Non-binary identities are valid

[d4m10n]

There is no evidence that the majority of people who identify as nonbinary meet the criteria for having gender dysphoria.

Moreover, there isn't a good reason to unnecessarily medicalize non-binariness. (Or at least we've not yet discussed such reasons here.) If someone wants to be accorded non-binary status, they shouldn't need to see a doctor and get a diagnosis.

 

[LondonJohn]

Okay, so you're comfortable making the claim that Sam Smith (based on what they've said in various outlets) most probably has all of the following attributes:

1. Marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics
2. Strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
3. Strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
4. Strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

I'm having trouble seeing where you're getting any of this.

1) Smith has not talked down the possession of male sex characteristics, to my knowledge.

2) Has Smith overtly expressed such a desire?

3) Has Smith overtly expressed such a desire?

4) Perhaps Smith has expressed strong convictions that they experience feelings and reactions typical to non-binary persons, but honestly I've no idea what that should be taken to mean.

(Typical feminine feelings and reactions include "gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity" according to the relevant wiki, whereas typical masculine feelings and reactions include "strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness." What sort of feelings and desires can we say typify non-binary as alternative gender?)

Finally (and perhaps most importantly) has Smith given us any indication to believe that their non-binariness is in any sense grounded in a process of psychiatric evaluation, professional or otherwise?

Well firstly, you're misinterpreting (1). To reduce it to its essence, (1) is where the person's own experienced gender identity is incompatible with (= incongruent with) the person's biological sex. So in the case of Sam Smith, the very fact that they don't experience their own gender identity as 100% man means, by definition, that they satisfy (1).

As to the others, I really have no idea where you're going with all this. By publicly stating that they have a nonbinary gender identity, Sam Smith is in effect satisfying (2), (3) and (4) as well.

Likewise, I have no idea why you're singling out Sam Smith. Do you regard them as a special case, for some reason? Because he's not. There are probably tens of thousands of people throughout Europe and North/South America (at the very least) whose own gender dysphoria experience is effectively identical to that of Sam Smith. Similarly, there are plenty of people whose gender dysphoria experience involves them getting the "full package" of surgical and medical treatments and wearing clothing which correlates to their gender identity. Similarly, there are plenty of people who (for example) choose to wear clothing and other decorative features which do not correlate to their birth gender, and who wish to be addressed by a name which does not correlate to their birth gender, but who are actually cisgender (we call these people transvestites).

Like I said, I'd really like to know your motivation for this ongoing analysis of Sam Smith. Is it perhaps because you think they are lying wrt their gender identity? Is it perhaps because you think they are "playing" at transgender identity (maybe because it's a so-called fashionable topic at the moment)? Is it perhaps because you think that Sam Smith's public statements in this area do not even amount to a declaration of transgender identity/gender fluidity? I truly don't know why this appears to be such an issue for you.

 

[d4m10n]

So in the case of Sam Smith, the very fact that they don't experience their own gender identity as 100% man means, by definition, that they satisfy (1).

There is no reasonable interpretation of "marked incongruence" which means "anything less than 100% congruence."

By publicly stating that they have a nonbinary gender identity, Sam Smith is in effect satisfying (2), (3) and (4) as well.

What you're saying here is that any announcement of non-binariness reasonably satisfies the DSM diagnostic criteria. Why then should anyone bother with psychiatrists and their exorbitant hourly rates?

Likewise, I have no idea why you're singling out Sam Smith.

Oh, well, he just happened to be in the news. Did you miss that post?

There are probably tens of thousands of people throughout Europe and North/South America (at the very least) whose own gender dysphoria experience is effectively identical to that of Sam Smith.

You keep using the phrase "gender dysphoria" as if an actual diagnosis has taken place. Why is that? I'm quite confident that you've no particular expertise in the field, and I've yet to see anything to indicate Smith has been seeing someone who is.

 

[LondonJohn]

No it isn't. The diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria require the presence of 'clinically significant distress or impairment' for valid diagnosis. Somebody who identifies as transgender without this does not meet the criteria for having gender dysphoria. There is no evidence that the majority of people who identify as nonbinary meet the criteria for having gender dysphoria.

