QT: Who is trans “inclusive” language really for?

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[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (116 children)

And why are men not expected to be inclusive too? Why are words like ejaculators, prostate havers, impregnators, individuals with testicles, non-birthing parents, bepenised people, and etcetera not being imposed?

well, from an equality standpoint, yes, in the same contexts in which anatomy based terms are used for subjects pertaining to the female biological sex, anatomy based terms should also be used for the male biological sex. Also, "non-birthing parent" is being pushed for (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22non-birthing+parents%22&rlz=1C1GIWA_enDE641DE641&oq=%22non-birthing+parents%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i30.4615j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 with https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9262007/Academics-Australian-National-University-told-staff-stop-using-word-mother.html in particular) and while I could not find "people with prostate" I could find "people with prostate cancer" ( https://www.google.com/search?q=%22people+with+prostate%22&rlz=1C1GIWA_enDE641DE641&sxsrf=ALeKk01zFurYGzvAtuVhwzvj8kSLYpH6TQ:1613738413313&ei=rbEvYMfBEuTBlAa0-6iIBQ&start=0&sa=N&ved=2ahUKEwiHzIqH_PXuAhXkIMUKHbQ9ClE4MhDy0wN6BAgGEDo&biw=1920&bih=975 ) instead of "men with prostate cancer".

In these last years trans activists have preached, quite successfully, about the importance of using “inclusive language”. Words related to womanhood like woman, mother, breastfeeding, among others are now considered exclusionary of trans identified people. As result, people are pressured to be inclusive of trans people and not trigger them when talking. That is how terms like people with periods, menstruators, pregnant people, birthing parent, uterus-havers, individuals with cervix, people who bleed, chestfeeding, non-prostate owners, among many other have entered the scene. What is more, transactivists have not considered women’s opinion over this change in language, regardless of how dehumanizing this language often is.

Also, despite how much they boast about being intersectional, they don’t care either how confusing this new language may be for non-native speakers or for people with lower levels of education.

well, my solution (that I wanted to propose in a thread to the same subject) was something along the lines of "Men/Women and other people with [anatomical term]" and "Men/Women and other people who [biological process]" . That would be inclusive of people with poor language skills/poor anatomical knowledge while also being inclusive of transgender (who, depending on the state of transition, might still have the anatomical features/biological processes of their birth sex) and intersex people (who, depending on the intersex condition in question, might have anatomical features/biological processes that are at odds with the sex of the gender they are identifying as). This has also the advantage of clarifying which anatomical feature/biological process is the relevant one in question.

Questions 1 and 2 aren't directed toward me, so I am skipping them.

For all, don’t you think it’s contradictory that you complain that GC reduce people to their genitals when we insist on a sex-based definition of women and men, and then you impose new words that reduce women to their body parts and body functions?

"men" and "women", as understood under the transgender paradigm, are social categories, not biological ones. Of course, for the purpose of healthcare, biology still has to be adressed, and because the scientific terminology relating to biological functions is often cold, clinical and difficult to understand, language using this terminology is also cold, clinical and difficult to understand. Therefore my suggested solution of "Men/Women and other people with/who ...", covering both the typical cases (non-intersex cisgender people) while still including the atypical ones (intersex and/or transgender people)

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (84 children)

"men" and "women", as understood under the transgender paradigm, are social categories, not biological ones.

But most of the world is not going to accept "the transgender paradigm" as a substitute for reality. Sex is biological, and no matter how hard you try to replace the reality of sex with newfangled social constructs, sex isn't going away. You can't erase it, override it, paper it over or make people unsee it.

Your post just illustrates how unwieldy and unconvincing '"the transgender paradigm" is. And speaking of your post, is "transgender punctuation and SPAG" a new thing too?

[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (83 children)

But most of the world is not going to accept "the transgender paradigm" as a substitute for reality. Sex is biological, and no matter how hard you try to replace the reality of sex with newfangled social constructs, sex isn't going away. You can't erase it, override it, paper it over or make people unsee it.

who is trying to replace biological sex with social constructs? What is attempted, is to stop going by biological sex and instead go by gender identity where biological sex shouldn't matter (e.g. outside the bedroom or medical care). And of course it is possible for a transgender person to be seen as a member of their gender identity instead of their birth sex.

And speaking of your post, is "transgender punctuation and SPAG" a new thing too?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Replacing well defined and understood medical terminology with the transgender paradigm is replacing biological sex with a social construct.

The transgender paradigm is a social construct and sex is observed biology.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (13 children)

Replacing well defined and understood medical terminology with the transgender paradigm is replacing biological sex with a social construct.

The transgender paradigm is a social construct and sex is observed biology.

a.) gender identity is not a social construct.

b.) why should gendered pronouns or the categories "man" and "woman" be based on biological sex?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

What observable evidence is there? Not self reported feelings, actual biological processes. Gender is a social construct itself. Identity is a psychological construct, not an observable reality. It is all ideas and theory and a whole lot of sexism.

The terms are sexed. Applying gender rhetoric and sexism to them is a choice. Woman means adult human female, not person who likes things assigned to female people by a patriarchal society.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

What observable evidence is there? Not self reported feelings, actual biological processes. Gender is a social construct itself. Identity is a psychological construct, not an observable reality. It is all ideas and theory and a whole lot of sexism.

Gender Identity is very much not a social construct. If it were, conversion therapy to turn transgender people cisgender would work, which it very much doesn't ( https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-conversion-therapy-associated-severe-psychological-distress-n1052416 )

In terms of observable criteria, there is the clear distress felt by gender dysphoric transgender people at their physical sexed anatomy, that is lessend when the physical sexed anatomy is changed from the one of the birth sex to the one of the gender the person identifies as. Gender dysphoria is a neurological medical issue that, similar to clinical depression, is currently diagnosed based on psychological means but is treated via medical ones (antidepressiva for clinical depression, hormone therapy for gender dysphoria)

The terms are sexed. Applying gender rhetoric and sexism to them is a choice.

no, they aren't. Of how many people you call "she" or "him", "woman" or "man" every day do you know with certainty which gonads they have?

not person who likes things assigned to female people by a patriarchal society.

really? Having Breasts, feminine facial features, lack of facial hair (usually), high levels of estrogen and a vagina were assigned to female people by a patriarchal society?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

How do you make the leap to conversion therapy not working being the same thing as observable biological processes? How does that make it not a social construct? Gender is a social construct so how is an identity based on it biologically evident?

how many do I correctly know the gonads.

98%or so. Intersex disorders are quite rare. The existence of people with disorders of sexual development is not a reason to stop using sexed terms for the vast majority of people. Male and female are clear and discrete categories. Disorders of sexual development are discrete categories of males and females with specific disorders. Muddying up everything observed about sexual development helps nothing and nobody.

Having Breasts, feminine facial features, lack of facial hair (usually), high levels of estrogen and a vagina were assigned to female people by a patriarchal society?

No those are sexed features. Sex is not defined by comfort or enjoyment of ones sexed features. Discomfort or distress with ones sex and sexed features does not change ones sex. It is not evidence of a gender identity. It is not a logical reason to erase sexed terms.

The erasure of sexed terms is the choice to ignore sex based oppression, or to make the wild claim that infanticide of female infants, forced births, child marriages, and all other forms of sexed oppression faced by female people is actually due to a female gender identity.

[–]ColoredTwiceIntersex female, medical malpractice victim, lesbian 13 insightful - 2 fun13 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

99.982% to be precise. Total amount of intersex people is around 0.16-0.2% of population and amount of intersex people with ambigious genitals or missmatched chromosomes are just 0.018%. If taking into account only genitals, then around 0.009-0.01%. So in 99.991% cases genitals = sex. And in most of cases just few extra tests needed to determine. It is around 3000-30000 or less people with DSD per country (depending on population of it). There much more transgender people than us.

Almost none of intersex people are trans (same percent as in general population), so I don't understand why we even being mentioned. We are not connected to this issue in any way and our problems are completely different.

We do not want to be called third sex, other or "less female/male". We are the same as everyone else, just with congenital problems with sexual development - like people with 6 fingers, or people with congenital heart disorders, and so on. We are neither lesser, nor "other". Othering hurt us and leads to IGM and mistreatment.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

How do you make the leap to conversion therapy not working being the same thing as observable biological processes? How does that make it not a social construct?

If gender identity were a social construct, a change in social enviroment would be able to change it.

How does that make it not a social construct? Gender is a social construct so how is an identity based on it biologically evident?

if by "gender" you mean "gender role", then "gender" is a social construct. But gender identity is not based on gender role and is not a social construct.

how many do I correctly know the gonads.

98%or so.

a. ) now you are straight up forging quotes. What I wrote was Of how many people you call "she" or "him", "woman" or "man" every day do you know with certainty which gonads they have? . Under b.) I will treat your answer as if you had actually answered my question.

b.) really? You have examined the gonads of 98% of all people you have ever called "she","him", "woman" or "man" ? Or have you actually (you know, like normal people) looked at their physical body (and most likely in the vast majority of cases their clothed physical body, meaning you have no idea what kind of genitals they have) and assumed from their secondary sexed characteristics?

No those are sexed features.

precisely.

Sex is not defined by comfort or enjoyment of ones sexed features.

true. Gender identity is defined by this.

Discomfort or distress with ones sex and sexed features does not change ones sex.

no one claims that experiencing gender dysporia changes ones biological sex.

It is not evidence of a gender identity.

except it absoloutly is, since gender identity refers to which set of sexed physical vcharacteristics you are comfortable with.

It is not a logical reason to erase sexed terms.

but it is a reason to make gendered terminology inclusive if not all affected have the same gender identity. And I have already presented my proposal on how to be inclusive without erasing the terms "men" or "women", since it does make sense to emphasize the typical case.

The erasure of sexed terms is the choice to ignore sex based oppression, or to make the wild claim that infanticide of female infants, forced births, child marriages, and all other forms of sexed oppression faced by female people is actually due to a female gender identity.

different forms of female oppression can be either sex based or based on apparent gender. Infanticide, restrictions to abortions or underage marriages are based on biological sex, sexual harrasement and gender pay gap are based on apparent gender. I have never seen anyone make the claim that the sex based forms of oppression you mentioned were based on gender identity.

Also, how is this relevant? In what way exactly does saying "Women and other people with a cervix should undergo regular cervix screenings" over "Women should undergo regular cervix screenings" promote or ignore female oppression?

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Your constant claim that "gender dysphoria" means feeling distress over one's physical sexed anatomy and your assumption that people without "gender dysphoria" feel no discomfort over their sexed bodies are highly offensive to me.

Many girls and women spend much of our younger lives distressed and in discomfort and excruciating pain due to gynecological problems associated with our menstrual cycles. This doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Many women experience painful chronic UTIs and and issues like Bartholin's cysts due to the anatomy of our vulvas. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Pregnant women and new mothers experience all sorts of things due to our sexed bodies that are discomfiting, distressing and painful - backache, nausea, indigestion, liver pain, stretch marks, hemmorhoids (piles), inability to get a seatbelt comfortably around us, torn and stitched-up vulvas, pelvic nerve pain. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Going through the experience of labor and childbirth is extremely uncomfortable, upsetting and scary for many/most women. You have no idea. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Breastfeeding can be very painful, and most women who breastfeed end up with at least one mastitis infection. Breastfeeding in public can be very uncomfortable and distressing for women, especially as it tends to attract a lot of stares, disapproval and perverted men who say disgusting things and make a point of situating themselves nearby so they can rub their penises whilst they watch us feed our children. This makes women who experience this want to die of mortification and revulsion. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Over the long term, many women who have given birth end up with problems like pelvic organ prolapse, pudendal neuralgia, urinary and fecal incontinence due to childbirth injuries we suffered years earlier. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Women during and after menopause suffer a variety of problems - hot flushes, insomnia, sweats, UTIs, vaginal atrophy - due to our sexed bodies. Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

Many girls and women feel tons of distressing shame over our sexed bodies from being sexually objectified, harassed and abused - and from being told we are gross and dirty for menstruating, and that our genitals smell and are "fishy." Doesn't mean we have "gender dysphoria."

I also take umbrage at the fact that when another poster mentioned

things assigned to female people by a patriarchal society

You responded with

Breasts, feminine facial features, lack of facial hair (usually), high levels of estrogen and a vagina were assigned to female people by a patriarchal society?

You really do see female people as just an assemblage of inanimate things made by and for men, don't you? To you we're just a bunch of body parts, not human beings.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I’m sorry but if you’re gonna make silly accusations like forging quotes when I loosely paraphrase you, I’m not giving you my time.

I know because the vast majority of human beings are not intersex or transgender, because transgendered people very rarely pass, and because since there is a plague going on I see about one stranger a week. 98% was being generous.

Even in normal times, it’s so unlikely as to be laughable that in a town of 20,000 people, I’m gonna see an intersex person or a transgendered person everyday.

Most people understand women to already be people who have a cervix. It’s muddying medical facts to pander to the hurt feelings of a select few who think not liking their vagina but liking plaid makes them a man.

Giving credence to gender identity harms women by erasing them as a sexed group with distinct oppression, needs, and differences. Giving credence to gender identity allows men who believe that preferring their legs shaved and enjoying cosmetics makes them women. Giving credence to gender identity is giving credence to gender, which is a social construct designed to oppress women and gender non conforming and homosexual males.

