9 ms·

> The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate

> The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate speech and try to suppress it. This is 100% my personal experience also. Even on HN last week someone said I should try to be a "better human" and compared my suggestion that maybe someone might oppose transgender women in women's spaces for reasons other than pure hatred or phobia of trans people, to segregation of blacks and whites. It's just absolutely impossible to have any disagreement with them without them trying these inane mob bully tactics. Being outraged should not be your only argument. Take the case of Fallon Fox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallon_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallon_Fox): a mixed martial artist transgender woman (who didn't even disclose she used to be a he while she was competing against women), or Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealand transgender olympic weightlifter in the news this week. Even mentioning these cases which clearly have more to them than pure hatred or phobia of trans people, still get lambasted with abuse. What's really frustrating is that they don't really listen to what you actually say, but instead "read between the lines" and assume everything you say is just a ruse hidden behind some immense hatred and bigotry. How about no? Just take what I say at face value. No, I'm not full of hate. Yes, I know being transgendered must be hard. Yes, I do know some transgendered people (why is this relevant?). Yes, I am cisgendered myself. No, I really do think transgender women have an advantage in combat sports. No, again, I'm not full of hate... It's quite ridiculous. ... OP was flagged because...?

recursivedoubts 5y ago
The idea is to set up rhetorical either-or's and then browbeat the majority into silence: Either you support unlimited immigration or you are a racist. Either you are 100% on board with the entire vaccine schedule or you are an anti-vaxxer. Either you say that Covid was a natural occurrence or you are a conspiracy theorist (and probably a racist too). And so on. Say what one will, but it's effective. I think one reason it works so well in the US is our puritan heritage, which has always had a strong manichean current in it. As the elites lost their religion, they retained this characteristic and it now manifests itself in the secular realm.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Sometimes the either-or's are not just either-or's, they're catch 22's. Trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria and denying that is transphobic, but if you say trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria you're a transmedicalist truscum. Checkmate atheists!
  - underseacables 5y ago
    Transgender is a psychiatric disorder with potential medical treatment. The problem is that it’s also a lifeline for people who are seeking an identity, and they become hyper sensitive to any questioning of something that, again, is all in their heads.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      Being transgender is as "curable" as homosexuality.
      - have2throwaway 5y ago
        For many years I experienced gender dysphoric feelings. Did that make me "transgender"? I used to believe that I was, even though deeply closeted. I didn't seek help. I didn't transition. I wanted to seek help but was too scared. What happened? Well, after some years, the gender dysphoric feelings went away. That happens sometimes – gender dysphoric feelings can spontaneously remit, go away by themselves. I don't have them any more. I know from the literature I am not unique, see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10929795/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10929795/ If it can happen spontaneously, is it impossible that sometimes therapy might speed that spontaneous process along? Would that be a "cure"? I have struggled with obsessive behaviour ever since I was a child. I probably have undiagnosed ASD (I have many other traits of ASD than just obsessions). I'm actually on a waiting-list to see a psychiatrist for an ASD assessment. Some of my obsessions are more ASD-like (pleasurable rather than anxious), others more OCD-like (anxiety-driven), so sometimes I wonder if I might have OCD too. I'll let my psychiatrist work that one out, when I see him. But what I realise now is that my gender dysphoric feelings were just another one of these obsessions. And like most of my obsessions, with time they fade and get replaced with new ones. If I had this self-understanding 15, 20 years ago, I think my gender dysphoric feelings might have remitted faster. If I'd sought help back then, would they have helped me gain that self-understanding of my own obsessiveness? Or would they have encouraged me towards transition? I'm glad I never transitioned, I think I'd be in a far worse place now if I had. But I worry with this idea of "affirmative care", people like me may be encouraged in that direction whether it is the right thing for them or not. What about your comparison with homosexuality? Does homosexuality ever "spontaneously remit" in the same way that gender dysphoric feelings sometimes do? I honestly have no idea. My feelings about my birth gender (male) have waxed and waned, but a constant for me has been attraction to women with never more than fleeting feelings for men; given that, the equivalent question for homosexuality is beyond my personal experience. (Sorry for the throwaway. I hope one can understand why. I wish I had the courage to talk about this stuff under my real name. I hope that one of these days I will, but not today.)
threatofrain 5y ago
But why would you discuss someone's medical suffering by leading with a topic on trans elite sports, which focuses on an extreme niche and elite phenomena?
- Moodles 5y ago
  Because I am making the point that even mentioning something as extreme as that still gets me lambasted with abuse. So if we can't even discuss that civilly, how on Earth are we meant to discuss more nuanced issues?
