reading this feels like reading correspondence between children, or maybe teenagers - the immaturity comes through strongly

I’m not sure why you continue to talk to them, tbh

Read everything Julia Serano has ever written 😆

EDIT:

1. parents’ rights

Anti-trans legislation removes parental rights - it takes away the right of a parent of trans children to give them gender-affirming care. Checkout this interview with the Arkansas Attorney General about making gender affirming care for minors illegal - this doesn’t support parental rights, it strips rights from parents. See around 2:25 mark, she mentions it’s just about getting a second opinion, Jon Stewart points out the state law doesn’t let you choose, you are forced to not get treatment under criminal penalty.

2. “What is a Woman?”

Ask them if they think the definition “adult human female” is any better, since it essentially just claims gender = sex, a woman has to be female, etc.

If they go for that definition, then show them countless examples of women who are not strictly 100% female, e.g. ask if they saw Alisha Weigel in public, would they think that is a woman? She has XY chromosomes and is a male with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. She looks and lives as a woman, but isn’t an “adult human female” - this definition fails in lots of cases, this is just a great one to get the intuition pump going.

If they just think that Alisha Weigel is “technically” not a woman because she’s not “technically” a female, remind them that nobody knows anyone else’s chromosomes when we call them a woman, nor usually their genitals, nor loads of other information about their biology … and yet we somehow manage to squeeze people into one of two boxes labeled “man” and “woman” anyway - and Alisha Weigel was easily put in that woman box, and if they’re arguing she should be in the “man” box instead, ask whether she should use the men’s restroom, whether she should be treated as a man when considering her risk for breast cancer and so on …

Hopefully this kind of reasoning re-establishes that actually our notion of being a woman is the common sense one, and that the anti-trans definition of a woman requires we violate our eyes and intuition.

3. your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25 [bad science btw.]

Explain that most people have a sense of their gender at an early age, that we don’t question a cis person’s sense of their gender at a young age just because their brain isn’t fully developed, and that most trans people have some knowledge that their gender is wrong from a young age even if they don’t know how to interpret their experience and don’t realize this means they are trans.

Furthermore, gender identity doesn’t change, it seems to form during fetal development, and if someone has a persistent sense of their gender younger than 25 (which all of us do), then there is not much reason scientifically and medically to question that. Finally, we don’t require cis people to wait until 25 to decide they are men or women, what justifies having a special rule for trans people?

There is a cost to forcing trans people to go through the wrong puberty and to wait for crucial gender affirming care, not allowing them to take puberty blockers because they aren’t 25 is insane, it shows a disregard for their life and a willingness to allow a lifetime of suffering and increased likelihood of suicide simply because … what, trans identities are suspicious to cis people? This isn’t controversial in the medical and scientific community, why do you think you know better than nearly every association of scientists and doctors?

4. “why is there a whole pride month?”

Why is there a Black History Month? Besides, why does this matter, pride month doesn’t hurt anyone and it implies homophobia - ask why it matters and see if they can articulate what is wrong with it, I guess.

5. trans regret

Regret rates are extremely low: https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/

Regrets following gender transition are extremely rare and have become even rarer as both surgical techniques and social support have improved. Pooling data from numerous studies demonstrates a regret rate ranging from .3 percent to 3.8 percent. Regrets are most likely to result from a lack of social support after transition or poor surgical outcomes using older techniques.

ah, I can’t see the downvotes to know whether they lost or won 😄

note: some instances like blahaj don’t have downvotes enabled, but maybe that’s fine if the voting is meant to be local to this community’s instance …

huh, well thanks for clarifying 😁

how does 19864 differ from 196? how did the subreddit differ from /r/196?

yeah, I thought the whole point of lemmy was not to centralize everything … it’s nice when things are spread across separate instances, as long as the instances federate

Americans don’t know any better, tbh

this tbh, I can understand how some might think Louis Rossmann is annoying, but for the most part what I notice is that he is a vocal advocate and we are lucky to have him, I’m a fan even if he’s annoying.

reminds me of my biology teacher who before teaching us evolution explained that she is being forced to teach it against her will so we can pass tests, but that she disagrees with it and that we shouldn’t feel pressured to actually believe evolution … this woman was teaching my AP biology class in senior year of high school, and previously had worked in the medical field and retired as a teacher

obviously Christianity was involved

Ah good point, this was like junior or senior year, I guess I thought of them as women.

I bet this person called themselves a Christian.

then how do you explain the y in papaya? checkmate professor

My chemistry teacher didn’t understand why consumers complain about pesticides, since she claimed you could just rinse them off easily (which isn’t entirely accurate). She got cancer shortly after.

My anatomy and physiology teacher told the class he believed the entire Middle East should be nuked, after showing the wikipedia article on Ross Perot and talking about how the country is in decline because Perot lost the presidential election.

He also body shamed women during class, and told women that if they are behind on cooking dinner they can just throw some garlic and onion in a pan and their husbands would smell the good aromas and not know any better.

He also required students to dance and he video recorded every dance, this was not optional and had nothing to do with the curriculum, but it was treated very seriously like an end-of-class thesis. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to worry about what he was doing with those video tapes. This was at the same high school where it turns out one of the coaches was molesting the students.

thank you 😅

deleted by creator

Being a woman is “marked” while being a man is just the default, so anything that strays from the “default” sticks out and it seems reasonable that it requires justification. This goes in reverse in some cases, like the need to refer to someone as a “male nurse” - why do we feel we need to say this? Because the default nurse is assumed to be female.

to save a link, this is the monero address they are requesting funds be sent to: 43uKiuUNUywKMTWmXe1fro5BX7d1zTUdGbmD5uzpBPdKKM1Vb6TPNo5cXmKQcNULJG3KBqPwdNKhf2tuETXU1qA4RwRdc4r

the first person I told was my partner, they reacted with immense relief, happiness, and tears of joy

You have to remember that one of his main constituents are the Reagan neoliberals and right-wing libertarians, so one of his main promises to these constituents is to reduce government. There is no further justification necessary, he is removing government regulation and bureaucracy, which is seen as a win by his constituents.

Reading between the lines, while some right-wing libertarians will claim the whole government is a problem, the movement is funded by the rich and the political focus is pointed more at destroying regulations on corporations that impede irresponsible and unethical methods of profiteering, like the way the CFPB protects consumers from companies that commit fraud.