Bloody hell
@monkers it was hard work just reading your post.......how long did it take to type it?
Dirk made an excellent point which you should take into account.
Allow me to try and elaborate.......though I am not as eloquent as you.
When I was a lad homosexuals were totally frowned upon (was it still illegal then??).
My parents were super religious.....that was it.....no excuse..... homosexuality was wrong wrong wrong.
You can surely understand how difficult it is for people (like me) to adjust to this new way of life. It will take time.
Aged 73 I am accepting it but you can't expect people that have had it ingrained in them to suddenly change their whole way of thinking.
I hope this isn't offensive to you as its meant to be constructive.
Don't flounce.....your posts are enjoyable
... about 20 minutes including proof reading (at which I'm abysmal). Thanks for all your kind words.
I'm 63, so a decade younger than thee. When I was a young'un there was no bigotry at home from my parents, though I have an older brother who caused some problems. I do remember hearing the racism and the homophobia elsewhere though - and of course there was no 'transphobia' at that time, since the language wasn't there as gay men were 'nancy boys' and those who dressed as women were just 'nancier'.
My brother is left handed. He had problems at school because the school did not provide equipment for left handed learners.
One particular teacher, an older person herself, was quite vicious in forcing left-handed children to 'be normal', ie right-handed. After a lot of protests, he was allowed to move class, this they achieved by moving him down a year instead of up a form. Despite being acquainted with negative discrimination, he went on to later excel in it himself. Early lesson in those training in the safeguarding of children, '' too often the abused become the abusers''.
I've heard it said that it is almost inevitable that a father and son either get into a one time brawl or otherwise very nearly so. My older brother once went out as teenagers 'queer bashing'. This really was a thing back then as you'll likely remember. My Dad got to hear of it and laid down his law. My brother set about Dad (a blind man) only discover that blindness wasn't such an affliction as to prevent him discovering that Dad could near take his head off with a single well-aimed blow. My brother didn't repeat his mistake again!
In the extended family there were those who were openly racist, so I used to hear it, but I instinctively recognised it for what it was and rejected it at a very young age. I was labelled 'an idealist' at a very young age.
I have generic criticism of our generation, that is laziness, a reluctance to adequately consider what on the face of it seems new to us, rejecting it as 'new-fangled' and therefore irrelevant. There is little that is new under the sun when it comes to people, just the language and ways in which the ideas are presented. My own thoughts are that the language used to attempt to explain things have gone terribly wrong.
Please indulge me by considering one example. The law defines trans folk as 'transsexuals'. The naysayers say that a person can never completely change sex since chromosomes are pre-natal, that adjustment to plug and socket arrangements do not enable a person to change sex. They also say that trans folk must be deluded to believe this, since science says that a person can not simply 'change sex'. That may sound like a satisfactory argument on the face of it.
However trans folk do not claim to fully change every aspect of their sex, so the argument is fallacious. Rather trans folk tend to say that they have always had a sense of self that doesn't match with their body. This led to the notion of 'being born in the wrong body' which, to be honest, is an example of lazy thinking. Assuming that the body and brain are healthy, it is not that either of them are 'wrong', just that they are not a match. The legal process is an attempt at an accommodation for the person. The law intends to recognise the 'gender' of the person and accordingly agrees to amend the record at birth.
Therefore the person can not be truly 'transsexual', and because the person's own perception of their own sense of gender has been for ever, then they can not have changed gender. Consequently a load of tosh is written and said by academics and others who really should know better.
If a person is 'transsexual' and 'changes sex' accordingly, then is said to be 'transgender' then in any logical thought they'd end up being mismatched again!
If only there was a definitive guide that nailed it, but that would probably require the vocabulary to be be all changed again. If that was to happen, imagine the confusion then!
We had one girl that was so bad we used to have to be there while the nurse gave her rectal valium......thank God these days are gone!
