Social Justice Transgender and gender identity discussion

[w01fg4ng]

You're the wizard, google it.

 

[Xorkoth]

Oh he most certainly did not do that at all.

It would be more accurate to say that he repeatedly insisted that the transgender "agenda" was to sexualize children to normalize pedophilia, rather than accusing any individual transgender people of being pedophiles. It's one of the views I had the most problems with from him because the only "agenda" is to try to eliminate the fear and hatred that transgender people face in society, like we had to do with homosexuality (which has finally become pretty accepted as a valid thing to be across most of society, fortunately).

 

[SKL]

Who would even notice if you're bisexual or trans if you don't draw attention about it?

"Who would notice if your trans?" I don't think you've seen a lot of transsexuals lol. Unless you just mean someone with gender dysphoria who doesn't attempt to "transition" or "pass," in which case I agree with you. Generally though this population tends toward narcissism and just love to draw attention to themselves (especially MtFs, FtMs are somewhat of a different beast).

 

[JessFR]

"Who would notice if your trans?" I don't think you've seen a lot of transsexuals lol. Unless you just mean someone with gender dysphoria who doesn't attempt to "transition" or "pass," in which case I agree with you. Generally though this population tends toward narcissism and just love to draw attention to themselves (especially MtFs, FtMs are somewhat of a different beast).

Wouldn't this quite possibly be a perception bias though?

Like, by definition you're only gonna see the people you can see, You can't observe the people who remain successfully unobserved.

So how can you accurately determine what proportion what you see really is?

 

[SKL]

Edit 4/11/21: nota bene: the following posts of mine were orginally in conversation with another poster who has since deleted the relevant posts (I don't know why) which is why it appears I made a shitton of posts one after another. Hopefully you can still follow the conversation.

Wouldn't this quite possibly be a perception bias though?

Like, by definition you're only gonna see the people you can see, You can't observe the people who remain successfully unobserved.

So how can you accurately determine what proportion what you see really is?

This is a good question. It's been called the "toupée fallacy," as in "all toupées are bad because I've never seen a good one." But there are just not enough trans running around for this to be happening all the time and the physical differences between trans-identified and natal sexes are objective in nature even if they exist (like all human characteristics) on a spectrum. Now, passing someone on the street, certainly not everyone is going to be clockable as trans. But looking at someone paying deeper attention to things like facial bone structure, hip curvature, shoulder width and angle, etc., it's going to become apparent. FtMs have it easier than MtFs because testosterone changes them in ways that estrogen does not and because there is probably more variance in men than there is in women for some of these "clockable" biomechanically based factors. Nonetheless, a person's bones don't lie. There is a reason (multiple reasons) that you can tell someone's sex from their skeletal remains. Identifying someone as being trans is doable just doing this when the flesh is still on, even if the MtF is lucky enough to be short and waifish or FtM broad and bullish. That's not even getting into voice, and behavioral tells, of which there are a lot. This is particularly apparent when a MtF is among natal women. Alexis (natal male) and sister Patricia Arquette (natal female), for example, show all the "tells" I just mentioned and then some when standing next to one another:

There's also this:

 

[SKL]

I'm hardly an expert on this, but I've researched in the past how people determine the sex of skeletons (to the untrained eye they seem extremely
hard to distinguish).

Spoiler: pelvis and skull

The bones do tell a story but when you add to it fat distribution (which can be changed by cross-sex hormones but only to an extent, look at Alexis and sister above for instance) and the way the bones are angled such as in the shoulders, which is due to cartilage and musculature (not present in old skeletons.) It's much easier to tell on a live person than in a forensic context with a skeleton, but bone structure is a big part of it. In "facial feminization surgery" they shave off parts of the skull. This example looks pretty good (and it was on a fairly feminine man to begin with), but still creates a kind of "uncanny valley" effect (as does a lot of plastic surgery):

Spoiler: image

Less can be done about the hips, although as I mentioned estrogen does help. Surgery is done too, but I believe less commonly, and the results don't look as natural either.

Spoiler: nsfw, obviously

These surgeries are costly and produce imperfect results. The ones pictured above are from surgeons promoting themselves so they can be assumed to be the very best. Most outcomes aren't as good, and there are many horror stories of bad outcomes, which are a "dirty little secret" of the community. Criticizing surgeons is something of a taboo in the online trans world. A certain surgeon, Dr. Rumer of Philadelphia, is a particularly instructive example (a flagrantly offensive parodic song has even been written about her.) This is not even going into the genital surgeries, which produce what is in some ways analagous to a literal open wound, which even in the best of cases looks little like a vagina and functions not at all like one. I'm not going to post an example of this because it's gross and extremely NSFW but pictures can be readily found online. This surgery is often fraught with complications. Many of the doctors who do any of these surgeries have questionable credentials and practices. But we're getting off topic.

