Hi there
I’m Lizzie. I have no idea who is still posting here, but I’m the owner of the site. Alan Fox drew my attention to a recent post by Erik about LGBTQ+ people. I read it with growing horror, culminating when I arrived at these words:
[LGBTQ+ people] exist sure enough and extermination is not the way to deal with them, but
“but”.
I set up this site as a venue in which people who wanted to discuss issues such as evolution, theism, and morality in good faith with people with who vehemently disagreed with them, could do so with minimal censorship. I have been absent from the site for many years now, though I continue to pay the hosting fees.
I could simply delete Erik’s post. He would consider it “cancel culture”. Yes, indeed I do wish to “cancel” those views from this blog. Committed as I am to uncensored discussion between people with radically opposing views (as exemplified in the original posting rules for the site) I will not provide a platform for articles that are Nazi-adjacent. I am deeply worried by the rise of right-wing fascism in the world, and I will not facilitate the propagation of such views.
No poster capable of considering, albeit rejecting, “extermination” as a “way to deal with” people like my own beloved daughter is welcome to post those views here. Every day I worry for her safety from people who want to exterminate her.
Alternatively, I could simply pull the plug on this site.
I will sleep on this. I would also welcome comments from any posters still active here. If there are hardly any left, I will probably do that last thing.
Hi, Elizabeth. It is good to see you back.
Yes, some of us are still here.
I disagree with much of what Erik said in his post.
I do think that some of the transgender activists go too far and attempt to be too coercive. Apart from that one reservation, I do not have any problems with LGBTQ folk.
Please keep this blog here. origin subjects need it. I didn’t read any posts on these subjects and indeed yuck if anyone suggested anyone should be eterminated for any reason. yuck. I didn’t read it the comment but anyways such things are malicious and should be censored and banned if unrepentant and persistent.
Its not freedom of speech to be malicious . Society opposes such speech from historical right. if one opposes thise people or supports then thats right freedom of speech. including anger and heat. but a threshold must not be crossed. its simple.Perhaps folks in great britain are less intellectually understanding of North American freedom of speech but denying freedom to speak maliciously. Its an equation.
Oh, this was quick 🙂 So, we hit on a topic that is not allowed.
As the first point, I discuss the numbers in my post. Anybody LGBTQ+ here raise your hand. You see, their numbers are so small that the riot they raise is disproportionate. My post is offensive to whom? Who raised a hand? (I predict no hands, but let’s see.)
As to anybody non-LGBTQ+ and whoever has not met such people, isn’t it good to benefit from an open discussion in order to be ready when you actually meet such people? When you are fully affirmative of them, isn’t it good to clarify to yourselves what you are affirming and why?
I personally was subjected only to the shallowest and silliest form of LGBTQ+ propaganda – just a little bit, not much – before I met such people. So, yes, let’s have something more substantive here so we are no longer “ill-informed” before these things start happening in our lives. What things, you might ask? Indeed, about time to get informed. If you are informed, you tell me.
Where you crossed my line, Erik, was when you talked about “extermination” as a “way to deal” with “LGBTQ+ people”. Yes, I know you said it wasn’t “the way”, but the very fact that you found it thinkable, and the context, imply that you see “LGBTQ+ people” as something that “society” needs to “deal” with in some manner at least adjacent to “extermination”.
I am going to move your post to “Guano”. I don’t like deleting posts (I am, as I said, a free-speech enthusiast), but I absolutely will not be the publisher of such posts.
We know all too well where such language leads. For everyone who says “violence is not the answer to X” there are people who agree that “X” is a problem that would be addressed, if unacceptably to you, by violence, but who disagree that violence is unacceptable. You guys saw that on January 6th. You saw it a couple of days ago in SF.
My own daughter has been subjected to physical violence by people like you who think that “LGBTQ+ people” are a “problem” that could be addressed by “extermination”, even if you yourself think that “extermination” is “not the answer”.
LGBTQ+ people are who they are. People. Like any other human beings. They are not a problem that needs to be “dealt” with at all, let alone by something akin to extermination, but not that.
