I'm speechless | Imamother

↑ 1untamedgirl

Thu, Dec 19 2019, 11:06 pm

roses wrote:

This is so incredibly sad. Can you imagine living on the streets, homeless, without a bathroom to use? Is this the kind of existence you would want for yourself or a family member?

I fail to understand why someone would think it is funny to joke at the expense of homeless people.

If there are no public bathrooms for the homeless to use then there is no need for sanitary napkins. So before we worry about whether there are sanitary napkins in the mens bathroom we first have to make sure there is a bathroom altogether for people to use. Where is ACLU when it comes to suing the city to ensure they build bathrooms for homeless people? Oh, they are too busy representing illegal aliens/foreigners and transgender men to help the homeless in America. Oh well.

What have you done to help the homeless people in America?

↑ roses ↓

Thu, Dec 19 2019, 11:28 pm

1untamedgirl wrote:

Huh? Your argument doesn't make sense.

And I still can't understand why you think it is a good thing to mock homeless and other disadvantaged people. I find it very sad to see such a lack of compassion and empathy.

↑ Fox ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:03 am

freilich wrote:

Exactly. Even more. We need to get that person the proper help. An anorexic should be taught to see themselves as they are, not what they perceive. Anyone suffering from a mental illness needs the proper care.

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness 99% of the time. By buying into that and glorifying it, we are enabling these people to stay sick.

People with genuine gender dysphoria typically view it as a mental illness with no good current treatment. At best, they can attempt to live as the opposite gender while acknowledging their birth gender. "I'm a man who lives as a woman because of a mental condition that we don't know how to treat," is often how it's expressed.

These are almost never the people agitating over feminine supplies in the men's bathroom. They want to "pass" as much as possible, and they wish to (and frequently do) fly under everyone's radar.

The saddest part is that activist extremists and just plain kooks (e.g., Jessica Yaniv) have made legitimate research into gender dysphoria almost impossible. Dr. Alice Dreger wrote about this in Galileo's Middle Finger. People with gender dysphoria would love nothing more than to take a pill or undergo an effective course of therapy to cure their problem rather than taking hormones that can shorten their lives and undergo painful surgeries. Sadly, trans activism is making life much, much harder for people with gender dysphoria.

↑ Fox ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:20 am

roses wrote:

This is so incredibly sad. Can you imagine living on the streets, homeless, without a bathroom to use? Is this the kind of existence you would want for yourself or a family member?

You do realize that the homeless situation faced in SF, LA, and Seattle is almost entirely based on substance addiction.

The problem is one of misplaced rachmones. These cities decriminalized many "lifestyle" crimes associated with homelessness while simultaneously allowing NIMBY zoning laws to prevent the development of modestly-priced rental housing. They enabled the homeless to build camps, and the cities distribute free needles and other basic supplies.

Addicts do not simply wander in off the street, eager to start rehab. They must hit "rock bottom" first, and as long as they can survive on the street, there is little opportunity to do so. Living on the street, they typically lose contact with family members who would also serve as an impetus to get sober.

While this is something of a side topic, it is relevant because it addresses the problem of misplaced rachmones.

Right now, children and teenagers are being counseled to transition if they believe themselves to be transgendered. They are prescribed puberty blockers and hormones; girls are supplied with breast binders that can damage their breasts; surgeons are doing a variety of surgeries on teenagers to help them look more like the opposite gender.

Yet there is scant evidence that transitioning is the best alternative for everyone, and there is a great deal of evidence that teenagers, in particular, often outgrow their feelings of gender discomfort. People are making a lot of money with this, and they will make more money helping young people de-transition, which is becoming more and more common.

It is not contradictory to have rachmones for people with genuine gender dysphoria while also wanting to discourage people from transitioning as a quick fix to feelings that will likely turn out to be something quite different from gender dysphoria. Living as the opposite gender should not be a political act; it should be a medical decision.

↑ roses ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:52 am

Fox wrote:

I think the homeless story starts a lot earlier than once the addict hits the streets. It is rooted in a myriad of social issues including intergenerational trauma, abuse, poverty, crime, violence, inadequate education, family history of substance abuse, children being exposed to substances in utero, inadequate health care resources, lack of health coverage, poor access to mental health services, and addiction treatment services that are not evidenced based and have poor outcomes and high recidivism. And of course the drug industry fueled opioid crisis. And gangs, gang violence, drug cartels and inadequate drug related law enforcement. Among other factors- these are just off the top of my head. I think evidenced based reforms need to happen at the root levels to address the criminal, social, educational and medical/mental health aspects before the addict lands up on the streets.

