Oh my bad, I guess I got a little overly defensive. I'm just so used to having to walk on eggshells whenever I discuss anything relevant to this topic without relying on a cookie-cutter script of what's an acceptable stance to take. Like I get it, people's nerves are high, but we have to preserve room for nuance and novel thought or else we become ineffective, not to mention a caricature of what we should be.

I also usually have a problem with the term virtue signaling, but in this context I would point out that I was using it to refer to "preaching to the choir" and contrasting it with the pragmatic approach of tailoring language to be more persuasive to outsiders/fence-sitters. So I wasn't using it as a blanket to try to invalidate taking a principled stance as a whole. Remember that I thought you were scolding me for something that I couldn't figure out why, which turns out was not the case anyway. So I was mistaken, and I wouldn't have mentioned virtue signaling had I not been.

But also, in my experience, it's not just the right-wing that uses the term. I've been accused of virtue signaling in leftist spaces where it's used almost interchangeably with "performativism."

Or in other words: "someone I don't like said something that I would otherwise generally agree with, so I have to hide an ad hominem attack under the cover of questioning their sincerity."

I think when they said "normalized," they meant it in the statistical sense. As in normalizing data against a larger set. Whereas you seem to have read it in the sociological sense of "validating." So that could be a potential source of the disconnect here.

For what it's worth, I don't necessarily agree with them. But I think what they were trying to say is that pointing out the difference in attempted suicide rates between trans people and national averages, is a bit like pointing out the higher instances of glycemia-related medical emergencies between type-1 diabetics and the national average. Of course it will be higher.

Again, I think it was a hamfisted attempt and not necessarily helpful, especially without diving into the intricacies of correlation and causation; but I don't think their point was that we shouldn't care. It seemed like more of a methodological critique.

Whoa now hold on a second. You are conflating different things here that I did not actually say.

I'm not dismissing trans people here in any way. I belong to at least one of the minority groups you mentioned and it is great to be seen, but I'm not advocating for writing people off for being in the minority. What I SAID is that statistically speaking a minority position has no business being equated with the "norm". By the numbers, left handers (just for example) are more creative, but statistically don't live as long. I don't know WHY that is, but I know that if my position is "everybody is the same" then I would be wrong here. It doesn't make sense that leftys should live shorter lives, but I surely doubt that it's because the oppression of right handed scissors.

I don't know about the prevalence of suicide rates among trans people as a sub-population, but I CAN say that it is indeed a minority and under-studied position and there is no reason to assume it is the same as "general population", not as a trivialization of a group, but rather because if you care about the characteristics of a minority, you should STUDY that minority. I am not about to paint trans people as undesirables, but I would go so far as to say that, psychologically speaking, being trans is a situation--WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM THE NORM--in which the best remediation is to transition (and be respected) rather than a lifelong course of therapy or medication or something else.

My position, no less or no more, is that you said "40% of trans yout reported attempting suicide in their lifetime. That's nearly 9 times the national average" and I cannot say, and I am skeptical to agree, that suicide risk for people who are trans and suicide risk for people who are not trans should be equal. There are 9x as many apples as there are oranges doesn't make any sense. Both of these numbers should be as small as possible.

My whole point is that, if you are going to subdivide groups, there IS NO STATISTICAL LOGIC TO ASSUMING THEY ARE THE SAME AS THE MAJORITY GROUP. Here when I say "normal" I mean, specifically and mathematically that we are respecting the norm.

You can twist your panties as many times as you want, but being trans and being cis don't have the same statistics, and being trans is a much smaller group. Moreover, I DON'T KNOW what a good number is for suicide rate, or happiness rate, or marriage rate, or anything else for trans folks. I hope every trans person gets to have all of these things, but comparing them to a majority cis standard does a disservice to everyone. I can understand that confounding factors presented by the mainstream clinical consensus are all in agreement, but there is nothing there that suggests what rates of occurrence ought to be.

Your arguments, while heartfelt, are not addressing the statistics I'm trying to get at. I think you're more interested in coloring me a transphobe and moving on. Which if that's the case, just downvote and do it. I don't need you to like me @Doomsider@lemmy.world but you're going to acknowledge my position or block me. My minority is I don't give a shit what you or anyone else thinks but I will comment until we both die rather than just move along.

Edit: To add and clarify, I LITERALLY don't know if this is resolved statistics. If you say "hey here's a link that resolves it" I will be happy to read it and accept. In the main, generalizing statistical rates from majority to minority groups doesn't make any sense, but most people are bad at statistics it turns out.