Also in the news

[leicsmac]

4 hours ago, doverfox said:

What happened to DAVID DORN is what may have happened to Kyle if he had not shot. We will never know. I think we can agree that crazy things happen at times of tension, 25 deaths in the protests since George Floyd's murder, so much for peaceful protests.

And many, many more people than that, disproportionately people of colour, have died as a result of institutionalised police malpractice, and no one has been held accountable.

 

Changing things by voting hasn't worked.

Petitions haven't worked.

Increasing awareness through social media output hasn't worked.

 

All of these things haven't worked because too many of the people with the power to actually change the system either don't want to put in the effort to do so, or genuinely believe that those same POC deserve what they get from the police.

 

Tearing shit up is probably not a solution either...but what, exactly, can be done to change a system that is so evidently broken for a major demographic in the US? If anyone has a solution, I'm all ears.

[urban.spaceman]

On 19/11/2021 at 21:37, MarshallForEngland said:

He didn't have a handgun as far as I know but did have an AR15 rifle. Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 at the time and therefore legally unable to possess a handgun, but under Wisconsin law was legally able to possess a rifle providing it met some length requirements. 

 

I agree by the way, it is absurd. I find the very idea of guns mental to begin with but the fact that it's legal across the US not just to own one but, in some states, to openly carry one, is almost unbelievable to me. But it's a big part of American culture and the 2nd amendment is taken very seriously. And the rationale behind the amendment is reasonably persuasive. 

I've said it before... America is a fundamentally violent culture, one that was born in defiance of tyranny which has manifested violence and paranoia ever since - their right to own deadly weaponry to protect their property as more important as life itself. It underpins absolutely everything - the cops are armed to the teeth because the general public is also armed to the ****ing teeth.

 

Kyle Rittenhouse was below the age of sexual consent in Wisconsin, was 4 years off being allowed to buy alcohol or cigarettes anywhere in the USA, couldn't legally watch porn... and yet was deemed to be legally in possession of an actual ****ing assault rifle. 

 

Dunblane was enough for us to accept the need for change whereas Sandy Hook only emboldened the desire for even more access to even deadlier weapons in even younger hands.

 

They'll never change. They're lost.

[Countryfox]

All getting a bit confusing now ..  

 

 

 

[leicsmac]

34 minutes ago, Countryfox said:

All getting a bit confusing now ..  

 

 

 

Not particularly confusing.

 

There's a branch of feminists for whom the whole idea of emotional or sexual relationships or association with men (or more specifically, willies) is anathema. It would make sense that they would include trans women in that anathema and so seek to marginalise them further because they believe in the same kind of gender essentialism that a lot of conservatives do.

 

Hence the endorsement from (I assume) the Daily Fail here - which I find amusing since those same lesbians would be pilloried by the Fail when appearing in a newsworthy story under probably every other conceivable circumstance.

 

Oddly enough, this branch don't seem to have that much ire towards trans men, other than viewing them as confused starter lesbians who just need a helping hand on the true way of things. But then, it always seems to be trans women rather than trans men who get the pelters in the public consciousness anyway.

Edited 21 November 2021 by leicsmac

[Parafox]

2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Not particularly confusing.

 

There's a branch of feminists for whom the whole idea of emotional or sexual relationships or association with men (or more specifically, willies) is anathema. It would make sense that they would include trans women in that anathema and so seek to marginalise them further because they believe in the same kind of gender essentialism that a lot of conservatives do.

 

Hence the endorsement from (I assume) the Daily Fail here - which I find amusing since those same lesbians would be pilloried by the Fail when appearing in a newsworthy story under probably every other conceivable circumstance.

 

Oddly enough, this branch don't seem to have that much ire towards trans men, other than viewing them as confused starter lesbians who just need a helping hand on the true way of things. But then, it always seems to be trans women rather than trans men who get the pelters in the public consciousness anyway.

I read your post and it just confused me even further. 

[urban.spaceman]

24 minutes ago, Parafox said:

I read your post and it just confused me even further. 

Typical cisnormative response. 

[Parafox]

3 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

Typical cisnormative response. 

