60% of Americans say people can’t switch genders, up from years past: poll

You can support transgender people and also believe gender is assigned at birth. They are not mutually exclusive.

Only 60%?

Who says there is no progress? Albeit too painfully incremental and started from a shockingly low point.

Thread already greyed out. A reminder that I need to change my settings on this device to Asbestos Eyeballs.

Support for gay marriage took a hit after the GOP made it a huge wedge issue in the 2004 elections. That's why they do their scapegoating--it works, even if just temporarily.

60% of Americans ? That's going to require building a lot of gulags.

[quote]and also believe gender is assigned at birth

Nothing is assigned at birth except your name.

So 40% believe you can or are not sure. Seems like sceince is not Americsn's forte.

Btw., no hate, I am all for live and let live, but you can only take artificial hormons and cut your sexual organs , but you can not change your DNA.

Wow. Since only 31% of black people say the people can change genders, that must mean it’s a huge percentage of non-black Democrats who are pushing up the Democrats’ total of 61%.

Who cares?

Civil rights are civil rights.

I bet in most states criminals have more rights/opportunities than trans folk.

R9, I doubt it's Hispanics or Asians. White liberals really are a plague.

R10, how about the right to be androgynous and not be trans or non-binary or medicalized or “cis” or part of an identity group? The right to grow up without anyone (peers, teachers, counselors) telling you what to be, and just develop?

r12 Hi, Pat. Welcome to DataLounge.

R12 Time for your coochie exam, toots.

People can definitely switch genders, they just can’t switch sexes. Humans are not generally hermaphroditc animals. Gender roles can be switched quite easily, since they’re just meaningless social constructs.

People switch gender roles all the time. Doesn't mean they actually switch genders and become trans.

The gender rigmarole is a fig leaf, and mostly boiled down to putting on a frock, makeup, high heels, and getting fake tits.

60% is higher than recent years' polling. So the relentless beat of the anti-Trans trolls is having its desired impact. Never thought we'd be going backward. I mean, gay men in jail simply for being gay. Where will this end? Court decides that 14th amendment was wrong?

It would help greatly if people would stop saying assigned at birth instead of observed at birth. The sex of a baby is not assigned.

R18 In your case brain was not assigned.

r19 ?

Sorry, I got it wrong what R18 said. He is right, sex is "assigned" in the moment if conception, not in the moment of birth.

the other 40% were assigned Stupidity at birth.

Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.

Also people need to stop saying gender when they mean sex and vice versa.

Eye color is assigned at birth too. I came out with brown eyes but Mommy and Daddy chose blue. I'm so grateful.

"sex assigned at birth" is a specific medical term for those with DSDs - a rare occurrence. It started getting used by the trans community to refer to everyone the past five years. For everyone else it is sex observed at birth, because it is obvious, despite the pseudoscience tools now trying to claim sex is a spectrum to justify their unscientific biases.

Democrats lining up behind reality denial in a time of inflation is a winner!

[R25] That seems right. I have an old Merck medical manual, 13th ed printed in 1977. The section on intersex states talks about ‘assignment’ of sex (not gender) at birth in cases where this is indeterminate: “Sex should be determined at the earliest possible moment, preferably within the first few hours or days of life...and the potential functional capacity of the external genitalia must be weighed in the assignment of sex.” It goes on: “Females with adrenogenitalism should be reared as females, controlled with steroids for life, and afforded early genital reconstruction, including subtotal phallectomy and division of labial fusion. Similarly, male intersex patients should undergo early surgery (usually a series of two or three operative procedures) to establish male genital appearance and function.”

The same manual stops just short of labelling homosexuality as a neurotic personality disorder under the section Sexual Maladjustment and Deviation.

It feels to me that we are stepping back in time. Many people make no real distinction between gay, trans, pedophilia and bestiality - we're all just perverts to them, non straights, so beyond the pale. This backlash against Pride and trans activism, which is supported by a lot of conservative gay men, will lead to the recriminilisation of homosexuality.

