“I’m just a cis person who has somehow managed to convince myself that I’m trans to the point that I’m having this kind of crisis”
Why? Also could we unpack the “I am trans” hypothesis? It seems to say “sometime during development something flipped the secondary sexual characteristics in my brain but not any of the ones outside it” given the type of spaghetti code evolution tends to produce, this seems rather unlikely. On the other hand, people convince themselves of weird beliefs and take them seriously enough to generate crises fairly regularly.
It seems to say “sometime during development something flipped the secondary sexual characteristics in my brain but not any of the ones outside it” given the type of spaghetti code evolution tends to produce, this seems rather unlikely.
Well, one obvious explanation for people thinking themselves trans is that maybe one of the secondary sexual characteristics flipped or maybe even something not related to sex at all. As a result they don’t quite fit in, then they here about the transsexuality movement and convince themselves that they’ve found the problem.
Note that this is consistent with the twin studies. All the brain scan stuff strikes me as the “we picked it up on a brain scan therefore it must be biologically caused” fallacy.
Does it matter to you if it’s biologically caused all else being equal?
Biologically caused is a problematic expression. Everything in the brain is biologically caused if we’re generous enough. I assume you mean genetically caused or developmentally caused.
flipped the secondary sexual characteristics in my brain
This is a potentially valid but minority interpretation of the statement “X is trans.”, held by no trans people I have discussed the subject with (and it tends to come up, eventually, across a sample size of a dozen middling-to-close friends). The more common one, which all trans people I know hold, is “At some point during my development I gained a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex.” Generally this is also a strong attraction to the other major gender bundle, but sometimes the trans person finds that bundle equally off-putting and rejects both, and others exchange between the two regularly or hold themselves to be both.
Also, the poor coding practices which evolution uses make this more, not less, likely to occur. Most people who study trans issues, history, etc. agree that there were probably high rates of ‘masked’ trans people in the past, who kept their personal identification preferences secret.
“At some point during my development I gained a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex.”
But that’s way too broad IMO.
I mean, I have an Y chromosome. I have male genitalia and no desire to ever change this. (I also happen to have quite a few traits that are way more common among males than among females, e.g. being about 1.88 m (6′2″) tall, having a baritone vocal range, having quite a lot of terminal facial and body hair, and being sexually attracted to women.) I find calling myself male a quite reasonable way of summarizing that info.
But I find claims that all this means that my long hair/dislike of football/low aggressiveness/finding it easier to befriend women than men/etc.¹ are somehow suboptimal or make my maleness any less valid to be preposterous and/or offensive. (“So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.”—Frank Zappa) IOW I do have “a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex”. But I don’t see any particular need to throw the baby away with the bath water and stop calling myself a man.
(As for neurological differences, I haven’t got a brain scan in the couple few decades, but FWIW my girlfriend is a heterosexual female neurologist.)
And I think that once one knows all this about me, there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
For something more quantitative and less stereotypical, I score slightly above median on both the masculinity and the femininity scales of the BSRI, and slightly higher on the latter than on the former.
And I think that once one knows all this about me, there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
Like you, I have a Y chromosome and male genitalia and some traits that are more common among males than females, as well as some traits that are more common among females than males (such as being sexually attracted to men). And, sure, calling myself male is a fine way of summarizing that info, and nobody seems to object.
And I am entirely comfortable describing myself as male and being described that way. I’m comfortable playing a male social role, in other words. It sounds like you are, as well.
By contrast, I have friends who, like you and me, have a Y chromosome and male genitalia and etc. and etc. But they are not comfortable playing a male social role.
So there seems to be a difference between you and me, on the one hand, and my friends, on the other. Consequently, it seems useful to have language that lets us talk about that difference.
Some of those friends refer to themselves as “trans women”. I see no reason not to use that language to refer to them.
By contrast, I have friends who, like you and me, have a Y chromosome and male genitalia and etc. and etc. But they are not comfortable playing a male social role.
Presumably they are also uncomfortable having male physiology? Otherwise why do such people seek to change it? It seems a drastic step to take if the only motivation is to join the other social club.
Presumably they are also uncomfortable having male physiology? Otherwise why do such people seek to change it?
The trans people I know vary widely in terms of whether they seek to alter their sexual physiology. Some do, some don’t, some do in principle but don’t consider the options provided by current technology good enough for the benefits to outweigh the cost.
But that aside, yeah, agreed. That, too, is a difference for which it is sometimes useful to have language.
It seems a drastic step to take if the only motivation is to join the other social club.
Speaking more generally here… presumably that depends a lot on how much we perceive membership in the other “social club” to depend on physiological markers, and the advantages we perceive in such membership. (Just to be clear, I’m not talking here about trans folk, but about people who seek to change their physiology in pursuit of social mobility, which is a whole different thing.)
But I find claims that all this means that my long hair/dislike of football/low aggressiveness/finding it easier to befriend women than men/etc.¹ are somehow suboptimal or make my maleness any less valid to be preposterous and/or offensive. (“So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.”—Frank Zappa) IOW I do have “a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex”. But I don’t see any particular need to throw the baby away with the bath water and stop calling myself a man.
This is why it’s usually said that sex is biological, but gender is socio-cultural. Gender ideals and gender roles can change a lot from one culture to another. You might be a seemingly effeminate man in one place, and yet find that you’re entirely normal in another place. It’s complete delusion to think white North American cultural roles correspond to some Deep Time-driven neurological or evolutionary factor in some special way nobody else on the planet has access to.
Imagine being told that 90% of the planet’s men are less masculine than the median! Does that make the statistician in you perk up his ears and start screaming bloody murder, or what!?
Either way. It doesn’t really matter. An extreme spread between the median and mean, or between the supposed population median and the apparent sample median, indicates that somebody didn’t do their sampling right at some point. Or in other words, they sampled WEIRDoes again instead of global humanity in general.
