Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[TomB]

Every law and every policy banning any given medical procedure is ultimately made on moral grounds, including laws against things that we'd really like to keep illegal, e.g. paying poor people for spare kidneys, involuntary sterilization, euthanizing gingers, etc. The problem isn't that lawmakers are doing ethics, the problem is that they are doing it wrong.

True.

But body harvesting and eugenics aside, most of these regulations in the US are subbed out to an agency (hopefully) composed of professionals in the relevant field. Politicians do not directly set arsenic limits in drinking water. Scientists at the EPA conduct research and propose rules. Same with the USDA, CDC, etc. And yes, I know I'm giving weight to LJ's "enlightened leaders" argument. But if the issue is hot enough for politicians to get directly involved, the science is likely to become a secondary concern.

 

[TomB]

I think it's more of an institutional culture than an intentional program. Progressive teachers looking for opportunities to do progressive stuff with/for/to their students, progressive teachers' lounges where they can find encouragement, and progressive school administrators who will back them up.

Add in the progressive fetish for genderqueer, and the recent advent of the "parents are wrong and should be excluded from the education of their children, and it ends up being very much like schools are looking for kids to transition. In practice if not official policy.

Hmmm....

Well, I grew up around teachers. My dad taught high school business and his friends were all teachers. The environment you describe doesn't really seem to resemble my experiences of the teaching community. (Teachers lounges?)

But then my dad retired in the early nineties.

 

[Ziggurat]

Right

I doubt very much that there are schools who go looking for kids to push towards being trans.

And I doubt many psychologists were looking to implant false memories of abuse. Yet it happened, quite a lot.

It’s very easy to fool yourself into thinking you are helping when you don’t have objective measures about what you are doing. Ever hear about facilitated communication? That’s a fascinating story of self-deception on the part of people who were truly trying to do the right thing. The people treating kids for gender dysphoria don’t really have any better metrics for what they are doing either.

 

[Meadmaker]

I think many people aren't aware of the role of sex hormones in brain restructuring during puberty, because they think of it as just being about the development of visible secondary sexual characteristics. Then you have the other problem of activists saying that anyone who presents evidence contradicting the narrative that puberty blockade is safe, is some evil far-right transphobe who wants children to die.

I wouldn't have known about it.

I assumed that both brain development and sex development happened during aging. I didn't know there was a connection.


ETA: And.....I don't want to accept something just because I read it on the interenet. However, if puberty blockers interfere with cognitive development, then outlawing them* should be a very obvious step. There shouldn't be any serious debate about them.


*as a treatment of anything related to gender dysphoria. There may be some very good reason why in some circumstances they are a very good idea.

 

[Meadmaker]

I think it's more of an institutional culture than an intentional program. Progressive teachers looking for opportunities to do progressive stuff with/for/to their students, progressive teachers' lounges where they can find encouragement, and progressive school administrators who will back them up.

Add in the progressive fetish for genderqueer, and the recent advent of the "parents are wrong and should be excluded from the education of their children, and it ends up being very much like schools are looking for kids to transition. In practice if not official policy.

It's kind of confirmation bias. There are lots and lots of transgender kids. Look, there's one now.

 

[Lithrael]

I broadly agree with TomB’s latest posts as well, thanks TomB for articulating clearly a lot of the sort of stuff I’d like to say on these matters.

 

[Meadmaker]

AGP
I'm sure it exists. But I keep hearing, without citation, that the vast majority of trans-women are AGP.

I don't hear that, although I think I know the comments that you are referring to. What I hear is that the very demanding people, unwilling to compromise, who insist on occupying women's spaces and roles, are dominated by autogynephiles.

That's not the same thing.

Are the comments correct? Are the autogynephiles really driving that bus? I wouldn't say it has been proven, but the evidence for it is significantly greater than zero.

There was even an argument that trans athletes were competing as women in order to satisfy their AGP. That's just weird.

Because? Once again, I've read the same comments, and some of them have not been expressed very articulately, but I think I would take something different from the arguments. Arguments about motivation....why, because, in order,...are rarely straightforward. Human motivation is often confused and complicated, and individuals are not even always aware of their own motivation. Therefore, it's hard to say that trans athletes compete as women in order to satisfy AGP. Their actual motivations may be much more complicated than that. However, if someone was both AGP and athletic, competing as a woman would definitely be something that really feeds that fantasy.

