I fail to understand this concept of being a different gender in your brain. To me that concept does not make any sense. A gender is determined by the physical reproductive body parts you have, except perhaps in extremely rare medical conditions some of which were mentioned in this thread. There is no need to alter language definitions in order to incorporate such extreme minority cases.
If you have physical body parts of a male, but in your mind you prefer to behave and dress and live in ways that are more typical of a female, why are we now trying to say that you are a female? Isn't that just reinforcing gender roles and behaviors by saying I don't belong to my gender, just because I feel/behave in a certain way that's not common to the majority of men? Feel how you want to feel, and have whatever kind of relationship you want to with others of the same or a different gender. Isn't that more psychologically healthy than believing there is something wrong with the body you have compared to your feelings?
I know this might seem off-topic to an STT forum, but to me this steps on the very science-based approach of Star Trek which I think society is moving away from in some ways, with all the non-science based information spread in social media (anti-vaxx, etc) being a prime example. Does everyone forget about the scientific method after high school? If it's not a repeatable experiment, especially with double blind studies and a large population where necessary, it's not yet scientifically proven and should not be shared as fact and especially not risking your life on.
Humans are two things, the physical and the mental. Your body and your mind. But that which is your self, your identity, your thoughts, your feelings, your desires, your hopes is in your mind. Everything that is your thinking self is in your brain. If you lose an arm the brain can still feel that it is there and you will have phantom limb sensations. If your body gets old you may still feel young in your mind and try to still do the things you have always done even though you may not now be able. Your body may be small and not one good for football but your mind may have a good cerebellum for sports and you may love playing football. Why are some men gay while others are straight when both have the same physical parts? Because their minds are different. Same kind of thing with trans people. Their bodies say they are one sex but their minds say they are another. You are correct that we need to pay attention to science but these differences in brains have been found with science and medicine. There some minute differences on average in a couple areas of the brains in males and females. Using an MRI scan scientists can see that the brain of someone who is born male but identifies as transgender woman will often have a brain that is more like that of someone who is female. And someone who is born female but identifies as trangender man will often have a brain that is more like that of someone male. For more information you can google it or read more on this link from the Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgender-brain-what-you-should-know/
While the science around MRI scans in this area is interesting, as I mentioned in my follow up comment I am not at all surprised by this. Our brain is what determines our personality, behavior, preferences, feelings, etc. It's hardly surprising that 2 people with similar personality/behavior etc would have some common elements in MRI scans regardless of physical gender.
I don't dispute the science behind these MRI investigations and I am not trying to imply that there are not physical differences in trans people's brains, since our brains physical functioning/structure determine how we think and behave and feel, etc. It's very logical that someone's brain would be different who thinks/behaves differently, since that's the physical part of our body that does the thinking and outputs behavior.
MRI scans are not a practical method to identify a person's gender, as we're not all going to go out and get MRI scans as a method of identification. Physical gender attributes are a far more practical solution, as well as medically relevant for a person's whole life even if they undergo reassignment surgery.
However, I have no objection at all to referring to a person (to third parties) as the gender they wish to project with their appearance. It's not like we typically mention people's gender directly to them anyways, so this seems like something that would not come up very often.
Hmm....we could suppliment this with other 2/3 crew involving a Disco / Voyager mashup....
Disco Janeway - 5 star
Section 31 Neelix - 4 Star
Control Kes 4 star
Celebratory EMH - 4 Star
Cadet Harry Kim - 3 Star
Off Duty Seven....with toothbrush and Teddy bear!!! - 3 Star
Terran Chakotay - 2 star
Boreth Nun Torres -3 star
Navigator Paris -5 Star
And why not...
Voyager Lorca - 5 star
Assimilated Stammets - 4 star
Temporal agent Burnham - 4 star
8472 replicant Saru - 4 star
Borg queen Tilly - 5 star
Delta flyer Detmer - 3 star
Kazon Tyler - 3 star
Krenim prisoner pike - 5 star
Equinox Cornwell - 4 star
EMH MK3 Culber - 5star
Vidiian prisoner Vok 3 star
Day of Honor L'rell - 3 star
Year of hell Georgiou - 5 star
So the MRI scan is reinforcing that some people think and feel in a way that may not match the way most people of their gender do. It is not surprising to me that an MRI scanning our brain (which is the source of our behavior/personality/feelings) matches a person's behavior up with others who have similar behavior/feelings/personality, regardless of reproductive organs.
