Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[Meadmaker]

To answer your question, it's because sexual fetishism is more common among men than women, and transwomen are a type of man.

Gold star for you! (Wasn't all that difficult, though, was it?)


But, to further elaborate, in my list of things that I saw in that venture, a few of which I truly wish I could unsee, I saw a whole bunch of MtF transgender folks, but not many FtMs.

I'm sure that will be another "unproven assertion", but I promise you I will not post links to provide proof.

 

[Rolfe]

Some time ago someone who also wouldn't post links told me roughly what to google and like an idiot I did. I need to scrub my brain out with a brillo pad.

And no doubt we'll have all the apologists on again saying, but what about the women who do [fill in stomach-churning fetishistic behaviour here]? They don't. Women don't fetishise female bodies. They don't even seem to fetishise male bodies, or not that I ever saw. Lesbians seldom (I say seldom because no doubt someone will dredge up a report from West Virginia from 1995) harrass women in single-sex spaces, not even other lesbian women.

We need sex-segregated spaces for a reason, and whatever we do about the genuinely dysphoric, post-operative transwomen we used to accept on a grace-and-favour basis, what we absolutely cannot do is permit any man who pleases to self-identify in there with us.

 

[Strawberry]

Gold star for you! (Wasn't all that difficult, though, was it?)


But, to further elaborate, in my list of things that I saw in that venture, a few of which I truly wish I could unsee, I saw a whole bunch of MtF transgender folks, but not many FtMs.

I'm sure that will be another "unproven assertion", but I promise you I will not post links to provide proof.

You must have taken a look at reddit's trans section, did you? A right bunch of freaks on there.

There's been a massive rise in the diagnosis of gender dysphoria among teenage girls recently, so I presume in future the male to female ratio of the trans people will reverse.

 

[Rolfe]

These girls are mostly ROGD though, and it seems to be shaping up that this demographic is particularly likely to detransition. I think we're only seeing the start of that phase.

 

[Meadmaker]

Speaking of something that touches on a few recent topics, yesterday "Mother Jones" ran an article entitled "The Conservative War on Transgender Rights Has Reached a New Low".

Those dirty swine! I didn't think they could get any lower, but somehow they managed! What did they do, you might ask? Well, they're going after the kids now!

This fall, two Republican lawmakers in the state vowed to introduce legislation barring trans kids from receiving certain gender-affirming health care and criminalizing parents who allow their children to transition.

Let me translate that out of Newspeak.

If you want to cut off your balls, you have to wait until you're 18.

"They're going after kids" was also a quote. It was the subtitle of the piece.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...-on-transgender-rights-has-reached-a-new-low/

Interesting that the story spent a lot of time debunking the idea that we have to stop parents and quack doctors from chopping kids' balls off.

“There’s been this incredibly wonderful and impactful rise in visibility of transgender people in the public sphere,” Oakley said. “But at the same time, I think there are many folks who are not educated who have a lot of confusion, who have a lot of questions. Opponents of equality have seized on that gap between visibility and understanding, and they’re trying to exploit that.”

"gender-affirming health care" and "transitioning" for minors refers to social transitioning until puberty and then hormone therapy at most (which is largely reversible).

Basically the article was pushing back precisely against the ignorant alarmist nonsense seen in the post immediately preceding this one.

 

[Puppycow]

Speaking of something that touches on a few recent topics, yesterday "Mother Jones" ran an article entitled "The Conservative War on Transgender Rights Has Reached a New Low".

Those dirty swine! I didn't think they could get any lower, but somehow they managed! What did they do, you might ask? Well, they're going after the kids now!




Let me translate that out of Newspeak.

If you want to cut off your balls, you have to wait until you're 18.

"They're going after kids" was also a quote. It was the subtitle of the piece.

I don't know, there's a lot of misinformation (or misunderstandings, whether intentional or innocent) on both sides it seems. People who are against it immediately say "they're castrating kids!". People who are for it say "that's not true!" but never seem to acknowledge that if medical transition goes beyond a certain point (taking cross-gender hormones), that permanent infertility is likely to result.

