As Generation Z Comes of Age, America Is Getting Noticeably More LGBT

A new poll says 5.6 percent of Americans identify as gay, bisexual, or transgender.

More Americans than ever are describing themselves as gay, bisexual, or transgender, Gallup reported today in a newly released poll.

The latest estimate, based on interviews during 2020 with 15,000 people over the age of 18, has 5.6 percent of Americans identifying as LGBT. This is a 1.1 percent increase over Gallup's last survey in 2017.

The poll results show an increased willingness to self-identify across all four categories: More people are willing to call themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. As with Gallup's 2017 poll, the new survey data shows younger generations are far more willing to identify as LGBT. Millennials are three times more likely than older generations to identify as LGBT. Gen Z is actually five times more likely to identify as LGBT.

And among those millennials and zoomers, there's a big jump in those who identify as bisexual. Only 1.8 percent of Gen Xers identify as bisexual. A full 11.5 percent of Gen Z adults identify the same way. And there's a much greater number of millennial and Gen Z adults identifying as transgender than previous generations, though it's still a fairly small percentage.

(Gallup)

This should be treated as good news for individual liberty. Resist the urge to see this necessarily as some sort of folly of youth or of the kids trying to be "trendy." While the percentages look big, it still only amounts to a small increase in the total population self-identifying as LGBT.

The reality is that for a significant amount of American history, especially the late 20th century, our culture has treated LGBT people as dangerous or deviant and therefore individuals were encouraged to suppress or just not act on non-heterosexual attractions. There's been an absolutely dramatic shift in acceptance of LGBT people over the past 20 years and so it should not be surprising to see a greater percentage of young adults willing to identify as LGBT.

The increase in the number of LGBT self-identification is a positive result of allowing people to define themselves and their sexual identities absent government pressures forcing them to conform to majority preferences in order to enjoy the same rights granted to everyone else.

Comments

[Joe M]

I hate the name Gen Z. So uncreative. Also puts you in a corner for the next generation coming after that. What will they call it, Generation A Prime?

Also, it's not "Traditionalists", it's the Silent Generation.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

Gen z is planning global genocide so they will be the last generation

[Mother's Lament]

“Some generations pass the torch. Others dunk it in a barrel of water — and then wonder why everything is cold and dark.”

[The Encogitationer]

It can be cold and dark whether the torch is passed or not. If anything, it can get even worse when misery has company.

At least now there is less misery associated with how people swing sexually and Dark Ages thinking on the subject. And at least the torches aren't lighting stakes and bundles of sticks with human beings in the middle.

[DWB]

Yet...

[Enough is enough]

Resist the urge to see this as trendy? Your kidding right, because that’s exactly what it is. Go into any American high school. Talk to youth counselor’s for an idea on just how trendy this is. There is enormous social peer pressure for girls to say they are bi-sexual. The vast majority are not.

[Muzzled Woodchipper]

There’s tremendous social pressure to claim being a lesbian as well.

In my son's small school, his small (middle school) class of 40 (22 girls), more than 1/2 the girls say they are lesbians.

I’d bet money no more than 1 or 2 ever sniff cooter.

[The Encogitationer]

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I've never heard tale of males being pressured to identify as Gay, Bisexual, or Pansexual. In fact, quite the opposite.

[Bluwater]

There is a pretty large element there, though it's not what you are taught. On a macro [societal] basis, you aren't wrong, but on a micro [individual] basis, there isn't a once size fits all answer. Pressure can come from more than one angle.

The pressure is not usually a direct pressure from outside to be LGBT, but one created in a need for acceptance by... someone, anyone. For those who are rejected, ignored, or picked on, identifying as LGBT can open new [even if limited] doors of acceptance by a segment of society, and an "explanation" to themselves and others of their social awkwardness [unacceptance], and emotional and/or physical frailty. While this isn't nearly as big a thing for more mature adults who have learned to deal or compensate for such things, these are pressures that are often catastrophic in teen and preteen years.

There can also be a bubble experience that gets some level of social protection. If you're the geeky quiet straight kid who is picked on, you are told to toughen up but nobody really gives a damn. However, if you suddenly identify as a trans, current social politics, powers that be and at least some of your contemporaries tend to step in to your defense, and at least some of the ordinarily abusive people will leave you alone. Picking on the tranny is not helpful to a bully's cred, and in some places, it is now a hate crime, where picking on the awkward straight guy isn't gonna cause you any trouble.

There can however, be an outside pressure. In years of working with kids, I've seen many who have behavioral or physical traits that are repulsive to the opposite sex, but not to gay peers. It's been enough to convince several of them that they must be gay. Again, acceptance instead of rejection, and an explanation for why all the girls won't look at you.

Yeah, I know the nature folks of the nature vs nurture argument will go nuts over these concepts, though this doesn't actually dispute the nature argument a bit. The concept that any behavior has one and only one cause in all humans forever and always is seriously stupid.

[jgress]

According to this poll almost 90% of Gen Z still identify as straight. Also that females tend more to bisexuality than males is supported by research going back decades.

[D-Pizzle]

It's also supported by late night Cinemax movies about women's prisons.

[raspberrydinners]

One would wonder why you care so much about what high schoolers are claiming their sexuality is.

[Bluwater]

One would wonder why you don't understand the significance of teenagers making life-altering decisions without the emotional, physical or mental capacity to make them.

[Scarbo]

According to my Excel spreadsheet, the generation after "Z" will be Generation AA.

[Jerryskids]

More Americans than ever are describing themselves as gay, bisexual, or transgender, Gallup reported today in a newly released poll.

Yeah, more Americans than ever are identifying themselves as ponies, puppies, and Pontiac Trans Ams, too. They're nuts.

[MatthewSlyfield]

I self identify as a polar bear.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yup. It's an epidemic of mental illness, enhanced by the media actually promoting nutcases as role models.

[retiredfire]

"It’s an epidemic of mental illness, enhanced by the media actually promoting nutcases as role models."
Don't leave out the "education" establishment, which makes the mentally ill standard bearers of normalcy.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Glenn Greenwald did a little more digging into the figures, and found that the vast majority of those who identify as bi-sexual are already in opposite sex relationships. He also found that a lot of women who would have simply called themselves butch lesbians a few years ago or now calling themselves men.

I recall one of our commenters mentioning that his daughter is calling herself "bisexual" at school simply because it's considered fashionable to not be straight, not because she actually finds girls sexually attractive. This is clearly the result of several years of Hollywood making it seem like half the population is gay, when really it's about 3-5%. More Gen-Zers are likely calling themselves "bisexual" for social status. Whether they continue to do so will be dependent on how long LGBTs are considered a protected class.

[GivenABadName]

Some of the increase in bisexual-identification may be due to how much easier the Internet made it to meet potential sex partners. Having to go to bookstores or bars or events to meet people is more work and involves revealing one’s interest publicly. Now someone can be app-sexual and arrange ménage a trois with a few taps. Hence the heterosexual primary relationship, and who knows what else they arrange at home with their phones, and voila, an identity that was more risky and took more work in the past is now available if they choose, perhaps known only to the partners, the survey, and the phone.

[Don't look at me!]

... arrange ménage a trois with a few taps.
Where the hell have I been? Why didn’t someone tell me this?

[Scarbo]

The irony of this is that the story is trying to make the point that people are finally (FINALLY) able to feel free enough to proclaim their true sexual proclivities without fear of judgement.

But as you point out, it is totally NOT OK to be straight (and white, and male, but I digress), so perhaps the data is still skewed by people making choices "under duress", in a fashion.

[The Encogitationer]

If they identify as Pontiac Trans Ams, they'll definitely get the dates down South!

[Inigo Montoya]

In general, I can’t decide if I identify more as a Ferrari or a Ford Fiesta. But on dates, things often end with me identifying as a Tucker Torpedo — if you catch my drift.