Good to know the site is still appreciated. I will leave it be. Thanks Robert.
Thanks Neil, and good to see you here too!
And good to see that posts here still get quick responses.
It’s nice to be back. I need to find my way round the buttons again.
But I need to ask: what do you mean by “coercive”? Example?
Instead of moving my post to guano, I suggest a compromise.
In the last paragraph, DELETE everything from the sentence that ends with “what happened next” until the sentence that begins with “They are properly a subculture…” (I mean, delete everything *between* those sentences.)
Not a good feature on this site that authors cannot modify their posts after publication.
Now, honestly look at these two paragraphs of yours and think carefully.
About the people who harrassed your daughter, would you as easily say: “They are who they are. People. They are not a problem that needs to be “dealt” with at all…”?
Surely the “are who they are” bit needs some more justification, and also how or why they are not a problem at all. I am armed with more cases of harassment, but even before I made my post I could reasonably expect a comprehensive discussion be suppressed.
Erik, it’s you and your bigoted ideas that are decadent and morally corrupt. Shame on you. All your arguments are pure, unadulterated bullshit. All crappy excuses to try to give your bigotry the appearance of reason. It all boils down to you thinking homosexuality is decadent and morally corrupt. Again, the rest is lipstick on a pig.
This is a trend these days among far right wingnuts: you’re a bunch of pathetic, hateful cowards, incapable of simply admitting your true motivations. You will even blame the oppressed for raising their voices, the infamous ‘backslash’.
Make no mistakes, it’s your toxic ideology that will get exterminated eventually.
PS: Fuck off, Erik.
Correct. Now, where in the world (or at least on the internet) is the explanation that this opinion is so deeply flawed that your adjectives are justified?
To be fair to myself, I begin with the contention that homosexuals and all the other groups more recently lumped together with them are numerically so small as to deserve far less attention than they do.
But yeah, I get it. For some reason everybody “bigot” and “ill-informed” on this topic does not deserve to be corrected and informed. I got it already more than twenty years ago. It’s nothing new. Why is this topic not evolving at all?
What more is there to my motivations? Please thanks.
You’re already off the mark by assuming that I am some far right wingnut. I’ll tell you who is far right wingnut: The people who voted in last parliamentary elections in Sweden. The plurality went to the crypto-Nazi party. I personally am rather concerned about this. According to Lizzie, they probably “are who they are. People. They are not a problem…” But I have a causal explanation why the vote went this way. Namely, Sweden is the wokest country on earth where LGBT matters – the matters of a numerically fringe negligible sexual minority – have been put on everybody’s table for breakfast, lunch and dinner for decades now. Assuming that Sweden is a democracy where votes are fairly counted, we got an indication that people threw up on this (possibly among other potential issues), because it gave them indigestion.
These issues deserve either more thorough discussion (because the *rational* debate has clearly not happened and is not happening. All there is is “bigot”, “coward”, “far right wingnut”, “ill-informed” and other completely empty nonsense like this) or the pro-side will have to start eventually dealing with the numerically overwhelming majority of actual people who are who they are.
People who harass other people for who they are are a problem. People being who they are is not a problem.
This isn’t hard.
Playing catch up. I’ve just got in. Temporarily I have moved Erik’s latest OP to the pending file making it invisible for now.
Here is your first error. Being in a small minority has nothing to do with what people “deserve”. Human beings have human rights, whatever the size of whatever minority in whatever category they belong to. And when minorities (or indeed majorities e.g. women; black South Africans under apartheid) are discriminated against, then they have the right to protest that disciminating. Those rights are not dependent on the proportion of people in the discriminated-against group.
Thanks!
It occurs to me that Erik thinks that LGBTQ+ people are people who have made moral choices that he disagrees with, analogous to people who make moral choices to violently harass LGBTQ+ people, and whom he apparently also disagrees with.
Erik, you have made a category error there. Being gay or trans, or intersex, or wherever you find yourself on the rainbow or indeed off it, is not a moral choice. It’s who you are. Nobody should be harassed or deprived of human rights because of who they are.
