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Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects?

• caeril 5y ago
  There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. The two primary components are: 1. Parents and sexual violence victims concerned about the non-falsifiability of trans-identification and the related concerns of sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have to gain access to private spaces of women and girls. 2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males. Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These groups exclusively concern themselves with trans-women. Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.
  • whateveracct 5y ago
    > Feminists (TERFs) One note: Nobody self-identifies as a TERF. Or at least not originally (I'm sure in Internet ire people do it ironically by now.) It's mostly a label used to crush nuanced conversation.
    • ska 5y ago
      > Or at least not originally I've heard it was the other way around, i.e. it started off as a self identification for a niche group which people started to reject once it begun to be used pejoratively.
      • raffraffraff 5y ago
        https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-credited-with-having-coined-the-acronym-terf-heres-how-it-happened https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-cre...
        • ska 5y ago
          Interesting, thanks! Although I supposed it doesn't really speak to whether it was initially embraced (by the identified niche group) before being rejected.
    • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
      Interesting to compare that with WASP.
    • handoflixue 5y ago
      No one self-identifies as an asshole or a bigot, but there sure still are a lot of them out there. I'd hardly say that the only use of those labels is to "crush nuanced conversation" - people just aren't inclined to take ideas seriously when they emerge from people they fundamentally disagree with. Telling a democrat that something is a "republican" idea will produce the same result, and vice-versa.
      • joshbert 5y ago
        I disagree, those labels have many aims, none of which are good and most of which seem to be a form of ending conversations before any meaningful conclusion is reached.
  • deadite 5y ago
    >Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These ground exclusively concern themselves with trans-women. I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I don't think we have much of a dog in this race so I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN considering most of us here are men. Boring day at work? I do feel bad for the women's Olympics, but I'd like to ask the Olympics committee what the hell were they thinking long before I start any kind of anti-trans crusade. This is one discussion that doesn't seem to be happening much. The diatribe is as always directed among the proles and the decisionmakers get a free pass. Someone must have said, "Yes, lets allow a 35 year-old recently transitioned man to compete with early 20 year-old women," and some approval process must have happened. Those are the people you want to start asking the hard questions, not look at LH and blame her for participating in the Olympics that she's allowed to participate in. Or as someone else put it: "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?"
    • caeril 5y ago
      > I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population. There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.
      • notamy 5y ago
        > Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest. Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.
  • plank_time 5y ago
    TERF is a pejorative term, I wouldn’t use it unless you are trying to attack feminists.
    • millzlane 5y ago
      In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether or not TERF constitutes a slur. But if we want to be accommodating to those who take offense with the term, we can use the term Gender Critical.
      • plank_time 5y ago
        “Trans-exclusionary radical feminist” sounds pretty pejorative, most especially the “radical” part.
        • paulv 5y ago
          "Radical feminism" is a branch of feminism. It is not used as a pejorative in the acronym.
        • ratww 5y ago
          "Radical Feminist" is the only part of the term that everyone agrees is not pejorative. It is a real branch inside feminism, which lots of women identify with, and it doesn't mean what most people think it does. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism
          • truffdog 5y ago
            For some reason I cannot recall, a friend of mine had me read a bunch of proper radfem terf blogs back in like, 2010. I remember being impressed with the coherence of their worldview, even if it, uh, was not flattering. Men were all inherently bad, penis-in-vagina sex was inherently rape, lesbians were good, trans-women were infiltrators and trans-men deserters.
        • 95014_refugee 5y ago
  • swebs 5y ago
    >2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males. I'd wager that most people believe this. Not just feminists.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      Unless I have wildly misunderstood you, I believe you would lose that wager: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Public-Opinion-Trans-23-Countries-Dec-2016.pdf https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Pu...
    • chc 5y ago
      Polling suggests otherwise: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-women-support-self-identification-transgender-people-boris-johnson-gra-a9616136.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-women-supp... https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/548775-new-poll-finds-americans-oppose-anti-transgender-laws-by-wide-margin https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/548775-new-poll...
      • s1artibartfast 5y ago
        There are a lot of shades of trans support, If you asked the most extreme questions you would probably get different answers. It is one thing to ask people should be able can use a bathroom, and another to ask questions about personal sexlife and behavior. i.e. if you asked people if you consider transwomen equally with women at birth as sexual partners, I bet the numbers fall through the floor.
        • chc 5y ago
          Well, sure. If you ask people whether they consider Black and Asian men equally as sex partners, the numbers would also fall through the floor. This doesn't mean Black or Asian men are less of men, or even that they're necessarily against either of those groups, it just means people have preferences in what their partners' bodies are like. My point is just that "trans women are women and trans men are men" is actually a common opinion, contrary to the claim in the comment I was replying to.
  • umvi 5y ago
    > Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints doesn't appear to feel threatened by transgender rights. At least, not according to official stances here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender
    • nostromo 5y ago
      I'm sorry to be so frank, but this is more of the same mormon bullshit. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the typical line. The problem is our actions and identity are often intrinsically linked. They have the same stance for gay people. "It's ok to be gay, god still loves you! The only catch is you can't ever have a romantic relationship with the person you love. If you do you'll be excommunicated and ostracized from your family. No biggy! God bless!" Nobody wants this sort of faux compassion.