[Bluwater]

I'm waiting for the first one to identify as a big damn ass fishing boat with a dock slip on Lake Tahoe, though I'll happily take a woman who just owns one.

[De Oppresso Liber]

Pretty sure the % claiming they are bisexuals will decrease as they get older and the chicks stop making out with each other for attention at bars/parties.

[mad.casual]

Grandpa was called for jury duty in front of a judge that he played golf with (so he wasn't going to be on the jury anyway). When the attorney asked him if he'd lived in town all of his life, he replied "I dunno, I'm not dead yet."

When I read that teenagers are more likely to identify as LGT than geriatrics, it strikes me that given the long arc of their history the geriatrics are probably more authoritatively and objectively correct.

[Kevin Smith]

Came here to post something similar, I knew quite a few "barsexual" girls when I was in college, all but one is strictly hetero now

[JesseAz]

More people are also calling themselves ex military despite not having served.

[R Mac]

Ha!

[Bluwater]

Yep, ask em what command and where they were stationed. Fucks em up every time. I had one tell me something I'd never heard of before, so I asked him if that was under the Massachusetts or Virginia Continental. He said Virginia.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

This should be treated as good news for individual liberty.

It would be great for liberty when it only stops at self-identification.

[Square = Circle]

Reporting from the front lines as I often do, I'm noticing that among the undergrads the culture is starting to shift to "I'm okay with all pronouns - I'm not one of those people who insists on making you use a specific one!"

Since the fellow who told me that literally had a beard, I chose to go with "he/him," and he wasn't offended at all.

I'm encouraged that we've hit peak Woke and the tide is starting to turn.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Not so great for liberty.

Scotland’s hate-crime bill could land Joanna Cherry in the dock
It might soon be an offence to criticise any aspect of transgenderism.

During a meeting of Holyrood’s Justice Committee last week, the justice minister, Humza Yousaf, faced an interesting line of questioning from Labour politician Rhoda Grant: ‘Does the Scottish government believe there are only two sexes or does it think that sex is a spectrum?’

A few years ago such a question might have elicited a chuckle. The idea that there are two sexes, male and female, has been perfectly orthodox since about the beginning of time. Asking if there are, in fact, three, four or a hundred different sexes is akin to asking whether water is wet or dry.

But there was no whiff of humour in the exchange. A grave-faced Yousaf ducked the question, refusing to be drawn on whether men and women are, well, men and women. The fact that he did so is instructive.

In Scotland today, the debate over ‘sex’ and the more abstract term ‘gender’ is about as toxic as it gets. The online world is awash with tribal skirmishes over the meaning of these words and how legislation might retain or alter their meaning. On one side of the debate there are women, keenly aware that many hard-won rights and entitlements are grounded in biological sex. Campaigners for women’s equality, both historical and modern-day, have affirmed conventional definitions of the terms sex and gender.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The bill would usher in a raft of new offences on the ‘stirring up of hatred’, including on the grounds of ‘transgender identity’. It’s unclear what ‘hatred’ means for the purposes of the bill. This is worrying when many activists insist that certain views about the nature of sex are ‘hateful’ and ‘transphobic’ in and of themselves.

Disturbingly, there is currently no free-speech provision in the bill on the issue of transgender identity. Only two free-speech clauses exist, on religion and sexual orientation. The Scottish government has proposed an amendment to allow ‘discussion and criticism’ of transgender identity. But ‘discussion and criticism’ is hardly a proper articulation of free speech, which must include the offensive, the provocative and the heretical.

[Square = Circle]

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this is going away tomorrow, or anything.

I'm just saying that from where I sit, where this is now a full-blown, easily-recognizable trend among Bay Area tweens, to the point where most of the parents are laughing and rolling their eyes now when the next 12-year-old girl announces she's non-binary just after all of her friends did, and where even Woke activists are starting to distance themselves from pronoun-policing, I think we're past the peak.

But since the wave tends to start in CA and move east, I'm guessing that the East Coast and the UK have a few more circles of retardation to sink through before awareness of their absurdity starts to strike them.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Have you read about the scandal in the UK? Where there are a rash of young people who declared themselves non-binary and were hustled into a life-altering medical gender-transformation process, without input from the parents?

[Square = Circle]

I have not - I've been pretty mercilessly busy of late. Do you have a link handy?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Despite a paucity of clinical evidence, the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative has spread from lobby groups through to the general public and even clinical practice. When the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) opened at London’s Tavistock Clinic in 1989, it received two referrals over the course of the year. In 2018-19 it received 2,590 referrals. The role of trans groups, including Mermaids, in the promotion of transition as a cure-all solution for troubled young people, is alleged to have prompted a spate of resignations at GIDS, with 35 staff members leaving between 2016 and 2019. One former clinician told The Times: ‘This experimental treatment is being done not only on children, but very vulnerable children, who have experienced mental-health difficulties, abuse, family trauma, but sometimes those [other factors] just get whitewashed.’ Fear of being accused of ‘transphobia’ and the pressure to affirm the ‘gender identity’ of young patients are reported to have put clinicians in an impossible position. The Times reported, quoting two clinicians who have resigned from the Tavistock, that ‘there was a dark joke among staff that “there would be no gay people left”’.

[Square = Circle]

See, I see in that another case of a lot of people pushing back against an absurd policy that probably few even intended in the first place.

It also smells a lot more European, and British specifically. I think the key line is "Fear of being accused of ‘transphobia’ and the pressure to affirm the ‘gender identity’ of young patients are reported to have put clinicians in an impossible position."

There's political pressure on the clinicians because Prince Harry and Jamila Jameel needed to score some political points, and the British government can be unbelievably callous (from an American perspective) when it's time to "do the right thing" to its citizens. Chin up - we're all in this together.

But my instinct says most Brits are looking at this outcome and saying "this is not right."

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It's not right, but the fact that these medical experiments are going on behind closed doors and being given cover by most of the media makes it no less horrifying.

[Square = Circle]

The "being given cover by the media" part is the most pernicious thing, IMHO, and I think is largely the driver behind some of the more obviously bad things. People like Jameel can virtue signal without having to think about the very real consequences of their virtue signaling, and the front line workers who are being asked by an activist organization to give hormone-therapy to 10-year-olds resign because they sense they will be demonized for refusing.

But this is also how backlashes start. Most people don't really pay attention to any of this. It just tracks as "we shouldn't persecute gay/trans people," since that's how it's presented, and most people are supportive of that perspective.

I also firmly believe that most people don't approve of hormone therapy for pre-pubescent children without parental consent, and aren't up in arms about this merely because they don't know about it yet, it never having been presented as an intended outcome.

[Zeb]

That is the rather disturbing part. Governments are trying to push the most radical form of trangenderism through legislation and policy before science or society in general has a chance to figure out what the hell is going on. It's not going to end well.

[Bluwater]

This really isn't about transgenderism. This is a socio-political exercise in word and thought control. Hell, once you accept that it's morally necessary to change large parts of your language, deny the fundamental structure of human biology and history, lie your ass off to be socially acceptable, they can talk you into doing any damn thing.

[Muzzled Woodchipper]

You needn’t go to the UK to find this type of bullshit. It’s rampant here too.

The employee insisted (both on Twitter and during our interview) that she was reluctant to say anything critical of Planned Parenthood because she believes in its core mission.

“[T]hey still provide vital services for women,” she wrote on Twitter, and anti-abortion activists “will jump at any opportunity to smear them.” But she went on to write: “Having said that, their recent roles in trans activism are abhorrent, and they’re digging their own grave.”

The Planned Parenthood clinic where she worked was located in a small town of roughly 30,000. Abortions were the clinic’s “bread and butter,” something this employee fully supports. But, she noted, “trans identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.”

[...]

According to the employee, based on her recollection, 1-2 new biologically female teen patients seeking testosterone would arrive per day. A few reasonable assumptions and some arithmetic reveal that a shocking percentage of the town’s teen girls came through the clinic over just a few years.

