iNow

Yeah, but those only work when you put your hat of foil back on, right?

Brains are not meaningfully aligned along some simplistic kindergarten-level male-female dichotomy. Our application of those labels is a bit arbitrary and for the most part are IMO a historical artifact. We do it because, well… because that’s how we’ve always done it… never mind that there’s a better way. Here’s one among many recommending a more meaningful multi-dimensional mosaic. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763420306540

In much the same way that astronomy used to follow a heliocentric model. Natural philosophers refused to abandon it for decades until they had no other choice.

I wish more people would do this. It’d at least make threads like these less common and less confrontational. ✌🏼 Not necessarily, but let’s keep conversation about that there. The entire concept of binary gender is fraught, as are humans trying to force square peg kids to fit into binary round holes due to socially cultural norms.

That’s not an accurate summary of my views, no. Nuance is lost here it seems

Definitely!

I never joke in threads this productive.

Hyperbolic much?

Citation needed. Isn’t the answer here obvious?

Not according to the paint section at the local hardware store. Parents and parents-to-be all standing there buying the “right” color to paint their still unborn child’s nursery… making sure it’s pink or blue or a similar gender-based hue.

Did you happen to notice how all of his little pajamas and onesies and jumpers (or whatever you Scottish blokes call em… maybe a romper?)… did you happen to notice they were ALL blue and white and gray. Not pink, though? Sadly it wasn’t just the parents who were in on it. Apparently all of their friends showed up to the baby shower with blue and gray and white onesies and bibs and socks and hats. Not a damned one was pink though, and the baby wasn’t even born yet. Heck… Not even the mom had seen her baby boy yet… what with him still gestating inside her belly and all… yet already the social gender cues were being reinforced everywhere and across all corners. Not yet even breathing air outside instead of breathing fallopian fluids, but already gifted trucks and blocks and planes instead of dolls and kitchenware. Obviously these roles and characteristics we see today are all genetic in origin. /sarcasm (and only quoted you here as a jumping off point, this is not a reply to you directly)

Yeah, but that was like 14 entire pages ago. Statute of limitations likely applies to evaded counterpoints.

I'm not certain whether I agree with their arguments, but the data to your core question are well summarized here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509633/

As am I. Please avoid subtly attempting to dismiss me as some Pollyanna. I’m more than capable of supporting my position. There are many realities involved here, and one of them is withering while the other is not. Except you’re not being consistent in your logic. Parents push children into “you are male!!” and “you are female!!” directions every. Single. Day. You’re NOT arguing against that. You’re happy defending the status quo where parents “push” genders on their children which you happen to find acceptable. You accept that. You just don’t like when the conversation steers into same sex. Anyway, nobody here is arguing that parents ought to PUSH their children anywhere, only that they stay the hell out of the way and show some acceptance when children do decide for themselves that they feel different from the norm.

Answer the question asked instead of evading with a new question of your own

Hard to disagree with that. Maybe it’s just me, but I get the very real sense that folks open to accepting others for who they are tend also to be more open to mutually respectful discussions than are folks that feel repulsed by who other people happen to live… and it’s a several orders of magnitude difference IMO.

Sometimes sufficient time must be measured geologically

At least one is thoughtful exchanges of ideas together in good faith and without fear of retribution or retaliation… and doing that at scale. Integration, not isolation. Ideas cannot be drowned out by fear and anger, and the best ones tend to rise to the top and win the day after sufficient time passes… regardless of how powerful or persistent are their enemies.

I think I may previously have misunderstood your position. That’s what I get for posting with kids running around. Another often forgotten impact of deglobalizing and splitting into little island blocs separate from each other is how poverty stricken nations… something like 60% or one out of every two out there is in a poverty trap right now after borrowing to survive Covid… and they can’t pay it back… deglobalizing makes that even worse bc it pulls $1.5 Trillion with a T dollars out of the system each and every year… $3T by year 2, $6T by year 4, $15 Trillion evaporated from the economy in just one decade… If you think people are mad and hungry now, just wait and watch how they react after another fifteen trillion dollars drops out from below them while they’re carrying an already too heavy burden of debt, dehydration, hunger, and suffering. My numbers are from the recent 2023 IMF report, but I may be misreading that too. The kids are kinda always being kids, after all.

The balloon collected intelligence about how the U.S. responds. They watched the ballon cross into Alaska and how we responded. They watched how the government and military responded the entire next week. They watched the news coverage and national freak out on social media. The conspiracy theories that were most cited. The anger and disappointment at Biden. They watched family members sniping at each other. They watched what other things and places we stopped watching while watching this. Now the next time when they want to deploy a virus against our banking system or energy grid, or just want more leverage in a negotiation over carbon credits and trade… they’ll just float a balloon across the continental US so we look up and watch it like wide-eyed children. “Oooohhh… shiny!”

From the environment itself, most likely. I think I see now where the core issue exists. Thanks for being so open about your preference for and priority of personal opinion over decades upon decades of peer reviewed research.

We can only respond to the words you type and submit, which in this case were the following: Simply repeating an invalid point over and over again without adding any new information doesn’t magically render it true. You were wrong, and/or your phrasing sloppy. Big deal. Man up. Either do a better job at defending your stance to support why it’s correct or acknowledge that you made a mistake and learned something new today. Is your ego too fragile to acknowledge or accept that latter possibility? Can you not even conceive of the possibility that you too are imperfect? Will you now attack me with bile and vitriol and childish whining to remind everyone just how thick your skin is?

Not when one lives in a culture where being gay is accepted as perfectly normal and entirely valid. People shouldn’t have to beg society for basic decency and respect just bc they happen to love differently than you do.

that the child has innate gender identity Fair. I wasn’t as precise as I could’ve been. We are not born hating others for who we love or find attractive. That is learned. It is cultural. Who we as individuals find attractive can have both social and genetic contributors, but I come down on the side that it’s more nature than nurture involved there. It’s complex though and we need to be open to both. More to the point: I also suggest that the very concept of gender itself is a social construct that’s somewhat arbitrary. We impose it on infants the moment they leave the womb based solely on their plumbing. That’s what gets imprinted on children by parents and tribal elders. That’s what’s fully nurture. “You have dangly bits. That means male and male means you just like female! Do not question the orthodoxy!!” It’s silliness. They’re human. You may as well be forcing them to be a Red Sox fan just bc they’re born with red hair. Super dumb. This isn’t a perfect description of all my thoughts on this topic, but is a mostly accurate summary of what I’ve tried to communicate here. Other people need to stop caring so much about who I or you or our kids happen to find attractive and want to get jiggy with. It’s none of our damned business. Just walk away and shut up about it. Does that help to clarify my points, or have I really missed the mark? Which also very easily could’ve been taught and or learned. What have you done specifically to rule out alternative possibilities?