Indeed, I’ve been on a steep learning curve since coming across and failing to participate usefully in a discussion elsewhere. Coincidentally, The Guardian newspaper published an interview with Chelsea Manning regarding her biography , README.txt and I found it very helpful in seeing the issues from a first-person perspective.
Hi Lizzie. Thanks for allowing TSZ to continue to roll on in your absence. I’m sure I’m not just speaking for myself when I say it’s much appreciated.
Welcome back.
Yes. It’s interesting that the increased visibility of trans people had restirred all the old anti-LGBTQ+ prejudiced that I thought we had, amazingly, moved on from. Chelsea Manning is worth reading. Julia Serano is also great. I can recommend this:
https://juliaserano.medium.com/biology-sex-and-transgender-people-a-resource-page-4f11b1058103
Erik, have you heard the term, “in the closet”? Mainly people who do not reveal their sexual orientation because they are afraid of the reception they get if they “come out”.
If LGBTQ+ people are being a bit more vocal these days, it is because they have a new-found freedom in a society which is becoming more tolerant. There are and have been societies in which the voices of these people are or have been underrepresented. Would you argue that they should have more freedom to express themselves in these societies?
You seem to be advocating suppression rather than freedom of expression. Perhaps you would prefer to live in somewhere like North Korea where there is little tolerance from that sort of thing, but somehow, I doubt it.
I’m thinking of the people who verbally attack J.K. Rowlings.
I have met “such people”. However, I did not know that until it was pointed out to me. Mostly, they just act like anybody else so it is easy to not notice them.
Yes, they sometime have parades. But then some folk have parades for their favorite football team. Should I be critical of that?
No, you are the one making the category error here. Sexual behaviour is very much a moral choice. Children grow up without any sexual behaviour throughout childhood, unless forced to it. Gay or trans or whatever fits nowhere in terms of what they are.
Gay or trans etc is nothing like, for example, having a specific skin colour. Despite clearly being born with it, skin colour is not what people fundamentally are. So, how come being trans or gay is something that people fundamentally are rather than choose to be? Is there a gay/trans gene or something? If yes, then make a case why it should be treated differently than the psychopath gene? (I myself deny the existence of a psychopath gene, same as I deny trans/gay gene. But go ahead prove me wrong.)
As for their rights, they already had all the rights that everybody else had. But they asked for more, making a category error in their understanding what rights are (as distinguished from privileges). They wanted special rights with their own name on it, in addition to universal human rights that they already shared with everybody else. Clearly they do not want to be like people in general are. They want to stand out as a special group of their own. Here’s what they are: a numerically negligible fringe sexual minority.
Sure I have heard of this and thought about it too. The answer is, again, look at the numbers. When you try forcing anti-LGBT voices into the closet, you will immediately run out of closets. Whereas, if LGBT people are kept closer to their closets, there is less reason for anti-LGBT voices to exist in the first place. This is how we solve many other social problems, e.g. throw money occasionally at the poor through welfare programmes so they won’t rise up against the rich, so why not solve this problem the same way? The poor are far more numerous and it works!
You know, business people first quantify the problem and, if the numbers look good (i.e. reasonable expectation of profit), they build a business case. In terms of their numbers, there is no business justification for LGBT people whatsoever. However, when you look at the social hype around them, then there’s some money to be made, so we now have corporations catering for this group by means of special labelling and rhetoric. This is similar to the commercial exploitation and consumerification of the green/ecological social trends, except that ecology is really globally in danger, while the concern for LGBT people was always disproportionate.
Isn’t it a good idea to have some foresight and be ready for the time when the LGBT hype fades away, i.e. shrinks into its true proportions? But if it is desirable to keep the hype up, then what will you inflate it with?
There are two kinds of such people. One is the inconspicuous kind as you describe, which is all good and fine. The other is the cockiest peacock type that you can notice from very far away – and this is fine too so you can take a different route to avoid them.
