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[–]Femaleisnthateful 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

LOL isn't it funny how the gender training is so predictable any of us could teach it ourselves?

The trans mental health thing jumps out at me as the most glaring and internally inconsistent. There are more trans people than ever before because of public acceptance, but also half of them try to kill themselves and their life expectancy is abysmally short (did 'they' explain why)? I don't recall the LGB community being this dysfunctional, despite experiencing overt discrimination and violence.

I don't have experience with this training myself, but I'm mentally steeling myself for when I will have to. I think the best way forward, since we're familiar with all the arguments, is to come prepared with research notes which debunk the 'facts' put forward in the training.

I would have liked to ask 'them' what criteria or characteristics define a person as a specific 'gender identity'. It slays me that these people rail against the 'gender binary' while deliberately reinforcing it.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

There are more trans people than ever before because of public acceptance, but also half of them try to kill themselves and their life expectancy is abysmally short (did 'they' explain why)? I don't recall the LGB community being this dysfunctional, despite experiencing overt discrimination and violence.

Even during the AIDS crisis when gay men in large numbers were being struck down in the prime of life and dying horrible, excruciating deaths, activists in countries like the US and UK didn't set out to make the situation seem worse by telling gay men that their average life expectancy was 35 - and that if they didn't die of AIDS, they'd still be highly likely to try killing themselves.

[–]RationalNeutral 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Were closeted LGB at such a risk of suicide if they remained in the closet and did not openly express their sexual preference?

Also I have to imagine that the generational increase in empathy over time is proving to result in different activism as well. Although, that appears to be lost upon this sub.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Were closeted LGB at such a risk of suicide if they remained in the closet and did not openly express their sexual preference?

You're presuming that "LGB" were/are "at such risk of suicide" - a phrase that has no meaning. Are you claiming that "LGB" generally have higher rates of suicide than straight people - and across the board? Or higher rates of suicidal threats, thoughts, or ideation, or urges, or plans, or attempts - or all or some of these? Can you provide the exact stats and sources for whatever it is that you're claiming?

BTW, researchers studying suicide who know what they're doing would not characterize "LGB" people as one undifferentiated mass.

For the record, most of the research on suicidal thoughts, attempts and completed acts amongst homosexuals that's been done over the course of decades has focused on male homosexuals. And it's found that the time in life when male homosexuals are most likely to think of suicide is when they are realizing their sexual orientation and grappling with coming out, or in the process of coming out. Which in most cases means when they are adolescents or very young adults. Today in 2021, the USA's CDC says that "gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men" are more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers "especially before the age of 25."

IIRC, recent surveys of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 in the US lumped together under the heading "LGBTQ" have found that the sub-groups that report the highest rates of suicidal thoughts are girls (or "AFAB"s) who are exclusively same-sex attracted or bi.

But as I'm sure you know, suicidal thoughts are not the same as suicide attempts, and neither thoughts nor attempts are the same as acts of suicide. Whilst a significant number of adolescents and young adults who are gay, lesbian and bi - and who are heterosexual too - report thinking of suicide and how they might commit suicide, and the rates of suicide have gone up in recent years amongst young people as it has amongst all age groups, the statistics over time show that suicide occurs most commonly in older age groups. Though the figures change from year to year, generally speaking, the rates of completed suicide increase with age. And people under 25 have by far the lowest rates of suicide.

In 2019, the suicide rates were higher among adults ages 45 to 54 years (19.60 per 100,000) and 55 to 64 years (19.41 per 100,000), with the rate highest among adults ages 85 years or older (20.12 per 100,000), the only age group with a rate increase from 19.07 in 2018 to 20.12 in 2019.

Younger groups have had consistently lower suicide rates than middle-aged and older adults. In 2019, adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24 had a suicide rate of 13.95.

https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://www.prb.org/suicides/

Interestingly, during the height of AIDS crisis, whilst there was an uptick of suicides amongst some gay diagnosed with HIV, there was no huge rise. Moreover, HIV poz men who committed suicide typically had not yet developed full-blown AIDS. There actually were fewer suicides amongst gay men with AIDS that researchers expected to find. A popular saying amongst gay men back then was, "we aren't dying of AIDS, we're living with AIDS."

I have to imagine that the generational increase in empathy over time is proving to result in different activism as well.

What "generational increase in empathy"? Please provide the evidence that there's been an increase. And please specify the generations involved in the studies, as well as the specific methods researchers have used to detect and measure empathy, that show empathy has increased. Please also be clear about which particular groups in the population supposedly have more empathy now than in the past, and state exactly which particular groups they supposedly have more empathy.

Social attitudes expressed online & in the mass media; the rates of male violence and harassment against girls & women; the popularity of porn & particularly porn in which women are degraded & harmed; the ways males of younger generations treat their female sex partners during sex & the sex acts they expect & demand of them; the increasing rates at which younger men are of assaulting, raping & murdering old women - often with overkill; the demonization of girls & women who stand up for our rights, spaces and sports - and many other factors suggest that if anything, there has been a marked generational decline in empathy towards the 51% of the human race that's female.

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I asked a question for more information and was not really making a claim with this comment, for the record.

What I'm trying to ask really is, "Is suicide as much of a concern for Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual people?"

There is no claim being made here, I just have no idea about their circumstances and am asking.

Obviously, if it isn't as much of a concern that may explain why it wasn't a statistic of interest to activism at the time.

Re: Generational increase in empathy

This is a general personal observation, I do not know how someone would quantifiably or empirically go about proving or disproving this. Nor do I really have any interest in proving or disproving that notion.

[–]teacherterf[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I thought of a lot of questions along those lines. My concern was that I didn't want to get too philosophical. A big part of the reason I don't want to challenge the nuts and bolts of these claims is that I already think that gender identity "education" lies well outside our mandate as a school and I don't want to send the message that we need to spend even more time discussing it. We should treat all students with dignity and respect, certainly, but this does not require us to believe what all of our students believe. Somehow this goes without saying in the case of religion - I am able to treat my Christian students with dignity and respect even though I do not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and I've never had to attend workshop training that was geared at changing my religious beliefs - but not in the case of gender. So, yes, gender identity is incoherent as a concept and I'm sure they/them wouldn't have had a good answer to your question, but other than acting as a gotcha, this is rather beside the point. Similarly, I could, for instance, challenge their claims about puberty blockers, but again - we're not a medical institution, and I don't want to spend time discussing an issue that has nothing to do with our professional lives.