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    So you are saying you choose to lead with elite trans sports, a niche phenomena of a niche phenomena, in order to demonstrate that you will be lambasted with abuse? And that is how you choose to lead with your speech? And you are saying if we can't discuss elite trans sports with nuance with civility, then how can we discuss an even more nuanced topic than trans elite sports? So did you want to discuss trans elite sports or were you trying to demonstrate that people cannot handle a conversation with greater nuance? Or both at the same time?
    - Moodles 5y ago
      > And you are saying if we can't discuss elite trans sports with nuance, then how can we discuss an even more nuanced topic than trans elite sports? That's all i'm saying. It's pretty obvious having an objection to Fallon Fox fighting biological women has more to it than pure hatred and bigotry towards trans women. If the gender ideology crowd can't acknowledge that or debate that civilly, I really see no chance of debating less clearcut topics. I deliberately chose it as the most extreme example I could think of to demonstrate how unreasonable and emotional I think that segment of the political spectrum is. > So did you want to discuss trans elite sports or were you trying to demonstrate that people cannot handle a conversation with greater nuance? Or both at the same time? The latter, but if you want to talk about the former we can do that too.
pqs 5y ago
The proof is that this article, a "The Economist" article, has been flagged. It shows [flagged] next to the title.
dang 5y ago
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- Moodles 5y ago
  Is this rate limiting on commenting ever going to be lifted or is it permanent?
  - dang 5y ago
    We're happy to take off rate limits if people give us some reason to believe that they sincerely intend to follow the site guidelines in the future.
    - Moodles 5y ago
      Ok I promise. My last topics I posted on were about this, a security blog post, the news, Simone Biles and accents. I do actually talk about lots of topics on HN but I tend to get drawn into political discussions which are replied to a lot more. Also it's hard for me not to respond when someone calls me a bigot, etc. I'm definitely not on HN just to troll about politics. I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational?
      - dang 5y ago
        Ok, I've taken the rate limit off your account. To prevent it kicking in again, please remember that on HN the idea is to value quality over quantity, and please stay up to date on the site guidelines. > I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational? When I skim through your recent comments I'm mostly seeing posts like these (just a random sample) - these are examples of what we don't want on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27379700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27379700 If you don't like the words "political/ideological battle" or "flamewar" we can find a different description; the point is that this is not the curiosity-driven, respectful conversation that the site is supposed to be for.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I’d like to see some introspection here. Can you imagine why they would respond so strongly? I’ll tell you. The trans experience is one that is in many ways beautiful and joyous but is sadly also fraught with trauma. Trans people experience a lot of pain that stays with them. Much of that pain has to do with people who refuse to accept who they truly are. Or people will “just want to have a discussion” where they try to see invalidate the persons identity. When a cis person enters a discussion like this, to the cis person it’s just an intellectual discussion. But to the trans person it can be threatening and it can trigger memories of past trauma they’ve gone through. So yes, trans people get upset when you bring things like this up because you’re bringing up a topic that may have been used as a “gotcha” to invalidate their identity, and it can be unclear if that’s what you’ll try to do. This makes the whole conversation upsetting to them. Imagine if a man who didn’t believe in women’s rights wanted to discuss it with a woman who has been discriminated against. That would be a difficult conversation and it wouldn’t be surprising if she got upset and didn’t want to have a “rational debate” about her rights. What you’re doing when you bring up difficult topics to a marginalized person is you’re forcing them to re live traumatic memories in order to educate you. I learned this from learning about the experiences of people of color. (If you’re white) DO NOT go ask a random black person to explain to you the everyday racism they feel, because inevitably it won’t make sense to you and when you challenge something they say it will become a lot of emotional labor for them to try to make it make sense. Sure some people are fine explaining this stuff but not everyone. Instead what people of color say about this is: go do the learning on your own. Go find out what people in this marginalized group say about your issue without making one of them explain it. Their identity is not up for you to debate. But you can read articles written by people within the community or listen to YouTube interviews. You can find the answers without making a marginalized person re live their trauma to educate you. This is all surrounding the topic of “emotional labor”. Debating someone’s trauma requires huge amounts of emotional labor for them to stay civil and most people don’t have the energy for that, so you should not ask that of them. There are other better ways to educate yourself. EDIT: Folks, I’m trying to honestly tell you the experience I’ve had. I had to learn this stuff too. I know that this community hates being told they have to change their behavior, but I’m kindly and honestly explaining what I know and you’re downvoting me. Please stop.
- 5y ago
burnished 5y ago
Without doing a deep-dive into the way you communicate I'd recommend that you broadly reconnect on shared values, like the importance of human dignity and compassion, before trying to proceed further in a conversation where it is starting to feel like other parties are treating you like a faceless adversary.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