Most transsexuals will not have all of this done. If they have, and were lucky to have an ambiguous body shape to begin with, then they are going to be much harder to "clock." This is a tiny minority though. And even in these cases I think the results usually fall into the "uncanny valley" territory, that is if you look. Even the very best passing ones usually benefit from a lot of makeup on a daily basis. I'll admit that there are some who would be very difficult to tell from a natal female with makeup and clothes on, but they are very rare. Unicorn rare. So much that talking about the toupée fallacy, which imagines there to be a large number of "stealth", very well passing transsexuals out there, is a fallacy in itself.

To my recollection, all that stuff is highly on a spectrum too. With some women having more masculine bones and some men having more feminine.

Certainly it is on a spectrum which is why I mention physically effeminate men who decide to "transition" as being "lucky." Someone like Charlotte Clymer (the MtF in the 4chan screencap I linked above and an overall insane person) is correspondingly unlucky. There is a spectrum but at some point there is an absolute dividing line as well. Sex is objective and binary. Even "intersex" persons, who are a vanishingly small minority who some TRAs like to bring up as an argument against the "gender binary", are either genetically male or genetically female but with additional chromosomes.

I dunno, maybe you're right

FWIW this is a topic I've researched quite a bit, but of course I bring my own biases to the table, as does anyone. I don't try to hide them, but I try to ground everything I'm saying in objective physiological fact or sociological fact that while subjective is pretty much beyond dispute.

but this all seems quite speculative.

"Speculative" in the sense that people aren't really doing scientific research on passing vs. non passing transsexuals (it's hard to do any research in this field due to political pressure) but hardly speculative in the sense that there are objective differences that are almost always visible.

Voice is an interesting one. I've never researched in great depth how transgender people handle voice.

They even have surgeries for this, on the vocal cords. Mostly, though, they see vocal coaches, it's a whole cottage industry.

I do know though that a LOT of the differences between men and women however are hormonally influenced.

Certainly but what cross-sex hormones can do for transsexuals is limited hence the need for cosmetic surgery. Hormones also of course don't change the facts of male or female socialization which has huge consequences beyond the scope of the current conversation, but which for the sake of the topic of "passing" play into both subtle and not-so-subtle cues that something is "off" about a person's gender presentation.

Infact the genetic basis seems to be one of the poorest ways to classify sex.

Disagree entirely, genetic sex is sex, definitionally. And all sex differences, including hormonal differences, exist because of genetics, hence why I state that intersex persons are one sex or another, i.e. they either have a Y chromosome or not, despite the fact that these disorders, which is what they are, not "other sexes" or somewhere between the sexes, may have different primary and secondary sexual characteristics and even unusual pairings of the two.

P.S. don't we have a thread for this though?

 

[SKL]

We do I'm being bad. (mods if you'd like me to move this stuff over give me the heads up and I'd be happy to do it for you since many of them are my posts anyway).

probably would be a good idea (although this subject does have that word "cis" in the title)

You do seem very knowledgeable about this.

Once this whole subject started becoming very salient in society I decided I needed to understand it better. What really struck me was how quick almost all media, and following that much of society, became convinced that transsexualism represented a sort of ontological reality, e.g. that MtFs are female in an ontological sense rather than just being men who present a certain way. That and how the news covered Bruce Jenner and all that followed. When stuff started getting done to children that was beyond the pale to me, and I really felt the need to understand better. So I've read a lot of the literature and even spent time following trans-oriented online communities so as to understand their thinking better.

On the clinical side I've only had a very small handful of trans-identified patients. In that setting, the best practice is to respect their identity and not delve to deep about it (unless you are treating them for gender issues which I never was.) However, the psychology/psychiatric and overall healthcare communities have become extremely politicized when it comes to trans issues. I linked this Wikipedia article, which itself isn't exactly objective, before as an example of this. The stifling of academic and clinical opinion as well as opinion generally in society that is contrary to the TRA (trans rights activist) narrative is striking and scary.

Tbh, with those later 2 pictures, I would have identified them as female for both the before and the after.

There's a slight masculinity to the left(before I assume) face, but not enough that I'd have picked it. I've seen women with more masculine features than that.

