kodokan

It's odd, isn't it - you'd think religious people would be the first in line to embrace situations where people are saying 'I know I have no actual proof, and that it's a thought/feeling in my head that I'm trying to describe to you, who cannot feel this same thing, but I just KNOW it to be real'.

I see it as identical, honestly - I'm not religious but accept that others believe in their different version of reality and want to live their life accordingly; I'm not transgender but accept that others believe in their different version of reality and want to live their life accordingly, etc etc. You can't tell one group of people that what they deeply believe to be truth, isn't, and then give the other group a free pass on proving their reality (and paying their taxes).

Leslie

That's a wonderful analogy.

Of course, these people not only deny individual beliefs and preferences, they also deny science. So, for religion, it's a win-win.

Many of the transgendered folks that are transitioning today, especially those that are older, may have actual scientific proof though. It was quite a thing for quite a while, when a baby was born with ambiguous genitalia, for the parents and doctors to "choose" which gender while the baby was still in infancy. Surgical procedures were performed, a sex was chosen for the birth certificate, appropriate (pink or blue) clothing and toys (guns or dolls) and all of the medical evidence was sealed and forgotten. Except it didn't always work.

kodokan

Good point.

The further along the path society moves in seeing what is defined as normal human biology/ behavior as a spectrum rather than Us-and-Other, the happier it makes me. Think of how the view of autistic disorders has changed dramatically to give an explanation for those people we all know in life who were previously dismissed as weird, eccentric, a bit 'off'. I'm sure notions of gender and sexuality will go the same way, that we'll come to understand that it's all far less binary than we'd previously assumed, and that 'different' doesn't mean 'wrong'. It's a very exciting time to be alive.

yellowroom

Er, well I'm religious. I can only speak for CofE Protestant Christianity but I find my fellow Christians broadly fall into two camps. One places importance on the teachings of Jesus eg "feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit those in prison, mind your own business about other peoples sins". Others tend to follow the more authoritarian aspects and like the rules and dos and don'ts of St Paul and his letters. It splits very roughly along party political lines in the UK (in the churches that I have attended anyway).

kodokan

Oops, apologies - there's me making sweeping generalizations in a thread about embracing individual differences! Not being part of a religious community myself, I do tend to only have exposure to the more extreme viewpoints as represented by the media, who're largely doing it to goad the masses and drive their viewing figures/ ad revenue.

yellowroom

No need to apologise, the more extreme pronouncements have me cringing too. I can't abide the "burn the sinners!!" approach of people who claim to follow someone who said the exact opposite ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone"). I'm also a scientist, so that can confuse too.

In truth, we all pick the bits of the bible we like best and gloss over the troublesome chapters. As an individual, I've found that the best way to turn people off religion is to be all sanctimonious about it. I don't hide my faith and am happy to talk about it if people want to ask, but I leave the judging of other people to an authority higher than me

scrubbedexpat099

You called?

scot47

A manufactured issue designed to distract us from the real issues of the day !

Dorothy

My partner and I were talking about this yesterday in the context of restraining orders. I was reading the court transcript of an appeal of an order and we were discussing how the magistrate took all of the woman's statements at face value and dismissed what the man said "so as to protect her from the male partner". I had said that while there certainly are violent men out there there are also men who need protection from abusive partners. It's disingenuous to both sexes to assume that women somehow need to be protected from men.

dc koop

What are little Sandra and her friends in 4th grade going to think when little Johnny who feels and thinks more like a girl suddenly starts to use their facility ? Are kids ready for this kind of thing? Or do the powers that be believe that kids these days don't have enough crap to deal with at school.

Dorothy

Perhaps little Sandra won't be in the same cubicle as little Johnny so it's not an issue, is it?

Do you have a separate bathroom at home for you and one for your wife? If not, why not?

robin1234

We actually do. There are just two of us, and two bathrooms. We each have our own, and never use each other's. We each clean and maintain our own, so get to choose our own soap, shampoo, cleaning products etc.

kodokan

I got all interested about transgender from our weekend discussion, and spent yesterday watching a couple of documentaries about the history of it throughout the 20th century, and how some modern kids are living with the condition.

Little Johnny isn't going to turn up at school all slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails, in skater jeans and a T shirt with a dump truck on it, kick a football around the playground, wipe his nose with the back of his hand, then decide to go pee in the girls' bathroom. S/he'll already be presenting as a girl, with long hair and dresses and answering to 'she' and 'her' and have changed her name to Jemima; she'll be thinking of herself as a girl, albeit with an unfortunate penis, and waiting to start hormone treatment as she approaches puberty, and how to pay for surgery once she turns 18.

From the documentaries, other kids were the least of their worries. 'Johnny's a girl now..? Huh, bit weird... *shrug*' You're talking about a group of people who often only have the haziest grasp on reality anyway, and spend a chunk of their waking hours being pirates or dogs.

It all seems horribly difficult and traumatic, and not remotely the way anyone would CHOOSE to be living their life. You'd have to have a colossal paranoia about the occurrence of Munchausen's to be thinking they're all just making it up for attention, from the time they start to speak as toddlers.

dc koop

Exactly the same situation with us. My wife has the bathroom in the master bedroom and I have the one off the hallway. She keeps her bathroom stuff on the countertop and I on mine. Like you we each clean our own bathroom.

When our granddaughters are at the house they use my wife's bathroom as it's nice and feminine

mrken30

Fortunately these societies did not have the white supremacist male problem.