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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Meanwhile if you transition around the start of puberty, you don't have to do any of these surgeries - you'll go through the rest of your life as a normal-looking member of the opposite sex, and won't have to go through the trauma of watching your body turn into something that gives you psychological pain every day. There's only one surgery you might have to do and that's sex reassignment surgery, and there I don't have any issue with not allowing minors to go through it.

Jazz Jennings seems to be going through plenty of psychological pain.

This not an honest presentation of the pros and cons of early transition. You are listing out the possible pros of early transition while forgetting the massive, elephant-in-the-room con: the child will likely be sterilized, they will likely never be able to have their own biological children, and may never have any proper sexual function or ability to orgasm. Again, see Jazz Jennings. No child is prepared to make that decision, no adult should be making that decision for a child.

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.

If you're trans, you're very unlikely to care about being sterilised or not having biological children the "natural" way anyhow.

I think we have to differentiate between the normal trans people who just want to put their heads down and live their lives, and the more extreme Live My Life Online types.

The latter very much do care about having biological children, or children related to them, and the 'natural' way of raising them. A current minor scuffle over breastfeeding/chestfeeding: can trans women breast feed? Of course we can, says one side, and it's just as good as cis woman breast milk.

Then why has language had this turn towards terms like "birthing parent" and why do we have a "pregnant man" emoji? I'm not being flippant: enough people cared enough to try and change common language and/or shove a new pictograph onto everyone's touch keyboards.

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.

Why are you pretending all of this is apolitical? Replacing the term mother with birthing parent might be appropriate in approximately 0.001% of pregnancies, but it is not helpful in any of the others. But it's the "Current standard practice" bit that is grinding my gears, because it was a direct result of queer lobbying. The concept of gendered emoji didn't even exist prior to 2017, the spy emoji wasn't a spy guy, it was just a spy, the runner emoji was just a runner. That was the standard practice in 2015, if current standard practice was a good enough justification we shouldn't have added any emoji whatsoever. But now it's something you like, so 'it's current standard practice!' is now good enough.

The concept of gendered emoji didn't even exist prior to 2017,

Emoji used to be universal symbols, a yellow circle with two dots and a line, representing every human, no matter their sex or race. But people invested in how they look said that every emotion is actually fifteen different ones (5 races, man, woman and neutral) and that emoji should reflect that. So now instead being beacons of unity of mankind, they veing marks of petty division.

It is ironic that a people so often accused of being nationalistic and gender conformative saw all human as having the same emotions, while the alleged anti-nationalists and feminists desired specificity.