Part of the huge logic hole in the idea is the assertion (cited many threads ago) that a male being more aroused in fantasies envisioning themselves as female are evidence of AGP. That's just such mindbogglingly bad logic. Because a non-AGP dysphoric male would also logically have a greater response viewing themselfs as female. Duh.

Thise fantasies are not evidence of AGP. They're the definition of AGP.

A non-AGP dysphoric male envisions a certain kind of sex or a certain kind of partner. An AGP male envisions himself as a woman, and that is the fantasy. If the fantasy is particularly strong, it creates dysphoria.

Blanchard, who invented the term, describes the difference in detail here:

https://quillette.com/2019/11/06/what-is-autogynephilia-an-interview-with-dr-ray-blanchard/

(ETA: If you don't want to read the whole interview, find the term "Moser" in the text. That section describes the difference between AGP and other things that could be mistaken for AGP.)

The existence of AGP should not be controversial. It clearly exists, and I was the one (I don't think I was the only one) who brought up the argument. Where there could be some controversy is to what extent AGP contributes to a desire to live as a woman and/or medically transition.

The difference between what you are describing for non-AGP males is that the focus of the fantasy is the sex, or the partner. It is possible that whatever they want to do requires a female body, so that might be incorporated into the fantasy. For AGP, the fantasy IS the body, or the identity. Being the woman is the key element.

Sports
Interestingly, sports are where there is a lot of common ground. Even ST recognizes that someone self-declaring their gender causes issue with women's sports. Personally, I think that sports default to sex segregation, but individual cases can and should be evaluated for exceptions. OF course the problem is that that requires judgment which is hard to write into a rule or a law. Meadmaker referred to this and concluded that the rule had to be by sex. My conclusion is that since no rule can be written...don't try to write one and allow judgment by whoever the governing body is of that sport.

But what do governing bodies do? How do they govern? They write laws. This isn't criminal or civil legislation, but it's rules for who may participate in the private activity overseen by the government body. So, saying "allow judgement by the governing body", is just saying who writes the rule.

Unless you are saying that the rule ought to be, "In cases of biological males who wish to compete as females, they may petition the Eligibility Committee who will make the determination." Well, if you don't provide guidance, in the form of criteria, to the Eligibility Committee, I would foresee constant controversy over their judgement. I don't see it as workable.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

They are still campaigning against them. There is a greater recognition of the fact that gender stereotypical behaviour does not indicate gender identity, that many trans individuals do not conform to gender stereotypes and there is greater recognition of non-binary identifying people as well. It is much less true today than it was a few decades ago that transsexuals had to prove to conservative therapists how well they fit into a gender stereotype to get any treatment at all.

What I see is a group of people who have largely won the battle for acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality and, to keep themselves in a job, have decided that the next battle is to convince the whole of society to suspend rationality to accommodate the delusions of those with a particular mental heath disorder. Eventually the public will see the emperor has no clothes.

Nobody is claiming this, especially not in the "trans-rights" movement. It is true that kids who conform more obviously to the opposite gender stereotype are more likely to be brought by their parents to a therapist who helps potentially transgender children, but that does not automatically mean they will be diagnosed as such.

How about just letting children be who they are (mentally and physically) without "helping" them? If people do insist on helping it should be to get the individuals to accept themselves rather than reinforcing there delusions or putting a few more in their heads.

It is an somewhat outmoded expression to express an experience of feeling there is a disconnect between one's sense of self and one's sexual characteristics.

Which makes no logical sense whatsoever and is clearly a sign of a mental disorder in any rational worldview, rather than a reason to undergo extreme plastic surgery and hormone therapy to pretend to be what you are not and can never physically be.

 

[Rolfe]

What I see is a group of people who have largely won the battle for acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality and, to keep themselves in a job, have decided that the next battle is to convince the whole of society to suspend rationality to accommodate the delusions of those with a particular mental heath disorder. Eventually the public will see the emperor has no clothes.

This. Well put.

And you can see it in the constant refrain that if you don't accept that men should have the right to go where they want and occupy whatever spaces they want, you're as bad as a homophobe.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Typical trans-activist dodge. Find some other issue to avoid having to address the issue actually under discussion. What is that called? Changing horses? Gish gallop? Look a squirrel?

Is this not the social issues and current events section? How is discussing state sanctioned transphobia a dodge?

