8 ms·

Too many times ration discussion critical on parts of the trans rights movement is heavily downvoted or banned. The people who otherwise support trans people, b

by km3r 6y ago

Too many times ration discussion critical on parts of the trans rights movement is heavily downvoted or banned. The people who otherwise support trans people, but think 'affirmation-only' approaches are the wrong way to go, are forced to forums/subs filled with people who are unapologetically transphobic. The discussion there will often lead the moderate opinions to radicalization. Of course parts of gay culture can be critized. Older man preying on barely legal teens, drug use, and open relationships are all controversial things that the gay community grapples with. Sure I can get behind not giving a platform to people who think gays should be stoned or trans people don't exist, but the moderates shouldn't be lumped in with them.

howinteresting 6y ago
> The people who otherwise support trans people, but think 'affirmation-only' approaches are the wrong way to go This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome". > are forced to forums/subs filled with people who are unapologetically transphobic. The discussion there will often lead the moderate opinions to radicalization. You are the company you keep.
- slibhb 6y ago
  > This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome". No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome". What people are saying is that some people may think they are trans and then change their minds later. In these cases a watchful-waiting approach is better because it may allow the person to avoid life-altering decisions like surgery or hormone replacement. This is not a hypothetical, there are recorded examples of young adults who, having undergone these therapies, came to regret it later. > You are the company you keep. If we extend this logic (which we should under no circumstances do) we could say that Aimee Challenor is guilty of the rape and torture of a 10 year old child.
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition, and of those half of them regret it because of social costs, i.e., bigotry from transphobes, and another big chunk regret that they transitioned as binary when they were in fact non-binary or vice versa. Fundamental to your argument is the idea that we should not trust trans people about their lives or their feelings. It’s bigotry. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your argument is disingenuous, unscientific, gaslighting propaganda pushed by bigots, and it has the direct result of harming trans people.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      > Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition Sure, but most of the contention by far is around kids and teenagers who are kinda sorta thinking that this "trans" thing they keep hearing about in their social milieu might perhaps apply to them, and statistics align with the (eminently reasonable) expectation of higher regret rates in that restricted subgroup. It's not a simple problem, there are very real issues involved.
    - 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago
      > something like less than 1% Could you ping me to where you see those numbers? I know data is tough to come by but the sorts of numbers I see, as someone who doesn’t follow this topic closely, are much higher: > Such “desistance” appears to be common. At least half a dozen medical studies show that between 61% and 98% of children presenting with gender-related distress were reconciled to their natal sex before adulthood. However, all these studies looked at children with early-onset dysphoria. https://www.economist.com/international/2020/12/12/an-english-ruling-on-transgender-teens-could-have-global-repercussions https://www.economist.com/international/2020/12/12/an-englis...
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    > No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome". Actually a lot of people say that, cf rhetoric about "a lifetime of hormones and surgery". As someone who has had surgeries and expects to be on hormones for the rest of their life, I think what I did to my body was good, not bad.
- axguscbklp 6y ago
  But for some people, transition is a regrettable outcome, even in the very literal sense that they do regret it. "affirmation-only" would mean affirming even people who actually would end up regretting a transition. The technology does not exist to actually make a man into a woman or a woman into a man.
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    That's not what affirmation-only means. It means supporting people as they come to terms with whatever the discrepancy between their phenotypical and subconscious sex characteristics.
    - axguscbklp 6y ago
      Ah, got you. But then "affirmation-only" seems like a misleading name. Cause it's not really "affirmation-only", it's more like "be supportive and nice". Edit: maybe I'm just not being charitable enough to jargon. I guess I can see how "affirmation-only" might be understood to mean "affirmation-only of felt gender identity" in the context of certain communities.
      - howinteresting 6y ago
