Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.
I’m sorry I’m not sure how else to describe it. Trans people are those who believe their sex doesn’t match how they feel inside.
I am aware of the concept of being transgender I am just wondering what your “polite disagreements” are with it
I’d say that a fairly debated topic related to transgender people, which isn’t just transphobes attacking people trying to live their own life, is the presence of transgender athletes in competitions. Some will take it as a personal attack whether you take a side or sit on the fence. I’m not looking to start that conversation here, but yeah. It’s definitely possible to hold a polite conversation about this while disagreeing on parts of the question. In a healthy space.
I think that after HRT the difference is not that big. Trans athletes may even be at the disadvantage since there are some cis woman that have higher than average amount of testosterone.
In the long shot I think it would be for the best to abolish gender based separation altogether and replace it with something more like weight categories.
Consider two 5’6" 65kg athletes, one man and one woman, are you saying that the man doesn’t have an advantage?
I used to believe the same until I saw the recent Women’s Premier League in Cricket. They had to reduce the size of field and the weight of ball. Even with that, the fastest bowl in the tournament was 130kmph while that speed is considered a “slower ball” in men’s cricket.
Now some of these female cricketers earm more than any Pakistani male cricketers. Which is fair, bigger market, bigger payout. But female cricketers don’t stand a chance against the male cricketers
Consider two 5’6" 65kg athletes, one man and one woman, are you saying that the man doesn’t have an advantage?
No, my MMA teacher was female and she’d kick my arse regularly
They had to reduce the size of field and the weight of ball. Even with that, the fastest bowl in the tournament was 130kmph
Now you’re undermining your first point, you’re not comparing same heights and weight. Physics is real.
Okay.
Ellyse Perry, the fastest bowler in women’s cricket is 176cm at 60kg (amazing athlete, represented Australia at both Cricket and Football world cups!). Her fastest ball was 130.1kph
Shoaib Akthar, the fastst bowler in men’s cricket is 180cm at 80kg. His fastest was 161kph
Laws of cricket dictate that women should use a ball that is between 415⁄16 and 55⁄16 ounces (139.98 and 150.61 grams); which could be up to 13⁄16 ounces (23.03 grams) lighter than the ball used by the men.
Also made me think, the whole height-weight distinction will only work in purely physical sports like boxing (maybe even some american sports like baseball and nfl). It is not going to work in global sports like Cricket and Football. Think about the greatest footballers of our generation. Cristiano was 183cm (6ft) and Messi 169cm (5ft 6in).
Here is a surprise for you: HRT actually does things to your body. I don’t think this should have been that hard to find on your own, but I can’t judge your circumstances.
Transphobes always make the same tired arguments about “biological differences between men and women” and then scream and run away when you bring up actual science, because they don’t care about the science. They care about being bigots, and using science to make their bigotry look legitimate.
There are things that don’t completely change with HRT (particularly when started after puberty.) Height, bone density, lung capacity, hand/foot/limb size etc. do not vary significantly after HRT and depending on the sport can make a huge difference (eg. Hand and foot size or lung capacity in swimming even where the two swimmers are the same height.)
Then we should allow people to access gender affirming treatment earlier, no?
That could be one conclusion since it may lead to more desirable outcomes. On the other hand, we generally don’t allow children to undergo other permanent procedures (eg. Nose jobs, tattoos etc.) because children change their minds. It can be argued that medical transition is necessary medical care (eg. like how we give chemo even though it may have permanent long-term effects.)
However, since dysphoria is a psychiatric diagnosis (there’s nothing physical to test like a tumour) we cannot be sure in the same way that treatment is medically necessary. Therefore, I believe that the care providers should have to be extremely sure that the child is not going to detransition before making any medical moves like puberty blockers or HRT. I’m not convinced they can be sure enough or at least that they are being that rigorous (they clearly weren’t here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62335665.)
the presence of transgender athletes in competitions
I disagree, that isn’t a “polite disagreement” and is, absolutely, “just transphobes attacking people trying to live their own life” as you put it. Every time that “Argument” happens it’s openly done in biologically unfounded ways by people who simply don’t understand how our bodies actually work- yet those arguments get mass upvoted by people who also don’t understand how biology actually works and who believe that trans athletes get some insane, unfair advantage.