A lot less than you seem to think. If anything, it’s the feminist-influenced modern western culture that’s the outlier.
I can certainly say that “feminist-influenced modern Western culture” seems a lot more anxious about its manliness and stoicism than the Levantine culture I’m living around right now, which is actually often quite emotive and flamboyant.
Levantine culture I’m living around right now, which is actually often quite emotive and flamboyant.
Does that apply to all feelings or are certain feelings more acceptable for men than others?
I’m from Finland, and you could almost say our emotional culture is the pinnacle of stoicism, especially for men. The main exception is when people are drunk of course, that’s when everything is acceptable.
I don’t entertain ideas about my gender identity at all, and don’t understand people who do. Perhaps as a small child I might have done that, but don’t remember a single instance.
This might make me jump to the conclusion that gender identity isn’t important to me, but I think it’s just as possible that being a man is invisible to me, since there’s no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Listing characteristics that are important for being a man would be quite difficult for me.
I could list many things that women usually do that I dislike, but I can think of many other reasons other than femininity for why I dislike them.
I don’t consider your IOW to be accurate; rejecting the masculine stereotypes is not the same as rejecting the cultural bundle labeled ‘man’, though obviously it’s similar. Most trans men I know are fairly femme, and most trans women fairly butch.
You’re rejecting the subbundle “Manly Man” without rejecting the rest of the bundle. You still, most likely, take up as much space as you need when in a space with other people, without questioning whether that is fair. You still probably make insulting cracks at your friends when hanging out, though they’re jokes, not serious. Your Adam’s apple doesn’t feel like an out-of-place tumor, nor does your penis (dysphoria). And you don’t get the gender-swapped equivalent of this (direct quote from a trans guy):
There’s a feeling with women that I am an outsider. Not in a bad sort of way. not like I’m not included or something that like. Just that that isn’t a group a belong to.
I intend to ask my other trans friends (who I can contact) in the next day or two. Clearly there is an element of having the wrong XML tag, but I strongly expect that there are other elements that cause that. And even if there aren’t, this isn’t a wrong question; being referred to correctly is important to them.
Also, in his words:
I think it’s deeper on a level than what he’s saying about himself. Like he doesn’t like the things that come along in his mind about being a man. I didn’t like being a woman. It had nothing to do with what I was or wasn’t expected to do. It was about what I was told I was.
You still, most likely, take up as much space as you need when in a space with other people, without questioning whether that is fair.
How do I take less space than I need? The fact that I’m physically big is hardly cultural. (I do think that that’s unfortunate when I am in a limited space with someone else, but there’s little I can do about that.)
You still probably make insulting cracks at your friends when hanging out, though they’re jokes, not serious.
Yeah, sometimes I do, but it’s not like women never do.
Your Adam’s apple doesn’t feel like an out-of-place tumor, nor does your penis (dysphoria).
That’s hardly cultural.
And you don’t get the gender-swapped equivalent of this
Women, generally, take up as little space as they can manage. It is not comfortable to sit with your arms held in past your sides and your ankles crossed, yet this is the default position most women will assume when sitting anywhere public. There is the baseline assumption that for 1 pie= the space of a room with 20 people, they deserve less than 1/20th of the pie; any space they take up is intrusive and taking any more pie than they need to not starve is wrong, even if others need no pie.
You still probably make insulting cracks at your friends when hanging out, though they’re jokes, not serious.
Yeah, sometimes I do, but it’s not like women never do.
Generally they don’t. It’s rare, and women who do with any regularity are partially breaking from the bundle. Which happens, of course; people hold to the bundles to different degrees.
Also,
Your Adam’s apple doesn’t feel like an out-of-place tumor, nor does your penis (dysphoria).
That’s hardly cultural.
The feeling of those body parts being part of you is entirely mental and heavily associated with the bundles ‘man’ and ‘woman’. So you should not expect those sensations (or the reverse ‘breasts feel like tumors’ and ‘vagina feels like a wound’) to co-occur with the bundle ‘man’ (or the reverse with ‘woman’).
Your Adam’s apple doesn’t feel like an out-of-place tumor, nor does your penis (dysphoria).
That kind of feeling isn’t limited to sexual characteristics and it’s not clear that the right solution is amputating the offending body part, as opposed to dealing with the feelings of tumorness themselves.
I assume you meant to reply to a different comment, possibly this one. The linked articles site multiple studies and, contra the only criticism offered of one of those studies in this thread, do compare pre and post-transition.
and it’s not clear that amputating the offending body part, as opposed to dealing with the feelings of tumorness themselves.
This looks complete to you? It’s clearly missing a predicate somewhere (technically an I’ = “I-bar”, in the language of structural linguistics), something like ”...themselves will improve the situation.” Perhaps you don’t speak English fluently?
Also, apart from the obvious grammatical incompleteness, I assumed you were going to present an argument. Or at least a citation of the study in question. (That article does not properly cite a study, giving no name or date or other way to find it, as far as I can see.)
Also, a syndrome with 300 cases reported, in total worldwide, versus a more complex syndrome (several related characteristics each appearing in the vast majority of syndrome cases) with a much higher prevalence, is clearly not working by the same mechanism, so the BIID analogy is obviously not useful.
I assumed you were going to present an argument. Or at least a citation of the study in question. (That article does not properly cite a study, giving no name or date or other way to find it, as far as I can see.)
And you presented even less evidence for your claim.
Also, a syndrome with 300 cases reported, in total worldwide
That’s partially the state of society. If we looked say 50 years ago, how many “reported cases” of gender dysphoria would there be?
EDIT: I just noticed that the names of the person I have been debating were not all the same, and that some statements I attributed to Eugene_Nier are actually those of army1987; I hadn’t noticed because I noticed several layers of Eugene_Nier->VAuroch->Eugene_Nier->etc. I will leave these in unmodified for now because I don’t think the comment is valueless enough to retract it.
