If you dont believe gender exists then what would you have to contribute to a discussion on transgender issues? In your mind gender or race may not exist. But they certainly do in our society today and the way different races and genders are treated by society has been a major point of conflict.

Too many confused/curious/scared heteros for that thread to ever function

Plenty obviously. If someone doesn't believe in global warming are they capable of contributing to a thead on it?

Are you alleging that sexuality is related to gender? That view is now verboten here.

Not in an intelligent way, no.

What percentage of the general population suffers from a mental illness? It would be an enormous mathematical improbability if no transgender people were mentally ill.

How far would you push this logic? If someone doesn't believe in the existence of atoms, can they make a meaningful contribution to a discussion of nuclear fission?

agreed

I've posted a crap ton in threads on race productively without believing that race exists btw, and no one has ever suggested that I be made to stop.

Why do you think that is?

Possibly, not a nuclear scientist but wouldn't fission deal more with subatomic particles?

If criticism of the concept of gender-- something invented in 1959-- aren't allowed in a thread that deals with changing gender, then it should just be moved to the religion forum which deals with issues of faith. Because that is literally all it is. It cannot be defined in any sort of non-circular way or without relying on stereotypes or vague terminology like "an inner sense".

I actually agree with this!

But "pea brains" is inoffensive and kinda funny, like "dum-dum.". And I've called MYSELF a dum-dum a time or three.

I admit to being a few fries short of a Happy Meal(TM).

Sounds heterophobic to me.

Hope you eat a temp-ban.

Even the Enviro-Fascists don't call it "global warming". It's "CLIMATE CHANGE", dum-dum.

OK. I'm going to admit that I was wrong when I said I wouldn't close the transgender thread for inappropriate posts. I believed that posters here could distinguish between addressing political and social issues related to various policies, and simply attacking transgender people. I was wrong. Disapointingly so, but wrong nonetheless.

The quoted post above is from about my second day here. It gives my first impression of the transgender thread. Unfortunately after recent postings I am convinced that my first impression was the correct one. The transgender thread has become a cesspool of falsehoods, disinformation and flat out slurs against transgender people. There are too many factual errors to attempt to fix them individually. And some of the worst stretches of trying to tie what is straight up criminal child abuse and murder to being gay or trans as a contributing factor I have seen are in this thread.

So I am going to close that thread, despite my intentions otherwise, because as I felt at the start, this is an excuse to bash transgender people rather than to address issues. In the future, if there is a specific political or societal issue that is significant enough in scope to warrant a thread, then start a thread on that specific issue. But we will no longer have a catch all trans thread that functions as a place to denigrate and attack a minority group.

Prepare for uke to be mad at you.

One legitimate question, imo, that will come from his inevitable post is: why not just ban those bad posters and leave the rest of us to discuss the issues civilly? It's only 2 posters or so who would have to go, right?

The thread has run its course

Maybe make a new thread about people who want sex change operations and it'll be the same people just without the pesky fact that gender isn't real?

That would both salvage the thread and eliminate any dissent due to pseudo scientific ideas of gender.

I believe it would still be a good idea to remove some of the most recent washoing in that thread, even with it locked.

That is a possibility. But...

This has some merit.

Yup. Letting threads turn into cesspools then just locking them is just awful modding. As with mass deletions when you treat trolls the same as good faith posting, you'll just get more trolling.

I am going to go back through and delete some posts and issue warnings or bans as appropriate. I just dont have the time right now.

I am leaving the thread closed, as from the start I never felt that a catchall thread to address "issues" of a single minority community made sense. We dont do it for any other group. If a topic needs to be discussed start a thread on it. For example, if someone wanted to discuss FLs law on teaching about gender identity and other stuff, then start a thread on it. Or policies about sports, start a thread. This will keep the discussion focused on a particular issue which will make it easier to identify derails. So imo the thread structure itself was flawed, which made it easy to get out of hand, regardless of the actual posts in the thread. If tou look back at recent posting the main "issue" being discussed is whether all transgender people suffer from a mental disorder or even exist. That's not an issue up for discussion.

The trans thread has been horrible from the start, I don’t know why it took this long, but I’m glad 2p2 is finally refusing to give a soapbox to bullying *******s.

This is just not true fwiw. First, no one was claiming that trans people don't exist. The claim is that gender doesn't exist. There still are very much trans people, just like there are still black people even though race doesn't exist. The claim that people are arguing that trans don't exist is ridiculous bad faith.

Second, you yourself made mental health an issue when you deleted 57's post and then reposted it for us to discuss

I havent read the thread here, but I cant imagine it is any worse than your most popular poster going on a tirade about the possibility of "some dude beating his daughter at HS track".