Althouse: "Someone needs to say it: Not everything's about you.... And it's okay to ask questions about something that's very new and involves children."

May 21, 2022

"Someone needs to say it: Not everything's about you.... And it's okay to ask questions about something that's very new and involves children."

44 comments:

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: "not everything is about you"

this was my response to all the gay males who jumped all over the "don't say gay" Florida child protection act as if the bill had anything to do with grown gay men. No - this is about our children.

BTW- the FL bill did not mention with word "gay" even once.; 5/21/22, 12:46 PM
n.n said...: Florida child protection act

It is about trans/social (e.g. pedophiles) trans/homos and others in the transgender spectrum, but generally about trans/social people... persons who seek sexual fulfillment, exploitation in classrooms, churches, closets, couches, Boy Scouts, etc. with boys and girls. This was not about #MeToo, #HerToo, #NoJudgment, #NoLabels and adult choices.; 5/21/22, 1:01 PM
n.n said...: BTW- the FL bill did not mention with word "gay" even once.

Yes, the assault was led by strawclowns dressed as strawmen braying a handmade tale.

That said, consider the pride of lions, lionesses, and their [unPlanned] cubs in gay parade.; 5/21/22, 1:10 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: What if Alito creates a vulnerable new category in need of civil right protection?

The horror.; 5/21/22, 1:11 PM
Old and slow said...: There may yet be hope...; 5/21/22, 1:19 PM
Joe Smith said...: This is what happens after giving out participation trophies for the past 30 years.; 5/21/22, 1:22 PM
What's emanating from your penumbra said...: There are some progressives, even, for whom ignoring reality is a bridge too.; 5/21/22, 1:26 PM
PM said...: Brilliant. Homework assignment for the NEA.; 5/21/22, 1:38 PM
Jamie said...: Because of the spacing and placement of the words on my phone's screen, when I first scanned the blog post headline I read it as, "Not everything is okay about you." I was shocked speechless that Maher - Maher! - would say something like that about "members of the LBGTQ+ community." (That "[blank] community" construction always gives me pause.) But it's fundamentally true, frankly, speaking from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. We have more or less decided to provide space in society for these biological aberrations (some have decided on full-throated celebration, some on plain tolerance, and everywhere in between, and yes, there are some who just don't want to tolerate at all), so I didn't question my bad read.

I actually had to tap through to the comments before I reread the headline accurately. So close to Following the Science, Bill...

Disclaimer: I'm in the camp of tolerance+gratitude that we live in a society in which people whose (I think) often natural proclivities would have caused them to hide or to be utterly sexually unsatisfied in the past can now find satisfaction without fearing for their lives.; 5/21/22, 1:40 PM
mikee said...: While social conditioning plays a strong role, the simple fact is that slippery force and gentle friction work on all adult genitals, from any supplier and for any receipient. This might make things a bit more complicated in the short term, but long term, the science is pretty undeniable. Good luck with all that.; 5/21/22, 2:37 PM
RideSpaceMountain said...: LMFAO. Of course not everything is about you! Most especially you Bill!

If most people eat crow, what do smug liberal johnny-come-lately know-it-alls eat?

It's your baby Bill...you made it, fucking own it.; 5/21/22, 2:44 PM
Mark said...: "not everything is about you"

Perhaps not. But for the left, everything is about OTHERS - about tearing them down and destroying the existing order.; 5/21/22, 2:51 PM
Yukon Cornelius said...: I suspect that the rising number of people asserting they are part of the LGBTQ+ community is less because of a fundamental change in human biology and more to do with the increasingly wide definition of what constitutes “LGBTQ+”. A visual example of this is how the Pride flag has changed from multicolored stripes to stripes with multicolored brackets as more and more identities are being brought into the definition.