So yes, saying people with a cervix as well does indirectly lead to the harm of women.

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (63 children)

who is trying to replace biological sex with social constructs?

Anyone who is trying to replace sex with gender.

What is attempted, is to stop going by biological sex and instead go by gender identity where biological sex shouldn't matter

First of all, sex is important in lots of things outside medicine and bedroom, including sports, stats, sex segregated spaces. Secondly, gender identity is something we don' t even know if it exists, it would be entirely unprovable even if it existed, it would be completely dependent on people' s words or, at most, adherence to stereotypes, and, more importantly, lots of people don' t even have it.

[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (62 children)

Anyone who is trying to replace sex with gender.

gender identity is not a social construct. And no one is "replacing sex with gender", what is happening is that sex and gender identity are seperated depending on which one is the relevant one.

including sports, stats, sex segregated spaces.

the sport one correlates with hormone levels (as these are what determines muscle buildup) which in cases of divergence between biological sex and gender identity HRT of sufficent length and dose does restore fairness.

In what regard is biological sex for non-mdeical statistics relevant?

"sex segregated spaces" - in what way is it relevant on whether the person in the cubicle next to you has testes or ovaries?

Secondly, gender identity is something we don' t even know if it exists

it does, as evidenced by the millions of transgender people experiencing distress based on the mismatch between their gender identity and physical sex.

if it exists, it would be entirely unprovable even if it existed, it would be completely dependent on people' s words

the diagnosis of clinical depression is just as dependent on the patients words as the diagnosis for gender dysphoria. Does that mean that clinical depression is entirely unprovable and does not exist?

Also, here's some studies showing a connection between brain development and transgender identities https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699258/ , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8 , https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm

adherence to stereotypes

gender identity has nothing to do with stereotypes.

more importantly, lots of people don' t even have it.

really? How many people have experienced involuntarily aquierring the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex and did not felt distressed by that?

Also, in this reddit post is a fun little thought excercise in this regard https://www.reddit.com/r/truscum/comments/ll6tpa/we_need_to_start_asking_transphobes_what_they/

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (26 children)

And who decides whether sex or gender identity is relevant in a given context?

If gender identity is not based on stereotypes, then in what is it based? How can a male feel like a woman. I'm a woman and I've no idea what is feeling like a woman.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (25 children)

And who decides whether sex or gender identity is relevant in a given context?

this needs to be discussed in a broader societal discussion. Based on what is discussed, it might make sense to go either by sex, gender identity or make some qualifications towards the state of transition for going by gender identity. It really depends on the details.

If gender identity is not based on stereotypes, then in what is it based?

it is based on what physical sexed anatomy you would be comfortable or uncomfortable with having. If it distresses you to have the typical primary and secondary sexual characteristics of your sex, regardless of the social enviroment, your gender identity might be in a misallignment with your sex. If it doesn't, then your gender identity alligns with your sex.

Essentially, there is a thought experiment (meant for self-reflection for people uncertain of whether they are transgender or just don't like their gender role/gender stereotypes): imagine you are in an enviroment without gender roles/gender stereotypes (variations are either a society without gender roles/gender stereotypes or a otherwise deserted island) and have the chance to irreversibly change your physical sexed anatomy to the opposite one (or an "neither","in between" or "parts of both" for nonbinary transgender ) would you do it?

How can a male feel like a woman. I'm a woman and I've no idea what is feeling like a woman.

The answer is, that the "I am a man/woman because I feel like a man/woman" expression is an oversimplification, that is unfortunately often misunderstood.

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (24 children)

this needs to be discussed in a broader societal discussion. Based on what is discussed, it might make sense to go either by sex, gender identity or make some qualifications towards the state of transition for going by gender identity. It really depends on the details.

But who is allowed to take part in this disscussion? Many changes in law regarding trans issues are happening behind closed doors and media coverage is one sided in favour of gender identity. Women's concerns are dismissed time and time again. Any woman who speak out in favour of sex risks being threatened, smeared and de-platafformed. So, how can we have a debate about whether sex or gender identity is more relevant if only one side is allowed to talk?

it is based on what physical sexed anatomy you would be comfortable or uncomfortable with having. If it distresses you to have the typical primary and secondary sexual characteristics of your sex, regardless of the social enviroment, your gender identity might be in a misallignment with your sex. If it doesn't, then your gender identity alligns with your sex.

Essentially, there is a thought experiment (meant for self-reflection for people uncertain of whether they are transgender or just don't like their gender role/gender stereotypes): imagine you are in an enviroment without gender roles/gender stereotypes (variations are either a society without gender roles/gender stereotypes or a otherwise deserted island) and have the chance to irreversibly change your physical sexed anatomy to the opposite one (or an "neither","in between" or "parts of both" for nonbinary transgender ) would you do it?

Maybe you think that gender identity is about distress over one's sex, but there are many trans people and allies who don't think that is the case.

You can be diagnosed with gender dysphoria whithout such distress according to the DMS-5, for example. And, under the "gender affirming treatment" paradigm, it's doubtful that a therapist is allowed to question a patient's gender identity, anyway.

There are many trans natal males who like their "girldicks" very much and have no problem saying so. And they say their gender identities are as valid.

In the thread about sexual attraction, I told you self-ID was legalized in Argentina. Here, you can change the sex markers of your document without a clinical diagnosis or a judicial order. You're not required to undergone any kind of "medical transition" to do so, either before or after. You just need to say you're really a woman (or a man) despite not being born one. The law that makes this possible is commonly known as the gender identity law and gender identity is mentioned in the law text itself. There are a few other countries with similar laws and many transactivists are campaigning to expand the list.

Also, I've seen several instances of transactivists talking about forced sterelizations in reference of the requirement of undergoing genital surgery before changing your legal sex in certain countries.

The answer is, that the "I am a man/woman because I feel like a man/woman" expression is an oversimplification, that is unfortunately often misunderstood.

So, what does this expression mean then?

[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (23 children)

But who is allowed to take part in this disscussion? Many changes in law regarding trans issues are happening behind closed doors and media coverage is one sided in favour of gender identity. Women's concerns are dismissed time and time again. Any woman who speak out in favour of sex risks being threatened, smeared and de-platafformed. So, how can we have a debate about whether sex or gender identity is more relevant if only one side is allowed to talk?

I am against threatening, smearing or deplattforming people just based on their opinions (the first two in general, the latter excepted for when one outright promotes hate - for example Germaine Greers infamous quote equating transgender women transitioning with rape (1) - or incites criminal actions). Also, a lot of times the "concerns" presented are just Red Herrings repeated over and over 1.

(1): here is the quote in question:

All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves. However, the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist violates women’s sexuality and spirit, as well. Rape, although it is usually done by force, can also be accomplished by deception. It is significant that in the case of the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist, often he is able to gain entrance and a dominant position in women’s spaces because the women involved do not know he is a transsexual and he just does not happen to mention it.

You can be diagnosed with gender dysphoria whithout such distress according to the DMS-5, for example.

I'm going by the ICD-10 ( under F64.0 ) that makes it quite clear, that it is about anatomical sex and the desire for medical transitioning (2).

(2):

Transsexualism

A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex

And, under the "gender affirming treatment" paradigm, it's doubtful that a therapist is allowed to question a patient's gender identity, anyway.

yeah, I'm kinda sceptical about "affirmation only" (e.g. no questioning of the self diagnosed gender identity allowed). People can be wrong about themself, and when someone transitions without actually being transgender, they are going to develop gender dysphoria towards the sexed characteristics of the gender they were transitioning to. Thats why detransitioners aren't big fans of this modell.

In the thread about sexual attraction, I told you self-ID was legalized in Argentina. Here, you can change the sex markers of your document without a clinical diagnosis or a judicial order. You're not required to undergone any kind of "medical transition" to do so, either before or after. You just need to say you're really a woman (or a man) despite not being born one. The law that makes this possible is commonly known as the gender identity law and gender identity is mentioned in the law text itself. There are a few other countries with similar laws and many transactivists are campaigning to expand the list.

well, in my country a person wanting to change their legal gender needs two independent medical assesments confirming the gender identity, that the person in question had been identifying this way for at least three years and that it is considered likely that they will keep identifying this way. Far as I heard, this is a rather hardass amount of conditions.

Though, back to self ID: it kind of depends on what this changed legal gender means in practice. From what I heard, it's mostly relevant in terms of into which prison one goes (both Blaire White and Rose of Dawn have made videos regarding this, with Blaire White advocating seperated LGBT wards.)

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (22 children)

A) You say that society needs to have a discussion about the issue of sex vs gender identity. But it seems you think the issue is already settled. Here you are dismissing women's concern as mere bigotry. So, are women allowed to take part on this discussion or not? Or are we allowed to participate only under trans terms? Why is never trans people the ones who have to consider women's concerns?

B) My point with all these examples was there are many people who don't agree with your view of gender identity being based on distress over one's sexed body. We can't ignore those people's position because they are the ones driving many of the legal changes. They want more countries like Argentina and less with yours. They're also pushing among other things for "gender affirming treatment" and they want to ban any alternative treatment as "conversion therapy".

But even if we go by your clinical definition of gender indentity, the ICD-10 that you quote starts the definition of transsexualism with "A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex". What does a desire to live as the opposite sex means if not stereotypes? Also, the page you linked says this about gender identity in children (emphasis mine):

Gender identity disorder of childhood

A disorder, usually first manifest during early childhood (and always well before puberty), characterized by a persistent and intense distress about assigned sex, together with a desire to be (or insistence that one is) of the other sex. There is a persistent preoccupation with the dress and activities of the opposite sex and repudiation of the individual's own sex. The diagnosis requires a profound disturbance of the normal gender identity; mere tomboyishness in girls or girlish behaviour in boys is not sufficient. Gender identity disorders in individuals who have reached or are entering puberty should not be classified here but in F66.-

How is this not about stereotypes?

[–]MarkTwainiac 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

the diagnosis of clinical depression is just as dependent on the patients words as the diagnosis for gender dysphoria. Does that mean that clinical depression is entirely unprovable and does not exist?

Please stop using other conditions to try to make a case for "gender dysphoria." Proponents of the idea that "gender dysphoria" is a stand-alone condition unrelated to, and not symptomatic of, other mental health issues should be able to make the case for it without constantly invoking other conditions. And it's galling when advocates of "gender dysphoria" as a condition unto itself try to substantiate it by invoking one of the very conditions many of us think that "gender dysphoria" is often an expression of, and cover for, such as anxiety and depression.

Also, your claim about depression is not entirely true. Mild forms of clinical depression might be diagnosed based solely on the patient's words, but that's not the case for major depressive disorder.

MDD usually involves dramatic changes in the person's affect, appetite, sleep patterns, sex drive and general behavior that are quite noticeable to others in their lives - family, members of their household, friends, colleagues. Often it involves physical changes like marked changes in weight, hair loss and increased susceptibility to physical illnesses due to suppressed immune function. Sometimes MDD involves mania, psychosis or catatonia - conditions which are very apparent to others.

Depression can be caused by a number of physical illnesses and conditions - thyroid dysfunction, pernicious anemia, urinary tract infections (particularly in elderly women), sinus infections, diabetes, lupus, MS, the hormonal changes that women experience after childbirth and during the menstrual cycle and so on. Depression can also be caused by various drugs and anesthesia.

People who seek help for depression are routinely given full physicals and tested for a battery of physical illnesses. They also often keep records of their daily behaviors, weight, sleep patterns, how much and what they ate and drank, all drugs taken, etc.

Also, people with depression are not trying to force the whole world to adopt an entirely new set of values in which depressed people's needs come first and being depressed is seen as the new norm; they're not demanding that laws and customs change to accommodate and prioritize depressed people; and they're not unilaterally decreeing sweeping changes in the language, forcing compelled speech on others, and insisting that everyone who hasn't suffered depression be labelled "non-depressives."

People with depression aren't always banging on about how nobody else on earth has ever suffered as much unbearable psychic pain as depressives. Nor are depressive rights lobbyists constantly citing fake suicide stats to get sympathy and to manipulate people into medicating children with drugs that will render them infertile and sexually dysfunctional. Of the large number of people who die by suicide each year - in 2018, more than 48,000 people in the US alone - the vast majority are depressed. But there is no annual "depression day of remembrance" or "suicide commemoration day" anywhere. Funny that.

[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Please stop using other conditions to try to make a case for "gender dysphoria." Proponents of the idea that "gender dysphoria" is a stand-alone condition unrelated to, and not symptomatic of, other mental health issues should be able to make the case for it without constantly invoking other conditions. And it's galling when advocates of "gender dysphoria" as a condition unto itself try to substantiate it by invoking one of the very conditions many of us think that "gender dysphoria" is often an expression of, and cover for, such as anxiety and depression.

yes, gender dysphoria is often coprevalent with other mental health issues. Therefore, it is often important for psychological treatment to be included, but gender dysphoria is a condition unto itself, as demonstrated by the fact, that it is not lessend by antidepressiva but is lessend by cross-sex hormones.

Also, your claim about depression is not entirely true. Mild forms of clinical depression might be diagnosed based solely on the patient's words, but that's not the case for major depressive disorder.

