Transwomen are not Women - Part 14

[Emily's Cat]

Thanks. The correlation clearly seems to be there, but is it "becoming transgender increases mortality risk" or "those who have a proclivity to become transgender already had a higher mortality risk"?

I wouldn't be that surprised if both effects are true, but the latter certainly seems to be. Obviously medical transition caries with it higher mortality risks (at the very least surgical transition does), which would fall under the first category, but for those who don't medically transition I would lean toward the explanation of a selection effect (those who become trans were from a higher risk population), in which case choosing to check the box doesn't change that fact.

I would say both.

There is a documented higher level of mental health issues among people who identify as transgender. Current trends are to blithely assume that the mental health issues are caused by being transgender, and not being accepted as such. But there's a fair amount of evidence that suggests the opposite is true - people with preexisting mental health issues are more likely to subsequently identify as transgender. In particular, the suicidality is present prior to identification as transgender, and it continues at roughly the same level post-transition in the majority of cases. There is a short-term alleviation of suicidality, but it comes back in the long term.

On the other hand, there are also health risks associated with cross-sex hormones, not to mention any surgeries. Pumping your body full of opposite-sex hormones that it did not evolve to accommodate has negative effects - whodathunkit?

 

[Emily's Cat]

If trans right activists have their way any man will be able to access female safe spaces without any risk whatsoever, let alone to their lives, provided they are willing to state when challenged that they identify as a woman. Which means there will no longer be any such thing as female safe spaces, unless you really think the sort of man who, for example, likes to expose himself to girls on the common would hesitate to take advantage of it.

It's this insistence that the feelings of transwomen obliged to use the spaces designated for their biological sex rather than their perceived gender are more important than the feelings of female rape victims who find themselves standing naked in the women's shower next to someone who could easily be the flasher from the common - or even the man who raped them - which convinces me that transwomen are men. Because, as we all know, the feelings and needs of a man have always, and should always, take priority over the feelings and needs of any number of women. If transwomen were really women they would have a damn sight more consideration for the effect of their demands on other women.

I'm feeling particularly cynical today. I'm going to say that if transwomen were really women, then their feelings would just be ignored.

 

[Emily's Cat]

"6.1 times as likely to die from non-natural causes as cis women'

Could that be largely from being assaulted/murdered?

In the Netherlands? Highly unlikely. I haven't seen statistics from there specifically, but statistics from most Western countries I have seen suggest people who identify as transgender are less likely than average to be murdered.

I found the study, but it doesn't say.

https://transvisie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/lancet-mortality-transgender.pdf

I found this.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/

"Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to a new study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.'

Without having any data to back it up at all... I would suspect:

• Higher likelihood of sexual assault and sexual violence because there's a higher proportion of transgender identified males who choose to prostitute themselves, and prostitution carries a higher risk
• Higher likelihood of assault when a potential partner finds out they have an outie rather than the anticipated innie
• Higher likelihood of drug-related injury and overdose

 

[Emily's Cat]

That study was discussed a while back. I mentioned that the higher rates of 'property victimization' suggest confounds with socio-economic status, although what they mean by this term hasn't been defined.

I don't think it's directly relevant to explaining death rates.

Again, very cynical today. I wonder how much of that property victimization is someone tore down my sign that said "support transpeople, punch a terf"?

 

[Emily's Cat]

As I said I suspect the differences in general are a combination of the health risks of transition and selection effects. The "non natural causes" difference is probably a selection effect, though it can also be potentially a sex effect: I'm pretty sure mortality rate from non-natural causes of males is significantly higher than females.* (See ETA)

Which gets a point here: it seems weird to compare trans women to cis women when the former are males from any meaningful medical and risk perspective. smartcookie's quote mentions "In comparison to men in the general Dutch population, the mortality risk was nearly double among transgender women" which is still pretty significant, but lower than the comparison to women. If there were no effect of being trans and no selection effects, we'd expect transwomen to be comparable to cis men, not to cis women. To be overly obvious: no trans women die in childbirth.

