Who determines the number of genders- and how?

[JoeMorgue]

If you don't treat people with gender rolls, then you're already treating trans women as women, therefore, what is your objection?

The entire literal point of this discussion.

Treating someone who identifies as a woman without gender roles obviously isn't enough. That's what I've been saying for 20 pages now. I have to literally think of and conceptualize them that way.

Again I'm being told I have to add gender rolls back into my world view so I can properly categorize people who identify as one gender over another.

I'm not sure exactly how many times I have to go back to ground and lay out my base argument in this thread but here I'll do it one more time.

1. There CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT be meaningful characteristics that differentiate a biological man from a biological man who identifies as a woman without those exact same characteristics also differentiate men from women on non-biological levels. Words mean things. This entire discussion has been mounts and heaps of doublespeak and "But it's complicated!" trying to make that not true.

No it's not "complicated." If you call a shape with four 90 degree angles and 4 equal length edges a square in on instance but a circle in another you haven't created a "fluid spectrum of shapes." You've just called the same thing different in two different circumstances for no reason.

"Gender is a spectrum" doesn't mean the exact same characteristic can mean different things in two different circumstances.

2. Purely internal "identities" that don't correspond to any objective characteristic or factor are 100% meaningless and cannot be accounted for in how we treat people in the way and to the degree we are being asked to.

3. If at the end of the day if I don't treat an 'X who identifies as a Y' any different then.... well to be honest how I conceptualize it really isn't... a thing that should I have to justify or explain to this level.

 

[tyr_13]

Can you back this up? As far as I know there is no good evidence for that (which is also the conclusion of the literature overview of Medicare) and, on the contrary, evidence suggests that it isn't in the long term (+10 years):

That study clearly states that it is not an evaluation of gender dysphoria treatment.

The entire finding of that study, according to the author, was that reassignment surgery in and of itself is not an effective enough (it still does help), and that treatment must also address bullying, family and community support, and the like. It is exactly the opposite as people (and even governments) have been using it to say. There is very robust (and this month again verified) of transitioning.

To be clear, surgery is not the entirety of transitioning and is not even a required step to transitioning.

 

[Joe Random]

<...>

2. Purely internal "identities" that don't correspond to any objective characteristic or factor are 100% meaningless and cannot be accounted for in how we treat people in the way and to the degree we are being asked to.

<...>

An honest question I'd asked a few times before both in meatspace and here (most recently in the 'man gives birth thread') : for a trans*, what specifically would they need to feel differently for them to identify differently? In the case of 'man gives birth', what would that person need to feel differently to change it to 'woman gives birth'? Rather than trying to build a ground up definition of gender I'm trying to get to one by reverse engineering it, by trying to understand what it is self-identified non confirming people feel.

It's easy to arrive at and explain definitions for orientation. I'm hetero. What would need to be different for me to cause me to say I'm homosexual? Simple : I wouldn't find women sexually attractive and I would men. When it comes to gender, for a transwoman what (specifically) would you need to feel differently to cause you to say that you're actually a cis man?

It's not a trap or gotcha, I honestly don't understand how gender identity carries any useful meaning in some cases (extreme ones where a fully biological male with no desire for surgery or hormones says they identify as female, for example). If it's truly nothing more than an internal identification or 'mind state' with no correlation to an external trait, behavior, or preference then the terms are essentially meaningless. I could say I identify as praxain. What's that? Oh, it's the opposite of buktih. The words carry no information telling me how I should interact with you differently than if you'd chosen the other (or any variant in between). I'm assuming there's more to it than that for trans people, so starting off by explaining (again, specifically) what is different for a person which causes them to feel trans* is an appropriate descriptor, or what they would need to feel to say trans is no longer appropriate, would go a long way in clarifying things.

 

[tyr_13]

The entire literal point of this discussion.

Treating someone who identifies as a woman without gender roles obviously isn't enough. That's what I've been saying for 20 pages now. I have to literally think of and conceptualize them that way.

