I second this motion.
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Yes, agreed in principle. Problem I find is that there’s rarely consequences.
Flat earth is a laughable example but I swear there’s people making big money off the back of it.
A more serious example this the numerous insta, tik tok health experts, some of which are simply spreading lies. They’re cherry picking bits from medical studies and twisting results to suit their agenda.
Taken to it’s extreme is organisations like Fox News.
It’s not about deleting or silencing views but calling out the BS. I don’t think enough of that happens and the tittynet has given a loud, unvetted voice to those people.
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Anazing how you call to leave a discussion when it suits you, and still dip back in when it suits you?
Any chance of an actual explanation as to why it makes any difference if their are trans people on here?
A phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear, or endures it with great anxiety and distress.
Definition of phobia from the Harvard Health Publishing above.
My thoughts are that not agreeing with a person’s lifestyle choices doesn’t make that person homophobic, transphobic etc. I think that the definition of phobia has been altered in a sutil but important way in today’s society.
As regards trusting science 100%. The problem is not science but that scientists have to approach a subject with an open mind to get the correct scientific results/conclusions.
I’m not getting involved in the morals/implications/beliefs/rights/wrongs of this debate by the way.
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Phobia meaning has changed in the last thirty or so years.
In addition to meaning fear, it has somehow morphed into feelings of hatred.
Maybe someone described themselves as homophobic and was misunderstood.
I reckon that despite the linguistic deviation that most of us know what it means in this context.
Indeed. I’m totally up for it.
But it would be nice if we could start from a position of not being really horrible about some of the most marginalised, abused and misunderstood people in society.
That’s a medical definition. The popular definition, as referenced in lots of dictionary sources, is a fear, mistrust or dislike of something.
Transphobic and homophobic are established, well understood terms. We don’t need to take the conversation down this route.
let’s pretend that science also has the answers for everything, because it doesn’t. It tries to explain it to some effect, but there are so many intangibles that cannot be physically measured. Like, feelings and emotions.
Psychology (and psychiatry) has been trying to understand human behavior for thousands of years. Still so much to learn, society keeps evolving and thus so does the theories behind the behavior
Doesn’t that open a can of worms?
Doesn’t that affect the responsibility to the person who would actually be diagnosed as homophobic or transphobic? If it’s a diagnosis that determines it, wouldn’t that have similar ramifications to the opposite end of the gender spectrum?
what do the North American indigenous peoples have to do with this discussion?
I think to be a phobia it has to go beyond a general dislike of things. There are lots of people who don’t like spiders but they will simply avoid them or scoop them up in a jam jar if they get stuck in the bath. An arachnophobe will point blank refuse to go in a room if they believe there is a spider there. If there is a spider in the bath they won’t be getting washed for a week.
Now there are people who maybe feel uncomfortable about gay or trans people but that doesn’t stop them interacting with those people or going into places where those people may be.
There are some people who seem to be in permanent distress that LBGT people exist. That looks like a genuine phobia to me. As with the arachnophobes, the spiders aren’t the actual problem.
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Oh good grief. Can we avoid the sophistry? In plain language, no one is seriously suggesting that transphobia and homophobia are the same thing as acrophobia or agoraphobia. Whatever they are, they are not the same.
Sort of like how celibacy actually just means non-marriage, nothing to do with sexual activity, but is no longer used that way.
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Take heart that she raised it with you in the first place. I know MANY people in her shoes who simply never raised it to their parents because they didn’t see any avenue to it going well. It may not have gone the way you imagined the first time, but she raised it with you, and was willing to do it again the second time, and that is a hallmark of a strong relationship. There are many ways that parents wont understand their kids and will get it wrong. All we can really do is cultivate a relationship with them that they’ll talk to us about it when that is happening with a fair expectation they’re going to be able to reach you.
This is specifically what I addressed a couple of days ago. Sex and Gender are indeed different, and it is gender where most of the discussion around being non-binary has been focused. But it is important to understand that even biological sex is not binary. There are people, known cases estimated to be 10% of the population, who cannot be neatly fit into any coherent binary definition of what biological sex is. This is what is described in the Scientific American article I posted a couple of days ago.
In short, a binary definition of sex requires that people born with sex chromosomes XX are female and XY are male. However, not all people are born with one of those two options, and not all who are go on to develop the outward characteristics that cause them to be labelled with sex predicted from that combination. As said above, known exceptions to this cover an estimated 10% of the population. How many more people are covered by discordances that haven’t yet been characterized is unknown. This is the reality that @Klopptimist ignores, and something he has been ignoring for years. He has never once actually engaged on how this can be reconciled with his supposed biological “facts”
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this is really at the heart of it. as one of those rare hetero white males, much of society has ingrained a certain expectation… an image of… machismo? strength in silence? stoic?.. into how we are to present ourselves to society.
One you hit a certain age and you see how much bullshit that really is… how important it is to emotionally connect with your family to strengthen that bond. To truly love your spouse and your children, then you quickly realize that all of that bravado is just a façade that everyone else sees.
and when you see what’s portrayed on the social media platforms which your children are being exposed to on a daily basis at school… you can truly see how fucking doomed we are in certain situations.
and bless my 8yo, he’s yet to be on a winning sports team in the past three years of footy and baseball and couldn’t give a shit. “I’m having fun with my team daddy, that’s all that matters”. 
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Indeed. It’s from the French ‘celibat’ denoting single status.
Wow, we have people saying what can and can’t be discussed.
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The list of reasons people have to do increasingly strange things through society’s justification grows? Who knew.
I once mentioned 1984 and it really upset some.
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Funny that that 10% didn’t present itself at my primary school, secondary school or college. Of the 1000 or so people I was at school was, surely 100 ish should have presented themselves. Not one. So I’m calling bollocks on your 10%.
A recent report from the Government Equalities Office states that there could be up to 500,000 people in the uk who identify as Trans. That is one in about every 120 people…
I do find 500,000 a bit hard to believe but then why would they grossly inflate the number? What motive would a government department have?
