http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pope-its-terrible-children-taught-they-can-choose-gender/ar-BBvanKF?li=BBnbcA1

Where's the morg on this!???

Yeah, see, every time somebody goes on about how wonderful he is, he pulls something like this.

Which is why, even though he's a little "better" than previous popes in some ways, he's a long, long, LONG way from being an OK guy. And he's still a force for ignorance and stupidity in the world.

I think the pope is referring to someone simply telling children they can choose. I do not think transgenders take it lightly but because of a long-standing feeling they belong to the opposite sex. But young children may take it wrong.

I admire this Pope more than any other I can remember, but when he comes out with something as nasty as this, I am deeply disappointed.

Someone I love dearly is TG, and I know firsthand that just as with being gay, it is not a choice that anyone would make voluntarily.

I wish more people understood this.

I found it confusing. It seems that Frankie is upset kids are not taught that gender identity is baked in. But then he turns around and quoted Bennie saying the current times are "the epoch of sin against God the Creator." So, it's hard to tell where he stands on SSA issues, since by his reasoning gayness is baked in and God created gays. So then, what's the problem?

I would like to see the textbook he is referring to before commenting.If he thinks changing gender is a sin, I disagree completely. If he saying that kindergartners and other small kids shouldnt be bombarded with such issues, I tend to agree with him. My kindergarten age niece was forced to deal with this because the father of her cousin decided to transition. She really didnt get it and for a while went around worrying that everyone she knew was going to change genders. I am not saying it shoulsnt be discussed, but I dont see that it is needed as part of the curriculum for small children. As for the pope, I can disagree with him.on some issues and admire him on others. That is the way it is with most people

bona, I'd like to know which book he was referring to as well.
I'd wager that whichever book it is, it has some small, minor mention about accepting transgender folks, which was then blown up into the ridiculous.
I'd wager that because it's par for the course. :)

OK, I'm may have to don my flame-proof suit for this one: my daughter has a boyfriend, except that he's a she. My daughter refers to her as he. But she's obviously a she. But they're not lesbians.

Now, there was a year or so where my daughter announced that she was a trans boy, and started calling herself by a male name and dressing in men's clothes, and, quite frankly, looking and smelling like that guy roommate you never wanted to be in the apartment with at the same time. Then she had a girlfriend (a long distance relationship where they never actually met, because they shared an internet-friendly liking for a Manga cartoon, but there was much emotional manipulation and drama); even when we were overseas she would try to find a place to get texting availability and then emotional ups and downs and nearly daily breakups and getting-back-togethers (and some "cutting", on a vacation!) would follow. And we constantly worry about suicide...

She would get extremely upset when my wife and I would get confused about all this. I say: "Who wouldn't?"


Now she says that she embraces her feminine side (cis gender?) and dresses in the things she used to abandon in her closet.


She also has depression, and if this new boy/girlfriend helps in that regard I'm all for it; OTOH, I know there are chemicals and measurable differences in brain chemistry in many "gender confused" people, but I'm sorry, you can't just decide what you are. She spends so much time on this gender identification stuff that she nearly forgets that she has a professional degree and she's not pursuing a job. I know she's young, but something is not right.

We actually had a session with her college counselor and I opined that if I wanted to start calling myself Chinese, it doesnt actually make me Chinese, and she said "No, this is different."

That is why I have to agree partially with the Pope: there is so much navel-gazing self introspection going on that people don't just go out and live their life and do things, create things, contribute.

They spend most of the day on Tumblr and Facebook saying "Look at me look at me look at me--I have my heart on my sleeve!" They go on and on and on about how everyone in the world is the same and we shouldn't use labels, and then they turn right around and put labels on everyone who is just a slighter shade of different and shout "Persecution!"

I blame myself, society, and universities.

I could go, but...

...rant over.