I am quite familiar with the topic of transgender mental health, and the "quick fix" idea is not supported amongst the experts. I do agree that transitioning should be a medical and psychological decision. My understanding is that there is always a process and a team based approach which involves a therapist, a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and surgeons as needed/desired. Surgeons in the US require a letter of clearance from a psychiatrist prior to the surgery. The psychiatrist will require that the patient has been in therapy and evaluate the therapy process to ensure the quality of the decision making process. It is a big responsibility for the psychiatrist to give this clearance, and I know it's done carefully.

Medical doctors who prescribe hormonal treatments also work as part of a team and require mental health providers as part of the team. Transgender treatment is very specialized, and competent providers are limited. There is a large expense and investment in pursuing all of the treatments, so patients need to be fully invested and pursue the process deliberately and carefully. Experts aid in a stable and deliberate transition process, which can occur over a number of years, and each stage is carefully evaluated. Minimally invasive interventions encouraged before more invasive and permanent ones.

↑ Fox ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 1:14 am

roses wrote:

I do agree that transitioning should be a medical and psychological decision. My understanding is that there is always a process and a team based approach which involves a therapist, a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and surgeons as needed/desired. Surgeons in the US require a letter of clearance from a psychiatrist prior to the surgery. The psychiatrist will require that the patient has been in therapy and evaluate the therapy process to ensure the quality of the decision making process. It is a big responsibility for the psychiatrist to give this clearance, and I know it's done carefully.

Medical doctors who prescribe hormonal treatments also work as part of a team and require mental health providers as part of the team. Transgender treatment is very specialized, and competent providers are limited. There is a large expense and investment in pursuing all of the treatments, so patients need to be fully invested and pursue the process deliberately and carefully. Experts aid in a stable and deliberate transition process, which can occur over a number of years, and each stage is carefully evaluated. Minimally invasive interventions encouraged before more invasive and permanent ones.

This is what is supposed to happen, but increasingly, it does not.

Dr. Stephen Stathos in Australia, a psychiatrist specializing in gender disorders, and Dr. Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University, have criticized the increasing pressure to diagnose gender dysphoria and begin hormonal treatment in pre-pubescent children and the increasing number of non-specialist physicians being ask to prescribe hormones.

Increasingly, clinicians who dissent from support of early transitioning are targeted by activists. Quillette

So in a perfect world, you would be correct. Unfotunately, activists are becoming more successful at dictating terms to physicians and scientists.

↑ sushilover

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 7:34 am

roses wrote:

Where did she say it?
What was the context of the comment?
How was it said?

I would need a lot more information before I could opine.
Off the cuff, if I was the employer and there was a possibility that an employee was making harassing comments at work about someone's gender identity, I would let them go. But again, context is everything, so I would need to understand more.

Again, she never harassed anyone. She tweeted a protest of some UK sports agency changing the definition of "woman" to include males. She said, “I accept everybody’s gender identity, I just do not believe it overrides their relations. I refuse to believe human beings can change their relations.”

She was fired.
You speak so piously about the need for compassion and respect, where is your compassion for this woman who was fired for standing up for the truth? Where is your compassion for the clinicians who are being silenced by activists? Where is your compassion for female athletes who are forced out of their sport if they don't want to compete against males? Where is your compassion for the children who are being transitioned at earlier and earlier ages? Where is your compassion for women who feel violated and helpless when there are males in their female only spaces? Where is your compassion for the women raped and/or impregnated by transgender women prisoners?

↑ JoyInTheMorning

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 8:04 am

Fox wrote:

This is a rare case when we agree on politics. There is too much pressure to diagnose gender dysphoria. It is dangerous when done for young adults, also; not just for prepubescent kids. I know of a nineteen year old who had trouble adjusting to college. The crazy group at college that she was hanging with, noting her tomboy-like qualities, suggested that she might be suffering from gender dysphoria. At her university, students can go to a clinic, see a doctor (not necessarily someone trained in transitioning, or on gender dysphoria), and start getting hormone treatments, just like that. Not even a need for a repeat visit or a thinking period. Even if one doesn't do surgery, the effects of hormones are often irreversible. Anyway, she started taking hormones. This person is now no happier and no more successful at college, but may have suffered irreversible changes. I think it's tragic. (Moral: choose your child's college carefully. I'm currently approaching the college parasha, so it's something I think about a lot. Not that gender transition seems to be an issue for my kids, thankfully, but you want to make sure your kids can find normal groups of like-minded religious kids to hang with.)

