Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects?
The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021.
In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I could find comes counts the number of people who selected "other" when choosing a sex at 0.4% or 224,632 people out of 64,596,800.
Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people.
I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.
In a world full of discrimination against trans folks, who knows how many people who would prefer being trans have failed to be identified?
But the topic is much bigger than that. You see, the ideology being pushed says that everyone who has gender dysphoria should be assumed to be trans. But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire. However said research is highly controversial exactly because it undermines the politically correct ideology that we should take seriously all claims that physical appearance is less important than chosen gender.
And THAT is the real problem. I don't have statistics. But anecdotally I have a 12 year old with gender dysphoria. Many of their friends have the same. I personally know more children claiming to be trans at present than I've known people who were blind or missing a limb over my entire life.
A *LOT* of parents are in my boat. It is easy to find opposing ideologies about how we should deal with our teenage children. There is very little research. And people are so focused on yelling at each other that nobody dares DO more research. Because no matter what you find, you're going to get targeted by someone.
> What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire.
This is frequently claimed but is untrue, or at the very least highly uncertain. The studies most often referenced have serious methodological errors, including inconsistent definitions of dysphoria (owing partially to problems with the Gender Identity Disorder diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV that have since been fixed with the DSM-5) and desistance (in some cases counting anyone who didn't follow up with the clinic conducting the research as having desisted) https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/desistance-articles-and-crit...
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.
> 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?
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?
How do you define denying the first part?
According to my child's world view, I need to ask them every day what their pronouns are today. And any accidental slip-ups on any adult's part are a demonstration of transphobia, which justifies a raised voice and lecture.
While I'm perfectly OK with making an attempt to treat people as they wish to be treated, at what point does the inconvenience and stress that your constant demands make on others become an unreasonable ask of them? (Which is a question that every parent of teenagers winds up asking at some point, for some reason...)
> According to my child's world view, I need to ask them every day what their pronouns are today. And any accidental slip-ups on any adult's part are a demonstration of transphobia, which justifies a raised voice and lecture.
I agree that their request is unreasonable, and I'm sorry for the stress it's causing you. I can't really justify their behavior on a rational basis (teens, right?). And obviously I don't know your child, and I don't know you, but as a trans person who went through a similar phase, maybe consider what they might be thinking if you want to understand why they might be behaving like this?
For one thing, they almost certainly know your opinions about the persistence of trans identity and online echo chambers of gender identity. If (real if) you're hostile to the idea that they could really be trans, it's possible they feel hostile to the idea that you could really be making a good faith best effort to support them, which is what this sounds like to me: defensiveness. I had a very similar dynamic with my parents for several years. We came out of it understanding each other a lot better, but it was certainly rough in the thick of it. I really hope you can find a way to resolve the tension.
If (real if) you're hostile to the idea that they could really be trans, it's possible they feel hostile to the idea that you could really be making a good faith best effort to support them, which is what this sounds like to me: defensiveness.
True, you don't know me.
When my child came out as pan, a few days later we had arranged for a trip to an old friend of mine who is a trans-woman, a lesbian, and who had a non-binary friend who was staying with her.
I regret the fact that you had a difficult relationship with your parents. I've seen that story play out. However I'm pretty confident that I'm not actually transphobic. My concern is not that I don't want a child who is trans, my concern is about what is best for my child's long-term well-being.
Parents make mistakes all the time. It’s a milestone of parenting. A child is a child and knows nothing. Not even themselves up to a certain age. But that’s how we are all born. Not knowing anything, until we do. Then we all make a shit ton of mistakes and learn some more. Whether a child is this or that has to be ALWAYS balanced against the back drop of their best interests.
It’s one thing to be supportive and empathetic. It’s another thing to bow down to worship your child and let them run the show.
The trans issue has risen to a point where society must face it and figure out the bigger questions of how can we accommodate them and yet balance and find natural limits. We are so fucking far away from that point. And we will get there eventually.
I agree with the parent comment saying the trans issue is way over sampled and is or has become some kinda trend. It just is. Clearly their child showcases the main point of children know nothing when the child mis-understands what true transphobia is versus a childlike ignorance of parroting a concept they just heard about.
Why is that? Well it never changes from generation to generation. If you have kids at some point they learn about attention and how to use it.
It’s kinda like personal preferences. Is it transphobic to say you are only attracted to the opposite sex and would never date or consider a trans person in a romantic relationship? Nope. But it’s a sure fired way to keep eyeballs on the screen and people in their rigid political groups.
Like this parent (although I will be more brutal) I could give two shits if they felt they were a trex or were a girl or a boy. I don’t care. What matters is that I raise a kind hearted, compassionate human being who understands the world is not your friend. And can find their grit and true will when they need it. There’s book loads more to this but boiled down I’m doing my best to not raise an inconsiderate asshole. Because they must be held to account and told when they are in fact acting like an inconsiderate asshole.
It's brainwashing of the highest order, what is happening to our young people. Professor Sam Valkin on Youtube elaborates on all this nonsense. Powerful forces seek to manipulate impressionable minds and make them question their own gender. The more educated and socially connected you are, the more you are at risk of the inversion tactics.
Not to actually accuse about this topic, but from a motive perspective, there are three powerful countries with first-rate technologists on the internet, all with proven hacking attacks, and all benefit from the weakening of the western world. They are also all generally allies against the rest of the world.
It sure sounds wild when strawmanned like this. Now "the Chinese will use any opportunity to reduce cohesion in western society, in particular by poring gas into culture war fire" is uncharitable, probably wrong, but plausible.
Again, that's not what I'm insinuating. Only that the first part, "Powerful forces seek to manipulate impressionable minds," does have motive and precedence. Just trying to answer "to what end?"
Demographic and Finance control is one example. If one chooses a life of Hedonism over a traditional path, they may be frivolous; e.g. a single person household that is not as efficient and pays for everything themselves. Just one example.
Nation States, Corporations, Moguls that that have no moral compass and use control matrices to sway minds. E.G. did you know that Snapchat is biggest peddler of child porn? Or how about Only fans being a legal pimp for narcissists and their enablers?
Can you explain what a control matrix is and how one might use it to sway minds? Would it bore you if increasingly many transgender people are expressing their identities because that feels safer than that used to?
Teenager brains have a outstanding circuitry designed at discovering what infuriates their parents (and the generation of their parents) and just hammer on it, whatever that thing is.
I was going to say, having been a teenager, this sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing I'd pull. Not exactly to make my parents upset but them being upset was an indication of success. I honestly don't know what my real end goals were but I'm sure it's at least partially understood by professionals.
I can completely understand how frustrating the situation can be - I am extremely supportive of trans rights but I also feel like that decision starts at adulthood. Puberty blockers seem like a really good way to compromise on that point since doors are being kept open but no decision is being fully committed to.
Being a teenager is really confusing to begin with, and the last thing children need is more ways to categorize and divide people into clumps.
How difficult is it to ask a simple question every morning? Or baring that, engage your kid. Could come to a compromise for defaulting to a gender neutral "they" for when you don't know how they're feeling in a given day. Upon which they could give you a reasonable clarification (or you know, just ask).
When your kid's demands are as simple as "hey support my identity, which requires nothing but thinking slightly more about the words you use" how could they not be frustrated when their parent can't even clear that low bar.
My <2 year old can already convincingly fake an accident if he believes that doing so will lead to tasty food.
I can imagine thousands of reasons why teenagers would lie, and maybe they'll come up with new pronouns just to annoy you. Because that's what kids do, they constantly test the limits of acceptable behavior and the limits of your patience.
That said, I agree with you that people can choose what gender they feel like and others should accept it as an opinion. But trying to force others to change their behavior to accommodate your opinion very quickly becomes unreasonable.
So gender is fine, but pronouns are already a slippery slope.
Do you believe a horny teenage guy would be willing to lie and say he identifies as female, if that means he gets to see all of his female classmates naked?
It's a tradeoff between people living out their believes and the inconvenience that this causes for others.
> Do you believe a horny teenage guy would be willing to lie and say he identifies as female, if that means he gets to see all of his female classmates naked?
No, I don't. Living out that type of switch for any length of time is an enormous investment, which will change the way your peers view you forever. It is worthwhile if you're actually trans, but anyone else would be so much better off just browsing the internet.
That said, I also think single-gender spaces are in need of an re-think. Same-sex locker rooms inherently assume that people of the same gender can't be attracted to one another, which is simply not the case. So what's the point?
> Same-sex locker rooms inherently assume that people of the same gender won't be attracted to one another, which is simply not the case. So what's the point?
Same sex locker rooms don't only assume people of same gender are not attracted to each other, but also that women are disproportionally exposed to potential sexual abuse from men than the other way around. Protecting women from men specifically is very central to the idea.
> Living out that type of switch for any length of time...
What "switch" are you talking about? The trans-rights movement frowns on requiring trans people to make any sort of "switch" beyond a mere declaration. The whole concept of self-identification is that a man need do nothing more than declare that he's now a woman, and he should promptly have access to spaces and resources reserved for women, such as girls' scholarships, women's bathrooms, women's shelters, women's sports teams and athletics, women's prisons, women's healthcare, women's dating websites, etc. Requiring any sort of physical transition is said to be a violation of trans people's human rights, and thus men-- biological males with penises-- should be allowed access to these spaces by simply "checking a box".
Getting self-identification enacted in laws is a primary goal of the most prominent and powerful trans rights lobbies:
You don't need surgery, but you do need to come out as trans. Everyone around you is going to take such a declaration very seriously, as they well should.
Unless someone really really commits, it's going to be terribly obvious who is acting in bad faith.
Do you know of any examples when this became a problem in practice?
Yes, and too many examples to adequately list. A small sample:
- Lesbian dating sites are facing an influx of men-- biological men with penises-- who have declared that they are lesbian trans-women, and are angry when they don't get any attention from the females on the site. This has become a significant controversy in these communities, because apparently many lesbians on lesbian dating sites are attracted exclusively to other females. Now, I'm sure some of these guys actually are earnest trans-gendered women, who are honestly and in good faith seeking to fully transition. But others are just incels trying a new strategy.
- The English and Canadian prison systems are currently dealing with the ramifications of allowing men into women's prisons-- biological men with penises who declare they are women, and demand to be placed into women's prisons. In many cases these guys have assaulted women in prison. These cases are easily googleable.
- 18 male candidates from the The Force for Mexico party registered as women for this year's municipal elections in Tlaxcala, in order to get around quotas requiring equal numbers of female candidates. These are men, just straight up men, who declared themselves women just for the registration, and defended by trans rights activists saying that self-identification must be respected with no questions.
- This guy: http://www.daniellemuscato.com/. This is a biological male with a penis who has no intention of transitioning (he has a medical excuse it seems). In legal trouble and homeless at times, he demands to be let into women's shelters and placed in detention with women. He works diligently and successfully to folks critical of him banned from twitter.
Jessica Yaniv (I know, an easy target, but he's a huge influence in Canada).
I visited nude beaches regularly because there are some in my vicinity. Although not for quite some time anymore since smartphones became that prevalent. Denying feelings of shame often is an indicator that there is a problem.
Any bathroom wouldn't be able to accommodate everyone. For these exception there can be single cabin room or something else.
There are a lot of bathrooms for both sexes, mostly in places where space is limited. But having segregated bathrooms is in no way a problem anywhere and I think many people are happy with that.
Not sure what your "feelings of shame" lines are about.
Also, I agree that any bathroom won't accommodate everyone. But no current bathroom does that either.
For unisex purposes it depends on the bathroom design surely.
People have this idea you have some semi-public space because people might see each other in a state of undress.
But almost all westernised bathrooms contain a bunch of toilet stalls.
If everyone is going into a toilet stall to do their business - standing or sitting - then the only shared space is for washing hands or preening in front of a mirror. And if that's an issue, optionally put that in the stall too.
If security is a problem - many toilet stalls have limited doors/walls around them - then make it secure. This effort would benefit everyone.
Then humans - whatever their persuasion - could simply do their business in peace and get on with their life.
Considering that one of the key arguments for gun legalization in the US is self defense - due to the argument that a criminal will find a way to get a gun anyways - is an interesting parallel to the lack of unisex bathrooms. Creeps will find a way to violate the privacy of bathrooms regardless, so why don't we just simplify things for building codes.
Granted, I really appreciate urinals and I feel like they might be a casualty of switching over to unisex bathrooms in a lot of cases.
So if I had a series of heavy processing tasks to run - your approach to optimizing them would be to divide the tasks by whether they're above or below the median and then execute each half of tasks on separate equally equipped computers so that half of your computing resources are sitting idle for a good portion of the time?
Huh? I dunno, but I do believe no guy wants to wait 4x as long to be politically correct or for whatever marginal perceived benefit there may be for some tiny population. Nevermind the cost
Your example is way off because they are not equal processing tasks obviously and resources may not be mostly idle you just made that all up
And even if there is an inefficiency or inequality that doesn't mean the answer is unisex bathrooms I could come up with an equally contrived example for how inefficient that is
Ok...What are you talking about? Don't they already? How does changing that help anything? It would certainly still be a massive slowdown for half the population and certainly not "trivial" to change them all
While it would be a slowdown for half the population - it would equally increase accessibility for the other half of the population and society would more efficiently utilize the bathroom facilities we have. If we get unisex bathroom out of trans rights I'll be happy both to see their rights respected and for society to drop an outdated prudish concept.
When I'm out at the theatre with my partner - we don't go back to our seats until both of us have taken care of business - I'd be happy to accept a bit of a personal delay in order to speed up the process overall (and I'd be even happier if an appropriate amount of urinals still existed - I don't know what that ratio is, maybe a quarter of the floor space or so, but eliminating them would likely make restrooms less pleasant for everyone).
... of course this is so redundant but urinals are an obvious solution for half the population and already in place... Like I said there would be a massive cost this is nowhere near trivial like someone stated. I also mentioned there may be other solutions (like redistributing the resources in another way, while probably similarly expensive for little utility imo). unisex bathrooms is a separate idea. Most of the time there aren't huge discrepancies anyway it's not like men's bathrooms are always idle while women's are always out of control so the efficiency isn't really an issue 99% of the time. If we are just moving urinals inside a shared area why are we doing it at all? We're just making one big line. It's nice that you don't mind waiting for your partner but try selling that to the guy who takes 15 seconds and has to go to the back of this new line. It doesn't make any sense
Intelligent building would forecast demographics and optimize for the future I guess if you really just want "max efficiency" I assume this is already being done to an extent, but changing things already built sounds expensive af for little to no value in my opinion.
This comment alone shows that HN suffers deeply from not having many women participants. If y'all had more female commenters, you'd know that you don't get to see a bunch of girls naked in a high school or college locker room. Everyone is so insecure about their bodies that they change in the toilet stalls or take their bra off under their shirt then shimmy the sports bra up under the shirt and hook it then change shirt, or put on a towel to keep it all out of view. Being a teenage girl really sucks in a lot of ways. Of course one would have gender dysphoria if it has a glimmer of a way out of the trap of having to be look perfect, act perfect, get perfect grades, be a perfect friend, be perfectly sexy but not a slut, be perfect but not stuck-up etc that teenage girls face every day. (I understand that teenage boys face another set of pressures that can also be crushing -- as a teenager though you always think that someone else has a more-perfect life or a greater set of freedoms, right?)
As for the headline "Teenager finds way to push parental buttons: this never-before-seen act is the fault of liberals" yes, can confirm that toddlers start practicing early.
Reading a comment like this I mainly think "wow TV and social media have really f-ed up young people these days".
Back in my high school days, we had some bathing events and also shared sauna. One could either voluntary use the nude beach, or walk a bit and go to an outdoor pool with proper changing rooms and dressed people.
I think the split was roughly 50/50 and there also wasn't much gender skew.
But that was a time before smartphones. When people still walked over to each other's house to hang out.
When I was a teenager on the swim team in the early 00s, the school had to ban 'deck changing' [changing into or out of your swimsuit in view of the public] because, in a game of one-up[wo]manship, it became overtly sexual with towels falling "by accident." The sort of prudishness described above surprises me.
The point is clearly that we should discourage folks from undertaking any permanent life alterations while they're still in the "it could be just a phase" stage. To use your analogy, we're dissuading the person from tattooing "I hate broccoli" on them until they've reached age 18 or whatever. Nobody is saying we should deny them their self-image outright.
While wise it ignores the fact that the intervention can save lives which would be ended by 18 years of age.
Would you be for puberty blockers so that puberty can be delayed until 18 and automatic sex transformations be paused until the person can make a decision which way they want to go?
This might come off sounding a little rough, but as someone who had one sibling die of overdose and another by suicide, I don't think teenagers are the best stewards of their own bodies or sanity. Sometimes allowing them to make their own decisions about who they're going to be friends with or what they're going to do with their bodies ends up losing a life. I can see how lives might be saved by being permissive to them having what they want, when they want it, but I've also seen lives lost that way. So I find the "save lives" argument a little disingenuous or misinformed.
An open conversation and a working plan for what they want to do later in life is a good thing. I'm not opposed to hormone therapy as an interim measure. But I'm opposed to catering to teenage whims that aren't thought through very well, or discussed well, or which are driven by a desire to be part of a popular group, because I've seen the results. Confusion and self-hate and self-destruction can happen as a result of not being able to express yourself, but they can also happen as a result of too much unrestrained emancipation for a teenager, who doesn't understand the consequences. I'm not even speaking about trans issues here, just about teenage decisions in general. They're not fully rational people. I wasn't, either.
The concepts of "man" and "woman" are already doing a lot of work in language, society, law, etc. Redefining those terms would cause/is causing a lot of upheaval.
Think of the concepts of "citizen", "resident", "immigrant", "ex-pat", "DREAMer", etc - all terms related to where someone lives and what set of laws applies to them. Regardless of how the person feels, the label isn't just for their own sake. Someone can be a citizen and an immigrant if they are naturalized, saying someone is a resident implies (but not definitely) that they are not a citizen, ex-pats are assumed to be temporarily in the place where they reside.
Labelling trans women as women is a lossy translation that ignores a lot of societal edge cases.
I think for those two examples you listed, the modifier is orthogonal. While "black" or "cancer survivor" tell me more about them as a person, they don't help understand gender/sex. Gender and sex, or the residency words I listed, provide different information about the same attribute.
Saying someone is a cancer surviving resident doesn't add anything to my knowledge of their medical history or which laws apply to them, but resident vs ex-pat tells me a lot.
Sure, you are what you are __now__, but as a teenager that is going through radical changes. That's why you can't even get a tattoo in the US until you turn 18. In some states, not even with parental permission. Because it's irreversible. The whole trouble with reassignment surgery for minors is precisely due to the fact that who they are today is not who they will be as adults. Of course people should be treated as they want to be treated __now__, but society recognizes that adolescents are not capable of seeing far enough ahead to adulthood to be entrusted with making certain kinds of permanent, life-altering decisions.
There's no debate I'm aware of about lowering the age for getting a tattoo, or drinking, or acting in porn, or other things which are fine for adults, but which we don't permit 12 year olds to do.
> 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?
A lot of us remember similar mistakes from their own teenage years. I had a short phase where I thought I was gay, because my classmates were starting to date girls but I had a close guy friend and wasn't very interested in girls. Then I looked it up, found some resources clearly explaining that's not what being gay is, and walked away more secure in my identity. If someone had told me that I couldn't be wrong, because nobody knows how I feel better than I do, I would probably have come out and then been confused and insecure for years.
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.
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.
Two limits with a large space of indeterminate in between sounds an awful lot like an analogue signal. A system that classifies as A, B, other: grab bag of unrelated conditions isn't particularly useful in a societal nor medical context (and why it isn't used anywhere). You can objectively measure certain karyotypes, measure how someone's body reacts to hormones (and what hormones they produce), how that makes them feel, what that body can then do reproductively, (almost like a spectrum of correlated traits) but not make nice neat boxes that fits in the reproduction section of the text book you had in the 6th grade. By that measure, gender is just as "objective". Ask a person what gender they are, exactly 1 measurement required boom you're done (and with better accuracy than trying to measure anything else to boot).
Your specific exposure to the public "debate" is recent, sure. But just because you hadn't heard of it before the heritage foundation spent millions of dollars to insure you did didn't mean it wasn't happening.
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.
This is full of false information about sex, it is most certainly NOT just a spectrum of traits that is one shallow dimension that you focused on for the benfit of your agenda and the least scientific approach.
You won't easily find support for that on hacker news =)
So, just to get the record straight this woman[0], md/phd, expert in gender and sex, is less right/qualified than you, unqualified programmer (who cites no sources for your claim) on a web forum?
Like yeah, Im aware HN (as a population) hates women, and GSM in general, but somehow im always surprised by how much yall do.
Haha, ok you can believe any "expert" you want if it makes you feel better. I have no idea who that is and I dont care. Try looking at the idea logically and within a body of science not out of context and cherry picked =)
You shouldn't believe me you should believe science. I'm not arguing any of that go read about it yourself.
> But how can anyone _possibly_ deny the first part?
Some people claim to be cats. The argument is fairly leaking too. You might argue it is different for gender and to a degree that is true. Doesn't But this argument is pretty leaking too.
> 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?
Because people lie about themselves all the time. Especially teenagers. We don't take every claim made by teenagers about their feeling as true on face value. We know they're practicing how to deceive people as part of growing up.
> 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 In particular, adolescents seem much less likely to desist than younger children.
The fact that it spreads inside friend circles should be all it takes to defeat the idea that it is based on some fundamental internal gender dysphoria. It's more akin to a social meme.
In not saying that applies to all cases, but definitely a good number of them among young people, especially girls.
It wouldn't be easy to prove something like that, because you're claiming the causation is inverted. You can't very well construct a controlled study out of people's social connections or gender identity.
I don't think either of us can do more than an educated guess here.
You said "The fact that it spreads inside friend circles should be all it takes to defeat the idea that it is based on some fundamental internal gender dysphoria." I offered a plausible alternative. At least you admit you're guessing now.
Since the explosion of kids identifying as trans is a rather recent phenomenon, it seems likely that there is no good research on the outcomes yet. The people identifying as trans who were studied ten years ago may be very different from the people who identify as trans today (their reasons for feeling trans may be completely different).
It seems rather obvious that something like social contagion is going on, similar to anorexia. There may be cases with other causes, but a lot of them at the moment are probably social contagion.
If you think about it, onset of puberty is when the bodies of kids undergo drastic changes, and it is normal that they struggle to come to terms with it. Maybe worse for girls because their bodies change in more obvious sexual ways.
So they are in a vulnerable state where their bodies feel wrong until they have adjusted to their "new world".
I don't find it surprising that they are vulnerable to people telling them the reason their body feels wrong is because they are really trans, and they desperately grasp for an offered cure.
That is just me thinking, not "medical research", mind you. However, I think parental common sense is underrated when it comes to such issues. Too much expert bullshit has been injected into child rearing over the centuries.
> But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire.
Could you link to this research? This is a fraught topic that includes fraudulent studies and claims like this mean little without links.
I can only pile on with anecdotal evidence from what my spouse has seen, working in middle schools: yeah, like half of kids who ask to start going by an opposite-gender name, ask to be addressed by different pronouns, start dressing differently, et c., in middle school end up changing their minds before they reach high school, and it is often girls.
From what I have heard this does not, however, lead me to believe there's an epidemic of kids receiving medical intervention in support of this, who don't "really mean it". As best I can tell it just means puberty is weird and confusing sometimes, but that usually resolves itself (at least, more or less) after a bit, which should surprise no-one. I doubt many cases that are merely confusion or uncertainty or "experimenting" or whatever, reach the point of even having a conversation with a doctor about it. I could be wrong about that, but nothing I've heard has me worried about The Children. Suicide rates do, but not that.
I'll add onto this, if people are genuinely worried about invasive surgery, the policing of trans identity is counterproductive to addressing that concern.
What would be productive is allowing kids to use different pronouns, allowing them to dress themselves the way they wish and allowing them to seek affirmative care and affirmative communities -- so that they can explore their own gender identity without feeling like they need to commit hard or lean in against opposition that tells them they're not really trans.
To the extent that gender identity can be influenced by social norms, allowing kids to identify their own genders is a way of allowing them to safely experiment in that space without invasive surgeries that they might regret. But if everything becomes policing whether or not someone really is trans, if everything involves policing even minor interventions like puberty blockers, then of course kids who suspect they might be trans are going to think that surgery is the only way that they'll be accepted or feel comfortable -- because that's what "gender-critical" groups are telling them, they're telling them that having a certain body is a barrier to their identity.
For some trans people, exploring gender is a process. Allowing people to feel safe and accepted during that process decreases the risk of rash decisions. And accepting them regardless of whether or not they pass for their gender decreases social pressure that might exist telling them they need to medically transition to be valid.
It's not surprising that mocking gender fluidity, over-emphasizing physical attributes in gender identity, and restricting low-impact interventions like puberty blockers might make uncertain kids feel like they need to hard-commit to medically transitioning. It's not surprising that trans kids and trans-questioning kids would be alienated by that environment, and that they might be less willing to openly air their doubts and fears or seek external advice.
> What would be productive is allowing kids to use different pronouns
The debate is not about whether somebody can use a pronoun. It’s whether everyone else is compelled to use it as well. It’s the difference between positive and negative rights - whether you have the right to compel others to behave a certain way vs whether you have the right to behave a certain way yourself. Legally compelled speech creates a real Pandora’s box.
I think you should feel good for being respectful and for using whatever terms people prefer, but punishing people for not doing so seems wrong minded
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
Then I'm a little bit confused at your question. I suppose my prior is that acceptance of trans identity will probably lead to more people coming out and more people seeking gender reassignment surgery. I don't know that for certain (again, we don't really have studies about this in the long term yet), but again, we can look at other situations (gay rights, acceptance of left-handedness, ADHD, etc...) and based on how those movements have gone, it's pretty reasonable to conclude that the more people feel comfortable expressing their gender identity, the more people will decide to express their gender identity, including (sometimes) through surgery.
However, that is a meaningless thing to worry about unless you believe that gender reassignment surgery is inherently bad, which... it's not. We don't care whether gender reassignment surgeries become more common, we care about people making mistakes and regretting their surgeries. So the only statistics worth measuring here are the outcomes of people who choose to have surgery or choose to avoid surgery. We want to know whether as adults they feel they made the right choice.
Lowering the number of surgeries is not a metric we should be optimizing for. Improving outcomes and avoiding post-surgery regret is the metric we care about.
I guess to answer your specific question, I suspect that acceptance of transgender identities will probably lead to more people coming out as trans, and will probably lead to more surgery. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not affirmation is good for kids and whether it helps them make more educated decisions about their identity in the future. Having more trans-identifying people isn't a bad outcome unless those people are unhappy with their identity.
> 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.
So I don't understand why this is a question that anyone anywhere would care about, unless your insinuation is that your goal is to minimize the number of transgender people overall.
Do you care if your kid has regrets about the decisions they end up making about their body once they reach adulthood? Or do you care whether your kid is trans? Because those two concerns are completely orthogonal to each other.
My question has a very specific purpose. I'm asking you to back up the following claim that YOU made.
"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."
I don't know whether that statement is correct. But my strong suspicion is that it is the opposite of the truth. That the more we encourage the idea of transitioning, the more interest we create in all forms of transitioning.
Moving on, you ask:
"Do you care if your kid has regrets about the decisions they end up making about their body once they reach adulthood? Or do you care whether your kid is trans? Because those two concerns are completely orthogonal to each other."
The answer is that I care whether my kid will come to have regrets. I don't actually care whether they are trans. I care about whether they are happy.
It is my belief that medical interventions in teenage years are likely to work out poorly for future happiness. I wish I could say that this is an informed belief, but after attempting to inform myself I concluded that good information is not actually available. Still, since that is my belief, I believe that increased odds of a medical intervention implies increased odds of a bad outcome.
> "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."
I don't care about legalism and I'm not going to get into gotcha debates about, "well technically you said".
My intent behind that statement would be more accurate to say: non-affirming environments force children and young-adults to make extreme decisions without the benefit of experimentation or counseling over those decisions. In that environment, it is more likely that they will regret the choices they make, because they will never get an opportunity to try out those choices in a limited capacity beforehand. This seems to me to be an obviously logical, reasonable statement: people who have less experience living as a trans person are less equipped to make weighty decisions about their future life. People who have less experience in any area of their life are less equipped to make weighty decisions about that area.
If that seems like a different argument to you than what I said before, then I apologize for being confusing, clumsy, and imprecise, and I'll happily concede one internet-point. But beyond that I'm not really interested in those kinds of fights.
> The answer is that I care whether my kid will come to have regrets. I don't actually care whether they are trans. I care about whether they are happy.
In which case, the only studies that will be helpful are the ones that measure regret, not rate of surgeries. Unfortunately those studies are limited. Bear in mind that post-puberty regret and regret over waiting on transitioning are also possible outcomes here. Both medically transitioning and waiting to transition or avoiding puberty blockers/hormones can have negative outcomes, which is why I emphasize kids being able to get more life experience being trans before they make that choice.
While long-term studies on transitioning are limited, there is at least pretty strong evidence that affirmative care reduces suicide rates in trans youth[0], so it does seem to have some measurable positive outcomes.
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.
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:
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.
These aren't great examples. Names, nicknames, surnames, and professional titles are all things that typically make sense given the context.
If your professor wants to be called "prof" or "Dr.", it's probably because they're a professor or a doctor.
But a personalized pronoun is like someone informing you that they identify as a doctor, even though they have no degree, and you must therefore address them as Dr.
This makes no more sense than when someone says they identify as a non-binary pan-sexual gender-fabulist (yes, I know such people), and you're now required to memorize their customized pronouns.
Now, to your point, I used to work with a trans woman who was very obviously a biological male, but also very obviously identifying as a female in gender. She wore dresses and feminine hair styles. Her demand for female pronouns made perfect sense, and her overt appearance and behavior made it easy for everyone to remember her self identification. I have no problem with that.
But I'm probably not going to put much effort into remembering anything beyond the traditional binary pronouns. Pick one of those and I'll stick to it, but if you expect me to call you xe/xim, you'll likely be disappointed.
I don't personally run requests like this through an internal filter to figure out whether or not I agree with them or whether they make sense to me. To your point of titles:
> But a personalized pronoun is like someone informing you that they identify as a doctor, even though they have no degree, and you must therefore address them as Dr.
I don't think I've ever looked up someone's PHD after they asked me to call them doctor. I just do it, it's no skin off of my back. If I find out that they're not a doctor later, I might think that's kind of weird, but I'm probably not going to fight them over it.
Same if someone says they got married, or if they're getting married and keeping their last name, or if someone gives me a pronunciation of their name that doesn't match phonetically with how it's spelled. I don't really know that I have a validation criteria for any of those things, I don't think I've ever needed one.
I guess I can theoretically think of examples where it would be an issue, but I've never personally encountered them, and I don't think xe/xim rises to that level. Memorizing xe/xim isn't any harder to me than memorizing how a name is pronounced.
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.
It's really not, as far as I've seen? At least not in the spaces where I'm active.
If you came into work with me and started to call me George, and refused to call me Daniel, yeah, you might face consequences at work for that. If it became a really serious problem, you might get fired, partially just out of the confusion of why this was such a big issue for you. I'm a little more tolerant of stuff like this, I'm not sure I care if people use the wrong name for me, but I don't advise going around and trying it, you're probably going to run into issues. And I have definitely met adults and professors who would openly reprimand someone for using their wrong title.
But you're not going to get thrown into jail for using someone's pronouns incorrectly, and you're certainly not going to get cancelled because you messed up one time. To the extent you are followed around by aggressive activists who are berating you for small errors, you can safely ignore them, society as a whole and the trans community as a whole doesn't think that way.
That's not to say that purity spirals and cancellation isn't a thing, it's not to say that people don't get overzealous about stuff. And certainly, Twitter is gonna Twitter. But Twitter represents maybe 20% of the population. I think you're going a little overboard with this characterization.
BUT... let's assume for a second that you're right. Let's assume that you are facing stigmatization for using the wrong pronouns, let's assume that enforcement is out of control and people are just getting canceled left and right for simple mistakes. We'll assume for the rest of this comment that literally everything you've said is accurate.
> 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.
What you are describing is the reality that trans people have faced for generations. Come out, get fired. Come out, get disowned by your family. Get shunned by society. Have politicians call you a menace, get told that you're dangerous to have around kids. Get evicted from properties, get used as a talking point. Have entire books written about how there's something wrong with your brain, that there's something wrong with you. Get attacked in prisons, get constantly accused everywhere you go that you are a fraud. Forget about having your online life ruined, have your regular life ruined. Get harassed as you're walking down the street, get thrown out of your church. Get told that you're a symptom of a decaying society.
Do you understand why some members of that group might end up having a short fuse about being misgendered? Do you understand why they might start to get worried about transphobia, why they might start to read into incorrect pronoun usage, or get a little bit paranoid sometimes?
What percentage of the US was openly disappointed that the Supreme Court ruled that sex discrimination laws applied to LGBTQ+ people? Look around you at the laws states are passing right now. Transphobia in the US is alive and well, and its agenda is actively being pursued today.
That is why this stuff dominates people's minds. Because the trans community understands better than almost anyone else in this country what it actually means to be cancelled by society, and they recognize a vocal group of Americans who are not just refusing to use pronouns, but that are trying to demonize them and erase them from society.
----
Now, you are not obligated to pay attention to militant, bad faith, or unreasonable activists. Those people are a minority, you don't need to feel bad about ignoring them. And no reasonable trans person is going to get mad at you for accidentally messing up a pronoun.
You are also not legally obligated to use anyone's pronouns. You might get fired or disinvited from some social groups, but if that's a big fear then you can vote to repeal fire-at-will laws. I can't control what a company does or who people associate with, I can't override someone else's freedom of association. In any case, you should not be losing sleep over whether you're going to get arrested for misgendering someone.
But it is utterly disingenuous to argue that there's a completely new, novel plague of cancellations over trans people. That plague always existed, and in the past it was even worse. It just affected different people than you.
The biggest difference we're actually seeing today is that more of society is realizing that refusing to accommodate trans people even in extremely trivial matters is kind of a jerk move. What we are seeing as cisgender people when we watch someone get cancelled is a very tiny portion of what many trans people have been living with throughout the majority of American history.
So if the backlash people have against anti-trans rhetoric really is terrifying, or you really do feel that people are on a hair-trigger to cancel each other, then pass some equal rights legislation and maybe everyone will be less on edge. On the same thread that people are openly complaining that trans women are "erasing the identity of biological women", at the same time that states are literally banning affirmative care for kids, you have to understand why some trans people and activists are a little bit reserved and prickly about this stuff at the moment.
thanks for writing this Dan, it's a breath of fresh air in an otherwise pretty exhausting thread. sometimes I think I shouldn't even bother in these conversations because it takes a lot of patience but I worry about people on here assuming the bad faith activists you mention speak for me and my trans community. comments like this make it worth it.
I'll add onto this appreciation post. I really enjoy reading things on HN but the perspective on issues like this tends to be very one-sided.
Anecdotally, pretty much every trans space I participate in is usually full of people trying to be themselves without getting fired, disowned, or murdered. There is nary a mention of going into women's or men's spaces without passing first AND some pressing need where a public bathroom cant be avoided. The fact that so much focus in this discussion is on use-cases which most people agree aren't practical already paints it in a suspicious light.
