A lot of transphobic people say things like “Trans people shouldn’t undergo surgeries and hormones to fix what they’re going through!” and what not, but I’ve come to a realization. They’re not saying this out of a genuine desire to help trans people, and I’ve used this “four point method” with every transphobe who says this to catch them using “caring about the well-being of people” as a bad faith op to disguise their pushes for just hating trans people.
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On what basis can you assert that gender dysphoria SHOULD NOT be treated by medical transition?
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By extension, do you know HOW to execute said treatment from a medical professional perspective?
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If no to number 2, circle back to number 1 and question your basis again.
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If yes to number 2, why are you harassing people online about your solutions instead of proposing it to medical communities (which would be infinitely more useful)?
Most transphobes I hit with this are not even able to get past the first question in any rhetorically coherent manner, if at all.
Of course, you act accordingly to how each transphobe answers, but at that point, it’s easy because transphobia isn’t rational. It’s entirely based on emotions and fears.
I emphasize that you’re supposed to use logic to come to a conclusion; not the other way around.
Transphobes just so happen to have already preemptively made a conclusion on trans people on the basis of emotions, but they realize that said conclusion won’t hold up in a genuine case of rhetoric (because of how emotionally charged it is), so they embarrassingly try to attach a logical explanation for their bigotry after the fact of them concluding that being trans is bad, so watch them grasp at straws and argue from incredulity as you ask them these four questions.
😇
just to add, inflammatory people aren’t interested in ‘debate’ and that goes for both sides of an argument. chances are, you have no intention to change your position and neither do they. and that’s fine. but a person should realise that at best, you’re wasting your time. at worst, you’re equipping them with more ways to argue with the next person who may not be as secure as you are. if you’re debating, aim to change the perspectives of onlookers. don’t do it without an audience unless the person you’re talking to is truly discussing in good faith.
it’s still good to learn these things so that you can recognise patterns when people discuss this stuff with you. if someone is discussing trans healthcare and brings up the ‘dangers’ of a medical transition, chances are they’re uneducated and you should move on. or, if there’s an audience you think you can reach, stage the discussion and cater it to them.
approaching these things from a winning/losing perspective can also be damaging to you, let’s try to be healthy in our discussions :p
idk too much, if im being ignorant let me know coooooool
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As a certified pickle lover and a transfem on spiro at that, you better watch yourself.
(I unironically believe in pickle supremacy. They’re the best vegetable, and they belong on everything. Yes, including pizza.)
change your name right now to devil jamie
I unironically believe in pickle supremacy. They’re the best vegetable, and they belong on everything. Yes, including pizza.
I shall die on my feet, rather than live on my knees before your pickled tyranny!
I misread the word “tyranny” there 😳
pickle supremacy!
Life is full of grey areas, not everything has to be a black and white debate. Except how gross pickles are. If you like pickles you are wrong.
It never ceases to amaze me how different people’s senses of taste are.
The worst part is, at least from my experience, even if you avoid the glaring issues with their rationale, even if you try and appeal to their empathy and assert you are a human fucking being that just has different experiences than they do, people will still treat you like subhuman scum. I’ve even had people get hostile with me for committing the crime of being nice to them whilst trans.
Maybe it’s cause I work in a grocery store in a conservative city, but it’s so hard to not have a cynical outlook from all the people lashing out at me just cause I’m a girl who used to be a boy. Like, I’m literally pouring my heart and soul out and being as kind as I can, but these people are too busy being as vile as they can possibly be to recognize any semblance of logical or emotional reason.
Why do we have to fight so fucking hard just to exist? What did we do to deserve this? When can I just exist in fucking peace?
I’m not sure where I saw this life hack, but I’ve heard people suggest responding with something like “I’ll pray for you, seeing as the devil has entered your heart and made you hateful” to short-circuit conservatives.
Because some people have been programmed to hate everyone different from themselves, regardless of actual threat posed.
Why? Some long-dead warlords wanted to more tightly control their tribes, thousands of years ago, so they programmed their tribesmen with this sort of rubbish. Those tribesmen and their descendants then proceeded to spread their programming throughout the world, mostly by murdering anyone who resisted the programming.
They’re not saying this out of a genuine desire to help trans people
Of course they aren’t. They consider trans people to be non-human abominations to be destroyed in the name of their hateful god. All of their pseudo-logic is nothing more than a means to that end.
On what basis can you assert that gender dysphoria SHOULD NOT be treated by medical transition?