MDD usually involves dramatic changes in the person's affect, appetite, sleep patterns, sex drive and general behavior that are quite noticeable to others in their lives - family, members of their household, friends, colleagues. Often it involves physical changes like marked changes in weight, hair loss and increased susceptibility to physical illnesses due to suppressed immune function. Sometimes MDD involves mania, psychosis or catatonia - conditions which are very apparent to others.

And strong cases of gender dysphoria also cause enough distress to have a clearly apparent impact on the persons psychological wellbeing.

Also, people with depression are not trying to force the whole world to adopt an entirely new set of values in which depressed people's needs come first and being depressed is seen as the new norm;

in what way are transgender peoples needs "comming first" or being transgender "seen as the new norm" ?

they're not demanding that laws and customs change to accommodate and prioritize depressed people;

in what way are transgender people "prioritized" ?

and they're not unilaterally decreeing sweeping changes in the language, forcing compelled speech on others

I'm actually against laws fopr compelled speech. As far as I am concerned, legally you should absolouty be allowed to call Buck Angel "miss", "ma'm", "lady","woman" or "she/her", just be aware of (and expect the social consequences of) this being highly offensive.

insisting that everyone who hasn't suffered depression be labelled "non-depressives."

I'm sure communities of people who do have clinical depression have their terms for people who don't. It's just not in the political spotlight, because there aren't as much political/social areas affected.

Nor are depressive rights lobbyists constantly citing fake suicide stats to get sympathy

can you show that the frequently citied (and used by "gender criticals" as a joke) number of 41% of transgender people having attempted suicide (compared to 1.6 % in the general population) is wrong ( https://web.archive.org/web/20151104050421/http://www.thetaskforce.org/static_html/downloads/reports/reports/ntds_full.pdf ) ?

manipulate people into medicating children with drugs that will render them infertile and sexually dysfunctional.

a.) of course children with clinical depression are going to be medicated when needed.

b.) admittedly, I am somewhat wary of childhood medical transitioning, as before puberty it can be difficult for the child in question to discern, whether the problem lies with gender role or the sexed anatomy (as puberty causes the secondary sexed characteristics to develop). This is why gender dysphoria that persists during puberty is most likely permanent. The reason medical transitioning for children is even considered is, that the development of the secondary sexed characteristics caused by puberty is greatly distressing towards the children where the problem is the sexed anatomy while it also makes changing the physical body to match the gender identity more difficult.

Of the large number of people who die by suicide each year - in 2018, more than 48,000 people in the US alone - the vast majority are depressed. But there is no annual "depression day of remembrance" or "suicide commemoration day" anywhere. Funny that.

there is no day of rememberance for transgender suicides either. There is a day of rememberance for transgender people who were murdered.

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm actually against laws fopr compelled speech. As far as I am concerned, legally you should absolouty be allowed to call Buck Angel "miss", "ma'm", "lady","woman" or "she/her", just be aware of (and expect the social consequences of) this being highly offensive.

Is misgendering more offensive than death and rape threaths? Are those threaths an acceptable social consequense for any woman who misgender someone? I'm asking you this because many supporters of the trans paradigma certainly think so. Also this issue is related to inclusive language.

[–]Taln_Reich 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Is misgendering more offensive than death and rape threaths? Are those threaths an acceptable social consequense for any woman who misgender someone? I'm asking you this because many supporters of the trans paradigma certainly think so.

I hate it when this is done (yes, I have seen the mountains of receipts regarding this). No social movement ever got anywhere by screaming angry, empty threats and people who have a different opinion. I have never done such a thing, and if it were up to me, it would immediately stop.

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

the sport one correlates with hormone levels (as these are what determines muscle buildup) which in cases of divergence between biological sex and gender identity HRT of sufficent length and dose does restore fairness.

This is totally untrue. Males have a physical advantage over females in sports that ranges from 10-12% at the lowest in sports like running to 60% in sports that rely heavily on activities of the upper body such as throwing, batting, weight lifting to 160% in sports that are largely about punching (boxing).

Males who suppress testosterone and take cross-sex hormones for a year have been shown to lose 0-4% of their muscle mass.

Also, muscle mass is not the only factor. Males have considerably larger hearts and lungs that cause them to have much higher blood oxygen, denser bones, entirely different skeletal shapes, faster twitch fibers and so on.

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1283720954657595393/photo/1

https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1283720954657595393

https://resources.world.rugby/worldrugby/document/2020/10/09/a67e3cc3-7dea-4f1e-b523-2cba1073729d/Transgender-Research_Summary-of-data_ENGLISH-09.10.2020.pdf

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/07/study-suggests-ioc-adjustment-period-for-trans-women-may-be-too-short

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (28 children)

gender identity is not a social construct. And no one is "replacing sex with gender", what is happening is that sex and gender identity are seperated depending on which one is the relevant one.

First, I was talking about gender and not gender identity: gender is a social construct, and it' s replacing sex. Secondly, sex is disappearing in every aspect, replaced by either gender or gender identity.

the sport one correlates with hormone levels (as these are what determines muscle buildup) which in cases of divergence between biological sex and gender identity HRT of sufficent length and dose does restore fairness.

Hormone levels are not the only important thing that should be taken into consideration and that differentiates the sexes. Not to mention, in lots of cases hormones are not even considered and men can join women' s sports without any kind of hormonal standards.

In what regard is biological sex for non-mdeical statistics relevant?

Crime, for example.

"sex segregated spaces" - in what way is it relevant on whether the person in the cubicle next to you has testes or ovaries?

How about rape shelters in which a person with a penis shares a room with a person with a vagina who was raped by another person with a penis? A locker room where 14 years old girls get naked together with a person with a penis?

it does, as evidenced by the millions of transgender people experiencing distress based on the mismatch between their gender identity and physical sex

All their existence proves is that they are distressed over their bodies and their sexed characteristics, not that that distress comes because of gender identity.

As for those studies, there are a gazillion of studies that debunk the lady/gent brain, which means that it' s far from a settled thing. Even if it were settled and trans people were recognized to have their preferred sex' s brain, they would still have their biological sex' s bodies: I don' t give a damn how much you have a ladybrain if you also have a penis and a male socialization.

the diagnosis of clinical depression is just as dependent on the patients words as the diagnosis for gender dysphoria. Does that mean that clinical depression is entirely unprovable and does not exist?

No, but it doesn' t mean that it should replace non-depression in laws and legislation. There should be space for both without having to pretend that anomalies are more important.

How about this, in another comment you say that since you don' t change your mind on your "gender identity" if you change social setting, then it means it' s real. Does that mean that if a person who believes to be Napoleon moves somewhere else and changes social settings, still believes he' s Napoleon, then he really is Napoleon?

gender identity has nothing to do with stereotypes.

I beg to differ. Most people I have asked what their gender identity is about have answered that it' s all about adherence to sex-based roles and a preference for things that are stereotypically associated with the other sex. For God' s sake, it' s how you are diagnosed with gender dysphoria "by experts" to begin with.

really? How many people have experienced involuntarily aquierring the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex and did not felt distressed by that?

This has nothing to do with gender identity, it' s simply distress/trauma of not having control of your body.

Also, in this reddit post is a fun little thought excercise in this regard

That thought exercise has been done to death in the old debate sub. If I woke up in a man' s body, I would be worried about who did it and how it was done, I would worry about the beaurocracy surrounded by it, I would be worried about my relationships and how to explain to people what happened without sounding like a grifter or a lunatic. I would be distressed by the fact that I would be in another body without not knowing and not consenting, not for the fact that it' s a male body per se. If I woke up in another woman' s body, I would have the same issues.

The comparison is so disingenous that it' s not even funny anymore: I would LITERALLY be in the wrong body, trans people are in their natural and healthy bodies that they have been born and grown in.

I am highly doubtful even the most devout terfs would seriously insist that she would be 100% a man

I would be a man with the socialization of a woman (note, not a man with a woman brain, I would have a male brain because I would be in a male body), which is not what happens to trans people in the least. They are still 100% their biological sex and they still have the socialization that their biological sex had brought.

and should now use mens toilet, locker rooms, call her self gay (asuming she likes men), and go by he/him pronouns because a couple of organs bellow the waist have changed

The fact that I would be awkward using a man' s toilet has nothing to do with whether or not I should use it. I would have issues with using a man' s toilet because I was taught that it wasn' t my place since I was, literally, raised as a woman (unlike trans natal males). However, I would still 100% use it because a woman' s toilet wouldn' t be my place anymore now that I am a man. Me being weird about it is not a justification for putting other women in distress and violate a space that is reserved for them.

As for pronouns, LOL! I don' t care if you call me "he" or "mister" even now that I am in a woman' s body, in fact, I would fucking love to be called mister... why the fuck should I care if I were a man?

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (27 children)

Hormone levels are not the only important thing that should be taken into consideration and that differentiates the sexes.

trying not to go into that debate. We can't discuss every single transgender issue in every single thread about transgender people.

Not to mention, in lots of cases hormones are not even considered and men can join women' s sports without any kind of hormonal standards.

well, that is obviously problematic. Not going to disagree there.

Crime, for example.

can you proove that biological sex is here more important than socialisation? But, yes, I'd actually like crime stats (both in regards to perpatrator as well as in regards to victims) to record both.

How about rape shelters in which a person with a penis shares a room with a person with a vagina who was raped by another person with a penis?

And if a person with a vagina was raped by another person with a vagina, should, acording to your logic, this first person share the room with a person with a penis?

A locker room where 14 years old girls get naked together with a person with a penis?

I used to get naked in a locker room, and always felt deeply uncomfortable. And for this it would not have mattered the slightest, what genitals the other people there had. So the solution is more cubicles, so no one has to get naked in front of someone else.

All their existence proves is that they are distressed over their bodies and their sexed characteristics, not that that distress comes because of gender identity.

Gender identity is defined by what sexed characteristics you are comfortable/uncomfortable having. If there were no such thing as gender identity, there would be no such thing as gender dysphoria.

As for those studies, there are a gazillion of studies that debunk the lady/gent brain, which means that it' s far from a settled thing. Even if it were settled and trans people were recognized to have their preferred sex' s brain, they would still have their biological sex' s bodies: I don' t give a damn how much you have a ladybrain if you also have a penis and a male socialization.

And if the person in question had no longer a penis and was socialized female due to early recognition of the gender identity made possible via this method (I'm strongly in favor towards more research regarding the brain sex theory, since if it could be refined to at least a supporting diagnostic tool it would greatly help in improving the diagnostic process)?

How about this, in another comment you say that since you don' t change your mind on your "gender identity" if you change social setting, then it means it' s real. Does that mean that if a person who believes to be Napoleon moves somewhere else and changes social settings, still believes he' s Napoleon, then he really is Napoleon?

how would a person come to falsely believe themself to be Napoleon if they were in an enviroment where no one ever heard of Napoleon? If this person still believed themselves to be Napoleon even without anyone ever having heard of Napoleon, then there would clearly some weird sheniagans been going on.

No, but it doesn' t mean that it should replace non-depression in laws and legislation. There should be space for both without having to pretend that anomalies are more important.

Precisely. There should be room for both. Which is why (in regards for this threadtopic) I have proposed the compromise solution of "Men/Women and other people with/who ...", e.g. mentioning both the typical and the atypical cases, without pretending that one or the other is more important.

I beg to differ. Most people I have asked what their gender identity is about have answered that it' s all about adherence to sex-based roles and a preference for things that are stereotypically associated with the other sex. For God' s sake, it' s how you are diagnosed with gender dysphoria "by experts" to begin with.

And the transgender people I have talked to have been very insistent on maintaining a strong distinction between gender stereotypes and gender identity (in fact, if anything, conflating those to is pretty much a beserk button on that board). And let me quote the ICD-10 in this regard:

F64.0
Transsexualism
A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex.

( https://icd.who.int/browse10/2016/en#/F60-F69 )

The part regarding gender dysphoria in children (F64.2) also explicitly states that gender non-conformity is not sufficent for a diagnosis.

That thought exercise has been done to death in the old debate sub.

it's been changed here in so far, that here only your genitals are changed, so everyone (or at least everyone you aren't showing your genitals) would still see you as a woman.

trans people are in their natural and healthy bodies that they have been born and grown in.

And that are distressing them.

I would be a man with the socialization of a woman (note, not a man with a woman brain, I would have a male brain because I would be in a male body), which is not what happens to trans people in the least. They are still 100% their biological sex and they still have the socialization that their biological sex had brought.

so if you suddenly had a penis and testicles, but in all other aspects it was still your female body, you would insist to be 100% a man?

The fact that I would be awkward using a man' s toilet has nothing to do with whether or not I should use it. I would have issues with using a man' s toilet because I was taught that it wasn' t my place since I was, literally, raised as a woman (unlike trans natal males). However, I would still 100% use it because a woman' s toilet wouldn' t be my place anymore now that I am a man. Me being weird about it is not a justification for putting other women in distress and violate a space that is reserved for them.

so despite only your genitals being changed, you'd now (despite still looking female) use the men's bathroom? (also, in the opposite case, would that mean that a guy who suddenly found himself with a vagina instead would be supposed to be the womens, even if the rest of him still appeared male?)

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (26 children)

trying not to go into that debate. We can't discuss every single transgender issue in every single thread about transgender people.

