Positive characteristics of Females
By saying females I am including women and girls and even females of other species animal mothers and so on.
These thoughts came to me watching Wonder Woman and contrasting the treatment of Male and female super heroes.
It seems to me that male traits are seen in a more positive light than female ones still and that traits like nurturing, caring and kindness and forgiveness are seen as weaknesses.
There is evidence such as in the fact that the majority of people in the caring professions are female that these traits are not just stereotypes and even if they were they would be positive stereotypes.
Male traits also can be viewed as negative however I think they still lead to more success and influence in certain areas of life.
So where should we go from here in regards to responding to and analysing these kind of traits. I feel we need to celebrate the female traits and encourage them to be aspirations whilst not degrading useful male assets. Maybe not rankling traits at all unless they are anti social ones.
These thoughts came to me watching Wonder Woman and contrasting the treatment of Male and female super heroes.
It seems to me that male traits are seen in a more positive light than female ones still and that traits like nurturing, caring and kindness and forgiveness are seen as weaknesses.
There is evidence such as in the fact that the majority of people in the caring professions are female that these traits are not just stereotypes and even if they were they would be positive stereotypes.
Male traits also can be viewed as negative however I think they still lead to more success and influence in certain areas of life.
So where should we go from here in regards to responding to and analysing these kind of traits. I feel we need to celebrate the female traits and encourage them to be aspirations whilst not degrading useful male assets. Maybe not rankling traits at all unless they are anti social ones.
Comments (380)
:rofl:
Does it still work if we flip it around? :chin:
:lol:
By whom? I can't think of anyone I know that doesn't value those traits highly.
Anything to do with motherhood ought to be cherished and celebrated as activity befitting of a woman.
Popular culture.
I grew up as a male around young males of my age and older and I was badly bullied physically and otherwise. Completely different experience with men and women. I have had problems with women but not the same kind as with men and also the crime rates reflect the differences between males and females 90% of crime done by men including the vast majority of violent and sexual crimes. Also most suicides are men which you can view as violence against the self.
What evidence do you have that society values female traits (considering the pay for jobs dominated by women) How many super heroes are female.
How come heroes have to be aggressive and strong and vengeful and not caring and nurturing and reasonable?
Statistics would disagree.
I don't think the statistics about the number of women working in care and the amount of men in prison are caused by stereotyping but likely by biological traits.
Do you think men should ape women and vice versa?
Where men occupy a role usually occupied by women that can be an outlier like a male nurse but not evidence that men and women are the same.
What's that and why would it be reflective of society's values at large?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Why would pay be considered an indicator of how much a society values certain traits?
Isn't parenthood greatly valued in any society? Guess how much that pays.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Super heroes are for children.
The argument is no and that is why it is unpaid work.
Quoting Tzeentch
I would wager that most people that watch super hero films are adults and that they have some cultural influence. Why do you think things like the Dc franchise are so popular?
How come there is not the female equivalent to Incels?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel
Incels have now committed acts of mass murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violence
"On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three women were murdered and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself.[142][143] He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name.[144] Sodini and his actions have been embraced and glorified by some members of incel communities, who sometimes refer to incel violence as "going Sodini"
I don't think the amount of money something costs or yields is necessarily reflective of its actual value. Happiness cannot be bought, yet you can spend fortunes on things that will make one profoundly unhappy.
To say societies don't value parenthood comes across as a bit disconnected, and if anything it shows that using wages as a measure of value is insufficient.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Even if that's true, you believe adults take their life lessons from those movies? I'd like to think adults are little more sensible than that, and that is reinforced by the fact I see very few adults trying to conduct themselves like super heroes.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How should I know, and why is it relevant? Also, aren't radical feminists basically the female equivalent to incels? :yum:
Men and women project so much onto each other and there are so many cultural aspects of gender. For this reason, Judith Butler, spoke of gender as performance. Stereotypes come into this, including ideas of psychology and ideals of the perfect body. It is likely that the media and popular culture feed into this and it may contribute to the rise of gender dysphoria.
The emphasis of a binary of gender divisions goes back throughout history but it may be that freedom from stereotypes may create greater creative expression of uniqueness beyond the confines of biological attributes. It is hard to think completely beyond gender and those who are seen as gender deviants and outlaws may be those who experience the harshest negative cultural treatment.
Historically, women were treated as inferior and there was such vast changes, especially with feminism, in the twentieth first century. There was postmodernism, with the idea of deconstruction of gender. In the twentieth first century there are probably remnants of all previous forms of prejudice and homophobia, and many individuals are struggling to make sense of the nature of difference, especially in its most basic division of males and females, as well as all binary distinctions, including the negative and positive, like the interplay between the yin and the yang.
I don't know what you mean by a stereotype here.
Most sub Saharan Africans are black. The white people living there are not a sub category of black. It doesn't disprove the the idea that Africa is a black continent.
Things that are mainly exhibited by women are because women exist not because someone invented these traits. Gender ideology doesn't make sense especially if you don't recognise biological reality as a basis for traits.
If I wanted to be more Chinese I would have to have skin colour and feature alterations under surgery to Match the biological reality of ethnic Chinese eating loads of Chinese food and learning to speak mandarin would not make me Chinese.
It makes sense that women and mens biology and psyche are different for survival reasons and child care. Men may need to use superior strength to protect a woman when she is very pregnant. It would explain aggression trends and other things.
Biology creates an immutable division between men and women and that is the only way children can be produced.
Crude prejudices and stereotypes exist but dismantling them does not dismantle biological difference.
People may play up to stereotypes of be unable to fulfil them. I am a tall bulky gay man who doesn't like sport and used to hang around with girls in primary school and read loads of books aimed at teen girls.
I never questioned my sex because I never identified stereotypes as having much substance. But stereotypes may emerge from trneds among population groups and have some truth.
I view her as a big villainess who has encouraged the rejection of reality and the mutilation of bodies. Apparently she may have had her own breasts removed.
If gender is a performance apparently, for her, part of the performance is poisoning yourself on wrong sex hormones that increase your risk of dementia, eyesight loss and heart attack
and then the sterilising effects of genital mutilation and puberty blockers.
I can't imagine our biology intended to get it self mangled for a mental image we have of our self.
I see the performance of gender as lying and unnecessary in the same way I felt no shame what so ever reading books written for teenage girls (Sweet dreams/Sweet Valley high) and I felt no shame for not liking football and cars.
I hate the mindless stupidity of the easily led. To be blunt. Now even non conformity is conformity and people pretend to have a series of wacky identities which are all seeming to be annoying, shallow, unintellectual postures.
Now I have big reservations when I see someone with blue hair, tattoos and piercings and so on.
Have you heard of a radical feminist going on a shooting spree?
Radical feminism maybe damaging in its own way that I can accept.
But we are talking about crime, anti social behaviour, murder and war. I can also accept this may be caused by male DNA and Hormones but this thread is about celebrating what women bring to the table (even if some of these things prove to be exaggerated stereotypes.) Not bashing men.
I see someone like Judith Butler as being a person living out the existential dramas of conflicting ideas and stereotypes. It is so easy for people to criticise trans people for what they are doing. After the times of liberation there is a backlash against transgender people. The thing is that in previous times, especially in the Christian church there was so much hostility towards gay people. Even now, in some cultural groups there is still extreme hostility towards gay people.
In many ways it is about the construction of 'otherness'. In the first post reply to me you mention women bearing children. Of course, that is true and it would be foolish to dismiss biology. However, all these aspects are about political power and the women's liberation movement is also about addressing sexism. Addressing sexism and racism are important political realities. History is about dominance and even this thread could be seen as sexist because it is largely men talking about women.
If anything, it would be interesting if women wrote on the the thread as opposed to being written about, in order to bring balance. Sometimes, the gender threads on this forum become popular with all kinds of hostile views about gender, almost as dumping grounds. This may because the issues arise emerge as a form of cultural wars, from the midst of individual and group dynamics of projection.
What is a trans person and what are they doing? I know a lot about this area. There isn't a coherent consistent definition of trans and it is now a legally recognised right to be skeptical of gender ideology (see Maya Forstater) I don't share your gender religion.
There are hundreds of identities and people are having bizarre frankly unethical surgeries like having their nipples or part of their breasts removed to express their androgyny and non binary identities. (I can present photos and links)
I think the onus is on gender ideologist to explain and defend their claims. If someone trans identified or with a special gender identity wants to defend there position on this thread (through reason) nothing is stopping them. I would welcome the enlightenment but I have read peoples own accounts numerous time and they are incoherent and fantastical.
Quoting Jack Cummins
There is nothing stopping women participating in this thread, joining this forum and disputing claims made on this thread. This happens to be a male dominated forum as is philosophy as a subject.
Men interact with women a lot, read women's accounts, read about human biology, there are many male gynaecologists. they are not unexposed to women, the concepts involved and have informative interactions with them usually from birth.
I am happy for women to talk about men and happy to challenge there opinion if I disagree with it.
You seem to be implying that no one can have any insight into anyone else if they are not them. (solipsism?)
There appears to be objective facts about the world such as biological facts and statistics about male and female criminality etc.
I am not going to ask anyone's permission to have an opinion on them that is thought policing and a dishonest form of communication.
Noooo! :sweat:
When we try to associate two dichotomies - in this case positive/negative and male/female - we’re never going to generate ‘true’ statements or conclusions from the language.
In the context of superheroes, I would agree that physical, violent capacity and invincibility to such aggressions are portrayed as valued traits - regardless of gender. But modern superhero mythology also explores the question of whether it is demonstrations of this capacity (perceived value) or how/why we choose to act/not act that makes a superhero: compassion, self-sacrifice, forbearance, gentleness, self-control, introspection and collaboration are less about a ‘show of strength’ and more about a willingness to interconnect regardless of perceived power.
As a female, I think female characters such as Wonder Woman, Black Widow, etc show (in different ways) how our experiences as women (ie. being underestimated based on demonstrations/perception of capacity) contribute to an overall understanding of human capacity. It isnÂ’t in our actions that we are powerful, but also in the choices we make to not attack, to not show strength, to show restraint, thoughtfulness and care - not instead, but as part of a more rounded, less quantifiable understanding of power/capacity.
Weakness refers to the relative lack of a particular, assumed strength, not an overall incapacity.
Thank god! :sweat:
"Wonder Woman is a superhero created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston (pen name: Charles Moulton),[2] and artist Harry G. Peter. Marston's wife, Elizabeth, and their life partner, Olive Byrne,[3] are credited as being his inspiration for the character's appearance"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman
"Although created to be a positive role-model and a strong female character for girls and boys,[250] in the controversial Seduction of the Innocent, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham claimed, as a point of criticism, that Wonder Woman's strength and independence made her a lesbian"
"In 1972, just months after the groundbreaking US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, science fiction author Samuel R. Delany had planned a story for Ms. that culminated in a plainclothes Wonder Woman protecting an abortion clinic. However, Steinem disapproved of Wonder Woman being out of costume, and the controversial story line never happened.[256]
The original significance of Wonder Woman had the intentions of influencing many women of all ages, displaying the physical and mental strengths, values, and ethical attributes that not only men acquire. "Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women's culture that feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream: strength and self-reliance for women; sisterhood and mutual support among women; peacefulness and esteem for human life; a diminishment both of 'masculine' aggression and of the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts," Steinem wrote at the time."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston
"Marston posited that there is a masculine notion of freedom that is inherently anarchic and violent and an opposing feminine notion based on "Love Allure" that leads to an ideal state of submission to loving authority"
Though Marston had described female nature as being more capable of submission emotion, in his other writings and interviews,[23] he referred to submission as a noble practice and did not shy away from the sexual implications, saying:
The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.[32]
One of the purposes of these bondage depictions was to induce eroticism in readers as a part of what he called "sex love training." Through his Wonder Woman comics, he aimed to condition readers to becoming more readily accepting of loving submission to loving authorities rather than being so assertive with their own destructive egos. About male readers, he later wrote: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"[33]
Marston combined these themes with others, including restorative and transformative justice, rehabilitation, regret and their roles in civilization. These appeared often in his depiction of the near-ideal Amazon civilization of Paradise Island, and especially its "Reform Island" penal colony, which played a central role in many stories and was the "loving" alternative to retributive justice of the world run by men. These themes are particularly evident in his last story, in which prisoners freed by Eviless, who have responded to Amazon rehabilitation and now have good dominance/submission, stop her and restore the Amazons to power
Big thanks to the contributors to these articles.
In psychological terms there are differences but they are not huge. Women tend to be more risk adverse so that could be interpreted as ‘nurturing’ in some situations. There is also the argument for such differences being ‘cultural’ but I do not think that makes complete sense if taken too far.
Men and women are psychologically different but do not seem to be different to the same extremes that they are in physical terms.
In terms of positive characteristics you tend to see trends of women taking on more prominent ‘masculine’ roles in societies in modern times. In the 1980’s women even wore big shoulder pads to appear more ‘male’ and assert dominance in office environments. This was strangely anti-feminine yet also helped propel women into higher paid jobs etc.,.
In society womens’ ‘traits’ (if we can call them that?) are generally not rewarded because they are good for roles/jobs that tend to see long term benefits rather than short term benefits - hence the pay of teaching and nursing.
Note: A good proportion of men are feminine and a good proportion of women are masculine. I am talking in an ‘overall’ sense here.
Provocation is the only reason I can see. So I am ‘provoked’ … merely to see if you go anywhere with this or have glaring double-standards :)
Who would likely suffer more I wonder. A man or a woman? If inflicting suffering was the purpose of the AI.
~Freddy Zarathustra
Quoting I like sushi
I was "joking seriously". :smirk:
It depends. I would actually say that being ‘Chinese’ is a cultural item rather than a biological one. Being ‘Chinese’ is not genetic as someone born to Chinese parents and raised in the US would, cultural speaking, be american if they were raised in the US and spoke only English and educated under the US system.
Nationalities are nationalities not genetic distinctions. There is obviously some ‘genetic’ similarity between peoples living the same regions for very obvious reasons.
The question underneath all this is the riddle of trying to define ‘culture’ … which is problematic as it covers practically everything a d is likely why many jump on the bandwagon when something is attributed to ‘culture’. Such ubiquitous terms are easy prey to misuse by over-application.
Yes. That has been a common trend for a long time. The ‘fairer’/‘weaker’ sex. Undoubtedly there are many hang ups still around that propagate these ideas. In reality all psychological traits are seemingly neutral. Even ‘moderation’ is bad in some circumstances.
In some cultures what you or I may refer to as ‘bravery’ would been deemed as ‘cowardice’. ‘Rashness’ viewed as ‘quick reactions’ depending on the success or failure of the action. We are fickle and stupid creatures, but it appears our ‘stupidity’/‘mistakes’ occasionally stumble upon novel solutions to hard problems.
The larger extent to which women have been, and are being, liberated across the globe is still transitioning and likely always will be. Stagnation is death. If no women/men are complaining it is not because there is nothing wrong, it is because they have lost their voice in the public sphere.
There has been a rather large push to create more female role-models in mass media. There are many different conflicting forces controlling these so-called ‘role-models’. Undoubtedly Wonder Woman was something of a sex symbol that was created to cater to both men’s and women’s fantasies.
I do sometimes get a little concerned when people act like ‘beauty’ is some kind of cultural creation. The hyper sexuality prevalent in advertising works. Everyone used to mock people like Mary Whitehouse but I think they probably did not listen carefully enough. There are certainly factors in society that are almost completely unchecked and out of governmental/social control. ‘Memes’ if you will.
All that said, I think there are good number of people wary of the power of AI and the influence it can exert over vast numbers of people. I do not think we are dumb enough to handover complete ‘control’ simply because we are scared of responsibility.
The rest of what you said has no bearing I can see. In terms of psychological traits there is a lot of variation to the point where stating any single man or woman must have this or that trait is complete nonsense. You can make some statistical bets because there are some reasonably large difference (as in ratios of 3:2).
We can take a thousand women and a thousand men off the street and be reasonably confident that the ‘differences’ (where they are commonly seen at their largest) will play out … it is statistics neither prove nor disprove ‘bias’ anymore than ‘explorer’ proved or disproved the existence of a teapot orbiting Saturn.
The reasons these traits propagate will obviously be due to many different factors including ‘culture’. I am certainly not saying it is black and white.
Anything else to put into my mouth?
Very antinatalist and antitranshumanist in tone. The idea is to protect humanity. I wonder if AI would go Ultron on us.
1. The AI (assuming a droid of some kind) could choose to sacrifice (disassemble / repurpose or jettison) itself in order to protect both humans.
2. Maybe the AI would make more room in the spaceship by relocating to the outside of the spaceship and attaching itself and yet remain 'plugged-in' so that it can continue to 'protect & serve' as long as possible.
3. Maybe, instead, the AI would clone them both, preserve their embryoes and then euthanize both donors while they sleep (tossing the carcasses out of the airlock). :up:
The solution, Smith, need not be binary. :nerd:
It is interesting to think would the AI beings and even the transhuman beings of the future be binary beings or androgynous? The further one goes beyond the basics of biology the more likelihood of beings beyond stereotypical gender. Some of the fantasy/science fiction authors, including that written by females, including Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ursula L Gun, create characters who incorporate characteristics of both gender, which include physical androgyny. This may be an echo to the archetypal or mythical hermaphrodite. The prefix trans is involved in transgender, transhumanism and may correspond with the idea of transformation as well.
The value of roles such as nursing and teaching stems from an understanding of when and where to relinquish or hand over control/power to another. A quality teacher or nurse is someone who doesnÂ’t derive professional value from demonstrations of their own capacity or control, but from increasing/restoring the capacity of others.
The structures that govern teaching and nursing roles, their decision-making and rates of pay, however, are still determined according to demonstrations of control. It was once believed (and in many cases still is) that a ‘good’ teacher should be able to demonstrate control over their students and influence on their thinking with regurgitated facts, etc. Schools remain, for the most part, focused on maximising control and accountability (ie. minimising uncertainty), and in doing so they can stifle or damage the valuable nurturing aspect of the teaching-learning relationship for many students and teachers.
It’s far from a perfect system (wherever you are) and I’ve personally found that the most effective healing, teaching and learning actually occurs in those ‘grey area’ moments with low control and high uncertainty. But it’s never really clear who can take the credit for what took place…patient or nurse, teacher or student…
We can discuss all of this in terms of primarily men’s or women’s ‘traits’, but at the end of the day devaluing the ‘traits’ associated with roles that increase or restore capacity in others has less to do with gender, and more to do with ego.
I wasn't looking at the dilemma you posed from a human perspective but from the perspective of the AI (e.g. HAL 9000).
:ok: HAL 9000 would've considered those options you mentioned?! :scream: I wonder what HAL 9000's assessment of humans would look like? Very reasonable or ok, could do better or batshit crazy?
If not no biggie ;)
I have no idea why you think that?
It is generally more simplistic. If you invest in ‘training’/‘educating’ then the pay off comes literally decade/s down the line. It is understandable why - in an economy based on profit - many people prefer to invest in what pays off next year/month/week rather than what pays off in 20 years or so … people have to eat and sustain themselves so the majority of what they have will be invested in tomorrow, next month/year rather than further down the line.
Of course the wealthy are more able to determine a better path for their children but overall the majority of people have to play in a system where they cannot pay their way out (in terms of better/best education possible).
Education is a tricky subject. Everyone has different ideas and governments tend to ignore what works in favour of what is already in place. Finland is the only country who did the sensible thing.
How could I act feminine?
The best characteristics of a man: compassion, forbearance, fortitude, generosity, humour, integrity, loyalty, mindfulness, patience, resourcefulness, truthfulness, understanding.
The top move rated movie is the Phallocentric The Shawshank Redemption with 2,676,899 votes cast
followed by The Godfather and The Dark Knight
Of the top 100 only 2 have female leads including Silence of the Lambs and two or three more have joint female leads and only one of the films is about the female experience.
You might say "Psycho" has a female lead although she is someone who is brutally stabbed to death in the shower in the nude in the movie so not really aspirational.
:100: :up:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The funny thing is that this sort of misguided critique of gender identity almost systematically ignores the distinction between biological sex and sociocultural gender (or, at a minimum, seeks to blur the distinction as much as possible). Obviously there are biological differences between the sexes, and traits that are biologically based: chromosomes, genitalia, differences in average height/weight/etc. No one is claiming that there is no such thing as biological sex, "trans activists" (i.e. reasonable people who are not transphobic) are not "denying biology". This common canard is a ridiculous strawman. But the other side tends to deny/ignore gender, and how it differs from biological sex.
And the kind of traits you keep talking about are generally not traits dictated by biological sex, but traits associated with socially-enforced gender roles and expectations- that women are caring and nurturing and so on, that men are strong and assertive and aggressive and all that.
But as Benkei already pointed out, these are traits that are distributed among both sexes (and so we're talking about statistical distributions, rather than a binary a "yes" or "no"), and are dictated by social expectation/convention, not biology (and so therefore the differences can probably be accounted for entirely by social convention, without invoking biology at all- we're talking about social norms that have been in place and been enforced for centuries, after all):
Men can be and often are nurturing and caring and creative. Women can be and often are assertive and aggressive and logical/analytic. And similarly for other traits associated with one particular gender role over another; these are matters of social convention, and so are in some sense arbitrary. These traits and roles are part of our normative expectation/model for how members are a particular sex are supposed to be like... not an accurate descriptive account of biologically-based traits. Again, social convention, not biology.
And even as far as biology goes, the story is far more complicated than you seem to realize: biological sex and sexual traits form a spectrum, not a binary male vs. female, so even the matter of biological sex (as opposed to gender) is not so straightforward as you let on.
Women are more caring and nurturing they are consistently more involved in caring roles and males are always incarcerated at much higher rates and commit the vast majority of sex crimes.
As a male growing up no one discouraged me from being caring and encouraged me to commit violence and sex crimes.
There are biological explanations for this especially since a woman carries a child for nine months and can breast feed it and is best suited for the primary child care role.
I posted a study in a previous thread I stared about Changing Sex that showed that Trans women exhibit the same criminality patterns as biological males. I can repost it here if you want it.
Here's an article entitled the Myth of biological sex:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/06/15/the-myth-of-biological-sex/?sh=5da28cc876b9
"But, biological sex isnÂ’t as straightforward as they likely think, and there is no one parameter that makes a person biologically male or female"
Opinion: Biological Science Rejects the Sex Binary, and ThatÂ’s Good for Humanity
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity-70008
"The oceans are filled with species of fish that change from one sex to another midlife, and some who change back again. There are invertebrate hermaphrodites and ladies-only lizards who reproduce by recombining their own chromosome"
Because women and mens bodies differ that is good reason to expect their psychology to differ. Using outlying cases of developmental disorders that affect men or women (to create an imaginary spectrum) and using other species that can change sex or are hermaphrodite as examples is tool to undermine the importance or relevance of widespread sex differences.
Right, there are differences in the statistical distributions of certain traits or behaviors between the sexes (including biological differences). This was already acknowledged. But given that both males and females exhibit these different traits or behaviors, and that these traits are part of normative social expectations (being enforced century after century) its clear that this isn't being driven by biology- there is no biological reason why women should wear dresses and bake cookies and wear pink or why men shouldn't talk about emotions/feelings, wear pants instead of dresses, and so on- but rather sociocultural norms and expectations. Gender, not sex. And of course there is individual variation as well.
So the distribution of different traits among the sexes is far more complicated than you let on, as is the matter of biological sex itself. And of course sociocultural gender remains distinct from biological sex: much of what you're talking about owes to the former, not the latter. Without accounting for these facts, your analysis/critique amounts to fan-fiction regurgitating tired social expectations and tropes.
And of course you were discouraged from being caring or emotional or other traits associated with female gender roles. Its just usually not explicit: its not like your parents or teachers come out and directly tell you that being caring or nurturing makes you an unmanly wimp (or whatever)... although this does happen occasionally- I was definitely told more than once that e.g. crying was for girls (and I know I'm far from alone there).
But usually its more implicit: gender norms/roles presented through culture and society, and enforced via social pressure- think of the comic book, cartoon, or action movie heroes that are presented as role models for young boys: tough, stoic, aggressive, violent: Batman beating up bad guys, action movies with Keanu Reeves or Bruce Willis kung-fu'ing the bad guys into submission, and so on. If a boy wears pink to school or cries during a sad movie, they are usually going to be mocked and teased for it. So, culture, and social pressure, enforcing normative gender expectations... not biology.
This was precisely the point of the Scientific American article I previously linked: the traits you're talking about as inherently male or female are often matters of gender and social expectations as much/more than biology, and even biological sex is not binary and is far more complicated than you've acknowledged here.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Well, no. Having different genitalia doesn't imply that their psychology is inherently different, especially not in the binary sort of way that transphobes like to portray. And what differences there are are matters of different averages and distributions (rather than a binary yes/no), and many of them are the result of socially-enforced gender norms (not biological sex).
As for the spectrum of biological sex, it is very real, and quite well-documented; denying this only serves to undermine your credibility and make you look more like a committed partisan with an axe to grind rather than a reasonable observer interested in the truth.
This perhaps could be challenged by replacing should with are inclined to, no?
Stereotypes, perhaps. But averaging all peoples, men are generally of larger muscle mass and perhaps as a result tire less. Life, regardless of the plush comforts of society or in the context of a single person alone on an entire planet, requires physical work. Whether the result of our current biological inclinations can be changed/altered (enter the taboo topic of "genetic trauma" which can be redeemed as the adaptability and salvageability of the human condition) does this not hold true?
:up:
Sure... but whence this inclination? If there was no such thing as socially-enforced gender roles, would females naturally (biologically?) want to wear pink and wear dresses and bake cookies? I can't think of any plausible reason why this should be so; these sorts of gender norms are social conventions (and so are often arbitrary). The reason people are "inclined to" adhere to gender roles/expectations is probably because they've been raised and bombarded with these norms and roles for their entire life, and continually enforced by their environment.... not because females are biologically inclined to bake cookies or be nurturing or whatever. .
Quoting Outlander
Sure. There is no denying the statistical distribution of physical traits between the sexes. But it must be remembered that this is a matter of averages, not a black and white binary choice: there are women e.g. bodybuilders, athletes, etc that are absolutely ripped, and could probably bench-press me with one hand. And then there are little shrimpy guys with the muscle mass of a child.
So there definitely are aspects of gender roles/norms that have some basis in biological variation. But that doesn't mean that all differences in traits are due to biology, and most of the traits that have been mentioned here (e.g. being caring or compassionate, nurturing, aggressive, etc) are part of sociocultural gender roles, not biological sex. Simply insisting on this distinction between sex and gender is usually enough to utterly shipwreck these kind of anti-trans arguments: no one is denying biological sex, but the transphobe/anti-trans position almost always denies gender.
ItÂ’s not a question of IF you invest in teaching/education, but HOW MUCH to invest, how much to pay those who teach - an entirely different question. We all understand that education pays off long term, but itÂ’s much more difficult to quantify that ROI, for instance, on the basis of an individual teacherÂ’s salary. Government funding is based on student numbers, and student numbers for each school and each classroom teacher are based on optimum numbers for demonstrated control and influence, NOT on optimum teaching-learning environments.
But I digressÂ… the point I want to make is that teachers and nurses are not paid less because we value women less, but because weÂ’re unable to accurately quantify the benefits of nurturing and caring roles that increase or restore the capacity of others.
I think that more females tend to take on these roles because our traditional, socially-determined interactions still focus on experiences of these unquantifiable benefits more often than they do for male socially-determined experiences, and there is less social expectation for us to demonstrate control and influence in everything we do, as a function of our individual identity.
ItÂ’s not that males have less capacity for nurturing and caring, but that they still grow up largely exposed to far less personal experiences of its intrinsic social and emotional value, and so they determine value from external measurements, observations, and demonstrations of control and influence, which are still the foundation of business, economic and government decision-making. Those doing it right are those who direct resources anyway towards the unquantifiable social and emotional value experienced in increasing or restoring human capacity.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
"The researchers state: ‘male-to-females . . . retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime.’ MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. The group had no statistically significant differences from other natal males, for convictions in general or
for violent offending. The group examined were those who committed to surgery, and so were more tightly defined than a population based solely on self-declaration."
These are people who are going out of their to present as female yet retaining male patterns of criminality.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/surprising-stats-about-gender-inequality/
This happen to biological females in societies controlled by men.
It would be interesting to know the specific offenses.
And why should that be surprising? If they were raised as male, and in a culture that bombards them with male/masculine gender norms all throughout their childhood, we wouldn't expect transitioning to immediately and completely eliminate all of the traits and behaviors encouraged and nurtured by ubiquitous gender norms, social pressure, and habituation. Its unreasonable to expect this to change overnight.
I'd be interested to see what the crime rates look like for newly transitioned trans women vs. trans women who have transitioned and been living as a woman for a longer period of time. And then there's the point Benkie already made, that trans people are usually the victim of a crime, not the perpetrator, and so panic over trans people using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender (for instance) is 100% pure horse pucky, an irrational panic over a completely fictitious threat.
That is a beautifully - one might suspect, artfully - opaque statement.
It clearly isn't socialisation. There is no evidence it is socialisation and there is no evidence of a change in trends. I have never been in a formal situation where men have been encouraged to be antisocial outside of male banter (all male social situations) and the school playground. Men are spontaneously aggressive. Men and women want to do different jobs. Women aren't desperate to be car mechanics and plumbers.
I think there is some reality denial going on and a lack of evidence being presented over quite trite theories and wishful thinking.
Reality doesn't care about feelings and hypothesises.
Someone trying to behave like the opposite sex is futile. I am a male all my behaviour is male by dint of it being mine. I live as a male not a non binary multigendered invented woo entity.
1. social learning theory
2. the theory key life experiences shape criminal behaviour
3. strain theory
4. edgework theory
5. gender role theory
Reality doesn't care about your outdated, ill-informed, bigoted feelings and hypotheses indeed.
It is too controversial people are in denial.
I posted a link to a site documenting crimes based on gender identity on another thread which you can seek out yourself
and someone here wanted the web site to get banned but the website still exist.
This whole gender identity are is now the most toxic subject on line. J K Rowling get has got numerous death threats, abuse and rape threats because of her comments in this area.
The result is a toxic environment of denial delusion and censorship which is shameful, like a lot about this period in history. Lies upon lies by people who apparently don't like reality.
I have to be careful what I say to avoid my own censorship. If I was drunk I would be more loosed lip but shame on these new tyrants censoring free speech and denying reality. Men have chopped up their penis to make a pseudo vagina. Gay men who were led to believe they could be women and now they regret it and people are enabling this social disaster to go on by lies and censorship it enrages me. I nearly feel hate towards the people enabling this.
This topic makes me too angry.
Reality is that men commit most crime 95% + of violent crime and sex crime and makes up 90% of prisoners and you believe criminology has refuted that in some way?
In September last year she was transferred to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire. During a three-month period at the female prison she sexually assaulted two other inmates."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
The decision to move White to a womenÂ’s prison was made public after she admitted in court to the sexual assault and to multiple rapes committed before she was sent to prison.
"On December 14, footage taken at the University of BrasĂlia (UNB) began to circulate on social media, quickly racking up viral attention. The camera-phone video clips showed a large, bearded male wearing a dress loudly screaming in the face of a female student, who appeared to be trying to get away from him.
Additional video was taken by the woman being assailed, and she can be heard pointing out the manÂ’s obvious characteristics.
“But you’re a dude!” The female student says.
“I am not a dude! Nothing is keeping me from bringing my hand to your face. Girl, respect me! Respect me!” He is heard screaming, using a colloquial expression for ‘slapping.’"
https://reduxx.info/brazil-female-student-assaulted-by-trans-identified-male-over-washroom-access-says-she-was-afraid-of-dying/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10953157/Man-suing-NHS-trans-surgery-regrets-bravely-waived-anonymity-share-ordeal.html
Battling mental health issues – and after decades of suppressing his homosexuality – Ritchie, 35, had thought the answer was to become a woman. But instead, he says, he was fast-tracked into making ‘the biggest mistake of his life’ and left infertile, incontinent and with ongoing pain.
"Today, he is one of a growing number of ‘de-transitioners’, living once again as a man and grieving his ‘mistake’. Much of his confusion was around accepting he was gay, he now acknowledges.
The irreversible operation involves removing the penis and testicles, and reforming the area to resemble female genitals.
For eight days he lay in a blur of painkillers. His first thought as he recovered his lucidity was: ‘Oh God, what have I done?’
That's a lot of column-inches for very few people.
I have given estimated stats about crime and inmates.
I can post another 5 stories of gay men who chopped up there penises and castrated themselves to become women and now regret and are angry at gender ideology and the encouragement they received.
I can state the case of Lia Thomas who has now been banned from women's swimming and any men who didn't start "transitioning to female" as a child.
This what is happening because people including feminists denied innate differences between men and women and tried to cure the issues of dysfunction by inventing gender identities.
How long of you got for me to illustrate my wide evidence base?
