[ED] Discussion: Trans Women Are not Women (Part 6)

[Belz...]

So much for the productive discussion about trans rights that LJ and ST said we could have.

Well, how could have a productive discussion with transphobes, right?

Sounds to me like she is talking about biological sexes here rather than socially constructed genders.

Maybe because she's operating on the traditional definition of gender. Or maybe not everyone agrees with the new definition anyway.

 

[Belz...]

Kind of brings to mind Picts charging into battle. Regardless of an army's technological and military superiority... seeing a pile of blue-painted naked male humans running at you with erections is going to be unnerving.

It does make aiming a whole lot easier, however, in more ways than one.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I am highly in favour of controlled studies in medicine, but there are a few differences between your proposal and other controlled studies:
- Usually the test subjects are not children who cannot consent to be experimented upon.

You mean... like the children being given the treatment without a full understanding of the effects that the treatment has on them long term? Why do you seem to feel that one set of children is capable of consenting to be a medical guinea pig, and the other set of children is not?

- Usually what is being tested is whether the medicine works, not whether the medicine is the appropriate treatment for individual patients. We already know that puberty blockers work.

Do we? The most recent information regarding puberty blockers indicates that blockers alone 1) delay physical and emotional maturation in ways that cannot be completely reverse, including a failure to accrete appropriate bone density and 2) do not provide improved mental health outcomes. All of the studies that infer a positive mental health outcome are studies of hormonal and surgical intervention having occurred, and they are studies based on patients in a prior era where more stringent clinical guidelines were being applied, and they were all adult patients, not children.

- Usually the test does not require years of denial of treatment.

Other forms of treatment are available which do not cause harm and do not produce adverse affects. Denial of an invasive treatment with long-lasting detrimental effects for a person who has no direct need of intervention should be considered standard medical practice, one would think.

- Usually the test does not involve purposefully and knowingly letting a condition get worse just to prove that the patient might learn to live with it.

Back up a moment. What gets worse if a child is not provided with puberty blockers? Is the condition immediately detrimental in and of itself, or are the potential effects under discussion ones of mental health, which would normally be addressed by mental health techniques rather than medical techniques.

- Usually the test isn't done just because some people think the treatment for the condition is the cause of the condition.

The treatment isn't a cause of the condition. The treatment, in a great many cases, prevents alleviation of the cause of the condition, by preventing the patient from becoming comfortable with their natural and fully functional sexed body and their sexual orientation. The treatment, by masking the cause and preventing healing, leads the patient to seek more extreme treatments.

 

[Belz...]

That's the problem with "identity" overall. It is hypothetically defined by a person's view and beliefs about themselves. But it is judged and either accepted or rejected by other people. It can't exist in a vacuum, and there's no rational way to force other people to accept your view of yourself. You can only convince them to accept your internally-defined identity by acting in accordance with the expectations of other people. And even then, acceptance and rejection of that identity might vary between different groups of people.

That's an excellent summary.

In a more complex example... a person could identify as Japanese in their hearts, if they're very into Japanese history and culture, Japanese media, food, and social norms, and they feel an emotional resonance with their understanding of a Japanese experience. There's a high likelihood that they'd be accepted as having a Japanese identity by other westerners who also feel that they themselves have a Japanese identity. They might even be accepted as having a Japanese identity by other westerners, whose only real exposure to a Japanese experience is through stereotypes depiction in our media and sushi restaurants.

STOP TALKING ABOUT ME!!!!!

 

[Emily's Cat]

That falls under side effects of treatment, if one of the possible side effects of the treatment is reinforcing the condition (and there are reasons to think it does) then it would require a controlled study to test that.

Fun fact: many antidepressants have a side effect in a small percentage of people of increasing depression and amplfying suicidal thoughts. That side effect was discovered by rigorous clinical testing. And for people who do experience that side effect - which they are warned of, by the way - they are taken off of that drug and a different one is tried.

Because a treatment should not reinforce and intensify the condition that it is supposed to treat.