There were no doctors at the clinic where she worked. Nurse practitioners were the professionals with the highest medical training, she said. The clinic employed a gender counselor who had “no actual professional credentials or formal training other than being MtF” (that is, a male-to-female transgender person). Adolescents would come and speak to this gender counselor and Planned Parenthood would then forward the counselor’s “notes to an actual licensed mental health professional somewhere off-site, and rubber stamp approve the patients to begin their transition. This is basically how they circumvented the requirement to speak to an actual counselor,” according to the employee’s Twitter post.

Whether patients received specific treatments—a course of testosterone, say—was decided by the “clinic manager,” with “no prior medical experience” whose prior job was “managing a Wendy’s,” the employee wrote.

Each day, new teen girls would present at the clinic (sometimes with mom). They often arrived in groups of girlfriends, all claiming childhood histories of gender dysphoria and asking to be put on testosterone. Did she believe their testimonies? “I think they were telling what they perceived to be their authentic history to them at the time. Like, I was a 13 year old girl, you know. Everything is very dire, everything needs to be remedied immediately,” she said.

https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/inside-planned-parenthoods-gender

[The Encogitationer]

I, of course, am dead-set against any law punishing people for either real or imputed or imagined "hate speech" or forcing the use of particular speech.

But when it comes to preserving the sex-specific "privileges" and sex-exclusive spaces demanded by Feminists, I hope you'll pardon me if I say "Meh!"

The only male-exclusive "privileges" and male-exclusive spaces allowed (indeed, mandated) anymore are only found in prisons and battlefields.

Why should men or anyone give a damn about whether women can compete against trans-people in playing some bread-and-circuses game that shouldn't even be the object of education and academia in the first place?

And what's wrong with unisex toilets as long as they are built for one?

Single-user unisex bathrooms are the cleanest bathrooms I've ever seen, used or cleaned, precisely because they are so small and not communal! They are both inclusive and at the same time protect privacy and dignity for all! They are far better than the rancid horse-stalls that are Men's rooms and the scenes from a Sam *sniff!* Peckinpah massacre that are Women's rooms!

If I were an architect, every one of my creations would have a whole row of at least two dozen single-user unisex toilets! And I'm not saying "there oughtta be a law." I'm just saying: "It's a better idea and building code enforcers, get the Hell outta my way! The form of a can must always follow it's function!"

If Feminsts really believe in gender equality and equal rights and opportunity, men and transgendered people should be there to help them prove their mettle!

[Bluwater]

Apparently you've never had a daughter play soccer but wants to avoid being mauled by a 220# trans who can't make it in the boys league. And for the same damn reason professional sports doesn't put Anthony Joshua [heavyweight champ] up against Thammanoon Niyomtrong [mini-lightweight champ]. Or the Chicago Bears against the North Chicago High varsity. It's stupid, unnecessary and dangerous. And it's biology. Fuck what you think the feminists want or the lesson you think you're gonna teach them.

As far as your toilet/shower problem, you're going to impose your standard on everyone whether you have a law that says that a given institution must or must not allow the unisex approach or whether you're just going to avoid the question altogether.

[Tony]

What are you worried about? You think you'll be forced to fuck someone you don't want to?

Real radical individual freedom means you probably have to be less wedded to your stupid cultural habits than the average person, not more, but that's why libertarians, who are socially conservative for the most part, can't hack it. They want liberty for themselves, and fuck everyone else's liberty. That's what it's always been about.

[Square = Circle]

What are you worried about? You think you’ll be forced to fuck someone you don’t want to?

I'm going to guess that his worries go more along the lines of what he posted about people actually getting into legal trouble for showing symptoms of having incorrect views about gender.

[Brian]

Some people are worried that their daughters will have to play high school basketball against 220 pound, 7 foot tall girls with Adam’s apples and penises.

It’s harder to win a basketball scholarship like that.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The rise and fall of Stonewall
The charity's embrace of trans rights could well be its undoing.

Bailey is not the only one to have engaged in legal action against Stonewall, thanks to its advocacy of trans rights. A 13-year-old girl took Oxfordshire County Council to the High Court over the Stonewall-backed transgender guidance it offered to schools. The council’s trans-inclusion Toolkit said that children should be allowed to use the changing rooms and toilets of their preferred gender. The schoolgirl’s legal challenge claimed the guidance was unfair and made her feel powerless, which prompted the council to withdraw the toolkit.

Another schoolgirl, aged 14, is taking on the Crown Prosecution Service over its LGBT hate-crime guidance for schools, which was drawn up in partnership with Stonewall, which is hardly a surprise given the CPS is an official Stonewall Champion. The schoolgirl claims that, under the CPS’s LGBT guidance, children could be guilty of a hate crime merely for excluding someone from a friendship group, or ‘not wanting to work with them’.

As John Ford, managing partner at law firm Sinclairslaw, which is representing the girl, explained:

‘Not only does [Stonewall] advocate for legal change; it seeks to embed its values and views of what it thinks the law should be in organisations which subscribe to its Stonewall Champions programme. This enables biological males to access female-only spaces and disciplines those who refuse to accept a person’s gender self-identification.’

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Ahh, being gay, it was nice while it lasted.

In October last year – at around the same time that Garden Court Chambers was given a major diversity-and-inclusion award – Allison’s employers released a statement on Twitter explaining that she would be under investigation. Tweets in support of the LGB Alliance from Allison’s personal Twitter account had drawn the attention of trans activists, who had then alerted Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers.

The LGB Alliance is a growing group of lesbian, gay and bisexual people who feel let down by the approach of the mainstream LGBT organisations like Stonewall. In recent years, without any consultation, Stonewall has redefined the term ‘homosexual’ to mean same ‘gender’ attraction rather than same-sex attraction, so as to be inclusive of those who identify as transgender. But the upshot is that you can fall foul of the Stonewall stasi for objecting to the claim ‘some lesbians have penises’. Naturally, this has come as a surprise to actual lesbians.

[Tony]

The gays and lesbians are feeling the heat same as everyone else.

The trans community is a total mess. There are people whose major life goal is to be able to move around in public without anyone ever noticing they are trans.

Then there are those who want to impose a pansexual ethos on everyone where rejecting someone because of inconsequential things like what's between their legs is considered bigotry.

They have arguments, and they get ugly. This is why I've always insisted that the Acronym people should be considered only loosely allied for shared political goals, not on a unified team in opposition to heterosexuals.

Of course, categories of people tend to be false and unhelpful in the end, so who knows where it will end up. Hopefully not someplace where we're all required to submit ourselves to rape or else be considered bigots.

I demand the right to be sexist and even racist in choice of sexual partner. But of course, don't knock it until you try it.

[Square = Circle]

I would like to take this moment to acknowledge and draw everyone's attention to a rare moment of lucidity from Tony.

[Tony]

Calm down, I'm not giving you permission to be a cunt.

You all thought the same things about gay people not 20 years ago. You'll evolve. Mostly you'll die off and leave culture to the young. It may not survive climate change, but I suspect it will survive the pronoun apocalypse. We've survived much weirder cultures.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

'cunt' is cis-gender affirming language. Comment reported.

[Square = Circle]

I was actually being serious. I agreed with what you said and found honesty in it.

You all thought the same things about gay people not 20 years ago.

20 years ago most of my friends were lesbians (I lived in North Oakland, which is gayer than SF by a fair spell). We would sometimes joke about my being a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

If it weren't for the assumptions you make about people, would you have anything to say at all, one wonders?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, I remember competing at Battlebots on Treasure Island. They hired a lesbian catering company.

First time I ever saw a woman with a goatee. But the food was OK.

[SgtBone]

Tony, all gay people are emotionally damaged people who are seeking the love and validation that they never received from one or both of their parents. This is what I honestly believe. Tell me why I am wrong.

