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Notes -
I think that conception of being trans - that someone is on some level the opposite sex but trapped in the wrong body - to be misleading. It's not that the little boy is a girl, it's that the little boy is unhappy being a boy and would prefer being a girl, or as close to one as you can get with modern medicine.
What's wrong with your daughter experimenting - and there's a chance any girl your daughter is with could be bisexual or attracted to women, not just the obvious masculine lesbians. I take it you wouldn't prevent a hypothetical son from hanging out with girls though? Double standards like these were a contributing factor in me being very upset with cis-heterosexual norms.
Also, good luck enforcing your values in your family - plenty have tried and failed. The odds are in favour of your daughter rebelling against your strict parenting in her teenage years as countless have done before, and if you are not preparing her to deal with the modern world - such as teaching her safe sex - the consequences could be dire.
Sure, I'm not sexually interested in most gay men anyway. Post-transition, most aren't interested in me.
I thought married people loved to complain about their spouse? That's one of the stereotypes I heard. Anyway I suppose it is telling that you don't find women interesting to talk to. I personally find the average woman easier/more interesting to talk to than the average neurotypical straight man (I do like artsy guys or men on the spectrum, as long as they're not into anime, Marvel or video games).
That's another reason I didn't like dating gay men, my sexuality is closer to that of biological women (I've discovered that while talking to my female friends in detail). I'm more hypergamous than promiscuous and don't really get anything out of hook-ups, and very much like the whole ritual of flirting, seduction, dating, etc. which is not very popular in gay men - most just wanted to have sex one the first date or even without even a first date.
Well I was a weak effeminate opposite-of-Chad boy with male nerd hobbies - books, D&D, comics - and in the few years I spent in public school, the only ones that shared my nerdy hobbies were girls. When I joined the school D&D group, the only other male was the teacher who organised it. All the high-achieving students - girls (and me). It was only when I went to a private school that I could finally meet guys I related to, but still my friendship groups were mostly female. I grew out of my nerdy childhood interests and became more interested in relationship drama, fashion and art though, so perhaps that's a contributing factor.
To the same sex!
Earlier in the month I had to vent a bit about how the rent in the apartment my partner and I are renting has gone up by 35% year-over-year, but because my partner really doesn’t want to move (and will make up actually ridiculous reasons to convince me/herself to not move, things like “the main road in this suburb is too wide”) we have in the end decided to just stay in the same place, paying nearly $900 extra each month. Who did I complain to? Other men (mostly)!
Don’t do this, please. You’re trying to build consensus about how your experience is the normal/right one and that finding men more pleasant conversation partners is somehow indicative of a defect. We could turn this around:
Would that be an appropriate conclusion to draw out or to say?
I suppose I should add a bit of my own experience. I personally find women somewhat easier to talk to (even with that stereotype of women being more on guard around men — clearly men aren’t playing on “lovecraftian horror story difficulty mode”), and women tend to make the conversation experience more pleasant, but talking to men in-depth (which is rarer) tends to be much more interesting, especially when things get more abstract. I also find it difficult to believe that men on the spectrum are better to talk to than normal men, at least of similar intellectual caliber and interests, having interacted with many men on the spectrum myself, since childhood.
I do personally think it says more about you — your interests and personality, if not your biases or your approach to conversation — that you find talking to women and autistic/artsy men more interesting, though I also don’t think that’s really much of a positive or negative, and I share some (but not most) of your intuitions here, especially around women being easier to “talk to”. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to draw normative conclusions and values out of this.
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I wouldn't let my son sleepover a girls when he is a teen either.
I basically think that traditional Christian norms are the best route toward living a happy, fulfilling, productive life. That is, date people of the opposite sex, don't have sex with someone you don't see yourself marrying, preferably wait until after marriage. Love your spouse forever, have lots of children. Some people are of dispositions that make this path more difficult, but it is the path I think it is best to encourage. I don't think being a lesbian is innate and I think it best to be discouraged. I think sexuality is more malleable than people think. She should aspire to have a husband, and for her children to have a dad. There is a trope that being a strict, conservative parent will only drive your kid to rebel and make them more sexually deviant. This has not been my observation. Yes it happens, and the one's who do rebel can be VERY vocal, but in general, one's children are more likely to have your values if you actually work to pass on your values. And statistically, it seems like the conservative families are doing much better these days on measures of well-being and mental health.
Perhaps this is true. That being said: for young Westerners I don't think that there is enough societal pressure and support to keep a gay person married to an opposite-sex partner for more than a decade, maybe two. If you're very religious/conservative suggesting that gays should be celibate is probably the better way to go...it leads to less personal and family wreckage.
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