I am... confused by the "don't let women wear pants" vs. "don't like transgender people" distinction. Discriminating against trans- people and telling people how to dress based on their gender both seem very bad.

Firstly, why? And secondly, who decides what counts as "actually?"

I think it's pretty silly to call feminine men "women." Gender and physical sex aren't the same — I think that if you want to actually talk about gender issues, that's pretty much one of the first things you have to recognize. Otherwise it's just going in circles...

Then go for it! As long as you don't put other men who *aren't* into traditional masculinity down for it, and don't put women who want to be "traditionally masculine" themselves down either... I think it'd be a great world if everyone could express their preferred flavour of gender identity freely, regardless of their…

That's a reasonable point, but... I dunno. It just seems like a comparatively small issue. I mean, massive societal change about how we treat gender vs. the logistics of building an efficient bathroom?.. I mean, you could make the argument that it would cost money (more overall bathroom space to reduce waiting; more…

It just seems ridiculous to me that this is a show-stopping issue. O_o Kids do lots of stupid and bad things that are difficult to punish. Boys can pee on toilet seats in the boys' bathroom already, if they really want to. Both boys and girls can do all sorts of dumb things in their respective bathrooms, and in many…

I think this is a very interesting post. My reaction is that one should just let kids experiment. If a kid insists on "trying on" the other gender, then let them. Maybe it's just a phase; maybe they're trans. Maybe they'll just grow up cis-gendered, but with an unconventional way of expressing their gender. They can…

... Isn't a big part of childhood that kids do bad things, then are taught, in one way or another, that these things are bad, and then don't do them any-more?

Cultural inertia, mostly? Give it a few decades.

Yes? It feels like you're expecting people to be all "oh, when you put it that way, NO, of course not, how silly! I see your point now!"

This is awesome. I wish that this was how gender worked in general, everywhere, all the time. Things would be so much simpler.

I think this is one of those cases where you can't just flip the genders involved around and complain about unfairness, for the unfortunate reason that the genders aren't seen or treated the same way by society. Female nudity and male nudity are perceived and treated differently; a man demanding that women coming to…

I love how you made "opinionated and confrontational" sound like an insult. :P

I'm sure these ideas will have a role to play.

I don't think that research is classified or secret any-more. Heck, you can get tours of giant underground bunkers with whole towns contained inside...

I love 2001, but I don't think "90%" of it is fact now. Or anything close. Space planes offering affordable passenger travel to high orbit? Nope. The closest we're getting to "passenger travel" will be short suborbital tourist hops, and they're not even quite here yet, and they'll be insanely expensive still. Base on…

I'm not saying they're totally garbage or anything, only that they're not as great as some people think. I'm not sure how much I trust Kurzweil — I haven't read the book you mention, but I found "The Singularity is Near" to be a bit over-optimistic and unconvincing. And taking too many vitamins definitely can be…

It is awesome when science reminds us that humans are not nearly so simple, and do not fit conventional, expected roles nearly so well, as modern Western society would sometimes have us believe.