4 ms·

> but punishing people for not doing so seems wrong minded That's not really what I was getting at, what I was getting at is that creating an environment where

> but punishing people for not doing so seems wrong minded That's not really what I was getting at, what I was getting at is that creating an environment where people refuse to use proper pronouns or provide even basic accommodation for trans kids is going to make them more interested in medically transitioning, not less. If you're a kid, and you suspect you might be a girl, and everyone around you is refusing to use pronouns because you don't look like a girl... it wouldn't be unbelievable for that situation to increase your risk of body dysphoria, because everyone around you is telling you you'll never be a girl until you look enough like one. It can be someone's right to avoid referring to people by their proper pronouns, but I don't believe them if they turn around and say they're doing it to protect the kids from rash decisions about transitioning. Making kids feel safer and more accepted is how you protect them from rash decisions. Making them feel like you respect them and their identity is how you encourage them to seek outside advice and to be open about their doubts about their own gender. > if people are genuinely worried about invasive surgery, the policing of trans identity is counterproductive to addressing that concern.

btilly 5y ago
Do you have any research supporting this? Your theory is that being accommodating on the first request makes more extreme requests less likely. An alternative theory is that bending over backwards to the first request makes such requests feel OK, and therefore makes more extreme requests more likely. Do you have any research indicating that one theory is more likely to be true than the other?
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Without having done any research, it certainly feels more plausible that experimenting on a small scale should satisfy curiosity more than it would engender (heh) some burning desire to take things further just for the sake of it. And tendentious language, such as calling simple things like not giving detentions for a boy arriving to school in a skirt or a girl declaring she wants to be known as Pete "bending over backwards", really only weakens your argument.
- danShumway 5y ago
  In specific to trans identity, I would need to look up some figures, and I doubt there's a ton of modern research out yet. A good research project on this would track not the instances of transitioning, but the percentages of people who transition who later regret doing so. Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. With trans kids, that's tricky to get data on today, because we kind of have to wait for them to get older to find out if they have regrets. However, this philosophy is consistent with how we approach many other topics with kids. There's a reason why psychologists offer guarantees of confidentiality, because we've learned that when people don't feel safe talking about an issue they're having, they don't talk about it. This is also the philosophy behind ending the war on drugs, it's the philosophy behind modern approaches to sex education. We are focused on management and education, not repression. We can also point back towards the debates about gay conversion therapy and look at some of those stats. Gay identity can follow a similar trajectory to trans identity; not everyone who thinks they're gay as a kid identifies as gay when they're older, and vice-versa. Discovering a sexual orientation can be a deeply confusing process. However, we have generally accepted that affirmative counseling for children who are experiencing distress over their sexual orientation is more helpful than conversion therapy or locking down the conversation. It is likely that trans children will have similar experiences. Trans kids will not stop questioning their gender identity just because they're told to. But if that questioning is happening in complete isolation, then how are they supposed to make educated decisions about any of this? In particular, a child who is wondering what they would feel like using girl/boy pronouns may simply burn with curiosity, rather than trying out the identity and genuinely discovering whether or not it fits them. As a somewhat over-simplistic analogy, a child who is convinced that they want to play the piano might take lessons for a while and then decide that they don't like playing the piano. Or they might decide that they love piano, and they might go out and buy their own keyboard. Either outcome is fine. But regardless of what they choose, the early lessons will have better-equipped them to make that decision.
  - btilly 5y ago
    Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. No, that is NOT what I'm asking about. What I'm asking for data on is whether efforts to accommodate teens in their requests is more likely to lead to them being satisfied with what they have received, or more likely to make more extreme requests. The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery.
nate_meurer 5y ago
Note that trans rights activists are pushing for the use of "personal pronouns", which are not limited to the traditional binary genders. They want you to use pronouns such as Ze/Zir/Zirs/Zirself, or Moon/Mooner/Moonself, or whatever someone feels like. If you object, or can't keep up, you'll be labelled a transphobe. Here's a sample, linked from the website of Stonewall UK, a prominent trans rights organization: https://www.mypronouns.org/how https://www.mypronouns.org/how
- danShumway 5y ago
  So? I don't understand how people are so upset about this. Is learning someone's correct pronouns more difficult than learning a preferred nickname? If somebody comes into work and announces that they've gotten married and they have a different last name now, is that a major inconvenience to people? I had professors in college who wanted me to call them prof, and some who wanted me to call them doctor, and some who wanted me to call them Mrs/Ms/Mr. It's fine, you learn their preferences and you do it. Transphobia isn't manifested in messing up someone's pronouns or getting a tiny bit behind on something, or accidentally calling someone the wrong thing. When people start to get suspicious of transphobia is when they see someone acting like using a pronoun is a giant imposition rather than very simple sign of respect. Seriously, who the heck cares if someone wants to use a different pronoun? I don't have any validation criteria for that. Heck, if you want me to alternate pronouns every other day of the week, I'll do my best to accommodate that and I'll respond respectfully if I mess up and I'm corrected. I just don't see what the big deal is here. We have so many different inconsistent rules in modern society about how to politely refer to other people, asking people's pronouns doesn't seem much more inconvenient to me.
  - docmars 5y ago
    I'll turn this around a little: I don't understand how people are so upset about people disliking it when others respond coercively, threaten legal action, cause job loss, or enact excommunication from society (if you're a celebrity) when somebody demands that you call them something unconventional in the grander scheme of societal norms. I don't think it's all that abnormal, at all, for a grand majority to push back on a vocal, disruptive, abusive, coercive, entitled group of activists sprinkled throughout the world who represent a slightly larger group of otherwise peaceful, passive people who have embraced a chosen (or inert) identity (or fad, for many) that flies in the face of society as a whole. Disclaimer: this next paragraph is wholly and entirely satirical, and I, with full sincerity, do not intend to take any of the actions portrayed in the following example: Dan, if you don't remember that I like my coffee with milk and agave nectar tomorrow, I'm unfortunately going to have you lose your job. Sorry man. That's just how I feel. You must remember, or I will continue to lose respect for you. I'm not going to just leave you alone and get over the fact that you won't remember -- I'm going to use social media to destroy your life and complicate your relationships at work, with your friends, family, and revel in any other damage I can do because you didn't remember the way I like my coffee. You must be my friend, but if you forget my coffee preference once, you're fully subject to my verbal and emotional abuse. See how that works? This is the reality. And people wouldn't be calling this out in droves if the news headlines, TV show skits mocking it, the endless reports & anecdotes of people's lives destroyed, etc. didn't already prove this phenomenon. Irrefutable. And it has to stop dominating everyone's minds. It is psychological torture on an unimaginable scale, to hold most of society hostage to an unmerited stigma for the sake of "respect" demanded of it. And what good is respect if it is not earned by demonstrating positive intent and action in everyday conversation? Activists on this front would do well to understand this, lest they continually fail in their mission to create a unified and equal society. Animosity, labels, and threats endorsed -- by proxy -- by the media, government institutions, and major corporations are the last thing that will unify people.