        Thank you. I want to provide concrete examples of what an affirming approach is. Here is an approach that is not affirming: https://mobile.twitter.com/caitlinmoriah/status/1374157498832154628 https://mobile.twitter.com/caitlinmoriah/status/137415749883... If a young boy wants to play with dolls, an affirming approach would let them. If they later decide they'd like to be perceived in the world as a girl and change their pronouns, you support them through that. If they later decide they want to keep playing with dolls, be perceived in the world as a boy and not change their pronouns, you support that as well. If they want to play with trucks and be perceived as a girl, you support them through that as well. The point is that how you are perceived, how you look at yourself and what you do are all different but correlated. You just support them through their journey of growing up and discovering themselves. Personally I've been uncomfortable at my endogenous sex characteristics from the moment puberty hit. That is why I've changed them (many years afterwards), and I couldn't be happier about that.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I have a perspective you may find interesting. First I don’t support or attack trans people specifically. I just think people should live and let live so in that regard I do support trans. I have and do socialise with trans people on occasion and we get along fine. With that out of the way I would like to highlight that through ignorance I have many questions about trans. These questions stem from purely curious thought though I have identified that some of them may be considered offensive to trans people. There is no forum in the world where I can ask these questions without it devolving into a mud slinging contest. I’ve seen it numerous times on various platforms. I literally don’t know enough about trans to form an opinion and have no way of educating myself but am somehow required to explicitly support trans. It’s an impossible situation. I defer to benefit of the doubt but I could never conclusively get behind trans rights because I’m too uneducated on the topic. This represents a fundamental limit for the movement IMO.
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    I'd recommend reading Julia Serano's Whipping Girl to start. I'm also happy to explain transness in detail to the cis people I know and trust in real life. Perhaps get to know a trans person among your friends, family or coworkers, and build enough of a relationship with them that they trust you. I generally don't do it on internet forums because of the range of responses I've gotten in places like this thread.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      Thanks for the book recommendation
- km3r 6y ago
  Not trying to really debate the specifics, just point out there is room for debate in good faith. > You are the company you keep Sure, but if someone who is trying to be critical in good faith finds themselves kicked out of every other community, what can you expect? Their unanswered questions will need somewhere to find an answer. Sure the individual has some responsibility, but you just made the path to radicalization much easier for them to stumble upon.
- Causality1 6y ago
  Affirmation-only in the form of behaving as if women and transwomen are indistinguishable is not always productive. For an example, if you write a feature telling people to watch and cheer on women speedrunners but you only include people who were successful male speedrunners before their transition you are not encouraging more women to join the hobby.
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    Obviously cis and trans women are not completely indistinguishable -- they have overlapping but distinct medical needs, for example. This is a strawman position. However, GCs tend to believe in an oppositionally sexist view of the world, where your assigned sex at birth puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible. That's how GCs construct their categories.
    - Causality1 6y ago
      It is not. https://www.autostraddle.com/6-amazing-women-speedrunners-to-follow-after-awesome-games-done-quick-2018-412698/ https://www.autostraddle.com/6-amazing-women-speedrunners-to... "Six amazing women speedrunners" and only one of them actually had to build their rep as a woman.
      - howinteresting 6y ago
        Oh, speedrunning, as in video games. Meh. That's completely unobjectionable to me -- fact is that a lot of trans people used video games to escape from society's bullshit when they were younger, which is why we're overrepresented in video game communities. To the extent that a cis woman has trouble being inspired by a trans woman speedrunner, she should probably work on her own internalized transphobia. Thankfully, this view is vanishing among younger people: they generally take it for granted that the category of womanhood includes cis and trans women.
    - krrrh 6y ago
      > puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible I find this debate interesting so I try to read a lot of different perspectives. I think the /r/gendercritical position was more nuanced than you make it out. They think that while humans can’t change their sex, rigid ideas of what it is to be a man or woman are one of the things that causes some people to feel like they need to. They would say that society should accept a and encourage a broader range of expressions of femaleness and maleness than it does now. The GC position, as I understand it, decries the idea that a butch dyke should feel the need to live under a male identity just because she is far outside of the “firm category” of feminine or has many traditional masculine traits. It’s why they use terms like “butch erasure” [1]. It’s something interesting that I learned reading a now-banned subreddit which helped me to have more compassion and understanding for people who haven’t always had the easiest time in life. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnJOSk-3kA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnJOSk-3kA
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by km3r 6y ago

howinteresting 6y ago

> The people who otherwise support trans people, but think 'affirmation-only' approaches are the wrong way to go This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome". > are forced to forums/subs filled with people who are unapologetically transphobic. The discussion there will often lead the moderate opinions to radicalization. You are the company you keep.