[Tony]

Because that’s a ludicrously reductionist hypothesis.

Most of the gays I know have fine parents. My parents are great.

[Bluwater]

Fine and great are not only relative terms that imply a common standard, they are absurdly general and cannot possibly define the entirety of even a single aspect of parenthood, let alone a comprehensive analysis or specificity in critical areas that can be highly traumatic. Such traumas can also exist far outside the area of the nuclear family and individuals can react in a wide variety of ways, including but not limited to heading down alternative life paths.

FYI, the vast majority of people who were abused and neglected as children think well of their parents.

[Zeb]

Yeah, a good comment that I was glad to read.

[Brian]

“Then there are those who want to impose a pansexual ethos on everyone where rejecting someone because of inconsequential things like what’s between their legs is considered bigotry.”

Some would call that “disinformation.”

You know: like claiming anyone who disagrees with me must be racist.

[Brian]

Hear, hear!

[Square = Circle]

But the upshot is that you can fall foul of the Stonewall stasi for objecting to the claim ‘some lesbians have penises’. Naturally, this has come as a surprise to actual lesbians.

See - I think these things you're pointing to are symptoms that there's growing pushback against this stuff.

I don't think it was that hard to notice that the western center-left picked up the "trans rights" thing the moment gay marriage got accepted way faster than they'd banked on.

The western center-left is bereft of content other than "we stand up for marginalized group x," and when homosexuality went mainstream, suddenly we needed to stand up for trans rights.

But you can't miss that we've gone through "spokespeople for The Trans Community" like tissue paper. Oops! Kailyn Jenner is Republican. Oops! Ru Paul isn't trans. And I forget the name of the one that was trans but wasn't trans enough, or said someone else wasn't trans enough, and who got Natalie Wynn (also trans) almost-cancelled for not unpersoning them fast enough for not being trans in just the right way.

It's clear that these groups like Stonewall (and the DNC) who work with these government agencies want to represent trans people and shoehorn them into the LGB coalition (to the extent that that's even a thing, of which I'm skeptical), but I think that the actual "Trans Community" has rather aggressively asserted that there's no "community" there to speak of, and that this whole thing has been a bit of top-down artifice from the get-go.

This kind of thing can work for a few years among devoted partisans who feel an obligation to believe what their party tells them, but LGBTQ+ "coalition" is already shedding the Ls like crazy over this kind of thing, and they've openly and cheerfully demonized a whole branch of feminism over it.

Which makes perfect sense, BTW - why would there be any kind of natural alliance between lesbians and male-to-female transsexuals?

[Nardz]

I've been pointing out for years - LG&B really have nothing in common with T, nor any intrinsic reason for alliance.
A gay dude is nonetheless a dude. A lesbian chick is nonetheless a chick. The gay dude just has sexual affinity for other dudes. But other than the nature of who he's attracted to, the gay dude is just a regular dude. He isn't intrinsically different than a straight dude. The a-normality is not inherent to the gay dude, it's inherent to his partnerships.
A tranny is a completely different issue. The tranny isn't even in agreement with his/her/its self. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter who the tranny is attracted to because his/her/its identity disorder is intrinsic to his/her/its body and ego.
I've probably butchered my thoughts here, but the basic point is: LGB issues exist in their relation to the outside world, while T issues exist unavoidably within themselves.

[Nardz]

Also - are we going with the biologically determined or choice theory of homosexuality?
I'm inclined to believe it's biologically determined, but either way it raises complications when you throw in the Ts.
Is a biological male who identifies as female but is attracted to females a lesbian or straight?
No idea how you start dealing with that can of worms if you're the Ls or Gs (the Bs should just call themselves hedonists and be done with it).

[Nardz]

And let's say a biologically male but female identifying T doesn't want to change anything about themselves. They have a beard even. If they start hitting on Ls, are the Ls intolerant for rejecting the advances?

[D-Pizzle]

This has come up, and the trans activists have answered "yes."

[Zeb]

Yeah, LGBT made sense when they were all considered sexual deviants by the dominant society. But now that being gay is pretty broadly accepted, it makes very little sense to lump trans in there. There are a lot of conflicts between gay and trans movements. And within the trans movement there are huge contradictions too.

[mad.casual]

You think you’ll be forced to fuck someone you don’t want to?

Do you want to force him to fuck someone he doesn't want to?

Because it seems like an odd thing to bring up. If he'd said "I'm fine with people not brushing their teeth as long as they don't force me to pretend like they've got good dental hygeine." would you have replied "What are you worried about? You think someone is going to force you to brush someone's teeth you don't want to?"

The generous interpretation is that you don't understand. Otherwise, it seems like yet another projection from you.

[Tony]

I'm trying to understand why libertarians think they have an entitlement to other people thinking and saying things only in approved ways.

Freedom means people will do things you are uncomfortable with. If you don't actually like freedom, you should be the one fixing the things you say.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

YOU WILL PARTICIPATE! YOU WILL PARTICIPATE ENTHUSIASTICALLY! LACK OF PARTICIPATION IS UNLIBERTARIAN, AND ANTI FREEDOM!

[Tony]

Define participation, because it really sounds like you're bitching that you have to think about stuff you'd prefer not to think about. And then going on the internet and making sure everyone knows how much you hate thinking about it.

[Nardz]

Tony: if a republican self identifies as good, and you don't refer to that person as good, are you being rude?

[Tony]

I can’t think of when it wouldn’t be rude to call someone evil. The only possible exception is when you’re talking to a Nazi, but good luck getting them to change their Nazi ways by being rude to them. It usually just pisses people off more.

[Nardz]

Lol

[Nardz]

Would you like to try answering the question now?

[Bluwater]

Why the hell are you constantly worried about whether you or others are rude or alternately offended? Seriously, I can't remember the last time I was actually offended by someone else, as nobody else actually has that power over me. Frankly, I think it's hilarious if someone tries to and then is sure they've offended me.

If you're offended, that's a sign of your own emotional weakness. Conversely, if you're speaking honestly and someone doesn't like what you have to say, agree to listen to rational arguments why you are wrong and let them deal with their own emotions.

[mad.casual]

I’m trying to understand why libertarians think they have an entitlement to other people thinking and saying things only in approved ways.

No you aren't. He specifically said he doesn't care what they think or say as long as it doesn't compel him to think or act one way or the other. You're the one that brought up forcing people to have sex.

Freedom means people will do things you are uncomfortable with. If you don’t actually like freedom, you should be the one fixing the things you say.

Stated by the guy who, when someone mentions something about freedom, says, "Are you worried people are going to force you to have sex?"

Seems pretty obvious that you can't conceptualize sex beyond someone else's genitals. It's like discussing personal liberties with Cookie Monster. "You say freedom to eat cookies personal choice, maybe you reconsider meaning of freedom! Nom... nom... nom"

[mad.casual]

Seems pretty obvious that you can’t conceptualize sex beyond someone else’s genitals.

Sex *or freedom* that is.

[Tony]

I just don't know what you think is going to happen. What does being forced to participate mean? Are you planning on crashing a trans wedding and being rude to people?

[soldiermedic76]

Maybe what is happening in the UK, being imprisoned for not toeing the line, as has been pointed out to you already. Or having the outrage mob coming after you for saying biological males shouldn't compete in female only sports, threatening your job and in a growing number of incidents, violence against you.

[Tony]

Violence is wrong, and it’s highly unlikely that it will be permitted by a government for this purpose. Especially not the hillbilly state governments where the most concerned live, and from where trans people tend to flee anyway.

But if you’re bitching about your culture punishing you for not behaving correctly, welcome the fuck to living in a culture. I bet you think you have no privileges too.

Christ, imagine being told what to think by your fellow citizens. Just as long as you salute and not kneel. You know important things.

[soldiermedic76]

Loosing your job because you don't toe the line, losing your house, etc isn't acceptable, period in a free society.

