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> Gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as exploring sexuality. While true, to be fair GP wa

> Gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as exploring sexuality. While true, to be fair GP was responding to this: >>> "For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to *heteronormativity*. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their *sexuality*." [emphasis mine] To muddy the distinction further, there is a small minority of men whose sexual kink is to be perceived as women. These seem to be the people who are making the most trouble for trans women who just want to quietly go about living as women without fuss.

maxbond 4y ago
Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything. https://xkcd.com/468/ https://xkcd.com/468/ This doesn't really muddy the waters; the concepts remain distinct, and people making it a kink to conflate them is kinda like how a joke isn't true but is only funny if you know the truth it refers to. Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their confusion, because they have been raised in a heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in their mind.
- rendall 4y ago
  > Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything. While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur. Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to recognize that some people's gender does not fit their sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning. Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only people interested in entering women's bathrooms and prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born in a male body, then everything would be clear and unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men who would happily identify as women in order to gain easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or dismissing the muddy implications of the question will not make the second faction go away.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out, trans people are not assaulting people in bathrooms, and what you're describing is really using the way our society is built to be hostile to people who do not fit into gender norms as a way to justify further hostility. It's saying, oh look, we built bathrooms and prisons in a way that reinforces these norms, well, I guess we're stuck with them.
    - rendall 4y ago
      > This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out... I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's locker room. Again, pretending this is about trans people is disingenuous. This is about (some) men. And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring it up do genuinely believe that some men will take advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So, probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so that trans people can get on with the business of doing their business.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - maxbond 4y ago
        I have heard some men say things about women when they weren't around that I find appalling; I've had to work on eliminating misogyny from my own thinking, and it is a work in progress; I'm well aware of men and the toxicity that often goes along with them. The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or, in the example you gave, violate their privacy and dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF activists use this narrative to attempt to enact legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of their gender - forcing trans women into men's bathrooms, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it alters your thinking.

maxbond 4y ago

Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything. https://xkcd.com/468/ https://xkcd.com/468/ This doesn't really muddy the waters; the concepts remain distinct, and people making it a kink to conflate them is kinda like how a joke isn't true but is only funny if you know the truth it refers to. Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their confusion, because they have been raised in a heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in their mind.

rendall 4y ago
> Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything. While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur. Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to recognize that some people's gender does not fit their sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning. Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only people interested in entering women's bathrooms and prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born in a male body, then everything would be clear and unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men who would happily identify as women in order to gain easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or dismissing the muddy implications of the question will not make the second faction go away.
- maxbond 4y ago
  This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out, trans people are not assaulting people in bathrooms, and what you're describing is really using the way our society is built to be hostile to people who do not fit into gender norms as a way to justify further hostility. It's saying, oh look, we built bathrooms and prisons in a way that reinforces these norms, well, I guess we're stuck with them.
  - rendall 4y ago
    > This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out... I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's locker room. Again, pretending this is about trans people is disingenuous. This is about (some) men. And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring it up do genuinely believe that some men will take advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So, probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so that trans people can get on with the business of doing their business.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - maxbond 4y ago
      I have heard some men say things about women when they weren't around that I find appalling; I've had to work on eliminating misogyny from my own thinking, and it is a work in progress; I'm well aware of men and the toxicity that often goes along with them. The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or, in the example you gave, violate their privacy and dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF activists use this narrative to attempt to enact legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of their gender - forcing trans women into men's bathrooms, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it alters your thinking.