 

[theprestige]

There's another angle to this as well, and it's an angle which appears to be either overlooked or swept under the carpet by the sorts of people I was talking about in my previous post:

It's difficult to get a proper idea of the proportion of transgender people who've suffered gender dysphoria to some degree; but even if we go by the "official" stats, it still means that it's happened to a lot of transgender folk.

And I think perhaps that *certain* people ought perhaps to stop and think about that, and its ramifications & meaning, for a while.

After all, for many people who realise they're transgender, they put themselves through a struggle - sometimes a truly horrible struggle, and sometimes a struggle which ends in suicide - to try to come to terms with the fact that they identify as a gender which is a) different different from the gender which society would "expect" them to inhabit, and b) different from their own assumed gender presentation during their life up to that point.

For someone who's never gone through that process, I can't begin to imagine the levels of cognitive dissonance, fear, trepidation, anger, concern that one is losing one's own mind.... that might accompany a realisation of one's transgender identity. If nothing else, I think the very real presence of gender dysphoria, and its very real effect and outcomes, ought to give serious pause to anyone who doubts the validity of transgender identity.

But I dunno, perhaps I think (dream) too much......

How does this angle inform your views on what rights trans folks should have because of their gender identity?

Are there any rights you think trans folks don't currently have, that they would have if people acknowledged the validity of their identity?

 

[Emily's Cat]

From my own perspective, I'd add a third reason: for those who have never experienced transgender identity , a disappointingly-large proportion seem to find it either impossible or improbable to believe that a female could ever genuinely, validly identify as a man (or vice versa, or other variations).

Actually, yes, that's fairly accurate from my perspective. It's accurate for exactly the reason that you rely on in your argument: the experience.

A person certainly can experience gender dysphoria. A male person can certainly experience a discomfort with their sexed body, and feel real anxiety and distress with respect to their penis, testes, facial hair, adams apple, etc. A female person can certainly experience discomfort with and distress with respect to their breasts, hips, and vulva.

But a male person cannot experience the state of being female. A female person cannot experience the state of being male.

You say that most people who have not experienced being transgender don't accept that a male person can genuinely, validly identify as a woman.

In response, I say that I find it baffling that people who have experienced neither being transgender nor being female are so willing to accept that a male person can genuinely, validly identify as a woman.

 

[Ziggurat]

A spayed cat is still a female cat.

Random trivia. A long time ago I had a Garfield comic book which consisted of basically a bunch of different genre fiction stories with Garfield as the main character. One of them was a black and white noir with Garfield as Sam Spade. He comments at one point that he doesn't know how he should respond when someone asks him, "Are you Spade"?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Puberty blockers are prescribed when children cannot consent to irreversible changes to their body

NOBODY consents to the bodies we are born with. Not a single one of us was given a choice. That choice does not exist. A kitten does not, and indeed cannot, consent to becoming a cat. An acorn is incapable of consenting to become an oak tree.

I didn't consent to stop growing at 5'2". I didn't consent to going gray. I definitely didn't consent to hot flashes and night sweats. I didn't ******* consent to a uterine fibroid that left me unable to have progeny. I didn't consent to having green eyes, and I sure as hell didn't consent to losing my near vision as I age.

NOBODY is capable of consenting to the natural passage of time.

 

[Emily's Cat]

All the time I was on this thread you never mentioned "centrists". Now all of a sudden, once I, one of the few actual centrists here, take a break, you start hammering about how centrists are evil.

First off, you're not the only centrist in this thread, not by a long shot.

Secondly, this has been a trope of ST's for a long time, it predates you becoming active here by several years.

In conclusion: this has nothing at all to do with you, try not to be paranoid.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Are you accusing us of being racists?

Yes, of course they are.

 

[theprestige]

Random trivia. A long time ago I had a Garfield comic book which consisted of basically a bunch of different genre fiction stories with Garfield as the main character. One of them was a black and white noir with Garfield as Sam Spade. He comments at one point that he doesn't know how he should respond when someone asks him, "Are you Spade"?

That book was amazing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I haven't seen LJ being productive. And since I took that break, ST hasn't been productive either. Since when did you stop being critical -- even more than I -- about their ideological hangups?

