Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Collin L, Reisner SL, Tangpricha V, Goodman M. Prevalence of Transgender Depends on the "Case" Definition: A Systematic Review. J Sex Med. 2016;13(4):613-626.

Across 27 studies, prevalence estimates per 100,000 were 355 for self-reported transgender identity, and 9.2 for surgical or hormonal transition.

That meta-analysis is about how research papers define "transgender", and how that affects their estimates for how many transgender people there are. That's not the same thing as a survey looking at a representative sample of the population. It it not itself an estimate of the prevalence. It's a critique of treating various papers which use different definitions of the term as if they were talking about the same thing.

To quote the conclusion:

The empirical literature on the prevalence of transgender highlights the importance of adhering to specific case definitions because the results can range by orders of magnitude. Standardized and routine collection of data on transgender status and gender identity is recommended.

 

[Elaedith]

That meta-analysis is about how research papers define "transgender", and how that affects their estimates for how many transgender people there are. That's not the same thing as a survey looking at a representative sample of the population. It it not itself an estimate of the prevalence. It's a critique of treating various papers which use different definitions of the term as if they were talking about the same thing.

To quote the conclusion:

Yes, that the is the topic of the paper. And in examining that question, they showed that the prevalence of transgender individuals is nearly 40 times higher if you define transgender based on self-identification, compared to definition based on surgical or hormonal transition. This is not consistent with more than a small percentage of people who self-identify as transgender undergoing medical transition.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Adding some probably ill-considered humor about "exploding vaginas" to hopefully take the edge out of some of the contentiousness .

TERF : why can't we say 'exploding women'?

trans-trender : stop erasing the validity of exploding LadyPenises, you bigot!

Colm Murphy : Why didn't I think of that ?!

Michael Bay : I thought of that ; why didn't I make a CGI-heavy film series out of it ?!

little old me : sounds like something from a poorly translated menu on engrish.com. Exploding vagina fermented rice (chicken or pork) -- 10.95

Lol I played a game called "Exploding Kittens" a few times. Not far off from Exploding Vaginas.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The link provided for the The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey takes me to this page:

https://1map.com/endtransdiscriminationorg

which doesn't seem to contain any relevant information at all. I was hoping to find something about what definitions they used for "medically transitioned" and "surgically transitioned".

I also found the link didn't work for me (otherwise I'd have linked directly to that, rather than the article), but I was just doing a quick google while I thought of it before I did something else, rather than intending to go on a deep dive. The article is a little unclear, but my best guess is that it's saying that "medically transitioned" is everything excluding surgery.

As it stands, there's no evidence that Rolfe's contention was incorrect. There's also no evidence that it was correct, but that's not what you were trying to prove with your link, and not what Belz took from it either.

I wasn't trying to prove anything with my link. I was trying to quickly find some actual data, as opposed to bald assertion and, having done so, I thought I'd share the little I'd found.

I literally captioned it "FWIW".

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Yes, that the is the topic of the paper. And in examining that question, they showed that the prevalence of transgender individuals is nearly 40 times higher if you define transgender based on self-identification, compared to definition based on surgical or hormonal transition. This is not consistent with more than a small percentage of people who self-identify as transgender undergoing medical transition.

They demonstrated that those papers did, not that that is true of the general population.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Realistically, there are only a few areas of life where body composition are relevant. Nobody cares about how thick your wrists are or how much Testosterone is in your blood outside of very specific circumstances like athletics.

I'm going to ask a couple of personal questions here, and you are welcome to decline answering if you like.

Are you heterosexual or homosexual? What physical characteristics do you find sexually attractive in a potential partner? When you see someone walking by on the street and think "Wow, that person is hot!" what are the attributes that lead you to that impression?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't doubt that they are the targets of bigotry. That is the unfortunate reality of minorities. I was questioning a specific claim about their experiences in restrooms.

How does this compare to other people? How many cis-people have been verbally harassed in public restrooms, for instance?

And how many women have been subjected to sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other sexual violence?

 

[Belz...]

And how many women have been subjected to sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other sexual violence?

That's essentially what I just asked. I want to have some numbers to compare to see if trans people really are at a higher risk.

 

[Ziggurat]

On the other hand, if they are suffering dysphoria about their bodies, i.e. if the actual, known, state of their bodies causes them anxiety, that's an anxiety disorder, isn't it? There's a stigma attached to the phrase "mental illness", but that's what we're dealing with, isn't it?

Yes. Yes it is.

There ought not be a moral judgement associated with that sort of thing, but there is a reality involved.

In the sense that there should be no moral judgment on someone for having (or not having) that condition, I agree completely.

I do think there's a good moral position in preferring to not have the condition, because the condition causes distress. One might say that the stress is relieved through transition, but living as trans is harder than living as not trans. One should never prefer that someone endure those hardships if that's avoidable.

That's not generally relevant to those who have the condition since they haven't generally chosen it. But if the idea that rapid onset gender dysphoria can be induced by environmental factors is correct, then there is a moral judgment to be made against anyone who helps induce it. Again, not because there's something immoral about being trans, but because there's something immoral about inflicting hardship. This is a controversial position.

To summarize, the idea that people say that transgenders are "just mentally ill sex perverts" is a straw man. No one in these threads believes that or has expressed it. We all recognize that transgenderism exists and that the feelings of those people are valid. The actual, real, position that is being mimicked by the straw man position is that allowing male access to female only spaces erodes barriers that protect females from the sex perverts that do exist, both within and outside of the trans community.

I agree.

 

[Matthew Best]

I also found the link didn't work for me (otherwise I'd have linked directly to that, rather than the article), but I was just doing a quick google while I thought of it before I did something else, rather than intending to go on a deep dive. The article is a little unclear, but my best guess is that it's saying that "medically transitioned" is everything excluding surgery.



