Is discourse regarding trans-gender really necessary though? It seems something a bunch of spoiled elitist bigots would discuss as their way to express distaste for plebs and pretends it's some sort of philosophical debate.
Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. You can discuss it over at /r/philosophy if your intentions are truly analytical.
> Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves.
I don't feel you've really followed the debate. Some trans rights activists are demanding that they be legally defined as the sex they 'identify' with. This equates to biological men being housed in female prisons, biological men competing in women's sporting events, etc etc. It's an attack on women's spaces and the very meaning of what it is to be a woman and what women's experiences entail.
This is just a short summary but the idea that they are affecting 'no one but themselves' is way off base.
> Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves.
This section was already covered by another user, but I'd like to provide an example too:
So, you fall in love with someone, and marry them. You have children with them and you have a nice family. Everything is going great until one day ... they confess to you that they have always felt like they were the opposite gender. This was not disclosed to you before you said your vows.
You want to support them because you love them so you encourage them to treat their dysphoria. You think it will be fine.
But then it turns out that when they begin to transition hormonally, you're no longer attracted to them. This is no fault of your own, sexuality is what it is, but you kinda feel like the person you were in love with has died. Your marriage falls apart. You're hurt. You feel vaguely betrayed even though you weren't really.
Whenever you try to talk to someone about what happened, just to vent, they all take your ex-spouse's side.
This is the content that was in a lot of the posts on GenderCritical. People who were hurting who wanted a place to vent about something a SPECIFIC person in their life did without automatically being labeled transphobic for working through their feelings.
Additionally, all the posters there were cis women. Men and trans women were asked to go somewhere else. Occasionally they would make exceptions and allow trans men to post, but for the most part it was cis women.
People who don't know better think of GenderCritical as aligned with the alt-right, but basically they are a despised part of the left. They would vote in the interest of women, being feminists, which meant NOT voting with the alt-right.
One of the main reasons they asked men to go elsewhere was because more often than not, those posters WOULD be aligned with the alt-right, and they would not have the best interests of women in mind when discussing things. Alt-right men would just see a subreddit that seemed to be for bashing trans people and be like "Sweet! This is my new home." and all the radical feminists would be like "nuh uh, out."
Source: I starting doing a deep dive into this community about a year ago to attempt to understand them.
I'll go ahead and say it's probably such an extremely rare occurrence that I highly doubt some sort of forum is required here.
Why an exclusive community about this subject necessary? This topic is not prohibited on /r/offmychest or any other "venting" subreddit. To me it seems like community of common hate and that's just awfully unnecessary.
I'm pretty certain posts of "my spouse turned out trans an left me" would never be removed from any platform.
There's so little value here that negatives outweigh the positives by an absurd margin.
Someone's interpretation of their own sexuality or gender affects no one but themselves. You can discuss it over at /r/philosophy if your intentions are truly analytical.