btilly 5y ago

Do you have any research supporting this? Your theory is that being accommodating on the first request makes more extreme requests less likely. An alternative theory is that bending over backwards to the first request makes such requests feel OK, and therefore makes more extreme requests more likely. Do you have any research indicating that one theory is more likely to be true than the other?

CRConrad 5y ago
Without having done any research, it certainly feels more plausible that experimenting on a small scale should satisfy curiosity more than it would engender (heh) some burning desire to take things further just for the sake of it. And tendentious language, such as calling simple things like not giving detentions for a boy arriving to school in a skirt or a girl declaring she wants to be known as Pete "bending over backwards", really only weakens your argument.
danShumway 5y ago
In specific to trans identity, I would need to look up some figures, and I doubt there's a ton of modern research out yet. A good research project on this would track not the instances of transitioning, but the percentages of people who transition who later regret doing so. Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. With trans kids, that's tricky to get data on today, because we kind of have to wait for them to get older to find out if they have regrets. However, this philosophy is consistent with how we approach many other topics with kids. There's a reason why psychologists offer guarantees of confidentiality, because we've learned that when people don't feel safe talking about an issue they're having, they don't talk about it. This is also the philosophy behind ending the war on drugs, it's the philosophy behind modern approaches to sex education. We are focused on management and education, not repression. We can also point back towards the debates about gay conversion therapy and look at some of those stats. Gay identity can follow a similar trajectory to trans identity; not everyone who thinks they're gay as a kid identifies as gay when they're older, and vice-versa. Discovering a sexual orientation can be a deeply confusing process. However, we have generally accepted that affirmative counseling for children who are experiencing distress over their sexual orientation is more helpful than conversion therapy or locking down the conversation. It is likely that trans children will have similar experiences. Trans kids will not stop questioning their gender identity just because they're told to. But if that questioning is happening in complete isolation, then how are they supposed to make educated decisions about any of this? In particular, a child who is wondering what they would feel like using girl/boy pronouns may simply burn with curiosity, rather than trying out the identity and genuinely discovering whether or not it fits them. As a somewhat over-simplistic analogy, a child who is convinced that they want to play the piano might take lessons for a while and then decide that they don't like playing the piano. Or they might decide that they love piano, and they might go out and buy their own keyboard. Either outcome is fine. But regardless of what they choose, the early lessons will have better-equipped them to make that decision.
- btilly 5y ago
  Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. No, that is NOT what I'm asking about. What I'm asking for data on is whether efforts to accommodate teens in their requests is more likely to lead to them being satisfied with what they have received, or more likely to make more extreme requests. The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery.