I’m going to note that I considered tapping out here, but I’m persisting a bit longer in the hope that you are still debating in good faith, though I am losing confidence in that belief. This is edging into mind-killer territory, so I’m also losing confidence in the correctness of my assessment.
That’s partially the state of society. If we looked say 50 years ago, how many “reported cases” of gender dysphoria would there be?
So do you have some reason to think there is a higher percentage of transgender people who report their issue than the percentage of people with BIID currently reported? Because with the drastic consequences to the life of the subject (see discussion), I would expect something like 60-90% of BIID to be reported, and would be extremely surprised if 90% or more were unreported, which removes any possibility of resolving the several-order-of-magnitude discrepancy.
Also, checking 50 years ago, more than 300 had been reported. One operation was carried out in Germany in, IIRC, the early 1930s; the research facility was closed by the Nazi party and all their (pioneering) research results into transgender psychology and biology destroyed for obvious ideological reasons.
And you presented even less evidence for your claim.
What evidence have you presented? I have given substantial description of what being trans feels like, taken as much as possible from direct conversation with trans people I know personally, some of it specifically gathered in response to points you raised. I have made clear distinctions between how you have described your experience (which matches my experience) and how trans people describe theirs. Short of commissioning a study, I have done everything possible here! You have provided personal anecdote and an unclear reference to a paper, poorly cited by someone with an obvious ideological axe to grind.
You also still haven’t justified your assertion that
there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
(which seems trivially false in a cultural context, where group labels are highly significant)
or addressed the distinction provided firsthand
It’s on a deeper level than what [Eugene_Nier] is saying about himself. Like he doesn’t like the things that come along in his mind about being a man. [Auroch’s Trans Friend] didn’t like being a woman. It had nothing to do with what [Friend] was or wasn’t expected to do. It was about what [he] was told [he] was.
Please back up some of these points. (Or else tap out yourself. I suspect similar factors are present on your side as well.)
So do you have some reason to think there is a higher percentage of transgender people who report their issue than the percentage of people with BIID currently reported?
Yes, there is a large “transgender” movement encouraging people to come out of the closet (or to convince themselves that they’re “gender-identity” doesn’t match their bodies). There is not a similar movement for BIID.
What evidence have you presented? I have given substantial description of what being trans feels like, taken as much as possible from direct conversation with trans people I know personally, some of it specifically gathered in response to points you raised.
Note of the evidence I’ve seen you present actually contradicts my claims. What you’re trying to do appears to be the analog of trying to convince someone that god exists by describing the religious experiences of some of your friends.
there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
(which seems trivially false in a cultural context, where group labels are highly significant)
So, would you describe the question you think is left.
What you’re trying to do appears to be the analog of trying to convince someone that god exists by describing the religious experiences of some of your friends.
All I need is an existence proof. Almost all trans people are aware of feelings of being trans well before they’ve heard the term, and there are still many of them. Therefore, trans people exist.
there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
(which seems trivially false in a cultural context, where group labels are highly significant)
So, would you describe the question you think is left.
The obvious unremoveable question, in languages with gendered grammar, is “Which gender should I use to refer to you?” Also, the ever-present bathroom question. Should they be allowed in single-gender spaces/colleges/clubs/etc., and which ones? “Should” in these examples is used because referring to someone as the incorrect gender causes harm; frequently panic attacks, exacerbated depression, and so on.
I’m going to have to tap out now, though. I’m now finding it hard to treat you as not a troll, which means I am being irrational and should stop.
All I need is an existence proof. Almost all trans people are aware of feelings of being trans well before they’ve heard the term, and there are still many of them. Therefore, trans people exist.
No one is deputing that trans people, in the sense of people who claim to be “really the opposite gender”, exist. The questions being discussed are:
1) whether someone wondering whether “they’re trans” is asking a meaningful question, and
2) the related question of what causes people to claim to be “really the opposite gender”.
Let’s consider how you’re explanation applies to the questions above.
The obvious unremoveable question, in languages with gendered grammar, is “Which gender should I use to refer to you?”
This says nothing about question (2). Applying it to question (1) someone asking “am I trans?” becomes someone asking “which pronoun do I want to be referred to by?” Since the pronoun issue appears to be an epiphenomenon of some other issue, this isn’t helpful.
Also, the ever-present bathroom question. Should they be allowed in single-gender spaces/colleges/clubs/etc., and which ones?
This has the same problem as the pronoun definition above, but with the added complication that one needs to consider why the bathrooms/spaces/etc. in question are single-gender. The answer is generally because the attendees feel more comfortable doing whatever they do there if members of the other gender aren’t present. Thus we need to take into account their comfort and not just that of the trans person when doing utility calculations.
In the best possible scenario transitioning is replacing a functional body part with another, not saying we’re exactly there yet.
In most cases BIID would just mean removing a functional body part, so it’s not surprising that those people would be screwed in the long term. What happens if you replace the body part with an equal or a superior prosthetic?
What happens if you replace the body part with an equal or a superior prosthetic?
Then droves of transhumanists suddenly declare that they have BIID. Heck, I’d probably be first in line, especially if it was modular.
Really, transsexuality and BIID seem like just another subset of self-ownership and freedom of expression—a human being should have the right to do whatever they damn well please with their own body, and should have the right to negotiate their presentation with society at large. Whether that means drugs, or tattoos, or or sexual reassignment, or amputation of body parts, or augmentation of body parts, we need to make it cheap, safe, easy, and not a big fucking deal.
Hello! Sorry if my term was offensive, but I actually meant something specific by it. “Transgender” is indeed the preferred term when discussing people who choose to express a gender other than the one their culture wishes to assign them. However, “transsexuality” seemed a more accurate term when discussing those who specifically choose to undergo sexual reassignment surgery (and when comparing with BIID). I understand that there are political connotations to that term, but I needed to be simultaneously precise and concise and meant no offense.