[soldiermedic76]

And violence had already been tolerated by some governments. Or at least not as harshly punished as similar acts of violence.

[mad.casual]

It's funny you should ask, Tony. In the early '00s my wife and I were invited to a lesbian wedding. We replied that we would attend. When we queried about the gift registry, the couple made it known that rather than buying wedding presents, we should contribute to their political cause. At which point we let them know that we were no longer able to attend.

Similarly, my BIL dated a guy to whom he is now married. A few years ago I was helping them move into their new apartment. When he asked if our kids might want to come for a visit. I declined. When he insinuated that it was because he was gay I pointed out that, in fact, it was because of the HRC '16 sticker on their refrigerator.

You see, Cookie Monster, there's more to life and freedom than just the number of cookies you can cram in your face.

[Tony]

You sound like an asshole with a bunch of terrible ideas. You thought Donald Trump should be president. I guess you owe your lesbian friends an apology for both your rudeness and your evidently incorrect political allegiance.

Though I agree that gifts are to be given freely and received with “surprised” effusive “appreciation,” and not assumed by either an order to donate to a cause or by the existence of a registry.

[SgtBone]

Tony, you are perhaps the saddest individual that I have ever encountered.

[mad.casual]

You thought Donald Trump should be president.

You didn't read what I wrote. I didn't say Trump should be President, I expressed the notion that Clinton shouldn't and I didn't even really do that. Moreover, I expressed that opinion to my gay brother in law, not to the lesbian couple.

Seriously, Cookie Monster, it was like 2 paragraphs. Not even 10 sentences. Our local public shool would've failed my second grader for such poor reading comprehension.

[Tony]

There are only two choices for president, and if you chose wrong, your opinions are worthless. Just
My 2 cents on the subject of having opinions.

I feel that you’re proud of your rudeness to your relative and friends. There’s a reason politics and religion aren’t supposed to be topics of conversation in polite society.

[Zeb]

I think you badly misread Paul's comment.

I’m trying to understand why libertarians think they have an entitlement to other people thinking and saying things only in approved way

They don't. The problem was when it goes beyond self-identification and gets government to back it up with force.

[Mickey Rat]

One of the things J. K. Rowling was criticized for was defending a lesbian's right not to be shamed fir not wanting to date a transgender person with a penis.

Your example of absurdity is already on the doorstep.

[Square = Circle]

A new poll says 5.6 percent of Americans identify as gay, bisexual, or transgender.

And I can attest that in the 11-14 female demographic, at least in the Bay Area, that's much closer to 100%.

On the up side, this means middle-school girls can do all their maneuvering around crushes without involving the boys at all, who are 100% ignoring all of this, as far as I can tell.

[Tony]

Any phenomenon where people are more comfortable fucking the strange and novel doesn't have to be seen as an innovation, necessarily, just a rejection of long-held cultural habits brought to you by Jesus and patriarchal dickholes acting in His name.

In our natural environment, humans will fuck any warm hole they can find, or dry one. Just look at the Kinsey report. And the only difference would be what people are willing to admit to.

I say kill Christianity and see where the chips fall. I bet there will be less death and misery.

[Square = Circle]

In our natural environment, humans will fuck any warm hole they can find, or dry one. Just look at the Kinsey report.

That's in no way an accurate portrait of the Kinsey Report.

[Tony]

It's an accurate portrait of how homo sapiens spent their time when neanderthals were still around.

[Square = Circle]

No, it isn't.

[Tony]

We probably killed them a lot too for looking funny.

[Square = Circle]

We probably killed them a lot too for looking funny.

You and I are descended from them, actually.

[Tony]

You do know that neanderthals passing DNA to modern people means someone had to fuck them at some point?

[Square = Circle]

Tony
February.24.2021 at 3:15 pm

In our natural environment, humans will fuck any warm hole they can find, or dry one. Just look at the Kinsey report.

[Tony]

So your argument is that humans are naturally prudish or what?

People are gonna be so pissed when they find out that all of the barriers placed around their pants were placed there by patriarchs from the desert thousands of years ago, and they didn't even intend to place them around your pants, only their own tribe's. This same randomly chosen cultural regime is why homophobia exists, and why some people can't eat bacon. Am I telling you anything you don't already know?

The sad thing is, I know some straight guys who are perfectly open-minded and irreligious who still feel guilty every time they masturbate.

Jesus has a lot of horror to answer for.

[Tony]

Hi, I'm Tony, and I fuck men. Or I did before I got into a long-term relationship.

We are all shaped by the fairy tales we were told as children. Some are more able to escape them than others. Hence the right-left divide.

[Square = Circle]

So your argument is that humans are naturally prudish or what?

No, just that your assertion that "In our natural environment, humans will fuck any warm hole they can find" is wrong.

[Tony]

So you are arguing for a level of natural prudishness that couldn't possibly explain the existence of 7 billion of us.

[Square = Circle]

So you are arguing for a level of natural prudishness that couldn’t possibly explain the existence of 7 billion of us.

No, just that your assertion that “In our natural environment, humans will fuck any warm hole they can find” is wrong.

[Tony]

But Christianity and Islam, which you probably think smoothed over the primal fuckfest into something more civilized, are not our natural environment.

They are a fantastic improvement on the general principle though. The patriarchy provides a lifelong warm hole to each man, and it will even iron your clothes and clean your house.

[mad.casual]

"I have no idea, but I won't let that stop me from making shit up to give myself and no one else the impression that I have the slightest clue what I'm talking about." - Tony

Continue preaching about those Christian patriarchal idiots Tony.

[Brett Bellmore]

More to the point, there's no reason to think the Kinsey Report was an accurate portrait of anything but the sort of people Kinsey liked to hang out with.

[mad.casual]

I say kill Christianity and see where the chips fall. I bet there will be less death and misery.

Of all the primate species, humans are the only ones that regard rape as an illegitimate form of reproduction and/or expressing social dominance, even then, it's a rather recently encountered and far from universal POV.

Your profound ignorance of even relatively obvious biological and social history is not at all surprising. Your advice about Christianity and social construction are duly noted, right below your inability to understand history and biology at a 6th grade level.

[Tony]

I'm going to get a headache if this is about how you're mistaking your cultural anxieties for biological truths.

There are no biological truths about how humans should fuck each other, and there for damn sure aren't any biological truths about which gender must wear dresses and makeup and which must wear suits and ties. The manliest men in the world once wore gowns and wigs and dainty little slippers. Gender expression is *completely* arbitrary, which is to say cultural, which is why the things you're worrying about are silly.

If you're talking about some actual aspect of biology, please spell it out.

[Square = Circle]

Gender expression is *completely* arbitrary

No, it isn't. At least, the belief that it is is held by almost no one who has actually looked into this at all.

Here's a book for you. This is pretty much the foundational text of modern social constructionist thinking, and not even she argues that "Gender expression is *completely* arbitrary."

[mad.casual]

It's completely arbitrary to the point that, across species containing multiple independent chromosomal formats the same not arbitrary patterns of behavior are observed both within and without anything resembling a society or an individual's capability to conceptualize such a thing.

Nothing means anything and there are no truths but you know Tony is right because he's got it all figured out while demonstrating a broad ignorance of even relatively simplistic facts and patterns that any 2nd grader would pick up on.

[Tony]

But I do, but not in the same way Judith Butler does, who makes things too complicated in my opinion. I'm for a far more radical reassessment of our assumptions, even if I don't mind sex distinctions remaining, as they apply to things like genitals and DNA. As long as we know precisely what we're talking about.

Just look at how a feral child behaves. Is it like anyone's idea of a girl or boy? Look at how normal adults behaved not 500 years ago. There are times and places when what would today be considered effeminacy in men was considered the height of cultured behavior (and thus sexual appeal).