If you want to pass laws to restrict trans people from sports, then you want to pass laws to discriminate against trans people. That’s not really up for debate IMO, it’s a straight up fact; it’s what you’re doing when you advocate for laws that are not founded in science, that are specifically targeting a tiny minority for the chance that one of that tiny minority might beat cis athletes in an “unfair” way, you’re advocating for bigoted laws.
Such arguments are also inevietably filled with people misgendering trans people, deliberately calling trans women “men” and hiding behind the “I’m talking about biology” argument to do so.
Replace the word “trans” with “black” and you’ll find that people are making literally identical arguments to those against desegregating professional sports leagues 80 years ago. Literally word for word.
Every time that “Argument” happens it’s openly done in biologically unfounded ways by people who simply don’t understand how our bodies actually work.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know how our bodies work, but I think explaining it will be more helpful in the long run than just making the subject taboo and banning everyone who asks it.
At the beginning of the pandemic a common argument against masks was “the virus is too small to be caught in a mask” - which made sense from a layman’s point of view. When people started explaining that masks did stop the water droplets the virus needs to be airborne - that argument become a lot less common.
Not everybody who has questions is “just asking questions”, if you catch my drift.
Not everybody who has questions is “just asking questions”, if you catch my drift.
I agree with that statement, context is everything.
I think that in the context of someone starting out going “it’s unfair for men to compete in women’s sports,” the person is “just asking questions.” That context poisons the well for questions.
But if someone comes in and makes a thread like “I don’t understand how hormone therapy works, can someone please explain it?” that, to me, is a good faith question and 100% should not be bannable.
All good :)
Now that I have your attention though, what would be a good counter argument on why trans women should be allowed to compete in the same league as non-trans women (please excuse my lacking vocabulary)?
Like I mentioned, at first sight as a layman, the argument that trans women would have an competitive advantage makes sense to me. So I’d be grateful if you could take away my ignorance.
Are you genuinely interested or just looking to start a fight? I know recreational outrage is a thing on Reddit and I had hoped to leave it there.
No I’m genuinely interested to hear your perspective and why it was a point of contention
No worries. Sorry for being defensive. I’ve received death threats before so you can imagine my reticence to speak freely.
Forgive the brevity. The topic is quite personal to me. I had a trans person in my family until recently. They committed suicide. I took it upon myself to research the topic to the best of my abilities. My current stance is that, while I support the right for adults to do with their body as they wish, I do not support the practise of transitioning children; be it medically or socially. In all my research I couldn’t find a single study, anywhere, demonstrating an objective quality of life improvement. These would be measurable metrics like:
- Life expectancy.
- Suicide rate.
- Rates of addiction.
- Health outcomes such as reduced rates of obesity and heart attacks.
- Rates of crime.
- Rates of homelessness.
- Rates of victimisation (rape, assault, etc.).
- Income.
- Wealth.
It’s not for lack of trying, either. I’ve never seen so much funding go to any single topic in academia. Given this lack of evidence, researchers turned to subjective measures of improvement. The primary being “suicidality.” They ask subjects how they feel about suicide. This is an effective proxy for, “are you happy with the major medical procedure you just asked for?” Unsurprisingly, this is subject to enormous bias.
Instead, I found evidence that not transitioning is a much better, much more effective treatment for children. This study found that only 37% of children still identified as dysphoric five years later. This study found that 88% had desisted (they were no longer dysphoric). This mirrors other historical research into various areas of child psychology. Children frequently change identity and beliefs around identity.
The primary arguments appear to be, a) if we don’t transition children, they will commit suicide. As above, I believe this is false. The second premise is, b) puberty blockers are completely reversible. This isn’t true either. These are the expected side effects of puberty blockers:
Osteoporosis and diabetes are absolutely life altering. Sweden went all-in on “temporary” puberty blockers for gender affirming care until children started experiencing life-long injuries. They are now effectively banned for gender affirming care for children.