    • chc 5y ago
      From that link: > Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. The intended meaning of gender in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is biological sex at birth. > Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (“sex reassignment”). Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions. > Leaders also counsel against social transitioning. A social transition includes changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex. Leaders advise that those who socially transition will experience some Church membership restrictions for the duration of this transition. Their advice on what treatments they support for transgender people is kind of vague and circumspect, but the gist seems to be "A therapist should at least be open to conversion therapy," which is generally considered harmful. Given the LDS Church's open campaign against gay rights based on the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (the same document referenced above), it seems reasonable to interpret this as stating opposition to transgender rights. Though as the parent noted, they are much less vocal on this topic.
  • paulv 5y ago
    > 2. Feminists (TERFs) I worry that this can be read as "all feminists are terfs", which is not accurate.
  • pavlov 5y ago
    > ” sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have” This is such a bizarre leap of logic. Trans women are the pariahs of contemporary Western society. Yet the same people who uphold this subhuman status also assume that rapists are nefariously claiming trans female identity. That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power. Trans women are downtrodden and powerless — the least attractive position for a sexual predator.
    • delecti 5y ago
      I think your terminology is a bit backwards. A trans man is someone assigned female at birth but who later identifies as male. From context you seem to be talking about the hypothetical of male rapists professing they identify as trans women. A person born male who later identifies as a woman is a trans woman.
      • pavlov 5y ago
        Thanks, that’s what I meant. (You write an agitated comment on the phone and make a basic mistake. The usual.)
      • kaitai 5y ago
        I thought that was the idea being sold by Republicans in the US, though, that a woman who is trans is going to be lurking in the bathroom to rape your daughter after beating her in tennis?
        • delecti 5y ago
          Yes. Republicans are trying to pass bills under the guise of protecting against trans women. Trans women are people who were assigned male at birth, and now present as women.
    • mmmmmbop 5y ago
      You are of course right factually, but fear of sexual predators is not based in stats and facts, but in feelings. When people think about rape, they imagine a stranger in a dark alley, whereas ~90% of rapists are somebody the victim knows.
  • freemint 5y ago
    I think the difference between treatment of mtf and ftm can be mostly boiled down to difference how males being female spaces VS females being in male spaces is perceived. For trans exclusionary feminists one is the patriarchy coming to female protective places and females claiming their place and undermining the patriarchy. As for parents males being less susceptible to forceful sexual exploitation is true but there is also a huge societal double standard when it comes women forcing themselves on men or abusing their male partner which is also reflected in parents being less worried about something happening to their children. Possibly also because of pregnancies onesidedness.
    • kaitai 5y ago
      The protection of female virtue is also an enormously successful political tactic, from the "yellow peril" in the late 1890s in Europe and the US to the "white slavery" panic (specifically referring to the cultural phenomenon in the US that gave rise to the 1910 Mann Act; check out the contrasting commentary of Emma Goldman and Rose Livingston) to the murder of Emmett Till and the burning down of Black Wall Street in Tulsa -- all of these are really responses to larger questions of opportunity and freedom of movement for folks that crystalize in the threat to a white woman's sexual virtue and the justification of violent response to crush the threat. The bathroom bills, the panic over sports, the violence trans and gender-nonconforming people encounter (especially on racialized lines) -- it's all part of a larger political narrative. As you can see from the comments on this HN thread, you get a daddy all worked up about his daughter's virtue/place in life and you can move political mountains because it is an Existential Threat that Must Be Removed. That's weaponizable in a way that talking about military spending or tax law or gerrymandering is not.
      • freemint 5y ago
        Interesting I wasn't aware of all of these patriarchic laws.
  • kingsuper20 5y ago
    >There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. I'd say that's a vast overreach. It isn't like the Trans Army is going to come burn down your house. If anything, it's a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. In a sense, that it's not different than people who want their limbs amputated or wear animal costumes at all times.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      > a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. That seems like a defensible position to take. At least as plausible as the common alternative -- that it is a physical illness (thus we 'fix' the body to match the mind).
  • spamizbad 5y ago
    > Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. While it's true there's little animosity directed at them, there is a lot of stuff Shrier's view that "gender ideology" is seducing lesbian women into thinking they're not actually women. Which, honestly, as someone who lived through lots of the dumb gay panic in the 80s and 90s sounds exactly like what people thought about homosexuals (eg: gay people can seduce/recruit straight people and turn them gay). So trans men get treated like dupes or victims of some social phenomena, rather than treated like actual human beings with agency of their own. In fact, pretty much every anti-trans viewpoint I see, even from otherwise highbrow publicans like the Economist, are really just rehashes of what we heard about gays in the 80s and 90s, before we realized they were, in fact, not a threat to society.
