What you said

that you don't feel threatened by things that are having a negative effect on other women — Andrew4Handel

No. What I replied to your fear of the "erasure" of women due to the breakdown of stereotypes was that I don't feel threatened with erasure.

and that your personal perception should apparently guide legislation not the obvious flaws in an ideology. — Andrew4Handel

No again. You said that.

Whatever your personal feelings are regarding stereotypes, I can't relate to legislation or ideology or whatever. I'm tired of chasing your arguments all around the mulberry bush. You win.

Women have been raped by men identifying as women in prisons and women's shelters but you don't feel threatened so that's Okay. — Andrew4Handel

And that relates to

What is being called the breaking down of stereotypes is becoming the erasure of women. — Andrew4Handel

How exactly?

That's only because i don't understand how I can be outside of something, not know it's fabricated and also escape it. Guess I just don't get how "the matrix" works. So, better not put me down as either; just write me off as N/A.

I don't see why we need to escape gender stereotypes. — Andrew4Handel

That is a problem!

It is fact that there are far fewer women in prisons and committing violent crime. — Andrew4Handel

And there are many reasons for that besides genetics.

What is being called the breaking down of stereotypes is becoming the erasure of women. — Andrew4Handel

As a woman, I don't feel threatened. You should take a poll, which cis gender is more opposed to dismantling stereotypes.

So you don't know what a trans right is but are advocating for it anyway? — Andrew4Handel

Yup, if it makes you happy to put it that way.

And can you not see how rights can clash with each other? — Andrew4Handel

Indeed, some do, and in order to be fair (which no society actually is, BTW) it would be necessary to reconcile such conflicts. But forbidding things is easier than solving problems, so that's how the legal code usually works.

For a basic example the right to play music in your house and the right for your neighbours to live in peace and quite.

These things can lead to compromises but sometimes they cannot. — Andrew4Handel

That one certainly can! And there are even some helpful technologies.
So, what, precisely, can't be reconciled with acceptance of non-stereotype gender identities?

Fair enough but that's beside my point. — TheMadMan

What is the point? If I don't know there is a choice, how do I define "rational option"?

I'll take that as a 'yes' to the title question. — TheMadMan

If you like. It seems arbitrary.

Of course society will always change, that doesn't mean we have to passively accept any specific change. We cna instead replace it with a different change. — Isaac

That's what people invariably do.

Given this, we can still argue sensibly that some change is bad and ought be resisted. — Isaac

Of course, it always is. But society still won't remain unchanged, so you who resist a specific change must still decide on:
a proposal for the healthier, more beneficial, more ethical direction in which you want some unnamed factions or agents to steer the issue.

Would you still chose to escape it? — TheMadMan

If I didn't know it was fabricated, on what basis would I decide whether to escape it? It's not rational to escape from a satisfactory environment.

For starters, men should be able to wear dresses instead of boring suits. — Benkei

Nobody should ever have to wear a suit! (or high heels)

You argued that societal change had no ethical component because it's going to happen anyway. — Isaac

Not exactly. I said it had lots of components, the ethics of which are interpreted differently by each faction. There is no objective societal ethic to use as a standard.

(there exist arguments about whether the change is 'right' or 'wrong'), — Isaac

Always. Sometimes one faction wins a round, sometimes another. God refuses to decide, however hard both teams pray.

and it is not going to happen anyway, its driven by our collective actions. — Isaac

You think people will stop driving it sometime? I guess that's possible. Therefore I'll settle for: "So far in recorded history, change has always happened anyway, even though some people have always opposed change on the grounds that it would/might be for the worse."

Whether I present an opinion about how society ought progress has no bearing on the validity of that argument. — Isaac

You're quite right. I was hoping to nudge the thread back on track.

What is a trans right? — Andrew4Handel

Yet to be determined, in many countries. I haven't defined it what advocacy groups demand of their governments and societies. A right, for anybody, is license to perform some activity and access to some share of communal resources under protection of the law. A 21-year-old, in western countries, has a right to buy alcohol; a seventeen-year-old does not. In countries with national health insurance, all citizens and resident aliens have a right to hospital admission for serious illness at public expense, while in countries with no such insurance, nobody has that right; hospital admission must be bought with private funds. So, no, all rights are not uniformly covered under human rights, which are concerned only with freedom from persecution.

Of course it's a bloody ethical consideration. If the change is bad, it's an ethical concern. It's literally what the word 'bad' means. — Isaac

I have yet to hear your proposal for the healthier, more beneficial, more ethical direction in which you want some unnamed factions or agents to steer the issue.