Yes, both of those are quite well done and done on men that were feminine to begin with. They are lifted from surgeon's websites so they can safely assumed to be some of the best work those surgeons have ever done. The only thing I can say about the "after" results is there's a bit of an "uncanny valley" effect. The hips are weird and the face definitely looks like it's had work done. But yes, they pass quite well. Most don't nearly approach them.

Those surgeries can't be cheap, it seems a little surprising that people would invest in them unless it was more than a mild improvement. But then again, we are always our own worst critics.

To understand why they'd drop money on this and go through a lot of suffering (these surgeries seem like they'd be very painful) you have to understand that gender identity disorder has a lot in common with other types of body dysmorphia, although GID is not strictly a subset of BD (there are other issues at play, which differ significantly between natal males, who tend to have psychosexual issues, and natal females, who tend to have body issues and trauma issues.) Nonetheless, in body dysmorphia, we're talking about psychological phenomena which cause people to starve themselves, get unnecessary plastic surgeries, work out to extreme levels, etc. Trans identified individuals have much in common with this. They are often utterly driven to change, or at least escape, their embodiment in their natal sex. Not every trans person is like this, but the classic type is. Some of the types that have become more common, or more prominent, in recent years since the explosion of trans identity stuff on the scene, especially natal male autogynephiles, may not feature this at all. In fact there's a whole debate in the trans community about whether trans identity necessitates body dysmorphia or even gender dysphoria at all.

 

[Neuroborean]

"Who would notice if your trans?" I don't think you've seen a lot of transsexuals lol. Unless you just mean someone with gender dysphoria who doesn't attempt to "transition" or "pass," in which case I agree with you. Generally though this population tends toward narcissism and just love to draw attention to themselves (especially MtFs, FtMs are somewhat of a different beast).

Is not that you don't notice, is that you shouldn't care a bit about it.
I've seen not so many cause there's not so many here, but I've seen a few.
And why they tend to narcissism? that's a pretty good question.

 

[Jabberwocky]

So, if I understand you correctly @JessFR, we might have one definition for ‘female’ for the purposes of determining who can play women’s sport, another definition of ‘female’ for determining access to women’s only social spaces such as restrooms, change rooms, and rape shelters, another definition of ‘female’ for positions where there is a quota for women and another definition for genetically-based medical research?

Some of these definitions could be determined socio-culturally (and therefore politically) but others objectively through physiological determination?

Makes sense to me that if gender is a choice and sex is a spectrum then definitions might need to be contextual.

 

[SKL]

Ok so I'm gonna reply to this part (I haven't gone over everything else yet).

There are conditions where people are born apparently female, yet have a y chromesome. Part of the chromesome is damaged causing a failure in masculinization of a newborn that otherwise would have been a male.

This is why I said genetics aren't a great way to identify this in the broader social sense. It's crazy to lump obviously female or obviously male individuals, who before modern science would have gone their whole lives not knowing, into the opposite category just to make the definition work. If you gotta do that it means it's a bad definition anyway.

You could narrow the definition to just the important part of the y chromesome. But then I think there are also conditions where that works but other abnormalities cause a failure in masculinization . Uhh I wanna say it's caused by having a born immunity to the effects of male hormones?

Some people respond to this by just saying those people are male, and I just can't take those people seriously. If you're born with visibly female sex organs, think you're female your whole life it's crazy to suddenly say "oh but you're a man cause I need you to be for my definitions to work!

You are right in a lot of ways that count here, so I'll try to clarify a bit what I meant in referring to intersex conditions being essentially male or female. They are, and I don't in saying this mean that some of the individuals affected aren't in many functional ways the opposite of what their chromosomes would imply. In terms of the most inherent functional differences between the sexes, most, but not all, intersex individuals are sterile (in those that are not, the conditions are sometimes heritable due to chromosomal abnormalities being passed along.)

Some conditions, like people with three or even four chromosomes, one of them a Y, I don't recall the proper names of these syndromes, this is far beyond my area of expertise, correspond fairly simply with the XX/XY dichotomy, although they have other issues; some, like what you are mentioning, seem to do the opposite, some involve externally ambiguous or even deceptively appearing genitals but something different internally. Some involve secondary sex characteristics that don't correspond with the genitals. "Intersex" is a diverse category.