So, just to make it clear, you bring up the topic, say that hormones are the only thing we should think about when segregating sports, I say nope, and your answer is that we shouldn' t look into the topic more specifically and we should just stay on the general directions you can justify? Ok.

can you proove that biological sex is here more important than socialisation? But, yes, I'd actually like crime stats (both in regards to perpatrator as well as in regards to victims) to record both.

Can you prove that socialization is more important than sex?

I don' t really care much about it anyway, trans people are socialized as their sex, so it would still be a segregation that would keep trans women away from women.

And if a person with a vagina was raped by another person with a vagina, should, acording to your logic, this first person share the room with a person with a penis?

Nope, but that would be because she is a danger to the other person, a trans woman would be not only a danger but also a desrespect of a sex segregated space. Not to mention that the female rapist wouldn' t bring the possibility of unwanted pregnancy in case she attacked the victim again, and the victim could have a better chance to defend herself.

I used to get naked in a locker room, and always felt deeply uncomfortable. And for this it would not have mattered the slightest, what genitals the other people there had. So the solution is more cubicles, so no one has to get naked in front of someone else.

Great, can you tell your TRA friends to get on board of that project instead of using women' s spaces?

Gender identity is defined by what sexed characteristics you are comfortable/uncomfortable having. If there were no such thing as gender identity, there would be no such thing as gender dysphoria.

Except that' s bullshit? It' s just a name you people have created to legitimize a mental illness. All people are uncomfortable with their sexed characteristics here and there, especially growing up. By your own logic, I am not a woman because I don' t like my big boobs and I would do without my period. There is no woman in existence who hasn' t been uncomfortable with her periods for one reason or another. Are we all trans men? Give me a break.

And if the person in question had no longer a penis and was socialized female due to early recognition of the gender identity made possible via this method (I'm strongly in favor towards more research regarding the brain sex theory, since if it could be refined to at least a supporting diagnostic tool it would greatly help in improving the diagnostic process)?

A male is never socialized as a woman. Even in case he' s going to transition as a child, he would still be socialized as a very special boy, not as a girl.

how would a person come to falsely believe themself to be Napoleon if they were in an enviroment where no one ever heard of Napoleon? If this person still believed themselves to be Napoleon even without anyone ever having heard of Napoleon, then there would clearly some weird sheniagans been going on.

Transgendrism has been around for decades. Even if a person has no knowledge of the terminology, everyone knows that there are people who get treatment to pretend they are the opposite sex. In order to never been able to hear about trans people, you would have to be a hermit.

Precisely. There should be room for both. Which is why (in regards for this threadtopic) I have proposed the compromise solution of "Men/Women and other people with/who ...", e.g. mentioning both the typical and the atypical cases, without pretending that one or the other is more important.

I don' t care one bit the word you use to describe things like that, I am talking about legislation. There is no space for both currently because every sex segregated right women have are being rewritten in order to include males and rendering them useless and meaningless.

And the transgender people I have talked to have been very insistent on maintaining a strong distinction between gender stereotypes and gender identity (in fact, if anything, conflating those to is pretty much a beserk button on that board). And let me quote the ICD-10 in this regard:

Awesome, can you speak to the DMS then and make then erase the 7 out of 8 points that they list to disgnose gender dysphoria? Thanks.

And that are distressing them.

ANd they are free to do whatever they want to their bodies: doesn' t make them the other sex, and they shouldn' t be recognized as something they are not, legally at least and certainly there shouldn' t be this ridicoulous push to make it the socially acceptable and morally wholesome thing to do.

so if you suddenly had a penis and testicles, but in all other aspects it was still your female body, you would insist to be 100% a man?

If only my genitals were changed, then I would be an intersex person because I would have XX chromosomes and male genitals. Which is not what trans women are. They are the opposite of it, they have XY chromosomes with feminized bodies and, more often than not, penis and testicles.

so despite only your genitals being changed, you'd now (despite still looking female) use the men's bathroom? (also, in the opposite case, would that mean that a guy who suddenly found himself with a vagina instead would be supposed to be the womens, even if the rest of him still appeared male?)

No, that answer was about me being in a male body. If I were in a female body with a penis and testicles, I would find gender neutral bathrooms or fight for them if they didn' t exist so that I wouldn' t have to shit on women' s spaces just for my benefit. Or I would keep it until I' m home. Whatever the case, I would still not impose my presence to regular women. Just because I was the victim of a wizard, it doesn' t mean that the 51% of the population needs to cater to my needs.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (25 children)

Can you prove that socialization is more important than sex?

I don' t really care much about it anyway, trans people are socialized as their sex, so it would still be a segregation that would keep trans women away from women.

A male is never socialized as a woman. Even in case he' s going to transition as a child, he would still be socialized as a very special boy, not as a girl.

You talk a lot about "female socialization". What, in terms of socialization, do a western woman raised gender neutral, a woman raised in a quiverfull family, a Basha Posh (Afghan custom where girls are raised as boys in order to deal with the extreme restrictions put upon girls in afghan society) and a woman raised in some awfull corner of the world where FGM is still practiced in common?

a trans woman would be not only a danger but also a desrespect of a sex segregated space

first, thats quite the villification, do you have statistics backing up that transgender woman in women's shelters cause an increase in danger? Second, is that "disrespect" really that bad that it justifies withholding care from a woman that was raped? And, third, would that mean that this person would be allowed in the rape shelter?

Not to mention that the female rapist wouldn' t bring the possibility of unwanted pregnancy in case she attacked the victim again

what kind of argument is that? By that logic a child or infertile woman (whether by choice or not) being raped would be less terrible, which really doesn't strike me as particulary feminist.

and the victim could have a better chance to defend herself.

that is a really poor argument. By that logic a five times MMA world champion and a 1.5 meter petite asthmatic girl would have to be put into seperate rooms because the latter is rather unlikely to be able to defend herself against the former.

Great, can you tell your TRA friends to get on board of that project instead of using women' s spaces?

generally speaking, all the pro-transgender arguers I have seen argue for spaces where nudity occurs to have cubicles so people don't have to undress in front of complete strangers. They still want to use the space belonging to their gender identity though.

Except that' s bullshit? It' s just a name you people have created to legitimize a mental illness

yes gender dysphoria is a mental condition, suspected to be neurological in cause, that, when left untreated, is often maladaptive, with the treatment in question being medical and social transitioning and acceptance.

All people are uncomfortable with their sexed characteristics here and there, especially growing up. By your own logic, I am not a woman because I don' t like my big boobs and I would do without my period. There is no woman in existence who hasn' t been uncomfortable with her periods for one reason or another. Are we all trans men? Give me a break.

do you wish to have a sexed anatomy other than female and to no longer be considered a woman? If no, then it is not the same.

Transgendrism has been around for decades. Even if a person has no knowledge of the terminology, everyone knows that there are people who get treatment to pretend they are the opposite sex. In order to never been able to hear about trans people, you would have to be a hermit.

I have absoloutly seen transpeople that were experiencing gender dysphoria before having heard about transgender people due to growing up in some particular backwards part of eastern europe.

I don' t care one bit the word you use to describe things like that, I am talking about legislation. There is no space for both currently because every sex segregated right women have are being rewritten in order to include males and rendering them useless and meaningless.

there are no rights granted to women on the basis of being women. What there is are laws against sex-based sicrimination with a couple of exemption 1 (Note: that link is UK-specific, but it applies to most of the developed world).

The closest thing to "sex based rights" would be laws specifically related to reproductive healthercare and I don't see how writing "women and other people can get abortions if they request so" instead of "women can get abortions if they request so" would take away rights from women, but for transgender men, it makes a lot of difference 2

Awesome, can you speak to the DMS then and make then erase the 7 out of 8 points that they list to disgnose gender dysphoria? Thanks.

a.) what makes you think that will do? My country goes by the ICD-10 (local modification), the DSM-5 is the american one. You think they would listen to some random foreigner?

b.) actually, in the DSM-5 definition 3 out of the 8 points are directly relating to sexual characteristics, e.g. physical sexed anatomy, not stereotypes.

c.) no psychologist who doesn't deserve their license taken would diagnose someone as gender dysphoric just for not following gender stereotypes while the patient expresses to be completly fine with their sexed characteristics. That doesn't happen.

ANd they are free to do whatever they want to their bodies: doesn' t make them the other sex, and they shouldn' t be recognized as something they are not, legally at least and certainly there shouldn' t be this ridicoulous push to make it the socially acceptable and morally wholesome thing to do.

And instead they should be stigmatized, mistreated and made outcasts for it? Transgender people do not chose to be transgender, but transitioning is as much a choice to them as taking pain medication is for someone with crippling chronic pain. Best case scenario would be the transgender person getting to transitiong and being treated by the whole of society like absoloute garbage, worst case would be the transgender person comitting suicide because they can bear neither the stigma of transitioning nor their existence in a body that feels deeply wrong to them. Do you not see that you are argueing for tormenting people for something they can not help? And for what? What is gained by considering transitioning socially unacceptable and morally wrong?

If only my genitals were changed, then I would be an intersex person because I would have XX chromosomes and male genitals. Which is not what trans women are. They are the opposite of it, they have XY chromosomes with feminized bodies and, more often than not, penis and testicles.

Why does it always come down to "but the chromosomes"? No one gives a sh#t about chromosomes. Did you ever had your chromosomes tested? I didn't, I just assume that I have the typical case because their isn't anything about my body to indicate otherwise. No one walks around testing the chromosomes of everyone they met before deciding on how to treat them, no one.

No, that answer was about me being in a male body. If I were in a female body with a penis and testicles, I would find gender neutral bathrooms or fight for them if they didn' t exist so that I wouldn' t have to shit on women' s spaces just for my benefit. Or I would keep it until I' m home. Whatever the case, I would still not impose my presence to regular women. Just because I was the victim of a wizard, it doesn' t mean that the 51% of the population needs to cater to my needs.

Why don't you fight for gender neutral bathrooms now? Transgender rights activists actually tend to do that, with gender critical people opposing.

[–]Omina_SentenziosaSarcastic Ovalord 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (24 children)

You talk a lot about "female socialization". What, in terms of socialization, do a western woman raised gender neutral, a woman raised in a quiverfull family, a Basha Posh (Afghan custom where girls are raised as boys in order to deal with the extreme restrictions put upon girls in afghan society) and a woman raised in some awfull corner of the world where FGM is still practiced in common?

What do those women... what? I think you forgot a part of the sentence.

first, thats quite the villification, do you have statistics backing up that transgender woman in women's shelters cause an increase in danger? Second, is that "disrespect" really that bad that it justifies withholding care from a woman that was raped? And, third, would that mean that this person JPG would be allowed in the rape shelter?

I don' t care if it' s a vilication, if they learned to stay away from women' s spaces, I wouldn' t have anything to "vilify" them. Second, we were talking about sexual abusers, they always raise danger when they are around potential victims. Third: nobody is saying that that guy who was raped shouldn' t get care, I am just saying that he shouldn' t get it in a women' s shelter. He' s a man, he can go to unisex shelters or an LGBT++++ one. I don' t know what JPG means.

what kind of argument is that? By that logic a child or infertile woman (whether by choice or not) being raped would be less terrible, which really doesn't strike me as particulary feminist.

Who said anything about it being less terrible? Quote me. Just because YOU made that leap it doesn' t mean I do.

that is a really poor argument. By that logic a five times MMA world champion and a 1.5 meter petite asthmatic girl would have to be put into seperate rooms because the latter is rather unlikely to be able to defend herself against the former.

If the MMA world champion were recognized to be violent or a sexual abuser, she shouldn' t be put in the same room as someone who could never defend herself against her. People with a history of being violent shouldn' t be put around other people to begin with, especially in a freaking shelter.

generally speaking, all the pro-transgender arguers I have seen argue for spaces where nudity occurs to have cubicles so people don't have to undress in front of complete strangers. They still want to use the space belonging to their gender identity though.

Of course they do, because they have zero respect for anyone else and only want their stupid identity validated. If they were reasonable people they would be ok with using separate spaces. If they are neutral, the fact that there is a woman sign in the front would be completely useless, but we obviously can' t give women the idea that they can have ONE thing without men making the argument that they are too entitled to it, can we?

yes gender dysphoria is a mental condition, suspected to be neurological in cause, that, when left untreated, is often maladaptive, with the treatment in question being medical and social transitioning and acceptance.

And? It still doesn' t prove that gender identity is a thing, unless you are ready to define gender identity as a mental illness. Still, a mental illness that makes you hate your own body 1) doesn' t equal with an innate natural identity that is at the base of womanhood for everyone and 2) it should be fought against, not pandered to.

do you wish to have a sexed anatomy other than female and to no longer be considered a woman? If no, then it is not the same.

I constantly want to not be considered a woman, given that women are not given even the fucking respect of having ONE single word to describe themselves. But not wanting to be considered a woman doesn' t change the fact that I am one.

I have absoloutly seen transpeople that were experiencing gender dysphoria before having heard about transgender people due to growing up in some particular backwards part of eastern europe.

Even assuming that were the case, which I don' t believe, they still have the knowledge of the other sex: desiring the other category' s characteristics, both physical or social, is not something that cannot occurr unless you know about trans people.

there are no rights granted to women on the basis of being women. What there is are laws against sex-based sicrimination with a couple of exemption

Yeah, because woman IS a sex category. The rights granted to women on the basis of sex ARE for women because woman = adult human FEMALE. Did you think that those rights were granted to us because of our gender identity, a concept that wasn' t even named until a few years ago?

