Trans women are not women (Part 8)

[Meadmaker]

"gender affirming care" includes social transition as well, which is as much under fire by these transphobes as anything else.

But if you are referring to the situation in Texas with the application of child abuse laws by the governor and attorney general, then that's not true.

Social transitioning and psychological counseling have not been declared illegal. The governor's orders do not apply to anything except chemical or surgical interventions. It's not accurate to say that the government of Texas has outlawed gender affirming care. Only a subset of the procedures that have been given that label are subject to those latest government decrees.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

But if you are referring to the situation in Texas with the application of child abuse laws by the governor and attorney general, then that's not true.

Social transitioning and psychological counseling have not been declared illegal. The governor's orders do not apply to anything except chemical or surgical interventions. It's not accurate to say that the government of Texas has outlawed gender affirming care. Only a subset of the procedures that have been given that label are subject to those latest government decrees.

Fair enough. In this context, "medical transition" is probably the best term to use that is both broad enough to capture all the related medical services, but specific enough in the context of the Texas attempts to criminalize medical care.

 

[theprestige]

Fair enough. In this context, "medical transition" is probably the best term to use that is both broad enough to capture all the related medical services, but specific enough in the context of the Texas attempts to criminalize medical care malpractice.

FTFY.

Why are you against criminalizing medical malpractice? I never figured you for an anarcho-libertarian.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

FTFY.

Why are you against criminalizing medical malpractice? I never figured you for an anarcho-libertarian.

Like I said, a great litmus test.

 

[Ziggurat]

That was hypnotherapists, not psychologists.

... and that makes a difference... how?

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

All over the place. Look at pretty much any of the stories of de-transitioners, there's lots of links in the thread. It's a consistent pattern for detransitioners: no professionals actually provide any challenge to their desire to transition, or try to identify if there might be any underlying causes besides gender dysphoria.

Now, you might say that this is just a sampling error, because this is examining only the ones who aren't properly screened, not the ones who are properly screened. Under this interpretation there is a screening problem at least some of the time, but maybe it's a small minority of cases. But there's a problem with this idea too.

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

We have a dog that isn't barking when it should be. I have never once heard anyone describe someone seeking transgender treatment but being denied that treatment because they didn't qualify. That isn't coming from prospective patients, and it isn't coming from professionals treating people. As far as I can tell, it isn't actually happening.

 

[Rolfe]

This might interest some people.

Sweden transitions to caution

 

[Meadmaker]

That was hypnotherapists, not psychologists.

Psychology might be regulated differently in The Netherlands. Here in the US, there's a huge overlap in the two categories, and the implantation of the false memories can occur through means other than hypnotherapy.

 

[theprestige]

Like I said, a great litmus test.

Typical trans-activist dodge. Try to demonize opponents instead of addressing their valid points and legitimate concerns.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

... and that makes a difference... how?



All over the place. Look at pretty much any of the stories of de-transitioners, there's lots of links in the thread. It's a consistent pattern for detransitioners: no professionals actually provide any challenge to their desire to transition, or try to identify if there might be any underlying causes besides gender dysphoria.

Now, you might say that this is just a sampling error, because this is examining only the ones who aren't properly screened, not the ones who are properly screened. Under this interpretation there is a screening problem at least some of the time, but maybe it's a small minority of cases. But there's a problem with this idea too.



We have a dog that isn't barking when it should be. I have never once heard anyone describe someone seeking transgender treatment but being denied that treatment because they didn't qualify. That isn't coming from prospective patients, and it isn't coming from professionals treating people. As far as I can tell, it isn't actually happening.

Seems to me that people in a situation you describe would have a slam-dunk medical malpractice case.

I'm not really seeing how total prohibition is the appropriate response to claims that some practitioners are not engaging in best practices.

It's perfectly fair for both the medical community and the general public to question how much psychological treatment and assessment should be required before beginning a medical transition, especially for non-reversible treatments.

Those advocating total prohibition are revealing that they are more interested in the extreme response rather than any good-faith assessment of best practices.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Does it occur to you that people redefine things in order to match their self-image?

Yes, it's an eye-rolling statement. But it might also be how this person internally reconciles contradictory data.

I'd be careful of reading too much into it.

Yes, I know that people redefine thing to match their self-image. That's actual a pretty core element of my objection. People are redefining commonly understood things to mean something that is in direct contradiction to what they actually mean... and then are advocating that their personal redefinition should be accepted by everyone else.

That this person reconciles contradictory data by redefining "masculine" to mean "feminine" is clearly problematic. But this person *also* implies that everyone else in the world should *accept* their redefinition, on the grounds that it makes contradictory things reconcile in their brain, despite the fact that it creates substantial contradictions for everyone else.

So... giving birth - one the utmost expressions of femaleness - is redefined to be "the most masculine thing ever". Woman is redefined from being an adult of the human species to mean a feeling in someone's head that is divorced from sex. Gay is redefined from being same-sex attraction between male humans to being attraction based on a feeling in someone's head, allowing completely heterosexual females to present themselves as gay males.

This redefinition of objective, material reality so that it fits into someone's subjective, ephemeral, unverifiable feeling... THAT is exactly the core of the problem.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Agreed.

Additionally, it introduces confusion to young children in a way that breaks down their ability to recognize and accept reality. Very young children are now being routinely told that they might be a girl or a boy or neither, and that they can choose what they want to be. These are children young enough to still have a very tentative grasp of sex differences. They're being told that the very basic objective fact of "boys have penises and girls have vaginas" is not true, and that a boy can have a vagina and a girl can have a penis and someone can be neither a boy nor a girl regardless of what body they have.

