2025 Pride - Day 4
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I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
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I'm sure LD can speak for himself, but I believe he's engaged in a rhetorical debate with the mainstream angle that there is no overlap between considering oneself to have a soul gender different from one's biological gender, and mental illness. Like, if you plotted the bell curves for "connection to reality" for both groups - those who believe their soul is gendered differently than their body, and those who do not - they would be identical. Meanwhile, while there may be some people who are totally normal psychologically but with that one characteristic of gender dissonance, the statistics show that people who self-identify that way are not otherwise normal statistically. Which obviously stands to any basic reason, even if it hurts to say, for those of us whose best friends are trans.
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I can imagine that there are some people with gendered souls who are otherwise indistinguishable from normal and healthy psychologically. The problem is that their category of "transgender" will always be polluted by people who are there due to self-hatred, depression, delusion, suicidality, or whatever else motivates someone to escape the biology they were born to.
And I find it difficult to believe that if a person were "forced", due to social norms, to just present as the biology they were born to, that they would be facing a life of pain the likes of which most people could never comprehend. Imagine listing as your life's greatest emotional torment, that you couldn't wear makeup and the clothes you wanted. This is a joke in the context of the pains of normal human life.
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I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
@jodi said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
I think mental disorder is the wrong term, 89. Best way I can explain how I think about it is like the continuum of a bell curve, where there will always be a smaller number of people out towards the edges in any category, outside of what the ‘average’ is, whether physical characteristics or mental characteristics. It’s not “wrong”, it’s normal, as in it’s the way life works. And vilifying the people on these edges isn’t helpful. We breed for unusual characteristics in plants and animals for Pete’s sake. And we can’t accept any unique differences in our own species. It’s really sad.
I see what you're saying, but it's hard for my to wrap my mind around any scenario where a male person "thinks they are a woman" without some form of mental issue. I'm not even saying having gender dysphoria "is wrong", but the idea that there isn't an underlying psychological issue is hard to justify. Before Matt Walsh made it so trendy, I used to ask the same question... what makes a male person "think they are really female?" (aka, what is a woman?). If it's just association and preference of the traditionally feminine culture (dress, voice, attraction, interests), ok... then you're a feminine man. Similarly, there can be masculine women. But to think this actually changes your gender or makes you genderless... I don't think will ever make sense. I suppose it could if you equate "feminine culture = woman" but that's not how I understand the differences between sex, gender, and femininity/masculinity. I'd imagine those on the pro-trans side of the debate see no difference between gender and the femininity/masculinity traits that define gender.
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I get that it is hard to wrap your mind around the scenario, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t be that way - and it doesn’t have to be labeled an “issue” - like it’s something that needs to be fixed, if that makes sense. It’s just a difference. Ok, these may not be the best examples, can’t wrap my head around anyone wanting to fly into space or climb Mount Everest, but that doesn’t mean there are not people who feel like that is what they need to do to lead a fulfilled life. I don’t have to understand it, but i do accept it. There are things I won’t risk for myself (unnecessary surgery, like plastic surgery) but a lot of people do body changing surgeries to feel better about themselves. Breast implants, nose jobs, facelifts, whatever. I wasn’t someone who did hormone therapy for menopausal issues - but people do take hormones for all sorts of reasons, and though I wouldn’t do that for myself, I accept that others may want to. I know this is complicated. And I don’t have any answers for the sports stuff - though rare when it actually makes a difference, that feels like a wicked problem to me. But I do have a relative (through marriage ) who is trans. And a kid who is non-binary. These people are our loved ones. And they deserve to be accepted and loved for who they are.
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Didn't mean for this to be a gang up on LD. From what I know of him, he's a good and thoughtful person. My apologies, LD. My intent was just to reinforce the notion that questionable morals are not the unique attribute of a single group - and in fact, some of our allegedly most moral people (clergy and such) have failings as well. As for the trans movement, I'm sympathetic with people who were born with a predilection for unusual desires. At the same time, I think the woke agenda with respect to "trans rights" has had some significant adverse impact on children in particular. It may take us as a society a while to sort that all out. Looking at our society generally, I wish people were more like the characters in Andy Griffin's fictional town of Mayberry. The illusion of homogeneity had some benefits.
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There are extremes of "acceptance", which are really masquerading "promotion", where, for instance, certain people coincidentally have an entire family of trans kids. At that point we have to ask whether social norms might play a productive role in helping people through often-temporary psychological states that produce profound fundamental confusions and aspirations that they should be careful to wish for.