“On the basis that God created man and woman, and man shouldn’t undo what God did.” That’s the response - in essence - that you’ll get from most people that assert that a god is real. The more true answer is probably that they’re deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a person that presents as one gender, but isn’t ‘really’ that gender, and they believe that their psychological comfort trumps anyone else’s psychological distress.
Them when Siamese twins get separated (they’re undoing what God did):
It’s funny how “we shouldn’t undo what God did” only applies to women, LGBT people, disabled people, etc. God does things to old men, too, and a lot of money gets spent on undoing those!
God does things to old men, too
Immediately read “ED” to me, but I hope I’m not weird for assuming that. Hehe.
Well I wasn’t going to say it.
But now you mention it, apparently viagra causes more deaths than mifepristone, yet only one of those has old men arguing that it isn’t safe and the FDA approval should be revoked…
“On the basis that God created man and woman, and man shouldn’t undo what God did.”
So, what, do these bigots think trans and intersex people were created by the devil?
Please don’t give them ideas.
My guess–and it’s just a guess–is that they think that people can be persuaded into being gay, or trans, or whatever, through the influence of satan. I don’t know how they rationalize things like intersex conditions, since obvs. that’s a genetic/chromosomal thing, and indicates that god fucked up somewhere.
I honestly think that a ton of it boils down to, “I don’t like this, therefore it must be bad and immoral in some way”.
If they are wearing glasses, God made them nearsighted, so why are they trying to undo what God did? “But nearsightedness is a medical condition” yeah and so is dysphoria
God also created infertile husbands with lazy sperm and tiny urethrae, but that doesn’t stop christians from turkey basting their way into six kids. God also created women with facial and arm pit hair, but that doesn’t stop christian women from getting laser hair removal or their husbands from being conditioned to be grossed out by it.
And on and on and on, not even getting into like, removing cancerous testicles and going on HRT, removing a whole ass uterus and going on HRT… Just talking cosmetic shit here.
Gender affirming care for cis people is and always will be a much bigger industry than it is for trans people. This has nothing to do with logic. Threads and discussions like this are great, but they will only ever be heard and understood by us, not them (this is a grand sweeping generalization, some people can obviously be deradicalized).
Edit: obviously the lazy sperm and tiny urethra thing isn’t cosmetic, I’m dumb, but I don’t feel like rewriting 🤷 you get it
Yes this feels like the real reason but they don’t always have the self-awareness to understand the basis for their opinions and have never had the need to take that deep-dive into questioning why they hold the beliefs they do.
I always just mention my friend Shane. Shane is a cis man. When Shane was 14, he developed gynecomastia, as some cis men do. It made him look like he had boobs. Little boobs, but boobs. That’s all, aside from that it had no risk of any medical issues happening. Shane underwent surgery at the age of 14. It was cosmetic surgery, but he’s a boy and having boobs made him feel bad. No one ever consider that this routine surgery would be a problem, because he was a boy and having boobs made him feel bad. It seems that the only difference between this and ChIlD MuTilAtiOn is that Shane is cis. If Shane had been AFAB, suddenly this would have been extremely concerning to a lot of people. This is because their motives are bullshit, and there’s absolutely nothing they want to ban for trans people that they don’t absolutely accept as long as it’s not for trans people.
It is so ironic that conservatives have no issues with teenagers getting breast augmentation surgery as long as they’re biologically female, but have an issue with trans surgery for ADULTS. Coming from a religion where tattoos or non-ear piercings are expressly forbidden but breast augmentation is a-ok, it’s almost like it’s more about towing the line of what they deem socially acceptable than it is about any concern for people.
While I totally feel for your struggles and wish people would just let you alone and accept you. I have to say your four-point method is also entirely in bad faith. There is almost no way you could have a constructive discussion when you are following these points. If someone doesn’t have the exact medical knowledge you dismiss everything they are saying. And if they possess the medical knowledge you are telling them to shut up anyway and talk to someone else.
I would assume almost exclusively people who deserve that kind of treatment would even start a conversation in a way that would have you resort to these points. So I guess no harm is done but I just wanted to point out that this isn’t some logical argumentation that would change the mind of anyone who is using logic to come to a conclusion.
If you passionately believe that you should be allowed to make medical decisions for someone else instead of their doctor, that you know better than the medical community, you better fucking be able to answer the precise medical reasoning behind it.