But of course, even that aspect of the comparison isn't the only issue. As an obvious example, they mention:


Is it surprising that the rate of death from HIV is different between trans women and cis women? Again, I suspect that this a selection effect: ie. the population of people who transition also have a statistically higher incidence of higher risk sexual behavior.

For what it's worth, while I'm using "cis" here, I'm not a fan of it, but felt it was suitable to use the same words that the posted study uses

*ETA: I checked the study, it gives the mortality rate by "non-natural causes" for transwomen as being 2.7x higher than cismen, so still higher but by a significantly lower margin, as I suspected.

I don't have sources, I'm working from memory. In addition to engaging in higher risk sexual behavior, there's an overall higher level of risky behavior including drug use.

 

[Ziggurat]

Again, very cynical today. I wonder how much of that property victimization is someone tore down my sign that said "support transpeople, punch a terf"?

My guess is not much, since I think those stats go pretty far back. But I'd also guess it's entirely explainable by socioeconomic status.

 

[Emily's Cat]

My guess is not much, since I think those stats go pretty far back. But I'd also guess it's entirely explainable by socioeconomic status.

That's probably more accurate than my current disposition allows!

FYI, my cynicism is unrelated to this topic today, it's a generalized irritance with everything in the world, predominantly triggered by work-related idiotics.

 

[smartcooky]

Children, should not be able to undergo transition surgery or medicinal therapy.

If adults want to do these things to themselves, fine. But not kids. They are too stupid, rebelious, angry, to make wise decisions for themselves.

Children also suffer from "fads" and bouts of wishful thinking. If I had been able to become everything I wanted to be when I was growing up, I would have ended up as an astronaut, an airline pilot, a professional cricketer, a rocket scientist, a fighter pilot, an All Black (member of the NZ national rugby team), a professional astronomer/astrophysicist, a rally driver, a rescue helicopter pilot and a yachtsman.

 

[JoeMorgue]

So real talk.

If you wait until... 21 let's say how much transitioning have you "lost?"

I'm assuming a lot of this stuff only works if you do it during puberty.

Is "I support transitioning but only if you do it after puberty" just FUNCTIONALLY (not necessary, for lack of a better term, morally) just "I don't support transitioning" with more words?

 

[Hercules56]

So real talk.

If you wait until... 21 let's say how much transitioning have you "lost?"

I'm assuming a lot of this stuff only works if you do it during puberty.

Is "I support transitioning but only if you do it after puberty" just FUNCTIONALLY (not necessary, for lack of a better term, morally) just "I don't support transitioning" with more words?

We dont let kids vote, buy a house, get a mortgage, become a prostitute, open a bank account, but we should let them make permanent changes to their body?

No way. There is a VERY good reason why we limit adult decisions to 18 and older and it needs to stay that way. Kids are stupid, impulsive, rebellious, confused, angry, easily tempted and victims of peer pressure, etc.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yes but my point was voting, buying a house, becoming a prostitute, and opening a bank account can't ONLY be effectively done at a certain point in your biological development or you can't ever effectively do it.

Can fully post-puberty adults ever really "transition?"

Again I am not taking a side in this, I'm talking and asking for information.

ETA:

To expand and clarify. I'm just saying we do need to be clear or honest. If transitioning only really works during puberty and we as a society agree that it should be done during puberty, then we need to just say "Transitioning just isn't something you get to do." A hypothetical discussion of an adult's rights to do after that point becomes mute.

 

[smartcooky]

That's probably more accurate than my current disposition allows!

FYI, my cynicism is unrelated to this topic today, it's a generalized irritance with everything in the world, predominantly triggered by work-related idiotics.

We have a word for that, but I can't post it unaltered here without incurring some mod wrath! (I just tested it and the auto-censor doesn't pick it up, so I will have to manually censor it).

That word is "Dumb****ery" (as in "Lets keep the dumb****ery to a minimum today". You can even get a mug with that written on it from Amazon!

Actually, I think that word applies perfectly to the entire TRA argument!

 

[theprestige]

We dont let kids vote, buy a house, get a mortgage, become a prostitute, open a bank account, but we should let them make permanent changes to their body?