Anon for this one Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...I'm sorry, you can't
> just decide what you are. She spends so much time
> on this gender identification stuff that she
> nearly forgets that she has a professional degree
> and she's not pursuing a job. I know she's young,
> but something is not right.
>
> We actually had a session with her college
> counselor and I opined that if I wanted to start
> calling myself Chinese, it doesnt actually make me
> Chinese, and she said "No, this is different."

I'm sure it's been rough on you.
Think how rough it's been on *her.*
Because it is different than calling yourself Chinese, and it's also not "choosing." Very likely, her body is "saying" one thing, and her brain another. If you think you're confused, imagine how she feels. Your brain and body both say the same thing. Hers don't. Her hormones probably conflict, too.

That's my big beef with the pope's statement -- this isn't really "choosing" any more than being straight (or gay) is "choosing." It's biology and brain chemistry and hormones and psychological confusion and lots of other things. It's her trying to figure out who she is amidst massively confusing signals -- from her society, from her body, from her brain.

I hope she finds somewhere she's happy and content. Whatever that is. :)

I don't think your experience is necessarily typical of this cisgender or transgender experience. I think those who are 'out, loud, and proud' our are very obvious or very vocal about their change, do so to draw attention to the issues, politics, and general hate and harassment that surrounds those who change genders in their life.

I would imagine, though I have no statistics to confirm this, that the majority of people who go through a gender transition, whether surgically, or just cosmetically (is that the right way of defining a nonsurgical gender transformation?) don't go around making it the most important thing in their life forever and ever and ever and acting dramatic about it. I imagine they are probably fairly private about it, because they don't want to get the harassment, discrimination, and prejudice that gets thrown towards people who are transgender.

I also imagine that transgender people don't always broadcast it because most people just lead normal, fairly private lives. People might have a facebook account, or instragram or twitter or whatever, but hopefully they don't use it as a platform to broadcast everything about their lives that their is to broadcast.

These are just my 'imaginings'. I think some people have this stereotypical image of a transgender person (and a gay person) as being very loud, garish, and flashy, and that's nonsense. I'm not saying that's what your saying, anon, but it's certainly not my experience, nor the experience of others I've talked to.

However, people still have a right to be as loud, garish, and flashy as they want to be. I imagine they would get a lot of shit for it though, whether through employment opportunities, social ones, or otherwise. It's an unfortunate reality, but that is the way of the world.

To be on topic, though, I don't this Francis defined his opinions on this very well, other than the fact that I got the vibe from him that he was intolerant of transgender people in general. It's possible he meant exposing really young children to transgender issues and having it be defined for them at such a young age, but I don't personally think that's what, or ALL, he meant.

Didn't this guy just apologize on behalf of the catholic church for persecuting gays, or some other group of people, or something? Maybe I'm getting him confused with someone else. Certainly not any mormon authority, though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2016 09:24PM by midwestanon.

Years ago, someone conducted an experiment with maternity ward nurses. A group of infants had all name or sex information removed and had all had neutral coloured baby blankets. Then the nurses were brought into guess the infants sex just by watching them.

The nurses were able to guess correctly in the majority of cases.

How is it relevant that experienced maternity ward nurses were able to correctly identify gender in babies? I would be concerned if a nurse couldn't, most of the time.

I understand infants have ambiguous sexual characteristics, and don't become obviously male or female until much later in life, but I would assume a nurse that works predominantly with babies and pregnant women would be able to use their skills to delineate between mostly same-looking male and female babies.

again, how does this matter?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2016 10:06PM by midwestanon.

I related this story to attempt to enlighten the discussion with humour. The story was about behaviour -- not ambiguous genitalia.

No matter what the Pope, a witch doctor, a crazy television preacher or the gypsy woman fortune teller might say what we commonly call sexual identity or "gender" is based in the human brain and develops in utero and once formed cannot be changed.

If someone with a female brain has a body with male genitalia that person is female and should be treated and regarded as such. She will live and behave as a female because it is natural for her to do so no matter what anyone else says.


If someone with a male brain has a body with female genitalia that person is male and should be treated and regarded as such. He will live and behave as a male because it is natural for him to do so no matter what anyone else says.


The "trans" problem is really a problem of human perception -- the external perception of others that is. Many conservatives and religious people claim to believe in a "soul" that can't be seen but they base their views of trans people on the external and not the internal. Trans people only want be what they already are. The reason why some are vocal and out loud and proud is because they are assaulted, raped, and killed at a disproportionally high rate. Remember the famous "A MAN was Lynched Yesterday" sign?


One day in the future humans will make first contact with an alien race. They may look completely different from humans but will have minds that can think and reason. Hopefully we won't regard them as "its" or "things" just because they won't look the way we would want them to look to satisfy ourselves.

I understand the concept of perception. Unfortunately, our society is not blind, in any sense. I agree with you, and the points you made. I made the same ones.

No matter how hard we try, we can't live blindly, with regard to the way we treat people, interact with them, or the opinions we form of them. Our opinions are always colored by our experiences.

Most human problems are based in perceptions, in differences. That's fairly obvious. I don't know why the idea of someone who feels inside like one gender but is physically another is so offensive to some people's sensibilities. It is a real scientifically proven fact, so it makes no sense to deny it, but people do, just like they deny other scientific realities that don't mesh with their sensibilities.

Gender and sex are just extra-taboo, I suppose. I really don't know what about transgender issues that gets people so riled up. It seems like the prejudice and danger that these people face, especially among certain groups of people, is very real, and very common.

http://www.avp.org/storage/documents/ncavp_transhvfactsheet.pdf

In 2013, 72 percent of the hate crime-related murders were committed against transgendered women. The pdf I linked to gave statistics, (alarming ones) but not reasons.

I can only guess. Why people hate the things they hate it something I spend probably too much time brooding about. I'm sure it has a lot to do with being the only exmormon in a house full of mormons; in a family full of mormons. People who choose to be willfully ignorant about a wide variety of issues, and thus favor morg positions that result in various prejudices against a variety of groups of people, is something that often makes me deeply uncomfortable. I can tell you that my dad, a doctor, is probably aware of the science (even if just the rudimentary parts) behind why homosexuality and being trans are, you know, real, that they are 'nature', not nurture; that being gay or being a man trapped in a woman's body (or vice-versa) is not some liberal scheme to promote perverse agendas, but something that has been proven through science. He knows this, and I know he knows it, but he chooses to put these things he knows on the shelf in order to be commensurate with the teaching of TSCC.

It's an awful thing. I'm sure a lot of people here have similar experiences.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2016 11:57PM by midwestanon.

"I don't know why the idea of someone who feels inside like one gender but is physically another is so offensive to some people's sensibilities..."

I'm not even sure what it means to feel like one particular gender. What does that even mean? I physically am (and look like) a woman. I'm attracted to men. Apart from that, I just feel like a person.

"...teaching children...that everyone can choose their gender"

Where's the reference? I believe he has the lesson wrong. If "they" are teaching that gender is "chosen," then "they" have it wrong.

"God created man and woman, God created the world this way..."

He also doesn't seem to pay much attention to Jesus as quoted in the book of Matthew:

http://biblehub.com/matthew/19-12.htm

Johns Hopkins University was the world pioneer in performing sex reassignment surgeries for decades. They now will not perform such surgeries, for ethical reasons. They are certainly not a Catholoc institution (or connected with any other religion6. I encourage anyone who is interested in the issue of transvestism to do a little of your own research about why they no longer do these surgeries.

Anyone hear what the American Academy of Pediatrics had to say earlier this year about treating children and teens with hormones, etc. for transgender reasons? I doubt you did; The Guardian and other left-leaning media I read regularly chose not to cover their statement at all. Again, I encourage you to do your own online search. A little hard to find, but the information is worth considering.