The image painted here is very much giving the impression that bad faith activists are the primary worry of society rather than most trans people trying to figure out if they have the right to exist in the society in the first place.
With attention being drawn to us yet again by a conservative party trying to distract its base from its own policy failures, it is hard to have this cyclical discussion again and again without getting exhausted. At least every time this hits the mainstream it feels like there is a little progress.
Oh right, that article! Sure, but if I'm making assertions about organizations like Stonewall, I'd rather cite them directly, rather than indirectly from an Economist story.
A) You weren't making a comment about Stonewall, but about some link that you'd found on Stonewall.
B) I, OTOH, was commenting about Stonewall, pointing out that it seemed a crappy source. As such, quoting a known reputable source's judgement of them seems far more prudent than the primary source itself. They're not likely to say "We're a crappy source", are they?
(Heeey, I think I may finally have figured out Wikipedia's obsession with explicitly secondary sources.)
If someone required me to chant "Chocolate is god" whenever I enter their home, and my refusal to do so is a punishable / jailable offense, then that is a massive breach of my own rights to control my own speech.
I would probably choose to no longer spend time with those people if they felt they could compell (or more accurately, coerce) me to speak a certain way.
The same applies to identity, given that immediate obvious biological traits are present that can be used to infer a person's identity, and if asked to refer to them as something different, to respect that as long as the request is as respectful as me asking someone to do me a small favor.
Anything beyond that is toxic, purely from an emotional/verbal abuse lens.
Fair point -- then I suppose I won't come over to your home if I find the rules unreasonable. The ball is in your court at that point, because I have a choice that you can't take away from me outside of an unreasonable or immoral means. Would I be the "Karen" in this situation? Perhaps. The critical party is always seen as the enemy, so no loss there.
At that point, it all boils down to control on either side. One side is demanding control of one's speech (in one's own home, in this example, let's be specific). On the other side, they are demanding respect for one's right to think and speak freely without being compelled by complete strangers, and in the case of Canada, by the government.
Just as I am free not to participate in a religion and all of its chants and sayings, I am also free not to participate in the demands of a fellow human who uses personal rules and boundaries in excess to exert control over others. It's really no different than someone 50 years ago screeching "you will call me sir," -- in fact, I would argue a good portion of Leftists would absolutely flip their shit if they learned someone's father demanded their children call them "sir".
"What gives?", they'd ask. In that situation, there's an authority figure using that as a way to teach his children respect in the context of an authority/subordinate relationship, yet something about it still seems silly, especially if the father was using it as a way to strong-arm his children leading to a poorer relationship later.
In a nearly identical way, some (not all) in the trans community, especially in the public sphere, exert that same control by strong-arming their way into gaining respect from complete strangers they never earned it from, and without overt and obvious physical traits to denote one's gender falling into 1 of 2 major buckets by deduction.
"Don't guess what I am, know what I am," and guessing wrong is minus 3 points on the relationship building scale. Nice way to start! It could have been much simpler. For those who are more forgiving of those mistakes and ask politely for others to call them a certain way -- that would make it more reasonable; and I would venture to say that the majority in this community are that way. The only other issue now is the sheer complexity of remembering 50+ genders and growing.
Many people can barely remember others' names after asking 3 times, much less N number of possible genders.
"Don't take yourself too seriously" never had a better moment to shine. The world would be so much different if everyone treated those genders as something faddish or silly, where one's job, reputation, standing with friends, and even criminal status aren't hinging on a few mistakes not remembering others' preferred pronouns, especially for public figures and celebrities. God forbid they mess up or setup boundaries against more angry/coercive types. The same goes for employers or anyone else refusing employment or service to members of the trans community. That also is a real shame.
What good is a society not built on grace, rather than punishment, for something so frivolous as pronouns?
I'm a male, and I've been called "she" by accident (and even jokingly) too many times to count. All of those people still have jobs and good standing in society because I didn't take to social media to mount a campaign against them.
I'm proud of that. :) Though, it didn't take much for me to brush it off, because that's what good people do. Turning it into a harmless joke only evolved the interactions into something memorable that left both parties feeling seen and respected.
If you're going to cherry-pick, at least recognize some of the other cherries:
> If someone refused to use a preferred pronoun — and it was determined to constitute discrimination or harassment — could that potentially result in jail time?
> It is possible, Brown says, through a process that would start with a complaint and progress to a proceeding before a human rights tribunal.
Sure sounds like "potential" to me, no matter how unlikely its proponents claim that will be.
And any talk of tribunals always makes my ears perk up, as it should anyone who values representative democracy.
> I would probably choose to no longer spend time with those people if they felt they could compell (or more accurately, coerce) me to speak a certain way.
This is the solution to your problem; and, if you were continually offensive to those people, one you may be forced to enact - by their rejection of your presence. However, if you do choose to interact with them, or choose to engage in activities where you will interact with them (during your work duties, for example) - that's the social contract you're going to have to adhere to if you want to continue doing so. You wouldn't argue that you should be able to go around verbally assaulting people without consequence because that would be an infringement to your right to free speech (which has always been limited, by the way; like it or not - you can't shout fire in a crowded theatre), would you?
Yup, precisely. In a nutshell, you're saying this goes both ways, and I think that's perfectly acceptable.
I will caveat that I believe people who are opposed to the gender pronoun salad should also have the right to share that publicly, and in the event a person who subscribes to that way of life stumbles upon those public comments would benefit most by live-and-let-live, and simply write off or ignore those individuals if they feel upset.
Unfortunately every single permutation within intersectionality, whether "normative" or not, are going to face mild disagreement or prejudice towards their own ideologies.
A humble response is one that lives beyond it, rather than consuming all of one's time fighting it in the name of justice, IMHO. Seeking perfect insulation from disagreement is unachievable in society without also severely marginalizing a few groups at any given moment.
That is, unless there is a clear sign that said prejudice is on track to grow rapidly in the direction of genocide or overt societal exclusion and/or the belief that reeducation is necessary. All of these are unacceptable.
Though we are witnessing this being done against normative groups en masse in companies and public institutions today, unfortunately. It appears that most are reaching a breaking point and pushing back, and those who do represent many different races, creeds, and backgrounds. It's encouraging to see.
> I will caveat that I believe people who are opposed to the gender pronoun salad should also have the right to share that publicly, and in the event a person who subscribes to that way of life stumbles upon those public comments would benefit most by live-and-let-live, and simply write off or ignore those individuals if they feel upset.
What do you mean by this? In what circumstances do you think it's acceptable to make these comments? What qualifies as "stumbling upon"? Do you mean to include group interactions in non-dedicated forums of discussion? Personal interactions? Should neither party be permitted to raise objection? Why should either party be expected to simply leave the discussion without contributing?
> That is, unless there is a clear sign that said prejudice is on track to grow rapidly in the direction of genocide or overt societal exclusion and/or the belief that reeducation is necessary. All of these are unacceptable.
> What do you mean by this? In what circumstances do you think it's acceptable to make these comments?
Excellent questions, and ones that are complicated to answer in any truly objective sense. The measuring stick I would maybe use to judge an appropriate context would be the same as how we would maybe treat a particular interest or political stance.
Does it feel appropriate to minimize someone else's political views to their face in a casual group setting? Probably not.
Does it feel appropriate to share a political rant in one's workplace chat that may have deeply personal implications? Maybe not. But if it did happen, could the offended party forgive the person who shared? That'd be favorable.
Does it feel appropriate to share the same political rant with a close friend? Sure, why not? Family? Definitely, if you're on good terms.
How about on Facebook? Twitter? Sure -- a point of disagreement is a few scroll wheel clicks away from passing over it, if a cool, measured response can't be mustered.
We are surrounded with opposition daily in various forms. The measure of our character is judged by how we choose to handle those moments. Sometimes walking away is a more mature response, because it acknowledges that the person is capable of thriving despite their opposition. It indicates that their ego is in their own control, not swayed by any insult that passively comes their way.
In the event you have a persistent harasser, it's time to either respond in kind, or get help from someone with the power to stop such harassment, but a single passive statement of belief or opinion shared is hardly even close to classifying as harassment.
> Who judges this and how are they chosen to do so?
Another tricky one, and very difficult to qualify.
If I had to choose, I might say the military if I've entrusted them to have intelligence data and a general pulse of potential threats within or outside a nation. Maybe that trust is misplaced? Who then would I turn to? The media? Would the media faithfully represent the issue in an unbiased manner? They've done very well to shatter that trust, as a collective institution.
Who then? Citizen journalists and average people recording and sharing video footage of evidence of mistreatment, but shared en masse? Reports of in the hundreds? Thousands? That'd be a good indicator that something's amiss.
Parents approaching their school boards en masse across the country to confront Critical Race Theory's damaging effects on school-aged children leading to fundamentally racist views against white people? That's a pretty good indicator something's wrong, especially if there hadn't been a past history of malicious / nefarious confrontations of the same sort, to where the recent recordings and reports of this happening are objectively novel situations within a larger period of time.
Despite those reports, there still would need to be a fairly unbiased judge of the broader situation, and one (or many) who could act decisively in enough time to prevent catastrophe should a threatening scenario for any given race or group arise.
It's the same sort of question as "did the Allies act soon enough against Nazi Germany's genocide?" or "did anyone act soon enough or... at all, against the Bolsheviks?"
Well, people finally acted, but was it enough? Or was the potential disaster they prevented grander than what had already been committed?
I couldn't confidently say there is anyone on Earth who is qualified to answer that question outside of God Himself.
> The debate is not about whether somebody can use a pronoun.
It sort of is, though: someone's use of a pronoun only exists to the extent that others refer to them that way. My pronouns for myself are I/me/mine. Your avoidance of the pronouns I prefer denies me the "use" of those pronouns. I can't use them without your help.
Not disagreeing about the positive/negative rights characterization. And bigger picture: you're right that this really is about respect. Many people want to demand (even if not compel) more attention to mutual respect; many others want to use disrespectfulness as an indicator of their independence, because they view that as a more important value.
Right? It's like if someone asked me "Hey, I'd prefer you call me Robert instead of Bobby" and I got pissed about it because they're trying to infringe on my free speech.
It's their identity, they're asking you to identify them a particular way.
Are they asking you to expend a small amount of effort to mentally adjust how to refer to them? Yes. Have people been changing nicknames over their lives for probably hundreds or thousands of years? Also yes.
But you ask someone to use a different pronoun and suddenly it's just too much.
I see it being compared to demanding people call you "King Robert (the Beloved) III, the Resplendent." Is it disrespectful not to meet their demands because it makes you feel silly? At what point are you allowed to say that they require excessive external effort to help them maintain their identity?
I mean I know plenty of people who want to be called ridiculous things, on the internet for example I'm talking to someone who apparently is called DangitBobby. And I'm KittenInABox. I'd be super weirded out if someone demanded that my name is too ridiculous and they'll call me Susan instead on the internet because its their free speech rights.
In the context of the internet it wouldn't be silly at all for us to call each other those things! But the internet is also sort of a wild west of etiquette so all bets are off.
Well, not at the point where you say "she" instead of "he". The fact that you can come up with a ridiculous example doesn't mean the actual request is ridiculous.
I don't think that she, he, or they are ridiculous. I personally have never been instructed on someone's pronouns before so I have no real life example of something that I would find ridiculous. But it's not difficult for me to imagine a set of pronouns that I would not enjoy using, and would probably avoid interactions with someone who insisted that I use them.
So you're making an argument against the concept of respecting someone's requested pronouns, because it's "not difficult for you to imagine" a situation where you would "feel silly" even though you've never even encountered someone who asked you to use even non-silly pronouns.
Great contribution.
The sad thing is that while this is only a conversation on the internet, there are people out there passing laws affecting actual humans with the same amount of actual exposure to those humans and based entirely on their own imagined discomfort.
Okay. I can tell you feel your logical position is much stronger than it actually is. We need not live through things to form opinions, and since I've never had to deny anyone's pronoun request I'm not really sure what you think you're defending against. Maybe explain how you think my opinion wrong instead of huffing and puffing about hypotheticals being evil. I don't feel the shame you've tried to direct my way. Maybe some second hand embarrassment for what I'm reading. Great contribution.
Their are plenty non ridiculous examples, but no clear place to draw the line.
What if I asked to be addressed as "Sir"? Would it matter if I were nobility, or a nobody just trying to assert dominance? Or if you hated me and thought I was the opposite of a gentleman? But what if I thought of myself as a perfect gentlemen? Are you bound by my self perception?
Ridiculous is a relative term. If I think a request is ridiculous, am I free to ignore it?
> But you ask someone to use a different pronoun and suddenly it's just too much.
It may indeed be. I likely don't have the time or energy to correctly address people who insist on being called they/them, or xe/xem. I have enough trouble remembering people's names.
Getting someone's pronoun wrong by accident happens. And it's generally just an "oh sorry, I'll try to get that right next time" and you move on. The problematic people are the ones who make a deliberate point of not using the pronouns that someone would like them to use, because they've independently decided that those pronouns are wrong.
Well, they say it's too much - but really it's just that they believe you aren't a valid member of the group you're claiming to be and they can't directly call you a liar. They're wrong, of course; but they're also lying when they say it's too much effort - that's not why.
Yes, very much a lack of respect for someone's choice of identity.
Forget nicknames, how would these people feel if somebody just said "Hey I'm going to call you Arnold now, because you fit my mental image of Arnold." Wildly inappropriate thing to do?
If you want to go and impose whatever pronoun you want on someone based on how they look, don't act shocked when you get called out for being a dick to them.
We don't have an obligation to call somebody by their real name nor should we have an obligation to use their preferred pronouns. We should do it out of respect, but we shouldn't be obligated to do so by law or some other rule.
I've not seen someone suffer negative consequences for calling someone else the wrong real name. I've seen instances of negative consequences for someone using the wrong pronoun though.
Is that because there would be no consequences if I showed up to my job and started calling every customer I talk to "Frank"?
Or is it because deliberately going out of your way to call people the wrong name to make a political point isn't a thing that anyone does, so nobody has needed a rule to make them knock it off?
The gender critical are not policing trans identity; rather, trans-activists are doing the policing of gender expression by loudly insisting that any kind of socially non-normative gender expression should be seen as tantamount to and ipso facto equated with some sort of trans identity. Your own reference to "gender fluidity" as tantamount to a separate identity rather than a characteristics that all humans may share to a lesser or greater extent, is an especially clear example of this. Need I point out how this policing may be harmful to non-heteronormatively-expressing folks?
> The gender critical are not policing trans identity
I don't know how anyone could look at the swath of laws introduced throughout 2020-2021 in both the US and in the UK and actually believe that people are not trying to police trans identity.
> by loudly insisting that any kind of socially non-normative gender expression should be seen as tantamount to and ipso facto equated with some sort of trans identity.
I mean, no. One of the good side-effects of allowing people to be more comfortable with gender fluidity is reducing stereotypes about what men and women need to look like and how they need to act. It means less telling women that something is wrong with them if they inhabit traditional male roles or have certain body types.
This is helpful not only for trans people, but also for non-conforming cis people. The less that people are freaking out over somebody calling themselves a girl if they don't look a certain way, the better things are for everyone who is not inhabiting a traditional gender role, whether they be cis or trans.
> Need I point out how this policing may be harmful to non-heteronormatively-expressing folks?
No, you don't need to. As I pointed out above, this policing isn't happening, and breaking down social norms about gender expression creates safe spaces for non-heteronormatively expressing people, regardless of whether or not they identify as trans.
An advantage of separating concepts like gender, sex, and presentation is that non-conforming cis people can feel more comfortable saying, "my appearance/interests do not make me less of a woman/man."
The idea that trans people are telling girls who like sports that they have to be men just so fundamentally misunderstands what the trans community actually believes about sex and gender. Trans people largely believe the opposite of what you say, they are pushing back against the idea that you can be "prescribed" an innate gender-identity by society.
This description is the opposite of my experience of the trans community. In my experience of trans people they are welcoming of any combination of gender expression and identity and are universally supportive of gender exploration and non-traditional gender expression for trans and cis people alike.
Unfortunately, trans-activists are not at all co-extensive with 'the trans community'. Many self-proclaimed activists "for trans rights" are not even trans themselves, and pursue social positions, points of view and policies that are largely opposed by actual trans people.
Who? Your argument appears, to me, to be dangerously approaching what resembles that of a "true Scotsman" or "straw man" fallacy. You should provide some data and sources to back up your anecdotal observations or you risk appearing disingenuous in your discourse.
Also, why is it that you refer to people who advocate for the validity of the trans experience as "trans activists" but insist on using the term "gender critical" to describe those who advocate for the position that the trans experience is invalid? Would not a more appropriate term be "anti-trans activists"? Is the resemblance to the "pro-choice/pro-life" argument - i.e. using a euphemism to avoid saying what the position is descriptively and clearly - purposeful?
> "gender critical" to describe those who advocate for the position that the trans experience is invalid
While some people with highly traditionalist views might indeed believe this, many gender critical folks do not. Trans identity can definitely be valid, but so can cis identity. And it's definitely wrong to conflate any and all non-normative gender expression or presentation with some kind of all-encompassing "trans experience", at least in the strict identity sense.
Puberty blockers are a pretty nifty tool to this end - they allow any hard committal to be deferred - the child can reverse their decision without any serious long term ills. I am rather concerned about the possibility that invasive surgery might become normalized in non-adults but I don't believe it's something that's close to happening.
Teenagers explore their identity in a number of vectors. I have always been strongly opposed to parentally imposed career choices and gender falls into this same category except there is some genetic predisposition that will carry on bodily changes unless proactive intervention is undertaken.
Impossible. Your request is a distraction and is deceptive - at best - because medicine doesn't work that way - and it never has. There's always the risk of long-term and short-term side-effects when any medication or treatment is given to treat any condition; the question is one of the benefits outweighing the risks. Accepting responsibility for the outcomes of these decisions is what lies at the heart of practising medicine.
Frankly, transgender youth who seek these treatments generally suffer from clinical mental health disorders - including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. These carry a significant risk of long-term suffering and anguish - not to mention the obvious fact that suicide is far too common in this population.
The risks of treatment are well studied and well known - the drugs used have existed for decades. They absolutely do not have to be completely safe and free of long term side effects - and even then the risk present is incredibly low - if what it does is keep them from committing suicide because of the suffering they endure as their bodies slowly turn into what they don't want to be. Surely you can imagine the distress that would cause?
The studies and metastudies and International Endocrine Society metareviews and treatment protocol recommendations are there and the vast majority of them say that you do less harm by providing blockers than you do by withholding them - do your own googling.
I am very much an advocate for trans rights, notwithstanding my hesitation about surgical and hormonal interventions being pushed for pre-pubescent children, and some of the more aggressive self-id advocacy.
> the question is one of the benefits outweighing the risks
Naturally, and this is the essence of the "safety and efficacy" goal that is at the heart of our medical regulatory framework.
> Frankly, transgender youth who seek these treatments generally suffer from clinical mental health disorders
I absolutely agree. That makes the subject a difficult one to study, and all the more important to devote resources to that study, and to warrant great care before we have good data, which we don't yet.
> the drugs used have existed for decades
Yes they have, and we have decades of data on the negative side effects.
Apparently Pink News forgot to actually read this study, a careful reading of which reveals the following:
- The percentage of people who ideated and planned suicide (but did not attempt it) was nearly the same between those with and without puberty blockers (55.6% vs 58.2%).
- The percentage of people who attempted suicide was higher for those who had blockers (24.4% vs 21.5%).
- The percentage of people who attempted suicide and were hospitalised was nearly double for those who had blockers (45.5% vs 22.8%).
I see similarly shoddy treatment of data in many other ostensibly pro-intervention studies.
Perhaps you know of some other, higher quality work I could look at?
> notwithstanding my hesitation about surgical and hormonal interventions being pushed for pre-pubescent children
Surgical and cross-hormonal therapies are, by most nationally recognised and implemented standards of care, reserved until the patient reaches at least 16 years of age. Pubertal suppression is used as a method of reducing harm and is widely associated with improved mental health outcomes.
> Perhaps you know of some other, higher quality work I could look at?
Yes, I do. It's the same one covered by the PinkNews article you cited. A "careful" reading is insufficient. A careful, statistically literate reading is required. Such a reading of the study shows that the data do support the conclusion. The "contradictions" you cite are derived from statistically insignificant correlations. Please read up on P-value and the necessity of corrections in multi-variate analysis.
The claimed reduction effect with P 0.001/multivariate corrected is total lifetime suicidality in individuals with a history of suicidal ideation, who wanted pubertal suppression and received it. Absolutely none of the "contradictions" you cite are claimed and the study isn't powerful enough to give realistic results for any of them.
Please, in the future, try to criticise studies like this. I certainly don't agree with many of Bigg's points but they do raise the right questions. More data is certainly needed - but that doesn't mean that the proposed treatment is necessarily wrong. That remains a clinical decision with this as but a small input factor.
> Surgical and cross-hormonal therapies are, by most nationally recognised and implemented standards of care, reserved until the patient reaches at least 16 years of age.
Those standards of care are transphobic and a violation of trans children's human rights, according to trans rights groups. Policies that seek any kind of age limits are universally attacked by trans activists.
For example, observe the storm around Tavistock in the UK, which has for years aggressively pushed children into transition surgeries and hormone treatments, and censored and persecuted internal dissenters and wistleblowers with accusations of transphobia.
Last year's High Court ruling that Tavistock must limit these treatment to children over 16 was attacked by trans activists. Here's Mermaids:
"It’s frankly a potential catastrophe for trans young people across the country and it cannot be exaggerated the impact that this might have, not only on the population of trans young people that require hormone blockers, but it may potentially open the floodgates towards other questions around bodily autonomy and who has the right to govern their own body."
And in a recent example from the US, in response to South Dakota's effort to limit surgeries and hormonal treatments to kids older than 16, the Trevor Project said, "[these bills] not only contradict reality and majority medical opinion in the United States — they would also put young lives in jeopardy".
Regarding the study, you're looking at the wrong one. The one cited at the Pink News link is here:
No, there's no p-value fuckery going on here (and yes, I understand p-values; I worked at a medical device company analysing statistics from human trials.) This is just bad analysis. And I see bad analysis and bad data everywhere I look within this admittedly fraught subject.
Thanks for the other material though, I'll take a look.
Agree with you given my experience. Kids question many things (religion, cultural norms, fashion norms, etc) and gender is now something that one can question, so it happens. And why not? People have been wrestling with gender roles for centuries, from questions of royal succession to whether women could inherit property or not to suffrage. Yet gender roles continue to be rather prescriptive. What intelligent kid wouldn't dig into why? And why would they take the thoughts of "the olds" as the last word when youth have never done so in human history?
So do what you'd do when your kid is rebelling against their religion or curfew or your selection of their college major. Talk about it and ask what's up. Express your own views, respectfully. Listen.
The disappearing lesbian is certainly a trend that is being noticed.
More and more women as coming out as trans instead of lesbian, and the 'lesbian until graduation' phenomenon was well known for decades before this.
The general populace has a very shallow understanding of the distinction between gender vs sex. The academic/popular liberal community makes no attempt to clarify the distinctions and it leads to further confused middle/high schoolers.
That study might be the most flawed I've ever seen. It relied on parents' perceptions like you said. And the author selected for parents who refused to accept their children coming out as trans. Among other problems.[1]
> The level of evidence produced by the Dr. Littman’s study cannot generate a new diagnostic criterion relative to the time of presentation of the demands of medical and social gender affirmation.
Worth noting that that paper not only surveyed exclusively parents but also recruited exclusively from transphobic websites (small wonder the parents found weren't particularly supportive). To the point where the conclusions had to be drastically rolled back and these failures in experimental design highlighted [0].
It's also the start and end of anyone replicating those results. This is very misleading and equivalent to linking the now debunked paper saying vaccines cause autism then telling readers to go look for more research.
It's also important noting, semi-related to your post, that nobody is pushing for trans-surgeries for teenagers -- they are pushing for puberty blockers. What this means is that puberty is medically halted until the teenager is a legal age, when they will be able to decide which puberty they want.
This avoids a lot of dysphoria-provoking secondary sexual characteristics from progressing, and also avoids accidentally "transing" a cisgender teenager.
Nobody hesitates to give puberty blockers to cisgender teenagers, for other medical reasons. I knew a young girl who had to have puberty blockers because she had a precocious puberty and it was literally destroying her young body -- she was not old enough physically or mentally to be able to deal with it.
However, for whatever reason, there is a huge backlash against giving it to transgender teenagers, despite it representing the best and ultimate choice in self-determination -- "Take these for a few years and then when you are 18 you can decide which puberty you want to go through". It leaves room for the individual to decide. If the person decides against it before then, they can stop and puberty immediately resumes as normal.
When the suicide rates are as high as they are for transgender people, and there is the option of halting the things causing the suicidal feelings, the dysphoria, all of the physical and emotional and societal pain. Halting an onslaught of pain that is utterly soul destroying, and just giving them more time to make a choice and more of an informed decision, how can there be any empathically-cogent argument against that?
Decreased bone density is a concern. This is monitored. It can be mitigated with supplements and exercise. And it isn't known if it's permanent or only for the duration of treatment as far as I know.
AMAB patients have less penile tissue for vaginoplasty. They have other options though. I don't think anyone has studied mature penile size in AMAB patients who decided to go through male puberty. Few do.
So an "AMAB patient" who takes puberty blockers never develops into an adult man and would require surgery to simulate the appearance of being an adult man if he decided he wanted that?
You're speculating without data and catastrophising. No drug given for any condition is harmless or without risk, don't be daft. It's all about the benefits outweighing the risk, and taking responsibility for that is at the heart of what it means to practice medicine; which is also between a doctor and their patient. You know very well that the risk of not treating the condition is suicide and long-term mental health problems - not to mention a worsening of dysphoria symptoms. Whether or not the patient is willing to risk that potential outcome and other risks later to almost eliminate their risk of psychological distress up to committing suicide now is up to the patient and their team of medical advisers. Not anyone else.
It's neither speculating nor catastrophising. The risks are real and documented. A confused child cannot give informed consent in this situation:
"The primary risks of pubertal suppression in gender dysphoric youth treated with GnRH agonists include adverse effects on bone mineralization, compromised fertility, and unknown effects on brain development."
"GnRHa therapy prevents maturation of primary oocytes and spermatogonia and may preclude gamete maturation, and currently there are no proven methods to preserve fertility in early pubertal transgender adolescents."
> A confused child cannot give informed consent in this situation:
I'd imagine you take the position that a child seeking this care is always confused. Could this be mistaken? Your argument would be void, if so.
Further, the quotes you make from the studies you cite are misleadingly cherry-picked - the studies themselves do not support the conclusion you imply they do. They are both calls for further research - they are not studies which draw any conclusions about the risk/benefit trade-offs of treatment and they do not state that treatment should be withheld.
> "The primary risks of pubertal suppression in gender dysphoric youth treated with GnRH agonists include adverse effects on bone mineralization, compromised fertility, and unknown effects on brain development." -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5290172
No one denies this. Again, it comes down to benefits of treatment versus risks of no treatment.
> "GnRHa therapy prevents maturation of primary oocytes and spermatogonia and may preclude gamete maturation, and currently there are no proven methods to preserve fertility in early pubertal transgender adolescents." - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31319416/
Same here.
Surely a patient and doctor have the right to decide to risk infertility or a lack of bone density later in life in order to prevent severe mental anguish and potential suicide now? Would you rather demand the child continue to suffer so that they can have, according to you - as though it were your decision for whatever creepy reason, the best chance of making more children they may not even want or strong bones they may not even use on account of having committed suicide before reaching adulthood?
> I'd imagine you take the position that a child seeking this care is always confused. Could this be mistaken? I'd conjecture that you believe this to be the case, because you don't address the simple fact that you assume that all children in this circumstance must be confused. If they are not, then they can give informed consent and your claim is void.
A child who insists that he is no longer a male (or never was) is definitely confused.
If that same child insists that he's black, even though both of his biological parents are white, would you take him at his word or save him from getting Dolezal'ed by an unforgiving woke mob?
Children don't make good decisions. Their brains are literally missing the hardware until about age 25. [1] We don't allow them to make permanent changes that they might regret.
I'm baffled by this because you're acting like not having puberty for a few years is a permanently regretful choice that can never be made by a medical professional assessing a child. If a medical professional assesses a child and determines a prescription of puberty blockers why should I give a shit?
> A child who insists that he is no longer a male (or never was) is definitely confused.
Circular, self-reinforcing, argument. Invalid.
> If that same child insists that he's black, even though both of his biological parents are white, would you take him at his word or save him from getting Dolezal'ed by an unforgiving woke mob?
Non-sequitur. Dismissed. Child still in need of psychological treatment.
> Children don't make good decisions. Their brains are literally missing the hardware until about age 25. [1] We don't allow them to make permanent changes that they might regret.
Sure we do. All the time. We allow them to grow up - that's rather permanent. You're not upset about that. Of course, it just so happens to be something you don't personally disagree with, unlike the topic of discussion.
"The primary risks of pubertal suppression in gender dysphoric youth treated with GnRH agonists include adverse effects on bone mineralization, compromised fertility, and unknown effects on brain development."
"GnRHa therapy prevents maturation of primary oocytes and spermatogonia and may preclude gamete maturation, and currently there are no proven methods to preserve fertility in early pubertal transgender adolescents."
I addressed bone density. The 1st paper said it wasn't clear if the effects were permanent. It identified several confounding factors in the relevant study. It went on to recommend monitoring, supplements, and exercise. It also said switching from puberty blockers to cross sex hormones at 14 instead of 16 would help.
The 1st paper said fertility may be compromised "if puberty is suppressed at an early stage and the patient completes phenotypic transition with the use of cross-sex hormones". Not if they decide not to transition. And cross sex hormones can compromise fertility on their own. The 2nd paper said "There is no substantiated evidence that GnRHa treatment for CPP impairs reproductive function or reduces fertility." Because those patients don't take cross sex hormones when they stop the blockers.
Unknown effects on brain development means no known effects. The only study mentioned found no significant detrimental effects.
All the research I’ve seen shows no significant consequences to taking puberty blockers. Puberty proceeds as normal once the puberty blockers have been stopped. Puberty has quite a wide range of onset ages and this is not taking the range that far beyond the historical range.
What research have you done? Because it doesn't take long to find evidence that they have a list of side effects including some not-so-innocuous ones, and the admission that research is lacking:
Possible long-term side effects of puberty blockers
Lower bone density. To protect against this, we work to make sure every patient gets enough exercise, calcium and vitamin D, which can help keep bones healthy and strong. We also closely monitor patients’ bone density.
Delayed growth plate closure, leading to slightly taller adult height.
Less development of genital tissue, which may limit options for gender affirming surgery (bottom surgery) later in life.
Other possible long-term side effects that are not yet known.
Quite extensive research actually. The overwhelming medical consensus is that puberty blockers are safe, and this is backed up by over three decades of their use in treating trans youth and even longer in treating precocious puberty.
I leave it to the reader to determine whether they think having to take vitamin supplement counts as a significant side-effects.
I would note, however, that it is also important to put these side effects in context. The contraceptive pill, for instance, also has reduced bone density as a possible side-effect.
My reading of the research also does not indicate that it is majorly lacking. Medical research is written in a very conservative manner. Researchers avoid making claims beyond the limits of their research. This can look like doubt or uncertainty when it is not.
Because giving hormone suppressors to developing kids could have massive implications to their physical and mental development? Has there really been enough research on the subject to come up with a valid cost-benefit analysis?
> How can there be any emphatically-cogent argument…?
Because drugging little kids should be a last resort. Using big words doesn't change the need to be extremely cautious in doing something as serious as blocking puberty.
A 77-fold tweet storm, that has got to be some kind of world record. It's surprising how much of it is just plain old common sense that would never be seen as sensitive or "political" in a halfway sane environment, stated in what comes off as a painfully diplomatic way, going to extreme lengths to not ruffle any feathers.
I hate to wade into a controversial topic where I'm under-educated and have limited info/opinions; but for what little it is worth to add to anecdata - the current cohort of 12-15 year old girls in my friend/family circle are virtually all in some level of gender dysphoria. Most of their parents are supportive and loving but... panicked, I guess - completely uncertain what to do, how best to help them, and without robust support themselves. I think there'll be people with strong opinions giving advice here as there are in real life - but those are in some ways people whose advice I'd personally be least likely to take - on average, more interested in propagating some ideological rightness (on any and all sides), rather than looking at each and every child, circumstance, and taking a good hard look what's best of the person. Because that is a damn difficult question, whereas loud opinions are all too easy.
Why does this affect as many youths as it does today?
No doubt there was unhappiness with one's identity in the past, but I doubt it was at the level it is today. And, in addition, I doubt it's at the same elevated level in all countries. In other words, we can ask 30 or 40 year olds, did you as a kid feel unhappy with your identity as much as today's youth feel about their identities but couldn't wouldn't express it?
Is it kids leading the change, is it kids following societal trends, is it other, what is it?
> Has anything changed in the last 10 or 20 years?
Labeling - There's one specific example I'm aware of: Girls interested more in "boy" things than "girl" things were once called a "tomboy", but were still accepted as a girl, just a girl with different interests. Nowadays that same kid would be described as transgender and encouraged to transition.
Yes. We as a society have become dramatically more accepting of gay and trans people.
Gay marriage is a reasonable proxy. Back in 2008, and even a relatively liberal state like California passed a proposition to ban gay marriage. Today popular opinion supports gay marriage. Not just popular opinion in California, or nationwide, but even popular opinion nationwide AMONG REPUBLICANS.
This is why the parents that I know today with children identifying as trans are figuring out how to best support and help their children. The parents of trans people that I knew a few years back wound up becoming homeless as teenagers because of the reactions of their parents. A typical such reaction having been, "You are murdering my son!"
No doubt. But we knew back then we had gays and lesbians among us. We had them as friends and acquaintances so we knew the population existed and that there were quite a few people in our circles who happened to be. But trans seems a bit different.
>In other words, we can ask 30 or 40 year olds, did you feel unhappy with your identity as much as today's youth feel about their identities but couldn't wouldn't express it?
This won't be accurate for a few reasons.
First, there are certainly people in denial about these feelings. A society that is more hostile to trans people will yield a society that has more trans people denying their true identity. That should be obvious. Sometimes that denial is only outward which could result on them lying on a poll. Sometimes that denial will even be to themselves which means they couldn't be truthful on a poll.
If you have spent time around young children you have probably learned that it is difficult to understand a feeling without being able to name that feeling. Similarly it is possible for people to be experiencing gender dysmorphia without realizing that it is specifically gender dysmorphia. I have heard trans people talk about having a general lack of comfort in their body or just the sense that they were somehow wrong that they couldn't explain until they later in life realized they are trans.
Also trans people tragically have a shorter average life span due to increased rates of violence and suicide. Simply measuring the percentage of 40 years isn't going to be comparable to a percentage of 15 year olds because many of those 15 year olds sadly won't live to see 40.
According to parent comment a significant fraction of the cohort are experiencing some form of unhappiness with their identities. If that is true, and a handful of commenters are making similar claims, then we could have seen alarming numbers of suicides amongst teenage girls, but we have not, so we'd have plenty of survivors to interview and understand better.
