Agree completely! We've all be patient with people who had stronger identity concerns that this.

> I do my best

Same here, and haven't stumbled yet. But when I do, I'll forgive myself and expect to be forgiven. Because *reasons*.

The thing I don't understand is how this seemingly broad (if indisputably fashionable) concern for trans people came to compel so much attention.

The number of genuine trans people you'll encounter in your life is almost vanishingly small. Sure, they deserve compassion.

But if the intention is to be theatrical about compassion, I don't know why children of divorce or children of alcoholics of the sufferers of any number of other diseases weren't chosen first. People really want to be right about transsexuals, and they want it yesterday.

Typos Sorry, reclining with laptop

The gender identity people manage to sabotage the gay movement thoroughly.

The term "bisexual" shouldn't exist, since that implies there are only two genders, not seventy-two. And if you're attracted to a women, but can't be attracted to a "woman with a penis," then you're a bigot.

Unless that penis is kept in the nightstand and comes with a vibrating function, "woman with a penis" is an oxymoron.

If anyone suggests that it is inconsistent to believe that homosexuality is not a mental illness while gender dysphoria is, I would point out that homosexuality, in and of itself, does not cause mental distress. Yes, the stigmatization can be stress inducing, but the orientation itself is not.

Gender dysphoria, by contrast, does cause distress. You believe you're living a body that doesn't reflect your gender.

Moreover, the mental health profession has never had any success in treating homosexuality. Not even it's most brutal efforts, such as shock treatments, have changed a person's orientation.

However, it can successfully treat gender dysphoria.

This might be overly simplistic, but I think the remedy for gender dysphoria is to adopt a less rigid and restrictive definition of each gender. Be a little more flexible as to what it means to be a man or to be a woman.

It's perfectly okay for men to like things and be drawn to things that are typically considered girlie things, like rom-coms (I loved "As Good As It Gets"), gardening, cooking or whatever.

“This might be overly simplistic, but I think the remedy for gender dysphoria is to adopt a less rigid and restrictive definition of each gender. Be a little more flexible as to what it means to be a man or to be a woman”

I’m confused as to what being more flexible means. Also confused as to who is supposed to adopt this standard. Government? Psychiatric professions? Employers?

I think the solution is, and always has been a strong and sane extended family who are, in my opinion and observations remarkable tolerant of their loved ones, and a wide variety of quirks.
Modern life has generated a lot of lost little sheep. Some of them are truly gender dysphoric. Others are just attention seeking. And some of it is just plain old child abuse by attention seeking parents.

I don't know, but from reading the excerpt above, it seems like we've gone from demands for respect and common decency (which are perfectly laudable) to demands for attraction, with ugly names for people who aren't sufficiently hot and bothered.

That strikes me as bratty.

It's not activities or likes/dislikes that define gender.

Roosevelt Grier, one of the most ferocious football players of the '50s and '60s and a stalwart of "The Fearsome Foursome," the LA Rams defensive line considered one of the best ever, was seriously into fiber crafts, mostly needlepoint and crochet, after his football career. He even did a Lite Beer commercial with his needlepoint.

My concerns with the current transgender ascendance is threefold:

• I fear that, instead of becoming a more open and accepting society, we're just enabling a psychosis.
  
• I'm concerned that we're rearranging thousands of years of civilization to accommodate the unique and strident demands of 0.6% of society.
  
• Transgender has become trendy. Parents are pushing children into genders they have not chosen themselves in order to garner media and peer group attention and, in come cases, approval onto themselves.

Activists have scared people into accepting these demands, lest they be labeled "transphobic." While it's a good thing to be accepting of people who don't stay in traditional gender roles, we've become so open-minded that our brains have fallen out.

I remember a talk show many years ago in which Roosevelt Grier was asked if he was teased for his interest in needlepoint.

Grier smiled and stood up---all 6'5" and 284 pounds of him. He quietly looked down at the talk host long enough for the host to burst out laughing. Grier quietly said, "No." He sat down again.

I would have kissed Grier for this, but I wasn't offered.