Then droves of transhumanists suddenly declare that they have BIID. Heck, I’d probably be first in line, especially if it was modular.
Sign me up too :)
Really, transsexuality and BIID seem like just another subset of self-ownership and freedom of expression—a human being should have the right to do whatever they damn well please with their own body, and should have the right to negotiate their presentation with society at large. Whether that means drugs, or tattoos, or or sexual reassignment, or amputation of body parts, or augmentation of body parts, we need to make it cheap, safe, easy, and not a big fucking deal.
I agree on all accounts, but unfortunately I think most health professionals partly disagree. I think most of the rational objections to those things happen because most societies are designed in a way that makes other people pay for those choices. I expect these objections become obsolete in the future, since self-modifications will likely be trivially cheap.
Well, sure. That sentence was not meant to encompass all possible types of self modification. I was talking about general objections to modification based on the price tag today, so if a great number will become trivially cheap, most current objections of such type will become obsolete.
and should have the right to negotiate their presentation with society at large.
Note that the right to negotiate does not imply any particular outcome. For example, the result of such negotiation might be the society shunning that individual.
and not a big fucking deal.
You don’t get to determine what constitutes a BFD for other free individuals.
Note that the right to negotiate does not imply any particular outcome. For example, the result of such negotiation might be the society shunning that individual.
Of course. I think I need to recalibrate my expectations, since I thought this was obvious enough that it didn’t need to be stated. Thank you for the update!
You don’t get to determine what constitutes a BFD for other free individuals.
Absolutely not, but there’s a difference between determining what constitutes a BDF for free individuals, and what constitutes a BFD for governments and medical ethics committees. That’s why (for example) most modern democracies have Constitutional limits on what freedoms the populace can vote to suppress, for example.
Free individuals absolutely have the right to be disgusted, confused, or disappointed by people who choose a particular avenue of self-expression. But those rights end at the point where their own expression of disgust, confusion or disappointment inflicts material harm on the expresser—just like the original person’s right to self-expression ends where it inflicts material harm on others.
And while the boundary for “material harm” might be fuzzy, that doesn’t allow us the sophistry of defining whatever makes us uncomfortable as ‘material harm’.
I thought this was obvious enough that it didn’t need to be stated.
Well, it’s a bit complicated because the “right to negotiate” doesn’t usually mean anything. Or, if you want it to mean something it gets messy and fuzzy.
Rights generally exist as pairs—someone’s right has a counterpart of someone else’s duty. For example, the right to free speech has the counterpart of the duty of the government to not stop you from speaking. So “the right to negotiate” implies a duty on the part of the society to negotiate with you. And what does that mean? I don’t know.
Consider e.g. the witches and the Inquisition. Do witches have a “right to negotiate”? Sure. Does it do them much good? Not really.
there’s a difference between determining what constitutes a BDF for free individuals, and what constitutes a BFD for governments and medical ethics committees.
That is certainly true, but in your original post did you mean BFD on the part of the government, or did you mean BFD on the part of the society?
That is certainly true, but in your original post did you mean BFD on the part of the government, or did you mean BFD on the part of the society?
I meant both, but at different strengths.
I meant “it shouldn’t be a BFD to society” in the sense that I think that a society that considers it a BFD has some really weird and sad priorities, but that’s my personal opinion and carries as much weight as me complaining about you kids these days with your pokey-mans and your tweeds.
I meant “it shouldn’t be a BFD for the government” in the sense that the government shouldn’t pass laws to restrict how people choose to modify or portray themselves, that I only barely accept current public nudity/decency laws in that there’s some fights that just aren’t worth the energy/outcome ratio, but that I’m personally willing to invest quite a lot of energy, in general, towards abolishing laws which tell people what they can and can’t do with their anatomy, biochemistry, and passive social behavior. Of course other people can believe differently, and invest their own energy accordingly, but they’ll find themselves at odds with my own efforts.
Really, transsexuality and BIID seem like just another subset of self-ownership and freedom of expression—a human being should have the right to do whatever they damn well please with their own body,
There is a difference between saying someone should have a right to do X and saying doing X is a good idea. Specifically, the question is should society be encouraging people to do these things?
To be honest, I’m not sure off-hand how I would even recognize something as a “means of self-coordinating” for a system as complex as a state or a society. How do you do so, and what do you have in mind as candidates?
The mechanisms whereby the state passes, interprets, enforces, refrains from enforcing, and repeals laws in order to coordinate the behavior of its citizens seem anything but simple to me.
One example, this one comes from the assisted suicide debate, is the following: Suppose I tell just about anyone that I want to die, the reaction is likely to be to very strongly encourage me to talk to a therapist. Now suppose someone with a disability generally considered extremely severe says want to die, the reaction is likely to range from mild attempts to talk him out of it, to calling someone who specializes in assisted suicides.
What happens if you replace the body part with an equal or a superior prosthetic?
That depends on a whole bunch of factors. Maintenance schedule and expense, for example. Availability of spare parts. An interesting question is who has control over firmware. Legal status is another interesting question (for a reference point, in the US you do not own (in the property sense) your own body).
I mean it literally. Under US law you do not have property rights in your own body, organs, or biological information.
With prosthetics it’s an interesting dilemma. If you argue it’s part of your body you don’t own it. And if you argue it’s just a piece of hardware that you happen to own, well, it might be seized as part of bankruptcy proceedings, for example.
“At some point during my development I gained a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex.”
There was once an old Saturday Night Live skit about nationality-change operations. But given your explanation, wouldn’t that imply that some people might actually think of themselves as a different nationality than the one they were born into? It’s certainly a cultural bundle, after all. Why don’t we see that?
First of all: We don’t? It’s less visible, certainly, but I know people who have felt they had a lot more in common with another country (or just another part of the country, within the US) than where they were born, and usually move there. Of course, moving is comparatively easy and isn’t stigmatized.