Cisnormative is a coordinate term of heteronormative. of or pertaining to the practices and institutions that legitimize and privilege heterosexuality, heterosexual relationships, and traditional gender roles as fundamental and "natural" within society. (LGBT, neologism) Of or pertaining to cisnormativity.

 

I had to research the word you used and I kind of get it, having read the definition a number of times. However, why do you think it's a "typical response" if I don't understand the original statement.

 

 

[urban.spaceman]

1 hour ago, Parafox said:

Cisnormative is a coordinate term of heteronormative. of or pertaining to the practices and institutions that legitimize and privilege heterosexuality, heterosexual relationships, and traditional gender roles as fundamental and "natural" within society. (LGBT, neologism) Of or pertaining to cisnormativity.

 

I had to research the word you used and I kind of get it, having read the definition a number of times. However, why do you think it's a "typical response" if I don't understand the original statement.

 

 

I was trying to be facetious in a vernacular I don’t fully understand. 
 

Backfired. 

[Wymsey]

Each to their own, I guess..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-47252658

[WigstonWanderer]

6 hours ago, Countryfox said:

All getting a bit confusing now ..  

 

 

 

Why should anybody be pressured into having sex with anyone?

[urban.spaceman]

9 hours ago, Countryfox said:

All getting a bit confusing now ..  

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Why should anybody be pressured into having sex with anyone?

Basically, there’s a lot of things happening here that can be very difficult to understand if you’re not LGBT+, or know anyone who is or aren’t connected to that world in any sort of way. I’m sort of on the periphery of the ‘+’ part (which I won’t go into), and some of my dearest friends are LGB too. I’ll try explain what I understand from the very basic to the complex… This is just opinion so don’t take anything as read or if I offend anyone LGBT+ on here (I know there’s a few on FT), I didn’t mean to. 

 

LGBT+ is generally a term used to describe people who are lesbian, gay, bi, transgender; the + is because there’s a dozen other ‘ways of being’ that are part of the ‘non-straight’ experience such as asexual (having no sexual feelings or desires). When I grew up I remember it just being LGB, and Transgender people generally being referred to as being either transsexual or a cross-dresser - generally derogatorily in mainstream culture. I only ever remember hearing about men who had ‘had a sex change’ to live as women generally in later life. I only remember sex and gender being basically biological terms that describe men and women.

 

In the last 10-15 years I’d say, thanks to better understanding, a slightly less hostile culture and better representation, things have changed. A lot. There’s been a cultural shift - sex and gender are taking on different meanings. Gender is now described as some people as ‘assigned at birth’ by the medical experts who took one look at the baby’s genitals and decided they were male/female.
 

Transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria - the way they experience their gender is at odds with what they were ‘assigned at birth’ with - for example, someone who has lived as a boy and went through puberty as a man, could find their bodies extremely traumatic as they feel more aligned to womanhood. Suicide rates in trans youth is basically off the charts because it’s such a profoundly difficult experience with them and they need access to specialised mental health and medical care such as HRT treatment or testosterone or oestrogen treatment. 
 

And it’s not just male to female - one of my closest and oldest friends (he chose me as the first person to come out to about 20 years ago) married a transgender man a few years ago, who has just delivered their first child. In the last 5 to 10 years there’s been a HUGE shift towards young girls suffering from dysphoria and need to live as a man. At least 4 girls from the D of E group I volunteered for years at suddenly came out as trans.
 

Some people put that down to the profound pressures our culture puts on young girls on how to look, how to behave, how to feel. I only know that for my friends husband, transitioning was a matter of life or death because of his dysphoria, and to see him happily married and with a child is something that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d stayed as a girl.

 

Anyway. 
 

LGBT+ folks are treated as if they’re the same community when many Ls or Gs or Bs or Ts don’t want to be associated with each other and don’t see themselves as having the same struggle. Some feminists want absolutely NOTHING to do with men at all, whatsoever, often for very good reasons. Meanwhile some in the trans community are pushing for ‘self ID’ - basically instead of having to go through the hurdles the authorities put in place to change your sex, such as living as the other sex for 2 years before you can change your birth certificate, ‘self ID’ advocates want to be able to just say they’re the opposite gender and therefore they are. 
 