There are multiple issues.
1) It is beyond child abuse to transition children. It is already known that a large % of gender dysphoric youth resolve as gay and are happy with that. Parents pushing them to have surgery does not improve their life outcomes.
2) It is hard-wired in, including by pheromonal/hormonal responses and visual responses, for heterosexuals to respond to the opposite sex. A surgical male or female does not trigger any of the proper signals, and actively repels on many dimensions. A person like Bruce Jenner who has boobs but still has his dick and wants to have sex with women positively freaks many women out.
3) The demand for acceptance includes bathrooms and showers, including in schools. If a high school boy (still with his equipment) can shower with the girls, why does he need to wear clothes in school at all? And why doesn't the privacy of the girls matter?
4) Sports.

This is an interesting issue because it doesn't fall along the usual right/left lines, it's splitting the left and strange alliances will be or are being formed around this issue.

I think the angloworld could indeed have less rigid societal gender standards.

My husband grew up in Switzerland and came to the states for University. He was shocked to learn that his playing the flute was considered unmanly. He was all like, "But the flute is a military instrument!" In our talks about societal problems in America he often brings up how there is a large subset of Americans that considers anything intellectual or culturally refined to be effeminate. Apparently he got shit for his Bach-loving ways when he first arrived. Even at school in MA.

I don't really know how that can be fixed, though. I mean sure at an individual level we can play Mozart Sonatas with our sons and nephews, but culturally-wide, not sure what you can do.

I think maybe it's a defensive mechanism? Cant cope with regular life for whatever reason, must be a reason, I know, I'm really a woman/man! And now anything that goes wrong can be blamed on "transphobia" instead of doing the hard work in life and on themselves. Why are there so many people who simple cannot cope with life, is a question we need to resolve.

I think the angloworld could indeed have less rigid societal gender standards. ~ NicoleK at February 3, 2019 10:47 AM

Rigid gender roles are reflections of the people applying them; one that speaks to their insecurities and fears, not to the gender-compatibility of the person defying them.

"Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together — what do you get? The sum of their fears." ~ Winston Churchill

Expertise in any arena requires practice and dedication. The man who pursues intellectual prowess is not dedicating his hours to working out with his buddies and increasing his athletic prowess. He's in a realm in which those buddies get lost, so mocking him as effeminate is the way they can claim superiority, even if that mocking is done in a companionable way.

Playing the flute is hardly effeminate. A famous centennial painting by Archibald MacNeal Willard, The Spirit of '76, shows a fifer and two drummers marching through the smoke of battle with the flag flying behind them. It has been famously parodied and homaged many times in popular media, including but not limited to Mickey Mouse and The Great Escape.

Anybody remember Freddy, the talking flute, in H.R. Pufnstuf?

Besides, the flautist does not have to carry a large instrument case like the tuba player or cellist. The flautist's case fits in his backpack. However, the violin player does get to pretend he's got a Tommy gun in his case, so maybe he wins the case wars.

And, as I mentioned before, activities are not gender. Liking to knit is just liking to knit, not evidence of gender dysphoria. And those who insist non-gender role activities are evidence of gender dysphoria are are as guilty of gender stereotyping as those who insist boys must do boy things and vice versa.

Maybe Momof4 has a point and a slightly-built boy, who is bullied for preferring what his peers consider feminine activities, in trying to reconcile his likes with his peers' ridicule and coming up short, comes to the conclusion that he must actually be a girl. With the trans lobby's political power behind her, she demands society accommodate the now-her. Our slightly-built young person, to Amy's point, gains power over those tormentors with that victimhood.

I suspect it all started with the realization in the U.S., about 3/4 of a century ago, that gay men actually exist and therefore straight men "had" to do as much as possible to separate themselves.)

From something I said elsewhere:

In an era when academics were considered far more of a manly pursuit than they are now - mainly because back then, girls were often discouraged from going to college - it was much easier for those upper-class men who didn't like sports not only to be open about it but to pursue Ph.D.s instead without losing face. Nowadays, even WOMEN are under some pressure to be sports fans, if not athletes. No thanks.