It's not that I automatically don't believe in innate behavioral differences based on sex. One look at other animals, and you should be surprised that we aren't more dimorphic. It's that every example ever held up in current culture war debates isn't one of those. It's about a pronoun or a style of clothing, which are in fact things we just made up out of thin air.

[mad.casual]

even if I don’t mind sex distinctions remaining

An Ex Cathedra so absurd it would make The Pope snigger uttered by a man purporting to be a viable alternative to the Christian Patriarchy.

[mad.casual]

There are no biological truths about how humans should fuck each other

"There are no biological truths about eating cookies. Cookie eating methodologies, customs, and cultural norms completely arbitrary."

Prove it Cookie Monster.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Resist the urge to see this necessarily as some sort of folly of youth or of the kids trying to be "trendy."

TOO LATE

[Scarbo]

TOO LATE indeed. My thoughts exactly.

[Bubba Jones]

40 years ago it was called "lesbians until graduation."

Now that no one ever graduates, this seems the logical extension.

Personally, I don't understand why we have such strict definitions of what it means/feels to be male or female that we have to invent new words.

[mad.casual]

Personally, I don’t understand why we have such strict definitions of what it means/feels to be male or female that we have to invent new words.

Wet roads cause rain. The words 'male' and 'female' weren't invented so that society and the law could enforce who can give birth and who can't. It was observed that a portion of many, many species bear young and a portion don't and useful terms for describing the phenomenon were adopted and adapted accordingly. The insanity is the insistence that undefining those terms without any fundamental change in the underlying biology somehow makes them more useful.

"We" aren't inventing new words to describe what it means/feels to be male or female, we're inventing new colors in the hopes that if we use them to describe a blue sky, it will turn a better color.

[Liberty Lover]

As Generation Z Comes of Age, America Is Getting Noticeably More Mentally Ill.

[mad.casual]

+1

[Scarbo]

+2

[n00bdragon]

It says something that the biggest portion of LGBT people are the "bisexual"s and the overwhelming majority of those are people in heterosexual relationships. But don't worry, they'd "consider" a same sex partner if the right one just came along.

Pad those numbers!

[Scarbo]

Yeah, costs me nothing to say I'm bisexual but continue to only have sex with women and insist the right man just hasn't come along yet.

[Rob Misek]

I’m ok with telling anyone that non-heterosexuals have a mental disorder, or are just choosing to be sluts.

I’ll back it up with evidence of logic and science.

I don’t want bigots for friends.

[Tony]

A mental disorder is usually defined as something that gets in the way of living a normal life. Some professionals insist that we treat disorders as disorders, because they see a lot of suffering in their practice, but some recognize that defining "normal" is not all that easy, especially in a pluralistic society. It's important to understand that most categories are imperfect, and that life is lived on a spectrum. And even people with the same psychologies can have extremely different lives, depending on how those traits were channeled when they were children. Someone with low empathy can grow up to be a serial killer or a paramedic, for example, depending on how they were raised.

Either way, bigotry and rudeness is no treatment.

[wareagle]

but instead of treating Bob's disorder in which he claims to really be Sally, "professionals" now insist that the rest of us go along with the delusion. If Bob is an adult, his choices are his own to make; but so are mine.

[Tony]

There’s always going to be someone at the tail end of the marathon of civilization. I’m afraid that’s usually going to be you. You should have picked a slower century to be born in.

[SgtBone]

Tony, do you find it odd that you are the only leftist commenting on this article? We all know your bias on this topic. I am just a bit disappointed that none of your fellow travelers have joined you here.

[Tony]

I’m not really into labels.

[Rob Misek]

If not logic and science, upon what do you and your concept of civilization, base your perception of reality?

I think the tail is wagging the dog.

[Tony]

My perception? Hm. I have some sensory inputs in my meat sack. Good eyes (not mine specifically), bad smell, OK ears, probably a relatively sophisticated sense of taste, but I haven’t read much about that.

In the end, all observations, scientific or otherwise, must imprint on our brains using these inputs, and we’re usually talking photons. You’ve never seen anything in your life except photons.

Kind of puts hating people for how they were born into perspective.

[Rob Misek]

I didn’t ask if you were capable of perception, I asked how you perceive reality if you don’t use logic or science.

You seem to perceive hatred in other people. How?

People without a disorder are born either male or female. That’s the best science, not hatred, that we have on the subject.

[Tony]

But that's not the best science. I can look on the internet and observe uncountable trans people. Thus, they exist.

[Rob Misek]

Are you saying that you DO base your perception of reality on your perception of science?

Does your perception of logic also influence your perception of reality?

If so, we could agree on the definitions of logic and science to perceive and agree upon the best of both.

Using them in turn as the basis of our perceptions of reality we will actually agree on every issue.

Are you willing, as I am, to recognize and agree upon the best science in this issue?

[Tony]

I only follow the best science. All of my kitchen gadgets are at least a “best buy” over at Cook’s Illustrated.

[Rob Misek]

Good, that will serve you well.

We should agree on all issues.

[wareagle]

The trans thing is at once an existential threat to womanhood and a destabilizing threat to gay people. When being a woman is no more than declaring to identify as one, the entirety of feminist doctrine is meaningless.

Likewise, the argument that homosexuality is engrained also goes out the window. If an effeminate boy can be medically experimented upon, or if a tomboy can be turned into a "male" rather than growing up into straight woman or lesbian turns the nature/nurture argument on its head.

[Rob Misek]

It’s about perceiving reality.

Either with logic and science, the rational way, or by making it up as you go, fantasy, the irrational way.

Stop appeasing fools.

[The Encogitationer]

Would...In an MFM DP threesome with Colossus of Rhodes!

[Alan Vanneman]

I'm probably not the first to notice this, but the statement
"This is a 1.1 percent increase over Gallup's last survey in 2017"
is wrong. It's a 1.1 percentage point increase, from 4.5 to 5.6 percent. It's close to an increase of 25 percent, since 1.1 is about one fourth of 4.5. Math innumeracy, anyone?

As to the main point, the declining stigma associated with being "different" is definitely encouraging. We don't get much good news, but this is welcome.

[Pedro Martinez]

For over a hundred and fifty years of the so-called "science" of psychology, I am not even sure if it can be designated a science, transgenderism, homo sexuality, and foggy identity in general were considered mental illnesses. So what has changed? We all belong to the same race whether we are "gay" or "straight".

I don't identify as a an adjective. I identify as a noun. A human who is a man. Pretty simple, no conflict. Identity is just another tool that the oligarchs, elite and mercantilists use to divide the slobbering herds that are confused over their adjective identities.

"Gen Z et al have had it way too easy. Most of us born during and after WW2 have never really faced hardship save the extremely, poor, soldiers and most definitely farmers. Very few have had to make sacrifices for over 70 years. We have become a nation of play-dough with too much unproductive time on our hands. Based on todays fractured "identity" politics, it will get a lot worse before it gets any better.

[Scarbo]

Your last paragraph puts into words what has been spinning around in my mind these days. Thank you.

And I love the "I don't identify as an adjective, I identify as a noun." That the current generations even deign to claim the "right" to "identify" as they proclaim is itself an exercise in narcissism of the highest order.

[The Encogitationer]

Like Napoleon Dynamite, I say "Vote For Pedro!" Gosh! 🙂

[Rob Misek]

Does it take hardship to recognize and value reality? Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why wisdom comes with age and why Gen Z snowflakes could care less.

The answer is simple. Stand up for reality. Don’t appease fools, persecute them.

[mad.casual]

“Gen Z et al have had it way too easy. Most of us born during and after WW2 have never really faced hardship save the extremely, poor, soldiers and most definitely farmers. Very few have had to make sacrifices for over 70 years. We have become a nation of play-dough with too much unproductive time on our hands. Based on todays fractured “identity” politics, it will get a lot worse before it gets any better.