You may also want to look up "autogynephia," which a tramswoman (born male) and respected researcher has written a book about. It is indeed a real condition, but it's not what 99 of transgender activists would want you to think or know about these issues.

I will close with an anecdote about one of my niece's best friends, and her only close friend who is a boy. My niece is in 3rd grade and has been close to this boy since first grade. The boy takes ballet, his favorite colors are pink and purple, and my niece tells me how he loves to play games with her and her other friends at school (all girls) like "Let's be flower fairies!"

I once asked my niece if other kids in her class, or in school generally, make fun of this boy for playing mostly with girls and liking so many traditionally feminine things. She just said, "No; he has some friends who are boys too--they just know he mostly likes playing with girls."

I have had the chance to observe this little boy several times over the past three years at my nirce's birthday parties, where he is always the sole male guest, or at her school plays, etc. He sits happily painting a trinket box purple and gluing sparkles on it during a party craft. He also talks excitedly about how much he loves playing basketball and baseball and watching the Warriors and Guants on TV. (He still takes ballet, too.) He was chatting to my daughter about Star Wars and how cool the laser fights are.

I can't help but think how very, very lucky this little boy is that in 2016 he is accepted for who he is by his parents, classmates, and teachers: a boy (yes, a boy) who happens to like many traditionally feminine things and even who seems a bit effeminate (in his gestures, speech)...but he is a boy nonetheless. Lucky him that his parents don't freak and feel the need to put him in a box: "He likes ballet, plays flower fairies, and likes pink and sparkles...well, he must be a girl!"

Whatever happened to the idea of accepting people who do not conform to gender stereotypes? Is it just some quaint, antiquated 70s idea nowadays that a boy might like some traditionally female things, or that a girl might only want to play with Hot Wheels and hate dolls? I suspect many kids had more freedom to be themselves only five or ten years ago in terms of gender norms than they do now.

I can't help but wonder if some of this is simply discomfort with homosexuality, even in 2016. Your son seems effeminate in some ways and might in fact be gay? Maybe it's easier in the prevailing mindset to say "Oh he--wait, she--was born in the wrong body." Your daughter wants to date girls? Oh, whew--she's not a lesbian after all because now she says she's really a male.

Anon for this one Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Johns Hopkins University was the world pioneer in
> performing sex reassignment surgeries for decades.
> They now will not perform such surgeries, for
> ethical reasons. They are certainly not a Catholoc
> institution (or connected with any other
> religion6. I encourage anyone who is interested in
> the issue of transvestism to do a little of your
> own research about why they no longer do these
> surgeries.

"transvestism" is not the issue here, nor the one involved in any surgery Johns Hopkins will or won't do.

Using the completely wrong word there makes me wonder how much you've actually tried to learn about this issue...?

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/12/15/scary-science-johns-hopkins-university

Additionally, the American Association of Pediatricians is fully supportive of transgender individuals, and their medical care. Perhaps you were misled by this *other* group, which has nothing to do with the AAP, who DID put out a rather nasty and hateful statement earlier this year?

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2016/03/22/3762261/pediatrician-hate-group/



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2016 07:50PM by ificouldhietokolob.

If you don't understand the difference and psychology between a transvestite and a transgender person, you need to do a whole hell of a lot more reading and self-education.

And Dr. Paul Mc Hugh (a Catholic who is biased ) has views that are no longer regarded as mainstream by other researchers

Oh, and other thing. It's usually the kids that tell their parents their gender and not the parents trying to make them trans because of their behavior. Problems arise when the parents don't listen and try to prevent the child from being their gender.



http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/06/10/3668041/paul-mchugh-transgender/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2016 07:47PM by anybody.

You have to wonder about advice about sexuality coming from "celibate" men in a "Priesthood."

I suspect one main reason they glom on to such a position in the Catholic religion is because they have personal issues or demons they are fighting about sex.

They are instilling shame and guilt which has damaged many people.

They need to STFU about gender roles and people need to quit empowering these clowns, IMO.