Again I'm being told I have to add gender rolls back into my world view so I can properly categorize people who identify as one gender over another.

I'm not sure exactly how many times I have to go back to ground and lay out my base argument in this thread but here I'll do it one more time.

1. There CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT be meaningful characteristics that differentiate a biological man from a biological man who identifies as a woman without those exact same characteristics also differentiate men from women on non-biological levels. Words mean things. This entire discussion has been mounts and heaps of doublespeak and "But it's complicated!" trying to make that not true.

No it's not "complicated." If you call a shape with four 90 degree angles and 4 equal length edges a square in on instance but a circle in another you haven't created a "fluid spectrum of shapes." You've just called the same thing different in two different circumstances for no reason.

"Gender is a spectrum" doesn't mean the exact same characteristic can mean different things in two different circumstances.

2. Purely internal "identities" that don't correspond to any objective characteristic or factor are 100% meaningless and cannot be accounted for in how we treat people in the way and to the degree we are being asked to.

3. If at the end of the day if I don't treat an 'X who identifies as a Y' any different then.... well to be honest how I conceptualize it really isn't... a thing that should I have to justify or explain to this level.

Flat denial it is then. None of this meaningfully addresses what I said besides to restate that you don't believe what is being said because you don't believe it.

To the highlighted though, if you treat only trans people without gender 'rolls', then you aren't actually doing 'enough'.

 

[Butter!]

This thread is a literal mind ****.

I don't even know what I think anymore. Who am I? Is someone burning toast?

 

[tyr_13]

This thread is a literal mind ****.

I don't even know what I think anymore. Who am I? Is someone burning toast?

It's hard to wrap ones mind around a problem that lacks visible symptoms that one does not have themselves. Not being able to understand it is not an argument that it's not real.


EDIT: It should be no surprise that many of the exact same arguments are used against depression treatments, and the existence of depression as a disorder, are used against transgender issues as a whole. And ADHD.

 

[Butter!]

It's hard to wrap ones mind around a problem that lacks visible symptoms that one does not have themselves. Not being able to understand it is not an argument that it's not real.

I'm not referring to that question. I just read through twenty pages over which we covered fringe sciences, gay eugenics, Orwellian language, Mumsnet, progressive conspiracies to create norms only to subvert them, the nature of perception, the nature of reality, the nature of identity, cultural appropriation, oh, and manspreading.

My head feels precisely the way it felt the first time I read the Wikipedia article on loop quantum gravity.

 

[kellyb]

EDIT: It should be no surprise that many of the exact same arguments are used against depression treatments, and the existence of depression as a disorder, are used against transgender issues as a whole. And ADHD.

Those are mental illnesses or disorders, tho.

Transgenderism is something different.

 

[kellyb]

I'm not referring to that question. I just thread through twenty pages over which we covered fringe sciences, gay eugenics, Orwellian language, Mumsnet, progressive conspiracies to create norms only to subvert them, the nature of perception, the nature of reality, the nature of identity, cultural appropriation, oh, and manspreading.

My head feels precisely the way it felt the first time I read the Wikipedia article on loop quantum gravity.

Ha! Yeah, it's kind of been a trip for me, too. lol

 

[Porpoise of Life]

Those are mental illnesses or disorders, tho.

Transgenderism is something different.

Well, I'd say that feeling that you don't belong in your own body and that you should really be the opposite sex is a disorder*.

And the best way we have to deal with that is to accept people's feelings and gender identification and allow them to present as and transition to the sex they identify as as much as they are comfortable doing.

Because, whether we (scientifically/intuitively/emotionally) understand why they feel like that or not, they really do. And it sucks to have to live your life in a body you feel is the wrong one, and having to make due with relatively crude alterations to be able to feel comfortable in your own skin.

*E.T.A.: to be clear, gender dysphoria is the disorder, and indeed that's not the same as being transgender. Even when someone has successfully gotten over their gender dysphoria, they're still transgender, and that's not a disorder, just the result of one.