“The proportion of mental health–related emergency department visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased 31 percent in 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, the report said. Visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls aged 12-17 then jumped 50 percent from February to March 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. The increase among boys the same age over the same period was just 3.7 percent.“
It doesn't follow that the rate would need to be "alarming" previously. Imagine 1% of teenagers are trans and 5% of suicides of teenager are trans. It wouldn't matter what the suicide rate would be and it would still have an impact on the total trans rate among 40 year olds.
I never said we couldn't ask. I said it wouldn't be accurate to use their answers to project onto current young people. And just because it might be unfalsifiable doesn't mean it would be any less true.
Not endorsing it per-se or suggesting it should be accepted wholesale but good reading on this is _ Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters_
Something I've wondered about this is the social pressure around dysphoria. Dysphoria, ironically, has become trendy, particularly about social media. See the "cis is boring" view that's been in vogue for some time across multiple social media platforms. This article on increasing rates of desistance after lockdown [1] (Disclaimer: Evidence isn't well structured and is arguably anecdotal) makes me consider the positive impact of social pressure on transition. That detransition seems like a clear blind spot in the literature (deliberately? it's another r/l culture war hotspot) means that all we get is anecdote for now though. Do note that other studies seem to report relatively high rates of desistance amongst children transitioners as compared to adults.
I can only add with my own anecdote. My son dated a girl when they were both 14. This girl had gender dysphoria. She was suffering from a lot of other externalities, but she swore she was a boy. Fast forward 3 years and she is now mature, optimistic, and very much a girl.
Culture seems to be going through a convulsion of sorts and it is taking an enormous toll on our young girls. They do seem to grow out of it, but the phenomenon is real.
>> "and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them"
This isn't actually a thing. Certain factions who would prefer trans people cease to exist push this idea that kids are on this hot new meme of getting their bits flipped before reaching the age of consent, but it is simply not a thing. No top surgery, either.
It just isn't a thing. It's a wild fantasy. The only thing kids can go on are puberty blockers. These are well-tested and their effects known and understood through their use for other medical concerns.
Whether or not that is a thing depends on where you are.
The most common type of surgery is breast. In the USA, double mastectomies on children are legal, and have been performed on patients as young as 13. As for gender dysphoria itself, according to some surveys the frequency of teenage biological girls diagnosed with the disorder has risen by a factor of 40 in recent years.
The article cited nothing for the former claim. An unspecified survey for the latter.
It seemed to imply the 40x increase was in rapid onset gender dysphoria. But ROGD isn't a recognized diagnosis even now. Never mind 2006. A single researcher published a single paper proposing it in 2018. They relied on the assumption teenagers tell their parents everything. And they selected for parents who refused to accept their children coming out as trans.[1]
The article also claimed 100% of a small study population proceeding to transition after puberty blockers contradicts the claim puberty blockers give children more time to decide before transitioning. But doctors don't hand out puberty blockers randomly of course.
Please note that that's an opinion article, not an academic source.
It's borderline misleading to say that mastectomies "happen", and then link it with an unrelated number for diagnoses of gender dysphoria.
It's also misleading to represent the growth of a tiny number relatively. A few dozen cases grew to a few hundred. That's completely normal and what happens with any novel diagnosis that was barely accepted even just 10 years ago.
Note that there's comparatively little benefit to puberty blockers in F2M cases, because other than the obvious case of breasts, most secondary sex characteristics, even post puberty, can be radically altered by taking male hormones. So you get very little benefit, but the risk side is a lot less clear. For the same reason, most F2M's will be better off delaying both hormonal and surgical transition until well after puberty and perhaps into middle-age, when desistance rates do get very low.
The situation re: M2F is genuinely more challenging, and one has to balance a variety of factors pushing for earlier, not just later intervention.
> Certain factions who would prefer trans people cease to exist
I don't think this is fair. When we're talking about people this young, concerns about later desistance are very real. Expressing such concerns is in no way equal to preferring that these people "cease to exist".
Middle age means over 40 commonly. Is that what you meant?
Mastectomies leave scars and can have complications. And you seem to ignore the psychological and social aspects of going through opposite gender puberty.
There are concerns about erroneous transitions. There also substanctial factions who loudly proclaim their preference that trans people (and homosexual) do not exist, and openly justify their claims with centuries-old supernatural myths.
We've just had a barely unsuccessful attempt (the social democrats were in favor, but didn't want to end their coalition with the christian democrats) of legislation in Germany which included allowing gender reassignment surgery without parental consent from the age of 14.
After psychological counselling, not just on a child's whim, but still.
We've had exactly your point in the public discourse: "that's FUD, no surgery for minors is planned", but the wording in the draft law was clear, and proponents were unwilling to get rid of it, even though it would have made the law's passage much, much more likely.
Sometimes people push bills like this to make their opponents look like fools, though maybe that's not as common in the EU. Movements are infiltrated all the time. I don't know the details of that bill (much less the name or backers), so I can't really comment.
What I do know is there's tons more bills trying (sometimes successfully) to block consenting adults and older kids with parental permission from even basic stuff like counseling or blockers. That seems way more dangerous than the fraction of a percent of kids who change their mind later being able to go through with a transition they'll regret.
>> and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire
> The only thing kids can go on are puberty blockers.
So instead of specifying gender reassignment surgery, they should have something more broad, like well-meaning medical interventions. It seems like the heart of their statement is true and that these medical interventions on children can backfire.
> What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire.
Except... people don't perform gender reassignment surgery on children just going through puberty.
I once read an anti corporate critique of this phenomenon. The argument went something like this:
Once female beauty was commoditized, and you could literally purchase an upgrade to parts you were born with. Entire cosmetic and plastic surgery industry benefited from marketing and promoting this model of beauty. The unforeseen consequence was that men started fetishizing these upgrades themselves.
As some men hyper focus on female body parts anyway.
It was a way to exploit psychological tendencies for profit.
I guess the counter remedy would be to promote female beauty as the whole, and not some collection of body parts.
| Professional organizations such as the Endocrine Society recommend against puberty blockers for children who have not reached puberty, and recommend that patients be at least 16 years old before beginning hormone treatments for feminization or masculinization of the body. The last step in transitioning to another gender, gender reassignment surgery, is only available to those 18 and older in the United States.
No claim containing the string "is not recommended by anyone" will hold up, since eventually it's easy enough to find someone (probably a troll) who does recommend X practice.
That seems unnecessarily pedantic, since obviously it should be assumed to mean "not recommended by anyone who matters", but I've upvoted you for providing the source.
I was editing my comment with that exact link when you posted.
Mastectomies are performed for non-gender-related reasons, such as prophylactic mastectomies, so it's arguable whether that falls under the definition of SRS/GRS. For any reason, it is exceedingly, vanishingly rare in children.
It seems like an oddly small number to obsess over, especially considering over 8,000 non-trans teenagers between 13 and 19 receive breast augmentations each year.
From your link:
| the mean (SD) age was 19 (2.5) years for postsurgical participants and 17 (2.5) years for nonsurgical participants
Surgical patients would be the ones who are in the most danger of suicide or self-harm or for whom nonsurgical (hormone) treatment is not an option.
Also,
| Self-reported regret was near 0.
Here is the document that the report refers to as the standard for care for transgender patients:
> I paid little attention to what site that was on, just looked for the content.
Sometimes people lie on the internet.
And quite often, when they lie, they do so by omission or by inaccurately summarizing facts.
In any case, the two points in this thread are in agreement. Top surgery is "typically only available to those 18 or older," as 'john-radio wrote. In atypical cases, it is available to those under 18, and it requires a doctor to a) decide that it's necessary and b) consciously go against WPATH recommendations when doing so. The legal opinion here is that an insurer may not come up with a rule that says that doctors may never decide that it's the right thing to do for a particular patient, because that's a decision a doctor is allowed to make.
The point that you're missing is that when there is a demand, a supply tends to rise.
My child is smart enough to look for a doctor that is known to have evaluated cases on a "case by case basis" to provide the surgery that they want. As for how to find said doctor, if anyone in their online social network finds one, that information will be shared. In fact I would happily take an even money bet that my child would have no problem laying their hands on the name of such a doctor within 24 hours.
| The WPATH standards of care also state, however, that male chest reconstruction surgery for female-to-male
patients “could be carried out earlier” than the age of majority in certain cases, and ultimately should be considered on a case-by-case basis “depending on an adolescent’s specific clinical situation and goals for gender identity expression.”
What do you think that specific clinical situation was in those situations?
I think society has made good efforts to be more accessible to people with disabilities. I'm pretty sure all of the traffic lights in America beep when the walk signal is on - that exists to assist blind individuals even in communities without blind individuals - in addition there are a lot more buildings with wheelchair ramps than there are with unisex bathrooms.
There are competing ideologies between the United States and the Rest of the World, essentially culminating in two approaches of diagnosing psychological and psychiatric health concerns.
One comes from the American Psychological Association, called the DSM and another comes from the World Health Organization called the ICD.
This doesn't address the "dysphoria = trans" claim at all. As I wrote in the other comment, one can be uneasy or unhappy with one's body/gender without wanting to switch to "the other" gender. As a mathematician, it seems like people here are claiming {1,2} = R (real numbers) which is just weird, they're sets of different cardinality.
You are arguing semantics. The specific words that the scientific community uses to refer to reality in their models of reality often change.
For example, “discomfort” in gender dysphoria is a scientific term that implies a level of suffering on par with the “discomfort” one would feel immediately after a major surgery, during the recovery phase, except this discomfort is chronic.
Scientifically, people experiencing gender dysphoria are considered to be in a state of chronic suffering for which there is a medical treatment, called gender affirming care.
Not all gender affirming care results in gender reassignment.
I wouldn't think of it as an ideology. I mean, maybe it is, but it doesn't seem at all bizarre. I'm not really aware of the details, but I'd be hard-pressed to name a difference between the two. I don't (think I) have a position on the issue.
But trans means switching from one side of the binary to the other, while dysphoria means "unease or dissatisfaction" which is not at all the same. One can easily be uneasy or dissatisfied with one's perceived gender identity yet not want to switch to the other side of the binary. What about agender people, or people who just don't like gender at all?
I certainly remember as a teen being unhappy with the constraints gender put on me in social situations but that certainly doesn't mean I'm trans.
There is a semantic shift taking place in the scientific community regarding the use of the prefix trans when referring to sex (physical anatomy) reassignment as a treatment in gender affirmative care.
Unfortunately, politics keeps interfering with the word choices of scientists.
There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights. The two primary components are:
1. Parents and sexual violence victims concerned about the non-falsifiability of trans-identification and the related concerns of sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have to gain access to private spaces of women and girls.
2. Feminists (TERFs) who believe being a woman is a fundamental, biological identity and cannot be coopted by males.
Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These groups exclusively concern themselves with trans-women.
Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.
One note: Nobody self-identifies as a TERF. Or at least not originally (I'm sure in Internet ire people do it ironically by now.) It's mostly a label used to crush nuanced conversation.
I disagree, those labels have many aims, none of which are good and most of which seem to be a form of ending conversations before any meaningful conclusion is reached.
I've heard it was the other way around, i.e. it started off as a self identification for a niche group which people started to reject once it begun to be used pejoratively.
Interesting, thanks! Although I supposed it doesn't really speak to whether it was initially embraced (by the identified niche group) before being rejected.
> Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men.
One of the interesting things about spending the last few years studying Western European post-Roman history has been the discovery that, in the West, there has historically been relatively little resistance to AFAB folks "presenting" (speaking of the interpretation at the time--the dichotomy between "presenting" and "being" is one I am thoroughly not qualified to negotiate) as male unless tied into homophobia. There are historical examples of folks who outwardly identify as women taking on male roles in monastic life, and it's often portrayed as a good and pious thing.
The reverse, it seems, is generally not true, though not exclusively so. I've read of, but don't have offhand, accounts of Church investigation into "male nuns" that ruled that the erstwhile offender, a male who had suffered prepubescent genital damage, had committed no crime being raised by a particular convent as a woman. But cases going the other way round are much more common.
In terms of today's relations, however, my intuition is that the fear regarding transwomen is that it's largely a performative flavor of misogyny and the fear of those of the "superior" set somehow damaging all men, much as the performative flavor of homophobia does the same with regards to gay men but shockingly much rarely with regards to bisexual or homosexual women. But, of course, that is just an intuition.
54 percent of Americans believe "whether a person is a man or a woman is determined at birth". There is a wide partisan divide with 80 percent of Republicans agreeing (so probably not radical feminists) and only 34 percent of democrats agreeing.
Polls have a way of shifting rapidly. People put down what they think they're supposed to put down. See how fast support for gay rights tilted as more people came out. Most people weren't really committed to homophobia, but they thought they were expected to seem to believe certain things.
The scientific community, specifically the community that conducts science on this topic, currently has a distinction on the terms sex and gender. I’d posit the possible consensus position that the term sex refers to physical anatomy whereas gender refers to one’s gender role in interaction with others.
There are a lot of shades of trans support, If you asked the most extreme questions you would probably get different answers.
It is one thing to ask people should be able can use a bathroom, and another to ask questions about personal sexlife and behavior. i.e. if you asked people if you consider transwomen equally with women at birth as sexual partners, I bet the numbers fall through the floor.
Well, sure. If you ask people whether they consider Black and Asian men equally as sex partners, the numbers would also fall through the floor. This doesn't mean Black or Asian men are less of men, or even that they're necessarily against either of those groups, it just means people have preferences in what their partners' bodies are like. My point is just that "trans women are women and trans men are men" is actually a common opinion, contrary to the claim in the comment I was replying to.
I think you may have missed the point in GP’s post. “Trans-women are women” is a common opinion in a casual context (like when greeting a colleague in an office), but in contexts where the stakes are higher (like when choosing a sexual partner), very few will treat trans-women as women.
I don't think this conclusion is justified by the data, though. If this were just a matter of "they'll humor trans people, but everyone secretly knows trans women are men and treats them accordingly," you'd expect gay men to generally be attracted to trans women. But by all accounts I've heard, the people who are attracted to trans women tend to be straight men, just like any other woman. It's true that straight men are generally less likely to be attracted to trans women than cis women, but this just shows that being transgender is unattractive to them. Gay men are even less likely to be attracted to trans women, so it's clearly not as simple as "people actually perceive them as male and treat them accordingly."
This data supports my point. It does not say "trans women are treated as men for purposes of dating," it says "trans women are not broadly considered attractive." They specifically call out that few people of any sexual orientation want to date trans women. But those who are interested in dating trans women tend to be people who date women.
The question is not "would you consider a trans person as a sexual partner" -- the question is, "do you consider a trans person to be the gender they identify as".
There are a lot of women I would not want to sleep with. Does not mean I question their gender.
It shows that most people don't consider them equivalent to women as sexual partners. We were discussing how in some demands trans people are considered and are not considered as their gender of choice. If you ask would you date a woman and someone says yes, then ask would you date a trans woman and they say no, that shows that they are differentiated for the purposes of this question
I don't think that passes the smell test. What study would you cite to support that assertion?
You could ask whether there is a study to assert parent poster's assertion, too. All I could say is that the burden of proof seems to fall on you with your statement, but most would take parent's at face value.
> Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men.
While it's true there's little animosity directed at them, there is a lot of stuff Shrier's view that "gender ideology" is seducing lesbian women into thinking they're not actually women. Which, honestly, as someone who lived through lots of the dumb gay panic in the 80s and 90s sounds exactly like what people thought about homosexuals (eg: gay people can seduce/recruit straight people and turn them gay). So trans men get treated like dupes or victims of some social phenomena, rather than treated like actual human beings with agency of their own.
In fact, pretty much every anti-trans viewpoint I see, even from otherwise highbrow publicans like the Economist, are really just rehashes of what we heard about gays in the 80s and 90s, before we realized they were, in fact, not a threat to society.
> ” sexual predators claiming an identity they don't actually have”
This is such a bizarre leap of logic. Trans women are the pariahs of contemporary Western society. Yet the same people who uphold this subhuman status also assume that rapists are nefariously claiming trans female identity.
That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power. Trans women are downtrodden and powerless — the least attractive position for a sexual predator.
I think your terminology is a bit backwards. A trans man is someone assigned female at birth but who later identifies as male. From context you seem to be talking about the hypothetical of male rapists professing they identify as trans women. A person born male who later identifies as a woman is a trans woman.
I thought that was the idea being sold by Republicans in the US, though, that a woman who is trans is going to be lurking in the bathroom to rape your daughter after beating her in tennis?
Yes. Republicans are trying to pass bills under the guise of protecting against trans women. Trans women are people who were assigned male at birth, and now present as women.
>That’s not how rapists operate! They seek positions of power.
This frames rape as some thing people plot out and rationalize over a long time.
Rape is like any other crime. Some people think about it critically and finds ways to commit it for their own amusement. Oftentimes it's just people taking an opportunity. Sometimes it's people finding ways to make opportunities and not thinking about freshman psychology power dynamics. A lot of rape involves hormones and alcohol flowing freely without consideration of the consequences or harm.
There are also people who actively enjoy feeling weak or inferior as part of a sexual fetish.
Trying to rationalize it into one group or mindset doesn't work.
You are of course right factually, but fear of sexual predators is not based in stats and facts, but in feelings. When people think about rape, they imagine a stranger in a dark alley, whereas ~90% of rapists are somebody the victim knows.
> Mormons are probably another group due to the reliance of their theology on binary gender, but I don't see them as being particularly vocal on this topic.
I'm sorry to be so frank, but this is more of the same mormon bullshit.
"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is the typical line. The problem is our actions and identity are often intrinsically linked.
They have the same stance for gay people. "It's ok to be gay, god still loves you! The only catch is you can't ever have a romantic relationship with the person you love. If you do you'll be excommunicated and ostracized from your family. No biggy! God bless!"
> Gender is an essential characteristic of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. The intended meaning of gender in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is biological sex at birth.
> Church leaders counsel against elective medical or surgical intervention for the purpose of attempting to transition to the opposite gender of a person’s birth sex (“sex reassignment”). Leaders advise that taking these actions will be cause for Church membership restrictions.
> Leaders also counsel against social transitioning. A social transition includes changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex. Leaders advise that those who socially transition will experience some Church membership restrictions for the duration of this transition.
Their advice on what treatments they support for transgender people is kind of vague and circumspect, but the gist seems to be "A therapist should at least be open to conversion therapy," which is generally considered harmful.
Given the LDS Church's open campaign against gay rights based on the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (the same document referenced above), it seems reasonable to interpret this as stating opposition to transgender rights. Though as the parent noted, they are much less vocal on this topic.
I think the difference between treatment of mtf and ftm can be mostly boiled down to difference how males being female spaces VS females being in male spaces is perceived.
For trans exclusionary feminists one is the patriarchy coming to female protective places and females claiming their place and undermining the patriarchy. As for parents males being less susceptible to forceful sexual exploitation is true but there is also a huge societal double standard when it comes women forcing themselves on men or abusing their male partner which is also reflected in parents being less worried about something happening to their children. Possibly also because of pregnancies onesidedness.
The protection of female virtue is also an enormously successful political tactic, from the "yellow peril" in the late 1890s in Europe and the US to the "white slavery" panic (specifically referring to the cultural phenomenon in the US that gave rise to the 1910 Mann Act; check out the contrasting commentary of Emma Goldman and Rose Livingston) to the murder of Emmett Till and the burning down of Black Wall Street in Tulsa -- all of these are really responses to larger questions of opportunity and freedom of movement for folks that crystalize in the threat to a white woman's sexual virtue and the justification of violent response to crush the threat.
The bathroom bills, the panic over sports, the violence trans and gender-nonconforming people encounter (especially on racialized lines) -- it's all part of a larger political narrative. As you can see from the comments on this HN thread, you get a daddy all worked up about his daughter's virtue/place in life and you can move political mountains because it is an Existential Threat that Must Be Removed. That's weaponizable in a way that talking about military spending or tax law or gerrymandering is not.
I’ve always regarded transitioning gender — and how it is focused so much on men moving away from being a man — being equivalent to someone saying I am uncomfortable and I want off this ride, where the rollercoaster is testosterone. That’s what I’ve picked up anyway, from my friends who have transitioned.
I think that might be why it’s more common than transitioning in the other direction?
I read the original comment by @caeril as saying that Feminists are TERFs, which would not be accurate as the expansion of the acronym is “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”.
From what I’ve seen reported, cis women are on average more relaxed than cis men about trans women.
Aren't a majority of the TERFs specifically 2nd wave Feminists who who do not like the idea of 'passing' as a female being reinforced. This as because they spent their lives fighting so that women did not have to abide by social norms enforced on them. From their POV, since gender is social, a trans-gender person reinforcing the need for transition to enjoy social aspects of being a woman is actively hostile to their goal of making social norms around gender be deemphasized.
The criticisms of transgenderism by TERFs have being a Feminist (in this case 2nd wave) at its very core. Removing it loses a lot of nuance of their specific criticisms.
It's tricky. They are certainly used in slur-like ways these days. I would say the difference is that white supremacist and racist are pre-existing terms that are widely considered to be neutral descriptive terms. You can use neutral terms in non-neutral ways and over time they may start to take on the slur connotation. But I don't think we are there yet with the established terms.
You can certainly be explicit about the negative evaluation, e.g. "racism sucks", "being a racist is not cool". The issue with language is that context imbues words with meaning. So when you use a term in such a way that the dynamics between the term and the context leads to associating the negative connotation of the context to the word itself, further usages of the word then carries that negative connotation with it. In the case of slurs, they no longer (or never did) carry any neutral meaning. So the difference between expressing distaste and using a slur is how the negative connotation is expressed.
For some reason I cannot recall, a friend of mine had me read a bunch of proper radfem terf blogs back in like, 2010. I remember being impressed with the coherence of their worldview, even if it, uh, was not flattering.
Men were all inherently bad, penis-in-vagina sex was inherently rape, lesbians were good, trans-women were infiltrators and trans-men deserters.
You can say "gender essentialist" if you feel that TERF is too loaded, but it boils down to the same thing; it's a position that denies identity rather than accepting it.
It's only pejorative in the sense that it attempts to accurately describe the motives of a set of individuals who aren't comfortable with the way those motives are widely regarded. In that sense it's about as pejorative as "racist".
That is the danger of interpreting technical jargon without having the technical background. It will get you in trouble when you are talking about software just the same as when talking about science.
It might be loaded with denotation outside of the scientific community, but the word “radical” has some various scientific meanings, as other commenters have noted.
To say nothing of the issue itself, the methods of "trans rights activists" frequently involve intimidation or vigilantism and generally cause a lot of resentment against trans people. People are afraid.
>Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These ground exclusively concern themselves with trans-women.
I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I don't think we have much of a dog in this race so I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN considering most of us here are men. Boring day at work?
I do feel bad for the women's Olympics, but I'd like to ask the Olympics committee what the hell were they thinking long before I start any kind of anti-trans crusade. This is one discussion that doesn't seem to be happening much. The diatribe is as always directed among the proles and the decisionmakers get a free pass. Someone must have said, "Yes, lets allow a 35 year-old recently transitioned man to compete with early 20 year-old women," and some approval process must have happened. Those are the people you want to start asking the hard questions, not look at LH and blame her for participating in the Olympics that she's allowed to participate in.
Or as someone else put it: "A female POC just lost her spot to a white, middle-aged, male-born son of a billionaire. This is supposed to be progressive?"
The Olympics has been dealing with the question of womanhood for a very long time. For a while they were literally stripping and groping female athletes. Later they did chromosome testing, until they discovered intersex individuals who confound that theory.
Even their current testosterone-levels theory is imperfect, since some people have obviously female bodies but inordinately high testosterone levels.
So they seem to be muddling along about as well as they can. If they want to have a separate women's category, it's a question they're going to have to answer.
The Olympics will eventually become a contest of the best humans, regardless of sex / gender. This is already how it is more or less today: people born with the right body types, into the right families, etc, will make it to the top.
This is the most elegant solution, but it's also functionally equivalent to "women can't do high level sports anymore"
I feel like women's sports is extremely cursed - a sporting competition with a handicap, except the handicap is not specified in the rules but is instead a randomly distributed quirk of biology, meaning that people have to judge who does or does not have it, except that the handicap is also an integral part of a person's identity...
(no I don't mean to say being female is a disability, the context is sports)
They're already in an arms race about performance enhancing drugs. And even without those, there are artificial limitations like age in women's gymnastics, because of the damage it does. Football players are grappling with decades of head injuries.
If you want to know the very best a human can do, you will destroy them. It's just not a question we can safely know the answer to.
So it's never really going to be fair, and we need to ask a different question. Exactly what that question is remains to be seen.
> I'm often confused as to why this topic comes up on HN
Take a look around, I think you'll find transmen comprise a much larger proportion of this community (and tech communities in general) than the general population.
There's also a lot of desire on HN to comment on political topics while pretending not to comment on political topics. Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.
> maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest
Some of us have an academic interest in biology, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, etc. while still aligning with the overall origin of this site as a place to discuss the latest in news as relates to technology startups.
It is unfortunate that this politically charged topic is so misunderstood and that ignorance of the basic science behind it is so prevalent, but here we are.
> Things like gender identity, women in tech, genetic differences, etc are all wonderful smokescreens to allow us to post politically but maintain a solid veneer of simply having an intellectual discussion on a topic of general interest.
Especially when it comes to these topics, I imagine it's very easy for people who aren't affected by these issues to "debate" them *because* they aren't the ones directly affected by it.
> The rest is just weaving arguments for the fun of it.
Interesting discussion is the HN way!
Some enterprising scientists may have some cutting edge insights reviewing HN comments on technology topics, no reason to suspect otherwise for social sciences.
TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women. You can find many TERFs blaming trans women and "gender ideology" for convincing butch-identified lesbians that they're actually straight men. Personally I think this denies trans men the dignity and autonomy to define themselves as they see fit, but then again, I would say that, I'm trans.
It's ironic that this transphobe fantasizing has led to non-conforming cis women being harassed in the bathroom. Whatever minimal problem there was with women being harassed or assaulted in the bathroom by men or AMAB people has been completely surpassed by these fantasies sparking a witch hunt.
Not sure what part you're referring to but it's more or less overt that many of them think trans men are basically women. This combined with what they say about trans women is most of where the accusations of essentialism come from.
> TERFs primarily don't focus on trans men because they see them as misguided women.
Not well versed in feminist theory, but I’m curious whether anyone has formally documented in the scientific literature these sorts of psychological attitudes.
Probably a cross-disciplinary masters thesis worthy topic if no one has done that research yet.
It's because there is no reason to have animosity toward a woman becoming a man. The main objections to MtF are about safety (a MtF will always be stronger and bigger than a woman on average) and fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really.
The scientific community may not yet have crafted any research on the specific question of attitudes towards transgender athletes, but it shouldn’t be hard to find the research if it exists.
> fairness (should male born people get female scholarships, compete in women's sports?). A FtM is not hurting anything or taking any opportunities away from anyone really
fairness is an issue when considering MtF, but not FtM? why exactly?
Transitioning female to male doesn't make you more likely to win Olympic weightlifting competitions in your new gender, so you'd be vanishingly unlikely to do it for the sake of gaining an advantage.
Keep in mind that transgender individuals are almost certainly, in general, and by regulation if they are transgender and an athlete, undergoing hormone therapies. In the case of estrogen treatment, that implies a reduction in muscle strength in addition to the other physical changes caused by the addition of estrogen and the removal of testosterone.
This is a factor in why there are regulations requiring testosterone levels below a certain amount in order to qualify in the women’s section of certain sporting programs.
>I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less?
It's really not that hard to understand. It's the same sort of thinking that motivates the slogan "don't punch down". Males aren't threatened by females identifying as men. But females are threatened by males identifying as women for many obvious reasons. For example, with self-id as the only criteria keeping men out of women's prisons, it undermines the protection women have against abuse from men while in forced proximity. A female in a male prison or male changeroom is a novelty, not a threat.
Seeing as how the historical perspective is almost directly reversed from what you claim, I'm going to have to be skeptical about this. The European-historical aversion to largely one-way nonconforming to gender and sexual roles (men acting as women being a problem, ditto male homosexual behavior) is pretty explicitly due to a rejection of (heterosexual) masculinity translating as a threat to that (heterosexual) masculinity.
Those currents run deep, and run through to today. And that's not to say that "but a guy might go in the girls' bathroom!" is not what bigots say, because as a prima facie claim that's certainly common--but I very much doubt, were we to see some unvarnished honesty, that bathroom fears are actually a primary motivator rather than a convenient battleground.
There is certainly a longstanding cultural thread of defending traditional manhood through explicit castigation of male deviants, but notably the source of the explicit castigation is largely from other males. The pushback against trans-women's acceptance as women isn't largely driven by men. It is pretty evenly distributed, or perhaps even more driven by women. The point is that these seem to be distinct phenomena driven by distinct concerns.
I don't have any hard numbers, but it is the impression I get from various organizations and legal challenges to trans legislation in the UK. The organized opposition seems to be largely driven by women.
I suspect it has much to do with the idea that trans-men are transitioning into a gender "in power." That is, adopting masculine social behavior and lifestyle allow transmen to enter the patriarchal fold and slip quite seamlessly into a male dominant society, as long as they remain unknown. Once they are known, the idea that they must be excommunicated or "proven" as female becomes imperative. Transmen are subject to inordinate degrees of violence like transwomen. This is all to say that cis men aren't as afraid, be it in washrooms or on a sports field, of transmen as much as transwomen.
Transwomen, on the other hand, are much more defined, in the eyes of a patriarchal society, by their rejection of masculinity in favor of femininity. To some cis-men, they appear as aberrations or duplicitous (hence the nickname "trap"), to some cis-women they appear as potential unfalsifiable unknowns, and a potential thing to be feared for sexual violence. Transwomen are thus caught in the crossfires of fear from both genders.
I don't think so, that's a work of fantasy and quite the leap.
It's probably more that in the grand scheme of things trans-men don't pose any sort of threat to other males. I don't recall ever discussing trans-men with my peers.
Trans women are seen as seeking female privileges (like the ability to compete against women in sports, which is easier than competing against men). Which enrages some people.
Trans men are seen as giving up their female privileges, to which everyone shrugs and says "you want less privilege? Fine by me!"
Of course men have privileges too, but I think many of men's privileges come from confounding variables. Like men are on average taller, and people are biased to view taller people as having more authority, so taller people are more likely to become CEOs etc.
Whereas women's privileges come from society compensating for men's privileges. So society sees women on average are smaller and physically weaker, and thus decides they need privileges like separate sports to compensate.
Trans women who went through male puberty often have the size advantage of men, so them also have the social privileges of women is seen as double dipping.
While for trans men it's the opposite, they're often small like women, but not afforded social protection for it.
Anyway that's just my theory why some people hate trans women more than trans men. I myself have sympathy for both cases, dysphoria sounds pretty awful.
>There's a large segment of the population that feels actively threatened by trans rights.
I'd say that's a vast overreach. It isn't like the Trans Army is going to come burn down your house.
If anything, it's a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it. In a sense, that it's not different than people who want their limbs amputated or wear animal costumes at all times.
> a general notion that transsexuals are mentally ill and that there is something odd about normalizing it.
That seems like a defensible position to take. At least as plausible as the common alternative -- that it is a physical illness (thus we 'fix' the body to match the mind).
The problem is the suppression of reasoned speech. People are forbidden to discuss this topic. People in power (e.g., University Deans) use this topic to abuse those under their power. Students use it to abuse professors (e.g., students claim that they don't feel safe around a particular professor). In the name of trying to stop abuse of trans people, we're abusing non trans people (e.g, people get fired over this topic).
In Australia and most other developed countries now, this ideology is heavily promoted to children, encouraging them to believe they are trans. They are connected with websites that promote the ideology, and then connected with a trans specialist who helps prescribe puberty blockers without parental knowledge.
If you are a parent who believes that children should be taught to love their own bodies as they grow rather than have surgeons pretend to fix them by removing essential organs, then this represents a massive assault on your offspring.
> The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6%
And there's a huge number of "trans" who later realise they were sold a lie and have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex. Selling this to ideology to children is going to dramatically increase that 0.6%. How many of the new cases are going to actually be trans, vs children that thought they were trans and started puberty blockers at school, but actually were just never taught to love their body?
This post has a very noticeable lack of citations and vague terms like "huge" which make it very likely that you are speaking from personal bias rather than any kind of expertise.
Australian parent here. While recognising I'm a sample of one, Ive never seen or heard from many other parent friends trans ideology being promoted.
If you have some examples please share. I suspect you've come across an article pushing a an edge case that tried to make it out as normal. This type of media is common at the more extreme ends of whatever views.
> And there's a huge number of "trans" who later realise they were sold a lie and have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex.
There is no way this is a huge number. I'd be shocked if you could find a credible source on this. This sounds like conservative agitprop.
Studies have consistently shown that most trans children revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]:
>The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall, they concluded that about 80 percent trans kids eventually identified as their sex at birth. Some trans activists and academics, however, argue that these studies are flawed, the patients surveyed weren't really transgender, and that mass desistance doesn't exist.
>Indeed, some of the studies cited by Cantor had sample sizes as low as 16 people and were more than 40 years old, and one was an unpublished doctoral dissertation. But the most recent study, published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, followed up with 127 adolescent patients at a gender identity clinic in Amsterdam and found that two-thirds ultimately identified as the gender they were assigned at birth.
This does not imply any percentage of patients who underwent surgery to "restore" their original sex. Orchiectomies, mastectomies, and histerectomies are irreversible in any case, not to mention bottom surgery.
> By all accounts, detransitioners make up a tiny percentage of that already small population: A 50-year study out of Sweden found that only 2.2 percent of people who medically transitioned later experienced "transition regret."
I was speaking specifically to GP's point about gender affirming surgery being reversed. If only 2.2% of people who have had this surgery experience regret, the proportion which reverses the surgery must be even smaller.
"Huge number who [...] have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex" is not supported by the data.
It is not easy for trans people to get gender affirming surgery, so I think the conservative "concern" that "children are going to get surgery and regret it" is vastly overblown: children receiving gender affirming surgery is so rare today, and involves jumping through so many hoops, that a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of people seems like a silly subject for policy debate.
Teenagers are dumb and fickle (I know I was!), so I think there should be a non-zero number of hoops for teens jump through to filter out the "just a phase" cases for any surgery (or even just tattoos) that will have permanent impact on their bodies. But 'concerns' about surgical detransitioning is primarily just scaremongering.
They cited a wide body of studies, including studies which included only trans kids. All studies produced consistent results. For those who didn't read the full article, here's the preamble to the 80% figure quoted above:
>There have, however, been almost a dozen studies of looking at the rate of "desistance," among trans-identified kids—which, in this context, refers to cases in which trans kids eventually identify as their sex at birth. Canadian sex researcher James Cantor summarized those studies' findings in a blog post: "Despite the differences in country, culture, decade, and follow-up length and method, all the studies have come to a remarkably similar conclusion: Only very few trans-kids still want to transition by the time they are adults. Instead, they generally turn out to be regular gay or lesbian folks." The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall, they concluded that about 80 percent trans kids eventually identified as their sex at birth.
They cited various problems with the other studies.