For the older generations, most people simply equate LGBTQ with being gay or lesbian, that is, a sexual orientation. For the younger generations, they have been fully instructed in not only sexual orientation but the various gender identities that comprise the full LGBTQQIP2SAA (or whatever it has become today). Further, what an older person would likely consider a normal part of adolescence (such as sorting out caritas and eros) is for a younger person a way to be part of the “cool” LGBTQ+ community (Questioning, although Queer isn’t a big stretch).

In other words, the graph is a bit disingenuous in that not all respondents have the same understanding of the question. Whether this is intentional on the part of gender activists to push their agenda is unclear. But I have my suspicions.; 5/21/22, 3:01 PM
rwnutjob said...: He may be Elongated yet.; 5/21/22, 3:04 PM
Mikey NTH said...: "It's not all about you" needed to be said a long time ago in a lot of pre-schools. Pity it wasn't because the whiniest are insisting that everyone must cater to their whims. Doubt it will end well.; 5/21/22, 3:05 PM
Saint Croix said...: Kudos to Maher. He's walking in a minefield, he knows it, and he did it anyway.; 5/21/22, 3:07 PM
rwnutjob said...: He may be Elongated yet.; 5/21/22, 3:08 PM
Achilles said...: There are people pushing this to be about group identity. Do not fall for this trick.

I know a bunch of you are just going to jump in and start bashing these people as a group.

There are a lot of people that are different and they are not happy with how they were born. But a lot of those people are also good people that want to live their life.

Don't lump the good people in with the barbarians that are trying to tear apart the social fabric.; 5/21/22, 3:11 PM
Jamie said...: Don't lump the good people in with the barbarians that are trying to tear apart the social fabric.

Hear hear! I'm happy to say that among the non-straight people I know, none has ever indicated a desire to burn it all down.; 5/21/22, 3:30 PM
Saint Croix said...: This is a really important segment. Amazing to me how few people are able to say things like this, and it's comedians (Chappelle, Maher) who lead the way.

Chappelle is our generation's Lenny Bruce, willing to go to the extremes in pursuit of a right to speak. (Chappelle is way funnier than Bruce ever was). Chappelle made fun of trans people, because he saw the humor in the situation. That made him hated. But it gave room to Maher -- who's not nearly as brave as Chappelle -- to give a "sensitive" version and make very important points.

Maher is not actually very funny. He's not a pure comedian. He intersperses his monolog with comedic bits. But his goal is not to make you laugh but to make you think (I think). Chappelle's number #1 goal is to make people laugh, and he's not political. Maher is very political, but his politics don't always align with the Democrat party.

The other comment I would make is that Maher said nothing about unborn children and how awful our disregard for them has been because of our own pursuit of sexual pleasure. To me there are big similarities between a woman saying "I don't want to be pregnant" and a woman saying "I don't want to be a woman." Both women are denying biological reality. And both women often rely on medical technology to achieve their desired state. (I would lump plastic surgery in this category as well).

So the doctor can make changes to your body. You go into a clinic 6 months pregnant and you come out not pregnant. That's a dramatic physical change to your body overnight. There are all kinds of damages this does to a woman's body, including (in my opinion) increasing her risk for breast cancer. (This is because pregnancy floods your body with estrogen and when you abort a pregnancy all those cells have nothing to do, and might become cancerous over time).

In general it's very dangerous injecting estrogen or testosterone into people. We warn young men about those dangers. (Don't take steroids!). But we don't tell young girls that the birth control pill is a steroid. (It also has been linked to the increase in breast cancer).

I suspect a lot of estrogen has been getting into our drinking water, and maybe our milk, too. Feminists who think estrogen is amazing and testosterone is evil might want to rethink their biases.; 5/21/22, 3:33 PM
cubanbob said...: For me the best part of getting old is having less and less energy to waste on crap. I save my energy for more important outrages.; 5/21/22, 3:43 PM
Mark said...: "It's not all about you"

It's also not about LGBTQ. Rather, as Sesame Street would teach, one (or two) of these things in not like the others. They are not a monolithic singularity. More and more, the Ls especially, do not want to be associated with the Ts, while the Ts are accusing the Ls of being anti-T.; 5/21/22, 3:45 PM
Mark said...: LGBTQ is not a group. They are groups. Once it was convenient to be allied. Not so much anymore.; 5/21/22, 3:47 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “Don't lump the good people in with the barbarians that are trying to tear apart the social fabric”

Alas, the barbarians have successfully insisted they’re all of a piece.