nate_meurer 5y ago

Note that trans rights activists are pushing for the use of "personal pronouns", which are not limited to the traditional binary genders. They want you to use pronouns such as Ze/Zir/Zirs/Zirself, or Moon/Mooner/Moonself, or whatever someone feels like. If you object, or can't keep up, you'll be labelled a transphobe. Here's a sample, linked from the website of Stonewall UK, a prominent trans rights organization: https://www.mypronouns.org/how https://www.mypronouns.org/how

danShumway 5y ago
So? I don't understand how people are so upset about this. Is learning someone's correct pronouns more difficult than learning a preferred nickname? If somebody comes into work and announces that they've gotten married and they have a different last name now, is that a major inconvenience to people? I had professors in college who wanted me to call them prof, and some who wanted me to call them doctor, and some who wanted me to call them Mrs/Ms/Mr. It's fine, you learn their preferences and you do it. Transphobia isn't manifested in messing up someone's pronouns or getting a tiny bit behind on something, or accidentally calling someone the wrong thing. When people start to get suspicious of transphobia is when they see someone acting like using a pronoun is a giant imposition rather than very simple sign of respect. Seriously, who the heck cares if someone wants to use a different pronoun? I don't have any validation criteria for that. Heck, if you want me to alternate pronouns every other day of the week, I'll do my best to accommodate that and I'll respond respectfully if I mess up and I'm corrected. I just don't see what the big deal is here. We have so many different inconsistent rules in modern society about how to politely refer to other people, asking people's pronouns doesn't seem much more inconvenient to me.
- docmars 5y ago
  I'll turn this around a little: I don't understand how people are so upset about people disliking it when others respond coercively, threaten legal action, cause job loss, or enact excommunication from society (if you're a celebrity) when somebody demands that you call them something unconventional in the grander scheme of societal norms. I don't think it's all that abnormal, at all, for a grand majority to push back on a vocal, disruptive, abusive, coercive, entitled group of activists sprinkled throughout the world who represent a slightly larger group of otherwise peaceful, passive people who have embraced a chosen (or inert) identity (or fad, for many) that flies in the face of society as a whole. Disclaimer: this next paragraph is wholly and entirely satirical, and I, with full sincerity, do not intend to take any of the actions portrayed in the following example: Dan, if you don't remember that I like my coffee with milk and agave nectar tomorrow, I'm unfortunately going to have you lose your job. Sorry man. That's just how I feel. You must remember, or I will continue to lose respect for you. I'm not going to just leave you alone and get over the fact that you won't remember -- I'm going to use social media to destroy your life and complicate your relationships at work, with your friends, family, and revel in any other damage I can do because you didn't remember the way I like my coffee. You must be my friend, but if you forget my coffee preference once, you're fully subject to my verbal and emotional abuse. See how that works? This is the reality. And people wouldn't be calling this out in droves if the news headlines, TV show skits mocking it, the endless reports & anecdotes of people's lives destroyed, etc. didn't already prove this phenomenon. Irrefutable. And it has to stop dominating everyone's minds. It is psychological torture on an unimaginable scale, to hold most of society hostage to an unmerited stigma for the sake of "respect" demanded of it. And what good is respect if it is not earned by demonstrating positive intent and action in everyday conversation? Activists on this front would do well to understand this, lest they continually fail in their mission to create a unified and equal society. Animosity, labels, and threats endorsed -- by proxy -- by the media, government institutions, and major corporations are the last thing that will unify people.