What does that even mean? — Harry Hindu

I think you're pretending not to understand what a trans woman is. It's a guy who is living as a woman, with or without surgical and hormonal modifications to enhance the appearance of femininity.

I think you're pretending not to understand what a trans woman is. — frank

And I think you have drunk the Kool-Aid without questioning.

It's a guy who is living as a woman, — frank

How does one live as a woman if one is a guy?

How does one live as a woman if one is a guy? — Harry Hindu

Why don't you find one and talk to them about it?

You mean you haven't and yet you're speaking for them?

You mean you haven't and yet you speaking for them? — Harry Hindu

No, I don't mean that.

Ok then. We've both spoken to trans-people. The difference is that you simply accepted their claims without question. Do you do that with other extraordinary claims that are made?

The difference is that you simply accepted their claims without question. Do you do that with other extraordinary claims that are made? — Harry Hindu

I usually keep my bullshit to myself.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

I was responding to the physical prowess argument, so your reply misses my point. Though as I said before, on the "exclusive space" topic, IMO if someone has had the surgery, they deserve to enter the exclusive space.

:roll: of course I can agree with all that (just read my recent posts in other political discussions), but that will take generations to accomplish. — Harry Hindu

It also took generations for racial practices to be abolished. . . and discrimination against particular nationalities based on biological nonsense. . . and allow for those of disparate physical ailments to have greater political/legal representation.

Thanks for saying nothing at all and pushing the can down the road. Proactive is the word for the day.

A more immediate solution to the trans problem is to start addressing it as what it is - a delusional disorder. — Harry Hindu

It's a delusional disorder to have mixed sex public or private places?

My work doesn't that have that problem, there are already mixed sex bathrooms which have existed for a while which didn't have this problem, other businesses don't have this problem with regards to hiring, nor is it the case that society at large really has a problem with this either in many other respects.

If anything, society seems to as it already has been moving in direction that, as the melting pot U.S. that it is, one that would be gender neutral for the most part. Unless we are supposed to go back to some comical conservative policing of every person on every bit of clothing, mannerism, figure of speech, hand motion, tone of voice, hair style, relationship style, etc. Making sure they are 'consistent' and 'correct' about their 'gender expression'.

Another step is literally what we've already been doing which is basically plastic and general cosmetic surgery. This already exists, continues to be developed further, and is readily rather available to anyone who desires it for whatever reason barring state/federal specifics on any restrictive medical practices.

___________________________________________________________________________________

This goes beyond the trans issue and I still fail to see a rational solution that someone across the isle or in the middle is able to give which doesn't immediately turn into some comical satirical take that you'd imagine a woke liberal thinks of a conservative solution.

However, the one thing you don't want to do is leave that answer blank because some radical will be happy to fill in that answer for you.

I was responding to the physical prowess argument, so your reply misses my point. — LuckyR

What was your point? What argument is there about physical prowess? It’s a biological fact.

Thanks for saying nothing at all and pushing the can down the road. Proactive is the word for the day. — substantivalism

Why are people so keen to dismantle women’s exclusive places? Why do we need to re engineer bathrooms and changing rooms for a less safe inferior solution? There are social aspects of these places that aren’t factored in. I find the whole mindset dismissive of women.

I usually keep my bullshit to myself. — frank

That wasn't the question. And you didn't keep your bullshit to yourself until I exposed your hypocrisy. Now you, and everyone else that drank the trans-Kool-Aid, is silent. Will you all bring the same tiring arguments back up the next time a Trans thread appears on the forum? Of course you will because it's not about what the truth is to you. It's about acquiring political power in the form of using people with mental disorders as political clubs against your political opponents.

Jumping in very late, here. I do not know what trans means, or what a trans person is. But it does seem plain easy to prove that no trans-man is or can be a man, nor any trans-woman a woman, for the extremely simple reason that a trans-man, If a man, is already a man, and a trans-woman, if a woman, is already a woman. That leaves the alternatives of a trans-man being a woman or neither a man nor a woman, and a trans-woman being a man or neither man nor woman. — tim wood

Confusing, I know. But Frank seems to think that everyone should know what a trans-woman is and what it means for a man to live as a woman, but when pressed on what that means... silence.

All this talk about who can enter which bathroom is irrelevant because if you really have spoken to a trans person then they will tell you that a woman is simply someone that believes they are a woman. So that person with a penis entering the women's bathroom IS a woman and there are no men entering women's bathrooms - ever.

