Didn't intend to wade in this deep but no one ever said in this thread that trans people NEVER commit violence, just that it's often over-exaggerated for rhetorical reasons by their opponents. What the trans community seems to be objecting to is that every time the toilet access issue is brought up, for instance, they might be confronted with the case of a possible trans person committing a crime against women in a toilet, which is often invoked as a spectre. Of course it happens but it's obviously relatively rare amongst literally millions of assaults, just as Florida Men are real too amongst millions of Floridans (didn't know about that reason for that, that's interesting).

It's possible to empathise that some women might feel discomfort with the toilet issue, which is a little complicated, and not saying it doesn't happen, but then the question also arises of how many times do trans women get violently or sexually assaulted in men's toilets and should we compare harms in order to decide whose claim is more 'valid' or who 'wins'? And should feminists stand with or support trans women who get assaulted in men's toilets? Should they do so if they perceive this to increase risk to themselves? Is this a legitimate fear that is statistically backed or more of a spectre? Does it compare at all to the risk of being assaulted in a bathroom by a non-trans man, which happens all the time too presumably?
Surely any assault in a bathroom by anyone against a woman, whether trans or born woman, is one too many, and it might seem likely there's some natural middle ground there between the camps but ironically this is one of the biggest dog whistle topics that everyone feels most strongly and gets toxic about.

Gendered prisons is, of course, a similarly fraught issue though you wouldn't deny that trans women also face violence in men's prisons, right?

Likewise, many trans people would presumably be critical on gender reassignment surgeries at too young an age too, and no one is denying that there are cases when it goes wrong and real damage is done. Likewise no one is denying that completely suppressing the existence of gender fluidity in children or denying medical advice to them can lead to a higher risk of suicide, for instance. But that is something for the medical and psychological establishments to work out a bit and for more research to be done on (and yes, some research already exists which suggests in some places the pendulum has swung too far). But hopefully that will sort itself out with time.

The problem with your posts are not your arguments but your tone, such as your last paragraph. Everyone understand that you have legitimate reasons to be angry but you're trying to constantly 'win' an argument where wanting to 'win' on such issues seems to carry with it a 'loss' to trans people, (falsely) trying to make this into a zero-sum game.

Do you accept that trans people too, much like women, face violence, harrassment and discrimination? Do you think something should be done to protect that community? Do you have any practical suggestions on a middle ground or compromise that would protect both communities' rights and concerns?

Or do you believe being trans is a 'made up thing' and trans women are men who don't need any additional protection. If that's the case, there is perhaps very little common ground to be found or won in this, in which case it's better to stop talking... But judging by your engagement and research on the issue, you have thought about more practical solutions.

In the interest of elevating discourse in this thread above political side shows and trolls, haven't read the article due to paywall but wasn't the previous SCBA dispensation very publicly political and pro-government, as is the BCI for the most part? Makes sense to argue that a more oppositional SCBA might not be a bad thing in a democracy where the constitution is arguably under pressure, which is what the first paragraph is saying.

What exactly is wrong with that? Kian might have written the same in an editorial. Serious answers only please, trolls will (likely) be moderated.

Simple: your comment is still up, and you get the troll tag, which you wanted in the first place when bringing up the moderation topic again. Just screaming about freedom of speech and repeatedly playing the censored victim card is not intelligent discourse and is boring and uninteresting for most readers except the most meta readers and some edgelords.

Please stay on topic, don't be a bore, and be helpful, kind and polite. It's not too much to ask. If you can't take that or make your points less antagonistically please do leave or start a more toxic echochamber yourself where you can rail against all bad things that upset you.

Moderation is there to make LI more respectful, not to give every political operative with an opinion or person itching for a fight a platform.

At the risk of being condescending, please don't read stuff like reduxx. Any bot or incel activist could literally start a website carrying nothing but Baby Reindeer female stalker news stories (and scraping the US press alone there'll be enough crazy Florida people daily alone to make this easy) and if you read this for a month it might make anyone think women are crazy and victims of female stalkers are everywhere. Or do so about Florida Man (who is obviously provably crazy) https://floridaman.com/

IMHO that's part of the problem with this debate - the media and echochambers in this can be so one-sided and motivated to stir outrage and get clicks or online clout about their cause they actually hinder reasoned debate.

And comparing and tallying up of harms gets us nowhere helpful.

Thanks both sides for, at least in part, your apparent efforts in trying to keep keep the tone of this conversation civil and mostly semi-polite and factual though. It is appreciated.