In this case, the bill in question also appears to outlaw "puberty-blocking drugs to stop or delay normal puberty and cross-sex hormone therapy" for minors.

Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs the Decatur-based gender transition practice Queer Med, called the legislation absurd. Lowell said minors make up about about 25% of Queer Med’s practice.

“The five major medical guideline generators that encompass most of the doctors in the country support gender affirming therapy and surgical intervention,” Lowell said. “To criminalize that would criminalize medical treatment backed by all of the major medical associations.”

In her press release, Ehrhart included quotes from an Atlanta-based pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Quentin Van Meter, who said the proposal is needed to protect children from “medical experimentation based on wishful social theory.”

“These children are suffering from a psychological condition without biologic basis,” he said. “Using the bludgeon of threatened suicide as justification is first of all cruel, and secondly, not supported by valid published studies.”

Van Meter is president of the American College of Pediatricians, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

Graham said banning children from aligning physically with their gender identity is troubling.

“(Ehrhart’s) contention that this is damaging to children or society is without merit and is a result of the dangerous trend from the most conservative forces to demonize and strip transgender individuals of their humanity,” he said.

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--reg...sition-minors-felony/2HzWVsIQq6CjR6Vrle9KHI/#

 

[Puppycow]

"gender-affirming health care" and "transitioning" for minors refers to social transitioning until puberty and then hormone therapy at most (which is largely reversible).

Basically the article was pushing back precisely against the ignorant alarmist nonsense seen in the post immediately preceding this one.

Is that correct though?

In the article I link to above, a doctor is quoted:

Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs the Decatur-based gender transition practice Queer Med, called the legislation absurd. Lowell said minors make up about about 25% of Queer Med’s practice.

“The five major medical guideline generators that encompass most of the doctors in the country support gender affirming therapy and surgical intervention,” Lowell said. “To criminalize that would criminalize medical treatment backed by all of the major medical associations.”

I'm also not 100% sure that the effects of cross-gender hormone therapy are always reversible.

https://www.ccrmivf.com/news-events/transgender-fertility-transition/

For instance, taking testosterone will eventually cause a person to stop ovulating and menstruating, while estrogen will lower sperm count and quality. It takes time to recover those bodily functions ― if you can recover them at all.

Modern medicine does allow sperm or eggs to be collected and preserved ahead of time, but it isn't cheap.

Because of this, even if a trans person did have infertility treatment coverage, they wouldn’t be able to qualify as “infertile” to use it, making all treatments out-of-pocket. Egg freezing can cost as much as $15,000, though sperm banking tends to cost no more than $1,000.

Daniels was dismayed to find that he had no health insurance coverage whatsoever for the costs.

“I sat on the phone for hours trying to file a claim because, at that time, the [Affordable Care Act] had kind of said you had to cover trans-related procedures,” he said. “They were refusing to cover pretty much anything.”

Thankfully, Daniels’ mom, who had initially raised the question about grandchildren, gave him and his partner $12,000 to cover the cost of the egg freezing. She later gave the couple another $8,000 to cover the cost of donor sperm and embryo implantation.

“I am privileged, and I recognize that privilege,” Daniels said. “I know how hard it is for people to realize that they will not be able to have their own genetic child unless they can afford egg retrieval or decide to carry the baby themselves.”

 

[Ziggurat]

"gender-affirming health care" and "transitioning" for minors refers to social transitioning until puberty and then hormone therapy at most (which is largely reversible).

That claim isn't really supported.

Puberty blocking drugs were first used on children to treat "precocious puberty", to delay puberty for kids who were experiencing it at an abnormally young age. And for them, they seem to go through puberty pretty normally if it's delayed to the normal age. But there's very little known about what happens to kids if you delay puberty past the normal time frame for them to experience it. They may not be able to experience a merely delayed puberty. There's almost no information about the long-term safety of puberty blockers for this purpose, and in fact it's an off-label use, meaning the FDA doesn't approve those drugs for this kind of treatment. And that's not even touching the fact that cross-hormone treatments can produce changes which are permanent, including reduced fertility.