However there is a detransition SubReddit https://www.reddit.com/r/detrans/
It now has 43 thousand members talking about their regrets and personal horror stories.
People are posting on You tube stories about how their vaginoplasty or phalloplasty left them in severe pain with multiple complications but then saying they didn't regret their decision.
SO even with the most heinously botched surgeries that cause life long disabilities they are motivated to say they don't regret it and undermine the ideology.
Research into detransition is being surpressed:
"Bath Spa University is conducting an internal inquiry into claims that it turned down an application for research on gender reassignment reversal because it was “potentially politically incorrect” and would attract criticism on social media.
James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specialises in working with transgender people, proposed the research about “detransitioning” to the university in south-west England, which, he said, initially approved the application.
When he went back with his preliminary findings that suggested growing numbers of young people, particularly women, were regretting gender reassignment, Bath Spa said his proposal would have to be resubmitted to the ethics committee, which rejected it."
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-university-transgender-gender-reassignment-reversal-research
Of course it is! How could the American Society of Plastic Surgeons compete with Reddit for credibility?
Do you think people who think you can turn penis into vagina and make lots of money trying to do this have any credibility? I don't.
We wouldn't be in the the situation we are in now if people had professional integrity.
I already posted one story of a men who regretted having his penis chopped up and was a closeted gay man and can cite many more. How many is too many for you?
"Two leading transgender medics warn children should not be given puberty blockers, that too many are being given gender reassignment surgery and reveal NYT turned down their op-ed on the subject
Dr Marci Bowers and Dr Erica Anderson spoke out in Bari Weiss''s Substack letter
The pair said they were concerned by some trends for transgender youngsters
Both warned that puberty blockers could be given too young, causing irreversible consequences for a person perhaps not ready
They also said that the policy of 'affirmative care' - which has replaced 'watchful waiting' - was not necessarily benefiting people in the long run
Anderson also said she was concerned about the 'sloppy' approach to the mental health side of transitioning, and feared many would regret it "
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10058951/Leading-transgender-medics-warn-children-given-gender-reassignment-surgery.html
All you are doing is undermining your own credibility.
Jazz Jennings developed long term depression directly after starting puberty blockers. This was also discussed on "I am Jazz"
And this was all documented on the family friendly TV "I am Jazz".
Dr Marci was born Male and had four children before having an orchiectomy and vaginoplasty in Marci's 40s Jazz will never be able to have children.
[b]"Every single child who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2 (9 - 11 years old) has never experienced orgasm."
— Dr Marci Bowers
trans-identified
President of WPATH[/b]
And all this despite being told the differences between men and women are invented. You can stop supporting this or become part one the biggest medical malpractice crimes and social scandals in human history. Including Castrating and sterilising children and leaving them anorgamsic and emotionally stunted.
Nonsense. There most certainly is evidence that "socialization"- sociocultural gender norms and expectations- plays a major role in driving violence and crime, and the disparity in violence/crime rates between men and women:
- Toward a Transformed Approach to Prevention: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence
and
- Harmful masculinities among younger men in three countries: Psychometric study of the Man Box Scale
And also
- Harmful Masculinity and Violence
and
-Man enough? Masculine discrepancy stress and intimate partner violence
and who knows how many more like these. You're just wrong on the facts here.
I was sent to prison at 17 for an arson and spent 2 and three quarters years in prison and other time in probation hostels with men (all male environments).
Before I went into prison I subscribed to equality between the sexes was always pro women and remained that way when I came out.
So I spent a few years around men with all kinds of criminal convictions and heard first hand young mens opinion on a lot of things. I heard very little sexism, some homophobia small amounts of racism (This is in the mid 90's England)
From one of your studies:
"There is strong evidence that young men who subscribe to inequitable gender norms (e.g., believe women are solely responsible for household chores and child-rearing) (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008) and endorse dominant and hostile forms of masculinities (e.g., believe women are sexual conquests) (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008) have higher rates of perpetrating psychological, physical, and sexual violence against women"
Well that is stating the obvious. Men that abuse women have a low opinion of women. In my experience most men were not in for assaulting women and did not have a low opinion of women unless you consider having pornographic images of women on prison cells demeaning to women.
I will look for a counter study for this but women sometimes hold a low opinion of other women and that does not translate into them becoming criminals. My mother gave up her job as a teacher when she married.
:pray: Fuck yes!
In other words, before you reject them out of hand because you see criticizing trans people and transgenderism as some sort of religious crusade (as you previously mentioned in a since-deleted thread)?
But you are wrong on the facts here: your "critiques" notwithstanding, there is an abundant body of evidence that sociocultural gender norms help drive crime, violence, and suicide, as you can see from the previously cited sources (and the many others like them). Maybe you disagree about the degree to which they contribute to these things, but you can't credibly deny that there is evidence that it is a factor.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How about instead of immediately trying to "counter" this body of scientific/medical counter-evidence, you actually look at it and consider the possibility that you might have been mistaken? Or is that impossible with the whole religious crusade thing? And if you're not open to genuinely considering counter-evidence or counter-arguments, what are we even doing here?
Let me clarify what you are suggesting are you claiming that the majority of crime is committed by men due to socialisation and is not caused by biology or testosterone?
Are you sayin your studies have proved this under the reason there are millions of men in Americas prisons and elsewhere is due to socialisation?
Wouldn't it be great if it were that simple and we could clear the streets of crime by rearing men to be more like girls.
Finally! An intelligent idea.
I am not denying that that is a factor by any means.
However it depends how you frame the causal relationship.
The societies creating toxic masculinity are shaped by men.
I have been around men where they enforce masculine codes of conducts amongst themselves with no input from women from an early age. Incels are males creating a sub culture amongst them selves whilst blaming women for their problems
Men creating toxic environments for themselves reflects badly on men. Unless you can show that women co-created or solely created toxic male identities.
You stated that:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm objecting to the bolded part. There is evidence (quite a lot of it in fact) that "socialization", or social expectations and gender norms, help drive crime and violence, and that gender norms (specifically hyper-masculinity) help explain the difference in crime/violence rates between men vs. women... hence the linked studies to that effect.
Yes but girls and women are social constructs and don't really exist we are told.
This whole thread was about celebrating women's behaviours and psychology etc and now you seem to have finally realised it.
Denying the existence of women and girls behavioural traits doesn't leave anything left for men to emulate. Do we we won't Women to act more like men and commit more sex offences and violent crime do we.
No we want men to emulate women ideally and that is why we need to preserve and celebrate the female identity and make the characteristics enviable, desirable and aspirational and not just parodies of social constructs.
Thanks!!
This study: "Man enough? Masculine discrepancy stress and intimate partner violence" Questioned 600 men
Before I talk about it in 2019 there were 1,322,256 male prisoners in the states so these men would account for 0.04% of the prison population if it was a sample of them.
Is that sufficient to derive information that would apply to all men in the prison system and that could be used to free these men from incarceration through rehabilitation.
So? If society can construct women with good qualities, it could construct better men.
This isn't mere jocularity: we really ought to do better by our little boys.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, I always knew what makes a good person, a good citizen, a good neighbour. It's good behaviour. Men are capable of it; men demonstrate this every minute of every day in every walk of life in every country.
Letter to the Editor: Regret after Gender-affirmation Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence
Expósito-Campos, Pablo MA*; D’Angelo, Roberto PsyD†,
https://journals.lww.com/prsgo/fulltext/2021/11000/letter_to_the_editor__regret_after.29.aspx
"Besides these methodological inaccuracies, data in this field are often of low quality because of “lack of controlled studies, incomplete follow-up, and lack of valid assessment measures,”5 as well as the long amount of time regret can take to manifest (the average and median are estimated at 8–8.5 years2,4). Many of the included studies had participants with follow-up periods of only 1 or 2 years postsurgical transition. None appear to have a long enough follow-up period to reliably identify regret. The study contributing almost half of the participants4 explicitly noted their inclusion of participants with short follow-up time, relative to time to regret, and their large 36% loss to follow-up as limitations. These shorter studies only provide an estimated lower limit, as the large numbers of patients lost to follow-up add correspondingly large uncertainties to any quoted number.
Bustos et al1 acknowledge “moderate-to-high risk of bias in some studies.” Actually, this affects 23 of the 27 studies. The majority of included studies ranged between “poor” and “fair” quality: only five studies—representing just 3% (174) of total participants—received higher quality ratings. However, even these had loss to follow-up rates ranging from 28% to more than 40%, including loss through death from complications or suicide, negative outcomes potentially associated with regret."
Males (and females, for that matter) in a formal situation are expected to keep any and all emotions in check, so it’s no surprise that ‘anti-social’ behaviour is discouraged. Both males and females are ‘spontaneously aggressive’ - females, more often than not finding themselves inexperienced and underdeveloped when it comes to physical interactions, have learned to use words more than fists, with just as much impact (although far less evident).
Girls who want to be car mechanics or plumbers have been both actively and passively discouraged from such paths from a very young age, by almost everyone and everything, and with various, often well-intentioned reasonings. Boys who want to be nurses or early childhood teachers face similar discouragement from all areas of society.
My daughter, by the age of seven, had effectively banned pink from her wardrobe, and no longer chose to wear dresses or skirts. This came about around the same time she came home and asked the loaded question “Do girls like dinosaurs?” It was a key moment that I felt required careful navigation around the language of identity and belonging. She identified as a girl, and she liked dinosaurs, and all she needed to know was that the two were not mutually exclusive.
I saw this as a conscious move on her part to question and then feel free to reject the socially-determined gender ‘traits’ traditionally expected of her as a ‘girl’, although she still identified as female in all other ways, and continues to, now twelve years later.
Someone trying to behave ‘like the opposite sex’ is not futile, but is a key component of forming identity. I think someone labelling behaviour and traits in this way is trying to enforce a binary concept where the reality of experience is far more complex.
At the private, religious school where I work, two of our high school graduates this year were identified as ‘trans’ - one male-female, the other female-male. The first was fully supported (after much discussion) by family as well as the school community, effectively transitioning their identity from one year of schooling to the next. The second lacked parental support, and so their formal identity with the school remained female, while pastorally and among their peers they were treated as a ‘boy’. As far as I could observe, they were not ‘trying to behave like the opposite sex’, but were attempting to find an identity that worked for them in the majority of their social interactions and experiences.
Personally, I don’t believe either should pursue surgery - I don’t think it should be considered ‘wrong’ for someone biologically male (ie. with a penis) to be referred to as ‘she’, if that’s the identity they’re most comfortable with, and I think that eventually we can get used to this level of uncertainty with regards to gender biology/identity, and conceptual labels such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ could gradually fall out of use. But it won’t happen overnight, and I think the resistance will continue for a couple of decades yet.
Socialisation is strongest prior to the age of 17, and spending a few years in a predominantly male environment, with little to no interaction with females, does little to increase oneÂ’s awareness of their own or their peersÂ’ attitudes towards females. Single-sex education is a perfect example of this - I emerged from five years of girlsÂ’ school education with an underdeveloped understanding of gender-based interaction, and could say the same for my sisters and most of my school peers.
This reads to me like an expression of disgust towards trans and gender non-conforming bodies. While your confusion toward all this is understandable - the issue is complex, expressing yourself in this manner is not. You must keep it respectful.
He has doubts. Doers he have evidence of a higher number? Or a lower one?
Claims of regret are actual irrelevant to the issue of whether the surgeries are ethical and whether people can become the other sex/gender.
The surgeries causes well documented complications and in the case of children who transition complete sterility/infertility and anorgasmia.
But you appear to be taking the same stance as you did on assisted suicide. To me one gay man regretting castrating himself through internalised homophobia is one person to many. But there are several now including this prominent detransitioner who has an increasingly large online presence
but before I get to him the idea men can become women is at odds with the claim men and women only have social imposed differences.
"A detransitioner has told how he was 'brainwashed' into having gender reassignment surgery after believing himself to be a woman trapped in the wrong body.
Going by the name Shape Shifter, the 32-years-old who lives in Massachusetts grew up in a Muslim country in the Balkans where even being gay was frowned upon, but he believed that if he transitioned to female he would finally feel happy with himself."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11151433/Detransitioner-says-brainwashed-having-gender-reassignment-surgery-woke-doctors.html
"[b]But soon after the operation was complete in 2015 in his mid-20s, Shape Shifter quickly realized he had made a terrible mistake, and that he was just a gay man who enjoyed presenting in a feminine way.
The procedures he has undergone - which include the removal of his penis and the creation of a 'neo-vagina' are irreversible.[/b]
They have left him with osteoporosis, scoliosis, a 'vagina' which his body believes is a wound, and which it tries to close up, as well as a host of mental health conditions including depression and a reduced sex-drive. "
What about the testimonies of trans and detrans people about their surgeries?
Like this.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/gabriel-mac-essay.html
“The whole process is constant body horror,” Berrian said at one point — after he’d told me that the penis-tip discoloration I was worried about might just be sloughing tissue that’s dying off, which is also fine. And this was a recovery with no complications that required surgery. The overall proportion of phalloplasties that need surgical revision, while lower for some surgeons (including mine), is about one in two. The highest number of corrective follow-up surgeries needed by anyone I know personally is 12.
From Gabriel Mac trans man.
This isn't "my hypothesis"- as if its just some random conjecture that just occurred to me- its a pretty well-established and widely-acknowledged sociological fact: our gender norms and expectations for men/boys ("hyper-masculinity")- which involve, among other things, valorizing aggression and violence- contribute both to the overall amount of crime, as well as the disparity in crime/violence rates between men vs. women.
And not only is it well-documented, its just sort of obvious: if you raise boys to believe that being tough and violent and aggressive are good and desirable traits for a man to have (and that anything less is negative/undesirable- "being a wimp" or "acting like a girl"), while teaching girls that they are to be quiet and submissive and reserved, you should probably expect to see increased crime/violence rates overall, and a disparity between crime rates between males vs females, as a result.
I also expect that this sort of lifelong habituation and saturation of societal gender norms and expectations isn't something that can be forgotten or eliminated over night- its not like it just magically disappears the moment a trans woman transitions (wrt your previous point).
Here is a study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/
Testosterone and Aggressive Behavior in Man:
"Atavistic residues of aggressive behavior prevailing in animal life, determined by testosterone, remain attenuated in man and suppressed through familial and social inhibitions. However, it still manifests itself in various intensities and forms from; thoughts, anger, verbal aggressiveness, competition, dominance behavior, to physical violence. Testosterone plays a significant role in the arousal of these behavioral manifestations in the brain centers involved in aggression and on the development of the muscular system that enables their realization. "
"There is evidence that testosterone levels are higher in individuals with aggressive behavior, such as prisoners who have committed violent crimes. "
I am not claiming no crime is affected by socialisation but that it is inadequate to account for the big discrepancies in crimes and prison populations.
From one of your articles:
"Boys learn to be men from the men in their lives, from their own experiences navigating our social norms, and from the large social and cultural context. Boys live under intensified pressure to display gender-appropriate behaviors according to the ideal male code."
...........
As I have said this is men influencing other mens behaviour based on behaviour arising in men. It is explained by men being men and influencing other men to try and attain a copycat masculinity but not based on a totally invented masculinity created by society.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
Yes but if someone is going to a big effort to become a woman with large doses of oestrogen in their body, presenting feminine etc they are actively trying to be more like a woman which means you would expect them to be trying to follow women's patterns of behaviour. Like I mentioned above men are acting more aggressive to copy other men so if you were trying to act like a women you should logically see a diminution in male patterns of behaviour or a concerted effort.
Except, again, its unreasonable to expect people to just unlearn a lifetime of habituation and social expectation/performance at the drop of a hat. Why would we expect it to work that way? Wouldn't we expect it to take some time to unlearn these (often subconscious) expectations and behaviors?
And I don't see anything in your cited paper or quotes that contradicts what I'm saying- it seems like you're arguing against a different point than the one I'm making. Remember, you said there was "no evidence" that socialization and social factors drive crime and violence, or help explain the difference in crime/violence rates between males and females. I pointed out that there is in fact a fairly large body of evidence (and scholarly consensus) for this. Gender norms, especially those governing masculinity (so, social factors, not biological ones) can and do contribute to the overall amount of crime and violence, and can help explain the disparity in the rates at which males and females commit crimes/violence.
(to be clear: no one is saying that its the only factor, but it is a factor, and there is a good amount of evidence for that)
Here's an argument that the aggregate absence of regret impacts how ethical it is.
( 1 ) If a surgery is not regretted, it was either not felt to be harmful long term, felt to be beneficial or incapacitated the person so much it made such an assessment impossible. (seems an exhaustive disjunction)
( 2 ) Gender affirming surgery is not regretted. (it is rarely regretted, <1% regret rate)
( 3 ) Gender affirming surgery is felt not to be harmful long term or felt to be beneficial or incapacitated the people... (instance of 1)
( 4 ) It didn't incapacitate the people. (It just doesn't remove insight from people)
( 5 ) It therefore is felt not to be harmful or felt to be beneficial. (3,4)
( 6 ) If a decision is felt to be harmful long term, it would be likely to be regretted.
( 7 ) Gender affirming surgery is not likely to be regretted. (citations available).
( 8 ) Gender affirming surgery is not felt to be harmful long term. (7, 6)
( 9 ) Gender affirming surgery is felt to be beneficial long term. (8, 3, 4 - disjunction elimination).
I'm sure you can see how you'd adapt the argument in terms of tendencies rather than strict statements. Like "If a surgery is not regretted by the majority of..." etc.
Less complications than routine surgeries, also gender affirming treatment for young people doesn't tend to have long term consequences - like puberty delaying drugs etc.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What about the literal thousands of people the world over wanting gender affirming treatment, surgery and support? What about the tiny rate of regret?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
There are three issues here.
The first is that the force of this argument derives largely from trying to make people disgusted, it's an emotional appeal using disgust. That is not a pleasant thing to do in this context, and it is also a bad argument. Rhetorically effective maybe, demonstrative definitely not.
The the second thing is that the rate of complications is rather different from whether the surgery is advisable. EG, someone who will 90% die without surgery X and 50% die because of surgery X should take the surgery. Similarly, someone who will suffer a lot more without surgery X than without surgery X should take the surgery. The overall thrust of your argument there is just invalid.
The third thing is that the premise is at best misleading and at worst wrong. You seem to have used the quote to suggest that this complication is typical, and furthermore that it presents sufficient risk to stop the widespread use of surgeries.
A quick search will show you that the complication rate is lower than typicality 32.5% from a meta analysis, and the paper stresses that the surgery is still of utmost importance for the people who take it. That's M2F genital surgery though. F2M breast removal has much lower rate, approximately the same for F2M genital surgery though. I didn't look up the other surgeries required for it.
The people who need these surgeries give informed consent, they will be extensively briefed on the risks and what can happen. They still consent.
These complication rates also aren't dissimilar to other surgeries - eg here you can see for shoulder arthoplasty, there is at least one complication which occurs about 60% of the time. And this is not seen as an argument against shoulder surgery is it?
Focussing on complications is also worse, I believe, than focussing on rate of regret. Why? Regret is individually based. Attitude after the surgery simultaneously gives you the overall appraisal of the subject (whether it was a good idea, improved their life etc) regardless of the complications and better tracks quality of life changes induced by the surgery. Someone could have a complication and not care, someone could have no complications and think the surgery wasn't worth it.
In that context, the rates of regret for transition are much, much less than common surgeries.
https://journals.lww.com/prsgo/fulltext/2021/03000/regret_after_gender_affirmation_surgery__a.22.aspx
https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/regrets-after-prostate-surgery/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779800/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6652388/
Transitioning, prostate, knee, leg in that order. <1% of people who receive the surgery regret it... And there is not widespread disgust toward prostate, knee or leg surgery.
Finally, the article you linked was a good read. You seem to have cherrypicked it though, while the process was body horror, the overall impact of the surgery was identified as strongly positive by the person who had it. They wanted to have a penis, they just didn't want to have only a penis.
The only thing in this which forms any sort of argument is a disgust reaction, your disgust, and it's not very nice!
I think you saying this is very harmful.
Phalloplasty and Vaginoplasty are literally genital mutilation extreme genital mutilation which stops the organs from function and makes them infertile. More severe than widely condemned FGM female genital mutilation.
The low levels of regret are obviously highly suspect because most surgeries should have a substantial level regret due to inevitable complications in some people. I don't know before I have a surgery if it will have complications that I may regret.
Complications but no regret is suspect as well. But knee surgery is to improve mobility and knee function.
Vaginoplasty and orchiectomy destroy function of the penis and fertility.
You are part of creating an Orwellian world to convince people black is white.
When someone commits to being and a vegan they cut all animal products out of their life. And even If they occasionally slip up and eat animal products they still eat far less than non vegans because they are highly motivated to. You should expect a substantial difference logically.
Have you heard of Autogynophilia?
Yikes. More nonsense. They are legitimate (and quite safe) medical interventions, not "genital mutilation" (else doctors would not be allowed to perform them), and they exist for a reason: gender dysphoria is a legitimate medical condition (and a rather unpleasant one from what I gather), and gender-affirming genital surgery is a crucial tool for helping people get relief.
Maybe, but it isn't appropriate in this context (why do you even care about other people's extremely private business in the first place?), nor is this an appropriate place to be simply venting disgust against a highly vulnerable minority group.
If you have things to say on the scientific, medical, ethical, sociological, etc. aspects of transgenderism and trans gender identity, that's great, by all means talk about that (as long as its still within the bounds of the site's posting guidelines, at least). But going on about how transgenderism is evil and wrong and how gender-affirming medical interventions are "genital mutilation" ain't it, chief.
They should not be allowed to perform them in my opinion. Are you unaware that medics have been highly unethical throughout history and committed lots of acts now considered torture and malpractice?
How would you describe the slicing up of a penis other than mutilation? It categorical cannot be turned into a vagina (which is a muscular canal) so what is it being turned into?
Lili Elbe is one of the most famous trans women in history.
"In 1931, she had her fourth surgery, to transplant a uterus and construct a vaginal canal.[6][7][32][5] This made her one of the earliest transgender women to undergo a vaginoplasty surgery, a few weeks after Erwin Gohrbandt performed the experimental procedure on Dora Richter.[26]
Death
Elbe's immune system rejected the transplanted uterus, and the operation and a subsequent surgical revision caused infection, which led to her death from cardiac arrest on 13 September 1931, three months after the surgery"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe
No man has had a successful uterus transplant and this one killed Lili
A few things here.
Firstly, forced circumcision is seen as unethical because it's forced - doesn't require consent. It inflicts a substantial harm on the person without their consent. Gender affirming surgery is done with consent. This is not a fair comparison.
Secondly, the premise is wrong, F2M genital surgery doesn't stop pregnancy unless the womb is damaged or removed. Even wiki has an article on Transgender Pregnancy. Similarly, M2F surgery can still allow reproduction - people plan ahead and store sperm. It goes without saying, but anyone with male natal sex and the ability to produce sperm can impregnate anyone with female natal sex who is fertile. That can happen regardless of the surgery (so long as reproductive aids are in play) or gender identities of anyone involved.
Thirdly, it doesn't stop the organs from functioning. M2F and F2M surgery recipients can still pee and orgasm. There might be complications with these things... But they don't stop peeing y'know. They also don't necessarily become infertile - see article regarding trans people with wombs and trans people who can produce sperm.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Well, regret expressed for gender affirming surgery is <1% rate. That came from a meta analysis. I trust that over my own intuitions, I think you should too. Before reading the study I thought the rate would be much higher.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
They can also make it prohibitively painful to walk, kill you, give you lasting chronic pain and/or fatigue. I don't think your attitude towards surgery is consistent here. Either apply your disgust to knee surgery and the like or remove it from gender affirming surgery. Some consistency in your ethical preferences please.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
See above. People prepare for this, it's preferable for the people (See informed consent), the rate of regret is low blah blah blah.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Disgust is appropriate. Disgust toward a group without reason is prejudice. You're showing us the latter, not the former.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
As far as I know, autogynophilia is now a fringe explanation of transgender identity rather than a mainstream one. See here, also as far as I know the popular sources which use it are transphobic. As in, they express revulsion towards trans people and condemn their behaviour.
No offense, but who asked you? Gender dysphoria is a legitimate medical condition, and so if gender-affirming surgery helps people get relief then what's the problem? Who are you to make that determination? How is it our business, who are we to say they shouldn't have access to these procedures? Its not like anyone's forcing you or I to have these surgeries. So why are you so concerned about other people's intensely private and personal medical matters?
I think it is a major issue relating to the truth and even the love of the truth. I've outlined numerous issues on here........ however............
I thought philosophy was The Love of Knowledge and was really concerned about the nature of truth and reality.
To me censoring or vilifying people for misgendering people and making me or others call a Male "She" or a Female "He" is undermining the quest for truth and transparency and authenticity.
It is Undermining people personal beliefs it is engaging in a reality denying exercise and trying to suck society in to it. Getting people to deny their senses when they see a male looking person enter a women toilets. Gaslighting people.
I have called people who are clearly male "she" to be kind and this was before people started chanting "Trans men are men" and demanded we view trans and biological sex as interchangeable and equivalent.
It is a major assault on the truth. It is not a trivial or solely personal issue it effects relationships between people and peoples children are being told they can be born in the wrong body and set on the course for sterilisation and becoming a life long medical patient.
My being gay does not hinge on the approval of others it is not propped up by making people have particular thoughts about me.
Telling people they are hateful for not believing a man can become a woman, opposing child transition and destructive genital surgeries
that is a major psychological exercise at undermining peoples sense of reason and strongly held reality beliefs to follow what amounts to a personal and group religious ideology of invisible gender souls.
Stop being sucked into these overblown media creations, and do something important.
What a strange thing to be singularly focused on.
Then why are you harping on them?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Right. So everyone else has to be punished for his mistake. By depriving people of the freedom to choose, you protect them from possible mistakes... and every possibility of self-actualization. like the risk- and happiness-free life of a caged finch.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It can be anything, including serious emotional dysfunction.
That aside - We're talking about a very, very small portion of the population, which doesn't really affect society in any way, and none of that less than 2% of the population, afaik, has troubled you in any direct way.
So.... what is your problem????
I'm disgusted with your bigotry. Happy? It's tiresome to read posts from someone who doesn't grasp the concepts of proof and evidence. When you're confronted with the fact the studies you cite don't say what you think they say, you ignore it and post anecdotal evidence. When you're confronted with evidence contrary to your position, your go to reaction is to ignore it. And then we get even more anecdotal evidence, which, in case you've missed that note, isn't evidence. If you don't understand what evidence is or logical proof, then you should begin with a course in logic.
@Andrew4Handel :up:
I'm not happy with your disgust.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
This is just a tad suspect. It is a mental health condition. Alien limb syndrome is not treated by surgery, and generally it seems that to treat psychological conditions with surgery is suspect, at the least. One might better compare such surgical interventions more with cosmetic surgery than knee surgery or the like.
@Andrew4Handel's situation is, as I understand it, that of someone who is not gender-typical, and therefore feels potentially the social pressure to undergo such surgeries, just as women are pressured socially towards conforming to a physical ideal of youth and beauty through surgery. As such Andrew has a certain authority as a directly affected person, and a particular right to express his concerns.
It is at least legitimate to wonder whether it is ethical to allow, let alone encourage conformity to such social norms through surgery, and to pretend that individual wishes in such matters are not very heavily socially constructed would be ridiculous.
FGM is outlawed because it results entirely from social pressure, and the relation to gender dysphoria is obvious. The tendency to overemphasise the autonomy of the individual and ignore the huge force of social pressures is itself the result of a current social pressure to conform. Body shaming is the basis of a huge, huge industry, that pretends it bears no relation to those primitive customs.
It's worthy of analysis, yeah. Normally you'd expect therapy or pills or other lifestyle changes to help someone with a mental health condition, if it were treatable by those means. I don't think there's evidence that it is treatable by those means though. The closest cosmetic surgery analogue, IMO anyway, is restorative cosmetic surgery after an accident. In this case, an accident of "having a mismatch between brain and body" - not that the brain in wrong body story is particularly accurate, but it's a good starting point for a more nuanced discussion.
I don't see much difference between surgery for mental health conditions and surgery for (classically considered) bodily ones. I can feel it in my gut but it doesn't survive thinking - which usually connotes the presence of ideology or emotional reaction for me. What reasons motivate surgery? Two angles maybe?
The first angle - alleviating suffering. Harm minimisation.
Seems to me to alleviate suffering, surgery being the best option to alleviate that suffering, and the patient believing that it is the best course of action to alleviate that suffering. That's a medical sounding perspective on it. It definitely alleviates suffering, and patients believe it is the best course of action - but is it the best course of action? I think there's a persuasive argument there, considering how long the delays for treatment are and how many hurdles there are to it, it's a miracle people don't give up more often if it wasn't seen as essential to their welfare.
There's a sub discussion there regarding whether trans people suffer a delusion regarding their gender, but I don't see what the delusion would be specifically. That they're "really" the gender normally/normatively associated with their natal sex? That seems to be aligning delusion with ideology rather than distorted perception. Though your mileage may vary on how much ideology and norms of perception are distinct.
They don't seem deluded in general, AFAIK they've got to jump through a lot of hurdles to prove they've got insight, are making an informed and rational decision to get transition surgery etc.
The second angle - informed cosmetic surgery being fine regardless of underlying ideological considerations.
I think it's fine? The things which would make it not fine are a good chance of regret (demonstrably false) or there being a coercion to transition. There doesn't seem to be a coercion by force for transition, like there is for female genital mutilation or circumcision. Social exclusion from family and friends etc. There are maybe some people who believe you're not a real (Gender) unless you transition, but that's quite different from it being the societal expectation+conformity pressure. If anything the conformity pressure directed at trans people seems overwhelmingly to be "don't be trans", right? Rather than "thou shalt medically transition". @Andrew4Handel definitely seems to be a good example of people emphasising how bad medical transition is, those are my lasting impressions regarding the peer pressure surrounding transition - the peer pressure steers you away.
Though most people don't really care what others do with their bodies. Either way the norm seems to be that transition is permissible but not mandatory. If it were seen as mandatory it would be easier to obtain, no?
Quoting unenlightened
I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether supporting a right to transition entrenches norms of body shaming. My instinct on that is that transitioning isn't seen as mandatory, just as permissible. People seem to want it despite societal expectations and perceptions of ickiness. "Thou shalt not be icky" and "thou shalt respect no one who desires the ick" are hallmarks of conformity pressure away from the seen-as-icky thing, like the true variation in feminine bodies or homosexuality... But the seen-as-icky thing in this case is transitioning, and the transitioned body. "Thou shalt ick" is the opposite tendency.
The perennial 'discussion' is about what what we should allow other people to do with their bodies. Some of us see that as arrogation of power.
Mental health conditions are medical conditions, and in any case gender dysphoria, like homosexuality, used to be classified as a mental illness only to have that classification subsequently corrected, and now is not considered a mental illness by credible health organizations or professionals (even though the incorrect belief that it is a mental illness persists among the general population- a belief that will change over time, as it did with homosexuality). So it is most certainly a legitimate medical condition, no way around that.
And alien limb syndrome isn't treated with surgery, because surgery hasn't been shown to be a safe and effective treatment for it. On the other hand, various surgical interventions have been proven safe and effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria. So sort of an apples/oranges situation here.
Misgendering trans people is engaging in falsehood and deception, as it involves blatantly ignoring how both gender and language work, and frankly is just an asshole move.
So don't do it. Unless you don't care about truth, and don't mind being an asshole. Honestly its just that simple. It doesn't harm you in any way to just use people's preferred pronouns, and so refusing to do so is just being an epic jerk.
I mean, honestly... is this satire or what? You post this checklist of transphobic misinformation- patent falsities- and want to turn around and claim concern for the truth? :yikes:
If you don't mind me asking, what are you smoking and where can I get some?
Reasoning by analogy is helpful in sorting things out, but it does provide great latitude in the conclusions we can reach by drawing upon distinctions. It gives rise to an entire legal industry, where we can creatively argue why precedent does or does not apply.
So, if a man wishes his penis removed, should he be granted that right, and, if so, should the same right be afforded the man who no longer wants his right arm?
Are penises enough like arms that the same rule applies? Does the fact that sexual expression/ gender representation is affected by one and not the other change our response? Or, is it a matter of pragmatics, that those wanting arm removal are rare enough that we don't care to evaluate it, but if it became something a considerable enough people really want, we should consider allowing it?
And the FGM is another issue. Are today's transsexuals evidence of a diseased society where natural biology is rejected and unknowing victims are volunteering for it (as some women might opt for FGM)?
So where do we go from here? I say like we always do, just with ad hoc responses to issues that arise without regard for pure logical consistency. In the case of transexuality, if option A is to be born as and live as a male but wish yourself female and option B is to live as a female but be born as a male, and deal with the negative social and physical issues, yet overall B was for you a happier life. I can't see not providing for B.