In the same vein, this reminds me of the 1994 book "American Manhood: Transformations In Masculinity From The Revolution To The Modern Era" by E. Anthony Rotundo. In it, IIRC, he said that in the 19th century, upper-class men and some middle-class men, who didn't have to make a living with their physical strength, did all sorts of things (ballroom dancing, poetry, painting, writing emotional letters to male friends) and were not accused of being gay, mainly because back then, gay men weren't supposed to exist! (Or, at least, many adults had never even heard of homosexuality.) That would explain, in a way, the appeal of men like Fred Astaire and Leslie Howard as late as the 1930s. (My baby-boomer mother could never understand the appeal of either man - they were just feminine to her. She did, however, like Gene Kelly.)

So, ironically, as gay men of all stripes become more free to be visible, straight men tend to balk more and more at anything "feminine."

Patrick, there are plenty of mental illnesses that do not inflict distress the person with the illness. Hannibal Lecter didn't seem very distressed. You need a better criterion.

"It's perfectly okay for men to like things and be drawn to things that are typically considered girlie things, like rom-coms (I loved "As Good As It Gets"), gardening, cooking or whatever."

Which is the huge contradiction. Central to progressive thought is that males and females are completely interchangeable in all roles, activities, etc., except for conception and gestation. The inevitable logical corollary to that is that the only factor determinant of gender must be physiology. What can Caitlin do in a sexually equalitarian society that Bruce could not? To identify as other than ones biological gender becomea arbitrary and meaningless.

Transgenderism moves gender from the chromosones to the mind, which implies that there is such a thing as an innately male or female mind, something all those claiming gender disparity in STEM is all because of discrimination claim cannot be.

I give it ten years before we're being told we must embrace a person's assertion that they are really a giraffe or a rhododendron.

> less rigid societal
> gender standards

That's a spectacularly weird thing to say. As is "angloworld."

I mean, yeah, it's a non-starter anyway. But anyone with time for conversation in those terms ain't livin' right.

"Patrick, there are plenty of mental illnesses that do not inflict distress (to) the person with the illness. You need a better criterion."

Don't see how your general point applies to his specific comparison.

By angloworld I mean English speaking countries... US, Canada, England etc

And there are general cultural trends I notice in the angloworld that I don’t notice in the francoworld. Gender roles, the takeover of transactivism, the helicopter parenting... those are a few cultural differences

Lenora I am going to read that book.

Well, okay, but I still want definitions for everything. What are "gender standards"?

It's not like most people would ever say 'I will blindly trust the committee to reconfigure the angloworld's gender standards.'

Such a plenum is imaginary. No such team ever convened.

The way people are expected to behave in any given society, according to their sex.

My husband found the rules to be stricter in America. He flat-out wondered why so many American men are so worried that people will think they are gay.

Apparently this was an issue with the guys he ran into.

The way people are expected to behave in any given society, according to their sex.

My husband found the rules to be stricter in America. He flat-out wondered why so many American men are so worried that people will think they are gay.

Apparently this was an issue with the guys he ran into.

But no, there's no governing board of cultural expectations

"It is beyond child abuse to transition children. It is already known that a large % of gender dysphoric youth resolve as gay and are happy with that. Parents pushing them to have surgery does not improve their life outcomes."

Johns Hopkins stopped this years ago. Hard to believe somebody would sanction it again.

Or that others might think they're going to look like this, or that their new appearance is going to solve their problems... I suggest that a new set of problems will appear, instead.

“The way people are expected to behave in any given society, according to their sex.

My husband found the rules to be stricter in America. He flat-out wondered why so many American men are so worried that people will think they are gay.

Apparently this was an issue with the guys he ran into.

NicoleK at February 4, 2019 2:13 AM

What “rules”?

Give us some examples, other than the flute. My son is a flutist. He was on active duty in a military band, and could have cared less about gender stereotyping.
When you get up into the professional levels, men dominate the profession, probably because of their physiology.

I think men have a lot bigger problems in the US than gender stereotyping. They are becoming second and third class citizens in their own country.

I think if you traveled more you would find there isn't that much cultural uniformity across the US NicoleK. Which instrument is 'cool' or 'masculine'/'feminine' changes a lot over time and geography. Those gender standards aren't so standard.

"He flat-out wondered why so many American men are so worried that people will think they are gay."

It was probably the time when gays were calling everyone gay and saying everyone was at least a little bit gay in order to inflate their numbers. The push back is predictable.

Apparently this was an issue with the guys he ran into.