What I mean by "they are either male or female by virtue of having a Y chromosome or not" (n.b. I phrased this very deliberately to include people with more than two chromosomes) is that all of these individuals have a genetic sex and any deviation from this is, regardless of it's nature, an inherently pathological aberration, which I do not mean this to sound offensive. There is no polite way to state it. Intersexuality is "normal" in that it is naturally occuring but it is a birth defect or rather a category of birth defect. Many intersex conditions coincide with severe developmental abnormalities. Some you barely ever hear about, even among intersex conditions which you don't hear a lot about to begin with, because they do not survive until adulthood. What's more, all of these conditions in general are extremely rare. The cross-sex-appearing intersex individual is an extreme rarity of an extreme rarity, the individual with genital ambiguity a little less so, but still rare.

Others that they're in a separate category entirely. Which strikes me only slightly less silly. Cause I keep coming back to "but if they were born appearing to be x, were socialized and grew up as x, and wouldn't until modern science have ever known they were anything other than x, how can you with a straight face tell me they're y, or z?"

I've looked into this question before, that question being "exactly what makes someone male and someone female". And all I was able to conclude is that there's actually no all encompassing definition. You can create specific definitions for specific scientific purposes. But that appears to be it.

So to continue with from the above, my point is that intersex individuals form no sort of argument at all in the debates about sex and gender. In it they are a red herring. They do not exist "outside the gender binary," they are either males, or females, but with pathological development of their sexual characteristics which can come in a dizzying variety of forms, although generally with only a discrete few outcomes (combine: external genitalia male, female, ambiguous; internal genitalia male, female; normal, underdeveloped; etc.) This may cause them to have very realistic cross-sex presentation (which, as I understand it, would inherently imply infertility) due to differences in the influence on growth of both prenatal and postnatal hormones. This may seem like a fine point, and even a cruel one to make to someone who has been raised as, and is superficially indistinguishable from, a woman (again, an extreme rarity), but the truth stands.

There's also the whole sex vs gender thing, which seems to try and solve this by saying "my gender is what I say say it is" and then leaving sex to be defined using these silly descriptions that wind up falling apart in the edge cases.

And here we arrive at the reason why, in this case, I feel it necessary to make this point. To avoid these edge cases. Why? Transgender activists are fond of pointing to intersex conditions to suggest that sex is not as cut-and-dry as it in fact is, or even that there is something "beyond the gender binary." These arguments are fallacies because they are speaking of extremely rare and inherently pathological development as if it were analogous to their having a difference in their subjective experience of their "gender" and the reality of their sex (which is something that some intersex people have been reported to feel. I am not sure, though, if this goes for intersex people who are entirely unaware of their condition. The only cases of this of which I am aware are, IIRC, of intersex children who were surgically modified to appear one way or the other and who's parents kept this from them, a rather different situation.)

Honestly, the abuse of intersex conditions by TRAs for the sake of argument strikes me as rather offensive to intersex people. It seems offensive, too, for them to be claimed as a part of the "+" in "LGBTQ+," as is sometimes done.

"Intersex" itself is honestly probably a problematic term in and of itself as it implies a lot that's not really actually the case, but I don't have another term ready to use.

Personally I think it's all overcomplicating things. We don't need a one size fits all definition that works in every single instance. We can work this out on a case by case basis and use some common fucking sense. The "if it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck" solution. :D

Intersex conditions are, as I said, a red herring. In terms of socializing the women you referenced initially, of course they should be socialized as women (the "duck" solution you mention.) It's a no-brainer. They cannot bear children but women with a lot of different issues have that issue (and when TRAs try to make this an argument for their cause, they have gone from vaguely offensive to astronomically offensive.) The more common case of children born with ambiguous genitalia present a much thornier problem. But again, these are rare situations which have precisely zero bearing on transsexualism and gender dysphoria. That's the reason I feel the need to get so specific about this.

@Atelier3 I think this answers what you are asking as well.

 

[SKL]

For restrooms, rape shelters, and stuff like that, I like the quacks like a duck approach. With rape shelters particularly, transgender women are at especially high risk. I think it makes more sense to be worrying about them than the other women.

Now sure, I'm sure you could come up with a specific example with a specific transgender person where if I were in such a shelter I wouldn't feel comfortable with them there. But that's why you use some common sense. If they clearly identify as female, have lived as female for years, you let them use the service.

If they're 6'2 and decided they identified as female a couple months ago... then you don't let them.

Similar with bathrooms, I just don't think it's really that complicated.

I don't want to get into this for now [later edit: but I did, oops] but I'll say that as far as bathrooms go, I've always been of the opinion that if people can't tell, nobody is going to complain, and thus the problem is solved before it ever comes up. That said, I just spent several posts talking about how "passing" is an unrealistic goal for most MtF transsexuals, so we're still left with the problem.