In these discussions, we inevitably get the categorical truisms such as "people deserve to be loved unconditionally", or "bad people exist everywhere in every category", but none of those statements is really up for debate. Almost everybody acknowledges the complexity of the real issue being discussed, but where we differ is in which truisms we feel necessary to say out loud. This depends on where we feel the mainstream is currently centered, and which direction we'd like it to go. LD, according to his prior writings, is pretty concerned with the child abuse angle (unintentional though that abuse may be).
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I'm with Dave Chapelle. I support anyone's right to live as they wish so long as it's not harming someone else. But the question is to what degree do I have to participate in their self-image? It's fine to be who you think you are up until you are demanding others change their behavior and/or vocabulary when referring to you.
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I appreciate all of your comments. My intent was not to gang up on LD. The screaming far left isn’t any better than the screaming far right. And we always hear about the extremes in the media. But there are real people in the middle of this. I agree with Ken, sorting it out is going to take awhile. We need more compassion and less fear and anger.
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I only have anger on one issue - bio men competing in women's sports. It's just wrong.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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I was leaving this one alone after seeing @Doctor-Phibes post. It’s certainly not my intention to hurt any members that have any close relatives and friends that are identifying as trans, non-binary, etc… But I do feel that I should address a few points.
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This series had absolutely nothing to do with being anti-gay individuals. The TQ+ may have attached themselves to the LGB, but the most virulently anti-TQ+ individuals that I know personally are LGB and find TQ+ antithetical and extremely problematic to their struggles for acceptance.
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I generally don’t find those young people that call themselves non-binary to be bothersome, more annoying and confused than anything else. Every generation there are kids pushing gender stereotypes types. Whether it’s tomboys or flamboyant boys. Their behavior and interests go against the general stereotypes for their gender. That’s generally a good thing in my mind. Boys and Girls shouldn’t be defined by things like their interests, talents, and such. Back in the 80’s these kids were punk, in the 90’s they were Goth, now they are “nonbinary”. I do have some issue with the nonbinary approach, though, because it does contradict and roll back some of the progress that was made in breaking gender stereotypes.
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Genuine intersex or “unsexed” individuals - This would include that Algerian boxer. I have full sympathy and no problem with them adopting whatever identity they are most comfortable with. In the case where there are clear male markers with male physical characteristics throughout their development, then I feel that competing in the women’s arena is not appropriate, but otherwise let them live as they want.
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Then we get to trans… Individuals that are living their lives as the other sex. Whether they’ve taken medical steps or not (but the medical cocktails and surgeries do make things much worse), over and over again we find that these individuals have myriad and multiple mental problems. The majority of the time they are on the autism spectrum, almost all have depression, extreme levels of anxiety, and almost all (but not every single one) have genuine gender dysphoria. Here’s the thing, genuine gender dysphoria is cured +90% of the time by puberty and growing up. Not blocking puberty, not by socially transitioning, or even medical transition, but by going through actual puberty. This is well documented and has been observed and argued by many clinical psychologists and MD’s. In addition, it has Noel’s been well documented that medical transitioning is not an effective method of helping the depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation that these kids are actually experiencing. The Cass report completely blew up the arguments for Gender Affirming Care and the studies that were used to promote GAC. Time after time we are discovering that the evidence and studies used to promote this movement were extremely flawed at the very least or outright fraudulent in many cases.
This is where it gets hard and contentious. Many of us know kids that are trans (again, I exclude the non-binary from that). We want to support them, help them, and see them do well in life. But I firmly disagree with the idea that the way to support them and help them is to just support it either tacitly or actively. I’m not going to be apologetic for that. In most cases, the actual root causes of their depression and various problems are not being addressed. Kids that have transitioned socially or medically still have an unacceptable suicide rate, and even WPATH has recognized that the detransition rate is nearly 33%. Think about that for a minute. Medical practitioners have been proscribing a treatment where 1/3 of the recipients regret the treatment, they still have high suicide rates, and these young people will be on drug and hormone cocktails with numerous health problems for the rest of their lives. For a condition that has over a 90% recovery rate if you just leave the kids alone and an even higher recovery rate if you treat the accompanying depression and anxiety through counseling. I am unapologetically against just going along to get along on this subject.
But even that doesn’t completely cover what this thread is truly about. Decry it as much as you want. Try to diminish the numbers all that you want. Adult trans propogate an unacceptably high rate of sexual and physical violence. Any sexual and physical violence is unacceptable, but when less than .5% of the population represents 15% of the population of a prison, that is alarmingly disproportional. Yes, African Americans represent a disproportionate number of prisoners and that’s a contentious enough debate. But .5% representing 15%? That’s orders of magnitude worse. And these crimes aren’t drug related or gang violence…
I have no desire to offend you, and that’s why I did send out the feeler a week ago and received no pushback, only supportive responses, and I planned on stopping these posts last night when I saw the responses by Phibes and Kluurs. And I appreciate where you’re coming from, I don’t know your particular private circumstances with this, but I have been open about the young people in my sphere that have been horribly affected by this, and I know how badly that hurts. If it was my child, it would be even worse. But going along with it just ain’t the answer.