And I don’t hear “the good people” insisting that they are not.

It’s like they’re all Ultra-LGBTQ or something….; 5/21/22, 4:03 PM
Mark said...: More and more I've been experiencing finger dyslexia.; 5/21/22, 4:17 PM
tim maguire said...: It’s no secret that the greatest predictor of whether a teen will come out as trans is whether they have a close friend who came out as trans. Kids rebel, but in rebelling, they order from the available menu—bobby soxers, then hippies, later punks, goth, today trans. And like those who came before, the trans kids will do it for a while, then one morning they’ll feel stupid and stop doing it. Just like kids have since teenage rebellion was invented after the industrial revolution.

The only thing we need to do is round up and shoot everyone who wants to subject these kids to life-altering therapies. Stay out of it, groomers. Let the kids be kids because the kids are alright.; 5/21/22, 4:42 PM
realestateacct said...: I'm starting to come to the conclusion that everything to the right of the B is a pose. I'm not really sure about the B. I'll concede there may be some genuine gender dysphorics who benefit from medical intervention but there are not enough of them to fill the bleachers at a WNBA game in the world.; 5/21/22, 4:52 PM
Saint Croix said...: Another way of thinking about this is that while many conservatives are pro-life, there's another group of conservatives who don't like radical changes to our society. And they really don't like radical changes to human biology.

There are lot of people on the "left" who might fall into this group. For instance, people who are opposed to GMO are opposed to changing basic biology. As you think through these issues, many of the people who are opposed to altering the biology of food might also start being worried about altering the biology of little children.; 5/21/22, 5:04 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: He was spot on with most of that. Notice how the democrat kept looking at him funny - Like "how dare you wander off the mind-crime plantation."

The gender-trans obsessed with our youth are on the march. They are lying to get your kids under their influence.

Art club might really be... "your parents are the enemy and here's my number call me any time, but don't tell you parents about this "art club". You're trans now, ok." club; 5/21/22, 5:05 PM
Rabel said...: It might be that we're seeing a loosely organized effort to back away from the most extreme positions of the left to give reassurance to those voters who might abandon the Democrat party for the midterm elections as a rejection of the current insanities.; 5/21/22, 5:12 PM
Saint Croix said...: Heterosexuality has been around since the beginning of humanity.

Homosexuality and bisexuality also have probably been around for similar lengths of time.

Transexuality, where a "mad doctor" starts giving you unhealthy levels of hormones to change your biology, that's a new thing.

So people who likes new things might jump on board this fad. (Young children, for instance).

But old people who are suspicious of new things are not going to jump on board.

Maher's point that this seems like a fad or a fashion trend is a good (and scary) point. Because (unlike most fads) this particularly one might have scary long-term consequences.

If you stop taking hormone pills, your body will likely revert to how it was before.

If you have the surgery, though, you've crossed a bridge. You will never have children. Your line will die out with you.

The future of the human race belongs to breeders and their children, and nobody else. That's a mean comment but it's true if you think about it. Breeders reproduce, and that's how the future of humanity will continue. (I say "breeders" and not "heterosexuals" because we now have the technology for anybody to reproduce).; 5/21/22, 5:12 PM
farmgirl said...: He’s sounding like Stephen Crowder.
Change my mind…; 5/21/22, 5:21 PM
effinayright said...: "I suspect a lot of estrogen has been getting into our drinking water, and maybe our milk, too. Feminists who think estrogen is amazing and testosterone is evil might want to rethink their biases."
***************

MANY people, including myself, have that suspicion.

Have there been any carefully calibrated and consistent quantitative analyses done in multiple places around the world to find out?