I'll also say that most women, imagining sharing a bathroom with an MtF, probably have in their minds a picture of a very effeminate gay man dressed up as a woman. Unfortunately, and very much increasingly, that isn't the case for a lot of trans-identifying [natal] males. Many people are not even aware that there are gynephilic (i.e. attracted to women) TiMs who identify as "transsexual lesbians." Most (all?) of them are "autogynephiles," and for people who are unaware of what that is, understanding the concept is most enlightening. In short, Dr. Ray Blanchard, probably the authority in this area for decades, classes TiMs (trans-identified males, by which I mean any natal male who identifies as female) generally as falling into one of two categories: HSTS/"homosexual-transsexual": androphilic, dysphoric, often suffers from internalized homophobia, sometimes will want to engage sexually with straight men.

The other is AGP: autogynephile; this individual, as the name might imply, is attracted to the idea of being a woman. This is a curious phenomenon called "erotic target location error," which I'll leave to the reader to look up if you are unfamiliar. Basically it's a rather unusual fetish. AGPs are almost all gynephilic (Blanchard thinks or originally thought all are.) They tend to have psychosexual issues and in this era it would seem that a lot of these derive from pornography. These are not, as a broad category, people who I'd be thrilled to have in the bathroom with female loved ones. The HSTS, by and large, sure, who cares, let the laissez-faire approach run wild. These individuals with AGP are a bit more problematic though. As they are driven by fetishism, they will often seem to feel the need to invade women's spaces as a goal in and of itself, and a not-insignificant portion of them are bothersome and rather more occasionally outright dangerous to women. The latter two categories are particularly interested in invading lesbian spaces, which has created no end of controversy in the "LGBTQ+" community.

We are seeing a lot more trans-identified natal men in this category, which some people attribute to pornography, some to "social contagion" (which I'll get into at some point I'm sure when discussing rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) and "social contagion", which are significantly bigger issues with trans-identified natal females.) It is also possible we are seeing fewer HSTS in the West as homosexuality is more and more accepted (interestingly, they quite often come from backgrounds which disparage homosexuality. In some Islamic countries, Iran in particular, "transitioning" is encouraged or even mandated for homosexuals.) I don't think anyone really knows, though, research is hard to do as I mentioned due to political pressure (which phenomenon I'll also get into at some point I'm sure.)

FtMs to be discussed at a later date. That's complicated too. Don't forget about them, though, as many do. They have, and present, their own set of issues, and these are shaping up to be more and more important: the number of trans-identifying natal females is skyrocketing! Stay tuned!

For medical research you have to define it for the uses of the research. So if for instance it's a study of the Y chromesome, You exclude everyone without one, regardless of how they identify.

Medical situations bring up interesting quandrys in this arena, like the case of a trans-identifying natal female who bled out in an emergency room due to an undetected (ectopic?) pregnancy that was missed because she "passed" and had "male" on her medical records. Less exotic situations would come up with differences in how the sexes present with heart attacks, stuff like that. And that's not even getting into the potential health effects of long term cross-sex hormones, which we know little to nothing about.

I think people make this way more convoluted than it needs to be.

Oh, it's pretty convoluted. Especially when arguments get made of a profoundly obscurantist and/or intellectually dishonest character, as happens a lot. You're right, though, it doesn't need to be convoluted. We could just say that some people prefer to attempt to pass as the other sex and more or less leave it at that. Ideally, we wouldn't have any bigotry towards them as such and certainly no incidences of them being subjected to crimes or harassment. Human nature being what it is, that's not realistic, and human nature also being what it is, once this is the ideal (broad social acceptance and a lack of acceptance for harassment) people are going to try to grasp for more, like the aforementioned AGPs invading female spaces. And now people want to try to apply all of these very adult concepts to children. So, here be dragons!

Edit: changed some of the language (see below)

 

[SKL]

You know, you're doing it right now. Basically showing disrespect to the preferences of transgender people by refusing to refer to them by their preferences. You don't have to actually believe it, but deliberately refusing when it requires so little of you just seems kinda rude to me.

I'm not trying for offense, but rather precision. Frankly my head spins when I read stuff that isn't sometimes. I won't say I'm unaware that people might prefer to be referred to in different terms, but I'm hardly using slurs here. Most who will be offended with the terms I use will not like my opinion to begin with. The term "homosexual-transsexual" is not mine, and I particularly use "heterosexual" here to contrast with it. "HSTS" is from the literature in question, which is fairly old and certainly not infused with modern sensibilities, but, let us not forget, it's written by a man who's life's work was with the this population, including some pioneering work in terms of getting them cross-sex hormones and surgery.

