Even outside of niche I think you’re still ignoring a lot of mainstream art.
What about the Golden Age of Television we’ve had this century? Before shows like The Sopranos and The Wire came along, TV programmes were mostly formulaic, episodic time-fillers and even the best were severely constrained by the need for each episode to be a self-contained narrative, and to stretch the budget across 24 episode per season. Now the most prestigious cinema has mostly migrated to the small screen and the shows we’ve gotten in the last 25 years could never have existed in the 20th century; the 90 minute Hollywood film is no longer as relevant and it’s normal that it peaked in the past.
What about video games? In terms of revenue they now completely dwarf Hollywood and the music industry combined and again the kinds of stories and experience we have today would have been completely impossible in the past. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3, The Witcher 3 are amazing works of art not just in the visuals but in their narrative.
CG animation in general is an amazing new medium and I’m often impressed by even random animated shorts I find on YouTube, let alone big budget productions.
To me what you’re saying would be like a Medieval English bard time travelling to 20th century and complaining that we don’t make good art anymore because we haven’t produced any better epic poems since Beowulf; that’s normal, people move on to new mediums. And before you deride TV, video games and CG as “not real art”, know that previous generations said they exact same thing about films, photography, even novels. The written word was derided by the Ancient Greeks as causing forgetfulness and that true wisdom could only be taught orally; by their standards, the works of Rousseau or any modern philosopher would be worthless.
I’m sure that in the future when we’re all playing fully immersive virtual reality experiences, people will look to the current day with nostalgia and complain that art is dead because we don’t make good video games you can play on a flat screen anymore.
rae
3mo ago
That picture shows Buck next to Laverne Cox who’s quite tall and wearing heels, he’s actually the average height for a cis man in many countries at around 5’9. I personally wouldn’t use Buck Angel as the go-to trans man because he’s turned into a proto-TERF himself strangely enough, and far more physically impressive trans men absolutely exist, see Mitch Harrison who can stand next to the Rock and is 6’3 and is quite muscular.
How are you supposed to enforce sex-segregated bathrooms anyhow? Should you pepper spray anyone who you think doesn’t belong, like what happened to this tall biological female thinking they were in the presence of a biological male?
The sources I’ve looked up show no link between gender inclusive bathroom policies and crime rates, but if you have any that contradict that, feel free to share.
rae
4mo ago
I’m a liberal and a centrist, and I’ve heard the exact same argument from leftists, but reversed, in that I’m basically a fascist because I support capitalism, am against identity politics, quotas, unrestricted immigration, and am geopolitically pro-Western.
How much of that is due to the fundamentals of either religion as opposed to the whims of cultural change? Today mainstream Islam is conservative and fundamentalist while Catholicism is the milquetoast liberal religion, but historically the roles were actually reversed!
Muslims were famously more tolerant of Jews in Al-Andalus than the catholic Spanish, and while Justinian the Great criminalised all homosexuality from the 6th century onwards, classical Islamic cultures had an approach very close to Greco-Roman mores where men were expected to be attracted to both girls and pubescent boys. Numerous caliphs, emirs and sultans (including Mehmed the Conqueror) were known to have male lovers, and these are kinds of societies that produced many instances of effeminate, sexually available male dancers from the Ottoman köçek to the Egyptian khawal. Literary works in the Muslim world were quite shameless in the amount of homoeroticism compared to anything in the West.
But as other commenters have noted, if you’re a Catholic and start disagreeing with the direction of the church, converting to Islam makes little logical sense. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to convert to any of the thousands of other Christian branches? Or even just start following the former Bishop Strickland and say Pope Francis is the anti-Christ and a usurper of the papal position.
rae
4mo ago
The Dunning-Kruger effect just showed that people at bad at estimating their score on a test, nothing more. It didn’t show that lower skilled people think of themselves as more competent than higher skilled people (the latter’s estimation was higher than the former on average).
The “overestimation” and “underestimation” is just a statistical artefact - if you get a 0, any random estimation is going to be an overestimation unless you get it precisely right, and if you get 100, an underestimation, and the same goes for anything in-between to a lesser extent.