All of Cantor's sources included non conforming behavior or "sub threshold" gender identity disorder.[1] He just ignored the numbers lost to follow up. And several studies found predictors of persistence. Like meeting the criteria for gender identity disorder.[2]
Based on the numbers I've seen, there are slightly more trans people in the world than blind people, but overall — you're not wrong. I don't even think most trans rights advocates would disagree with you that the amount of attention devoted to transgender people is excessive. The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgender rights, while there isn't an equivalent movement for blind people. Transgender people have some asks in terms of societal support (e.g. British law has some awkward legal red tape for trans people around things like marriage), but in general, most of the noise is being generated by the anti-transgender side (e.g. bans on therapy for transgender people, bathroom bans, sports bans, outrage at voluntarily chosen gender-inclusive phrasing like "people who have a uterus").
So it's a bit of a hard subject. I really don't think it's worth this much attention, but if hate groups are devoting this much attention to opposing transgender people, we're faced with the choice of either also giving it a lot of undue attention or throwing transgender people to the wolves.
>The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgender rights
Firstly, a resistance to expanding rights is not a movement to regress rights. For the most part (exceptions apply), the margins of the culture war here are not about trans people being on the defensive against long-standing rights being stripped.
Secondly, obviously the margins of this battle are often (again, not always, particularly when it comes to health care issues) pretty small-stakes, especially in comparison to the outsized amount of attention they're given. Certainly not important enough to justify the "you're trying to murder me / dehumanize me / erase me" rhetoric that one predictably receives when mild resistance is offered towards this agenda.
I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights, which are probably some of the first examples people would think of when you mention "the trans debate," so I don't know what to say here except that you're mistaken.
I also think your portrayal of the stakes for transgender people is a bit flippant. Gender dysphoria is a pretty painful mental illness that often leads to suicide, so forbidding a transgender girl from getting treatment and forcing her to go to the boys' room does seem both dehumanizing and dangerous to her life.
>I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights
I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right". If you're referring to other stuff you'll have to be more specific.
>Gender dysphoria is a pretty painful mental illness that often leads to suicide, so forbidding a transgender girl from getting treatment and forcing her to go to the boys' room does seem both dehumanizing and dangerous to her life.
Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however.
> I don't think you did. You threw out terms like "sports bans" but I don't think trans individuals being able to compete based on gender identity is a "long-standing right".
If these bans had already been in place, they wouldn't have needed to pass them. Trans people have been using the appropriate bathroom for their gender for ages, but now that transphobia is on the rise, they're actually being prevented from doing so. Trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics for longer than many Olympians have been alive, but now than a trans woman has actually made it in, for the first time ever, suddenly it's a debate. Some people have always preferred inclusive language, but now that people are on the lookout for "gender ideology," there's a decent chance that using it in passing will get you 10 thinkpieces and a JK Rowling tweetstorm about whether the phrase "menstruating people" erases women.
> Many policy issues will have some sort of effects on overall mortality. But I think it's pretty important in functional democracies that you should be able to have policy disagreements where these sorts of stakes are present without believing that the people taking the opposite stance are sadists or murderers instead of individuals who come to these debates with somewhat-different priors of empirical reality and somewhat-different but not fundamentally-abhorrent values. Trans issues seem to lack this normal presumption, however.
I don't completely disagree, but I think this is not so much about trans issues, and more an unfortunate product of the way bigotry works in our age. You don't have the KKK out burning crosses in front of people's houses anymore, instead you have people who are "race realists" and are just "worried about preserving culture." Nobody — not even virulent transphobes who believe all trans women are pedophiles — identifies as a transphobe, they are "gender critical feminists" who are "worried about preserving women's sex-based rights" or "worried about the children." Bigots have realized that bigotry isn't cool anymore, so they've learned to dress it up as moderate concern-trolling. So it's harder to tell who's speaking in good faith, especially since some actual moderates who haven't thought deeply on issues will parrot the bad-faith actors' talking points.
Regarding your last point, what do you think the practical implications of this are for those who seek social change? While there are plenty of obvious examples of what you're talking about, I worry that it's dangerously psychologically attractive to dismiss any and all criticism as bad-faith bigotry, at the expense of potentially convincing those actual moderates. That's especially true if the topic is personally sensitive and/or it's the nth repetition of a particular talking point. In a moral sense an explanation might not be owed, but that often seems like ceding a pragmatic opportunity to push for change.
It feels like there's a narrative metagame where there's a risk that taking concern trolling too seriously is a vector for being baited into savaging increasingly innocuous questions from actual moderates. And since people seem, generally speaking, to not like being told to sit down and shut up even in the service of causes they could otherwise be brought to support, I worry that could broadly harm public sentiment towards movements that go too hard into these kinds of tactics.
I don't know from blind people, but in America, there are anywhere from 10.2 to 17.5% of the population that are diabetic. While not pursued by hate groups, they are actively preyed by pharmaceutical companies and politicians who don't let insulins go generic - one of the few medicines that can't. Yes there is complaint about the medical system in America, I have yet to see diabetic/nondiabetic show up under facebook ID's like He/Him/His, normalization of syringe usage in restaurants, blood sugar testing not become a spectacle (of course I pick this one because I know the most about it, but there are many disorders that could be used with it). Stigma, predation and debate is associated with many things, but this one will get you fired/excommunicated from society. Speaking ignorantly about "just eat less sugar" to a type 1 diabetic does nothing.
I sympathize with your overall point and agree that it's shameful how America treats diabetics like an ATM, but I think you're very far off-target if you envy the way transgender people are treated. Lots of anti-transgender people do just fine in our society. A person who actively fought against trans rights in California is currently the Vice President of the United States (though she has gotten much quieter on trans issues in the meantime). We have several openly anti-trans members of Congress. The fight for trans rights is so defensive that covering the insane medical costs isn't even on the radar. A lot of transition-related expenses are rarely covered by insurance, and they cost as much as a luxury car. Yet when you hear about "trans activists," what they're fighting for is not to have their ability to use the bathroom taken away.
I'm not envious of the way transgender people are treated, and if I came across sounding that way I do apologize. My tone was for the disproportion of attention, not of action. In truth, very little action will be taken for good for the transgender population or health disorders. That isn't how these things play out, unfortunately. As a society, we only know the stick and not the carrot. While I sympathize with the sentiment that there are several openly anti-trans members of Congress, nearly all of Congress is anti-Medical Reform in action, if not in voice. My point is a scale of difference, which was brought up at the start of this thread. I really do appreciate the struggle that the trans community has to go through, and I am not deaf to their cries (and, though somehow this makes me a worse person to some who would hear it, I do know people who are trans). But if we are going to look at things on a societal scale, how can we ignore the statistical numbers of the societal woes and population impacts?
As for insurance, you might be shocked at what insurance doesn't cover for diabetics. They don't just "cut a check" for everything. I can't tell you how many times my doctor and I have to get on the phone to argue with them for literal months to get things covered. For things to keep me alive. Not to feel right in my skin. Not to keep thoughts of suicide away. To keep bare minimal physical biological function going.
As for Kamala Harris, she has a whole lot to be displeased about. Prison labor, drug prosecution, questionable school bussing policies, anti trans right policies. Yeah, I'm not a fan.
There is definitely some ground for solidarity between trans and diabetic people when it comes to access to healthcare - however, and I don't mean it to downplay the struggles of diabetics - discrimination against trans people has a social component that as far as I know doesn't apply for diabetics.
People can be rejected by their family, struggle to find employment, be beaten and killed by their dates, harassed in the street, etc... Based solely on the fact that they are transgender.
The media does absolutely soak it for eyeballs and outrage, but at the same time it really is a bellwether for how gender works in a society at larger. Gender is simply a more social / less individual phenomenon than blindness itself is (to use your example).
I find it funny and illuminating to read about conservative cis gays complaining about those darn genderqueer "kids, these days". All media fads aside, we simply haven't reached "queer equilibrium" yet where increasing acceptance of past social categories no longer triggers the emergence of new ones.
I think the importance is based not on the numbers involved - which are small - but on the significance of the demands. People are discussing our fundamental understanding and definitions of people's sex and gender that potentially affects everyone. A major concern is that once you let everyone self identify where does it stop? A caucasian woman was vilified a few years ago for identifying as black. Had she identified as male she would have been celebrated by the same people
I think there will be rather a lot of us who are quite animated by this issue—one that doesn’t directly affect us—because of our own past experiences.
As a gay man growing up in the 90s, I very acutely remember some of the public discourse around gay rights while I was a teenager. In the UK, that specifically included a coordinated campaign against mentions of homosexuality in education, with some pretty stark attempts to smear gay men in particular as dangerous predators and paedophiles intent on sneaking their agenda into schools so that they could abuse children.
If I’m honest with you, I wouldn’t be particularly animated about trans rights myself (beyond being generally supportive) if it weren’t for the fact that I see exactly the same techniques and accusations levelled against the trans community—specifically trans women—as were used against people like myself 20 years ago.
So I’ve personally gone from generally supportive-if-disinterested, to being absolutely fucking furious that this is being allowed to happen again. I’ve observed absolute outright lies about a minority group being repeated by people in positions of influence, and while it might not affect that many people directly I am so absolutely disgusted by it that I fully intend on being extremely vocal about it.
Back in the nineties I remember scare campaigns about gay schoolmates in locker rooms taking advantage of other students - it is literally the same playbook.
> Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people.
It's not impactful in terms of the number of people, but its a civil rights issue for those on the left. And for those on the right its just one more group trying to change things from the status quo.
It's also a complex issue. I sit pretty far on the left, but the various issues related to trans policy I find to often not have a clear solution -- most notably around sports and fairness. Sigh.
Honestly though the question around sports fairness is less a problem raised by trans people and more just an existing issue exposed. Female and male bodies work differently on average but there are a good number of women more fit and physically capable than 99% of men - gender is not an independent variable in physical fitness but I do wonder if there's really much of a reason to keep insisting that the genders be separated into exclusive leagues.
While we do have the special olympics, there are all sorts of classes of people who lack genetic traits to excel at sports and no allowance is made for them to compete within their own bracket - the only bracket we have is men and women.
I will admit that this is not a hill I'll die on though - I have almost no interest in sports as a profession so it's a fair bit out of my wheelhouse.
There is plenty of brackets so all can play at their respectives levels, separation in different leagues for collective sports, different levels in individual sports, etc. You can have fun in your local amateur <whatever>, but there would not be any point in a game against professionals. And at the top level, olympics or international competitions, there would be no match in mixed genders for most sports.
Sports fairness is basically a transphobe dogwhistle at this point. Major athletic organizations already have policies in place that say that trans women can’t compete unless x,y,z criteria are met which is typically a minimum number of years on HRT and T levels not more than something.
The issue is that there is a trade-off being made here. A trans woman athlete likely has a better bone structure than the average cis woman but not better than the most naturally gifted cis female athletes. Athletic orgs have largely decided that this is fine and it’s not a significant enough advantage to care about because the question for them was “how can trans women compete” not “if trans women can compete.”
But then it’s such an easy issue to drive a wedge on because you can get people riled up about whether trans women should be able to compete with a sprinkling of misinformation about what HRT does and dash of “so a man can just say he’s a woman and compete.”
What about basketball as another example. Height is probably the single most important physical attribute of the game and the height advantage men have is overwhelming. HRT after puberty has no impact on height.
And in that situation you may have very real case for saying that women over a certain height shouldn't be allowed to play women's basketball. That's fine, it's really no different than weight classes in wrestling. But then a trans woman who is of average height for a female basketball player shouldn't be barred from playing.
However, the WNBA sports so many women who are 6'+ (tall people play basketball, go figure) with the tallest player ever being 7'2" so the range of heights of women is pretty broad.
You seem to not be taking into account that fact that on average trans women will be taller than cis women, not that every trans woman is taller than every cis woman. And when talking about a sport that naturally selects for people who are outliers in height a trans woman being 5'7 (taller than the average woman) will be one of the shorter players.
Even if you capped height, to say 6'8", you will still see likely eventually see trans women dominating the sport.
<i>You seem to not be taking into account that fact that on average trans women will be taller than cis women, not that every trans woman is taller than every cis woman.</i>
No, I am taking that into account. Because of how dominant height is in basketball, you rarely see men in the NBA at 5'9" (the average height for a man in the US). Probably less than .5% of the NBA is that height or less.
So in women's basketball what this means, even if you cap the height, you will see the average height in the league grow because of the addition of trans women. 6'3" point guards will become the norm -- as of today I don't think a single 6'3" PG exists in the WNBA. And almost all of the eventual 6'3" PGs will be trans women.
Whereever you cap the height -- that height will be dominated by transwomen.
The only way to really blunt the impact is to cap the height so low that there is a substantial pool of top talent from transwomen and cis. Something like 6'. But that ends up now drastically hurting a bunch of cis women who are tall and prior to this, this being the preferred sport for them. And the WNBA already has issues with popularity and comparisons to the mens game (although I perosonally really enjoy womens basketball) -- if they capped the height to 6', that just makes the problem worse.
Not just bones. Muscle mass and the rest doesn't just disappear. In the sport i do (rugby), it's been evaluated to be a danger to players (increased risk of injury), and i would wager most contact sports are similar.
Muscle mass does just disappear in the exact same way as it does when someone stops steroids. It’s not instantaneous which is why places require 12-24 months of constant hormones.
Also you picked the one single example where trans women have been sorta kinda banned with basically no concrete justification, caused the world to roast them publicly, and then clubs largely ignored them and came up with their own rules — like France and the US changed the requirements to time on HRT and T levels like every other sport and the UK did a height and weight limit which, while odd, is actually a lower bar than time on HRT.
Outright bans on trans women will basically never be necessary when HRT is so effective. If by some chance there is a sport where it’s not enough you can start imposing greater restrictions like requiring trans women reach a certain (low) weight to shed any pre-transition muscle.
This is how the ruling class controls us peons. They have us fight each other vociferously over things like this or abortion or gay marriage, while they stay above it and do nothing except minor moral victories.
It wouldn't work if we didn't subject ourselves to it. The "ruling class" may be working to control us, but they don't have to work very hard. They don't even make the lies plausible. There are an awful lot of people willing to die on the hill of the most astonishing idiocies, just because it's their idiocy.
I have no real visibility (pun not intended) into the blind community, but similar groups do exist in the Deaf community; Deafness-as-identity/culture is very much a thing and some of the general cultural views around adaptation and integration with the hearing world look not-dissimilar to what you see in some aspects of LGBTQ+ movements.
> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.
There is something about tech, though, that seems to concentrate the male to female transitioners far above background levels.
I can count more than a half-dozen male to female transition folks in my tech circles. I can't even think of one that I bumped into doing any non-tech social activity.
"There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people."
There are more white people than black people in the US. More Christian people than Jewish people. More able-bodied people than disabled people. More descendants of immigrants than Native Americans.
What level of outrage? I notice a lot of outrage online from people whose identities I cannot verify. I have noticed zero outrage IRL from real people that I interact with.
Small sample size but I think that judging outrage from online presence is inaccurate.
Yeah, there is a huge disconnect between online and IRL discussion of trans issues. Online you see all this seething outrage but IRL there are two camps — either you run in a ‘blue’ crowd and someone being trans is a non-issue. Nobody cares, they use your name and pronouns, let you live your life, celebrate legal victories, and commiserate losses, but when push comes to shove won’t actually do anything that requires effort and can’t be posted on insta. Then if you run in a ‘red’ crowd you’re quietly not accepted, you’ll be party to dinners where phrases like “gender ideology”, “the trans agenda”, “indoctrination”, “free speech” are brought up whenever articles hit the news. And if you come out you either are kicked out of your family, ghosted by your friend group, or just ignored and expected to never speak of it again. If you do being up that people aren’t using your name, pronouns, or being otherwise not treated like your gender you’re called “political” and it’s taken as an attack. And if you say, “no it’s because what your doing hurts me” it’s doubly taken as an attack because now you’re “playing the victim.”
Only when the two groups mix do you get this fired up hate because the mechanisms within the groups that lead to people not talking about it don’t work and the social graces that tamp out arguments aren’t present on the internet so it explodes.
I hate so much that my existence is the hot button political topic right now. Like it’s good I guess — seems like we need to get this out of our systems but ugh does it bring out the worst in everyone. This should have never been a party thing and it’s so stupid that it’s now a billion times more political because of it. Both sides are trying to out woke or out red pill each other while the actual lives of trans people fall by the wayside.
Distraction is exactly what’s important about it. It triggers everyone and keeps people from paying attention to other things. Also helps get clicks, sell ads, and boost social media engagement.
Personally I don’t care at all if people want to be trans and be called by a chosen gender pronoun. I just can’t think of a reason I should have a problem with that.
There are a few edge case areas like women’s sports and prisons where it is a very complicated issue, but those are rare cases among rare cases. This is not an issue that should be monopolizing headlines.
When it comes to issues in which there is a conflict between a small group and some larger group, you can't just brush this aside as only a problem affecting the smaller group.
For instance, there are situations in which transgender rights (someone identifying as a woman using a for-women-only space) are in conflict with women's rights (women not wanting to be in a for-women-only space when whom they perceive as a male is present).
You can't just disregard the women and say, don't worry about it, it's just a 0.6% problem.
We invent wheelchairs and ramps and lots of prosthetic limbs.
We (recently) approved a drug to treat Alzheimer.
We offer nursing homes and in-house help and care to old people with mental issues.
We do little more than argue about trans individuals. And many trans individuals are killed or commit suicide. The average life expectancy for a trans person is likely a lot smaller than a blind or disabled person.
THAT is why trans people and the related community are making a lot of noise.
Couldn't agree more. The airtime on this topic is insane. People's email signatures filled with their pronouns. The anger. The division. I get it's an emotive conversation but then so are gay rights, gender rights, race rights, democratic rights, inequality, and about a gazillion other topics. That's not belittling trans as an issue, but it's so incredibly noisy.
IMO the wider question here is nothing to do with trans but about what being "liberal" means. We're in this insanely weird moment in history when the hard left is eating itself by being so Woke it's nearly impossible to even have a conversation any more.
I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better.
"I'm as left wing as they come, but being left wing means being able to have open, honest and sometimes uncomfortable debates. Being left wing is not, and never has been, about shutting down conversation, de-platforming, dogma, chilling effects. These are the things of the hard right, and the sooner people on the left start realising it and start being empowered to be vocal in defence of the freedom of ideas, the better."
That has not been true anywhere in the world where a left wing (the) party dominated the discourse. No socialist or communist party has ever had tolerance to an opposing view.
I hope you're aware that "left wing" doesn't mean "socialist" or "communist" and that plenty of liberal democracies have had social democratic parties in power for some period or another without there being any breakdown in tolerance to opposing viewpoints.
Of course it also means socialists and communists among other leftist parties. They represent the pure leftist ideology from which other leftist parties take ideas from, and the closer to center those parties are the more they tone the communistic ideals down. In essence the tip of the left wing is completely intolerable and illiberal.
Your point doesn't really work, if it is "at the heart of any left wing moderate is a left wing fringe lunatic" because obviously you could just claim the same of the right, and suggest that every moderate right wing has fascism at its core. This sort of reductionism ends up with nothing useful.
Both right and left approach a similar looking set of ideologies at their extremes. I'm arguing that the left runs the risk of being overrun by something that moderate liberal lefties like me should be very concerned about.
> Your point doesn't really work, if it is "at the heart of any left wing moderate is a left wing fringe lunatic" because obviously you could just claim the same of the right, and suggest that every moderate right wing has fascism at its core. This sort of reductionism ends up with nothing useful.
I disagree. Maybe we understand the terminology differently. For me both wings of the left and right spectrum are extremes, while liberals and conservatives are on another axis. Liberals and Conservatives have existed long before there were leftist and rightist ideologies. (the -isms)
> Both right and left approach a similar looking set of ideologies at their extremes. I'm arguing that the left runs the risk of being overrun by something that moderate liberal lefties like me should be very concerned about.
The terminology question is confused by the fact that, in the US, "liberal" means "leftist", whereas in much (all?) of Europe or maybe even the rest of the world, "liberal" is more associated with classical liberalism, i.e. closer to what is called "libertarian" in the US (although I do feel that libertarianism is like classical liberalism taken to the extreme).
In any case, classical liberalism was only developed in the 19th century, while the usage of "left" and "right" is slightly older: it dates back to the French Revolution where it just happened that opposing factions would sit at opposite ends of the assembly. Given the chaotic nature of the French Revolution, what these opposite ends would represent would change countless times, but in general, the left wing was more associated with progressivism and the will of the Third Estate and the right wing was more conservative. Communism didn't even exist at the time, although arguably the first proto-communist advocate, Gracchus Babeuf, did emerge later in the French Revolution (he was offed by the "left wing" itself, though).
Yes, although that "something" isn't even socialism, it's... I don't know what it is. I'm not a socialist by any stretch but I am told that some hard-core Marxists are quite skeptical of modern "wokeness" which strangely never seems to question power imbalances due to capitalism itself.
Problem is that people on the left support de-platforming. Perhaps it is wrong and business leaders are really responsible for this, but combating hate speech is popular in those circles. You can guess how hate gets define by zeitgeist.
Most countries in Western Europe have/had socialist and communist parties, that have been pretty tolerant to opposing views. Most US citizen have very strange ideas about socialism.
> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon to create distractions by purposefully treating a small group badly. And the solution can neither be to allow it to dominate all the bandwidth nor to ignore it.
Meanwhile, unlike Alzheimers, amputations or blindness, there doesn't really need to be any scientific breakthroughs to handle this. We just need to somehow fix society. It's at least controllable.
> There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people.
That's a little bit of a non-sequitur, no? If this should be compared to anything, it's to earlier left-right "cultural war" flash points such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
Say that people with Alzheimer's should get access to better medical treatment, and no one will disagree with you (although some might say "as long as I don't pay"). Say the same about people who have lost a limb, and you'll see the same thing.
But try making any such statement about trans people, and you'll get vehement, polarized agreement and disagreement. Now, you've entered the territory of how people should and shouldn't be able to express their physical identity in public, in both sexual and non-sexual manners. And you are about to run into many strongly held opinions and pre-existing cultural mores.
With that said, I don't disagree with your last point. Sometimes, I do feel like cultural war inflammations are purposely constructed to hack the human psyche by playing into these strongly held beliefs and pre-existing cultural mores. At least in the present day, these kinds of inflammations work very effectively for generating engagement in the attention economy. But I don't know if that's a good thing. On the contrary (and maybe you'd agree with me here), I often get the sense that it's a bad thing.
Human society has no "laws" by nature, the closest observable in nature with the great apes is a brute "winner" takes it all society, that is not capable to create and sustain complexity and coherence.
To compensate this, humanity has "contract" cults who form a basic law providing form of society, protecting the weaker party form getting exploited and abused.
These contract cults exists since the dawn of time and have been shaped into various forms, mostly with mythological wrappings, we designate as religion today.
Hounded into the service as contract cultists, have been all sexual deviants of a society. Always.
Which is why if you watch carefully, its actually selected for.
A emotional reaction to question regarding sexual deviancy from the norm, is a important signal during the mating process, regardless on what side of the political spectrum you are.
Gender ideology is a synthetic contract cult, and while it has all the other negatives, previous religion incarnations carried with them, it also brings alot of freedom to the cultists and tries to do away with alot of pain. Abolishing it, is not possible, as it will simply lead to other contract cults forming.
The best that can be accomplished is, preventing the church from intervening in fields of science society depends on and finding a new separation of church and state, with this contract cult.
PS: Bad engineered religions, lead to a faltering rule of law in societys, which then return in the long run to the "winner" takes it all societal model, destroying complexity capability.
People who don't qualify as legally blind but have extreme vision impairment would like to talk to you. My stepson is profoundly deaf but still has hearing and wears hearing aides to assist him, he'll often read lips during conversations to supplement that audio information and that can result in pretty big communication breakdowns.
Pretty much everything in life is a spectrum of possibilities - trying to boil those down to binary states can be helpful for some purposes but is never clean.
Well, it's undoubtedly a condition but there are probably some who dispute whether it's a "disease" or "disability". This resistance is more commonly associated with the deaf community, and drawing parallels between this population and the trans population will get you in hot water pretty quickly..
I would imagine that the rate of violent attacks on blind individuals specifically due to their blindness is also lower than hate crimes against Trans individuals.
I don't hear about a lot of amputees being dragged behind pickup trucks for not having as many limbs as their attackers, but maybe I'm not reading the right publications.
I have a theory that we are seeing a "Times Square Billboard Effect" where as we progress and some marginalize groups are being better heard and included other groups are both seeing an opportunity and need to get more noticed. Similar to Times Square billboards having to get brighter, flashier and larger to be noticed. With how traditional and social media are working to get noticed it has be as big and loud as possible.
I mean, 2 million people in the US being discriminated against seems like plenty enough people for this to be a worthwhile discussion. But it's not just the number of people. It's also about how severe the discrimination against them is.
>Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people.
Ok but is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people don't deserve health care for their disability? Is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people shouldn't be afforded working rights?
You can't just go "there's only 2 million trans people in the US, who cares about their healthcare, there's more important things out there", when the consequence of doing so severely impacts the quality of life of .5% of the population.
I don't think you would be sitting here going "only .5% of the US has type 1 diabetes, why are talking so much about making sure they get appropriate health care? Who cares if they're discriminated against during hiring?"
> Ok but is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people don't deserve health care for their disability?
Actually, health insurance doesn't cover the cost of a guide dog, which can cost between $40-60k [0]
From personal experience (I'm not blind, but I know one), there is also workforce discrimination in the form of "don't ask her to do that, she's blind" when in fact the blindness doesn't impact the work at all.
>I don't think you would be sitting here going "only .5% of the US has type 1 diabetes, why are talking so much about making sure they get appropriate health care?
I read that trans people suffer from high rates of violence, homelessness, etc. In contrast, amputees and blind people don't usually get kicked out by their parents or randomly stabbed.
If BLM (vs e.g. StopAsianHate) is any indication, the level of outrage in activism seems to be directly correlated to the level of violence in high profile incidents, more so than percentage of affected population
For the record, in case it wasn't clear, I was talking primarily about US. But if we must compare, in some parts of the world anything under the LGBT umbrella is considered a crime punishable by death. I'm not aware of any place in the world that considers killing toddlers with disabilities legal.
Adult percentages are too blunt an instrument. With young adults and children this is a big issue.
In the school where I teach, sex, gender, and most importantly gender identity come sharply into focus during puberty and I have several students taking a time-limited therapy course to help them with gender id questions. That puts us into the 5% to 10% range, though that is of course purely anecdotal and from a tiny sample size.
Puberty hasn’t suddenly become more complex and access to these ideas and therapies may be driving gender-identity as a fashionable topic amongst the kids. But from what I’ve seen it’s a genuine need with most of them who ask for it.
Puberty is fascinating: it is a time of identity turmoil for every human being and while in the majority of cases that means going down a difficult but pre-determined path, for many others it throws up a huge number of questions about how to match their genetic/hormonal programming and the way they think, with the society in which they live. Intersex itself is a spectrum, for example.
> Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people. There are more people with Alzheimer's than trans people. There are more people in the US who have lost a limb than trans people.
Those groups aren’t subjected to violence just for existing. The comparisons aren’t at all one to one.
This is a video from a source I normally don't trust. But if we really want to learn something about bias, I think it is worth a watch. This is about racism, but I think we see similar problem with gender.
This is a real problem, especially since a too strong backlash would hurt too. But at this point I don't think it is sustainable to feed pupils wrong or ideological information.
Honestly, I would have difficulties deciding to send my kids to a school this or a pious catholic boarding school. In both cases countermeasures might be helpful.
For the topic itself I agree with you. There are countless issues that should get more exposure compared to these topics.
A minority group, by definition, has no power. It needs the majority to speak for them. So regardless of how small a number they represent, scaling the conversation up is required.
> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.
But downplaying it is exactly what you are doing, literally.
To answer your main question, though: the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
The disproportionate harms that this small community is subject to is the key to understanding the level of outrage being evoked on their behalf.
> disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
This is provably untrue. Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics (for example, in 2019, the FBI reported ~7000 criminal offenses[2] in the "hate crime" category). I get it, people are passionate about it, companies change their logos, everyone posts about it on social media, but let's not perpetuate these myths.
Both of you are correct, you're just looking at probabilities conditioned in the opposite way. You're looking at P(trans | killed), which is low. The parent post is looking at P(killed | trans), which is quite high. Understandably, if you are trans P(killed | trans) is a lot more relevant to you than P(trans | killed).
I don't agree, we were talking about proportionality. 0.6% of the US adult population identify as trans (1,254,000). Of that 0.6%, 44 were killed. The math is simple. The overall murder rate in the USA is 0.005% (population: 328 million, yearly murders: 16,425). The per-capita murder rates of trans people in the USA is 0.0035%, barely over half the national average.
To make the claim that trans people are disproportionately affected by crime/violence is simply not true.
> To make the claim that trans people are disproportionately affected by crime/violence is simply not true.
It's well-known that many trans hate crimes go unreported or misreported (as the victim is misgendered). So unless you really think it was highly unlikely for there to be >= 19 unreported/misreported trans deaths (19 + 44 / 1_254_000 > 0.005%), then trans death rates are probably higher.
We're dangerously getting into "no true Scotsman" territory here. Even being as charitable as I can, it just seems that you don't like the data because it doesn't fit your narrative.
> Even being as charitable as I can, it just seems that you don't like the data because it doesn't fit your narrative.
And you seem to like the data because it does. You are right, I don't trust reported numbers of trans people hate crimes, because I'm not aware of any unified reporting standards around trans hate crimes (in general I don't trust reported numbers on newly reported hate crimes, especially when advocacy groups are doing most of the reporting; it means the issue is poorly understood (so badly reported) and highly politicized). I have a pretty large prior here that I believe trans hate crimes are underreported, much like I have a prior that sexual violence is underreported, due to the nature of these instances. Moreover, numbers this low have large uncertainty bands, just using basic frequentist or Bayesian probability methods, enough that I doubt we can even come to much of a conclusion over our topic of discussion. I think we'll have to agree to disagree, and please stop downvoting me. I felt like our discussion was productive.
I don't have a narrative. I look at the data and draw conclusions. You start with conclusions and try to morph the data to fit them. I'll even grant you that sexual crimes go underreported (heck, have 43% to bring up that number up), but even so, it wouldn't account for a "disproportionate" number of crime against trans people. It would barely equal the rate of the general population. You're seriously trying to argue that trans crimes are underreported by multiple factors? That's quite the claim.
> I think we'll have to agree to disagree, and please stop downvoting me.
If you'd prefer working with the data we have presented, take a look at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/tables/table-1.xls . Other than racially motivated hate crimes which comprise most FBI recognized hate crimes, the next most is religious hate crime, below which is sexual orientation motivated hate crimes. And sexual orientation motivated hate crimes rank very similarly to religiously motivated hate crimes. In other words, sexual orientation oriented hate crimes are the 3rd most frequent, and very close in # to religiously motivated hate crimes, the 2nd most frequent hate crime.
Specifically with anti-gender-identity based hate crime, we can see that anti-transgender hate crime has one of the highest incident numbers for any individual cohort, despite knowing that only 0.6% of the population identifies as trans according to data presented earlier in this thread.
> It would barely equal the rate of the general population.
You are generalizing from the specific, here. The data that you appear to be referencing is only looking at murder rates.
You’ve then set up a straw-man argument. The straw is in the data that you’ve not incorporated into your mental model: the rates of crimes other than murder.
Yeah, I used murder rates specifically for three reasons: (1) they are often cited in news articles, including my citation above; (2) they are the easiest to compare side-by-site in an apples-to-apples comparison (gen pop vs population X or population Y); and (3) murder rates tend to be a good indicator of other, proximate, criminal activity (be it sexual assault, physical assault, etc.).
Homicide rates are also quite reliably measured, and comparable across populations and jurisdictions (as opposed to robbery, assault, etc. that are less reliably reported and consistently defined). It is, generally speaking, a good measure.
No one is arguing against the validity of measurements of homicide rates.
At question is 1) the validity of using murder rate to predict to frequencies of other victim-having crimes and 2) the validity of ignoring between-group variation when drawing conclusions about the relative frequency of crime between different groups.
> Also, your methodological techniques are faulty - ease of comparison is not a means in which to determine the validity of a comparison.
This is a straw-man, nowhere do I argue that "ease of comparison is a means in which to determine the validity of a comparison." I do, however, argue that the comparison of murder rates in gen pop to the murder rates of trans pop is a valid comparison. Perhaps you'd like to elucidate why you don't think it is.
I’m not seeing where “U.S. violent and property crime rate have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source” that you cited shows evidence that murder rates are reliable predictors of rates of other types of victim-having crimes?
Additionally, pointing out errors of generalization and particularization is not a straw-man tactic of argument. It is a direct conflict with your argument on the grounds of scientific validity - are you actually measuring what you think you are measuring?
Setting aside that we haven’t yet established that murder rates are reliable predictors of other victim-having crimes, there is a deeper problem, that another commenter was trying to point out to you in terms of Bayesian probability.
To draw the conclusion that I drew, which I continue to defend (for clarities sake: that the LGBTQIA+ community is disproportionately affected by victim-having crime), you would need to look at data that partitions the general public into its various sub-groups and compares the frequency of victim-having crime between all of the individual sub-group, in all combinations.
Such a statistical technique is frequently used in empirical studies of populations, across disciplines.
Statistical analysis of these between-group variations is where you are able to draw out conclusions such as “blacks are disproportionally convicted of certain crimes” or “LGBTQIA+ are disproportionately victims of murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination”.
> Perhaps you’d like to elucidate why you don’t think it is [a valid comparison]
There may very well be some valid conclusions to draw from data about murder rates for the whole population compared to a given sub-group, but that methodological technique suffers from the so-called “law of averages”.
In the scientific community, it is common knowledge that research methodologies based on statistical analyses of between-group variations is a technique that is sensitive to patterns that would not appear in a comparison with the average.
> I’m not seeing where “U.S. violent and property crime rate have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source” that you cited shows evidence that murder rates are reliable predictors of rates of other types of victim-having crimes?
I'm not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse here, but there's an obvious correlation between the drop in "violent crime" (homicide, murder, assault, manslaughter, etc.) and "violent victimization" (physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, etc.). Do I have to calculate the correlation coefficient for you?
> In the scientific community, it is common knowledge that research methodologies based on statistical analyses of between-group variations is a technique that is sensitive to patterns that would not appear in a comparison with the average.
I don't believe the comparison here suffers from the law of averages. And even if it did, the difference between the two data sets' deviation isn't high enough to be of any significance.
Well just have to agree to disagree, but I’ll refer you to the empirical evidence cited by myself and other commenters that ultimately supports my original assertion.
Possibly violating HN site guidelines here, but I wanted to add a civilly-toned comment to thank you for illuminating one area where our mental models had diverged on this topic.
> you don’t like the data because it doesn’t fit your narrative
In counter argument, you don’t like the laws of logic and probability because they don’t fit your narrative.
Edit: Furthermore, do we not agree, in the United States, under the rule of law, that it is a failure of civil responsibility, punishable by death in some jurisdictions, to murder even 1 person, let alone 44?
How is your argument anything other than we must do everything within our rights and capacity, as a country, to prevent each and every failure of civic responsibility?
> How is your argument anything other than we must do everything within our rights and capacity, as a country, to prevent each and every failure of civic responsibility?
