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Can we not get bogged down in the merits of the SPLC and whether or not a group counts as a "hate group" or just a bunch of s? The issue that is actually relevant to this thread is that the American College of Pediatricians is a fringe group formed to advocate right-wing Christian beliefs about gender roles, gay marriage, etc. They have a tiny percentage of the members of the mainstream professional association in the field, and little apparent interest in the broader work of a mainstream professional association. Independent of what label the SPLC gives them they should not be considered a credible source of information.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sirlynchmob wrote:
http://www.outsports.com/2011/8/24/4051722/moment-42-lana-lawless-wins-right-to-play-on-lpga-tour
When trans golfer Lana Lawless won the 2009 Long Drivers of America title, it was too much for the organization to handle.

She won a single event, sued for the right to compete, then seems to have disappeared entirely. Her wikipedia article (one of the very few mentions of any kind since 2010) says nothing about any wins since earning the right to compete. So it seems that, far from "obliterating the competition", she had a single fluke win in a side event and then never accomplished anything else.

and Renee Richards
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/sports/golf/13lawsuit.html
Renee Richards, the transgender tennis player who won the right to play in women’s events in the 1970s

And this is similarly underwhelming as an example of "obliterating the competition". Despite her statements about her supposed advantages we're talking about someone whose professional peak was 20th in the world, and a single win in a "tennis for old people" tournament. That's a respectable career that most amateur tennis players would envy, but it's hardly a sign of professional dominance.

Hi all! I was reading this forums from months to this day, but this debate made me jump aboard to register.


First of all: Transgender is a term that should be pushed away in favour of the more apropiate Transexual. And I think that, if people understand what is Transexuality, most of these people that say "I don't mind what they want to be called" will just end to do that.

First of all: Gender Dysphoria is a mental disorder. A mental disorder caused by a biological and physical condition.
Why is Gender Dysphoria a mental disorder? Well, we should first clarify what means a "disorder"
"a disturbance in physical or mental health or functions; malady or dysfunction:"

A transexual man or woman its a person with the biological body of a sex, and the biological brain of the other sex. That is what causes the "disorder"
I'm gonna exemplify it with homosexuality:
An homosexual person is a complete sane person. Why? Because you can put a Homosexual person in a vacuum and his sexuality will cause 0 disturbances, stress or malfuctions that affect his living capabilities (Eat, reproduce: a homosexual person is totally capable of having descendancy if they aren't sterile, etc...)

Transexual people is a diferent case.
You can put a Transexual man or women into a vacuum with 0 interaction with the outside world and his Gender Dysphoria will cause them a very big mental strees and disturbance.

The human race has 2 biological sexs and a third sexes "group": The xenotype XX (Fenotype: Woman) Xenotype XY (Fenotype: Man) and the "hermaprhodyte" xenotypes that are many but for comodity will put all together.

Sex and Gender are similar things but not equal. So please, don't say that sex is based in social constructs (Thats the gender). This is post modernism, not based on facts. You believe it helps the acceptance of Transexual people but no, It doesn't help this cause. I understand your good intentions but we can't ignore biology if we want to reach the day where Transexual people can have a happy life. And that day will come with understanding of the issue, science and respect.

Genders are a social construct, built upon the biological differences in sexes: Our womans are biological more capable to handling childrens, be more empathic, etc... from this biological "base", the characteristics of the femenine Gender was build socially. The same happens with the masculine gender. More strenght, more violent: The biology is the foundation of the gender.

Historically, you had periods of history were at a social and legal level you had actually 3 genders, long before sXXI: In many empires of the past you had 3 genders: Male, Female, Eunuch. Eunuch were considered a totally independent group in laws. They were born male, but they were not socially or legally considered male after the castration. They were in fact another gender.

I'm saying this to make this point:
Transexual people its people with a Dysorder (That don't make them less human) but cause them pain and suffering, at a biological level, that just get worse with the social rejection.
I'm gonna compare them with Daltonic people to make an example.

In today videogames you see that more and more are creating a "Daltonic mode". To normal people, thats adds nothing to their lives. To Daltonic people its a HUGE help.
When a Transexual with diagnosticated Gender Dysphoria ask you to call them for the pronoun that correlates with their brain structure, they don't whant to convert you, to push an agenda, or to make your children weirdos. They just ask for consideration and help with a dysorder that affect their lives and cause a huge suicide rate.

