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You said "thank God" a few posts ago. I assume you don't believe in God. I also assume that people who say "assigned at birth" don't believe that an actual assignment occurs at birth.
And the UK's article of definition that was linked to earlier doesn't count, any more than the U.S.'s article of definition saying that corporations are people.
Frighteningly, I have actually had people argue with me that it really is an "assignment" because doctors can't really know for sure and some people are intersex, and some people could end up being transgender which makes the "assignment" be completely wrong because doctors are really just guessing.
I know that sounds like it ought to be a caricature of "the other side". I seriously wish it were.
The relevant question is whether trans people and cis people of the same gender actually do usually get along peacefully in prisons and shelters. If there's evidence that they do, then I reverse my opinions on the matter.
Occasionally some do. Then again, sometimes female prisoners get raped, and females in rape shelters wake up to find the transwoman in their room masturbating their lady penis over them in the middle of the night.
How much rape and sexual assault do you think females should be required to experience in order to allow male-bodied transwomen the right to be housed with females?
I like this. My height is 5'8", and my age is _8. But my stature is about 6'2", and my maturity is 20/70 (all the energy and optimism of sophomoric youth, all the wisdom and pragmatism of venerable age).
Frighteningly, I have actually had people argue with me that it really is an "assignment" because doctors can't really know for sure and some people are intersex, and some people could end up being transgender which makes the "assignment" be completely wrong because doctors are really just guessing.
I know that sounds like it ought to be a caricature of "the other side". I seriously wish it were.
But anyway, to circle back, I don't think an age incongruence causes dysphoria to the same extent as gender incongruence. Or if it does, it has less of an effect on the outside world.
I suspect there are more people who experience age-related dysphoria than we give thought to. There is, after all, an enormous skin-care and cosmetic surgery industry built around helping people look younger than they really are.
But you're right - it doesn't really have an affect on anyone other than that individual.
I suppose if they started demanding that skin care and botox injections be covered by insurance and subsidized by the government, the general "you do you" view toward it might shift a wee bit.
Why have you changed your mind? What information has led you to do so?
What position have you changed your mind to? And does it vary by whether or not the trans person has a clinical diagnosis or is self-declared? Does it vary by whether the trans person is genitally intact?
The same as me. Except I have no fiscal position because economics bores me.
Also, I'm not much of a pragmatist. I like to have the slack ropes of knowledge neatly tied up in speculation, confident that I can rethink things when new information arrives.
There's a fair bit of economics that bores the hell out of me too... but it's a key component of my career field, so oh well.
Pragmatists are generally quite happy to rethink their positions when new information is acquired. Pragmatism is about finding functional solutions that work pretty well most of the time and cause the least problems... rather than adhering to ideological objectives and rigid principles.
We're the 80%ers of the world. We pretty much never let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough-for-government-work.
Frighteningly, I have actually had people argue with me that it really is an "assignment" because doctors can't really know for sure and some people are intersex, and some people could end up being transgender which makes the "assignment" be completely wrong because doctors are really just guessing.
I know that sounds like it ought to be a caricature of "the other side". I seriously wish it were.
I suspect there are more people who experience age-related dysphoria than we give thought to. There is, after all, an enormous skin-care and cosmetic surgery industry built around helping people look younger than they really are.
But you're right - it doesn't really have an affect on anyone other than that individual.
I suppose if they started demanding that skin care and botox injections be covered by insurance and subsidized by the government, the general "you do you" view toward it might shift a wee bit.
Of course, biological sex is not a social construct. It is, however, a construct of evolution. Like all evolved traits, it's good enough for survival but not perfect. There are people who differ in some ways from the biological binary -- I think it's been mentioned in the thread a few times. It makes no difference to evolution as long as it doesn't stop reproduction from happening.
This is one of those things that gets technical, so feel free to just drift on past if you're not interested.
Sex is binary among all sexually dimorphic species - that includes all mammals, and the vast majority of other vertebrates. Biological males are those who have the anatomy that normally produces small motile gametes AND has a functional SRY receptor. Females are those that have the anatomy that normally produces large immobile gametes AND has a fully non-functional SRY receptor.
Intersex people are those who have a development disorder associated with those sexual markers. Some of them have ambiguous or malformed primary sex characteristics, some of them experience disorders related to the development of secondary sex characteristics. This means that intersex people are still binary-sexed, and are still identifiably male or female.
The inclusion of the SRY receptor in that definition is relevant only to people who have XY chromosomes, but who cannot receive the testosterone wash during fetal development that prompts the development of male primary sex organs. IIRC, these people who have complete androgen insensitivity have gamete-producing organs that are positioned where a females ovaries would be, but they are organs that would be expected to produce spermatazoa. The lack of testosterone during fetal development leaves them with otherwise female internal organs - they will have a uterus, fallopian tubes, vagina, vulva, etc.