The most disgusting part is that it's not like there's no hardship anywhere else in the world and there are no guides about how to go about freely and fairly vanquishing it. There's no impetus to fight actual Nazis to the death to ensure the Jews aren't trampled upon when it's much easier to annoy people who use the wrong pronouns and self-aggrandize a "profound" victory.

[Barnstormer]

All these comments for nothing...

The article cited a Gallup poll, which samples a population about as scientifically random as the residents of San Francisco.

[Chumby]

Used to know these two gay Irish guys. Michael Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzmichael.

[Cal Cetín]

"the same rights granted to everyone else"

Well, maybe we are reaching the point where each of us, regardless of what kind of identity we have, will have an equal right to force people at the point of a gun to provide us with goods and services.

[Tony]

You already do, just not because of your gender identity, yet. But it is inevitable, of course. You guys never win these things because nobody considers the battle over until the liberals win. That’s just the way it is.

You guys have the same arguments every time this same right is extended to a new category, never realizing that no law actually privileges the minority group getting the attention. With the advance of liberalism, you are just accumulating new rights for yourself, too. You can bitch about it if you want or you can treat it as an opportunity to make money like a real American.

[SgtBone]

Tony, I am very sad that your dad did not love you and you are seeking his love and approval where you will never find it.

[Tony]

Woah are you my ex?

[Agammamon]

never realizing that no law actually privileges the minority group getting the attention.

I'm pretty sure I can't force an anti-het baker to make me a cake.

[Chumby]

You likely cannot force a Halal deli to serve you bacon. Or have a Halal bakery decorate a baked good with an image of Muhammad giving Jesus a blowjob.

[Tony]

I’m pretty sure this is an injustice that will never affect you and never so much as give anyone a scraped knee.

When we say “culture war,” we are universally referring to “stupid shit.” Get back to me on the tyranny of antidiscrimination in public accommodations once we’ve solved climate change and poverty.

[dougwesterman]

I don't agree that it is good news for the cause of liberty. There is too much social pressure to "identify" as something.

[Mencken Sense]

"Resist the urge to see this necessarily as some sort of folly of youth or of the kids trying to be 'trendy.'"

You should spend some time around the kids. Explain to me why an otherwise normal looking and acting male youth who (as far as I can tell) has had no sexual experiences of any kind wants to be identified as "she"? Why would an actual female lesbian who bangs chicks insist on being identified as a "nonbinary" "they"?

These are cost-free strategies to grab attention and bring meaning to meaningless lives. At least Rachael Dolezal had to put in a little work.

[Titus PUllo]

When I was in college in the 80's, the local media did a poll on campus to see drug use and % of heavy drugs..everyone I knew said what was going to freak out the media...everyone was doing coke daily...you realize kids love to screw with adults heads right? I doubt the %'s are any different..human beings are human beings and don't change..sounds like this author is woking a little too much here..

[Rob Misek]

Sex reassignment surgery results in sterilization.

That’s why it can only be performed by doctors attempting to alleviate a mental disorder, specifically gender dysphoria.

[Tony]

More like all the trans people you encounter and never notice.

I don't pretend to understand it, but I'm a touch socially conservative. You freedom people should probably learn to be OK with different lifestyles.

[Tony]

Biology is the study of what life does. It doesn't have anything to say about your cultural biases, except "Look at this uniquely freakish species that spends all its time obsessing over cultural biases."

[Tony]

I didn't. I said it was a unique and freakish thing our species does.

We fight wars for hundreds of years over whether God is one guy or three guys. It's absurd.

[Tony]

Good thing that's up to professionals and not you.

Mentally ill means you can't function in normal life. If the only reason that's the case is because of how other people treat you, that's other people's issue.

You don't say someone living under Jim Crow is mentally ill for being unable to find lunch.

[Square = Circle]

We fight wars for hundreds of years over whether God is one guy or three guys.

Just 'cause you happened to step in my particular pool, the hundreds of years of war actually preceded the decision that "our guy is three and their guy is one."

You start by deciding that your enemy's religion is wrong, and then you build your religion from there.

[Tony]

The point is pretty much the only consistent reasons we kill each other in large numbers are the extremely stupid ones. Name a major war that was fought over resources.

I'll grant that sometimes war is made to acquire resources, but no soldier fights for that reason alone. You have to have cultural anxiety to make someone be willing to die. Hence January 6th. None of those people was there for any tangible reason. They're just worried they might have to use a different pronoun.

[D-Pizzle]

Funny. Tony actually believes that all the "religious wars" throughout history were actually about religion rather than being thoroughly political in nature. Cf. Thirty Years War.

[Tony]

Let me guess, if you're fucking a woman-shaped Japanese doll made of plastic, that's perfectly natural, as long as it's woman-shaped.

[Tony]

Not WWI. Not WWII. Not Vietnam. Maybe Iraq, but it was only permitted to happen because of racism (another arbitrary cultural invention).

I think all war is fought over meaningless cultural narratives, especially the ones with powerful men acting on behalf of their own fortunes.

Every castle or fortress ever built was built in service of a man's ego and his subjects' desire to keep the pronouns they're used to.

[Brett Bellmore]

Trans people are actually rare enough that "all the trans people you encounter and never notice" is going to be a null set for a lot of people. Under half a percent of the population, and NOT uniformly distributed.

I've said before, I honestly don't care if somebody wants to drill a hole in their head and pour in battery acid. My thinking something is a bad idea has nothing to do with whether I think somebody is entitled to do it, and that includes cross dressing, changing your name, getting surgically mutilated, and taking hormones.

Where I draw the line is at complicity. Don't ask me to supply the battery acid. Don't ask me to pretend that a guy becomes a girl if they decide they're one.

I think the problems start when people start to believe their own choices obligate other people.

[Tony]

You can keep calling me stupid, or you can tell me why I'm wrong.

Which resources were ze Germans trying to steal from Poland? From the United States? And what do the Jews have to do with it?

[Square = Circle]

Which resources were ze Germans trying to steal from Poland?

You understand that significant portions of that conflict took place in North Africa, in China, and in the South Pacific, right?

Why do you think that is, if it was just over something the Germans wanted from Poland?

[Square = Circle]

Not Vietnam

Why do you think we were there?

I think all war is fought over meaningless cultural narratives, especially the ones with powerful men acting on behalf of their own fortunes.

So, which is it? Those are two different things.

[Tony]

I didn't intend to argue with people who actually think wars are fought for rational reasons, because I didn't think it would be a controversy. Obviously no war is fought for rational reasons, except such wars where you're starving to death and you must kill or die, in which case you're too starving to fight anyway. Ask the Kim family. Starving people don't have revolutions. People fight revolutions and wars only for stupid reasons.

That's not to say that powerful people can't exploit this for their own purposes, but you'll never get an army to fight for those reasons alone.

And in theory, all of these matters could be handled nonviolently. By setting up sophisticated systems of trade, for example. It's why I'm such a fervent capitalist.

[Square = Circle]

That’s not to say that powerful people can’t exploit this for their own purposes, but you’ll never get an army to fight for those reasons alone.

So why do powerful people start these wars. They seem awfully expensive to engage in for no reason, no?

[Tony]

You're right, if the man behind the curtain were acting rationally, he wouldn't waste so many resources if an alternative were possible. And nobody actually needs rubber or cotton. They're nice-to-haves, not need-to-haves. So in that sense, these resource wars are cultural too. Or is the dye in an aristocrat's cloak something other than a cultural artifact?

None of this has to be conscious. We get raging war boners because we grew up in tribes where the application of game theory was acute. They were going to try to kill you and steal your women, so you better be prepared to do it back.

Evolution wouldn't have us wasting resources in this way unless it paid off in some greater way. So we are led around by assumptions about the cosmic value of trinkets on our neck or paint on our faces, while are genes are happy as long as we steal some new women to rape.

[soldiermedic76]

The pacific war was fought only for resources. Japan attacked the US because the US embargo was threatening their supply lines. So was WWI, it was fought over colonialism, e.g. who got to colonize where and who as a result got to take advantage of the resources from colonialism.