  • eropple 5y ago
    > Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. One of the interesting things about spending the last few years studying Western European post-Roman history has been the discovery that, in the West, there has historically been relatively little resistance to AFAB folks "presenting" (speaking of the interpretation at the time--the dichotomy between "presenting" and "being" is one I am thoroughly not qualified to negotiate) as male unless tied into homophobia. There are historical examples of folks who outwardly identify as women taking on male roles in monastic life, and it's often portrayed as a good and pious thing. The reverse, it seems, is generally not true, though not exclusively so. I've read of, but don't have offhand, accounts of Church investigation into "male nuns" that ruled that the erstwhile offender, a male who had suffered prepubescent genital damage, had committed no crime being raised by a particular convent as a woman. But cases going the other way round are much more common. In terms of today's relations, however, my intuition is that the fear regarding transwomen is that it's largely a performative flavor of misogyny and the fear of those of the "superior" set somehow damaging all men, much as the performative flavor of homophobia does the same with regards to gay men but shockingly much rarely with regards to bisexual or homosexual women. But, of course, that is just an intuition.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    Wow - I don't think so, unless by; "2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a" ... you mean the groups they represent i.e. 'a lot of women' frankly many of them who are not 'radical feminist' or even 'feminist'. Huge numbers of women are uncomfortable with at least some parts of 'trans women' from 'changerooms' to 'sports' etc.. I don't think the very notion of 'trans' really upsets very many people at all, and that's the funny paradox. But as soon as it crosses paths with others, then it's an entirely different issue and there's a lot of dust raised by pluralities.
  • zarzavat 5y ago
    To say nothing of the issue itself, the methods of "trans rights activists" frequently involve intimidation or vigilantism and generally cause a lot of resentment against trans people. People are afraid.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • gorgoiler 5y ago
    I’ve always regarded transitioning gender — and how it is focused so much on men moving away from being a man — being equivalent to someone saying I am uncomfortable and I want off this ride, where the rollercoaster is testosterone. That’s what I’ve picked up anyway, from my friends who have transitioned. I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?
• karpierz 5y ago
  On the other hand, there isn't any controversy as to whether blindness is a real condition.
  • moate 5y ago
    I would imagine that the rate of violent attacks on blind individuals specifically due to their blindness is also lower than hate crimes against Trans individuals. I don't hear about a lot of amputees being dragged behind pickup trucks for not having as many limbs as their attackers, but maybe I'm not reading the right publications.
  • yanderekko 5y ago
    Well, it's undoubtedly a condition but there are probably some who dispute whether it's a "disease" or "disability". This resistance is more commonly associated with the deaf community, and drawing parallels between this population and the trans population will get you in hot water pretty quickly..
  • worik 5y ago
    Yes there is. Being "legally blind" is a thing. The cut off for how little vision is enough to be blind is debatable. Not that simple.
  • munk-a 5y ago
    People who don't qualify as legally blind but have extreme vision impairment would like to talk to you. My stepson is profoundly deaf but still has hearing and wears hearing aides to assist him, he'll often read lips during conversations to supplement that audio information and that can result in pretty big communication breakdowns. Pretty much everything in life is a spectrum of possibilities - trying to boil those down to binary states can be helpful for some purposes but is never clean.
• Kharvok 5y ago
  The difference is that there aren't groups cheerleading the deconstruction of human sight because blind people exist.
  • JonathonW 5y ago
    I have no real visibility (pun not intended) into the blind community, but similar groups do exist in the Deaf community; Deafness-as-identity/culture is very much a thing and some of the general cultural views around adaptation and integration with the hearing world look not-dissimilar to what you see in some aspects of LGBTQ+ movements.
• fungiblecog 5y ago
  I think the importance is based not on the numbers involved - which are small - but on the significance of the demands. People are discussing our fundamental understanding and definitions of people's sex and gender that potentially affects everyone. A major concern is that once you let everyone self identify where does it stop? A caucasian woman was vilified a few years ago for identifying as black. Had she identified as male she would have been celebrated by the same people
• 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  > I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted. But downplaying it is exactly what you are doing, literally. To answer your main question, though: the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination. The disproportionate harms that this small community is subject to is the key to understanding the level of outrage being evoked on their behalf.
  • dvt 5y ago
    > disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination. This is provably untrue. Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics (for example, in 2019, the FBI reported ~7000 criminal offenses[2] in the "hate crime" category). I get it, people are passionate about it, companies change their logos, everyone posts about it on social media, but let's not perpetuate these myths. [1] https://www.them.us/story/44-trans-people-killed-2020-worst-year-for-transphobic-violence https://www.them.us/story/44-trans-people-killed-2020-worst-... [2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-hate-crime-statistics https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
    • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      > This is provably untrue. Both of you are correct, you're just looking at probabilities conditioned in the opposite way. You're looking at P(trans | killed), which is low. The parent post is looking at P(killed | trans), which is quite high. Understandably, if you are trans P(killed | trans) is a lot more relevant to you than P(trans | killed).
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • 5y ago
• plank_time 5y ago
  This is how the ruling class controls us peons. They have us fight each other vociferously over things like this or abortion or gay marriage, while they stay above it and do nothing except minor moral victories. The sad thing is that this works.
  • jfengel 5y ago
    It wouldn't work if we didn't subject ourselves to it. The "ruling class" may be working to control us, but they don't have to work very hard. They don't even make the lies plausible. There are an awful lot of people willing to die on the hill of the most astonishing idiocies, just because it's their idiocy.
  • trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Yep, most the activism is about politics, gender is just the current vehicle for it.
• chc 5y ago
  Based on the numbers I've seen, there are slightly more trans people in the world than blind people, but overall — you're not wrong. I don't even think most trans rights advocates would disagree with you that the amount of attention devoted to transgender people is excessive. The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgender rights, while there isn't an equivalent movement for blind people. Transgender people have some asks in terms of societal support (e.g. British law has some awkward legal red tape for trans people around things like marriage), but in general, most of the noise is being generated by the anti-transgender side (e.g. bans on therapy for transgender people, bathroom bans, sports bans, outrage at voluntarily chosen gender-inclusive phrasing like "people who have a uterus"). So it's a bit of a hard subject. I really don't think it's worth this much attention, but if hate groups are devoting this much attention to opposing transgender people, we're faced with the choice of either also giving it a lot of undue attention or throwing transgender people to the wolves.