No way. There is a VERY good reason why we limit adult decisions to 18 and older and it needs to stay that way. Kids are stupid, impulsive, rebellious, confused, angry, easily tempted and victims of peer pressure, etc.

The way I read it, Joe isn't arguing that we should let children transition. He's arguing that it's a serious setback, for a dedicated and sincere transitioner, to be forced to wait until after the biology ship has sailed, and no effective transition is possible.

And I agree with that. It is a serious setback. I think it is a necessary setback, though, for the reasons discussed at length in this thread.

I might change my mind about transitioning pre-pubescent children, if there were good medical evidence that these children suffer from a condition that requires treatment, and that prepubescent transition is the best known treatment for this condition.

As it is, there is no evidence for either of these propositions, and here's good evidence that this course of treatment is doing more harm than good - even for adults.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Children also suffer from "fads" and bouts of wishful thinking. If I had been able to become everything I wanted to be when I was growing up, I would have ended up as an astronaut, an airline pilot, a professional cricketer, a rocket scientist, a fighter pilot, an All Black (member of the NZ national rugby team), a professional astronomer/astrophysicist, a rally driver, a rescue helicopter pilot and a yachtsman.

I'd have been a Cherokee living completely off the land, hunting my dinner with a bow, while simultaneously building rockets to send me and my pet frog to Saturn.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So real talk.

If you wait until... 21 let's say how much transitioning have you "lost?"

I'm assuming a lot of this stuff only works if you do it during puberty.

Is "I support transitioning but only if you do it after puberty" just FUNCTIONALLY (not necessary, for lack of a better term, morally) just "I don't support transitioning" with more words?

Real talk. What is "lost" varies by sex.

I'm going to assume that your transition includes a bout of puberty blockers, followed by a combination of native hormone suppressants and exogenous cross-sex hormones.

The effect of transitioning that would be relevant here is fairly limited. By not transitioning as a minor, males would "lose" the avoidance of facial and body hair developing, as well as their voice lowering. By not transitioning, females would "lose" the avoidance of boobs and menarche.

On the other hand, if minors do transition, the lose the natural accretion of bone density needed to support their adult height, and adult sexual function. Males end up with a child-sized penis, because the blockers and suppressants keep the penis from elongating to an adult size. They can also lose the ability to produce sperm, and may in some cases lost the ability to orgasm. Females end up with no breasts, but also no increase in nipple sensation. Their uterus won't enlarge which can make it impossible to conceive or to safely carry a child to term. They can also end up with reduced sexual sensation and infertility.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes but my point was voting, buying a house, becoming a prostitute, and opening a bank account can't ONLY be effectively done at a certain point in your biological development or you can't ever effectively do it.

Can fully post-puberty adults ever really "transition?"

Again I am not taking a side in this, I'm talking and asking for information.

ETA:

To expand and clarify. I'm just saying we do need to be clear or honest. If transitioning only really works during puberty and we as a society agree that it should be done during puberty, then we need to just say "Transitioning just isn't something you get to do." A hypothetical discussion of an adult's rights to do after that point becomes mute.

The arguments that I hear from adults almost always come from males, and what they lament is the facial and body hair that they were "forced" to grow, their adam's apple, as well as their lowered voices. Many of them will also argue that if they had been allowed to have a "female" puberty, they would look more feminine as an adult, but that's not actually true. Their height, hand size, and foot size aren't driven by sex hormones, they're driven by the adrenal gland. At best, they would end up with female-typical fat deposits in the breast region and on the hips and buttocks - but they get that exact same result as adults that they would get as minors.

Transitioning as a minor avoids some of the secondary sex characteristics that we develop during puberty - but that avoidance comes at the cost of not developing a fully adult body. You lock in some childhood features. So in essence, a male that transitions at puberty is permanently a juvenile plus some boobs and a bigger butt.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We have a word for that, but I can't post it unaltered here without incurring some mod wrath! (I just tested it and the auto-censor doesn't pick it up, so I will have to manually censor it).

That word is "Dumb****ery" (as in "Lets keep the dumb****ery to a minimum today". You can even get a mug with that written on it from Amazon!

Actually, I think that word applies perfectly to the entire TRA argument!