I am not sure whether gender dysphoria is something real, or this is just a form of body dysphoria. There were times when I was a kid that I said that I wanted to be a boy, but what I really meant was: I want to play with boys, because they have more fun. I want to wear pants, because they are more comfortable and less restrictive. If I had been told that I might really be a boy inside, I probably would have been more upset when I started to menstruate and got breasts. As it was, I just regarded it as an inconvenience. And eventually I started liking some of the girly parts of life, and at some point, I really liked it when boys paid attention to me as a girl. I think this is natural for many tomboy-like girls, and it's something we grow out of. It's been a trope in young adult fiction for forever. Now it's thought to be people suppressing a part of themselves. No, not at all in my case. It was just me rebelling against silly cultural gender stereotyping. Here I am today, so happy to be female, mostly because being a mother is so wonderful, but still very happy in my very male field. And when my kids were younger and I played with them, I can tell you that I played much more with their trains and blocks than their dopey dolls.

I am very sympathetic to anyone who has true biological / psychological issues related to gender, but I do think society is making the problem worse.

↑ roses ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 8:39 am

Fox wrote:

The topic you bring up- of the ethics involved in early transitioning, is an important one, and understandably controversial. A transition process that begins at the onset of puberty has significant benefits to those who have a clear desire and need to transition and may be more beneficial in the long run due to eliminating the development of s-x characteristics that can be shameful and very painful or impossible to undo. These include breast development, Adams apple, facial hair, body hair etc. For a teen living in a body that is developing the mature s-xual characteristics of the s-x opposite of their gender identity- that can pose psychological risks as well as increase need for more serious intervention, with it's associated risks. Once the features develop, it's a lot harder to undo than to stop the development earlier on hormonally. And the earlier intervention has the benefit of a more authentic transition and ability to "pass" in a way that a purely adult transition can never achieve. So there is a significant psychological/medical benefit to the advocacy for this kind of transition.

The ethical alarm posed on the other side is the concern of allowing a minor to make choices with lifelong impact and long term effects. And should a teen's decision be honored, and how, and , to what extent, given the possibility that they may regret the decision later on? So the question becomes- at what point do we allow people agency over their own bodies? And is it ethical to withhold treatment from a teen when the delay will also have significant risks and potential for medical and psychological harm ?

It is a significant dilemma and not an easy one to navigate. Like everything else medical, I believe there should be freedom of choice and a decision made with the medical/psychological team and family. The issues are so extremely complex, that there are no easy answers. I also believe that clinicians should take a case by case approach with flexible and collaborative decision making.

I do understand the advocacy for support of early transition. If it was my fourteen year old who had been living as a male for years, I would understand that breast development would be extremely shameful to him. And I would worry about the serious risks of top surgery as well as the pain involved. So I would like there to be a choice to not cause the child these harms via gentler hormonal interventions at a time when the development can be circumvented. And I would like the decision making process to be made by a team attuned to my child's needs and safety and not limited by preconceived rigid agendas.

princessleah ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 11:40 am

I would like to provide some facts here.
I am a psychologist and I have a specialization in LGBTQ treatment, and particularly with transgender individuals.

I attended the annual meeting this year of USPATH (US Professional Association for Transgender Health).

The transgender population is extremely small, although this issue seems to be blowing up disproportionately.

Just under 10% of kids who come to a gender clinic or express wanting to live as their non-natal gender will go on to have a transgender identity, or transition. Most will grow out of it. The majority will identify as homosexual.

The OFFICIAL practice in the US is to do nothing irreversible to anyone under the age of 18. That means no surgery (except in rare cases) and no hormones. They do give puberty BLOCKERS to kids before they start developing, but this is reversible.

For kids who do go on to desire transition, sometimes it's a problem (this happened to Jazz) when they've been on puberty blockers for so long-- they don't develop enough genital tissue to have successful surgeries.

↑ princessleah

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 11:50 am

Fox wrote:

I'm going to cause everyone heart palpitations by agreeing with Joy and Jeanette.

They believe, in general, that marriage equality was the last big hurdle to full equality, and that these organizations should now concentrate on legitimate problems in LGBT communities that are not necessarily related to victimhood.

There is also a great deal of concern among conservative gay men and lesbians that transitioning to another gender will become de facto conversion therapy, almost as it is in Iran. The believe that it will be entirely too tempting to tell gay/lesbian teens that they're really the opposite gender.

_________________________

This is just one more way in which old alliances and allegiances are crumbling. Instead of Evangelical Christians wagging their fingers at gays, they're standing together shaking their heads at non-binary people.

One more comment: I don't get this whole thing.
Because the gay people got their marriage equality, now the fight is over? That seems rather selfish. It's not a concern that gender identity is not a protected status in the US? You can come out as transgender and then be fired the next day, and that's ok because gay people won their fight?