In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11-years-old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.
“When we asked him regularly how his back felt, he said: ‘I’m in pain all the time’,” she added.
And these are just the dangerous irreversible side effects. The cosmetic side effects are devastating, and include men with child-sized penises and testicles, and women without breasts. This is one such case. The teenager had taken puberty blockers, resulting in a small penis. With insufficient penile tissue, doctors attempted to remove and use part of his colon to create a fake vagina. He died less than a day later from complications.
Ultimately, I believe I am very open to evidence. I have reached my position precisely by pouring over research. I am open to honest discussion and debate. I don’t belittle or minimise anyone’s experiences or beliefs. I simply want the best outcomes for children. For this opinion, I have been banned on many subreddits. I have been sent death threats. I have been called every disgusting name in the dictionary, and then more. I hope that Lemmy is a place which allows respectful discussion.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml this is exactly why tone policing is bullshit moderation policy.
Your modteam is allowing this transphobic screed to exist, and has in fact unbanned the user that posted it despite the very very obvious fact that they are a transphobe doing concern-trolling and “just asking questions” style veiled bigotry, while simultaneously banning everyone that has reacted to their behaviour by rightfully calling them the names they deserve to be called.
This policymaking is what results in people in the left calling someone a terf or a fascist getting banned while the fascists and terfs roam free. The site will be taken over by this and the left will slowly be banned and pushed out by it. The fact that the team can’t seem to get into their heads that trans people might get a little fucking heated when bigots are allowed to exist and clearly defended by some of the incompetent members the modteam is another part of the problem.
You should get some trans people on your team to keep the rest of the idiots on it making these shit decisions in check. This nerd should absolutely be rebanned and every other person that copped a ban over this shit should be unbanned.
In all my research I couldn’t find a single study, anywhere, demonstrating an objective quality of life improvement.
You’re saying you haven’t found any evidence and that proves there isn’t improvement but it’s impossible for any properly done study to prove any changes to those categories. The simple reason is there is no environment that has existed for long enough to do a comparison. It’s impossible to conduct a proper study on the life expectancy of trans people if they transition at 12 years old or 20 years old because the treatments have not been around long enough and people can live a long time. Even a study that tracks suicide rates over 5 years based on treatment type takes much more than 5 years.
The only studies that can be done need to use historic data and we can’t change the past plus retroactive comparisons are super dicey and very prone to bias. Remember how dead patients were added post-moterm to that COVID trial published from Egypt which totally skewed the results? That study lead to large numbers of people taking ivermectin and fueled the antivax movement worldwide https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93658
The absence of research studies can not be used to prove or disprove something and should not form your opinions based on this. As least people aren’t trying and doing it poorly then people write catchy articles about it and it creates whole industries (I’m looking at you, nutritional science).
What the hell is this? Trans person here. This is not the thread to start concern trolling about trans issues. If you really want a space to talk freely about your concerns you can start a community or even your own instance.
If you really want a space to talk freely about your concerns
They were brief, another user asked for a longer version. The user even intro’ed their comment with “my reticence to speak freely”, and then went ahead explaining since the other user seemed genuinely interested.
In a way this whole episode including your participation is very relevant to “avoid as the user base grows”. I also don’t think concern troll fits here, or maybe we use different definitions.
Personally, I wish people could get along with each other despite having different points of view. That’s one major, major value I see in platforms like this. I want to be exposed to views challenging my bubble.
He’s literally responding to a user who said
I’m genuinely interested to hear your perspective and why it was a point of contention
So he explained his perspective. Concern trolling lmao.
If you want a space where you don’t encounter other perspectives, there are plenty of spaces like that both in the real world and on the internet.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml please reconsider reprioritizing civility fetishism, particularly in defense against transphobia. The course of events here was extremely uncool and is tantamount to making this space systemically transphobic.