No, and this shows a fundamental misunderstanding.
MRI scans can show a number of things, but what we're interested in here are:
1) Brain structure - effectively distribution and density of grey/white matter
2) Connectivity - the differences in strength and complexity in connections between regions in the brain; and
3) Patterns - voxel changes across time
3) is what sits behind the "mind reading" tech, where if you show people the same picture then similar regions will light up, and then asking them to remember them will produce a similar effect. This looks like what you're describing and has minimal bearing on gender.
1) and 2) and primarily set during gestation, with further changes dependent on childhood, and can be radically altered post physical brain trauma as the brain re-wires itself.
1) and 2) also show marked differences between genders and explains why men tend to be better at some functions, and women at others.
These are the ones the MRIs show in trans, so it has nothing to do with behaviour, feelings or personality and everything to do with the body assigning gender attributes to itself during gestation.
You're trying to apply a psychological construct onto a physical one. You cannot rewire your brain like that via behaviour and feelings any more than someone could will their arm to drop off. It just doesn't work that way.
I just don't agree with the need for any further confusion from there. There are physically two genders, and if you prefer to dress/behave in a way more common to the opposite gender, I'm happy to refer to you that way (when speaking to others about you using pronouns). Passports can show your physical gender, but your appearance just needs to match your picture. It does not matter if it matches the listed physical gender you had at birth for identification. Plenty of people have been androgynous looking in the past and that's never mattered for identification.
Firstly, there isn't just two physical genders - from a chromosomal perspective there are least 7, including Turners, Mosaic and multiple-X.
From a physical perspective, there are at least three, including male, female and true hermaphroditism.
Introducing gender as a spectrum is just unnecessarily confusing, and creates too many security and potential personal issues with unintentional offense, particularly in a workplace.
Not wishing to cause offence, but your very first comment in this thread was to decry the lack of science. And here you are doing exactly that, we know gender is a spectrum, and we have for a while, it is backed up with a wealth of science.
Yes, it can be confusing, so is much of life, and this is why we educate and strive to continue to learn more and adapt what we regard as fact as more evidence appears. Sometimes that evidence is uncomfortable and challenging, but that is no reason to discard it.
We all also begin as separate cells (sperm/ovum), and the ovum has no gender specific markers while the sperm does. In the vast majority of cases, the resulting fully developed human will match the physical gender determined by the genetic markers from the sperm. We don't have any reproductive organs when we're 2 separate organisms not yet fertilized, but the genetic markers are already there to determine where we will VERY likely land without external manipulation or medical complications and extreme rarities. This is physical, genetic gender. There are 2 of them in my opinion.
Sperm and ovi are not discrete organisms, they're specialised cells, and both do contain gender specific markers in X, Y and, at the very least, on chromosome 1. Once fertilised a proto-female embryo forms, and then the gender-assigning biological machinery gets to work a couple of months later. As stated earlier, X and Y are not guaranteed to determine an outcome as it is the TDF/SRY gene that drives the pathways to develop male or female attributes.
You are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and I'm not interested in changing that, but all I ask is don't try and use science to justify it when current evidence disagrees with it.
I realize this is a weird topic for this forum but I'm thankful Shan's let us continue as I find it interesting and educational. I would like to make it clear that I hope I have not been offensive anywhere, but am trying to share my views in an honest and considerate, respectful way.
(regarding MRI details)
1) and 2) also show marked differences between genders and explains why men tend to be better at some functions, and women at others.
These are the ones the MRIs show in trans, so it has nothing to do with behaviour, feelings or personality and everything to do with the body assigning gender attributes to itself during gestation.
I'm trying to understand what you mean here. What do you mean by "men tend to be better at some functions"? How could they demonstrate that they are better at something, without exhibiting a behavior or physical action or personality trait? I was trying to be all-encompassing in my summary that I accept MRI scans review all elements of a person which are controlled by the brain, including personality, physical body control, signals to your organs to function, everything. 2 people who share some similar element of physical body characteristic, or even physical brain construction would of course have similar brain scans.
You're trying to apply a psychological construct onto a physical one. You cannot rewire your brain like that via behaviour and feelings any more than someone could will their arm to drop off. It just doesn't work that way.