If there are womanly attributes where do they come from? — Andrew4Handel

DNA + social roles, usually. All infants born and raised in a society absorb the society's perception and expectation of these gender roles. When the DNA is ambiguous and a person is assigned to one kind of role, but internally identifies with the other, they have a strong desire to change their external image to their match their internal one. (Usually after a long, failed struggle to change the internal one.)

It took decades for women (half the population) to receive the sort of legal protections that trans folk have achieved in the space of a couple of years. — Isaac

That doesn't make the persons changing gender assignment a politically significant number; that shows how many of their fellow citizens support their right to self-determination. The support is significant, because the small, insignificant number of sufferers has won the sympathy of people who were always comfortable with their own gender.

People, as far as I can can see, are expressing their view that the change is for the worse. — Isaac

Too bad. Change happens. One group wants this, another group doesn't want them to have this, a third group thinks they should have it, a fourth says they could have this but not at our expense, etc, etc. Somebody wins an advantage, at least temporarily, and everyone who loses is disgruntled. The fact that this happens - all the time, over every issue - is not a philosophical or ethical consideration when assessing the citizen's claim to a right or prerogative.

It took decades for women (half the population) to receive the sort of legal protections that trans folk have achieved in the space of a couple of years. — Isaac

You mean, Scotland didn't allow trans folk to vote or manage their own money until recently? Yet, somehow, women now having those rights causes less disruption and strife in society than the long fight to secure the right. So maybe it the disruption and strife over trans rights will cease, once they have secured their rights.

A pronoun is a word that is used in place of another noun. — NOS4A2

In grammar. In identity, however, "I" is known by the infant before it is named, before it knows its species. The only 'other' it knows is "thou", the mother or caregiver - and possible "them" if it has litter-mates.

You seem to class surgery and suicide together, as if they are similar when they are not. — Jack Cummins

Not together - alternative solutions to the problem of chronic hopeless unhappiness. I prefer surgery.

Surgery may be the healthy alternative to suicide for many. — Jack Cummins

Not if they can't afford it.

many who do go back to their natal gender do so on account of the social intolerance which they experience — Jack Cummins

I may have mentioned that.

So how does any of that defeat the argument that this change might be for the worse and we ought steer society in a more healthy direction? — Isaac

In that this change might also be for the better.
I'm not convinced that a "more healthy direction" has been put forward or attempted.
A number of people, though a quite small segment of society, and therefore not politically significant, is desperately unhappy with their assigned gender roles. Psychotherapy, aversion therapy, self-medication and peer bullying has failed to cure them of their unhappiness. So they turn to surgery or suicide.
What's the healthy alternative?

The symbol that has served us the greatest as an identity is the personal name. — NOS4A2

I think it's the personal pronoun. Names only identify from the outside. Pronouns identify from inside as well as in relationships.

Are you suggesting it is impossible for such institutions to change for the worse? — Isaac

No. I am stating that societies, their mores and attitudes change continuously, even though all societies have some members who want no kind of change. It may be for better or worse or better for some and worse for others, or simply different. And of course it is steered: advocacy groups take up one cause or another; they are supported by some portion of society and opposed by another; they are effective and successful or they are defeated and persecuted. Any shift in rulership, economic and power relations bring about change. Some changes are predictable, some are unforeseen; brought on by external or internal pressure, by new knowledge or new circumstances. Society is an organism. Organisms change. It's neither helpful nor harmful - it's life.

So it trumps no right. — NOS4A2

In this, we agree.

No one is arguing gender-surgery ought be forbidden, so the distinction is irrelevant. — Isaac

No-one is arguing that? I'm surprised.

I've already outlined the potential harms, — Isaac

Potential harms to others? Do you mean that attitudes might change? Organizations and social structures might change? They will anyway. Not sure I can see it as harmful.

So out goes drinking ages, drug laws, ages of consent, euthanasia? — Isaac

Good idea! You know those arbitrary lines never worked, right?

We discourage people from doing what they like with their own bodies all the time. — Isaac

There is a distinction between discourage and forbid.

I don't doubt in some neo-liberal utopia we're all free to do exactly what we want without having to consider our affects of others, but here in the real world we ought do exactly that. — Isaac

By all means, do consider how individual decision regarding people's own bodies affect which others. Let us make laws according to an objective benefit/harm analysis.

If a man who feels acutely uncomfortable in the role of a man, because he knows he is meant to be a woman, and decides to have his external appearance altered to match his internal self-image, and he is happy with the result, that's a benefit for her. What is the harm, to whom?
If one such altered person in a hundred later regret their choice, that is his decisions doing harm to herself. Who else being harmed?
If then the 99 others who would benefit from the same alteration are prevented from doing so, just in case they might regret it later, that 99 unhappy people who for the rest of their lives bring little joy to anyone around them. Where is the benefit? (And that's even without asking why that one regretted his choice. Was it perhaps because bigots made her new life difficult?)

