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

[LondonJohn]

Possibly worth noting here that sexual modesty shows up of human universals^WP:

https://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm

But "antonyms" (for example) are on that list too.

That doesn't mean that governments/parliaments should take antonyms into account when formulating legislation...

 

[Elaedith]

The video of Dr. Debra Soh's address and Q & A at the Oxford Union came out this weekend.

I haven't listened to it all yet, but it includes a lot of discussion about why it would be difficult to do a controlled study on outcomes for treatment of gender dysphoria in the current climate, and other impacts of politics on science.

 

[Lithrael]

I wonder what kind of data you’d get if you asked a cohort of the kids’ classmates for their evaluations of the situation. Some kids seem to be really good at pinging their classmates’ tendencies. Anecdotally, none of the trans people I knew before deciding to transition pinged as gay, to me, beforehand. One did strike me as a bit nonconforming, but not any more than I am.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

SciShow In high school biology, we learn that humans are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, and that a person’s internal and external sex organs match those chromosomes. It turns out, however, that sex isn’t that straightforward.

I found this interesting, and Hank is always a nice listen. Bit of an eye-opener re the biology, at least for me. Imagine, if you watch the video, that given we have even less a handle on the workings of the brain, what spectrum of subtle differences may also obtain in behavior based on similar biological factors. Pardon if already discussed. Came across it and thought it germane.



Aside

As for me personally, there's Emily Beecham, Jessica Lucas, or Christie Lou Stout... and then there's the rest of boring, insipid humanity. Don't dwell on that last one much, myself. To each his/her/hisn/herm own! Why should I care? Way too busy getting starry-eyed. Quick, we're aging, there's no time for this stuff!

 

[d4m10n]

A interesting read on topic:

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1380572615983697922

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/a-truce-proposal-in-the-trans-wars-c49

Treatment of minors should be safe, limited and rare. A blanket ban on all medical treatment for trans kids is a crude invasion of an intensely personal decision rightly placed in the hands of doctors, parents and children. Asa Hutchinson is right. No government should have that power. And there are many cases when early intervention has been shown to help kids enormously in handling their gender dysphoria, leading to good outcomes and happier trans lives. Too many people have been helped and too many good doctors have been involved to ignore this truth.

At the same time, the use of off-label puberty blockers should not be portrayed, as it too often is, as an easily reversible pause in development while the child figures things out. These drugs have unknown long-term effects on healthy children, have no good studies behind them, affect bone density and mental and neurological development, and are, in fact, almost never reversed. They are an experiment. On children. It seems to me you need a very good reason to use them.

There is much more to it, but this is a representative sample of Andrew’s approach to the relevant issues.

Share & enjoy!

 

[Aber]

It is not a medical study, it is treatment.

Given that the evidence base is "very low", as shown by the NICE report

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56601386

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said existing studies of the drugs were small and "subject to bias and confounding".

any use IS a medical study.

 

[Meadmaker]

I wonder what kind of data you’d get if you asked a cohort of the kids’ classmates for their evaluations of the situation. Some kids seem to be really good at pinging their classmates’ tendencies. Anecdotally, none of the trans people I knew before deciding to transition pinged as gay, to me, beforehand. One did strike me as a bit nonconforming, but not any more than I am.

I mentioned this anecdote before, but I know that I remember driving a group of nine year olds to a party and the main topic of conversation was whether Olivia was "really" a girl. At age 14, Olivia decided "she" was not. She was an ultra-tomboy from the time I met her at age 6.

And she was cute. She wasn't in any way "butch". She just acted, and because of dress, looked, mighty darned boyish. She was a bit Elliot Page-ish. Attractive, but somewhat androgynous.

On the other hand, the person I knew who recently came out as trans as an adult (late twenties) seemed, and still seems to me, awfully feminine, despite the new hairstyle.

So I guess I've known two people before they came out, and one seemed extremely, I don't know the right adjective, "trans-ish"? And the other, not.

 

[Matthew Best]

A interesting read on topic:

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1380572615983697922

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/a-truce-proposal-in-the-trans-wars-c49

There is much more to it, but this is a representative sample of Andrew’s approach to the relevant issues.

Share & enjoy!

Andrew Sullivan? The man is simply evil, transphobic and determined to persecute and kill trans people. Also, any empathy he does have for trans women is a function of his misogyny and hatred of women.

 

[d4m10n]

That doesn't mean that governments/parliaments should take antonyms into account when formulating legislation...