This is what happens when you don't bother asking the right questions when someone makes extraordinary claims because all you are really concerned about is using people as political pawns. They don't care about what trans-gender really means, or else their definitions and explanations would be consistent.

All this talk about pronouns when the same people advocating for calling people by their preferred pronouns as a sign of respect have themselves called people names (bigot, racists, idiot, moron, etc.) that they did not identify as. The hypocrisy is so easy to point out precisely because they are simply repeating the same bullshit they've heard without questioning it themselves. They don't reflect on what is being said because it reinforces what they already believe (the arguments from the left (or right) are always right). This is what happens when you see the world through the prism of politics.

It's about acquiring political power in the form of using people with mental disorders as political clubs against your political opponents. — Harry Hindu

Maybe, but there's nothing you can do about it.

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I agree with a lot of what you said before this, but I wanted to expand on this. Obama's victory was so traumatizing to a large segment of white society that they had to "other" him with outlandish conspiracy theories that many still believe to this day (birtherism) — RogueAI

Hi Rogue,

I see this idea a lot in Democratic Americans, that 'large segments' of white society are overtly racist. I'd love to see some proof of this applying to 'large segments' of people.

I was very familiar with the 'birther' thing - we get a lot more US news than you do Canadian, I would assume, just given the two countries relative power. But to me, it seemed like BS lies from Trump were echoed by the right wing propaganda machinery and some naive / poorly informed people believed them.

There are racists and racism. But 'so traumatizing to a large segment of white society that they had to "other" him' seems a wild, unfalsifiable statement.

Which is partly why Trump got back into office, right? Woke arguments were/are so wildly overstated. I genuinely believe that this tendency on the left is HARMING the very populations they claim to support, and I say this as someone offended by their betrayal of principles I hold dear.

I mean, Democrats couldn't even beat Trump in 2024, when the man was super beatable. That's on Democrats as much as Republicans.

I believe that a lot of whites saw the election of Obama as irrefutable proof that their time as king of the mountain was coming to an end and they went into denial mode — RogueAI

Again, I see this repeated a lot, but NOBODY ALIVE THINKS LIKE THIS.

Even if you reject my capitalization, certainly, white people do not view themselves as 'white people' the way that minority groups might view them or themselves.

I grew up in a small, working class town. Mostly white. I went to the 'country' high school. Lots of pick up trucks in the parking lot. (I moved to Toronto as fast as I could). These people would be Republicans, generally, in the States. I do not recognize what you are talking about in any of the people I know.

We have to monitor who we suspend very carefully or we would get investigated by the justice department (not a danger with Trump in office) and/or lose funding from California. — RogueAI

The desire to not be offensive has certainly destroyed any kind of disciplinary standards in Toronto schools. I think 'wokeness' has done permanent, widespread, severe damage to a lot of children, with discipline being just one of the many ways it has been compromising schools over my 20+ year career.

My female principal banned football because the boys were playing "too rough". That really bugged me. — RogueAI

Have you read "Of Boys and Men" by Richard Reeves? It's great, and he talks about just how devastating that thinking is for boys. Hey, you could show your principal, nothing risky about that right :)

Hi Rogue,

I see this idea a lot in Democratic Americans, that 'large segments' of white society are overtly racist. I'd love to see some proof of this applying to 'large segments' of people. — Jeremy Murray

America itself is a very racist country. We have been since before the Revolutionary War. I said this to another poster (in this thread, I think). In my lifetime, the Mormon Church preached that blacks could not be priests. In my Mom's lifetime, blacks had to ride in the back of the bus, could not go to white schools, and were lynched. Just let that sink in, that in living memory, America was so racist that not only was de facto racism entrenched in society, de jure racism existed too! The state was doing it!

Here's the governor of Alabama:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhze-cPHVtc&t=9s
Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!

As a white person, I have lived among whites all my life and have heard how we talk when it's just white people in the room. Many years ago, I was going out to lunch with my partner teacher, and he saw a pregnant black woman and he fantasized about running her over. One of his dreams in life was for a black person to break into his house so he could legally shoot him. In 2016, this guy got MAGA in a big way.