The only possible exception to the binary would be someone who had chimerism... and whose chimerism produced mixed sexual organs and left them with both types of gametes. To my knowledge though, nobody has been found with this condition, even though it's hypothetically possible.
His "argument"? You mean his argument that "oh it isn't happening"?
Have you considered that ST's claim is not based on reality? He's been shown information and statistics repeatedly... he just dismisses them out of hand because they don't agree with his belief.
ST has also been pretty clear that he feels that a certain (as yet unspecified) amount of additional harm done to females isn't a big deal - it's a sacrifice he's willing to make so that transwomen feel affirmed about their identity.
This podcast is a little less than an hour long, and the entire thing is very good and well worth listening to, but I've left some timestamps to the relevant sections. The guest, Ethan Watters, co-wrote (along with Richard Ofshe) the book "Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, And Sexual Hysteria".
Amazon review of Making Monsters:
A SOCIOLOGIST AND A WRITER LOOK AT "RECOVERED MEMORY" THERAPY
Richard Jay Ofshe is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American sociologist and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UC Berkeley, and a member of the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation; Ethan Watters is a freelance writer. They have also written Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 340-page hardcover edition.]
They wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, "We have written this book as a bitter debate has raged over the practices of recovered memory therapy and the treatment of multiple personality disorder... Our goal is to prove beyond doubt that devastating mistakes are being made within certain therapy settings..." (Pg. ix) They added in the Introduction, "We believe there is now sufficient evidence... to show that a significant cadre of poorly-trained, overzealous, or ideologically driven psychotherapists have pursued a series of pseudoscientific notions that have ultimately damaged the patients that have come to them for help... the epidemic of repressed memories 'discovered' daily in therapy settings prove not that our society is exploding with the most vicious sort of child molesters and satanists, but rather than psychotherapists... can unintentionally spark and then build false beliefs in a patient's mind." (Pg. 5-6)
They assert, "While a therapist, conscious of the problems of memory retrieval, may be able to maintain the core veracity of a client's recall over the course of therapy, recovered memory retrieval... does not concern itself with this problem... Within the recovered memory world, the longer and more intense the process is, the better. Recovered memory therapists pursue hidden memories for years... unaware that their process destroys the fragile treasure they claim to seek." (Pg. 62-63)
They suggest, "That the pain of therapy is real should not be accepted, however, as an argument that the memories uncovered are accurate. One's emotional reaction to a mental image memory need not correlate with the truth of that image but rather only to whether one BELIEVES that visualized event to be true." (Pg. 109) They add, "The primary mistake of the recovered memory therapists is not their investment in the satanic-cult belief, but the use of methods that coerce patients into reclassifying imagined events... as memory." (Pg. 187)
They state, "Examining the history of MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder], we find myriad clues suggesting that this supposed disorder is ... influenced by cultural cues... it was not until the popular book Sybil ... and the subsequent movie ], that child abuse was offered as the cause of its symptoms... It was only after Sybil that therapists, often using hypnosis, began finding alter personalities and supposedly 'repressed' abuse histories to match." (Pg. 221)
They observe in conclusion, "While many in the mental health field have identified recovered memory therapy as an inexcusable mistake that is causing enormous harm, there is, unfortunately, no regulatory body that can stop its practice. Some look to ... the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association... Unfortunately, these organizations function less as regulatory bodies insuring the safety of the patients than they do as guilds protecting and promoting their membership... It is probably unrealistic to believe that any committee called by these organizations will be unable to take a strong stand on an issue... which so divides its membership." (Pg. 299-300) They add, "One dimension ... that has not been discussed in this book is its economic impact... hundreds of millions of scarce health-care dollars are being wasted... more than half... of the money funding recovered memory therapy comes from either insurance company or government sources." (Pg. 302)
This is an excellent book, that will be of great interest to anyone studying this highly controversial issue.
ETA: This podcast is primarily about the "Satanic Panic" and the Repressed Memory/DID controversy. The trans discussion is a fairly brief sidenote.
35:40 — SRA/RM therapists are now involved in gender therapy (they specifically name Diane Ehrensaft)
(to approx 37)
37: Watters comments on becoming a pariah for questioning a popular, mainstream belief (much like the "canceling" and de-platforming of experts who question current gender ideology. At one point Watters said they'd have never been able to publish Making Monsters in today's social climate)
38: points out that he was accused of being part of a Satanic cult himself; goes on to discuss how around the time their book came out, Loftus’s research was getting attention, there had been some major lawsuits, and the SRA/RM "fever broke" — which meant the voices of critics and skeptics were gaining momentum, there was less blowback than there might have been otherwise and the profession itself remained silent rather than launching an attack.