And as for Blanchard. I did some googling after you mentioned them last time. Man was I not impressed. Basically represents everything I hate about psychiatry and shows how still contaminated it is by its Freudian roots.

I wouldn't say his theories are terribly Freudian in nature, specifically. Old school psychology which is largely descriptive in nature rather than being "hard science", yes. But very valid and useful in terms of descriptiveness. Not holy writ but very useful.

I also got a sexist vibe. Not transsexist just regular sexist.

I'm not sure that I see that, but OK. I'd be curious what in particular. If it has to do with the AGP stuff, it's probably more in terms of him describing other people's sexism.

 

[w01fg4ng]

I haven't had a doctor in years. lol America

Wonder if my next one will ask me what my preferred pronoun is like my last one did.

 

[w01fg4ng]

Doctors, am I right? Paper work is such a drag.

I understand.

But sometimes it's best to look past annoyances and see purpose. Sometimes it's necessary to put some elbow grease into your work to get good results.

 

[w01fg4ng]

I choose to be the gender I identify with.

 

[SKL]

@SKL It can't be descriptive if you are describing something your patients insist is wrong.

It very much can be. This is unfortunately a necessity in psychiatry and psychology a lot of the time. People don't always make the most reliable reports (and this is not necessarily on purpose!)

I despise how it basically says "no how you feel is incorrect, I know how you feel better than you do"

That's not what it's saying at all, at least in my reading, and certainly not what I am saying. The point is about trying to develop models that describe groups of people. Of course not everyone is going to correspond exactly to them, but they are useful heuristically.

Part of the reason the theory was developed was that at the time during which you had to basically be the HSTS type (i.e. androphilic and effeminate) in order to get surgery or hormones and the AGP type was considered weird perverts and not allowed either by the medical establishment ("gatekeeping," as they call it now.) This has changed greatly and most clinics operate on an "informed consent model," i.e. basically working with with all comers. Whether this change is a good one or not is debatable but explains why Blanchard came up with a way of describing TiMs who did not fit the HSTS profile. And, it turns out, they had a lot in common. Is every non-HSTS TiM an AGP? Probably not. Is there diversity of human experience here? Definitely. But the categories are worth keeping because they describe very well what you see out there "in the wild."

It's the same kind of sex obsessed weird theories Freud came up with and insisted were right in the face of obvious contradicting reports.

The ETLE theory is somewhat Freudian-adjacent, I'll admit. But it is a compelling way to describe the experiences and the behaviors of a large cross-section of trans-identifying males. The pattern shows up again and again.

Transsexuals believe they're really the opposite gender than they were assigned at birth (this is again where the sex gender word difference becomes annoyingly pedantic since either fit here).

Calling them "homosexual transsexuals" along with various things you've said as well, presupposes that those feelings are wrong [...] We don't have any idea really how gender identification works in the brain. So how can we possibly presuppose these stupid theories like Blanchard seems too?

No it doesn't judge any feelings as "wrong" (I am not sure if you mean "wrong" in terms of veracity, or of morality though. It doesn't really do either.)

It posits a reason why they have those feelings, rather than an essentialist view that says "gender identity" is an inherent, separately existing, and stable ontological category which is separate from sex (this view reads awfully close to "a man with a female soul," although "a woman trapped in a man's body" is the more common formulation. Not very scientific, that.)

Also, that it's Blanchards life work doesn't mean he's right. It means he has every reason to refuse to believe he's wrong.

I didn't mean it meant he was right. I meant that he is not unsympathetic to trans-identified people.

By knowing they offend people, and using them anyway when you don't have to. That's rude and disrespectful.

And it sure didn't seem precise to me. Calling transgender women attracted to men homosexuals is NOT what I would call precise. I would call it quite confusing. But that's because you're refusing to mentally classify them as female and I'm not.

If you wanna be precise, maybe stick to the androphilic gynophilic terms. Define them at first if you're concerned people might not be familiar with them. And then it's clear and isn't disrespectful.

Fair enough. I'll stick with "androphilic/gynephilic", "person with dysphoria," "TiM/TiF" (identity with reference to natal sex), and "FtM/MtF" (medical intervention, or perhaps even a lot of cosmetics.) These are not always especially well-liked when compared with "transwoman/man" by the people in question but they are descriptive and objective. Terminology here is an absolute minefield and I hate getting bogged down in arguments about it. Same with pronouns, which I will endeavor to avoid entirely in this context so as to neither confuse nor offend. Journalistic style guides and the like are of no use because they value political correctness over all.