The argument that gender affirming surgery is harmful is not cut and dried, but it can't be dismissed by such gross oversimplification as 'it's their body, they can do what they like with it'. — Isaac

That's not precisely what I've been doing. However, that's what the legal position boils down to.
How about: It's their mind. What makes you think, what gives you the skill, where do you get the right, to know it better than they do?
And: Just how, exactly, is it affecting these 'others'?
No disgust doesn't count as grounds to assume guardianship over another adult, and neither does the belief that your morals are better than theirs.

The desire to have a vagina or no arm is just that, a desire. The belief that a man is a woman is just that, a belief. — NOS4A2

And therefore refusal to believe it trumps their right to act on it? Again, on what grounds?

Whether the motivation is physical, social, emotional, delusional or unhealthy, it is the decision of some other person to alter their own body, with the aid of skilled professionals willing to perform the operations.
The perennial 'discussion' is about what what we should allow other people to do with their bodies. Some of us see that as arrogation of power.

Claims of regret are actual irrelevant to the issue of whether the surgeries are ethical and whether people can become the other sex/gender. — Andrew4Handel

Then why are you harping on them?

But you appear to be taking the same stance as you did on assisted suicide. To me one gay man regretting castrating himself through internalised homophobia is one person to many. — Andrew4Handel

Right. So everyone else has to be punished for his mistake. By depriving people of the freedom to choose, you protect them from possible mistakes... and every possibility of self-actualization. like the risk- and happiness-free life of a caged finch.

Disgust is sometimes an appropriate emotion. It can be a sign of rationality, ethical sense and confronting dysfunction and injustice. — Andrew4Handel

It can be anything, including serious emotional dysfunction.

That aside - We're talking about a very, very small portion of the population, which doesn't really affect society in any way, and none of that less than 2% of the population, afaik, has troubled you in any direct way.
So.... what is your problem????

Here is a response to the surgery regret study you linked to: — Andrew4Handel

He has doubts. Doers he have evidence of a higher number? Or a lower one?

enough opium to spend the rest of my days — 180 Proof

PM me the supplier's name.

Yes but girls and women are social constructs and don't really exist we are told. — Andrew4Handel

So? If society can construct women with good qualities, it could construct better men.
This isn't mere jocularity: we really ought to do better by our little boys.

This whole thread was about celebrating women's behaviours and psychology etc and now you seem to have finally realised it. — Andrew4Handel

No, I always knew what makes a good person, a good citizen, a good neighbour. It's good behaviour. Men are capable of it; men demonstrate this every minute of every day in every walk of life in every country.

Wouldn't it be great if it were that simple and we could clear the streets of crime by rearing men to be more like girls. — Andrew4Handel

Finally! An intelligent idea.

That study is highly implausible and has methodological problems. — Andrew4Handel

Of course it is! How could the American Society of Plastic Surgeons compete with Reddit for credibility?

A nuclear war, a 2000 year slog back to full recovery, and then another nuclear war. — Bitter Crank

I'm considering possible scenarios minus the nuclear war. Hoping the political and economic systems will implode before they explode.

Civilization must not be recovered! If it is, our descendants are doomed to repeat the cycle.
I wrote one such novel myself, where they did save technology, but it's only a fanciful pipedream.

Based on this review, there is an extremely low prevalence of regret in transgender patients after GAS. We believe this study corroborates the improvements made in regard to selection criteria for GAS.

A total of 27 studies, pooling 7928 transgender patients who underwent any type of GAS, were included. The pooled prevalence of regret after GAS was 1%

That's a lot of column-inches for very few people.

For those intending to hang on: Don't count on it. — Bitter Crank

I rather think some will. Humans are stubborn. I think there will be roving gangs pillaging the remains of civilization, but also a number of small communities, well isolated and fortunately located, that survive and renew the human endeavour. It will take a very long time, given the devastation they will inherit, and it will be a hard, primitive life. They may even find the caches of knowledge and seeds our last generation stored up for them - unless the others destroy those, too. Whether the next civilization grows on the same pattern as this one, or evolves sustainable organizations, I don't know.

No, it wouldn't because it distracts from the point that this is an irrelevancy. — Benkei

That is a beautifully - one might suspect, artfully - opaque statement.

We know what-all is wrong with faith, magical thinking, wishful thinking. We know what's wonderful about reason, logic, the scientific method. But as to practicalities:
If we look at institutions and compare success-rates, all we have to do is go to any town in North America and count churches and hospitals or clinics.

