Should transgender rights be expanded or curbed?

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  • I'm still sceptical whether a child can 'decide' to be a different sex. I suspect nurture is as influential as nature.

    Maybe it's my own childhood that makes me so sceptical, knowing how much I hated to be a girl and expected to do 'girly' things by all, except my Dad. Maybe that's because I was the youngest of 5 girls and my dad had always hankered after a boy and I became the 'boy' who joined in with all the things my dad did, although my Dad did teach me how to make my own clothes, and used to cut me dress making patterns from pictures I saw in trendy magazines. It was cheaper than buying them for me. :)

    Would I have 'decided' to be a boy, given the opportunity? I don't know for sure, but I doubt it. I am happy as I am, and I don't let gender 'expectations' affect my choices. I had motorbikes, fast horses, set up my own business (with support from my husband), and I am definitely not the girly type who spends a fortune on clothes and make up. There are more interesting things to spend money on.

    I remember raging in my early married days that I had to get my husbands 'permission' to take out a bank loan, even though I earned more than my husband. I still get annoyed when I think about it. I wouldn't have been angry if the same had applied to married men, ie. they had to get the wife's permission. It was the inequality that annoyed me.

    I guess I've always been a bit of a rebel.

    I appreciate your frank self-analysis. I'm not sure what you mean by "Would I have 'decided' to be a boy, given the opportunity? I don't know for sure". I have to assume you are talking about the hypothetical opportunity to rub a genie's lamp and "hey presto!" you become a boy and that you are not talking about a Heath Robinson medical conversion where you end up a counterfeit boy.

    Nature versus Nurture is crying out for a long-term historical Scandinavian-type trial coupled to multi-variate analysis by DNA, occupation/vocation, single vs mixed schooling, life-style, personality traits, etc etc.

    Meanwhile I keep wondering about showbusiness, theatrics and dancing in particular; do these vocational/social-environmental categories attract males with personalities and aspirations which foster a (latent) homosexuality or do these vocational categories nurture such tendencies. Maybe disentangling cause & effect is of little consequence. Maybe it's a bit of both, where nature gives a guy an inclination in that direction and from there on the guy finds a substantial minority that gives him a safety in numbers and a per group to exercise or even discover within him self those tendencies.

    Could the critical correlation factor that draws one to showbiz be a self-absorption bordering on narcissism? I ask this because self-absorption among young people has been a growing trend linked to our postwar permissive society, bringing with it a self-indulgent irrational pursuit of self-identity fads, including sex-identity projection. As for the transgender journey from gal to guy, it's just a case of a different menu of identity goals or aspirations, eg sports/athletics, military

    I'm becoming out of my depth here, not sure if feminism can morph into female power then into power per se and then into male power and thereupon "changing" into a male.

    Also, after I'm looking at the weblink below I'm starting to question the reasonableness of my own prejudices. Could it be that the pursuit of sex ambiguity is a path to sex equality? Why bother coming to terms with differences if one can blur or remove those differences?

    https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeters…s_contrapoints/

  • II don't care whether the kid cuts his willy off to prove a point. That's his problem and his parents, There are a lot of crazies on the streets these days, from bad parents or parents with bad genes (same difference perhaps) and it might be too late to help the kid get back to my idea of normal (which hopefully is also your idea of normal)

    As to who I propose to quarantine, I'm not sure I understand your question and I'm not sure you understood my comment. When I wrote "With any luck we'll only need about 10 different social/physical space/quarantining categories, maybe 20 if each of the 10 also has a separate subcategory of accessibility for the physically disabled" I can't believe you took that literally? It was a reductio ad absurdum joke.

    I don't speak Latin and I don't share your "humour."

  • I don't speak Latin and I don't share your "humour."