I wasn't trying to prove anything with my link. I was trying to quickly find some actual data, as opposed to bald assertion and, having done so, I thought I'd share the little I'd found.

I literally captioned it "FWIW".

There wasn't any actual data there.

 

[Belz...]

There wasn't any actual data there.

This isn't data:

The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found 61 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents reported having medically transitioned, and 33 percent said they had surgically transitioned. About 14 percent of trans women and 72 percent of trans men said they don’t ever want full genital construction surgery.

?

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's essentially what I just asked. I want to have some numbers to compare to see if trans people really are at a higher risk.

Here's a starting point...

Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics

1 out of every 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime

21% of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students have been sexually assaulted, compared to 18% of non-TGQN females, and 4% of non-TGQN males.

US Dept of Health & Human Services, Office on Women's Health

In the United States, one in three women has experienced some type of sexual violence.

Violence Against Trans and Non-Binary People

Nearly half (47%) of respondents were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime
...
72% of respondents who have done sex work, 65% of respondents who have experienced homelessness, and 61% of respondents with disabilities reported being sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

I include the second element in this quote, because that's a confounding factor. Rates of sexual assault are higher for sex workers and homeless people across the board, but I can't find information that separates them out from the total.

Huffpost, so grain of salt... 17 Facts About Sexual Violence and Sex Work

Sex workers experience high levels of sexual violence. Globally, sex workers have a 45 to 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence at some point in their careers and a 32 to 55% chance of experiencing sexual violence in a given year.

 

[Belz...]

Speaking of grain of salt, I take all of that with a grain of salt. The one in three statistic, if I recall correctly, was hugely inflated because of, let's say, malleability of the definition of rape and sexual assault. I don't know if this one's the same thing, but it rings an alarm bell.

 

[theprestige]

What I want to know is, are transwomen being sexually assaulted because they're women, or because they're trans? And does the 1 in 6 sexual assaults on women include assaults on transwomen? If a cishet assailant gropes a transwoman's chest, which statistic(s) does that contribute to? Seems like there should be some overlap. Maybe a lot.

 

[JihadJane]

Speaking of grain of salt, I take all of that with a grain of salt. The one in three statistic, if I recall correctly, was hugely inflated because of, let's say, malleability of the definition of rape and sexual assault. I don't know if this one's the same thing, but it rings an alarm bell.

What types of sexual violence shouldn't be included in definitions of rape and sexual assault?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Speaking of grain of salt, I take all of that with a grain of salt. The one in three statistic, if I recall correctly, was hugely inflated because of, let's say, malleability of the definition of rape and sexual assault. I don't know if this one's the same thing, but it rings an alarm bell.

This is one of those statistics that often rings alarm bells for men...but most women say "Hmm, yeah, sounds about right".

Sure, there's going to be some flexibility for deifnitional variations. But at the end of the day, I know a LOT of women who were forced into sex, or who were date raped, or had fingers forcibly inserted at a party, or... the list goes on and on.

I'm actually a bit stricter about what constitutes rape than a lot of women are. For example, if both parties in an encounter are extremely drunk, I don't think rape applies. Regret maybe, and definitely some bad decisions, but not rape. And I'm a very vocal, self-assured person, who isn't afraid to speak my mind or tell people no (No is the most empowering word int he english language).

I've had several occasions where I've been cat called, groped, had a butt cheek or a boob grabbed when I'm not even in a super-crowded locale, and I've had a couple of occasions where a guy tried to force me to have sex with him - like actually physically holding on and groping and being super insistent and not letting me up until I physically punched him in the gut.

So at the end of the day... one in three over their lifetime might be high... but I don't think it's high by very much. If you actually look at sexual assaults, not just attempted or completed rape, it's absurdly high.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What I want to know is, are transwomen being sexually assaulted because they're women, or because they're trans? And does the 1 in 6 sexual assaults on women include assaults on transwomen? If a cishet assailant gropes a transwoman's chest, which statistic(s) does that contribute to? Seems like there should be some overlap. Maybe a lot.

I really don't know, and I haven't been able to find a break down.

The overarching point, for me at least, is that yes, transgender people face a lot of abuse... but it's not actually that much higher than what women face on a regular basis. They're not massively more at risk than women in general are.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I really don't know, and I haven't been able to find a break down.

The overarching point, for me at least, is that yes, transgender people face a lot of abuse... but it's not actually that much higher than what women face on a regular basis. They're not massively more at risk than women in general are.

If they are excluded from domestic violence shelters, that seems like a unique disadvantage.

 

[Elaedith]

They demonstrated that those papers did, not that that is true of the general population.

It's a meta-analysis of studies estimating prevalence in general populations from sample data. Obviously no individual study is can be assumed to accurately represent the population due to sampling error and bias.

Regardless, the higher the percentage of people self-identifying as transgender who have medical transition, the less discrepancy expected between studies that use self-identification versus studies that use medical transition for definition. If most people who self-identify medically transition, they will be classified the same way regardless of which definition is used.

 

[theprestige]

If they are excluded from domestic violence shelters, that seems like a unique disadvantage.

Seems like they're not, though.

Which brings us back to one of the central questions being asked in this thread. If you've already answered it, my apologies:

Should biological males be admitted into domestic violence shelters for women, based purely on self-identification as women?

It's a yes or no question, but not a simple one. I fully expect a complex or nuanced answer. That's fine with me. What's not fine with me is deflections like asking how often it happens. It doesn't matter how often it happens. What I'm asking is, do *you* think it would be a good thing or a bad thing if it did happen?