* recriminalisation

Girlies, mother's egg has x chromosome. Father's spermatozoid can be x or y. So, when father's x meets mother's x a woman is concieved and when father's y meets mum's x the man is concieved. You can never change that, no matter the xhemicals and hormones induced in your body and the surgeries performed. Just as Michael Jackson didn't become Caucasian by skin bleaching and surgerirs to change the features.

Well, what did you expect, OP?

Of course people cannot switch genders. Everyone knows this, even the 40% who say otherwise.

The thing is, that we shouldn’t treat people horribly when they decide they don’t want to identify as their birth gender.

Also, we shouldn’t sit down and make this a political issue, but people insist on doing so. Now that abortion is off the block, this is the new wedge issue. And now this will be used to strip rights away from parents who never once considered putting their kids on hormones, and who never had their children express any desire to transition.

This will be used to fuck parents and kids over who are NOT in the trans community.

Just watch.

This SCOTUS ain’t playing. The next 30 years are going to be ROUGH, all because we all fell for the bullshit the GOP were smart enough to disguise as gender issues, when in fact what it truly is, are parental rights issues.

By the time they’re done with us, they will control what our kids where, where they go to school, what they learn, what they eat, what they read, what toys they can play with and on and on it goes and will continue to go.

I do NOT agree with placing children on hormone therapy, but I understand what is happening here and it genuinely isn’t about fucking hormones.

Watch. You’ll see.

Hey. Maybe you’re OK with the government telling you how to raise your kids. I hope so, because that’s what this is all about on the bottom line.

R29 and R30 haven’t grasped the difference between sex and gender.

OK, R31. Fair enough.

And I’m glad I made that honest mistake, because that’s a perfect example of how this will be used to confuse low information voters and it will STILL be about the same shit I discussed in my post @ R30, AND it will all be combined to strip parents of their rights, and MORE specifically, will be used to discriminate against every gay man and lesbian in the United States.

The T will never be dropped. It’s intentional and it’s coming from the GOP.

I will not be the first to mix up this issue based on gender versus sex and I won’t be the last.

And at the very least, I can identify my error and admit it, but the average flyover voter won’t, and that’s also a new and realistic aspect regarding this.

Well, not new, but the bottom line is: parents will lose parental rights incrementally, and EVERYONE will love that or hate that, AND the gays and lesbians will be blamed for ALL of it.

You are not stupid, OP, and neither am I.

We both know where this is headed.

[quote]We both know where this is headed.

Yes, r32, it's not covert, the looming dangers are stated, overt, written in Supreme Court opinions (Thomas) , declaimed by Secretaries of States (Texas) and innumerable Evangelical spokespersons: gay people are criminals and need to be charged and imprisoned.

Again, this stunning moment in our history demonstrates that this "worries" are not paranoid, overstatement, or political reaction. This is what is being put out explicitly in the public sphere by those with power to achieve their goals.

Those who collaborate with these religious extremist ideologues assist the dark and dangerous bigotry. To rail against trans people is very similar to Jews in the early 30s in Germany who were happy to agree with the Nazis that "socialists and communists" are the real problem, all this antisemitic Nazi rhetoric isn't really dangerous.

It's time to choose: freedom or criminalization. This is NOT a drill.

The T issues are coming from the GOP is lunatic conspiracy theory. The T issues came from the Ts and the most left of the identity left. The GOP exploit reaction to it to win elections.

R34, it was not a coincidence that the T movement and the far right attempt to use “science” to confine women to their stereotype happened at the same time. The T movement took that stereotype, adopted it as their own, and have turned the left into hypocrites ever since. And while my relatives, women who grew up in the 70s, were happy to take courses like auto mechanics for women, modern girls are pushed towards makeup tutorials on TikTok.

R34, and you can’t pressure someone into something in childhood and then claim it’s something they wanted and they’re part of a civil rights group. What civil rights group is that, androgynous people who think something is wrong with their bodies and they can’t go through puberty? Nothing is wrong with being androgynous. Nothing is wrong with having an androgynous body. Selling hormones is marketing drugs to kids - hey, girls, do you hate the thought of being women? Just identify as non-binary and you can take testosterone! There are plenty of social issues that girls go through in puberty- we go through them and talk about them and they give us solidarity as women. It’s not about, take the easy way out of social misogyny- hormones! Forget feminism and talking to other women and other people- only identify politics all the time. Meanwhile no feminism and no one helping or empowering women.