I fail to see the need to differentiate the two. Your psychological external behavior and speech is generated by a physical function of your brain. Thus, psychology comes from a physical source. Scans of the brain that generates that psychology, show physical characteristics that reflect it because it's got a physical source. I recognize that some areas of the brain are harder to change, extremely difficult without extreme trauma or life circumstance change, or even impossible. I agree with that. I hope I've not implied anywhere I think there's a need for someone to change how they want to feel/behave/act in life, whether they think of something as gender specific or not.
I'm not an educated scientist and I recognize you are demonstrating you have more knowledge of scientific detail than I do in complex analysis of biology, but to the layperson I don't recognize a need to add additional complexity to our everyday lives to attempt to educate everyone for biological circumstances that they'll likely never encounter in their lives. Why is this useful information to me?
I object to being pressured by society to try to recognize new gender concepts that have changed in only a few decades and continue to change within less than a decade, making it unnecessarily difficult just to be polite and courteous and non-offensive! After millennia of humans, now suddenly we have an urgent need to redefine ourselves within such a tiny time span of civilization.
As we learn more about science on the microscopic and even quantum level, perhaps we could further subdivide humans into thousands or millions of subdivided genders for education and medical research but where is the benefit to everyday life? Needless complexity adds no value to the lives of hermaphrodites or males or females in common speech and how we treat each other. Everyone deserves respect and true equality of opportunity. Just as rocket science is the classically highlighted complicated one, there is no value to me trying to understand the full detail of rocket science to appreciate the contribution it makes to space travel.
We dont need Disco Janeway cause we have Disco Pike.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
We dont need Disco Janeway cause we have Disco Pike.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
We dont need Disco Janeway cause we have Disco Pike.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting
It makes sense that a blue card with a blue uniform would feel blue himself.
I'm not an educated scientist and I recognize you are demonstrating you have more knowledge of scientific detail than I do in complex analysis of biology, but to the layperson I don't recognize a need to add additional complexity to our everyday lives to attempt to educate everyone for biological circumstances that they'll likely never encounter in their lives. Why is this useful information to me?
I will try to answer to your arguments. I don't think that the amount of information people are expected to aquire is as huge as you assume. Of course, if you want to build an informed opinion on a topic or if you want to take part in decisions about it, then you'd have to gather lots of information.
But here what we were debating was simply whether or not trans people should be accepted, respected and referred to as the gender they identify with. You seemed to agree on point one and two, so what we are talking about is when to use he/she and potentially they. That's three pronouns and only one of them is new in its use. You can ask people which one they prefer, if you feel like there may be some ambiguity. Or if you get it wrong they will simply tell you.
No one really expects you to know all of the possible biological and non-biological variables.
I object to being pressured by society to try to recognize new gender concepts that have changed in only a few decades and continue to change within less than a decade, making it unnecessarily difficult just to be polite and courteous and non-offensive! After millennia of humans, now suddenly we have an urgent need to redefine ourselves within such a tiny time span of civilization.
As we learn more about science on the microscopic and even quantum level, perhaps we could further subdivide humans into thousands or millions of subdivided genders for education and medical research but where is the benefit to everyday life?
I really don't think that people are being pressured to accept an enormous amount of new information or habits. No one expects you to know any details or to use 50 different pronouns.
And if you actually choose to be thoughtful and refer to people by the gender they identify as, it may not bring any benefit to your life, but it might be a big benefit to theirs, because they will know that you respect them and that you're on their side. As someone who is not trans but part of the LGBT+ community, I can guarantee that this is important, because people don't usually come to tell you to your face that they think you're garbage and should die. But there's this 20-60% of population (depending on where you live) that does think that way and you never know if the person that you're talking to is one of them, until they make it clear that they're not (or in most cases, until they come out as queer themselves). Allies are important, especially now that there's so much misinformation on these topics.
As for your argument about the sudden changes of the last decades, I think that our societies are going through lots of fast changes in different fields. That might be scary, but there has never been that much availability of information, education and resources to so many people. So I think that it's our responsiblity (or at least it's a good thing to do) to use those informations and resources to make sure that as many people as possible are able to live a dignified and fulfilled life. That includes all sort of marginalized groups who wouldn't have had any chances just a few decades ago, but can (or could) now live perfectly normal lives.
We dont need Disco Janeway cause we have Disco Pike.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
He did need Burnham to think of self destructing the ship because somehow that idea eluded him... there might be something to this 'uniform makes him weaker' theory!