 

[Rolfe]

I wouldn't have known about it.

I assumed that both brain development and sex development happened during aging. I didn't know there was a connection.

ETA: And.....I don't want to accept something just because I read it on the interenet. However, if puberty blockers interfere with cognitive development, then outlawing them* should be a very obvious step. There shouldn't be any serious debate about them.

*as a treatment of anything related to gender dysphoria. There may be some very good reason why in some circumstances they are a very good idea.

I think I must have known that brain development was linked to puberty, because I remember the week I got my first period thinking, when do I start to think differently? Do I stop being me? Of course it's a gradual process and you're not really conscious of it happening. (Mainly I stopped going out to play ball games with the younger children at the intervals, and joined the orchestra.)

Now I really don't know where the references are now, but I read about this a couple of years ago. Studies have shown that puberty blocking in children lowers the IQ by something like 2 to 4 points. I don't think that's in dispute at all. It's just that the frantic parents who have been told their child will commit suicide without them think it's a small price to pay.

There are also the animal studies, with the adolescent sheep. The puberty-blocked group were found to have forgotten tasks they learned earlier, while the control group remembered them. They were also worse at learning new tasks than the control group. These things should not be given to healthy children under any circumstances. Not even if they say they'll scream and scream until they're sick.

There is one condition where puberty blockers may be of use, and that is precocious puberty, when a child starts to go through puberty at an insanely young age. I think that use pre-dates the use in gender nonconforming children, and is the source of the claim that it's just a pause button and everything will return to normal once the drugs are stopped. However I gather it's not as simple as all that, and I don't really know what the adrenals are doing in these children. I understand it's a balancing act, trying to mitigate the harm of very early puberty with drugs themselves known to have harmful side-effects.

 

[Rolfe]

Puberty blockers.
Note, that I'm not talking about taking opposite sex hormones, I'm talking about measures to delay puberty. I think there is merit in both sides here. The motivation behind them is to delay portions of body development while an attempt is made to figure out what the correct course of action is. If a child's condition is such that a transition would be beneficial, this is s benefit as it will allow for a smoother transition and a more socially acceptable appearance post-transition. No, one's appearance should not matter. But, yes, in this world, unfortunately, it does. However, like any other treatment, there are consequences. Side effects. Some of which may be long term. For instance bone density can be affected.

But the existence of side-effects is not by itself an indication that a treatment should be banned across the board.

No, puberty blockers and hormone treatment should not be given out lightly. But that does not mean they should not be prescribed at all. This is where I have issues with both sides. One wants free prescription free access on demand, and the other wants no access at all. I think a doctor should be able to prescribe them after careful consideration of the case. I also think they should be subject to the consequences of damages caused by misdiagnosis.

Let's stick with this one. Here are the downsides of puberty blockers, effects that are either certain or a pretty significant risk.

• Sterility
• Permanent loss of the ability to orgasm
• Permanent loss of the ability to become sexually aroused
• Loss of cognitive function (2-4 IQ points)
• Loss of bone density, osteopenia, fractures, bone pain
• Loss of adult height (mainly seen in puberty-blocked girls I believe)
• unquantified increased risk of stroke
• unquantified risk of heart attack
• unquantified risk of dementia
• mental health issues

That's off the top of my head, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more.

Now there is a wrinkle here. Some although not all of this can probably be mitigated by stopping the puberty blockers and allowing the child's natural puberty to set in as well as it can after that disruption. But that is not what happens. There are almost no data about what happens when a normal (not precocious) puberty is interrupted for several years and then allowed to proceed, because it so seldom happens.

Talking as if puberty can simply be delayed with no consequence, as if this can be discussed as a separate topic from wrong-sex hormones, is naive and unrealistic. The stated intention to allow "thinking time" is perverse. What is actually being done is to prevent the brain maturation that accompanies puberty that would, in the majority of these children, cause them to stop feeling that they wanted to be the opposite sex and come to terms with the healthy bodies they have. (Much as I quit playing rounders or cops and robbers and went to orchestra practice instead.) In contrast, once these kids get as far as puberty blockers they're socially and psychologically locked in. There isn't an off-ramp. Puberty blockers lead to wrong-sex hormones as night follows day.

Without puberty blockers the large majority of these children grow out of wanting to be the opposite sex and settle down as the sex they are, without any physical harm. A lot of them turn out to be gay. With puberty blockers almost all of them "decide" to become the sex they aren't and progress to wrong-sex hormones and usually surgery.