NicoleK at February 4, 2019 2:13 AM

Also let me suggest, that if your husband is Swiss or from some other European country he was in no position to understand American culture or expectations from a few casual contacts with American men.

My husband after six years or working 60 hours a week with Japanese men, is starting to understand a few things about Japanese culture and Japanese men, but is by no means an expert on the subject.

Well he lived in the US for 15 years in a male-dominated field...

And yes, there are many cultures in the US. Heck we lived in the same town for many years in totally different social circles, and perhaps he would have found the local Goth scene very different from the people he was interacting with.

I'll grill him tonight over dinner for more examples if you like.

OK he is listing examples not sure I can type fast enough.

Some examples:
Once he was in a restaurant and he asked the waiter "May I have the check, please" and the guy at the next table said, "That guy must be gay, you don't say May I have the Check Please, you say Check Please"

He's giving me more examples which mostly seem to involve people thinking he was gay because he was wearing a button down shirt.

"They have twenty million genders but then they're so judgemental. If you didn't care about certain sports or whatever, that was weird".

The people who acted weird to him tended to be random people in restaurants. He concedes that the Boston area academics he worked with were more accepting of button down shirts and flutes.

NicoleK. I call bullshit on 90 percent of what you listed here.

What kind of thin skinned man whines to his wife about comments overheard in restaurants or even remembers them?

I guess the answer is a European academic, who has been steeped from birth in the presumptive rudeness and coarseness of American culture.

Maybe one who is insecure in his masculinity?

Boston is the home of American high end flute manufacturing. A good 60 percent of the top level flute players there are men.

I heard plenty of rude comments directed at me as an American living in Germany. Fortunately I didn’t know the language or the culture well enough to pick up most of them.

Momof4 asked "Why are there so many people who simple cannot cope with life, is a question we need to resolve." I think there is in fact a very good reason: life is far more complicated than it used to be. In 1800 in America, if you grew up on a farm, you were a farmer. Simple. If you were in the city, your father either got you a job in his factory, or found you an apprenticeship in something--and that was it, that was what you did. Everyone dressed the same. Music was either church or sometimes a few locals could play something.
Today you need to identify your musical style, clothing style, choose one of 10,000 professions to go into, and have an opinion on hundreds of political and social issues that everyone is debating. I am a mature, competent, smart person and I still find it exhausting sometimes. I pity the typical 18 yr old.

On Radwaste's comment: The only surgical trans person I ever met (see how common they are? not) got the surgery in his late 40s. I met "her" a few years later. I must say he was one of the uglier women I've ever met. It has been shown that surgical transition does not reduce their very high suicide rate because it is not a magic bullet.

As Crid would probably tell you. To be an American man, or understand them, you have to have been an American boy.

The only place I was ever sexually harassed was in Europe. Happened several times. Mostly walking thru Museums.

Amazingly, never when my husband was with me,

I don't call bullshit on that Isab. That's Boston. But they both misunderstood what was happening. No one seriously thought he was gay or was even really suggesting it. They were just being assholes. And Boston is somewhat famed for people being random assholes to random people. Those were just throwaway insults. No sense was intended.

In a similar vein I was with some people and one was talking about the news. They mentioned a story about a couple that got caught running around nude and doing things at the local park. One friend spouted off 'That's gay.' At which point everyone slowly turned to look at him.

Thanks, NicoleK. Hope my memory is correct...
___________________________________

cc said: The only surgical trans person I ever met (see how common they are? not) got the surgery in his late 40s. I met "her" a few years later. I must say he was one of the uglier women I've ever met. It has been shown that surgical transition does not reduce their very high suicide rate because it is not a magic bullet.
_______________________________________

Um, that's why the kids who demand surgery "need" to start it before puberty. Having the surgery as a adult typically doesn't fool any strangers.

Here's what I wrote back in 2017:

Kids aren't stupid. They KNOW (especially boys) what becoming trans would mean in the long run, so if they're merely gay or androgynous, they don't WANT any medical treatments or surgery. (In both cases, I assume it would mean not being able to reproduce as adults.)

While of course we have to learn to have more respect for kids who don't want to have stereotypical gender roles, as well as those who are going to grow up completely gay, I suspect that most of the parents who agree to hormone treatments did so because their kids were a lot more extreme - at very early ages - in their demands than just wanting to wear dresses, get crew cuts, or play only with certain toys.