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting[/quote]
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
[/quote]
And he was. Suddenly he was letting Saru and Burnham tell him what to do, break from Starfleet regulations and procedures, but at least he got to witness Burnham's self-realization. He acted like Discovery wasn't really his ship the entire season. So I think the weaker stats are completely accurate.
I think we need to acknowledge that being transgender (where one identifies mentally as the opposite gender of what one physically is) is very different than being lesbian, gay, or bi.
Once they are accepted by society, lesbian/gay/bi individuals are able to be at peace with their identity and enjoy a healthy sex life with others who identify the same way. Their principal concern (at least here in the US) seems to be one of eliminating persecution for their difference from the norm. While their orientation won't help propagate the species, it isn't inherently unhealthy for themselves (or anyone else for that matter.
A trans identity is inherently unhealthy. These individuals are unhappy with the conflict between their own mind and body. From a health perspective, the question becomes what to do to help individuals in this situation -- by and large they aren't looking to remain as they are, they're looking for help in resolving the conflict between mind and body. In the 20th century, psychology deemed this a disorder and tried to treat the mind through therapy and drugs. In the 21st century, modern medicine has advanced enough to take the opposite approach: trying to change the body through gender reassignment surgery, etc. Given what we understand of medical technology in the 23rd century in Star Trek, it seems likely that trans individuals could be "cured" of this problem -- probably through some sort of genetic manipulation, possibly quite early -- though I'm not sure any of us could say whether this would result in physically changing someone's gonads to the opposite gender, or if it would change the brain activity that causes the sense of a particular gender identity.
We dont need Disco Janeway cause we have Disco Pike.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
And he was. Suddenly he was letting Saru and Burnham tell him what to do, break from Starfleet regulations and procedures, but at least he got to witness Burnham's self-realization. He acted like Discovery wasn't really his ship the entire season. So I think the weaker stats are completely accurate.
While I wholly agree that trans people are unfairly lumped together with the rest of the LGB community as sexuality is completely different from gender, I'm not so convinced that I agree with your conclusions in regards to gender identity. Trans people are not inherently unhealthy - that's an incredibly offensive statement, although I'm certain you didn't mean it to be. Do they have a desire to change how they appear? Yes. But based on my experience, pretty much every person I have ever met has sought to exercise more/eat better/eat cleaner/etc because they wanted to change their appearance. And many of those people did suffer from depression etc for those same reasons.
I also would not take Star Trek's lack of transgender-inclusiveness to indicate that this has been "cured." Until a few years ago, we had no proof that homosexuality continued into the 23rd century. A lack of examples does not constitute proof of a lack of existence.
Wasn't there a gay writer who wrote for the original Star Trek? I believe he included some simple same-sex couple scenes in some of his stories, but they never got filmed. Things like a boyfriend seeing off a boyfriend in the transporter room?
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
While I wholly agree that trans people are unfairly lumped together with the rest of the LGB community as sexuality is completely different from gender, I'm not so convinced that I agree with your conclusions in regards to gender identity. Trans people are not inherently unhealthy - that's an incredibly offensive statement, although I'm certain you didn't mean it to be. Do they have a desire to change how they appear? Yes. But based on my experience, pretty much every person I have ever met has sought to exercise more/eat better/eat cleaner/etc because they wanted to change their appearance. And many of those people did suffer from depression etc for those same reasons.
I also would not take Star Trek's lack of transgender-inclusiveness to indicate that this has been "cured." Until a few years ago, we had no proof that homosexuality continued into the 23rd century. A lack of examples does not constitute proof of a lack of existence.
My apologies. that paragraph was drafted days ago and I thought deleted after I did some additional research. I did not intend to post it at all.
Comments
While the science around MRI scans in this area is interesting, as I mentioned in my follow up comment I am not at all surprised by this. Our brain is what determines our personality, behavior, preferences, feelings, etc. It's hardly surprising that 2 people with similar personality/behavior etc would have some common elements in MRI scans regardless of physical gender.
I don't dispute the science behind these MRI investigations and I am not trying to imply that there are not physical differences in trans people's brains, since our brains physical functioning/structure determine how we think and behave and feel, etc. It's very logical that someone's brain would be different who thinks/behaves differently, since that's the physical part of our body that does the thinking and outputs behavior.