Some of us in this thread value civil discussion more than others.

 

[d4m10n]

Maybe because she's operating on the traditional definition of gender.

Given her audience likely leans traditionalist, that seems like a fair bet.

Problem is (IMO/YMMV) Soh claims that gender is "not a spectrum, a continuum, a kaleidoscope, a prism, or any other majestic...metaphor" dreamt up by gender activists, but then goes on to talk about how sexual reproduction is binary instead of addressing claims about the countless variations of personal identity which relate to how one sees oneself relative to ideas of masculinity, femininity, androgyneity, etc. Either she's missing the point, or she gets to it elsewhere in the book.

I think it's important to address specific claims made by experts like Soh and Osterman, which means actually quoting what they really said instead of loosely paraphrasing. Ironically enough, it seems Soh might disagree.

And also I seemed to be the only one to figure out how to play the podcast, since AGG's link doesn't contain a player and I had to find another website that did.

I've got the podcast on deck, but I'm going to finish the book first. As a general rule, I try to avoid rebuttals until I've absorbed the material being discussed.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I agree. I also don't understand why the word "identify" came to be associated with transgender in the first place. Was this definition really constructed at large, or was it coined by a specific person?

So far as I can tell, it's an outcome of Postmodern Philosophy having an illegitimate child with Critical Theory.

 

[Elaedith]

I haven't read all of Soh's book yet as I found it a bit simplistic and lacking citations (which is common enough for a work written for a general audience).

I think she does have a very good insight into what is happening with censorship, harassment and silencing of academics and researchers, having decided to leave academia herself because she could speak more freely as an independent author and journalist.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The ACLU has been out of its mind since 1977.

Why do you say that? What happened in 1977 with the ACLU? I don't really know that particular element of history. Actually, history in terms of specific events and dates isn't really my strong subject anyway.

 

[Distracted1]

I reject this entire line of discussion. We've been over this repeatedly. We all know where we stand. We all know that it's a trivial problem to overcome, for anyone actually interested in moving the discussion forward. Nobody is confused about what you're trying to say unless they want to be confused. Nobody is getting blocked by this unless they want to be blocked by this.

As far as I'm concerned, the only real question(s) left are the most important ones: What rights, for who, and why?

Half the reason we can't have a productive discussion is because ST, LJ, et al. refuse to discuss these few remaining questions.

The other half of the reason is, quite frankly, silly buggers. xjx just has to say "not all penises" every. single. time. EC just has to re-defend her shorthand every. single. time. You and Distracted have to re-hash this same tired point every couple days.

You want to have a productive discussion? Move on. Both LJ and ST have said they think there's productive discussion to be had about rights. So hold them to it. Press them, not each other, to discuss something substantive. Please. I'm begging you. Up your game.

The line of discussion is the crux of the argument, IMO. If transsexuals are not considered a separate branch of humanity from everyone whose sex and gender is determined by biological factors then they are deserving of the same rights as everyone else. No more, no less.

The only infringement upon those rights could be the barring of them from spaces segregated based upon sex and gender. This segregation is the same as it is for everyone else unless one accepts a semantic argument that "some A's are B's" because of how we now define "B's".

The reality is immutable, so an attempt is being made to change the descriptors to create a loophole.
You seem to think the linguistic twist is the red herring. I find the imaginary lack of "rights" to be it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's an excellent summary.

Thank you! I was quite proud of it.

STOP TALKING ABOUT ME!!!!!

The real question now is whether people of Japanese descent in Japan would accept you as Japanese...

I think I mentioned this before, but a Korean colleague of mine married a Canadian-Japanese person... who spoke no Japanese, didn't like sushi, didn't like anything about Japanese culture, and pretty much was only ever considered Japanese because of looks alone. As far as they (and those who knew them) were concerned, they were simply "Canadian".

 

[Emily's Cat]

Random trivia. A long time ago I had a Garfield comic book which consisted of basically a bunch of different genre fiction stories with Garfield as the main character. One of them was a black and white noir with Garfield as Sam Spade. He comments at one point that he doesn't know how he should respond when someone asks him, "Are you Spade"?