  • yanderekko 5y ago
    >The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgender rights Firstly, a resistance to expanding rights is not a movement to regress rights. For the most part (exceptions apply), the margins of the culture war here are not about trans people being on the defensive against long-standing rights being stripped. Secondly, obviously the margins of this battle are often (again, not always, particularly when it comes to health care issues) pretty small-stakes, especially in comparison to the outsized amount of attention they're given. Certainly not important enough to justify the "you're trying to murder me / dehumanize me / erase me" rhetoric that one predictably receives when mild resistance is offered towards this agenda.
    • chc 5y ago
      I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights, which are probably some of the first examples people would think of when you mention "the trans debate," so I don't know what to say here except that you're mistaken. I also think your portrayal of the stakes for transgender people is a bit flippant. Gender dysphoria is a pretty painful mental illness that often leads to suicide, so forbidding a transgender girl from getting treatment and forcing her to go to the boys' room does seem both dehumanizing and dangerous to her life.
• mdoms 5y ago
  If the issue is that voices are being censored then the issue affects everyone who is studying in a university - massively more than your figures.
• btilly 5y ago
  That is hard to say. In a world full of discrimination against trans folks, who knows how many people who would prefer being trans have failed to be identified? But the topic is much bigger than that. You see, the ideology being pushed says that everyone who has gender dysphoria should be assumed to be trans. But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire. However said research is highly controversial exactly because it undermines the politically correct ideology that we should take seriously all claims that physical appearance is less important than chosen gender. And THAT is the real problem. I don't have statistics. But anecdotally I have a 12 year old with gender dysphoria. Many of their friends have the same. I personally know more children claiming to be trans at present than I've known people who were blind or missing a limb over my entire life. A *LOT* of parents are in my boat. It is easy to find opposing ideologies about how we should deal with our teenage children. There is very little research. And people are so focused on yelling at each other that nobody dares DO more research. Because no matter what you find, you're going to get targeted by someone.
  • dukeofdoom 5y ago
    I once read an anti corporate critique of this phenomenon. The argument went something like this: Once female beauty was commoditized, and you could literally purchase an upgrade to parts you were born with. Entire cosmetic and plastic surgery industry benefited from marketing and promoting this model of beauty. The unforeseen consequence was that men started fetishizing these upgrades themselves. As some men hyper focus on female body parts anyway. It was a way to exploit psychological tendencies for profit. I guess the counter remedy would be to promote female beauty as the whole, and not some collection of body parts.
  • mkr-hn 5y ago
    >> "and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them" This isn't actually a thing. Certain factions who would prefer trans people cease to exist push this idea that kids are on this hot new meme of getting their bits flipped before reaching the age of consent, but it is simply not a thing. No top surgery, either. It just isn't a thing. It's a wild fantasy. The only thing kids can go on are puberty blockers. These are well-tested and their effects known and understood through their use for other medical concerns.
• psychlops 5y ago
  Here's a chart I love showing how the news distorts based on what people want to read (or what they are pushing) versus reality: https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die-from#what-we-die-from-what-we-google-what-we-read-in-the-news https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die... I'm not sure how the world would be if proportional importance news were the norm, but it's certainly not the case today.
• matthewmacleod 5y ago
  I think there will be rather a lot of us who are quite animated by this issue—one that doesn’t directly affect us—because of our own past experiences. As a gay man growing up in the 90s, I very acutely remember some of the public discourse around gay rights while I was a teenager. In the UK, that specifically included a coordinated campaign against mentions of homosexuality in education, with some pretty stark attempts to smear gay men in particular as dangerous predators and paedophiles intent on sneaking their agenda into schools so that they could abuse children. If I’m honest with you, I wouldn’t be particularly animated about trans rights myself (beyond being generally supportive) if it weren’t for the fact that I see exactly the same techniques and accusations levelled against the trans community—specifically trans women—as were used against people like myself 20 years ago. So I’ve personally gone from generally supportive-if-disinterested, to being absolutely fucking furious that this is being allowed to happen again. I’ve observed absolute outright lies about a minority group being repeated by people in positions of influence, and while it might not affect that many people directly I am so absolutely disgusted by it that I fully intend on being extremely vocal about it.
  • munk-a 5y ago
    Back in the nineties I remember scare campaigns about gay schoolmates in locker rooms taking advantage of other students - it is literally the same playbook.
  • konogasa 5y ago
    Thank you.
  • nobodyandproud 5y ago
    In the 1990s I don’t recall stifling of speech, and firing of professors on campus for having a position in the matter. Allowing the discussion and research to take place, if anything, is what allowed LBG rights to come to fruition. The article is pointing out that this isn’t allowed happen with trans concerns and so the inevitable backlash and a regressive outcome.
• 762236 5y ago
  The problem is the suppression of reasoned speech. People are forbidden to discuss this topic. People in power (e.g., University Deans) use this topic to abuse those under their power. Students use it to abuse professors (e.g., students claim that they don't feel safe around a particular professor). In the name of trying to stop abuse of trans people, we're abusing non trans people (e.g, people get fired over this topic).
