medicine.
Jonathan has declared that time has died, but I think maybe his watch stopped. Common mistake, the poor dear. :P
He’s right about one thing though, it’s a horrendous thing to say (or even think about), yet young people are letting these ghouls mutilate their bodies at an alarming rate. It’s worse than a horror story, it’s really happening.
A number of trans activists have said that trans people have existed “since the beginning of time”, an extraordinary bit of hyperbole.
Yes well if they existed at the beginning, surely they existed at the end too? It’s all very Biblical. :D
It’s worse than that though. As I keep saying, hardly any of the claims People of Gender make about themselves make sense without a lot of implicit claims about who other people are as well. If I am what you are. then you are what I am:
• “I am what the biological females are (and must therefore be granted access to all spaces previously reserved for them)”
• “Women are whatever they have to be to make me one of them”
• “Other people are whatever they have to be (‘cis’, ‘binary’, ‘gender conforming’) to make me different, special, an exception (‘trans’, ‘non-binary’, ‘gender nonconforming’)”
If you define “women” as “whatever TIMs happen to be”, it follows trivially that TIMs are something called “women” (I.e. TIMs are whatever TIMs happen to be)*. But then there is no longer any justification for saying that any of the biological females are “women” – “cis” or otherwise – in that same sense of the word. But, once again, the whole justification for including TIMs in all spaces previously reserved for biological females ultimately rests on the premise that both groups are the same in some real sense (as opposed to in name only). You cannot have it both ways:
• Either calling someone a “cis woman” is to make a claim about what going on inside her head (e.g. “cis women” think/feel in whatever ways “trans women” happen to think/feel), in which case “cis women” and “trans women” may both be “women” in the same (non-standard!) sense of the word, but there is no justification for saying that any of the biological females are “cis women”** and hence no justification for including TIMs in their spaces.
• Or “cis women” relate to “trans women” the way fruit bats relate to baseball bats. I.e. it’s all just a bad pun, there is no justification for treating “cis women” and “trans women” as subsets of the same group, and hence no justification for including “trans women” in the same spaces as “cis women”.
* The same way defining “God” as “whatever happens to exist” makes it trivially true that something called “God” exists, but gets you no closer to proving the existence of, say, the Biblical Yahweh.
** Certainly not without specifying exactly what those ways of thinking/feeling are, and demonstrating that they do indeed apply to those biological females.
Sure you can. It just means that you’re then operating within a paraconsistent logic.* Having at least selectively rejected the principle of explosion (and, of course, the law of noncontradiction) you are free to go about having your P and your -P at the same time in the same way. Sounds** like progress to me!
* This is not recommended.
** kaBOOM!