MRI scans are not a practical method to identify a person's gender, as we're not all going to go out and get MRI scans as a method of identification. Physical gender attributes are a far more practical solution, as well as medically relevant for a person's whole life even if they undergo reassignment surgery.
However, I have no objection at all to referring to a person (to third parties) as the gender they wish to project with their appearance. It's not like we typically mention people's gender directly to them anyways, so this seems like something that would not come up very often.
Disco Janeway - 5 star
Section 31 Neelix - 4 Star
Control Kes 4 star
Celebratory EMH - 4 Star
Cadet Harry Kim - 3 Star
Off Duty Seven....with toothbrush and Teddy bear!!! - 3 Star
Terran Chakotay - 2 star
Boreth Nun Torres -3 star
Navigator Paris -5 Star
And why not...
Voyager Lorca - 5 star
Assimilated Stammets - 4 star
Temporal agent Burnham - 4 star
8472 replicant Saru - 4 star
Borg queen Tilly - 5 star
Delta flyer Detmer - 3 star
Kazon Tyler - 3 star
Krenim prisoner pike - 5 star
Equinox Cornwell - 4 star
EMH MK3 Culber - 5star
Vidiian prisoner Vok 3 star
Day of Honor L'rell - 3 star
Year of hell Georgiou - 5 star
No, and this shows a fundamental misunderstanding.
MRI scans can show a number of things, but what we're interested in here are:
1) Brain structure - effectively distribution and density of grey/white matter
2) Connectivity - the differences in strength and complexity in connections between regions in the brain; and
3) Patterns - voxel changes across time
3) is what sits behind the "mind reading" tech, where if you show people the same picture then similar regions will light up, and then asking them to remember them will produce a similar effect. This looks like what you're describing and has minimal bearing on gender.
1) and 2) and primarily set during gestation, with further changes dependent on childhood, and can be radically altered post physical brain trauma as the brain re-wires itself.
1) and 2) also show marked differences between genders and explains why men tend to be better at some functions, and women at others.
These are the ones the MRIs show in trans, so it has nothing to do with behaviour, feelings or personality and everything to do with the body assigning gender attributes to itself during gestation.
You're trying to apply a psychological construct onto a physical one. You cannot rewire your brain like that via behaviour and feelings any more than someone could will their arm to drop off. It just doesn't work that way.
Firstly, there isn't just two physical genders - from a chromosomal perspective there are least 7, including Turners, Mosaic and multiple-X.
From a physical perspective, there are at least three, including male, female and true hermaphroditism.
Not wishing to cause offence, but your very first comment in this thread was to decry the lack of science. And here you are doing exactly that, we know gender is a spectrum, and we have for a while, it is backed up with a wealth of science.
Yes, it can be confusing, so is much of life, and this is why we educate and strive to continue to learn more and adapt what we regard as fact as more evidence appears. Sometimes that evidence is uncomfortable and challenging, but that is no reason to discard it.
Sperm and ovi are not discrete organisms, they're specialised cells, and both do contain gender specific markers in X, Y and, at the very least, on chromosome 1. Once fertilised a proto-female embryo forms, and then the gender-assigning biological machinery gets to work a couple of months later. As stated earlier, X and Y are not guaranteed to determine an outcome as it is the TDF/SRY gene that drives the pathways to develop male or female attributes.
You are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and I'm not interested in changing that, but all I ask is don't try and use science to justify it when current evidence disagrees with it.
I'm trying to understand what you mean here. What do you mean by "men tend to be better at some functions"? How could they demonstrate that they are better at something, without exhibiting a behavior or physical action or personality trait? I was trying to be all-encompassing in my summary that I accept MRI scans review all elements of a person which are controlled by the brain, including personality, physical body control, signals to your organs to function, everything. 2 people who share some similar element of physical body characteristic, or even physical brain construction would of course have similar brain scans.
I fail to see the need to differentiate the two. Your psychological external behavior and speech is generated by a physical function of your brain. Thus, psychology comes from a physical source. Scans of the brain that generates that psychology, show physical characteristics that reflect it because it's got a physical source. I recognize that some areas of the brain are harder to change, extremely difficult without extreme trauma or life circumstance change, or even impossible. I agree with that. I hope I've not implied anywhere I think there's a need for someone to change how they want to feel/behave/act in life, whether they think of something as gender specific or not.
