4 ms·

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 tra

by 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.
  - yanderekko 5y ago
    >I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right". If you're referring to other stuff you'll have to be more specific. >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. Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however.
    - chc 5y ago
      > I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right". If these bans had already been in place, they wouldn't have needed to pass them. Trans people have been using the appropriate bathroom for their gender for ages, but now that transphobia is on the rise, they're actually being prevented from doing so. Trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics for longer than many Olympians have been alive, but now than a trans woman has actually made it in, for the first time ever, suddenly it's a debate. Some people have always preferred inclusive language, but now that people are on the lookout for "gender ideology," there's a decent chance that using it in passing will get you 10 thinkpieces and a JK Rowling tweetstorm about whether the phrase "menstruating people" erases women. > Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however. I don't completely disagree, but I think this is not so much about trans issues, and more an unfortunate product of the way bigotry works in our age. You don't have the KKK out burning crosses in front of people's houses anymore, instead you have people who are "race realists" and are just "worried about preserving culture." Nobody — not even virulent transphobes who believe all trans women are pedophiles — identifies as a transphobe, they are "gender critical feminists" who are "worried about preserving women's sex-based rights" or "worried about the children." Bigots have realized that bigotry isn't cool anymore, so they've learned to dress it up as moderate concern-trolling. So it's harder to tell who's speaking in good faith, especially since some actual moderates who haven't thought deeply on issues will parrot the bad-faith actors' talking points.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
https://www.diabetesresearch.org/diabetes-statistics#:~:text=34.2%20million%20people%2C%20or%2010.5,%2C%20economic%2C%20and%20ethnic%20backgrounds https://www.diabetesresearch.org/diabetes-statistics#:~:text.... I don't know from blind people, but in America, there are anywhere from 10.2 to 17.5% of the population that are diabetic. While not pursued by hate groups, they are actively preyed by pharmaceutical companies and politicians who don't let insulins go generic - one of the few medicines that can't. Yes there is complaint about the medical system in America, I have yet to see diabetic/nondiabetic show up under facebook ID's like He/Him/His, normalization of syringe usage in restaurants, blood sugar testing not become a spectacle (of course I pick this one because I know the most about it, but there are many disorders that could be used with it). Stigma, predation and debate is associated with many things, but this one will get you fired/excommunicated from society. Speaking ignorantly about "just eat less sugar" to a type 1 diabetic does nothing.
- chc 5y ago
  I sympathize with your overall point and agree that it's shameful how America treats diabetics like an ATM, but I think you're very far off-target if you envy the way transgender people are treated. Lots of anti-transgender people do just fine in our society. A person who actively fought against trans rights in California is currently the Vice President of the United States (though she has gotten much quieter on trans issues in the meantime). We have several openly anti-trans members of Congress. The fight for trans rights is so defensive that covering the insane medical costs isn't even on the radar. A lot of transition-related expenses are rarely covered by insurance, and they cost as much as a luxury car. Yet when you hear about "trans activists," what they're fighting for is not to have their ability to use the bathroom taken away.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    I'm not envious of the way transgender people are treated, and if I came across sounding that way I do apologize. My tone was for the disproportion of attention, not of action. In truth, very little action will be taken for good for the transgender population or health disorders. That isn't how these things play out, unfortunately. As a society, we only know the stick and not the carrot. While I sympathize with the sentiment that there are several openly anti-trans members of Congress, nearly all of Congress is anti-Medical Reform in action, if not in voice. My point is a scale of difference, which was brought up at the start of this thread. I really do appreciate the struggle that the trans community has to go through, and I am not deaf to their cries (and, though somehow this makes me a worse person to some who would hear it, I do know people who are trans). But if we are going to look at things on a societal scale, how can we ignore the statistical numbers of the societal woes and population impacts? As for insurance, you might be shocked at what insurance doesn't cover for diabetics. They don't just "cut a check" for everything. I can't tell you how many times my doctor and I have to get on the phone to argue with them for literal months to get things covered. For things to keep me alive. Not to feel right in my skin. Not to keep thoughts of suicide away. To keep bare minimal physical biological function going. As for Kamala Harris, she has a whole lot to be displeased about. Prison labor, drug prosecution, questionable school bussing policies, anti trans right policies. Yeah, I'm not a fan.