Why I won't do that for FGM or arm removal? Because I do make rules based upon principle alone, but I deal with specific issues and arrive at what works. But, if you want me to creatively arrive at a distinguishing fact that makes the analogy inapt, I suppose I could.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom - it is really concerned about how and when to judge or action an understanding of reality.
Authenticity is as much about one’s own experience of reality as it is about how we interact with others. I get that ‘misgendering’ people is an experience we’re going to have to learn to navigate somehow, but when conceptual assumptions are found not to align with experience, we either work on adjusting our methodologies to account for the experience in our understanding of reality, or we deny the experience is valid, true, or ‘normal’.
To demand that biology and identity both be viewed as valid descriptions of gender - that “trans men are men” - is not a trivial or solely personal issue, but nor is it a major assault on THE truth. Children being told they were ‘born in the wrong body’ IS, however.
Being gay is no longer considered a dysfunction, but being born biologically male yet identifying as a ‘woman’ (ie. trans) is still perceived as a medical condition that needs to be ‘fixed’. I disagree with this diagnosis - I don’t believe that ‘a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina’ should be considered anymore accurate than ‘a man is sexually attracted to a woman’, or vice versa. As with homosexuality, medical intervention is not the solution - understanding is.
The fact that most intelligent adults can now interact without assuming sexual orientation based on gender identity, leads me to believe they could also interact without assuming biological anatomy based on gender identity. Yes, we like being able to make assumptions - it simplifies our interactions. We’re unaccustomed to reading the signs at this early stage, partly because trans people are unsure how they will be received - as if something is ‘wrong’ with them. But just as it’s getting easier to recognise and unnecessary to conceal when someone is gay, I think it will eventually get easier to recognise and unnecessary to conceal when someone was born biologically male, regardless of gender identity.
My instincts are different. 'Thou shalt not be icky' is indeed a powerful commandment, but at the same time, anyone who does not conform to extremely narrow stereotypes of appearance and behaviour is already icky, and thereby in physical danger all day, every day. And under this lifelong threat, people "choose" whatever desperate measure promises a chance of sainted 'normality' and if not real acceptance, at least some blessed invisibility. The hatred of difference is already visible even in this very tolerant discussion site.
Quoting Vera Mont
It is an individual decision whether or not to obey commands at gunpoint. But guns are often persuasive, and so too are many other forms of pressure such as ridicule, bullying, exclusion, and so on.
You don't have an argument there, you are just reciting the received opinions and describing the status quo. Why isn't surgery appropriate in some mental cases, but appropriate in others? Why do the status of mental conditions come and go according to the moral strictures of the day? Try just a little critical thinking here. It's not as if it was the mental health professionals were in the vanguard of the change of attitude to homosexuality. In particular, try, please.
to be a bit less anal in your stigmatising put-downs. If you have a thing about assholes, try CBT before you opt for surgery.
Quoting Hanover
Certainly that is not a question I have given a reasoned answer to, but I have raised it, and it does seem to merit some kind of response. It seems the social pressure to enlarge breasts, lips, buttocks by surgery is regarded as benign by this predominately male group. Again I wonder if there is any reason at all, more than 'what is socially accepted is acceptable.'. It looks complacent if not partisan, to me.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
If your position is simply 'everything we're told is true' then you're not responding to the arguments you're simply not engaging. Medicine is political, your 'credible health organisations' are political, language is political. The decisions made in these fields are not made from some Solomon-like position of detached wisdom, they're not made by Plato's philosopher kings. they're made by humans, affected by and forming part of the culture they're in. The critique of the transgender movement is a political one, it includes the cultural changes within the medical establishment, the linguistic changes with our communities, and the cultural changes in the next generation. You can't argue against those criticisms by citing the very agencies they're criticising as if they were unquestionable authorities.
I honestly despair when I read this kind of response. Whatever happened to holding power to account? Do we just lay down an accept whatever we're told now? You said yourself...
Quoting busycuttingcrap
It used to be considered such by the very medical professionals whose current opinion you're now treating as gospel.
I think that is a plausible motivation for an individual, internalised hatred. But there's a question of which internalised hatred - is "fleeing toward surgery" the same motivation as "minimising a discrepancy from gender stereotypes"? Perhaps these things are not mutually exclusive effects or motivations. If trans people adopted a sainted normality as an aesthetic choice - and god knows who must choose it with more vigour -, it may equally be their essence showing itself.
Some abstain from adopting those norms expressively - or conforming -, are they more pure?
So out goes drinking ages, drug laws, ages of consent, euthanasia? We discourage people from doing what they like with their own bodies all the time. We do so because society is not (contrary to increasingly popular opinion) just a collection of individuals. We affect each other, our decisions form part of trends, peer pressure, shifting norms, social boundary changes, and political influences which affect all of us. I don't doubt in some neo-liberal utopia we're all free to do exactly what we want without having to consider our affects of others, but here in the real world we ought do exactly that.
The argument that gender affirming surgery is harmful is not cut and dried, but it can't be dismissed by such gross oversimplification as 'it's their body, they can do what they like with it'. The choices we make influence others and we ought be mindful of the effects of that influence.
Then you seem to have ignored most of what I have written
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
As I said I can cite many more cases of outspoken gay men who identified as trans and had their penis removed and now regret and in some cases immediately after the surgery. And people are bizarrely saying the surgeries are not genital mutilation are not sterilising people and denying the terrible effect this having on people due to external and internalised homophobia.
So you are lying about my contributions unfortunately.
I am a gay person with religious relatives who grew up in a religious cult, has not had a romantic relationship another man. I ended up with chronic sexual dysfunction due to my upbringing and paranoia about sex. I was also born with only one testicle that has now disappeared back inside my body so I have an empty scrotum. I am not speaking from place of heterosexuality or privilege. Myself and other gay and bi people are protesting about what has happened to the gay community and women's rights.
LGB has now become LGBTQIA+ gay people have been accused of committing sexual apartheid. There are few gay only spaces left. Same sex attraction is being attacked and lesbians are being harassed to sleep with women with penises, men with vaginas or Phalloplasties are turning up at gay saunas and crying when they get rejected by gay men.. Grooming is taking place. We are gay we have been there we are documenting it we know. Our community is compromised, at war and ruined and becoming criminal.
He should granted the right on the grounds of self-ownership alone, but self-surgery is dangerous. So should he be provided with a professional to do it for him, and a setting in which to do it? I donÂ’t think so.
It isnÂ’t clear whether these kinds of surgeries are life-saving or cosmetic. The symptoms are often centered around beliefs and desires. The desire to have a vagina or no arm is just that, a desire. The belief that a man is a woman is just that, a belief. Worse, such surgeries hinder proper bodily function, and as such arguably make one worse off. This is why such surgeries should be relegated to the cosmetic type where access depends on whether you can find it in the market.
Good idea! You know those arbitrary lines never worked, right?
Quoting Isaac
There is a distinction between discourage and forbid.
Quoting Isaac
By all means, do consider how individual decision regarding people's own bodies affect which others. Let us make laws according to an objective benefit/harm analysis.
If a man who feels acutely uncomfortable in the role of a man, because he knows he is meant to be a woman, and decides to have his external appearance altered to match his internal self-image, and he is happy with the result, that's a benefit for her. What is the harm, to whom?
If one such altered person in a hundred later regret their choice, that is his decisions doing harm to herself. Who else being harmed?
If then the 99 others who would benefit from the same alteration are prevented from doing so, just in case they might regret it later, that 99 unhappy people who for the rest of their lives bring little joy to anyone around them. Where is the benefit? (And that's even without asking why that one regretted his choice. Was it perhaps because bigots made her new life difficult?)
Quoting Isaac
That's not precisely what I've been doing. However, that's what the legal position boils down to.
How about: It's their mind. What makes you think, what gives you the skill, where do you get the right, to know it better than they do?
And: Just how, exactly, is it affecting these 'others'?
No disgust doesn't count as grounds to assume guardianship over another adult, and neither does the belief that your morals are better than theirs.
Quoting NOS4A2
And therefore refusal to believe it trumps their right to act on it? Again, on what grounds?
I'll make a bold claim, that some might want to dispute, (but I hope not) in an attempt to establish some semi solid ground for the debate:
"It is no part of anyone's essence to be ashamed of themselves or have any negative feelings about their body, (or for that matter, any pride or positive feelings). Such feelings can only arise in a social setting through comparison with others."
Alien limb syndrome is almost an exception, but to the extent there is negative feeling, it is precisely because it is not felt as oneself.
My belief that that man is a man ought not to prohibit his right to try to look like a woman, because I also believe that that man ought to decide what he should do to himself. ItÂ’s not my body and not my decision. So it trumps no right.
No one is arguing gender-surgery ought be forbidden, so the distinction is irrelevant.
Quoting Vera Mont
I've already outlined the potential harms, as have others. If you don't intend to address them then there's little point in my repeating them.
In this, we agree. Quoting Isaac
No-one is arguing that? I'm surprised.
Quoting Isaac
Potential harms to others? Do you mean that attitudes might change? Organizations and social structures might change? They will anyway. Not sure I can see it as harmful.
The question of whether regret is a common response to sexual reassignment surgery is an empirical question best addressed by statistically verifiable data, none of which you have. You just know of a handful of unfortunate examples. You can keep repeating them, but they hold no significant persuasive value for anyone who wants a scientific perspective.
Your personal health, sexual, emotional, and spiritual trauma are real, significant, defining, and challenging. Whether intentional or not, they are distracting to the issues at hand and they serve as a deterrent to objective debate for fear of offending you after you have discussed your vulnerabilities.
As to the impact you report on the gay community, even should I take that as fully correct, it is an aside. If there are members in the trans community that are bullying, attacking, misleading, and ostracizing, then they ought to stop, but that doesn't address whether society ought accept transsexuality.
As to a thorough evaluation of the empirical data, from the gay community, skeptical of transsexual medical treatment, see:
https://www.genderhq.org/trans-youth-suicide-statistics-kill-themselves-manipulate-parents
I point out this website because I do think it presents some reasonable areas of debate from the medical perspective and it comes from a critical perspective from the gay community.
That is, it makes your argument by addressing the science. Whether it ultimately is succesful will take some amount of sorting through.
I've not read any arguments to the effect that gender alteration ought be made illegal. Only varying degrees of concern about it's promotion.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes. Unless you seriously consider that after barely a few years of this change in approach all the evidence we'll ever need has been gathered and collated, then yes, all harms and benefits are 'potential'.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes. Are you suggesting it is impossible for such institutions to change for the worse? Or are you suggesting that we're powerless to steer changes, they're imposed on us by...?
Quoting Vera Mont
No. That much is evident. Others can, hence the discussion.
Why does the patient have the right to self ownership to do aa he wishes, but the doctor doesn't have the right to self-ownerhip to do as he wants as long as there is mutual consent?
Quoting NOS4A2
So you're in favor of facial feminization, breast implants, buttock implants, and liposuction, but hold your single objection to modifications to the penis?
No. I am stating that societies, their mores and attitudes change continuously, even though all societies have some members who want no kind of change. It may be for better or worse or better for some and worse for others, or simply different. And of course it is steered: advocacy groups take up one cause or another; they are supported by some portion of society and opposed by another; they are effective and successful or they are defeated and persecuted. Any shift in rulership, economic and power relations bring about change. Some changes are predictable, some are unforeseen; brought on by external or internal pressure, by new knowledge or new circumstances. Society is an organism. Organisms change. It's neither helpful nor harmful - it's life.
So how does any of that defeat the argument that this change might be for the worse and we ought steer society in a more healthy direction?
Therefore, insofar as the topic is positive essential characteristics of females, there is nothing to be said. Any positivity is a social construct, as is the negativity. One might think that reproductive ability is an essential positive, but the existence of abortion legal or illegal, and the stigmatisation of offspring born out of wedlock contradicts this. Beauty - is of course in the eye of the pornographer. One is left with motherhood and apple pie. And again the difference between noble service and ignoble servitude is all in the eye of the beholder.
Or possibly in the ass of the pontificator.
No, I was correcting you on the facts: mental health conditions are medical conditions, and gender dysphoria isn't considered a mental health condition. If your view on this question requires we ignore patent medical fact, all the worse for you. Though, credit where credit is due; "received opinions" is a good one :lol:
And I imagine what treatments are effective for what conditions are going to differ on a case-by-case basis (though, again, gender dysphoria isn't a "mental case"): what are the causes and symptoms of this or that condition? What is currently feasible via surgery? In any case, when surgery is or isn't appropriate or effective is a medical question, not a philosophical one, and neither you nor I are doctors (so far as I'm aware), so what is the value of us debating it?
This is not a fact of nature, it's a social construct. this is demonstrated by the fact that you already pointed out that what is and isn't a mental health condition changes from time to time, not in the light of evidence, but in the light of changing social mores.
It isn't (I've said nothing even remotely to that effect, as I suspect you know perfectly well), and there's no serious argument to engage here, just a lot of prejudice and misinformation/ignorance trying (and failing) to masquerade as a totally-not-ridiculous discussion topic.
Quoting Isaac
Where did I say anything about treating stuff as gospel? Its not that great to keep attributing fictitious claims and quotes to people you're trying to have a discussion with; maybe stick to the things I actually said?
And "medical evidence/expertise has been mistaken in the past, therefore this particular piece of medical evidence/expertise is mistaken" isn't much of an argument either. If the weight of the empirical evidence and the unanimous consensus of the medical profession considers something to be or not be a medical opinion, I'm inclined to accept that as provisionally true lacking any compelling evidence to the contrary.
And you don't have any compelling evidence to the contrary, do you? :roll:
I specifically said traits associated with women whether they are invented or real.
The issue was celebrating traits associated with women which has led to people denying such traits exist.
I then pointed out that women consistently behave less antisocially than men and that the top hundred most highly rated movies are almost all about mens experience's
Women committing less crime and carrying and caring for children is not a social construct. If people value human life and aren't antinatalist then the fact that we all grew inside a woman and only biological women can carry and grow a child is very relevant fact. It is one of the reasons women are more vulnerable in some ways and you would imagine it would raise the value of women but it has not.
You don't need to vilify men altogether to recognise that their biological traits can be harmful when misdirected.
Again with putting words in my mouth: "not in the light of evidence, but in the light of changing social mores"? When did I say that? Homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness from the DSM due to the overwhelming weight of the evidence, if that was what you were attempting to refer to.
And the notion that medical professionals are currently changing these sorts of classifications willy-nilly based on social mores or political agendas is well into nutty conspiracy theory territory (and, needless to say, is completely baseless)... I don't remember you being much of a conspiracy theory fan, un, but people's interests change so whatever floats your boat I suppose.
It is a social construct, because crime is a social construct created by law. Quoting busycuttingcrap
[sarcasm}Of course it was. And the same with drapetomania. [/sarcasm]
Crime is anti social behaviour and harmful regardless of whether it is made legal. The crimes men are committing are objectively harmful.
My point is that we should be celebrating whatever makes women behave more pro socially, more caring and less violent even if these things were being created by socialisation.
You could take the view everything is a construct and that constructs are deterministic or that biology is deterministic and we will never be able to change one way or the other.
So, out of curiosity, since the decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness was (apparently) based on social mores and not evidence, would you say it was therefore an erroneous decision?
In your informed medical opinion, should homosexuality still be classified as a mental illness?
And what about gender dysphoria- I suppose that was also done on the basis of social mores and not evidence?
Nah, medical/scientific. Sorry if you're salty about it, but that's life. Gender dysphoria isn't considered a mental health condition.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
They're not harmful, nor are they irreversible, and I'm not sure where it says that "if X involves hormones X must be a mental health condition" anyways- care to fill me in here?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Ok, and? All forms of surgeries, and most non-surgical medical interventions as well, carry potential risks.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Your naked disgust at trans people or gender-affirming surgery isn't relevant or appropriate, so you should probably ease off the throttle a bit with this kind of nakedly transphobic rhetoric.
Transsexualism (F64.0): Desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a desire for surgery and hormonal treatment
Gender identity disorder of childhood (F64.2): Persistent and intense distress about one's assigned gender, manifested prior to puberty
Other gender identity disorders (F64.8)
Gender identity disorder, unspecified (F64.9)
Sexual maturation disorder (F66.0): Uncertainty about one's gender identity or sexual orientation, causing anxiety or distress
The American Psychiatric Association permits a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in adolescents or adults if two or more of the following criteria are experienced for at least six months' duration
In addition, the condition must be associated with clinically significant distress or impairment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Diagnosis
"The American Humanist Association has withdrawn its humanist of the year award from Richard Dawkins, 25 years after he received the honour, criticising the academic and author for “demean[ing] marginalised groups” using “the guise of scientific discourse”.
The AHA honoured Dawkins, whose books include The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, in 1996 for his “significant contributions” in communicating scientific concepts to the public. On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.
“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black,” wrote Dawkins on Twitter. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
Nkechi Amare Diallo (/n??ke?t?i? ??m??re? di????lo?/; born Rachel Anne Dolezal, November 12, 1977)[fn 1] (/?do?l????l/)[9] is an American former college instructor and activist known for identifying as a transracial black woman. In addition to claiming black ancestry, she also claimed Native American descent.[10] She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president.
In that this change might also be for the better.
I'm not convinced that a "more healthy direction" has been put forward or attempted.
A number of people, though a quite small segment of society, and therefore not politically significant, is desperately unhappy with their assigned gender roles. Psychotherapy, aversion therapy, self-medication and peer bullying has failed to cure them of their unhappiness. So they turn to surgery or suicide.
What's the healthy alternative?
So there's debate as to whether transexual surgeries are harmful. Who gets to decide?
In a prior Covid vaccination thread you argued that due to uncertainties in vaccine effectiveness and the right for the individual to determine his own risks and benefits, the person directly affected had full authority to decide.
My view is that the best evidence ought be used and have less a problem imposing rational views on the irrational even if it reduces their autonomy
So, if you can show me that X is a public health hazard, I think it may need to be removed from the market, despite some still wanting to take the risk.
Are we in agreement regarding about the allowance of public mandates and prohibitions?
You seem to class surgery and suicide together, as if they are similar when they are not. Surgery may be the healthy alternative to suicide for many. There is such a tendency especially in social media to focus on those who are unhappy with their gender transitions rather than having regrets. Also, some people just get on with their lives afterwards and don't make a big thing out of it. Many pass as their chosen gender and don't even need to tell people most of the time, except for intimate relationships or in a medical context.
Also, from what I have read about detransitioning, except in cases like Kiera Bell in England, who changed too early in adolescence, many who do go back to their natal gender do so on account of the social intolerance which they experience
The doctor has the right to perform Vaginoplasty just as he does Rhinoplasty, only that the procedure ought to come at the customerÂ’s expense like most other medically unnecessary procedures.
I donÂ’t object to anyone getting cosmetic procedures. They could sew their hands to their feet and call themselves a circle, for all I care. I just donÂ’t think others should pay for it.
You just happen to be wrong about this. It used to be a crime to commit acts of sodomy; now it is not, here in the UK. It used to be a very very serious crime now it is an entirely personal matter nobody's business but the participants'. Except in those other countries where it is still a very serious crime. What is anti-social depends entirely on the society in question. It used to be a crime not to attend church on Sunday. It used not to be a crime to beat your wife and your children. Times change; yesterday's hero is today's villain.
We can argue about what is objectively harmful to what subject. I might agree that corporal punishment is harmful, or that surgery is harmful, because physically, it damages the organism, but whether or when it might be beneficial in the longer run to the individual or to society in general is still up for grabs. I had a minor surgery for a hernia and I still bear the scar and feel some residual pain. But on the plus side, my guts are not bulging out of my belly risking life-threatening strangulated hernia. I'm not going to make the argument in favour of corporal punishment, but it can be made precisely on the grounds of your complaint about objectively harmful behaviour of unrestrained males. They need discipline.
I am a moral realist of sorts, but I think the moral certainty of some moral positions being taken up here is dangerous. But I am not a mental illness realist. Mental illness and mental health are social constructs.
I agree wholeheartedly- for instance, the moral certainty that trans people are wrong and bad, and/or that gender dysphoria is not a legitimate medical condition- despite all the evidence and expert consensus to the contrary- can be quite dangerous.
You know what else is dangerous? Ignorance- especially of the willful variety- and bigotry (the post-hoc rationalization of bigotry isn't all that swell, either). And especially dangerous to trans people, who are many times more likely to be the victim of a crime than cis people, and at least partially due to the prevalence of the sort of rhetoric on display here.
But back to the matter at hand: do you think the decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness was a mistake? Should it still be classified as a mental illness, in your view? And was declassifying gender dysphoria as a mental illness also a mistake?
Homosexuality was considered harmful but there was a lack of evidence for this just like it was considered a mental disorder but there was a lack of evidence for that.
If something is proven totally harmless and is still a crime then either it will be made legal or it's being labelled criminal will be inexplicable.
Quoting unenlightened
If a criminal is harmed by a punishment that is a fact. If you are harmed by having surgery that is a fact. If the punishment or surgery has long term benefits it will be a short term harm for long term gain.
We are getting into rabbit whole territory now because if anything can deemed harmful and the same thing can be considered not harmful we have a contradiction (possibly due to subjectivity) That would fatally undermine all value claims.
The danger there is that I could take a course of action that harms other people but could not called out on it because my perception is final.
That does make me think that maybe people don't value you woman's traits because they are frightened of things like warmth and care and nurturing for maybe Freudian reasons. We value stoicism and self reliance because we are frightened people and they are the easiest paths to take.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detransition#:~:text=Frequency%20estimates%20for%20detransition%20and,to%20as%20many%20as%208%25.
Not together - alternative solutions to the problem of chronic hopeless unhappiness. I prefer surgery.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Not if they can't afford it.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I may have mentioned that.
...
Quoting busycuttingcrap
Who said it couldn't? People, as far as I can can see, are expressing their view that the change is for the worse. I don't read anyone expressing the view that it's actually impossible to be for for the better.
Quoting Vera Mont
They've literally just changed the law in Scotland. Campaign groups are currently going through court to have opposing campaign groups stripped of their charitable status. several prominent figures have have their careers (or reputations) ended for holding opposing views on this... The idea that this is not a 'politically significant' group is absurd. It took decades for women (half the population) to receive the sort of legal protections that trans folk have achieved in the space of a couple of years. By that measure alone, they have been one of the most successful political movements we've ever seen.
Hopefully, we do. Debate, democratic action, constitutional consideration... the usual.
Quoting Hanover
As I've said above, I don't believe anyone is arguing that gender-transitional surgery be banned (certainly I'm not), so I don't really see how this is relevant. The individual will indeed determine their own risks and benefits. I might disagree with that determination - especially if it fails to take into account the effect of that decision on others. I might also take issue with institutions of my government advocating or supporting certain routes, as is my duty as a citizen of that government (to hold them to account, that is).
Quoting Hanover
This is, no offence, a ridiculous view. I struggle to think of a single course of action for which there is 'best evidence' in any clear way. Perhaps gravity, or electromagnetism. Certainly not anything medical (where replication rates for experimental proofs are barely over 50% and corporate influence is so rife as to lead frequently to criminal charges). The idea that there is, available to us, any kind of clear 'best evidence' for any medical intervention is laughable. We just don't live in such a world, even if one were possible.
We live in a world where 'best practice' is hotly debated among experts in their field and we (non-experts) are hopelessly unequipped to decide between them.
Quoting Hanover
This is overly simplistic. The problem is what degree of proof you'll need, what default position you take. For example, why even let it on to the market in the first place? Why is the default position that it be 'on the market' until proven unsafe, why not 'off the market' until proven more safe? If I (assuming I'm an expert here) merely suspect it of being unsafe, should it be removed first and replaced when shown to be fine, or left available and removed if not? Then there's the question of who it is we need convince of it's safety and why. The question of degrees of personal autonomy to disagree with that body and on what grounds.
Testing the efficacy (or harm) of a medical intervention is not like testing the pH of a chemical sample, or weight of an object...there's never, ever, a single clear answer. So there's always a choice about who to believe, and choices about who to believe are political, not scientific.
Who appoints the members of SAGE in the UK? Who appoints the head of the CDC? Who appoints the Director-General of the World Health Organization? ... Politicians.
I think the class 'mental illness' is a social construct, as I already said. This means that there is no fact of the matter such that anything is or is not a mental illness, and one has or does not have anything identifiable like a virus or a wound. I would prefer to follow David Smail's psychology and talk instead about 'distress' and 'unhappiness'. Sources of distress are not defects of individuals at all, but defects in relationships. Homosexuals used to have an unhappy relationship with society, and now it is a little better. But anyone who deviates from our sexual stereotypes is liable to have a difficult relation to our society, because our society is very rigid still about sexuality, and many other things.
In general, I think the identification of any person as mentally ill is unhelpful. What is 'wrong' with homosexuals, intersex, schizophrenics, autistics, is that we cannot relate to them, and that is our problem at least as much as theirs. And this is not a particularly wild and wacky view, but has been a thread in psychology for a very long time.
That doesn't make the persons changing gender assignment a politically significant number; that shows how many of their fellow citizens support their right to self-determination. The support is significant, because the small, insignificant number of sufferers has won the sympathy of people who were always comfortable with their own gender.
Quoting Isaac
Too bad. Change happens. One group wants this, another group doesn't want them to have this, a third group thinks they should have it, a fourth says they could have this but not at our expense, etc, etc. Somebody wins an advantage, at least temporarily, and everyone who loses is disgruntled. The fact that this happens - all the time, over every issue - is not a philosophical or ethical consideration when assessing the citizen's claim to a right or prerogative.
Quoting Isaac
You mean, Scotland didn't allow trans folk to vote or manage their own money until recently? Yet, somehow, women now having those rights causes less disruption and strife in society than the long fight to secure the right. So maybe it the disruption and strife over trans rights will cease, once they have secured their rights.
Yes it does. A number that can get a national law changed is a significant number. and you've no idea whatsoever how that campaign won the gains it did, you're just storytelling. It might have won over the compassion of the population. It might have been seen as a cynically astute move by the politicians. It might have been good lobbying. It might have downright blackmailed enough Scottish MPs, or got in the good books of the fucking Lizardmen for all we know... You've provided nothing to back up your assertion at all. If you think all laws that get passed do so because of popular support then you're even more naive than you first appeared.
It's crazy how fast you mainstream liberals will spin, it must make you dizzy. If a fracking law gets passed, it'll be without doubt the result of evil corporate powers with their backdoor dealings, but as soon as one of the new fads gets its legal recognition suddenly the law becomes nothing but a pure reflection of the people's heartfelt will.
Those who transition this way usually have to be on drugs for the rest of their lives. That's an enormous profit for the pharmaceuticals. I don't know what kind of utopia you live in, but here on earth massively powerful lobbying groups are more often responsible for changes in law than an entire parliament suddenly finding itself moved by compassion. Funny these newly compassionate individuals didn't find it in their hearts to do anything about the 50 million starving children in Africa. Maybe next, eh?
Quoting Vera Mont
Of course it's a bloody ethical consideration. If the change is bad, it's an ethical concern. It's literally what the word 'bad' means.
Quoting Vera Mont
No. I mean that campaigns to change the law are usually long and hard fought. Any campaign which gets it's way after only a couple of years is a powerful political movement, not a downtrodden, barely influential minority.
What are these womanly attributes?
If there are womanly attributes where do they come from?
What is a trans right?
And how are they not covered by basic human rights?
Unfortunately what is not being explicitly said is that one sex wants the right to things that are for the other sex such as single sex spaces (including women's shelters) and single sex sports, gay male spaces, gay spaces etc. This is in conflict with women's rights and dignity such as not undressing in front of a male bodied person in a changing room and not being physically intimately examined by a male bodied person etc.
What has happened in Scotland is men can now identify as women without a gender recognition certificate, without having "lived as a woman" or presented as female for any specific length of time" and without having had any surgeries. Which has compromised women's security and is Going to be challenged by the British Government.
In contrast gay people have the right to marry and that in no way compromises straight marriages or the right of other people to get married.
I have yet to hear your proposal for the healthier, more beneficial, more ethical direction in which you want some unnamed factions or agents to steer the issue.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
DNA + social roles, usually. All infants born and raised in a society absorb the society's perception and expectation of these gender roles. When the DNA is ambiguous and a person is assigned to one kind of role, but internally identifies with the other, they have a strong desire to change their external image to their match their internal one. (Usually after a long, failed struggle to change the internal one.)
Yet to be determined, in many countries. I haven't defined it what advocacy groups demand of their governments and societies. A right, for anybody, is license to perform some activity and access to some share of communal resources under protection of the law. A 21-year-old, in western countries, has a right to buy alcohol; a seventeen-year-old does not. In countries with national health insurance, all citizens and resident aliens have a right to hospital admission for serious illness at public expense, while in countries with no such insurance, nobody has that right; hospital admission must be bought with private funds. So, no, all rights are not uniformly covered under human rights, which are concerned only with freedom from persecution.
So? What has that to do with the counterargument I'm presenting?
You argued that societal change had no ethical component because it's going to happen anyway. That's simply wrong on both counts. It does have an ethical component (there exist arguments about whether the change is 'right' or 'wrong'), and it is not going to happen anyway, its driven by our collective actions.
Whether I present an opinion about how society ought progress has no bearing on the validity of that argument.
That said, I have a theory that societies that are less hung up on gender stereotypes, will see a significant decrease in transitioning because there's a wider gamut available for gender expression so the dysphoria will probably lessen because gender roles will be less pronounced. For starters, men should be able to wear dresses instead of boring suits.
High heels, stockings and a wig:
And more of this please:
Not exactly. I said it had lots of components, the ethics of which are interpreted differently by each faction. There is no objective societal ethic to use as a standard.
Quoting Isaac
Always. Sometimes one faction wins a round, sometimes another. God refuses to decide, however hard both teams pray.
Quoting Isaac
You think people will stop driving it sometime? I guess that's possible. Therefore I'll settle for: "So far in recorded history, change has always happened anyway, even though some people have always opposed change on the grounds that it would/might be for the worse."
Quoting Isaac
You're quite right. I was hoping to nudge the thread back on track.
Nobody should ever have to wear a suit! (or high heels)
I thinks that's very likely. I think it's behind @unenlightened's concerns (as I read them), which I share. Progress toward that end is hampered, not helped, by the promotion of the idea that one's discontent is 'fixed' by altering the offending body, not by altering the society which unjustly places such sex-related expectations.
The notion that the fault lies with the only aspect profitable drugs can 'fix' is not an accident.
Change and the form that change takes are two different things. Of course society will always change, that doesn't mean we have to passively accept any specific change. We cna instead replace it with a different change.
Given this, we can still argue sensibly that some change is bad and ought be resisted.
Quoting Isaac
That's what people invariably do.
Quoting Isaac
Of course, it always is. But society still won't remain unchanged, so you who resist a specific change must still decide on:
a proposal for the healthier, more beneficial, more ethical direction in which you want some unnamed factions or agents to steer the issue.
Even in this thread we see people cannot escape gender stereotypes and put horses behind carriages to justify their own biases. And I like to think I have a decent rational grasp on these sort of biases and I still reinforce them without thinking through jokes, expressions, how I treat women as opposed to men etc. in everyday life. It's not something we're likely to escape any time soon.
I don't see why we need to escape gender stereotypes.
It is fact that there are far fewer women in prisons and committing violent crime. It is a stereotype and fact that men are more aggressive. There are averages and norms which make some stereotypes quite widely applicable but never covering every single person.
A lot stereotypes are not completely nonfactual.
It is one thing to dismantle stereotypes and another to try dismantle the biological reality of women by making the category meaningless and something you can opt in an out of.
Women have now been referred to in literature as cervix havers, pregnant people and black birthing bodies.
What is being called the breaking down of stereotypes is becoming the erasure of women.
So you don't know what a trans right is but are advocating for it anyway?
And can you not see how rights can clash with each other?
For a basic example the right to play music in your house and the right for your neighbours to live in peace and quite.
These things can lead to compromises but sometimes they cannot.
That is a problem!
Quoting Andrew4Handel
And there are many reasons for that besides genetics.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
As a woman, I don't feel threatened. You should take a poll, which cis gender is more opposed to dismantling stereotypes.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yup, if it makes you happy to put it that way.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Indeed, some do, and in order to be fair (which no society actually is, BTW) it would be necessary to reconcile such conflicts. But forbidding things is easier than solving problems, so that's how the legal code usually works.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That one certainly can! And there are even some helpful technologies.
So, what, precisely, can't be reconciled with acceptance of non-stereotype gender identities?
Women have been raped by men identifying as women in prisons and women's shelters but you don't feel threatened so that's Okay.
I am not a child starving to death in poverty that doesn't mean it is not happening and that I shouldn't be concerned.
And that relates to
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How exactly?
I am man who as I said earlier read books aimed at teenage girls as a boy and hung around with girls at primary school (kindergarten for Americans?)