Second: In my (purely American) experience, nationality is less remarked upon. If you assume it takes (for a random number) 300 mental notes of discord to notice that being treated as part of a bundle feels inappropriate, it might take 50 days for a transgender person, and three years for a “transnationality” person. (Okay, 300 was significantly low.) So having them not notice to the extent that they feel the need to change is plausible.
Third: Nationality isn’t as low-level a drive as gender. Tribe-membership is, but co-opting it to nationalist sentiment not so much. And I certainly know people who felt intensely out of place in the tribes they were born into; political alignment, sports, family ties, etc. I’d be quite surprised if you don’t know several such people.
So some combination of those reasons? And possibly others. I don’t know which of these if any is accurate (and my trans definition is obviously imperfect). But I don’t think any of them is particularly complex, and they seem to explain the trends.
Of course, moving is comparatively easy and isn’t stigmatized.
That doesn’t work so well when the nationality is also associated with physical differences. If a white person were to say “I feel I’m really Chinese”, and it was clear that he meant it and it wasn’t just a metaphor meaning “I studied China a lot”, people would think he’s an idiot. And nobody ever wants to get an operation to make their facial features look more Chinese because they feel they are Chinese. Furthermore, he need not express an interest in moving to do this—what if he says “I feel I’m Chinese-American” (in the same sense that a person with Chinese heritage is, again not just meaning “I studied China”)?
I doubt there’s much neurobiology backing it up on a higher level than “Look! These brains are different! Let me make a huge list of rationalisations why.”
From a medical POV neurobiology could help, but isn’t necessary to take action.
ETA: Regarding the first point, finding neurological differences in different kinds of minds should be the default assumption, and shouldn’t in general make the experiences of these minds more or less valid. I think validating or invalidating empirical psychology via biology with our crude tools is a fallacy, and wonder if there’s a name for it. I suppose it could be some kind of a subtype of the naturalistic fallacy.
Why? Also could we unpack the “I am trans” hypothesis? It seems to say “sometime during development something flipped the secondary sexual characteristics in my brain but not any of the ones outside it” given the type of spaghetti code evolution tends to produce, this seems rather unlikely. On the other hand, people convince themselves of weird beliefs and take them seriously enough to generate crises fairly regularly.
And yet...
Well, one obvious explanation for people thinking themselves trans is that maybe one of the secondary sexual characteristics flipped or maybe even something not related to sex at all. As a result they don’t quite fit in, then they here about the transsexuality movement and convince themselves that they’ve found the problem.
Note that this is consistent with the twin studies. All the brain scan stuff strikes me as the “we picked it up on a brain scan therefore it must be biologically caused” fallacy.
Does it matter to you if it’s biologically caused all else being equal?
Biologically caused is a problematic expression. Everything in the brain is biologically caused if we’re generous enough. I assume you mean genetically caused or developmentally caused.
Well, biologically as opposed to memetically, for starters.
This is a potentially valid but minority interpretation of the statement “X is trans.”, held by no trans people I have discussed the subject with (and it tends to come up, eventually, across a sample size of a dozen middling-to-close friends). The more common one, which all trans people I know hold, is “At some point during my development I gained a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex.” Generally this is also a strong attraction to the other major gender bundle, but sometimes the trans person finds that bundle equally off-putting and rejects both, and others exchange between the two regularly or hold themselves to be both.
Also, the poor coding practices which evolution uses make this more, not less, likely to occur. Most people who study trans issues, history, etc. agree that there were probably high rates of ‘masked’ trans people in the past, who kept their personal identification preferences secret.
But that’s way too broad IMO.
I mean, I have an Y chromosome. I have male genitalia and no desire to ever change this. (I also happen to have quite a few traits that are way more common among males than among females, e.g. being about 1.88 m (6′2″) tall, having a baritone vocal range, having quite a lot of terminal facial and body hair, and being sexually attracted to women.) I find calling myself male a quite reasonable way of summarizing that info.
But I find claims that all this means that my long hair/dislike of football/low aggressiveness/finding it easier to befriend women than men/etc.¹ are somehow suboptimal or make my maleness any less valid to be preposterous and/or offensive. (“So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.”—Frank Zappa) IOW I do have “a strong repulsion from the particular cultural bundle labeled with the gender which matches the dominant one for my sex”. But I don’t see any particular need to throw the baby away with the bath water and stop calling myself a man.
(As for neurological differences, I haven’t got a brain scan in the couple few decades, but FWIW my girlfriend is a heterosexual female neurologist.)
And I think that once one knows all this about me, there’s no question left to ask whether I actually am a man.
For something more quantitative and less stereotypical, I score slightly above median on both the masculinity and the femininity scales of the BSRI, and slightly higher on the latter than on the former.
Like you, I have a Y chromosome and male genitalia and some traits that are more common among males than females, as well as some traits that are more common among females than males (such as being sexually attracted to men). And, sure, calling myself male is a fine way of summarizing that info, and nobody seems to object.
And I am entirely comfortable describing myself as male and being described that way. I’m comfortable playing a male social role, in other words. It sounds like you are, as well.
By contrast, I have friends who, like you and me, have a Y chromosome and male genitalia and etc. and etc. But they are not comfortable playing a male social role.
So there seems to be a difference between you and me, on the one hand, and my friends, on the other. Consequently, it seems useful to have language that lets us talk about that difference.
Some of those friends refer to themselves as “trans women”. I see no reason not to use that language to refer to them.
Presumably they are also uncomfortable having male physiology? Otherwise why do such people seek to change it? It seems a drastic step to take if the only motivation is to join the other social club.
The trans people I know vary widely in terms of whether they seek to alter their sexual physiology. Some do, some don’t, some do in principle but don’t consider the options provided by current technology good enough for the benefits to outweigh the cost.
But that aside, yeah, agreed. That, too, is a difference for which it is sometimes useful to have language.
