Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[TurkeysGhost]

Well let's all hope you're never brought into the ER unconscious and hence unable to correct the doctors' assumptions, possibly leading to serious complications if treatment is administered on the basis of such flawed assumptions.

Do you have something specifically in mind that is of special concern here specifically for trans people?

Unconscious patients with unknown identity/medical history is a known problem, and there medical professionals have a protocol for dealing with this. ER medical staff are no strangers to treating unfamiliar patients. The problem of the patient with unknown medical history is nothing new, and the existence of trans people doesn't strike me as much of change in this regard.

 

[Aber]

And I still don't get why we would call gender "gender" if it is synonymous with what biology leads to. Gender is different from biology

It is a relatively recent development to consider sex and gender to mean different things.

 

[Lithrael]

This seems like a reasonable definition but it would fall apart if ever anglophone society managed to cure itself of the sexism inherent in treating women differently than men.

Sure. Cool. Then we could come up with a new more useful one for however things work after that.

ETA: Philosopher Kathleen Stock wrote an entire paper against the "social kind" approach to defining womanhood.

Yeah, yeah, linguists can cry me a river. “When, about 50 years ago, feminists started to talk of womanhood in terms of a social role instead of a biological state, they unwittingly initiated a chain of destruction which left us with present day ruins.” What a load. If you’re tempted to start your paper complaining that concept-language drift makes things harder than usual to explain to aliens, you can go ahead and put me down as a tergiversator.

 

[d4m10n]

Then we could come up with a new more useful one for however things work after that.

Except that (re)defining "woman" and "man" as social kinds based on differential social norms would foreseeably normalize and entrench the gendered norms themselves.

 

[Lithrael]

I can’t bring myself to be worried about the risks you see in that. Language has unexpected effects like that sometimes but for goodness sake. It’s the kind of thing that make you go ‘oh, I never noticed that!’ rather than ‘the ills of society can be traced to defining this word in such and such a way.’ Especially considering the concept we’re talking about here is slap bang in the middle of a contentious state of flux.

“It’s about how people treat you when you are percieved as a man or as a woman” does not define what that treatment is, it leaves that open. Pretty much the only actual prescriptive thing in the definition that I’ve seen anyone reallly want, is use of the corresponding pronoun.

 

[Ziggurat]

2) You shouldn't need a doctor's note, or even have gender dysphoria, to be transgender and therefore should be able to change your gender when you feel you are ready to.

Is Zuby transgender?

 

[caveman1917]

I wouldn't carry anything on me like that, period.

I have gone through a lot just to try to erase any reference to me having once been male, as transpeople tend to do with our assigned genders and deadnames. If something happens to me as a result of a situation like what was presented, where incorrect treatment is administered because I'm not able to tell them I'm trans, then I guess I'm screwed. I would not carry anything on me that outs me as transgender, and you wouldn't find many of us who would.

Why? Is it because of a psychological need to not be reminded of that information or because you're scared someone might steal your wallet and out you as transgender to others? It doesn't appear to be the former since, as you say, when you visit a doctor you correct their assumptions on this, so you are both aware of the information and of its relevance in a medical context. So I can only assume it's the latter explanation?

 

[Boudicca90]

Is Zuby transgender?

No way. Zuby is a guy pretending he's trans to troll us and try to delegitimize us. He can go to hell.

 

[caveman1917]

Do you have something specifically in mind that is of special concern here specifically for trans people?

Unconscious patients with unknown identity/medical history is a known problem, and there medical professionals have a protocol for dealing with this. ER medical staff are no strangers to treating unfamiliar patients. The problem of the patient with unknown medical history is nothing new, and the existence of trans people doesn't strike me as much of change in this regard.

Well there was that example of failing to check for pregnancy. And while it's true that unknown medical history is a common problem with unconscious patients, staff will make assumptions regarding a patient's sex (unknown sex isn't really part of the unknown medical history, which concerns unknown history of disease, drug use, or surgery, and not unknown sex). Also, we're assuming here that the patient does not have unknown identity as we're talking about a note sitting next to the patient's ID in their wallet - so we're assuming staff found the ID including information on the (medically incorrect) sex of the patient.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Well there was that example of failing to check for pregnancy. And while it's true that unknown medical history is a common problem with unconscious patients, staff will make assumptions regarding a patient's sex (unknown sex isn't really part of the unknown medical history, which concerns unknown history of disease, drug use, or surgery, and not unknown sex). Also, we're assuming here that the patient does not have unknown identity as we're talking about a note sitting next to the patient's ID in their wallet.

Is pregnancy testing a common high priority emergency test for unresponsive patients in the ER? In this context, we're talking prioritizing basic necessities of life. Airways, major bleeding, cardio-respiratory function, sepsis, severe infection, traumatic injury, overdose, and other immediately life threatening conditions, this are the kinds of things that an ER cares about.

There are probably medical conditions where some form of notification would be helpful. Diabetes and severe allergies come to mind. I can't see why trans status would be a necessary bit of information for emergency medicine.

 

[Ziggurat]

No way. Zuby is a guy pretending he's trans to troll us and try to delegitimize us. He can go to hell.