A study concluded that even after post-transitional surgery, Transexual people had a suicide rate x20 bigger than normal people (It was higger before transitional surgery, but I didn't know the number. This study was famous because many right-wing news site use it to push anti-Transexual propaganda, ignoring the point where the study sais that the suicide rate where higger before the surgery, and the result just point that you can't operate a Transexual man or woman and just let them live their lives, because its a complicated issue that still needs more work and those people still need help. Transitional surgery helps a bit but is not the panacea, so we still need to put more work on that issue.)

The study: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

And as a Left-wing person, I think that this trend of "I'm identify myself as...!" is a movement born from recognision desire. Its only works to hurt the cause of the real Transexual people and comes from men and women that don't understand than a person can't decide his gender, that is a social construct.

So please, if you don't have a Gender Dysphoria, don't say that you identify yourself as X, because you are hurting people that need help and acceptance. If you don't want to behave in the "social accepted" trends of your gender, thats totally fine. You don't need to say that you identify as other gender.

Sorry for the wall of text. Sorry for my level of english. But this is an issue that my family took very serious when a cousin of mine decide to end is life because this same reason (And I, as all of my family, take our responsability. We weren't supportive to him. We don't understand him. And a 14 year dead boy was the result). and I don't want people dying because right-wing don't want to understand their medical needs and left-wing just want to be special.

If this wall of text help some of you to reconsider your views, or at least bring some more info to this issue I'll be content

 Peregrine wrote:
Can we not get bogged down in the merits of the SPLC and whether or not a group counts as a "hate group" or just a bunch of s? The issue that is actually relevant to this thread is that the American College of Pediatricians is a fringe group formed to advocate right-wing Christian beliefs about gender roles, gay marriage, etc. They have a tiny percentage of the members of the mainstream professional association in the field, and little apparent interest in the broader work of a mainstream professional association. Independent of what label the SPLC gives them they should not be considered a credible source of information.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sirlynchmob wrote:
http://www.outsports.com/2011/8/24/4051722/moment-42-lana-lawless-wins-right-to-play-on-lpga-tour
When trans golfer Lana Lawless won the 2009 Long Drivers of America title, it was too much for the organization to handle.

She won a single event, sued for the right to compete, then seems to have disappeared entirely. Her wikipedia article (one of the very few mentions of any kind since 2010) says nothing about any wins since earning the right to compete. So it seems that, far from "obliterating the competition", she had a single fluke win in a side event and then never accomplished anything else.

and Renee Richards
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/sports/golf/13lawsuit.html
Renee Richards, the transgender tennis player who won the right to play in women’s events in the 1970s

And this is similarly underwhelming as an example of "obliterating the competition". Despite her statements about her supposed advantages we're talking about someone whose professional peak was 20th in the world, and a single win in a "tennis for old people" tournament. That's a respectable career that most amateur tennis players would envy, but it's hardly a sign of professional dominance.

Most of the systems I have coached high school wrestling in had boys and girls competing against each other anyway, this is not a big deal...at all...he won and in DOD schools would have no asterisk or any other bs marring his acheivement. I had previously posted that in professional MMA trans have no advantage whatsoever, none are even ranked, so this supposed advantage has not materialized at all in a sport that is basically all about physical ability.

 djones520 wrote:
To clarify for those who don't click the link.

This is a biological woman, who identifies as a male, and has been taking hormonal therapy, that won a wrestling competition, competing as a female (as I'm guessing the state required).

When I first read a story about this earlier today, I thought it was a boy ID'ing as a girl, winning. So just wanted to make sure others weren't confused as well.

Honestly, how do they allow this? If the women is taking hormonal therapy doesn't that mean she's getting a boost in testosterone? Doesn't that obviously give her an advantage over girls that aren't on these treatments? This seems like a bad judgement call by the people running the tournament or they're too PC to stop it. Just ridiculous.

JessVal wrote:
This seems like a bad judgement call by the people running the tournament or they're too PC to stop it.

Lolwut? How could it be "too PC"? You did read the article, right? The guy wanted to compete against men, but the school overruled him because his birth certificate still had that "F" on it. This situation is the exact opposite of whatever "PC SJW TUMBLR FEMINAZIS RUIN EVERYTHING" complaints are popular these days.

Also, the person in the article is a man, with pronouns he/his/him. Please don't misgender him with female pronouns.