by chc 5y ago

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.
- yanderekko 5y ago
  >I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right". If you're referring to other stuff you'll have to be more specific. >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. Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however.
  - chc 5y ago
    > I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right". If these bans had already been in place, they wouldn't have needed to pass them. Trans people have been using the appropriate bathroom for their gender for ages, but now that transphobia is on the rise, they're actually being prevented from doing so. Trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics for longer than many Olympians have been alive, but now than a trans woman has actually made it in, for the first time ever, suddenly it's a debate. Some people have always preferred inclusive language, but now that people are on the lookout for "gender ideology," there's a decent chance that using it in passing will get you 10 thinkpieces and a JK Rowling tweetstorm about whether the phrase "menstruating people" erases women. > Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however. I don't completely disagree, but I think this is not so much about trans issues, and more an unfortunate product of the way bigotry works in our age. You don't have the KKK out burning crosses in front of people's houses anymore, instead you have people who are "race realists" and are just "worried about preserving culture." Nobody — not even virulent transphobes who believe all trans women are pedophiles — identifies as a transphobe, they are "gender critical feminists" who are "worried about preserving women's sex-based rights" or "worried about the children." Bigots have realized that bigotry isn't cool anymore, so they've learned to dress it up as moderate concern-trolling. So it's harder to tell who's speaking in good faith, especially since some actual moderates who haven't thought deeply on issues will parrot the bad-faith actors' talking points.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago

https://www.diabetesresearch.org/diabetes-statistics#:~:text=34.2%20million%20people%2C%20or%2010.5,%2C%20economic%2C%20and%20ethnic%20backgrounds https://www.diabetesresearch.org/diabetes-statistics#:~:text.... I don't know from blind people, but in America, there are anywhere from 10.2 to 17.5% of the population that are diabetic. While not pursued by hate groups, they are actively preyed by pharmaceutical companies and politicians who don't let insulins go generic - one of the few medicines that can't. Yes there is complaint about the medical system in America, I have yet to see diabetic/nondiabetic show up under facebook ID's like He/Him/His, normalization of syringe usage in restaurants, blood sugar testing not become a spectacle (of course I pick this one because I know the most about it, but there are many disorders that could be used with it). Stigma, predation and debate is associated with many things, but this one will get you fired/excommunicated from society. Speaking ignorantly about "just eat less sugar" to a type 1 diabetic does nothing.

chc 5y ago
I sympathize with your overall point and agree that it's shameful how America treats diabetics like an ATM, but I think you're very far off-target if you envy the way transgender people are treated. Lots of anti-transgender people do just fine in our society. A person who actively fought against trans rights in California is currently the Vice President of the United States (though she has gotten much quieter on trans issues in the meantime). We have several openly anti-trans members of Congress. The fight for trans rights is so defensive that covering the insane medical costs isn't even on the radar. A lot of transition-related expenses are rarely covered by insurance, and they cost as much as a luxury car. Yet when you hear about "trans activists," what they're fighting for is not to have their ability to use the bathroom taken away.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  I'm not envious of the way transgender people are treated, and if I came across sounding that way I do apologize. My tone was for the disproportion of attention, not of action. In truth, very little action will be taken for good for the transgender population or health disorders. That isn't how these things play out, unfortunately. As a society, we only know the stick and not the carrot. While I sympathize with the sentiment that there are several openly anti-trans members of Congress, nearly all of Congress is anti-Medical Reform in action, if not in voice. My point is a scale of difference, which was brought up at the start of this thread. I really do appreciate the struggle that the trans community has to go through, and I am not deaf to their cries (and, though somehow this makes me a worse person to some who would hear it, I do know people who are trans). But if we are going to look at things on a societal scale, how can we ignore the statistical numbers of the societal woes and population impacts? As for insurance, you might be shocked at what insurance doesn't cover for diabetics. They don't just "cut a check" for everything. I can't tell you how many times my doctor and I have to get on the phone to argue with them for literal months to get things covered. For things to keep me alive. Not to feel right in my skin. Not to keep thoughts of suicide away. To keep bare minimal physical biological function going. As for Kamala Harris, she has a whole lot to be displeased about. Prison labor, drug prosecution, questionable school bussing policies, anti trans right policies. Yeah, I'm not a fan.