Does this apply equally to those promoting trans agendas in the comments?
I ask because here we are, in a thread specifically about these kinds of issues, and you are threatening my account with termination for disagreeing. I don’t see any threats made to the people on the other side, despite posting incredibly divisive/controversial views.
When you selectively moderate along ideological lines you harm the community. I could understand removing these types of posts from say, a technical update about AWS as it’s off topic. This post however is about social issues and the comments are about social issues. Perhaps you think that’s off topic for HN, so maybe remove the topic entirely?
We don't ban accounts for disagreeing, but for breaking the site guidelines. Your account was the most flamewarrish one in the thread by a large margin. If you think I missed a worse offender, I'd be happy to take a look, but from what I saw your comments were the most aggressive (in both quality and quantity). If that's right, then you're in no position to point fingers at others.
If you read https://hackernews.hn/newsguidelines.html, it isn't hard to see what would be ban-worthy about that. Not banning such accounts would be like not having a fire department.
I remember when the first person I knew disclosed that they were trans. The pronoun thing was weird for a day or two. But it's no more a burden than using "they" with you since I don't know your gender.
Calling trans people "delusional" is transphobic. If you don't think of yourself as intolerant, you're probably experiencing cognitive dissonance about the whole thing. If you're not homophobic, ask yourself why you're being so reactive about this.
I grew up in a time when "fag" was tossed around very casually. When I realized that the use of that word hurt people, I stopped. These are not hills to die on.
Given that you've clearly decided that trans activists have "delusions" I'm not sure there's much hope, however...
- What changes to your language are they demanding? If you mean they ask you to refer to them in a particular way, then this is not an uncommon thing. People often ask to be referred to in a particular way. For example, most people don't like being called "fruitloop".
- If what you mean by "anti-scientific ideas" is that that people exists who either a) are not conventionally male or female, or b) feel very strongly that their gender is not the one assigned to them at birth, then I would argue that these ideas are not anti-scientific at all. There is a huge amount of nuance in the science of human development that is left out in the "conventional" wisdom.
I'm a non-binary person, a scientist, and a medical doctor. So I am obviously invested here on several fronts.
Hopefully it was accidental and not a sleight of hand, but I hope you realize you pivoted a statement about the trans activists being pushed back against (that they are “deluded”) to being about trans people as a whole. I feel like this kind of pivot happens so often in bad faith that people now do it subconsciously and not even necessarily in bad faith but simply out of habit.
Similarly, (but not necessarily in the exact same vein,) there is an overarching sentiment that all trans people agree with the broader LGBT community, but it’s definitely not true.
Totally agree. The charitable interpretation is the right one to make if you actually care about arguing the ideas. I'm sure my philosophy professor would be very upset with me.
Did you mean to reply to me? I have not really made a statement about the actual topic because it is personally irrelevant to me. I just want people to argue in good faith, even if at this point a reasoned discussion seems impossible. (And just to be explicit, by that I mean, we’re probably not going to see eye to eye, so I’m probably not going to engage with your rhetoric. Sorry.)
You are aware of the existence of physically intersex, hermaphroditic, and androgynous humans? Are you aware that trans identifying people frequently exhibit physiological characteristics, such as extremely low sperm count in born-male people? Are you aware of the existence of cultures that officially recognize multiple genders, like in Samoa, Mexico, India, & Chile?
Your own example of race is telling, since race is not binary. What race should someone call themselves, if they have a father from Finland, a mother from Zimbabwe, and are born in Germany are a German citizen and only speak German?
What are you scared of? Why are you offended enough by what gender someone else feels to call it delusions and lies? Is it a lie to call someone Nathan when they ask you to?