Speaking more generally here… presumably that depends a lot on how much we perceive membership in the other “social club” to depend on physiological markers, and the advantages we perceive in such membership. (Just to be clear, I’m not talking here about trans folk, but about people who seek to change their physiology in pursuit of social mobility, which is a whole different thing.)
This is why it’s usually said that sex is biological, but gender is socio-cultural. Gender ideals and gender roles can change a lot from one culture to another. You might be a seemingly effeminate man in one place, and yet find that you’re entirely normal in another place. It’s complete delusion to think white North American cultural roles correspond to some Deep Time-driven neurological or evolutionary factor in some special way nobody else on the planet has access to.
Imagine being told that 90% of the planet’s men are less masculine than the median! Does that make the statistician in you perk up his ears and start screaming bloody murder, or what!?
Than the median man, or than the median person?
Either way. It doesn’t really matter. An extreme spread between the median and mean, or between the supposed population median and the apparent sample median, indicates that somebody didn’t do their sampling right at some point. Or in other words, they sampled WEIRDoes again instead of global humanity in general.
(I had misread “less masculine” as “more masculine”.)
A lot less than you seem to think. If anything, it’s the feminist-influenced modern western culture that’s the outlier.
Sorry, is imagining someone saying something stupid supposed to be an argument for something?
I can certainly say that “feminist-influenced modern Western culture” seems a lot more anxious about its manliness and stoicism than the Levantine culture I’m living around right now, which is actually often quite emotive and flamboyant.
Does that apply to all feelings or are certain feelings more acceptable for men than others?
I’m from Finland, and you could almost say our emotional culture is the pinnacle of stoicism, especially for men. The main exception is when people are drunk of course, that’s when everything is acceptable.
Many/most feelings.
I don’t entertain ideas about my gender identity at all, and don’t understand people who do. Perhaps as a small child I might have done that, but don’t remember a single instance.
This might make me jump to the conclusion that gender identity isn’t important to me, but I think it’s just as possible that being a man is invisible to me, since there’s no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Listing characteristics that are important for being a man would be quite difficult for me.
I could list many things that women usually do that I dislike, but I can think of many other reasons other than femininity for why I dislike them.
I don’t consider your IOW to be accurate; rejecting the masculine stereotypes is not the same as rejecting the cultural bundle labeled ‘man’, though obviously it’s similar. Most trans men I know are fairly femme, and most trans women fairly butch.
How so? I don’t suppose you consider stuff like height or vocal range as cultural, do you?
You’re rejecting the subbundle “Manly Man” without rejecting the rest of the bundle. You still, most likely, take up as much space as you need when in a space with other people, without questioning whether that is fair. You still probably make insulting cracks at your friends when hanging out, though they’re jokes, not serious. Your Adam’s apple doesn’t feel like an out-of-place tumor, nor does your penis (dysphoria). And you don’t get the gender-swapped equivalent of this (direct quote from a trans guy):
I intend to ask my other trans friends (who I can contact) in the next day or two. Clearly there is an element of having the wrong XML tag, but I strongly expect that there are other elements that cause that. And even if there aren’t, this isn’t a wrong question; being referred to correctly is important to them.
Also, in his words:
How do I take less space than I need? The fact that I’m physically big is hardly cultural. (I do think that that’s unfortunate when I am in a limited space with someone else, but there’s little I can do about that.)
Yeah, sometimes I do, but it’s not like women never do.
That’s hardly cultural.
I actually usually do. (There are exceptions.)
Women, generally, take up as little space as they can manage. It is not comfortable to sit with your arms held in past your sides and your ankles crossed, yet this is the default position most women will assume when sitting anywhere public. There is the baseline assumption that for 1 pie= the space of a room with 20 people, they deserve less than 1/20th of the pie; any space they take up is intrusive and taking any more pie than they need to not starve is wrong, even if others need no pie.
Generally they don’t. It’s rare, and women who do with any regularity are partially breaking from the bundle. Which happens, of course; people hold to the bundles to different degrees.
Also,
The feeling of those body parts being part of you is entirely mental and heavily associated with the bundles ‘man’ and ‘woman’. So you should not expect those sensations (or the reverse ‘breasts feel like tumors’ and ‘vagina feels like a wound’) to co-occur with the bundle ‘man’ (or the reverse with ‘woman’).
That kind of feeling isn’t limited to sexual characteristics and it’s not clear that the right solution is amputating the offending body part, as opposed to dealing with the feelings of tumorness themselves.
You didn’t finish writing this comment. I will wait until you do to address this point.
I assume you meant to reply to a different comment, possibly this one. The linked articles site multiple studies and, contra the only criticism offered of one of those studies in this thread, do compare pre and post-transition.
This looks complete to you? It’s clearly missing a predicate somewhere (technically an I’ = “I-bar”, in the language of structural linguistics), something like ”...themselves will improve the situation.” Perhaps you don’t speak English fluently?
Also, apart from the obvious grammatical incompleteness, I assumed you were going to present an argument. Or at least a citation of the study in question. (That article does not properly cite a study, giving no name or date or other way to find it, as far as I can see.)
Also, a syndrome with 300 cases reported, in total worldwide, versus a more complex syndrome (several related characteristics each appearing in the vast majority of syndrome cases) with a much higher prevalence, is clearly not working by the same mechanism, so the BIID analogy is obviously not useful.
Sorry, fixed.
And you presented even less evidence for your claim.
That’s partially the state of society. If we looked say 50 years ago, how many “reported cases” of gender dysphoria would there be?
EDIT: I just noticed that the names of the person I have been debating were not all the same, and that some statements I attributed to Eugene_Nier are actually those of army1987; I hadn’t noticed because I noticed several layers of Eugene_Nier->VAuroch->Eugene_Nier->etc. I will leave these in unmodified for now because I don’t think the comment is valueless enough to retract it.
I’m going to note that I considered tapping out here, but I’m persisting a bit longer in the hope that you are still debating in good faith, though I am losing confidence in that belief. This is edging into mind-killer territory, so I’m also losing confidence in the correctness of my assessment.