The closest thing to "sex based rights" would be laws specifically related to reproductive healthercare and I don't see how writing "women and other people can get abortions if they request so" instead of "women can get abortions if they request so" would take away rights from women, but for transgender men, it makes a lot of difference

I wouldn' t care adding trans men and female NBs if that didn' t validate the idea that gender identity is a thing that should be respected. However, the point I was making is still that all the rights we have INCLUDE MEN. The issue here is not females who hate being females being included in things for females, it' s the fact that males are included in legislation for females.

a.) what makes you think that will do? My country goes by the ICD-10 (local modification), the DSM-5 is the american one. You think they would listen to some random foreigner?

Whatever equivalent you have in your country.

b.) actually, in the DSM-5 definition 3 out of the 8 points are directly relating to sexual characteristics, e.g. physical sexed anatomy, not stereotypes.

No, the 8 points of the guidelines are for children and it' s 7-1. The guidelines in general are 6 and they are 3-3. So counting all, it' s 14 points, 4 of which are about bodies and 10 of which are about stereotypes. As someone else has pointed out in this thread, you need three to be diagnosed with dysphoria, so even with the 6 points, you can still be diagnosed based entirely on stereotypes.

c.) no psychologist who doesn't deserve their license taken would diagnose someone as gender dysphoric just for not following gender stereotypes while the patient expresses to be completly fine with their sexed characteristics. That doesn't happen.

Considering that the current atmosphere bans any kind of treatment that isn' 100% validation, and this for mental healtchare as well, I think you are full of shit.

[–]strictly 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Also, in this reddit post is a fun little thought excercise in this regard https://www.reddit.com/r/truscum/comments/ll6tpa/we_need_to_start_asking_transphobes_what_they/

That thought experiment doesn’t make sense. This person obviously want to prove female people have “female gender identities” and would be dysphoric if they woke up as male. But the argument of this person makes is that waking up as an estrogenized male would be worse for a person with a “female gender identity” than waking up as a non-estrogenized male. If that’s the case, why would males with so called “female gender identities” want to transition to estrogenized males, if staying non-estrogenized is better for those with “female gender identities”? Shouldn’t they instead argue that female people who wake up as non-estrogenized males also would want to take estrogen and become estrogenized?

Either way, to me the estrogenized male body is the most visually unappealing body configuration (nothing against those who are attracted to that body type or like having that body type though). So yes, I wouldn’t like waking up with a “girl dick” or inverted penis. If I am going to be male I would much prefer to be non-estrogenized male, and if I am going to have penis I would prefer the non-inverted one. My first act if I woke up as an estrogenized male would be to detransition the body. And yes, I would regard myself as male if I woke up male, a male with a female past, so I would be different from other natural males as I in this magical scenario would be a magical male (made male by magic, not due to nature).

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

What is attempted, is to stop going by biological sex and instead go by gender identity where biological sex shouldn't matter (e.g. outside the bedroom or medical care).

Anyone who thinks biological sex only matters in the bedroom or medical care is very naive. And probably a male person who is young, doesn't have children, has never played or coached sports, hasn't worked alongside women in jobs where physical strength matters, hasn't had any longterm intimate relationships with female persons, has no idea that safety equipment isn't designed with female bodies in mind, has never navigated the world when visibly pregnant or as the mother of a young child, and has never spoken to female people with considerable life experience about the realities of our lives.

Just today, I had to deal with some longterm financial planning matters and inquired about putting one of my sons on my auto insurance. Actuaries will attest that sex matters when figuring out how much money you'll need in retirement, and insurance companies will tell you that adding a young male driver to the family policy will cause a considerable hike in premiums.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar rules are commonly accepted norms that most people follow so that what we say and write can be most easily understood by others. For example, using capital letters at the start of sentences (and paragraphs), using punctuation marks to clearly denote when sentences have ended, and using spaces or separate lines when giving links and urls - especially long ones that are more than one line - rather than just smushing them in the middle of sentences.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

has never played or coached sports, hasn't worked alongside women in jobs where physical strength matters

physical strength does play a role in certain areas. Thing is, muscle builup is controlled by hormone levels, so a transgender person that has been on HRT for a significant time might be better grouped by gender identity here.

And probably a male person who is young, doesn't have children,

hasn't had any longterm intimate relationships with female persons

please elaborate.

has no idea that safety equipment isn't designed with female bodies in mind

safety equipment ought to be designed to consider either body type.

has never navigated the world when visibly pregnant

or thought to be pregnant.

or as the mother of a young child, and has never spoken to female people with considerable life experience about the realities of our lives.

and you think people who appear female in these situation and are transgender are not experiencing this?

Just today, I had to deal with some longterm financial planning matters and inquired about putting one of my sons on my auto insurance. Actuaries will attest that sex matters when figuring out how much money you'll need in retirement, and insurance companies will tell you that adding a young male driver to the family policy will cause a considerable hike in premiums.

this is more likely conncted to gendered socialisation rather than whether the person in question has testes and ovaries. Also, insurance companies are already facing the fact that this will now go by gender identity.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar rules are commonly accepted norms that most people follow so that what we say and write can be most easily understood by others. For example, using capital letters at the start of sentences (and paragraphs), using punctuation marks to clearly denote when sentences have ended

english is not my native language and as far as I can see, I ended all sentences with punctuation marks (though there might be some "," misplaced or missing). As for capital letters at the start, that should not make what I write more difficult to understand.

and using spaces or separate lines when giving links and urls - especially long ones that are more than one line - rather than just smushing them in the middle of sentences.

I place links and URL's were I want, especially when making a point.

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

you think people who who appear female in these situation and are transgender are not experiencing this?

Once again, in the minds of "gender identity" believers everything is reduced to how people appear. Nothing else matters except how one looks.

FFS, being female is not simply about appearance! Women inhabit our female bodies and feel things within and because of our female bodies. Being female is not a spectator sport! If everyone on earth world lost the power of sight, smell, taste and touch tomorrow, we female people would still be female and inhabit female bodies. And males would still be 100% male, even the ones who wished to be women and claimed to be trans.

As a woman, I feel I have more in common with males who know they are males than with males who claim to be female and are focused on trying to approximate appearing female coz the "regular" males are more likely to be grounded in reality as I am.

To answer your question directly: I believe males who alter their looks so they "appear female" have absolutely no effing idea what it's like to experience life in a female body as female people do. There is very little connection between what males who identify as trans and try to come off as women experience coz of their altered appearance as they go through life and what actual female people experience coz of inhabiting bona fide female bodies.

During COVID, many women who live alone, particularly older women, haven't seen anyone or been seen by anyone in a year. This has not diminished our being female one iota. Nor has it had any impact on our experience of our female sexed bodies.

I don't understand what you mean by your reference to someone who is "thought to be pregnant"? Thought to be pregnant by whom? How can a male think he is pregnant? What would it mean and matter if someone else were to think a male who "appears like" a woman might be pregnant? A male thinking he is pregnant, or someone else thinking he is pregnant, would not make him pregnant, nor make it possible for him ever to be pregnant. There is no connection between the hypothetical you have raised and the lived reality of being a pregnant woman.

Pregnancy is something that happens inside a female body. It's not affected either way by vision - whether the woman's own or anyone else's.

When I spoke of navigating the world when pregnant, I didn't mean being viewed by others as pregnant - I meant dealing with the physical realities such as having always to find a restroom coz of the constant need to pee, feeling an exhaustion in the early months that is like no other, being nauseous 24/7 for months at a time, having always to make the sensory adjustments required to maintain balance in an unwieldy body that is and feels so markedly different and is so much larger to how it's felt and been the rest of your life, having always to be hyper-aware and vigilant coz of the need to protect the fetus from harm, having a hard time fitting into a seat in a diner or behind the wheel of a car, having your water break in public... and so on.

But all this seems beyond your understanding coz you see being female as something that is all about - and only about - appearance.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When I said

Just today, I had to deal with some longterm financial planning matters and inquired about putting one of my sons on my auto insurance. Actuaries will attest that sex matters when figuring out how much money you'll need in retirement, and insurance companies will tell you that adding a young male driver to the family policy will cause a considerable hike in premiums.

You said:

this is more likely conncted to gendered socialisation rather than whether the person in question has testes and ovaries. Also, insurance companies are already facing the fact that this will now go by gender identity.

You really think the fact that in nearly all human societies - particularly those where most people have a decent enough standard of living to have access to sufficient food, clean water, shelter and basic medical care - female humans have longer life expectancy than males by a number of years is down to "gendered socialization"? The fact that males are 3 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than females is all due to gendered socialization? The different diseases that men and women in mid-life and old age tend to develop, and the different trajectories the same diseases take in members of the two sexes, are all the result of gendered socialization?

Please contact the press, then. Most scientists believe the sex differences in lifespans, in the risk of losing one's life to COVID, in the different diseases males and females develop, and the different trajectories of the same disease in the two sexes, are largely due to differences in genetics and especially due to the extra immune benefits women have due to having a second X chromosome (immune function is determined by genes on X chromosomes). Yes, some socialization does factor in, particularly when we look at lifespans starting from birth - male babies are much more likely to die before age one, for example, and between 14 and 25, males have a much higher risk than females of dying due to homicide. But take two persons, one male and one female, who make it to age 65 with similar health profiles, lifestyles, habits and such, and the woman still will likely outlive the man by 5-6 years in most countries.

If you can show that all these differences are mainly due to "gendered socialization," you deserve a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

As for the different insurance rates between young females and males, you think this is all down to "gendered socialization" too? That's funny, coz those who espouse the theory that "gender identity" is paramount usually tend to place a very high value on sex hormones, arguing that most sex differences are the result of the different hormone profiles of the two sexes and that by altering sex hormones each one of us can acquire the characteristics of the opposite sex. The insurance industry places a lot of emphasis on hormones too. A commonly-held view in the insurance industry is that a large part of the reason why male drivers under age 25 are much more likely to have auto accidents and fatalities is coz of the impact of pubertal/early adult male testosterone levels on brains that are still developing. The T in teenage boys' and young men's bodies makes them more aggressive and risk-taking whilst the lack of pre-frontal brain development they have until their mid-20s makes it especially difficult for young male drivers to assess risks and anticipate the consequences of their actions. Once their brains finish developing at at age 25 or so, they become much safer drivers.

BTW, the reasons the auto insurance industry is open to evening out the insurance rates charged to males and females after age 25 are a little more complicated that trans activists seem to think. The insurance industry only appears to be appeasing trans activists.

[–]emptiedriver 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (29 children)

"men" and "women", as understood under the transgender paradigm, are social categories, not biological ones.

But how do you become associated with either category? For most of us, it is simply a biological fact. Only trans people, and perhaps some limited segment of "cis-identified" people though it can't really be proven, have an inner sense of gender. The vast majority of us know what sex we are based on bodily realities.

Of course, for the purpose of healthcare, biology still has to be adressed, and because the scientific terminology relating to biological functions is often cold, clinical and difficult to understand, language using this terminology is also cold, clinical and difficult to understand.

Well, except that it does not need to be. That's why we have the words "man", "woman", "male", and "female". For the purposes of healthcare, sexual relations, sports and physical events, private issues, and various other situations where our biological realities impact the ways that we interact with the world. If there were no biological difference, there would be no need for the words.

The whole inner identity is a fiction. It is loosely based on stereotypes of how biologically different people behave, but it is meaningless.

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The whole inner identity is a fiction. It is loosely based on stereotypes of how biologically different people behave, but it is meaningless.

It's even worse than that, I think. In most case, "gender identity" is entirely based on sexist stereotypes of how the two sexes appear, and only to a much lesser extent on stereotypes of how they two sexes behave.

Most males who ID as the opposite sex are very selective about which behaviors associated with the female sex they emulate - they equate "acting like a woman" with being submissive, coquettish, slutty, slavish to male sexual desires, giggling, being dumb, pretty, delicate, physically weak, helpless, squeamish, useless around mechanical things like cars and power tools - and those are the only types of behaviors they try to emulate. When it come to wiping other people's asses and noses, scrubbing the toilet, washing the dishes, cleaning the house, making sure everyone is fed, doing laundry, working crap jobs, always thinking about other people's welfare, putting other people's feelings and needs first, being self-effacing, swallowing their anger, biting their tongues, not getting their own needs met, not being listened to, being excluded from various spheres, being passed over for jobs and promotions, never getting a chance to realize their ambitions and pursue their dreams, accepting unfairness and discrimination as "one's lot in life" and putting up with it without a word of complaint - not so much. Not at all, in fact.

In my observation, the vast majority of stereotyped behaviors that female people are socialized to engage in are behaviors most males who "identify as" girls and women have absolutely zero interest in adopting.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (27 children)

But how do you become associated with either category? For most of us, it is simply a biological fact. Only trans people, and perhaps some limited segment of "cis-identified" people though it can't really be proven, have an inner sense of gender. The vast majority of us know what sex we are based on bodily realities.

of course transgender people are aware of the biological sex they are, after all, the physical sexed features are the source of their gender dysphoria. If you don't feel distress about your physical sexed features (simplifying here, for more in depth criteria see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Diagnosis ) you are the gender identity of your physical sex.