Albino Squirrel wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Fun Fact for the day, Gender Dysphoria is a disease and parents are making it significantly worse by allowing their kids to believe this is normal.

"Moreover, barring pre-pubertal affirmation and hormone intervention for GD, 80 percent to 95 percent of children with GD will accept the reality of their biological sex by late adolescence." (ACoP)

So maybe this kid is one of the 5-20% of kids who don't grow out of gender dysphoria, who knows, but its a fair bet that his/her parents jumped on board because they are open minded people (Sarcasm) instead of getting their child help.

Now, on the off chance that this child is in fact a part of that small population of Gender Dysphoric people who don't transition back to normal, it makes no sense for him to be competing against Girls while taking HUGE doses of steroids. Texas goofed here clearly.

Here you are pretending that sex is binary, or indeed that there's a "real" biological sex that isn't intimately tied to social constructs one way or another. Focault, Beauvoir and Butler would all like a word with you.

Aside from some rare genetic defects, sex is binary.

I'm glad you've authoritatively settled hundreds of years' worth of debates with that brilliant statement. Truly, we are in the presence of an intellectual colossus. I stand in awe, humbled.

Galas wrote:
Hi all! I was reading this forums from months to this day, but this debate made me jump aboard to register.

First of all: Transgender is a term that should be pushed away in favour of the more apropiate Transexual. And I think that, if people understand what is Transexuality, most of these people that say "I don't mind what they want to be called" will just end to do that.

First of all: Gender Dysphoria is a mental disorder. A mental disorder caused by a biological and physical condition.
Why is Gender Dysphoria a mental disorder? Well, we should first clarify what means a "disorder"
"a disturbance in physical or mental health or functions; malady or dysfunction:"

A transexual man or woman its a person with the biological body of a sex, and the biological brain of the other sex. That is what causes the "disorder"
I'm gonna exemplify it with homosexuality:
An homosexual person is a complete sane person. Why? Because you can put a Homosexual person in a vacuum and his sexuality will cause 0 disturbances, stress or malfuctions that affect his living capabilities (Eat, reproduce: a homosexual person is totally capable of having descendancy if they aren't sterile, etc...)

Transexual people is a diferent case.
You can put a Transexual man or women into a vacuum with 0 interaction with the outside world and his Gender Dysphoria will cause them a very big mental strees and disturbance.

The human race has 2 biological sexs and a third sexes "group": The xenotype XX (Fenotype: Woman) Xenotype XY (Fenotype: Man) and the "hermaprhodyte" xenotypes that are many but for comodity will put all together.

Sex and Gender are similar things but not equal. So please, don't say that sex is based in social constructs (Thats the gender). This is post modernism, not based on facts. You believe it helps the acceptance of Transexual people but no, It doesn't help this cause. I understand your good intentions but we can't ignore biology if we want to reach the day where Transexual people can have a happy life. And that day will come with understanding of the issue, science and respect.

Genders are a social construct, built upon the biological differences in sexes: Our womans are biological more capable to handling childrens, be more empathic, etc... from this biological "base", the characteristics of the femenine Gender was build socially. The same happens with the masculine gender. More strenght, more violent: The biology is the foundation of the gender.

Historically, you had periods of history were at a social and legal level you had actually 3 genders, long before sXXI: In many empires of the past you had 3 genders: Male, Female, Eunuch. Eunuch were considered a totally independent group in laws. They were born male, but they were not socially or legally considered male after the castration. They were in fact another gender.

I'm saying this to make this point:
Transexual people its people with a Dysorder (That don't make them less human) but cause them pain and suffering, at a biological level, that just get worse with the social rejection.
I'm gonna compare them with Daltonic people to make an example.

In today videogames you see that more and more are creating a "Daltonic mode". To normal people, thats adds nothing to their lives. To Daltonic people its a HUGE help.
When a Transexual with diagnosticated Gender Dysphoria ask you to call them for the pronoun that correlates with their brain structure, they don't whant to convert you, to push an agenda, or to make your children weirdos. They just ask for consideration and help with a dysorder that affect their lives and cause a huge suicide rate.

A study concluded that even after post-transitional surgery, Transexual people had a suicide rate x20 bigger than normal people (It was higger before transitional surgery, but I didn't know the number. This study was famous because many right-wing news site use it to push anti-Transexual propaganda, ignoring the point where the study sais that the suicide rate where higger before the surgery, and the result just point that you can't operate a Transexual man or woman and just let them live their lives, because its a complicated issue that still needs more work and those people still need help. Transitional surgery helps a bit but is not the panacea, so we still need to put more work on that issue.)