Problems arise when you cannot avoid them. For example. Most people are not like us who have met such people. On the workplace, these unsuspecting ordinary common folks are these days asked to affirm something called “inclusivity and diversity” which is a corporate doublespeak for a policy that either was already there when you are e.g. in customer service, or it does not make sense when you are e.g. in backoffice or in factory. In the latter case, you do not have the power to include or diversify anything – it’s the administration who does it. Also, given the general numbers again, there’s little to no likelihood to have the relevant people among your colleagues, so why the policy? In customer service, you were already (hopefully) instructed how to handle customers whose makeup is weird or whose clothes are terrible, so why make a special case of a group who is supposedly nothing special but fully normal?
Anyway, peeps, thanks for confirming that around LGBT issues nothing still makes sense and you have not evolved a bit throughout the decades. We have a supposedly mainstream topic that is still taboo and you see no contradiction there. Where I live, the topic has moved on greatly and you are not even trying to catch up. Enjoy!
You may or may not be familiar with the term, TERF. I certainly wasn’t until recently.
Eric, do you think that gay and lesbian individuals should be allowed to be open about their sexual preferences and not be discriminated against because of these preferences?
Those “cockiest peacock type” can also be found among heterosexuals, and those are just as obnoxious.
Why not adopt a “live and let live” attitude.
Well I don’t tend to think of “verbal attacks” as being “coercive”. The “verbal attacks” certainly go in both directions. I find this whole “cancel culture” thing to be a canard, actually – far from being “cancelled”, or, for that matter “coerced” into silence, she has one of the biggest platforms in the world. In fact several.
So often, I read articles or hear interviews from people complaining about being “cancelled” or “silenced” on major media channels. And while every time a trans person is on a panel show, there is ALWAYS an anti-trans person there for “balance”, at least on UK TV, but the reverse is not the case.
The anti-trans movement is very loud in the UK. And sure, there’s a lot of verbal aggression, especially on twitter. But I don’t see any evidence that it’s one-sided. And, tbh, if it were, I would have sympathy for the “side” that people are trying to ACTUALLY cancel (i.e. trans people, whether through “extermination”, or conversion therapy, or denial of their right to referred to in accord with their gender ID).
And you find them all over twitter, from all quarters of opinion. Cocky is not the prerogative of LGBTQ+ people.
Absolutely it does. Do you seriously think that women and minorities do not face serious barriers to employment and promotion? That’s what EDI policies are for – to try to remove those barriers, by tackling not only overt bigotry but also unconscious and systemic bias.
Because they DO face barriers to employment and promotion, and indeed to being treated as fellow human beings. And as for this “minority” thing – LGBTQ+ people make up a substantial minority of the population, and you don’t need a very large organisation to have a good chance that several of its members will be LGBTQ+. Provided their aren’t systematic barriers to their inclusion, of course. Hence the need for EDI, given the bias and bigotry that exists.
What is taboo, Erik, and I made this perfectly clear, is not the topic, but posts that treat LGBTQ+ people (or any marginalised group) as a “problem” that “society” needs to “deal with” in some way at least comparable with “extermination”. I will not allow publication on this site of posts likely to give encouragement to those who share your views about “the problem” but not your scruples about going as far as violent “solutions” such as “extermination”.
If you want to have a conversation about LGBTQ+ issues that is fine, just as it is fine to talk about ANY problems faced by ANY marginalised group here.
But I won’t host Nazi propaganda.
To be anti-LGBT is to be bigoted. It is no different from saying you are anti-women or an anti-Semite. Do you think a person who is sexually attracted to someone of the same sex can just switch these feelings off?
Get rid of LGBTs and there would be no need for anyone to be anit-LGBT! By your logic reducing sexual harassment in the workplace would be to have as few women as possible in that environment! Is that what you would advocate? And how would you propose keeping people closer to their closets?
You are preaching a doctrine of division and hate whereas what is needed is more compassion and understanding. A celebration of diversity and individual freedom.
Sexual behaviour can and does indeed involve “moral choices”, and consent is key. But sexual orientation and gender identity are not “choices” – they are part of who you are.