From where I'm sitting, it seems relevant and interesting to point out that every human culture has to deal with the phenomenon of sexual modesty whenever any given human government chooses to regulate or redesign spaces originally intended to accommodate the phenomenon of sexual modesty. As to antonyms, I'd say that bringing them up here is the opposite of relevant and interesting.*
*

 

[caveman1917]

I found this interesting, and Hank is always a nice listen. Bit of an eye-opener re the biology, at least for me. Imagine, if you watch the video, that given we have even less a handle on the workings of the brain, what spectrum of subtle differences may also obtain in behavior based on similar biological factors. Pardon if already discussed. Came across it and thought it germane.

What a steaming pile of excrement (for clarity, that doesn't refer to your post but to the content of the video). Let's take a moment to debunk this pseudo-science in full.

In high school biology, we learn that humans are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, and that a person’s internal and external sex organs match those chromosomes.

No source is provided for this claim, and as several commenters on the video noted this claim is false as - while the exact curriculum can vary across different schools - plenty of high school biology teachers include genetic variations in their lessons. It's also setting up a strawman, as sex in biology is defined by gamete type and not by chromosomes.

So we have one lie and one strawman, and we haven't even clicked play yet.

In high school biology, we usually learn that the sexes in humans are fixed and concrete. Whether you're male or female is black-and-white and rooted in your DNA: your 23rd pair of chromosomes is either two X chromosomes or and X and a Y. That's it. End of story. And that's essentially what scientist thought too.

Another blatant lie. Sex chromosomal variations were already included in textbooks in the late 60s. Again, of course, no source is provided for this claim.

In fact, biologists today are saying sex is a spectrum.

The next blatant lie. Biologists today are saying sex is binary, just like biologists from half a century ago.

But in reality, none of the traits we use to discriminate between the sexes are truly binary.

And yet another lie, gamete types are strictly binary with only sperm or ova. Indeed, there is a million dollar prize (like the James Randi prize) for anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a third gamete type in human reproduction. If this youtube channel is so certain about their claims, why haven't they gone and collected it? The answer, of course, is the same as for why nobody managed to collect the James Randi prize.

In typical woo style they then try to dazzle their audience by linking to a bunch of scientific articles, obviously hoping that nobody would actually go and check these. I only bothered to go and check the first source they give, and of course it doesn't support the video's claims at all. Plenty of people in the comments have been checking their other sources too, should one be interested.

To sum up, a long-winded string of lies and strawmen packaged up in a veneer of science. And now I'm going back to my position of not posting in moderated threads, but this video was just too egregious to let pass.

 

[Collin237]

I found this interesting, and Hank is always a nice listen. Bit of an eye-opener re the biology, at least for me. Imagine, if you watch the video, that given we have even less a handle on the workings of the brain, what spectrum of subtle differences may also obtain in behavior based on similar biological factors. Pardon if already discussed. Came across it and thought it germane.

He almost had it but he missed the biggest point -- that this is an example of what it means to be not designed. It's a fact that there are only two forms of sexual anatomy. But it's also a fact that nobody corresponds completely to forms.

I was also disappointed that he dismissed gender as only sociological. That precluded mentioning small-scale behaviors. And no, it doesn't require knowledge of the brain to study them; mocap would do just fine.

 

[Meadmaker]

Helen Joyce's book is due to come out in July:

Trans: when ideology meets reality.

This is primarily dealing with the history and ideology behind the movement. It's already gone to the bestseller list in its category on Amazon in the UK on the basis of pre-orders.

Helen Joyce did several interviews about her research. One thing I found interesting was the ideology behind the focus on re-conception of 'woman' rather than 'man'.

Very interesting interview.

What really impressed me was the way she seemed to really understand and master the vocabulary of the gender identity movement, without buying into it. So many people just dismiss anything that sounds so foreign to people who use standard English and who tend to dismiss anything that has too much academic jargon. She really understands all the buzzwords from academia, and can truly address it the arguments, and then doesn't simply declare it all rubbish. She understands it, describes it, demonstrates that she can get her head around it, and then exposes the contradictions, and, having done so, only then declares it rubbish.

 

[Earthborn]

How do we know who will benefit?

It depends on the individual child and their personal circumstances.

You seem to trust that this can be determined with accuracy. I don't.

I don't either. I trust that it can be done without prescribing puberty blockers to children for whom it is not beneficial, as the "Watchful Waiting" method means many children for whom it might be beneficial do not get them. The vast majority of them go through natural puberty.