What's the standard, then? How do you differentiate between honest trans identity and dishonest trans identity? You may think it's obvious in the case of Zuby, but "it's obvious" doesn't work in general even if it works for him. If nothing other than self-declaration is needed, then how do we actually distinguish between you and Zuby? I don't say this because I doubt your trans identity, and I don't say this because I think Zuby isn't faking it. But there's got to be a dividing line somewhere, and you don't want to allow any of the mechanisms I see by which such a line could be drawn. That isn't workable.

 

[caveman1917]

Is pregnancy testing a common high priority emergency test for unresponsive patients in the ER?

Not in particular, but a diagnosis for the patient's condition can very well depend on assumptions regarding their sex, leading to incorrect treatment.

 

[d4m10n]

“It’s about how people treat you when you are perceived as a man or as a woman” does not define what that treatment is, it leaves that open. Pretty much the only actual prescriptive thing in the definition that I’ve seen anyone reallly want, is use of the corresponding pronoun.

It leaves open the treatment, but closes the book on equal treatment.

Without differential treatment based on perceived sex and/or expressed gender, the new meanings evaporate.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Not in particular, but a diagnosis for the patient's condition can very well depend on assumptions regarding their sex, leading to incorrect treatment.

In an emergency context? I can't see how, but I'm not a medical expert. Please explain.

ETA: how is being trans something that is specifically worth worrying about enough to quickly ID? Medical alert bracelets are a thing, but usually only for certain conditions where such an extraordinary measure is justified (e.g. epilepsy)

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because if you say the defining factor is how people treat you and relate to you, that is based on assumptions about your biology, made because of your gender presentation, rather than your actual biology.

Exactly. Because I am seen as female by my appearance, I am seen as female in other areas, including biology. Even if it isn't accurate sometimes. Which is why I sometimes get asked questions about biological functions I don't have.

Yes... and maybe?

Yes, how people interact with you and treat you now will be based on your appearance. That treatment, however, is highly related to the assumption of sex, and that treatment for ciswomen begins in early childhood and in strongly reinforced throughout our lives. So it's not just how other people treat women... it's also how they expect women to behave. A lot of it is BS and very confining.

There's a fundamental difference in childhood conditioning between girls and boys, that underlies a lot of other differences in treatment. When it comes to wants, the default position for males is that if they want something, they should get it. That doesn't mean they will get it, only that the default is that there's no reason for them not to. Failure to acquire their wants is expected to be accompanied by a justification for why they don't get to have what they want. It might be transactional - the store ran out of that item. It might be that they don't qualify or lost out in a competition. The justification is not overly important, but there is a subconscious assumption that failure to acquire what a man desires has a justification for why their desire was not fulfilled.

On the other hand, the default position for females is that if they want something, they must justify why they should get it. The default for females is that they don't get what they want unless their is good justification for them to acquire it. Females are conditioned, from pretty early in childhood, to ask permission.

 

[Boudicca90]

What's the standard, then? How do you differentiate between honest trans identity and dishonest trans identity? You may think it's obvious in the case of Zuby, but "it's obvious" doesn't work in general even if it works for him. If nothing other than self-declaration is needed, then how do we actually distinguish between you and Zuby? I don't say this because I doubt your trans identity, and I don't say this because I think Zuby isn't faking it. But there's got to be a dividing line somewhere, and you don't want to allow any of the mechanisms I see by which such a line could be drawn. That isn't workable.

Maybe you should find a better example than someone who basically admits he did it to try to delegitimize transpeople in sports. And I know it's obvious to you too, so you can stop trying to pull this crap. Zuby is faking, and he's doing it to try to restrict our rights.

If you don't see a difference between him and an actual transperson, that's your problem to deal with, don't insult me with this.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yes... and maybe?

Yes, how people interact with you and treat you now will be based on your appearance. That treatment, however, is highly related to the assumption of sex, and that treatment for ciswomen begins in early childhood and in strongly reinforced throughout our lives. So it's not just how other people treat women... it's also how they expect women to behave. A lot of it is BS and very confining. But some of it isn't. For example, having male-free intimate spaces is partly due to social ideas of 'modesty' from the perspective of men... but from the perspective of women it also has a lot to do with safety and dignity that men are frequently unaware is even an issue for us.

If males lose male-segregated intimate spaces, they lose modesty. A female might see their genitals.

If females lose female-segregated intimate spaces, we lose modesty, we lose protection from voyeurs (who are largely male), we lose safety from sexual assault by males (who are bigger and stronger).

It's already lost to transmen, who are often bigger, stronger, and male appearing.

The female segregated space only works as you describe if you assume trans people don't exist. The horse is out of the barn. Either transwomen will be in there, or transmen, and either seem to fail your ideal here.

 

[Paul2]

Because if you say the defining factor is how people treat you and relate to you, that is based on assumptions about your biology, made because of your gender presentation, rather than your actual biology.

Yeah, I got that.

 

[caveman1917]

In an emergency context? I can't see how, but I'm not a medical expert. Please explain.

Not during stabilization procedures themselves of course, it's not like, say, electrical cardioversion is performed differently on males and females. But for diagnosing the actual underlying condition? Yes, a differential diagnosis may very well rest on the patient's sex, as several diseases either occur only in one sex, occur significantly more frequently in one sex, or have different symptomology depending on sex.

 

[Paul2]

It is a relatively recent development to consider sex and gender to mean different things.

True, and it's quite useful to distinguish how society socializes people of a particular sex and how biology "biologizes" those same people.