 

[Ziggurat]

Modern medicine does allow sperm or eggs to be collected and preserved ahead of time, but it isn't cheap.

And good luck getting sperm to preserve from a boy that's been put on puberty blockers before he goes through puberty.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Is that correct though?

In the article I link to above, a doctor is quoted:


I'm also not 100% sure that the effects of cross-gender hormone therapy are always reversible.

I did not meant to give the impression of reversibility at any point and I meant more specifically the puberty delaying ones. Puberty blockers are reversible and cross-gender hormones are reversible up to a point. The doctor in the MJ article described starting at very low doses and following up regularly to confirm a positive response. In other words, it sounds like the medical professionals are aware of the risks and proceeding properly.

Modern medicine does allow sperm or eggs to be collected and preserved ahead of time, but it isn't cheap.

Granted, but again it does seem like some heed is given to the whole "do no harm" thing.

I can admit I'm a bit biased against the conservative politicians in just about any conservative politician vs. scientist debate, but I can at least say I have a rather rational reason for doing so :9.

Mostly I was just amazed that someone could take an informative piece and summarize it as saying exactly the opposite of what it was saying and have the gall to say they were decoding it from "newspeak" by doing so...

ETA: fragile men fret so damn much about what other people are doing with their penises. 50 years ago it was consternation over men putting their penises in other men, now the idea that someone just might not want a penis at all is so damn threatening. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

 

[Ziggurat]

I did not meant to give the impression of reversibility at any point and I meant more specifically the puberty delaying ones. Puberty blockers are reversible

We don't know that. Like cross-hormone treatment, they may only be reversible up to a point. If a child is too old when they go off the puberty blockers, they may never experience normal puberty.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

We don't know that. Like cross-hormone treatment, they may only be reversible up to a point. If a child is too old when they go off the puberty blockers, they may never experience normal puberty.

Again, given the close eye being kept on the process and the incredibly low number of people choosing to halt seems to be a strong point in the favor of good medical science in the overall.

Any diagnosis can be wrong, any procedure can be botched. Look at cancer treatment over the decades. The numbers were surely abysmal at some point, but yet we kept at it. I'm sure there were all kinds of attempts to shut down the "quack doctors" with a plan to "pump radioactive fluids through people's bodies(!)."

Returning to the issue of the bill(s) in question however, they are classic "solution searching for a problem" junk. The idea that the doctors are engaged in social engineering while the reactionary fundamentalist pols are defending our innocent children is as farcical as it always is in these instances, just pure gas-lighting/projection. It's the same as when they talk about the "gay agenda."

 

[Meadmaker]

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...-on-transgender-rights-has-reached-a-new-low/

Interesting that the story spent a lot of time debunking the idea that we have to stop parents and quack doctors from chopping kids' balls off.



"gender-affirming health care" and "transitioning" for minors refers to social transitioning until puberty and then hormone therapy at most (which is largely reversible).

Basically the article was pushing back precisely against the ignorant alarmist nonsense seen in the post immediately preceding this one.

Dr. Izzy Lowell, an Atlanta-area doctor who primarily treats queer patients, says the transition process for young trans kids is often far less dramatic than opponents suggest. Lowell describes herself as conservative when it comes to prescribing hormones, and says for very young patients she tells their parents to “do nothing other than social transition.” She tells them to “affirm that child’s gender, as much as you can, but let them lead—never impose a gender on them.”

Emphasis added.

ETA: https://www.politifact.com/texas/st...oes-law-say-about-children-and-sex-reassignm/

Widely accepted guidelines for transition care emphasize gender-affirming care and therapy as primary tools for children. More intensive options, like surgery or hormone treatment, are typically reserved for older adolescents (with parental consent) and adults.

Why the denial?

ETA2: This is another case where some compromise is possible, but it won't happen because something about our political/media/entertainment (I think most commercial news is really entertainment driven) tends to force people to extremes. I think most people could accept transition procedures on minors if those procedures were actually fully reversible. I think you could even keep full surgical transition legal for 16 and 17 year olds if there were sufficient strings attached. But what's happening is that the surgery really is happening, and people are trying to stop it, and then various voices insist that it doesn't happen when it's quite clear that it does, and people say that conservatives are "reaching a new low" and "going after kids".