Anyone know?; 5/21/22, 5:23 PM
JPS said...: Mark,

"It's also not about LGBTQ.... They are not a monolithic singularity."

This reminded me of a passage from the magnificently grouchy Florence King:

"The leading unpopular truth of homosexual life is that gay men and Lesbians don't much like each other. It could hardly be otherwise; each having surrendered prerogatives that the other wants, each views the other as a fool. In a normal country they couldn't bear to be in the same room together but in America they're in the same minority group."; 5/21/22, 5:30 PM
n.n said...: ...is not a group. They are groups.

More importantly, they are individuals. However, under diversity [dogma], they are classified in color (i.e. monolithic) blocs, immutable, and undifferentiated, incorporated. One step forward, two steps backward.; 5/21/22, 5:45 PM
n.n said...: The transgender spectrum -is- trendy but socially exclusive with elite classes. The trans/homosexual male community needs to come to terms with social progress. They are simply not that politically congruent ("="). Trans/bisexuals were always impure and socially excluded even with an increasing community pulse (pun intended). Trans/homosexual females became the politically congruent construct of the day with the unparalleled horror of curbing reproductive rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. Trans/neos' moment in the diversity spotlight coincided, unsurprisingly, with Mengele mandates.; 5/21/22, 6:22 PM
Lurker21 said...: Once, people were assumed to be heterosexual unless there was actual evidence to the contrary. Even people who weren't sexually active were assumed to be straight. Hence the button from years gone by, "How dare you presume I am heterosexual."

Today, unless you you are heterosexual in a very pronounced way, you are assumed to be "different." The sexual revolution of the Sixties changed people's expectations. The new sexual "frankness" meant that people were talking about things, and doing things, that they wouldn't have done or talked about before. Hence the identification of young people who aren't lesbian or gay, but don't have an overpowering orientation towards the opposite sex with the extended LGBTQQ label.

When a large proportion of incoming students at one elite college pronounced themselves LGBTQQ in a poll, there was a lot of outraged talk. What got missed was that 10% or more of the students considered themselves asexual, and therefore, outside the heterosexual paradigm. Those were people who probably might have simply assumed that they were "normal" in the "old days."

Another ten percent or more considered themselves bisexual or "questioning." In your parents' day, most of them wouldn't have thought of themselves that way. If you were "normal" you got married to someone of the opposite sex and had children or you just didn't define yourself in terms of sexual orientation.; 5/21/22, 7:04 PM
Jupiter said...: We should never have let them call their sick travesty of a relationship "marriage". In fact, we didn't. A homosexual judge in California did, after a huge majority of Californians voted against it.; 5/21/22, 7:51 PM
Scott said...: I think Maher got red pilled. Now he must be figuring out to steer the show into something more real without losing too many of his admirers.; 5/21/22, 9:43 PM
Tom said...: This is turning into a TERF war and the US feminists, who can see how this is trending, have trapped themselves in a worse situation than that time they sided with Clinton and attacked his victims. But they see the mess that’s coming for them. So Chappell and Maher are doing the fighting for them.

Chappell probably can’t be canceled. But since Maher is off the reservation, his Jewishness doesn’t protect and he defaults to old white guy. He’s far too dangerous for HBO to continue allowing him a platform.

He’s got to go.; 5/21/22, 11:24 PM
walter said...: Meanwhile, it's harder and harder to find a good BLT.; 5/22/22, 12:30 AM
Jamie said...: Meanwhile, it's harder and harder to find a good BLT.

That's because there's no such thing as a good BLT!; 5/22/22, 7:06 AM
Danno said...: I saw this video on Powerline yesterday. Maher may be backpedaling as the march toward total wokeness overcomes the Dems, but he showed his stupidity the other day by saying he wouldn't follow Musk in voting Republican.; 5/22/22, 8:12 AM
walter said...: Right. Comments like that keep me from expressing my preference.; 5/22/22, 9:54 AM