 

[Jabberwocky]

@JessFR, I’m very sympathetic to transpeople and have had trans friends in the past. I think like any population of people there are multiple determinants of their self-perception and their social behaviour.

Given the ongoing predjudice against gay people in many cultures, I think the hypothesis that social pressure, including pressure within families could result in an effeminate gay man finding it less stressful to identify as a woman in some circumstances.

This possibility becomes more likely when you think about the increasingly inviolate status trans people have in Western culture and the very strong activism towards non cis-conforming children and youth in both the education system and the medical system. Throw in the incentive of being trans making one ‘special’ in our increasingly victim-oriented culture and it would seem ‘coming out’ as trans is not necessarily a dangerous or risky thing to do.

The phenomenon of social contagion in teenagers, especially teenage girls is well studied. In my own research I have looked at how it influences youth suicide. Which it does. If it is powerful enough to encourage young people to attempt suicide it is surely a reasonable hypothesis that it may encourage them to adopt particular sexual and/or gender identities.

Note that I emphasise that these are valid hypothesese - not social facts. In large part the transgender community is a science-free zone where research that might question what really is dogma is incredibly difficult to get approved or funded.

In the absence of much science, I think it should be possible to posit hypothesese such as these without in any way discriminating against or demeaning transgender people.

 

[JessFR]

Given the ongoing predjudice against gay people in many cultures, I think the hypothesis that social pressure, including pressure within families could result in an effeminate gay man finding it less stressful to identify as a woman in some circumstances.

Let me just read that back to you, you're saying that some gay men are so bullied and discriminated against... That they decide the solution is... To be go around identifying as women?

Is that really what you're sincerely proposing to me?

That if you're gay in America you should transition because then you'll be more accepted..

 

[SKL]

Oh BTW @SKL this is gonna bug me until I ask. What is TiM and at TiF? These aren't acronyms I'm familiar with. Transgender identifying as male and female? That's what I'm assuming but I wanna check.

Actually the other way around. TiM/TiF = trans-identified (natal) male (who identifies as female), without any reference to having undergone intervention or even trying to pass. Or even dysphoria/dysmorphia for that matter. Just identifying as the opposite sex. Note that a TiM is a "trans woman" and a TiF is a "trans man." See what I mean about confusing terminology?

I meant wrong as in "your feels are because you're mentally ill".

We did it with the gays too, we presupposes that their feelings were mental illness and that the fundamentally right and absolute reality was that men are attracted to women and women to men.

With time we realized that no, it's just a natural variation isn't a mental illness at all.

This is exactly what's being done now with transsexuals. Presupposing they're wrong.

Depends on what you mean by "mentally ill." Trans-identified people interface with the medical system in that they seek out medical intervention in order to make changes to their physiology (hormonally and cosmetically.) This wasn't the case for homosexuals. When they were interfacing with the medical system it was simply because homosexuality was pathologized. Medical science doesn't really need to have an opinion on homosexuality, but very much has to have an opinion on transsexuality and it's origins. It is be irresponsible to give these interventions out to all comers (as is frequently done now) as there is dramatic overlap with mental illness, from personality disorders which are highly comorbid to outright psychosis which can outright masquerade as gender dysphoria. This as I mentioned was the origin of Blanchard's typology. It is not as if he was seeking out transsexuals and pathologizing them. They were seeking him out for medical intervention and he, basically by necessity, developed categories to describe them.

Also, you can't have this both ways. You can't say that patients can't be trusted about how they report their feelings but also that this model is valid because it describes observations...that are made in large part via self reporting.

I could talk about epistemological and nosological problems in psychiatry all night, and have. (n.b. Blanchard is a psychologist, though.) I've made a lot of effortposts on the subject over on BL over the years. While the broad questions are topical, they are nonetheless "off topic" to the question at hand. But you seem to be fixing on the idea of "believing patients are wrong." Certainly, Blanchard presupposes that a TiM is not in any ontological sense female nor will he become one by identifying as she and even undergoing medical intervention. Not only are there various ways of trans-identifying that don't presuppose this either, but it's entirely irrelevant to the question of the patient's self-report of their other experiences.

But really, if you want to be convinced of the reality of autogynephilia, spend some time on trans-identifying reddits. Observing these people in their "natural habitat" has done wonders to convince me that Blanchard was on to something.

