RE: Penny explains things, Episode 1. Anti Transgender arguments and why they are wrong.(revisit)
The problem here is I see the same type of "politics" involving trans people that I see with, say, scientific racial studies. Do the wrong kind of results or get the wrong kind of evidence, try to be a good scientist, and suddenly you're a pariah in the scientific community. That stifles scientific progress.
I'd address all of your points, I personally am not anti-trans but often when repeating or analyzing points that have some pretty good science behind them people automatically assume I'm being a bigot or am on the attack.
The bathroom issue was just political nonsense meant to rile up the voter base, thankfully it backfired.
What do you say about the trans people that do get surgery, access to hormones, etc., but still kill themselves or can't shake the depression?
What do you think about parallels between people not finding solace in the groups that they were born into and being able to find that elsewhere? Is it a coincidence that so many furries are gay, and that the furry movement started before it was in vogue to come out?
What do you think about studies that show that there is stress-mediated cellular changes to the brain in persons that show a desire to be trans? Is it all just a big coincidence that many trans persons are living in terrible conditions in the first place? (think poor black trans women in the inner city, not what's her face the crazy-driving manslayer)
Would it be too far-fetched to believe that if we are to superimpose activity that we see in the animal kingdom (if you believe in evolution, and we're descended from primates, and they're related to reptiles, and they came out of the oceans, so you might see where I'm going with this one) to the human domain then there are actually many species that change sex based on certain environmental factors. Being one sex or the other is simply too competitive at the time so then they are able to switch, think lizards and fish and so on, there could possibly remain the relics of such a mechanism in the human brain, but we have obviously lost the capacity somewhere along the line to simply change our sexual organs independently.
Interesting article, glad to read your take on it, not attacking you with these questions, and I'm in the camp that we need to start looking at all people as equal beings, but also need to not shy away from searching for explanations so that we can have them ready when people are curious about their origins.
First off let me say clearly that as long as you remain polite and to the point there will never be a point that conversation is not allowed on my page, as it says in my header, which you must not have read, I am an atheist an anarchist and and so you can assume my perspective moving forward is godless and science based.
I will respond to your points cronalogicly and ask that you reply in the same manner so as not to lose a thread in the discussion.
First to your cry for fairness breaches in the reporting of junk science. There is no evidence that the very limited entirely politically funded studies that get shouted down about trans people are being subjugated or are being silenced, even amature takes of these studies show how lacking in evidence and one sided the research is. Its not oppression its dismissal of junk science.
As to your question about trans suicides after hormones and surgery. This is a non-question and you and I both know that. There are people who commit suicide for a number of reasons, fixing your gender issues may not fix all of your health issues, the rates of post of suicidality in the trans community is on par with the rate of cis suicide which if you think about it means that post op trans people are exactly like cis people, with the same problems and hurdels to climb.
The furry thing is not a part of this discussion, gender is not sexuality and click and trend studies where dismissed as garbage in the late nineties along with the alpha statues bullshit. I know several furries and they are lovely queer individuals that are fun and fascinating.
Those brain studies where not linked to trans people at all and the studies group was so small that to say it was inconclusive would be stretching it. Also and you need to understand this, this picture of poor marginalized people who stress out and turn trans is a fantasy, the tech field is where most trans people are, regardless of color. We that find ourselves early face a life of repression and it hurts us fiscally for sure but its society's foot, not the lack of power or will in the trans community. I never felt out of the main until I came out, that's when it starts, you can read actual numbers and realise this but also every data pool and survey tells us that social or economic situation has no bearing on gender disphoria. Educate yourself it's frustrating to repeat myself.
The gender change theory is interesting to me and something I have looked into allot, though I've yet to find any real evidence I do think as brain scanning tech improves we will find some sort of primordial switch. Can't wait:-) be well, I hope your day his lovely.
There's an issue I've read somewhere, I'll leave it here knowing that I have no proof or further readings into this: there's a problem, I've learned, on people that have transitioned but have realised that they really weren't gender-disphoric, and it's my understanding that these people (whatever their numbers are) are the ones that are having high suicide rates and that's the source of the rumour about transgenders as suicidal individuals (which they are not). Don't kill the messenger and I'm not even that sure this is true, but if it was, still not a reason for questioning anyone's choices.