But people absolutely loooove to take these limited psychology studies and twist them to sound like it gives some clever insight into the human condition (generally one that supports their preconceived notions and biases), so that’s how we got “dumb people think they’re clever and smart people think they’re dumb” from “people can’t estimate their result on a general-knowledge test very accurately on average”.
rae
4mo ago
The gay men I know spend just as much time and energy as straight men on getting sex, they’re just more successful at the hooking up part. They’ll spend way more effort on their appearance compared to straight men (with corresponding higher rates of body dysmorphia and eating disorders) since male sexuality is primarily visual. Ironically straight men should be more motivated by their sexuality in pursuing financial success, as things like status, money and charisma matter a lot less to sexual success if you’re gay (unless it’s a sugar daddy situation).
I think it’s more to do with the kinds of people that are openly homosexual - having used Grindr in rural or poor areas, the gays there tend to be extremely closeted, often in sham straight relationships. Many won’t even admit to being gay (which is why medical professionals use the term “men who have sex with men”). You need a certain level of introspection and non-conformity to come out (even to yourself!) and I bet that’s correlated with financial success - plus you’ll likely want to move to an urban, more affluent area as that’s where LGBT acceptance is the highest nowadays, and that surely motivates you to have a high paying career due to the cost of living.
rae
5mo ago
Why do you feel disgust at trans people? Is it disgust at the concept of being trans, or the uncanny appearance some of them stereotypically have? Many trans people look perfectly normal. Trans men especially just tend to look like short effeminate men and it’s very likely you’ll interact with them without noticing they’re trans if you don’t know what to look for.
Tbh it’s the same as with any minority. Once you get to know them as people and realise they’re not the caricatures the media portrays them as, the disgust and hate tends to go away. What Daryl Davis did would probably work quite well for trans people as well; if you’re not familiar with him, he’s a black man that befriended members of the KKK. Many left the organisation as they couldn’t reconcile what they’d been taught about black people, and the normal human being they were talking to.
rae
5mo ago
I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.
This happens on a micro scale as well in trans issues; the trans people that will attract the most attention will naturally be the most divisive, e.g. Dylan Mulvaney. Fewer people care about say, Rebekah Bruesehoff, the trans girl activist who plays field hockey and just looks like your typical boring blonde American girl; but everybody knows Lia Thomas because leftists look virtuous defending a male looking 6’1 broad shouldered trans woman, and most importantly, they can have a flaming debate with conservatives online about it.
According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.
With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures. To me, this just seems like a moral panic amplified through the news in order to distract the masses from real issues - the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, inflation, wealth inequality, social services being stripped away, the erosion of the middle class. Why do you care about this? Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?
You know what issue really affects children in the US? 1 in 4 kids are obese or overweight. Where is the medical establishment there? What about the 8.4% of kids on psych meds, some of whom are on them involuntarily?
Also maybe it’s because I don’t live in America, but in my modern Western country, transitioning isn’t a matter of waltzing into a clinic and getting your breasts chopped. Just getting evaluated by the gender service takes upward of 5 years, and you need to be vetted by a series of psychologists. Getting any kind of surgery requires an official gender identity disorder diagnosis and a letter from 2 separate professionals (and good luck getting those). Sure, you can go private - have you got ten thousand pounds in cash? You have to be incredibly dedicated, child or adult, to go through this system.
And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill. You can get all sorts of crazy ridiculous procedures, even as a minor, if you have more money then sense. Is it not absolutely disproportionate to have so much air time occupied to whatever most likely very low % of those few hundred kids from privileged backgrounds that might regret it later?
rae
5mo ago
Yes, though I was under the impression that cancer treatments are extremely potent, and dangerous, and are only prescribed when you actually have cancer, rather than given out like candy as a prophylactic?
There are many kinds of medications used as cancer treatment. Chemotherapy would probably fit the description of extremely potent and dangerous, and you don’t want to go on it unless you have cancer.
Meanwhile bicalutamide is a popular cancer treatment for malignant prostate cancer, but is also given out to cis women with androgen-dependent conditions like acne, hirsutism, hair loss; it’s also given to men who have overly long erections. It has very few side effects except rare liver interactions (so you have to get frequent blood tests).
Either "some form" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, or this is plain unlikely to be true? Even WPATH kept the 18+ age limit for female bottom surgery, even as they abolished limits for every other procedure.
I was talking about hysterectomy, which many cis women get for cancer prevention (or treatment). Removing the uterus and ovaries will obviously go a long way in preventing uterine and ovarian cancer. The 18+ limit seems sensible to me in any case.
Thanks!! The only thing I’d disagree with is that transition isn’t necessarily an irreversible all-or-nothing process. You can start by changing your presentation to something more feminine or masculine, transition socially, and even HRT is a very gradual process that leaves you with multiple months to decide and for MtF patients there’s one irreversible change and that’s breast growth, but they’ll rarely grow big enough that they would require double incision mastectomy should you detransition. FtM patients will get voice deepening, male pattern baldness, facial hair growth (although laser hair removal isn’t a big deal), and bottom growth, but it’s much easier for FtMs to socially transition than MtFs without hormones.
What made the gender dysphoria go away for you if I may ask? I was able to repress it for a while after adolescence, but it came back with a vengeance once the infamous “twink death” hit.
rae
5mo ago
For MtF patients, estrogen and anti androgens makes you risk of prostate and testicular cancer extremely low (did you know the medications trans women take for HRT are the exact same as those for people with prostate and testicular cancer?). Also, castration in animals tend to increase lifespan - Korean eunuchs lived an average of 14-19 years longer than other male aristocrats, and castrated mental asylum patients in the mid-20th century would live longer the earlier they were castrated.
Most likely, it would mean this effect is reversed for FtMs, unfortunately. But top surgery at least drastically reduced the risk of breast cancer, and some form of bottom surgery would do the same for various cancers associated with the female reproductive anatomy.
rae
5mo ago
Tbh that sounds like a cool hook for a sci-fi dystopia story where the population is addicted to AR glasses that personalise reality to their own wants and desires. Basically one step below living in the Matrix.
Which are pretty nebulous as far as I know. There are plenty of flat-chested short-haired females out there but you needed long-hair and neo-breasts to feel better about yourself.
I don’t care that much about the hair or the breasts, but I need to compensate for my other male characteristics. There’s also other things like softer skin, facial fat deposition, hip/waist/bum fat, hairiness, which are changed by hormones.
The breasts are real, not implants, so the term “neo-breast” would be inaccurate.
Either way you provided evidence suggesting that women with dysphoria should get anti-androgens to be cured, not cross-sex hormones (androgens).
What about you, have you tried supplementing androgens instead?
Unfortunately the anti-androgen “cure” only worked for adolescent natal females, the earlier the better. I didn’t know about this during puberty, but there’s no evidence of supplementing androgen working in adolescent (or adult) natal males working - Dr Powers did try, and I recall some old studies but I can’t find them. B-12 and methylfolate supplementation has anecdotally worked in reducing dysphoria in adults but only by a small amount, not enough to cause someone to detransition.
In my case I had already very high androgen levels prior to transitioning with surprisingly little masculinisation, so I don’t know what would have helped.
Idk about other conservatives but when I think "normal monogamous life" I'm not thinking about your situation.
Compare my situation to the stereotypical gay man hooking up with a new partner every weekend, a queer polycule, or a straight incel addicted to porn? I want to get married, have kids and a home. Like ideally, I would go stealth, move to a suburb with my husband, and the neighbours would never know we’re not a normal monogamous couple with a normal life.
Also the guy you're dating, would he care if you told him to call you 'dude' instead of 'sweetie'?
“Dude” isn’t a term of endearment like “sweetie” is so he might be confused. If you mean, would it change our relationship if I asked him to call me my male pronouns? If that’s the only thing I changed, it would not, although it could be weird with my appearance (but he/him HRT femboys do exist). If I detransitioned, well, being bisexual he would still be attracted to me, but in a different way that makes me uncomfortable. In the past I did experience men and women being attracted to me for characteristics I hated, and it made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
All I'm saying is that the glasses and headphones would come together to create the perfect 'I am a woman'-simulation, no matter what other people are actually saying.
Wait, how?? If I didn’t transition and all I did was wear the headphones and glasses, people’s actions wouldn’t reflect them seeing me as a woman no matter how you edited their words. Like if I went to a bar, no straight man would actually want to take me home (and they might punch me if the AR system edited their words to mean sexual advances). I’d still be asked to lift heavy things, certain clothes wouldn’t fit or look right (and others might treat me worse as a result). I would still have male genitals and feel there them even if I didn’t see them, and the outline of my body wouldn’t match where I put my hands. Also if I applied makeup wouldn’t it look all wrong since it would edit my facial proportions?
rae
5mo ago
I don’t understand or see the point of neo-pronouns. If anything I’d prefer if there were no gendered pronouns at all in English, like in Hungarian or Turkish.
