@SKL i had not read that far back and have now read your post.
i have not looked in depth into the science- i checked the first couple of links on google regarding the transgender brain and none of them even contain the word 'homosexual' so in my about-to-go-to-bed state i can't assess the accuracy what you say. i would appreciate a reference.
When studied the difference in "brain sex" of the homosexual and trans-identified natal individuals has been at best a matter of degree, and a few neurological correlates of trans-identifion have been found which do not relate to "brain sex" (which is not entirely cut and dry to begin with), for instance see
Structural connections in the brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation (which studies all four combinations of sex and sexual orientation)—
After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed sex-typical FA-values. The only exception was the right inferior fronto-occipital tract, connecting parietal and frontal brain areas that mediate own body perception. Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical signature of transgenderism is related to brain areas processing the perception of self and body ownership, whereas homosexuality seems to be associated with less cerebral sexual differentiation.
When they are found the differences (structural and functional) between trans-identified and non-trans-identifying males are similar to the differences between heterosexual and homosexual males. The latter difference is more pronounced in effeminate/gender non-conforming (GNC) homosexual men. This rather calls into question the concept of an essentialistically cross-sex brain that causes trans-identification.
On "brain sex" in homosexuals see, among many other studies,
Male sexual orientation, gender nonconformity, and neural activity during mental rotations: an fMRI study and
Sexual Orientation-Related Differences in Virtual Spatial Navigation and Spatial Search Strategies. The variables being studied here are the same as those being found "female" in trans-identified males.
This article specifically fails to find "feminine" differences in gynephilic TiMs.
Studies on natal females, gynephilic and especially androphilic, as I have mentioned are much fewer. The first study I cited did include them though.
in the case where you state there has been no research i hope you would agree that means we can draw no conclusions.
Well, to some extent. I do not claim that androphilic trans-identified females
don't have masculinized brains, but in this whole conversation the burden of extraordinary proof most definitely lies on those who make extraordinary claims. This is not a case of my claiming that the cat meowing in the dark is black; this is a case of my saying that it is probably not a dog. One could say that "the jury is still out on that" but one assumption is definitely safer to make than the other.
apart from you claiming they are problematic i didn't see any evidence or argument in the post you linked to.
Evidence that trans stuff is problematic? (First off, the one post is one of many.) But the most glaring example of harm is the high % of people, especially those who transition young and especially natal females, who later regret their choices and "detransition." The numbers are very high. A significant portion, in fact an increasing portion, of who undertake cross-sex medical interventions (hormones and surgery) regret it. These changes are permanent. Especially for natal females (testosterone in females causes changes which are more permanent than estrogen in males, a higher % of TiFs undergo surgery, to wit, double mastectomy.) Something other than a stable and essential "gender identity" is going on, and it is dangerous. Furthrrmore, the number of trans-identifying young people, and again especially natal females, has increased dramatically, as have the ratios of female to male. For various reasons I covered above, I don't see this as attributable to a situation where social acceptance leads people to "embrace their true selves," but rather what in sociology is called "social contagion," a phenomenon familiar in the study of eating disorders, which, btw, are highly disproportionately found in TiFs, along with histories of trauma, personality disorders, and perhaps most of all, autism spectrum disorders. It would be wise to look for an etiology of gender dysphoria in places other than a theoreotical intrinsic "identity."
i don't know where you are from but in the UK transitioning takes years, its not possble to do on a whim. you have to live as your identified gender for a year before you can even start getting any medical treatment and even after that it is a slow process. i can see there being issues in countries that allow people to rush the process- i'd guess a profit-driven healthcare service like the US is more likely to perform gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy hastily and in that case certainly agree that is problematic.
Some places in the UK (Tavistock) were going whole hog with excessive and under-screened medical intervention with the young and old. Commendably, NHS recently made this harder to do. You are almost certainly right that profit motives influence the "informed consent" (i.e. cash and carry) approach to "transgender medicine" here in the US. Incidentally, speaking of profit motives, the pharmaceutical industry heavily funds some of the most prominent trans activist organizations, no doubt seeing recent trends as a way to market various (some previously pretty niche) medications.
