6 ms·

I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The o

by btilly 5y ago

I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. But then again, most research in the social sciences isn't very good. See the Replication Crisis. Or as we used to say, news at 11.

jolux 5y ago
> You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I removed that part as I agree it wasn't relevant. > As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. Unfortunately it's so poor that I judge it as being insufficient to use to form an opinion on this issue. It's much worse than the replication crisis at large, it's not clear that their methods prove what they claim in the first place if you look at their work. The pages I linked go into greater depth about why this is a difficult question to study and what the existing research gets wrong. > The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. That's as may be, but I suggest you read the WPATH standards of care if you're interested in what the medical community in general thinks about the medical treatment of trans people, including kids. It's a little out of date (2012), but if you can't find a knowledgeable medical professional nearby it's pretty much the gold standard, and is very well supported by evidence: https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc In particular, adolescents seem much less likely to desist than younger children.
scubbo 5y ago
> any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-to-entry to such major decisions (especially for children), even while there's also a simultaneous reasonable concern that such barriers will be used to prevent access to folks who genuinely do need, want, and would benefit from it. But how can anyone _possibly_ deny the first part? How could anyone contradict an individual who states their own gender - on what grounds can you claim to know how someone feels about themselves better than they themself do? Even the position of "they are confused" or "this is a phase that will pass" or "they have been pressured into that belief" doesn't hold water - until that phase passes, that person's gender, their self-image, _is_ whatever that phase dictates. That doesn't make the current situation any less true. If you told someone "I like broccoli" and they responded "that's just a phase, you'll grow out of liking broccoli soon", your response would, presumably be "...so? I like broccoli _now_, what does your guess about the future have anything to do with it?" Does your position on "accepting gender at face value" change if the statement "I am male" is replaced with "I see myself as male"? Are you more comfortable accepting the fact that someone's self-image can change over time, rather than imagining that gender is some abstract immutable inherent property?
- jhrmnn 5y ago
  I think your last paragraph hints at the root cause. Many people simply have a trouble seeing gender purely as self-image since it has originated from sex, which is objective. And this development is quite recent.
  - lordCarbonFiber 5y ago
    Two things here. 1. Sex isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. It's a bimodal spectrum of correlated traits; meaning there isn't a single marker you can choose to separate everyone into neat buckets that wouldn't misclassify some cis people (and jeez yall get mad when you get misgendered). [0] 2. None of this is even remotely new, Im not sure where you're getting that impression from. Germany had an entire institute dedicated to studying trans people at the turn of the 20th century [1]. I'd agree that for a variety of (usually discriminatory and religious) reasons it hasn't been well studied, but trans people certainly arent new. [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289718803639 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/24702897188036... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
    - orand 5y ago
      Humans can only produce two different types of gametes (sperm or egg), and never both in the same body. And it’s never a “spectrum” with “speg” or “sperg” variants.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
        Many people are infertile and make neither. Surely, if we're trying to group people by biological sex, we'd use chromosomes and ternary logic: male / female / intersex.
    - jhrmnn 5y ago
      1. I didn’t say that sex is binary, just that it’s objective. You’re male, female, or intersex, and this is decided by objective facts. Gender is not. 2. Transgender is not new. But the broader public debate about the distinction between sex and gender is recent.

by btilly 5y ago

jolux 5y ago

> You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I removed that part as I agree it wasn't relevant. > As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. Unfortunately it's so poor that I judge it as being insufficient to use to form an opinion on this issue. It's much worse than the replication crisis at large, it's not clear that their methods prove what they claim in the first place if you look at their work. The pages I linked go into greater depth about why this is a difficult question to study and what the existing research gets wrong. > The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. That's as may be, but I suggest you read the WPATH standards of care if you're interested in what the medical community in general thinks about the medical treatment of trans people, including kids. It's a little out of date (2012), but if you can't find a knowledgeable medical professional nearby it's pretty much the gold standard, and is very well supported by evidence: https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc In particular, adolescents seem much less likely to desist than younger children.

scubbo 5y ago

> any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-to-entry to such major decisions (especially for children), even while there's also a simultaneous reasonable concern that such barriers will be used to prevent access to folks who genuinely do need, want, and would benefit from it. But how can anyone _possibly_ deny the first part? How could anyone contradict an individual who states their own gender - on what grounds can you claim to know how someone feels about themselves better than they themself do? Even the position of "they are confused" or "this is a phase that will pass" or "they have been pressured into that belief" doesn't hold water - until that phase passes, that person's gender, their self-image, _is_ whatever that phase dictates. That doesn't make the current situation any less true. If you told someone "I like broccoli" and they responded "that's just a phase, you'll grow out of liking broccoli soon", your response would, presumably be "...so? I like broccoli _now_, what does your guess about the future have anything to do with it?" Does your position on "accepting gender at face value" change if the statement "I am male" is replaced with "I see myself as male"? Are you more comfortable accepting the fact that someone's self-image can change over time, rather than imagining that gender is some abstract immutable inherent property?

jhrmnn 5y ago
I think your last paragraph hints at the root cause. Many people simply have a trouble seeing gender purely as self-image since it has originated from sex, which is objective. And this development is quite recent.
- lordCarbonFiber 5y ago
  Two things here. 1. Sex isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. It's a bimodal spectrum of correlated traits; meaning there isn't a single marker you can choose to separate everyone into neat buckets that wouldn't misclassify some cis people (and jeez yall get mad when you get misgendered). [0] 2. None of this is even remotely new, Im not sure where you're getting that impression from. Germany had an entire institute dedicated to studying trans people at the turn of the 20th century [1]. I'd agree that for a variety of (usually discriminatory and religious) reasons it hasn't been well studied, but trans people certainly arent new. [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289718803639 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/24702897188036... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
  - orand 5y ago
    Humans can only produce two different types of gametes (sperm or egg), and never both in the same body. And it’s never a “spectrum” with “speg” or “sperg” variants.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      Many people are infertile and make neither. Surely, if we're trying to group people by biological sex, we'd use chromosomes and ternary logic: male / female / intersex.
  - jhrmnn 5y ago
    1. I didn’t say that sex is binary, just that it’s objective. You’re male, female, or intersex, and this is decided by objective facts. Gender is not. 2. Transgender is not new. But the broader public debate about the distinction between sex and gender is recent.