BF2S Forums Transgender people are now allowed into the military

Trump Jr looks like he gutted a hobo and had his beard transplanted on.

I am working on a project for the SS Department (Social Studies you weirdos!). I am using new tech to create lessons on LGBT history. I thought this up since the LGBT mandate is new and you need to work on projects in order to have a chance of moving up in the system.

But yes, I will be creating lessons on LGBT history that many other teachers will use. I am the greatest ally in American history. Nobody can ever call me a homophobe ever again.

I strongly support lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. The trans situation is a bit more complicated. I support the government paying for gender reassignment surgery. I will use whatever pronoun or name anyone wants. I came in contact with a kid a few months back who didn't want me to use the name on the list because that is their "dead name". I smiled and said "okay. That's super cool. Have a great rest of your day [new name]." The kid was probably very nervous to speak up to a stranger about their name.

Transgender women playing in women sports is incredibly problematic. I don't know any good solution to the bathroom situation. I have seen guys act like the bathroom police and try to drag a butch lesbian out of the bathroom because they didn't know they were a girl. I am also a bit more cautious about youth gender reassignment. I wonder how many of the kids who want to change genders would instead be happy to live proudly out as a gay person if society didn't make that hard. How many just need some depression medication and less social media. I will acknowledge that being trans is a lot of work and something people wouldn't do on a whim.

That is way more progressive than pig people.

Also the project gives me an opportunity to punch down on red states.

Transgender women playing in women sports is incredibly problematic. I don't know any good solution to the bathroom situation. I have seen guys act like the bathroom police and try to drag a butch lesbian out of the bathroom because they didn't know they were a girl. I am also a bit more cautious about youth gender reassignment. I wonder how many of the kids who want to change genders would instead be happy to live proudly out as a gay person if society didn't make that hard. How many just need some depression medication and less social media. I will acknowledge that being trans is a lot of work and something people wouldn't do on a whim.

Do people really "go trans" in America because it's an "easier path" (lol) than, er, coming out as gay? Is that theory in your program? Aren't their easier ways for a delinquent, other than permanently altering their body, to perv on girls' locker rooms?

I wonder how many movies are there of people coming out as trans vs. coming out as gay? In & Out probably has more of a boomer audience than Boys Don't Cry.

I think dominion of judgment should fall to doctors and psychiatrists, and individuals themselves, and not on moralists flapping their jaws on ten o'clock news. The decline of society, based on a gut feeling, because of the LGBT sandwich and people not going to church. Stay tuned for more jedi prophecies.

Of course, none of this to dismiss women's objection to having a transwoman's wing-wang ostentatiously flapping in the breeze at the local spa in front of their daughters, but these seem like outlying cases to me.

One trans acquaintance (former classmate) who came out did so very reluctantly, almost as if following some regimen set by their psychologist or something. I, who had been a guest at their wedding beforehand (I didn't pry on how that went), rather took it in stride. "Nice to hear from you, glad you're doing ok, still down for Unreal Tournament whenever." They knew me in the Bush years, so wer probably expecting a poor reaction, or had already received several poor reactions. I'm was under the impression that they preferred to leave most of their former social life behind. Rate of message exchange is currently like once every 5 years.

Anyway they had given years of thought to it and at least some of the family had been accepting (and unsurprised), so that's cool I guess.

uziq wrote:

i think that paragraph by macbeth is actually pretty remarkably level headed and fair.

lots of young people are confused and don't know what they 'are' (does anyone at that age? or ever in their lives, in some existential respects? and so on). all that motivates them is a basic body dysmorphia or a sense of not socially fitting in. i would be very surprised indeed if the majority of pre-teens/early teenagers knew decisively whether they are 'trans' or 'gay' (or both). everything is a muddle at that age, even for heterosexual people without major hangups over their gender or sexuality.

Same, but sadly some of that stuff often leads into knee-jerk. One person had second thoughts, let's cancel the whole program.

US right now is a pretty good example of medicine getting sucked into culture war:

- the doctors are part of a vast conspiracy to make you all afraid of the scamdemic so the Democrats can assume dictatorship!
- sex change surgeons are milking America and ruining families. the gay agenda at work!

I really don't know a single trans person in my life and have maybe interacted with one a handful of times. Can't believe the gender identity of <0,01% of the population has become a major political topic and one of the centrepieces in a 'culture war'. I also barely have the energy to spend my days pondering how we as a society can best accomodate people at the absolute cultural fringes, at least not to the point where I believe we should have national whole-of-society debates on the topic.

gay and bisexual people sure, but it's statistically unlikely you personally know transgender people or even interact with them on any semi-regular basis. It's rare to the point that I'd just fall back to a philosophy of 'live and let live', where beyond basic adjustments in national laws where necessary I'd just defer to professionals & local organisations to figure out their own way of working wrt trans people.