The problem with this is that the aforementioned feminists who want nothing to do with men, believe that predatory men would just ‘self ID’ as women to get access to hard fought ‘women only’ spaces - women’s prisons, women’s changing rooms, toilets, women’s refuges etc and therefore easy access to generally vulnerable women to abuse. Naturally, trans women don’t like being excluded because they feel that they ARE women. These feminists get referred to as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), generally a derogatory term. They don’t like being treated as if they’re predatory men and just want to be treated as a woman, which is mostly the case when they’ve transitioned. 
 

The problem, and this is what the original post is referring to, is that some predatory men definitely DO ‘self ID’ to get access to women’s spaces. My lesbian friend showed me some of the ‘women’ she’d matched with on lesbian dating apps once, and they clearly were not women or female. I’m taking 5 o clock shadow, massive bulge in a skirt sort of people. There’s many cases of indecent exposure of male bodies in women’s changing rooms, rape convicts transitioning to move into women’s prisons and offending again, etc. There’s even one ‘trans woman’ in Canada who tried to sue a dozen or so intimate waxing services because they catered to only female bodies and didn’t want to wax her big hairy balls (Jessica Yaniv - a raging lunatic). ‘She’ lost, every time. 
 

Things are changing linguistically so fast that a woman who lost her job for saying biological sex exists because that was considered transphobic, won support from JK Rowling who put across the women’s safety argument in a 3000 word essay, saying many times she also supports trans rights. But because she has a contrary position she’s treated like she’s Queen TERF, and the situation is so toxic around it she wasn’t even invited to talk about the 20 year anniversary of the Harry Potter films. This is where there must be distinction drawn between actual trans people and trans activists - the latter of whom aren’t even always trans. Last year on GMB Piers Morgan had a debate between an actual trans woman and a LGBT activist and the trans woman was in full agreement with JK Rowling. 
 

Another problem that self ID is creating is that thanks to activists and some organisations, more and more young people are deciding they’re trans and end up becoming medicalised. As in, some children as young as 3 are being referred to trans treatment clinics and when they’re about to go through puberty, are put on puberty blockers which prevents the natural process from happening. This is still fairly new and there’s a lot of controversy around it, as the looong term effects aren’t really known. Lots of people object to it on other grounds, such as age of consent and the irresponsibility medicalising young people for life. There’s a lot of people “detransitioning”, believing they were given the wrong treatment and were medicalised before natural puberty could take place. Someone won a case recently because she went through ‘top surgery’ (had her breasts removed) based on the treatment she’d been given because of her dysphoria, then later decided to live as a woman again. Her argument was that the charity and clinic had used her vulnerability to make life changing body alterations when she deserved better care. 

 

Where we’re at currently is biological women who just want freedom from biological men, and trans women ( and trans men) who just want to be accepted and live their lives like my mate’s husband is doing, like normal human beings. It’s culturally a huge issue online, where there’s no in between permitted generally, with the extremes being the loudest. Some TRAs (trans rights activists) even go to the extent of saying that genital preferences are transphobic. Work that one out. 
 

Basically, people with gender dysphoria are genuinely vulnerable and really do need help and support.
 

Anyway, I hope I’ve done the subject justice and have been fair as I could be to everyone. Like I said I’m on the periphery of the LGBT+ community and I just wish there was less toxicity around the whole situation.
 

Will happily be corrected on any of it also. 

Edited 22 November 2021 by urban.spaceman

[urban.spaceman]

^cue Rod Hull laugh reaction emoji. 

[urban.spaceman]

Can’t believe after all that writing I didn’t even get into the ****ing pronouns. 

[leicsmac]

6 hours ago, Parafox said:

I read your post and it just confused me even further. 

Damn, sorry about that.

 

In that case, I'd refer folks to @urban.spaceman 's post above which is an excellent primer on the subject.

Edited 22 November 2021 by leicsmac

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, urban.spaceman said:

 

Basically, there’s a lot of things happening here that can be very difficult to understand if you’re not LGBT+, or know anyone who is or aren’t connected to that world in any sort of way. I’m sort of on the periphery of the ‘+’ part (which I won’t go into), and some of my dearest friends are LGB too. I’ll try explain what I understand from the very basic to the complex… This is just opinion so don’t take anything as read or if I offend anyone LGBT+ on here (I know there’s a few on FT), I didn’t mean to. 