 

[Collin237]

Very interesting interview.

What really impressed me was the way she seemed to really understand and master the vocabulary of the gender identity movement, without buying into it. So many people just dismiss anything that sounds so foreign to people who use standard English and who tend to dismiss anything that has too much academic jargon. She really understands all the buzzwords from academia, and can truly address it the arguments, and then doesn't simply declare it all rubbish. She understands it, describes it, demonstrates that she can get her head around it, and then exposes the contradictions, and, having done so, only then declares it rubbish.

That's all she did? She debunked some academic fluff that most people wouldn't care about? How does that have anything to do with real life?

 

[d4m10n]

She really understands all the buzzwords from academia, and can truly address it the arguments, and then doesn't simply declare it all rubbish. She understands it, describes it, demonstrates that she can get her head around it, and then exposes the contradictions, and, having done so, only then declares it rubbish.

There are two people I've seen who really fit this description, and (oddly enough) they are both named Helen. Here they are together:

 

[Meadmaker]

There are two people I've seen who really fit this description, and (oddly enough) they are both named Helen. Here they are together:

I saw bits and pieces of that interview, too.


I do want to add one thing. My previous post referred to "the vocabulary of the gender identity movement" and declared it to be rubbish.

I want to add that I don't think the idea of a gender identity is rubbish. I think it does make sense to say that certain people have a very real sense of gender that doesn't match their sex, and we can call that very real sense a "gender identity". I don't think that's rubbish. However, so much of the associated jargon and claptrap that has been written about it, that they discuss, is rubbish.

 

[Collin237]

I saw bits and pieces of that interview, too.


I do want to add one thing. My previous post referred to "the vocabulary of the gender identity movement" and declared it to be rubbish.

I want to add that I don't think the idea of a gender identity is rubbish. I think it does make sense to say that certain people have a very real sense of gender that doesn't match their sex, and we can call that very real sense a "gender identity". I don't think that's rubbish. However, so much of the associated jargon and claptrap that has been written about it, that they discuss, is rubbish.

If it's a question of whether jargon and claptrap should be rejected, I think both sides would generally say yes. But the next question is which parts of something are jargon and claptrap, given that a fair assessment has to include phrases from both sides?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Andrew Sullivan? The man is simply evil, transphobic and determined to persecute and kill trans people. Also, any empathy he does have for trans women is a function of his misogyny and hatred of women.

I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious.

Sullivan is sometimes a bit obnoxious, but they don't strike me as being either transphobic nor misogynistic.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There's a lot of discussion about transgender people being highly persecuted and subjected to intense levels of violence. There's a common narrative of people who don't capitulate to gender ideology "wanting to kill transpeople".

I found the two following articles rather interesting in that regard:

The transgender murder epidemic that never was

He concluded: “After reviewing the 118 cases with all available information, four appear to have been directly anti-trans-motivated.” That is four in five years – roughly one a year. Does one hate crime a year constitute an epidemic? Do the words “systematically hunted” make any sense at all?

More Trans Criminals Than Anti-Trans Crime in the UK?

I looked for any and all reports of trans people being murdered, assaulted, or raped — and since 2008 I was able to find 12 reports total between the UK and Ireland. Of the 12, only 3 of which can be considered bonafide anti-trans hate crimes and were investigated or treated as such by police and the courts: Giovanna Del Nord, Anna Montgomery, and a protected-identity transwoman who was attacked in Yorkshire in 2020.

In contrast, I also looked for any and all reports of trans people murdering, assaulting, or raping others — and since 2008, I was able to find 48 reports. In trans rights activist-fashion, I am not debating over whether or not these people are ‘genuinely transgender,’ but rather accepting their claim however it stands. I also included the possession, creation, and/or distribution of child sexual exploitation material amongst these as I consider it to be assault against a child (as we all should) and a violent crime in general.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We've had a lot of discussion about Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria among teenage girls, and there's been plenty of discussion about the effect on young female humans. We haven't really talked about ROGD as it pertains to young male humans. Partly, that's been because the increase in cases among female human teeangers has been astronomical... but there's been a considerable rise among male human teens too. And similar to female humans, there's a strong correlation with autism spectrum disorders as well as other mental health comorbidities.

I though that this multi-part article sharing the stories of parents of young male humans experiencing unexpected gender dysphoria was interesting, and well worth reading. I don't believe the series is finished, it indicates that there's at least one more installment coming. But the three parts already released are good.

When Sons Become Daughters