• nend 5y ago
  I mean, 2 million people in the US being discriminated against seems like plenty enough people for this to be a worthwhile discussion. But it's not just the number of people. It's also about how severe the discrimination against them is. >Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. Ok but is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people don't deserve health care for their disability? Is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people shouldn't be afforded working rights? You can't just go "there's only 2 million trans people in the US, who cares about their healthcare, there's more important things out there", when the consequence of doing so severely impacts the quality of life of .5% of the population. I don't think you would be sitting here going "only .5% of the US has type 1 diabetes, why are talking so much about making sure they get appropriate health care? Who cares if they're discriminated against during hiring?"
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    > Ok but is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people don't deserve health care for their disability? Actually, health insurance doesn't cover the cost of a guide dog, which can cost between $40-60k [0] From personal experience (I'm not blind, but I know one), there is also workforce discrimination in the form of "don't ask her to do that, she's blind" when in fact the blindness doesn't impact the work at all. >I don't think you would be sitting here going "only .5% of the US has type 1 diabetes, why are talking so much about making sure they get appropriate health care? I know a diabetic who says he is COMPLETLY dependent on his work's health care to pay for his medicine. I'm not certain we are giving ENOUGH attention to this. [0] https://puppyintraining.com/how-much-does-a-guide-dog-cost/#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20guide%20dog%20cost%3F%20%2440%2C000,it%20costs%20so%20much%20for%20a%20guide%20dog https://puppyintraining.com/how-much-does-a-guide-dog-cost/#....
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  100% of people have gender.
  • mkl 5y ago
    No, look at agender here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender.
    • jhgb 5y ago
      Isn't that like pointing out an empty set being still a set?
    • NoblePublius 5y ago
      I am an agender exclusionary radical feminist
      • deleted 5y ago
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  • perl4ever 5y ago
    Empirically false. I have a government pension, and when I log in to the online self service, it says my gender is "unknown". I have been informed it can not be changed.
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  The media does absolutely soak it for eyeballs and outrage, but at the same time it really is a bellwether for how gender works in a society at larger. Gender is simply a more social / less individual phenomenon than blindness itself is (to use your example). I find it funny and illuminating to read about conservative cis gays complaining about those darn genderqueer "kids, these days". All media fads aside, we simply haven't reached "queer equilibrium" yet where increasing acceptance of past social categories no longer triggers the emergence of new ones.
• alsetmusic 5y ago
  > Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people. Those groups aren’t subjected to violence just for existing. The comparisons aren’t at all one to one.
  • omgwtfbbq 5y ago
    As a share of all crimes committed what percentage are against trans people?
• kenjackson 5y ago
  > Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people. It's not impactful in terms of the number of people, but its a civil rights issue for those on the left. And for those on the right its just one more group trying to change things from the status quo. It's also a complex issue. I sit pretty far on the left, but the various issues related to trans policy I find to often not have a clear solution -- most notably around sports and fairness. Sigh.
  • munk-a 5y ago
    Honestly though the question around sports fairness is less a problem raised by trans people and more just an existing issue exposed. Female and male bodies work differently on average but there are a good number of women more fit and physically capable than 99% of men - gender is not an independent variable in physical fitness but I do wonder if there's really much of a reason to keep insisting that the genders be separated into exclusive leagues.
    • flavius29663 5y ago
      > I do wonder if there's really much of a reason to keep insisting that the genders be separated into exclusive leagues. The world champion team of female soccer gets beat by a boys under 15 high school team https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/ https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-b... The 203rd male tennis player absolutely crushes the Williams sisters https://www.marca.com/en/more-sports/2017/06/27/595296da468aeb99218b464c.html https://www.marca.com/en/more-sports/2017/06/27/595296da468a... Women 100m record is 10.49. High-schoolers can run in 10.00 s https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/Athlete.aspx?AID=12657819 https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/Athlete.aspx?AID=1265... Men's record is under 10. If you do away with the women leagues, you will see 99% males in almost all sports.
      • munk-a 5y ago
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  What level of outrage? I notice a lot of outrage online from people whose identities I cannot verify. I have noticed zero outrage IRL from real people that I interact with. Small sample size but I think that judging outrage from online presence is inaccurate.
  • Spivak 5y ago
    Yeah, there is a huge disconnect between online and IRL discussion of trans issues. Online you see all this seething outrage but IRL there are two camps — either you run in a ‘blue’ crowd and someone being trans is a non-issue. Nobody cares, they use your name and pronouns, let you live your life, celebrate legal victories, and commiserate losses, but when push comes to shove won’t actually do anything that requires effort and can’t be posted on insta. Then if you run in a ‘red’ crowd you’re quietly not accepted, you’ll be party to dinners where phrases like “gender ideology”, “the trans agenda”, “indoctrination”, “free speech” are brought up whenever articles hit the news. And if you come out you either are kicked out of your family, ghosted by your friend group, or just ignored and expected to never speak of it again. If you do being up that people aren’t using your name, pronouns, or being otherwise not treated like your gender you’re called “political” and it’s taken as an attack. And if you say, “no it’s because what your doing hurts me” it’s doubly taken as an attack because now you’re “playing the victim.” Only when the two groups mix do you get this fired up hate because the mechanisms within the groups that lead to people not talking about it don’t work and the social graces that tamp out arguments aren’t present on the internet so it explodes. I hate so much that my existence is the hot button political topic right now. Like it’s good I guess — seems like we need to get this out of our systems but ugh does it bring out the worst in everyone. This should have never been a party thing and it’s so stupid that it’s now a billion times more political because of it. Both sides are trying to out woke or out red pill each other while the actual lives of trans people fall by the wayside.