I don't want this to turn into a MAGA diatribe, so I'll just give three examples of Trump&Co being totally racist:
- Charlottesville, when Trump said there were fine people on both sides.
- Darren Beattie was appointed undersecretary to the state department after he tweeted this:
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men."
- Our current immigration policy where white Afrikaners are welcomed as refugees while Abrego Garcia was mistakenly sent to an El Salvoradorean prison (the Trump Administration admitted it was a mistake), and they won't bring him back.

Even if you reject my capitalization, certainly, white people do not view themselves as 'white people' the way that minority groups might view them or themselves. — Jeremy Murray

I wish it were true. Have you heard of the "Great Replacement"? This is the belief by right-wing whites that the white race is going to be literally fucked out of existence and replaced by minorities because we're not having enough kids.

Chris Rock has a great routine how invested white people are in their whiteness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJmvfbDdhFg
"There's not a white man in this room who would change places with me, AND I'M RICH!"

"There's not a white man in this room who would change places with me, AND I'M RICH!" — RogueAI

If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters. You're talking about the way people think. They can think whatever they like.

If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters. — frank

Of course. Black women don't have it hard in this country cause Oprah!

Of course. Black women don't have it hard in this country cause Oprah! — RogueAI

I didn't comment on how hard life is for anyone. Everyone has challenges. Everyone has advantages. A lot of things come down to mindset.

I didn't comment on how hard life is for anyone. Everyone has challenges. Everyone has advantages. A lot of things come down to mindset. — frank

When you said "If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters." I take that to mean "if a black man can get rich in America, it's not REAL racism. It's "racism", but it's not actually hurting anyone."

If you didn't mean that, what did you mean?

When you said "If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters." I take that to mean "if a black man can get rich in America, it's not REAL racism. It's "racism", but it's not actually hurting anyone."

If you didn't mean that, what did you mean? — RogueAI

The racism that matters is stuff like red-lining. If a particular white person doesn't like blacks, but this doesn't impact my ability to own property, I don't see it as a kind of racism that makes any difference to me. People can think whatever they like.

Maybe, but there's nothing you can do about it. — frank

What I'm doing about it is exposing the hypocrisy and motivations of the extreme left for open minds to see. It was only a few years ago that even questioning trans-genderism would get you banned or canceled. I was one of the few going against the grain here on this forum. Now you have many Democrats calling out the trans-movement as hurting the party. The needle is moving.

Ok. I think you're going a little too far, though. There's room on the planet for people who become trans. There's no reason to squash them. Just let them be. The woke bullshit will stabilize itself over time.

Ok. I think you're going a little too far, though. There's room on the planet for people who become trans. There's no reason to squash them. Just let them be. The woke bullshit will stabilize itself over time. — frank

I never said there isn't room on the planet for anyone, nor am I trying to squash anyone. My whole point when it comes to politics - if you've read any posts of mine recently in political discussions - is live and let live. The problem is that the trans-movement is not letting others live by petitioning the government to affirm their delusions. Have you been consistent in informing atheists that there is room on the planet for Christians and the atheists should not squash the Christians? I'm not a Christian. I'm an atheist. The difference is that I'm consistent in my rejection of all delusions and those that want government to affirm their delusions.

Have you been consistent in informing atheists that there is room on the planet for Christians and the atheists should not squash the Christians? — Harry Hindu

Both Christians and atheists are protected by the first amendment. People can be as deluded as they want to be. It's none of your business.

The difference is that I'm consistent in my rejection of all delusions and those that want government to affirm their delusions. — Harry Hindu

For the most part, the support the LGBTQ community is getting is about capitalism. Companies want to virtue signal. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop them. Have you not received diversity education from your employer?

Morning,

I appreciate these thoughtful replies! I've been a depressed hermit for a few years now, and I am therefore rusty as I attempt to communicate with people and the world again, and I am already afraid I have written too much ...

Feel to free to skip it/parts of it, I've been working on some of these ideas for a while now in my personal writing, and got on a roll. Course, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

And, I want to be as respectful as possible in disagreeing with you as a 'privileged' white male in Toronto or simply as a human being.

I think "America is a racist country" is more of a meme, in the Richard Dawkins sense. And this meme has been weaponized in the hands of awful narcissists, while at the same time a collision of communication technologies monetized groupthink. It works the same way on the right, for sure, MAGA, as intentionally vague as 'racist country'.

The unknowable, hidden enemy can be anyone, can serve any purpose in the hands of the loudest of the voices found.