    You think I speak Latin? I abhor people who, when writing to English readers, use French or Latin phrases unnecessarily. But once in a while such words or phrases capture succinctly a meaning in a way that can elude English. So what are we really dealing with here? A chip on your shoulder? Such a big chip that you can't bring yourself to paste it into Google? After Belgium beat Germany in football the Sun headline was "Schadenfreude". If it's good enough for Sun readers, it's good enough for you

    As for humour, you don't need to share it, but if you can't even recognise it, I think that's your problem rather than mine.

  • Rob is in luck. Seems like most gays are scared to hold hands. Well done Rob, you're winning. Party time.

  • Now we have a transgender winning a womans beauty contest. I equate this to athletes using drugs. They should not allow drug users, or those who have had cosmetic surgery, to enter these contests.

    Before anyone accuses me of discrimination, there are beauty competitions for transgenders only.

    Transgender wins Miss Universe!

    The world is becoming stark raving bonkers. Become a minority and nobody will dare deny you anything!

    Mark Twain — 'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

  • Rob is in luck. Seems like most gays are scared to hold hands. Well done Rob, you're winning. Party time.

    Quote from Fidget

    The world is becoming stark raving bonkers.

    To people like me and Fidget the world is becoming bonkers. To people like Hoxton Hockler it's hard to tell what they think, their comment might be demonstrating ultra tolerance, maybe even a repressed inclination to re-engineer their sex identity. Then again, perhaps their comment is meant to be caustic and ironic, seeking to express disapproval of my negativism. There is a third interpretation, which is that the comment is just a vacuous jeer, while at the same time concealing their own viewpoint, maybe not even having a viewpoint.

    Yes, I'm negative about transgenderism because male-female has been a dichotomy since Adam & Eve and the idea of sex identity being a matter of degree rather than binary - with all that this implies about the need for artificial insemination or surrogate motherhood - is not a trend I relish. Still, it might help reduce the birth rate on this overcrowded planet. Presumably the only refugees from the Middle East who would gel with this new transgender scenario would be Muslim gays fleeing for their life, with or without their goollies after being attacked by their fellow countrymen.

    I admit it; I'm too old to bugger about in a transgender world. All of a sudden I feel quite upbeat about mortality.

    At least California Hippies and "flower children" back in the sixties had the excuse of being drugged to their eyeballs.

  • To people like me and Fidget the world is becoming bonkers. To people like Hoxton Hockler it's hard to tell what they think, their comment might be demonstrating ultra tolerance, maybe even a repressed inclination to re-engineer their sex identity. Then again, perhaps their comment is meant to be caustic and ironic, seeking to express disapproval of my negativism. There is a third interpretation, which is that the comment is just a vacuous jeer, while at the same time concealing their own viewpoint, maybe not even having a viewpoint.

    Yes, I'm negative about transgenderism because male-female has been a dichotomy since Adam & Eve and the idea of sex identity being a matter of degree rather than binary - with all that this implies about the need for artificial insemination or surrogate motherhood - is not a trend I relish. Still, it might help reduce the birth rate on this overcrowded planet. Presumably the only refugees from the Middle East who would gel with this new transgender scenario would be Muslim gays fleeing for their life, with or without their goollies after being attacked by their fellow countrymen.

    I admit it; I'm too old to bugger about in a transgender world. All of a sudden I feel quite upbeat about mortality.

    At least California Hippies and "flower children" back in the sixties had the excuse of being drugged to their eyeballs.

    Haha, you took your time but eventually it had to come round to suggesting I wanted to change my gender. I almost thought my powers of prediction had failed me! I'm amazed how people find it so difficult to think beyond their own tiny little world.

  • Haha, you took your time but eventually it had to come round to suggesting I wanted to change my gender. I almost thought my powers of prediction had failed me! I'm amazed how people find it so difficult to think beyond their own tiny little world.

    +'s & -'s of forums

    Main +

    I enjoy on-line forum debates, exchanging points of view, sometimes being influenced, other times exercising influence, and, more often than I should, having a rant about dumb leaders and dumb voters who are sending us down the drain.

    Main -

    What bores me are people who just want to argue for the sake of it, who try to be smart but have nothing interesting to say, no opinions they want to try out for size on others, probably no opinions full stop.