• brighton36 5y ago
  Race and gender are infracultural values (these taxonomies govern architecture, city planning, and civil religion). Prior to recently, These are/were objective taxonomies. Which, is why rocking these pillars causes so much attention. (And thus, pays to cover, for a news syndicate)
• deleted 5y ago
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• RC_ITR 5y ago
  Uyghurs are less than 0.1% of China's population, but their treatment is (rightfully) a huge issue globally. Most people just aren't as utilitarian in the way that your comment implies they should be.
• deleted 5y ago
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• pmoriarty 5y ago
  "There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people." There are more white people than black people in the US. More Christian people than Jewish people. More able-bodied people than disabled people. More descendants of immigrants than Native Americans. That's what makes all these people minorities.
• phodge 5y ago
  In Australia and most other developed countries now, this ideology is heavily promoted to children, encouraging them to believe they are trans. They are connected with websites that promote the ideology, and then connected with a trans specialist who helps prescribe puberty blockers without parental knowledge. If you are a parent who believes that children should be taught to love their own bodies as they grow rather than have surgeons pretend to fix them by removing essential organs, then this represents a massive assault on your offspring. > The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% And there's a huge number of "trans" who later realise they were sold a lie and have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex. Selling this to ideology to children is going to dramatically increase that 0.6%. How many of the new cases are going to actually be trans, vs children that thought they were trans and started puberty blockers at school, but actually were just never taught to love their body?
  • cwkoss 5y ago
    > And there's a huge number of "trans" who later realise they were sold a lie and have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex. There is no way this is a huge number. I'd be shocked if you could find a credible source on this. This sounds like conservative agitprop.
    • neartheplain 5y ago
      Studies have consistently shown that most trans children revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]: >The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall, they concluded that about 80 percent trans kids eventually identified as their sex at birth. Some trans activists and academics, however, argue that these studies are flawed, the patients surveyed weren't really transgender, and that mass desistance doesn't exist. >Indeed, some of the studies cited by Cantor had sample sizes as low as 16 people and were more than 40 years old, and one was an unpublished doctoral dissertation. But the most recent study, published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, followed up with 127 adolescent patients at a gender identity clinic in Amsterdam and found that two-thirds ultimately identified as the gender they were assigned at birth. This does not imply any percentage of patients who underwent surgery to "restore" their original sex. Orchiectomies, mastectomies, and histerectomies are irreversible in any case, not to mention bottom surgery. [0] https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the...
• bsder 5y ago
  > I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted. There is something about tech, though, that seems to concentrate the male to female transitioners far above background levels. I can count more than a half-dozen male to female transition folks in my tech circles. I can't even think of one that I bumped into doing any non-tech social activity.
  • orand 5y ago
    Autism/Asperger’s is likely the common factor. There are studies that show this.
• la6471 5y ago
  Yep sad that we cannot think of anything better to do ….
• dmje 5y ago
  Couldn't agree more. The airtime on this topic is insane. People's email signatures filled with their pronouns. The anger. The division. I get it's an emotive conversation but then so are gay rights, gender rights, race rights, democratic rights, inequality, and about a gazillion other topics. That's not belittling trans as an issue, but it's so incredibly noisy. IMO the wider question here is nothing to do with trans but about what being "liberal" means. We're in this insanely weird moment in history when the hard left is eating itself by being so Woke it's nearly impossible to even have a conversation any more. I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better.
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    > Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. >>These are the things of the hard right Woah. Hey now. People can change.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • nec4b 5y ago
    "I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better." That has not been true anywhere in the world where a left wing (the) party dominated the discourse. No socialist or communist party has ever had tolerance to an opposing view.
    • raxxorrax 5y ago
      Problem is that people on the left support de-platforming. Perhaps it is wrong and business leaders are really responsible for this, but combating hate speech is popular in those circles. You can guess how hate gets define by zeitgeist.
• deleted 5y ago
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• AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  If I understand correctly, trans people get beaten to death far out of proportion to their numbers. No, I don't have statistics, but if true you can't just look at the number of trans people to see how serious the problem is.
  • neartheplain 5y ago
    Here are the numbers: In 2019, the most recent year for which the FBI has data, the total US homicide rate was 4.3 deaths per 100,000 people [0] (possible underestimate; incident reporting is voluntary, and 25% of police departments don't submit expanded homicide data). Human Rights Campaign recorded the deaths of 25 transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2019 [1]. There are an estimated 1 million people who identify as transgender in the US [2], and an estimated 1.2 million people who identify as nonbinary or gender non-conforming [3]. That produces a US trans and nonbinary homicide rate for 2019 of 1.1 per 100,000. Of all homicides reported by HRC with transgender or gender non-confirming victims in 2019, just one was determined to involve a clear anti-LGBT motive. HRC's data may be an underestimate. However, it is consistent with their estimated homicide rates and rate of hate crimes reported in other years. Any murder is a tragedy, hate crimes all the moreso. However, a single-digit number of annual anti-trans and nonbinary murders is thankfully not an epidemic. The overall homicide rate for trans people seems much lower than the national average. Notably this data excludes assaults, harassment, stalking, or any other attacks which don't result in fatalities. [0] https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/shr https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri... [1] https://www.hrc.org/resources/a-national-epidemic-fatal-anti-trans-violence-in-the-united-states-in-2019 https://www.hrc.org/resources/a-national-epidemic-fatal-anti... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/gender/transgender/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/gender/transgender/index.html [3] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/nonbinary-lgbtq-adults-us/ https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/nonbinar...