(Not to mention the problems that might occur when, say, a girl has a new baby brother that her father desperately wanted - and she resents that and comes to believe he never wanted any daughters at all.)

It's well known that LGBTQ teens have high rates of suicide when their parents are hostile to them - and the trouble with parents refusing to help trans children get the medical treatments they truly want, early on, is that post-puberty, those treatments don't work so well. That is, the post-surgery adults don't look that different from transvestites, if at all.

... I wish Lehmann would offer proof that more than a small fraction of kids coming into clinics are REALLY shallow enough to consider transgender surgery just for the sake of being "fashionable." Parents, after all, generally don't like the idea of their kids effectively sterilizing themselves - never mind other hazards of surgery and hormones - so how do we know the kids DIDN'T show suicidal signs (or signs close to them) when the parents tried to make them settle for things like clothes, haircuts, and toys?
_______________________________________

But...I saw something in 2018(?) about vegetarianism that made me sit up and wonder. Namely, what if - IF - the artificial hormones in meat that have built up in the average adult's body (not just the mother's body) make a big difference in whether or not that adult's child wants to go trans later on?

After all, since many of us would agree that it's wrong to inflict ANY religion on a child who's too young to refuse to go to a house of worship, etc., what's the difference when it comes to the hormones that adults don't mean to consume - but that just might "force" their children into surgery later on, since the kids know they can't settle for just being gay? Having surgery, after all, is never a trivial decision, for multiple reasons. Who would choose to receive those hormones in utero, when they could have been avoided?

“Um, that's why the kids who demand surgery "need" to start it before puberty. Having the surgery as a adult typically doesn't fool any strangers.”

Is that the purpose? You only feel better transitioning if you can trick people into thinking you are a fuckable replica of the sex you want to be?

By that standard 90 percent will fail. Not only that but if you tell your potential partners that you are trans, which you are ethically bound to do, 95 percent of them will run screaming for the exits,

What about the incredible damage from a lifetime of hormones, and the risks from what is major surgery? Are we to discount all those as well?

As far as a Vegan diet, too much soy has been linked to all sorts of endocrine problems, and is extremely unhealthy for children.

"We can respect the right of certain people to be identified as the gender they believe they are, and to remove any discrimination against them, while also seeing biology as a difference that requires a distinction. "

The problem here is that those two statements, as stated, cannot be reconciled. If biology matters, then we cannot simply let people behave "as the gender they think they are" in all circumstances, because allowing them to do so will cause distress to those around them. In public, in situations where gender doesn't really matter, yeah, whatever. If a woman wants to identify as a man, and wants me to address her using male pronouns, I probably will do so if she's reasonably polite about it. However, I still expect that she will use the restroom corresponding to her biological sex. Because you simply cannot get around the fact that male and female genitals are different, and that we have some very strong social expectations, which have built up over the centuries for some good reasons, regarding situations in which one's genitals are exposed to strangers. To take this further, there is simply no way that a man can function as a woman, or vice versa, in a sexual relationship.

Here's a silly example of the problems we get into: A trans man (a biological woman) goes into a sperm bank and says she wants to be a donor. How is she going to do that? Her body lacks the equipment to produce sperm. Shall we humor her and let her play make-believe, wasting someone's time at the sperm bank in the process? You can say the same about a man wanting to be a surrogate mother.

Not only that but if you tell your potential partners that you are trans, which you are ethically bound to do, 95 percent of them will run screaming for the exits
_______________________________________

That's what they used to say about allowing people to be openly gay at work. How could good conformist heterosexuals possibly function in such a workplace - or resist harassing the gay workers, at least?

The same went for casual social situations - not just dating. (Such as at high school and college.)

Somehow, straight people learned not to throw themselves into hysterical fits. Urban types KNOW they're likely to encounter a trans person time and again, especially if they're into casual sex. They can handle it quite calmly now, with a yes or a no. (Thank you, Dan Savage!)

What about the incredible damage from a lifetime of hormones, and the risks from what is major surgery? Are we to discount all those as well?
________________________________________

I thought I made it clear that it's better than suicide, at any rate. Also that IF most trans kids are that way only because of the hormones they received in utero, chances are they'd rather not have received those hormones - if only so they wouldn't have to go through all the risks that MORE hormones (and surgery) would cause!

