Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[TragicMonkey]

One thing that struck me was her reference to an Oxford researcher who was a "professor of evidence based medicine".

Is there any other kind? I mean, I know that there's quackery out there that may as well come from Hogwarts, but, at Oxford, is "evidence based medicine" a specialty? Surely Rowling is not using an actual title there, is she?

Medical industry buzzwords. Like so many things it started out as a real theory of how to do things but degenerated into blather about fifteen years ago. These days it's mostly a term that shows up in marketing materials and on posters in offices dealing with the business side of healthcare.

eta: there's an article on Wikipedia but it will put you to sleep.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yeah the whole "evidence based" has become a popular way of saying "Experimental instead of theoretical" in a lot of fields.

It's a really, really bad way of putting it in my opinion.

 

[d4m10n]

The "OMG, we're experimenting on children!!1!!" is even worse.

Any medical treatment designed to affect the course of puberty is bound to involve experimenting on pubescent children, whether during controlled trials or otherwise. The only question worth discussing is whether such experiments are being conducted ethically and with appropriate oversight.

As to who has the better insights on that question, I really cannot say. On the one hand we've got ethical philosophers such as Simona Giordano & Søren Holm (whom you linked upthread) and one the other hand we have dozens of clinicians who have worked in the field. The former are experts are applied bioethics, but the latter are actually dealing with gender nonconforming children and their families.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I hadn't really thought about like that before. It's kind of a tough question, though.

At first glance, it seems obvious to me that it's the personal subjective sense of masculinity: "I think I'm a man, therefore I should be in the same category as everyone else who thinks they're a man."

But what is that category?

The category is the way we're perceived by other people. "I think I'm a man, therefore I should be perceived as a man by other people." But that's definitely *not* something transmen have in common with cismen.

That's pretty much the heart of the problem, I think: The category is based on the perceptions of others, but transmen want their perception of themselves to put them in the category.

I also think, now that you've got me thinking about it, that maybe it's the wrong question. Maybe the right question is, "when my self-perception and the perception of others is at odds, which one should prevail in society?"

And I think maybe the answer is, "it's complicated, it depends, and there's always going to be circumstances that nobody is happy with."

I'm not sure it's that complicated. You can't dictate perception. You can't demand that people perceive something other than what they actually perceive.

I'd love to be able to say that I view myself as still being skinny, and that society should make me some size 2 jeans that fit me... but I don't think that's going to happen when I'm actually size 12. I can't demand that everyone else perceive me as skinny despite my matronly upper arms and jiggly booty.

Now... if it were really important to me, there are things I could do that would alter other people's perception of me. I could eat a lot less cake, I could do some cardio. Hell, if I'm really at a loss I could have lap-band surgery followed by a full body skin tuck.

I just don't think it's reasonable of me to insist that other people perceive me as skinny. I think it would be silly of me to insist on riding in the middle seat in the back of a small car on the basis of me viewing myself as the thinnest in our group when... well... I'm not.

 

[Matthew Best]

As to who has the better insights on that question, I really cannot say.

I can: it's whichever of them agrees with my predetermined conclusions on the question they're discussing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

"Gender identity" sounds an awful lot like all those stereotypes we put on what men and women are "supposed to do" that I thought we were trying to get rid of.

Watching people dance around the subject while trying to stay on the moral high ground with this but at the end of the day this is just gender stereotyping again, putting a bunch of rules on how men and women are supposed to act.

That is one of my biggest concerns. I'm trying very hard to destroy those gender stereotypes... This doesn't really help that.

 

[angrysoba]

ETA: One thing that struck me was her reference to an Oxford researcher who was a "professor of evidence based medicine".

Is there any other kind? I mean, I know that there's quackery out there that may as well come from Hogwarts, but, at Oxford, is "evidence based medicine" a specialty? Surely Rowling is not using an actual title there, is she?

Maybe it means she specializes in experimental design.

Obviously we want all our medicine to be based on evidence, but most of the actual practice of medicine has little to do with experimental design.

Medical industry buzzwords. Like so many things it started out as a real theory of how to do things but degenerated into blather about fifteen years ago. These days it's mostly a term that shows up in marketing materials and on posters in offices dealing with the business side of healthcare.

eta: there's an article on Wikipedia but it will put you to sleep.

Yeah the whole "evidence based" has become a popular way of saying "Experimental instead of theoretical" in a lot of fields.

It's a really, really bad way of putting it in my opinion.

Oxford University has a Centre For Evidence-Based Medicine.

Link here.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's about signals. Stereotypes are good for that. Cis-women (and men) may see the stereotypes as limiting and sexist, but I suspect that they provide utility to the trans community.