Because it is. You can’t make a gay person straight, any more than you can make a black person white. And nor can you make a trans person cis.
Not all phenotypic characteristics are genetic. Some of it may be (there’s some evidence for a genetic basis for transgender identity), but there is more evidence that hormonal exposure in utero has more bearing on the propensity for a particular sexual orientation or gender ID, which in turn, is formed over the course of child and adolescent development.
More to the point, there is PLENTY of evidence that you cannot “pray the trans away” anymore than you can “pray the gay away”. For whatever combination of genetic, hormonal, and social developmental reasons, some of us turn out to be gay or trans.
Just as some of us turn out to be taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, smarter, more musical, more athletic, balder, whatever, than others.
This is made-up nonsense. Of course they have the same human rights as everyone – but people like you are denying them those rights.
And, although the proportion is irrelevant, 2-5 in 100 people is not “numerically negligible”. We might as well consider the entire population of the US “numerically neglible” on that reckoning, and Swede would just be chump change.
Sure, any minority is “fringe”, by definition, but by the same token, so are left-handers and people who can wiggle their ears. That is no reason to deny them the same rights as the majority.
I have many close friends who are gay, lesbian, non-binary, transgender, and everything else in between. One of my closest friends is a bisexual cisgender man who is a committed (but open) relationship with a bisexual cisgender woman. They think of themselves as queer because they don’t conform to stereotypical gender norms (e.g, my friend paints his nails and wears dresses).
So when I see someone saying that people of such-and-such a group are a problem, and how are we going to deal with that problem, it hits me really close to home.
And it occurs to me that when he reads someone saying “LBGT+ people are a problem and how we are going to deal with this problem,” he probably feels something close to what my 19th century Jewish ancestors felt when they read discussions of “the Jewish problem”.
It’s not dehumanization in the strict sense, but it’s on the slippery slope to dehumanization. As we know from Hitler’s “final solution” to “the Jewish problem.”
Being gay or trans is, of course, not a choice, but even if it was, it would be a totally acceptable one. I think it’s worth mentioning because that’s an element of the reactionary narrative that we shouldn’t ignore. They’re wrong in every possible way and it needs to be pointed out IMO.
But how do you tell that they are trans or gay or whatever? If you cannot tell it, then how can you be sure it is what they are? If it’s just by them telling you what they think they are, there’s still a hurdle of getting over what they think they are versus what they actually are. Until then, it’s just a plain unsupported assertion. In a rational debate, let’s just dismiss plain unsupported assertions.
Assuming that sexual harassment is a thing, no, the choice is not “totally acceptable”. But perhaps you do not assume that sexual harassment is a thing, which means we are probably on different planets.
Here is the text of Eric’s deleted post:
Who they think they are IS who they are. That’s how identity works. Only I know who I am.
And why would it be anyone else’s business anyway?
So you are saying there is no case of people thinking back and forth over different options, and identity crisis is not a thing? Plain assertion ignoring commonly known facts.
Indeed why. I did not make it my business. I have to deal with others making it my business.
Sure there are.
In what way?
Elizabeth,
“And, although the proportion is irrelevant, 2-5 in 100 people is not “numerically negligible”. We might as well consider the entire population of the US “numerically neglible” on that reckoning, and Swede would just be chump change.”
By Eric’s arguments, the uproar over the Holocaust was blown out of proportion. After all, jews only comprise 0.2% of the world’s population.
Well, they murdered the LBGT population at as well. That would have bumped up the proportion a bit.
See how you all down to the very last one fell into a narrow ideological line. No diversity whatsoever. This is a statistical impossibility. This alignment means that some of you are either hiding or perhaps sincerely mistaken about your own opinions.
In mainland Europe, an increasing number of countries have, in parliament or government (or both), parties that are characterised as far right or populist. Poland, Slovenia, most recently Italy. The only potential rigging can be in Hungary, the rest are deemed honest elections. Are all these people bigots? How bigoted do you have to be calling so many nations bigots?