It's neither for me nor this thread to defend the Wire, and that's not what the moderation or criticism of you is about. It's about the tone and quality of discourse. You could have phrased all your points in a non trollish manner. Instead you sought to make it about culture wars with dog whistles and provocation, which implies you were not interested in a debate about the media ecosystem but just practising selective outrage yourself, which you ironically accused 'the other side' of.

While a nominally legal topic, please do not take the trollbait and continue unnecessarily with this thread, there's been enough words spilled over this here: https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/357360-can-we-have-an-open-respectful-conversation-about-the-concept-of-being-non-binary

Again the argument is disingenuous when the majority of media by revenue and readership has become commercially and editorially a propaganda extension of the government. By your metric independent 'liberal' media can not publish softball interviews with the opposition without getting cancelled? What kind of media ecosystem would you prefer? Do you think there's any role for the Wire in a healthy democracy? Do they ever do legitimate journalism? And, all actual and not rhetorical questions, are there any non-corporate news sources that you deem allowable?

Talk about journalistic integrity and demanding liberal outrage in this context seems to be a figleaf, rather than a genuine interest in discussing the fourth estate.

Please mind your language and how you put your arguments across - this thread has long veered from wanting an open and respectful conversation (though it could have been worse and thank you all for trying).

Tldr: both sides believe they are morally correct and on the right side of history and can show harm that's being / been done by policies but can't agree on several issues which historically have no easy answers. Now the argument, as expected, is rotating on which side is suffering more, who is historically and at present getting censored more by which part of the media, and calling the other sides arguments 'crap'. This is not productive.

Unfortunately in this thread there has been little talk of substantively what policies or compromises could exist that accept both camps' concerns.

Sharing things like that website is not helpful to be honest. No one denies that trans people sometimes commit crimes - all people do. But a website about every crime and dog whistle headline about trans people is not journalism or anything more than fear mongering that is not helpful.

Imagine a website that is exclusively populated with headlines about crimes committed by X ethnicity, religion, immigrants or sexual orientation? A doomscrolling website with headlines of all crimes committed by gay people or women in the world? A website that only carries crimes or violence committed against trans people now or historically?

Consuming such media is not part of a healthy media diet and does not lead to constructive debate and constructive outcomes but only to embittering and hardening lines between both camps.

That said, no solution here other than, thank you all participants in this thread for trying to engage but sadly it seems to have run its course in the present format.

One substantial reason:

"Where's the liberal outrage here for unbiased and independent journalism? Why should any viewer consider the content or the narratives platformed on The Wire as gospel truth and not INDI Alliance election propaganda?"

The post is clearly disingenuous. 'Liberal outrage' is intended as trollish. For some reason the response decided to not engage with the subject, which was a lawyer / politician talking about stuff that could be of interest to lawyers.

Instead the post went ad hominem on The Wire, which while not perfect and definitely having an ideological slant in nowadays' polarised environment, is still for the most part doing real jorunalism.

Please deal with the facts and arguments, not political mudslinging.

Those links seem a little biased. The anti-semitism claim is seemingly more complicated than implied as fact - good summary here, and represents arguments on both sides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

Regarding sexism, that's not backed up by either source, and case could be made he was not modern-day progressive: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ca.collapse/feminist-questions.htm

Similar regarding racism, there are strong rebuttals online: https://jacobin.com/2022/05/marx-race-antisemitism-history-andrew-sullivan-enlightenment

Please assume the best of the poster and if it was a troll, then ignore it - no one reasonable actually believes any of that nonsense to be true. But if being charitable, the point of the post was a misguided attempt that calling an entire group mentally ill can be triggering and upsetting, especially if the evidence and science and cause and effect relating to trans people is complicated.

These are valid questions to ask. The problem is that usually those questions are asked without also acknowledging that many more cases exist that aren't as fringe or problematic where having strong trans support systems actually saves lives and prevents mental illness.

At some point this becomes a contest of which side causes or suffers more harm, and most societies seem to be struggling to cope with formulating compromises.

And the more extreme fringes of neither side seem to accept those concerns, and public debate then often becomes hostile, as this thread too seems to have become.

Nothing significant has been censored here beyond trying to stop this thread veering into transphobia by implying trans people are mentally ill, please do not imply otherwise.

But you've said what you need to and while you and others on both sides have made a few thought provoking points, and there are serious issues surround open discourse and debate around how society and policy and the medical profession should deal with it, this thread kinda proves why it's so hard: it often seems to come down to us vs them, from both camps, and anger.