Yes you're correct, and I was inaccurate: only a subset of people who experience transgender identity will have clinically diagnosable gender dysphoria. However, there is a generalised understanding that, given the way the world currently (unfortunately) is, virtually everyone who identifies as transgender will almost by definition have suffered, at some stage, distress and confusion directly related to the condition: it almost always is a source of tension and distress wrt the person's family, and one only need read a few of the relevant threads within this "sceptics'" forum to see exactly how and why transgender people risk mockery, marginalisation, accusations of "faking it", or accusations of attacking female rights rolleyes. Does the world at large seem, at this moment in time, to be one which is properly respectful, understanding and non-discriminatory towards transgender people?


But in fact, this is nothing whatsoever to do with the original point of d4m10n to which I was replying - he/she/they was claiming that "gender dysphoria has nothing to do with people who claim neither gender" (their italics for emphasis). In other words, so the claim went, males with a woman gender identity and females with a male gender identity dld fall into the ambit of gender dysphoria, but males or females with nonbinary gender identity did not.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes it is true. How many times do we have to debunk this nonsense?

No. It is not true.

What is true is that the vast majority of people who survive birth and the first few months of life are one of two binary genders.

However, there factually and very obviously does exist a very small number of humans who do not genetically fall into what we term as biological male or biological female. And just because only an extremely small percentage of the population fall into those intersex categories, that doesn't make their existence irrelevant or deniable.

And after all, remember that Emily's Cat's original post (to which arthwollipot had replied with the correct rebuttal, stated this:

"Humans are either male or female. They cannot be both, and there is no in-between sex."

There's no escaping the fact that this is palpable nonsense (apart from the logically-irrelevant "they cannot be both"), which is easily disproved by the facts.

 

[Emily's Cat]

...do you honestly think that's what androgyny is? I'm honestly not sure how to respond to that.

Are you at all familiar with the career of David Bowie?

Is David Bowie male or female? Is his occasional presentation as androgynous due to his lack of conformity with the expectations of a male with respect to clothing, makeup, etc?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not even in a reformed prison system that does not allow for any kind of assault?

Show me that prison, and I may change my mind. I'm not interested on taking bets with respect to a hypothetical future state.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not true.

That article is straight up wrong, Wolli. Those are karyotypes, but they do not represent different sexes. Not a single individual produces a third type of gamete. There is no other sex among humans, or among any mammal, or among the vast majority of vertebrates. Every single mammal on the planet is either male or female.

Considering those karyotype mixes to be different sexes is akin to considering a person with Down's syndrome to be be not human because they have a different number of chromosomes.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's not quite the question I'm looking for. Do transwomen PRISONERS commit sexual crimes at a greater rate as other prisoners in the same ward, for similar offense? That I think is what will give the better idea of whether the presence of transwomen increases the danger to other inmates.

I don't know that I have an answer to your specific question. I do know that transwomen commit sexual crimes at the same rate as men. I also know that as a proportion of inmates, transwomen have a higher rate of being incarcerated for sexual crimes than not trans men.

I think the material element here is that transwomen (and males o all types) commit sexual crimes and assaults at a massively higher rate then females do so. Even if a transwoman prisoner only commits sexual offenses at the same general rate as other males in prison... that's still a rate that is an order of magnitude higher than the rate at which females commit sexual crimes.

Putting males of any sort into the female ward is pretty much putting the fox in the henhouse. Just maybe the fox takes a moment and glues some feathers to it's butt first.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well firstly, you're misinterpreting (1). To reduce it to its essence, (1) is where the person's own experienced gender identity is incompatible with (= incongruent with) the person's biological sex. So in the case of Sam Smith, the very fact that they don't experience their own gender identity as 100% man means, by definition, that they satisfy (1).

I'm going to just call BS on this assumption. I don't consider my "gender" to be in perfect alignment with my sex either. Nobody does. Because gender is baloney, and it's based on a set of ridiculous stereotypes about preferences, behaviors, etc. All of which are unnecessarily harmful and should be destroyed with zeal.

Failure to perfectly conform with an offensive set of stereotypes should NOT mean that a person isn't their actual sex. It just means that gender stereotypes are dumb.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No. It is not true.

What is true is that the vast majority of people who survive birth and the first few months of life are one of two binary genders.

However, there factually and very obviously does exist a very small number of humans who do not genetically fall into what we term as biological male or biological female. And just because only an extremely small percentage of the population fall into those intersex categories, that doesn't make their existence irrelevant or deniable.