I wonder how many people would support finding a real cure for gender dysphoria, instead of whatever this "transgenderism" quackery is.

R37, the condition of gender dysphoria is extremely rare. The first person to be famous in the US for having a sex change (and said she was partially motivated by homophobia) was Christine Jorgensen in 1952. Since then, there have been very few people seeking sex changes, even while acceptance of being gay or lesbian has grown. And it was well known that childhood gender dysphoria is relatively common but usually lessens as a child grows older and resolves around puberty to a gay or lesbian identity, without therapy; it’s just something that happens naturally; it isn’t common to hate your own body, and there are often social causes if you do. Now the movement is trying to block puberty and make it so that people never experience their genetic inbuilt puberty or know what their own adult hormones feel like. Plus they are aggressively embracing a stereotype of womanhood, which is doubly misogynistic- for FTM who think they can’t be female because they don’t fit the stereotype and for MTF who think that being female is defined by a stereotype they themselves would know, even though they have never biologically been women. Plus the default “cis” identification implies a stereotype on anyone who isn’t actively identifying as trans. It’s a regression of thought, gender rights and women’s rights to pretend that bodies, and not stereotypes, are the social construct. And it doesn’t actually help trans people, or anyone, to think that. Plastic surgery isn’t the end goal of being a free thinker.

R38 Brilliant - totally agree with all your points. So what next? Does LGB split from T? Or is that too late? I have a feeling it may be.

the Trans rights movement has made a mockery of every civil rights movement this country's ever seen. It's a like a sick parody.

R39, no, just that LGBT takes the stance that transition is for adults only, with no puberty blockers involved. And confirm that sex is only sex, and not the same as gender and stick to the existing definition of dyphoria which states that in order to have it you have to hate your actual sex part (genitalia). The problem would resolve itself, because most people by the time of puberty don’t have sex dysphoria. And most people who are currently identifying as trans, around 90 percent, don’t have genitalia dysphoria. And also the definition of non-binary to mean someone who wants to take hormones to look like they have an intersex condition is fad science and marketing of testosterone as a drug to young people. Men are more likely to have high-paying jobs than women, less likely to be harassed; non-binarism is not about being androgynous but about changing yourself though drugs to become androgynous. Among other things, it encourages society to just sweep under the rug underlying causes of distress in girls.

R41 Absolutely agree that transition is for adults and puberty blockers shouldn’t be used. But your arguments are quite subtle. The average person won't distinguish between sex and gender as the poll shows. Even if you could confine transition to adulthood (which T activists will never be satisfied with) there's still the trigger points of m2f adults in restrooms, prisons and women's sports. I think for most people it boils down to ‘can a person born male become a real female?’ and for the majority the answer is ‘no'. I think LGBT needs to decide what our stance is on that.

[quote]‘can a person born male become a real female?’ and for the majority the answer is ‘no'. I think LGBT needs to decide what our stance is on that.

It's not an issue of any intersect with lesbians, gays, or bisexuals. There's no need for LGB to come to a consensus position paper on something that has no similarity to their own experiences, however varied. The two things are fundamentally unrelated.

There's no more need for an LGB stance on Trans than there is for an LGB stance on 6G wireless technology standards.

^ Of course it's an issue of intersect politically if we're all flying under the same LGBT banner.

R43 the problem is that those advocating a radical trans ideology have taken over lgb rights and political organizations and other major organizations, such as community center boards, pride march commiittes, etc. Also major gay media outlets. It will be almost impossible to oust these group. Power, and more importantly, salaries depend on them holding positions. It's very corrupt really.

Maybe gay men and women need to make our own groups again.

Are you going to build a gay community center in NYC or SF from the ground up? You need money and support.

