7 ms·

I am not taking dig on Manning, but activists. Gender is irrelevant, what matters is 10 versus 35 years. And you proved my point.

vertex-four 10y ago
Gender's not quite irrelevant - I'm reasonably certain Chelsea is happy that she gets the medication she needs (as she has written), and that in general, people accept her transition at this point. Humane treatment is a thing that's important, and for trans people, humane treatment partially involves treating them as the gender they are. Personally, I have no skin in this game, but I have a suspicion that the people who fought Wikipedia, newspapers, TV stations and blogs to identify her correctly have absolutely no experience getting someone out of military prison.
- douche 10y ago
  Fact of the matter is that Manning was born with a Y chromosome and a penis. Mental illness aside, he's still a man, albeit one who has chosen to mutilate himself. I don't really care what he decides to do with himself - although I smart a little bit that taxpayer money funded his gender vision quest.
  - M1ntos123 10y ago
    In your world of pure cold logic Hitler did the world a service by murdering innocent victim for having 'inferior' genes than someone else. Chelsea is a biological man but she considers herself a woman; this is called 'sex identity'. Note: Hitler's world of logic is probably not very logical at all when you really analyse everything, just as this dudes argument with Chelsea having a mental illness and stuff.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    It's funny you bring up "mental illness" in this context. Gender dysphoria definitely qualifies, but what I think you're failing to appreciate is that the best treatment for that illness, according to the current scientific consensus, is gender reassignment. Your shaming of Manning for undergoing treatment for their medical condition makes just as much sense as shaming someone who undergoes any other medical procedure to correct something wrong with them.
- Idontagree 10y ago
  Her medication doesn't change her biological makeup, science isn't that good yet. I'm happy to call anyone what they want, but surgery and drugs do not recreate your sex.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    Sex no, gender yes. That's the long and the short of it.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    There's plenty of evidence over the past couple of decades that trans people are, in a specific way, intersex - specifically that trans people's brains often have characteristics closer to those of their identified gender than what they were assigned at birth. There's certainly lots of anecdotal evidence that many people's brains just seem to "work better" once on the correct hormones, and generally speaking transition has very good outcomes - people who have transitioned are generally doing better on key indicators, though still not as well as cis people. The people behind the studies believe that this might be down to how prejudice and discrimination affects trans people even after transition, though there's no further studies in that direction yet. (For a comparison, I believe gay people were doing worse than the general population on the same key indicators before general acceptance, and it's been gradually getting better.) Here's a question, though: if we're not who we are in our own minds, who are we? Are you and I really only what others can see?
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      I'd like to see a source for this evidence please.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        I haven't gone over these properly, so I can't actually argue for their validity, but Wikipedia claims that there are numerous studies which seem to argue the same things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Brain_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Brain...
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
She asked to be called female. This isn't about anonymous activists, it's about the specific human being you're pretending to care about. But I was mostly referring to the way you implied that it's somehow the sole responsibility of a tiny and already-beleaguered minority to remember Manning. She's been largely forgotten by the tech press, by the liberal/progressive press, by America in general, and whose fault is that? Right, it's those nasty trans people! They're the ones who should be keeping the memory alive, not us!
some-guy 10y ago
Why criticize people for caring about something if you didn't also care about the same thing?

vertex-four 10y ago

Gender's not quite irrelevant - I'm reasonably certain Chelsea is happy that she gets the medication she needs (as she has written), and that in general, people accept her transition at this point. Humane treatment is a thing that's important, and for trans people, humane treatment partially involves treating them as the gender they are. Personally, I have no skin in this game, but I have a suspicion that the people who fought Wikipedia, newspapers, TV stations and blogs to identify her correctly have absolutely no experience getting someone out of military prison.

douche 10y ago
Fact of the matter is that Manning was born with a Y chromosome and a penis. Mental illness aside, he's still a man, albeit one who has chosen to mutilate himself. I don't really care what he decides to do with himself - although I smart a little bit that taxpayer money funded his gender vision quest.
- M1ntos123 10y ago
  In your world of pure cold logic Hitler did the world a service by murdering innocent victim for having 'inferior' genes than someone else. Chelsea is a biological man but she considers herself a woman; this is called 'sex identity'. Note: Hitler's world of logic is probably not very logical at all when you really analyse everything, just as this dudes argument with Chelsea having a mental illness and stuff.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  It's funny you bring up "mental illness" in this context. Gender dysphoria definitely qualifies, but what I think you're failing to appreciate is that the best treatment for that illness, according to the current scientific consensus, is gender reassignment. Your shaming of Manning for undergoing treatment for their medical condition makes just as much sense as shaming someone who undergoes any other medical procedure to correct something wrong with them.
Idontagree 10y ago
Her medication doesn't change her biological makeup, science isn't that good yet. I'm happy to call anyone what they want, but surgery and drugs do not recreate your sex.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  Sex no, gender yes. That's the long and the short of it.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  There's plenty of evidence over the past couple of decades that trans people are, in a specific way, intersex - specifically that trans people's brains often have characteristics closer to those of their identified gender than what they were assigned at birth. There's certainly lots of anecdotal evidence that many people's brains just seem to "work better" once on the correct hormones, and generally speaking transition has very good outcomes - people who have transitioned are generally doing better on key indicators, though still not as well as cis people. The people behind the studies believe that this might be down to how prejudice and discrimination affects trans people even after transition, though there's no further studies in that direction yet. (For a comparison, I believe gay people were doing worse than the general population on the same key indicators before general acceptance, and it's been gradually getting better.) Here's a question, though: if we're not who we are in our own minds, who are we? Are you and I really only what others can see?
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    I'd like to see a source for this evidence please.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      I haven't gone over these properly, so I can't actually argue for their validity, but Wikipedia claims that there are numerous studies which seem to argue the same things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Brain_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Brain...

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

She asked to be called female. This isn't about anonymous activists, it's about the specific human being you're pretending to care about. But I was mostly referring to the way you implied that it's somehow the sole responsibility of a tiny and already-beleaguered minority to remember Manning. She's been largely forgotten by the tech press, by the liberal/progressive press, by America in general, and whose fault is that? Right, it's those nasty trans people! They're the ones who should be keeping the memory alive, not us!

some-guy 10y ago

Why criticize people for caring about something if you didn't also care about the same thing?