And after all, remember that Emily's Cat's original post (to which arthwollipot had replied with the correct rebuttal, stated this:

"Humans are either male or female. They cannot be both, and there is no in-between sex."

There's no escaping the fact that this is palpable nonsense (apart from the logically-irrelevant "they cannot be both"), which is easily disproved by the facts.

You are, quite simply, wrong. There are only two sexes. There are literally and only two types of gametes. There is no third gamete. There are no medium-sized, sluggishly motile gametes. There are exactly and only two human gametes.

 

[d4m10n]

he/she/they was claiming that "gender dysphoria has nothing to do with people who claim neither gender" (their italics for emphasis). In other words, so the claim went, males with a woman gender identity and females with a male gender identity dld fall into the ambit of gender dysphoria, but males or females with nonbinary gender identity did not.

I should've said that the psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria isn't logically, legally, or socially necessary to don the mantle of non-binary. Anyone can claim to be non-binary, merely by announcing themselves as such, as Sam Smith did.

 

[LondonJohn]

There is no reasonable interpretation of "marked incongruence" which means "anything less than 100% congruence."

What you're saying here is that any announcement of non-binariness reasonably satisfies the DSM diagnostic criteria. Why then should anyone bother with psychiatrists and their exorbitant hourly rates?

Oh, well, he just happened to be in the news. Did you miss that post?

You keep using the phrase "gender dysphoria" as if an actual diagnosis has taken place. Why is that? I'm quite confident that you've no particular expertise in the field, and I've yet to see anything to indicate Smith has been seeing someone who is.

Well.....

1) Sam Smith came out as non-binary in early 2019*. I mean, if you choose to represent that as "being in the news" a full two years later in the present day of early 2021, you have a very different definition of "being in the news" than I (or, I imagine, most other people) do.


2) You do know that a person can experience gender dysphoria without a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, don't you?

In articles published in 2019, Smith recounted their struggle and their anguish at reconciling the fact that they experienced their own gender in ways which were not exclusively "man". For example, they stated "I've always had a little bit of a war going within my body and my mind"*, and "(I'm) scared ******** but feeling super free right now"**, and “After a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out.”**.

All of this clearly suggests (to me, at least) that Smith had indeed experienced significant levels of gender dysphoria as they grew through adolescence into adulthood. But as you quite surely say, I'm no expert


3) You still appear to have a bizarre misunderstanding of where nonbinary transgender identity fits, in the sense of the DSM-5 criteria. I'll say again: exactly the same criteria apply as to binary transgender identity. It's all there in black and white: the criteria only mention (and correctly so) situations where the person's experience of gender is at odds with the gender they were assigned at birth. Quite where and how you've decided to rewrite the criteria such that they only apply to people whose experienced gender identity is the binary opposite of the gender they were assigned at birth..... is fully beyond me.


4) You also seem strangely unaware of the primary reason why people with transgender identity / gender dysphoria seek counselling and psychotherapy. It's only very minimally linked to any "requirement" to be diagnosed and labelled. Rather, it's almost all to do with trying to navigate their way through perhaps the greatest cognitive dissonance most people will ever experience. They seek therapy because they're confused, and/or frightened, and/or seeking professional reassurance and validation. Frankly, in that context, your flippant comment about "why should people bother with psychiatrists and their exorbitant hourly rates" came across as unthinking and rather offensive.


5) Perhaps germane to all of this, Sam Smith revealed in an appearance on "The Late Late Show" in November of last year that they'd experienced (and continued to experience) struggles as an out transgender person. They stated that they'd in effect been "outed" against their wishes (which in itself speaks loudly to the adverse way in which transgender identity is still viewed within society); and they stated that they'd experienced a backlash.

And Smith works and mixes socially primarily among musicians and liberal artists (as opposed to, for example, working and socialising among (say) sheet metal workers or pig farmers, who might be considered to be less liberal and more reactionary). So to me this indicates very clearly that we're still a very long way away from affording transgender people the basic rights, dignity and protections that they deserve. YMMV (and, quite possibly, YMWV)


* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-47612616

** https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...on-binary-im-changing-my-pronouns-to-theythem


Oh, and perhaps you meant to write they rather than he in your post, as I've highlighted. But whether or not it was purely unintentional on your part, it's rather revealing nevertheless...