Are there no commonalities between both camps, if we ignore the more extreme fringes of both, and can agree on mutual respect, acceptance and kindness? It might not solve all the issues but that does leave a lot of space in between.

You're right, this is not going anywhere and getting ridiculous... Was trying to rebut your claim that only things that could be externally seen are 'real', which taking your argument similarly would mean homosexuality is imagined unless it's expressed in some behaviour by someone.

The claims you make regarding mental illness are clearly not something that can be adequately discussed here, if your basic argument is that being trans is always a mental illness or caused by mental illness.

We can't answer here what OPs friends are going through, nor can we generalise that all trans people are like OPs friends, or that OPs account is even a fair one. So let's park this discussion, it seems to have run it's course and you've had your say and is unfortunately not constructive anymore.

Thanks for letting us know -you're right, the search seems to have broken, sorry about that. We'll get that looked into and hopefully fixed soon. In the meantime, as suggested below, please search via external engines:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Alegallyindia.com%2Fconvos%2F+

As written, that post is obviously hate speech but that seems to be the rhetorical point rather than intended as mysogyny - ie, written in the style of OP but replacing the word trans with women?

So if it is hate speech when written about women, why is it not when said about trans people?

Unless I'm misunderstanding their intent here...

Do you have evidence for that claim of a 'drastic decline'? Until 2017 at least, the Hindu population in Pakistan had been growing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_Pakistan

Interesting question, why did India adopt democracy? Is that an Indian or 'Hindu' quality? And, controversially, would India have done so if it hadn't been for British occupation and repression, as well as post-enlightenment 'Western-style' education and ideas of some of its revolutionary leaders?

Is the fact that Russia as a dictatorship is nominally a Christian state relevant? Or that China is a anti-religious? Religion is only one aspect of power and history and accident, it's rarely the totality as you seem to imply.

Your last paragraph is not an example of bona fide, and most of your arguments are straw men, so would argue as moderator that this thread has run its course and you're trolling now.

Just like homosexuality, fluid genders, transgenderism and transexualism exists in animals too: https://daily.jstor.org/transgender-proclivities-in-animals/

And if homosexuality can be proven by external behaviour, so can any other 'queer' external expression, whether that goes to surgery or lifestyle or your fashion or haircuts.

Anorexia might be tempting to compare and might seem to share some similarities on its face, but for one, it literally kills people. But someone getting liposuction or other plastic surgery because they might erroneously feel they're fat or want to be a supermodel does not attract society's judgment or your opprobrium? So why would any surgery or such beliefs that have to do with gender or genitals?

Finally, yes, social sanction already exists for not being kind, so most people try not to be dicks to each other. So please be kind and don't rail about moderation or categorically deny the existence of trans as a 'thing', which sounds like a dog whistle and something that is potentially unkind and cruel to people you might not know. You can do better if you want to genuinely engage on the issues and have genuine questions, rather than wanting to prove only your opinion is valid.

There is evidence of the accounts of people. Do you disbelieve someone who is gay, for instance, until you get a brain scan that proves they are gay?

Agree this is a complex issue, but so is the mind and so are humans. There may be debate to be had about how the medical establishment and society should deal with this on a policy level, but if you start by denying the reality of the experience of all trans people, this is not a bona fide basis to the discussion.

Please keep on topic and on good faith.

Opinions are fine but not when they veer close to hate speech. Try replacing the category in question with 'gay', 'women', 'mental illness', 'Hindus', etc in your sentences.

Yes, there are debates to be had but do not have those debates while completely denying the lived and documented reality of many in such absolute terms, and accept that your anecdotal experience may not be the totality of what's out the there either.

In short, try to be kind. That's not about freedom of speech, it's about fostering genuine debate and making LI a more pleasant place.

Thank you for this feedback on the usability, that's really valuable and interesting!

We didn't realise that there was a difference in the the comments section when signed in vs as a guest from the homepage (I presume?). Will see whether we can reproduce this!

Is there a specific screenreader software you would recommend to use on Windows, Mac or Linux for reproducing the website usability issues, or are they all fairly similar in capability and any of them would work?

Haha, have now published the non-abusive pun: https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/356703-blind-student-studying-law-hit-me-with-your-questions#comment-356929

That said, the mods have generally done a great job on this thread, you missed nothing interesting, and thank you to all readers for asking interesting questions and to OP for the amazingly patient and insightful responses.

Thank you also for your feedback on the screenreader UX issues. We'll see if we can reproduce and fix this.