Non-binary can have multiple meanings. It could mean having dysphoria, but not enough to make you want to fully transition - plenty of butch lesbians are like that. It could mean preferring an androgynous presentation and not being comfortable with being/looking completely male or female. Some straight people also adopt the label to be trendy.
rae
5mo ago
Some trans men don’t get dysphoric when it comes to pregnancy, or just want a biological child badly enough that they go through it anyway. Medical professionals should be aware of the fact that a person that looks like a man could be pregnant, as it’s a medical reality.
With regards to the emoji, current standard practice is to have a non-gendered, female and male version for every emoji. Given that pregnant trans men and non-binary people exist, why not be inclusive follow the standard? Although they did deviate from the usual, which is to make the default emoji non-gendered and have the gender be a modifier, for backward compatibility reasons.
rae
5mo ago
I'm not sure if you're trolling at this point, but have you seen some before/after pictures of burn victims? There is a reason face transplants are a thing and it's not because people are a "little bit" bothered.
rae
5mo ago
It is indeed. The question is then what's the percentage of detransitioners, and how reversible the changes are. Even if there is say, a 80% detransition rate, but it happens all in the first month of puberty blockers, that's a very different situation from it happening 10 years down the line.
Unfortunately the statistics are currently very murky and the studies are ideologically charged. I could be swayed to opposed childhood transition if it was shown that the cons outweighed the pros, but unfortunately I'm going via my personal experience and biases for now.
rae
5mo ago
On the other hand, you have people like Kim Petras, Hunter Schafer, Valentina Sampaio, etc., young transitioners who seems to be mostly ignored by the right. I also know some trans women that transitioned early-ish (~14) and they have no regrets or sexual dysfunction. If you're trans, you're very unlikely to care about being sterilised or not having biological children the "natural" way anyhow.
rae
5mo ago
So women with a mental illness making them think that they are men took medication to reduce T levels (anti-androgens) and that helped them feel better about being women? Why aren't you taking anti-estrogens to cure your gender dysphoria then?
This is an incorrect view of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria isn't thinking you're the opposite sex, it's being uncomfortable about being the sex you are and feeling more comfortable if you adopt the characteristics of the opposite sex.
Sounds like pretty bad science to me. They should have at least given cocaine to some of them and see who reports feeling better.
Cocaine doesn't last for very long and the side effects/crash are very severe, but there's other stimulants out there! Given the high proportion of trans people that have ADHD, giving them one like Adderall or Ritalin might not be a bad idea.
Can you explain? The gay men that you were previously pursuing unsuccessfully finally took an interest in you after you grew your hair long and breasts? Or did you manage to attract a straight man who just can't wait to get married, 2 children and a white picket fence in the suburbs?
I dated and hooked up with plenty of gay men prior to transitioning. Gay men are actively uninterested in femininity and lost interest after I grew my hair long and such. I receive plenty of attention from bisexual/bicurious men - sexually speaking there's a ton of seemingly straight men that are very interested in trans women. I'm now in a long-term relationship with a bisexual man and we could certainly get married, adopt children (or go through surrogacy) and buy a house in a suburb. Ironically, I'm more comfortable now with having a family and the normal monogamous life that conservatives are a fan of, than I ever was before.
Only because you have a point of reference to what the opposite sex is like. If you moved to a male-only monastery for life eventually you would have no idea what a woman behaves like. You could also get smart glasses that correct every dumb thing any woman say around you and you'd get the impression that women are rational, pragmatic people while men are the irrationally angry, ditzy sex.
Why the thinly veiled misogyny? Your post has a fairly hostile, sarcastic tone in general. Is this a response informed from bad real life experiences with women and/or trans people?
Well that's what the headphones are for.
Not sure I understand this part?
What kind of medical treatment has other people than the patient as targets?
Any cosmetic surgery to correct a deformed but otherwise functional appearance?
You seem to believe PCOS to be a symptom of gender dysphoria while it could very well be that gender dysphoria is a symptom of PCOS, or a symptom of another underlying cause causing both dysphoria and PCOS.
I only said trans people often have those conditions, I didn't say anything about the causal chain. I agree that gender dysphoria could be a symptom of PCOS or another disorder. How else would treating the patient with antiandrogens work? If you read the post, the FtM patients had elevated testosterone levels, took medication to reduce those levels, and the gender dysphoria went away.
Source? They gave placebo hormones to transists and they compared results to transists with the real deal?
That's hard to do since hormones have obvious physical changes and you could tell easily you're in the placebo group. This is unfortunately only self reports from people that transition medically, but not socially (including some of the famous "detransitioners" on conservative media - a few said they detransitioned but admitted to still being on HRT).