 

LGBT+ is generally a term used to describe people who are lesbian, gay, bi, transgender; the + is because there’s a dozen other ‘ways of being’ that are part of the ‘non-straight’ experience such as asexual (having no sexual feelings or desires). When I grew up I remember it just being LGB, and Transgender people generally being referred to as being either transsexual or a cross-dresser - generally derogatorily in mainstream culture. I only ever remember hearing about men who had ‘had a sex change’ to live as women generally in later life. I only remember sex and gender being basically biological terms that describe men and women.

 

In the last 10-15 years I’d say, thanks to better understanding, a slightly less hostile culture and better representation, things have changed. A lot. There’s been a cultural shift - sex and gender are taking on different meanings. Gender is now described as some people as ‘assigned at birth’ by the medical experts who took one look at the baby’s genitals and decided they were male/female.
 

Transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria - the way they experience their gender is at odds with what they were ‘assigned at birth’ with - for example, someone who has lived as a boy and went through puberty as a man, could find their bodies extremely traumatic as they feel more aligned to womanhood. Suicide rates in trans youth is basically off the charts because it’s such a profoundly difficult experience with them and they need access to specialised mental health and medical care such as HRT treatment or testosterone or oestrogen treatment. 
 

And it’s not just male to female - one of my closest and oldest friends (he chose me as the first person to come out to about 20 years ago) married a transgender man a few years ago, who has just delivered their first child. In the last 5 to 10 years there’s been a HUGE shift towards young girls suffering from dysphoria and need to live as a man. At least 4 girls from the D of E group I volunteered for years at suddenly came out as trans.
 

Some people put that down to the profound pressures our culture puts on young girls on how to look, how to behave, how to feel. I only know that for my friends husband, transitioning was a matter of life or death because of his dysphoria, and to see him happily married and with a child is something that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d stayed as a girl.

 

Anyway. 
 

LGBT+ folks are treated as if they’re the same community when many Ls or Gs or Bs or Ts don’t want to be associated with each other and don’t see themselves as having the same struggle. Some feminists want absolutely NOTHING to do with men at all, whatsoever, often for very good reasons. Meanwhile some in the trans community are pushing for ‘self ID’ - basically instead of having to go through the hurdles the authorities put in place to change your sex, such as living as the other sex for 2 years before you can change your birth certificate, ‘self ID’ advocates want to be able to just say they’re the opposite gender and therefore they are. 
 

The problem with this is that the aforementioned feminists who want nothing to do with men, believe that predatory men would just ‘self ID’ as women to get access to hard fought ‘women only’ spaces - women’s prisons, women’s changing rooms, toilets, women’s refuges etc and therefore easy access to generally vulnerable women to abuse. Naturally, trans women don’t like being excluded because they feel that they ARE women. These feminists get referred to as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), generally a derogatory term. They don’t like being treated as if they’re predatory men and just want to be treated as a woman, which is mostly the case when they’ve transitioned. 
 

The problem, and this is what the original post is referring to, is that some predatory men definitely DO ‘self ID’ to get access to women’s spaces. My lesbian friend showed me some of the ‘women’ she’d matched with on lesbian dating apps once, and they clearly were not women or female. I’m taking 5 o clock shadow, massive bulge in a skirt sort of people. There’s many cases of indecent exposure of male bodies in women’s changing rooms, rape convicts transitioning to move into women’s prisons and offending again, etc. There’s even one ‘trans woman’ in Canada who tried to sue a dozen or so intimate waxing services because they catered to only female bodies and didn’t want to wax her big hairy balls (Jessica Yaniv - a raging lunatic). ‘She’ lost, every time. 
 

Things are changing linguistically so fast that a woman who lost her job for saying biological sex exists because that was considered transphobic, won support from JK Rowling who put across the women’s safety argument in a 3000 word essay, saying many times she also supports trans rights. But because she has a contrary position she’s treated like she’s Queen TERF, and the situation is so toxic around it she wasn’t even invited to talk about the 20 year anniversary of the Harry Potter films. This is where there must be distinction drawn between actual trans people and trans activists - the latter of whom aren’t even always trans. Last year on GMB Piers Morgan had a debate between an actual trans woman and a LGBT activist and the trans woman was in full agreement with JK Rowling. 
 