Well, except that it does not need to be. That's why we have the words "man", "woman", "male", and "female". For the purposes of healthcare, sexual relations, sports and physical events, private issues, and various other situations where our biological realities impact the ways that we interact with the world. If there were no biological difference, there would be no need for the words.

of course there are biological differences between the typical male and female anatomies, what is questioned is that the terms "man" and "woman" are biological terms, simply because the people in this categories typically have a similar biology.

The whole inner identity is a fiction. It is loosely based on stereotypes of how biologically different people behave, but it is meaningless.

Gender identity is not stereotypes or gender roles. A person could love to perform activities stereotypical for and love to wear the clothing stereotypically asociated with their birth sex, and still have a different gender identity, if the person in question experiences gender dysphoria in regards to the sexed anatomy of their birth sex.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

of course transgender people are aware of the biological sex they are, after all, the physical sexed features are the source of their gender dysphoria. If you don't feel distress about your physical sexed features (simplifying here, for more in depth criteria see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Diagnosis ) you are the gender identity of your physical sex.

Professionals rely on the clinical criteria in the DSM and the ICD, not Wikipedia. The clinical criteria for childhood-onset and adolescent/adult-onset "gender dysphoria" in the DSM and ICD as well as the vast professional literature on the topic DO NOT support the claim that transgender people's "physical sexed features are the source of their gender dysphoria." At all.

On the contrary, it is very possible to meet the criteria for a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" at any age whilst having no negative feelings about one's genitals and other physical sex characteristics.

All that is required for a clinical DX of GD is a belief/claim that one should be the opposite sex (or no sex in the newer formulation), plus a desire/preference for the sex-stereotyped clothing, toys, interests and roles associated with the opposite sex, and perhaps a desire for (some or all of) the physical sex traits of the opposite sex. (Or in some newer variations of the criteria, a desire for the sex characteristics of neither sex.)

But desiring the sex characteristics of the opposite sex does not necessarily mean disliking one's own sex characteristics. Many males who are trans nowadays want to have a mix of female and male sex characteristics (feminized face, no beard, little or no body hair, female hairline and hair growth pattern, the appearance of female breasts, female body shape, penis and testicles). And some males who are trans today say their ideal genital configuration would be a penis and testicles along with a surgically-created pocket in the pelvis they could consider a vagina and could use for the purpose of being penetrated "like a woman."

The DSM-5 defines gender dysphoria in children as "a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender" and one's sex lasting at least 6 months, as manifested by at least 6 of the following 8 criteria (one of which must be the first criterion):

  • A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
  • In boys (assigned gender), a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing
  • A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play
  • A strong preference for the toys, games or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender
  • A strong preference for playmates of the other gender
  • In boys (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities
  • A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy
  • A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender

Only 1 of these 8 criteria involves disliking one's own sex anatomy and physical characteristics. As only 6 of the 8 criteria are required for a DX, having that one trait is not essential.

Same goes for adult/adolescent GD. To be DX'd with this, a person has to have "a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least six months’ duration, as manifested by at least 2 or more of the following":

  • A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
  • A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
  • A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
  • A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
  • A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
  • A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

Remember, only two of the above are required to get a clinical diagnosis of adult/adolescent GD. And what "the other gender" means is never explained. But when pressed about what "the other gender" means, people with "gender dysphoria" typically come up with a list of sex stereotypes - or vague mumbo jumbo that relies on circular reasoning and constant repetition of the word gender: people with gender dysphoria feel distress over their gender; people with gender dysphoria desire to be seen and treated as the other gender; gender dysphoria involves distress over their gender..."

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

Gender identity is not stereotypes or gender roles. A person could love to perform activities stereotypical for and love to wear the clothing stereotypically asociated with their birth sex, and still have a different gender identity, if the person in question experiences gender dysphoria in regards to the sexed anatomy of their birth sex.

This makes no sense. Coz the concept and diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" are entirely reliant on embrace of, indeed preoccupation with, sex stereotypes. To get a DX of "gender dysphoria," you simply have to meet some of the criteria in the above checklists. In children, nearly all the criteria are about sex stereotypes - and since kids have to meet 6 of 8 criteria, embrace of sex stereotypes and preference for the sex stereotypes associated with the opposite sex are essential.

In adults, the clinical criteria for GD are mostly about desiring to be the other "gender," believing one is the other gender, thinking one has the feelings of the other gender, wanting to be treated as the other gender. When you drill down to find out what all this vague gobbledygook actually means, the responses make it clear that gender for people with "gender dysphoria" boils down to a bunch of regressive sex stereotypes. Take away sex stereotypes, and the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards.

[–]emptiedriver 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (25 children)

of course transgender people are aware of the biological sex they are

I'm saying the very idea of there being any OTHER thing to be aware of is just made up. Saying that you are the gender identity of your sex is imposing the notion of gender identity on people who simply don't have it. Most of us just have a sex. That's why we have the words man and woman, because they are useful to discuss issues which are relevant to our sexes and biological differences. They are not useful to discuss gender identities. There's nothing to discuss! There are no issues!

Gender identity is not stereotypes or gender roles. A person could love to perform activities stereotypical for and love to wear the clothing stereotypically asociated with their birth sex, and still have a different gender identity,

The more ethereal you make the concept of gender identity, the less need there is for a word to begin with. But we do need words to discuss biological differences, as evidenced by the clumsy attempts to reconfigure language to discuss all sorts of important topics - all the menstruating people and individuals who pee standing up and those who get pregnant. We can escape that ridiculousness by using the standard terms as they were originally meant, and then calling your friends by their personal soul names or whatever.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (24 children)

I'm saying the very idea of there being any OTHER thing to be aware of is just made up.

Then what do you think the distress felt by gender dysphoric transgender people is based on?

Saying that you are the gender identity of your sex is imposing the notion of gender identity on people who simply don't have it. Most of us just have a sex.

There is no such thing as "not having a gender identity". If you feel psychological distress in regards to having your anatomical sex, you have a gender identity different from your anatomical sex and is the sexed phenotype where you wouldn't feel such a distress. If you don't feel any such distress, your gender identity matches your anatomical sex. Under such definition, how would it be possible not to have a gender identity?

The more ethereal you make the concept of gender identity, the less need there is for a word to begin with.

it's not at all anm etheral concept. And of course we need words here.

We can escape that ridiculousness by using the standard terms as they were originally meant, and then calling your friends by their personal soul names or whatever.

what words do you propose for "Person with male Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a male Phenotype" and "Person with female Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a female Phenotype" and how do you propose replacing the words "man" and "woman" with these words for all interactions not involving sexed anatomy?

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

There is no such thing as "not having a gender identity". If you feel psychological distress in regards to having your anatomical sex, you have a gender identity different from your anatomical sex and is the sexed phenotype where you wouldn't feel such a distress. If you don't feel any such distress, your gender identity matches your anatomical sex. Under such definition, how would it be possible not to have a gender identity?

No, this is not true. Please stop saying that the subjective feelings that you and a small number of the earth's human inhabitants experience are feelings that everyone else on earth shares.

Most people definitely do NOT have a "gender identity." The only people who can be relied on to agree they have a gender identity are those who wish they were the opposite sex, or neither sex, or some human-concocted combination of the two sexes.

Some vegans have a very extreme revulsion to the idea of consuming or using animal products. But just because some people have this revulsion and experience it deeply does not mean everyone else on the planet have it too. Even amongst people who are against eating and using animal products, many don't feel the same sort of revulsion and deep-seated distress over these matters that some vegans do.

Billions of people on earth believe they have souls and after their deaths their souls will continue to exist in some kind of afterlife or reincarnation. Just because billions of people believe they have a soul does not mean all people believe we have souls. Many of us don't think that souls are real even for those who believe they have one.

Right now I personally feel great deal of distress and discomfort "in regards to my anatomical sex" coz my anatomical sex has caused me to develop pudendal neuralgia, which creates an excruciating combination of extreme pain and numbness in my vulva, lower vagina, female perineum, female urethra and the anus in which I've had recurrent piles since I first developed them during pregnancy many years ago. Every day I wish a giant bladed device would come along and scoop out all these body parts. But I still do not have a "gender identity."

BTW, both sexes have a pudendal nerve, and thus both males and females can suffer from pudendal neuralgia. But it is is 2-3 times more common in females. Coz of our sex anatomy and coz female people experience many physical things that males don't - menarche, menstruation, pregnancy, miscarriage, labor, childbirth, childbirth injuries and menopause.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

No, this is not true. Please stop saying that the subjective feelings that you and a small number of the earth's human inhabitants experience are feelings that everyone else on earth shares.

Most people definitely do NOT have a "gender identity." The only people who can be relied on to agree they have a gender identity are those who wish they were the opposite sex, or neither sex, or some human-concocted combination of the two sexes.

Of course people whose gender identity matches their anatomical sex do not feel gender dysphoria, and therefore, to them, there doesn't appear to be such a thing as a"gender identity", since without the mismatch between gender identity and anatomical sex, gender identity has no effect. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Some vegans have a very extreme revulsion to the idea of consuming or using animal products. But just because some people have this revulsion and experience it deeply does not mean everyone else on the planet have it too. Even amongst people who are against eating and using animal products, many don't feel the same sort of revulsion and deep-seated distress over these matters that some vegans do.

transgender people do not believe non-transgender people to experience gender dysphoria. A close adaption of your analogy would be if the vegans with a revulsion to consuming or using animal products would consider there to be such a thing as a "meat-revulsion-identity" where you do identify as "meat revolted" if you feel a revulsion to eating meat and "meat non-revolted" if you do not feel such a revulsion, while still being aware that there are both.

Right now I personally feel great deal of distress and discomfort "in regards to my anatomical sex" coz my anatomical sex has caused me to develop pudendal neuralgia, which creates an excruciating combination of extreme pain and numbness in my vulva, lower vagina, female perineum, female urethra and the anus in which I've had recurrent piles since I first developed them during pregnancy many years ago. Every day I wish a giant bladed device would come along and scoop out all these body parts. But I still do not have a "gender identity."

you experience distress resulting from your reproductive anatomy being in an unhealthy state - and therefore hurting - right now. But if it were healthy and fine and not hurting at all, would you still wish every day "a giant bladed device [would] come along and scoop out all these body parts" ?

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Of course people whose gender identity matches their anatomical sex do not feel gender dysphoria, and therefore, to them, there doesn't appear to be such a thing as a"gender identity", since without the mismatch between gender identity and anatomical sex, gender identity has no effect. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

I have made it clear to you in other posts I don't have a "gender identity"! Stop trying to impose on one me.

You haven't defined gender or "gender identity" anywhere on this thread, despite everyone asking you to do so again and again.

Gender is commonly understood to mean masculine/feminine. And "gender identity" is commonly understood to mean preference for sex stereotypes and sex roles that are either masculine or feminine.

I am of the female sex, but I do not identify with feminine sex stereotypes and sex roles forced upon or associated with female people. Please stop telling me that because I don't have "gender dypshoria" I must identify with those stereotypes. I know my own mind very, very well. I have fought against sex stereotyping my whole life - and I'm in my mid-60s, so that's a long time.

But if it were healthy and fine and not hurting at all, would you still wish every day "a giant bladed device [would] come along and scoop out all these body parts" ?

That's an a silly thought experiment coz the condition I have is incurable, or at least it is at the moment. I've tried all the available treatments, and am open to trying others if they come along, but so far the treatments I've tried have either not worked or only worked partially and for a while. My only option to not be in severe pain 24/7/365 is opioids such as morphine and Fentanyl, which I was on for close to a decade but decided to stop in 2011. Coz I like having a clear head and my wits about me.

I'd miss my clit and the orgasms it brings, and wouldn't want to have to pee and defecate into bags, but I have no use for most of my sex organs anymore. I've already had my uterus, cervix, ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed coz of the painful health problems I've had - and getting rid of those certainly helped for many years. I don't regret losing those organs. I think I'd do fine without the rest. My brain is the organ I treasure the most, followed by my eyes and typing hands.

BTW, the removal of various of my female reproductive organs has had no impact on my sense of self and self-image. I am just as female now as when I was a lovely young woman, when I was pregnant, when I was a new mother, when I was breastfeeding. My sex is a matter of biological fact. It's not an identity. If I lost my breasts due to cancer, and had an accident in which I lost my lower body, every cell in my body would still be XX. I would still be as female as I am today, and when I was born.

[–]Taln_Reich 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

You haven't defined gender or "gender identity" anywhere on this thread, despite everyone asking you to do so again and again.

I have defined it again and again. Just because you are unwilling to listen, doesn't mean I haven't explained it already.

And "gender identity" is commonly understood to mean preference for sex stereotypes and sex roles that are either masculine or feminine.

NO IT DOESN'T. Why do you make me explain the same goddamn thing over and over again?

I am of the female sex, but I do not identify with feminine sex stereotypes and sex roles forced upon or associated with female people. Please stop telling me that because I don't have "gender dypshoria" I must identify with those stereotypes. I know my own mind very, very well. I have fought against sex stereotyping my whole life - and I'm in my mid-60s, so that's a long time.