A transsexual who doesn't begin transition until after puberty has many advantages. He or she develops and retains the ability to become sexually aroused and to orgasm. Fertility can be preserved, depending on later choices. Brain maturation and adult cognition, risk assessment and decision making capacity are achieved and retained. There are still long-term problems of the androgenised female or the oestrogenised male, but they're starting from a much better place in so many ways.

So do tell, what are the advantages you want to set on the opposite side of the equation, when you say you believe doctors should be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers?

First, what on earth do you mean by "mis-diagnosis"? There is no way to tell which children are going to grow out of wanting to be the opposite sex and which aren't, other than waiting until they've gone through puberty and attained adult cognition and been able to make a proper choice. So how can anyone possibly "diagnose" which children to treat?

Second, even if you could unerringly pick out the ones who will still want to be the opposite sex when they're in their twenties, what on earth are the advantages you think you'd give them by stopping them going through puberty, that compensate for that litany of harm?

 

[Ziggurat]

What I see is a group of people who have largely won the battle for acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality and, to keep themselves in a job, have decided that the next battle is to convince the whole of society to suspend rationality to accommodate the delusions of those with a particular mental heath disorder. Eventually the public will see the emperor has no clothes.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer

 

[theprestige]

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer

Something something skin suit demand respect.

 

[Earthborn]

AGP
I'm sure it exists. But I keep hearing, without citation, that the vast majority of trans-women are AGP.

Rolfe likes to throw acronyms around and insists they represent different phenomena, but there are no diagnostic criteria in use to distinguish between them. On the other hand, she does not seem to distinguish between (autogynephilic) transsexuality and fetishistic transvestism, for which there are diagnostic criteria to distinguish them.

 

[Earthborn]

What I see is a group of people who have largely won the battle for acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality and, to keep themselves in a job, have decided that the next battle is to convince the whole of society to suspend rationality to accommodate the delusions of those with a particular mental heath disorder. Eventually the public will see the emperor has no clothes.

Transgender individuals are screened for mental health, and those with mental health problems find it harder to access transgender care. Transsexuality is the "mental health disorder" that has "not having mental health disorders" as one of its diagnostic criteria.

How about just letting children be who they are (mentally and physically) without "helping" them?

Because they are suffering.

If people do insist on helping it should be to get the individuals to accept themselves rather than reinforcing there delusions or putting a few more in their heads.

Getting them to "accept themselves" can only ever have a limited effect. It stops working when you are expecting people to deny their sense of identity.

 

[Ziggurat]

Transgender individuals are screened for mental health, and those with mental health problems find it harder to access transgender care.

Maybe in an ideal world they are screened. But in the real world, plenty of people are rubber stamped for transgender treatment.

Because they are suffering.

Getting them to "accept themselves" can only ever have a limited effect. It stops working when you are expecting people to deny their sense of identity.

Who said anything about "denying their sense of identity"? You aren't denying someone's sense of identity by not chopping off healthy parts of their body.

And medical transition has a limited effect too. This isn't a choice between doing nothing and solving the problem. Non-medical treatment isn't nothing, and medical treatment won't fix everything.

 

[Rolfe]

There is mounting evidence that wrong-sex hormones and plastic surgery do not alleviate the suffering of these peope but may indeed make it worse.

"These people are suffering! We have to do something!"
"OK, this is something, we'll do that."
"But this doesn't help many people and makes some worse."
"That's irrelevant, we have to do something and this is something so we'll go on doing it."

 

[Earthborn]

And I doubt many psychologists were looking to implant false memories of abuse. Yet it happened, quite a lot.

That was hypnotherapists, not psychologists.

Maybe in an ideal world they are screened. But in the real world, plenty of people are rubber stamped for transgender treatment.

Oh, really? Where? (Asking for a friend).

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer

Cases where one could argue treatment was sometimes given with too little screening -- such as with Tavistock -- are indeed better examples of the problems of privatisation of healthcare than they are examples of problems with transgender care by itself.

 

[theprestige]

Is this not the social issues and current events section? How is discussing state sanctioned transphobia a dodge?

Rolfe has raised serious, important questions about what specific treatments you include and justify under "trans-affirming care". Every post you make about other things nobody is asking about is a dodge.