The idea is to set up rhetorical either-or's and then browbeat the majority into silence: Either you support unlimited immigration or you are a racist. Either you are 100% on board with the entire vaccine schedule or you are an anti-vaxxer. Either you say that Covid was a natural occurrence or you are a conspiracy theorist (and probably a racist too). And so on. Say what one will, but it's effective. I think one reason it works so well in the US is our puritan heritage, which has always had a strong manichean current in it. As the elites lost their religion, they retained this characteristic and it now manifests itself in the secular realm.

zozbot234 5y ago
Sometimes the either-or's are not just either-or's, they're catch 22's. Trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria and denying that is transphobic, but if you say trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria you're a transmedicalist truscum. Checkmate atheists!
- underseacables 5y ago
  Transgender is a psychiatric disorder with potential medical treatment. The problem is that it’s also a lifeline for people who are seeking an identity, and they become hyper sensitive to any questioning of something that, again, is all in their heads.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    Being transgender is as "curable" as homosexuality.
    - have2throwaway 5y ago
      For many years I experienced gender dysphoric feelings. Did that make me "transgender"? I used to believe that I was, even though deeply closeted. I didn't seek help. I didn't transition. I wanted to seek help but was too scared. What happened? Well, after some years, the gender dysphoric feelings went away. That happens sometimes – gender dysphoric feelings can spontaneously remit, go away by themselves. I don't have them any more. I know from the literature I am not unique, see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10929795/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10929795/ If it can happen spontaneously, is it impossible that sometimes therapy might speed that spontaneous process along? Would that be a "cure"? I have struggled with obsessive behaviour ever since I was a child. I probably have undiagnosed ASD (I have many other traits of ASD than just obsessions). I'm actually on a waiting-list to see a psychiatrist for an ASD assessment. Some of my obsessions are more ASD-like (pleasurable rather than anxious), others more OCD-like (anxiety-driven), so sometimes I wonder if I might have OCD too. I'll let my psychiatrist work that one out, when I see him. But what I realise now is that my gender dysphoric feelings were just another one of these obsessions. And like most of my obsessions, with time they fade and get replaced with new ones. If I had this self-understanding 15, 20 years ago, I think my gender dysphoric feelings might have remitted faster. If I'd sought help back then, would they have helped me gain that self-understanding of my own obsessiveness? Or would they have encouraged me towards transition? I'm glad I never transitioned, I think I'd be in a far worse place now if I had. But I worry with this idea of "affirmative care", people like me may be encouraged in that direction whether it is the right thing for them or not. What about your comparison with homosexuality? Does homosexuality ever "spontaneously remit" in the same way that gender dysphoric feelings sometimes do? I honestly have no idea. My feelings about my birth gender (male) have waxed and waned, but a constant for me has been attraction to women with never more than fleeting feelings for men; given that, the equivalent question for homosexuality is beyond my personal experience. (Sorry for the throwaway. I hope one can understand why. I wish I had the courage to talk about this stuff under my real name. I hope that one of these days I will, but not today.)

threatofrain 5y ago

But why would you discuss someone's medical suffering by leading with a topic on trans elite sports, which focuses on an extreme niche and elite phenomena?

