Until the child tells you their gender identity, don’t assume it matches their body
I’ll disagree with that one—it seems such an assumption is more than 99.9% likely to be true; and we assume less likely things all the time. Being aware of transsexuality and of the problems transfolk deal with should be enough until you have particular reasons to believe your child may identify with a different gender.
it seems such an assumption is more than 99.9% likely to be true
I think 99.5% is probably a reasonable upper bound on how confident you should be (with 0.5% of that being a Gettier case). Physical intersexuality of various sorts has an incident of about 1%, I have read, and in the absence of studies on the subject I’m inclined to deploy an ignorance prior about the mature gender identification of a random intersexed person. Garden-variety transfolk only cut this probability from there.
I’d think a parent would be aware of physical intersexuality, so I’m not sure that’s relevant in this thread’s context; physically ambiguous sex would certainly be a reason to be cautious about assuming gender! I’m having a hell of a time finding consistent prevalence data for psychological transsexuality, though; estimates seem to vary from 1 in 21000 to around one in 500 (taking the low estimate in the latter because it seems to be running on MtF numbers, which appear to skew a bit higher).
I’d think a parent would be aware of physical intersexuality
This is not reliably true. I have a friend who is a genetic chimera (fraternal twins, fused early enough in development to turn into one basically normal-shaped person). She was considered anatomically male and normal at birth and well past, and didn’t find out she had female organs too until her twenties, when they finally did an ultrasound to track down her irregular abdominal cramping, then did genetic tests to explain why there was a uterus in there. This gave her a relatively socially acceptable excuse to assume a female social role.
I’ll disagree with that one—it seems such an assumption is more than 99.9% likely to be true; and we assume less likely things all the time. Being aware of transsexuality and of the problems transfolk deal with should be enough until you have particular reasons to believe your child may identify with a different gender.
I think 99.5% is probably a reasonable upper bound on how confident you should be (with 0.5% of that being a Gettier case). Physical intersexuality of various sorts has an incident of about 1%, I have read, and in the absence of studies on the subject I’m inclined to deploy an ignorance prior about the mature gender identification of a random intersexed person. Garden-variety transfolk only cut this probability from there.
Even if instead of 99.9% Emile had said 95%, he would still have a point.
I’d think a parent would be aware of physical intersexuality, so I’m not sure that’s relevant in this thread’s context; physically ambiguous sex would certainly be a reason to be cautious about assuming gender! I’m having a hell of a time finding consistent prevalence data for psychological transsexuality, though; estimates seem to vary from 1 in 21000 to around one in 500 (taking the low estimate in the latter because it seems to be running on MtF numbers, which appear to skew a bit higher).
This is not reliably true. I have a friend who is a genetic chimera (fraternal twins, fused early enough in development to turn into one basically normal-shaped person). She was considered anatomically male and normal at birth and well past, and didn’t find out she had female organs too until her twenties, when they finally did an ultrasound to track down her irregular abdominal cramping, then did genetic tests to explain why there was a uterus in there. This gave her a relatively socially acceptable excuse to assume a female social role.
I don’t mean to trivialize any problems she may have gone through but at least on a first reading that sounds awesome.
I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t but it still sounds that way.
Yay! Someone high-status said it so I don’t have to!