The study: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

And as a Left-wing person, I think that this trend of "I'm identify myself as...!" is a movement born from recognision desire. Its only works to hurt the cause of the real Transexual people and comes from men and women that don't understand than a person can't decide his gender, that is a social construct.

So please, if you don't have a Gender Dysphoria, don't say that you identify yourself as X, because you are hurting people that need help and acceptance. If you don't want to behave in the "social accepted" trends of your gender, thats totally fine. You don't need to say that you identify as other gender.

Sorry for the wall of text. Sorry for my level of english. But this is an issue that my family took very serious when a cousin of mine decide to end is life because this same reason (And I, as all of my family, take our responsability. We weren't supportive to him. We don't understand him. And a 14 year dead boy was the result). and I don't want people dying because right-wing don't want to understand their medical needs and left-wing just want to be special.

If this wall of text help some of you to reconsider your views, or at least bring some more info to this issue I'll be content

This is a very good post.

Thank you and don't worry about your English level. You managed to put over some very good points quite clearly.

Thanks! I'm trying to improve my english.
And thanks for the compliment. I Try to approach this topic with a practical , respectful and logical viewpoint, but I'm totally aware that we are living in a convoluted times and speak of some topics like this one is really hard.

People is very fast to put etiquetes on other peoples: "Transphobic" or "SJW" are things that I had been called in other forums mentioning this same issue.A thing that I find ironic.

Galas wrote:


First of all: Transgender is a term that should be pushed away in favour of the more apropiate Transexual. And I think that, if people understand what is Transexuality, most of these people that say "I don't mind what they want to be called" will just end to do that.

I'm curious as to why you see transsexual as preferable to transgender - the latter has been the go-to term in my country and my debating circles for more than a decade.

I prefer transwarp myself. Engage the transwarp drive!

Crystal-Maze wrote:

Galas wrote:


First of all: Transgender is a term that should be pushed away in favour of the more apropiate Transexual. And I think that, if people understand what is Transexuality, most of these people that say "I don't mind what they want to be called" will just end to do that.

I'm curious as to why you see transsexual as preferable to transgender - the latter has been the go-to term in my country and my debating circles for more than a decade.

Because transexual people don't have a problem with their gender (Well, its obvius that society has a problem with the gender clasification of a transexual man or woman. But its not an innerente problem of transexuality). Its a biological problem, having the biological structure of the brain of one sex, and the body of the other biological sex.

Saying "Transgender" imply that they are people socially considered of one gender that want/identify as the other gender. It turn a biological and medical issue into a social issue. (I'm not saying that all of this issue didn't have a social side. But its not the only side of Transexuality )

But, going down from my pedestal, in my country is the inverse. Transgender (Transgénero in spanish) was never used, we always use Transexual. But, ignoring the tipical term used in one country or the other, the stated above is why I think that the term Transexual is more accurate than Transgender.

PD: I'm gonna be honest. I had to look in google for many english versions of terminology that I only use before in spanish. If I say something strange, please mention it.

Late Reply follows cause I wanted to make this one clear;

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
*snipped because I can't get the quote and spoiler boxes to work XD

And this is why people should be careful with editorials. The guy is outright ignoring Dees own personal statements and experiences, namely that he considers his defense of Claude Henley in 1962 as an "eye opening epiphany" that lead to a radical change in his personal beliefs and outlook. This isn't something that he just "conveniently" said later. You can literally trace his history as lawyer with a huge demarcation line at the Claude Henley case where he switched from being a lawyer who'd take anyone as a client to a guy who exclusively serviced himself filing law suits on behalf of African Americans. Dees is certainly something of a show boat and he's always basked in the publicity of being a literal white knight white knighting on behalf of African Americans, but that doesn't really exclude that he also believes in what he's doing.

He went on to become one of the men foremost responsible for dismantling the third iteration of the Ku Klux Klan into a non-relevant political entity. Calling the SPLC a "scam" in the sense it is being used here (the sense from which Civil Right's activist Stephen Bright criticized it) is meaningless. So Dees is a guy who's gotten rich running a non-profit. Who the feth running successful long running non-profits hasn't? It has little baring on what the SPLC produces which can stand on or off its own merits.