Also I think this "conversion therapy" is misplaced of course. Transgender people have all kinds of s-xual orientations, they're not all gay in their natal genders and straight in their experienced gender. many identify as gay or panzexual.

↑ Fox ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:36 pm

princessleah wrote:

I don't speak for conservative gay men; I just listen to them complain online (and IRL if they are given the opportunity). Because of course I do; that seems to be my tafkid in life, lol. That and admiring pictures of their dogs.

One primary theme that runs through their arguments is that they believe LGBT activism has morphed from a demand for equality to a demand for special treatment and extraordinary accommodation. A number of columnists and writers have authored pieces saying, basically, "Look, we promised everyone that gay marriage wouldn't infringe on anyone who didn't agree with it, and now you're pestering everyone to call you by made-up pronouns!"

The bottom line, I think, is that the LGBT alliance has always been fragile, and it is falling apart at a rapid rate. The Gs dislike the Ls; the LGs both dislike the Ts; the Ts are mad that the LGs are making more money than everyone else; and everyone is annoyed by the Bs. Oh, and the Gs believe the Ls have taken over all the advocacy organizations and are humorless harridans who care more about their own power than addressing real problems.

A lot of cute dogs, though.

↑ roses ↓

Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:55 pm

Fox wrote:

I'm going with princessleah. It does sound like, "we're good and happy now, so we're not interested in supporting you in the issues that are important to you, since we can't relate to it" kind of thing. That's easy to say from a position of those whose fight has been won. They're tired. They just want to live life in normal acceptance now that they've achieved it. I get it.

But there is also a lack of empathy in their annoyance. Because the cis-gay experience is tremendously different than the transgender experience. The commonality I see is that they were both marginalized groups. And now only one is the marginalized group. (In liberal geographical areas. I'm sure discrimination is alive and well in lots of other areas in the US). But it is possible to live a very normal life of employment, social acceptance and family as a gay person in many areas of the US. That's not the same for transgender people at all, employment being the biggest issue, and of course the constant legal/social harassment around bathroom issues, discrimination in medical settings and more. It's still a huge fight, and a very different fight. How and to what extent gay people will choose to support them- that's their choice. But I find their complaints to be selfishly driven.

Last edited by roses on Fri, Dec 20 2019, 1:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

↑ Fox

Sat, Dec 21 2019, 8:42 pm

roses wrote:

The commonality I see is that they were both marginalized groups. And now only one is the marginalized group. (In liberal geographical areas. I'm sure discrimination is alive and well in lots of other areas in the US).

Your prejudices are showing. In fact, nearly a quarter of all LGBT people live in what would be considered rural areas, and most feel relatively supported -- oftentimes more than their urban counterparts.

Here's what Middlebury professor Carly Thomsen found in studying gay rural life:

Quote:

"Rather than considering ourselves to be different from everybody else, and operate in a way where we create these gay subcultural spaces that run counter to dominant ways of being, now LGBTQ people have been folded into precisely what is imagined as a good person.
This 'folding' happens through emphasizing connections to family, farm and land, and community institutions. This runs counter to one of the norms common to 'coming out' in urban areas, that is, to produce oneself as different."

roses wrote:

That's not the same for transgender people at all, employment being the biggest issue, and of course the constant legal/social harassment around bathroom issues, discrimination in medical settings and more. It's still a huge fight, and a very different fight. How and to what extent gay people will choose to support them- that's their choice. But I find their complaints to be selfishly driven.

I think there's a bit more to it than just selfishness. One of the complaints, for example, is the unwillingness of major LGBT rights advocates, such as HRC and GLAAD, to support any serious research about what problems trans people actually face, which ones are most common, and what works to solve those problems.

For example, we know that MtF trans women are disproportionately represented in s-x work. But why is that? There could be a number of reasons. Maybe it's less a matter of discrimination and more a matter of going to a high school where trans people aren't exposed to bullying. These are reasonable questions to ask, and all the shrieking about transphobia doesn't answer them.

Overall, I think conservative gay men, at least, are supportive of individual trans people; it's the activists that they find problematic. Sixty years of gay advocacy was spent convincing people that gays are not mutant freaks, and the minute that tipping point is reached in society, out come a bunch of poseurs with purple hair demanding to be called zhe and zhir.

In general, though, I think it's important to remember that groups of people are always less heterogenous than they seem from outside. There are approximately 7.5 million Jews in the U.S. and 19 million LGBT people.

Think of how many subdivisions there are among Jews! Imagine explaining why MO Jews don't typically marry Chassidim, let alone the difference between Bobov 48 and Bobov 45!

The same is true of LGBT people. I once had to explain to someone whom I thought would know better that I don't socialize with Ben Shapiro. So I suspect everyone has valid points.