Well, as a 72-year-old who is no longer sexually attractive, but who still has all my mental faculties and libido, I use gay porn, and see no problem with it. Indeed, much of gay porn just shows men enjoying each other, although in recent years I am seeing more things I don't like (slapping each other, spitting on each other, etc.). I ha…
Well, as a 72-year-old who is no longer sexually attractive, but who still has all my mental faculties and libido, I use gay porn, and see no problem with it. Indeed, much of gay porn just shows men enjoying each other, although in recent years I am seeing more things I don't like (slapping each other, spitting on each other, etc.). I have had people on Substack try to shame me for liking porn, but that is pretty hard to do when most of the MEN in porn obviously want to be in porn (they enjoy exhibiting themselves). But for women, it is different. Most women do it for the money. That's fine. Women, who are the gate-keepers of human procreation, must be more conservative in this area.
But getting back to your central point, as a gay man, I can't say that I am normal and trans people are abnormal. It just doesn't look good. I am religious and believe in reincarnation. I believe that what is actually happening with [most] trans people is that they selected the wrong sex before birth. Every soul must experience maleness and femaleness before the reincarnational cycle is over, and some souls have a fear of being male or female. For example, a soul that identifies as male may avoid being a female for a bunch of incarnations because he doesn't want to experience childbirth or the chronic second-class citizenship that all women experience. But after those lives, he needs to be a woman to further his spiritual growth. So, having incarnated as a man for another time, he decides he is really a woman and tries to transition to being a woman -- not realizing, of course, that being a trans woman won't give him the actual experience of womanhood.
Now, I understand that to a scientist like you, all this sounds ridiculous, but it's what I believe.
Another possible reason for choosing the wrong sex before birth is to experience the strife that results from that, which can teach a soul useful things. All these children who are transitioning as teenagers and then regretting it five years later are also learning spiritual lessons, such as the foolishness of acting rashly or without enough information.
I am not religious and I don't believe in reincarnation but I do think that trans men in the past may have had a developmental disorder - as yet not identified by neuroscience.
I strongly agree with "as a gay man, I can't say that I am normal and trans people are abnormal." Same goes for all of us who accept gays. Our society slowly and painfully came to accept gay people after thinking pretty much exactly what many anti-trans ideology people now think about trans. I find no difficulty in differentiating between rejecting current trans ideology (atts to kids, sport, women, sex-binary etc) and accepting trans people in the same way that third gender identities have been accepted in many non-Xtian societies.
The difference between gays and trans people is pretty simple. A man who says "I am attracted to other men" cannot be disproved in any way. No man would say that if it weren't true. But when a man says "I am a woman", there is lots of evidence that it isn't true, his male body being the obvious evidence. And since the differing physical capabilities of men and women have real-world consequences, and especially since women are second-class citizens who are routinely victimized by men, no man must be able to enter into women's single-sex spaces with impunity, and certainly not by pretending that he is not a man.
I agree with most of what you say but not the claim that the difference between gays and trans is "pretty simple". Both groups are talking about subjective/internal feelings that exist for them. The problem we have is the current trans ideology which claims that society should accept male-born humans' claim to that they actually are women as a reason to alter laws, policies and practices, including language that concern female-born humans.
There are several societies with established third gender roles - that is the appropriate way forward for trans-women and trans-men. Not false claims and demands that undermine female safety and medicalize kids etc. But instead of being reinforced by political activity, the acceptance and safety of those third gender roles is being undermined by the demands of Western trans ideology. This has already happened in some Middle Eastern societies which have rejected their long traditions of accepting male same sex activity - Western homosexual roles mean gay men no longer give priority to their family of origin and that was crucial to acceptance of the sex activity. This highlights the fact that the traditional third gender roles are too constrained to enable men and women to live modern independent lives. Activism to modify and establish new third gender roles is the real way forward. The existence of classic early onset trans-women over centuries and in many human societies (that doesn't include ROGD) means for me that I accept their subjective experience is different and likely due to some form of physiological developmental failure in the process to become male. Therefore I do not reject trans-women. I reject modern trans-ideology and the policies and practices this involves.