Stay here; it's the least weather-vulnerable area I know of within reach. We get the odd tornado and blizzard, but no big floods or fires. The neighbourhood is neither dense enough nor rich enough to attract looters, and it's rural enough for local people to understand the importance of co-operation.
Also, we have already disaster-proofed our home as much as our income allows: wood heat, well and septic, solar power, greenhouse - can't think of a safer place to go.
- First aid supplies, including analgesics.
(The pharmacy won't give out extra prescription meds, so we'll have to wean off.)
- Add to pantry of staples: more canned goods, rice, coffee, tea, powdered milk.
- Soap - both hygiene and cleaning products
- Inventory and add to supply of candles and matches.
- Cat kibble in farm-size bags; short rations until they get back in the habit of hunting.
- Extra set of solar batteries and converter.
- Power packs for tools
- Cans of gasoline and stabilizer
- A roll of heavy plastic sheeting.
- More kinds of heirloom seed.

MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. — Andrew4Handel

It would be interesting to know the specific offenses.

This seems true for me.

But could it be illusory? — Andrew4Handel

None of your business! He tells you who he is; you have no reason to doubt his veracity, respect him and accept it.

Are we same person through time or have we changed in many ways without realising it? — Andrew4Handel

You are the same person, undergoing constant change, like everything else in the universe. Your memories run through your life like the string in a bead necklace - if you lose a memory you lose part of your identity. People with Alzheimer's rely increasingly on other to hold their identity for them, to keep sticking detached pieces back on.

The best characteristics of a woman: compassion, forbearance, fortitude, generosity, humour, integrity, loyalty, mindfulness, patience, resourcefulness, truthfulness, understanding.
The best characteristics of a man: compassion, forbearance, fortitude, generosity, humour, integrity, loyalty, mindfulness, patience, resourcefulness, truthfulness, understanding.

Report what progress we've made. — Agent Smith

Consecutively numbered pages 1 thru 8.

Are we making any progress? — Agent Smith

Of one kind. The trouble with dictionaries.....

No, not all definitions define progress as "simply going forward, — Lambert Strether

Hence the word "also", meaning one of several definitions. Meaning, 'progress' does not have to be read as going from less to more or inferior to superior; it canalso indicate the simple unidirectional sequence of events.

and even if they did, the Universe would have no care about earthling(s) definition of it — Lambert Strether

I can think of no reason why it should. Or even learn any language at all.

particularly since it shows many more signs of entropy, not development (even if that use of forward was the one) — Lambert Strether

I sad nothing whatever about 'development'. Nose and toes pointing the same way, one foot before the other, repeat. That's forward progress, whether the destination - known or unknown - is Disneyland or a swamp.

There's a point to Lambert Strether's remark. If I place A, B, C in that particular sequence, one begins to see growth/advancement in the series so arranged i.e. one instinctively feels C > B > A. — Agent Smith

One can also (alternatively, as another possibility) one could see three individual items, or a row of items, or a puzzle, or an encrypted message. The one who does the seeing need not be familiar with this alphabet and so interpret those images as pictograms for a house, a woman and a bundle of laundry. And one could meditate on that until he lost his mind...., I guess.

To progress also means simply to go forward - it doesn't indicate direction or ascent.

I don't follow the value of the path you are trying to trace out here, — universeness

History. Written, oral, artistic depictions, and fossil record. Also the number of human currently alive, the percent of those currently endangered, at risk and marginal; the percentage currently living in luxury beyond the dreams of ancient eastern potentates. The condition of the planet and its non-human inhabitants.

but you continue to demonstrate a strong command of reason, so, I cannot believe you have no confidence left at all, that the human race can create and exist within a very good society that would make the 'human condition,' a very positive experience, — universeness

The human race has had science since before it was human. It has been using science from the very beginning; for about 5 million years. Somewhere in there, they learned to use fire, altered bones, skins, stones, logs and reeds for their purposes and established settled communities. Many of those may have been - there is some evidence that some were - very good societies. Near the present, around 6000 years ago, they invented the wheel, writing and religion. In that 6000 years. with all those ancient tools and a million new ones, they did not create a good society. They created islands of goodness for some fortunate generations of a segment of one society or another, but they're never sustainable.
What will happen in the 50 years that could have happened, and didn't, in the past 6000?

It will take a lot more time to get it right Vera, as I have typed before, on the timescale of the cosmic calendar, 'give us a f****** chance!' — universeness

We are not on the cosmic calendar; we are on the doomsday clock. I'll be out of you way soon enough. But the messes made by science and technology are not going anywhere; their effects are in operation. To believe that this trend will be reversed in the available time requires faith. I have no faith.
I don't say humans being can't make good societies: it is very probable that they have, and that those societies were more durable than the more recent ones. It is possible that a remnant of humanity will start over and do better - but their task will be far more difficult. Our distant ancestors lived on a far more hospitable and generous planet than our descendants will have.