    You clearly fall into the minus category and a sex change isn't going to cure what ails you. I think you should hold out a bit longer until the medical profession discovers how to do personality transplants. Meanwhile, I suggest you get back on your medication.

  • Now we have a transgender winning a womans beauty contest. I equate this to athletes using drugs. They should not allow drug users, or those who have had cosmetic surgery, to enter these contests.

    Before anyone accuses me of discrimination, there are beauty competitions for transgenders only.

    Transgender wins Miss Universe!

    The world is becoming stark raving bonkers. Become a minority and nobody will dare deny you anything!

    Ah yes , Remainers, proves your last point exactly !

  • Good, when someone resorts to daft attempts at personal abuse, like yourself, it means I've won the argument.

    Strange how you get away with it and I get told off just for highlighting another poster's comments. :)

  • I've no idea what post you are referring to Hoxton, but if someone is specifically is told of, their post will be quoted or they'll get a direct notification like this:

    @hoxton_hockler 

    I will now post a warning to the thread, for everyone, noone specific to calm down, hopefully you'll notice the difference - clue: look at the colour of the writing.

  • Two personal attacks towards my good self have been left in whereas the point I made that Rob's desire to target homosexuals seems to have been successful has been removed.

    I'm not sure I had those kind of rules in mind!

  • The real problem is The Equality Act 2010. This Act prevents debate and forces people to "believe" things which are simply untrue. Please sign and share my petition to protect freedom of expression

    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/2269…UWJZMD9Lk5CmVGU

    Is that the wording on the petition? I will not sign anything unless I know the detail, but the link you provided just takes me straight to the signature with no further information.

    Mark Twain — 'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

  • Professor Nicholas Matte (university of Toronto) said that there is no such thing as biological sex. I must have missed the scientific revolution that took place since I was a biology student in the 1990's. Whoever "proved" this must have won the Nobel Prize for medicine.

    Does anyone really believe that biological sex does not exist?

  • Professor Nicholas Matte (university of Toronto) said that there is no such thing as biological sex. I must have missed the scientific revolution that took place since I was a biology student in the 1990's. Whoever "proved" this must have won the Nobel Prize for medicine.

    Does anyone really believe that biological sex does not exist?

    Sure, biological sex does exist. But so what? The world is now entering a new phase, where biological reality can be meddled with or fine tuned, where true reality is eclipsed or overridden by perception, image and feelings, with a light smattering of some simple drugs and minor surgery. Science fiction books and films are becoming overtaken by events. The young are pushing back or smashing the boundaries and taking in their stride the kind of changes that sane un-perverted grown-ups might find grotesque or just plain bonkers. Thinking in the short to medium term, climate change could turn out to be the least of our problems. Thank goodness for mortality.

  • Does anyone really believe that biological sex does not exist?

    No. Nature created males and females, and many other methods of procreation, but they are species specific. Anything that wasn't one or the other would fail to breed, without medical or scientific interference.

    I did a little bit of genetic research when I was breeding showdogs, and any recessive genes, or sports, that were a handicap to the future of the species would eventually be bred out of existence (if nature is allowed to prevail) as they wouldn't survive or be capable of breeding offspring with any damaging characteristics. That's why we rarely see albino animals in the wild. They don't survive, unless humans interfere and protect and breed them for the novelty.

    Nature, when allowed to, creates it's own balances, ie. overpopulation leads to starvation and reduced breeding, same with loss of habitat, whereas human interference leads to massive increases in population to the detriment of every other living creature, also is creating people that cannot survive without scientific and medical interference. How many people would actually be alive today if it weren't for drugs, operations, and genetic manipulation? We have become humans who cannot survive 'naturally'. If we bred animals (and we do) to that criteria we would be vilified, and quite right too. There are many breeds of animals that now cannot breed, or survive, naturally, but I suppose they are expendable. Are humans expendable too? A few remote tribes would maybe survive without these scientific and medical 'aids', but the majority would be long gone.