You're saying that some gay men are so bullied and discriminated against... That they decide the solution is... To be go around identifying as women? Is that really what you're sincerely telling me?

You weren't replying to me, but HSTS-type TiMs are notably more often encountered in communities and ethnic groups that are less accepting of homosexuality, so...maybe?

I mentioned the Iranian ayatollahs above who went so far as to issue a fatwah that being trans was OK and that homosexuals should be medically transitioned, by force if need be. But we don't need to go that far to observe this phenomenon. A disproportionate number, still a minority, of trans-identified children, seem to be gender non-conforming (GNC) and from conservative religious backgrounds. HSTS seem to be disproportionately Black and Hispanic, which groups are less accepting of homosexuals than Whites (who in turn seem to make up the vast majority of AGPs. Riddle me that? I don't know, but am simultaneously not surprised. Either way, yet more evidence the categorical difference is real, though.)

This possibility becomes more likely when you think about the increasingly inviolate status trans people have in Western culture and the very strong activism towards non cis-conforming children and youth in both the education system and the medical system. Throw in the incentive of being trans making one ‘special’ in our increasingly victim-oriented culture and it would seem ‘coming out’ as trans is not necessarily a dangerous or risky thing to do.

The phenomenon of social contagion in teenagers, especially teenage girls is well studied. In my own research I have looked at how it influences youth suicide. Which it does. If it is powerful enough to encourage young people to attempt suicide it is surely a reasonable hypothesis that it may encourage them to adopt particular sexual and/or gender identities.

This is fucking huge and a particular problem in young TiFs, and young TiMs too but most especially in young TiFs who theretofore were either lesbian or merely GNC. I will make a post about them exclusively maybe tomorrow as I have been giving the adult TiMs all my attention so far. I will try to talk about minors at some point too in their own right, too.

In the absence of much science, I think it should be possible to posit hypothesese such as these without in any way discriminating against or demeaning transgender people.

Absolutely. But it's nigh-on impossible to do so even for serious scientists, due to the pressure from advocacy groups, which form a sometimes-opaque nexus with extremely outsize influence and money, much of which is derived from a small group of very wealthy TiMs like Jennifer (born James) Pritzker. Some interesting discussion of this here, here, and here, and that's just a brief look. This has lead the modern "social justice" movement to adopt the TRA agenda in an extreme, rapid and totally inorganic way (often to the detriment of other marginalized groups like women and LGB people.) I'll try to talk about this later, too.

 

[w01fg4ng]

A Proclamation on Transgender Day Of Visibility, 2021

Spoiler: Full Text

Today, we honor and celebrate the achievements and resiliency of transgender individuals and communities. Transgender Day of Visibility recognizes the generations of struggle, activism, and courage that have brought our country closer to full equality for transgender and gender non-binary people in the United States and around the world. Their trailblazing work has given countless transgender individuals the bravery to live openly and authentically. This hard-fought progress is also shaping an increasingly accepting world in which peers at school, teammates and coaches on the playing field, colleagues at work, and allies in every corner of society are standing in support and solidarity with the transgender community.

In spite of our progress in advancing civil rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, too many transgender people — adults and youth alike — still face systemic barriers to freedom and equality. Transgender Americans of all ages face high rates of violence, harassment, and discrimination. Nearly one in three transgender Americans have experienced homelessness at some point in life. Transgender Americans continue to face discrimination in employment, housing, health care, and public accommodations. The crisis of violence against transgender women, especially transgender women of color, is a stain on our Nation’s conscience.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to fulfilling the promise of America for all Americans by stamping out discrimination and delivering freedom and equality for all.

To ensure that the Federal Government protects the civil rights of transgender Americans, I signed, on my first day in office, an Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. Today, we are proud to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility alongside barrier-breaking public servants, including the first openly transgender American to be confirmed by the United States Senate, and alongside patriotic transgender service members, who are once again able to proudly and openly serve their country. We also celebrate together with transgender Americans across the country who will benefit from our efforts to stop discrimination and advance inclusion for transgender Americans in housing, in credit and lending services, in the care we provide for our veterans, and more.

To more fully protect the civil rights of transgender Americans, we must pass the Equality Act and provide long overdue Federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act will deliver legal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans in our housing, education, public services, and lending systems. It will serve as a lasting legacy to the bravery and fortitude of the LGBTQ+ movement.

Vice President Harris and I affirm that transgender Americans make our Nation more prosperous, vibrant, and strong. I urge my fellow Americans to join us in uplifting the worth and dignity of every transgender person.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2021, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join in the fight for full equality for all transgender people.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.