It wasn't just the emperors. They've written tomes about homosexuality in antiquity but are strangely quiet about trans people.

Why do you think that is? I'm not a historian but I think it's because in ancient times they were largely categorized as a 3rd gender. I think a lot of transgender people just became the equivalent of fem boys. I don't know. Maybe transgender people secretly ruled rome and didn't want to tell all the serfs about it.

I think sexuality is a real biological thing and gender isn't. In ancient Rome people were a lot freer to be sexual how they wanted, and so they were. We don't hear about trans people in Ancient Rome because there weren't repressive attitudes and because it wasn't anything that anyone had thought of.

I don't think it's trivializing anything to compare it to needing glasses, and if you needed glasses as a child I bet you wouldn't say that. Children can be very cruel to anyone who is different, and especially needing glasses, which actually does signify that something about you is slightly defective, really brings it out of people who are bullies. Plus it's not something that even can be hidden from others.

I don't know what exactly you are referring to as a "monstrous evil" though. Do you think trans people are treated worse now than in the past? Where I live they are definitely treated better, although I know liberal west coast cities are outliers. I don't really know much about how trans people are treated in more conservative and religious areas, but I can't imagine they're treated worse than they were 50 years ago.

I think requiring everyone to give their pronouns isn't really that terrible, but it has nothing to do with granting basic courtesies.

Yeah, I guess that is true, though more often the person isn't around so it didn't come to mind as easily.

The problem is who decides what is virtuous, and perhaps more importantly why.

Actually, it's just Jain. If you're an adherent of Jainism, then you're a Jain.

The actual "fainting" is mostly from the Language Police who insist that everyone in the known universe summarily adhere to an idiosyncratic pronoun-theory that the "Name and Claim Your Gender" crowd invented like three years ago.

And you can. This isn't some "society has gone mad" kind of thing. Are there people who take this too far? Of course. Are they some of the loudest voices, especially on social media? Yup. But that doesn't mean most of society is going to freak out if you don't choose to advertise your pronouns, no matter what culture warriors might say.

I missed this in uke's posts, but whether it was him or you that came up with this...well said!

My post was related to people sharing their pronouns. so in that context, I'd say that anyone who thinks those are important questions have a much more important question to ask themself - why the **** do they care? When someone sends me an email and declare their pronouns in their signature, I likely have no idea if they are doing so out of care for others and aren't concerned in the least about what others think of this care, if they don't care at all about others and are simply doing this to virtue signal, or if they're somewhere in between. But...I don't give a ****! Why would I?

they took care of the pharaoh and raised the children imo. no dick, no threat kinda logic. like the eunuchs.

I'm the furthest thing from an expert on transgender history, but I see no reason to assume that the experience described by transgender people did not exist before the term "gender" was introduced into the popular lexicon in the 1950s. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of historical examples from before the 1950s and from different cultures of people we would now describe as transgender.

I'm sympathetic to the view that some people, especially teenagers, who announce they are transgender are just trying on a hat that they will later decide is not right for them. That's sort of the nature of being a teenager, and that's a good reason to be cautious about medical stuff for teenagers. But on the flip side, based on a few people I know personally, you would have an even harder time convincing me that the phenomenon of gender dysphoria is some made up thing that didn't exist before the 1950s.

Well I definitely think there were plenty of repressed gay people before the 1950s. There is also a phenomenon called autogynephilia-- which is guys who get aroused at the thought of themselves as female-- and that seems to be a real thing and part of the impetus behind cross-dressing.

Spaceman and a number of other people here it would seem, have this idea that sex and gender are two completely distinct domains, but given that gender has no biological basis that seems like a big stretch. Instead it's better to think of gender as sort of like a socially constructed layer that goes over the top of sexuality. Sexuality is the base layer which informs "gender", which is itself informed by society.

This is sort of how you can end up with flaming gay males, "bears", lipstick and butch lesbians-- they can run the gamut in terms of "gender expression".

But you'll have a hard time finding a flaming straight effeminate male or a butchy straight female who isn't repressed.

let me give you a hint.. this is a 3,500 post thread. and it certainly wasn't started nor maintained by the people on the left that just accept that people would like to be referred to as a different name/pronoun..

I can't find a tool to create Venn diagrams but imagine a Venn diagram with two circles-- one is sexuality and the other is socially constructed ideas about gender (e.g. stereotypes about how males and females are supposed to act)-- where they overlap is what people call "gender".