[soldiermedic76]

Poland and Russia were invaded for the most finite resource we have, land. That is why Germany invaded both countries, for their land. In Poland's case much of the land actually belonged to Germany before the Versailles treaty. Germany fought for land, Japan for oil and rubber.

[Square = Circle]

And nobody actually needs rubber or cotton.

However, sometimes your enemies can make advanced weapons with rubber that you won't be able to match if you can't get any yourself.

Sometimes your clothes come from faraway foreign powers who keep you impoverished paying high premiums on them and you find that an additional source of cotton under your control frees up all kinds of resources that used go into making sure you didn't freeze to death.

Sometimes you colonize whole continents looking for sources of fur because it's so freaking cold where you're from.

Those tribal things you talk about are the things the aristocrats use to get the peasants inflamed about people on the other side of the planet that they've never met.

If it all were simply human tribal-nature, we'd be at constant war with neighboring cities, not Afghanistan.

Why do you think we're in Afghanistan, by the way?

[Square = Circle]

Germany fought for land, Japan for oil and rubber.

And no small part of Germany's bitterness was tied into having been pretty actively shut out of the Africa feeding-frenzy.

[Nardz]

"Which resources were ze Germans trying to steal from Poland?"

Lol
You know land is a resource, no?

[R Mac]

Wow. Tony’s even dumber than I thought

[Tony]

Did Germany run out of land? They may have said something along those lines, but notice how they went straight for the population centers of Poland, and not the open land.

[Square = Circle]

Name a major war that was fought over resources.

The Vietnam War (rubber)
Basically everything going on in ME/NA (oil)
WWII (various resources in the South Pacific, competing with Japan for them)
Civil War (cotton)
The Opium Wars (opium)
The American Revolution (cotton/tea)
The "Cabinet Wars" (various resources in Africa/Latin America)
The Crusades (silk/spices/olive oil)

Do you need me to go on?

no soldier fights for that reason alone. You have to have cultural anxiety to make someone be willing to die.

Obviously. Smart people have known this for eons. Even medieval thinkers were perfectly well aware that no peasant had a single thing to gain by holding a pike for the king. But look out for the Catholics!!!.

[Tony]

What do you think is going to happen to you?

You're not going to do away with manners. It sounds nice, until someone does something that offends you.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Mentally ill means you can’t function in normal life."

These days, "mentally ill" means "the check won't clear". So long as you can pay the doctor, they'll say you're OK. They don't care anymore if you think you're Napoleon, so long as you can hold down a day job and not walk out into the street and get run over.

That's a pretty low threshold for declaring people mentally health.

[Tony]

I don't want to be misinterpreted. I'm not saying culture is stupid or unnecessary. I'm saying culture is (almost) everything. The thing that makes homo sapiens different from other animals is culture. The stuff we make up with our extra brainpower. But it is made up. You can tell because we have so many differences of opinion on the matter.

So if you have a bunch of anxiety over some habit you inherited from your parents, maybe do yourself a favor and don't be so anxious over something that doesn't matter.

[mad.casual]

I’m not religious at all, but methinks the Sodom and Gomorrah parable had a great deal of truth to it.

Personally, whether you're talking about the Mesopotamian version, Sumerian version, Cherokee version, or the Judeo-Christian version, I'm finding the parable about the Tower of Babel especially poignant. Particularly the part where (depending on the telling) God decides or is invoked to confound the speech/lingquistics of the constructive/industrious people.

[The Encogitationer]

First of all, what is the evidence that Sodom and Gommorah even existed? Even if it did, didn't Ezekiel say it's "sin" was inhospitality to the stranger and the poor, not homosexuality?

Two, homosexuality was prevalent throughout the Roman Empire, yet the Eastern Half of the Empire lasted for centuries after the Western half.

Japan had an active homosexual culture, yet it persists, albeit, not as an Empire.

And World War II's European Theater was won against Anti-LGBTQ Nazi Germany by the Allies in good part because of Alan Turing, a gay cryptographer, cracking the Nazi's Enigma Code. (Britain's thanks for that was Turing being forcibly institutionalized and forced to have hormone treatments until he injested cyanide--unknown if it was suicide or murder?)

Just on this small sample alone, it doesn't look like LGBTQ identity has a thing to do with the rise and fall of nations and civilizations or whether people can have good, meaningful, even extraordinary lives.

[Tony]

The part that's interesting to me is that, even if this guy was punished totally unjustly and ridiculously, you're still gonna care about this one moment of injustice more than a billion other worse ones, because of the cultural assumptions it challenges.

I can't defend Canadians, because I don't know why their heads flap the way they do, but I can assure you that no American law will punish people for their speech, since that would be unconstitutional. It may include sexual identity among all the other classifications people are protected from discrimination for, but that goes as much for people who identify as cisgender males as anyone else, so there's really nothing to complain about.

[Zeb]

He's been too consistent for way too long. I'm pretty sure he's just Tony.

[Brian]

I'm pretty sure the doll doesn't become a woman.

[Brian]

I think he’s saying it’s ok to ignore culture because culture comes from minds.

[Tony]

So the professionals used to say something, now they say something else, and you’re choosing to go with what they rejected.

Science doesn’t work that way!

[Bluwater]

*Well first, not all the professionals say the same thing. And many of those who don't agree with the popular position simply don't wish to lose their jobs. You lose.
*Second, what happens if they change again? Will you accept "the science" then? The argument from authority is a pretty stupid logical fallacy. Look it up. You lose.
*Third, you are clueless about mental illness, so it's best to shut up about it and it certainly would be best to avoid building any argument on it. The vast majority of those with some sort of mental illness [depression, anxiety, phobias, sociopathy, neuropathy, paranoia, OCD, dissociative disorders, eating disorders, and the list goes on] all function in normal life. While it's not popular to define it as such, mental sexuality that doesn't match the biology or reproductive reality is in fact a dissociative disorder. Given that the first goal of any species is to reproduce, any condition that prevents that from happening and only affects a small percentage of the population is by any definition, abnormal. Funny how we consider autism at 15% to be considered abnormal, yet self-defined LGBT at 3% to be normal. Where's your "science" there? Your preference or virtue signals are irrelevant and they certainly aren't science. You lose.

That said, personally I don't care whether you get your rocks off on any given gender, any given species, or never at all. But everyone pretending that something is other than what it is borderline mental illness itself.

[Tony]

Cultural biases absolutely can affect judgments such as what counts as a mental illness. Those biases are not often found leaning in the direction of social outcasts.

If the definition of mental illness is whether your condition affects your ability to live a normal life, well, being trans certainly did that in days when being trans was forbidden by normal society. Illness isn't a precisely defined thing. Much of what's considered illness is self-reported symptoms. Not a precise science.

So if you're trying to assert that science is on your side when you're rejecting what science currently says, you should know that science doesn't actually take a side, so it can't take yours.

[Tony]

This has been a lesson on how stupid it is to let the arbitrary norms of ancient desert tribes dictate our emotional reactions to modern human behavior.

[Tony]

Discard the bad parts and keep the good. We can’t do without culture. It hardly even makes sense to conceptualize that. The Borg have a culture.

But we can keep the good bits and discard the bad, and we can do that because nobody is going to stop us but ourselves.

[Brian]

I agree. Let's embrace good and stop bad!

For example, I'd like to drop the part of the culture that accuses everyone who disagrees with them of racism. That's stupid.

[Tony]

So activist college students?

[SgtBone]

Tony, I truly pity you.

[Tony]

Given the sheer number of gods said to exist by various societies, we’re both pretty equally likely to end up in the same place. Hopefully it’s just dirt!

[The Encogitationer]

All foiled by a simple translator app on a smartphone. *Tips Fedora.*

[Tony]

Political meaning what? People assigning nonsense values to lines on a map and golden hats?