 

[kellyb]

Well, I'd say that feeling that you don't belong in your own body and that you should really be the opposite sex is a disorder.

I guess I just wonder if people would still feel that way if we lived in a culture without such strict gender norms, gender roles, and gender stereotypes.

And the best way we have to deal with that is to accept people's feelings and gender identification and allow them to present as and transition to the sex they identify as as much as they are comfortable doing.

I don't think anyone's been arguing otherwise.

 

[caveman1917]

That study clearly states that it is not an evaluation of gender dysphoria treatment.

The entire finding of that study, according to the author, was that reassignment surgery in and of itself is not an effective enough (it still does help), and that treatment must also address bullying, family and community support, and the like. It is exactly the opposite as people (and even governments) have been using it to say. There is very robust (and this month again verified) of transitioning.

To be clear, surgery is not the entirety of transitioning and is not even a required step to transitioning.

I've looked up some of the studies you listed and notice that they tend to share the following flaw: "We sent questionnaires to people we could find who have had GRS, and from the ones who responded none of them reported having died from suicide."

Since the Swedish study is based on a pre-existing database and includes those in the initial group who died from suicide afterwards, its conclusion that 10+ years after GRS the rate of suicide is 20-fold that of the general population is at least based on data that would actually support drawing such conclusions.

ETA: and I'll note your reliance on pre-packaged arguments from advocacy sites, which in this case constitutes a strawman since I never claimed that it increases suicide rates, merely that it doesn't decrease them (at least not in the long term).

 

[Porpoise of Life]

I guess I just wonder if people would still feel that way if we lived in a culture without such strict gender norms, gender roles, and gender stereotypes.

I think so. Because transgender people don't feel like they should play with Barbie dolls or toy cars more, or that they should be able to dress the way they want to... They actually feel that their body is wrong for them
I think that goes deeper than cultural norms and if I had to guess I'd say it's rooted in something biological.

 

[caveman1917]

Well, I'd say that feeling that you don't belong in your own body and that you should really be the opposite sex is a disorder*.

And the best way we have to deal with that is to accept people's feelings and gender identification and allow them to present as and transition to the sex they identify as as much as they are comfortable doing.

Because, whether we (scientifically/intuitively/emotionally) understand why they feel like that or not, they really do. And it sucks to have to live your life in a body you feel is the wrong one, and having to make due with relatively crude alterations to be able to feel comfortable in your own skin.

*E.T.A.: to be clear, gender dysphoria is the disorder, and indeed that's not the same as being transgender. Even when someone has successfully gotten over their gender dysphoria, they're still transgender, and that's not a disorder, just the result of one.

Some people present as transabled, for example they identify as blind and request medical procedures blinding them. Would you do that as well?

 

[sadhatter]

Is it necessarily all that different from people who get horn implants and lots of facial tattoos and piercings?

I really don't know, myself.

As someone who has always looked like a bit of a freak (no face tattoos or horns but too close for most tastes. ) the way I've had this explained is two fold.

1. I could have chosen not to get tattoos, dress strange, etc. So it's not the same kind of harassment.

2. At any point I could stop this if I don't like the harassment they can't.

I find both pure ****.

1. I didn't. What an alternate time line me did is irrelevant.

2. Not only is tattoo removal expensive, painful and doesn't work well, I got mine for very personal reasons. Ifv they get removed it will be against my will.

 

[sadhatter]

Well, I'd say that feeling that you don't belong in your own body and that you should really be the opposite sex is a disorder*.

And the best way we have to deal with that is to accept people's feelings and gender identification and allow them to present as and transition to the sex they identify as as much as they are comfortable doing.

Because, whether we (scientifically/intuitively/emotionally) understand why they feel like that or not, they really do. And it sucks to have to live your life in a body you feel is the wrong one, and having to make due with relatively crude alterations to be able to feel comfortable in your own skin.

*E.T.A.: to be clear, gender dysphoria is the disorder, and indeed that's not the same as being transgender. Even when someone has successfully gotten over their gender dysphoria, they're still transgender, and that's not a disorder, just the result of one.