It is possible to learn how to break away from negative thought patterns (for example: this part of my body is male and I need to see a surgeon, instead of: I love how male this part of my body is!)
It seems to me that you are not your gender dysphoria. If you are a person who is bad at math, then you can study hard and get a to a certain skill level where you can be confident solving some math problems.
It appears to me that if you are a person who is bad at seeing herself in her birth sex, then this is something they can practice and grow more confident in, instead of lobbing off body parts and playing with disguises for their whole life.
I tried this, I tried seeing a therapist, I tried living as a gay male. I tried everything I could not to transition because I disagreed with the leftist trans movement, for many many years. Yet a few months after I started HRT, my quality of life hugely improved, and I finally had a decent dating life. If anything, refusing to accept that I was trans and telling people I was a gay male - that was the lie.
You're telling me I should stop HRT and go back to that state of suffering - what for? I already did break away from a huge amount of the negative thought patterns, compared to before, and I have no desire to go back.
What would that even look like? How would you know what the opposite sex proprioception feels like? Even if you took cross-sex hormones and then feel that your skin feels different, how would you know that this is the same feeling that somebody of the other sex feels?
Sexual secondary characteristics are a thing - trans women have differently distributed body fat, develop breasts, softer skin (others have confirmed this), trans men get hairier, develop deeper voices, larger muscles and grow a small sort-of micropenis. Spatial and verbal abilities also change following HRT (this is where the infamous brain scan study of transwomen comes from). Proprioception in terms of those characteristics is real - I don't care that this is the same feeling that someone of the other sex has or not, it's different from the feeling I had before and externally matches the opposite sex, and that's good enough for me.
I don't see in which version of 'gender-affirming therapy' you would not be aware that you had your bones shaved etc.
The point is that other people see it too. A more interesting point would be, what if everyone wore these glasses and could alter how others saw them? Cosmetic surgery would be pointless in those circumstances, that I agree with.
They could be surgically-implanted as well.
The glasses wouldn't change how others treated me beyond the superficial - which pronouns and intonations absolutely are.
rae
5mo ago
"Never" is a strong word when it comes to technological progress, uterus transplants exist and egg cells could be made from stem cells.
How is my current existence a lie? I'm very aware that I'm not biologically female, but my male characteristics are causing me pain, and I can correct them and have a superior quality of life. After transitioning I became functional both romantically and sexually, and much less prone to anxiety, depression, and despairing over my physical appearance. People close to me know I'm trans, and I don't particularly care to correct strangers about the pronouns they use with me.
Body dysmorphia is a tragic thing and often co-morbid with gender dysphoria. But you can absolutely reach the point where you pass in your daily life to average people, and then reach diminishing returns.
rae
5mo ago
How so? The changes from hormones and surgery are real, felt by your body, and perceived by others, instead of being an audiovisual illusion that only you can see. The parallel would be like having some sort of moderately advanced but not perfect prosthetic arm, versus superimposing a CGI limb that no-one else sees, and that you can't use for anything since it's just pixels on a screen.
Do note that I have a somewhat transmedicalist point of view, which is different from the mainstream leftist view or what conservatives call "gender ideology".
What died with GOT was a singular, high quality show dominating pop culture, but there’s been spectacular shows since. Better Call Saul, Mr Robot, Dark, Queen’s Gambit are all post S5 of Game of Thrones, and in terms of ongoing shows, there’s Arcane, which is an artistic masterpiece that has no right to be based on League of Legends, there’s also Severance, Andor, two new Star Trek shows that are actually respectful of the source material, The Last of Us, 1883…
I’d argue TV is only getting better (although maybe the recent writer’s strike will put a stop to it). But the point was that we peaked in the 20th century, so even GoT disproves the argument despite only being good until 2014.
That’s a matter of personal taste then. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an incredible work and calling it “niche” would make that word meaningless given that it was the #1 best selling game on Steam on launch and won numerous high profile awards.
Sounds like a “vibecession” of art rather than any real artistic decline. Maybe you’re also just suffering from nostalgia?
Or maybe one of the problems is the death of a mainstream media culture, which I agree had its last major hurrah with Game of Thrones. There’s no single “hot new show” anymore, there’s a ton of shows with a few incredible ones amidst a sea of trash, and you can’t rely on what’s #1 to tell you what’s good or bad.
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