So do you have some reason to think there is a higher percentage of transgender people who report their issue than the percentage of people with BIID currently reported? Because with the drastic consequences to the life of the subject (see discussion), I would expect something like 60-90% of BIID to be reported, and would be extremely surprised if 90% or more were unreported, which removes any possibility of resolving the several-order-of-magnitude discrepancy.
Also, checking 50 years ago, more than 300 had been reported. One operation was carried out in Germany in, IIRC, the early 1930s; the research facility was closed by the Nazi party and all their (pioneering) research results into transgender psychology and biology destroyed for obvious ideological reasons.
What evidence have you presented? I have given substantial description of what being trans feels like, taken as much as possible from direct conversation with trans people I know personally, some of it specifically gathered in response to points you raised. I have made clear distinctions between how you have described your experience (which matches my experience) and how trans people describe theirs. Short of commissioning a study, I have done everything possible here! You have provided personal anecdote and an unclear reference to a paper, poorly cited by someone with an obvious ideological axe to grind.
You also still haven’t justified your assertion that
(which seems trivially false in a cultural context, where group labels are highly significant)
or addressed the distinction provided firsthand
Please back up some of these points. (Or else tap out yourself. I suspect similar factors are present on your side as well.)
Yes, there is a large “transgender” movement encouraging people to come out of the closet (or to convince themselves that they’re “gender-identity” doesn’t match their bodies). There is not a similar movement for BIID.
Note of the evidence I’ve seen you present actually contradicts my claims. What you’re trying to do appears to be the analog of trying to convince someone that god exists by describing the religious experiences of some of your friends.
So, would you describe the question you think is left.
All I need is an existence proof. Almost all trans people are aware of feelings of being trans well before they’ve heard the term, and there are still many of them. Therefore, trans people exist.
The obvious unremoveable question, in languages with gendered grammar, is “Which gender should I use to refer to you?” Also, the ever-present bathroom question. Should they be allowed in single-gender spaces/colleges/clubs/etc., and which ones? “Should” in these examples is used because referring to someone as the incorrect gender causes harm; frequently panic attacks, exacerbated depression, and so on.
I’m going to have to tap out now, though. I’m now finding it hard to treat you as not a troll, which means I am being irrational and should stop.
No one is deputing that trans people, in the sense of people who claim to be “really the opposite gender”, exist. The questions being discussed are:
1) whether someone wondering whether “they’re trans” is asking a meaningful question, and
2) the related question of what causes people to claim to be “really the opposite gender”.
Let’s consider how you’re explanation applies to the questions above.
This says nothing about question (2). Applying it to question (1) someone asking “am I trans?” becomes someone asking “which pronoun do I want to be referred to by?” Since the pronoun issue appears to be an epiphenomenon of some other issue, this isn’t helpful.
This has the same problem as the pronoun definition above, but with the added complication that one needs to consider why the bathrooms/spaces/etc. in question are single-gender. The answer is generally because the attendees feel more comfortable doing whatever they do there if members of the other gender aren’t present. Thus we need to take into account their comfort and not just that of the trans person when doing utility calculations.
In the best possible scenario transitioning is replacing a functional body part with another, not saying we’re exactly there yet.
In most cases BIID would just mean removing a functional body part, so it’s not surprising that those people would be screwed in the long term. What happens if you replace the body part with an equal or a superior prosthetic?
Then droves of transhumanists suddenly declare that they have BIID. Heck, I’d probably be first in line, especially if it was modular.
Really, transsexuality and BIID seem like just another subset of self-ownership and freedom of expression—a human being should have the right to do whatever they damn well please with their own body, and should have the right to negotiate their presentation with society at large. Whether that means drugs, or tattoos, or or sexual reassignment, or amputation of body parts, or augmentation of body parts, we need to make it cheap, safe, easy, and not a big fucking deal.
hello! i am transgender, and i would like to friendly mention that the word is “transgender” is usually preferred
but words are hard, so if this doesn’t come across as friendly, i have done words poorly :c
Hello! Sorry if my term was offensive, but I actually meant something specific by it. “Transgender” is indeed the preferred term when discussing people who choose to express a gender other than the one their culture wishes to assign them. However, “transsexuality” seemed a more accurate term when discussing those who specifically choose to undergo sexual reassignment surgery (and when comparing with BIID). I understand that there are political connotations to that term, but I needed to be simultaneously precise and concise and meant no offense.
Sign me up too :)
I agree on all accounts, but unfortunately I think most health professionals partly disagree. I think most of the rational objections to those things happen because most societies are designed in a way that makes other people pay for those choices. I expect these objections become obsolete in the future, since self-modifications will likely be trivially cheap.
Depends on the modification.
Well, sure. That sentence was not meant to encompass all possible types of self modification. I was talking about general objections to modification based on the price tag today, so if a great number will become trivially cheap, most current objections of such type will become obsolete.
Note that the right to negotiate does not imply any particular outcome. For example, the result of such negotiation might be the society shunning that individual.
You don’t get to determine what constitutes a BFD for other free individuals.
Of course. I think I need to recalibrate my expectations, since I thought this was obvious enough that it didn’t need to be stated. Thank you for the update!
Absolutely not, but there’s a difference between determining what constitutes a BDF for free individuals, and what constitutes a BFD for governments and medical ethics committees. That’s why (for example) most modern democracies have Constitutional limits on what freedoms the populace can vote to suppress, for example.
Free individuals absolutely have the right to be disgusted, confused, or disappointed by people who choose a particular avenue of self-expression. But those rights end at the point where their own expression of disgust, confusion or disappointment inflicts material harm on the expresser—just like the original person’s right to self-expression ends where it inflicts material harm on others.
And while the boundary for “material harm” might be fuzzy, that doesn’t allow us the sophistry of defining whatever makes us uncomfortable as ‘material harm’.