To make a blunt analogy... can you imagine trying to teach grade school children the basics of mathematics - addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division - while *simultaneously* teaching them that numbers are just symbols and that sometimes one can be two and five can be nineteen? Think about the difficulty many kids have when they encounter pre-algebra and the concept of variable placeholders for a value. And that's AFTER they have a concrete understanding of the nature of numbers already in place. How would you go about teaching a child the nature of numbers... when the entire premise is based on everything being a variable?

In my view, it fundamentally damages a child's ability to understand factual reality.

 

[Rolfe]

Those advocating total prohibition are revealing that they are more interested in the extreme response rather than any good-faith assessment of best practices.

I don't suppose there's any chance of you addressing the actual points, rather than finding another way to dehumanise people who don't agree with you in your head?

I don't see anyone advocating prohibition of surgery or wrong-sex hormones for adults post puberty, who have made an adult, informed choice.

I'm waiting for one good reason why children should be prevented from going through puberty, given the horrific list of adverse effects of this course of action, when they will have wider and better choices available to them after puberty when they're in a position to weigh up these choices with an adult's understanding.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

You know, if the FDA or HHS were the ones setting guidelines and limitations on care for dysphoric youth, I would have less disagreement than I do. I may still disagree, but I would have at least some marginal acceptance that someone with knowledge was involved.

But that's not what's happening. These are laws being passed by politicians with no actual knowledge or expertise of any relevant sort.

The fact that I happen to agree that pharmaceutical or surgical procedures should *not* be used as a treatment for dysphoria in youth is actually quite irrelevant to my objection to the creation of these laws in the first place.

 

[Elaedith]

That was hypnotherapists, not psychologists.

Not to my knowledge. False memories can be implanted by suggestion and were implanted during therapy. This does not require hyponosis.

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

There are plenty of examples of people with mental health problems being unconditionally affirmed and given cross-sex hormones, sometimes on their first appointment. Watson describes her experience in this video, which was posted a while back. Helena received testosterone at a high dose on her first appointment, as recounted here. In the US, many private therapists don't follow WPath guidelines and justify it by saying that screening for mental health problems is implying transgender identity results from a disorder. Some do not believe a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is necessary at all for medical treatment.
"“If you are trans, I believe you,” says A.J. Eckert, the medical director of Anchor Health Initiative in Connecticut. Eckert is wary of psychologists who follow the guidelines by completing a comprehensive assessment before recommending medical intervention for youths. “Gender-affirming medicine,” Eckert holds, means that “you are best equipped to make decisions about your own body,” full stop. These providers do not always realize they’ve confessed to ignoring the standards of care. "

(Ekhert is the favoured reviewer for science-based medicine, whose concept of 'evidence-based rebuttal' includes citing evidence that contradicts claims, as mentioned earlier in this thread).

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.

Not clear what this means. Tavistock is public healthcare. Screening tends to be even less in the US.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

It has shifted substantially in the last decade. Your experience is thirty years out of date

This wasn't my experience as a child either, but it is a lot of what's happening now. That's why so very many parents - many of them quite progressive - are objecting to the approach being used in their children's schools.

 

[Meadmaker]

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.

That's something that I keep scratching my head over. I'll address it in the context of sports, because I think it's easiest to see in that case.


What is the real, valid, identity of a young transwoman? Well, she's a male bodied individual who identifies as a woman. (Language can get so difficult. Woman/girl. Male/female. I'm talking about a teenage transgirl, and we all know what that is, even if we can't agree on what to call her....I mean...I give up. You know what I mean.) So, assuming she is not actually delusional, then she is very much aware of her male body. That body is part of her identity. She may not be happy about it, but it's there, and she knows it, and lots of other people know it, too.

So, how is it denying her identity to acknowledge it? When it comes time to race, how is it denying her idenity to have her race against other male-bodied people? Can't we let Lia Thomas (or a teenage counterpart), wear a women's swimsuit while swimming in the same races as the other male-bodied swimmers? That's acknowledging her identity, not denying it.

Likewise with locker rooms. She has a specific identity and has certain characteristics that don't fit in the locker room. People say we have to treat her exactly like all the other girls. Why? She isn't like all the other girls. Her real, valid lived experience, is different from those girls, so why do we have to treat her in the same way?


So, back to your statement, people may want to have body parts chopped off, and maybe it's even a good idea to do that sometimes. I don't know. However, altering someone's physical appearance isn't affirming their identity. At most, it might make it easier for them to affirm their own internal sense of identity, but that's not the same thing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

The hormonal influence on cognitive maturation is actually fairly well known. More specifically, we know the deleterious impact on mental and emotional development when those hormones are absent.

 

[Rolfe]

It's a point. We have multiple examples of young people who were "affirmed" and cleared for wrong-sex hormones after a couple of vague chats with a provider, with no investigation into their autism, or eating disorders, or depression, or self-harm.

I do not think I have come across a single example of someone saying that they went to a gender clinic and after psychological assessment wrong-sex hormones were deemed inappropriate for them.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

It's a point. We have multiple examples of young people who were "affirmed" and cleared for wrong-sex hormones after a couple of vague chats with a provider, with no investigation into their autism, or eating disorders, or depression, or self-harm.

I do not think I have come across a single example of someone saying that they went to a gender clinic and after psychological assessment wrong-sex hormones were deemed inappropriate for them.

Ah yes, the scientific method at work.

 

[theprestige]

Those advocating total prohibition are revealing that they are more interested in the extreme response rather than any good-faith assessment of best practices.

Nobody here is advocating total prohibition. Some are advocating prohibition of biology-altering, life-altering treatments for minors, without a sound medical basis.

You're being invited to present and defend that sound medical basis, as you understand it, but so far you've been dodging that invitation.