I have never been a conformist but I have also never considered myself to be escaping stereotypes. I have had to accept that I am different than a lot of men who have different preferences not deny these mens existences and preferences and deny biological differences.
Ironically gender ideology says that if you are a girl who doesn't like make up and dresses you might be a trans child and need sterilising by puberty blockers and that if you are non conforming you need a flag and a label like Non binary or Ace-aro, pansexual and two-spirit etc.
What you said
that you don't feel threatened by things that are having a negative effect on other women
and that your personal perception should apparently guide legislation not the obvious flaws in an ideology.
As a gay man I am now being associated with lots of unpleasant things I am strongly against including gender ideology, breaking down healthy barriers, sterilising children with puberty blockers and castrating people and trying to normalise the attraction to children (Paedophiles) Now being labelled MAPS or minor attracted people.
Are we sure that's how it works? Isn't it rather that "the fact of the matter" is a matter of social convention rather than, say, a fact of nature? Adulthood is also something of a social construct, since how/when one qualifies as an adult has varied pretty significantly over time and from place to place, but in a given time/place there is still some "fact of the matter" as to when you are an adult according to the social conventions of that time and place: the fact of the matter is just whatever that community has decided it to be.
Or, to use Banno's favorite example, the rules of the game of chess are purely socially stipulated, but there still is some fact of the matter as to how each piece can move... its just a fact that is socially determined. And so similarly with mental illness as a social construct. So, that difficulty out of the way, you can now answer my question as to whether you think declassifying homosexuality and gender dysphoria as mental illnesses was a mistake, right?
Quoting unenlightened
You know who its really helpful for? People with a mental illness. I suspect it is pretty difficult to get treatment for a mental illness, without being diagnosed as a person with a mental illness.
Yeah I'm not sure this is even seriously in debate anymore; the positive effect on mental health outcomes, of both surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming medical interventions, is substantial. And as far as surgical interventions go, all major surgeries carry risk, and gender-affirming surgery is no exception... but as far as major surgery goes, they are quite safe.
So... no compelling contrary evidence, then? Maybe next time I guess, eh?
No. What I replied to your fear of the "erasure" of women due to the breakdown of stereotypes was that I don't feel threatened with erasure.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No again. You said that.
Whatever your personal feelings are regarding stereotypes, I can't relate to legislation or ideology or whatever. I'm tired of chasing your arguments all around the mulberry bush. You win.
Cut the crap lad. Respond to the position I have presented or not as you please, but if you want to respond make a point at least.
*warning graphic photos*
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3901910/
It was mentioned in this article I cited:
"The overall proportion of phalloplasties that need surgical revision, while lower for some surgeons (including mine), is about one in two. The highest number of corrective follow-up surgeries needed by anyone I know personally is 12"
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/gabriel-mac-essay.html
"One of the nodding heads in the group belonged to a nonbinary white person who was still horizontal in recovery from having had, a week prior, the worst happen, which was that after their procedure, in which all the fat and skin had been stripped from their left forearm from wrist to nearly elbow, along with major nerves, an artery, and veins, and then shaped into a tube and connected, in careful layers, to skin and blood vessels and nerves in their pelvis, their new penis had failed."
I mean, who would've thought that pushing lazy anti-intellectual conspiracy theories and parroting anti-trans talking points without actually thinking about what you were saying would not end well? :roll:
So you're saying that major surgery carries the risk of complication... what a shocking discovery!
This changes everything! :lol:
How can you endorse anyone getting a phalloplasty.
It is nothing like a penis.
Look at the article and the images in it and tell me you believe that is a penis and worth removing a chunk of your arm and leg for?
Are you a man? I have penis I have had surgery for a missing testicle and undescended testicles but I can get erections and produce sperm. Don't gas light people that that is a penis and a necessary body modification. It is sterility and life long health programs. How many examples do you want me to quote of complications I can probably easily find 100 I have read.
Why would you encourage women to think this is a penis and an adequate replacement for a penis?
Its pretty straightforward, tbh: gender dysphoria is by all accounts quite miserable, hence the increased rate of e.g. depression, suicide, etc, and gender-affirming surgery is both relatively safe as far as major surgery goes and has a strong positive effect on mental health. And in any case, if gender-affirming surgery scares you so much, there's an easy solution: don't have any.
My question for you is, why do you care so much about what other people are doing, especially if they find it helpful? Why are you obsessed with this particular type of surgery? I don't hear you going on about plastic surgery or other medical interventions that carry similar amounts of risk, so what is it that makes you so worried about this particular type of surgery and not any others? It couldn't have anything to do with your obvious prejudice towards trans people/transexuality, could it?
"(...)something big's happened, I had lower surgery back in January this year so January 2018 and that essentially means that I now have a penis"
Here Jammi is lying to a big audience as a phalloplasty (or the metoidioplasty Jammi had) is not a penis, does not function like a penis and the other implants are not testicles and do not function as testicles and produce sperm, Jammi also does not have a prostate gland or produce seminal fluid.
Jammi goes on:
[i]"(...)with my surgery first stage back in January 2019 where had complications hematoma nicked artery blood spurting everywhere second emergency surgery week in hospital horrible horrible time much pain."
"One of the surgeons came through and like removed some stitches and then squeezed out the blood clot probably one of the most painful things I've ever experienced
yesterday went a bit bad after the squeezing I did feel better and then went to the toilet and suddenly the right side just started swelling up again really bad blood was spurting out.
It was not pretty so what that meant is I had to go back in for surgery it was all good in the end and it didn't impact my actual results but it was probably one of the worst weeks of my life i'm not gonna lie "[/i]
.......
Jammi then goes on to describe having no regrets.
What does it take to make someone admit they regret something. Jammi was just a normal lesbian before this. Now Jammi is a heterosexual male. An aspiration for an increasing number of lesbians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YImdgvt8_qA&t=240s&ab_channel=Jammidodger
Because they're harmful.
Love how you are now confusing lesbians with gender dysphoria.
I hate your parents for fucking up your upbringing.
Not appropriate.
You can probably predict my response based on this.
Quoting unenlightened
I think you believe the same as me, that people are what people make of them. Identity isn't in the head, it's in what people do together and have done together - personality as internalised patterns' constraints on people's potential actions. So some kind of comparison is in the essence of identity, right?
The next point I've got to make is that people do have predispositions, perhaps some bodily, which constrain how patterns can be internalised into identity, which constraints work and which don't. That manifests as a constraint on someone's propensities for development, who they become depends on how they're set up to grow and set up to adapt, even though all the potential is not determined in advance.
So I think you can grant that shame is not part of someone's essence, but negative feeling about the body could result in a discrepancy between someone's essence and their current state, which is indeed a comparison, but perhaps of the first kind. A desire to become who you know you are, rather than a desire to become someone else. The shame isn't necessarily felt, just commonly felt.
If shame is the feeling that your essence is in error - "I am wrong" rather than "I did wrong", it isn't surprising that shame often follows such a fundamental discrepancy.
Seem about right to you?
Yes, but that's not the debate here. For clarity (although it's been spelled out already) I'd prefer people not be encouraged to surgically alter their bodies to 'fix' a mental health problem caused by societal values which are themselves wrong. Fixing society's unhealthy attitudes by laying the fault at the individual is itself unhealthy, but doing so by giving more power to an industrial complex which is already responsible for some of the greatest tragedies we've recently been through is doubly bad.
Quoting Benkei
If we have two options (simplistically - promote gender altering surgery or don't), and each has it's potential flaws, but we accept suboptimal solutions all the time... does that lead us to either option? It reads to me as an argument for either.
If I've genuine concerns for the social impact of such policies then is it not just as legitimate to say that, yes, there'll be downsides to not promoting such surgery (mental health impacts on those who might otherwise be helped), but no policy is perfect and we accept suboptimal solutions all the time?
... Christ almightly! Does everything one doesn't personally agree with have to be a 'conspiracy theory' these days?
What's lazy is dividing every position into one of the two ready-made media-friendly tribes on every issue instead of actually reading what people are saying.
I'm not promoting either. I'm promoting having the choice and respecting such choice when it's been made one way or the other. What I don't accept, not that that is what you're doing but what I consider other posters to be guilty of, is trying to rile up disgust and deciding once and for all for everybody in every situation what that choice should be. It's not as if people are picking out a dress when they decide to have gender affirming surgery. At least in the Netherlands it takes years and surgeons are reluctant to perform these operations because they take their hypocratic oath seriously. Patients really should have a high likelihood to be better off with the surgery than without. Especially since comorbidity of other mental health issues are common.
That's my poor wording at fault. I was attempting to engage with your argument at the level of public health policy. Policy will either promote or restrain certain approaches, it's extremely unlikely (not to mention very difficult) that a policy would do exactly neither and leave both options precisely equal.
As such, your argument, applied to public health policy, could be used equally to design policies which place barriers (or further barriers) in the way of pharmaceutical and surgical responses to gender dysphoria using exactly the same argument as is being used to design policies which remove or lessen those barriers.
I don't think so because public health policy isn't in the business of resolving social issues. It has to work with the constraints it has and that's societies with gender stereotypes that are so stringently prescriptive @Andrew4Handel can't even imagine how a man can act feminine.
That said, even from a holistic point of view, doing away with gender stereotypes will not resolve all gender dysphoria (although I guess that won't be gender dysphoria anymore but something else, body dysphoria?) and I'd advocate the option because more choice is more freedom.
Edit: wait, I might be misunderstanding, are you saying currently policy promotes having gender affirming surgery?
I find this hard to accept. I would take issue with it on its face - junk food, for example, is as much a social issue as a medical one and public health policy acknowledges that. But I would also take issue with it from the position of a citizen. If it is, as I believe, our duty as citizens to hold our authorities to account, then we needn't (nor ought to) limit our assessments to artificially narrow concerns.
If the social impact of a public health policy is negative, then the personal benefits to individuals need not outweigh that as far as we're concerned. The authority itself might have a narrow remit, but we don't.
Quoting Benkei
I agree, but there are solutions to gender dysphoria which do not involve promoting the idea that it's the individual who needs 'fixing'. As @unenlightened has alluded to, there are mental health approaches which focus on acceptance (society's, not the client's), and strategies to deal with the lack of it. Therapies which focus the blame where it belongs and provide mechanisms for change on both sides of the individual's relationship with their community.
I think we should differentiate with the ideal world and the complex, large nation states we live in. In an ideal world, we have a holistic approach and public health policy is embedded in other socio-economic policy and they move and change in tandem and a cross-specialist interaction leads to (far more) optimal solutions. The reality is they are only tenuously related. It's public health policy to highlight the problem of junk food but individual choice trumps prohibitions in this area. And this is an issue; food safety doesn't deal with whether it's healthy. So we see small changes, where nutritional values and scores are given to food so people can make more informed choices. And we see people don't care. Well, actually, that's not fair. People with enough money to worry about their health do care, for too many people it's just a matter of what they can pay for and with the need for both persons in most relationships to work to even make ends meet, who has time to cook? So really, economic circumstances are making it much harder to have a healthy lifestyle. In the Netherlands that's mostly driven by stagnant wages and insane increases in house prices. Which in turn is driven by macro-economic policy choices, foreign direct investments and market liberalisation.
Yes, it's all connected but no we're not capable of untangling that web and I don't think anybody is. So we have to compartimentalise out of necessity.
Quoting Isaac
I don't consider this realistic though and I don't find it helpful to build hypothetical solutions to actual problems. Maybe in relation to family members yes but the wider community is not in therapy - it doesn't resolve bigotry in every day life and on social media, it doesn't get you a job because people don't hire you because they think you're offputting or they don't want to create a scene with the high performing alpha male Jake they don't want to lose.
Basically, I don't disagree with anything you say, I just don't think it's in any way practical.
Do we? I agree it's too connected to unravel with great accuracy, but I'm less sure that reluctant compartmentalisation is the only answer. A 'rough sketch' of the likely 'web' seems another viable alternative, or 'as many plausible connections as you can manage' is another. I share your concern about pragmatic limits, but it doesn't seem too difficult to me for an institution like https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance in my country to consider social impacts. It already considers economic impacts. I accept it'll never cover everything, but I don't accept it's thereby under no obligation to even try.
Quoting Benkei
They're not hypothetical, such therapies actually exist. Obviously they don't run therapy on 'society' but they do focus on an individual's methods of relating to a sometimes hostile environment as opposed to assuming there's some bodily, or in most cases chemical, 'imbalance' which needs a pharmaceutical 'fix'. There's long been a movement opposed to 'chemical psychiatry' it has a perfectly well-accepted pedigree.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, disagreements over the pragmatic feasibility of any solution are much harder to resolve. All I can give toward my case is that institutions like NICE already do take non-medical impacts into account, and non-pharmaceutical, non-blaming, therapeutic interventions do already exist and have been used with some success.
I want to be picky, because it affects the direction I would like to turn us towards. It is ubiquitous, it is universally instilled from birth, but it is not essential. "Be good for Mummy." is the first commandment to alienate oneself. It is irresistible because the infant's dependency is total, and Mother's love is conditional. The rift between unacceptable essence and role-conforming performance is universal, and thus normal, and considered sane. To steal Smail's book title, This is the origins of unhappiness.
Some people think this is all a conspiracy theory apparently. :yikes:
Quoting fdrake
My daughter, aged 4, doesn't want to be taken to school by her mixed race mother, but by her white dad. She wants to be white but isn't. This is what she has learned in 2 weeks at kindergarten.
I don't want to call being [s]mixed race[/s] brown and frizzy-haired a predisposition, nor being whatever sex one is; what is internalised as identity is other people's feelings about what they identify one as being. There is a functional body image of course, that develops and that is already complex, but it becomes overlaid with this cognitive internalised identification and that is where the pride and shame and desire to be different begin.
I don't think one can distinguish, at that level, (or at age 4) what aspects of the body can be reasonably developed, and what cannot. This results in all kinds of contradictions that play out in individuals, internalised from the contradictions in society.
A simple example is food. Food is portrayed as orgasmically pleasurable, and a huge industry of salty, spicy, sugary, fatty, carbohydrate heavy instant foods are pushed onto people. At the same time, the ideal of beauty is heroin chic, starvation diet thin and also pushed as the path to happiness. Anorexia and morbid obesity are the individual manifestations of this social contradiction. Neither, though, I would say, has its origin in an individual predisposition, it is all learned and internalised. "I am strong willed and starve myself to death, you are a weak-willed lard-arse." And the strong or weak will is also an identity internalised from the emotions of others. So the distinction between the anorexic and the morbidly obese is about as significant as which side of the rope the tightrope-walker falls.
People do not like to hear this very much; they have been sold the rational self-interested man in control identity, and having bought into the franchise, object to having it exposed as a fraud.
It wasn't, until you introduced it.
The argument, apparently, was that the state of womanhood is in danger from males transitioning to female. I do not believe that to be the case.
Another argument was that, if a small percent of the population changes gender at will, society might somehow be harmed. I do not believe that to be the case.
Another argument was that heterosexual men disguised as women have penetrated women's shelters and prisons for the purpose of committing rape and other crimes. I am not personally aware of such a case, but as crimes are sometimes committed by people in disguise, I see no reason to disbelieve it. I do not, however, believe that all trans people should be penalized for that fact.
Then there is this multipronged ?argument:
Quoting Isaac
1. I am unaware that "people" are being encouraged to alter their bodies, and if so, by whom they are being encouraged.
2. This assumes that you are qualified to assess whatever problems people you have never met experience in relation to their gender identity, or that these problems are necessarily and invariably psychological. I do not believe either to be the case.
3. Such psychological problems are assumed to have a single cause: societal values,
which are
4. presumed wrong in some unspecified way.
While both these assumptions may be correct, no proof is offered.
5.I do not believe that 'society's unhealthy attitudes' can be fixed, but I do know that laws are always drafted in such a way as to hold individuals responsible for transgressing social rules and mores. Whatever a society is right or wrong about, only individuals can be punished.
6. Industrial complexes already have a good deal of power through their economic influence. I don't follow which particular industrial complex is being empowered by gender transitions, or what that complex is expected to do with its new power.
7. Unclear also is what industrial complex has been responsible for what great recent tragedies.
This argument is interesting for its sheer impenetrable complexity.
To date, I have not "promoted" gender reassignment, though I have steered several young people to social service agencies that might be able to counsel them, and helped someone research medical procedures.
As to social policy, the fascists are coming, so I would strongly encourage anyone who values their individual freedom to exercise their options while they can.
You have an odd approach here...
Quoting Vera Mont
Yet in your counter...
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Vera Mont
...all offered without a shred of proof nor even any argument.
Then there's...
Quoting Vera Mont
(Referring to arguments about corporate power), which is smartly followed by...
Quoting Vera Mont
...which presumably is presented as an example of an argument as clear and penetrable as a mountain lake...?
Pushing on.
Quoting Vera Mont
I'm seriously tempted to just call it quits there. You're either being deliberately disingenuous or are woefully uninformed. You've never heard of Tavistock Clinic, sued for medical negligence for doing exactly that, and then promptly shut down after a damning report by the Care Quality Commission?
Quoting Vera Mont
No, it presumes someone is. Or rather, someone must.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes. Blaming people's bodies because society won't accept them as such is wrong. Categorically.
Quoting Vera Mont
Nonsense. Rules and laws can be drafted so as to bring about social change. Again, putting being disingenuous aside this is simply ill-informed.
Quoting Vera Mont
Gender transitions require a lifetime of drugs. You work out which industrial complex benefits.
Quoting Vera Mont
Opioids crisis. Over 100,000 dead last year.
We could add to that insulin price hikes, the refusal to distribute life-saving vaccines at cost, any number of cases of proven criminal fraud over prescription drugs... This is the industry you're wanting to entrust with the lifelong 'solution' to gender dysphoria.
Gender in its various forms may be part of evolutionary pathways. The various differences, including intersex and gender dysphoria are aspects of nature, just as homosexuality is, so independent of how people choose to act, including transitioning or not, it may all just be seen as diversity in the spectrum of evolutionary possibilities.
No. Only actual conspiracy theories.
Agreed. But also, lazy conspiracy theories are lazy.
OK. And you identify these how?
I don't think I should be required to prove my belief and disbelief to you, even if that were possible to do. And, no, I will not attempt to prove that I don't think so.
Quoting Isaac
Correct. Woefully behind on UK news. But if it's been shut down, it's presumably stopped encouraging people.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, I happen to agree, although not everyone agrees on categorical rights and wrongs. And I gather you assume that this blaming of bodies is the sole cause of gender dysphoria. Seems a tad simplistic.
Quoting Isaac
As I understand the situation, that is standard procedure in all gender reassignment cases. It's a process, still being studied, researched and refined. https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/discussion-paper-toward-commission-policy-gender-identity/current-issues
Quoting Isaac
A law can be drafted 1. to prohibit something, 2. exact something, 3. lift a prohibition or 4. lift an obligation. It is enforced by punishing individuals who 1. do what is forbidden 2. fail to do what is required 3. prevent another from doing that which is permitted.
Eventually and incrementally, laws do contribute to social change and that changes attitudes over time. I suppose a government could pass a law saying: From Monday on, all citizens will be tolerant, but it would be difficult to enforce.
Quoting Isaac
I'm not wanting anything of the kind. You sure piled a lot of grudges onto a simple argument for personal autonomy! I'm wanting to let people make their own decisions about their lives.
And also to regulate the pharmaceutical industry. And also to stop harmful criminal activity and medical malpractice where possible. But I suspect those three functions come under separate government departments.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I've been hearing that rumour for about 60 years. If it had been serious, human males as we know them might have ceased to exists in the space of 100,000 to 5,000,000 years (different estimates by different authors). However, the situation is not so dire: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17127617
I've always been of the mind that its relatively safe to call things that quack and waddle "ducks".
And the suggestion that the declassification of homosexuality and/or gender dysophoria as mental illnesses was done on the basis of "social mores" or political agendas and not evidence or valid scientific/medical considerations (nevermind the extensive body of evidence/medical studies cited as the basis for those decisions) lands pretty comfortably in conspiracy theory territory, in my estimation... and especially when this is suggested on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, and in the absence of any relevant expertise.
This is the sort of nonsense you expect from vaccine "skeptics" or flat earthers, not people interested in philosophy, and not least because its simply lazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
"Before Money's work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories."
"A 1997 academic study criticised Money's work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer.[4] Reimer committed suicide at 38 and his brother died of an overdose at 36. Some of Money's therapy sessions involved sexual activity between the two brothers when they were children."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
"Money was a prominent proponent of the "theory of gender neutrality"—that gender identity developed primarily as a result of social learning from early childhood and that it could be changed with the appropriate behavioural interventions."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
"By the age of 13 years, Reimer was experiencing suicidal depression and he told his parents he would take his own life if they made him see Money again."
"For several years, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently successful female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases. Notes by a former student at Money's laboratory state that, during the yearly follow-up visits, Reimer's parents routinely lied to staff about the success of the procedure.[failed verification] When Money learned about this, he continued to misrepresent the results as a success for decades. By the time this was discovered, the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant Intersex medical interventions had become the accepted medical and sociological standard"
I am familiar with the story of David Reimer and it is such an unusual one as I read his autobiography which he wrote some time before his suicide. Thinking about it now, the idea of raising a child who had lost his penis, in a circumcision accident, as a girl seems atrocious. But, for many years the case was important in sociology to show that gender can be learned socially. Money's work with Reiner was considered to be a great success.
It was only later that it was known that Reimer suffered so terribly. Even though he had been given surgery and hormones he still was extremely masculine and got made fun of for being so hairy. He did transition to male and I believe that he was going to have a phalloplasty and he struggled with depression. I knew that his brother had schizophrenia but I didn't know that he died of an overdose. It is not surprising that the twin suffered with all that had happened, especially the suicide of his brother.
First the campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_1967
Then the law change.
Then the science.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
Don't let history get in the way of your ranting scientistic ideology.
He says, while ignoring the relevant history. Pot, meet kettle. :roll:
(and as always, bogus accusations of "scientism" are a reliable indicator that someone's argument has fallen apart and that they're now grasping at straws... so thanks for that)
Meanwhile in reality, the APA's decision was based on (and explicitly cited) scientific studies on the subject, particularly the extensive "Kinsey Reports", i.e. "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948), and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), as well as Hooker 1957 ("The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual"), Ford and Beach 1951 ("Patterns of Sexual Behavior"), and others (the list of citations for the APA task force report on the subject is seriously like 30 pages long).
So homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness due to a compelling body of evidence showing homosexuality to be a normal, natural, and healthy variation of human sexuality... not because of some conspiracy among liberal psychiatrists or pressure from a woke mob of LGBTQ activists or whatever other fanciful nonsense you've talked yourself into.
(The irony is that homosexuality's original classification as a mental illness was due primarily to social and cultural biases and presuppositions in the absence of really any relevant empirical support, and was only changed in the face of an overwhelming and growing body of empirical counter-evidence).
Life can be mundane and it feels like our choices and actions make small difference. This is the appeal of superhero movies. These are people of robust action. That is what highlights the men. Nurturing traits are less short term oriented and might be seen as less interesting but are important in their own way.
Exactly. And your qualification to unilaterally make such an estimation is...?
Anyone who isn't frankly terrified of the blind obsequience to authority inherent in this modern attitude has not been paying sufficient attention to the last 100 years of human history.
The medial establishment said so, so it simply must be right.
The same establishment that has been found guilty of mass and systemic corruption resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands only a few years ago in the opioid crisis. The same establishment with the demonstrable 'revolving door' between drug companies, government approval agencies and institutional bodies. The same establishment funded almost exclusively by the companies profiting from its decisions.
One serious question - if a report on global warming was produced by a group of scientists funded by fossil fuel companies, whose members often go on to sit on the boards of fossil fuel companies, who had, in the past, been proven to have colluded with fossil fuel companies... How big would their list of citations have to be for you to just blindly accept everything they say?
Quoting busycuttingcrap
Funny how it's always vaccines... Would you claim that all drugs on the market are safe and efficacious? That all the (literally) hundreds of court cases where drug companies have been proven in criminal or civil court to have lied about either the safety or efficacy of their drugs are all 'conspiracy theories'?
If not, then what magic protects vaccines as a class of drug from this exact same pitfall?
Quoting busycuttingcrap
This will be the same APA who, from 2005-2014, colluded with the US government to alter it's ethical guidelines to allow psychologists to be involved in extraordinary rendition practices (aka 'torture')? That APA, the completely independent, unimpeachable, totally devoid of bias or ideology, APA?
Then why should I be required to prove mine to you?
Quoting Vera Mont
Seriously? You're suggesting that the most plausible explanation for the near criminal misconduct of the nation's leading gender clinic is that it was just one single bad apple? Thank God they didn't put you in charge of the the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.
That's not irony, that's normal procedure. The irony is that you think it supports the probity and social independence of psychology.
See here, for another conspiracy theory: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1938342/
It's amusing really, you use the label 'conspiracy theory' and other derogatory labels just the same way psychology always has and continues to use medicalised slander to delegitimise critical views of its practice. Disagreeing with psychology shows 'lack of insight' or 'paranoid delusions'; the label is the argument, diagnosis, and evidence all in one.
Can you share a guidance where you think they're doing this because I just tried to randomly and after spending 30 minutes reading, I couldn't find what you're referring to.
Not that it much matters for the point your making and the one I'm trying to make. I don't know about the UK but in our healthcare landscape we're currently spending over 1,5 billion EUR on healthcare policy with a multitude of advisory organs at various levels, continuously pouring out advice and reinforcing each other's opinions (but they never advise getting rid of the overhead they're a part of, how surprising!). That's definitely compartementalisation taken too far and with ridiculous (and expensive) consequences.
As a result, I'm not so optimistic given this is often the state of "modern" government. I do think we could have afforable healthcare not through policy but healthcare worker autonomy - they decide what care their patient should get. I'd suspect a significant 1 billion EUR saving in not dictating policy and an uptick in people actually helped because their care becomes central instead of following policy and procedures. But then, this leads to maximum compartimentalisation because every patient becomes unique and the socio-economic issues cannot be taken onboard (because healthcare workers are working one-on-one with their patients). And to change social issues, we need to aggregate, so we need policy and procedures again. And we're back at square one. :-)
Meanwhile, what to do with people with gender dysphoria? "Yeah, it really sucks you're depressed but it only took us over 50 years to get gay people accepted and then maybe in 50 years you'll feel comfortable with your gender expression and the dysphoria will change, so have a bit of patience, ok?" Except of course, identity is already formed by then and the social change won't resolve the problem for them. So yes, allow gender affirming operations, it will save lives while society tries to catch up with not being dicks about other people's gender expressions.
You probably already know this, but GPs, therapists and the whole healthcare system violates the nice guidelines everywhere. They're guidelines and do almost nothing to change the behaviour of healthcare professionals as far as I'm aware. It has a moral obligation to try, it usually just pretends to.
I think we can all agree that there are three levels at which the problem can be looked at...
A) Realistically, people are dicks and are unlikely to give a man in a dress the time of day let alone a job or any respect. Realistically public health policy is driven primarily by politics and money - lobbying - and we're unlikely to get much of a say.
B) Ideally, people could be whoever they want, we wouldn't 'medicalise' different ways of being and society would do it's best to accommodate different neurotypes.
C) Pragmatically, we can make some progress toward the latter despite the former (otherwise we might just as well give up now).
With regards to the trans debate as a whole (and medical interventions specifically) a number of issues arise in relation to these divisions.
1. The majority of the debate is about (a) not (c). You have good points to make regarding (c), but they're peripheral to the main debate. Kathleen Stock, for example, was not pelted with eggs for being too idealistic. Mermaids are not attempting to strip feminist campaign groups of their charitable status because they think they're trying too hard. Medically induced sex changes are, without doubt, an ideological goal of at least a large vocal proportion of the trans movement. My critique is mainly against this target.
2. The above makes me slightly suspicious of attempt to get the same result as above, but via a (c)-like argument. It's all just a little too convenient. When the ideological argument looks shaky, a pragmatic one is hastily pulled from the sleeve. Not saying that's your approach, just explaining my ickyness toward such arguments.
3. Pragmatic arguments are nearly impossible to make any headway on. The quality (and specificity) of empirical data required to make a compelling pragmatic argument is very high. For this reason it's rarely forwarded as such. I think it's dangerous to treat an assumed pragmatic limit as an objective position in the absence of very strong evidence of the necessity, which we simply don't have here.
We ought not be saying 'we probably can't push society away from medicalising it's intolerance so we'd better support the exact process we're trying to avoid, just in the case it might still save some lives'. I just don't see that as a very compelling argument.
Quoting Benkei
This should explain https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18767894/
Quoting Benkei
I agree this is a good way forward, but with a public healthcare system we do need some means of limiting the options available to those which are safe, effective, and cost-effective. I cannot see a compelling reason why 'socially progressive' shouldn't be added to that list of requirements.
Quoting Benkei
Well, yes. Unfortunately. You said yourself, solutions are usually suboptimal and if we don't have an optimal solution available then someone's going to suffer. That said, as I mentioned above, there are perfectly good, non-medical therapies available with reasonable indicators of success. The typical 'treatment vs non-treatment' studies cited as support for medical intervention do not (in any I've read) account for the type of non-medical option being compared.
Quoting Benkei
The point is that it's currently actively antithetical to that progress ever being made. Promoting an intervention which continues to treat intolerance as a fault of some individual's biology just further embeds the intolerance, it doesn't just fail to tackle it, it actively makes it worse.
Edit - I realised you might be meaning something more specific with NICE guidelines. An example would be any one of several changes to increase patient choice (for example in treatment of depression). There's no clear evidence of the clinical effectiveness of patient choice (although it seems likely to have a beneficial psycho-somatic effect). Increasing patient choice is an entirely ethical principle. A decision that patients simply ought to have more choice, not that better clinical outcomes result from more choice, just that this is how things ought to be.
Absolutely. I'm not saying changes there will be a panacea, I'm more suggesting it in the context of the distinction I've made in my reply above. We should not, on principle, exchange assumed pragmatic limitations with actual objectives. Especially in cases where the former is actively antagonistic to the latter.
You're not. Far from it!
Quoting Isaac
How should I know all the fuck-ups of your health care system? There may be lots of bad apples misconducting themselves all over the place. Shut down all of the criminal ones.
I actually would prefer individual dressing rooms for everyone. I go to the gym and some people just walk around naked, like they'll get around to putting on their clothes after they check their phone or do whatever. I mean good God man, can we have a little decency?
Some things you just can't unsee.
I was merely countering your responses. You seem pretty adamant about the lack of harms for someone who is knowingly unaware of the publicised harms.
Where was that? I recall wanting to weigh the harms against the benefits; not denying that people are harmed by other people, but asking in each case: Who benefits? Who is harmed?
But see:
The NYT article quoting an APA committee member explaining his reason for the shift in views on homosexuality as follows:
"The criteria I propose applies to almost all of the conditions that are generally considered psychiatric disorders: The condition must either regularly cause subjective distress or regularly be associated with some generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning."
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/23/archives/the-issue-is-subtle-the-debate-still-on-the-apa-ruling-on.html
This makes explicit reference to social functioning, which implicates societal reaction to the behavior and the stress it places on the person. That is, we might need to treat homosexuality not because it is per se unhealthy, but because society makes life very difficult for the homosexual to function in. It would follow therefore that if we can have societal acceptance of transexuality, that would alleviate the need to categorize gender (which is a social construct anyway) dysphoria as an illness.
I took that to be @unenlightened point, which is that he was troubled by the categorization of illness being based upon social acceptance. This does not diminish the suffering of transexuals, but recognizes that suffering is caused by social forces and not internal ones.
This would then draw a distinction between certain types of mental illnesses, as those related to social ostracization and those that appear to be organic disorders, like schizophrenia, for example, where the dysfunction will occur regardless of how accepting society is of the schizophrenia.
Gender dysphoria cannot exist in a society where gender roles are not identified. Schizophrenia isn't so societaly dependent.
This makes the diagnosis of gender dysphoria a social statement with a severity dependent upon the society one lives in. Medicalizing the defiance of cultural norms is to medicalize non-conformity. I would expect therefore that the APA will eventually stop viewing transexuality as a medical diagnosis, with its primary reason for not now doing so is that treatment cannot be authorized or paid for without the diagnosis, which now implicates political reasons for its classifications.
EDIT: It's interesting how on the issue of homosexuality the label of it being a disorder was lifted to eliminate the stigma, but with transexuals, the label is demanded for validation. I don't know what this means other than that psychology forms its diagnosis for pragmatic reasons and that likely leaves some questioning the validity of it as a field. I don't, but I can see how forming decisions on the basis of non-scientific reasons raises flags for some.
I took the questions in...
Quoting Vera Mont
...to be rhetorical. Tone is not an easy thing to communicate in short written comments.
If not, then...who else is being harmed?
All other transexuals, depressed people, autistics, schizophrenics, anorexics, bulimics...and so on. Basically anyone who really ought to benefit from society adapting to their neurodiversity but instead now suffers from an increase in the trend to see the fault as being located in their biology, not society's attitude toward them.