Well, it’s a bit complicated because the “right to negotiate” doesn’t usually mean anything. Or, if you want it to mean something it gets messy and fuzzy.
Rights generally exist as pairs—someone’s right has a counterpart of someone else’s duty. For example, the right to free speech has the counterpart of the duty of the government to not stop you from speaking. So “the right to negotiate” implies a duty on the part of the society to negotiate with you. And what does that mean? I don’t know.
Consider e.g. the witches and the Inquisition. Do witches have a “right to negotiate”? Sure. Does it do them much good? Not really.
That is certainly true, but in your original post did you mean BFD on the part of the government, or did you mean BFD on the part of the society?
I meant both, but at different strengths.
I meant “it shouldn’t be a BFD to society” in the sense that I think that a society that considers it a BFD has some really weird and sad priorities, but that’s my personal opinion and carries as much weight as me complaining about you kids these days with your pokey-mans and your tweeds.
I meant “it shouldn’t be a BFD for the government” in the sense that the government shouldn’t pass laws to restrict how people choose to modify or portray themselves, that I only barely accept current public nudity/decency laws in that there’s some fights that just aren’t worth the energy/outcome ratio, but that I’m personally willing to invest quite a lot of energy, in general, towards abolishing laws which tell people what they can and can’t do with their anatomy, biochemistry, and passive social behavior. Of course other people can believe differently, and invest their own energy accordingly, but they’ll find themselves at odds with my own efforts.
There is a difference between saying someone should have a right to do X and saying doing X is a good idea. Specifically, the question is should society be encouraging people to do these things?
“Society” is not one entity with a single will. It’s a messy ecosystem which usually does a lot of different things at the same time.
I am not sure what does the expression “society should” mean. Unless you actually have “state” in mind.
It’s not clear to me that the “state” is any less of a messy ecosystem which usually does a lot of different things at the same time.
The “state” does have some means of self-coordinating and allowing dominant forces to alter the whole. Which I don’t think society does.
To be honest, I’m not sure off-hand how I would even recognize something as a “means of self-coordinating” for a system as complex as a state or a society. How do you do so, and what do you have in mind as candidates?
A simple example: laws.
The mechanisms whereby the state passes, interprets, enforces, refrains from enforcing, and repeals laws in order to coordinate the behavior of its citizens seem anything but simple to me.
The mechanisms are complex, but the outcome is reasonably consistent.
The two areas where the state is much less of a messy ecosystem is the legal system and the direct application of force (military, police).
The expression “state should” usually has a clear meaning which involves passing laws or enforcing them.
One example, this one comes from the assisted suicide debate, is the following: Suppose I tell just about anyone that I want to die, the reaction is likely to be to very strongly encourage me to talk to a therapist. Now suppose someone with a disability generally considered extremely severe says want to die, the reaction is likely to range from mild attempts to talk him out of it, to calling someone who specializes in assisted suicides.
That depends on a whole bunch of factors. Maintenance schedule and expense, for example. Availability of spare parts. An interesting question is who has control over firmware. Legal status is another interesting question (for a reference point, in the US you do not own (in the property sense) your own body).
I wonder if we’ll get a new “dysmorphic disorder” in DSM-VII for “excessive” prosthetic modding spiraling out of control ;)
I’m not sure I understand you. Isn’t borrowing someone’s prosthetic leg without permission called stealing?
I mean it literally. Under US law you do not have property rights in your own body, organs, or biological information.
With prosthetics it’s an interesting dilemma. If you argue it’s part of your body you don’t own it. And if you argue it’s just a piece of hardware that you happen to own, well, it might be seized as part of bankruptcy proceedings, for example.
There was once an old Saturday Night Live skit about nationality-change operations. But given your explanation, wouldn’t that imply that some people might actually think of themselves as a different nationality than the one they were born into? It’s certainly a cultural bundle, after all. Why don’t we see that?
First of all: We don’t? It’s less visible, certainly, but I know people who have felt they had a lot more in common with another country (or just another part of the country, within the US) than where they were born, and usually move there. Of course, moving is comparatively easy and isn’t stigmatized.
Second: In my (purely American) experience, nationality is less remarked upon. If you assume it takes (for a random number) 300 mental notes of discord to notice that being treated as part of a bundle feels inappropriate, it might take 50 days for a transgender person, and three years for a “transnationality” person. (Okay, 300 was significantly low.) So having them not notice to the extent that they feel the need to change is plausible.
Third: Nationality isn’t as low-level a drive as gender. Tribe-membership is, but co-opting it to nationalist sentiment not so much. And I certainly know people who felt intensely out of place in the tribes they were born into; political alignment, sports, family ties, etc. I’d be quite surprised if you don’t know several such people.
So some combination of those reasons? And possibly others. I don’t know which of these if any is accurate (and my trans definition is obviously imperfect). But I don’t think any of them is particularly complex, and they seem to explain the trends.
That doesn’t work so well when the nationality is also associated with physical differences. If a white person were to say “I feel I’m really Chinese”, and it was clear that he meant it and it wasn’t just a metaphor meaning “I studied China a lot”, people would think he’s an idiot. And nobody ever wants to get an operation to make their facial features look more Chinese because they feel they are Chinese. Furthermore, he need not express an interest in moving to do this—what if he says “I feel I’m Chinese-American” (in the same sense that a person with Chinese heritage is, again not just meaning “I studied China”)?
I doubt there’s much neurobiology backing it up on a higher level than “Look! These brains are different! Let me make a huge list of rationalisations why.”
From a medical POV neurobiology could help, but isn’t necessary to take action.
ETA: Regarding the first point, finding neurological differences in different kinds of minds should be the default assumption, and shouldn’t in general make the experiences of these minds more or less valid. I think validating or invalidating empirical psychology via biology with our crude tools is a fallacy, and wonder if there’s a name for it. I suppose it could be some kind of a subtype of the naturalistic fallacy.