    • freemint 5y ago
      Don't role your own aggregate statistics when the thing you try to derive by mashing together things created for different purposes is measured or estimated by people. I don't role my own encryption for public use either.
• kyle_martin1 5y ago
  Given the data we have now, you’re right— if humans were rational we’d be focusing topics that affect the masses. Using minority groups (BLM, LGBT, Immigration, etc.) as shields for larger agendas is an effective defense strategy.
  • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
    > if humans were rational we’d be focusing topics that affect the masses Are there any academic articles on ethics that you could cite to back up that assertion?
    • kyle_martin1 5y ago
      Well, communism is heavily documented in history books.
      • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
        I’m not familiar enough with communist theory to understand the empirical underpinnings of its historical or modern use as a form of government. Do you have any reference material on the successes and failures of communism that would be worth bookmarking?
  • perl4ever 5y ago
    This is more nuanced than you think. If you choose one variable that describes people, and assume for simplicity it's approximately bell shaped, then sure, most people are in the middle, which is "average" or "normal", and if we want to help the most people, it seems logical to focus on them. But if you start adding independent variables, it becomes increasingly unlikely that any given person is in the middle on all of them. Even with three, let alone dozens. So you, or any other randomly chosen person, are probably very like "the masses" in some respects, but given, say, ten dimensions, nobody is average. Which is why disregarding minorities in general isn't a viable way to run a society. (I got this idea from an item on HN, which I think was more or less this: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...)
• deng-xiao 5y ago
  >It just feels like we're being distracted. It is how they killed OWS. Now it is cool to be a member of the party of the rich, and to support megacorps and endless war.
• andyxor 5y ago
  I suggest that you read the article, here is archived version https://archive.is/2021.06.05-230906/https://www.economist.com/international/2021/06/05/a-backlash-against-gender-ideology-is-starting-in-universities https://archive.is/2021.06.05-230906/https://www.economist.c... But to answer your question “why is this important” - the extreme minority of transgender people and the army of their supporters and activists in their quest for recognizing trans rights step on and disregard women rights and aggressively “cancel” anyone who dares to disagree with gender ideology, now that affects all of us, if you care about free speech.
• kazinator 5y ago
  When it comes to issues in which there is a conflict between a small group and some larger group, you can't just brush this aside as only a problem affecting the smaller group. For instance, there are situations in which transgender rights (someone identifying as a woman using a for-women-only space) are in conflict with women's rights (women not wanting to be in a for-women-only space when whom they perceive as a male is present). You can't just disregard the women and say, don't worry about it, it's just a 0.6% problem.
• lhorie 5y ago
  I read that trans people suffer from high rates of violence, homelessness, etc. In contrast, amputees and blind people don't usually get kicked out by their parents or randomly stabbed. If BLM (vs e.g. StopAsianHate) is any indication, the level of outrage in activism seems to be directly correlated to the level of violence in high profile incidents, more so than percentage of affected population
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    >In contrast, amputees and blind people don't usually get kicked out by their parents or randomly stabbed. To counter this, I'll quote someone close to me during college "where I'm from, people like him get drowned in a bucket before they are 2"
    • lhorie 5y ago
      For the record, in case it wasn't clear, I was talking primarily about US. But if we must compare, in some parts of the world anything under the LGBT umbrella is considered a crime punishable by death. I'm not aware of any place in the world that considers killing toddlers with disabilities legal.
• beervirus 5y ago
  It’s not about trans people. It’s about VERY LOUDLY having the “correct” opinions.
• vineyardmike 5y ago
  We have the American Disabilities Act. We provide braille books, and TTS options. We invent wheelchairs and ramps and lots of prosthetic limbs. We (recently) approved a drug to treat Alzheimer. We offer nursing homes and in-house help and care to old people with mental issues. We do little more than argue about trans individuals. And many trans individuals are killed or commit suicide. The average life expectancy for a trans person is likely a lot smaller than a blind or disabled person. THAT is why trans people and the related community are making a lot of noise.
• api 5y ago
  Distraction is exactly what’s important about it. It triggers everyone and keeps people from paying attention to other things. Also helps get clicks, sell ads, and boost social media engagement. Personally I don’t care at all if people want to be trans and be called by a chosen gender pronoun. I just can’t think of a reason I should have a problem with that. There are a few edge case areas like women’s sports and prisons where it is a very complicated issue, but those are rare cases among rare cases. This is not an issue that should be monopolizing headlines.
• bshoemaker 5y ago
  Republicans think it's a wedge issue, so they're happy to distract from real issues and ruin trans people's lives.