It wasn't. These are important questions.
Quoting Isaac
All that harm is being done by a few thousand people being surgically altered? Interesting opinion, and I have no doubt it's sincere. Nor do I doubt that those who can and will never accept transsexual conduct by biological males and females are sincere in their opinion.
I think this covers off on the key points rather well. The trans people I know have had their lives transformed for the better - freedom, happiness, clarity - by becoming the gender they identify as.
Calling men "women" legally is a legal lie. It lies to society and women about biological males and for example it has led to male rapists and murderers being referred to as "she" in court and put in women's prisons. It has made female victims of male crimes be told to refer to the perpetrator as "she" in court or get charged with contempt of court.
I have already cited the case of Karen White https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
So does society really believe these men are women? I don't for certain. Are we to everyone on behalf of sparing someone's feelings or subjective self assessment and desires.
An absurd situation would be is someone like Caitlyn Jenner went to the Moon would we call Caitlyn the first woman on the moon? Are we going to call a man "the first woman on the moon" or the first Female X and allow them to take credit for what is intended for women. (This as already happened with male sports people breaking women's sporting records)
If Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page) went to the moon would Elliot be the first woman on the moon or just another man on the moon now she identifies as a "He".
This is gas lighting everyone and lying and total dysfunction as an alleged cure for a mental health disorder that we are now being told is not a mental health disorder despite the need for surgeries and life long medication.
In some cultures, like India and North America, there are gender neutral communities. These may comprise people who are born intersex or choose to live as the other gender than they were assigned to at birth. In Western society, gender dysphoria is probably approached differently because the medical technology is there to enable them to be more physically at ease witg their bodies, especially if social attitudes reflect intolerance of people's choice of gender identity.
John Money invented Gender being separate from sex which does not even make sense.
And his botched and insane intervention to rear a boy as a girl failed.
But I have it cited as a success in one of my text books that we were using in in A' level psychology in England in the early 1990's.
We were using and early edition of "Richard D Gross psychology the science of mind and behaviour."
Nice example of transphobia. Interesting that you focus on a trip to the moon when the issue is entirely of terrestrial significance. The fact that Jenner and Page can now live happily should be our focus, not some weird bragging rights to an event - a prosperous distraction. And if a transgender person was first on the moon? We can manage that, A4H - humans have had to negotiate far more subtle matters over the centuries. And sure, there are tans people who are 'bad', just as there are straight people and gay people who are bad. People can do bad things, so? I remember 40 years ago people regularly smearing gay men with the allegation that they are pederasts. This still holds in some places I've traveled through where they say ignorant shit like God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
And Not the facts of reality, biological reality or women's integrity and safety?
Not dangerous men being given easy access to vulnerable women's spaces.
Not the fact we cannot change sex?
Not the fact the men are taking awards designed to recognise biological females achievements and prize money aimed at biological women (Lia Thomas etc)
One persons happiness should not come as a result of others peoples disadvantage, and in this case forcing everyone else to lie. That is an appalling stance to take. Not humane at all.
Being the first women on the moon would a be a momentous achievement for women but we are now undermining these achievements to placate other people and also encouraging more people to believe they can escape the rules and boundaries of biology.
These are distractions and smears. If you are so obsessed with social justice, A4H, why not work at a homeless shelter or financially support a women's refuge?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Vera Mont
[b]Psychology : the science of mind and behaviour
by Gross, Richard D, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1992.[/b]
[i]"A classic piece of evidence relevant to the issue was reported by Money in 1974. It involves a pair of monozygotic (identical) twins whose embryonic and fetal development were that of a normal male. An accident during circumcision (by cautery) caused one of the twins to lose his penis. Assuming that gender is primarily a social phenomenon, and that identity is learned, it was decided to raise the unfortunate "penectomized" boy as a girl.
This would seem to be a decisive way of choosing between the learning versus biological arguments, by letting rearing "compete" with biology, and it would have been a true test case had not as much as possible been done to "defeat" the male biological realities and to enhance female biological maturation.
At seventeen months, "he" was castrated, i.e. the androgen-secreting testes were removed, and was given oestrogen (female hormone): a vaginal canal was constructed at this time. Much earlier than this, the parents changed "his" clothes and hairstyle.
By the age of four, "he" preferred dresses to trousers, took pride in "his" long hair and was much neater and cleaner than his brother. "He" sat while urinating, in the usual female fashion and was modest about exposing "his" genitals (in contrast to the other twin, for whom an incident of public urination was described by the mother with amusement)."He" was encouraged to help the mother with the housework, while the brother "couldn't care less about it.
At five years. "he" had many tomboyish traits, but was encouraged to be less rough and tough than the other twin, and was generally quieter and more "ladylike", while the normal twin was physically protective of his "sister". At nine years, although "he" had been the dominant one since birth, "he" expressed this by being a "fussy little mother" to "his" brother. The brother continued to play the traditional protective, male role.
This seems to support the view that gender identity (and gender role) is learnt. The reversal of original sexual assignment is possible if it takes place early enough and is consistent in all respects, which includes the external genitalia conforming well enough to the new sex. However, the castration and use of oestrogen clearly, contributed to the ease of reassignment and probably also accounts for the normal twin being."[/i]
.....
Now both brothers have committed suicide. The parents admitted lying to researchers about progress, there was sexual abuse by Money
but this was long one of the most influential cases on gender issues.
We were heavily and nosily protested by activists at this event which you can't tell on most of the video but I can give more details about that and police inaction.
I was a bit overwrought myself.
Not sure this unusual case from almost 50 years ago is much relevant to the current discussion. We can all cherry pick examples of shit going wrong. Does the fact that the Challenger Space Shuttle blew up, killing 7 astronauts mean space exploration is wrong?
It is the building blocks of gender ideology and the belief that sex differences beyond reproduction are artificial.
You presented an anecdote of a biological male raised as a female, and it seemed to indicate that transitioning at a very early age was enough for the child to accept all female social attributes, but then you indicated that the history provided by the parents was entirely false and the children were sexually abused by the researcher, which completely invalidates whatever results there were from this single example you provided.
My questions are why did you post this and what do you think it shows?
Then there's the example of Thailand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathoey
Yes, the case of Reimer is an interesting case in pointing that gender goes beyond cultural issues. It was certainly a problem that intersex people were not given a say in their own choice of gender. However, it is questionable to use it to oppose trans identities.
It does seem that in the current cultural backlash many individuals think that they have a right to insist on their views as the ultimate one, often based on citing examples of online research. Having worked in mental health care, including working with trans identified individuals, it does seem that the voices of professionals and their patients are often pushed aside It is matter of politics rather than about the well being of those who turn to the medical profession for support. So many media sites seem to be platforms more for people to vent their opposition to people with gender identity issues and most trans people just wish to live their lives rather have to face transphobia daily.
We're stalemate then. I'm no expert on the matter, but I am comfortable with the notion that gender's a social construct and that biological sex is different. If people's psychological wellbeing is almost always enhanced by taking the transgender commitment, so be it. We ain't going to change this by being retrograde monomaniacs about the issue. It's here to stay and we need to understand how to live harmoniously with our fellow creatures and allow people the dignity of becoming who they need to be. No doubt there'll be lots to work though and many jagged edges.
:up:
Yes, Thailand is interesting and it does seem that there is increasing intolerance to those who question the binary. It may be partly that more people are wishing to express androgyny. On the other hand, I do wonder if so much opposition is about a gradual wish for more totalitarian powers and suppression of human freedom.
As I know that you are in England now, I am wondering if you are aware of the most controversial trans legal case of Kiera Bell. I would imagine that you have heard of it but as it is in England I will point it out for anyone who is not familiar with it. Basically, this is a young woman who is detransitioning, after taking puberty blockers and testosterone and having chest surgery as an adolescent. Kiera was living as Quincy and at age 21 regretted this treatment.
As a result, Kiera, as she is now known, sued the adolescent gender clinic. She argued that as a teenager she was not stable enough to have the capacity to consent. She won her case and it has far wide ranging effects. Of course, it does seem that her medical treatment happened so quickly and much of it is irreversible.
However, it has become a source of activism and it does seem that many, including Christian groups, have seized on it as a means of supporting gender fundamentalism and she has become a celebrity. There are even T-shirts with the slogan, 'Queen Kiera Bell'. It does seem to have become a culture war between those who are stressing gender rights and those who are wishing to assert fundamentalism. The aspect which I wonder is how will people navigate their own personal searches while the issue of transgender is seen as a political one rather appreciating the complexity of it as an aspect of personal identity and psychology.
I don't know why people care about what other people do, like how someone can be so mad about men acting as women. I can understand why people may think it odd, but I don't understand anger at oddness.
It shows that gender ideology is based on untrue foundations it is not the only case by any means but it was the most influential original one that we were being taught in 1992. It is also of importance since John Money is responsible for the original separation of sex and gender.
The sciences are bedevilled by a replicability crisis particularly in the medical sciences and psychology/neuroscience. This means a lot of false information is in the public domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
This case is an example of a thorough refutation of certain claims and problem with the ethics and sanity in this kind of research among other things. The pressure on participants in studies to lie is well documented. Those studies can be called into question but they came after research into prominent much cited case like Zimbardo's "Stanford Prison experiment"
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication
"There’s even more evidence that the “guards” knew the results that Zimbardo wanted to produce, and were trained to meet his goals. "
"The replication crisis (also called the replicability crisis and the reproducibility crisis) is an ongoing methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibility of empirical results is an essential part of the scientific method,[2] such failures undermine the credibility of theories building on them and potentially call into question substantial parts of scientific knowledge."
They are impersonating women and having and encouraging other people to have unethical Frankenstein surgeries and undermining women rights so you are mischaracterising the issue.
Do you have a problem with black face and if so why?
Where has anyone on this thread claimed they have a problem with men dressing in women's clothes or acting unmanly.
Nevertheless are you also denying the fetishistic element of cross dressing, of men pleasuring themselves whilst dressed as women including in women's toilets (there is footage) and public spaces, which there is huge evidence for on the internet. Sexual pathologies and paraphilias are real. It is not just about people being squeamish about gender non conformity.
Saying gender nonconforming children are trans is about enforcing gender stereotypes and that is happening.
It does startle me how people seem to have so much of an issue with what other people do. It may be that 'oddness' in itself is the problem as it was always those who were outside the norm who came under critical attack and subject to moral panic, like the way people seized upon Aids to condemn the gay and bisexual community. In the past, the bearded ladies, dwarfs and those who looked different were cast into the role of circus freaks.
In some ways, there have been the romantic deviants, like the sexually ambiguous pop singers. But, there is still a strong shadow of hatred and many people who look and act outside of the norm are subject to forms of bullying and violence in many places in the world. Those who continue to wish to be allowed to express their issues with the deviant 'others' often overlook this aspect of the power dynamics at play. They do not seem to link this together in their analysis, because they don't wish to consider the issue of prejudice and the nature of projection.
Yes I am familiar with the case.
And now the Tavistock clinic is being closed down which is a historical first and unprecedented move for complete closure of a failing service.
This behind a pay wall but:
"The Tavistock gender clinic is facing mass legal action from youngsters who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers.
Lawyers expect about 1,000 families to join a medical negligence lawsuit alleging vulnerable children have been misdiagnosed and placed on a damaging medical pathway."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tavistock-gender-clinic-to-be-sued-by-1-000-families-lbsw6k8zd
The LGB Alliance is much Maligned charity trying to protect the rights and identity of gay and bisexual people. Mermaids a charity for "trans children" has tried to get the LGBA closedown but in the process exposed itself and is now being investigated by the charity commission for malpractice and child safety issues.
[i]"LGB Alliance said 60 per cent of boys and 70 per cent of girls referred to Tavistock are gay or bisexual, while just 17 per cent of the population are not heterosexual.
And there has been a huge 4,400 per cent increase in the number of girls referred to the clinic, with triple the number of girls attending the clinic compared to boys."[/i]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11205739/Soon-close-NHS-Tavistock-clinic-accused-transing-gay-away-bitter-legal-dispute.html
"Paul Roberts, head of LGBT Consortium, said it was 'transphobic' to claim 'a person with a female body cannot be a gay man'."
This is not a moral panic. Gay men have had their penises and testicles removed because they couldn't accept their homosexuality or thought being gender non conforming meant they were women.
Gender non conformity is being pathologized and labelled and not normalised.
and being treated by unethical surgeries with many complications.
It is nothing like the situation faced by gay people despite us being force paired with TQIA+
Being gay does not require surgeries, genital mutilation and hormones and life long medicalisation, undermine women's rights and spaces or make everyone lie about reality to appease someone else.
Why can't a person with a female body identify as a gay man? Some, such as Poppy Z Brite, a famous author who wrote, 'Lost Souls' has transitioned and is living as a gay man. There are many male to M to F individuals who identify as lesbian and F to Ms who identify as gay men. That is because gender identity and sexual preference are distinct from one another. Life is full of diversity.
You seem to be making the mythical assumption that people who change gender are just people who can't accept homosexuality. It is not that simple because it is not necessarily about the body one is attracted to but to how a person feels about one's own body prior to any sexual relationship with another, or independently of actual relationships at all.
Because gay men are same sex attracted. As a gay man from a Christian cult background, gay men were pressurised to be heterosexual and to have sex with women one of my sisters tried to get me to date women. This is very traumatic for us. Gay men were given electric shocks whilst being shown homoerotic images. They were given sickness inducing drugs likewise and chemically castrated (with substances now used as puberty blockers.)
Now they are being called transphobic for not wanting to sleep with women who identify as gay men and accused of sexual apartheid.
A women cannot live as a gay man and a gay man having sex with a vagina is heterosexual sex. What is happening is women wanting to being gay men impersonating gay men and being surprised and hurt when being rejected by gay men.
It is a crying shame this is happening for both sides because it is giving people unrealistic expectations.
There is increasing evidence for this and I have already cited two cases of gay men in this thread.
I have shown you the evidence about the Tavistock clinic of which I can find you more given time.
So it is not mythical, there is evidence and there is increasing evidence and there is lots of evidence.
There are other reason for presenting as the opposite sex and there is lots if evidence for Autogynephilia a term created Ray Blanchard who is an expert in this area, worked with trans people and made this theory with their approval based on their evidence such as arousal at the thought of oneself being the opposite sex. The only reason the autogynophile is unpopular is because it doesn't support the trans children narrative and makes people have to view some trans people as having a sexual paraphilia.
There is also evidence for Rapid onset gender dysphoria being transmitted among girls.
I will leave the discussion for now because I need to get up early tomorrow. It does seem from what you have said that your life has involved a lot of struggle. To end on a light upbeat note, we have one thing in common, as I can't bear playing sport at all either. Good night!
Just before I log out, in case anyone gets confused and sees it as some kind of sexual pun, when I said that I don't like playing sport it is meant as field games, such as football!
Also, I think one has to be a little careful of some aspects of sexuality, especially self disclosure. That is because online discussions are very different from those face to face. Most importantly, it is not a safe therapeutic space because it is a philosophy site which the public can read. It may be worth you thinking about because the more I use this and sites in general I am aware of a need for a certain amount of caution in what I say.
Not that I am recommending silent suppression of speech. I am simply saying that the nature of too much self disclosure on a public philosophy site is worth reflecting upon, mainly for how it may impact on you at some point rather than just those who read it.
Good night,
Jack
If you wish to discount all reports of subjective experience and rely entirely upon objectively measured data for fear of dishonesty, you must apply that objection globally and not just to those you disagree with.
That is, if you reject studies that show high correlations of gender reassignment surgery satisfaction, you must reject those reports that state the opposite.
To be consistent, you must be agnostic and you cannot make such claims as:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, nothing shows anything under your stance. If the subjects of my polling can't be trusted, then your smattering of friends you've talked to can't be either, nor can we trust Money's admission he lied.
That's a false dichotomy though. And we started out with a theory anyway so let's not get carried away with the qualifications shall we?
It doesn't actively make it worse at all. I seem to be quite capable of holding both views simultaneously because I theorise some reasons for gender dysphoria have to do with one's surroundings. If surgery helps them, then by all means let them have it. A lot of depression and anxiety in younger people is due to worry about climate change, shall we not treat that depression (hopefully through cognitive therapy only) because it's not their fault? That doesn't sit right with me.
I don't see how.
Quoting Benkei
I'm not sure what you 'seem' to be capable of is a very good measure for appropriate public policy. I seem to be capable of owning a gun and not shooting anyone with it. Does that lead to the conclusion that we ought allow everyone to own a gun without restriction?
Quoting Benkei
No one is talking about not treating those with gender dysphoria. As I've said, lots of good therapies are available. If you were asking a like-for-like question - say "should we not give depressives SSRI drugs assuming the problem is their faulty neurotransmitters", then yes I agree with that sentiment. I think anti-depressants do more harm than good in the long run and ought to be severely restricted. Should we not treat depression at all? No. But that's not what I'm suggesting here for gender dysphoria.
As the experience with Tavistock clinic and campaign groups like Mermaids is testament to, these medical interventions are promoted as end goals, not as reluctant stop gaps awaiting societal change. As I said, no-one in the mainstream trans movement is treating opposition like Kathleen Stock as being well-meaning but over idealistic, they're treating them as bigots. This isn't a question of ideology vs pragmatism. It's a question of ideology vs ideology.
I am not sure what many, including yourself, are suggesting for gender dysphoria. There is often such an emphasis on protecting the feelings of those who are offended by gender dysphoria and those who claim to identify outside of the binary.
So much seems to be based on opinion rather than any clinical basis. For example, you say that 'antidepressants do more harm than good' which is merely your viewpoint. Surely, there is a need to step back and look at evidence as critically as possible, not picking and choosing what to select. Part of the problem is that there is so much information online. In order to offer approaches which are intended to aid those who are struggling with gender identity issues, there is a need to look at the issue from various angles.
I don't necessarily think this is the place to discuss specific therapies. I assume everyone is broadly aware that alternative therapies exist. If your position is that there literally are no alternatives to surgery, then I'm happy to go through what those alternatives are, but presuming you're aware of them, I'm not sure what you're asking.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Do you feel capable of doing that? Do you trust the government to do that? Looking back over the history of medicine (particularly psychology, particularly sex and gender...) what would you say our track record has been on 'stepping back' and looking at the evidence critically?
Quoting Jack Cummins
I agree. Do you think the current debate is one that's welcoming of "various angles"? How have the angles other than a full-throated agreement with all claims been received? Would you say alternative viewpoints to the mainstream trans agenda are welcomed in intellectual debate?
I should add, that if you're keen, there's no reason why doing so might not be interesting nonetheless. Do you have a particular clinical study in mind?
In many ways I see the current thread as having some diverse opinions, and if anything, what seems strange is that the thread title is 'Positive characteristics of females' and the main focus is upon transgender. This may hark back to the way in which a lot of the original objections to trans people comes from the quarter of lesbian feminism, especially of those assigned to the male gender in 'female spaces'. Strangely, it seems that gender fundamentalism seems to almost coincide with religious ideas, especially a focus on what genitals a person has.
I am not sure that a completely unbiased angle is possible or one definitive clinical study stands supreme but approaching the issue from a philosophy angle requires a certain degree of impartiality. I do come from a background in training in various psychological therapies, ranging from the psychodynamic to the cognitive models. I agree that the discussion of various therapies is probably beyond the scope of this thread.
Gender dysphoria and its 'treatment' medically and therapeutically, and if anything what I question more than anything is why on a forum such as this, so many threads are created focused on trans issues. It is probably that they generate a lot of moral feeling, mostly from the angle of what is projected onto those who identify as transgender, including those who transition. It may be that the whole issue raises critical issues about the nature of gender, which those who are gender euphoric, as opposed to gender dysphoric, may wish to sidestep. This involves the cultural construction of gender and, to what extent this is biological or about exaggerations of biological differences based on reproduction.
Precisely for the reason I stated. We can be in favour of both social change and gender affirming surgery. The latter is therefore not antithetical to the former.
Quoting Isaac
I don't think that analogy works. If you want an analogy: It's better to teach people to cope with the underlying causes of potential criminal behaviour than to lock criminals up but I'm still in favour of locking up criminals.
Quoting Isaac
Then I'm having trouble placing your comments when you call it "antithetical". That sounds to me like you disapprove. Or is there a difference between offering the option (which I'm advocating) and your idea of "promoting" gender affirming surgery, which you claim is currently happening?
It does, but 'pro-trans' (for want of a better term) positions are not the ones being labelled 'conspiracy theory'. Not all opinions are equal, and the reasons for that inequality interest me.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Few issues deny the validity of other people's opinions on such ideological grounds. I think that scares people (quite justifiably). You and I might disagree vehemently on, say, economics, we might call each other all the names under the sun, but at the end of the day, Marxism is a valid economic theory, as is Free-Market Capitalism (though I have to rinse my mouth out for admitting it). Same with, say, clashing theories of evolution, quantum physics, psychology... even religion.
But there's this (I believe, new) category of issue, of which transgender is an example, where certain points of view are considered invalid on ideological grounds alone. We don't simply debate whether transitioned women are 'real' women, or whether they ought have all the rights and benefits of natal women. It's considered an invalid opinion to disagree (as opposed to a valid opinion which I merely disagree with). But there's no fact of the matter about such a question. It's something society simply comes to some shaky agreement on. We can't run a test on it. So if people feel excluded from the decision, then they're going to become frustrated about that.
In my experience (the circles I move in are hardly representative, I'll admit) people are nervous. A state of affairs has come to exist where certain views can be (on a whim, it seems) declared verboten with moderately serious consequences. It's a real issue, especially in academia. I've mentioned Kathleen Stock before. Her experience sent quite a few shock-waves through certain academic circles. She's neither a bigot, nor a cruel person. She's actually very friendly and intelligent. But she was physically attacked because she held views which were unpopular and her University (my University too) did not even properly support her.
Whether that's what motivates the influx of threads, I don't know. Maybe unlikely. But that's where my interest is.
You showed you can. Not we can. Hence my example of gun ownership. The fact that you can hold those two concepts concurrently foes not prove society can any more than the fact that I can safely own a rifle proves that society can.
It's quite normal, and indeed advisable, to design policies around the likely responses of society as a whole. Society as a whole does not have such a good track record as I've no doubt you have.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, but locking up criminals does not contradict anything about their crime having underlying causes. If we locked them up with no attempt at rehabilitation, it would. And indeed I would be vehemently opposed to that approach.
As I said, a very reluctant and guarded use of surgery because we have no better option is not what's being proposed. People in favor see it as an objective in its own right, and people opposed are labelled bigots. The disagreement is ideological, not practical.
Quoting Benkei
Of surgery, yes. Of therapy, no. There's a massive difference. I disapprove of medicalising the effects of intolerance. That includes surgery, pharmaceuticals and blame-based therapies, but it does not exhaust all forms of treatment.
Quoting Benkei
There is a difference, yes. But even within the 'offer' camp (into which I also fall) there are degrees of enthusiasm behind that offer which matter, I think, considering that, as I said, the mainstream position is not merely a reluctant offer.
I prescribe carbon neutrality, all round. This is a case where it becomes absolutely clear that treating the individual is unable to get at the pathogen because the pathogen is societal. The cure for the individual is to join extinction rebellion, there's nothing like a just war for raising morale.
To treat the sufferer is to invalidate their feelings and becomes an antidemocratic oppressive measure. Thus we see how inevitably psychology becomes a political tool.
I think the mainstream position is concerned with that if a person has gender affirming surgery then people should accept it. About the question whether persons with gender dysphoria should have gender affirming surgery, I think opinions are much more qualified. But maybe things are simply different here than in the UK.
The Royal Dutch Association for the promotion of the Medical Arts, a.k.a. the Doctor's Association writes the ethical code for practitioners in the Netherlands. One of the ethical pillars is the subsidiarity principle that requires practitioners to employ the means that have the least impact to reach a specific goal. So a gender affirming operation is only on the table if other less impactful measures have failed.
That doesn't rise to the level of promotion in my view but, since it's the most impactful measure available, as an ultimum remedium.
On what grounds?
Quoting Benkei
I think gender surgery is still not easy to get in the UK, but I'm including any medicalisation of the problem, so puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Puberty blockers were, until very recently, alarmingly easy to get here in the UK, and the campaign groups are not saying "phew, that was a narrow escape, thanks for shutting Tavistock", they're saying they want more drugs, more easily available.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, we have a similar code. The issue is not it's existence, the issue is the very strong campaign to ignore it in favour of more readily available treatments. The trans movement slogan is not "things are about right as they are, thanks"
Personal freedom usually. My body, my choice, kind of thing.
Quoting Isaac
Subsidiarity precludes it becoming more readily available in the Netherlands. They can campaign but it's not going to change the ethical rules doctors have to abide by. First stop is therapy, if that doesn't help then a second psychiatrist will do an assessment on whether it really is gender dysphoria and if there aren't other insufficiently treated or untreated mental illnesses. If that's yes and none (or if the latter are a consequence of the dysphoria), then I suspect puberty blockers are less problematic than other drugs (anti-depressants, if that would make sense) and therefore would be available.
I have to say the movement isn't really vocal in the Netherlands or I haven't been paying attention.
I suspect it's because the rules are sensible and there isn't a big backlash against gender-nonconformism in general. I guess it must be the same in Canada, though we have some loud assholes who demand a reset to 1900 CE - and a smaller faction that's holding out for 1600.
Biologically males and females are different and that biological difference includes psychological and behavior differences. The same thing also manifest homosexuality and all the different places on the sexual spectrum. And men improve with age because their hormones change with age.
:rofl:
There are cognitive differences. Behaviour is learned. So no.
I shall inform the old bastards in my local.
Quoting Isaac
Perhaps I have missed this, but don't you need to establish that a trans person's stated need for transition is caused by intolerance? Same with younger people who want to take puberty blockers to give them more time for their gender identity to fix, why intolerance there?
I'm also interested in what's made you so worried about the availability of puberty blockers?
So you'd disagree with any such campaign? If so, we have no subject of disagreement. There are such campaigns in England.
'Establish'? That would imply the default position is that it isn't (or that it's not being so has already been established such that I need present evidence to the contrary).
As ever in these kinds of debates I'm more interested in the manner by which the debate is conducted than by the positions within the debate themselves. Here, what peaked my interest was the accusations of bigotry, 'conspiracy theory' etc. So it's not so much about whether one position has been 'established' or not. It's about whether one position is even in the debate. The question I'm asking is - why is it seen a illegitimate to even hold the belief that a trans person's need for transition is caused by intolerance? I don't need to prove it as established fact to investigate that, only that it is as plausible an explanation as any other.
There only seem to me to be two broad positions here (from which many more nuanced ones arise). Either;
1. there exists such a thing as a male/female brain and as such it is possible to be born with the wrong brain for your body.
or
2. behaviour typically associated with male/female bodies is frowned upon to such an extent that it you have a male/female body but behave in ways usually associated with female/male bodies, respectively, you will not be treated fairly.
Of course both can exists and merely manifest in different people.
In the case of (1) surgery (or drugs) to make the body match the brain seems a viable option. But so would medical intervention to make the brain match the body - yet so called 'conversion therapy' is very much a shut off route (it doesn't work at the moment, of course, but then transitional techniques didn't work at first either - further progress is shut off on ideological grounds, not practical grounds, no one is even researching the possibility).
A further complication of (1) is that females born in the 'right' body must, if we're to accept the premise of (1), have 'female-type' brains. ie there's a different brain type for females, it's fixed, and nothing short of medical intervention can change that. Anyone who can't see the very serious implications of accepting such a model for women, people of colour, the disabled... that different phenotypes have predictable and fixed ways of thinking...
It's essentially the issue that feminists have with this framing - that there's a 'female brain' which causes people to want to wear dresses, feel sexually attracted to men, and enjoy Bridget Jones.
So I don't buy (1), not without overwhelming evidence, which we don't have.
That leaves (2). Under (2), treating the person wanting to behave in ways more typically associated with the opposite sex by medically changing their sex so they more closely match society's expectation is unjust at best, abhorrent when pushed on young people by media representations.
I don't see a third option.
Quoting fdrake
Hopefully explained above, but if not see... literally any pharmaceutical company's track record on ensuring their products are safe and efficacious first, profitable second.
This is from Hilary Cass, a senior paediatrician who has been reviewing NHS gender services for children.
and on 'gender-affirming' hormones...
These are obviously just snippets within the wider debate. as I said, I'm less interested in the technical details here than in the manner in which the discussion is conducted.
Ideally default positions have arguments for them IMO. But I doubt we need to get into it here.
Quoting Isaac
I think this is factually nonsense too, but rhetorically useful. Like the neurodivergent banner and neurodivergent brains. I think position ( 2 ) is a possible explanation for it, but I don't think it's easy to establish as true.
While it's probably true that some of the pain and behaviour of trans folks is motivated by fitting into a societal norm, like "passing" there's a question about whether this is even an atypical response to particularly salient and fundamental norms about society. You can find similarly strong norms about race, disability and sexuality. There is a third possibility, which I think @unenlightened is close to (though please correct me if I'm wrong), in which all identity works like passing, and passing is nevertheless expressive.
This is from the paper I linked earlier, I found it quickly for a citation, I don't know and am not in a position to judge if it is authoritative.
There is a trope that the pressure to transition comes from trans activists, I want to make an argument against that here.
If we think of passing as a moral imperative, that "if you are X then you ought to behave as expected of X", it raises the question of where those expectations are coming from. I don't think it's reasonable to explain the imperative to conform to cisgender+heteronormative gender norms as arising from trans activist pressure to pass, transition etc - that expectation arises from a social consensus. It's societal standards which give rise to the imperative to conform to standard categories of gender expression "in public", rather than the criticisms of trans activists. So the pressure derives from societal norms rather than transgender rights activist groups and their allies. The trans activist origin of this pressure is also undermined by the same norms forcing conformity on cis men, women and people who don't fit on the binary.
When speaking about that pressure, there is a question about whether it is sufficient to explain why some transgender people want to present as more traditionally female - is it all fear, or is it also a self affirmation? Some testimony favours the latter, despite acknowledging the mix:
It is majorly affirming to have something which you identify as a core aspect of your being affirmed socially. Not just for "fleeing shame", but by skilfully controlling an aspect of your presentation to better perform your identity.
The role that medical interventions might play in this is self affirmation in that regard. Restorative rather than pandering to societally inflicted wounds. Would we see the desire to get surgery in a society that had less confining gender norms? Who knows, I guess it comes down to how much transgenderism is rooted in less socially constructed aspects of embodiment (like is it somehow an interaction between developmental tendencies of proprioception and social norms?) - would the desire for a different body matter less if it was less gender-normy?
Anyway, if we're talking about whether it's permissible to surgically transition or delay puberty, we've got informed consent for that right? The bar seems quite high to establish that either of those are impermissible given that it improves stated wellbeing for those who want it.
Quoting Isaac
Yeah that's fair enough. It'll come down to a risk assessment on an individual level basis, and the individual's desires ought to play a big role in that. Should they be determinative? I'd side with yes if we're comparing it to unestablished future risks vs established reports that individuals tend to be satisfied and have low levels of regret for surgery , but I don't think I've got a fortress of an argument for that claim.
Indeed. I have never thought of it quite like that, but yes. Or I could say that narrative identity is always fiction. Or if you can stand the Freudian terminology, that identity is always a dual act of introjection and projection. That is the answer to why people are exercised about each other's identifications. If a woman is more muscular than me, it is an attack on my masculinity, and contrariwise, as a woman, a muscular woman is an attack on my femininity.
The need for acceptance is so fundamental that more than one psychologist, can think it insane for even a slave to resist their identification as such. And more than one slave can accept the identity in order to be accepted. We go back again and again to our abusers, because to be abused is to be confirmed and accepted as part of the society. To be alone is death.
But again, all this must be denied, and the identity of the self-interested rational responsible man who is the captain of his fate etc must be affirmed, because to be so dependent and fragile in one's identity is also death.
As I found with the top 100 movie rating list that was 99% about the male experience.
The new ideologies on gender do not strengthen women's identities and has a limited effect on mens identities.
Can people define what a women is which is vital if we are to have women's rights and women's achievements. If you can't that is a disaster for women.
Nobody's preventing such a celebration. Just don't accept enthusiastic cheering from people who are forced into a role they did not freely choose.
Noone freely chose to be born.
We are talking about women in relatively free western societies when they have the choice to be what kind of women they want to be and not about enforcing a role on anyone.
We all have our sex imposed on us by biology at birth and women display different traits then man that are not imposed on them as statistics show but are consistent.
Denying these trends in women and females is denying womanhood and femaleness.
If men and women have children and women end up doing the majority of the childcare for instance
the men can step in and be a stay at home dad or help out heavily in the care. If this is not happening it may be through choice of both parties or the mans lack of commitment to equality.