Apart from the insults (accusing me of not liking logic, etc.), this is a straw-man and, just to be clear, is absolutely not what I'm arguing.
I believe this paper ought to suffice as the entry point for the non-scientific community to pursue the academic research that supports my original assertion:
Violence against transgender people: A review of United States data,
Aggression and Violent Behavior,
Volume 14, Issue 3,
2009,
Pages 170-179
That paper (full text in [1]) does not support your argument at all. In fact, murder rates are only mentioned in §3.2:
> The report related stories of 51 transgender and gender non-conforming individuals under the age of 30 who were murdered in the United States between 1995 and 2005.
Quite frankly, this number is even lower than the FBI's statistics.
> What is beginning to emerge from these multiple sources of data are the increased risks of variety of types of violence, though in particular sexual violence, faced by transgender people
Their conclusion directly states that there is an increased risk of violence for transgender people.
Secondarily, their conclusion also hints at there being empirical evidence that one cannot extrapolate from murder rates to cover all forms of victim-having crime. That would imply that your argument is indeed suffering from the law of averages.
You seem to be succumbing to a psychological phenomenon called projection.
In fact, you have set up a straw man argument, contrary to HN site guidelines of using the most charitable reading of my original comment, and then inverted your mental model such that you believe I am the one setting up the straw man.
> Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics
I'm confused. How can you compare 44 deaths to 7000 offenses? (Including 55 deaths, across all hate crimes.)
I'm not arguing that trans people are disproportionately killed or assaulted, but that we are in no way a rounding error.
Using your source, the 2019 FBI report:
Of the 8,559 criminal offenses, 51 were Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter.
224 offenses were based on Gender Identity, this includes 173 Anti-transgender offenses, and 51 Anti-Gender Non-Conforming offenses. 342 offenses not included in those numbers we’re targeting “Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group)”
5 of the 51 Murders and Nonnegligent Manslaugters were perpetrated because the victim was in the group "Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group)".
1 of the 51 Murders and Nonnegligent Manslaughters were perpetrated on the basis of Gender Identity.
> the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
Citation needed.
From what I can tell they are being given more leeway than any other group, and anyone who dares argue against their “rights” risks losing their job.
Trans-people does absolutely not to seem to be at risk anywhere.
Technically, no, I’d posit that in the scientific community of focus on this topic, it is considered common knowledge and likely an “a priori” logical conclusion.
> From what I can tell they are being given more leeway than any other group, and anyone who dares argue against their “rights” risks losing their job.
Trans-people does absolutely not to seem to be at risk anywhere.
You might refresh yourself on HN site guidelines.
Your comment would have been much more interesting if you had declined to include the quoted portion.
Given the data we have now, you’re right— if humans were rational we’d be focusing topics that affect the masses. Using minority groups (BLM, LGBT, Immigration, etc.) as shields for larger agendas is an effective defense strategy.
If you choose one variable that describes people, and assume for simplicity it's approximately bell shaped, then sure, most people are in the middle, which is "average" or "normal", and if we want to help the most people, it seems logical to focus on them.
But if you start adding independent variables, it becomes increasingly unlikely that any given person is in the middle on all of them. Even with three, let alone dozens.
So you, or any other randomly chosen person, are probably very like "the masses" in some respects, but given, say, ten dimensions, nobody is average.
Which is why disregarding minorities in general isn't a viable way to run a society.
But to answer your question “why is this important” - the extreme minority of transgender people and the army of their supporters and activists in their quest for recognizing trans rights step on and disregard women rights and aggressively “cancel” anyone who dares to disagree with gender ideology, now that affects all of us, if you care about free speech.
If I understand correctly, trans people get beaten to death far out of proportion to their numbers. No, I don't have statistics, but if true you can't just look at the number of trans people to see how serious the problem is.
In 2019, the most recent year for which the FBI has data, the total US homicide rate was 4.3 deaths per 100,000 people [0] (possible underestimate; incident reporting is voluntary, and 25% of police departments don't submit expanded homicide data). Human Rights Campaign recorded the deaths of 25 transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2019 [1]. There are an estimated 1 million people who identify as transgender in the US [2], and an estimated 1.2 million people who identify as nonbinary or gender non-conforming [3]. That produces a US trans and nonbinary homicide rate for 2019 of 1.1 per 100,000.
Of all homicides reported by HRC with transgender or gender non-confirming victims in 2019, just one was determined to involve a clear anti-LGBT motive. HRC's data may be an underestimate. However, it is consistent with their estimated homicide rates and rate of hate crimes reported in other years.
Any murder is a tragedy, hate crimes all the moreso. However, a single-digit number of annual anti-trans and nonbinary murders is thankfully not an epidemic. The overall homicide rate for trans people seems much lower than the national average.
Notably this data excludes assaults, harassment, stalking, or any other attacks which don't result in fatalities.
Don't role your own aggregate statistics when the thing you try to derive by mashing together things created for different purposes is measured or estimated by people.
I don't role my own encryption for public use either.
At my university, the fratboys were far, far, FAR more disruptive than the LGBT groups. But we go with it; fratboy are an accepted pupal stage of American men it seems
One shouldn't expect courage from The Economist, but it's always wise to bet on their prudence.
I don't read The Economist for facts or details so much as to get a sense of what topics a current establishment can no longer afford to ignore. The details are secondary to the neccessity that a writer, a sub-editor, and a senior editor with tremendous personal stake in maintaining access to the circles that define establishment media, have collectively recognized that to remain relevant as a publication, the risk/reward on any ensuing controversy still means the magazine has to acknowledge which way the wind is blowing.
When The Economist says something is just starting, it means it's been brewing for at least several years and they need to comment on it. I don't think direct discourse on the topic improves the discussion on gender because the participants use a critical theory in which the promise of discourse is just bait to corner political targets for their mobs. However, we (and even The Economist) can recognize that popular tolerance for these tactics has finally reached an inflection point, and this change in attitude is what will finally allow real analysis and insight by thoughtful people into topics about gender.
As an Economist reader who sometimes scratches his head at how late they are to the party, I love your framing here. I appreciate their sobriety though.
> By allowing the author to hide behind anonymity it reveals The Economist's biases and their stake in the debate by asserting that "terf is a slur" and representing "gender critical" ideologies as "mainstream."
Why do you wish the author was named--so you can have their head? You sound like the people in the article trying to stifle debate
There are plenty of great reasons why author's in reputable publications should (and shouldn't) be identified. I frequently track threads by journalist in order to understand bias.
For instance, when I see scathing articles about Bernie Sanders being America's greatest enemy appear across ostensibly venerated and elite publications, I can look up an author's catalog of published work and discover that they are eg- an old money heiress and New England socialite with deeply vested interest in not reforming or regulating causes of wealth inequality who frequently publishes to centrist and liberal-right outlets.
Once patterns are identified, other journalists can research and report on what those publications, their editors, or their journalists are attempting to manufacture. Caught early, before they become quoted sources and internally promoted voices of authority, the public has a better chance at gleaning who the real stakeholders are.
Anyway, it was recently identified that reassignment surgery costs around $150,000, and at a rate of roughly 1% of the population, that's a multi-billion dollar market without established brand loyalty. The corporations that capture that are expected to be well served.
The n-word is a slur, yes, that has no bearing on whether other words are slurs or not. Do you have a point or should I just accept that whatever word you deem a slur, is one?
I did a quick search of Twitter.[0] Lots of uses of "TERF" and all of them have extremely negative connotations. "TERF" is equated with transphobia, "hate"/"hate speech," bigotry and even an intention to murder.
I'm not sure how specifically you would define "slur," and I'd be curious to learn, but to my mind "a word used almost universally to defame and cast hyperbolic, inaccurate aspersions on an outgroup" seems like a reasonable working definition that encapsulates all other slurs as well as this one.
Yes, I disagree with that definition of slur, the bar is too low if that's all it takes. In my opinion a history of oppression is what matters and if we go by how twitter uses a word, "Karen" and "Boomer" would be slurs too.
Thank you for your description of The Economist. I subscribed to The Economist in 1996 and at time it really was a different than the rest of the news papers. For example, Philip Tetlock identified reading The Economist as a predictor for ability to forecast future.
Then something changed. One important change was that they basically started publishing their authors names by allowing authors have blogs with their names. I also understand (would like to know more about this) that they started hiring journalists. Previously only subject experts were welcome but at some point there was a huge influx of Guardian-type journalists.
To me, first hint about the change in the articles was their coverage of feminism in work place where they really started to spout fashionable ideological points such as writing that women make better leaders, etc.
> I don't think direct discourse on the topic improves the discussion on gender because the participants use a critical theory in which the promise of discourse is just bait to corner political targets for their mobs.
Are you suggesting that we should leave gender to the scientists and when The Economist has spoken, it should be recognized as the moment that “the science is in”?
I could understand your first paragraph, the second seems like a non-sequitor.
> Are you suggesting that we should leave gender to the scientists and when The Economist has spoken, it should be recognized as the moment that “the science is in”?
I read it more as “The Economist has started speaking about the subject, so it's an established science -- now we can start to expect actual results from it”.
There’s a lot that’s already been said in this topic but I feel compelled to bring up the damage imposed by TERF talking points. The conversation goes something like this: “Transgender women possess an innate maleness that carries a non-zero threat to female spaces.” They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one presents in both dress and phenotype.
In my experience this is the center of every “debate.” It’s less about the merits of the cause and more about convincing this point against the hypothetical risk of a male who’s taken advantage of self identified gender. TERFs are generally not interested in dynamics of trans men, who seem to be more like “gender traitors” than their deceptive counterparts.
Personally I find this whole movement a farce. Every talking point not only misaligns with trans women, it causes more harm to cis women at scale. “Real women” give birth — except hundreds of thousands who cannot. “Real women” look like the contemporary feminine ideal, yet 1 in 10 women suffer from PCOS enduring testosterone levels higher than any trans woman has to contend with. And the cake topper of them all, “trans women fuel negative stereotypes of femininity,” while simultaneously not appearing feminine enough, often barred from HRT until after puberty. This Goldilocks zone of womanhood is always out of reach, and therefore transness is never acceptable.
I don't see how it is unreasonable for a female inmate to be uncomfortable sharing sleeping quarters with a person who has a penis (regardless of how that person identifies).
The fear that cis-women have of rape is real. The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real. I think the fairest thing to do is take both of these fears seriously and house intact trans-women in a space where they neither feel threatened with rape, nor impose that threat on cis-women.
I think referring to this fear as a "TERF talking point" is as disrespectful as it would be to minimize the fear that trans-women experience in men's prisons.
Fear of rape or pressurised sex amongst prisoners is perfectly real, but if a tiny minority of transpeople are a distant third in terms of sexual threat to female prisoners behind male warders and natal females and a campaign organization proposes rehousing transpeople (all 125 of them) in different prisons as their solution to prison rape over better safeguarding practises or single occupant cells which might offer many more women more protection from more pervasive threats it sounds suspiciously more like a "talking point" against the target group than a practical solution to sexual violence in prisons. Especially if the campaign groups responsible have long lists of other issues with transpeople, and somehow the sexual activity involving people with penises and keys doesn't get the same attention...
>but if a tiny minority of transpeople are a distant third
Here's the problem I have with this line of defense: it doesn't accommodate the reality of self-id and the likely downstream effects if it becomes the accepted norm. If all it takes for a male to be housed in a female prison is a checkmark on a form, we should expect that many cis-men will take advantage of the situation, thus creating a very real threat of abuse for women in women prisons. If I were being locked up for an extended period of time and all it took was a declaration to be housed in a female prison, I would do it. I would go from one of the smaller and weaker inmates to one of the biggest and strongest. It is a no-brainer in terms of my personal safety. And I have no interest in abusing anyone or taking advantage of forced-proximity. Imagine how many abusers would take advantage of that circumstance? An argument in defense of gender-affirmation in prison assignments that doesn't accommodate this likely reality isn't substantive.
>all it took was a declaration to be housed in a female prison
That's not at all what it takes.
>Imagine how many abusers would take advantage of that circumstance?
Imagine how many abusers already take advantage of the power they already have over women in women's prisons. That the real problem of sexual violence is focused and framed wholly and entirely on trans women is exactly the point made by the parent: this is an entirely disingenuous effort by people wholly uninterested in actually preventing the real, existing, non-imagined abuses in women's prisons and more interested in enforcing a strict gender binary that harms both cis and trans women.
In fact, it is all it takes in some jurisdictions[1]
>Imagine how many abusers already take advantage of the power they already have over women in women's prisons.
This is a disingenuous reply. The issue of abuse is colored by the difficulty in mitigation, i.e. available funds to significantly alter prisons, increase guards, etc. The fact that existing abuse has no easy, cost-effective solutions is not an argument against preventing the likely increase in abuse due to policy changes which are comparatively low-cost.
>Thornton said that “a person’s gender identity is self-reported and CDCR will evaluate any request submitted by an incarcerated person for gender-based housing.”
This CDCR review process is a hurdle, and staffers are hypervigilant (to the point of manufacturing anxiety) of the transfers that have already happened.
>But Moore, 43, said that she has also heard staffers question inmates housed with Calvin, asking whether she has exposed herself, explained her sexual behavior to them or said things that made them uncomfortable. She said the questioning has fomented anxiety and false rumors that Calvin is in a relationship.
>...when groundbreaking legislation gave transgender, intersex and nonbinary inmates the right, regardless of anatomy, to choose whether to be housed in a male or female prison... When asked whether inmates in the men’s prisons trying to manipulate the transfer system has been a significant issue, Thornton said that “a person’s gender identity is self-reported and CDCR will evaluate any request submitted by an incarcerated person for gender-based housing.”... Inmates can request transfers to their correctional counselor, which are then considered by a committee that includes the warden, custody, medical and mental health staffers, and a PREA compliance manager. Staffers review the inmate’s criminal record, health needs, custody level, sentence and safety concerns.
There's certainly room for interpretation here, but it seems like the evaluation is based on specific personal requirements and any explicit safety concerns, not a medical or psychological exam to determine whether the request is due to one's genuine identity.
I think housing intact trans-women in single occupant cells in women's prisons is a reasonable middle ground. The trans-women are in a space that affirms their gender identity, but it does not require cis-women to share a cell with someone who can rape and impregnate them.
These are true statements. Cis-women can be raped and impregnated by people with penises is also a true statement. Perhaps the complete solution is to house all in-mates in separate cells regardless of sex or gender. I do not think that creating situations where female prisoners can be sexually assaulted and impregnated by their cell mate is a positive step forward.
> I do not think that creating situations where female prisoners can be sexually assaulted and impregnated by their cell mate is a positive step forward.
You keep combining impregnation and sexual assault as if they're the same thing. Cis women are already sexually assaulted by other cis women in prisons! This is not a problem created anew by housing trans women in women's prisons. I venture that the problem is not trans women, the problem is the assumption that prisons cannot stop inmates from sexually assaulting each other.
Impregnation and sexual assault are obviously not the same thing, and I am not combining them as if they are. Housing cis-women and trans-women creates a unique situation where cis-women can be sexually assaulted AND impregnated. I don't dispute that cis-women can sexually assault other cis-women, and that sexual assault is a problem in men's prisons and women's prisons and exists with or without the presence of trans men and women.
To completely stop sexual assault in prisons, people would have to be housed in separate cells. Housing cis-women and trans-women in the same cell does not stop the sexual assault problem.
> I don't dispute that cis-women can sexually assault other cis-women, and that sexual assault is a problem in men's prisons and women's prisons and exists with or without the presence of trans men and women.
In that case you're hard pressed to argue why housing trans women in women's prisons exacerbates this issue, unless you think trans women are more likely to be rapists. Excluding an entire population on the basis that some of them might rape people is not just if rape is already a problem.
> To completely stop sexual assault in prisons, people would have to be housed in separate cells.
I mostly agree, but it's very easy to construct a solution to these problems while ignoring the present reality. Almost no trans people are currently housed in prisons that accord with their gender identity, and 35% of trans people in prisons themselves report having been sexually assaulted in the past year as of 2015 [1]. The status quo is pretty dire for them too, and their safety should be weighed against the safety of the cis people they might otherwise be housed with.
No, I don't think trans-women are more likely to be rapists. Trans-women are at high risk of sexual assault in male prisons and that should be taken seriously. Cis-women are at risk of sexual assault and being impregnated from that sexual assault if they are housed with intact trans-women.
I think both of these concerns can be addressed. None of the options address everyone's needs and preferences, but are certainly better than leaving trans-women completely vulnerable in men's prisons.
1) House trans-women in a separate part of men's prisons so that they are not at high risk of sexual assault. Some people do not like this because it doesn't affirm their gender identity.
2) House trans-women in prisons for trans people. This is likely unrealistic because the number of people is small and for most inmates it would mean spending prison time far away from their community, making it harder for friends and family to visit.
3) House trans-women in women's prisons, but not force cis-women to share a cell with intact trans-women. This scenario would remove the threat that trans-women face, affirm their gender identity, but not impose an unfair burden on cis-women who fear being sexually assaulted and impregnated by intact trans-women.
I think scenario (3) goes most of the way in protecting trans-women from sexual assault, allows them to serve their sentences (hopefully not too far away from family), yet still acknowledges that many cis-women in prison have been sexually assaulted or fear sexual assault by people with penises because it can result in pregnancy which creates an entire new set of physical, psychological, and moral challenges for that cis-woman.
No. Correctional officers do not sleep next to prisoners in the same cell every night, so it doesn't create the same threat and fear.
Sexual assault by correctional officers is a problem that also needs to be better addressed. But that's true regardless of the question on how to house incarcerated trans-women.
Without any stats for transwomen in particular, human males are more likely to be rapists, and an intact transwoman is closer to a man than a ciswoman is, no? Unless you think that the reason men are more likely to be rapists is purely a result of their gender identity and has nothing to do with biology.
With regards to the danger of trans people being sexually assaulted in prisons: yes, it is absolutely a problem. MyHypatia literally made the same point you're making in their original comment.
Side request: if it doesn't bother you too much I would prefer you refer to trans women with penises as trans women with penises rather than as "intact" trans women. Such phrasing suggests that trans women without penises are damaged.
> Without any stats for transwomen in particular, human males are more likely to be rapists, and an intact transwoman is closer to a man than a ciswoman is, no?
This argument is rather tangential. Is there any empirical evidence that trans women are more likely to sexually assault people than cis women? Is the median trans woman more likely to sexually assault people than cis women who have been convicted of sexual assault, or who have already committed sexual assault in the prison?
> MyHypatia literally made the same point you're making in their original comment.
Specifically, they said that putting trans women in women's prisons would be imposing the threat of rape on cis women. After I pointed out that cis women already rape other cis women in women's prisons, they clarified that it was actually impregnation they were really worried about introducing, not rape as such. I don't think my criticism of this concern has been addressed.
Sure, no problem. Though I would point out that "intact" is also a word used to describe uncircumcised males, without strictly implying that circumcised males are damaged.
I don't think there are enough transwomen in prisons to make any reasonable statistical statement about transwomen in particular being more or less likely to be rapists. And I don't really think the argument is tangential. People with penises are more likely to be rapists than people without them, this is a clear statistical reality. If a large population of people are being held together, historically because they did not possess penises, and are worried about the introduction of someone with a penis (who statistically is much more likely to be a rapist by nature of having a penis), I think the burden is on you to demonstrate that gender identity is a confounding factor in those statistics. And if there isn't a difference between having a penis and not having one in this circumstance, why do we even need to have gendered prisons?
With regards to MyHypatia, I was referring to the fact that, in the second half of your comment to which I initially replied, it seemed like you felt MyHypatia did not recognize the direness of the trans situation in prisons. But they clearly do, as evidenced by this from their first comment:
> The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real
> Though I would point out that "intact" is also a word used to describe uncircumcised males, without strictly implying that circumcised males are damaged.
It may be used to describe their foreskin, but I've never heard or seen it used to describe them as whole people. It sounds very odd. What is the negation of intact? You can't really use a word to describe a category exclusively without implying the opposite of the other category.
> People with penises are more likely to be rapists than people without them, this is a clear statistical reality.
I don't think you can argue this is a clear statistical reality without data about trans women. As far as I know contemporary research suggests sexual assault by women has been historically undercounted. I don't know if the numbers come out similar in the end, but it seems like the kind of thing that is easily colored by social bias.
> If a large population of people are being held together, historically because they did not possess penises
Is it because they didn't have penises? Or because they weren't men? I don't know of any specific information, but this is an important distinction, because the general perception for a long time has been that men are more violent than women, and I think it's more because of male secondary sexual characteristics (muscle tone and height, mainly) than primary. Would a burly intersex person with high testosterone and ambiguous genitalia who sexually assaulted somebody have been put in a women's prison? Should they be today?
> And if there isn't a difference between having a penis and not having one in this circumstance, why do we even need to have gendered prisons?
I don't know, but I do think it's worth asking the question! Do we segregate people by gender because it's fundamentally necessary, or because our prison system is so brutal that we can't imagine inmates of different genders living together peacefully? There could very well be science on this subject that I'm not aware of, but on its face the sexual segregation of American prisons seems hard to separate from their brutality and corruption.
I think we will need to agree to disagree with regards to "intact" being a harmful adjective to use in this particular situation, but I am happy to no longer use that phrasing if you or anyone else finds it objectionable. I was using it as shorthand for "transwomen with an intact penis" which I think is a fairly accurate way of putting it. Mostly I was using it because that is the phrasing that had been used previously in this conversation and nobody had objected to its usage until this point. To my mind dancing around realities (e.g. saying things like "passed on" instead of "dead") is a strange obsession we have as a society that I generally find tedious and counter-productive regardless of the situation, but that is just my opinion and I am perhaps a bit more direct than average.
Sexual assault by women being undercounted does not account for the fact that most estimates put male perpetrators at around 90% of sexual assault cases. It would have to be severe undercounting (in anonymous surveys to boot) to get anywhere close to make up for that divide. Also, unless I am misinformed, I was under the impression that the majority of transwomen share male secondary sex characteristics – I have certainly not seen any indication that transwomen are shorter than the average male and would not expect that to be the case, given that the majority of trans people alive today were not on puberty blockers + hormone therapy before any such primary sex characteristics could do their thing in puberty.
Historically, being a man was having a penis. At the end of the day, humanity is a sexually reproducing species and there are two fundamental sexes required for procreation (intersex individuals notwithstanding). For better or for worse, human societies have divided themselves along this line (as best they could judge) since time immemorial. Given this universality, it seems incredibly unlikely that the various discrepancies between men and women (whether with rape or anything else) can be explained away by society / sociological conditioning (and therefore fixed by a change in the same).
I fully agree that the solution is to look at the problem holistically and question whether a system which allows for any sex/gender to be raped by any other sex/gender is a system that should be maintained. But as it stands, that system is still around, so we can't just pretend the decisions we've made going into that system are totally irrelevant and now that we're "more enlightened individuals" we can just switch things up without that fundamental revisiting. Said another way, this strikes me as a bit of a Chesterton's fence situation: I don't know exactly why we decided to make men's and women's prisons, but until we've firmly established that "why", I don't think it is sensible to use our 21st century definition of "men" and "women" and apply it to systems that were not made with those definitions in mind.
This comment gets a lot wrong and I don't think it's a productive use of my time to explain it fully but I will try to enumerate my main objections.
1. "Intact" is straight-up offensive. I was trying to explain why without saying so (because people on here always seem to object that something isn't offensive when I say it is) but you didn't get it, or I did a poor job of explaining. The term implies that trans women with vaginas merely have damaged penises, and made a choice to ruin their bodies, and consequently that cisgender bodies are better, because they are always intact. That is where it originates from.
2. Many human societies throughout history up to today have recognized at least three genders, most famously for the US, indigenous Americans with two-spirit people. It is incidental, not inherent, that Western culture does not have a category like this outside of scientific classification.
3. Feminists ostensibly believe in equality between men and women. This idea that men are uncontrollable rapists, and that women are defenseless and purely innocent, seems blatantly sexist to me. Sure, men are especially violent in our society. It's plainly true. They also happen to hold most of the power in our society. The concept of rape culture goes a long way to explaining why men rape people and are generally more violent: it is condoned by the people who hold most of the power. Justice for trans people is inseparable from justice for all women, and the destruction of patriarchy. That's what I was trying to get at in talking about the obvious violence in the US prison system. The state treating people with violence legitimizes people treating each other with violence, and that's only the start. Humans are highly intelligent and by all accounts we have, through great effort, managed to become much less violent in our dealings with each other over time, for the most part. At some point you can't blame animal instinct for choices that humans make.
1. I wish our medical technology was at the point you seem to believe it is, I truly wish it was. But it's not. I wish society was at the point it is in the Culture series, where every individual in the Culture has the ability to change their biological sex at will (and even become androgynous if they wish!). But we are certainly not at the point. Post-op transwomen don't have vaginas, just as they have none of the other plumbing that exists as part of being one half of a sexually reproducing pair. They have imitations of them, poorly reconstructed from, yes, as you say, a mutilated penis. I hope that one day (sooner rather than later) we will get to the level of medical prowess where this is not the case, but we are certainly not there in 2021. In the same way, I hope that one day soon we will be able to make legs for people that lost/never had them (if they wish). Offense is taken, not given – it is not that I don't understand that people can be offended by "intact", it is that someone taking offense at an accurate description of reality is generally not worth the effort to guard against, because with that low of a bar people can be offended by anything. But again, I already agreed not to use that terminology, which (again) I was only using in the first place because it had been used previously in the conversation without objection by someone else.
2. Two-spirit was a term invented in 1990, so that seems like a bad example of a concept that has existed throughout history. Even the concept of a "special third gender" necessitates that you have two primary ones. I am not arguing that every society throughout history has had two distinct gender roles and that is all. The point I am making is that the reason gender exists as a concept at all is because there are distinct human sexes. The reason there are distinct sexes is because that is what we are: a sexually reproducing species with binary sex characteristics. One sex that produces the large gamete and one sex that produces the small, which come together to form zygote, which is incubated by the aforementioned large gamete provider. If it worked in any other way, if there was any variation on this theme, you and I would not exist. Your progeny involves one male having sex with one female and the female carrying the result of that in her womb for at least 20+ weeks (usually 40) in an unbroken line back to the first human, and then much, much further.
3. I never claimed men were uncontrollable rapists, just that the statistics (to the best of our ability to measure them) indicate that rapists are far more prevalent among males than among females. Clearly the vast majority of men are capable of not raping people. Furthermore, "rape culture" is a strange way of describing a culture which has harsh punishments for rapists and frequently makes people unemployable after the mere accusation of rape, with little proof needed (name another crime we do that for as readily). In fact if I was going to invent a "rape culture" from scratch those things would definitely be the opposite of what I'd include as norms.
Look, if you want to dismantle the prison system because it normalizes and perpetuates horrible violence, then by all means say that. But this is not at all the same thing as saying "we can just stick people in whichever prison best matches their gender identity regardless of what reasons we had for making men's and women's prisons in the first place because clearly the people who made that decision were poorly reasoning morons/bigots who had no reason to make such a distinction". Just as saying "we should develop more gender-neutral bathrooms" is different from saying "men and women's bathrooms are functionally identical just with different signs on the doors", even though men's bathrooms were clearly designed around the assumption that users of said bathroom are likely to have a functioning penis.
I personally think that we as a society should move away from gendering everything in general. Bathrooms, clothes, toys, prisons, makeup, etc. could all be much more gender neutral than they are and I think that would be a good thing. Until then, when talking about interim solutions, "are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater" is a valid question.
Justice for everyone is inseparable from justice for anyone.
I think your posts in this thread are downright admirable, and for that reason, in case you're not aware (and if you are, readers probably aren't)--it is probably worth noting that "intact" is common TERF watchwording, pushed and intended to normalize the position that trans women are not women.
In this context “trans woman with a penis” or “woman with a penis” is fine. You can’t go wrong with scientific language. Pretty much nobody who is trans uses the word “intact,” I would go so far as to say it’s offensive and that you should avoid using it in the future if you don’t want to offend people. I find it offensive, certainly. It’s reminiscent of transphobic people describing trans women who have had vaginoplasties as mutilated.
I mean, I'm not trans, I'm not in a place to note "preferred" nomenclature, but I moderate spaces where there are trans folks and "pre-operative", or perhaps "without bottom surgery", seems to be a neutral description.
With that said, the focus on genitalia strikes me as odd and really unfounded in the first place for a productive conversation.
I do agree that focus on genitalia is generally unnecessary and unwelcome. In this case though we are discussing trans-women fearing people with penises raping them in men's prisons, and cis-women fearing people with penises raping them in women's prisons.
In this context, if a trans-woman doesn't have a penis then this fear is unfounded and they should be housed with cis-women. If a trans-woman does have a penis, then I think this fear is reasonable (after all, that is what trans-women are escaping when they leave men's prisons). Basically, this is one of the few cases where discussing genitalia is relevant.
Alternatively, this could be an opportunity to address sexual assault in prisons more broadly. No inmate, no matter how heinous their crimes, should be subjected to sexual assault.
The prevalence and sexual assault in prisons is an example of a normalization of deviance that should be opposed, instead of tolerated.
If you read the article you linked, you will find that is not true. From the article: "between 2016 and 2020, there were seven sexual assaults against females in women's prisons by trans women." 7 assaults in 4 years is not 5x more.
If you are referring to the statistic that "trans inmates are 1% of the population and commit 5.6% of the assaults", you will find that the trans inmates in question are actually trans men being incorrectly housed in women's prisons.
“there were 125 trans prisoners in 2017, 60 of whom were serving sentences for sexual offences. Of those 60, 27 were serving a prison sentence for rape.” which is more shocking than your 5x statistic. Note the 5x statistic appears weak to me because “Between 2016 and 2020, there were seven sexual assaults [reported] against females in women's prisons by trans women.”.
I can't really speak to the psychology of rapists in prisons, but I imagine there are a good number of people that, if they're gonna rape someone with a penis anyway, it is more enjoyable to rape the person that is presenting as a woman.
Also because rape in prison is very much about power, and exerting power over people you dislike for one reason or another (in this case trans people because they are trans) especially.
There are a lot more straight male rapists than non-straight male rapists, just because there are a lot more straight people. Yes, there is also situational homosexuality, but trans women change the situation.
Trans people are way more likely to be raped then non trans. And cis women do get attacked by trans men. Like, if your concern is prison rape, it is quite odd to start with lowest probability events and ignore high probability events.
My comment was in response to the parent comment referring to cis-women's concerns as "TERF talking points". I am saying that cis-women's concerns shouldn't be invalidated, and that we can figure out a path forward that acknowledges the threat that trans-women may face in men's prisons and also acknowledge the threat that cis-women may face being cell mates with a person who has a penis.
Basically, I think that sexual assault in prisons should be taken far more seriously for everyone. That may mean every prisoner should get their own cell regardless of sex or gender. I don't think housing cis-women and intact trans-women in the same cell alleviates this.
I am cis woman. I happened to look at prisom rape and sexual violence statistics a while ago.
The trans men in jail abusing cis women is real thing. They are housed together now. The trans women being raped or abused is incredibly frequent thing - includig by guards. (Male on male rape is a joke, basically. Transwomen in prison are assumed to enjoy sexual abuse basically.)
But despite the former being literally about cis women safety too, it just dont interest people. There are many ways to make prisons safer and making it so trans women or gender non conforming men are a bit safer is topic only for radical trans activists and no one else.
If there is heated discussion about issue that dont currently exist which ignores issues that do cureently exist, it is ok to call it talking point.
Even beyond that, a cis woman can sexually assault another woman (Rape has different definitions depending on where you are, but clearly the distinction is irrelevant—sexual assault isn't inherently of a different impact, just different exact actions).
It's the exact same argument that was used as justification to try and criminalise homosexuality, that they would all be assaulting people in bathrooms, changing rooms, and prisons.
By that line of reasoning every inmate should be held in solitary confinement by virtue of the fact that rape is possible between every possible pair of gender identities.
No, you don't have to place them in solitary confinement. You can place them with other trans-women.
Men are housed with men in jails. Yes, sometimes they commit violence against each other, including rape. But we don't put all men in solitary confinement.
This begs the question of why it is acceptable for men and trans women to be raped, but unacceptable for cis women to be raped?
There is no justification for accepting any prison rape—or, for that matter, sexual assault, which cis women are entirely capable of.
(And, to be clear, sexual assault is not inherently a lesser crime than rape, rape is just a specific form of sexual assault, and depending on jurisdiction, may be defined in such a way as a cis woman can be a rapist).
It is not acceptable for men nor trans-women nor cis-women nor anyone to be raped in prison. My comment does not condone rape. If you think that all men and all trans-women should have separate cells to prevent this possibility, I think that could be a positive step forward. I do not think that subjecting cis-women to the fear of rape is a positive step forward.
There is no evidence that trans women are more a threat to cis women than cis women are to each other. If a cis women is afraid of being assaulted by a trans women, that is a fear rooted in bigotry, not reality. If the individual in question is a convicted rapist, than precautions should be taken regardless of that persons genitals or gender to make sure they dont assault anyone else. Prison rape is horrific and needs to be addressed, and concern trolling about trans women doesnt help anyone and does hurt public perception of trans women.
The fear of being impregnated from a sexual assault is not rooted in bigotry. It places cis-women in a very uncomfortable position of having to birth and raise a child created from sexual assault or have an abortion. This is not concern trolling. It is a very real fear. Prison rape is horrific for everyone, not just cis-women. It is horrific for men and trans-men and trans-women as well. Housing cis-women with intact trans-women does not solve or address the prison rape problem.
> It places cis-women in a very uncomfortable position of having to birth and raise a child created from sexual assault or have an abortion.
I want to be very clear: I do not want this to happen. I don't want any woman to be raped, especially not impregnated as well. But my point still stands: this does not happen on any sort of regular basis. I do not think you're arguing in bad faith here, and I hope you see that I'm not either. Segregating trans women from cis women does nothing to protect cis women. Implementing this segregation across the prison system would not impact the occurrence of prison rape by half a percent. But by insisting that trans women are a threat to cis women, you are hurting trans women. You are playing into and amplifying a very popular narrative in our society that trans women are deceptive, dangerous predators. And this leads to legislation that harms the whole trans community.
It is actually incorrect, I just responded to that comment. See below:
If you read the article you linked, you will find that is not true. From the article: "between 2016 and 2020, there were seven sexual assaults against females in women's prisons by trans women." 7 assaults in 4 years is not 5x more.
If you are referring to the statistic that "trans inmates are 1% of the population and commit 5.6% of the assaults", you will find that the trans inmates in question are actually trans men being incorrectly housed in women's prisons.
Then why did you present it as a zero-sum game where you were quite willing to suggest putting trans-women into a situation you find unconscionable for cis-women?
You have thoroughly proved the original poster's point: TERF talking points are damaging. You bought one up, defending it as "reasonable", but when pressed you accept that there is a preferable solution that doesn't involve throwing trans people under the bus.
The talking point is there to push a narrative that trans people are dangerous, just as was done with gay people before. It is designed to imply that we must choose between women's rights and trans people's rights, which is a false dichotomy.
Why would a rapist stop wanting to rape regardless of the state of their genitals? Is sexual violation with a penis so much more horrific than other violations it deserves special consideration?
