18 ms·
I don't really agree with the biological sex thing, as the rules of how reproduction works are generally pretty straightforward and pretty much the same across
by ttt0 6y ago
I don't really agree with the biological sex thing, as the rules of how reproduction works are generally pretty straightforward and pretty much the same across most of the mammal species. But it's beside the point.
My question is specifically how do we diagnose gender dysphoria. Is it just based on the fact that a person might express himself in a way that society associated with one gender or another?
That would make sense to me. For what it's worth, from my observations of this community it appears to me that at the very least a significant part of self-{identified,diagnosed} transgender population seems to have an unrealistic, hypersexualized portrayal of what being a woman means, most likely influenced by pornography.
But why obscure and attack the concept of biological sex then? Doesn't that only reaffirm that what we've been doing this entire time is a right thing to do? Imposing the correct gender role (or as you called it, assigning gender at birth), seems exactly like the way to go, as it lowers the chance of child developing gender dysphoria and having all the problems associated with it.
- lsiebert 6y agoI suggest you read up on intersex people if you think biology is straightforward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex As for diagnostic criteria, they vary from country to country. Here's whats in the DSM 5 https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphori...
- ttt0 6y agoAnomalies and people born with defects do not disprove the overall rule. Just like people being born with 6 fingers do not change the fact that humans have 5 finders at each hand. I'm not sure if there is a name for this type of argument, but this is a fallacy. In science virtually nothing is true 100% of the time. This is not what science is about. The second link basically confirms what I suspected.
- lsiebert 6y agoIt's dehumanizing and problematic to classify people's healthy bodies as anomalous or defective. I don't see how your appeal to tradition is sufficient to justify your view. Science generally accepts that the identities it discusses are nominalist and conditional. We humans create boundaries and classifications by grouping elements, but no such group or organization is objectively correct, some are just subjectively useful for particular purposes.
- ttt0 6y agoSimply recognizing that, let's say, a down syndrome is a genetic defect and something that's generally abnormal does not dehumanize people with down syndrome. Genetic and birth defects are a thing. It's a common scientific term. I'm not appealing to tradition, I'm arguing for it based on what I've understood about gender dysphoria or the concept of gender in general so far. To reiterate, gender dysphoria comes with all sorts of potential problems, like medication, surgeries, depression, discrimination etc. And that makes me believe that the best way to go about it for parents is to make sure (to a reasonable degree) that the child will not develop gender dysphoria and that the biological sex of the child will match the gender (a social construct, so we can influence it by controlling the environment). Unless you want to argue that what we've been doing up to this point actually makes gender dysphoria more common and the 'new way' suppresses it, or that I'm missing something important, I don't see any gaps in my reasoning.