I, as a woman, absolutely find the stereotypes limiting and sexist!

So why should I, as a woman who has been fighting against those stereotypes, be asked to take a back seat because those stereotypes are useful for someone else?

Would anyone suggest that racial stereotypes, while they may be seen as limiting and racist to black men, provide utility to someone else as a justification for continuing to embrace those stereotypes?

 

[Emily's Cat]

There are women who naturally make higher than normal levels of androgens and have been banned from women’s sports.

Just skipping over the question of intersex conditions... I think it might be worth noting that they were both banned based on testosterone levels above the IAAF threashold.

The IAAF level of 5nmol/L is still high for female levels, which normally range from 0.1 – 1.8nmol/L.

That threshold is over 2.5 times as high as the high-end of the normal range for females.

There's a bit of a difference between "higher than normal and "4 standard deviations above the mean".

 

[Emily's Cat]

You wouldn't have such big problems wrapping your head around it if you actually understood the difference between recognizing that females tend to act in a certain way and demanding that they act in a certain way.

By recognizing that masculinity is a attribute associated strongly with males, as opposed to females, does not mean that we have treat masculinity as a exclusively male attribute nor does it mean that we have to stress that it's important that men behave in a masculine manner.

Easy for you, a man, to say...

Consider, for example: Women tend to want to have babies and they tend to want to care for them when they're young. That's just a natural difference between males and females. Thus, if we're looking at two candidates for an executive position and one of them is a female, we should hire the male because he's less likely to change his mind and stay home to raise babies

Sure, it's not "prescriptive" but that "descriptive" stereotype sure does tend to play into a lot of decisions that present barriers to women...

 

[tyr_13]

I've read this before but I still don't know how we know this. Of course most 3-y.o.'s will tell a psych grad student (upon being asked) that they are a girl or a boy, since they've seen that girls and boys are distinct groups and they've been told over and over which group they belong to.

A experience common to young boys with single moms (or dads who travel often) is having to be dragged into the ladies b/c there isn't a male parent or uncle around to escort them to the men's room. It's often an uncomfortable and frustrating experience, b/c one feels that they belong in the room with the urinals rather than the one with a sofa. Even so, I don't think this tells us about a deeply felt internal sense of self so much as it tells us that we're most comfortable in the places where we are seen to fit in, especially when the other place is taboo.

Pretty sure those studies were on the overview study linked to in the 'blog' that was dismissed here but I'm not bothered to find out. I'm fairly certain it wasn't just asking, and that children whose gender identity didn't match their biological sex were statistically predictive of those who would later come out as trans.

I was trying to track down the difference between the ages given, but got side tracked. It seems like not the biggest issue. The entire 'if your gender identity matches your sex then you don't have a frame of reference' hypothesis seems plausible here.

Since we're going around in circles - and have been for about 1 1/2 threads - I'll throw one of my old favourites into the ring. I've never had a satisfactory answer, so have a crack!

How does gender dysphoria differ from body identity dysphoria?

(no irony in people with BID referring to themselves as "trans-abled!)

There was a single pilot study comparing BIID and transgender, but it didn't show much. They don't seem to have common hypothetical sources, nor do the differences between people with BIID and typical people match the difference between transgender people and cisgender people.

There are much greater commonalities with sexual orientation and transgender status (example: the more sons a woman has, the more likely the next son is to be trans, bi, or gay).

I want to be described as The Great Sage Equalling Heaven.

We call you Roboramma. You call me a god. You think an allusion to Journey to the West wouldn't be honored?

Rowling is at it again

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1279759345539039233?s=19

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"I've ignored fake tweets attributed to me and RTed widely. I've ignored porn tweeted at children on a thread about their art. I've ignored death and rape threats. I'm not going to ignore this." - Rowling talking about how what she says is a misrepresentation of her stance (it's not a stretch of what she said really) is more important to her than porn directed at children.

She also blocked Steven King and deleted her tweets praising him after he tweets, "Trans women are women."

Her positions aren't some mystery.

Any medical treatment designed to affect the course of puberty is bound to involve experimenting on pubescent children, whether during controlled trials or otherwise. The only question worth discussing is whether such experiments are being conducted ethically and with appropriate oversight.

As to who has the better insights on that question, I really cannot say. On the one hand we've got ethical philosophers such as Simona Giordano & Søren Holm (whom you linked upthread) and one the other hand we have dozens of clinicians who have worked in the field. The former are experts are applied bioethics, but the latter are actually dealing with gender nonconforming children and their families.