Yes, because women can get pregnant. Then not only do you have to deal with trauma of your sexual assault, you have to deal with the trauma of having a child born from that sexual assault or have an abortion.
Its also about the possibility of being impregnated
Just personalize the idea, your sister or female significant other was thrown in jail, and then housed with a male who is a trans woman who has sex with her with or without her consent and creates an ongoing consequence that is impossible if trans women were not there
That would be the expectation you would start with to form a conclusion
By this logic, it would be fine if they were infertile, which is obvious nonsense.
Sexual assault does not hit some magic breaking point where it becomes an unacceptable risk at the chance of impregnation. If there is a significant risk of sexual assault, then the prison has fundamentally failed and that is the thing that needs fixing.
It simply doesn't matter if someone is trans or not, cis people are just as capable of sexual assault, and prisons must be protecting all inmates, not only cis-women, from assault.
the rest of us are starting with the premise that prisons have all failed equally, and find them equally incompetent at any additional vector of assault such as the one that introduces pregnancy
its not nearly as gendered as you are making it out to be, this a condition statement satisfied by some gendered combinations
In good faith and not as whataboutism:
Do you think being forced to impregnate someone against your will is similarly horrific although less burdensome for the first 9 months?
Additionally if you only have to vocally identify as a woman without having to take any further steps (Hormone replacement, srs, etc) this seems exploitable.
While you are throwaway I am still gonna remind you of "assuming good faith" is one of core tenants of hn.
Other things that are exploitable: driving vans/cars in cities as they can be driven into crowds.
I agree that it is thinkable that some people might want to exploit these rules. However I haven't seen anything that suggest abuse will be rampant enough and not be able to be dealt using existing laws and shaming exploiters. So I think we should give trans people their rights and deal with perverts and abuser separately.
A cost on switching can be imposed but it shouldn't make it more stigmatising or harder on trans people ideally.
I don't think your explanation of "TERF talking points" is fair. Contra Judith Butler it's not clear that feminism has any meaning without some essential idea of "womanhood". That is fundamentally what disturbs "TERFs".
When you talk about "this Goldilocks zone of womanhood," I think you've rediscovering one of the oldest philosophical discoveries: mental concepts and ideas (in this case "woman") do not apply perfectly to the world of appearences. But this does not mean we can jettison concepts and ideas altogether. In fact they seem necessary. So the fact that we cannot seem to come up with a perfect criterion for defining "biological woman" does not mean that we can dispense with that category.
And that's what's being asked of us. We are told "trans women are women". What does that mean? It if means "there is a category, women, and in that category there are trans women and biological women," that's fine with me. If it means "there is no distinction between biological women and trans women," that seems wrong to me and to the vast majority of people.
It's really not complex. "Trans women are women" is directly comparable to "Adoptive parents are parents". It is a statement that biology is not the important factor generally, identity is.
The supposed fear that people believe there is some magic change to your chromosomes the second you chose to identify with a gender is patently absurd. There is obviously no real support for such an idea—it is a straw-man that no one reading the phrase "trans women are women" in good faith and taking even a second to look into what trans people are saying would assume was the intent.
> "there is no distinction between biological women and trans women,"
There is no category of women that is entirely identical, where you couldn't distinguish between them.
Some AFAB women can't give birth. Some of them have more androgynous bodies. Some of them are black. Some of them have different levels of estrogen, or grow up in different social circles that impose different expectations about how they should act, or provide different opportunities.
Nobody is saying that AFAB women don't have different experiences than trans women, any more than anyone is saying that Black women don't have different experiences than white women. Womanhood has always been a broad category, and there has never been a point where you could accurately say that there are no distinctions between the subcategories within womanhood.
If TERFs believe there is a fundamental quality that makes them indistinguishable from every other woman, then they are being absurd. Even if you ignore trans women, that world doesn't exist.
Did you read my post? I addressed all of this very directly.
To quote myself:
> When you talk about "this Goldilocks zone of womanhood," I think you've rediscovering one of the oldest philosophical discoveries: mental concepts and ideas (in this case "woman") do not apply perfectly to the world of appearences. But this does not mean we can jettison concepts and ideas altogether. In fact they seem necessary. So the fact that we cannot seem to come up with a perfect criterion for defining "biological woman" does not mean that we can dispense with that category.
So, regardless of whether we can specify criteria by which we can decide whether or not someone is a biological woman, the essential concept of "biological woman" seems to me (and to gender critical feminists) to be indispensible. To me, because it allows us to provide a good (though not perfect) answer to the question "where do babies come from?" and to gender critical feminists because they view the concept as central to their political/philosophical project.
In fact, we can use your method of argument to demolish any category or concept. Take death for instance. How do we define death? By what criteria can we say anything is dead? Take life. By what criteria can we say something is alive? In fact we can't answer these questions perfectly and this is well known. But I don't see any use in getting rid of concepts like life and death which seem central to how we all understand the world. Along the same lines, I don't think we can dispense with "biological woman".
And while all of this may seem "absurd" to you, terms like "AFAB" seems "absurd" to me.
> So the fact that we cannot seem to come up with a perfect criterion for defining "biological woman" does not mean that we can dispense with that category.
Right. But nobody is asking you to dispense of the category of women, what we're doing is we're agreeing with you that the category is fuzzy and we're saying that genitalia and sex assignment at birth do not clearly designate identity.
Nor are we getting rid of the category of cisgender and/or AFAB women. Trans women are not (and have never claimed to be) biologically identical to AFAB women. If trans women were claiming that they were biologically identical to women, then many of them wouldn't be taking estrogen. They are very aware about their biology :)
But acknowledging the fuzziness of women as a category overall means regularly reassessing our social norms about how women are expected to act and what their bodies are expected to look like. This is especially true in instances where we see people who are sharing a lot of experiences with other women.
Many trans women know what it's like to be catcalled. They know what it's like to be discriminated against at their jobs. Their experiences are not identical to everyone else's, in the same way that women's experiences in these areas are not all identical depending on their backgrounds/bodies/environments. But there is enough overlap that it is useful to group them together under the banner of womanhood. Because there isn't a perfect criterion for "woman", and part of feminism is critically examining biases about what hoops people need to jump through to be considered an "acceptable" woman -- regardless of whether those hoops are set up by men, or by other women.
> To me, because it allows us to provide a fairly good answer to the question "where do babies come from?"
Well, except for infertile women, who are fully woman and fully valid regardless of their ability to have children.
> and to gender critical feminists because they view the concept as cental to their political/philosophical project.
I disagree that trans women mean that these political/philosophical goals can't be achieved. To me, this is just gatekeeping, I don't see a real motivating need for this kind of exclusion. Trans women do not have an agenda to take away women's rights, many of these people are feminists themselves.
> And while this may seem "absurd" to you, terms like "AFAB" seems "absurd" to me.
The absurdity is not that you have different opinions about the definition of a woman, the absurdity is your implication that acknowledging the womanhood of trans women is tantamount to saying that their experiences are completely identical to cisgender, AFAB women, or that it's destroying some kind of sacred bond. That position is absurd because cisgender, AFAB women do not have identical experiences with each other.
You wrote:
> If it means "there is no distinction between biological women and trans women," that seems wrong to me and to the vast majority of people.
That would be an absurd thing for anyone to claim about any attribute of womanhood, and nobody is doing so.
> Right. But nobody is asking you to dispense of the category of women, what we're doing is we're agreeing with you that the category is fuzzy and we're saying that genitalia and sex assignment at birth are not perfect criterion.
In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
You don't seem to realize it but your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real". You've typed a lot of words attempting to do that.
> I disagree that trans women mean that these political/philosophical goals can't be achieved. To me, this is just gatekeeping, I don't see a real motivating need for this kind of exclusion. Trans women do not have an agenda to take away women's rights, many of these people are feminists themselves.
All categories are "gatekeeping". To say X is X and not Y is "gatekeeping". This is why "gatekeeping" is such a dumb term.
> The absurdity is not that you have different opinions about the definition of a woman, the absurdity is your implication that acknowledging the womanhood of trans women is tantamount to saying that their experiences are completely identical to cisgender, AFAB women, or that it's destroying some kind of sacred bond. That position is absurd because cisgender, AFAB women do not have identical experiences with each other.
I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women. This is very explicit. You're choosing to ignore it because it's inconvenient to your argument.
> But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women.
No one, literally no one, is saying that AFAB and cisgender women do not exist.
> your entire argument is based on undermining the category of "biological women" by showing that it isn't "real".
If your criteria for the category of "biological women" is dependent on having a strict bright line distinction between AFAB/cisgender women and everyone else, then yeah, I am trying to get rid of that bright line, because the bright line doesn't exist and has never existed at any point in history, and it's silly and unscientific to say it exists.
However, if your criteria for "biological women" is not dependent on some kind of mythological bright line, then no, I am not trying to undermine anyone or anything. I'll say it again, no one is claiming that AFAB/cisgender women do not exist as a category, and no one is claiming that they do not have unique experiences within that category. No one wants to get rid of the category of cisgender women.
> In fact we are being asked this. Which is why trans women are competing with biological women in sports. How is that not dispensing with the category of "biological women"?
This is too large of a topic to get into right here and would be too long of an aside, but I do not see strong evidence that trans women are destroying the competitiveness of women's sports, I do see strong evidence that the blowback against trans women risks harming AFAB/cisgender women who naturally have unconventional levels of testosterone or unconventional body types. I'm also a little bit thrown by the idea that forcing trans men to play in women's sports is going to somehow be an improvement over what you're worried about.
This harm to non-conforming cisgender women is not only isolated to sports, by the way. A side-effect of transgender bathroom bills is often an increase in harassment towards masculine cisgender women who face harassment when they use bathrooms that match their birth sex. A general increase in acceptance of gender fluidity and gender expression has been (as far as I can tell) largely beneficial to cisgender non-conforming women.
> I don't define everything by "experiences" so this is all gibberish to me. But, again, we are being asked to deny the distinction between biological women and trans women.
Arbitrary distinctions between women are less important than distinctions that affect their experiences and their fight for their rights. So if your position is that women should abandon shared experiences and solidarity over gender rights in favor of arbitrary biological distinctions, then guilty as charged, I am undermining that effort. Because it's an unhelpful effort that ought to be undermined.
However, outside of the TERF world, I do think that most women consider shared experiences and solidarity with other women to be important, and to be a part of their gender identity.
> No one, literally no one, is saying that AFAB and cisgender women do not exist.
I don't think anyone is asserting that, at least not the way you say. You're sort of responding to a perceived strawman with another strawman.
What gender critical folks are saying is that the more radical arm of trans-activism (particularly the powerful Self-ID movement) looks at biological sex as superfluous and arbitrary, and thus any spaces, programs, or resources that have been reserved for women up to this point must be made available to men if they so much as declare themselves to be female. Any requirements to "commit" to a transition, in terms of time or physical/hormonal adjustment are attacked as transphobic.
And then there's the language policing that the self-ID'ers want to enact, wherein, for example, biological women would be referred to as "menstruators", and transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
And in fact, breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles as an inherently anti-trans behavior, because obviously it cannot be part of the "shared experience" of women and transwomen.
I know there's a lot of space in between the extremes for people who truly were "born in the wrong body" as Mermaids says, but I think it's understandable that many honest and well-intentioned folks perceive the more radical TRA stuff as a misogynistic male colonisation of femininity.
> looks at biological sex as superfluous and arbitrary,
> biological women would be referred to as "menstruators"
> transphobic phrases such as "breastfeeding" would be prohibited.
> breastfeeding itself is under attack in some TRA circles
If you say there's a group of people out there who think this way I can't technically prove to you that group doesn't exist, but I have never personally met a trans person who would agree with those statements. At most, I have seen "menstruators" used as a shorthand for "women who menstruate" specifically in conversations about menstruation, which does not seem to me to be a particularly problematic use of the word.
I'll take you at your word that these people exist and are bothering you, and for whatever it's worth you have my permission/support if you ignore them. But I don't think it's accurate or fair to extrapolate from those people to make statements about what trans activists and trans people themselves believe overall. I am not trying to say that the experiences of cisgender woman are superfluous, and including trans women in feminine spaces or being conscientious of their experiences is not an attempt to erase anyone, it's an attempt to be inclusive.
I'm reminded of Hark, A Vagrant's Straw Feminists comic[0]. There's a pretty big difference between what the majority of trans community members are saying -- "Not all women breastfeed" (which is trivially true, even among cisgender groups of women) -- and "Breastfeeding is transphobic", which is nonsensical. While I totally understand why someone might look at straw trans-rights arguments and worry that this means trans people are "erasing" them, it is still important to understand that trans people by and large are not saying those things, it is a mischaracterization of the overall group.
If you let radicals define how you approach every social movements and how you characterize the people involved in that movement, then there are very few social movements that you won't begin to see as problematic, feminism included.
The way that black women experience sexism is often tangibly different than the way that white women experience sexism. Racial inequality can compound and complicate other inequalities.
I think it's important in feminist circles to understand that the Black community can be affected by sexism in ways that white women might not experience.
You can say the same about things like income. The sexism that a professional in an office job experiences can occasionally differ in subtle ways from the sexism that a blue-collar worker experiences. Not to say one is better or worse, just the way that inequality manifests is often contextually dependent.
No, but I do understand that the way society treats Black women is often different than the way society treats white women, and I understand that being a white woman does not automatically give someone complete insight into the struggles that Black women face.
I don't think "trans women are women" is a literal statement - I think it means "we should give trans women the rights and protections afforded to women"; it's an expression of support.
Kinda like "Black Lives Matter" - obviously they do, but the fact that you have to say it out loud and directly highlights the disparity and systemic injustices faced by people of color.
At least, that's what I think those things mean, someone with a more sophisticated understanding will probably correct me if I'm wrong.
I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss what seems to be a reasonable discussion as simply “TERF talking points” and then reframe what your opponents are saying in an un-sympathetic way.
Maybe it's like telling ME patients it's all in their head, and they can be cured psychologically. It may work on some, but for many they get permanently damaged from too much pressure and stress. After such abuse and being ground down, it's hard to be sympathetic to ignorance and abuse.
I don't know enough to conclude, but trying to understand and ask more questions is a first step.
Indeed, well said. Even outside of the realm of gender, the rhetoric of biological essentialism is harmful.
When I see people say things like "biology is what is real", I think about the harm done to every adopted child who is being told that their parent isn't really their parent, that their relationship should not be respected as much as someone who is biologically related to their parents.
CIS (as born) women may also have (traditional) male-like traits. If you separate people by traits in prison, then why separate based on trans-ness alone? For example, large women are more likely to rape small women in prison simply because they can. If you separate based on such risks, then separate large women from small women also; why focus on just trans?
Many prisons already separate by ethnic group simply to keep the peace. Yes, it's segregation, but the alternative is more prison riots.
Thus, if separation happens for practical reasons, then don't limit the separation practices to one group; otherwise, you will be accused of discrimination, perhaps justifiably. Use statistics, not stereotypes, to find the split points.
Or get better security so mixing doesn't result in problems. Lowest-bidder security has down-sides.
Its this sort of thing that backlash is all about.
You cant have an unapproved opinion or refuse to use their terminology or authoritarians will silence you, label it as trolling or hate speech etc.
Real is absolutely the simplest and best description. Trans and cis are poisoned terms their use designed to support the legitimacy of the identity. There is only real and fake.
This thread is full of people commenting on both sides of the question so obviously there's no "you can't have an unapproved opinion". What you can't do is toss obvious flamebait, for the same reason you don't get to toss lit matches at a gas station. You can describe that as "you can't have an unapproved smoking device" if you want, but it's misleading.
What you just said will understood as extremely hurtful and a purposeful attack on trans people by (some) trans people or trans advocates.
Did you do that on purpose?
That seems to me a very uncharitable take on the TERF position. For example, approximately 1/4 of women have been raped at some time. It's not very hard to see that such women could have a problem with someone who's biologically male in the women's room - a serious, traumatic problem.
You can say that and still be sympathetic to the plight of trans people.
Sorry, I don't buy this concept that hordes of (or any, for that matter) predatory trans women are queuing up for the chance to prowl round changing rooms. Do you, really?
Say you're right. What stops them sneaking in right now? It's not like there are mandatory ID checks at the entrance.
This is what I don't understand. How many examples are there of the horrible ills these bathroom bills will "solve"? Trans people exist today, they use bathrooms, where are the problems?
Virtually none. In fact trans people are vastly more likely to be victims of the sorts of things that the people pushing those policies argue those bills are meant to prevent.
Gendered bathrooms are a concrete expression of the fact that it is gender that is the major fault line through our society. The fact we need them is a damming indictment on our society (on men probably)
Even if we ignore the fact this is a nonsense non-issue that isn't solved by the "solution" of forcing people into bathrooms by biological sex rather than gender identity, it's still nonsense.
You've just created a world where predatory men pretend to be trans men, who are now legally required to use women's bathrooms.
At least most trans women are trying to express in a feminine way (disregarding the issues with women—cis and trans—being discriminated against for not being “feminine enough” by someone's standard), with this "solution", you've just normalised people actively trying to be as masculine as possible going into women's bathrooms. Congrats.
(Of course, predation in bathrooms is illegal, why on earth would someone who is willing to break that law be stopped by another one saying they aren't meant to be there? It's literally the same nonsense argument used by homophobes to argue we shouldn't allow gay people into those spaces.)
I'm not hypothesizing anything. I'm pointing out that "someone who's biologically male in the women's room" doesn't have to mean "predatory trans-woman" but could be "predatory man pretending to be trans".
And I'm asking you, when you are just-pointing-out, if it's actually happening in a way that is statistically recognizable and thus a contribution to the discourse in question, or if it's not.
The reality is predatory men already invade women's restrooms for perverted reasons. You don't think they would not be emboldened by being able to shame people for being transphobic to increase their chances of getting away with whatever they are doing?
Without proof to the contrary the assumption should be that the trans population has a similar proportion of rapists as any other does.
Since its been well established that essentially all rape no matter who is raping who goes under reported it is completely rational for women to be just as fearful as they would with any other stranger.
The question isn't whether women should assume that a transperson is less likely to rape them than any other stranger. That's not what "bathroom bills" are about.
The question is whether bathroom bills forcing transpeople who wish to not break the law (potential rapists are obviously not part of this set...) into men's bathrooms, and a surrounding climate of generalised hostility towards anyone with any remotely masculine element of their physique or style in women's bathrooms actually meaningfully reduces the risk of rape, or just makes the environment more intimidating for everyone.
It's literally in response to the posit that trans women would rape strangers in changing rooms. I've tried to make it as far from a strawman as possible by arguing against even a single occurrence of that happening.
Cis women can perpetuate rape. Should we ban them from changing rooms too? How far through the looking glass does this have to go?!
But I also know a trans woman who is over 6 feet tall and has a beard. She is considering hormone replacement therapy but has not committed yet.
I cannot help but have some empathy for women -- who might have very good reason to be fearful of men -- who are uncomfortable having this person in female-safe spaces. That is 100% independent of the intentions or actual danger posed by this trans woman I know, which is as close to zero as I can imagine.
> to bring up the damage imposed by TERF talking points
Even to the extent that there is a debate to be had about trans identity and how gender/sex works, it's really hard to have that debate when one side is terrified that their rights are being taken away. For trans people, this debate has immediate consequences.
It's kind of frustrating to me that people don't see this. People are mad about not being able to have academic debates about trans identity as if it's unreasonable for the trans community to be prioritizing their own rights instead of the intellectual curiosity of university professors.
2020-2021 has seen one of the largest jumps in anti-trans legislation since... I don't even know when, since before I was born. So yeah, everyone who cares about this issue is on edge about TERFs, because TERFs don't want to have a friendly academic debate, they want to pass legislation blocking affirmative care, policing bathrooms and sports, and generally erasing trans people from society. I'm annoyed when I see people online acting like the trans community is the reason that these topics are politically fraught. They're politically fraught because TERFs and anti-trans politicians are using them as a front to take people's rights away.
If that problem got fixed, if trans people weren't under attack, if a lot of the questioning wasn't tied up in bigotry, then conversations online about gender wouldn't be so tense. It's wild to try and blame the trans community for prioritizing self-preservation.
Being trans is a personal philosophy. You may argue that the 'feeling' is innate, but must make major changes to your outside appearance/ biology / defy culture norms.
With that being said, defying cultural norms is a good thing but you can't force me to accept your reality. I have to option to have a difference in opinion than you. If i accidentally say sir, instead of mrs you can't cancel me because of it.
I don't claim to be a moral precept but what i do offer you A peace treaty. You can live your life in a way that is pleasing to you but you cannot force other people to accept your beliefs no matter how much scientific or cultural backing it may have. if the local womens book club doesn't want a dude who 'Claims' to be a women in their book club but can obviously still see he's a man, that's okay. It's not discrimination, it's difference in opinion and that is okay.
edit: Deleted a paragraph discussing sports. I think it mainly took away from my argument rather than helped it.
> They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one presents in both dress and phenotype.
If you were responsible for compiling a dictionary, what is the accurate definition of "woman" that you would provide?
I must admit that I’m apprehensive to give an answer given this thread’s…liveliness, but I’ll do my best.
“Woman” describes a collection of chromosomal and phenological traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens. A human is often perceived as a woman when she simultaneously embodies a variety of these traits, especially so when those traits contrast that which is considered male.
Much like the concept of feminism, consensus on what is and isn’t in these categories continues to evolve as it’s observed and informed by the experienced of both genders.
I can understand why a definition like this wouldn’t be as satisfying as something more concrete and well, definitive.
Apologies if this question is too stupid, I mean no disrespect, just trying to understand things better.
If gender is a complete social construct and 'man' and 'woman' are something that is traits observed within an ongoing and temporal culture lens, then why not create another of your own?
Most problems that I see in this debate are due to one group wanting to widen the scope of a existing understanding, the other wanting to preserve it.
Wouldn't creating a 3rd gender and legislating it as a valid legal entity with compelled equal facilities solve the problem for both groups?
It’s a fair question. I can’t speak for all trans women, but the impression I get is that many trans people would prefer to think of their transition as a medical issue to be managed back into the gender binary. You’ll probably get varying answers depending on just how far someone is in their transition.
This doesn’t come up often but I think cis folks aren’t aware that many trans folk “graduate” out of the community once they feel sufficiently transitioned. After a few years of hormones and surgery, many would just prefer to go on with their life — skipping the debates and games of political football.
Personally speaking, the concept of a third space wouldn’t be so bad, but making gendered spaces less necessary to begin with seems like a more realistic target. Historically, women were chained to their homes because of a lack of public restrooms. Why we didn’t opt for single-stalls and shared facilities is probably more to do with existing building codes and social norms, rather than a natural order of things.
This reply is getting a little too long, but I’d like to pass on the much wiser words of Kate Bornstein:
Then there's gender attribution, whereby we look at somehody and say, "that's a man," or "that's a woman." And this is important because the way we perceive another's gender affects the way we relate to that person. Gender attribution is the sneaky one. It's the one we do all the time without thinking about it; kinda like driving a sixteen-wheeler down a crowded highway...without thinking about it.
In this culture, gender attribution, like gender assignment, is phallo centric. That is, one is male until perceived otherwise. According to a study done by Kessler and McKenna, one can extrapolate that it would take the presence of roughly four female cues to outweigh the presence ofone male cue: one is assumed male until proven otherwise. That's one reason why many women today get "sirred" whereas very few men get called "ma'am."
Sorry to break it to you, but chromosomes are prescriptive. You cannot simply ignore that there are differences between X and Y chromosomes. Society's distinctions between the sexes is not arbitrary. Why do we have separate bathrooms in public but not at home? Why do we have segregated sports? Why do we celebrate feminists but not MRAs? It's because there is a real-world difference.
Flamewar tropes like "Sorry to break it to you" are not acceptable on HN in any case and certainly not on a painfully divisive and inflammatory topic like this.
If you can't keep in mind that you're talking to other human beings who may have deep and good reasons to feel differently than you do on a topic, then please don't post here. This is a difficult enough topic without poisoning it with swipes and snark.
Chromosomes are not detectable from the outside. Phenotype is not entirely dependent on genotype. Trans women may suffer from both certain "female" diseases and certain "male" diseases.
> Sorry to break it to you, but chromosomes are prescriptive.
... Except when they aren't. Even biology doesn't paint such a simple picture. Chromosomes are important, but not as important as hormones -- and how the body responds to those hormones.
If you're not aware of CAIS, it is probably the clearest way for you to re-evaluate your view that chromosomes are prescriptive.
Edit - puzzled by the downvotes here. Do you know what chromosomes you have? Have you checked? If you do, there's a nonzero chance that they aren't the chromosomes you're expecting to find.
If you were to test your chromosomes and found they didn't match your expectations, you would either have to change your belief about the prescriptiveness of chromosomes, or your belief about your gender. Which belief would you change? Which belief do you hold more strongly?
One thing I find quite odd is how the study of gender emerged out of an approach that demanded a critical understanding of assumptions and the things society insist upon (that there are only 2 genders, that gender is essentially related to biological sex rather than something that is manifest in social behaviour, ect.) and yet that view has twisted into a sort of all or nothing view that is extremely antagonistic to critical inquiry. The tendency for a number of trans activists and talking points to revert back to a kind of gender essentialism; the logical inconsistencies in the idea that one identifies a private gender identity, rather than a personal desire to transition or live as another gender; the insistence that a trans person has special insight into the concept of gender --- raise up any of these points and you bear the risk of being labelled a "transphobe" even though you are entirely committed to the protection of a trans persons rights and dignity.
A small, extremely vocal minority insists that anyone that voices the slightest hesitation in accommodating trans people into gender/sex segregated social functions must be a transphobe or be complicit in the violence against trans people. It makes the entire conversation exhausting.
I dunno if I'd agree that it's a small vocal minority, zero-tolerance to anybody questioning the current dogma is seen everywhere where trans acceptance is a focus. Ten years ago I was told, by trans people, that there are physical differences between trans and cis brains. Say that today, and you get kicked out of LGBT spaces for being a transmedicalist or truscum.
I have no idea whether it's true or not because you can't even find research on the subject because of how absurdly politicized the topic is.
"Truscum" being the word for someone who thinks that changing one's gender and sexual characteristics might not be the greatest idea ever unless you actually have, like, gender dysphoria. Never mind the many, many people who are now pursuing "detransition" after going one step too far. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
I'm also genuinely puzzled by dang's remark. I had tried to limit the unpleasantness in my comment as far as possible, while providing clarifying info and staying accurate to (i) what the trans activism movement itself seems to be stating internally, as well as (ii) the easily foreseeable consequences of these attitudes, if stated only obliquely for the sake of general politeness. If even that counts as "furthering a flamewar", this has some remarkably unpleasant implications about the overall debate re: gender issues.
OK, I'll just agree to disagree then. I understand that boilerplate ideological rhetoric is an unavoidable hazard in a thread about gender issues (or indeed, politics more generally) and I'll keep trying to write comments that are as far as possible from any 'boilerplate'.
By "ideological boilerplate" I mean repetitive ideological points, the kind that people repeat over and over again to bludgeon their enemies with in internet battles. That's the opposite of the discussion we want here. What we want is people listening to each other, taking in the specifics of what they have to say, and then responding with something that they haven't thought or said before—let alone a thousand times before. Conversation should be a co-creation between mutually respecting equals. When done well, it is always new. This follows from the core principle of HN, namely curiosity [1], because curiosity withers under repetition [2].
Snark is also a clear indicator of repetitive bludgeoning because people only resort to that when they have, let's call it, surplus creative energy left over—no real thought being needed to repeat the underlying points—which they use to try to add force to the smiting [3].
That's easily disproven: HN commenters post views from every side of these questions, and as long as they do so thoughtfully and substantively, we don't moderate them.
Commenters in the habit of posting typical internet dreck love nothing better than to paint themselves in grandiose colors as noble, freethinking victims of repression. In fact the problem is, to put it crudely, that they post such shitty comments. We're just trying to have an internet forum that manages to hover a little above the bottom of the barrel.
p.s. It looks like your account has been breaking the site guidelines by using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you're battling for or against, because it destroys the curiosity this place is supposed to exist for. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here either, for the same reason. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
> HN commenters post views from every side of these questions, and as long as they do so thoughtfully and substantively, we don't moderate them.
It's the absence of action that is the issue. There is all kinds of left wing (I'm from the US for reference) dreck on here that receives no push back nor moderation. It's very common to see very low value statements on HN that disparage Republicans. People on here have said all kinds of nasty things about Republicans and conservatives. I rarely see any push back from you against these. It's pretty common to see people assume that Republicans don't care about people and state so, like it is an obvious truth without any supporting argument. How is that thoughtful or substantive?
I think your personal biases are blinding you to just how low value much of the accepted discussion here at HN is, when it is left-leaning
These perceptions are notoriously in the eye of the beholder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. The opposite side to you makes exactly the opposite generalizations. It's obvious that these claims can't all be right. What's less obvious, but I think also true, is that because they're so identical, there must be some common mechanism producing them. I think it's that people's perceptions are strongly conditioned by their passions.
In other words, while "I rarely see" is no doubt true, the reasons for that have to do with your own filters as much as the objective situation. This explains why the opposite side reaches the opposite conclusions from the same data: they have the opposite filters. It's the same mechanism in both cases, and there are more than enough datapoints to support every pre-existing view. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
As you can imagine, what this boils down to is that all passionate political observers feel equally aggrieved and, ironically, all share the same perception that HN is stacked against them and they're being treated unfairly.
Thanks for the response. There is a lot of truth to what you say. I've come to notice that different articles seem to be magnets for different groups of posters. So there seems to be a little bit of a echo-chamber-like-bubble around particular articles, which probably enhances these effects of everyone feeling aggrieved.
"many, many people" -- do you have numbers as to how many people detransition, not due to being pressured but because they aren't trans after all, and only after making irreversible changes?
The idea that you can even detransition is fairly recent. Before then you just had to live with it...and the suicide rate historically has actually been 20 times higher post-op.
You might want to look up what Danielle Bunten Berry, rest in peace, had to say on the matter. The important quote is on her wikipedia page.
I do not know anything about the subject of the linked article, nor her views. Did not venture past the pay/registration wall. I have no opinion about her.
zero-tolerance to anybody questioning the current dogma is seen everywhere
Generally, of course dogma should be questioned.
However, academic freedom does not mean that universities must provide a platform to literally anybody that wants one. Their resources are finite and choices need to be made.
Surely, we can agree that some discussions by their very nature are harmful or at least deeply insulting. Imagine discussions such as "should women be allowed to vote?" or "are $ETHNICITY people worthwhile of being treated like other human beings?" or "was Hitler right?" or some other such topic.
I would certainly not say such speech should be banned, but it is equally clear to me that no institution should be obligated to provide a platform for such ideas.
It's worth noting that "teach the controversy" is the disingenuous rallying cry of creationists seeking to wedge anti-evolution religious dogma into US public school systems. Those people know that merely giving creationism a figurative seat at the table serves to legitimize it to some extent. They also hope to wear down their opposition (in this case, already-overworked educators) by consuming massive amounts of their time and energy. Well, such religious teachings should be denied a seat at the table, at least in publicly-funded secular schools.
Yes. Decisions are made all the time. Sometimes they are reconsidered and sometimes even reversed. That is not inherently a bad thing, particularly when new information comes to light subsequent to the initial decision.
What are you getting at? I can guess, but these things work better if we don't make assumptions or guesses about what others are saying.
I am not sure if your definition of academic freedom applies equally all over the world.
I understand Humboldts definition of "Freiheit von Forschung und Lehre" an university is obligated to support you once you have been taken on and to fire people because of their research alone would violate it.
In this specific case she was a guest of Essex University and not a tenured professor there, so they were under no specific obligation to provide a platform for her.
Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology
at Britain’s Open University, was due to
give a talk at Essex University
To your point though, I wouldn't find it good for a tenured professor to lose their job for such a thing. However, even the idea of tenure really is meant to be more like "freedom from interference" and not "unlimited freedom without consequences", right? And of course the tenure track prior to tenure is of course a period of intense vetting.
The way people aligned to academic gender and racism ideas justify discharging other tells me a lot about the quality of said ideas. It happens in other faculties too, but not nearly that often and that decisive.
You have to convince others of your ideas at some point...
Why are publicly funded institutions allowed to decide who's opinion matters and whose doesn't? Assuming the discussion is poised and not straight up slandering nonsense, what harm does it do? Are we trying to curtail freedom of speech? They shouldn't be allowed to take a stance because they are the government. Although for some reason colleges can operate as some separate entity that just happens to siphon government funds...
Why are publicly funded institutions allowed to
decide who's opinion matters and whose doesn't?
At a very minimum, there are real-world constraints at work.
There are a limited number of lecture halls and auditoriums. It costs money to run the facilities. Staff is required to maintain them. Somebody has to sweep the floors. There are heating and cooling bills to be paid and new boilers to be purchased every few decades. There are a limited number of hours available in students' academic careers.
A university cannot provide platforms for an unlimited number of professors and guest speakers; a student cannot attend an unlimited number of talks/lectures.
Therefore it is obvious. Choices must be made. One could even say that this curation is one of the most elementary duties of an educational institution.
What's your alternative? Should publicly funded institutions make zero curatorial choices whatsoever? Should literally anybody be able to teach there? If that is not your position, then you surely accept that some curation needs to occur.
This is not incompatible with the wishes of the people nor does it suggest that educational institutions should have dictatorial carte blanche. They must make choices, but must also be accountable to the public.
Are we trying to curtail freedom of speech?
No.
Nobody is arguing that the subject of the linked article should be barred from expressing her views. This is strictly a question about who should (or should not) be obligated to give her a soapbox and a megaphone.
They shouldn't be allowed to take a stance
because they are the government.
There would be considerable benefits to getting the government out of the education business entirely. The downsides would be considerable as well.
It would be worth looking for examples of times and places when government kept its nose out of education entirely. I do not think you will enjoy the correlation between "governments disinterested in education" and... well, anything good.
Given that reproduction in mammals is inescapably binary, and a really big fraction of social interaction in humans is shaped by courtship, both overt and covert, it's hardly surprising that our historical perspective on gender roles has been predominantly binary too.
I think another reason "things are different now" is that more of us think abstractly today than in years past. Many of the perspectives and possibilities we entertain today would have been alien to more of us 50 or 100 years ago, when the world was more conventional, more black and white.
Finally, with the multitudes of voices that no longer remain hidden behind mainstream media outlets, we're more aware of nontraditional, complex, and nuanced POVs today. That helps us realize that many psychological variations exist "between the lines", not as pathology but as a matter of natural variation.
I think the irony of the current battle around identity is that we have been making steady progress based on the idea that personal characteristics shouldn't matter. However this whole debate is reversing that by not only saying it matters a great deal but that other people should be forced to defer to others personal choices even when it directly affects them
You can notice this in a few fields of popular ideologies these days, that is overcorrecting for a problem to the point of becoming exactly the thing one was originally fighting against.
I am of the somewhat progressive-unpopular opinion that some people have an unhealthy interest in how they label themselves and how others perceive them, and in the attempts to be supportive the popular opinion is doing more harm than good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against anyone with a certain genotype or phenotype having any particular interest in whom they love, how they dress, their hobbies, behaviors, etc. as long as they don’t put hurts on other people. I do have doubts about the amount of “identifying” people do with their preferences though. It can be a subtle point that is hard to make just right without getting pitchforks raised, I’m never sure i’ve done it right.