slibhb 6y ago
> This is a contradiction in terms. Supporting trans people means believing that transition is not some sort of "regrettable outcome". No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome". What people are saying is that some people may think they are trans and then change their minds later. In these cases a watchful-waiting approach is better because it may allow the person to avoid life-altering decisions like surgery or hormone replacement. This is not a hypothetical, there are recorded examples of young adults who, having undergone these therapies, came to regret it later. > You are the company you keep. If we extend this logic (which we should under no circumstances do) we could say that Aimee Challenor is guilty of the rape and torture of a 10 year old child.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition, and of those half of them regret it because of social costs, i.e., bigotry from transphobes, and another big chunk regret that they transitioned as binary when they were in fact non-binary or vice versa. Fundamental to your argument is the idea that we should not trust trans people about their lives or their feelings. It’s bigotry. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your argument is disingenuous, unscientific, gaslighting propaganda pushed by bigots, and it has the direct result of harming trans people.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Something like less than 1% of trans people regret transition Sure, but most of the contention by far is around kids and teenagers who are kinda sorta thinking that this "trans" thing they keep hearing about in their social milieu might perhaps apply to them, and statistics align with the (eminently reasonable) expectation of higher regret rates in that restricted subgroup. It's not a simple problem, there are very real issues involved.
  - 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago
    > something like less than 1% Could you ping me to where you see those numbers? I know data is tough to come by but the sorts of numbers I see, as someone who doesn’t follow this topic closely, are much higher: > Such “desistance” appears to be common. At least half a dozen medical studies show that between 61% and 98% of children presenting with gender-related distress were reconciled to their natal sex before adulthood. However, all these studies looked at children with early-onset dysphoria. https://www.economist.com/international/2020/12/12/an-english-ruling-on-transgender-teens-could-have-global-repercussions https://www.economist.com/international/2020/12/12/an-englis...
- howinteresting 6y ago
  > No one is saying transition is a "regrettable outcome". Actually a lot of people say that, cf rhetoric about "a lifetime of hormones and surgery". As someone who has had surgeries and expects to be on hormones for the rest of their life, I think what I did to my body was good, not bad.
axguscbklp 6y ago
But for some people, transition is a regrettable outcome, even in the very literal sense that they do regret it. "affirmation-only" would mean affirming even people who actually would end up regretting a transition. The technology does not exist to actually make a man into a woman or a woman into a man.
- howinteresting 6y ago
  That's not what affirmation-only means. It means supporting people as they come to terms with whatever the discrepancy between their phenotypical and subconscious sex characteristics.
  - axguscbklp 6y ago
    Ah, got you. But then "affirmation-only" seems like a misleading name. Cause it's not really "affirmation-only", it's more like "be supportive and nice". Edit: maybe I'm just not being charitable enough to jargon. I guess I can see how "affirmation-only" might be understood to mean "affirmation-only of felt gender identity" in the context of certain communities.
    - howinteresting 6y ago
      Thank you. I want to provide concrete examples of what an affirming approach is. Here is an approach that is not affirming: https://mobile.twitter.com/caitlinmoriah/status/1374157498832154628 https://mobile.twitter.com/caitlinmoriah/status/137415749883... If a young boy wants to play with dolls, an affirming approach would let them. If they later decide they'd like to be perceived in the world as a girl and change their pronouns, you support them through that. If they later decide they want to keep playing with dolls, be perceived in the world as a boy and not change their pronouns, you support that as well. If they want to play with trucks and be perceived as a girl, you support them through that as well. The point is that how you are perceived, how you look at yourself and what you do are all different but correlated. You just support them through their journey of growing up and discovering themselves. Personally I've been uncomfortable at my endogenous sex characteristics from the moment puberty hit. That is why I've changed them (many years afterwards), and I couldn't be happier about that.