 

[LondonJohn]

I should've said that the psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria isn't logically, legally, or socially necessary to don the mantle of non-binary. Anyone can claim to be non-binary, merely by announcing themselves as such, as Sam Smith did.

Ah, still with the "can claim to be..." stuff, huh?

Perhaps you might be able to clarify what you mean to convey by your use of that word "claim", and why you didn't simply write something like "...can state that they are non-binary". To me, the use of the word "claim" automatically injects a non-zero element of fabrication.

That aside though, your point still makes no sense to me. And I still don't understand why you're singling out nonbinary transgender identity a) for special treatment, and b) (apparently) in an attempt to invalidate it.

To repurpose your final sentence, for example: "Anyone can claim to be state that they are binary transgender, merely by announcing themselves as such, as Elliot Page did". What's the difference (in your opinion)?

 

[xjx388]

Moreover, there isn't a good reason to unnecessarily medicalize non-binariness. (Or at least we've not yet discussed such reasons here.) If someone wants to be accorded non-binary status, they shouldn't need to see a doctor and get a diagnosis.

Right.

I doubt that most “non-binary” feelings would qualify as a medical condition. Look at David Bowie, for instance.

 

[LondonJohn]

You are, quite simply, wrong. There are only two sexes. There are literally and only two types of gametes. There is no third gamete. There are no medium-sized, sluggishly motile gametes. There are exactly and only two human gametes.

I see.

So your settled opinion is that, for example, there's no such thing as intersex people? That they are mythical beings? Like unicorns?

 

[d4m10n]

1) Sam Smith came out as non-binary in early 2019*. I mean, if you choose to represent that as "being in the news" a full two years later in the present day of early 2021, you have a very different definition of "being in the news" than I (or, I imagine, most other people) do.

Please see post #561.

2) You do know that a person can experience gender dysphoria without a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, don't you?

You do know that unqualified skeptics should generally refrain from armchair psychiatry, don't you?

(FWIW - I'm not the one attributing diagnoses here.)

3) You still appear to have a bizarre misunderstanding of where nonbinary transgender identity fits, in the sense of the DSM-5 criteria. I'll say again: exactly the same criteria apply as to binary transgender identity.

Do they? The first three criteria are about "primary and/or secondary sex characteristics" and so far I've seen no reason given why we should expect non-binary persons to hope to modify what sexual characteristics they have. Have you read some research on point? I'm really interested in learning more.

4) You also seem strangely unaware of the primary reason why people with transgender identity / gender dysphoria seek counselling and psychotherapy.

Have you given us some reason to believe non-binary persons typically come to this identity as the result of counselling and psychotherapy?

To repurpose your final sentence, for example: "Anyone can claim to be state that they are binary transgender, merely by announcing themselves as such, as Elliot Page did". What's the difference (in your opinion)?

Credulity, IMO.

 

[LondonJohn]

Right.

I doubt that most “non-binary” feelings would qualify as a medical condition. Look at David Bowie, for instance.

You know not of what you speak.

(And FWIW, Bowie never stated that he was transgender (in the sense which clinicians and lawmakers today would recognise). Rather, he was a performance artist who aimed to shake up public perceptions of gender identity, sexuality and visual presentation through his many personas and his many related statements. It's an entirely different situation to that of, for example, Sam Smith)

 

[arthwollipot]

There's no escaping the fact that this is palpable nonsense (apart from the logically-irrelevant "they cannot be both"), which is easily disproved by the facts.

Quite apart from the fact that there are people who are born with intersex characteristics.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I see.

So your settled opinion is that, for example, there's no such thing as intersex people? That they are mythical beings? Like unicorns?

Intersex people exist, but they are not a different or a mixed sex. Each intersex person is either male or female.

Intersex conditions create malformations or prevent the formation of sexual characteristics. In the vast majority of cases, intersex conditions have no outward physical affects, and are merely a matter of chromosomal abnormalities. In some intersex cases, secondary sexual characteristics fail to develop along normal lines - females don't grow breasts, male testes don't descend, puberty is delayed or absent. In some cases, intersex conditions present as partially formed or ambiguous genitalia.

But each individual is still only either male or female.

This has come up repeatedly, but I think it bears reiteration: The vast majority of people with intersex conditions are NOT transgender. And the vast majority of transgender people do NOT have an intersex condition. Intersex conditions affect the development of sexual characteristics, but do not create a third sex, nor do they result in a mixed sex.