The Brad
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Wow, I started that post this morning and have missed a whole bunch of responses, lol. I will have to read through and address them. Don’t take my response as anything more than a reply to Phibes post last night. I still need to read the rest.
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LD tested the waters before he did it this year, asking whether it was appreciated. Nobody raised any concerns at the time. Now all the moralizing me-tooers are piling on. Sad.
I think we've all learned a valuable lesson here today.
I've repeatedly made my opinions known about this stuff in the past. I also objected in when it was stated that the board has concensus about the topic, just for somebody to sarcastically remark on me posting based on 'my feels', so I thought 'fuck it', and stopped commenting.
However, just because I don't comment on something doesn't mean I agree with it.
I you want to go on a holy war, well, it's a free board. But we all know how those turn out. And don't expect me to join in.
As far as me 'piling on' goes, well, I thought the board had concensus. How can I pile on a concensus?
I was only joking
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@Mik said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
I only have anger on one issue - bio men competing in women's sports. It's just wrong.
This bothers me too. And I believe I saw it when I competed in powerlifting. I remember one individual who simply dominated “her” peers.
I do have empathy for those born with ambiguous genitalia. I saw this long ago as a PICU nurse. The boys’ parents were told to raise them as girls and had a team of people helping them. There were hormones and surgery, and psych people supporting that as they matured. How scary for the parents and the children. I don’t know how any of them grew up, whether they competed in sports, whether they had friends, how they felt gender wise. But growing up, no matter who and what we are, we all make comparisons with our peers; we want to be normal; we judge ourselves against others. What a tormenting time for those having to navigate parenthood with a new baby with ambiguous sex characteristics. -
I don't agree with bio men competing in women's sports either. This isn't what this about. This is about me objecting to the demonization of non-binary or trans people by pointing out terrible things some of them have done.
You could do the same thing for people who suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or autism or ADHD or even obesity or god help us American citizenship. But why would you? What purpose would it serve?
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I really do appreciate everyone’s thoughtful responses. This is not an easy to deal with issue. There was a thread started a little while ago about how this forum had changed, this person thought it was for the worse. But I honestly feel like it has gotten better, more thoughtful posts about everything, including politics. - I’ve started reading and posting more here because of that feeling. So thank you.
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@Mik said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
I only have anger on one issue - bio men competing in women's sports. It's just wrong.
I have several points of anger on this subject. The one that originally set me off was discovering school districts were making health decisions for students while hiding and lying about it to keep it secret from parents, the legal guardians entrusted to protect and make these decisions for the child. “That doesn’t really happen” I was told…
Oh yeah?
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It’s fair to say that bad things happen with this issue as well as in a lot of other areas. For example, a good friend of ours’ daughter was sexually harassed repeatedly in a local school by a teacher and when she complained she was brushed off and ignored by the school board. Nothing to do with the trans issue, but it was a horrendous situation which ended in a prosecution and the head teacher being fired due primarily to our friend’s determination.
This doesn’t mean that all teachers should be demonized.
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It’s fair to say that bad things happen with this issue as well as in a lot of other areas. For example, a good friend of ours’ daughter was sexually harassed repeatedly in a local school by a teacher and when she complained she was brushed off and ignored by the school board. Nothing to do with the trans issue, but it was a horrendous situation which ended in a prosecution and the head teacher being fired due primarily to our friend’s determination.
This doesn’t mean that all teachers should be demonized.
@Doctor-Phibes said in 2025 Pride - Day 4:
It’s fair to say that bad things happen with this issue as well as in a lot of other areas. For example, a good friend of ours’ daughter was sexually harassed repeatedly in a local school by a teacher and when she complained she was brushed off and ignored by the school board. Nothing to do with the trans issue, but it was a horrendous situation which ended in a prosecution and the head teacher being fired due primarily to our friend’s determination.
This doesn’t mean that all teachers should be demonized.
I’m not saying teachers should be demonized, but school districts around the country have adopted similar policies that allows the district to make health decisions for your child without consulting the parents, and even concealing those decisions from parents. It’s not just Loudoun County, or this district in NY. It’s not about sexual abuse, it’s about a child’s well being and who is ultimately the guardian and caretaker of the child.