Another problem that self ID is creating is that thanks to activists and some organisations, more and more young people are deciding they’re trans and end up becoming medicalised. As in, some children as young as 3 are being referred to trans treatment clinics and when they’re about to go through puberty, are put on puberty blockers which prevents the natural process from happening. This is still fairly new and there’s a lot of controversy around it, as the looong term effects aren’t really known. Lots of people object to it on other grounds, such as age of consent and the irresponsibility medicalising young people for life. There’s a lot of people “detransitioning”, believing they were given the wrong treatment and were medicalised before natural puberty could take place. Someone won a case recently because she went through ‘top surgery’ (had her breasts removed) based on the treatment she’d been given because of her dysphoria, then later decided to live as a woman again. Her argument was that the charity and clinic had used her vulnerability to make life changing body alterations when she deserved better care. 

 

Where we’re at currently is biological women who just want freedom from biological men, and trans women ( and trans men) who just want to be accepted and live their lives like my mate’s husband is doing, like normal human beings. It’s culturally a huge issue online, where there’s no in between permitted generally, with the extremes being the loudest. Some TRAs (trans rights activists) even go to the extent of saying that genital preferences are transphobic. Work that one out. 
 

Basically, people with gender dysphoria are genuinely vulnerable and really do need help and support.
 

Anyway, I hope I’ve done the subject justice and have been fair as I could be to everyone. Like I said I’m on the periphery of the LGBT+ community and I just wish there was less toxicity around the whole situation.
 

Will happily be corrected on any of it also. 

This is excellent, thank you for taking the time to write it out.

 

I'd just add a couple of things:

 

- The divisions within the LGBT community are quite often based on power and when their particular group gained equal rights or became more socially acceptable. Gay men and many lesbians often have the most power based on this, trans folks are right down at the bottom. "We've got life sorted out for us, let's pull up the drawbridge" and all that. This added vulnerability for trans folks makes things more sensitive.

 

- These divisions are sometimes encouraged and exacerbated by groups and media that dislike all LGBT groups equally, want to see them all marginalised, but choose a more established side for the sake of encouraging the infighting so that they're easier to pick off. This should be taken into account.

 

- People need to parse the difference between trans women and predatory men pretending to be so rather than using predatory men as an excuse to distrust trans women.

 

I do have something of a personal stake in this because I have a few trans friends (men and women), as well as friends within the LGB community who are wholly supportive of them. As urban puts above, all they are looking for is social acceptance. And sometimes they do need to be defended against barbs from people who have much more social power than they do.

[Innovindil]

8 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

It’s culturally a huge issue online, where there’s no in between permitted generally, with the extremes being the loudest.

The irony of it all from someone on the outside looking in is it seems both side are correct. Women deserve to feel safe in their "own" spaces and trans people deserve access to those spaces too. 

 

Trouble is we all know if it gets to the stage of free for all pick your own gender then there will be people who take advantage of that. Just need some big brain to figure out a way to safeguard against them. 

[jgtuk]

10 hours ago, Wymsey said:

Each to their own, I guess..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-47252658

She's actually awesome. A good friend of mine and has done some Taxidermy for me.

This is the latest.

Edited 22 November 2021 by jgtuk
Added pics

[Buce]

8 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

 

Basically, there’s a lot of things happening here that can be very difficult to understand if you’re not LGBT+, or know anyone who is or aren’t connected to that world in any sort of way. I’m sort of on the periphery of the ‘+’ part (which I won’t go into), and some of my dearest friends are LGB too. I’ll try explain what I understand from the very basic to the complex… This is just opinion so don’t take anything as read or if I offend anyone LGBT+ on here (I know there’s a few on FT), I didn’t mean to. 

 

LGBT+ is generally a term used to describe people who are lesbian, gay, bi, transgender; the + is because there’s a dozen other ‘ways of being’ that are part of the ‘non-straight’ experience such as asexual (having no sexual feelings or desires). When I grew up I remember it just being LGB, and Transgender people generally being referred to as being either transsexual or a cross-dresser - generally derogatorily in mainstream culture. I only ever remember hearing about men who had ‘had a sex change’ to live as women generally in later life. I only remember sex and gender being basically biological terms that describe men and women.

