Interesting Links for 26-04-2025

[andrewducker]

1. 'It's everything': 5-year-high pork cancellation signals China weaning off US farm goods

(tags:pork china USA trade )

2. Debunking various transgender myths

(tags:transgender myths faq )

3. Trump's use of the Enemy Alien Act is pure fascism

(tags:fascism USA republicans )

4. Help challenge the Supreme Court's judgment on trans rights

(tags:UK law bigotry rights Europe )

5. Reminder that Senior Officials Quit Britain's Equalities Watchdog EHRC Over Transphobia last year

(tags:bigotry UK LGBT OhForFucksSake transgender )

Comments

[calimac]

2) Wow, this is excellently written. I'm particularly pleased with the section explaining what social constructs are. e.g. the use of money as an example, because I've seen people argue that somehow gold is "real" money while other forms aren't.

This is led into by a speculation that the real reason transphobes are so hung up on the false idea of sex as a binary is because if it isn't, that opens up that social sex identity is a social construct. But I think there's another major factor. It's that most people do fit rather neatly into one of the two sex boxes ("rather" so - the article does point out the commonality of abuse for not fitting in smoothly enough), and there's a psychological tendency to treat what you normally see as universal. And indeed, all the exceptions to the sex binary listed in the article I've seen dismissed as minuscule in number, trivial, insignificant. I've even seen it said that they can all be reduced to M or F in the end. That's not true of all of them, and even for those it is, that assignation is a social construct.

The one thing in the article I'd query is the flat statement that nobody is being pushed into gender transition. I've seen stories that contradict that. I'd like to see those stories proven false, but I haven't seen that proof.

[andrewducker]

"It's that most people do fit rather neatly into one of the two sex boxes"

I'd argue that the percentage is kept higher by the way we treat people who climb out of those boxes.

It's 3% non-binary 2% transgener in the USA according to https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/

And the USA isn't exactly a friendly towards trans people. So what percentage would be that way if there was no bullying or mistreatment of non-binary/transgender people is a fascinating thought.

[cmcmck]

I 'fit rather neatly into one of the two sex boxes' but it doesn't happen to be the one 'they' thought I should be fitting into and clearly I'm now to be punished for that.

The stories that suggest people are pushed into gender transition are mostly a certain kind of literary fantasy of the dodgier kind.