And anyone that would stop them expressing themselves is an *******.

But while I'll call anyone anything they wish if they are not a prick, I also don't fault someone for not doing so. You have the right to dress,act, and modify yourself all you want, you don't have the right to control other people's view of you.

It always makes me think of my most hated against me lyric (like the band when they are not cringe worthy. ) "you want them to see you just like every other girl. ". That is an unreasonable request, you don't get to control how other people think, and if you want to you are an *******. And beyond that it puts the onus of your happiness on everyone in the world doing you a solid and expressing something they may not feel. It's going to fail, obviously.

 

[Mycroft]

Good, we're in agreement then. Persons who posses a penis may be referred to as "he". Glad we got that settled.

No. When Caitlyn went by Bruce she publicly identified as male, so male gender pronouns were appropriate. As far as we know, Caitlyn might still have a penis.

 

[tyr_13]

I've looked up some of the studies you listed and notice that they tend to share the following flaw: "We sent questionnaires to people we could find who have had GRS, and from the ones who responded none of them reported having died from suicide."

Oh, you found that in the 56 studies reviewed in the analysis I linked to and found that they were all or mostly questionnaires with that problem then? That would be surprising as that's simply not the case.

There are limitations that all the studies share, but that's primarily the fact that transgender people are such a small subset of the population.

Since the Swedish study is based on a pre-existing database and includes those in the initial group who died from suicide afterwards, its conclusion that 10+ years after GRS the rate of suicide is 20-fold that of the general population is at least based on data that would actually support drawing such conclusions.

ETA: and I'll note your reliance on pre-packaged arguments from advocacy sites, which in this case constitutes a strawman since I never claimed that it increases suicide rates, merely that it doesn't decrease them (at least not in the long term).

The study itself and the author explicitly disagree with your conclusion. That the interview that makes the later clear appears on an advocacy cite doesn't change that. That the interview also addresses other arguments that you did not make doesn't change that. It certainly doesn't mean I'm assigning the other arguments to you.

Again, the study did not address the entire process or steps that constitute 'transitioning' as a whole, but specifically on one type of surgery. Let me try to be more clear; your point is a straw man. I'm thinking it is an accidental straw man, but I did not claim that the surgery itself had the outcomes I described.

 

[tyr_13]

I'm not referring to that question. I just read through twenty pages over which we covered fringe sciences, gay eugenics, Orwellian language, Mumsnet, progressive conspiracies to create norms only to subvert them, the nature of perception, the nature of reality, the nature of identity, cultural appropriation, oh, and manspreading.

My head feels precisely the way it felt the first time I read the Wikipedia article on loop quantum gravity.

Oh it's definitely a complex topic that can touch on many hot-button issues for people, who then to drag in their baggage as well making it a hot mess. Being confused is normal, especially the more into detail the discussion gets.

 

[Cavemonster]

It's going to fail, obviously.

Is it?

A few short decades ago, the large majority saw homosexual people as dirty dangerous deviants and liked to regularly call them all sorts of demeaning names. No one in the mainstream supported same sex marriage.

Now, it is pretty frowned on to call gay people those names, attitudes have changed.

Go back a few decades before that and using pretty terrible names for people with dark skin was fairly common. There were laws being enforced forbidding interracial marriage. When those laws were challenged, angry people picketed the courthouse with signs against "race mixing". Today those opinions are fringe and condemned by both law and polite society.

This is all within the lifetime of people on this forum. And these changes happened for a lot of reasons, but part of that process was always "Hey, don't call us X, please use Y instead" and all in all, it was fairly effective in the long run.

I don't see it as a given that Trans people will see the same shift towards acceptance that other groups are undergoing, that kind of thing takes a lot of work and time. But I don't think for a moment that it's an impossible effort.

Our last President was born at a time when he would have been forbidden to use certain water fountains because of the color of his skin. If you can look at that and think attempts to create social change are futile, then I don't know what to tell you.