Moodles 5y ago
Because I am making the point that even mentioning something as extreme as that still gets me lambasted with abuse. So if we can't even discuss that civilly, how on Earth are we meant to discuss more nuanced issues?
- threatofrain 5y ago
  So you are saying you choose to lead with elite trans sports, a niche phenomena of a niche phenomena, in order to demonstrate that you will be lambasted with abuse? And that is how you choose to lead with your speech? And you are saying if we can't discuss elite trans sports with nuance with civility, then how can we discuss an even more nuanced topic than trans elite sports? So did you want to discuss trans elite sports or were you trying to demonstrate that people cannot handle a conversation with greater nuance? Or both at the same time?
  - Moodles 5y ago
    > And you are saying if we can't discuss elite trans sports with nuance, then how can we discuss an even more nuanced topic than trans elite sports? That's all i'm saying. It's pretty obvious having an objection to Fallon Fox fighting biological women has more to it than pure hatred and bigotry towards trans women. If the gender ideology crowd can't acknowledge that or debate that civilly, I really see no chance of debating less clearcut topics. I deliberately chose it as the most extreme example I could think of to demonstrate how unreasonable and emotional I think that segment of the political spectrum is. > So did you want to discuss trans elite sports or were you trying to demonstrate that people cannot handle a conversation with greater nuance? Or both at the same time? The latter, but if you want to talk about the former we can do that too.

pqs 5y ago

The proof is that this article, a "The Economist" article, has been flagged. It shows [flagged] next to the title.

dang 5y ago

It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Moodles 5y ago
Is this rate limiting on commenting ever going to be lifted or is it permanent?
- dang 5y ago
  We're happy to take off rate limits if people give us some reason to believe that they sincerely intend to follow the site guidelines in the future.
  - Moodles 5y ago
    Ok I promise. My last topics I posted on were about this, a security blog post, the news, Simone Biles and accents. I do actually talk about lots of topics on HN but I tend to get drawn into political discussions which are replied to a lot more. Also it's hard for me not to respond when someone calls me a bigot, etc. I'm definitely not on HN just to troll about politics. I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational?
    - dang 5y ago
      Ok, I've taken the rate limit off your account. To prevent it kicking in again, please remember that on HN the idea is to value quality over quantity, and please stay up to date on the site guidelines. > I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational? When I skim through your recent comments I'm mostly seeing posts like these (just a random sample) - these are examples of what we don't want on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27379700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27379700 If you don't like the words "political/ideological battle" or "flamewar" we can find a different description; the point is that this is not the curiosity-driven, respectful conversation that the site is supposed to be for.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

I’d like to see some introspection here. Can you imagine why they would respond so strongly? I’ll tell you. The trans experience is one that is in many ways beautiful and joyous but is sadly also fraught with trauma. Trans people experience a lot of pain that stays with them. Much of that pain has to do with people who refuse to accept who they truly are. Or people will “just want to have a discussion” where they try to see invalidate the persons identity. When a cis person enters a discussion like this, to the cis person it’s just an intellectual discussion. But to the trans person it can be threatening and it can trigger memories of past trauma they’ve gone through. So yes, trans people get upset when you bring things like this up because you’re bringing up a topic that may have been used as a “gotcha” to invalidate their identity, and it can be unclear if that’s what you’ll try to do. This makes the whole conversation upsetting to them. Imagine if a man who didn’t believe in women’s rights wanted to discuss it with a woman who has been discriminated against. That would be a difficult conversation and it wouldn’t be surprising if she got upset and didn’t want to have a “rational debate” about her rights. What you’re doing when you bring up difficult topics to a marginalized person is you’re forcing them to re live traumatic memories in order to educate you. I learned this from learning about the experiences of people of color. (If you’re white) DO NOT go ask a random black person to explain to you the everyday racism they feel, because inevitably it won’t make sense to you and when you challenge something they say it will become a lot of emotional labor for them to try to make it make sense. Sure some people are fine explaining this stuff but not everyone. Instead what people of color say about this is: go do the learning on your own. Go find out what people in this marginalized group say about your issue without making one of them explain it. Their identity is not up for you to debate. But you can read articles written by people within the community or listen to YouTube interviews. You can find the answers without making a marginalized person re live their trauma to educate you. This is all surrounding the topic of “emotional labor”. Debating someone’s trauma requires huge amounts of emotional labor for them to stay civil and most people don’t have the energy for that, so you should not ask that of them. There are other better ways to educate yourself. EDIT: Folks, I’m trying to honestly tell you the experience I’ve had. I had to learn this stuff too. I know that this community hates being told they have to change their behavior, but I’m kindly and honestly explaining what I know and you’re downvoting me. Please stop.

5y ago

burnished 5y ago

Without doing a deep-dive into the way you communicate I'd recommend that you broadly reconnect on shared values, like the importance of human dignity and compassion, before trying to proceed further in a conversation where it is starting to feel like other parties are treating you like a faceless adversary.