> You can notice this in a few fields of popular ideologies these days, that is overcorrecting for a problem to the point of becoming exactly the thing one was originally fighting against.
I've noticed this too, it's not only gender ideology but racial ideology and more. Seems to be form of ideological "pilot-induced oscillation"[0]
"[Pilot-induced oscillation] occurs when the pilot of an aircraft inadvertently commands an often increasing series of corrections in opposite directions, each an attempt to cover the aircraft's reaction to the previous input with an over correction in the opposite direction" (in this case the "pilot" is "society")
And the mechanism of this oscillation is people joining and leaving a movement.
In the beginning the radical idea is a basic kind of equality where some kind of person shouldn't be disadvantaged for some characteristic.
There is then a growth phase where many people join and small specific victories turn into general victories.
There is then a shrinking phase where people leave the movement or lose zeal as general victories are had.
The movement keeps much of its ideology capital and with the more moderate people losing interest, the median ideology moves towards special privileges for hyper-specific characteristics defended by a very real "the problem still exists".
The end stage is a movement that tries to conflate its extreme views as being equally as beyond question and equally morally right as the views during the growth phase, and you get conflict when people have a hard time sorting out the complexities of which is right and which is too far... and you get the backlash where the basic right is threatened by the connection with the extreme views... and so it goes.
The 21st century is the century of complexity, the basic problems are often solved and the complex ones need more nuance than the basic ones took... and the struggle is getting this point across that things aren't as simple as they were before.
Speaking of racial ideology, I honestly don't understand how we're supposed to become less racists if we're drawing so much attention to race and putting it left, right and center of any policy discussion?
Because, honestly, shutting up about it and ignoring it is the solution we tried from the 70s through the 2000s and it didn't accomplish anything - racist folk were just empowered by not being called out on it.
At least when it comes to America - there are some very deeply entrenched societal issues that we'd need to resolve to achieve anything near equality including generations of depriving wealth accumulation in communities (i.e. Native Americans).
Did it really not accomplish anything? Remember that Jim Crow laws officially ended in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. 44 years later the first black US president was elected.
Is it really fair to say we've come nowhere since the 70s?
No, I think we've made some progress - it's just extremely slow. Don't forget that Fredrick Douglass was a major black political figure during the Civil War and that Sammy Davis Jr. was a sex icon - it doesn't mean that the majority of African Americans (and them too I bet they'd be happy to tell you) didn't suffer heavy racism. There are some good examples of African Americans thriving even in America as it stands today - but that doesn't mean that the playing field is equal, it just means that it's not so biased that it's literally impossible for them to succeed.
It's very difficult to pull individuals out of poverty, much less an entire demographic. Tribes have tried a lot, everything from covering all or part of college, regular per-capita payments, free healthcare, partially or fully subsidized housing, etc. and people waste it by trashing their free housing and blowing money on alcohol and drugs. I find it hard to believe there's a greater obstacle to growing wealth than growing up without any.
I can’t comment on a particular field or ideology per se, but perhaps it’s social media newsfeed algorithms that are creating the similar effect to pilot-induced oscillation that you’re identifying?
Much more likely that it is an emergent property of collective human behavior.
Nonetheless, sophisticated social engineering attempts or clandestine social research are certainly within the realm of discovering by a quick search of the news.
The problem is that people entangle their sense of identity with their opinions. (I think PG had an essay on HN recently that talked about this - he called out religious and political opinions in particular.)
So their opinions aren't up for discussion. If you disagree with them, they feel offended and personally attacked.
Suddenly we've got people so incapable of existing in an environment where there is gasp some disagreement, that folks go around saying that not being supportive of somebody's opinions and preferences is a violation of human rights.
That isn't explicitly what you are saying, but you are also very much not leaving room for that.
People have largely lost the ability to disagree, and to differentiate between somebody who disagrees with them and somebody who thinks their opinions and preferences shouldn't exist... and at the same time we have lots of people all over the spectrum who really do think only their way of thinking is acceptable and nobody who thinks differently should exist.
It is unacceptable and more pointedly, unsustainable from all sides. You can't have a society survive where people only think one way of thinking can survive.
One of the core foundations of the logical reasoning behind human rights declaration by UN is the following statement
> Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law
> People have largely lost the ability to disagree, and to differentiate between somebody who disagrees with them and somebody who thinks their opinions and preferences shouldn't exist
That could very likely be a result of the traumatic oppression that much of the world subsists within.
> The problem is that people entangle their sense of identity with their opinions.
When two ethical principles are in conflict, one has to take an even harder look at the formal ethics to either choose between the principles or to synthesize a newer, more informed principle.
Typically something like that ends up in the court of law, but academic philosophy and scientific ethics researchers often contribute meaningful avenues of avoiding the need for the application of justice to redress harms by providing legislatures with more clear ethical principles upon which to build their legal frameworks for justice.
To be sure, I think people's opinions about things (and any sense of identity they have in those opinions) are sacred and inviolate as far as social structure and society are concerned. It's morally and civilly wrong to treat people badly on the basis of their opinions.
I was just pointing out how some people take it so far that one can't even have a thoughtful discussion with them in which one is taking up a contrary position without them feeling offended (and perhaps even angry/combative). Some people even try to shut down contrarians. To such people I'd say: calm down and discuss your point of view civilly. The truth is strong enough to stand on its own without your non-discursive help.
Yea, identity politics may very well end up going down in history as a social engineering failure of the left based in a misunderstanding of ethics and science.
Similar to how the Capitol Riots could be construed as a social engineering failure of conservative political forces.
I agree and I'll add to that activists claiming to speak on behalf of a particular group are often not actually representing that group. I think there is currency in identity these days, to your earlier points, and some wish to spend others' currency for themselves.
I don't think it's an issue of people being interested in how they label themselves so much as society being interested in labels for people. If you come out as gay, suddenly there are a load of assumptions placed on you about how you speak, dress, act, what your hobbies are, etc. People adopt identities in these cases because society has preconceived notions of the identity, not because the individual themselves has decided that they want to make a big deal out of their identity.
This is a vicious circle. Gays or non-whites are now expected to vote for certain parties (depending on country) etc., and reap bewilderment at the very least if they do not comply with the expectations.
There is, for example, a fairly famous author (Ayaan Hirsi Ali), who is a Somali ex-Muslim, and she says she was having really hard time from the Dutch left when she lived there. Her ideas simply did not fit the preconceived concept of an African immigrant.
any of the three can become unhealthy when overdone, and different people have different amounts of interest in the three. They each have a set of problems associated with them.
I wouldn't go out of my way to say any one in particular is more of an issue. (i.e. they're all issues in different ways)
You said it. One example I find somewhat relevant is the Boston bombers. They were young people in America, with little connection to their local Muslim community. But, like many young people, they were obsessed with identity. They joked about jihad, they bought a license plate holder that said "terrorista#1" for a friend, etc. They perceived themselves as Muslims (despite not following Muslim practices), had a thirst for identity, and sought out that identity online. When that thirst intensified, it drove them to radical communities, they started following those practices that they were told people of their identity _should_ follow, and it eventually led to tragedy.
How does this story go if they hadn't been obsessed with their identity as Muslims or if they had gone to the local mosque to ask about Islam instead of seeking out radical Muslims online?
100% Agree. At least in my home country, this is mostly fueled by the left (I consider myself center).
Lots of them just "work" of doing nothing but protesting, so once they get something they wanted, they have to move to the next thing.
For example, they start by making changes to the language so, instead of being "los" (male) or "las" (female) they started to say "les" (does not exists in spanish) as they say it is more inclusive (nor male nor female).
But it is not that they say "los", "las", and "les", they want you to say "les". So first it was an "innocent" thing, and now they are trying to pass laws and indoctrinate everyone, included kids from any age, 6 years old or less.
If it was natural an used by all, it could be, but it in this case it was not natural, not used or liked by all, and forced.
For example, thief's use their own words and it is not considered part of Spanish for example.
They started with gender ideology and then started to escalate. And it is not more inclusive if you force me to leave my believes. If you want to be called "les", and you ask nice, I will probably have no problem. Now, if you want me to embrace that "les" is more inclusive because you just say so and you force me to do it, is not part of Spanish.
A similar thing happened with abortion. First they started saying it has to be legal, then that it had to be free, and then that if you are a doctor and you don't agree with abortion you have to do it anyway (they force you to do it by law).
Do you have any more information on the abortion policy you're using as a comparison?
Tried to guess which country you were referring to but couldn't find concrete info after a bit of googling.
I don't think the comparison between using more inclusive language to refer to people, and you being forced to abandon your beliefs, makes much sense. Putting aside potential issues with beliefs and their effect on a person's treatment of those around them, no one is forcing you to stop believing whatever it is you believe.
Potentially limited may be how you treat or talk to people, but that is a separate limit than what you are allowed to believe, since once it becomes words or actions, now it's not just in your head but out in reality and potentially affecting others.
MY MISTAKE: apparently the law does allow a doctor to say no for his believes. I cannot edit the previous post.
Again, so this people today say that you have to say "les", what prevents me from saying I am not filling included, I want everybody to start saying "lus" or "chimichangas" for that matter? The problem for me is that they force you to behave however they want you to behave.
Honestly though, in my day job I've been trying to eschew gendered pronouns across the board - my coworker's gender is not relevant to them being my coworker. For a long time we've promoted gender as the single most defining trait as a person in a way we don't promote with height, weight or even skincolor. It's Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith that are used as common forms of address - but not Tall Smith or British Smith. I'm pretty much done with such an emphasis being placed on gender in common social interactions, the only thing it's relevant to is who's going to sleep with who which isn't really something I want to discuss at work anyways.
Mr. and Mrs. are both honorifics that are technically nouns - but they definitely modify the noun that comes after them which is one of the uses of an adjective. I can talk about the white house and the red house - just like I can talk about Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith.
There are plenty of other words (including adjectives) that you can use as honorifics - you've got Little John (and Lil Jon), Short Bob and Tall Bob.
I think it's fair to move away from Mr. and Mrs. being as prominent as they are.
> but they definitely modify the noun that comes after them
One of the two nouns is an appositive, but it's never been too clear to me which is which in English grammar. In my native tongue it definitely doesn't seem to be the case that Mr. modifies Smith, as our equivalent to Mr. is a common noun that is used to refer to any male human.
In English the word serves double duty (and does other stuff) - "Hey Mr., can you tell me which way it is to the subway station" is a perfectly natural sentence. They can even be anonymized nouns (similar to la blanca - referring to a white house depending on context) - "Oh, I was going to wait to open the bottle until the Mrs. gets back". Lastly you've got the example I had in my prior comment "Oh sorry, I actually wanted to speak with Mrs. Smith - can you put her on the line?" where it is functionally, I think, an adjective though the dictionary considers it a noun in that usage.
Academically speaking, my understanding of the linguistics at play are that there are biases embedded deep within the gendering of specific words, even.
There is a real gap in the archaic forms of Romance languages when it comes to the level of gender sophistication that was in the even more archaic Latin.
Modern languages are evolving rapidly and it is entirely within the realm of reasonableness to expect that humanity will tend towards meta-evolving it’s own languages.
But I am not well read in linguistics and suspect that Noam Chomsky has already written a book on this topic.
>Do you have any more information on the abortion policy you're using as a comparison?
No, s/he doesn't because is talking nonsense: conscientious objectors rights/persons are protected in Argentina by its Constitution and plenty of case law.
Re: Abortion: Doctors can (and have) very much deny to perform or "facilitate" abortions on moral or religious grounds but by law ("Ley del Aborto") they also have the legal obligation to refer the woman/patient WITHOUT delay of any kind to another doctor or another hospital (mostly public ones) to have the procedure.
Those "thief words" are part of a dialect, yes. A word being "forced" or "natural", whatever that means, has no bearing on this discussion, and neither your personal choice of using them or not.
What makes it forced or unnatural? It's intentional, to be sure, but hope does that make it less natural? Or put differently, how do you distinguish between a natural and unnatural change to language?
Unnatural because they thought of inventing it, they started saying "tod@s" (todos is everyone), didn't catch, they then moved to "todxs", didn't catch, then they said "todes", and because people don't naturally use it. They even use it wrongly all the time. But more importantly, unnatural because if you have to impose it and call me names for not using it, you are doing it wrong.
How is this different than any other term that was coined?
> didn't catch, they then moved to "todxs", didn't catch, then they said "todes", and because people don't naturally use it. They even use it wrongly all the time
This sounds like natural evolution to me. People try different terms until one sticks.
> But more importantly, unnatural because if you have to impose it and call me names for not using it, you are doing it wrong.
Why? You're calling their use of language "wrong". Can't they do the same?
The parent is pretty clearly saying that "les" wasn't previously a Spanish word, because HN is an English language forum and some of us don't know that. Let's not nitpick the English of folks for whom it's a second language.
> > Language is defined by the people who speak it, not by some authority.
> This may be true in case of English, but not necessarily in case of many national languages.
Counterexample: The German Rechtschreibreform of 1996 was mainly retracted after a decade of popular resistance. Seems even languages that are ostensibly “regulated by a central authority” in the end follow the will of those who use the language.
English is already a counterexample. As for orthography reforms, well, they don't affect language as such, as languages are primarily spoken. An orthography reform won't ever change how people speak, so whether the German one was successful or not is irrelevant. And the fact that orthography reforms in particular may not be often successful is not surprising either since written words tend to more conservative as they have facilitated communication through time. Just look at the discrepancy between English speech and writing.
I meant counterexample in the sense of "language that does at least ostensibly have a central authority (the Duden) still in the end having to bow to the will of the language-using public". English isn't a counterexample of that, since it doesn't even remotely claim to be governed by any central authority.
> ...languages are primarily spoken. An orthography reform won't ever change how people speak, so whether the German one was successful or not is irrelevant
"Primarily" is not the same as "only". You haven't heard a word I've said, have you? And yet here we are, talking to each other...
I absolutely agree it's wrong to publicly shame someone to use this pronoun, but I don't agree with how you're framing the rest of the situation. Why is it that they're "indoctrinating" and not "teaching"? Also, if people are using this word it naturally exists.
You seem to accuse them of having an agenda, as if this is a bad thing on its own, but it's clear you too have an agenda of your own. But while theirs, misguided or not, is based on acceptance, what's yours based on?
No, left people in my home country do it all the time.
In general they are "militants" of the Peronist party.
There are videos and books for kids that shows Peron, Evita, and more recently our current Vice President as heroes and such.
https://i.imgur.com/zgVUcjS.jpg
There it literally says: Peron is the leader, everybody loves Peron, everybody sings long live Peron!, long live the leader! hurrah!
https://i.imgur.com/gkqespa.jpg
This one is about Evita, Peron's wife: Evita loves the kids. The boys and girls love Eva. Long live Evita! Hurrah! Hurrah!
This two are pages of books for kids of elementary school from 60 something years ago.
However, you can still see in school:
https://i.imgur.com/MJuFrQx.jpg
This one shows Cristina Kirchner, our current VP, in a book that tries to "leftiside" the kids.
This was ironically one of the things that was hardest about coming out as gay, for me. Nobody ever treated me the same way again. I was either uncomfortably praised or silently judged, with practically no in-between. Suffice to say, my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.
And the reverse: your sexuality - or anybody else's who is not my mate - is not on my list of 'want-to-know'. I simply do not care about the choices and/or attributes of other people though I believe they should be 100% free to make whatever choice they want and be whoever they are, and have gone out of my way to ensure that this is the case for people who find their life's choices frustrated or their reality denied by others.
This is probably a sign of my advancing age, I'm probably a prude by today's standards, but I simply don't find these subjects for semi-public or even public discussion with strangers.
I think the issue is that a gay man probably wants to be comfortable answering "what did you do last night?" with "I went out to dinner with my boyfriend", but can't be with a new friend who doesn't know about their sexuality.
As much as we'd like to believe we have no biases, we do. Straight is the societal default. People who are not straight and just want to answer a question about their dinner run the risk of a bad reaction if the person they're talking to just happens to be homophobic.
Someone might prefer to get that reaction in a controlled setting, when they've emotionally prepared themselves for it, not during the course of answering a routine question about dinner. So that's why someone you're just starting to get to know might prefer to specifically tell you that they're gay, rather than waiting for it to just come up as an incidental fact during conversation.
This isn't about them assuming that you specifically care about their sexuality. It's about them being able to determine if you are a person with whom is safe to share details about their life... innocuous details that a straight person would take for granted as being safe to share.
Understood. I think the reason why such a scenario would not likely play out in my vicinity is that being gay is such an accepted thing here that the large majority of the people would not bat an eye. The Amsterdam gay pride draws crowds from all over Europe each year.
Unfortunately, that doesn't mean there isn't any bigotry and associated violence against gays, lesbians, trans people etc. I wished that were true, alas here too we have our share of people who simply won't recognize reality. But I'm fairly sure that the people who are at risk of such violence here have their own ways of ensuring the chances of encountering people who are prone to acting on their bigotry in non-safe settings are reduced to a minimum, it's out in public where the risk is largest, and that increases as you get away from the larger population centers.
The bigger issue in 'coming out' here is to deal with such people in a family setting, that's where bigotry can and still does cause significant hardship.
Sure, but by the time I would call someone my friend or acquaintance I would assume that they would feel safe enough saying anything that might reveal that fact in an indirect way. Then again, being gay/lesbian is very much an accepted thing here. Being trans still not so much, though that is changing.
If I would meet some stranger or some person in a work setting their sexuality would not be on my list of things I would be interested in, either we don't know each other that well or we have at best a working relationship, a job to get done, and to move the subject to sexuality would be - according to me - inappropriate.
It's weird to me that sexuality and identity are so intertwined. Why should someone "come out" as anything?
(I know a lot of people "come out" as various things in a mere bid for attention... I'll leave that issue aside.)
If I knew someone casually for a while who never talked about his/her sexuality, but one day they said "I never said this before, but I'm a heterosexual", I'd certainly feel awkward about it. Why did he/she say that to me?
To take it further, why phrase it "I am ..." instead of "I have ... desires"? If the latter sounds awkward, why is the former any less awkward?
It's only weird to you because you are almost certainly straight, cis and male. Let me explain.
All of society is structured around your identity. Like the fish, you can't even see the water because you have always been in it. I'm unlikely to help you see the water, but let me at least try.
If you meet a friend, he might comment he saw a movie with his new girlfriend. He shows you a photo on his phone and you say she's really cute and nice catch. He asks if you want to grab a beer later. You say you have to pick up your wife from the airport later and pick up the kids from their school.
All of this, the girlfriend, the comment she's cute, the wife the kids, they are your life. It is who you are. If someone asks what you are doing later, it's all you have to say, because that's what you do. It is your identity.
I have a partner. We have lived together for 14 years. In order to tell you anything about myself, I have to tell you about him too. It is my life. It is what I do. This is who I am.
Coming out is something you do with each and every new person you meet. I am not rubbing your face in my sexuality. I'm just talking about me. If I tell you I went out for lunch, but avoid telling you with who, that is in the closet. If I tell you it was with my boyfriend, that is out of the closet.
So yup, done hiding here, and not going to start again because some people might be clueless or treat me as less.
Edit: nice, downvotes. Did I make you feel silly for listening to taking points from bigots?
It's distressing the degree to which people want to blame others for their identities while regarding their own as some kind of fundamental default of nature. It's only "identity politics" when it's somebody else's identity.
Thanks. I think that gets lost easily in these discussions. This is my family. My partner, my mother and father-in-law, my sister-in-law, my nephew, my home, my plans for the future. It's connected to everything I might tell you about my life over the past 14 years. Having someone label all that as "awkward" or "political" is pretty extreme, especially when the person suggesting it doesn't even have a hint at the enormity of what they just said. It's the very definition of "casual erasure", something that sounds political and till someone comes up to you and tries to erase you.
Edit: to the people down voting my mother-in-law, she is a kind and caring woman!
I don't think you deserve to be downvoted but I don't believe having a conversation about heterosexual relationships is somehow free of consequences. Even if I had a conversation about a partner who is straight, people are going to make snap judgements about the their appearance, what they do for work, what religion they belong to (Be prepared to be judged if it is the wrong one!) etc.
Many children have been disowned by their parents because they fell in love with someone from the wrong family. There is no shortage of thousand year old stories and plays describing this exact situation. So, the idea that "Like the fish, you can't even see the water because you have always been in it." doesn't really resonate with me. That doesn't mean our society is free from discrimination and unfair treatment, but painting people with a broad brush serves to alienate those who might be your allies, and is ironically the very thing you are advocating against.
I think you need to experience some discrimination to see the "water." It gives you an ability to better understand what other people deal with, even if you don't share their identity. I absolutely think experiencing religious discrimination, gender discrimination and so on can give you lots of empathy for a person not like you, but dealing with similar challenges.
To me it's pretty clear the person I was responding to had zero frame of reference to what discrimination feels like, which is why I said so. I really don't know how to get that through to a person with words alone. I think there needs to be a parallel experience to build on.
It's no broad brush to say that a person who thinks sexual orientation has no bearing on identity must be squarely within the favored majority.
> To me it's pretty clear the person I was responding to had zero frame of reference to what discrimination feels like, which is why I said so.
I sympathize with you here, I really do: but making such broad assumptions is a bad way to foster real, productive conversations. Identity and queerness are deeply personal topics with all sorts of nuance and interplay between them. I appreciate that you're living your truth, but coming off with this "scorched earth" rhetoric isn't going to win you any fans.
Can you unpack "scorched earth rhetoric" for me? I am clearly upset that someone tried to stuff me back in the closet, but isn't that a natural reaction? I think it's fairly generous to share my personal experiences in the hopes that someone out there might learn how to better respect others.
> It's only weird to you because you are almost certainly straight, cis and male. Let me explain.
I don't think that's a fair assessment, and it's certainly not a true generalization. I'm not cis, but I completely understand how weird the concept of "coming out" is. Nobody wants to put you back in the closet, we just want to discuss how much the current paradigm surrounding sexuality sucks.
My priors on who is most likely to have low empathy for minorities are pretty strong. I bet I am right, but could be wrong:)
I agree that "coming out" takes some explanation. You're going to have an easier time explaining it to some people than others. A shared experience certainly helps! Otherwise you're left trying to explain what blue looks like to someone who's never seen it.
Why does the current paradigm suck? There is unprecedented LGBT acceptance, and that does not suck. There are no sucky paradigms around jeans vs. khakis because there isn't a cohort of people who would prefer if khakis were banned in public.
From great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent post:
> This was ironically one of the things that was hardest about coming out as gay, for me. Nobody ever treated me the same way again. I was either uncomfortably praised or silently judged, with practically no in-between. Suffice to say, my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.
That does suck, but isn't this exactly why LGBT stories need to be shared instead of hidden? I have lived in more and less accepting places. In the less accepting places, I have experienced the unwanted praise and judgement. In the more accepting places I have been treated as a regular old person with a regular old life. And I think the world is moving more and more towards that place of boring acceptance, and that is just an awesome thing. I am forever grateful to the people who put in all that hard work so I can go about my life. And in gratitude I will keep talking about mine, and keep helping other people who aren't being heard to be heard as well.
For what it's worth, I didn't read any "scorched earth" rhetoric in dougmwme's original post. I thought it was a reasoned argument, well-explained, in a way that gave me a really interesting perspective on the situation (as someone who has heard and thought about these sorts of perspectives often).
Maybe read it after applying the principle of charity, without assuming the writer is angrily banging on the keyboard, and instead is being thoughtful and trying to teach?
I wasn't thinking as much about normal conversations - "I was at lunch with my boyfriend", etc. It's one thing to say that, it's quite another to make statements to people about what sort of sex you want to have -- that's what I find awkward.
I guess the takeaway is that sex is pretty central to civilization and society, as it's a prerequisite to and determinant of family structure. It really is part of our identity.
I think the issue is that a gay man or a lesbian does not yet know if it is safe to even have those normal conversations with some person they are just getting to know. If they're asked a question that would lead to "I was at lunch with my boyfriend/girlfriend", they might get a homophobic response.
Directly coming out to you, when they are comfortable and emotionally prepared for it, is a way to avoid a traumatic reaction during normal conversation.
Beyond that, when you've been forced to repress some part of yourself due to social expectations, it can be a big relief to be able to specifically tell people about that part of you, rather than just letting it come up obliquely during conversation when you happen to refer to a same-sex partner.
I really do appreciate your response and glad I got through. And yeah, sex is pretty foundational to society. As I get older I see that more and more. Just know that the next time a person comes out to you explicitly and says "I'm gay!", they are not trying to awkwardly insert their sex lives, they are doing the best they could to get through a potentially difficult moment with a person they had to come out to. This is especially true when a person is at the beginning of their journey to accept themselves and find acceptance in others.
The experience of "coming out" (to me) was reconciling my sexuality with my family. In America, you're basically born straight and everyone in your family assumes so. The easiest part of it was coming out to my close friends, who already know that I'm not vain or chasing attention with it. The harder half is finding some way to frame it to your parents (and grandparents). Knocking on their door, sitting down in their home and eating their food is just irreversibly ruined. In some sense, I know it's my fault: I'm basically telling them that their bloodline ends here, I hope they enjoyed their transient acknowledgement on this earth while it lasts. That's a tough pill to swallow for a generation that's all about making the idyllic "50s family" a reality.
> To take it further, why phrase it "I am ..." instead of "I have ... desires"? If the latter sounds awkward, why is the former any less awkward?
I wish we could do that too, but if I told that to people now I'm gay and a freak. Society won't care one way or the other, because queerness is political now. You're either with "them" or against "us", and never the two shall meet.
That's just my view on it though. I'm only 1 (one) gay person out of millions, so take my anecdata with a grain of salt.
> In some sense, I know it's my fault: I'm basically telling them that their bloodline ends here, I hope they enjoyed their transient acknowledgement on this earth while it lasts. That's a tough pill to swallow for a generation that's all about making the idyllic "50s family" a reality.
That is an uncommonly insightful and empathetic characterization.
I think fault implies intention, so I wouldn't call it fault. It's just a conflict of life goals and personal properties that no one particularly chose to have.
Though I also approve of the intention of GP to understand the situation from their parents' perspective.
Because it is something they felt the need to repress for a potentially long portion of their life. Coming out is the start of a process to release the pressure that has built up from that repression and letting the person's personal view of themselves realign with the public view of themselves.
Also, yes it is weird that sexuality and identity are intertwined, but that is not something that is new and it is something that is tied to all sexualities, including heterosexuals.
Isn't this just the process of getting to know someone? As you get to know someone, you share more information about yourself. I think it's a pretty normal desire for people you spend time around to understand you, and part of that is understanding the way you relate to other people.
It's because it was ostracized for so long. If most of society is telling you that something is wrong with you, then you'll seek out other people who share that trait and develop a sense of community with them. It's normal to identify with your community.
I think many times coming out is about reconciling expectations with reality. If people assume one thing about you but that is not the case, coming out can be a way to correct assumptions. In a sense, not coming out can feel like lying to those close to you.
It can also have the effect of making a relationship more close...sharing something intimate with someone can strengthen a friendship (or, obviously, break it in some cases).
> If I knew someone casually for a while who never talked about his/her sexuality, but one day they said "I never said this before, but I'm a heterosexual", I'd certainly feel awkward about it. Why did he/she say that to me?
That's because the dominant mode of society in _most_ cultures involves a heterosexual identity; it's just so deeply embedded in culture that most people can't tell. For the longest time, it was (and still is in many cultures) socially acceptable for men to ogle women. Why? Because there was a tacit understanding that part of being a man meant being hypersexual, and because all men are attracted to women (in this trope), ogling women is just part of "being a man". This ties a man's behavior and identity with his sexuality.
Because the choice is either to hide important aspects of yourself, or else come out, whether that's explicitly by saying something, or implicitly by your actions.
In my case, if I didn't explicitly come out as nonbinary / trans, the change in my wardrobe and appearance was going to "out" myself regardless. It seemed healthier and emotionally safer to be upfront about it with the people I know.
In your example, a person doesn't have to "come out" as heterosexual, they can just introduce their spouse, or mention who they are dating. Maybe in an ideal world that would be the case for everyone, but it's not today.
> To take it further, why phrase it "I am ..." instead of "I have ... desires"? If the latter sounds awkward, why is the former any less awkward?
I definitely agree on this point, and what I find fascinating is that in my (albeit very limited) knowledge of French, instead of saying a phrase like "I am hungry", you say "j'ai faim", which has the literal translation of "I have hunger".
People come out, because they keep their gayness secret for a whole lot of good reasons. The alternative to coming put is not dating your boyfriend and going to reataurant. It is making sure no one ever see you with him, kiss him, hold his hands.
Also, parents and relative reacting badly on finding out ypu are gay are not exactly unheard of. There are also plenty of accepting parents, sure. But as heterosexual, they already assume you are one and you dont have to guess whether it will be breaker for them or not.
Same here. I only address my sexuality when the topic comes up or with good friends. Otherwise I have noticed people do treat me differently, as was apparent at my previous workplace.
As someone who is CIS, I also don't try to imply a sexuality in myself or others unless I'm with people I know. I try not to speak about my wife, but my "spouse" and try to use gender-neutral terms where appropriate.
I often wonder where this misconception originated: why do people think that "cis" is an acronym? What do they think it stands for? It's just a prefix; the antonym of "trans."
This is changing tho, with avatars and pronouns and emojis that display skin color. Now a thumbs up in Slack is segregated by color. Why people don't see this as an incredibly bad idea, I don't know.
We've got that happening by gender as well - dancing is a gender independent activity, I don't understand why I need to pick a gender to express when I want to say "I feel like dancing".
In all fairness, the good old yellow ones still work fine too. It's not like they were overwritten by the constant burden of choosing a race for your ephemeral internet hand.
Do you feel the same way about nicknames? If you call someone by a nickname that they don't like and they let you know they prefer their own name then do you consider it too onerous to defer to them about it?
I don't think that is what commenter is saying. I, personally, of course defer to nicknames and pronouns.
I think it is more similar to race-blind versus race-conscious policies - along with gender-blind versus gernder-concious.
Is it better to assume that men and women are pretty much the same in academia and each are capable of the same thing? Or is it better to assume that men and women are intrinsically better at different things with certain characteristics.
I think the answer is in the middle but clearly there has been a move in the last five years to say that gender inherently effects your worldview/characteristics while simultaneously saying that men/women should have equal outcomes in all fields. Its not internally consistent.
> Is it better to assume that men and women are pretty much the same in academia and each are capable of the same thing? Or is it better to assume that men and women are intrinsically better at different things with certain characteristics.
This is something I think a lot of people misunderstand about [id]-consciousness. Is it better to assume that you as an individual have biases that align/oppose with overarching biases in our society, or is it better to assume that you alone, or society at large, are bias-free? Can we address inequality by treating everybody the same in this moment and ignoring the historical context they exist in, or do observed biases need to be compensated for in some manner?
It's certainly consistent. Worldview happens as a result of experiences - if ones biological sex and/or gender is used as a reason to allow or deny certain experiences to someone, then maybe it affects their worldview, no?
This is different than whether the gating on biological sex makes sense.
(Note I don't mean strictly mechanical stuff like peeing your name into the snow, I'm talking about things like teachers "not wasting time on helping girls understand math"[1] - because I suspect that teachers not helping girls with math is probably more causal to fewer women in math than their vaginas.
[1] I've personally heard math teachers say this, and heard stories of others saying it too.)
That's not quite what I'm saying. It seems like you are advocating a gender blind policy - one in which no one is every denied treatment or eduction based on their gender. And one in which teachers do not insult girl students and make sure to have examples that would interest them.
However, what happens if this is completely eliminated and there are still discrepancies in grades, degrees, income? Many would say then that the subject matter is tilted towards men or women and needs to be reformed. Those who argue that position are arguing for gender conscious policy. Which is definitely not the same as gender neutral policy (which was the most popular 15 years ago when I was in school - but things seem to be shifting towards more conscious policy)
I defer to nicknames, but if the State or my university or my company forced me to, on pain of getting fired, expelled, fined, or worse, then I wouldn't want to defer to nicknames anymore on principle.
I don't care what gender someone calls themselves, and as a nice person I'll try to remember and use it, so long as they don't attempt to get me fired if I get it wrong.
What if you insist on calling that person by the wrong name even though you know it's not what they prefer? That seems like a pretty good example of creating a toxic work environment and you should be fired over it.
It would depend on the specifics. There is a difference between harassing someone and not deferring to their request on the basis that you don't agree with it (however misguided you may be).
Conflating these two things is precisely why there's a backlash against CRT et al. from otherwise left-leaning individuals.
You missed the point that trans people aren't creating the burden here. It's pretty clear that it's a simple request and we regularly make similar adjustments, like with nicknames.
You're hitting the nail in the head that the problem is with the anti-trans person making a stink about it. That is where the real burden is, and that is who is to blame for the toxic work environment. The bully is the problem, not their target.
Let’s get specific. Here is a hypothetical scenario. It is not meant to be representative, merely plausible. It could happen at least once.
Imagine a Mr. Jones who does not agree with the basic premise of gender theory, and believes — say — that transgendered folk are suffering from a mental illness. Mr. Jones has a transgendered colleague with whom he is generally cordial, though not particularly warm. One day, said colleague learns about Mr. Jones opinion, and decides she will assert herself and “call out” Mr. Jones if she is ever offended by his behavior or speech.
One day, Mr. Jones refers passingly to this colleague as ‘he’. For the sake of argument, let us assume this was not meant to be disrespectful, but that this utterance is instead the result of being distracted, and that the colleague has some masculine features. In other words, it was uttered unthinkingly — an honest mistake.
Offended, Mr. Jones’ colleague confronts him publicly and berates him for his behavior. She demands to be called ‘she’, proceeds to shame him on social media, and demands a public apology.
Mr. Jones feels this is an unfair and disproportionate response. Moreover, he now believes her demands to be retaliatory. He firmly but politely refuses. The conflict is referred to HR, and Mr. Jones is ordered to use his colleague’s preferred pronoun. Mr. Jones’ ethics preclude compelled speech. He refuses and is fired.
My questions for you are simple:
1. Do you think it is appropriate that Mr. Jones be fired?
2. Should the law hold him accountable?
3. Should Mr. Jones’ colleague be able to sue her employer if Mr. Jones is not fired?
4. Should she be able to sue Mr. Jones?
The fact that I’ve depicted Mr. Jones as cordial and well-intentioned (despite holding a potentially distasteful opinion) and his colleague as bellicose and vengeful is no accident. This situation will necessarily arise, unless you somehow believe people can’t both be kind and disagree with you on gender-theory.
At any rate, you will find that many (most?) people object to CRT and the likes because they worry that it gives spiteful people the means to dispose of unsavory (though not necessarily bad) people like Mr. Jones. From there, they worry that they might be next. I submit that this should worry all of us, even you.
> 1. Do you think it is appropriate that Mr. Jones be fired?
Sure. Not for originally misspeaking, but for intentionally harassing her afterwards.
> 2. Should the law hold him accountable?
Of course, just like the above.
> 3. Should Mr. Jones’ colleague be able to sue her employer if Mr. Jones is not fired?
This one's hard to say -- but only in the exact same way all “how responsible is an employer for the actions of an employee?” matters are. Which has nothing to do with whether the employee in your example was in the wrong, because he obviously was.
