Transgender trends and politics in the US

Was unaware that Iran forced transgender surgery on its LGTBQ population. Hoping this never happens in US.

Interesting that Iran is promoting itself as a medical tourism destination for transgender operations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/middleeast/iran-transgender-surgery.html?unlocked_article_code=1.s08.5Nt1.2GGvYSO-0faq&smid=url-share

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a legendary transgender activist who had been in the movement since Stonewall, died Monday at age 78.

Her death was announced by the House of GG—Griffin-Gracy Retreat and Educational Center, which she founded. She died “in the comfort of her home and surrounded by loved ones in Little Rock, Arkansas,” says a statement from the center. “Her enduring legacy is a testament to her resilience, activism, and dedication to creating safe spaces for Black trans communities and all trans people — we are eternally grateful for Miss Major’s life, her contributions and how deeply she poured into those she loved.”

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The focus on gender as specified on original birth certificates raises a question: what happens when there’s a simple typo on the original birth certificate?

You see, you’re only male or female, and it’s decided on your birth certificate by your birth, unless you’re intersex, in which case you might be surgically assigned as male or female, but it’s ONLY the case if the surgery is when you’re a baby, or I guess in the case that your biology later happens to different than the sex the doctor originally assigned you as, maybe your gender then can change? And we’re not going to discuss XXY and other similar situations because that’s rare and shut up.

What is unusual is that lots of girls play on boys’ teams, because it’s more competitive and makes the girl better at her sport than other girls their age. Very helpful when trying to become elite versus the rest of the girls in the country.

Yep. When my wife was in high school they didn’t have a girl’s soccer team yet so she played on the boy’s team.

It depends. Is the administration of the school a bunch of idiots or are they not? In this case, I think the answer is that they are.

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It’s almost like going after trans people indiscriminately hurts cis people too.

In the obvious studies vein, GA has backtracked on forcing trans inmates to detransition because their medical staff couldn’t keep up with the problems caused by taking hormones away from trans inmates.

How hard is it to just ignore people who don’t affect you?

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That’s where I’d like to be. why would I care about transgender folks?

well, I have to care about transgender folks right now because their freedoms are being infringed. it’s not trans folks I care about, it’s their access to freedoms.

and until that infringement stops, I think most reasonable people need to have their noses in this business.

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Some folks are just disturbingly obsessed with genitals.

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Protecting rights might be sufficient in the legal sphere to protect appropriate public policy. it might be most effective in the political sphere. but in the fully human sphere it is not enough. The goal must be to fully love transgender people (along with all others), to see them as they are, to help them be who they are meant to be, and to recognize this is one of the things that makes life worth living.

i think the difficulty is that you can try to support transgender people out of love, and simply get it wrong. you can think that specific person is confused about who they are. i think this is why the de transition stories are so effective in the political sphere.

i think this will be overcome because love overcomes. it worked with homosexual rights. if we keep trying to see the people we love, eventually we get it right.

there seems to be another reason to be agains trans rights. for some people, it feels like an alien and personal attack on their family. i do not understand why. then transgender people can stop being people. this category of attack scares me much more.

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Human civilizations are built on collective beliefs and norms. Money isn’t real, we just collectively pretend it is.

Since farming we’ve collectively pretended a lot around gender roles. Trans people challenge those collective ilusions and so challenge their power. This leads to push back from those whose power is challenged.

I don’t think the values they are protecting are nearly that old. They want to go back to maybe the 19th century.

They want a particular kind of rational order for society.

Such an order does not have a place for educated elites who control their behavior with scientific concepts they do not understand, tied to moral condemnation they also do not agree with.

I think it is the same anger that was directed against covid masking restrictions. Or against a professional federal bureaucracy that stands against their political will.

I think this is why it really seems to be offensive is the statement that a person can be trans at all (and another reason why the de transition stories are popular.) It is both a scientific, technical statement and also a moral one that, for them, threatens the entire rational order of society.

Thus, the actual impact of trans people on everyday life is not the focus. No wonder i frequently hear different trans writers claim they feel like their existence is threatened.

Oppressing women and controlling thier sexuality is as old as farming. I see most gender roles as a consequence of that desire for men to control women.

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In the United States, laws against gender non-conforming individuals mostly date back to the industrial revolution, when cities started growing rapidly enough that there was critical mass for visible queer subpopulations to be present. And while they were applied to men in drag, my understanding is that lesbians were the primary initial target.

There are certainly books arguing that sexism is the fundamental cause of transphobia, e.g., Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.

If genitals were the driving issue, then trans people who get genital surgery wouldn’t also be discriminated against.

Obsession with genitals is so stupid anyways. I don’t find trans men attractive, not even Elliot Page, because men don’t appeal to me. But I absolutely would date a masc leaning woman who was a breast cancer survivor and had the exact same body parts as most trans men. I think that people who haven’t spent much time around trans people don’t understand how vastly different the 2 scenarios are.

Controlling women requires rigid gender roles and norms. Trans people highlight that that rigidity is an imaginary societal construct, like money, not actually rooted in biology. This threatens men who seek to control women, and women who’ve allowed themselves to be controlled by men.

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I agree, but I think there is much more going on here.

For example, why were republicans repeatedly asking democratic nominees to “define what a woman is”? Why is there this strange obsession with a reduction of gender into sex, and sex into chromosomes that can be scientifically measured with a microscope?

The Romans were the literal patriarchy, but they did not require a rigid dividing line between men and women. Quite the opposite. If they were not careful, men could “accidentally” become more like women and lose social standing.

Another example: as I understand it (though not well), Iran certainly has its own gender roles. But it does not have the same issue with transgender women, at least. I read at one point there was even a concern that gay men might be pressured into transitioning so that their sexual activity would fit into the appropriate “gender role”.

No, I think it is about controlling our understanding of ourselves in a way that removes ambiguity and provides a particular kind of affirmation. And science (or “science” if you prefer) plays a key role in that. Of course gender roles play a part too.