 

In the last 10-15 years I’d say, thanks to better understanding, a slightly less hostile culture and better representation, things have changed. A lot. There’s been a cultural shift - sex and gender are taking on different meanings. Gender is now described as some people as ‘assigned at birth’ by the medical experts who took one look at the baby’s genitals and decided they were male/female.
 

Transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria - the way they experience their gender is at odds with what they were ‘assigned at birth’ with - for example, someone who has lived as a boy and went through puberty as a man, could find their bodies extremely traumatic as they feel more aligned to womanhood. Suicide rates in trans youth is basically off the charts because it’s such a profoundly difficult experience with them and they need access to specialised mental health and medical care such as HRT treatment or testosterone or oestrogen treatment. 
 

And it’s not just male to female - one of my closest and oldest friends (he chose me as the first person to come out to about 20 years ago) married a transgender man a few years ago, who has just delivered their first child. In the last 5 to 10 years there’s been a HUGE shift towards young girls suffering from dysphoria and need to live as a man. At least 4 girls from the D of E group I volunteered for years at suddenly came out as trans.
 

Some people put that down to the profound pressures our culture puts on young girls on how to look, how to behave, how to feel. I only know that for my friends husband, transitioning was a matter of life or death because of his dysphoria, and to see him happily married and with a child is something that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d stayed as a girl.

 

Anyway. 
 

LGBT+ folks are treated as if they’re the same community when many Ls or Gs or Bs or Ts don’t want to be associated with each other and don’t see themselves as having the same struggle. Some feminists want absolutely NOTHING to do with men at all, whatsoever, often for very good reasons. Meanwhile some in the trans community are pushing for ‘self ID’ - basically instead of having to go through the hurdles the authorities put in place to change your sex, such as living as the other sex for 2 years before you can change your birth certificate, ‘self ID’ advocates want to be able to just say they’re the opposite gender and therefore they are. 
 

The problem with this is that the aforementioned feminists who want nothing to do with men, believe that predatory men would just ‘self ID’ as women to get access to hard fought ‘women only’ spaces - women’s prisons, women’s changing rooms, toilets, women’s refuges etc and therefore easy access to generally vulnerable women to abuse. Naturally, trans women don’t like being excluded because they feel that they ARE women. These feminists get referred to as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), generally a derogatory term. They don’t like being treated as if they’re predatory men and just want to be treated as a woman, which is mostly the case when they’ve transitioned. 
 

The problem, and this is what the original post is referring to, is that some predatory men definitely DO ‘self ID’ to get access to women’s spaces. My lesbian friend showed me some of the ‘women’ she’d matched with on lesbian dating apps once, and they clearly were not women or female. I’m taking 5 o clock shadow, massive bulge in a skirt sort of people. There’s many cases of indecent exposure of male bodies in women’s changing rooms, rape convicts transitioning to move into women’s prisons and offending again, etc. There’s even one ‘trans woman’ in Canada who tried to sue a dozen or so intimate waxing services because they catered to only female bodies and didn’t want to wax her big hairy balls (Jessica Yaniv - a raging lunatic). ‘She’ lost, every time. 
 

Things are changing linguistically so fast that a woman who lost her job for saying biological sex exists because that was considered transphobic, won support from JK Rowling who put across the women’s safety argument in a 3000 word essay, saying many times she also supports trans rights. But because she has a contrary position she’s treated like she’s Queen TERF, and the situation is so toxic around it she wasn’t even invited to talk about the 20 year anniversary of the Harry Potter films. This is where there must be distinction drawn between actual trans people and trans activists - the latter of whom aren’t even always trans. Last year on GMB Piers Morgan had a debate between an actual trans woman and a LGBT activist and the trans woman was in full agreement with JK Rowling. 
 