But it has no existence on its own and is basically just a cognitive layer on top of sexuality. But because humans are super malleable, those socially-constructed layers can take on an outsized importance-- and so you have some people believing that gender is this real thing without understanding that there is a base layer of sexuality that underlies it, which is exactly how you get people who think they are transgender but just turn out to be gay, and why you have lots of females currently (who are much more malleable in their sexuality) who are becoming trans

This seems like a possible archetype of a particular type of transgender person. Do you think this type of person is common when they are in fact repressed? And if so, could they also be the type of person with autogynephilia? If such a person could identify as transgender, can you be sure that that isn't more common than instances of your theory of gay people being transgender? Them desiring a male to satisfy their autogynephilia wouldn't necessarily make them gay IMO.

you guys would love reading about elagabalus, could definitely be argued there was a trans emperor of rome

syrian dude who was cousin of the emperor and thus as a child made the head priest of a sun god - which one can only imagine has gotta be a pretty unique experience in your formative years to be the highest religious authority around and your cousin is the highest secular authority

cousin is killed, there's civil wars, eventually a faction led by his family wins and they coronate him as emperor

dude is very much gay, which wasn't a problem, however, he was a bottom, which was not cool for a person in power, he was further scandalized for dressing up as women and cosplaying as the female wife of his lovers - which may or may not be a trans thing but definitely going into drag queen territory

like the biggest scandal about him was he was seen going about on his chariot with his driver who was his lover where he was pretending to be the driver's wife

anyway, he was killed and replaced by his brother or cousin or something, only lasted a year or two and died as a teenager - which was fairly typical, iirc the average lifespan of an emperor was like 2.5 years after taking power

of course it's extremely possible this was all highly exaggerated or even outright made up by his successors as justification for the coup - if you look at the history of roman emporers, nearly everyone who was killed by a rival is known to be an incompetent pervert and anyone who died peacefully and was succeeded by the next person in line is known as a good and wise leader - this is not a coincidence

just imagine if the only historical account we had of hillary clinton a thousand years ago was written by one of the people storming the capitol on January 6th - that's basically what you're dealing with regarding roman history so it's very possible none of the stuff ever written about him was ever true

I'm not sure I follow you completely and I don't know enough autogynephilia to be able to speculate much about it.

But I definitely think there are plenty of repressed homosexuals. A good friend of mine has a neighbor who was single but had had relationships with males but she is definitely on the more masculine side of things, and at that time I was hanging out with a lesbian friend of mine basically every other night and she would always want to go over to our other friend's house.

Eventually though she hooked up with the neighbor and basically "converted" her or really just got her to admit she's gay, and they're still together to this day. Somehow she knew that the neighbor was gay and that there was chemistry with them (the gaydar's of gays is interesting...another lesbian friend thinks everyone is gay so her gaydar is broken).

But I also think you're right that those sorts of people (repressed homosexuals who seem more like the opposite sex) would be prime candidates to be transgender since if you don't know you're gay but act like the opposite sex, then trans it is.

Really the idea that sexuality and "gender" are two separate domains just seems batshit crazy to me and I would assume that anyone arguing it hasn't spent much time around gay people, and yet one of them doing so in this thread is gay. Which just goes to show that ideology reigns supreme.

Oh no! not a gay guy who thinks sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things! Impossible! But tell me more about how things you say don't exist are layered in your sapphic fantasies. : )

(I don't have time to argue or post right now)
ttyl

This seems pretty good but I'm just getting started watching it, but he talks about how there are multiple different pathways to gender dysphoria and how what he calls childhood onset gender dysphoria is strongly associated with homosexuality-- as basically all common sense and reason would suggest.

After I learned in my early 20s about how much affinity I had with lesbians, I used to joke that maybe I was a lesbian trapped in a man's body. I was only ever joking though and I just like them because they're typically more open minded than heterosexual girls-- which could be either a nature or nurture thing there or both Somehow now there are males who actually believe that and want access to lesbian spaces, which I would never be so presumptuous to think I deserve.

But I am curious SB,

First-- you agree that a person can be gay-- either male or female-- and be effeminate or masculine, right?

And do you agree that we don't find non-repressed effeminate straight males and non-repressed butchy straight females? And if so, why do you think that is if gender and sexuality are two different domains?

These people absolutely do exist.

Actually, it is Lefty Uke that has insisted that this thread be reincarnated several times. The pronoun thingy was a non-issue until Uke started telling everybody the "correct" way to address trans people.

The first incarnation of this thread was about trans athletes.