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One of the things I've noticed about the media is how they define the narrative by promoting the things that people should be talking about, rather than simply dismiss and ignore. Case in point:
AP News: "New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates"
Note that it's about how trans people must use the correct gender marking (i.e. gender assigned at birth), rather than their own preferred gender, on their drivers' licenses.
I notice that I'm confused as to what "transgender rights" are, and what rights specifically transgender people are demanding that Americans don't already have. Trans people have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for instance. However, the demand that other people refer to you with a specific designation is not really a natural right, and in fact, suppressing or compelling the speech of others is a violation of other people's rights to free speech.
The question of if gender can "change" is purely philosophical and not something that can be settled by research. I can't begin to imagine how research could settle it, unless the research in question is from a hyper-advanced sci-fi future where reversible body modification is possible with no ill side effects.
Is the contradiction here that they can't be protecting women if they don't use favorable labels? If we accept that premise (which I don't), then surely calling women "menstruators" is also not protecting them, but that terminology has been advanced in the name of being inoffensive to trans-identifying males.
I love the multiple layers of lies that get packed into this one sentence. It's like a masterclass in lying while saying something that is technically true.
First, attributing it to unspecified "transgender people" in general. So you can't blame the journalist for printing this statement if it's blatantly false, he is just the messenger.
Second, attributing any supposed harassment from others to carrying ID that "misgenders" them, rather than other factors. They're painting this world where a trans woman (man who says he is a woman) is just like a woman in every other respect of the word, except that he just happens to have "M" on his license, and that causes him to be unduly questioned. In reality, a trans-identifying male can be spotted from a mile away, and if he was ever asked about it (which IME most people are too polite to even do), it was because he was clocked as a man and it's obvious to everyone that he's a man.
Finally, the assertion that they face violence. (To be clear, I mean violence as in physical violence, something that can at the very least be legally categorized as assault. I don't believe that mere speech is violence.) I am going to assert that there are vanishingly few cases where a trans person has faced violence simply on the basis of being trans and nothing else. Out of all the cases I've seen, they faced violence for other reasons, such as being the aggressor or for being involved in sex work.
I'm not saying it's impossible or hasn't happened, but I just haven't seen a case yet that could support the assertion that there are people who want trans people dead or genocided. There are no roaming death squads of extremists hunting down trans people. Being a trans person is quite a safe demographic in America. By and large, most people just don't care about trans people, but they are interested in making sure that trans people don't inflict negative externalities on society.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, we have the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Why the quotes around biological reproductive system? Are biological reproductive systems not a well-defined, scientifically-grounded concept?
My bigger point is just asking why anyone should even care in the first place, including trans people themselves. If I was trans, I would shrug and just accept the "M" designation on my license. To the extent that I would have a problem with the current state of affairs, I would find that the entire licensing regime that the government imposes on the people -- forcing them to register and pay fees in order to drive and participate in society -- is the actual problem here, not merely an unpreferred gender marker. But my stance is that it's not worth it to fight the licensing regime and it's better to comply. Hence, too, I wouldn't care about having the "M" on my license. It seems rather silly to me to question and reject one social construct (gender) while being completely subservient to another (driver's licenses).
And my biggest point is that this shouldn't even be worthy of discussion. If you're going to accept that the government has the right to force you to get licensed, who cares what kind of silly labels they give you? But a mainstream news article publishing this as a headline implies that it's a newsworthy item, a topic of controversy, something that people should care about even though it's really not going to have an impact on anyone's life.
I agree, violence for the most part is not actually that common in the US unless you hang out with bad crowds and a few examples otherwise are statistical anomalies.
Ok but how the heck you gonna dismiss violence against trans people as just a few small cases but then cite a single anecdote of violence here? There are not roaming death squads hunting down and killing conservatives either.
A few examples to the contrary does not change the statistical truth that basically any demographic in the US (besides black male really) is a rather safe demographic.
Now this is just blatantly not true, I've seen plenty of passing trans people. It's a toupee fallacy at best and delusional wishful thinking at worst. There's a lot of overlap in male and female appearance, there's even plenty of men (who identify as male) that can make for a convincing female appearance without even having the feminizing effects of hormones, a lot of the "femboys" can do that.
Yeah there's lots of people who don't, but there's plenty who do without any trouble.
