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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2013 20:08:43 GMT -5
Because of how you identify your gender / sexuality? That's more of something to say about someone's work ethic.
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Post by susanismyalias on Jun 1, 2013 20:14:34 GMT -5
Well that's bullshit so
(that was in response to hikaru not jason)
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Blind Ryan
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Post by Blind Ryan on Jun 4, 2013 20:21:56 GMT -5
I don't care about the gays any more than I care about the races. Fuck who you want providing it's consensual and legal. The thing that has always confused me is the T. I was born a cripple and I learned early to accept everything my body can and can't do. Why can't they? Why do they NEED to do this? Why not just accept that you're a guy/girl and that's that?
I'm an eye/lung/back/joint/chronic pain cripple from my three month early birth. I accept everything bad and good that comes with that.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2013 21:16:15 GMT -5
I think the key here is to realize that there's no difference between being gay and wanting to live your life that way and being transgender and wanting to live your life that way. Would you tell a gay person to just be straight? Hopefully you wouldn't. By the same token, transgender people should have the freedom to live their lives the way they feel is best. It's not like it's hurting anyone.
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Blind Ryan
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Post by Blind Ryan on Jun 4, 2013 22:03:59 GMT -5
I'm not saying they can't. I'm saying I don't understand not accepting the cards you were dealt. I mean getting a sex change is a big deal, you know? I just want to understand it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2013 22:07:57 GMT -5
Right, but by the same token, gay people were born with an attraction to their own gender. Why not just play the cards they were dealt and have relationships with the opposite sex? I'd say understanding it is the same as understanding how you're able to accept whatever your own sexuality is. It's who you are, and that's all it really needs to be.
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Post by Allie on Jun 5, 2013 1:09:02 GMT -5
There are things I want to say, regarding individuals vs. "The Movement/The Cause", but the words just aren't coming right now. They almost never do until the moment has passed. Maybe I get bogged down in worrying about how I'll be attacked in response, I don't know.
But I guess what I can clumsily put forth is that while it's not a difficult thing to speak of on an individual person-by-person basis, it becomes much more difficult(especially, but not exclusively, when it comes to the T part) when you have to look at it as a mass movement.
As for RK, I understand where they're coming from, as that's exactly the way my family raised me (You 'play the hand you're dealt' because sometimes you can't have what you want out of life, so you gird your loins, live with it, and be forward with it). I understand that viewpoint, and I'm not going to demonize someone for having it (I'm not down with the idea of "We have to demonize people with that viewpoint because otherwise some people will never be comfortable", really).
I'm not touching the "birth vs. environment/conditioning" thing, because I'm leaning towards the opinion that that's increasingly irrelevant, in the long run.
Back to the "Mass Movement" (or "Political Cause", if you truly prefer) aspect... well, that's where I tend to stand in a different place than most, and that's about as far as I'm willing to go with that.
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Post by jongoo on Jun 5, 2013 3:18:11 GMT -5
I'm a fairly conservative Christian I would say and I believe what the Bible has to say about this issue. That said, nowhere in my study of the Bible does it say that we should treat gays like shit, let alone judge them. Words may not be exact but, "judge others not, lest you be judged". Just being honest, gay sexuality disgusts me but I still disagree with people who say that gays are bad/evil/destined for hell (oftentimes the reason given being, "because God says so"). I don't think the Bible says that gays are destined for hell, anymore than anyone else. "For all fall short of the glory of God" and all that. So yes, I see it as a sin but then a lot of things are sin, but as many have said, "only God can judge me." I expect to see people who identified themselves as gay when I go to heaven.
Personally, when I got very depressed in my early-mid twenties, I doubted my sexuality for no real good reason. It was a deep depression, and I just thought I was every negative thing you could possibly imagine. At the time, I believed that being gay was one of the worst things you can be so I thought maybe that applied to me as well, even though I still only got turned on by women. I became OCD about it, avoiding anything that might make me look "gay" (like being fashionable, listening to certain music around others, etc). Probably making matters worse, during this depression, I hardly had any romantic encounters because I believed girls just wouldn't want to be around me and the truth is, what girl would want to be around someone as depressed and lacking in confidence as I was? As I got out of depression and started having relationships with girls again (platonic and romantic), plus learning to care much less what others think, I stopped obsessing about it. And even though it made a rough time in my life even tougher, I'm kinda glad I went through it because I think it gave me a bit of empathy.