    I just think nature knows best how to create sustainable life and most humans don't care about the long term future of our species. A tricky subject, and fortunately one I won't have to face. I'm hoping and praying that reincarnation does not exist, as I don't want to see, or be part of, the future.

    Mark Twain — 'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

  • No. Nature created males and females, and many other methods of procreation, but they are species specific. Anything that wasn't one or the other would fail to breed, without medical or scientific interference.

    I did a little bit of genetic research when I was breeding showdogs, and any recessive genes, or sports, that were a handicap to the future of the species would eventually be bred out of existence (if nature is allowed to prevail) as they wouldn't survive or be capable of breeding offspring with any damaging characteristics. That's why we rarely see albino animals in the wild. They don't survive, unless humans interfere and protect and breed them for the novelty.

    Nature, when allowed to, creates it's own balances, ie. overpopulation leads to starvation and reduced breeding, same with loss of habitat, whereas human interference leads to massive increases in population to the detriment of every other living creature, also is creating people that cannot survive without scientific and medical interference. How many people would actually be alive today if it weren't for drugs, operations, and genetic manipulation? We have become humans who cannot survive 'naturally'. If we bred animals (and we do) to that criteria we would be vilified, and quite right too. There are many breeds of animals that now cannot breed, or survive, naturally, but I suppose they are expendable. Are humans expendable too? A few remote tribes would maybe survive without these scientific and medical 'aids', but the majority would be long gone.

    I just think nature knows best how to create sustainable life and most humans don't care about the long term future of our species. A tricky subject, and fortunately one I won't have to face. I'm hoping and praying that reincarnation does not exist, as I don't want to see, or be part of, the future.

    Granted, nature created males and females which are species specific. But nature also created what Darwin described as evolution and there is no reason it can’t also apply to humans, where we have evolved by human-made scientific developments or interventions rather than merely through Darwin’s natural survival of the fittest. A caveman invents the wheel, a bird invents a nest, a human invents drugs to live longer and fine-tune their sexual self-identity to create a human-made new sub-species.

    You may well be right that the natural world would be better off without humans to dominate it. I don’t know about you but I have a short-term vested interest in not testing that prediction. Whether you or I like it or not, it’s a world which belongs to humans through force of nature. The trouble is that us humans are dumping on our own doorstep and force of nature offers no guarantee of survival and certainly has no natural reason to arrest our tendency to self-destruction*.

    Let’s get really brutal here: if we respect the animal kingdom, we must surely also respect their evolution and survival of the fittest. In which case, if we humans in the First World believe we belong, deserve and are capable of remaining top dog, shouldn’t we be better at ensuring our own survival? In which case, how do we reconcile that "reason for being" with propping up or rescuing Third World countries containing a species of human kind inherently unable, unsuitable and undeserving to survive? Has our evolution to First World Top Dog made us soft-headed, suicidally stupid, with the brain or temperament of wildebeests and lemmings, rather than like other animals who stay alive by building borders, burrows, dams, nests, mounds, beehives, camouflage or escape routes?

    Among other reasons, I ask this because of the consequence of letting in an endless unfiltered number of Islamic immigrants under the woolly defined flag of multi-cultural-ism. It is already evident that through religious intent, a higher birth rate, deliberate terrorism or unthinking savagery, they will become the dominant species and our own muddled thinking will give us the survival prospect of lemmings or wildebeest.

    So if you’re worried about a hellishly Groundhog Day reincarnation and would hope to end up in a world inhabited solely by animals, but want to be among survivor animals, pray to be a Lion or, if you have animalistic political ambitions, perhaps a snake in the grass.

    * Or as Sara Teasdale (1884 to 1933) would put it ….

    There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

    And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

    And frogs in the pools singing at night,

    And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

    Robins will wear their feathery fire

    Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

    And not one will know of the war, not one

    Will care at last when it is done.

    Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

    If mankind perished utterly;

    and Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

    Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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