Millhouse

How out of touch with reality that conversation was. I'd wager that most people have no idea - or care - what cis-gender means.

What separates the Gen X and Y/Z is Instagram hours.

DXBtoDOH

How would you know. You're not Gen Y/Z

Your mini Millhouse is growing up in a very different world than we did. Just look at the latest political battles going on back in the UK (or rather, within Labour) over gender identities. Or the huge fuss over transgenders using the appropriate bathrooms in the US a year or two back. The Canadian law that was passed declaring it a prosecutable violation to refuse to call someone (namely a transgender) by their preferred pronoun. I find it peculiar but that's the way it seems to be. Even my Grindr app now has a line for "preferred pronouns".

When we were kiddos, the transgenders were weirdos. Men dressing up like women? A subject best left to the shrinks. But today? They're getting their rights.

scrubbedexpat141

It was only just before you were born that being a gay man was legalised, but only then if you were over 21.

So hardly surprising that rights are extending further to smaller groups?

Millhouse

The only thing that has changed is the rights granted to them
(mostly by Gen X people).

DXBtoDOH

As Millhouse probably knows but won't admit the current hot topic is gender fluidity. I won't bore the bored about it but it's become a divisive issue in Labour and leftist groups and has pitted feminists against transgender activists (opens up the can of worms for if anyone can change their gender at will does it weaken the identity of women as a biological group?). Sounds daft, but those are real cultural battles at the moment. And it's filtering into the real world as well, with some schools being told to avoid calling any students by male/female pronouns and even new schools are being designed with gender neutral bathrooms.

I'm not sure where I stand on the subject. Some of the examples are extreme but what tends to be extreme at one point becomes accepted down the road, as you kindly pointed out to me. But the larger political aspect of the question is that the Millennial generations have embraced to a greater degree the notion of self-autonomy, that the rights of the individual is paramount and trumps any greater societal concerns, so the rights of a tiny minority, such as transgenders, must be protected even if it inconveniences the vast majority. And these are not necessarily rights whose restrictions would necessarily deprive these people of their genuine wellbeing (is a transgendered man told he can't use a women's loo genuinely being deprived of rights?). In the liberal west the battles are often the degree of balance between individual will versus the well-being of the greater society and the generational difference seems to also rest on that the Millennial are further towards the individual will end of the spectrum than say, the boomers and certainly far more so than the Greatest Generation Ever, who saw greater value in cultural unity over individual autonomy.

But for all the advantages of self-autonomous free will I do wonder that if the left has now come to declare gender is not biologically based but culturally based and as such anyone can call themselves a male or female regardless of the birth origins, what's to stop, say, a white woman from declaring that she's actually a black woman because she identifies as black? Hmm? A few years ago in the US such a woman did masquerade as a black woman and even assumed leadership roles in local African American groups but when she was discovered to have been white all along, the reaction was ferocious. So it'll interesting to see what happens to the cultural left over the next few decades for they spent the last few decades promoting identity politics and encouraging people to see themselves as belonging to niche groups deserving of special protection, but with the trend towards the primacy of self-autonomous free will as the underpinning ideology (loosely defined as I can be anything I want whenever I want and can change who I am any time I want to regardless of what others think), then the sanctity of those niche groups are seriously weakened, which undermines a large portion of the left's base.

Will be interesting

scrubbedexpat141

Personally, I think it's bullshit. I think you're born one gender (unless you're a genuinely unlucky hermaphrodite).

If you feel that's wrong and undergo reassignment then you should be considered the gender you have changed to - that's acceptable in every sense I think.

However, the kinds of people who wake up and decide today they're a boy or a girl or man or woman are not behaving in a normal way. Bending over backwards to accommodate such behaviour is silly in my opinion....fortunately I think a lot of it is over-egged and made to be far more dramatic than it is by The Daily Mail type press and people regurgitating the misconceptions on social media. You know, the 'health and safety gone mad' or 'political correctness gone mad' type claims.

There's obviously some truth in some of these things but you make a good point - does one man who identifies himself as a woman have the right to use female toilets because he wants to and feels he should? What about the women who use that toilet and don't want to share it with a person they see as a man? One person vs hundreds (perhaps, just for example) in any situation.

I think 'the West' is quite soft to these sorts of things and it's why I bet on Trump to win because it's very easy to get annoyed by these issues, but more often than not people get annoyed by the extrapolated potential and the dramatisation of current realities rather than the actual like the percentage of those being affected for example.

Dunno. Don't really care a great deal about it if I'm honest, which means I don't mind if people get rights to things they think they should have as long as it doesn't affect the greater good. EG: Gay marriage. I don't care if gay people can get married do I? Good for gay men and women, why not let them marry, it's the same thing as me marrying a woman. Doesn't affect me either way so why be upset if it's legal or not? Automatically makes me a supporter of it by default I think. If the law was one that affects the masses or majority or you directly to satisfy a very small part of society then I totally get why you'd be pissed off or anti it. It's natural.

I'm finding it hard at the end of a busy Sunday to articulate myself concisely and with clarity, sorry. I don't think people's opinions, beliefs or traditions (for want of a better word) should impact other people. People need to handle their business and other people need to handle theirs. The less they **** with each other the better. If you're offended by something, 99% of the time it's your problem and nobody else's.

IKnowNothing

Wow, totally agree with you, I care not about someones sexuality, religion, colour, race (different to colour), gender etc. as long as they're an honest and decent person. Who frankly cares.

Now read my sig.

DXBtoDOH

The issue wouldn't be the "right" of the individual to decide that he wants to be a woman and start dressing up as a woman and even undergo treatments to look more like a woman. It looks like most of us are in agreement that if such a person wants to do so then there's no reason or need to stop him.

But does the rest of society have to be forced to accept that person as a woman? That all the women's bathrooms need to be flung open for him? Must a woman's sports team accept him? Women's colleges or girls' schools? Or political short lists meant to promote female candidates? As you can see, a lot of women, even progressive leftists, are not quite comfortable with this reality.

So you can see how laws meant to protect an individual's self-autonomous decision can impinge on the rest of society in uncomfortable ways. The difficulty is finding that balance between individual freedom and societal well-being.

littlejimmy

Not really, but I'm sure you're going to tell us them anyway...

jam25mack

Agree on most of this.

Millhouse

Not in my house it's not. I have no interest in people self-identifying - it's a dangerous fashion caused created out of the poor economics and decline of circuses. Each to their own though, just don't expect me to care either way about it. You do have to question the raising levels of female hormones in food though.

Given that it's mostly men that are jumping the gender bridge, it seems to me that women are the ones most upset or opinionated by all of this.

littlejimmy

Oh. The cranky yank has gone...

Arnold S

It's not really, you're literally talking about a pub full of radical feminists enjoying the notoriety that making trolling and sometimes bigoted comments brings. On the flip side, you have the trans-activists which among them has unearthed some absolute crackpots, out solely for confrontation with feminists.

Its all deep meta identity politics spawned from the pages of 4Chan and Reddit and while baffling to most, not too dissimilar to the Uni Soc politics satirised in Life Of Brian.

I'm not a member, or would even currently vote for Labour, but many of my FB friends are. Some are even activists. I also have a number of SNP supporters in my circle too who would regard themselves left of centre.

I don't have time to collate the data but it's still very much health care provision, taxation, social welfare, unemployment and workers rights that is driving the concerns of "the left".

Arnold S

Hi Nail, this is Head. You two grab a table over there and I'll get the pints in.

scrubbedexpat141

Only if it's ale.