rorykoehler 6y ago
I have a perspective you may find interesting. First I don’t support or attack trans people specifically. I just think people should live and let live so in that regard I do support trans. I have and do socialise with trans people on occasion and we get along fine. With that out of the way I would like to highlight that through ignorance I have many questions about trans. These questions stem from purely curious thought though I have identified that some of them may be considered offensive to trans people. There is no forum in the world where I can ask these questions without it devolving into a mud slinging contest. I’ve seen it numerous times on various platforms. I literally don’t know enough about trans to form an opinion and have no way of educating myself but am somehow required to explicitly support trans. It’s an impossible situation. I defer to benefit of the doubt but I could never conclusively get behind trans rights because I’m too uneducated on the topic. This represents a fundamental limit for the movement IMO.
- howinteresting 6y ago
  I'd recommend reading Julia Serano's Whipping Girl to start. I'm also happy to explain transness in detail to the cis people I know and trust in real life. Perhaps get to know a trans person among your friends, family or coworkers, and build enough of a relationship with them that they trust you. I generally don't do it on internet forums because of the range of responses I've gotten in places like this thread.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Thanks for the book recommendation
km3r 6y ago
Not trying to really debate the specifics, just point out there is room for debate in good faith. > You are the company you keep Sure, but if someone who is trying to be critical in good faith finds themselves kicked out of every other community, what can you expect? Their unanswered questions will need somewhere to find an answer. Sure the individual has some responsibility, but you just made the path to radicalization much easier for them to stumble upon.
Causality1 6y ago
Affirmation-only in the form of behaving as if women and transwomen are indistinguishable is not always productive. For an example, if you write a feature telling people to watch and cheer on women speedrunners but you only include people who were successful male speedrunners before their transition you are not encouraging more women to join the hobby.
- howinteresting 6y ago
  Obviously cis and trans women are not completely indistinguishable -- they have overlapping but distinct medical needs, for example. This is a strawman position. However, GCs tend to believe in an oppositionally sexist view of the world, where your assigned sex at birth puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible. That's how GCs construct their categories.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    It is not. https://www.autostraddle.com/6-amazing-women-speedrunners-to-follow-after-awesome-games-done-quick-2018-412698/ https://www.autostraddle.com/6-amazing-women-speedrunners-to... "Six amazing women speedrunners" and only one of them actually had to build their rep as a woman.
    - howinteresting 6y ago
      Oh, speedrunning, as in video games. Meh. That's completely unobjectionable to me -- fact is that a lot of trans people used video games to escape from society's bullshit when they were younger, which is why we're overrepresented in video game communities. To the extent that a cis woman has trouble being inspired by a trans woman speedrunner, she should probably work on her own internalized transphobia. Thankfully, this view is vanishing among younger people: they generally take it for granted that the category of womanhood includes cis and trans women.
  - krrrh 6y ago
    > puts you in one of two firm categories, and any sort of crossing over or breach between categories is impossible I find this debate interesting so I try to read a lot of different perspectives. I think the /r/gendercritical position was more nuanced than you make it out. They think that while humans can’t change their sex, rigid ideas of what it is to be a man or woman are one of the things that causes some people to feel like they need to. They would say that society should accept a and encourage a broader range of expressions of femaleness and maleness than it does now. The GC position, as I understand it, decries the idea that a butch dyke should feel the need to live under a male identity just because she is far outside of the “firm category” of feminine or has many traditional masculine traits. It’s why they use terms like “butch erasure” [1]. It’s something interesting that I learned reading a now-banned subreddit which helped me to have more compassion and understanding for people who haven’t always had the easiest time in life. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnJOSk-3kA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnJOSk-3kA

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]