LGBTQ news

Doctor Who's been up and down, but I also don't know how they aggregate digital viewings (for example, I never watch "live" anymore, because it's always the kids' bedtimes). Reception to Russel T Davies returning has been positive, and the casting of Rose here ties into the upcoming 60th anniversary apparently featuring Tennant (the 10th Doctor) and Catherine Tate (one of his companions). So there's a nostalgia factor at play, but often. The 50th anniversary special turned out very well.

Certainly, good casting news to me. Davies as a gay man has historically been involved with a bunch of (non-Who) productions that explore sexuality, and LGBT shows in particular. It's unlikely he's just tacking this on for ratings.

 

Equalities experts fail to give trans self-ID 'abuse' examples when quizzed over GRA reform

The Scottish government want to make it easier for trans people to obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC) which allows them to legally change the sex on their birth certificate and other legal documents.
Opponents to the reforms have claimed the changes would threaten single-sex spaces and have suggested predatory men could obtain a GRC to legally gain access to these spaces and attack women and girls.

On Tuesday, Members of the Scottish Parliament heard from the Equalities and Human Rights Committee (EHRC), which has withdrawn its support for the Scottish Government’s planned reforms of the Gender Recognition Act.
Pressed by Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy, on whether other countries with more lax laws around gender self-ID – the principle that people are recognised in law as the gender with which they identify – the organisation’s two experts failed to give examples.

Alasdair MacDonald, the EHRC’s director of policy and human rights monitoring, said the organisation’s investigations into self-ID had not been focused on “abuse of the system”.
He added: “Our emphasis has been less about any abuse of the system but rather understanding the implications of broadening access to this process and what that means for services and data collection.”

Melanie Field, the EHRC’s head of strategy and policy did not provide an example of abuse of more relaxed self-ID laws, but acknowledged the debate in the UK was “particularly heated”.
She added: “I’m not aware that we’ve had any formal discussions with our international counterparts on this but I’ve been involved in some informal discussions and I think the overriding thing I would take away from those is that there is a real recognition that domestic context matters.

Vic Valentine, a manager at the Scottish Trans Alliance pointed to research from Transgender Europe which analysed how thousands of trans people had been affected by relaxed self-ID laws.
They said: “Of more than 17,000 people who had been legally recognised, there were two cases of repeat applications and both of those were around people who had come out as trans, transitioned, had been legally recognised and obtained legal gender recognition and then faced a significant amount of hostility and discrimination due to their transition and felt unable to continue to live in a way that reflected how they felt about themselves.
“And actually those people went on to reapply when their circumstances changed later."​

 

Of course that anti-trans candidate hand picked by the Prime Minister to run for the Liberals turns out to have been white supremacist-adjacent. "Australian MP candidate Katherine Deves praised and promoted Kiwi Farms, a far-right forum linked to the deadly Christchurch mosque attack, newly-discovered archived tweets show". These TERFs/anti trans types absolutely love nazis.

 

Someone pointed out to me that implicit to all these opponents thinking is a belief in a zero-sum situation. They think that if anyone that isn't them advances, then they must be losing.

I found this thought useful because it reminds me that a lot of them are self-status anxious, and not cruelty maximizers. Thats an optimistic thought, right?

 

I think that any progress has to be law-based/established, for it to have a set meaning. If it's just general "acceptance" then it can be interpreted differently by anyone; including members of the group.
A problem with something set in law, of course, is that it creates more friction. So that is inevitable.

 

I gotta say, I can’t think if male skateboarders have an advantage over female ones. Maybe?

 

I feel like it's gotta be similar to gymnastics where being shorter and smaller gives you an advantage but idk

 

I don't know if I missed a link or something, but:

Nope.

 

This was somewhere else I saw a controversy about a trans skateboarder winning competitions on the women’s team but I mixed it up and thought it was on here.

 

Some fun stuff going on on Twitter about that: https://twitter.com/transsender/status/1526811186326425600. Well, technically Instagram I guess. I don't use Instagram so don't really know for sure.

Allegedly the person who hosted the series: https://twitter.com/_steezuschrist/status/1526821936830873601

Certainly, doesn't seem to be much in the way of evidence for said alleged controversy, other than the person who didn't come first.

 

Truly terrifying that our lives are in the hands of people who hate us and will just straight up make **** up in order to kill us.

 

It would be an RCT on gender-affirming care, not sex reassignment specifically.

It's a valid criticism, in itself, and deserves to be on any bullet-point list of concerns. The fact that an RCT is nearly impossible doesn't take away from the fact that we don't have the data. Retrospective analysis can only get you so far and creating a control group using retrospective data is way harder than sorting a volunteer into the control group. The bias kicks in when they don't use a few extra words acknowledging that this absence is probably insurmountable.

It's the rest of their list where you really want to see wtf they're using for their analysis. We have to remember that there is a lot of p-hacking in the literature, so anyone biased can very easily pull out their interpretation. It's not entirely unfair they do so, because reporting standards for scientific analysis are not nearly what they should be. In fields like this, the evidence will remain 'very weak' unless the effect sizes are amazing or the confounding variables are tight af. It's not a criticism of the research, it will just be fundamentally true.

Edit: they're hunting for the answer they want, but I want to see the fundamentals of their criticism. Thanks, Syn (below)

 

Medical care for trans people is entirely decided by cis people

 

This is literal state enforced detransitioning on a mass scale

This is the government removing your bodily autonomy

But it's okay because it's only being targetted at a small minority

 

Yeah, I can feel that. Treatment from a sympathetic cis medical system won't even come close to what will be possible once trans people are making the decisions, inventing the tools, and providing the care. The only solution seems to be to get trans people into the health fields, which will require both boosting from below and shattering of various ceilings. Picking people who can make it, and backing them with the resources until its done.

I sometimes wonder why Martine Rothblatt isn't mentioned more. I guess she doesn't make much news headlines as a trans activist or researcher. But, she's a top-level contender in the Big Pharma. I mean, not 'top, top' contender. But a net worth of a quarter billion and running a pharmaceutical compnay is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Can we not pretend like these people have the principle of good science on their side? Thanks.

 

I appreciate your explanation.