I'm not an educated scientist and I recognize you are demonstrating you have more knowledge of scientific detail than I do in complex analysis of biology, but to the layperson I don't recognize a need to add additional complexity to our everyday lives to attempt to educate everyone for biological circumstances that they'll likely never encounter in their lives. Why is this useful information to me?
I object to being pressured by society to try to recognize new gender concepts that have changed in only a few decades and continue to change within less than a decade, making it unnecessarily difficult just to be polite and courteous and non-offensive! After millennia of humans, now suddenly we have an urgent need to redefine ourselves within such a tiny time span of civilization.
As we learn more about science on the microscopic and even quantum level, perhaps we could further subdivide humans into thousands or millions of subdivided genders for education and medical research but where is the benefit to everyday life? Needless complexity adds no value to the lives of hermaphrodites or males or females in common speech and how we treat each other. Everyone deserves respect and true equality of opportunity. Just as rocket science is the classically highlighted complicated one, there is no value to me trying to understand the full detail of rocket science to appreciate the contribution it makes to space travel.
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
It makes sense that a blue card with a blue uniform would feel blue himself.
I will try to answer to your arguments. I don't think that the amount of information people are expected to aquire is as huge as you assume. Of course, if you want to build an informed opinion on a topic or if you want to take part in decisions about it, then you'd have to gather lots of information.
But here what we were debating was simply whether or not trans people should be accepted, respected and referred to as the gender they identify with. You seemed to agree on point one and two, so what we are talking about is when to use he/she and potentially they. That's three pronouns and only one of them is new in its use. You can ask people which one they prefer, if you feel like there may be some ambiguity. Or if you get it wrong they will simply tell you.
No one really expects you to know all of the possible biological and non-biological variables.
I really don't think that people are being pressured to accept an enormous amount of new information or habits. No one expects you to know any details or to use 50 different pronouns.
And if you actually choose to be thoughtful and refer to people by the gender they identify as, it may not bring any benefit to your life, but it might be a big benefit to theirs, because they will know that you respect them and that you're on their side. As someone who is not trans but part of the LGBT+ community, I can guarantee that this is important, because people don't usually come to tell you to your face that they think you're garbage and should die. But there's this 20-60% of population (depending on where you live) that does think that way and you never know if the person that you're talking to is one of them, until they make it clear that they're not (or in most cases, until they come out as queer themselves). Allies are important, especially now that there's so much misinformation on these topics.
As for your argument about the sudden changes of the last decades, I think that our societies are going through lots of fast changes in different fields. That might be scary, but there has never been that much availability of information, education and resources to so many people. So I think that it's our responsiblity (or at least it's a good thing to do) to use those informations and resources to make sure that as many people as possible are able to live a dignified and fulfilled life. That includes all sort of marginalized groups who wouldn't have had any chances just a few decades ago, but can (or could) now live perfectly normal lives.
He did need Burnham to think of self destructing the ship because somehow that idea eluded him... there might be something to this 'uniform makes him weaker' theory!
Just thinking chronologically here, we're lead to believe that "Christopher Pike" in the gold uniform changes into the Disco uniform and loses about half on all his stat lines
Damn, those uniforms must be tight fitting[/quote]
I thought the same thing. Apparently when he puts on the Discovery uniform he’s a totally weaker captain
[/quote]
And he was. Suddenly he was letting Saru and Burnham tell him what to do, break from Starfleet regulations and procedures, but at least he got to witness Burnham's self-realization. He acted like Discovery wasn't really his ship the entire season. So I think the weaker stats are completely accurate.
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
While I wholly agree that trans people are unfairly lumped together with the rest of the LGB community as sexuality is completely different from gender, I'm not so convinced that I agree with your conclusions in regards to gender identity. Trans people are not inherently unhealthy - that's an incredibly offensive statement, although I'm certain you didn't mean it to be. Do they have a desire to change how they appear? Yes. But based on my experience, pretty much every person I have ever met has sought to exercise more/eat better/eat cleaner/etc because they wanted to change their appearance. And many of those people did suffer from depression etc for those same reasons.
I also would not take Star Trek's lack of transgender-inclusiveness to indicate that this has been "cured." Until a few years ago, we had no proof that homosexuality continued into the 23rd century. A lack of examples does not constitute proof of a lack of existence.
My apologies. that paragraph was drafted days ago and I thought deleted after I did some additional research. I did not intend to post it at all.
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends