‘Male’ and ‘female’ plugs and connectors – gendered language

[tszaboo]

Except that's not what happened. There was gaslighting, social media bans an the usual woke washing around it. Nobody is under criminal investigation about it. 1000 family sue them in a civil lawsuit.
An what I literally rea from your comment: "we'll keep on doing the same thing, but make it more difficult to investigate".

I know there was malfeasance there, which is why it was closed. The services were transferred to other clinics, which means there is less self-reinforcement of attitudes in one place; this should very much help the issues in question.

This is an issue, that genuinely affect about 0.03% of the population, that have real genetic issues, an require (or want) treatment. And they cannot get it, not in the required quality, because the clinics are overloaded with trendsexual people, confused children and men who have fetishes.

Nobody is becoming transgender because it’s trendy: it makes zero sense to voluntarily subject oneself to ongoing harassment and discrimination, especially in this political climate. The reason we have seen more people come out as trans in recent years is because of the overall greater acceptance. I expect that the current backlash (driven by conservatives using it as a wedge issue) will result in statistically fewer people coming out as trans over the next years.

As for confused children: they should be under clinical care, precisely to help them figure things out. (Remember, one of the possible outcomes of “figuring it out” is “oh, I guess I am cis after all”.)

You know, the "nobody" claims are the easiest to rebut, because even one example proves it wrong.

Ugh, fine, be a pedant. You know damned well that in that kind of sentence in ordinary speech, “nobody” means “practically nobody”. I am terribly sorry that I forgot to include an explicit “practically”.

https://torontosun.com/news/world/transgender-psychologist-suggests-peer-pressure-causing-teens-to-transition
Now, my question is: are you going to debate people, who are expert in their filed, who have first hand experience, and who agree with me?

I don’t need to. As far as I know, that isn’t a widely held opinion in the field. You can find examples of climate scientists who disavow anthropogenic climate change, or of doctors who believe MMR vaccines cause autism, but that doesn’t mean it’s the consensus among experts in those fields.

And no, it's not a discovery. Those hormones (which are the same used for chemical castration) are irreversible.

Sorry, I don’t know what discovery you’re referring to.

However, puberty blockers are reversible (or to be more exact, non-permanent, since you don’t need to actively reverse them, just discontinue use) — exactly like chemical castration, which is also non-permanent and reverts after discontinuation. That is literally the point of puberty blockers: to delay (not permanently prevent) puberty, such that when the uncertainty has been resolved, the blockers are discontinued, and either natural (cis) puberty occurs, or alternative hormones can be administered to effect puberty to the opposite sex.

If puberty blockers had an irreversible effect, there would be no point in using them, since it would prevent both of the possible desired outcomes!

People don't talk out because a woke mob used to burn them on stake if they do.
There is plety of evidence and plenty of children, who spoke out, that they have irreversible effects. Just search any detrans interviews.You cannot just take hormones an chemicals willy nilly and not have any effect.

Let's actually look at boybuilding, other people who take chemicals. HRT basically kills testosterone production and you are forced to continue till you die. It's a subscription if you start, forever.
I would bet a good amount of money that tiktok an other social meia branwashing an the entire movment has a 1:1 correlation.

[Analog Kid]

I hope you can understand that I am in equal, if not greater, disbelief that anyone would think someone would somehow choose to be transgender just because it’s trendy, never mind that it’s widespread.

Sorry, Tooki, but I have to dispute that. With some caveats.

I have no data at hand, but from what I've seen it's entirely plausible that at least some young people who consider themselves transgender have come to that conclusion not solely because of some deep-seated mismatch between their "binary" gender and their inner soul's desired one (to use a fairly tortured description: dunno how to better state that).

In other words, these days there's a certain cachet, a certain subcultural glamor associated with "against the grain" ideas of sexuality that could be pretty persuasive, especially to young people who are much more susceptible to such enticements from their peer group.

Now, two caveats: as I said, I have no data. How much of an influence might this be? Probably not all that great.

And what would be the dire consequences of this? Contrary to what the gay- and trans-bashers are trying to tell us, probably not much. Maybe a few guys wearing dresses or girls acting and dressing "butch" is all, I'm guessing.

So long as such enticements don't lead to major, irreversible actions like sex-reassignment surgery, then this phenomenon, if it exists, is kind of a nothingburger. And I don't believe there's a major assault on youth by "groomers" as the gay- and trans-bashers accuse.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that there is an excessive push towards "treating" a child with gender confusion as a candidate for some kind of "transitioning" where it's not warranted by over-zealous social and medical care providers.
Again, no data, but there seems to be anecdotal evidence of this, by gender "partisans" on the other side of the fence from the bashers.

[tooki]

People don't talk out because a woke mob used to burn them on stake if they do.

Uh huh. 🙄
You do realize that “woke”, as used today, means simply “anything I don’t like”, and only serves to weaken any argument you might have? It’s a dog whistle to other conservatives, nothing else.

There is plety of evidence and plenty of children, who spoke out, that they have irreversible effects. Just search any detrans interviews. You cannot just take hormones a chemicals willy nilly and not have any effect.

Let's actually look at boybuilding, other people who take chemicals. HRT basically kills testosterone production and you are forced to continue till you die. It's a subscription if you start, forever.
I would bet a good amount of money that tiktok an other social meia branwashing an the entire movment has a 1:1 correlation.

I don’t pretend to know the minutiae of hormone therapies; I’m not an endocrinologist. However, it’s entirely disingenuous to equate the carefully-designed hormone therapies of HRT and puberty blockers with the reckless BS done by bodybuilders who juice. At the end of the day, an endocrinologist understands the effects of the hormones and hormone blockers they administer, and select and dose them accordingly. Do they know everything there ever is to know? No. There’s always more to discover. (As we are learning about birth control pills, for example.) Nonetheless, I trust them more than I trust conservative hysterics.

Also, while I don’t want to dismiss or trivialize the real experiences of people who have detransitioned, it’s also important to remind people like you (who consistently focus on outliers) that detransitioning is statistically very rare, with the overwhelming majority of trans people exhibiting positive outcomes. Restricting access to gender-affirming care, based on the low but nonzero risk of a negative outcome, harms a far greater number of people than it saves.

[pdeal]

I haven’t followed this whole thread but looked a little. Back in the 80’s when rs-232 was used for everything we used to make or buy various, what we called, gender benders to git’er hooked up and going. Maybe someone could start a company selling various 21st century gender benders to fill this market niche and this could satisfy idiots that came up with such stupid gripes about connector gender terminology.

[tszaboo]

People don't talk out because a woke mob used to burn them on stake if they do.

Uh huh. 🙄
You do realize that “woke”, as used today, means simply “anything I don’t like”, and only serves to weaken any argument you might have? It’s a dog whistle to other conservatives, nothing else.

Thank you, but you are not going to language police me.
I'll keep using "woke" for all the SJW bullshit. If it upsets people, good, that's the point of the usage.

[Cyclotron]

.....
I hope you can understand that I am in equal, if not greater, disbelief that anyone would think someone would somehow choose to be transgender just because it’s trendy, never mind that it’s widespread.
.......

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10448302/
Surgery (knife) tripled in three years as the trendiness was reaching new heights

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11876199/
Research on the adolescent social contagion

Business is good and projected to grow by big numbers
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sex-reassignment-surgery-market

Try to find studies on the topic without industry bias and conflict of interest. I've tried its difficult the massive amount of dysphoria research is done by those that make money and a lot of it for promoting active treatments.

The primary issue with treatments of adolescents with drugs is loss of fertility for life, bone density issues and major long term health complications even if they are only treated for short periods of time.  Even in the industry that profits they admit that 10-15% of those that are treated decide later that they were wrong. Given the source the true numbers are likely closer to 30% and this is supposedly an industry that claims it only treats people after "through clinical evaluations." 

I hope that everyone that needs medical treatment gets it. I equally hope that no one is harmed.  At the moment, I believe there's substantial evidence of a fad and harm.

[Zero999]

Just because the concept or race has been used to justify atrocities in the past. It doesn't mean it isn't real. If race really wasn't genetic, then no one would be able to identify another person as belonging to a different race and discriminate against them because of it. What is true is the old racial subgroups were incorrect, but that's just we know better thanks to genetics. Now many use different terms for race i.e. ethnic group or genetic population, but they're basically the same thing.

Gender resignment treatments lack randomised long term data to support them.

Any treatment which is irreversible should have a higher burden of proof, compared to more temporary ones, especially for mental health problems*. Giving someone testosterone for gender dysphoria is not the same as fluoxetine for depression. Yes, antidepressants occasionally have long term effects, but they normally fade after discontinuation, whereas hormones such as testosterone result in females developing male secondary sexual characteristics, which do not revert back after cessation.

No puberty blockers are not reversible. That's a myth.

Puberty blockers can counterproductive. In many cases gender dysphoria resolves on its own once the person has completed puberty. It isn't as simple as pausing puberty to allow for time to think, because going through puberty causes structural changes in the brain which do not occur on puberty blockers. Gender reassignment surgery i.e. the creation of a neovagina also requires the patient to have gone through puberty, which won't happen with these medications. Puberty blockers have only been tested and shown to effective at treating precocious puberty.

*Many believe all transpeople have gender dysphoria, was well as believing being trans is not a mental illness. This is logically inconsistent. Gender dysphoria is a mental illness, similar to body dimorphic disorder. As I said in my other post, many transpeople do not have gender dysphoria, they just feel as though they don't fit the socially accepted stereotype for their biological sex. The term transgender is meaningless without more context.

People who don't stereospecifically conform to their biologic sex have existed for millennia and they got on fine without being pumped full of artificial hormones and having surgery. It's probably true there might have been a tiny number of people who have serious mental illness in the past which now can be treated with hormones and surgery, but that's not how most mental disorders are treated.

[paulca]

Lets just state that in the USA at a least medicine is a for profit industry.  They have sales targets.

The NHS....  have budget targets.  And it doesn't work how you think it does.  It's usually a race to spent it to prove you need it and maybe get more next cycle.

[Cyclotron]

Lets just state that in the USA at a least medicine is a for profit industry.  They have sales targets.

The NHS....  have budget targets.  And it doesn't work how you think it does.  It's usually a race to spent it to prove you need it and maybe get more next cycle.

Somd difference but I doublt as much as you might think. Everyone goes to work to take home money so even at the base of all industry, government run or not there's profit as goal. While the NHS is "non-profit" so are most of the US hospitals. But just like US hospitals, the NHS is a profit making maching:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/13/private-companies-nhs-services-profit-chpi-research

That's not even cracking into people seeking reasons to profit by getting grants, the whole pharmacutical industry of which the UK has some substantial players making very large profits in see AstraZeneca and GSK for example.

The largest impact that I'm aware of to money making in the UK vs. the US is the employees such as doctors and nurses make substantially less in the UK vs. the US.

The pressure to gain more market remains on either side. If you get more work by adding gender dysphoria services then your budget expands.
One offset that the US has is the big insurance which would push back on on dysphoria services to drive up their profit. The NHS wouldn't produce such back pressure as government agencies tend to like to expand vs. contract or remain stagnate.

[NE666]

the carefully-designed hormone therapies of HRT and puberty blockers with the reckless BS done by bodybuilders who juice. At the end of the day, an endocrinologist understands the effects of the hormones and hormone

My first degree is in medicine and I don't hold the view that either therapy, HRT or puberty blockers, are particularly 'crafted' or designed. Most drug therapies are considerably less 'designed' and definitely less specifically targeted than most people assume. Only very rarely, and in recent history, does pharmacology really come anywhere close to providing a 'magic bullet'.

HRT is, when applied as originally conceived (a treatment for problematic aspects of the menopause), not really more than a simple like-for-like replacement of those hormones that the recipient's body is already producing only in diminished quantities. In that respect it's effectively the same thing as the use of insulin for type-1 diabetes - you're just substituting an exogenous source for the (missing) intrinsic one.

Puberty blocking is also a blunt instrument, preventing the production of (mostly the same) sex hormones by suppressing pituitary action. It's no more or less 'targeted' than paracetamol is.

To go on a step, I also don't agree that the latter is anywhere near being yet proven to be without long-term undesirable and yet unrecognised side-effects. I feel the opposite outcome to be the most likely. Puberty is a vital aspect of normal human development and one who's breadth and complexity is already understood to have profound and widespread effects on most, if not all, major aspects of our adult physiology and on the development of our brains. Just pressing the pause button on it feels, to me if no-one else, like playing incredibly fast and loose with the patient's longer term wellbeing.

But then, at this stage, no one is going to persuade me from my own view that what we're really talking about is a form of body dysmorphia, and that only appropriate treatment should be helping the patient to reconcile their projected gender with their real physical and genetic one. As I've said before elsewhere on this forum, the medical profession would be horrified by the idea that anorexics should be treated with weight-loss drugs, or gastric banding surgery, yet appears mostly fine with doing effectively the same for those who self-identify as transgender.

[tooki]

People don't talk out because a woke mob used to burn them on stake if they do.

Uh huh. 🙄
You do realize that “woke”, as used today, means simply “anything I don’t like”, and only serves to weaken any argument you might have? It’s a dog whistle to other conservatives, nothing else.

Thank you, but you are not going to language police me.
I'll keep using "woke" for all the SJW bullshit. If it upsets people, good, that's the point of the usage.

I never said you can’t use it! I’m just letting you know that, far from “upsetting” anyone, using it only reduces the credibility of the person saying it.

[Cyclotron]

....
...

To go on a step, I also don't agree that the latter is anywhere near being yet proven to be without long-term undesirable and yet unrecognised side-effects. I feel the opposite outcome to be the most likely. Puberty is a vital aspect of normal human development and one who's breadth and complexity is already understood to have profound and widespread effects on most, if not all, major aspects of our adult physiology and on the development of our brains. Just pressing the pause button on it feels, to me if no-one else, like playing incredibly fast and loose with the patient's longer term wellbeing.

But then, at this stage, no one is going to persuade me from my own view that what we're really talking about is a form of body dysmorphia, and that only appropriate treatment should be helping the patient to reconcile their projected gender with their real physical and genetic one. As I've said before elsewhere on this forum, the medical profession would be horrified by the idea that anorexics should be treated with weight-loss drugs, or gastric banding surgery, yet appears mostly fine with doing effectively the same for those who self-identify as transgender.

It is very unfortunate that we will have to see history reports on this era that rushed to experiment on some of the most vulnerable in society.

I've read the current research on the impacts of "corrective" and "gender-affirming" care in adolescents.
Long-term clinical research specifically evaluating non-affirming "corrective care" or gender identity change efforts (often referred to as SOGICE) in adolescents is sparse.  That's the care that's been done for the longest amount of time in humanity. Long-term clinical research in "gender-affirming" is non-existent because there's not been enough time.  From what's available the down sides of one is possible psychological damage, the side effects of the other are psychological damage and mental development, fertility development, bone development, and in the case of surgery irreversible changes to the body.

I can't imagine the mental gymnastics one has to go through to not have enormous concern about the latter's impacts.
...
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I particularly found your last paragraph compelling.

[SteveThackery]

I never said you can’t use it! I’m just letting you know that, far from “upsetting” anyone, using it only reduces the credibility of the person saying it.

WRONG - in my opinion. "Woke" is a well-understood term which I and many others use. It might reduce my credibility in your eyes, but I don't care about that. And you are wrong on the other count: calling woke people "woke" seems to incense them! I've rarely seen such rage as that from a woke person being called "woke". It's astonishing.

[Monkeh]

"Woke" is a well-understood term which I and many others use.