As for the gay people I've known, they were were just like anybody else I've known in that some were cool, some not.
EDIT: I used "gay" for LGBT so when I said "gay sexuality disgusts me" that isn't entirely true because I forgot about lesbian porn lol.
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Blind Ryan
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Post by Blind Ryan on Jun 5, 2013 6:02:27 GMT -5
"Right, but by the same token, gay people were born with an attraction to their own gender. Why not just play the cards they were dealt and have relationships with the opposite sex?"
Playing the cards they were dealt would be them having sex with the same gender. The whole transgender thing, I thought, wasn't about sexuality but self-appearance. Am I wrong?
Hikaru, the nature/nurture aspect of these kinds of abnormalities (being gay is abnormal in that it isn't normal. I'm not demonizing it,) is interesting if not relevant as you said. My theory is for every kind of mental abnormality on display in our society there is about 5% of the group who are honest-to-god born with it. Their brains are different in that specific way. Hell, who here doesn't have some kind of odd fetish that they can't quite explain? The rest of it is nurture through some kind of cascade of events or other.
And you're right, I say again. It doesn't matter in the long run. If they want to be gay, let 'em. If they want to trasnform their body, fine.
My rub is I want to know why it's such a need for them to do the latter.
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Post by Snarboo on Jun 5, 2013 7:45:52 GMT -5
And you're right, I say again. It doesn't matter in the long run. If they want to be gay, let 'em. If they want to trasnform their body, fine. My rub is I want to know why it's such a need for them to do the latter. As someone who is not transgender, the best way I can imagine and summarize it is thusly: you ever have a nightmare where you were the wrong gender? Now imagine you woke up and the nightmare didn't end. From what I understand, gender dysphoria isn't an aesthetic thing ("I don't look right"), it's a physical thing ("I don't feel right"). People who are trans have a body/mind mismatch, which causes a lot of strain on them. For some people, the only way to correct this is by getting surgery. Now, not all transpeople seek out or go through gender reassignment surgery. Some take hormone treatments, some take hormones and have surgery, and others choose neither. I admit some of my knowledge on this may be outdated, but that's the basic gist from what I understand.
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Post by Allie on Jun 5, 2013 9:31:44 GMT -5
And you're right, I say again. It doesn't matter in the long run. If they want to be gay, let 'em. If they want to trasnform their body, fine. My rub is I want to know why it's such a need for them to do the latter. As someone who is not transgender, the best way I can imagine and summarize it is thusly: you ever have a nightmare where you were the wrong gender? Now imagine you woke up and the nightmare didn't end. From what I understand, gender dysphoria isn't an aesthetic thing ("I don't look right"), it's a physical thing ("I don't feel right"). People who are trans have a body/mind mismatch, which causes a lot of strain on them. For some people, the only way to correct this is by getting surgery. Now, not all transpeople seek out or go through gender reassignment surgery. Some take hormone treatments, some take hormones and have surgery, and others choose neither. I admit some of my knowledge on this may be outdated, but that's the basic gist from what I understand. That should be correct, but I wonder how many people are pushed farther in a direction than they otherwise may not have gone due to either peer pressure, or the looming spectre of being labelled a fraud or a category traitor.
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Post by justjustin on Jun 5, 2013 11:26:32 GMT -5
I know that "play the hand you're dealt" is supposed to mean "be realistic," but it's a very flawed phrase because everyone has a different idea of what the cards are. At the end of the day it really just means "I don't like what you're thinking, and I can't really argue why, so I'll pretend to make an objective argument so you feel obligated to appeal to it." It is up to the individual to determine what the cards really are.