But we are creating a situation of confusion where trying to find out what works and what is a an imposition or stereotype is benefitting few people and people are being experimented on such as in the case of childcare
Where what is best for the child is being held ransom to arguing about who should look after the child and why and for what reason.
If a couple create a child the child should be the priority not the parents career aspirations etc in my opinion. It will usually be the mother who does the caring in the end or a female nursery nurse, nanny or female teacher.
Because you can never know how you reached you current identity whether by a valid procedure of self selection due to social pressure.
On the other hand you can accept that people are living their preferences.
Also birth defects, but many of these can be surgically corrected. I think that if someone who is suffering can be repaired, we should repair them.
I don't know what you are referring to here.
Are you saying being born male or female is birth defect? I am saying sex differences are real not imposed.
We can celebrate them without imposing expectations on non conforming people.
I have to accept that most men are straight and a lot like sports and cars. At some stage I may have felt like an outsider and frustrated but I now don't expect men to change for me a minority.
Could be. Nature is imperfect; reproduction is chancy; genetic errors are not unusual. Only the person living inside a body can really know how living in that body feels.
Now I am just discussing your average man or women. Being a man or women is a biological fact with medical ramifications and psychological and physical ramifications.
Denying facts is not helpful. If that is the route you want to go I see no benefit to it other then maybe to you personally. Treating people and children in particular as if they there are not male and female is ridiculous. People need to be told the reality of their body and likely psychological and pohysical outcomes. Anything else is anti scientific.
Quoting Vera Mont
What does that mean?
Yes we are subjective beings with inner private worlds. Anyone can dislike any aspect of their body and mind but is that healthy, is it delusional and where does it lead us?
It is is irrelevant anyway to the majority of people who are happy being male or female and who exhibit common traits of their sex.
I don't have either. Why do you?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It means you don't know, the parents don't know, the GP doesn't know, the psychiatrist doesn't know, the cleric doesn't know, the journalist doesn't know, the MP doesn't know. Yet all these unknowing people are sitting in judgment.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Unless they either care about the welfare of their fellow humans, or want the power to shove their fellow human beings into assigned roles.
It is irrelevant to this topic because we are discussing the majority of people. Your responses have been unhelpful so far but are you saying the majority of people should suppress or tone down their identities for a minority?
I want more evidence that you are committed to subjectivity and respecting peoples inner worlds.
Unfortunately society does not work on that basis it works on useful generalities. We can only go so far to cater for everyone's unique identity.
Not at all. I'm not telling the majority what they should do. I'm not telling any minority what they should do. I'm not telling anyone how they should feel, how they should conduct their private lives, or what norms they should conform to.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You will want in vain.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Pity!
I think we generally agree about identity, personality and those like concepts being (to a large degree) socially constructed. I appreciated your point about the need for acceptance being more fundamental than whatever plane of social relations identities are constructed within. It's good to highlight that there are some conditions of possibility/generative presuppositions for the formation of a psyche; those capacities which render us social, feeling beings.
I've got two points+questions about it. I'll reiterate that I'm not authoritative and I'm not in a position to judge the veracity of a study, I'm just trying to use them to make sure what I'm saying isn't beyond the pale.
( 1 ) While I'm not sold on this one. I think it's worth considering that while a given identity is socially constructed, we do have these psyche generative mechanisms/capacities which apply at the individual level. They're shared capacities to be sure, they apply to everyone. I intuit that those capacities are manifested by bodies in different ways, though. How I am rendered social is different from how you are rendered social - our tendencies for psyche-genesis will have been different. Examples there might be synesthesia, neurological conditions and disabilities. Bodies have some say in the psyches which may dwell within them.
I don't mean to suggest that there are male or female brains (like @Isaac highlighted, this is bogus), I mean to suggest that we've not ruled out that an individual's body constraints the genesis of their psyche differently than others. As far as I'm aware there is some evidence that this is the case here, some of which consists of review content.
To my understanding, those differences can arise from genetics, the developmental environment, and possibly epigenetic effects. The epigenetic aspect there renders biological factors socially mediated, and social factors biologically mediated.
I'm not trying to suggest that gender stereotypes should be naturalised, I'm more approaching this from the angle that the genesis of social identity implodes a hard distinction between nature and culture - since they both mediated the others' mechanisms.
The question I have in that respect is - what gives you the intuition (if it does) that the most part of trans identity comes from social factors rather than the body those social forces can inhabit/en-mind? Further, do you see these individual level bodily differences as showing that it's plausible that trans identity isn't entirely socially determined?
( 2 ) More broadly, I think your comments apply (and perhaps are even designed to apply?) to other identity categories. One of your example was race and your daughter going to nursery, if I understood it - race was being sustained/generated in their mind by the differences in expectation they've picked up. What's the practical import of your criticism for trans people vs racialised people? What ought people do and not do?
Really? You must be unaware of the campaigns here.
Mermaids (a trans charity in the UK) are pushing for faster turnaround times and greater availability of puberty blockers and gender-affirming endocrine treatments for children. Treatments which our country's leading paediatrician has had to close the country's main gender clinic for over prescribing.
They were implicated by the commission with helping to create an environment which put children at risk because drugs with little clinical evidence of success and marginal data on long term effects were promoted out of fear of being labelled transphobic by charities like Mermaids. According to the testimony of some of the 35 clinicians who resigned from Tavistock before it was shut down "We are extremely concerned about the consequences for young people... For those of us who previously worked in the service, we fear that we have had front row seats to a medical scandal".
The report goes on to say...
I think promoting an environment where clinicians are unable to prescribe in the best interests of their patients for fear of consequences is a little more than 'misplaced'. It's been bad here. thing are improving since Tavistock, but there's a lot of pushback even on the decision to close it.
Fair enough. I suppose I'd argue for it in terms of not creating new models where old ones are adequate. we already have a model of societal intolerance creating pressure to conform, we do not already have a model of how brains might create identities out of what are seemingly social categories which are nonetheless clash somehow with the body. If I can explain the phenomena using existing models, I'm not sure I need to go looking for a new one.
I'm wary here of p-hacking on a massive scale. We wouldn't want to start with the notion that trans identity has to be such as to be resolved by sex-change and then go searching for data sets that might show that.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, the models of identity I typically work with take this as a stating point - I mean, at one time I was working on the social construction of perception, so I'm pretty heavily invested in the notion of social construction in general (perhaps too heavily to get a sufficiently detached picture, I'll grant). As we've discussed before with perception though, the space within which social construction works is itself constrained by an external world which imposes limits on what can be believably constructed. Likewise I'm sympathetic to your raising the idea (reading your exchange with @unenlightened) that identity construction might be similarly constrained by biological factors (both somatic and psychological).
It's just that, as above, there doesn't appear to be a need for such constraints en masse insofar as the phenomena is already explained by well-trodden models of social acceptance. I needn't theorise that some, as yet hidden, genetic constraint limits the selection of identities from the 'supermarket shelf' of society's offerings in such an alarming way that one's own body must be rejected and replaced with another in order to make a satisfactory choice. It's plausible, but seems unnecessary.
Quoting fdrake
Absolutely. If I had a complaint about the mainstream trans movement it would be of being overly conservative, of undermining the hard-won progressive achievements of feminism over the last decades which finally allowed a slightly wider range of societal roles for natal women.
Society as a whole imposes the notion that some of it's smorgasbord of identities are available only to those with breasts, or only to those with penises (as well as other such restrictions). Thus anyone whose internal biological constraints might limit their choice of socially constructed identity to only those society makes available to the female form will be stuffed if they happen to have a male body. The solution is for more people to choose those options anyway. It is not for people to change their body to comply with society's arbitrary criteria as to who can have what identity.
As I said to @Benkei above, one option here is that people, quite understandably, not able to cope with the conflict this creates, choose the easier route. But then the appropriate response is one of sympathy for the individual and anger at society. That's not the message we're getting from groups like Mermaids who are pushing medical transition as the end goal, not as an unfortunate necessity for many because of the weight of social pressure (which needs to stop), but as an 'affirmation' of who they 'really' are. It's this narrative that I think is dangerous insofar as it reinforces these arbitrary restrictions on choice. It attempts to replace the notion that these restrictions are societal with a medicalisation of them. It makes the problem one of an individual's biology, not of a society's arbitrary sex-based role assignments.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. I can see an argument for this. No different to getting a tattoo. Essentially a 'modelling' of one's body to match an idea one has of it as an aesthetic construction - an art project. I don't see any issue with that. I don't doubt that some small quantity of plastic surgery falls into that camp too. but that wouldn't pathologise the problem. No child is traumatised by their inability to get a tattoo despite feeling strongly that they want to present that way. Individual ideas about presentation may drive some gender expressions (and include bodily re-forming), but it's society which renders the inability to achieve that traumatic, as opposed to merely frustrating.
Again we're in danger of searching out data to match the theory here. It's possible that people's need to express their body image is so great that the trauma is internally generated (or partially so), but it's not necessary. There's already explanations with existing models which don't in any way fail to capture the nature of the phenomena.
Quoting fdrake
Well, yes, but that's not how we handle other similar issues. We don't use such an approach with other medical interventions on offer, for example. We have strong systems in place to control recommendations based on efficacy, cost, and other factors. We don't simply give patients the Pfizer catalogue and say 'take your pick'. Consent to drugs and/or surgery is not like consent to some act (like sex, or skydiving). One hands over a good deal more trust to the medical professional given that details of the potential consequences are not generally part of public knowledge. As we've seen at Tavistock, that trust can be interfered with by social pressure and campaigns. That's not a good thing.
Furthermore, the whole issue is about societal pressures, which, if real, precede consent. One consents to that which one feels one ought to consent to. If society is creating unhealthy pressures then it will act on consent as much as any other choice made. Women were not, centauries ago, dragged kicking and screaming into loveless marriages of servitude. They consented to them. They consented because society imposed, from birth, the idea that they ought to consent.
Quoting fdrake
That's understandable. As I said, I think there's arguments for both sides and the evidence is far from clear either way (one of the main criticisms of the Care Quality Commission was the lack of data gathering meaning we could not reach properly informed decisions here). If, as has been established in the Tavistock case, medical professionals are in fear of their livelihoods if they do not conform to certain narratives, then we're in even more of a position of wariness than usual when it comes to results from a handful of small trials with (usually) methodological holes you could drive tank through.
The issue, though, is one of framing. Framed as a concerned political debate about the efficacy of medical treatments, the direction society ought to take to be as inclusive and just as possible... in that context I think the jury is out on how we ought proceed. But that's not the framing. One only need read a few comments here (but more pervasive in wider society) to see that it is framed as progressives vs bigots, as The Science™ vs 'conspiracy theory'. In essence that's a bigger problem because if that toxic approach to disagreement can't be surmounted then the idea of any future direction being hashed out between concerned parties for the best might as well go out of the window.
Eh, assumes that the phenomenon can be explained with existing models. Think that's be problematised enough nowadays where it can no longer safely be assumed as the reference position. And even then, the question of how that default position ought be managed societally is different still.
Quoting Isaac
The meaningful therapeutic distinction between gender therapies (like puberty blockers and reassignment) and one of "those options" is something that would need to be established. Just like with cosmetic surgeries - do you think someone who's had a single breast mastectomy is similarly obliged not to get a suitable breast implant because to do so would reinforce stereotypes on women's appearances? Those two things could be consistently asserted (both ought not for the same reason, permissible to do it for both) but I don't find moral preferences in this situation consistent at all.
Quoting Isaac
Yes! I think that's true. My perspective on that is largely harm minimisation, I think there's a compelling case that gender therapy ought to include transition as part of it on that basis. But we probably don't need to get into that here.
Quoting Isaac
I don't believe that's conclusively demonstrated. Like DSM-5 distinguishes gender dysphoria (which AFAIK is the explanation you're gesturing toward?) from transgender identity:
You have gender dysphoria coupling with other mental illness among the trans population, but nevertheless they aren't determinative of trans identity. The probability of being trans given self reports of gender dysphoria is definitely much higher than the probability of reporting not trans, regardless that probability increase isn't determinative of having trans identity. That's also baked in the DSM right, you need clinically significant distress for gender dysphoria (so someone who's trans but doesn't have clinically significant distress), and if you didn't satisfy enough of the diagnostic criteria you wouldn't have it anyway:
(it's 6 for kids)
The overall thrust there is that transgenderism isn't reducible to societally induced trauma, just strongly correlated with it. Analogously to what you said later, it would be like defining heterosexual partnership only using womens' forced consent into marriages of servitude. Since at the time marriages of servitude were the gold standard of romantic relationships.
It's certainly a point for the social determination of all of these surrounding categories, but by my reckoning a point against any reductive explanation. Broadly speaking because, in both cases, the underlying constructs which are being used are at least historically variable - and currently in visible flux for the gender identity ones, and also there's good reason to suspect there are relevant biology-society interaction effects here (again AFAIK, provided a citation to @unenlightened for it).
Quoting Isaac
Are you meaning this in a judgement neutral sense? Like "the trust was interfered with which resulted in a good change)" vs "the trust was interfered with which resulted in a bad change" - all you care about is the societal pressure on treatment one way or the other, not that one could be better than the other. I'm sure we could have a long political/ethical discussion about Tavistock elsewhere too.
Definitely, though it isn't a specific issue for transgender surgeries. A whole swathe of surgeries and interventions can be argued against using this as a premise.
So that we don't go down infinitely many rabbit holes at once, I suggest we focus on one or two subdiscussions. I don't know how to do that though, any guidance?
Thank you for engaging with me on this; I'm not used to it. I am not saying that brains are all exactly alike. I am not saying that they are not affected in their development in the womb by the experiences and diet of the mother, I am not saying that there cannot be a brain that is, to put it crudely female-like in structure in a male body, or vice versa. Brains are plastic from the beginning, and are moulded by the environment from the beginning, and as the individual grows up, with luck, the brain becomes more and more able to reciprocally mould the environment.
But the question of identity is not the question of individual character. Every zebra has a unique bar code, but no bar code gives rise to an identity problem.
So if there is a male with a female brain, this might give rise to some odd behaviour and some odd feelings. They might be 'effeminate', they might be homosexual, they might be particularly nurturing, less aggressive than most males, and so on. But why should any of this be problematic in any way or cause them to be unhappy with their condition? "I am what I yam!" being the default.
The challenge to anyone who wants to reject my thesis is to come up with an answer to this question that is not based on relations with society.
Quoting fdrake
Certainly. I start from a completely general idea of identity, as distinct from what I can call 'character'.
One's character does not require any thinking about or effort. My hands are unsteady, so that my handwriting is almost illegible and my drawings scribbles. I am good at maths, terrible at recognising faces or remembering names, I am rather passive and quiet, but can get angry and passionate too. I am a hetero male. This is more or less a description of character, but by comparison still with some vague 'normal' or average, and descriptive of social activities. But it is an attempt to describe something like my innate being rather than the way I think of myself. That is not really possible without some hand-waving.
When that character interacts with the education system, quiet passivity becomes laziness, unsteady hands become carelessness, forgetting names and faces is inattention and rude, and so on. I become moralised, and these things become 'wrong' with me rather than mere facts about me.
Otherwise than through they eyes of convention, how could there be anything wrong, uncomfortable, conflictual with being a man with a vagina, or a woman with a penis? One's physicality can only possibly be in conflict with an image of an ideal, which necessarily must come from others.
Good idea. No guidance, though, beyond just mentioning the areas that most interest me.
As I said above, I'm most interested in the environment within which this debate takes place. I've not personally been affected, but I know people who have. It's an issue in certain circles of the academic world [hide="Reveal"]I want to stress here that I'm well aware of my filtered position here, there's no doubt in my mind that in the 'wider world' the trans kid trying to navigate through the prejudice and hatred in their community is the greater issue, but in my world, it's not[/hide]. So that's one avenue - are alternatives to the mainstream trans position actually viable, or are the detractors right and they're nothing but bigotry dressed up? To address this we only need see if the models reach the much lower bar of being reasonable, rather than preferable. Is it at least reasonable to hold that there's no such thing as an internal, pathological, need to modify one's body (such that one might suffer more than everyday frustration at being unable to), or does existing evidence preclude such a view?
The other, possibly related, issue that interested me was this...
Quoting fdrake
I'd be interested to hear your thinking on what problems the account I've given runs into (different from merely the plausibility of alternative models), such that it might fail to account for some aspect of the phenomena. That might also serve to focus the discussion - what aspects of the phenomena do we see which stand out as requiring certain types of explanation?
Some brief notes nevertheless...
Quoting fdrake
I think there's a meaningful difference (in the context we're talking about here - societal expectations) in replacing a body part you once had and altering or creating a body part you never had. The difference being that parts you once had are selected, not from an image given by society, but an image given by you. To replace a lost breast is not to say "society expects someone like me {typical woman gender role} to have two breasts so I'm going to conform to that expectation". It doesn't require society at all. One could, as a complete hermit, say "damn, I want to look how I looked yesterday, I feel different". This isn't even possible with transitioning, let alone likely. The objective body-image is given by society, it cannot be given by the individual because the individual, without society, has no way of even knowing what that image is. The difference is between "I want to look like me (but me yesterday)" and "I want to look like them".
Another interesting issue you touch on here is that of how we treat medical and experimental data in this debate. We know from Tavistock (and a number of other sources now) that medical professionals and academics are feeling pressured to conform to a narrative (good or bad - I'll answer your question on that later), but knowing this, and knowing as you do, perhaps more sharply than most, how data can be, shall we say, 'encouraged' into whatever answer is being sought, what weight do we put on data here?
NICE did a meta-study recently and the results were distinctly under whelming, they concluded...
...and for gender-affirming drugs...
The largest suicide rate study I know of was done through Tavistock and based it's findings (5.5 times more likely than controls) on just four suicides out of the 15,000 or so patients. Other studies are generally smaller. One I read (cited by Mermaids) turns out to have had a cohort of just 27, a positive group of 13 and all were self-referred into the study cohort (they actively wanted to take part). The data here is manifestly inaccurate and if clinicians can be persuaded by social influence to actually medicate where they later think they oughtn't have, then it seems impossible to believe that active researchers aren't submitting to the equivalent pressures. Add to that the ever present and entirely malign influence of the lobby groups selling the drugs being advocated for and you have an environment that is distinctly not conducive to evidence-based decision making.
So - to your question. Is it judgement neutral? I doubt it. I don't know anyone's capable of that, but here I'm small-c conservative. If we're to accept that clinicians are pressured into conformity (and assuming they can be persuaded out of it eventually) then I'd far rather they conform to existing societal pressures (which at the least are well known, if not all that healthy) than conform to what essentially can be indistinguishable from the latest fad. We have an obligation to do no harm, and I don't think that's met by rushing into treatments with low quality evidence when the evidence of the harm being mitigated is only of similarly low quality.
"Neko
3 months ago
Bottom surgery was the biggest mistake of my life, I am in agony all effin day if Im honest. ItÂ’s been 7 years and 12 revisions and it still is a mess.. Being with a partner is impossible, the smell is like a rotting corpse only a few hours after cleaning. I was fine before. Nobody wants to sleep with this I am so sad"
I am not sure about that. True mammals do learn from each other but I don't think that is true of all animals. I think if we were to focus on hormones and behavior, science would indicate hormones do trigger behaviors. Same as an itch triggers the desire to scratch. And an age-related increase in testosterone increases and then decreases aggressive male behaviors. While a female may be consumed with a desire to have a child and later, for hormonal reasons, may have no interest in sex.
In the US we could really use better sex education. Correct information could decrease marital problems and perhaps increase our ability to accept people's sexual differences.
It is a bit complex. Aging is less complex as we all do it bout the same. But sexually there is a spectrum of differences and a person's voice, appearance and movements are an expression of hormones and hormone receivers, as well as psychological factors playing into the mix.
That is a shame. We have so much potential but to manifest it requires education and training. I really do think it a shame to not develop our arete.
Quoting J Studd & N Panay
Personally, I love steroids! I was given steroids after surgery and I felt so good I wanted to get a job as a janitor and return to life as it was when I felt like an Amazon woman who could do anything. My daughter was horrified and frantically said I should not get the job because it was the steroids making me feel so good and unfortunately continued use of steroids can lead to serious problems.
I also found my menstrual cycles were hell when I was in a bad marriage but when I was in a supportive man, my menstrual cycles were a period of bliss and feeling in touch with the universe. I would say our environment is just as important as our hormone cycles.
That is an important warning, especially for those who must work for a living. I have heard some real horror stories about how something said on the internet can seriously damage one's life. Besides our personal experiences are not empirical. I try so hard to not speak of personal experience, but when we experience something, it is very real for us in a way that empirical information or someone else's experience does not have that same quality of reality. And especially when talking about hormones and the female experience or how females are judged, the need to speak from experience is overwhelming!
If gender change meant painful monthly cycles and mood swings, why would any man want that? The way women are treated is not always nice, so again I have to ask why would a man want that? What is their fantasy of being a woman that makes being one of them a good idea?
My argument in summary is men and women are different, women have praiseworthy characteristics
but mens characteristics are the most celebrated.
These are all biologically based and not social constructed and cannot be opted in and out of.
The denial of this harmful.
I want people to have all the evidence and this evidence to me is to compelling to be dismissed and should shape further discussion.
I think that there needs to be good grounds in life and philosophy for denying reality or in believing in hidden identities.
It would be just as easy to go on YouTube and find a video of someone happy with their surgery or happy or unhappy with just about anything else. It's a childish and propagandistic way to present an argument. I agree, stop doing it. If you want to present evidence, stick to academic sources.
The difference between men and women is a social construct in relation to a biological foundation. Male and female biology IS different, but the fact that there are characteristics most commonly associated with one biological sex or another, and that some characteristics are celebrated regardless of biology, while others are praiseworthy in association with female biology only, IS socially constructed.
What you call ‘compelling evidence’ is reductionist methodology: colour reduced to monotone, and shades of grey reduced to black or white. We make these judgements most accurately based on the perspective for each interaction, NOT based on some popular or politically-determined binary classification of characteristics. The way I see it, denial of colour or shade variation is harmful - as is asserting that black and white are not socially constructed and cannot be opted in and out of.
I understand your preference for ‘good grounds’, but what constitutes ‘good’ is socially constructed, and you need to recognise the inaccuracy and uncertainty of this in relation to both reality and identity. There will always be someone whose perception of ‘white’ includes what most would call ‘black’, or vice versa - they’re not wrong, and should not be forced to deny their minority experiences as ‘real’ against such limiting constructs so that we can continue to act as if reality consists ONLY of either black or white.
I think what should shape further discussion is not what is considered ‘compelling evidence’ or ‘good grounds’, as if perspective is not a factor, but rather the complex relational structure between biological evidence/observation, social construct (including language, concepts, value, identity) and understanding.
Quoting Possibility I disagree.
Having been brought up watching the Simpsons, I conclude that my skin is not yellow enough, and I have too many fingers. Can I get some medical help?
I claim the Simpsons as a society, and three fingered yellowness as its norm, and how can anyone dispute? One has to say that some social constructions are repugnant, invalid, reprehensible, ridiculous, dysfunctional. But if one says it only relative to the current fashion, it has no moral force at all. Next year it may be absolutely the thing to have a finger removed and yellow stained skin, and unpatriotic to remain encumbered with four fingers and that disgusting pasty white or brown skin.
Language is socially constructed, too - that’s not to say it’s a social construct, though. There’s a difference. The Simpsons and the particular ‘society’ it depicts is a social construction: an heuristic device created in relation to aspects of real and/or imagined social structure - to some extent in ignorance, isolation and/or exclusion of a broader understanding of reality. Male and female toilets, too, are a social construct.
Language, on the other hand, is an amorphous relational structure between what we observe/do and what we understand. The notion of ‘good’ is a similar structure: not so much created by society as an aspect of it. Socially constructed, but not a construct of society.
Our understanding of reality isn’t based on what’s ‘good’, but on what’s accurate. What constitutes ‘good’ is continually adjusted and refined according to developments in both our observations and our understanding, with the aim of improving accuracy in the relational structures between what we observe/do and what we understand.
FWIW, I donÂ’t support medical intervention as a solution to gender dysphoria, but I do recognise the attraction, given our fear of prediction error and uncertainty as adults. The solution, as I see it, is to deconstruct aspects of society based on our assumptions (mis-understanding) that biological sex = gendered characteristics = gender identity, and be prepared to navigate the uncertainty towards developing a more accurate relational structure (language, society, morality, etc) between observations and understanding.
I'm gonna bracket away any of the legal recognition stuff for this post. Despite it being important. I'll focus on what I understand to be the medical takes. A lot of these are references taken from Philosophy Tube's recent video on the topic, which is localised to NHS England. I'm not authoritative, and I can neither say whether the sources are authoritative or representative of ideologies etc.
If I understand the current medical metagame on what counts as a trans person in the UK, it's typified by the following (classes of) live events:
( 1 ) Person has gender atypical behaviour+identification for their associated natal sex young age. This can include the assigned gender role just "feeling wrong", the body feeling off and so on (gender incongruence)
( 2 ) ??? - this is experimentation with gender expression, learning how to perform your gender, internalising social norms, and trauma.
( 3 ) ??? - somehow ( 2 ) leads to mental illness.
( 4 ) Clinically significant distress associated with the experiences in ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) make the person diagnosable with gender dysphoria.
( 5 ) They count as trans because of the diagnosis.
That seem about right? The socially defining trait for being trans is the conjunction of gender incongruence and clinically significant distress yielding a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
I think the more progressive account keeps the gender incongruence, but drops the clinically significant distress. That transforms it from necessarily a pathology to often associated with a pathology.
One way this manifests in treatment access is that allocation of gender therapy/gender reassignment is done to alleviate distress (as you'd expect any medical treatment), so that aligns the administration of treatment (in the public mind) with alleviating gender dysphoria - the clinically significant distress. Rather than aligning treatment to remove gender incongruence for aesthetic/personal/life affirming reasons (like cosmetics or restorative surgery). There's a difference in how treatment behaves in those as well I think?
The bar for obtaining hormone therapy and surgical interventions for adults at the minute is still fairly high, the treatment pathway goes through nonsurgical and non-medicational therapies and assessments first (see flowcharts here). In that regard a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is almost a necessary condition for receipt of gender affirmation therapy. It is nowhere near a sufficient one. The process of obtaining gender affirmation therapy/interventions is very long even after gender dysphoria is diagnosed AFAIK.
In contrast, changing it so that gender incongruence plays the role of that necessary condition, you can depathologise trans identities more while maintaining similar screening processes and what treatments are (in principle) available). The bar may be lowered for gender affirmation by removing the emphasis on clinically significant distress being tied to the gender incongruence. I think this is the thrust of the following passage in the Trans Health Manifesto of the Edinburgh branch of Action for Trans Healthcare.
(They are strongly left wing).
And here's a supporting quote to contrast the role gender dysphoria plays in current treatment availability:
So the thing which I think is inaccurate, and even dangerous for health outcomes of trans people, is the insistence on clinically significant distress as part of the determination of (the diagnosis which) gives access (start of access...) to gender affirmation therapy. It simultaneously pathologises and confounds the identity with its comorbidities, saying "too much", but also too little constitutively of the origin of gender incongruence, saying "too little".
Though, how the gender affirmation healthcare system functions is... more orthogonal... to this more fundamental shift I've portrayed. The whole thing could be made a lot better for trans people with the current definition and treatment pathways (can grab you more citations if needed).
Quoting Isaac
Maybe this intersects with the obliqueness of the issues - while the determinative aspects of trans identity influence the healthcare pathways, the current administration of the system can be discussed more independently of it. There's much more discussion of these operational aspects in the video I linked.
I think essentially the conversation here cannot really progress without addressing the issue of negative pressure and positive ideology in the medical service provision. As I cited earlier, the evidence for both efficacy and safety of all medical interventions is sketchy at best, as is evidence of the harms suffered without those interventions.
Obviously, in such an environment, campaign groups are not going to just throw their hands up and say "oh well, we can't resolve this yet, more research need", they're going to cherry-pick the best sounding results from the weak collection and stick them front-and-centre. This goes for both side, clearly. So I don't see much room for progress on medical grounds alone. the most comprehensive meta-analysis I've managed to find (NICE and the review of GIDS in the UK) concluded the evidence was weak. As far as I'm concerned, that shifts the discussion to that about sensible default positions, not correct medical approach, which, in my view, simply cannot be established using the quality of evidence we currently have.
I think there are still issues of philosophical interest, but if any argument hinges on the medical question of efficacy, it needs to do so from a position that the question is, as yet, unresolved. It cannot do so from a position that the medical treatments are safe and efficacious, and the processes best practice. Not only is this questionable on epistemological grounds, but the premise of any 'campaign' is that current practice is flawed. Such a premise must have, as a fundamental axiom, the notion that existing knowledge and practices can be flawed. It cannot then use, as a basis for it's argument, the unquestioned accuracy of any current knowledge and practice.
I agree that the pathologising of the issue is the problem, but where I think I struggle is with what happens once that's been removed. If we no loner require the 'clinical distress', then the harm being resolved by the medical intervention is not clinical any more, it becomes, if not societal, then... ecological? We'd be claiming that there exists, naturally, a cohort of humans who identify as some other sexual phenotype than the one they were born as, but without this being a medical issue (not a defect), nor a societal one (we haven't fucked up and made a whole cohort of people unable to fit in). Just a naturally occurring feature of a population that some of them desperately (but not clinically desperate) need a different body (but not just any different body, they don't need a tail or broader shoulders, or a third arm, they need the body of the other sex).
On its face I find this implausible, but to dig a little deeper for some more flesh on those bones...
1. Why sex? Why not skin colour, hair type, height? If this phenomenon naturally occurs and isn't socially constructed, then is it just coincidence that it hinges on the most socially relevant phenotypical traits and not the socially irrelevant ones?
2. Where's the precedent? Tribes famously have long-accepted cross-gender roles. Some consider there to be a third gender, some simply accept that some women do men's things and vice versa. Suicide rates in tribes are famously low (with some not even having a word for the act). So where are the distraught Nádleehi, for example?
3. Why would this particular form of dissatisfaction deserve attention? We have famously limited resources (NHS on it's knees etc), if we remove the clinical need, then what differentiates this form of bodily dissatisfaction from any other? On what grounds do we deny steroids to the unhappily puny? On what grounds would we deny hair straighteners to those dissatisfied with their afros? I don't want this to be taken as a slippery slope argument, more a question of where (if) we'd draw a line.
4. How do we frame such a state of affairs without invoking a 'female/male brain'? At best there's what appears to me to be a very thin line to tread here. We want to say that it's the sex of the body that matters (not just any bodily dissatisfaction will do). We want to fix that using endocrinological interventions (about as close to the brain as you can get without actual lobotomy). But we want to stop short of saying that the brain is sexualised in any way. Do you think that needle can be threaded? How are we to explain how GnRH therapy works to bring about the chosen identity, but at the same time not say that such an identity is created by natural gonadotrophin? I struggle to see how we can leave open to those who have naturally occurring gonadotrophins of one functional sort, any identity they choose, but at the same time say with confidence that artificial GnRH therapy brings about a certain identity with efficacy?
There's many other questions, but I'll leave it there for now. The issue is a large and varied one.
Can you actually give real world examples of what you are referring because otherwise I have not got anything to respond to.
However social constructionism is a theory and a contested theory at that, you are simply claiming without evidence that certain traits are social constructed but if you apply that to everything consistently nothing is real (It is an anti realist stance).
Who decides what is constructed and what isn't and on what grounds? There are reasons to expect, as with other living things, sexually dichotomous behaviour. What of my behaviour is responding to a social construct?
It also reads like an allegation and an allegation that peoples behaviours are not sincere. That might apply to certain people and certain behaviours but it is a strong allegation to make in general.
And if you dismantle one view of things you inevitably replace it with something else equally dogmatic like social constructionism.
Also your position reads like social engineering, that you want to engineer diversity but that is usually the most shallow and insincere form of diversity.
Like a couple of men who have posted lots of pictures of themselves in skirts on the web claiming they are "dismantling toxic masculinity." As if wearing a skirt has some kind of magical gender powers and when I can show them loads of examples of men in dresses behaving toxically on line.
Do you think a profoundly effeminate gay male or ‘butch duke’ fits neatly onto a dichotomous scale , or are you are arguing for a scale that expresses a masculine-feminine continuum?
It's not a scale it is a dichotomy.
Everyone is a unique individual with a profound personal inner life.
Are you referring to a scale of stereotypes? A scale of disorders of development? A genetic scale.
What is the difference between a "profoundly effeminate gay male" and any other gay male or any other male?
Is it that they work different jobs? The tone of their voice? Hairstyle? lack of conformity?
I don't get this "Profoundly effeminate comment"
A gay man of any shade is nothing like a woman and a woman is not just a flamboyant high pitched gay male. Men being attracted to other men is a different experience than woman being attracted to men and the sex is different.
In my opinion...
But we are here because a male impregnated a female and that is essential for the survival of our species and a fundamental. We need to know whether someone is the opposite sex to reproduce.