My preferred term is one that the autocensor won't catch, but which would also violate rules. In my censor-friendly rendition, the asterisks rhyme with duck...

"****tardistry"

 

[Emily's Cat]

The way I read it, Joe isn't arguing that we should let children transition. He's arguing that it's a serious setback, for a dedicated and sincere transitioner, to be forced to wait until after the biology ship has sailed, and no effective transition is possible.

And I agree with that. It is a serious setback. I think it is a necessary setback, though, for the reasons discussed at length in this thread.

I might change my mind about transitioning pre-pubescent children, if there were good medical evidence that these children suffer from a condition that requires treatment, and that prepubescent transition is the best known treatment for this condition.

As it is, there is no evidence for either of these propositions, and here's good evidence that this course of treatment is doing more harm than good - even for adults.

Even if there were good evidence to support that it's the best treatment for that subset of kids... I would still oppose it because the risk of false positives is far, far too high. I think that as our diagnostic methods stand right now, the risks associated with false negatives is far lower than the risks associated with false positives. Until the accuracy can be significantly improved, I think it should be avoided.

 

[d4m10n]

A charitable reading of a fundamentalist's dogma requires that we accept their premise that god created everything and that the bible is the literal word of god.

A charitable reading requires only that we avoid interpreting any given premise in a way that makes it immediately self-contradictory and utterly vacuous of meaning; we should be striving to interpret it in a way that could actually be evaluated as either true or false.

I don't think charitability is going to cut it though. A charitable reading *requires* that we accept the premise, and the premise itself is irrevocably flawed.

A charitable reading in this particular case requires only that we come up with a version of "gender identity" doesn't lead to vicious recursion when defining either sex or gender. ACLU are not alone in making this difficult, basically any dictionary of social justice has this problem along with (last I checked) Wikipedia. That said, I think what the gender rights activists are really saying is that all people have an inborn sense of which sex (female/male) they would feel most comfortable being / being seen as / seeing themselves as and which gender (woman/man) they would feel most comfortable being treated as in those rare but highly charged and salient situations when we treat women and men differently. This inward sense is called "gender identity" even though it (by hypothesis) exists wholly independently from all observable outward signs of social gender or biological sex.

If you cede any part of the false premise, you cannot combat the arguments that follow from that premise.

I'm not asking anyone to assent to any of the four statements excerpted at post #985 but I am claiming that they a straightforward statement of the ideology on offer here. In another thread, I might provide a concise statement of early Xn belief from the Council of Nicaea for roughly parallel reasons.

I am so very disappointed in ACLU. I used to support them a lot, but over the past several years, they've simply lost their minds completely. It's been slipping further and further away from their core principles for a while. I think the real tipping point for me was when ACLU took legal action to *block* an FOI request that was asking for prisons statistics that didn't even identify any individual, just aggregate stuff. Blocking an FOI request is completely antithetical to the purpose of ACLU historically.

Since I've known these people for decades, I've at least a working theory of what changed and when and how. Since you don't believe they are actually being sincere, you would not find it compelling.

What happens when I believe that only a very few people genuinely and sincerely believe that sex is irrelevant, mutable, or socially constructed... but that a large portion of people are dishonestly exploiting the loopholes that such beliefs would create if advanced into policy?

You tell me. By contrast, I'd be surprised if Laurel Hubbard, Lia Thomas, Rachel McKinnon and that whole lot were deliberately and dishonestly exploiting gender ideology rather than just going along with a particular set of ideas prevailing at the time.

I liken this to some of the arguments made pre civil war in the US.

For this analogy to work, there would need to be a material payoff to modern gender ideology resembling the millions of unpaid manhours which inured to the propertied elite in slave societies like Virginia.

 

[smartcooky]

For this analogy to work, there would need to be a material payoff to modern gender ideology resembling the millions of unpaid manhours which inured to the propertied elite in slave societies like Virginia.

Doctors and pharmaceutical companies hawking gender transition care and drugs is one helluva "material payoff". It would not surprise me that the vast majority of doctors who support the TRA side will be the ones giving the care and hawking the drugs.