• plerpin 5y ago
  At my university, the fratboys were far, far, FAR more disruptive than the LGBT groups. But we go with it; fratboy are an accepted pupal stage of American men it seems
• HWR_14 5y ago
  > I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted. Those aren't mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon to create distractions by purposefully treating a small group badly. And the solution can neither be to allow it to dominate all the bandwidth nor to ignore it. Meanwhile, unlike Alzheimers, amputations or blindness, there doesn't really need to be any scientific breakthroughs to handle this. We just need to somehow fix society. It's at least controllable.
• yowlingcat 5y ago
  > There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people. That's a little bit of a non-sequitur, no? If this should be compared to anything, it's to earlier left-right "cultural war" flash points such as same-sex marriage and abortion. Say that people with Alzheimer's should get access to better medical treatment, and no one will disagree with you (although some might say "as long as I don't pay"). Say the same about people who have lost a limb, and you'll see the same thing. But try making any such statement about trans people, and you'll get vehement, polarized agreement and disagreement. Now, you've entered the territory of how people should and shouldn't be able to express their physical identity in public, in both sexual and non-sexual manners. And you are about to run into many strongly held opinions and pre-existing cultural mores. With that said, I don't disagree with your last point. Sometimes, I do feel like cultural war inflammations are purposely constructed to hack the human psyche by playing into these strongly held beliefs and pre-existing cultural mores. At least in the present day, these kinds of inflammations work very effectively for generating engagement in the attention economy. But I don't know if that's a good thing. On the contrary (and maybe you'd agree with me here), I often get the sense that it's a bad thing.
• lunatuna 5y ago
  I have a theory that we are seeing a "Times Square Billboard Effect" where as we progress and some marginalize groups are being better heard and included other groups are both seeing an opportunity and need to get more noticed. Similar to Times Square billboards having to get brighter, flashier and larger to be noticed. With how traditional and social media are working to get noticed it has be as big and loud as possible. Where this goes I have no idea.
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  Adult percentages are too blunt an instrument. With young adults and children this is a big issue. In the school where I teach, sex, gender, and most importantly gender identity come sharply into focus during puberty and I have several students taking a time-limited therapy course to help them with gender id questions. That puts us into the 5% to 10% range, though that is of course purely anecdotal and from a tiny sample size. Puberty hasn’t suddenly become more complex and access to these ideas and therapies may be driving gender-identity as a fashionable topic amongst the kids. But from what I’ve seen it’s a genuine need with most of them who ask for it. Puberty is fascinating: it is a time of identity turmoil for every human being and while in the majority of cases that means going down a difficult but pre-determined path, for many others it throws up a huge number of questions about how to match their genetic/hormonal programming and the way they think, with the society in which they live. Intersex itself is a spectrum, for example.
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  Very important, because it affects education of children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YWuD9RwJD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YWuD9RwJD4 This is a video from a source I normally don't trust. But if we really want to learn something about bias, I think it is worth a watch. This is about racism, but I think we see similar problem with gender. This is a real problem, especially since a too strong backlash would hurt too. But at this point I don't think it is sustainable to feed pupils wrong or ideological information. Honestly, I would have difficulties deciding to send my kids to a school this or a pious catholic boarding school. In both cases countermeasures might be helpful. For the topic itself I agree with you. There are countless issues that should get more exposure compared to these topics.
• pgsimp 5y ago
  Gender ideology affects almost everybody. It does not just affect members of the LGBT community. That is why there is a backlash against it, because people don't want to be pestered and indoctrinated by it. Note that gender ideology and people being gay or whatever are not the same thing (just like feminism and being a woman are not the same thing - the one is an ideology and theory of the world, the other is a biological reality).
• PicassoCTs 5y ago
  Human society has no "laws" by nature, the closest observable in nature with the great apes is a brute "winner" takes it all society, that is not capable to create and sustain complexity and coherence. To compensate this, humanity has "contract" cults who form a basic law providing form of society, protecting the weaker party form getting exploited and abused. These contract cults exists since the dawn of time and have been shaped into various forms, mostly with mythological wrappings, we designate as religion today. Hounded into the service as contract cultists, have been all sexual deviants of a society. Always. Which is why if you watch carefully, its actually selected for. A emotional reaction to question regarding sexual deviancy from the norm, is a important signal during the mating process, regardless on what side of the political spectrum you are. Gender ideology is a synthetic contract cult, and while it has all the other negatives, previous religion incarnations carried with them, it also brings alot of freedom to the cultists and tries to do away with alot of pain. Abolishing it, is not possible, as it will simply lead to other contract cults forming. The best that can be accomplished is, preventing the church from intervening in fields of science society depends on and finding a new separation of church and state, with this contract cult. PS: Bad engineered religions, lead to a faltering rule of law in societys, which then return in the long run to the "winner" takes it all societal model, destroying complexity capability.
• mvkel 5y ago
  Does it matter, or make the cause any less noble? A minority group, by definition, has no power. It needs the majority to speak for them. So regardless of how small a number they represent, scaling the conversation up is required.
  • inkblotuniverse 5y ago
    So the 1% don't have power? Or aren't a minority?
    • mvkel 5y ago
      “The 1%” are a statistical minority. They are not a minority group. “Minority group” is term of art that explicitly refers to a collective of people who are discriminated against.
• still_grokking 5y ago
  > It just feels like we're being distracted. Some politicians would call this a feature and not a bug.