Well if they are correct, then the current detransition rate of 0.47% will increase greatly.

While it is wrong to dismiss possible problems with puberty blockers, the motivation of Rowlings and others are obviously not good faith. They aren't concerned with their use in precocious puberty. They also don't balance the clear benefits in their use for transgender youths.

But she has 'concerns', so the problem must be real.

 

[Roboramma]

We call you Roboramma. You call me a god.

Just as long as you don't start calling me Protector of the Horses, we'll be okay.

You think an allusion to Journey to the West wouldn't be honored?

 

[d4m10n]

Well if they are correct, then the current detransition rate of 0.47% will increase greatly.

Heck, it could go as high as 9.4% someday.

 

[tyr_13]

Heck, it could go as high as 9.4% someday.

You did notice that they were not measuring detransition rates, correct? That's measuring a different metric, with a drastically smaller sample size, in a different country, and includes people who continued in their gender identity but without medical interventions. Continuing to transition can't be called detransitioning, and neither can deciding against transitioning.

It essentially shows that the assessments before medical intervention are appropriate and effective at drastically reducing inappropriate intervention to a very low rate.

 

[d4m10n]

You did notice that they were not measuring detransition rates, correct?

You think the poster paper was actually measuring detransition rates? Look at the wording again.

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[Arcade22]

It still requires me, me personally not in some vague, passive, mealy mouthed allusion to society, to put meaningless expectations and roles on the sexes/genders and I won't do that.

Except that they are not nessecerily meaningless by any means. Even something as basic as identifying whether someone is male or female, irrespective of gender presentation, relies upon stereotypes that are accurate enough to work in practice.

Do you not infer an individuals sex, or at least their gender presentation, by their appearance?

 

[Arcade22]

Easy for you, a man, to say...

It's easy for women too, i can assure you that it's not only men who do this.

Consider, for example: Women tend to want to have babies and they tend to want to care for them when they're young. That's just a natural difference between males and females. Thus, if we're looking at two candidates for an executive position and one of them is a female, we should hire the male because he's less likely to change his mind and stay home to raise babies

Sure, it's not "prescriptive" but that "descriptive" stereotype sure does tend to play into a lot of decisions that present barriers to women...

And with regards to this specific example there already is a way to deal with this kind of discrimination: by prohibiting employers from discriminating against women because they may want to have and raise children. Or should we be "sex blind" and not take this kind of problem into account when we draft anti-discrimination laws?

It's like someone being "race blind" to the point that they can no longer see the problem associated with existing racial discrimination and do something to rectify it. Stephen Colbert style.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Do you not infer an individuals sex, or at least their gender presentation, by their appearance?

You mean the very thing I'm being told I can't do?

"Yeah we're bringing all the stereotypes back, but it's okay because we're not using them the same way" is really, really not going to win me over here.

I'm not putting expectations about how men and women should act back on cis-men and cis-women just so trans-men and trans-women can feel special and any and all variations on "No you see we'll just let the transgender people use the stereotypes as part of their identity, but we just won't let anyone use them against cis-men and women" (which seems to where we've landed finally) is functionally insane.

 

[JoeMorgue]

It's like someone being "race blind" to the point that they can no longer see the problem associated with existing racial discrimination and do something to rectify it. Stephen Colbert style.

Yeah and if you told me a white man eating fried chicken and watermelon while doing a blackface mammy routine was okay because that's not him using a stereotype, it's just him identifying as black you'd have a fair comparison to make.

 

[Arcade22]

You mean the very thing I'm being told I can't do?

Who exactly is telling you that you are not able to identify, to some realistic degree of accuracy, whether someone is a man or a woman based on their physical appearance or mannerisms?

Sometimes that's important. A lot the time it isn't, and we don't need to assume whether they are a man or woman, boy or girl or anything else.

Again, it's one thing to take note of stereotypes, while keeping in mind that many stereotypes are not true or accurate at all. It's another to stress their importance especially when it shouldn't be relevant.

"Yeah we're bringing all the stereotypes back, but it's okay because we're not using them the same way" is really, really not going to win me over here.

I'm not putting expectations about how men and women should act back on cis-men and cis-women just so trans-men and trans-women can feel special and any and all variations on "No you see we'll just let the transgender people use the stereotypes as part of their identity, but we just won't let anyone use them against cis-men and women" (which seems to where we've landed finally) is functionally insane.

I realize that it's lost cause, but i still think it's important to point out that there's a difference between recognizing that something holds true for a certain group of people in general or most of the time, and actually stressing the importance of it or demanding that people adhere to said stereotypes.