And the idea that one should accept oneself is often taken to mean "you're fine the way you are." It's another one of those pseudo-objective statements. The problem is that everyone has a different idea about what makes a person a person; so people will naturally accept and reject different aspects of themselves depending on how important it is to one's self-understanding, or how changeable it is. And again, only the individual can determine how to identify oneself based on one's circumstance. Do people who go to the gym not accept themselves? Do people who go to school and educate themselves not accept themselves? How about when making new friends? Getting a different job? These people are actively changing their physical composition, system of beliefs, thinking abilities and social habits on a daily basis yet we wouldn't say they fail to accept themselves. So then why, when someone wants a sex change, do people suddenly argue they should just accept themselves when the average joe does no such thing on a daily basis? It says more about the person using the phrase than anyone else. It says "I value coming to terms with my original body as part of who I am, and you should do the same." They use the phrase "accept oneself" because it has that mystical universal appeal that so many are fooled by-- and they themselves are fooled by! If you believe identity is a universal understanding, then no doubt you'll object when someone identifies themselves differently since it would threaten the stability of your own self concept. So understand this: It's not universal, and someone can get a sex change without having to rearrange your web of beliefs.
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Post by Weasel on Jun 5, 2013 13:45:22 GMT -5
This might fall under the same category as what justjustin is talking about, but a phrase I stand by is "you and you alone are in charge of who you are."
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Post by Scylla on Jun 5, 2013 14:59:30 GMT -5
I think it's funny that when you really think about it logically the only reason there's such ado about homosexuality and the belief that it's a sin is the same reason why Catholics are opposed to birth control and why in the Hasidic neighborhoods near me it's not unusual for a couple to have 10+ children before the mother hits menopause. It's all a relic of a bygone time; the whole "go forth and be fruitful" mantra. Back when the human lifespan was much shorter, children were far more likely to not reach adulthood, and the Earth wasn't remotely as populated, the state of the human species was a legitimate concern. Of course anything that could threaten our future as a species would be seen as evil.
But now that the Earth is overpopulated and we have basically no threat but ourselves, it's all pointless. Yet because it's still incorporated into many religions, so on it continues. Yet when you look at the animal kingdom, homosexual behavior does exist to a small degree, and there is no negative reaction to it. It's not like the other animals kill an animal that displays homosexual behavior. If a male animal fails to reproduce, it's his loss; it just leaves more females for the other males to mate with and pass on their genetic code. And if those homosexual tendencies are genetic, those genes aren't getting passed on, so there's no threat to the future of the species.
And personally, I do think homosexuality is likely genetic. It's probably genetics that produce transgender people too. Some people make it out to be some sort of magical, nebulous thing, but I don't think you can play it both ways. If it's not a choice nor something picked up somehow, if it truly is present from birth, which I do believe, then there's a concrete reason for that. And what you are when you're born is basically all a matter of genetics (unless somebody wants to propose that things the mother consumes or does while carrying determines if a child is gay, but I think that would be a silly argument). But I'm guessing genetics hasn't been looked into so much because it gets dicey from there. Considering that all living creatures are biologically intended to reproduce, it could very well be a genetic defect, but most gay people would probably take offense to the idea that their homosexuality means they're "defective". In practically, there is absolutely nothing wrong with homosexuality, but biologically, it's not ideal. If all babies born on Earth from this moment forward were born gay, that would be a horrible situation (even if we perpetuated the human race with test tube babies, that's too 1984-esque for me). On the flip side, I wonder if it could perhaps be a genetic mutation reacting to current conditions. Like I said, we are overpopulated after all, so maybe homosexuality is created as population control? That's not to say that there haven't always been gay people, but, who knows, maybe there's a higher percentage now than in the past? It's hard to tell when, up until recently, it's been so hush-hush. Animals have been known to do unusual things in response to population abnormalities, even randomly changing gender if the balance of males and females is off. Maybe transgender people could be linked to that phenomenon in some way.
Well, these are just some thoughts from a naturalistic point-of-view. Hopefully I haven't totally offended a bunch of people with this since I'm not at all trying to suggest anything bad about anybody.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2013 15:10:42 GMT -5
I used to view it as strictly a thing you were born with, but then I got to thinking about how malleable people really are. A child could be born into a family in China or England or Chile, but that doesn't mean they're going to act or think or sound like someone from that region. It largely depends on the household they're raised in and the experiences they have. I mean, just consider the tradition of pederasty in ancient Greece. It seems highly unlikely that every single child involved that sort of relationship had natural homosexual leanings. It was just the way things were done back then.
Now that's not really the way things are handled in modern society, but it seems a bit unrealistic to write off all modern homosexuality on genetics.
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