Was my characterization accurate when I talked about "cutting your balls off". No. I suppose not. But let's be clear that the inaccuracy was a case of the legislation proposed does exactly what I said, but it also does more. It also prevents less drastic treatments.

Rolfe has talked a lot about the effects of various treatments. There's a lot of irreversible stuff going on.

 

[Ziggurat]

Again, given the close eye being kept on the process and the incredibly low number of people choosing to halt seems to be a strong point in the favor of good medical science in the overall.

The low number of people isn't relevant, since it's not limited by a screening process which rejects lots of candidates, but simply by the number of people interested in the treatment.

I think I misread this bit initially.

First, the numbers of people who halt are not low. The majority of children who claim to be transgender cease to do so if not given hormone treatment. If most people who receive hormone treatment don't halt, that doesn't mean hormone treatment was the right thing to do. Again, this may not be PC to say, but an outcome where someone doesn't have any medical intervention and ceases to be transgender at all is frankly a better outcome than one where they medically transition. It's better for their physical health, it's better for their financial stability, and I bet it's better for their emotional state too. Which means that if you give medical treatment to someone who would have halted, and as a result they don't halt, you have harmed them.

And how close an eye is being kept on the process? Maybe they're keeping a close eye on the case, but how do we know? I certainly don't. I don't trust that the process is being monitored objectively at all. I'm not sure it's even possible to do so right now, given the influence of activists on the topic.

Returning to the issue of the bill(s) in question however, they are classic "solution searching for a problem" junk. The idea that the doctors are engaged in social engineering while the reactionary fundamentalist pols are defending our innocent children is as farcical as it always is in these instances, just pure gas-lighting/projection. It's the same as when they talk about the "gay agenda."

It's not that simple. Sometimes medical and especially psychology professionals DO try to engage in social engineering. Sometimes the conventional wisdom of the profession is wrong (see: dietary guidelines for fat vs sugar). It doesn't suffice to just say trust them, they're the professionals. Look up the case of David Reimer if you want a directly relevant example.

 

[Ziggurat]

fragile men

You do yourself no favors with this sort of framing, which is really just an ad hominem. It's especially ridiculous for a poster like Rolfe.

 

[Meadmaker]

One more point about the article.

I must admit that my characterization of the article was misleading. I'm sorry for that.....sort of.

I was just so disgusted by the article. It was not an "informative piece". It was extraordinarily misleading. It was incredibly slanted. It misrepresented the real world. It conflated what was being done with seven year olds with what was being done with seventeen year olds, and in both cases if said "usually" and "often", but in a way that encouraged the reader to think that the things the law would outlaw are things that never happen anyway.

Yeah, "usually", they don't cut people's balls off at 16. Turning "usually" into "never legally" would not be a "new low".

 

[Belz...]

No idea, the terms aren't all that consistently used, sadly. I think it's already been pointed out a few times transgender itself is not quite correct to describe the group it applies to, but transexual was felt to have too much baggage.

Well that's a problem. If we can't be sure what means what, then what are we even talking about?

If sex and gender mean different things and we're talking about transgender, then "cis-male" is meaningless.

 

[Belz...]

A biological/anthropological explanation for human sexuality isn't remotely proven.

...wait, what are you saying here? That sexuality is... what? I have no idea where you're going with this.

This is just a slightly more advanced version of stamping your feet and insisting the whole universe agrees with you.

No.

I wrote a zinger. Stay butt hurt over it aslong as you like, your choice.

You lied. If that's how you want to conduct our discussions, two can play that game.

Like all people, interpretations you rely on might not be accurate.

Correct. But that doesn't change what I said.

Also: hypocrite much?

This is the equivalent of poking someone in the eye until they punch you in the face and then calling them violent. You're fooling no one.

 

[Belz...]

You do yourself no favors with this sort of framing, which is really just an ad hominem. It's especially ridiculous for a poster like Rolfe.

Sexist, too.