Because by all the best data, America is demonstratively much less racist than it has ever been, although the past five years are going to be hard to measure and parse, and it takes time to do social science like that. So, there is a lag-time in the data, but the best data continues to show all sorts of agreed-upon-across-the-spectrum demographic positives.

It's only the framing of the issue, not the data, that asserts the unique 'racism' of America. Since there is no data aside from outcomes-based data that 'proves' racism - we cannot 'prove' anything, scientifically, about any ideologies, we are left to make a best-case argument. Again, the woke are ahead of the curve, deconstructing objectivity, 'decolonizing' education (the irony. We are literally colonizing the minds of our students with this dogma).

Now all the best arguments against the woke are simply proof that the woke are correct, with devastating consequences for anyone who wishes to reference, say, philosophy, quality data, or anyone even speaking 'out of place' by opining on gender as a male, etc.

Coleman Hughes calls your statement and others of their ilk "The Myth of no Progress". I could rattle off a dozen sources though, that I've read in the past year (hermits have time for reading), from across the political spectrum, who see this meme (however they express this idea) as toxic, for everyone, for white people and for all the people it is supposed to help.

Heck, I could name a dozen black authors off the top of my head, if you include academic essays and such, who authoritatively denounce woke thought from across the political spectrum as illiberal, harmful, patronizing, racist, proven ineffective, etc, etc ... depends on the author. The acrimony towards woke is the common denominator. And this level of discourse, across the spectrum, a lateral discourse, with this much forceful argument is generally ahead of the curve on social trends.

The myth of no progress diminishes the real suffering of people who lived under Jim Crow, suggesting that their suffering is the same as those today. It breeds discouragement, resentment, an 'external locus of responsibility', that is robustly associated with poor mental health outcomes in psychology.

And yet, for me to seek out black perspectives on race that run contrary to woke narratives is racist by definition. I could get cancelled, easily, were I to return to the classroom, simply for sharing my GoodReads reviews.

Have you heard of the "Great Replacement"? This is the belief by right-wing whites that the white race is going to be literally fucked out of existence and replaced by minorities because we're not having enough kids. — RogueAI

Man, I know some of these people personally. Some are friends. It doesn't mean the same thing to the guys I know as it seems to mean to you.

First time I heard that spoken was over a decade ago, easily. From a guy whose been a friend since high school. The first smart MAGA type I ever encountered, even though there are differences here in Canada, the core beliefs and values of these new conservative types tend to be the same.

It sounded super creepy to me right away, but then I looked into it, and yeah, this is just a stupid conspiracy theory propped up by a few legitimate arguments and data points, a really stupid way to talk about immigration. I would posit that this is sort of an inevitable outcome of a society that is failing to even teach reading, but is unfailing in teaching dogma that casts these kinds of people as 'deplorables'.

That paranoid conspiratorial thinking was sweeping through the right back then for sure though, that language. The collision of social media and the smartphone in 2014 swept up both tribes, exaggerating outrage via algorithm. Society is no longer able to keep up with sourcing good information as our tech advances far outrun our cultural adaptations. Conspiracy theories on both sides is just one outcome.

I was talking to people on Quillette as Jan. 6 was taking place, heterodox types mostly, but the majority of the community seemed to be highly conservative, this new kind of conservative, and I was watching some of these conspiracy theories taking hold in real time. Within days I saw the same talking points around whether or not it was an insurrection coalescing around the same crazy stuff that was baked into the conversation from the beginning on the 6th.

I know conspiracy theories. 'White supremacy' is a conspiracy theory too.

The genius of it is the way is has co-opted morality entirely, despite their own morality being so opaque.

Broadly speaking, MLK was a deontologist. He believed the word of God taught him to understand that humanity is a shared experience, fundamentally. This belief gave power to the mans words and character, his ability to lead.

It appears to me that wokeists are, weirdly, deontological. I think the majority are likely moral relativists, which leads them to a technocratic, neoliberal outsourcing of morality to 'experts' for utilitarian ends. They claim to exist in the same moral tradition as MLK, but their movement and ideology is fundamentally secular, lacking that shared sense of unifying moral purpose embodied by MLK.

But can you point to anyone arguing woke arguments who isn't, by definition, exclusionary? Who doesn't feel of an entirely different category, morally speaking, from MLK? Who inspires you to difficult action through moral force of character?