Here's a silly example of the problems we get into: A trans man (a biological woman) goes into a sperm bank and says she wants to be a donor. How is she going to do that? Her body lacks the equipment to produce sperm. Shall we humor her and let her play make-believe, wasting someone's time at the sperm bank in the process? You can say the same about a man wanting to be a surrogate mother.
_________________________________________

And why would either of those scenarios happen?

And IF it turns out that a vegetarian diet makes all the difference in the world - or maybe cloned or organic meat makes the same big difference - I'd love to see how the members of Focus on the Family (to name just one conservative organization) are going to take that news.

How many of THEM care about environmentalism or any other benefits of the vegetarian diet? Plus, how many of them have ties to the meat industries - or would be willing to support organic foods?

"That's what they used to say about allowing people to be openly gay at work. How could good conformist heterosexuals possibly function in such a workplace - or resist harassing the gay workers, at least?"

As is your usual style, Lenona, you deliberately missed the point in order to get in a hot take. If you can't tell the difference between a co-worker and a sexual partner, you're even stupider than I give you credit for. As usual, your intellectual vapidity is exceeded only by your unfocused wordiness.

And you're the one playing dumb. Why do I have to spell everything out, when that would just make me more wordy? Didn't I drop enough hints in the next paragraphs?

Btw, it used to be a lot more common for bisexual men to pretend to be straight, marry women, and and ruin the women's lives - in part because living an openly gay lifestyle would likely lead to housing and job discrimination, so they couldn't pursue long-term, honest relationships until that discrimination was stopped.

Not wanting to look like a transvestite is not the same as wanting to deceive a sexual partner.

I have never heard of a man who became a woman who was in the habit of trying to deceive men. That's likely in part because EVERY trans person is well aware of the possibility of getting beat up - or much worse. On a daily basis.

And given how much more aware everyone is of trans issues these days, I doubt 95% of them are going to run screaming, even when there IS deception involved.

Just in case anyone DOES need things spelled out more:

1. I wasn't the one who brought up the need to attract sex partners. Preteens who DEMAND surgery aren't thinking of such things; they just want to look - and feel - like the average person of the opposite sex. Desperately. They don't want to settle for being gay. How do we know? Because, no one enjoys going through surgery.

2. To imply that it's wrong to create passable trans people because they can't be trusted, in dating situations, to be honest about their origins and intentions (or that they can't live happy lives anyway, so it's a waste of surgeons' time), sounds a lot like saying that gay people can't be trusted not to be sexual predators or other types of degenerates, whether at work, school or in the social scene - and so they need to keep invisible or get expelled from school or fired from their jobs - and (until the 1970s) classified as mentally ill. (As if any of THAT would help their status.) Not to mention, they need to get rehabilitated. We've all heard of "Boy Erased," I assume? Last year, there was an op-ed titled "I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States."

More on that, plus what Dan Savage wrote in 1998:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2018/01/blink-7.html

And I find it incredible that anyone who would write the last paragraph on February 4, 2019 6:07 PM, would accuse anyone else of being vapid.

"Don't see how your general point applies to his specific comparison."

Patrick proposes causing distress to the subject as a criteria for mental illness, as a way to create a dichotomy between homosexuality and gender dysphoria. I've falsified his proposition, which breaks his syllogism. He's right that you can construct criteria for the label "mental illness" that distinguish between homosexuality and gender dysphoria, but for the exercise to be meaningful, the criteria must consistently hold for all cases. His doesn't.

NicoleK, from the examples you cite, your husband needs to frequent classier joints that don't cater to idiots. I've spent time in the most redneck enclaves of the deep South, working with blue collar workers who own sheets with eye holes but no high school diplomas. I've been to biker gatherings with teeth to tattoos ratios that required three decimal places not to round to zero. In all that, I've never encountered anyone who would regard wearing button down shirts (widely considered a symbol of the cis-hetero patriarchy) or the use of complete sentences as evidence of homosexuality.

cc: "Today you need to....."

and yet literally tens of millions manage this every year, and the do not have the letter S emblazoned upon their chest or birth names like Kal El.

Your hypothesis ignores the control group.