Arent you arguing that there is such a thing as masculine and feminine behavior , and that these are based in biology, which is what allows dog owners to distinguish between male and female dogs based on their behavior?
If you believe this, then dont you accept the possibility of intermediate forms of biologically-formed gender ( like hermaphroditism is an intermediate form of genetic sexual identity)? If biology can produce intermediate sexes , why shouldnÂ’t it be able to produce intermediate genders?
Yes but that they only occur in the sex being described. Any behaviour exhibited by men is male behaviour.
Behaviour permed by both sexes could be described as neutral or unisex, including like eating, sleeping, fidgeting etc.
I don't know much about dogs but I assumed there sex would have to be discovered based on genitalia.
Quoting Joshs
Intersex conditions I know tend to occur in either males or females. For example Klinefelter syndrome only occurs in males. Turner Syndrome only occurs in Females. Androgen insensitivity syndrome occurs in males.
But regardless I don't see that as part of a spectrum because they can often lead to infertility.
A spectrum to me would be where more than a combination of an egg and sperm or male and female could produce a new human.
A spectrum of gender to me is meaningless because everyone is different and we exhibit a huge range of behaviours which don't belong to either sex or any named gender identity. It actually dilutes human diversity to creating stereotypes and unnecessary flags.
Reality consists of relation. Nothing could be ‘real’ in itself, in isolation from any and all interaction - there’s no way to be certain, and it’s frankly a pointless line of inquiry. There is understanding, perception/prediction and observation/measurement of reality, with varying degrees of accuracy.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
These ‘syndromes’ and other conditions you mention are named as ‘disorder’ in relation to an assumed dichotomy. They’re exceptions to the rules we impose on reality by virtue of a perceived structure that excludes them rather than understanding. We observe genetic incidents of XXY and XO, for instance, as ‘real’, yet to some extent invalid, human conditions. Something to be fixed because fertility is perceived as a norm.
You seem to be saying that gender dysphoria, having no observable/measurable evidence, should be dismissed as ‘not real’ according to these rules we impose on reality, rather than something to be fixed.
What I’m saying is that discrepancies between one’s perception and these normative rules creates human conditions that are still ‘real’ at this level of perception/prediction, and that it is their perceived invalidity and NOT their lack of evidence that excludes them, rather than challenging us to understand the broader reality from which these conditions arise. I’m saying that surgery as a solution misses the point - manufacturing observable ‘evidence’ of upholding the rules perpetuates ignorance, isolation and exclusion. As successful as it may be for some, it’s cheating the system in pursuit of social validity. So when it fails to achieve that goal, the regret is understandably devastating. But that’s NOT compelling evidence that they should have simply followed the rules as they stand, and assumed their biological sex as gender identity. Rather, I find it evidence that these rules reflect an inaccurate relational structure of perception/prediction between what we observe/measure and what we understand.
When we perceive as much value in oneÂ’s personal gender identity as in the normative rules for gender that we impose on reality, it becomes clear that there is more to understanding the complex relational structure between X and Y chromosomes, observable/measurable sex characteristics and hormones, desire, behaviour and gender identity than these rules imply. Yes, there are observable sex characteristics that are more or less indicative of biological sex, but theyÂ’re not nearly as accurate as you would hope. This imprecision, like geocentric system calculations, suggests that our existing perception/prediction structures areÂ… well, wrong.
IÂ’m suggesting that we put aside the rules as they currently exist, and instead seek to develop more accurate structures of perception/prediction between what we observe/measure and what weÂ’re only recently beginning to understand about the broader reality from which all these diverse human conditions arise. Listen to and observe young people when they struggle to learn and accept the rules in relation to experience. Binary, dichotomy, spectrum - these arenÂ’t going to cut it, to be honest. I get the sense that weÂ’re looking at a multi-dimensional value structure, more like a qualitative wavefunction. Perhaps weÂ’re even going to have to dispense with some of our quantitative shortcuts or assumptions and interact more honestly, one human to another...
Quoting Andrew4Handel
We may need to ‘know’ whether someone is the opposite sex to reproduce, but do we really need to reproduce? All of us? Fundamentally? If there’s enough babies being born for the species to ‘survive’, then why is this binary identity a fundamental necessity for everyone? Surely we don’t need to ‘know’ this every time we interact?
I get the sense this may be a personal issue for you. Prediction error and mistaken assumptions are a primary source of pain, humiliation and loss in human experience.
I think there's three different concepts bleeding together here.
The first is trans identity. I think broadly construed that applies to people who've transitioned surgically, people who live as the opposite gender otherwise, and I'd guess people like the Nádleehi. To me this is a binary concept - someone has trans identity or they don't. People are cis or trans. People are two-spirit or not. There could be a discussion regarding a-gender, genderfluid people there, but let's not go there for now unless you think it's necessary. I don't think they fit on the binary, but I don't think they're necessarily trans either.
The second is gender dysphoria. This is clinically significant distress caused by having a gender identity different from the assigned gender of a body. As far as I'm aware the current metagame for defining trans identity (operationally) treats gender dysphoria as determinative of being trans. You are trans if you've got gender dysphoria.
The third is gender as a social construct. This is as it says on the tin (up to an account of social construction lol). What gender means for the two-spirit, I imagine, is different from what gender means for a trans person in the UK.
So, onto a critical account using these distinctions.
If you specify gender as a concept within a mechanism of social construction, you evaluate trans identity within that mechanism of social construction. If you have the UK gender construct in mind, you end up with (some) trans people wanting to go from one side of the construct to the other in the account of trans identity. Then it appears perplexing that something which seems natural (bodily variation) seems to coincide with something granted as socially constructed (gender identity).
On the flip side, the presence of people of trans identity seems close to a cultural universal. There are people who are gender incongruous regardless of the gender concept, and there will be people who identify with what is rendered incongruous (like identifying as a woman while having male natal sex). Then there is how that gender incongruity is expressed through social constructions.
So with respect to:
The precedent being that gender roles are known to vary across societies. If system of gender norms contains a positive and supportive role for a Nádleehi, I imagine they would have less "clinically significant distress" for them in that context. In a traumatic context, more clinically significant distress. I tried looking for an experiment of someone who's family environment/upbringing was Nádleehi for some time, and then they were immersed in a scenario with westernised/(Christian etc etc) gender norms.
It is an anecdote supported with a newspaper article, but it is better than nothing:
[quote=The Struggle to be Nádleehi;https://ictnews.org/opinion/the-struggle-to-be-nadleehi-a-two-spirit-person]I have read of instances in the past where, when a Nadleehi was born into a family, a celebration involving other families would be held, as having a Nadleehi child was considered to be a great event. Then, in modern times, I see LGBTQ2S Diné and Nadleehi people today who were kicked out of their families, bullied viciously, or in the case of Fred C. Martinez, murdered.
I would not learn any of this until I went to college and started researching Nadleehi and other tribes that had Two Spirit people. When I first read about Fred C. Martinez and what happened to her, I wept. She was accepted by the matriarchs and women in her family as Nadleehi, yet would be bullied at school and sent home by officials for “wearing feminine clothing.”
Her life would come to a tragic end when she went to a party and left with Shaun Murphy. Her body would be found a week later and it was never charged as a hate crime.[/quote]
with supplementary information about the murder of Fred Martinez here.
[quote=Getting along in Cortez...;https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Getting+along+in+Cortez%3A+in+the+aftermath+of+the+matter+of...-a0127059485]"Cortez is a good community, but it has been my experience after living here 20 years that there are definite conflicts between Indians and whites," says Mark Larson, who represents Cortez in the state house of representatives. "We had [an incident in which] high school youth beat a Ute Indian to death in the park several years ago. And we had another incident where a couple of youths beat another Indian to near death."
But none of that history kept Martinez--a proud Navajo--in the closet. Friends always assumed that he might be gay, and his mother says she knew for three or four years that he was nadleehi. But it wasn't until summer 2000, right before his freshman year at Montezuma-Cortez High School, that the 6-foot-tall, 200-pound Martinez started to let his dark hair down and live in a manner that felt natural to him.
"He just started wearing makeup. He liked girl stuff," Mitchell says. "He felt good and he felt happy for being that way. And he said to his brothers and me, 'If you don't like the way I am, go ahead and tell me right now.' But nobody said anything."
Not at home, anyway. Friends, however, say Martinez was a frequent target of verbal harassment at school, and Mitchell says her son was sent home by school officials for painting his nails, plucking his eyebrows, and wearing makeup. "He would say to me, 'People don't like me for the way I am,'" she says. "And I would just tell him, 'Sonny, you just have to be yourself.'"
Dee Goodrich knows how difficult it must have been for Martinez to be himself. Goodrich, who is 26, is both Navajo and nadleehi. He grew up in Cortez and, until a couple of years ago, dressed almost exclusively as a woman.
"My sister was real traditional in her ways and was real active in the powwow circuit. I wanted to be just like her," says Goodrich, who performed as a female in powwow "jingle dances" and still designs stunning powwow costumes for his niece and others.
"Nadleehi is an old word for people who are blessed with the gift of being both a man and a woman at the same time. It's a sacred word," he says. "I always wanted to be like that. I always felt more feminine than I did masculine."
However, not all of Goodrich's classmates were privy to the same Native American teachings. And when Goodrich started to call himself Deanna, pluck his eyebrows, and powder his face, he was treated as anything but sacred. "No matter how many times I thought I was going to go to school and have a good day, I got harassed," he says; "faggot" was the slur most often tossed his way. "I felt secure the way that I was, so I didn't understand why people had to say what they said. For some reason some people just really wanted to knock me down."[/quote]
I think this establishes that Martinez was gender incongruous, had a supportive environment at home (was good there), was recognised as Nadheeli there, but when exposed more strongly to violent gender norms, they were bullied and then murdered. The lack of clinically significant distress, plus the desire to express in a gender incongruous manner I think demonstrates that trans identity isn't reducible to gender dysphoria.
It might be worthwhile thinking about how "clinically significant distress" could be caused in this context. If we've got someone who grew up without clinically significant distress associated with their gender identity for some time, then (plausibly) you're bullied and attacked for that identity, it will traumatise you, and has a high chance of causing clinically significant distress. The proximal cause of the trauma seems to be having a tendency towards gender incongruous expression and people treating you like shit for not abiding to norms which forbid that expression. Compound event of what looks like an innate tendency with a social construction.
Where are the distraught Nádleehi? Wherever their identity and norms grate on each other. A construal of gender incongruence that reaches before gendered expression in social norms needs support from a bodily capacity which engenders (pun intended) bodies to gender incongruous behaviour.
My intuition for how to thread it is to look for more interaction effects, I suspect (with some support) that these interactions render it impossible to reduce causation to a single bodily mechanism, or even bodies as a whole. In its simplest form, the manifestation of gender incongruence seems bodily and social, and is effected by gene expression - which itself is environmentally mediated.
So, I suspect it can be threaded. With the construal that having a trans identity is biologically predisposed, but that gender expression is socially constructed, administering hormones would change the biology but also the interaction effect. To put it another way. body properties are gendered, gendering works through societal expectation, if you change the body to better fit the societal expectation of the body, you'd be making a social and bodily intervention at the same time.
If this is a question about NHS resource allocation, I'll address it later. I don't think it's a coincidence, but I don't think that the desire for something socially constructed (to gender express in a certain way) renders the desire not naturally occurring. Like if you've got a sweet tooth, cookies or cake may suffice. If you've never seen a cake, you'd only crave a cookie.
Maybe we've not removed the clinical need - that would be true if trans people didn't have clinically significant distress. What I've tried to show is that gender dysphoria isn't determinative of trans identity. Someone who is not distressed by their body wouldn't necessarily get the surgery, or have resources allocated to it based on clinical need.
In terms of the others, I believe you can change your body's impact on your gender expression only with surgery+hormone+gender expression treatment. You need help and drugs for that. And it's something that needs medical intervention to change in some cases.
There's a sub issue here about distinguishing NHS time for treatment (a resource question) and whether it's permissible to treat some body issues with surgical/drug interventions in a moral sense.
I think I largely stated my position on this to @Isaac here. The tl;dr in our context that "based in the social" and "based in the body" are sufficiently mingled up that construing gender identity as "based in the social" does a disservice to gender identity being a social relation between bodies, afforded by those bodies' developmental mechanisms.
Quoting unenlightened
But we might even agree in general. Am I right in thinking you see the genesis of identity as some kind social trauma, whereas character is something innate?
Yes. I'm saying that Any combination of male/female/no-sex brain and body, along with any combination of hormone regime that naturally occurs is bound, short of physical pain resulting, to be accepted as 'just the way I am' unless there is an induced conflict between that and 'the way I ought to be'.
In short the only possible source of conflicted identity is social. I mean who d'you even think you are, fdrake? That's just a duck! :razz:
Unlike your definition of gender dysphoria, this definition still seems too vague to work with. It's seems no more than saying people who are trans, are trans. What is it to be trans? Is it wanting to act like another gender to the one assigned to you at birth, or is it wanting a different sexual phenotype to the one you have? Or is it both?
If the former, then gender dysphoria must be construed as a solution, not a motive - it's something the mind has 'come up with' to pin it's hopes on. Like (in your sugar craving example) saying that the lack of cookie is the problem. It's not - the lack of sugar is the problem, the cookie was a solution, the lack of which now seems traumatic, but if offered a cake, the trauma of cookie-less-ness would go away.
If the latter, then why sexual characteristics? Why not arm length, or head size, or hair colour?
If both, then why would they be connected at all if gender is a social construct. If we want to say there's no such thing as a female brain, then the association between female body parts and female gender roles is nothing but coincidence (biologically), we'd expect a pathological desire for female body parts and a natural desire to play a woman's gender role to be completely unrelated.
Societal attitudes to gender roles seems to be essential (to come back to this later).
Quoting fdrake
I think this is a good broad assessment. So with regards to treatment -
How would you feel about skin-whitening being offered to black kids in neighbourhoods suffering from systemic racism in the police?
How would you feel about chemical castration of homosexuals in Islamic regimes?
If both of those make you feel a little icky, then what's the difference between them and gender re-assignment for people suffering the sort of trauma Fred Martinez experienced?
We mustn't lose sight here of the pro-trans movement's agenda. The campaign slogan is not "we must reluctantly use sex-change surgery, until society finally accepts us for who we are (which we're working on)", nor is it "the medical barriers ensuring sex-changes are only considered in cases where the level of trauma is sever enough to justify the risk - let's keep things just as they are". Organisations like Mermaids and Stonewall are campaigning for easier access to sex-change drugs, and more encouragement of trans children to seek out that option.
Quoting fdrake
I think that works as far as avoiding the 'female brain' problem, but it lands us straight back into the idea that medication is only needed to better meet societal expectations. Again, would skin-whitening for black kids in racists communities be a good solution, something to promote? If not, then why sex changes for trans kids in gender-strict communities?
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I think we agree there, that's where I'd end up too. I can see a situation where there could be sufficient biological tendencies (through behaviours like imprinting) to explain universal gender preferences without resorting to notions like a 'female brain'.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, that's the direction I was going in. There's all sorts of clashes between one's body and society's acceptance of it, between one's body and one's own desires for it. Why privilege sexual characteristics?
Apologies, I'd previously construed trans identity as gender incongruence. Rather than trans identity as gender dysphoria. There's an argument there that Diné gender norms couldn't produce gender incongruity in Nádleehi because Nádleehi are an "axis" on the space of gender. But I've made the assumption that such identities aren't orthogonal/independent from the other gender constructs, they're desires to express otherwise, to claim a different place on the same axis, or a mixed state of its values.
Quoting Isaac
I imagine it's both? I think gender incongruence is worldwide, right (cultural universal + biological predisposition ?) But how gender incongruence manifests is localised to a system of gender norms.
Quoting Isaac
Why not for what purpose?
Quoting Isaac
The best distinction I can come up with is that one - skin whitening - shames the body that it's applied to, and one is either an expression of that body's nature or is caused by a shamed incongruity between body and norm. I think the first is prejudicial violence "these people need to be white!" whereas the second is expressive change "We need to be otherwise!".
You could maybe rejoinder that someone could want to change their skin colour for precisely the same reasons. In that case, I think it's either a bullet bite scenario (which I don't like) or I should parry with a distinction. If we use @unenlightened's social pressure/identity+shame dynamic as a proxy, the skin bleaching is explainable entirely by shaming social norms, my response to him was that trans identity is isn't explainable by shame, only trauma is.
The question about gender reassignment I think comes after the question about whether someone is trans, and the ethical norms are different. Oppression vs expression, shame being imposed from without vs undoing shame from within. I'd prefer not to think about it in terms of shame, because as you've highlighted people from more supportive social backgrounds (I imagine) have less chance of being traumatised about their gender incongruence.
I would be interested in finding out whether trans people without trauma express the desire to transition with a different frequency than those with it!
Quoting Isaac
There's a volitional aspect to it. I think we can grant that societal pressures are in play without throwing informed consent and expression of will out the window. If this syllogism was valid:
( 1 ) Decision X is influenced by norm Y.
( 2 ) Norm Y is coercive.
( 3 ) Decision X was done with highly restricted agency.
We'd either be biting the bullet that most decisions were done with restricted (so the force of your distinctions is undermined, all agency is restricted what's the big deal), or alternatively we could quibble about what a sufficient degree of restriction and coercion is for the decision to count as being done from a position of highly restricted agency.
We'd be going back to a previous discussion about informed consent there though. Resolving it would require us to map out how volition, expression and autonomy work in the presence of norms, and a theory of how norms coerce. I don't think we're resolving that here, and I don't know where I'd start.
Quoting Isaac
I'm glad that we see eye to eye on that.
Quoting Isaac
Maybe an inverse argument works here. Perhaps we privilege sexual characteristics precisely because of the desires and social status of people with gender incongruity and gender dysphoria, so we're making that decision "after the fact", rather than through an a-priori comparison.
Societally, I don't know why sexual characteristics are privileged. I could imagine a horrific world where skin bleaching is NHS prescribed rather than something you buy at Boots (though both are horrid). I suppose the distinction for me is that I intuit that someone can choose to undergo transition for expressive reasons, and it meaningfully effects change.
Inversely, do you think there's something about white-skin identity which would be expressed by skin bleaching? That wrings as wrong in my head as your examples did. I'm not even sure there is a specific white-skin identity, just a "not-dark skinned" one. Putting it pretentiously, I'm under the impression that there's something affirmative in gender transition, but only something negating in the skin bleaching one. "Make me not this!" (skin bleaching) vs "Make me not this AND make me this" (transition).
Do you get the same impression?
So, using your definitions from above, would it be an unfair paraphrasing to say that you see the difference between sex-changes and skin-whitening as being that in the former the participants don't mind, but in the latter they do mind (but feel they have to)?
You seem to want to stop short of saying that a normal (non-pathological, supportive society) expression of trans identity would involve any traumatic need to change sex. There might, however, be an idle preference for doing so, but the trauma is societal in cause.
With black kids in a non-racist neighbourhood, there would equally be no non-pathological need to change skin colour, but the difference is that none would even have an idle preference for doing so, such that when society offers it as a 'solution' to it's own racism, no one would take it otherwise.
If that phrasing is close to right, then I think I can agree with it in principle (whether it's true is a far more difficult thing to determine, but I agree it could be). The problem with that account is two-fold:
1) It kinda makes it sound like society is OK to push harsh bio-chemical interventions on it's minorities (rather than simply tolerate them) on the grounds that they "don't mind". I can't get to feeling good about that, even though I've no strict moral objection. I can get to a reluctant "Oh well, I suppose if they don't mind then I've no reason to stop them", but it's not something I'm going to waive flags over, I'm not going out on the street to cheer on the fact that society's found a way to get out of it's obligation to tolerate differences by using drugs.
I come back to the fact that the pro-trans activists are not pushing a reluctant stop-gap awaiting a better solution. They're pushing this as the end goal.
2) If the free and un-coerced consent of the trans community to this stop-gap 'solution' is the only thing separating it from the unconscionable skin-whitening 'solution' to racism, then it is vitally important that the community is unaffected by any form of social coercion. It is vitally important that the discussion around gender and sex takes place in an environment where people are free to express their views and encounter a range of opinions on the matter so that they can make up their own minds.
Do we have such an environment, do you think? Are trans activists generally working toward, or in opposition to, such an environment?
Quoting fdrake
Not really, no. I think that 'identity' like any other concept is socially constructed, a post hoc story we 'pick off the shelf' to explain the various biochemical goings on in our heads which are (absent of any story) just a lot of electrical signals and chemistry. I don't believe people are born with stories already programmed, I don't see how they could be. I think we learn, through our culture and environment, to make different types of sense out of the interocepted data we get from the internal receptors in our brains.
As such someone who is black wanting to be white and someone who is male wanting to be female are both societal stories offered to explain a whole host of (probably completely incongruous) neurological goings on. One person might, then, identify as trans for a whole bunch of completely different neurological reasons to another. Same for identifying as 'white'. It's just a story, offered by society and it matches up with set of interocepted neurological goings on in need of an explanation, in need of some sense made of them.
Obviously, we all share similar neural goings on, so some stories are going to be very popular if they make sense of those shared processes, but it's also true that some stories are going to very popular if they're presented to the exclusion of all others and with huge social pressure to conform. This makes it very difficult to tell whether it's the quality of the story (good at explaining the interocepted data) or the PR of the story (advertised itself well) that accounts for its popularity.
As such, I don't see any reason why we couldn't find ourselves in a future where 'being white' was presented as a thing some people are, given a lot of good PR and thereby become just as popular a story as the trans identity is today.
Note, none of this denigrates the stories (life is quite impossible without them), nor is it an attempt to de-legitimise trans identities (calling it 'just a story' is not meant as demeaning - everything is 'just a story'). It's a warning that because everything is 'just a story' society has to be very careful about the way in which it presents its smorgasbord of available stories, especially if some stories lead to serious consequences (trauma or drugs).
I can understand the concern with that. There's two things I want to highlight. The first is that it's worthwhile recalling the distinction between how the treatment is administered and whether it's worthwhile to do. That is relevant because perhaps Mermaids aims of depathologizing trans identity and making treatment more accessible perhaps could be attained by making the current system better administered, the people who administer treatment more informed, and educating GP gatekeepers to treatments (this includes voice coaching and other non-invasive interventions etc). There was an NHS report to this effect (can cite if required) - a lot can be gained by making the current treatment work better without a fundamental reimagining of how trans identity is seen by doctors. Though the latter, I strongly believe, would aid the former. And of course the former would aid the latter.
The second thing I'd want to raise is a kind of case study. If we assume that the only reason for gender affirmation interventions is, essentially, peer pressure to shame their recipients, that would collapse the distinction between gender affirmation and "conversion therapy". The latter is universally traumatogenic, the former has a less than 1% rate of regret. It may be difficult to establish long term improvements in condition caused by the assignment, but exactly the same would hold for the kind of non-invasive treatments which are stipulated to be worthwhile in this context. Like therapy, you'll know how the short term effects swamp the long term ones - the further out in time you go from the intervention the less the observed impact on health outcomes. On that basis, should we scrap all mental health interventions because there's insufficient evidence it works long term?
And if we're working on a basis of "do no harm and this might work" - like therapy - why wouldn't greater access to medical aid for trans people (including reassignment surgery) be entailed by the same humanitarian premises which suggest that increased access to mental health services is necessary?
I'd guess you do see a distinction between conversion therapy and gender reassignment? If you don't we probably need to examine that area of the dialogue before we can proceed.
I think we have made some progress though, it seems we agree that there is a way to thread the needle between gender as a social construct with biological enablers vs male/female brains, I think we also agree that this hasn't been definitively established. Do we also agree the theory "social constructions alone determine gender incongruity" isn't established, and is likely to be too reductive
Yes, I think that's definitely true (the changes being needed). I have strong doubts this is what Mermaids are actually doing though, based on their other activities (for example their attempt to de-legitimize LGB charities), but the question of what trans activists are actually trying to do might properly be secondary to any question about the nature of the trans phenomena. One thing I think we can adamantly agree on is that trans identity is a real thing, so there's something there to account for outside of any campaign group's activities around it.
Quoting fdrake
I believe I've read it. This one?
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I think this is a strong way forward. In fact it might even strengthen the barriers against medical intervention for some if the principles already in place were applied properly. We saw, at Tavistock the effects of too lax an approach.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. In some ways that's one of the issues I see. If we say that some aspect of the person needs to be adjusted to match the other, then why not the brain? It's relatively plastic, responsive to pharmaceutical intervention... Why not make trans people happy with the body they have by adjusting their brains rather than make their current brain chemistry happier by adjusting their bodies. Is there a reason, other than efficacy, why one is icky and the other not? The reason I don't think the relative efficacy of the treatments gives us the whole picture is that even research into "conversion therapy" seems wrong. It's not that it currently doesn't work, it's that we don't even want it to.
For me, both therapy approaches seem wrong because we shouldn't be tinkering with bodies or brains as if they were custom cars which can have parts swapped our with little effect on the whole. Not without very strong cause. We simply don't know enough to do that.
For the current trans movement, it seems tinkering with the brain to make it better fit both society's expectations and somatic biology is taboo, but tinkering with the body, for exactly the same reasons (replace somatic biology for psychological biology) is not only OK, but revolutionary. Something to be cheered on with great enthusiasm. I honestly have absolutely no insight at the moment into why.
So, going back to efficacy, is there a reason why sex change works and therapy (not limited here to conversion therapy alone) doesn't? I can think of a few, but only speculative. To be clear, I'm talking here about all therapeutic solutions, not just "conversion therapy".
1) if one wants a new car, but can't afford it, the situation can be dealt with one of two ways; one can either be given the money, or one can undertake to change one's relationship with material possessions. The former is more likely to work because it's easier. Its simply something about our psyches that we believe in the power of material changes more than we do in the plasticity of the brain. Arachnophobes will commonly think removal of all spiders is more likely to make them feel better that CBT. But they're wrong. The material change is only likely to shift the anxiety elsewhere whereas CBT for phobias can be very effective. People are frequently incorrect about the likelihood of an approach working and this can lead to failures in those approaches which require long term commitment.
2) I don't think the social peer effects can be ruled out. The placebo effect of having a cure for which everyone congratulates you ("how brave!") rather than berates you (the stigma of mental health treatment remains undented) is enormous when considering that the end points are all expressed in mental terms (how 'satisfied' you are, how many 'regrets'...as if such end points were not themselves social!)
3) I know I've mentioned it before and you've diligently (and probably, sensibly) avoided it but I can't ignore the fact that the sex change option is supported by one of the largest industries in the world with the largest lobbying power by far. We can't pretend that isn't going to have an impact anywhere in this. Therapy is cheap and creates only employment. Drugs are expensive and generate huge profits for very powerful industries with a proven history of pushing profitable solutions over efficacious ones.
Quoting fdrake
Agreed. It's good to talk without the usual knee-jerk tribalism these topics so often descend into. As I've said, I've had colleagues affected by this. There are establishments, academic and otherwise, where this very conversation would at least be flagged, if not muffled entirely.
Forgot to answer this. Yes. I think that social constructions are 'selected' to make sense of biological interocepted data. That biological data is likely to be non-homogenised, and so groups of people will likely reach for the same narrative for similar reasons. Given the disconnect though, I think it unlikely there'd ever be a one-to-one correspondence, just a loose, fuzzy correlation.
I think people want to be special in whatever way is available to them, or they don't.
Some people primarily want to avoid trouble, and some don't.
I think this whole gender/sex issue is just one of the expressions of this.
Life is hard enough as it is, why make it more difficult for oneself?
Is this the LGB Alliance you're talking about? Any other examples?
Quoting Isaac
Yes.
Quoting Isaac
I need to ask why though. I can see the premise:
( 1 ) We don't know enough about the risks involved.
And the conclusion:
( 2 ) We ought not modify bodies.
But it's not a very strong argument by itself. Too many qualifying phrases, and the overall pattern of inference isn't justified either. So you'd need to demonstrate why ( 1 ) implies ( 2 ) and flesh out these qualifying words:
Quoting Isaac
Underlined and bold are underlined modifiers to currently unarticulated premises, which are bolded. There's also the issue of going from a factual statement:
"..seem wrong.."
implied by "..because we shouldn't.."+(analogy)+(causal statement)+(qualifier to causal statement) ).
If you can't see what bits are which in the above quote to my paraphrase of the argument, I can throw more words at it. We may need to have a similar discussion about how you were using natural and constructed in relation to when we ought to apply treatment earlier.
I do find what you're saying plausible though, I figured it was time I started asking you hard questions as well.
Quoting Isaac
I agree peer effects can't be ruled out, but I don't think it's been demonstrated that the intervention is a placebo, or whether that matters for administering treatment. Answering the above exercise would help with that, I think.
Quoting Isaac
Yes. It is a reason to be suspicious, but it's of weak relationship to any norms of administrative treatment in this context. It would need to be more concrete and evinced. Without those things and exhaustive contextual efforts, I doubt this train of argument would be a decisive factor either way given the uncertainties we've agreed surround other issues and this issue's relationship to the broader picture. I believe we can't practically tell if such weak evidence (in that Bayesian sense) would be decisive in this state of evidence, therefore it would not be decisive in our discussion. That is why I've ignored the point.
Yes. I believe there aren't many spaces in which this discussion could be had. I am grateful for it.
Examples of court cases? No, I think that's the one all this has pretty much coalesced into. but I'm talking about the wider debate, the attempt to demonise people like Kathleen Stock, the harassment of feminist journalists like Julie Bindell, Suzanne Moore, Hadley Freeman... But also the giving of medical advice to children contrary to NHS guidelines. It's not a good look.
Quoting fdrake
OK. I'll have a go.
Quoting Isaac
I'll start by saying that this is really intended to be an argument about sensible priors in the absence of good evidence. so there's obviously two parts to question 1) is there really an absence of good evidence, and 2) given (1), have I made a case for avoiding medication being a sensible prior.
To tackle (1). I've not yet heard any update to Dr Cass's meta study for the NHS. It may be that I'm out of the loop, but at this stage, the best data I have on evidence is that it is "weak". That goes for 'puberty blockers', gender re-assignment surgery, and gonadotropin therapies. So I consider (1) to be a given, but I may be persuaded otherwise in the light of new evidence.
So to (2), a much harder case to make. Is leaving things alone the best policy if you've only weak evidence an intervention will help? I have to admit that this comes from a gut feeling. I'm going to justify it, but I'm going to be open about the fact that the justification is post hoc. I wouldn't have to give it a moment's thought to feel it's wrong to give medication to someone because it might help them. I suppose an obvious life-or-death situation would change my mind, but it would have to be clear, not just more guesswork on weak evidence.
So, to actually attempt a post hoc justification. I think the first argument is one of a sensible baseline for therapy (of any sort). If we don't accept a 'state of nature' as a baseline, then we have no grounds to distinguish pathology from merely bad design. Is my appendix a pathology? Should women's cervical openings be a little wider for easier childbirth? Do I have the optimum number of fingers? It's essential in medicine to be able to identify a pathology. That's done by assuming that whatever flaws it may have, there exists an archetype which acts as a default model of physiological function, and that archetype is based, not on a sci-fi 'blue-sky-thinking' ideal. It's based on a 'state of nature'.
The second argument is one of responsibility (not going to invoke the bloody trolley scenario but...). We are generally held to be more responsible for that which we actively do than for that which we reasonably fail to prevent. I'm responsible if I detonate the bomb, but I'm not responsible for not interfering with its detonation (unless doing so would be really easy - hence 'reasonable'). As such, doctors and other clinicians ought pay closer attention to the potential side effects of the drugs they administer than to the potential outcomes of a failure to administer. Side effects are weighted more heavily. In the case of weak evidence for both, weak evidence of side effects trumps weak evidence for negative outcomes from a failure to intervene.
So. Having done that (?). Can I return the challenge?
You say...
Quoting fdrake
I've taken a similar approach with the highlighting of qualifiers. What measures the strength of such a relationship and in saying it needs to be 'more' concrete, you're implying some target level of concreteness that's not yet been reached? What is this target level? The pharmaceutical companies have been legally (in some cases criminally) convicted of fraud. I'm struggling to see what greater level of evidence would be required that they engage in fraud. I can see a point about not assuming every drug is promoted fraudulently, simply because some are, but I can't see how one would support a proposition that multiple convictions for fraudulent activity do not weigh at all into an argument about whether some current activity might not be entirely on the level.
Of course, I wouldn't advocate a position that no medication can now be trusted, that would be absurd, but I do think it has to constantly weigh in the balance now. We're just unfortunately in an economic system where that's a constant factor. If one is weighing risks, one has to include in that calculation the risk of fraud.
I can be quite specific about what I'd need to be convinced that concerns about pharmaceutical companies' influence were relevant.