Another problem that self ID is creating is that thanks to activists and some organisations, more and more young people are deciding they’re trans and end up becoming medicalised. As in, some children as young as 3 are being referred to trans treatment clinics and when they’re about to go through puberty, are put on puberty blockers which prevents the natural process from happening. This is still fairly new and there’s a lot of controversy around it, as the looong term effects aren’t really known. Lots of people object to it on other grounds, such as age of consent and the irresponsibility medicalising young people for life. There’s a lot of people “detransitioning”, believing they were given the wrong treatment and were medicalised before natural puberty could take place. Someone won a case recently because she went through ‘top surgery’ (had her breasts removed) based on the treatment she’d been given because of her dysphoria, then later decided to live as a woman again. Her argument was that the charity and clinic had used her vulnerability to make life changing body alterations when she deserved better care. 

 

Where we’re at currently is biological women who just want freedom from biological men, and trans women ( and trans men) who just want to be accepted and live their lives like my mate’s husband is doing, like normal human beings. It’s culturally a huge issue online, where there’s no in between permitted generally, with the extremes being the loudest. Some TRAs (trans rights activists) even go to the extent of saying that genital preferences are transphobic. Work that one out. 
 

Basically, people with gender dysphoria are genuinely vulnerable and really do need help and support.
 

Anyway, I hope I’ve done the subject justice and have been fair as I could be to everyone. Like I said I’m on the periphery of the LGBT+ community and I just wish there was less toxicity around the whole situation.
 

Will happily be corrected on any of it also. 

 

 

Thanks for posting this, Spacey; it's very interesting and informative.

 

And thanks also for introducing me to a new word (dysphoria).

[twoleftfeet]

i think we should accept that in this new pic and mix society we can choose which bits of being equall we want. that we can have it all our own way.

 

It can be confusing for some of use with new genders appearing and people changing a friends daughter decided she want to go buy another name but her dad has trouble after 16 years of calling her A to automatically calling her b. As a kid i was often at the end of a list of bobby, geogie, shep before my mum got to my name perhaps it was an early sign of the dementia she would suffer from later in life who knows , perhaps it was the order in which we had caused trouble to her in the past.

[leicsmac]

Kyle Rittenhouse on the Tucker Carlson show:

 

"I'm not a racist person. I support the BLM movement."

 

You know something, I actually believe him, and this is why: on that show, he could have been as mask off racist as he liked and the audience would have lapped it up. Instead, he decides to state a position that he knows is going to piss off a lot of that viewership. I can't think of a legit reason for that other than him telling the truth.

 

Incidentally, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the households of most folks who watch Tucker Carlson when he said that.  The reactions would likely have been entertaining.

[Wymsey]

3 hours ago, jgtuk said:

She's actually awesome. A good friend of mine and has done some Taxidermy for me.

This is the latest.

I slightly take my comment back; and please don't think I'm questioning her personal character.

 

Just personally think that it's a gory/strange hobby to do, collecting dead animals and stuffing them to try and make them look real again.

 

My Mother had a fox like this in a lounge in her old house and, as as nice as it was looking at its final appearance, it just didn't sit right with me having a past-dead animal being stuffed for display.

 

I admit I'm probably in the minority, here.

Edited 22 November 2021 by Wymsey

[Buce]

3 hours ago, jgtuk said:

She's actually awesome. A good friend of mine and has done some Taxidermy for me.

This is the latest.

 

Is that an African Hawk-Eagle?

[jgtuk]

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Is that an African Hawk-Eagle?

No. It's one of our own Welsh Buzzards.

She is a light phase 1st year bird, sadly found by me with a broken neck and wing (dead of course).

[jgtuk]

11 minutes ago, Wymsey said:

I slightly take my comment back; and please don't think I'm questioning her personal character.

 

Just personally think that it's a gory/strange hobby to do, collecting dead animals and stuffing them to try and make them look real again.

 

My Mother had a fox like this in a lounge in her old house and, as as nice as it was looking at its final appearance, it just didn't sit right with me having a past-dead animal being stuffed for display.

 

I admit I'm probably in the minority, here.

Not at all. I abhor hunting and taxidermy is often associated with it so I can understand the feelings evoked by a dead animal.

Syd (the person the paper quoted) is currently a Law student at Nottingham Uni so is not taking commisions now - my Buzzard was one of the last she worked on.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59369492

 

This is pretty awful.