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[–]Penultimate_Penance 14 insightful - 3 fun14 insightful - 2 fun15 insightful - 3 fun -  (5 children)

Should medical transition for gender dysphoria be allowed? For children no (they don't have the maturity or life experience to make such a permanent decision about the rest of their adult life, before they have an inkling of a clue what it is like to be an adult.) Adults potentially yes depending on what kind of physical transitioning they are engaging in. I do think we should take medical ethics very seriously and have a bare minimum level of gatekeeping involved to reduce the odds of someone making a permanent choice they could regret for the rest of their life. Many physical transition surgeries and hormone therapies cause irreversible lifelong negative health and quality of life consequences that cannot be undone. It makes sense to treat the mental health issues first before making any body modifications. So I am neutral about adults physically modifying their bodies to look more like the opposite sex, but it should absolutely be a last resort.

If you believe it should be allowed, why and with what restrictions (if any)? Adults must be fully informed of the consequences and risks involved in any body modification they are interested in. For more extreme modifications like genital surgery they should be required to undergo a reasonable amount of mental health treatment first before being allowed to replace a perfectly healthy body part with a poorly done faux one of the opposite sex. If you read about the side effects, the consequences of surgical failures and overall health consequences of genital surgery it makes sense to think no one should be doing this, hence why at bare minimum we should be requiring mental health treatment first if not outright banning some of the more objectively harmful body modification practices pushed by the trans movement.

What about legal/social transition (i.e. legal documents)? Legal documents absolutely not. I have a book recommendation: "Invisible women" which talks about all the ways failure to measure sex in studies has led to a huge data gap in every aspect in women's lives from the way cars are designed to the effectiveness on drugs on women vs men. It is also incredibly important for safeguarding. Allowing a man into a rape crisis shelter, women's prison, an all girls summer camp and so on can have catastrophic consequences, in fact it already has had catastrophic consequences. Allowing men to legally change their sex to female undermines women's essential sex based rights in the law. We have different bodies and drastically different needs than male bodied people and that should be recognized in the law with no confusion.

As for social transitioning eh, live and let live. As long as the trans person in question isn't being a jerk I have no problem using pronouns and whatnot as a social nicety. Part of not being a jerk though is male bodied people staying out of women only spaces. That's where I draw the line. I can be nice to them socially, but if a man who claims to be a woman tries to join me in the women's locker room oh hell no. If he barges into a lesbian meet up he should be kicked out. If he tries to participate in women's sports he should be called out for exactly what he is: a cheater. He can play on the men's team or join a unisex sports league. Pretending to be the opposite sex does not give men the right to be treated as though they really are the opposite sex in all aspects of life. There are hard lines they should not be allowed to cross to maintain women's rights and safeguarding so we can freely participate in public life.

I see trans individuals the same way I see religious fundamentalists. I lowkey think they're kinda nuts and disagree with them on a lot of things, but as long they leave me be I'll do the same for them. It's when they start destroying women's rights that I say now hold on a minute, there's a very important line I will never allow men to cross without a fight. Women's rights are tenuous at best and men's personal beliefs, identities, feelings whatever you want to call em' should never be allowed to override those rights. There is a very long history of horrific oppression against women up to the present day that we must never forget about. I am Malala is another good book to read. All it takes is one batshit crazy ideology to gain power for women's rights go out the window. Transgenderism is a pseudo religious movement. We can give them reasonable keyword reasonable accommodations the same way we do for regular run of the mill religious folks, but not at the expense of the rest of society.

Edit: Fixing wording

[–]MissAnarchistQT is cringe[S] 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Thank you so much for responding! Your input was very enlightening. I will need to take a look at your book recommendations as well.

One follow-up question I have with regard to the changing of legal documentation: do you think there is any possibility to find a middle ground solution to this issue? While allowing legal sex change does have a number of ramifications that cannot be ignored, I understand that many transsexuals deal with severe social consequences when their legal sex doesn't match up with the sex they socially live as. Evidently, being allowed to change legal sex documentation is far from a real solution, but do you think there may be an alternative/middle ground?

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 10 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

Hi MissAnarchist!

I made a thread awhile ago about this topic and I feel like it was an interesting discussion. Legal sex change helped me a lot to being able to live a normal life and not have to deal with issues around me being transsexual or discrimination. That said, I know you can’t actually change sex so it is a fiction, it can be a helpful one. Anyway, I’ll leave the thread here in case it helps. Happy to have you here. 😊

https://saidit.net/s/GCdebatesQT/comments/62sl/gc_legal_sex_change_is_there_room_for_compromise/

[–]Penultimate_Penance 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks for linking that discussion. If there was a way to create a legal fiction to make a passing trans person life easier without opening a can of worms against women's rights I would be open to it. I have a hard time thinking of an alternative solution/compromise that works well for both parties though.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

If you don’t mind answering, how do you feel about taking sex markers off more forms of ID or making it where only law enforcement or other people who needed to knew could see it? I feel like if it was only visible when people needed it or if you were applying for a sex-based scholarship or sports league, maybe we could insure sex-based protections stayed sex-based and make it easier for passing trans people to live normal lives. I know none of this is GCs problem to solve and there probably aren’t that many trans people it even would matter for, but I’m just curious if there is something wrong with it that I’m not thinking of. I’m sure some trans people wouldn’t like this idea either because they’d want everything to say the sex they want to be, but I feel like if I could exist without risking being outed when I had to show ID it would have been fine to not change anything.

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

I could see that working pretty well, where there could be additional data like sex that could accessed after scanning the license/passport number when needed. In most day to day activities sex shouldn't matter, so that compromise could potentially work with some caveats to protect women's spaces, shortlists, sports and so on.