@NotThatGuy It's ignorance that leads to such problems. Increased understanding seems like the solution. It's one of the great goods a site like StackExchange can contribute to.

@Nat I would generally support someone asking e.g. "I think that being trans means ..., but I was told that was wrong; what does being trans mean?" (and asking that ON THE POLITICS SITE, or on a science site). That is (generally speaking) a good-faith question that promotes education and challenges misconceptions.

But when someone says "being trans means ..." (and that's false), and then proceeds to ask a question that builds on that, that does more to spread misinformation, and there would be conflation between what trans means and what they actually asked. When I say this is the wrong question to ask, I don't mean they should drop the topic altogether, but rather that they should ask the right question.

@NotThatGuy I appreciate that you may dislike loaded questions: this is, a question that asserts something objectionable as a premise, such that all responses to the question would seem to validate that objectionable premise.

Still, most questions on SE.Philosophy have premises that aren't necessarily exactly right. ..some of them can be pretty out there sometimes. So it's probably not reasonable to adopt a perspective that premises are validated just because an answer asserted them.

Instead, StackExchange policy seems to favor frame-challenging such premises. This not only avoid alienating askers, but also helps to provide those useful frame-challengers to future folks who might have the same questions.

(Additionally, there's the issue that folks may disagree over which premises are valid, and (close/open)-vote wars just aren't the way to resolve those disagreements.)

Also, I, personally, like to encourage folks to get along and try to understand others' perspectives.

Sometimes some (social/political/religious)-movements seem to maintain steam by pushing for hostility towards others with differing beliefs. I perceive that sort of issue to be relevant when it comes to discussions of gender. And I'd like to dissuade folks from it -- because my agenda's generally to promote knowledge/understanding rather than advocating for some specific ideological perspective.

(Please note that I use the term "ideological perspective" in a sense that may differ from how you use that word.)

@Nat I don't fundamentally disagree with frame challenges. I have provided some myself. But when your question is about something so well-known and so impactful on society (in either case), and your flawed premise is so commonly spread, it makes more sense to reject the question altogether, and to address the flawed premise separately.

You only need 1 question that explains what being trans means and why a particular understanding is incorrect, whereas one can ask an endless amount of questions that build off of that flawed understanding, that will all have the exact same frame challenge as an answer. That seems redundant to the extreme, and like a waste of everyone's time.

Most of whatever "hostility" you perceive from me is me trying to move this site towards the high quality that's a goal in its mission statement. (The rest of the "hostility" is from me being frustrated with people endlessly misrepresenting facts and the positions of others, and seemingly having no concern for whether that's accurate, as demonstrated by how they respond to objections about that, if they respond at all.)

@NotThatGuy I'd agree that we'd probably like only 1 question that's specifically "What does trans mean?" rather than a lot of duplicates (unless they vary in some significant manner). Though that's not what this question was asking, so it wouldn't have been a dupe. And there wouldn't have been just 1 answer to that 1 question, so there wouldn't have been a singular perspective for this question to have referenced.

I would note some of my own frustration with some of the pop-culture notions of what "trans" means pushed on sites like reddit and by sources like GLAAD that seem to take extremely simplistic positions on the topic, favoring populist engagement over philosophical rigor. I mean, the role of identity and the ideologies that give rise to it seem potentially pretty interesting, but pop-culture pushes such absurdly mindless perspectives as though this were a comedy.

..but that's just a frustration of mine, to empathize a bit.

I guess to add to the issue is that, like with most religious issues, this topic's deeply personal to many people, so there're huge emotional landmines to watch out for.

@Nat I didn't say they'd be duplicates (however you define that), but that they'd all have the same answer pointing out the same problem across all the questions. If a series of questions start popping up that builds on the premise that the Earth is flat, I don't expect many people would object to just shutting all of that down in favour of pointing people to resources explaining that the Earth is round, how we know that, and that it isn't flat.

(Actually I seem to recall us having had a question or two about that, which were indeed shut down, and fairly quickly too, but I could be misremembering.)

You may say that flat Earth is too fringe or clearly absurd, but you may be shocked and depressed to learn how many people advocate for it. And this question is arguably far worse, because it's asserting views that others hold, when few to no of those people actually hold or promote those views. But, who knows, maybe you'd be fine with also accepting questions that presuppose a flat Earth.

GLAAD is an activist organisation. They do activism, and they intend to appeal to the general public. They do not intend to appeal to those with an interest in philosophical debate, and for the most part, they start from the existence of trans people, rather than trying to convince people of their existence. You can find others who engage with the topic on a more philosophical and fundamental basis (like I did here), and you can find scientific research supporting the existence of trans people.

@NotThatGuy I'm still not getting what you mean by trans people "existing". I seem to get that it's a major issue for you with some significant meaning behind it, but I'm not quite getting it. To me, a trans-gendered person is generally anyone who (1) has some fairly clear biological-sex (and so isn't intersexed); and (2) asserts their gender to be something significantly different from that biological-sex. I don't perceive the question of their existence to be controversial.

To be clear, I'm generally critical of the notion of gender and its significance as a worthwhile concept. But that's sorta like the analogy to Libras from Astrology: despite me thinking that it's not a great concept and I don't want to have to engage folks based on their Astrologically-derived identity, I don't doubt that folks who identify as Libras or trans exist.

@Nat Is someone with autism someone who asserts that their brain works in a particular way, or is it someone whose brain works in a particular way? I'd say that's universally understood in the latter way. But when it comes to trans people, we keep saying that it's how someone's brain works, but anti-trans people keeps interpreting that as being merely something that someone asserts (although I will concede that how many trans activists describe it definitely isn't helping).

As for astrology, you may note that I wasn't taking issue with someone merely asserting that they are a Libra (for without context, that would be meaningless), but rather I was disagreeing with the underlying facts of distant planets and stars influencing your personality or whatever. Their worldview is based on questionable facts, but you seem to want to object to the "Libra" label without discussing the underlying facts (if we follow the analogy).

@NotThatGuy: Since we were having two chats in different rooms and they seem to be converging, I'll switch to just the other room.