I think you are a little more knowledgeable about other cultures than I am, and perhaps understand the nuances of this issue better than I do. I tend to see things in black and white.
I also think there is a place for trans women in the world; they just need to exhibit more humility.
Well, as a 72-year-old who is no longer sexually attractive, but who still has all my mental faculties and libido, I use gay porn, and see no problem with it. Indeed, much of gay porn just shows men enjoying each other, although in recent years I am seeing more things I don't like (slapping each other, spitting on each other, etc.). I have had people on Substack try to shame me for liking porn, but that is pretty hard to do when most of the MEN in porn obviously want to be in porn (they enjoy exhibiting themselves). But for women, it is different. Most women do it for the money. That's fine. Women, who are the gate-keepers of human procreation, must be more conservative in this area.
But getting back to your central point, as a gay man, I can't say that I am normal and trans people are abnormal. It just doesn't look good. I am religious and believe in reincarnation. I believe that what is actually happening with [most] trans people is that they selected the wrong sex before birth. Every soul must experience maleness and femaleness before the reincarnational cycle is over, and some souls have a fear of being male or female. For example, a soul that identifies as male may avoid being a female for a bunch of incarnations because he doesn't want to experience childbirth or the chronic second-class citizenship that all women experience. But after those lives, he needs to be a woman to further his spiritual growth. So, having incarnated as a man for another time, he decides he is really a woman and tries to transition to being a woman -- not realizing, of course, that being a trans woman won't give him the actual experience of womanhood.
Now, I understand that to a scientist like you, all this sounds ridiculous, but it's what I believe.
Another possible reason for choosing the wrong sex before birth is to experience the strife that results from that, which can teach a soul useful things. All these children who are transitioning as teenagers and then regretting it five years later are also learning spiritual lessons, such as the foolishness of acting rashly or without enough information.
I am not religious and I don't believe in reincarnation but I do think that trans men in the past may have had a developmental disorder - as yet not identified by neuroscience.
I strongly agree with "as a gay man, I can't say that I am normal and trans people are abnormal." Same goes for all of us who accept gays. Our society slowly and painfully came to accept gay people after thinking pretty much exactly what many anti-trans ideology people now think about trans. I find no difficulty in differentiating between rejecting current trans ideology (atts to kids, sport, women, sex-binary etc) and accepting trans people in the same way that third gender identities have been accepted in many non-Xtian societies.
The difference between gays and trans people is pretty simple. A man who says "I am attracted to other men" cannot be disproved in any way. No man would say that if it weren't true. But when a man says "I am a woman", there is lots of evidence that it isn't true, his male body being the obvious evidence. And since the differing physical capabilities of men and women have real-world consequences, and especially since women are second-class citizens who are routinely victimized by men, no man must be able to enter into women's single-sex spaces with impunity, and certainly not by pretending that he is not a man.
I agree with most of what you say but not the claim that the difference between gays and trans is "pretty simple". Both groups are talking about subjective/internal feelings that exist for them. The problem we have is the current trans ideology which claims that society should accept male-born humans' claim to that they actually are women as a reason to alter laws, policies and practices, including language that concern female-born humans.
There are several societies with established third gender roles - that is the appropriate way forward for trans-women and trans-men. Not false claims and demands that undermine female safety and medicalize kids etc. But instead of being reinforced by political activity, the acceptance and safety of those third gender roles is being undermined by the demands of Western trans ideology. This has already happened in some Middle Eastern societies which have rejected their long traditions of accepting male same sex activity - Western homosexual roles mean gay men no longer give priority to their family of origin and that was crucial to acceptance of the sex activity. This highlights the fact that the traditional third gender roles are too constrained to enable men and women to live modern independent lives. Activism to modify and establish new third gender roles is the real way forward. The existence of classic early onset trans-women over centuries and in many human societies (that doesn't include ROGD) means for me that I accept their subjective experience is different and likely due to some form of physiological developmental failure in the process to become male. Therefore I do not reject trans-women. I reject modern trans-ideology and the policies and practices this involves.
I think you are a little more knowledgeable about other cultures than I am, and perhaps understand the nuances of this issue better than I do. I tend to see things in black and white.
I also think there is a place for trans women in the world; they just need to exhibit more humility.