7 ms·

If you want a simple appeal to medical science, gender dysphoria is recognized in the DSM-5 [1], and gender-affirming care and identification have been shown to

• willcipriano 4y ago
  The issue there philosophically is that prior to it's recognition in the DSM-5 transgender people would then not have existed. That is more of an appeal to authority than an explanation why one accident of birth is a social construct and one is not.
  • ketzo 4y ago
    Yeah, that’s fair as an argument from first principles. But speaking from a more practical standpoint: we know, empirically, that there are a lot of transgender people out in the world. We know that many of them feel much healthier when they are able to transition, in various different ways. It’s not just an appeal to authority, it’s an appeal to a fairly significant consensus in medical science. Which feels better to me. We just don’t have any meaningful evidence for “I identify as black so I can say the N-word” being anything other than an annoying troll argument. Or at least, I certainly haven’t seen any. But if you want to talk about race/gender as social constructs, that’s a whole ‘nother conversation — one very worth having!
    • willcipriano 4y ago
      I don't disagree that people are suffering from a condition and feel the way they do. I'm sure if I had it, I would feel the same way. I don't care one bit what clothes you wear or what name you want me to call you. My problem is mainly when I think about other, similar conditions, like elderly people who think they are 8 years old or patients who think they are celebrities. I'm not asked to think of them in the manner that they think of themselves. Another example: a teenage girl with body dysmorphia identifies as obese, but you'd have to be evil to go along with that dysmorphia. It just seems to me that this one case is different but I can't point to a good reason why.
      • sumeno 4y ago
        This kind of argument has been used to deny people their rights forever. In the 90s and 00s one of the arguments was that if you legalized same-sex marriage then bestiality would be next. These arguments are just a new flavor of that so that people can still be jerks to transgender people.
        • grajam_hons 4y ago
          I think the crucial difference is that nobody was disadvantaged by legalizing same-sex marriage. At least in how it was implemented in the UK, religious venues are not compelled to officiate such marriages. So the LGB folks still get to enjoy marriage equality, but the reverends and imams and suchlike don't feel disrespected.
          • sumeno 4y ago
            Who is disadvantaged by using someone's preferred pronouns? or not using racist slurs?
            • grajam_hons 4y ago
              I was thinking more along the lines of how women's rights are affected, for instance. What's recently been happening to women in prisons quite exemplifies the issue.
              • grajam_hons 4y ago
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              • deleted 4y ago
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          • UncleMeat 4y ago
            Conservatives have complained bitterly that legalizing same-sex marriage disadvantaged people. You've got clerks who say it violates their rights. You've got people who say that it devalues their own straight marriages.
    • BazzeractQ 4y ago
      It's gone a bit too far now though. I mean, previously it was just a polite fiction to assuage the mental anguish of those who feel at odds with their sex for whatever reason. Now we're all compelled to actually believe it, in all situations. Or at least, convincingly act as if we do.
      • ketzo 4y ago
        I suppose the question I would ask you is: why do you need it to be a fiction? Why can’t you just… make it a new reality?
        • BazzeractQ 4y ago
          The honest answer is that I've not yet heard any convincing argument that would cause me to accept this as a reality. Perhaps this is partly because I used to be a biologist and worked in the medical research field for a while (before pivoting to software development to get out of academia), so I have a very critical eye when it comes to the studies that proponents of this set of beliefs tend to use to support their arguments.
• Tao3300 4y ago
  Dolezal wasn't acting in good faith? Wasn't she heading a NAACP chapter? What does good faith look like?
  • titanomachy 4y ago
    That's an interesting question. She is on record lying about her parentage and about being discriminated against by police. Trans people (as far as I know) don't claim that their genetics are different from reality, but that their experienced gender is different from their genetically determined one. I don't know if that's enough to consider her "bad faith", though. If you genuinely did "feel black" despite having white parents, it would certainly be tempting to at least withhold information about your parents.
• BazzeractQ 4y ago
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