The issue here might be that language is fluid and, as semioticians have been telling us for years, there is no necessary connection between a word (a sign) and what it signifies. It may well be that the pace of change in language relating to trans people is too fast for your liking [...]
What is happening is that the etymology of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ is in a state of flux and there is no longer or not yet any word (besides the clunky cis-man and cis-woman) that matches the concept of man and woman in your head. The semantic content of ‘man’ has expanded to include certain persons who have, or had, vaginas and XX chromosomes. That genie is never going back in the bottle. However, I find it easy to accept that the meaning of man has changed without accepting that transwomen/‘cis-women’ or transmen/‘ cis-men’ are ontologically identical.
What frustrates me is that I don’t have a better word than cis-x to describe my concept for what formerly meant ‘men’ and ‘women’ to me. But I speak other languages so I have experience in seeing that mental concepts do not correlate to specific words in a conclusive way.
"Male" and "female" are used sometimes to refer to natal sex. I agree that it helps to have other languages (to go Classical for a moment, maybe one could speak of a TiM presenting as a
mulier, but certainly never a
femina. Perhaps the same goes for TiFs,
mas, and
vir.) I greatly dislike the "cis" expression, a technical sounding neologism like that doesn't feel right when used to describe the normal baseline condition. I also dislike (but understand that this particular ship has sailed in general discourse) "transman/transwoman." It just doesn't work very well etymologically. "Trans-identified female/male" seems to me like less an abuse of the language, more precise and, of course, as you noted a few pages ago, it doesn't make any ontological claims (either way—while it is more used by critics of transgenderism, as a technical term, it feels the most neutral to me.)
I think you are on dangerous ground with the mental illness argument. Normal/abnormal or normal/deviant are socially constructed categories
While this is true, I wouldn't go full Szaszian on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. It is a real phenomenon with real clinical manifestations which cause the patient distress. We treat it as an indicator of an intrinsic "identity" at our (and more importantly, our patients') great peril. Transitioning is being sold to people as a cure-all for various kinds of existential angst and anomie, which in turn are being presented as vague indicia of a mismatched "gender identity." This is obviously a load of nonsense: cross-sex medical intervention just doesn't help trans-identified people very much in terms of mental health outcomes, including suicide risk, which is often used as a way to try to make the availability of such interventions "a matter of life and death," which is essentially the same as the perennial cry of the Borderline PD patient, "keep things inside my narrow comfort zone or I will harm myself."
[...] You cannot, call a person suffering from bi-polar disorder ‘insane’ in the workplace if they become manic any longer. But you don’t seem as animated about these kinds of language changes?
"Insane" was never a clinical term. It's a legal one with very specific meanings. "Mentally ill," however, is moving into "person with such-and-such syndrome" type language. A lot of this has to do with the successes that are seen with modern meds in many cases. In the cases that fail, though, and these are ones that people in the field often would prefer not to discuss, political correctness has made far fewer inroads (I'm talking your street schizophrenics and perennially hospitalized people on disability living on societal margins.)
Also, in the treatment of a psychosis my understanding is that Psychiatrists do not immediately confront or attack the delusion. They invest quite a lot of time understanding the delusion
"Investimg quite a lot of time understanding the delusion" hasn't been a part of mainstream psychiatry for a long time. We don't spend much time working through delusion, we just medicate underlying psychosis. Some of this is due to financial (length-of-stay) constrain and some due to the fact that modern medications work and addressing delusions as such doesn't really help the vast majority of patients. But you are right. Attacking delusional beliefs head-on is at best something to be done with caution, if at all. The paranoid should be assured he is safe, for instance, but in general and non-argumentative terms.
A large problem in contemporary psychiatry is an inability, for legal and social reasons, to exercise paternalistic authority overpatients. It's not very PC, but "patients' rights" have rapidly overtaken clinical necessity and left it far, far back in the dust. The same is seen in transgender care, where any sort of screening, even for serious psychiatric issues, is seen as "gatekeeping" and "informed consent" as the sole prerequisite for treatment, is the order of the day in the US.