Thus lacking the moral strength for their arguments, wokists turned to controlling language and education, storytelling and cultural expression. This, along with the beginning of our virtual age in 2014, allowed certain fringey people to gain an extraordinary amount of power fast, by advancing narratives perfectly suited to our shiny new virtual realities.

Wokism and MAGA are two peas in the same neoliberal technocratic dystopia that we now live in ...

(Haha, sorry. I also like to write horror stories as a hobby, and sometimes the existential dread I feel at the state of the world tends to bleed between the two).

Sorry man, this is too long. Overall, to come back to what you are saying, I don't dispute any of those experiences or observations you've shared. That thing about your partner teacher is frightening, appalling. I have never experienced such a naked, hatefully racist thing. Racism and hate of all kinds ARE real.

But this dreadful experience is simply increasingly less and less likely over time, has been for decades. And there will always be assholes. There are mentally ill people prone to racist outbursts. I've known a few. It is their psychosis talking though.

But pouring everybody's worst experiences of hate into one overflowing kiddie pool of prejudice isn't enough to outweigh the data, more and more of which emerges daily, on the failures of woke to accomplish anything at all, really, but division and wasted resources.

Heck, a principle here in Toronto killed himself after getting bullied for disagreeing with a wokist in PD that Canada was 'more racist' than the US. Disagreement with the dogma is killing people, literally.

This belief system, well-intentioned though she and her proponents may be, has had disastrous social consequences across the WEIRD world.

It is not even the best way to deal with the issues it purports to advocate for.

But the best argument, to me, remains that of Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed Jr, who describe woke thought as a means of neoliberal elites presenting themselves as 'moral' by ensuring that the top ten percent of society is representative, thus dodging the need to do anything at all about economic disparity.

MLK himself argued for a movement based on social class, rather than racial essentialism.

The governor of Alabama, Darren Beattie, that dreadful weekend in Charlottesville, this stupid Afrikaner stunt which is obviously just a stunt, this is all a result of a conversation that has been weaponized and monetized by tech elites more powerful than many countries. Freaking Zuckerberg has blocked posting Canadian news for years, for example.

Your examples are of the worst of the worst sort of thinking, nefarious actors, often with agendas completely at odds with their words and actions. They take advantage of the weaknesses and blindspots of conservative, fan the flames of the worst fires, and sometimes it SEEMS like the FOX news talking heads are representative about what actual people think.

But these kind of people simply do not represent ordinary conservatives.

Do you think every woke person is represented by the extreme and seemingly insane fringes of their movement? Of course not.

Just last night I read about a decade-old study finding that exposure to conversations around white privilege lead white people to be more judgemental of poor white people as deserving of their poverty. We are teaching all sorts of people to be suspicious of white men. This seems stupid, given how many of us there are.

These trends I'm describing are sometimes decades old. That Richard Reeves book is new, but when Christina Hoff Sommers wrote about our schools' betrayal of boys twenty years ago, it was old news even then.

And Sommers is still vilified by wokists, despite two more decades of evidence piling up to vindicate her arguments.

Woke is a moral house of cards, and that shit's about to fall down.

If you made it to the end of this, thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

So you're unfamiliar with the height and muscle development advantage in sports that male-to-female transexuals possess? Okay, then let me introduce the issue to you (even though it was a hotly debated concept within this very thread).

Both Christians and atheists are protected by the first amendment. People can be as deluded as they want to be. It's none of your business. — frank

Straw man. I'm not talking about the people that are deluded and keeping their delusion to themselves. If I identified as the reincarnated spirit of Elvis Presley and petitioned government to force people to refer to me as, "The King", to upgrade bathrooms toilets to thrones for the King, or that children must pray to the spirit of the King in school, would I be keeping my delusion to myself?

For the most part, the support the LGBTQ community is getting is about capitalism. Companies want to virtue signal. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop them. Have you not received diversity education from your employer? — frank

No, I haven't. Although, I have worked for myself for a significant portion of my life. Companies are abandoning DEI initiatives. To even implement them in the first place is implying that you weren't treating people fair and equal before your company implemented them. Again, they are assuming the premise that systemic racism exists. We already have laws in the books for discrimination and treating people equally. DEI was a push to give special treatment to certain groups.

So you're unfamiliar with the height and muscle development advantage in sports that male-to-female transexuals possess? Okay, then let me introduce the issue to you (even though it was a hotly debated concept within this very thread). — LuckyR

I think we have our wires crossed. There is no debate because men have significant physical advantages over women.