Yes. It's clearly true that there are vested interests in prescribing drugs to make profit, even when they're not needed. It's not clear how this interfaces with trans treatment. As far as I know, even non-surgical interventions are relatively difficult to obtain - if they were handed out like candy there would be much fewer complaints about the process being obstructive. I believe that's also evinced by the NHS report. Though there's no guarantee that every healthcare system has similarly strict/harsh/draconian/badly administered barriers. I think that's a mark against the factual claim that there's been an effective pressure by drug companies to popularise transition treatment and hormone therapies - they're still seen as insufficiently available or badly administered by trans rights groups.
I suppose there is an angle there where pharmaceutical companies are making policy decisions for trans rights groups, or some entryist angle, but I wouldn't believe that without hard evidence in context.
Hard evidence in context is what I meant by concreteness. Give me documentation about exactly how one pharmaceutical company has influenced one major service provider and I'll be more convinced this line is relevant.
Quoting Isaac
I do think they weigh in, just weakly. They weigh on one issue in our discussion specifically - healthcare provision. If you focus on that, there's no evidence been provided about how these fraudulent patterns have effected gender affirmative treatment. Then there's also no evidence, so far, that whatever effect is postulated has sufficient impact on the issue as a whole to support any particular point in it. So it's relevant, and if pharmaceutical companies lobbying (or other corruption) were demonstrated to be a major driver on the adoption of trans healthcare measures, that those adoptions were nevertheless wrong also hasn't been demonstrated.
Those two sources of uncertainty make me not want to discuss it further, as I believe it would derail our discussion. Though if you wrote an essaypost with evidence and extremely detailed links to at least one issue in gender affirmative treatment, I'd be more inclined to go down that route. Ball's in your court.
Though do take note if you decide to write it of how many connections you need to document to the issues we're discussing. Closing that gap would take us far afield.
Will respond to your other points later.
I can agree it's not a good look, I'm left with a similar feeling that the significance of it not being a good look hasn't been articulated. I'm left with a sense that you believe these misadministration are a direct result of how trans rights organisations comport themselves? If so, why do you think that's the case? I'm imagining the premise that there's something sinister about the comportment of trans rights orgs is required to get your objection going, enough to treat that conduct as direct cause for inappropriate medical guidance being given to trans people.
I don't necessarily agree with the suppositions required to get this line of inquiry going, nevertheless I am interested in how you're tying it all together.
The rest of that paragraph I think requires a different tack.
Quoting Isaac
I believe you are construing that how these people were treated was at best unreasonable and at worst wrong. I think there's a convincing case that the conduct is reasonable, despite the harms. But I would also need to know why you believe this state of affairs isn't a good look to engage properly with your
opinions.
Quoting Isaac
Is this being evaluated in terms of long term alleviation of mental health symptoms associated with gender incongruence? Would appreciate the paper link. Regardless, there is always going to be an issue painting with too broad a brush - many therapies don't have well demonstrated long term health outcomes, especially for mental health issues, nevertheless they are administered and justified in terms of their risk/reward ratio. I believe a consistent case could be made for cancelling/deprioritising resource allocation to these treatments, but to me it seems suspicious why a broad point like insufficient evidence of improving long term health outcomes is being leveraged in the context of trans healthcare rather than for the broad swathe of treatment it would apply to. Why appeal in this context and not others?
In that regard there's also a concreteness problem, documented evidence or a strong argument that such a broad thing ought apply more in this case than others, and why. I think we'd need an argument that also takes into account the very low regret rate of transition surgery - which is much less than other highly promoted, even deemed necessary, surgeries which manifestly alleviate some source of harm (lined earlier, can relink if required).
I think you're presenting evidence very strongly here, which I appreciate. What I'm not following well is the philosophical side of your position. How you're linking your points, how the concepts you're employing relate to evidence, justifying how you infer one thing from another.
Quoting Isaac
I agree there, it's hard to argue for that, nevertheless it's a commonplace occurrence for healthcare providers to make that gamble. Medication for mental illness is a particularly strong example, but the same also goes for other health conditions. EG: I've had a rash on my body since just after covid, it's spread to lots of places. I've never been sent to a dermatologist, nevertheless I've been prescribed treatment courses for allergies, eczema, and fungal infections with no tests to see what is what. I am not trying to claim this is right (I would prefer the test), I'm trying to say it's commonplace. In that regard, it seems this is another place where the means of your criticism applies generically to healthcare services, rather than to gender affirmation specifically.
Quoting Isaac
Like here, you seem aware that the points you're making apply in lots of cases, to the extent where you noted that the point is general enough to apply to all treatments, nevertheless there isn't much of an argument taking this intuition and contextualising why it is sufficiently prescient to gender affirmation treatments to "flip" some issue one way vs the other. Also about what "the issue" is.
IMO, this isn't necessarily a problem, it's just that concrete instances and arguments are required to render these perspectives relevant to the case (evidentially), on precisely what the case is (conceptually), and what we ought to do about it (normatively).
I also thank you for the post-hoc admission, I've noticed the same in myself. I have a lot of beliefs I've
picked up from the media I read/watch in this area, and I appreciate the opportunity to examine them.
Quoting Isaac
I think that's one system of norms which applies to the issue, which could be persuasive. The other regards informed consent, the ongoing horribleness of inhabiting what you feel is the wrong gendered body for you, and how intervention does indeed remove a constant source of social trauma for those who'd opt for it.
I believe this should be evaluated in the context of prescription without testing in general. What do you think distinguishes the seemingly benign example of administering anti-fungals for a non-fungal rash with no test from the less benign example of administering gender affirmative interventions after other mental health screening has been done?
Trying to render your perspective in an argument:
( 1 ) We are judged more harshly for that which we do than that which we don't.
( 2 ) Mitigating circumstances for doing something change the harshness of judgement about it.
( 3 ) Mitigating circumstances for not doing something change the harshness of judgement about it.
( 4 ) There are mitigating circumstances for not medically intervening in trans people's lives (in unspecified circumstances X for unspecified reasons Y) when it would really do more harm than good.
( 5 ) There are no mitigating circumstances for medically intervening in trans people's lives (with the same qualifier) when it would really do more harm than good.
( 6 ) Therefore we would be judged more harshly for medically intervening in trans peoples' lives (in unspecified circumstances X for unspecified reasons Y).
Mine is something like:
( 1 ) If a person desires treatment X, and we would not be judged harshly for administering it, then X can be administered without harsh judgment.
( 2 ) If administering X to a person is desired by the person and seen as sufficiently justified by a qualified set of clinicians, then administering X to the person would not be judged harshly.
( 3 ) X is judged by the person and some qualified clinician to be sufficiently justified in that case.
( 4 ) The person desires X.
( 5 ) We would not be judged harshly for administering X to the person.
I think both arguments are valid, we're largely talking about the concept "and we would not be judged harshly for administering it". I treat ( 2 ) as sufficient to establish the treatment wouldn't come with harsh judgement, I think you're arguing that there isn't a way for (some class of treatments) to be sufficiently justified by a qualified set of clinicians in this instance?
Also, this is just a literature request: I am interested in "potential side effects of failing to administer" too, do you have any literature on this? As for potential side effects of administering - my intuition is that judging negative effects of therapy would be similar to judging negative effects of voice coaching, counselling etc as part of gender affirmation. Surgery and hormone therapy maybe come with different risk assessments (I think this is reflected in the NHS's current treatment pathways).
That's true, to a point. But as I said. The Mermaids campaign slogan is not "things are fine just as they are, but let's not let them get worse". If there are currently sufficient barriers to treatment (and if treatment is something which oughtn't be 'handed out like candy') then things are fine as they are, the campaign objective of Mermaids are wrong.
Quoting fdrake
I agree we'd have to conclude that any pressure has not been effective. I don't think it necessarily leads to a conclusion that it isn't present, nor that it isn't a danger which needs to be weighed. If I know Bob is generally a liar, I take whatever he says with a pinch of salt, I verify his claims with others before believing them. That done, I might make good decisions based on my advisors. It would be a mistake then to look at my quality decision-making ans say "looks like Bob wasn't so bad after all". Clinical guidelines needs to be aware of social pressures, lobbying pressures and the weakness of evidential bases. That they already are is not an indication that those pressures do not need attending to. Again, the Mermaids campaign slogan is not "things are fine just as they are, but let's not let them get worse".
Quoting fdrake
I'm not sure exactly what level of evidence you'd want. A repeating theme throughout my opinion here is going to be - why would I give them the benefit of the doubt here? I don't owe these corporations anything and they've done nothing to earn any trust. If a convicted murderer is found with a gun in the car, it's of more significance than if I were found with a gun in my car (I hunt).
I'm wary of going down another rabbit hole. I've been bitten once. There is a chain of funding connections between billionaire with heavy investments in pharmaceuticals and funding for trans rights groups (including a lot of University-based centres, particularly in the US), but there's no smoking gun, there's no document which says Joe Bloggs funded 'Drugs for Trans' and now he's a Lupron-billionaire. I don't see why there would be. Our economy is literally designed to protect people who want to influence events in favour of their investments. If you don't believe that, then I don't see any way we can proceed.
So yes, there is a string of evidence (I'm not the sort of person to simply arrive at conclusions without such), but no, none of it is concrete in the sense you're' looking for, so I'm reluctant to spend the time it would take to accumulate it all into a long post if it's not going to progress the discussion in any interesting direction. I don't think it should be needed for the points I'm making...
Here's a good article on the reach of the pharmaceuticals https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7496/855 in the BMJ. If you're of the view that corporations with this amount of reach, who could earn around up to ÂŁ1million in profit from each transitioning young person, are nonetheless simply restraining themselves on this occasion out of good will, then again, I think we've hit a dead end. Our understandings of how the modern economy works are just too incompatible.
If powerful corporation have a) the power, and b) the incentive to bring about situation X, then situation X comes about. I'm going to suspect those corporations of having had a hand in it. To not would imply they have both will and means, but nonetheless restrained themselves, but then just got lucky anyway. I find that unnecessarily implausible. As I said, I don't owe these companies anything, I've no reason to withhold judgement until I have court-worthy documentary proof.
And I think people generally hold this view too, just not with pharmaceuticals (for reasons outside of the scope of this thread). How much evidence have we all demanded to consider the Shell-funded reports on climate change suspicious? How much documentary proof did we all require to mentally convict Trump of the various wrong-doings for which he's still not been criminally convicted? What paper-trail do we all demand to suspect Russia of a second, third, fourth war crime given it's first? The merest hint of a scandal is enough to render any politician's speeches nothing but empty rhetoric.
For some reason articles like that in the BMJ, a string of criminal and civil convictions for fraud, the partial responsibility for over 100,000 deaths in the ongoing opioid crisis... never seem enough to raise suspicions about pharmaceutical promotions above tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy.
But it may be a clash of incompatible world-views. Happy to drop it if so, I've been there before to no gain.
It's generally been the report of the clinicians involved There was a swathe of resignations form Tavistock before it was closed and most cited an environment where speaking out was considered 'transphobic' in some way. With Stock, Moore, Birchill etc, that's exactly the environment these campaign groups are creating. The same is true in academia, I hear the same from colleagues. Now, either it's coincidence that this environment spread to clinicians (where it is more dangerous than just unpleasant), or it's a result of the campaign to create such an environment.
Quoting fdrake
I think that's answered best by something I've already said. I don't believe there's a 'right' way for people to interpret their biology. I don't think the chemical and electrical signals in our brain actually mean anything absent of a narrative of which there is no one right fit. That makes it important for there to be a community with enough freely available narratives for people to be able to find ones which make sense of their particular experiences. The harder, more complex a society is, the more narratives it's going to need. Also (highly speculative), the further we get from a 'natural' lifestyle, I suspect the more 'out of sync' some of our brain activities will get and the more complex narratives will be required to make sense of them. A society which seeks to close down options as 'unacceptable' is in danger of causing harm. That goes for people like Fred Martinez not finding a narrative he could use in the modern culture he found himself in, but it goes equally for the young lesbian who doesn't want to be told that her feelings of sexual attraction to same sex phenotypes is 'abusive' because she 'ought' to be attracted to anyone calling themselves a woman.
If we can't make a society in which a few incompatible narratives can be allowed to exist alongside one another without resorting to court or institutional bullying then we've lost hope.
Quoting fdrake
Dr Cass's Interim Report https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf
The CQC report on Tavistock https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/7ecf93b7-2b14-45ea-a317-53b6f4804c24?20210120085141
The gonaotrophin evidence report https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/document?id=2334888&returnUrl=search%3Ffrom%3D2020-01-01%26q%3Dgender%2Bdysphoria%26sp%3Don%26to%3D2021-03-31
Quoting fdrake
I don't think it should be limited to this case at all. I'm in favour of a broad reach here, but the reasons for focussing on trans issues are, as Dr Cass highlights, that the numbers are increasing exponentially. There's no precedent for that. We have therapies which are ineffective (or weakly evidenced) for all sorts of mental health problems, and many are growing, but linearly. The numbers of children seeking treatment for gender-related issues has increased beyond anything we've ever seen outside of epidemics. The need for proper protocols for treatment is therefore very urgent and the need to stem any wrong-turns is heightened.
Quoting fdrake
The argument (for me) is the one I gave above. If we have a material solution vs a mental solution, the material solution will be favoured (regardless of long term outcomes). It's easier and we have a psychological bias in favour of believing external causes more than we believe internal ones. Also, the end points are insufficiently robust at measuring personal gains, they still ask about 'satisfaction' or 'regret' which are both socially mediated. Clinical interventions ought not be measured on the basis of the degree to which society finds the end goals attractive.
Quoting fdrake
Again, I refer back the the alarming rate of increase in children seeking treatment for gender-realted issues. It is unlike any health issue outside of epidemics, that we've ever experienced.
Quoting fdrake
In essence, nothing. I disagree that the prescription of anti-fungals for a non-fungal rash is benign. We're facing, in the next few years, an anti-biotic resistant c.diff and s.aureus problem in hospitals which is rapidly overtaking all other causes of hospital-related death. That crisis was brought about by northing else but the over-prescription of anti-biotics. Medical interventions are not isolated. Our biochemistry is not like the custom car whose parts can be swapped out. We ourselves are a very finely tuned ecosystem of chemicals and biota, and socially we form an even greater such system.
That said, I'd refer to what I've said before about the rates. There's not been a recent 100-fold increase in the numbers of children seeking rash treatments, so the not-so-benign prescription of dubious anti-fungals is not so pressing an issue.
Quoting fdrake
Nothing springs to mind, but It's my wife who is most active in this field, I get most of this from her. I'll ask.
Quoting unenlightened
Shitposting:
One of my high school friends used to troll internet forums and voice hang outs as "The French Pirate". They invited me, it sounded fun. It was fun. I wanted to be "The French Privateer", so Francis Drake. There was also a character called "X-Drake" in a manga I was reading at the time. Hence the name.
And it just kinda stuck. I'm quite grateful I didn't choose the name "schlongpusher69". I imagine that would've stuck too.
Substantive:
Angle 1
You've raised some good points about social conflicts being internalised as identities, especially about shame. I'll raise you the same challenge I did with Isaac, how does that cash out in this context?
A1 ) Surgical transition is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A2 ) Hormone treatment is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A3 ) Gender affirmation schooling (voice therapy) is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A4 ) Therapy for gender dysphoria is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A5 ) Counselling for trauma which has caused all this shame is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
In addition to the answers, I would like a description of why that seems right to you.
Angle 2
If I've read you correctly, I believe the what marked (whatever identities are in play) here as artificial for you was that they seemed to come bundled with shame, rooted in social conflict. This was contrasted to someone's "character", which describes who they are without the social baptisms of shame, trauma and other "holes". I have some questions about that:
B1 ) If identities are socially constructed, what stops shame from being an essential part of one?
B2 ) What general consequences does this "artificiality" of shame have for people who have it?
B3 ) Why can't people's characters be inherently shameful? We can be quiet or good at mathematics, but not shameful, why?
B4 ) Why is it appropriate to treat "character" as a state of nature, prior to social identity, whenever we observe someone their character's expression becomes identified? As much as socialisation builds character, it builds identity - that these two develop in tandem undermines treating one as a state of nature and the other as social artifice.
@Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Yeah there's no point us pursuing the pharmaceutical industry's corruption in this context. It's a reason to be suspicious of all drugs which are prescribed without assessment. Among other reasons. Smoking gun absent, I don't see much point. This is just a context thing, would be happy to pursue it in other contexts - like you invoking it for the Pfizer/AstraZeneca vaccine trials seemed very justified to me. The difference here is just the degree to which the specifics are left to speculation.
Quoting Isaac
What do you take as the campaign objectives of Mermaids? I don't have a good sense of a unified ideology for them, over and above making things easier for trans people.
Quoting Isaac
Solution is a bit of an overstatement, one of the premises of this discussion was that long term therapy is ineffective in preventing relapses - so we're not contrasting long term solutions to an issue, we're contrasting based on limited evidence in order to minimise present and ongoing suffering. This will be heuristic, ideologically motivated, institutionally suspect, involve various lobbying groups. Such as the decision made this week from the English government blocking Scotland's passed reforms on gender recognition - this wasn't done using longitudinal studies either.
I get the impression that, because your position applies to lots of medical interventions, the best consistent response for you is to bite the bullet that recognises the inconsistent and flawed treatment in society, mandate "it ought to be the case that more medical interventions should be strongly based on data from controlled studies", and claim in absence of such data, no intervention should be taken. Whenever benefits+uncertainty = costs + uncertainty, do nothing.
Quoting Isaac
I think this would have more bite if it wasn't already granted that gender affirmation treatment is both a social and a bodily intervention.
Quoting Isaac
I agree. What is especially frustrating is that Mermaids and trans rights groups are not problematising the discussion by themselves, the arguments you're giving really are used by people "out in the wild" as means of stymying the improvements of trans rights. In our context, we can discuss them with more leeway. Out in the wild, they're often treated as weapons, so it's no surprise that such moves are seen as attacks.
Quoting Isaac
This would be nice. As supporting argument for an argument I think it's not a good one, though. Firstly it's an "ought" statement, "it's important", secondly it's currently false for transgender issues. I believe you are suggesting that nonmedical interventions are more appropriate, because the reason medical interventions are being pursued for trans people is ultimately because society's fucking awful for minorities. This is also similar to @unenlightened's point I think, though from a different angle.
Like I asked @unenlightened, how do you think trans people ought to be treated?
Is there any model aside from the social that can explain this increase?
Quoting fdrake
This all feels to me rather like the question of abortion. Given social pressures, economic and normative, on women who become pregnant, that we are not going to treat or try to change, should, abortion be legal? A reluctant yes, but removing the stigma and properly funding childcare and motherhood would be a better solution in almost every case.
To be honest, I don't have the expertise to answer, but it is clear to me that there is a need or desire to transition only to the extent that what one is, is, or is felt to be, "wrong". And that means it is a social artefact. And what is permissible is an artefact of the same society. So I suppose that what society says is wrong with an individual, it needs to facilitate them changing. But I don't have to like it.
Quoting fdrake
B1. Shame is ubiquitous, but what stops it from being essential is that it can only arise from comparison.
B2. This is a huge question, that I could make a whole thread on. From shame one hides oneself and tries to be what one is not, leading to anxiety of being exposed as a fraud, and from being hidden comes the sense of isolation and loneliness. Think of anorexia for an example of how social pressure creates lethal misery through body-shaming.
B3. I don't understand the difference from B1.
B4. I distinguish character and identity by crude definition thus: character is what one is, and identity is the image one has of what one is. Both develop and change due to biology, socialisation, and other environmental influences. (No one becomes a pianist or comes to see themself as a pianist without a piano in the environment.) Does this make more clear how shame operates at the level of self-image, and not at the level of actual self? How it operates though is to divide the individual into inner and outer, and all the other conflicts within psyche. Hence, in this case 'I am outwardly male and inwardly female' or vice versa. So the division between state of nature and social artifice is indeed part of the same division in psyche, and of course the individual cannot actually be divided, so some aspect must dominate and some aspect must be suppressed. Or some aspect acted out, and some aspect hidden away. and because we feel this division, we look for and cherish the imagined unity of 'authenticity', the great prize of therapy.
Speaking of anorexia, another body dysphoria, would we advocate liposuction as a treatment?
I also don't have the expertise to answer. Regardless, I have an opinion and feelings on the matter, and I want it all battle tested.
Quoting unenlightened
That makes sense to me. I can sympathise with reluctant support somewhat. Do you think it's in no one's "character" to transition? Further, is gender part of someone's character (vs sex)? Like... is it in my character to have male gender identity?
Quoting unenlightened
I see! This is what I'm getting at. You seem to be construing character as a collection of unary properties of a person ("I am good at mathematics"), and identity as a collection of comparison relations which obtain of he people ("I need to be stronger" or "I need to present (more like X)"). Usually there's a good distinction to be had between those unary properties - like "is red"- vs relational properties - like "is redder than" - but I think that's quite hard to draw a firm line on here.
The reason being is that personal characteristics also seem socially constructed to a large degree, like you being good at mathematics. Does that mean you were demonstrated to be better than your peers through exams/implicit assessments of competence/demonstrations through completing exercises? I'm sure you see in each of those cases, there is a social relation underlying the ascription of the property "is good at mathematics" to yourself, even if the property itself is unary. The stated examples are also comparisons - "good at mathematics (relative to this exam performance record)", "good at mathematics (relative to aggregate peer approval)", "good at mathematics (as ensured by passing these exercises)". Why do you get to be "good at mathematics" in your character? I'm not doubting that you *are* good at it btw, I'm asking how you make sense of it given the above.
I'm still struggling to understand your view and how it relates to the topic. I think I'm getting there though. Are there norms in the "state of nature"? What's the state of nature made of? If humans are essentially undivided why do we see the proliferation of identities in contravention of that fact?
Quoting unenlightened
I can see the case for anorexia and shame. I think applying the same to trans people is... problematic... though. When you say "From shame one hides oneself and tries to be what one is not" - in the context of a trans person, are you saying that an M2F trans person "really is" a man but feels the need to become a woman?
@unenlightened I'm not symphatising with reluctant support as your proposed "solutions" don't solve being unwanted pregnant for 9 months and then going through the hell that's labour. It's not about the unborn kids or fetuses, it's about the rights to your own body. And it's not as if abortion is anything new. It was entirely without moral consideration before the church but good to see Christian values are firmly rooted in your mind through cultural conductivity.
I don't want to defend anti-abortion sentiment. I simply got the impression that @unenlightened agrees on the political points and looks at them with pained goggles on. Happy to be corrected though.
Agreed, as to the difference, and also the significance of that difference. I suppose I'm less trusting of pharmaceuticals, we can agree to differ on this, it's resolution being perhaps outside the scope here.
Quoting fdrake
I don't really see much of an overarching campaign objective. They've run some harmless, even positively beneficial campaigns, but on gender-affirming medical treatment, they've been overstepping medical advice. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-lobby-group-mermaids-urges-puberty-blockers-for-12-year-olds-b96zqbh2k
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/30/transgender-charity-mermaids-investigated-breast-binders-given-to-children
They were still promoting places like Mike Webber's clinic and GenderGP long after they were struck off for clinical malpractice prescribing puberty blockers to under 12s
Quoting Ms. S. Appleby vs Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
And on shutting down disagreement, they've been positively disgraceful, as we've discussed above.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. I have taken similar stances on other pharmaceutical interventions. Full disclosure though, I'm writing most of this second hand. My wife has been campaigning to de-pathologise children's mental health issues for almost her entire career. I get an earful post-work and total submission to the cause is easiest (only slightly joking!). She's furious (and has been directly affected by the changes in approach) and would probably bite your head off, so I'm trying to see what arguments there are to temper such fury.
Quoting fdrake
This sounds interesting, but I'm not following exactly, could you expand a bit? Are you suggesting that we could see gender affirming therapies as less problematic because they are more holistic already? That could well have legs.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, it's part of this move to divide everything into two opposing camps with each getting more vehemently opposed to the other. It's a really interesting phenomena because what seems to be happening is that the workings of the social media algorithms have become cultural, people replicate those AI objectives in settings outside of AI control, it's like the AI has become an influencer in our culture... Anyway, another topic...so many interesting threads to pull on here.
Quoting fdrake
Like anyone else, allowed to do what they like so long as it doesn't harm others and be free from overt coercion, especially during more vulnerable ages. It's not a privilege I think they currently enjoy form both sides.
I think the issues here are bigger than the minority group though. Trans people have a hard time. They'll continue to have a hard time if they're given access to treatments and also if they're given access to counselling, but (and I don't mean this to be insensitive), there's not many of them. The effect n society of the manner in which this debate is being conducted I think has far greater potential for harm than any movement in either direction on trans populations. If our culture cannot re-learn how to deal with differences of opinion without demonising or beatifying I think the devastating effect that failure has already had will only get worse.
The resources you asked for. I'm told these are comprehensive reviews.
https://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/Abstract/2015/11000/Gender_dysphoria_in_children_and_adolescents__a.6.aspx
https://jme.bmj.com/content/48/9/603.full
Not really, but the question is whether the social change is allowing undiagnosed cases to come forward or actually creating cases.
The problem I have with the former option is...
a) it strikes me as an oddly functional cusp, just about accepted enough for people to come forward for treatment, but still so unaccepted that people really need treatment to avoid the massive trauma of remaining in their existing phenotype. Just fundamentally unlikely, but possible.
b) there is, without doubt a growing trend, young people in certain circles are very keen on the whole trans 'thing' - this would mean the effect is minimal, but it's mainly young people that are coming forward, so I find that hard to believe.
Ultimately, I think it's difficult not to see a strong social positive effect (as opposed to the removal of a retraining effect).
The seminal article is this one https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330 , but it's been much criticised.
Quoting Benkei
First, wages for pregnancy and nursing women and childcare, Give the up-coming generation and its needs its real value in society. Which is near the top of the list and a long way above the defence budget. When that is all in place and pregnancy and birth are accorded the high status and rewards they deserve, then there may still be a few unwanted pregnancies, and then I will listen to arguments either way, as to whether "pregnancy dysphoria" should be treated surgically or with counselling under this or that circumstance.
It's a bit off topic, but I think these comparisons can be illuminating.
Thanks. Yeah, I would not be happy with drawing any very definite conclusion from that. It looks more than a bit undergraduate to me. There is, I would have thought a strong possibility of onset of menstruation dysphoria, augmented by porn induced disgust at female body being self diagnosed as gender dysphoria.
I wouldn't swear to it, but I think before the rather recent liberalisation of abortion, one could get an abortion on mental health grounds in the UK, but of course you risked permanent incarceration. There are a lot of things I think are a load of bull, and I have been trying to provide a consistent and reasoned way of distinguishing individual medical issues from socially constructed dysphoria, aka unhappiness. If you prefer to just shout your dogma and label the opposition, you don't need my say so, and you're not going to get it.
It's not like cutting one's hair. I assume that women do not deliberately get pregnant in order to have an abortion, but that it is rather an unpleasant thing one undergoes because the alternative is even more unpleasant. Do you think otherwise?
Nice way to go off topic. I can't help but point out though that this:
Quoting Benkei
is way off base.
"According to Buddhist ethics, the first precept instructs lay Buddhists to abstain from killing or harming any living being or destroying living creatures. In Buddhist beliefs, a life begins from the first moment of conception, therefore, abortion, which is obviously an act of harming and killing an innocent life, is definitely sinful and against the precept. The majority of Buddhists therefore agree that abortion is equal to the killing of a human being, and is a form of sinfulness that should be avoided."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2982600
"According to Hindu bioethics, abortion is allowed only in cases where it is necessary for saving the life of the mother. The perspective of Hinduism is a very pro-life one, emphasizing Ahimsa and its intrinsic reverence for life."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7166242/#:~:text=According%20to%20Hindu%20bioethics%2C%20abortion,its%20intrinsic%20reverence%20for%20life.
"most Islamic scholars agree that the termination of a pregnancy for foetal anomalies is allowed before ensoulment, after which abortion becomes totally forbidden, even in the presence of foetal abnormalities; the exception being a risk to the motherÂ’s life or confirmed intrauterine death."
https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6939-15-10
So yes, as far as we're concerned in the West, it's a Christian thing. And yes, abortion was permitted in other cultures. I never claimed all of them or that Christianity was the only religion that prohibited it.
But it should be, right?
A typical patient in the US is already a mother, over 20, unmarried, relatively poor and attended some college. Oh shit, it's family planning! So you rather have her make her own life and that of her other kids worse because you made it up, literally by sucking it out of your thumb, that it's a mental issue. These women are making rational choices about what's best for them and the rest of their family despite a society in which large segments frown upon it.
And then there's teenage pregnancies due to stupidity or accidents. Also, mental issue.
How many of us haven't had unprotected sex with another that didn't result in a lasting relationship? And then if my ex wants to get an abortion she has mental issues. I don't think so.
You might want to go back and actually read what I said. I literally spelled out the economic and social pressures that typically make a woman seek abortion. Here is my repeat prescription:
Quoting unenlightened
That was by way of comparison with the pressure put upon gender atypical people to somehow conform such that they "choose" what I would maybe unfairly describe as 'mutilating surgery'.
What people want and what people choose is socially (including economically) constructed and conditioned. So having to choose between your growing foetus and your already malnourished underprivileged children is not a free choice. to have a free choice must include having the means to look after the child, and still have a life and a career. The issue of abortion is about child-support and family support. So maybe take off the mighty shield of righteousness and engage in some debate. I am very unsure where I want to draw the lines, so you might convince me if you do. For example, what do you think about the anorexic's right to choose to starve to death? Or the right of depressed people to choose suicide? I find these things hard to decide, personally.
A fair number of us, actually. Are you protecting the right of your ex to choose, or your own right to be irresponsible? Sheesh I'm even sounding like a fucking republican to myself now! Look what you made me say.
Look, I'll just go on record that I am strongly against making abortion illegal. Happy? I am also strongly for making abortion not the economic necessity it all too often is at present for many of our exes. We ought to be prepared collectively to support all our many exes and their progeny, and fund child care and all the other services. How's that for a Christian ethic?
There's also PlosOne's rather poor record on peer review...
Nonetheless. I think an explanation without taking social influence into account is ridiculous. What's more worrying now is the distinct imbalance developing in favour of girls seeking to reject their birth sex in favour of the (let's face it) somewhat more socially promising, male form.
Indeed, rather like the way drapetomania seemed mainly to affect Blacks. Perhaps its a new variant of hysteria.
What struck me as particularly interesting is the fact that teenage girls seeking "gender affirming therapy" is a group that is growing extremely rapidly, and that this demographic is also suffering from alarming rates of mental illness.
It is a suspicion of mine that in western society's quest for complete sameness between the sexes it is primarily girls that have been persuaded to become more like boys, and not the other way around. Essentially, it is "society's" view that girls ought to be more like boys, but it doesn't say that out loud. Apparently, girls weren't good enough in their previous form. Not "smart" enough, not "successful" enough, etc. - whatever those terms mean.
Human beings are sensitive creatures, and the young generation picked up on this intuitively. Where does this desire to see girls turn into boys come from? An older generation with a complex regarding femininity and its role in society, perhaps?
Wherever it comes from, it is projected onto the children who more than anything else want to please their parents.
Earlier in this thread there was this brief exchange:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Tzeentch
I think may have been correct, at least as far as influences on the younger generation are concerned, however I wonder if we agree on where this comes from.
Notice the use of the word "still" - as though society is moving towards a situation in which feminine traits will be valued higher. Given the role of "feminism" in western society one would be forgiven for believing as much, but we clearly see the opposite. In fact, feminism might aswell be re-branded masculinism in the "modern" age.
On a further note, in society's quest for complete sameness (which perhaps in the future we will look back on as society's quest for the masculinization of girls) boys haven't been faring much better.
Where society seems to have developed a hyperfocus on developing masculine traits in girls, on the side of boys we will probably encounter neglect - or perhaps even an opposite effort, for boys not to develop masculine traits. A fear of the boys out-masculinizing the girls, perhaps?
Note, conspicuously, that there is hardly any effort whatsoever to make boys develop feminine traits.
What dark pathology is our "modern" society hiding?
I thought this would be a relevant topic of discussion in a thread that was supposed to be about positive feminine traits.
I think the attempt to deconstruct sex and gender has just left a lot of confused people.
So I start a thread to celebrate women and immediately people express skepticism about the existence of any real traits of women. Imagine how confusing this must be for younger people?
It's like no one could even use the principle of charity to humor the thread topic but went straight into the process of dismantling sex and Gender.
Quoting Tzeentch
Social conservatives would argue that the past 50 years has seen a concerted push to de-masculine males. Men are told to “cry more” and “to let-go of their bottled-up emotions.”
“Whether the title of a piece is “The Stigma of Masculinity: Can Men Still Manly Without Feeling Ashamed?" or "How to Raise a Feminist Son" or "Re-Defining Masculinity,” the message is the same: There is something inherently wrong with boys, or at least in the way they have been raised in the past (and many are still); and we have to do something about it.“(Psychology Today)