R42, the age of consent for medical procedures is 18, the age of majority; and if the American Medical Association agreed that no hormones or surgery should be attempted before that age and that the use of puberty blockers is unethical, inasmuch as you can’t choose hormones other than your own as better when you don’t even have a basis of comparison and could reasonably expect the ones you were born with to be healthier for your body, then I think this would resolve the issue. People only are confused about sex versus gender because of the recent movement to say that sex does not exist and that sex is a social construct. It’s a reversal of the progressive stance of the 20th century and it makes no sense; people now are claiming that the body, the physical body itself, is a social construct, which is blatantly untrue but opens the door to various medical alterations. The difference between gender roles and sex parts is a very obvious one; you see it come up in feminist discussions all the time. The right wing tries to perpetuate an idea of women as “non-workers”; even though for hundreds of years women have been working, whether in factories or doing farm work on their family run farms in rural America, for which there is plenty of evidence.

R48 I don’t disagree with any of that; nevertheless 60% of adults believe a “person's gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth”. For them it's one and the same thing. The distinction between sex and traditional gender ROLES (e.g. what you in the workplace) is obvious enough but it's less clearcut between sex and gender IDENTITY. That's how T activists have managed to smuggle through the idea that by transitioning you become a “real” woman. Once you accept that a person born a man can “really” be a woman, biological sex goes out the window. I know that's reductive but I think that’s where we are.

R49, but isn’t it possible that the 60 percent figure comes from misleading wording in the poll? What would the poll say if the question was whether people could change their sex from the sex assigned at birth?

^ Yes, possibly - but my hunch is that with that wording the percentage saying ‘no' would be even higher. Probably among the 40% ‘yes’ are some who see gender as a social construct (changeable). If the question was whether people can change their gender from the gender assigned or assumed at birth, the percentage of ‘yes’ could be much higher?

But I'm a bit out of my depth, really, just floating my opinion. I would like to think that your solution would be enough but my instinct that the debate is at a more basic level and my fear is that trans pushback is being used to roll back gay ‘rights' on all fronts.

R51, yes I think you’re right. Part of the issue is that feminism was stunted - women are more likely to work in jobs where they can barely support themselves; so because of that we’re still stuck with the same gender stereotypes and bigotries and imbalances of power from the past. The trans movement is problematic in my opinion and is illicitly selling sex change as a product, and to very young people for whom it might not be in their best interest. And in some ways because women are disempowered it creates more demand for their product; so feminism and more power for women isn’t in their financial interest. So I oppose the power behind the movement but not the androgynous individuals who identify as trans. I also think it’s very important for everyone right now to be able to talk honestly about feminism and women’s rights, aside from the medical ability to alter some secondary sex characteristics.

Also MTF numbers are still so small as to be a red herring; the real boom in numbers comes from FTM and XX non-binary, both of which are encouraged to take testosterone. The weaker feminism is, the more girls would want to act on so called “penis envy” which is a well known phenomenon and has been since the days of Freud. Girls realize women are disempowered and are motivated to try to become men. But their decision to take testosterone to solve their emotional needs leaves feminism behind, unless the entire population of women is supposed to take testosterone in order to be heard or have power to support themselves. They have become a third sex, which is medically altered people. There are few MTF but by not letting women identify as a separate group from trans women, they have weakened feminism. They know they have no other objective way, aside from a stereotype, to identify what being a woman is.

[quote]Also MTF numbers are still so small

All the energy, angry, lunatic anti-trans trolls, thoughtful anti-trans trolls, Christo-fascist evangelicalbans, patriarchal rightwing anti-queer militias, bourgeoise concern fraus... is all a fraud. Just like Karl Rove and the anti-gay legislatures and initiatives that won elections for Republicans/Bush... it's all calculated inflaming cultural wars to help the extreme Right Wing (and the corporate/private capital that wants to grab and hold absolute power) dominate.

It's all a fraud. A nothing burger. Let the very, very small number of folks have the liberty due them, and get on with the larger issues.

R54, the locker rooms and sports aren’t the biggest issue. The other issues I mentioned are still valid and hopefully we can all talk about them both now and after we defeat the far right. The left should not be adopting the right wing’s stereotypes.

Then 60% of people are right. It's a physical impossibility to change male chromosomes into female chromosomes, and vice versa. They can change their physical appearance, and that's it. Whatever sex you were born as you will be until you die, no matter what you look like or the kind of clothes you wear.

More shocked at the fact that 4 out of 10 Americans think you CAN..!