Gender Identity has nothing to do with gender roles/gender stereotypes. It doesn't matter at all how masculine/feminine you are or how much you say "f#ck you" to gender stereotypes. If you are okay with being of the female sex (which you quite clearly are. And, no, health problems or experiences of sexual harassement do not count towards this) your gender identity is female, even if you defy every single gender stereotype regarding women that has ever existed simultanously.

[–]emptiedriver 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

Then what do you think the distress felt by gender dysphoric transgender people is based on?

It's personal distress - bodily, psychological discomfort or dysphoria. Exactly how to categorize will depend on how individuals describe their own experiences - a LOT of people have some kind of distress about their bodies! - and especially when living in a society or family that imposes expectations. But personal distress is a psychological issue. It is not a category that can be physically or objectively determined.

It began as a mental illness, with the same mushy boundaries as other psychological diagnoses, but has become increasingly unreliable as it's become acceptable to just self-diagnose. The gates are wide open with no requirements.

There is no such thing as "not having a gender identity". If you feel psychological distress in regards to having your anatomical sex, you have a gender identity different from your anatomical sex ... If you don't feel any such distress, your gender identity matches your anatomical sex.

Again, why is this an "identity"? You don't have to identify with your body to have a body. What if you just accept the body you have, or feel slight distress, or have had distress at times, or can't exactly decide whether you have distress? Plus plenty of transgender people no longer claim to have distress about their bodies anyway, they just say they feel an inner sense of gender. You are the one claiming it simply exists. Do you accept that you have a racial identity? Or a national identity? If someone tells you that you either do or don't identify with some aspect of your physical or historical reality, and that that makes you either trans or cis-racial or what have you, is that reasonable to you? Can't we simply have physical bodies and personal (rather than categorical) identities?

it's not at all anm etheral concept. And of course we need words here.

If it's not ethereal, what does it actually mean? What do people in the category "trans women" all have in common? Or what do "trans women and cis women" all have in common that make them one category?

what words do you propose for "Person with male Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a male Phenotype" and "Person with female Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a female Phenotype"

Transsexual, Transvestite? Trans person? Trans Woman / Trans Man? MTF and FTM? As long as we recognize that a trans person is specifically one sex presenting as the other we are fine.

and how do you propose replacing the words "man" and "woman" with these words for all interactions not involving sexed anatomy?

Not sure I get what you're asking. I would like to continue using the words man and woman to refer to biological reality, and use trans-specific terms to talk about people who are intentionally trying to present or want to be understood as the sex that they are not anatomically.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

It began as a mental illness, with the same mushy boundaries as other psychological diagnoses, but has become increasingly unreliable as it's become acceptable to just self-diagnose. The gates are wide open with no requirements.

I find self-diagnosis rather questionable, since self-diagnosis is obviousöly rather unreliable.

Again, why is this an "identity"? You don't have to identify with your body to have a body. What if you just accept the body you have, or feel slight distress, or have had distress at times, or can't exactly decide whether you have distress?

They simply can't accept the body they have, because it feels utterly, innately and inherently wrong to them. This is not a choice. This is not some slight distress. If they could accept their bodies as is, do you really think they would go though HRT, surgeries, get thrown out by their parents (yes, I have seen several experiencing this) over this?

Like, let me tell you about the time, one of them was - clearly during a particulary bad gender dysphopric phase - making a post about how he felt about the physiological effects of having the hormone levels of his birth sex. The entire thing read like a particulary disturbing body horror story written from the perspective of the person undergoing the body horror - except all the worse because it happens for real to someone I actually know and like (Note: he latter, after pulling himself somewhat together and having reconsidered his decision not to go on HRT for carrerial reasons deleted the post. But, believe me, it was a really disturbing read)

Do you accept that you have a racial identity? Or a national identity?

If someone tells you that you either do or don't identify with some aspect of your physical or historical reality, and that that makes you either trans or cis-racial or what have you, is that reasonable to you?

depends on how they define the entire thing. If their definition is, that you are "transracial" if you feel distress over physically/by ancestry being a particular ethnicity and "cisracial" if you don't, than I would be "cisracial", because I don't give a sh#t. If they demanded that because of that I would have to have a strong identification with my ehtnicity, I'd call them out on this bullshit.

If it's not ethereal, what does it actually mean? What do people in the category "trans women" all have in common?

Starting out with a male physical anatomy and desireing to change their anatomy to a female one or having already done so.

Or what do "trans women and cis women" all have in common that make them one category?

Having a female physical anatomy and not having a desire to have a different one or having a desire to have a female physical anatomy .

what words do you propose for "Person with male Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a male Phenotype" and "Person with female Phenotype and/or distressed over not having a female Phenotype"

Transsexual, Transvestite? Trans person? Trans Woman / Trans Man? MTF and FTM? As long as we recognize that a trans person is specifically one sex presenting as the other we are fine.

I was asking for words that respectively mean "Cisgender women and transgender women" and "cisgender men and transgender men", not for trans-specific words.

and how do you propose replacing the words "man" and "woman" with these words for all interactions not involving sexed anatomy?

Not sure I get what you're asking. I would like to continue using the words man and woman to refer to biological reality, and use trans-specific terms to talk about people who are intentionally trying to present or want to be understood as the sex that they are not anatomically.

If you demand, that "man" and "woman" are purely biological terms, then you also have to replace every instance of the words "men" and "women" were the present sexed anatomy doesn't/shouldn't matter with new words meaning "cisgender men and transgender men" and "cisgender women and transgender women".

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

They simply can't accept the body they have, because it feels utterly, innately and inherently wrong to them. This is not a choice. This is not some slight distress. If they could accept their bodies as is, do you really think they would go though HRT, surgeries, get thrown out by their parents (yes, I have seen several experiencing this) over this?

No one is saying that the distress of people who call themselves trans or "gender dysphoric" is not real, that it's consciously chosen, or that it's "slight" or insignificant.

We are simply saying that distress over one's body, including one's sex anatomy and processes, is not unique to people who are trans or "gender dysphoric" - nor is the suffering that trans and "GD" people feel coz of their distress over their sexed bodies necessarily more extreme, painful or disabling than the distress many other people who are NOT trans and do NOT have "GD" feel over their bodies and sex characteristics too.

Like, let me tell you about the time, one of them was - clearly during a particulary bad gender dysphopric phase - making a post about how he felt about the physiological effects of having the hormone levels of his birth sex. The entire thing read like a particulary disturbing body horror story written from the perspective of the person undergoing the body horror - except all the worse because it happens for real to someone I actually know and like (Note: he latter, after pulling himself somewhat together and having reconsidered his decision not to go on HRT for carrerial reasons deleted the post. But, believe me, it was a really disturbing read)

You really need to broaden your social circle a bit and meet, talk to and read about a more diverse set of human beings than just people who are trans and "gender dysphoric" whom you seem to think experience things unlike what other people go through.

Fact is, many people of all sorts have had strange, extremely disturbing dissociative episodes in which they've seen and experienced their bodies as monstrous, utterly alien, out to get them, diseased, distorted, hideous, non-human, huge, tiny, crawling with bugs, being on fire, part horse, part dog, with wings or fins, and so on.

Sometimes people have hallucinatory experiences - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and/or gustatory - as the result of mental illnesses (lots of people with "garden variety" major depression, for example, experience episodes of psychosis and disassociation from their bodies during MDD); due to physical states brought on by disease (brain tumors, Co2 narcosis, meningitis, shock after a traumatic labor and birth, for example); or because of drugs (THC, opioids, the drugs they used to routinely to drug to pregnant women in labor and birth, some drugs used in labor and childbirth today, infused immune drugs like IVIG, and hallucinogens like LSD, mescaline, peyote and ketamine, for example).

https://www.healthline.com/health/hallucinations#causes

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/nonpsychotropic-medicationinduced-psychosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727751/

This is not to diminish the scariness and horrible nature of what your friend went through. I'm just trying to make it clear that such experiences are part of human experience and therefore they are not unique to trans and gender dysphoric people the way you and others seem to think.

Some information about the horrible experiences featuring very scary hallucinations that have been part of childbirth for women past and present that you might find eye-opening:

https://timeline.com/restraints-hallucinations-and-forgotten-pain-were-the-norm-on-midcentury-maternity-wards-46909123c4f7

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjg8em/i-thought-my-baby-was-a-horse-what-its-like-to-trip-on-your-post-birth-drugsv

https://www.rxlist.com/pitocin-side-effects-drug-center.htm

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No one is saying that the distress of people who call themselves trans or "gender dysphoric" is not real, that it's consciously chosen, or that it's "slight" or insignificant.

Except for all the gender criticals here downplaying and trivializing the issue. Like making statement along the lines of calling transgender women "men who believe that preferring their legs shaved and enjoying cosmetics makes them women"

We are simply saying that distress over one's body, including one's sex anatomy and processes, is not unique to people who are trans or "gender dysphoric" - nor is the suffering that trans and "GD" people feel coz of their distress over their sexed bodies necessarily more extreme, painful or disabling than the distress many other people who are NOT trans and do NOT have "GD" feel over their bodies and sex characteristics too.

I'm not saying that people can't feel distress over their bodies (sexed anatomy included) that isn't gender dysphoria, or that it is necessary more painfull/disabling/distressing. I am just saying that gender dysphoria is a serious condition, that deserves treatment, empathy and acceptance, instead of villification, hatred and stigmatization.

Fact is, many people of all sorts have had strange, extremely disturbing dissociative episodes in which they've seen and experienced their bodies as monstrous, utterly alien, out to get them, diseased, distorted, hideous, non-human, huge, tiny, crawling with bugs, being on fire, part horse, part dog, with wings or fins, and so on.

Sometimes people have hallucinatory experiences - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and/or gustatory - as the result of mental illnesses (lots of people with "garden variety" major depression, for example, experience episodes of psychosis and disassociation from their bodies during MDD); due to physical states brought on by disease (brain tumors, Co2 narcosis, meningitis, shock after a traumatic labor and birth, for example); or because of drugs (THC, opioids, the drugs they used to routinely to drug to pregnant women in labor and birth, some drugs used in labor and childbirth today, infused immune drugs like IVIG, and hallucinogens like LSD, mescaline, peyote and ketamine, for example).

https://www.healthline.com/health/hallucinations#causes

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/nonpsychotropic-medicationinduced-psychosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727751/

This is not to diminish the scariness and horrible nature of what your friend went through. I'm just trying to make it clear that such experiences are part of human experience and therefore they are not unique to trans and gender dysphoric people the way you and others seem to think.

Some information about the horrible experiences featuring very scary hallucinations that have been part of childbirth for women past and present that you might find eye-opening:

https://timeline.com/restraints-hallucinations-and-forgotten-pain-were-the-norm-on-midcentury-maternity-wards-46909123c4f7

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjg8em/i-thought-my-baby-was-a-horse-what-its-like-to-trip-on-your-post-birth-drugsv

https://www.rxlist.com/pitocin-side-effects-drug-center.htm

Except that you are still fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. The issue wasn't, that he was perceiving his body in a way it wasn't. The problem was, that he was perceiving his body exactly the way it was and that to him having such a body was as deeply disturbing as actually having some monsterous, inhuman body.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Except that you are still fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. The issue wasn't, that he was perceiving his body in a way it wasn't. The problem was, that he was perceiving his body exactly the way it was and that to him having such a body was as deeply disturbing as actually having some monsterous, inhuman body.

If he was experiencing his body as monstrous when by objective standards and the observation of others, his body is not in fact monstrous, he was NOT

perceiving his body exactly the way it was

At all. He was disassociating and hallucinating, and thus not perceiving the reality of how his body actually is or was at that moment.

There's nothing wrong with having hallucinatory or disassociative episodes - lots of people (including me) have taken drugs for the express purpose of hallucinating and experiencing other ways of perceiving the world and our own bodies through all our various senses. Many of us have found this extremely beneficial. There's an entire literature written about it, from Huxley's classic The Doors of Perception from 1954 to recent works about people micro-dosing with LSD or using IV ketamine as treatments for and ways to prevent depression. Lots of rock 'n' roll is about these kinds of experiences, and The Doors are named after them.

Having experienced hallucinations can very much deepen one's understanding of reality, but hallucinations are not reality. People who mistake their hallucinations for reality are suffering from a delusion.

[–]emptiedriver 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

I find self-diagnosis rather questionable,

Start telling that to the trans rights people.

They simply can't accept the body they have

a) this is not a current definition of trans, but if it were, everyone who was trans would get full SRS, and the questions of biological difference would at least be significantly reduced (eg, the issue of people with penises being allowed into women's shelters, prisons, dressing rooms etc would not come up) and b) not accepting your body doesn't mean your body isn't real. Anorexic people or depressed people or plenty of other mentally troubled people (especially teenagers whose bodies are changing) cannot accept their bodies. Some of them go through years of suffering and manage to come through the other side thanks to various therapies or medications or life changes. Not accepting their body does not mean they can determine an inner reality that others cannot see. It means they have a mental problem. One way to deal with this may be to assuage the pain by trying to make reality better match their inner vision, but it doesn't mean that they never had the body they struggled with. A trans person who suffers with a male body and gets surgery to alleviate pain is still a male person who had mental problems and surgery. They don't have anything in particular in common with a woman who was born female and deals with an actual female body. They have a different set of life experiences.