My worldview on abortions and transitioning is easy: that’s a personal choice between an individual and their doctor. It doesn’t affect the health of anyone but the person getting the procedure so I, but anyone else, should have a say.
I don’t need in-depth medical knowledge to defend that position. If you’re position is that we should go mucking about in other people’s care, you do need to know the medical particulars for why you believe that or I’m going to judge you hard.
There is a difference between making medical decisions for someone else and having a discussion about voluntary medical procedures. For example, I hope we can all agree that giving children who are aspiring athletes steroids, growth hormones, or other PEDs is not something acceptable. I don’t know if this can be done safely or not but just the potential of abusing this system makes it something that should be discouraged.
And the argument that this is between doctor and patient also falls flat because you can almost always find a doctor willing to work with you. Again, there are tons of doctors involved in giving children performance-enhancing drugs. If you look into plastic surgery you find plenty of licensed real doctors who are willing to perform operations that other doctors would consider harmful or even dangerous. So just because a doctor is agreeing with you, doesn’t mean this is a safe procedure.
The topic of transitioning is very difficult. At the end of the day, I agree with you, it doesn’t impact me at all so let others do as they please. Especially, since for many their mental well-being increases significantly and makes up for any impact the procedure had on their physical health. Any personal attacks are entirely unwarranted and unacceptable. But I think it’s still fair to talk about it, even for people without extensive medical knowledge. Just as we talk about breast implants, botox injections, or height surgery. Just because we as a society might discourage them doesn’t mean they should be unavailable and we certainly shouldn’t harass, attack, or even kill anyone who decides to get them.
We as a society have already said that we don’t allow children to make their own decisions, so any trans-related care falls under that banner and is, like any major medical procedure, already incredibly difficult for minors to get approved for. If you feel that we should be legislating beyond the practices of the medical community and the FDC, then yes that will carry a high bar of medical knowledge I’m going to ask you to have, as you are advocating for knowing better than the field of medicine as a whole.
There are still strict medical guidelines that doctors have to follow, even on an individual level. The story I hear over and over again from trans people is “it was a nightmare getting approval for my care and it took years” not “it was super easy”.
My question will always be: why is trans care special? We already have lots of rules around medical care for children. Why does trans care need to be specifically singled out?
You’re assuming that the intention is to change their minds.
It’s not.
I am not. I am saying that these points work as well against someone who is bringing up arguments in good faith. They will get shut down the same way as someone who doesn’t. These points don’t discern between someone who is transphobic and genuinely concerned.
Fair point, but I usually like to discern those two. I made this post in reference to a forum debate I got into with viciously transphobic 30 to 50 something cisgender conservative men who are outright insulting me on the basis of me being trans. I’m not trying to change their minds. I’m just trying to make them look more foolish than they already make themselves look. I owe no good faith to disrespectful people like that. Their arguments are all emotionally charged and stem from the “trans people are icky” type of shit, so it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
:^)
As I said I fully believe you that most people who fall subject to these points deserve that kind of treatment.
I’ve asked a similar question to one of my friends who came out at transphobic.
Basically, he thinks it’s a mental illness and they need therapy to convince themselves they are in fact the gender that they had at birth and to live their life with that original biological gender.
I tried to explain to him that biology and how the human brain works isn’t a perfect science yet, and that it’s possible for people to develop a brain with different wiring that ends up with someone having the opposite gender in their head.
Even that isn’t enough for him.
Let’s just say we don’t talk much anymore…
Whether or not gender dysphoria is a mental illness means very little. The only known treatment that actually works is to change the body to fit the needs of the mind.
And yeah, that comes with an elevated suicide risk…no doubt due to unrelenting harassment from bigots like your former friend.
Your former friend’s confidence in psychotherapy is severely misplaced, by the way. I’ve been through that (not for gender dysphoria), and calling it unhelpful would be an extreme understatement. That’s why psychiatric medications are so popular—they actually work, if only a little—and that, too, is changing the body to fit the needs of the mind.
Yes. Same.
I sought psychotherapy for depression and it did very little. Never tried meds though because our healthcare system here makes it impossible to get to a psychiatrist, which are the only ones who can prescribe these kinds of meds here.
we don’t talk much anymore…
“much”
Damn! You’re better than I am. I’d tell someone like that who is my “friend” to get as far away from me as possible.
We’ve been friends since we were little kids. We’re around 40 now. We’ve been like brothers. It’s been extremely difficult on me.
I’m so sad.