'woke' is a term people like tszaboo in particular use to refer to literally anybody who disagrees with their political opinion. It's a label they apply to dismiss people. Quite frankly, it is the very cancel culture he rails against, wielded by his hypocrisy with absolutely no shame.

[mojorizing]

I was wondering why I was getting an erection when I plugged in my toaster.... and I thought I liked toast, but it's all about the male plug going into the female wall socket!

[negativ3]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

[TimFox]

Back to the original question, avoiding political stuff and nonsense.
General Radio avoided all of this with the GR-874 series of hermaphroditic connectors, where a 90 degree rotation allowed the same connector type to mate.

[tooki]

"Woke" is a well-understood term which I and many others use.

'woke' is a term people like tszaboo in particular use to refer to literally anybody who disagrees with their political opinion. It's a label they apply to dismiss people. Quite frankly, it is the very cancel culture he rails against, wielded by his hypocrisy with absolutely no shame.

Exactly this.

So when someone wields it, I don’t get angry, I laugh!

[tooki]

I never said you can’t use it! I’m just letting you know that, far from “upsetting” anyone, using it only reduces the credibility of the person saying it.

WRONG - in my opinion. "Woke" is a well-understood term which I and many others use. It might reduce my credibility in your eyes, but I don't care about that.

It used to have a well-defined meaning. But conservatives co-opted it to mean “anything I don’t like, especially things liberals like”.

And you are wrong on the other count: calling woke people "woke" seems to incense them! I've rarely seen such rage as that from a woke person being called "woke". It's astonishing.

Except that, as someone who tends to keep the company of people conservatives would deride as “woke”, I can tell you that that simply ain’t true. If anything, it’s becoming a badge of pride, insofar as many of the attitudes conservatives accuse “woke” people of are attitudes I consider admirable.

[tooki]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

That’s not even close to what “woke” originally meant.

[negativ3]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

That’s not even close to what “woke” originally meant.

Opinions are like something everyone has.

[tooki]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

That’s not even close to what “woke” originally meant.

Opinions are like something everyone has.

The word has a very clear history that you (like most people who bandy it around carelessly) are woefully unaware of. It had a very specific meaning, not the “waaaah anything liberal I don’t like” use by conservatives.

[negativ3]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

That’s not even close to what “woke” originally meant.

Opinions are like something everyone has.

The word has a very clear history that you (like most people who bandy it around carelessly) are woefully unaware of. It had a very specific meaning, not the “waaaah anything liberal I don’t like” use by conservatives.

No-one has discussed the etymology of your favorite word, except you.

[Gyro]

Back to the original question, avoiding political stuff and nonsense.
General Radio avoided all of this with the GR-874 series of hermaphroditic connectors, where a 90 degree rotation allowed the same connector type to mate.

At last, somebody mentioning connectors for the first time in about 7 pages! Thank you Tim.

An OP who posts something like that "without comment" is doing so to provoke an OT shit show.  @vk3yedotcom, if you're going to attach something, at least express an opinion or have something constructive to add! 

Connectors and other mechanical items are going to be male or female, or as mentioned, hermaphroditic. for any foreseeable future. It is in such wide usage both by engineers and parts manufacturers around the world that it's not realistically going to change, at least within a lot of our lifetimes.

[Cyclotron]

Woke applies to any sub-culture which seeks power by the derangement of language and much much more.
Meaning "awake" is just the start of the rabbit hole, which is what "they" originally called themselves.

That’s not even close to what “woke” originally meant.

Opinions are like something everyone has.

The word has a very clear history that you (like most people who bandy it around carelessly) are woefully unaware of. It had a very specific meaning, not the “waaaah anything liberal I don’t like” use by conservatives.

There's a never-ending list of words hurled at political opponents; it always has been. The term you find offensive was brought into the modern era and promoted as a brand by one party, and the other uses it to label all of that as "bunk."  No surprise. Few care to actually understand the opposition's points of view, so it all degrades into mud and name-calling. The era of statesmanship is over. No one wants to work things out or try to reach a consensus.