The SPLC may wear it's politics on it's sleeve, but that's kind of the point. They listed the Family Research Council as an anti-gay hate group. The Family Research Council explicitly opposing LGBT rights legislation. Now calling them a hate group is a stretch, but SPLC has always had a loser definition of "hate group" than many. They provided reasoning and supporting documentation for their classification and within the bounds of how they operate it fits[url]. Dana Milbank puts forth good reasoning. The FRC is not the Aryan Knights or the KKK, but there are a lot of groups on the SPLC's list that aren't that extreme like American Border Patrol and the American Family Association. SPLC does not reserve the "hate group" for people who commit violent acts, but for any group that promotes discrimination in government or American society. They lobbied to try and shut down a House resolution condemning the Ungandan Anti-Homosexuality law which makes being gay a death penalty offense. When this was made public they responded by saying that they don't support the death penalty for the mentally handicapped. It's not that hard to see why they'd be listed as promoting hate.

So the FBI dumped them? So what? The FBI probably shouldn't be partnering with political groups at all, and there can be no denial that SPLC has a political message. One of your links criticizes the SPLC as "fearmongering" by drawing connections between lone wolves and organizations that are not supported by evidence. Welcome to missing the point central! The SPLC does not imply direct links as in "someone told him to shoot up that church." It's not that simple. The SPLC focuses its attention of the perpetuation of ideology and that's the link, and it's a link that comes up in most hate crime cases. Just take a look at Dylann Roof in his picture with the Confederate Flag. That's not happenstance, or coincidence. he posed with a picture of the Confederate Flag because the flag means white power for a hell of a lot of people. It's not something he came up with on his own. However lone wolf his individual actions were, they were informed by a broader ideology that was not unique to him. Same with Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was an advent watcher of Anwar al-Awlaki's sermons. Or recently Alexandre Bissonnette who took Donald Trump (you know that guy whose in the White House?) as inspiration to shoot up a mosque. Now SPLC would be silly to put the President of the United States on their list as a "hate group" but they put the Alt-Right there because the Alt-Right encourages his bull gak and it's not a meme.

Which brings us to basically your only accurate criticism of the SPLC; that it focuses on white hate overtly, and gives limited attention to non-white hate. I don't think this is politics so much as time. The SPLC is an organization born of the Civil Right's era, and forged in late 20th century America. The issue of non-white hate groups goes understudied on pretty much all fronts though, so picking out the SPLC for specific criticism in this regard serves little purpose. At least they make "token" mention. I can think of some groups that proclaim to the heavens and back that there are no racists anymore except reverse-racists. One of them is now running Congress

To which I say say sir;

What I linked above will be dismissed, of course. Hell, most won't even click the links. The problem with people like me is that we don't go far enough for the modern left in our "tolerance" (i.e. Don't toe the line, you are still a bigot). And I have no problem criticizing or attacking "sainted" institutions, right or left, since I don't give a damn what people think of me or my opinions or how they take any information I share, and I'm not here to change anybody's minds.

I clicked your links. The "problem with people like" you in this instance isn't that you don't go far enough for the modern left in your tolerance. It's that you are apparently comfortable dismissing one organization as biased, but used admittedly biased sources to support your decision. The most unbiased source you list didn't call the SPLC into question. Merely a single decision it made, which is fair. See the person criticizing the SPLC for listing the FRC as a hate group didn't say the SPLC should be ignore. It called them out on something the author thought was bad. They didn't make it a sweeping mandate to dismiss the organization. Make up your mind. Is it good to be biased or bad? Neutral? Should we completely dismiss an organizations like SPLC or FRC for doing one or two stupid things, or accept that it's something that happens and move on? Do you have any specific criticism of the SPLC that can't be leveled against literally everyone who does anything even remotely political? You could challenge the SPLC on it's merits. Instead of lecturing how putting the FRC on a list of hate groups shows the SPLC is biased, argue why an organization that sent out emails praising Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni as a paragon of Christian virtue when he reinstated the Ungandan Anti-Homosexuality law isn't a hate group. Maybe come up with a criticism of Morris Dees that isn't an ad hominen attack against his character.

The problem is that you put tolerance in air quotes, and somehow expect anyone to seriously think that tolerance is what concerns you!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
I prefer transwarp myself. Engage the transwarp drive!

I take your transwarp drive and raise you a transwarp threshhold! We will all be fish people soon, but don't worry. The writers will retcon it in three years