All it will take to drive trans people off is for you to ban them when they defend themselves against transphobic hate. And all it will take for transphobes to make that happen is for transphobes to harass people here until they react. This pattern has happened many times on many platforms and I’m surprised if you’re not aware of it.
I’m torn on this. One the one hand there’s something to be said against insta-banning a person just because they wrote “I don’t know if a 12-year-old can meaningfully consent to gender affirming care”. On the other hand you get people who engage in that kind of discourse just to hide their power level. e.g. one of the links in the above-discussed comment goes to transgendertrend dot com, a website I did not know of until today, but it took me exactly one look at its main page and its “about us” section to suspect that anyone who linked anything from there must be way more radicalized than the stage where they are “open to evidence and to honest discussion and debate”. As a filthy moderate myself, I know that a fellow filthy moderate would at least make the minuscule effort to find a source that pretends not to be propaganda.
The author of that manifesto two levels up is not making an argument out of the bottom of their heart; they are proselytizing. They are engaging in what the Musk fan, Tim Urban, once described in his blog as “thinking like an attorney”:
An Attorney and a Sports Fan have a lot in common. They both have a preferred [conclusion], while also still maintaining some level of dedication to [the process of objective reasoning]. They’re both conflicted between the values of truth and confirmation. The critical difference is in which value, deep down, is higher in their Values Stack. A Sports Fan wants to win, but when pushed, they care even more about fair play than winning. An Attorney’s job is to win, and no matter how hard you push them, nothing can alter their allegiance. Because has THIS ever happened? [A crude drawing of a courtroom; a judge asks “anything more from the defense?” and the defense attorney, to the horror of the defendant, answers: “actually, your honor, the prosecutor just made some really excellent points. I guess my client is guilty after all.”] No. That has never happened.
“Civility fetishism” is a real problem and I have personally seen it destroy some spaces I have held dear, via attorneys attorney-ing all day and shouting “debate me, debate me, it’s just facts and logic, what are you so afraid of”. So I fully understand the weariness of the person I am replying to.
I am completely appalled at this instance right now for allowing this absolutely vile comment to persist on here, but since some reactionary admin decided your disgusting falsehoods should remain up, allow me to provide an extremely easily-found data point you “couldn’t find” in your search:
New Study Confirms Extremely Low Regret Rates for Gender-Affirming Surgery
Regret rates for sex reassignment surgery are among the LOWEST for ANY type of surgery OF ANY KIND. They’re even lower than the complication rate! (Yes, really!) How’s that for hard data?
Given the fact that this was incredibly easy for me to find (a single Google search pulled it up easily), I can only conclude that you “couldn’t find” evidence that transitioning is beneficial because you weren’t actually looking for it; you were looking for evidence of exactly the opposite point.
If this comment is indicative of things you said to your relative who took their life, then you should absolutely feel partially responsible; this kind of patronizing pseudo-concern BS is exactly the kind of toxicity that makes trans people feel that they will never be accepted by the people in their lives.
I am completely appalled at this instance right now for allowing this absolutely vile comment to persist on here
They’re probably simply overloaded right now. Traffic has shot up several fold over the course of a few days and many of the people don’t understand the rules yet. From my recollection, these sorts of comments would usually be removed fairly promptly. For a comparison of mod teams, /r/moderatepolitics has 18 moderators (plus bots) compared to this community’s 3. Likewise, the instance has 7 moderators.
I’m not gonna lie, when someone calls out about censorship and not being able to talk about trans I’m inclined to think they’re not people that have interesting to say.
But your comments is exactly how we should discuss a subject, thank you
Although I think that in an enormous community like reddit, YouTube, Facebook, etc. the moderation is necessarily a bit aggressive since it takes time to analyze the real intentions. And with the army of bots, and trolls organizing, or masking their intend behind falsely neutral point of view, it’s easy to start blasting.
Still, I agree that lots of mods, drunk on power or following the subreddit trend was abusing and just censoring.
Ps: sorry my comment is not really a response to this one specifically haha