The free market will sort it all out.

You, Ken, and Uzique work with white collar types all day. I doubt you get many chances to meet people outside of your professional class.

my entire social life is based around music and the arts. LMAO at the idea i spend my entire time around 'white collar' people. the publishing industry isn't working for the tax revenue service, macbeth. it's arty and bohemian and fosters quite a lot of eccentrics. (there is literally a staff member at my publishing house, in the IT department, who sent an email to send:all in the organisation announcing his transition and requesting to be named a woman's name.)

i have been to tonnes of clubnights, more than i can count, with an element of drag/ballroom/vogue or with a big LGBTQ+ crowd. that's kind of what house music is, or was traditionally. melting pots and 'safe spaces', in the original, pre-culture war sense of the term.

i am pretty willing to bet i've been around some more 'out there' people than you have. i've lived in london, bristol and for short periods in places like berlin. you live in new jersey. you wouldn't survive a fucking weekend in berlin

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-13 10:26:01)

Larssen wrote:

The alternative would be that for some reason national legislators would have to put pen to paper and devise and entrench into law transgender-specific norms and rules to stuff like bathroom rights and gender reassignment treatment.

No thanks. First, that's ridiculous. Second, let the professionals and local people involved decide on a case basis what they want to do with this. The national government is not some national cultural police, with the important caveat that any treatment should not be in violation of existing discrimination laws. Which are for the courts to deal with and create jurisprudence on.

The "local people" are some of the ones who will grab a butch woman by the shoulders and toss her out because they think she's a dude looking to perv on the women's room.

One of many anecdotes:

It was bound to happen, given the wave of anti-trans bathroom bills and accompanying hysteria and propaganda stirred up by conservative organizations and other right-wingers in the United States and Canada.

A cisgender woman — that is, a natal female who identifies as female — was allegedly dragged out of  the women’s washroom in a restaurant by a security guard and thrown into the street because he thought she was a man. According to reports, neither the security guard nor the restaurant’s manager would listen to her when she told them she is female.

The incident allegedly happened in January at Fishbone’s Rhythm Cafe in Detroit to Cortney Bogorad, who has filed a lawsuit against the establishment, reports Advocate.com .

https://montrealgazette.com/life/bathro … men-beware

No thanks to leaving this kind of stuff purely in their capable hands.

How would you feel if one of mac's pigmen punched one of your relatives in the face because they thought she was a dude? And then maybe punched her again after finding out she was a woman because of some triggered sense of insecurity?

berlin is lot crazier than manhattan macbeth. people live incredibly 'alternative' lifestyles. sex clubs, gay clubs, chem-sex parties, etc, are mainstream, not hidden and out the way. you can go to (normal) dance clubs in berlin and there's dark rooms for people to do drugs, have orgies, etc. nobody bats an eyelid.

manhattan maybe had that in the era of paradise garage, warhol/velvet underground, the factory, etc. lmao. let's not pretend manhattan has been that way post-giuliani.

let's not get into a conversation of 'i'm worldy wizened'. you have never been to europe.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-13 10:31:02)

wow! from atlantic city to camden. you sure have seen the world.

comparing manhattan to berlin now, today, just shows how little you know. it's a simple difference of gentrification. manhattan lost all of that 'weirdo originals' scene in the 1990s, at best. there aren't big drag clubs or hippies eking out alternative bohemian lifestyles in the village anymore, macbeth.

berlin, until very recently, was still extremely cheap for rent. it has been an 'artist's city' for this reason for decades. it's shabby-genteel, where manhattan is now, as far as cultural venues and scenes are concerned, 100% genteel. even brooklyn is way more commercialized and expensive than berlin today, where brooklyn-berlin used to be the central axis of arty hipsterdom in the early 2010s.

berlin also has an international reputation as a magnet for, well, freaks and outcasts. because it's known for being a welcoming and nonjudgmental place. it has been this way since the era of fucking wim wenders movies and the new german cinema. it was that way in the weimar era. berlin has always been a freaky little sex-pit -- not a reputation that manhattan has particularly traded on. in fact, haven't recent mayors gone out of their way to clean up times square and shut the sex cinemas and clean the whole place up?

you also need to consider that europeans are way more relaxed and permissive in general. like, waaaaay more relaxed about anything to do with sex or vice. it's a mark of sophistication, even, in some european circles.

silly point anyway. again, my whole social life in my 20s was tracked around underground music scenes and nightlife. lots of extreme environments, a very wide spectrum of characters, lots of drugs and afterparties and norm-bending, anything-goes behaviour. this isn't a brag, but the idea that you're more 'exposed' to the variety of life as a special education teacher in suburban new jersey is LOL.

weren't you literally posting here a few years ago like 'i went to my first ever nightclub the other night, i was high on weed and it was crazy!'

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-13 10:45:47)