Moreover, this includes Sweden, which was until recently known as the wokest country on the planet with the longest practice in tolerance-and-diversity ideology, so their population should definitely be very well informed by now. Ill-informedness or bigotry cannot be the issue, those things had been fixed in Sweden a long time ago. Something else must be up.
Some years ago when LGBT certification and diplomation (the most intrusive form of explicit LGBT propaganda in education facilities, including kindergartens, and workplaces) reached a milestone, certain commentators dared to suggest that, given the proportion of LGBT folks in society compared to the mass of the rest of people, the visibility of this propaganda leaves an unjust impression and there may be backlash. (Unjust as in unjustified at best, as injustice at worst.) Now it appears that they were onto something. Their analysis had predictive power.
If you guys think that anti-LGBT sentiments and opinions are Nazism, then there’s a chance to indirectly reduce it by toning down LGBT propaganda (provided that the analysis is correct). In my original post I say up front: Tone it down. But instead you overreact. What a fail.
The name-calling and acting as if the other side knows nothing is so last decade. It was old already a decade ago. Time to get more sophisticated.
But thank you for not banning me. Have a good one!
Erik,
That was weird.
It seems that we all (except, perhaps Erik) accept diversity. Therefore we are not diverse enough for Erik. There needs to be someone who rejects diversity for Erik to consider us diverse enough.
Actually even that isn’t quite right, because most TSZ participants did not reply so we don’t know their reaction.
I’m not at all sure what this is about. You want if toned down, but I’m not seeing anything sufficiently untoward that it needs to be toned down. Maybe it is different where you live.
I will note that I did not call you a “bigot” or a “nazi”. A difference of opinion need not warrant those labels.
Looks like a missed out on the hoopla. However, since I believe this is an important topic, let me add my two cents: I too have, and have met in the past, several friends who are gay or transgender. In my youth I have even been hit upon by a boy (yes, ladies and gentlemen: I was a real dish in those days). As far as I can judge, all these men and women are sweet and good people: I certainly do not see how they would cause any harm.
So I really do not see what would justify “putting a limit” on the LGBTQ+ phenomenon.
As Neil said, you seem to be defining diversity as inclusive of people who oppose diversity.
And you are also well-poisoning by characterising support of LGBTQ+rights as “ideological”. It is precisely not. What is ideological is withholding human rights from a minority on the basis of some ideology about “decadence” or whatever. Challenging ideology is not being ideological.
Bigotry is all to easy to gin up, and far right and populist leaders do this regularly. Yes, those movements both appeal to and promote bigotry. It is not bigotry to call out bigotry.
Bigotry is never gone for good, as Sweden attests. It is all to easy to appeal to people’s discomfort with what is “other” by painting the “other” as a danger.
You are using emotive language rather than argument. What “propaganda” are you referring to? Why is “the proportion” even relevant? What if the “propaganda” was the promotion of racial equality in a majority white system? Would this be “unjustified” on the basis that the non-white population was a small minority?
I hope your answer is no. Bigotry on the whole tends to be against minorities (not always, as in misogyny and apartheid). Being atypical in a society tends to make you vulnerable to scorn and rejection and bias. That is WHY it is important to raise children to be accepting of people who are different, and for children who are different to learn that they are accepted. It is even MORE important if the difference is a minority, not less. All schools will have some gay, trans, non-white, disabled, neurodivergent, etc children. They will each be in a MINORITY. That is WHY it is important to teach inclusivity in schools. It is absolutely not a reason not to.
Yes, it’s Nazism. And the answer to it in 30s Germany was not for the gays, the transgenders, the communists and the Jews to tone it down a bit. The answer was to resist Nazism. That is the failure that we need to learn from.
Bigotry is based in ignorance.
I am very reluctant to ban anyone, nor to delete posts. I decided in the end the solution to your post was to repost it as a comment.
I’m not really opposed to purely verbal attacks. I’m a fan of Rowling, but I think she has the resources to defend herself.
For me, coercion might involve firing people for their opinions.