46:21 — 76% of psychologists today believe in traumatic repression (in other words, pseudoscience is firmly entrenched in the field)
46:50 — Watters reminds listeners that the Left were the ones pushing the conspiracy theory, prominent experts in psychology, liberal/progressive talk show hosts, magazines, etc
43:40 — 1993 survey of psychotherapists revealed that 12% of them had at least one SRA/RM case. Knowing now that SRA wasn't happening, those professionals (and both of the APAs) should have been called on to explain how that belief was being propagated.
47:50 — With the exception of the ones who were sued, most therapists experienced no consequences, they just quietly backed away from it, stopped using those methods (or simple stopped advertising it) and many pretended they never had to begin with. There was no accountability, they never had to explain themselves, they learned nothing from the experience
My own conclusion: all of this reinforces my conviction that there is very good reason to be skeptical of the "experts" here, whether they're talking about repressed memories or trans/gender identity issues. I usually agree with deferring to experts, but in this particular field, with this history of jumping headfirst into pseudoscience and wholeheartedly promoting it while viciously silencing dissenters, their credibility is in question.
That's where the ideological capture comes in. Transwomen are women, for an undefined (and undefinable) meaning of woman which does not align with any commonly understood meaning of woman.
Women's rugby is for women. And since transwomen are women, transwomen should be allowed to play women's rugby. And if you disagree, you're a transphobe.
Women's rugby is also for transmen pumped full of testosterone.
There are so few trans men who actually want to play a contact sport on the men's side. (I actually havent heard of any but I'm sure they are out there somewhere!).
It's always Ladies night and nobody wants to pay that cover charge.
(on banning transwomen on female teams)That’s a highly-disputed subject but of great interest to TERFs and transphobes.
And then there was Smith.
“I don’t think it’s dangerous,” Smith told SkyNews at the time. “Sport is for everybody, I’ve had to play women over a foot taller than me. I’ve had to play women a lot bigger size-wise than me. So why would it be a danger?”
Remember the man who was admitted to the ER with abdominal distress, who was triaged as a man, diagnosed as a man, and treated as a man? And it ended more badly than it should have, because he was female and pregnant?
Performing manhood was more important than telling the medical staff, "I know I'm a man, but you should probably be aware that a few months ago someone put their dude-stick up my mangina, and it's entirely possible I've got a baby growing in my dude-terus. Or as I like to call it, my lady-scrote."
Personally I'm impressed at the set of brass balls on someone who chooses the role of a fully-operational female in vanilla PiV sex, and still confidently insists to medical professionals that they're a man.
That's not what happened though. IT's turned into that framing... but that's not how it went down.
The transman came into the ER, and he told the admitting nurse that he was a transman - he didn't try to hide it. IIRC, he even mentioned that he might be pregnant. The nurse, however, wrote down "M" for sex, feeling that it was the right thing to do to acknowledge his gender identity.
Everyone else downstream from there just followed the normal procedures for male patients complaining of abdominal pain. They didn't run the pregnancy panel against his blood sample, as they would have with a woman.
That's a case where I place the majority of the blame squarely on the hospital and the degree of policy capture embedded in it. I grant a bit of blame to the patient for not being significantly more vocal about being biologically female, and for not making a lot more fuss about the situation. That, however, is highly likely to be the residue of having been raised as a girl, and conditioned to behave as a girl... which often includes not speaking up for oneself, not challenging "authorities", bearing one's discomfort in pain, and basically being quite and reserved and cooperative.
I've got one of those. It was stray, and pregnant when the shelter picked it up. No complications with the birth, and we adopted the parent cat shortly thereafter. All nicely documented by the shelter in the adoption paperwork.
Except for the gender. For some reason, all the paperwork reads "female". Just to be safe, we've continued that practice with our veterinarian.
Also I'm pretty sure the cat considers herself all lady, and maybe part dog.
One of my cats was errantly labeled as male on her intake form at the shelter. We were a bit stymied when we picked her up a couple of days later and she had a shaved belly and a tummy scar.
My completely-novice understanding is that kittens are difficult to sex when they're very young. The vulva is virtually indistinguishable from a male cat's urethral opening, and the testes are internal until they hit puberty. So apparently they've got to really poke around a bit to make sure.
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One of my cats was errantly labeled as male on her intake form at the shelter. We were a bit stymied when we picked her up a couple of days later and she had a shaved belly and a tummy scar.