[Having a female physical anatomy] or [desireing to have one while not desireing a different one.] I was asking for words that respectively mean "Cisgender women and transgender women" and "cisgender men and transgender men", not for trans-specific words.

Don't you see that your own definitions already show that there is NO NEED for that? You cannot define the word woman without using "or" to separate cisgender women and transgender women into two parts. Why do we need one word for the both of them? They are simply two different ideas. There is nothing in common between them as a concept.

If you demand, that "man" and "woman" are purely biological terms, then you also have to replace every instance of the words "men" and "women" were the present sexed anatomy doesn't/shouldn't matter with new words meaning "cisgender men and transgender men" and "cisgender women and transgender women".

I truly have no idea what you are talking about.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

a) this is not a current definition of trans, but if it were, everyone who was trans would get full SRS, and the questions of biological difference would at least be significantly reduced (eg, the issue of people with penises being allowed into women's shelters, prisons, dressing rooms etc would not come up)

Not everyone can get everything ,partialy SRS because isn't covered everywhere and is expensive, especially if it is to be done well , partialy because the strength of gender dysphoria can vary (and aparently the strength can even vary depending on which body part it concerns, like having a lot regarding the chest but little regarding the genitalia or vice versa). Also, I hardly see gender critical people be any more accepting of the "years on Hormones, multiple rounds of FFS, post-buttom-surgery, unclockable-if-they-dont-tell-you"-level trans woman compared to the "day-one, pre-everything still trying to get rid of the beard stubble"-level trans woman.

b) not accepting your body doesn't mean your body isn't real. Anorexic people or depressed people or plenty of other mentally troubled people (especially teenagers whose bodies are changing) cannot accept their bodies. Some of them go through years of suffering and manage to come through the other side thanks to various therapies or medications or life changes. Not accepting their body does not mean they can determine an inner reality that others cannot see. It means they have a mental problem. One way to deal with this may be to assuage the pain by trying to make reality better match their inner vision, but it doesn't mean that they never had the body they struggled with.

I don't think any transgender people are really claiming they never had the body they struggled with. They might try to keep it a secret if they are stealth, but that is not the same.

Don't you see that your own definitions already show that there is NO NEED for that?

No, I don't.

You cannot define the word woman without using "or" to separate cisgender women and transgender women into two parts. Why do we need one word for the both of them?

because, at the end of the day, part of the transgender identity is also the desire to be socially accepted as part of the same group as the cisgender people of the respective gender.

If you demand, that "man" and "woman" are purely biological terms, then you also have to replace every instance of the words "men" and "women" were the present sexed anatomy doesn't/shouldn't matter with new words meaning "cisgender men and transgender men" and "cisgender women and transgender women".

I truly have no idea what you are talking about.

How would you like it, if every instance of the word "woman" would be replaced with the word "ovary-haver"? Because if you insist on "men" and "women" being biological terms instead of social ones, that is what the word "woman" would mean. It would mean, that every use of the words "woman" and "man" would be reducing the person in question to their gonads, with no regards to their identity.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

How would you like it, if every instance of the word "woman" would be replaced with the word "ovary-haver"? Because if you insist on "men" and "women" being biological terms instead of social ones, that is what the word "woman" would mean. It would mean, that every use of the words "woman" and "man" would be reducing the person in question to their gonads, with no regards to their identity.

No, this is not true. The words woman and man communicate three things: 1) that the organism in question is a human being, in other words a person; 2) that he or she is an adult human being, as opposed to an infant, child, adolescent or teenager; and 3) that the adult person is either male or female. The latter terms designate the two clearly different, broad categories of human beings - and other animals as well as plants - that exist based on having developed in utero the anatomy to have the potential capacity at some point in life to play the male or female role in the reproduction of species.

These words don't reduce anyone to their gonads, they just designate which of the two groups of human adults individuals belong to. In both "adult human female" and "adult human male," the words that designate sex - female or male - do not negate or override the "adult" or "human" part. Sex is only one of three pieces of information about someone conveyed by these words.

Everyone knows that there is much more to human adults than just our sex, LOL. And that female and male human beings of all ages can have any kind of personality.

In English, there are tons of words that separate the adults of all the different animal species from the young of the same species: horse v foal; hen v chick; fox, bear, lion and so on vs cub; dog vs puppy; cat vs kitten; duck vs duckling; pig vs piglet; cow or bull vs calf. And as my last example shows, there are different words to distinguish adults of most animal species by their sex too: bull vs calf; stallion vs mare; buck vs doe; cock vs hen; ram vs ewe (in sheep, the young is called a lamb); lion vs lioness, and so on.

When people use such words as bull, cow, buck, doe, stallion, mare, ram, ewe, cock, hen, lion, lioness, we can all picture in our minds what the particular animal spoken of looks like. No one is reducing them to their genitals!

On the contrary, when we call up a mental image of a lion or lioness, what we tend to focus on is the mane, or lack thereof, and the size of the animal. When we call up an image of a deer or buck, or a bull or cow, we tend to focus on the antlers and horns as well as the relative overall body size of the male and female animals in question. When we call up mental images of a cock or rooster, a hen and a chick, we all see the animals in all their feathery fullness - no one envisions their gonads. We really don't think of their gonads at all. (I personally can vividly picture what a rooster/cock, hen and chick look like right now, but I have no idea what their gonads look like, or where they are even located.)

with no regards to their identity.

Yes, it's true that the terms under discussion are used and given without regard to any person's or animal's identity. That's coz they're not markers or badges of "identity" - particularly not in the newfangled way the word "identity" is used today, meaning as a shorthand for "ideal self" or the kind of person an individual human might want or prefer to be, or believes he or she should be or insists he or she really is, contrary to the actual facts. These words were invented to be statements of observed, verifiable, objective fact - to reflect the reality of what an individual person, animal or plant actually is. They were never intended to indicate the desires, fantasies or claims that run counter to objective reality that some humans have about themselves.

I'm totally in support of people inventing new words to designate the new ways some people like you conceptualize their/your own selves and want to be seen in the world. The problem is, trans people and other gender identity ideologues are trying to seize and utterly change the meaning of words that have existed, been commonly understood and in use for thousands and thousands of years - and they are doing so without any consultation with, or concern for, the rest of the population that already knows what these words really mean. Moreover, some members of the trans community are trying to take the words for particular groups of people - such as woman, man, mother, father, daughter, sister, feminist - from the very groups to whom those words actually apply. Which is not going to end well for the trans people. Coz those words are already taken. They're not up for grabs.

[–]emptiedriver 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Also, I hardly see gender critical people be any more accepting of the "years on Hormones, multiple rounds of FFS, post-buttom-surgery, unclockable-if-they-dont-tell-you"-level trans woman compared to the "day-one, pre-everything still trying to get rid of the beard stubble"-level trans woman.

there are plenty of trans women who are not "pre everything" but simply do not want surgery. It's hard to find clear statistics but even among those who get any kind of medical intervention, it's a very small percentage who have any intention of having their genitals removed.

But the key thing here is how much it ends up affecting people's lives - I'm not religious but don't much mind if people say things like "god has a plan" or "I'm praying for you" - I take it as well-intentioned and translate it in my head to something along the lines of "I want things to go well for you". So I thank them for the intent and don't argue over the details. But if they start claiming that I am scared of God and just need to submit, that various words have specific new definitions (like the lingo of cults), that I have to do the sign of the cross every time we interact, it's going to become more unwieldy. Trans women who have removed their genitals, mostly pass, and usually don't ask to be included in private women's groups are like polite christians who might say "god loves you" every now and then but don't push it. Most people will just smile and nod. But even the spiritually open-minded can get pretty pissed off by a new religion who is trying to change the law so everyone has to follow their belief system. Trans women who want to change the rules of sports, of privacy, of language, for no reason except their own belief system are imposing their religion on the rest of us.

I don't think any transgender people are really claiming they never had the body they struggled with.

Then why can't they accept being "trans women" and not demand to be included in the category "women" in every case? They are not women, they are men who have struggled with and cosmetically altered the body they have. They are a different set.

They might try to keep it a secret if they are stealth, but that is not the same.

If they want to be in the closet about it, that's their thing to deal with in their own lives. I wouldn't think it the best way to go, and I can't imagine it can work in all relationships (maybe superficial acquaintances, but not real friendships, and your family always knows). What matters is that they don't claim that they are actually women and should be allowed to e.g., compete in women's events - just that they are not "out" about being trans women, and therefore, have to make excuses about why they can't compete in the women's event.

No, I don't... because, at the end of the day, part of the transgender identity is also the desire to be socially accepted as part of the same group as the cisgender people of the respective gender.

So, although there is no definition that includes both, their desire to be included in the definition should change the meaning of our words? Should we change all words to work that way? A lawyer is a person who has finished a law degree or anyone who wishes they had a law degree? Your husband is the man you married, or any man who wishes they had married you? Why is the desire of the trans woman to be included in the word more important than an objective definition?

How would you like it, if every instance of the word "woman" would be replaced with the word "ovary-haver"?

No, that is what you are trying to do. The word woman already includes the idea of having ovaries, along with other biological realities. It also includes the idea of belonging to the human race and being a person and having the experiences that come with being biologically female. If I was going to ask about something specific to ovaries, I might want to also want to include people who used to have ovaries, but I would not care to include men who have no idea what having a female reproductive system is like. So, the word "woman" is perfectly good. I could also use that word to ask people about the experience of growing up female, or being worried about being pregnant, or menstrual cycles, or breast cancer or any number of other things. But what would you need the category of "woman" for to address "cis women and trans women" ? What experiences and commonalities do they have ?

It would mean, that every use of the words "woman" and "man" would be reducing the person in question to their gonads, with no regards to their identity.

Woman and man aren't the entirety of anyone's being. You also have a whole lot of other words that you can use, plus your own name. Your "identity" is not ensconced entirely in the concept of woman. It just means you are a female person. Don't get so stuck on that.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I hardly see gender critical people be any more accepting of the "years on Hormones, multiple rounds of FFS, post-buttom-surgery, unclockable-if-they-dont-tell-you"-level trans woman compared to the "day-one, pre-everything still trying to of the beard stubble"-level trans woman.

I'm one of those people. And I very much disagree with this point made by emptiedriver

it were, everyone who was trans would get full SRS, and the questions of biological difference would at least be significantly reduced (eg, the issue of people with penises being allowed into women's shelters, prisons, dressing rooms etc would not come up)

Coz imany girls and women - and many men especially fathers and grandfathers - don't just think it's inappropriate for males with penises to be in women's shelters, prisons, change rooms, toilets, hospital wards, sports and so on. Most people think it's not appropriate for all and any males over age 7 regardless of their genital configuration, sexual orientation and claimed "identities" to be in female spaces.

No matter how much plastic surgery they have, males still have enormous strength and speed advantages over female people. Males who've gone to great lengths to surgically alter their outward appearance like Gigi Gorgeous, Blaire White and Laverne Cox might look like Barbie dolls come to life, but they still have male grip strength and size. With one hand they can easily grab a girl or woman by the throat and strangle her to unconsciousness or death. Even a lifetime of cross-sex hormones and T-suppression doesn't change that.

No matter how much cosmetic surgery and lip fillers males get, what they wear, how much makeup they put on, how long their hair or hair extensions are, how much they flick their hair and tilt their heads, how long and shiny their acrylic nails are, how giggly and "girly" and coquettish they act, they all still have a male gaze - and it's with that prurient, prying male gaze that they look at girls and women.

Decades ago working as a newspaper reporter I did a story on Vietnam war vets in the US who had experienced extreme injuries and amputations to their lower bodies and were in wheelchairs. These men all had lost their genitals, but that in no way diminished their male gaze and made them any less able to make women uncomfortable by using their male gaze to look us up and down and visually undress us. Similarly, I have visited a lot of rehab hospitals and nursing homes full of men in wheelchairs for one reason or another, often coz they were elderly and had experienced strokes. But just coz these men couldn't get out of their wheelchairs and attack me didn't mean they couldn't look and leer at me like a piece of meat.

Even males who are not sexually attracted to females tend to have an untoward, unseemly curiosity in looking at female bodies and can't help themselves from checking us out to see what we really look like up close. Moreover, homosexual males who wish they were female themselves tend to look at female people and our naked bodies with envious, covetous eyes - which is very unpleasant for us female people. Worse, since males who wish they were the opposite sex and call themselves trans typically tend to be extremely sexist, superficial, ageist, judgmental about other people's appearance and disdainful of human physical imperfection in general - and disgusted by things like body fat, cellulite, stretch marks, wrinkles, saggy skin, breasts and buttocks - their presence in women's locker rooms, loos, shelters, showers, prisons and such will make these spaces less welcoming and psychologically safe for the majority of female people.

Girls and women don't consent to male people bringing their male bodies, male gaze, male sexual thoughts and sexist aesthetic standards of what women and girls should look like into spaces meant for females-only and where we will be vulnerable, naked and/or in various states of undress. As for the girls and women who say it's OK with them, they don't mind the presence of some males in such spaces personally - the consent of other female people is not for them to give on our behalf, and the hard-won rights of all female people are not for a small number of our own too naive to have thought things through sex to blithely give away.

[–]BiologyIsReal[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Women are still expected to be inclusive to a greater degree than men are, though.

Aren't you trans? How come neither question 1 or 2 apply to you?