How the heck do you know what you do there? If you were trans, how do you know you wouldn't be able understand their problems? Certainly in this hypothetical you would have those same feelings of discomfort about being identified as male.
There aren't, but I would imagine that if I was a notable conservative figure, I would be much more worried about a lone assassin tracking me down and hunting me, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death. That seems to be kind of the point of such political violence.
How do you know they were trans if they were passing? I'm not trying to do a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious.
I see this similarly to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. Isn't the entire point of carrying concealed that you don't know if someone is carrying concealed? If they, for example, tell others that they are carrying concealed, that defeats the utility of concealment. In the same way, a real woman isn't telling everyone that she is a woman, because other people see her and automatically recognize her as one. Ideally, a trans person wouldn't have to tell others their preferred gender, it would just be obvious to everyone. They wouldn't even have to say "my pronouns are she/her".
I still feel like most trans people don't pass because I've never thought of someone as non-trans only to find out that they were trans later.
Is discomfort about being identified as male a prerequisite for being trans? If I'm a trans person but I have no such discomfort, am I not a real trans person? These are questions even trans activists have disagreements on.
Either way, I don't think that it's sustainable to make all efforts to remove any way I could possibly be identified or categorized as male, so I think it would be reasonable to draw the line somewhere.
Well
Sometimes people just list it on an online bio or something, you can find plenty of folk who clearly look quite feminine. Sure pictures and videos are different than IRL, but it's not "obvious" there still. Someone like NikkieTutorials was a famous content creator on YouTube and they're only known to be trans because someone in their life who was told it threatened to out them. "Outing" wouldn't even be a thing anyway if it wasn't the case that some people do pass.
Plenty of trans people tell stories of doctors asking them about pregnancy risks or whatever else sort of story that only works if passing really does happen and them having to explain that they're trans. Maybe they're all lying, but that is some evidence.
Just go to like an anime convention or something else where people dress up. There's a lot of men who can make for very convincing women.
The reverse, "transvestigations" claiming people like Macron's wife or Erika Kirk or other famous women as being potentially trans show that many of the "signs" are clearly something that occur in ordinary women too. Sometimes it goes into ridiculous territory even like this lady has a picture of her after a C-section with her newborn and husband and she still gets constantly harassed with people trying to claim she is trans because of how she looks, even trying to say that she must have had a uterus transplant (which if a trans woman had a successful transplant, got pregnant and gave birth would be a huge story). A lot of people who can "always tell" refuse to admit otherwise. Even offline here's a teen who got harassed and told to leave the women's restroom, despite her not being trans.
Statistically speaking you probably don't even know a trans person passing or not who is meaningfully trans in the sense of changing their name/hormones/identification/etc to begin with! It's something like .5% of the population for it, that's relatively rare. 1/200 is pretty uncommon, dunbar's number is around 150, and that's things like associates not close friends who would tell you something like that. If you have something like five really close friends, four family members and three partners throughout life the chance of any of them being meaningfully trans is really low to begin with. However it is possible that someone in the nameless crowds at the grocery store or movie theater or sports stadiums might be and you don't even notice and count them because they're a stranger.
Yes that's the toupee fallacy. The argument that all toupees look bad and you can always tell falls apart when you consider that good looking realistic toupees aren't noticed.
Well discomfort for birth sex but I think generally so. At the very least it's pretty common among people who meaningfully transition with and not like a stupid 16 year old who just puts neopronouns in their bio and calls themselves trans.
You can not hide an adams apple, height, shoulder configuration, and most of the "passing" trans individuals are either children, extremely low T males or various Asian descent inherently neotenous with help from make up. I am frankly tired of the "there are invisible trans all over the place, you just don't know about them" song and dance.
A handful of genetic abnormalities(XXY, XYY) like that woman that looks like a dude shouldn't be used to excuse 99% of cases. The Hermeneutics of
GayTrans Suspicion surely suck for the wrongly accused, but w/e.I do kinda feel for mannish and/or tall women on dating apps these days. I remember when I was on the apps a few years ago I'd always have a vague twinge of concern when those profiles popped up.
Also the amount of clearly trans profiles that were doing their best to hide that fact felt like potentially cruising for a bruising from somebody desperate who didn't know how to read the cultural norms.
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