I just turned 77, so some of my opinions were formed in the Stone Age.
One of them is that protest movements usually point to a genuine problem, and at the same time, push beyond reason in demanding solutions. What my years tell me is such movements behave as a damped resonance. One that swings too far, encounters resistance, oscillates, and gradually comes to rest in a new place.
Yes, some of that seems to be happening. But it is always difficult to be sure of the real reason somebody is fired.
Yes, I agree that often happens.
I’ve never had an opinion I didn’t disagree with.
I had a number of blue collar summer jobs in college. One crew called me Old More or Less.
One of my troglodyte opinions is there is a lot of faddishness in the trans movement, and I’m concerned that surgery may not always be a good option.
That said, one of my chat correspondents was diagnosed at age 35 as a chimera, whose hormone balance flipped. Married as a man, with children. This transition happened over several years, while lots of people were watching, so to speak.
What makes her case different, in my eyes, is she will never have to take hormones. I’m a bit suspicious about the long term health effects of hormone therapy.
I agree with that. But from my distance, it is hard to distinguish cases where it is a fad from cases where it is reality.
Some of my colleagues are ethnic pro-Putin Russians with whom I need to collaborate on sorting out sanctions. If you cannot see how this is diverse and wonderfully tolerant across a bunch of trajectories, then you are hopelessly out of your depth.
All sorts of skeptics naturally create diversity. You made a skeptical website. I happen to be a strong LGBT-skeptic.
When it affects politics, there’s campaigning for it and it is formulated in law, it is absolutely ideological. There are no non-ideological laws and no non-ideological politics. How do you say, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
In the paragraph you quoted, I explicitly stated what propaganda I was referring to, namely LGBT certification and diplomation. I am talking about Sweden where I know the situation in great detail. It looks like you are so blissfully unaware of it that you cannot see it even when things are spelled out for you.
At this point, it is clear that you don’t have anything informative to tell me. Instead, maybe I have something informative to tell you, but you are suspecting me of opposing diversity, so whatever.
And it is not emotive language to call political promotional material propaganda. It is propaganda. Democratic Party promotional material is propaganda of the Democratic Party and Republican Party promotional material is propaganda of the Republican Party. Propaganda is the standard word for it.
And why should I trust you have the ability to learn from it? The failure to resist Nazism at the time was an extreme failure. It was such a fundamental failure of humanity that it is quite a question how many people here have the ability to recognise the modern parallels.
For example, literally nobody among important European leaders opposed Putin and they were feeble even after Crimea was annexed. Instead, many sided with RT propaganda that described Ukraine as a Nazi country. Some of the prominents (such as Schröder) keep ambassadoring for Putin even right now at the time of war without any consequences whatsoever – apparently the authorities over Schröder (surely he must be subject to some jurisdiction) have no concept of corruption and treason.
So overall people’s ability to see Nazism ahead of time is appallingly weak. It takes some good knowledge of the broader sociological, politological and geopolitical picture to draw the relevant conclusions. In my assessment, the current leaders of Poland, Hungary, Italy, and the crypto-Nazi party of Sweden are nowhere near the potential of the kind of Nazism that Hitler and Mussolini represented – for one because they lack a paramilitary arm of brawlers and they seem to be keeping it this way, which is a difference from Putin for example. Feel free to disagree. I will maybe start caring once you inform yourself properly on these matters.
Empty phrase, given that you have demonstrated yourself less informed than me.
(As you perhaps notice, no other insult gets me the way “ill-informed” does. I’m gonna show you some day, Alan.)
I have no way of knowing whether my opinion is valid, or it is to what extent.
I am a bit shocked , however, that children are being advised to enter into a procedure that requires a lifetime of hormone supplements, without any safety studies whatever.
I haven’t researched this, and I don’t know how to, but a quick Google search suggests that people having trans surgery have significantly less life expectancy. By seven years or more.
I’m not convinced a child can give informed consent to this.
I have a nephew with a trans child. I keep my mouth shut. I’m not morally or philosophically opposed. Just skeptical.