> 4. Should she be able to sue Mr. Jones?
Of course.
All in all: What a hilariously silly, contrived, and wrong-headed example. How could you not notice, while typing it in, that all it shows is how ludicrously wrong your position is?
>Sure. Not for originally misspeaking, but for intentionally harassing her afterwards.
The point in this example is that the harasser-harassee relationship is exactly reversed.
It's revealing that you find the act of using the wrong pronoun to be harassment, but public shaming at the workplace and on social media to be acceptable.
I see we fundamentally disagree, which is fine. I do hope, however, that you can see why many of us disagree with you, and don't want your sociological theories enshrined into law.
No, the point in this example is that the harasser-harassee relationship is not reversed. You're only, for some weird reason and without any logical support, claiming it is.
And I'm sorry to disagree even on this, but no, it is not "fine": What you are disagreeing with aren't any "sociological theories" I am trying to get "enshrined into law", but with logic and reality.
1. I'm not talking about "honest mistakes". Nobody is putting cisgendered people in jail for a slip of the tongue.
2. Your simplistic theories about how people ought to be should go out the window when you meet and interact with a real person who is different from you. Think of it as avoiding making a bad impression on someone who has just as valid a reason to be who they are. Yeah, maybe this is new and uncomfortable for you, but that is how meeting anyone is.
But I am talking about honest mistakes. I am worried that people such as yourself are incapable or unwilling to distinguish them from actual bona fide harassment.
>Nobody is putting cisgendered people in jail for a slip of the tongue.
People are already being fired and cancelled for such things. This is precisely why we're having this debate.
Difference between the two is very subtle, and in my opinion comes down to bad faith. If the person in question is any good at deception, it would be extremely difficult to do anything about it without some kind of authority. I don't think it's possible to stop the conflation without discovering a way to detect bad faith or making all people respect each other.
There are many companies out there and I very much doubt all of them would be doing it. At the end of the day, it's company's choice on what policies to enforce and you are free to pick one that is more compatible with your beliefs.
> There is a difference between harassing someone and not deferring to their request on the basis that you don't agree with it (however misguided you may be).
There is? What is it?
In a couple of child comments you agree with some other commenter that it's “very subtle”... I'd argue that of course it is; most non-existent things are. Before rejoicing in your sophisticated ability to detect oh-so-subtle differences, please make sure there is something to detect in the first place. One of the best ways to make sure one has got something right is to explain it to others. So: What difference?
The toxic work environment argument mostly comes from people creating such environments to be honest. As long as people let others disagree, nobody should be fired. If that isn't possible, politics will again be banned as a topic in workplaces.
Not really an apt comparison since there's nothing about a nickname that defies observable reality, a name is a social construct to begin with. Sex however is a biological construct in which the characteristics are directly and quantitatively observable.
Sure there is. My legal name and the name I sign on documents is "Michael" but I could have a preference for "Mike". Are you really going to deny that to me because there is an "observable reality" that is different from my preference?
A name is not an intrinsic trait of a person, it's a legal abstraction. Your name has no meaning outside of it's designation as a name and you can change it at any time. 'Mike', 'Michael', and 'Michelangelo' all mean the same thing- it's just an arbitrary word used to identify a person. 'Him' and 'Her' on the other hand are not arbitrary and do not mean the same thing, they refer to directly observable biological traits that cannot be changed.
We can tell instinctively based on a whole slew of traits, within a split second of looking at a person your brain identifies their sex whether you want to or not. Skeletal structure alone is a dead giveaway.
Human brains seem really good at these things, just like they're good at for example recognizing faces. Perhaps it has something to do with evolutionary pressure for our survival?
We use our best judgement. In my experience it's most often confused in babies because it can be difficult to tell at times. I do not get upset when they say my son is adorable even though I don't have a son. I accept the spirit of their comment and try to politely correct them with something like: Thank you, she loves to flash a good smile. Then I go on my way.
We actually recently hit this very issue - a bad account migration resulted in everyone having flastname accounts - but that first initial and last name were based on legal names not common names - as a result a number of employees were upset at being forced to revert to birth names, especially those who had immigrated at a young age and adopted a new name.
I have a friend who was named at birth after their absentee parent and really dislikes ever being called by that name. It is important and polite to use names that people personally prefer within reason.
I think it's pretty clear that other people's preference for nicknames (or gender pronouns) are not a burden on you and your insistance to call people by the wrong name (or gender) is for some other reason. That was my point. This isn't about trans people causing undue burden on you.
You don't have to pretend. Nobody thinks my name is actually "Mike" but if I ask you to call me that instead of "Michael" then what is it to you?
And if you really feel that your gender is being intruded upon by trans people then i encourage you to find something more meaningful and unique to attach your identity to, because your manhood feeling threatened is not a respectable reason to deny trans people their identity.
You describe one possible situation, let me imagine a different one. I say that I like going by Mike, and you keep making a point of always referring to me as Michael even when it doesn't really make sense to go full formal. After multiple months of it, I kinda get tired of this and decide to accept offer from another company and tell our boss that. When they ask me why I want to leave I'll be sure to mention that, and maybe they'll evaluate our productivity and decide it's better for business to just fire you instead. See how different those two situations are even thought the premise is the same?
The idea is that sex and gender are different though; gender _is_ a social construct. I think lack of agreement on this is a big part of the issue right now.
Edit: as pointed out below, gender roles are something we've made up, but preferences and behavior themselves (which we're calling gender) are not. Still separate from sex.
This distinction doesn't sit right with me though. What is Gender really, in the modern definition (since it seems to have changed over the years)? From what I gather it's a way for people to tell others that one of their physical characteristics (Sex) does not match their mental state (Gender). To me this doesn't really seem like a positive thing, it comes off like a potentially harmful delusion from someone who can't come to terms with their own biology.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a feminine man or a masculine woman, people can behave however they wish regardless of biology. But the most feminine man on the planet is still a man and saying so shouldn't turn you into a pariah, it's true after all.
Imagine we came up with 'Gender' like terms for other physical characteristics, it seems to me like the logic quickly breaks down when you think about it-
Gender is to Sex as
____ is to Race as
____ is to Age as
____ is to Height as
____ is to Weight as
____ is to Eye Color
etc.
As I wrote in another comment, trans individuals’ gender identity is hardwired to the same extent that people’s sexual orientation is hardwired, so there must be some innate physiological component to gender identity. My guess is it’s neurological, since there aren’t discernible hormonal, genetic, or anatomical differences between trans and cis people.
Your analogies don’t apply because, with the exception of age (mental age vs. physical age), there is no mental analog to race, height, eye color, etc.
I’d analogize gender identity to sexual orientation: there is nothing physiological that distinguishes heterosexual people from homosexual people, but the former are hardwired to be sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex, while the latter are hardwired to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex.
>Your analogies don’t apply because, with the exception of age (mental age vs. physical age), there is no mental analog to race, height, eye color, etc.
Why? What specifically makes transrace/race-identity any less valid of a concept than transgender/gender-identity? You say there is no mental analog to race but there's just as much proof of that as there is for gender identity. I've always loved african-american music and culture, I use black slang a lot, I felt like I didn't fit in with my white peers growing up- maybe I identify as black and will designate myself as such on my job/college applications going forward. Who are you to tell me my race-identity isn't valid? Maybe I'm just hardwired that way.
>I’d analogize gender identity to sexual orientation: there is nothing physiological that distinguishes heterosexual people from homosexual people, but the former are hardwired to be sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex, while the latter are hardwired to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex.
If there is nothing physiological to make that determination I think 'hardwired' isn't the right term
> Why? What specifically makes transrace/race-identity any less valid of a concept than transgender/gender-identity?
Because there aren’t any (or infinitesimally few) people who believe from a very young age that their “race identity” doesn’t match their genetically defined race. Gender dysphoria is rare but not infinitesimally so (~1% of the population), and it usually first emerges in childhood.
> If there is nothing physiological to make that determination I think 'hardwired' isn't the right term
Sorry, I was a bit sloppy with my language. I should have written “there is nothing grossly physiological that distinguishes heterosexual people from homosexual people.” Colloquially, we don’t generally consider neurology to be physiological, since we don’t yet have the technology to identify subtle differences in neural topology. Doesn’t mean that neurological phenomena aren’t hardwired, and thus “physiological” on a microscopic level we aren’t yet able to detect. As an extreme example, mental retardation is certainly hardwired, even though there’s often nothing grossly physiological (i.e. detectable physical brain abnormalities) that causes it.
I suspect that as science and medicine advance, we will identify the neural wiring patterns that determine one’s sexuality and gender identity (assuming we are allowed to study such things), at which point we can actually point to a definitively physiological determinant of both.
> My guess is it’s neurological, since there aren’t discernible hormonal, genetic, or anatomical differences between trans and cis people.
That's exactly the point. If someone's "gender identity" doesn't refer any observable characteristic other than their "gender identity", then the entire concept is circularly defined and therefore meaningless. It's like if I were to say my biological height is 5'7" but my "height identity" is 6'3". What meaning does "height identity" have and why should anyone take a concept like this seriously?
Because you want to reduce suffering in the world. Calling someone putting effort in to presenting a female persona, even though you know there was a penis at birth, her is not that hard but if you purposefully him then you might flare up gender disphoria which is not nice to have.
The left and center has decided it is not a joke to call someone who had a penis at birth a her, nobody will laugh at you why are you resisting being courteous?
But "gender" is a made-up concept with no clear (non-self-referential) definition, seemingly made up specifically to cause confusion and conflict.
It's as if there were two concepts, "race" and "grace", and you could be "biologically" white but "identify" as black, or "height" and "gheight", and you could be "factually" 180cm tall but "identify" as 165cm.
Certain gender roles are social constructs, but gender as a whole cannot be a social construct because gender dysphoria exists. A transgender person’s gender identity is hardwired (and opposite of their genetic sex and outward sex characteristics), which is strong evidence that gender is an innate physiological characteristic. It’s likely something neurological, since trans people’s obvious physiological characteristics (e.g. hormone levels and anatomy) are consistent with their genetic sex.
(This is why trans-exclusionary feminists exist, because the existence of trans people nullifies their belief that gender is 100% a social construct.)
> Certain gender roles are social constructs, but gender as a whole cannot be a social construct because gender dysphoria exists.
Huh? How does that logically follow? (Hint: It doesn't.)
Feels more like it's the other way around, that the existence of gender dysphoria proves that gender is a social (and psychological?) construct: If gender were always the same as biological sex, there would be no feeling of conflict between them. That some people do feel such a conflict shows that they are not always the same. Therefore they cannot both be purely biologically determined.
Maybe it would be easier for you to grok if you thought of it not as “gender conflicting with itself”, but think of it as — privately rename it to — “sex-gender dysphoria”?
> (This is why trans-exclusionary feminists exist, because the existence of trans people nullifies their belief that gender is 100% a social construct.)
On the contrary, that seems to be exactly what the TERFs don’t believe. They should just come out and admit that “if gender is a social construct, then we’re ‘feminists’ not in terms of female- gendered people but only in terms of people of female sex.” Which, since feminism is about the role of females in society, i.e. very much a social issue, would show them up as pretty damn silly... But that’s their problem.
> If gender were always the same as biological sex, there would be no feeling of conflict between them. That some people do feel such a conflict shows that they are not always the same. Therefore they cannot both be purely biologically determined.
The last sentence does not logically follow from the other two. Lots of physical/neurological properties are correlated in the vast majority of people (e.g. biological sex/the sex you're attracted to, age/cognitive ability); the fact that they’re occasionally inconsistent in some people has no bearing on whether they’re biologically determined.
By your logic, sexual orientation is also a social construct. Most males are attracted to females, and vice versa. Using your words, “if the sex you’re attracted to were always consistent with biological sex, there would be no feeling of conflict between them. That some people do feel such a conflict shows that they are not always consistent. Therefore they cannot both be purely biologically determined.” How does that logically follow? (Hint: it doesn’t)
> privately rename it to — “sex-gender dysphoria”?
That’s exactly my point: trans people have the body of sex A, but the brain that people with a sex B body typically have. Just as gay people have the body of sex A and the brain wired to be attracted to sex A, which is again something that sex B people typically have.
>They should just come out and admit that “if gender is a social construct, then we’re ‘feminists’ not in terms of female- gendered people but only in terms of people of female sex.”
Feminism is about achieving equality between genders by advocating for women, who have typically been marginalized in society. If gender is 100% a social construct, then there should be zero difference between the brains of men and women, which makes it a lot easier to argue that they should occupy identical roles in society and thus be truly equal. The fact that trans people provide strong evidence that male (gender) and female (gender) brains are fundamentally different scares some people (i.e. TERFs), and their solution is to dismiss trans people rather than realize that different genders can still be treated equally by society even if their brains are wired differently.
> >They should just come out and admit that “if gender is a social construct, then we’re ‘feminists’ not in terms of female- gendered people but only in terms of people of female sex.”
> Feminism is about achieving equality between genders by advocating for women, who have typically been marginalized in society.
No, that's my point: For "TERFs", feminism is apparently not about achieving equality between genders, but about achieving equality between sexes.
As for the rest... I'm not up to going through it all in detail, but on the whole it feels like about the same level of misunderstanding.
Although gender is not a binary concept. I honestly do think that gender is mostly a social construct but our definition of what it is is much better than it used to be - sterile men and barren women would often be considered outside of standard gender definitions since they couldn't "fulfill the intended role".
I have problems on this front though, I'm pan myself and gender seems really insanely trivial to me - I do understand that my experience is not the common one though.
I don't think I'm exactly right about this, but consider three sets of words:
- man/woman
- male/female
- masculine/feminine
There is a concept of grammatical gender, where words can be masculine or feminine (or neuter in some cases, and there are other systems as well with different words). You don't talk about man words or male words, it's masculine. So, I tend to think of gender as masculine or feminine. That covers most people (although not all: nonbinary, gender fluid, genderqueer, etc. are all real).
I tend to think of sex as male or female. At least for human beings, that covers most people (not all, intersex is a real thing, and there are other unusual but 'natural' configurations as well)
So one way to look at this - which again, is probably not exactly correct, but it's how I think - male/masculine and female/feminine are what we've traditionally thought of as man and woman. But, I think it's pretty clear now that we need to account for the other combinations, i.e. male/feminine and female/masculine. That's where cis- and trans- come in: male/masculine is a cis male, female/masculine is a trans male, both are subsets in the set of all men. Same with women.
We've got nonbinary, genderqueer, etc. as well. I don't really understand the latter, but the former is pretty easy to explain: imagine being told you had to be masculine or feminine, and your response was "No, I don't. I prefer or reject some of each."
Overall, to me, gender is about what you like and how you behave, while sex is more biology (i.e., what's in your pants). It's easier to understand the arguments if you completely separate gender from sex, and don't make assumptions about one based on the other. In fact, I think the assumptions - e.g. gender roles - are the entire problem, and if people would just stop with that, a lot of things would get better.
> - ‘gender’ is being misused as a synonym ‘gender roles’, which are defined by one’s sex.
Sure, “Gender” = “What gender role(s?) a person plays” is one way to put the social definition of gender. (Seems pretty succinct and workable, so you can drop the “misused”.)
Here's where you go wrong, though: Gender, in terms of what gender roles people play, is not always determined purely by biological sex.
This has no bearing on whether the idea is right or not, and shame on you for trying to shut down conversation by comparing adherents to child molesters.
Which was irrelevant, and intended to get people questioning whether thinking along the same lines would cause others to look at them the same way. "I don't want people to think I might be a child molester too... maybe I should keep these ideas to myself." It absolutely shuts down conversation.
Various societies throughout history have recognized gender identities as distinct from biological differences for about as long as there have been societies. That the modern English terms for those two categories emerged from academia is pretty irrelevant.
Well, while it could be argued that sex is biological given, it is surely that our society overstates the difference between men and women - plus our current society still aims to standardises / normalizes all other sexes. The social meaning of being male, of being female etc. is still socially constructed and therefore which sex you are born into has measurable impact on your life, your chances in terms of career.
I have that exact situation at work, twice in fact. One woman's nickname is Pookie. Some people are uncomfortable with using that term and they use her legal name. It doesn't bother her. Another man insisted on people calling him "PawPaw". Nobody was comfortable with that, especially the women he borderline harassed every day. He was fired for stealing food out of the break room before the name situation came to a head.
You don't have the right to compel speech in other people in any way. You don't even have the right to make people call you by your birth name. Some jurisdictions like NYC have laws against malicious miss-naming by an employer or landlord, but even that only applies if they essentially make it a harassment campaign.
What is interesting is that you value rights... but not for trans people. You wrote many paragraphs about your God-given right to misgender people. Noticably missing is any talk about trans people being able to use public accomodations or have access to medical care or not face discrimination in terms of hiring, loans, services.
Like, "compel speech"? Really? You were going to use a pronoun anyways. It's just such a simple ask for the sake of politeness but you frame it as "compel speech"? This idea that it's such a burden is obviously contrived.
That talk is missing because it wasn't the subject of the comment to which I was replying. Misgendering people is dick behavior and terfs are by and large hypocrites. Believing in peoples' rights to say mean things to each other is not the same as advocating for fascistic bathroom restrictions or arguing that trans people don't deserve the same freedom from legal discrimination as any other gender identity or sexuality.
It's not just like a nickname, though. It's about who you're willing to date, who is put in which prison or who is allowed to compete in which sports competitions.
Still not a good reason to forbid trans people from public accomodations, keep it legal to discriminate against hiring trans people, deny them service, deny them loans, etc.
My point in asking about those edge cases is to say that it's not an excuse for the wide-ranging ways we torment trans people as a society.
> > > It's about who you're willing to date, who is put in which prison or who is allowed to compete in which sports competitions.
> > Are you in prison or competing at the highest level of sports?
> I assume they're dating.
Then the time to rise a stink and become loudly anti-trans is surely when the law starts to mandate[1] you dating them, or at the earliest, when it's starting to look as if the law is about to do so... But not before, right?
This is common in many of the team sports I've played in. The more someone hates their nickname the more likely it will stick. Generally it's only done with close friends.
I think it is, and it's sad that you have been so heavily downvoted.
We seem to be finding ourselves lacking the etiquette to deal with this situation.
Can you do this in the workplace, yes, with the right people and relationships.
Can you treat trans people like this, yes, with the right people and relationships.
If ribbing someone causes them to get offended, you leave them alone or it is just bullying.
If they come back at you, it's a game, a fun game that builds relationships with the right people.
This is a key element missing from the discussion. In some contexts being purposefully disrespectful is a good thing.
This also means you need to operate in an environment where it's okay to make a mistake, apologise and move on. You have to be able to read the person's response to attempt any of this. You cannot do that over text, so it can't be used online.
You know.. I call people their nicknames and preferred pronouns.
But... I have a name like David Goldsmith - common first name, two common syllable last name. People call me Dave, David, Davy, Goldsmith, and this one Indian coworker of mine always seems to call me Goldsith, which I think is cool because star wars, but also like wtf dude, you're missing the same letter every time.
The point is though, I don't really care what people call me. People call me a dozen different things nowadays. The last time I got bothered about what somebody was calling me, I was 12 and it was "Davy dumbsmith".
In my experience it's pretty hard stopping people from calling you nicknames, if they feel like doing so. I've never introduced myself with a nickname to anybody, but somehow they often end up using one anyway. Then, a name is really something other people use for refering to you. Whatever is more convenient for them is probably the best name.
Wouldn't this be the opposite of that scenario? As in, someone has a given name at birth but they prefer a nickname and some people find using the nickname too onerous and use their given name instead?
The point I was making is that giving someone a nickname they don't like is completely different from not calling someone a nickname they prefer.
Regarding nicknames, I do sometimes interact with people that have nicknames that I'm not comfortable with or the thought of using that name for them doesn't seem respectful. For example, I took a two week class that was taught by former astronaut Sherwood "Woody" Spring. His peers all called him Woody but it seemed too personal for the teach-student relationship we were in and I defaulted to calling him Mr. Spring. He didn't mind that. I suspect the majority of people that go by nicknames don't really mind when people call them by their given name or a formal version of their name.
Generally I think nicknames are just a bad analogy for gender, so we shouldn't use the comparison at all.
Is it a bad analogy? What extra effort do you go through to defer to another person about their gender? If anything it's less effort than remembering two names.
Please explain it to me because it seems awfully bigoted to perpetuate this myth that trans people are such a burden that we can't possibly treat them like how we treat each other.
Is calling someone by their preferred pronouns as onerous as treating them like royalty to you?
I see now why so many people make such a fuss about this.
Not the OP, but what a smug reply. This is not mathematics, you are not the professor, and it would be only fair if you started with your own description of said difference, as you see it. You cannot expect that everyone sees it in the same way, can you?
Trans people aren't asking to get credit for certifications or degrees they didn't receive. Calling someone by their preferred pronouns isn't bestowing an honorific upon someone (as if it's up to you to be the arbiter of that anyways). It's basic decency.
Do you think legislators and employers should get involved in decisions about nicknames? If so, that would make you some sort of authoritarian.
And this is what the debate is really about: authoritarian vs libertarian political attitudes. I’m certainly ready to have that debate, but it would require the “woke left” [0] to abandon the moral high-ground.
[0] There’s surely a better term to use, but I can’t think of it right now.
Where we seem to disagree is on the question of whether government, employers or other institutional powers have the power to silence those who don't see it our way. If we do indeed disagree, then by definition you lean towards authoritarian politics. You are willing to go further than I in restricting freedom of expression to defend trans people. You may even be right, but that makes you more authoritarian than me.
Why does this matter? Because it's the actual subject of debate. I want trans people to be treated with respect too, but my political opinion is that authoritarianism is the wrong way to achieve this outcome.
I think you will find that many people who reject identity politics / CRT / etc don't actually hate trans people. They fear authoritarian mobs and the governments they elect.
(Apologies for the multiple stealth-edits. It sometimes takes me a few tries to articulate my thoughts.)
Woah there, you're putting a whole lot of assumptions on me. I'm not against the rights of white men being up for debate in the public sphere any more or less than the rights of transgender people.
But we live in an authoritarian system which limits the rights of transgender people by various means. It's better in the US than it is in the UK, which in turn is much better than Saudi Arabia. The Gender Critical folks want more authoritarianism. They want the government to decide your gender, and segregate transgender people from cisgender people.
If you reread, you'll surely notice the qualifier "seems". I used it precisely because I can't be sure what you actually think, and can therefore only talk about surface-level appearances. Please be assured that I am doing my best to interpret your comments charitably, and assuming the best of your character :)
>But we live in an authoritarian system which limits the rights of transgender people by various means.
I believe you are confusing authoritarianism with something else. Authoritarianism is roughly the idea that institutions (government, businesses, etc.) should exert more control over individuals. The presence of inequities don't qualify as authoritarianism on their own, and neither does outright discrimination. To illustrate: discriminating against a group doesn't imply that government should have more control over individuals. It's definitely bad, but it's something else.
I would urge you not to conflate the two, as this is precisely what prevents the majority of liberals from adhering to CRT et al.
>They want the government to decide your gender, and segregate transgender people from cisgender people.
I don't know if you're talking about the US, the UK or Saudi Arabia here, but in the US and UK -- two countries in which I have, incidentally, lived for quite some time -- this is not what the majority of CRT-critics want. The majority are attached to liberal values, and are concerned that the confusion of ideas that permeates CRT discourse (of which your earlier conflation is an example) lead its proponents to the conclusion that authoritarian measures are desirable.
> You are willing to go further than I in restricting freedom of expression to defend trans people. You may even be right, but that makes you more authoritarian than me.
Sorry, no. I'm not sure how many "seems" you've inserted since my first reading, but those two sentences are what I characterize as putting assumptions on me. You continue to respond to things I haven't said, so I'll stop trying. Have a nice day.
Yes, that quoted text follows from the “seems” bit. If that premise is wrong, then you’re off the hook! That’s precisely why the “seems” was there to begin with!
I can’t shake the feeling that you’re storming off to avoid having an actual conversation. Hopefully I’m wrong about that too.
> I can’t shake the feeling that you’re storming off to avoid having an actual conversation. Hopefully I’m wrong about that too.
After I pointed out that your assumptions were wrong (rendering, I don't know how much of, that comment nothingburger), you edited your post a bunch and act like I'm the weirdo for not liking what you've put in my mouth. After hedging a pile of ungenerous assumptions with "seems" (on the basis of a statement we appear to agree upon), you're now having so much trouble refraining from ungenerous assumptions that you continue to voice them behind another hedge. Does this help you understand why I'm not interested in further conversation?
> Where we seem to disagree is on the question of whether government, employers or other institutional powers have the power to silence those who don't see it our way
Isn't it the default case that employers can set rules about how employees speak to each other? Do you see anything wrong with an employer saying "you must make a good-faith effort to call people by their preferred name and pronouns"?
My point was that this is not about how personally difficult it is for you to respect someone else's preferences. It's actually very easy and we do it all the time for other things, like nicknames. If you're so against trans people having similar status as you then you shouldn't claim that it's because trans people are causing you a burden.
>If you're so against trans people having similar status as you then you shouldn't claim that it's because trans people are causing you a burden.
Yes, I understand. But, much of the opposition you're seeing isn't because people are "against trans people". It's because they're opposed solving the problem of intolerance through authoritarian methods.
Aren't you being the "authoritarian" by insisting on calling people by the wrong nicknames (gender), promoting laws that outlaw nickname (gender) preference and going as far as violence if that person continues to disagree with your name (gender)?
The proposed protections for trans people are in response to real acts of violence that are not in line with laws like the 14th Amendment which promotes equality for all people.
And let's remember that these laws to protect trans people are only being proposed. Many laws on the books are against trans people. What you're reacting to is social pressure to treat trans people with respect, not authoritarian legal pressure. If anyone is feeling authoritarian legal pressure it's trans people.
>Aren't you being the "authoritarian" by insisting on calling people by the wrong nicknames (gender) ...
Of course not. I'm perhaps being an asshole, but authoritarianism is a concept applied to policymaking, not manners. It roughly translates to the belief that institutions should have more power over individuals. Calling people the wrong name, no matter how mean-spirited, is expressing no such belief.
The point is that certain things -- bad though they may be -- are not to be legislated. You may disagree with this premise, and you may even be correct, and that would definitionally make you lean towards authoritarianism.
To reiterate, many people -- myself included -- agree with you that it is unkind to call trans people the wrong name. Where you seem to disagree with us is that we find the prospect of things like compelled speech to be terrifying and fundamentally at odds with the principles of liberal government.
But you're not just calling people by the wrong gender, you're acting as a gender authority and upholding the laws and restrictions against trans people that the authorities put in place. Look at it from a trans person's perspective and it's clear that their struggle is a clash with authority. If your company forbids you from creating a toxic work environment for trans people then that is an extremely minor brush with authority compared to what trans people endure.
No. Sorry, but no. Nothing in expressing an opinion (much less indulging in name-calling) makes me a gender authority. Even if it amounted to a bona fide claim of authority, you can rightly dismiss it. No need to involve the law.
In fact, I could just as well retort that you are currently positioning yourself as an authority on becoming a authority, which is just as ludicrous, and just as irrelevant to the question at hand.
Again, this kind of conflation of ideas and Jesuit argumentation is precisely why CRT is opposed by a great many liberals.
When should bullying or similar behaviour become punishable? Certainly not if you accidentally say something that afronts a person.
The purpose of these compelled speech laws is to deal with repeated discriminatory or repeated bullying behaviour. Not to give everyone a tool to denounce strangers and get them into trouble with the law .
Do you have any suggestions how what laws freithen you can be adjusted to make you more comfortable with them while allowing for harsher punishments for bullying/discriminatory due to them being a class worth protecting more?
I don't see any irony there, because there is a huge difference between accepting that certain personal characteristics shouldn't matter, and accepting that people nevertheless do face a wide range of problems because of their personal characteristics that shouldn't matter. The former has experienced some progress as you mention (at least for what's considered acceptable to voice publicly), but the latter appears to be highly controversial.
There's a nuance here: it's possible to both want systemic change on the macro scale, but also meanwhile seek a local maximum for oneself given the current system dynamics at play.
By proxy, I might advocate that income inequality is too high, and that some form of wealth redistribution should be considered. You might say that, therefore, I ought to donate my entire salary to charities. Someone might do that, as a radical stand against capitalism, and I would support that. However, I would also support someone that is trying to seek better wages under the current system, even if they do support wealth redistribution on the wider political scale--in context, it's understandable.
Translating that back to the original space, it seems that you advocate that someone that might today identify as a trans woman might instead identify as a man (or person) with phenotypically female presentation, due to medical treatment, and with a significant number of traditionally feminine attributes, as 'personal characteristics shouldn't matter'. This would place them in the vanguard of challenging gender dynamics. I think that's admirable of people that choose to do that. I understand that many other trans folk want to challenge the status quo less severely, and identifying as their gender allows them increased safety, sanity, and happiness within the confines of the current world.
>However this whole debate is reversing that by not only saying it matters a great deal but that other people should be forced to defer to others personal choices even when it directly affects them
Yep, and the problem is that this is obviously a principal that is not going to be impartially implied, but instead that deference towards personal identity is going to be parceled out based on tribal lines - look how common it is for many on the left to argue that black conservatives are "not really black" (or maybe they're black, but not Black?)
The battle for trans rights is intertwined much more tightly with a battle for control of language - extending to affirmative demands that others deeply change their normal language to avoid giving unintentional offense - than any other civil rights push I can think of, and I wonder if this will become more commonplace in the future.
I don't think gender ideology is an appropriate topic for HN. There is little to be gained and much to be lost from discussing it here. Little to be gained because it has nothing to do with software development, and because gender issues are thoroughly covered elsewhere. Much to be lost because gender issues are so divisive that we risk alienating members of our community.
You're certainly right that this is an inflammatory topic with strong political and ideological overlap, and as the guidelines explain, we don't want flamewar here, and we don't want ideological or political battle. The site exists for intellectual curiosity, and those things aren't compatible. There's a great deal of established moderation practice around this, if anyone wants to read past explanations:
That doesn't automatically make a story like this off topic for HN. It depends on whether there's enough new information in a story to support a substantive discussion. In this case, the topic is not just "gender ideology", it's ongoing developments at universities and in the discourse at large. All of these are significant and interesting phenomena. For that reason I turned the flags off on this submission. That's also established moderation practice (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It requires a judgment call, of course, and we don't always make the right calls—but not making any would be an even worse call.
Of course it's commenters' responsibility to stick to the side guidelines if posting in such a thread. That means curious, thoughtful conversation and respect toward other commenters (and other people generally). Flamewar, flamebait, snark, name-calling, personal attacks and so on are not ok. People sometimes think that just because a topic is inflammatory it means they get carte blanche to spew what they will (e.g. "if you don't want me to post like this then you shouldn't allow this thread in the first place"). I call that argument "the topic made me do it", and not only is it false, the opposite is true: commenters here are under a greater obligation in cases like this, as the site guidelines make clear: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
> HN is for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity
I think that's the problem with a topic like this on HN. There will be little learning going on, with many statements made with certainty by individuals that have never studied any of these concepts in any detail. The level of dismissal in the comments is itself a reason to pull the plug.
That's certainly a big problem, but HN can't be a site for intellectual curiosity and at the same time exclude every story with political or ideological overlap. People sometimes imagine that that would be better, but only in the context of a specific story or thread they don't like. If you try to imagine it as a general policy it breaks down altogether. Nor would this community accept such severe restrictions on the range of topics. I don't think we have any choice but to patiently work together at having more thoughtful conversation.
If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity, I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.
HN is a non-siloed site, meaning we don't have subreddits, or any of the other ways that large communities segregate themselves. Here we're all in one big room together, like it or not. It's always been that way and I think it's part of its DNA.
This has advantages and disadvantages, as with all such design choices, but it's good to be conscious of what one's design actually is, since otherwise one might end up fucking with the DNA, which doesn't seem like a great idea.
I too like nuanced discussion on HN and I generally don't shy from political questions.
That said, HN is the watering hole for people with multiple political approaches on a fairly wide spectrum.
I think debate between these people is best facilitated by prompts and articles which raise multiple nuanced questions. And I think we do have useful debates at this point.
What isn't useful is something like an overt manifesto for one or another "side" on this political spectrum. And HN generally avoids such things.
But there's a kind of article, like this one imo, that is more or less a manifesto - an article that stake out a position and only give apparent gestures at balance. These have the same low-quality potential as manifestos. In important questions, it's unfortunate have a lot of uninformed posts even when they aren't flame bait.
In the case of the present article, I don't think readers of the article will come away with any greater understanding of "Gender Theory" and what gives rise to it and so it's not really a generator of good quality discussion even when people are not shouting at each.
Edit: Another thing I should add is that in the case of article that are effectively manifestos, upvotes and downvotes are going to gravitate to being just around the popularity of various positions and that too lowers the quality of discussion.
I wanted to express thanks to Dang for the moderation of this site, precisely because we can learn, discuss, and evaluate difficult topics like this, without flame wars, and rudeness. There are a lot of good comments here today, that satisfy and stimulate, our moral, cultural, ideological and biological curiosities.
Thanks Dang!
Most of the discussion is the same old talking points. Probably because the only new information in the article is scant detail about a handful of disconnected events. The likes of which have gone on for years. The title is inflammatory too. Multiple ideologies are involved but only 1 is called that.
For what it's worth, I like that we discuss controversial topics here if only because it's the only online forum I'm aware of where this stuff can be discussed with any degree of productive dialogue or without a constant barrage of bad faith (which isn't to say there aren't bad faith commenters here, but the signal/noise ratio is much higher here).
In my experience browsing HN almost daily, over the last year it has become something of an echo chamber for "anti woke" lines of thinking. I've seen little to no healthy discussion on the topic - by which I mean productive disagreement. It's usually just a top comment decrying twitter/etc and then a pile on of agreement.
It's entirely plausible that most were thinking that but didn't say anything for fear of backlash. If so then the mere act of them speaking what's really on their mind is, what I would argue as, "healthy discussion".
Either way, I've been finding a lot of what's being said here today as interesting and mentally engaging on some level.
I would disagree. I think that there is a strong pro free speech group, most of who are also literally woke, but who also want to keep the overton window broad.
There are, of course, some pretty reptitive comment threads, but you can collapse those and generally find more interesting discussion somewhere (don't forget there are often multiple pages of comments.)
I'm in the same boat. Its a bit tiresome and I feel it's getting worse (?)
Fwiw, current college student. My school isn't particularly "woke" beyond having a LGBT support center, but that strikes me as common decency rather than wokeness.
I disagree with this only because I frequently get downvoted for comments that don't "fit the narrative." Could I be a little less brash in the way I word it? Sure, but I keep vulgarities at a minimum to at least come across as somewhat refined.
People like me are very much liberal, left leaning, and dislike fascism. But as of now, it feels like freedom of speech is more of "freedom to speak about only certain things." Simply because so many people are kowtowing to these zealots. Of course you're going to get more vocal people opposed to this line of thinking. It's the exact same thing left leaning people like myself got away from in our psychotic religious upbringings. Only for us to see the exact same thing on the left, but with even more drastic and unfair measures.
Oh, the silent downvoting, I noticed it once than more.
And on two occassions, it seemed as if somebody was so vindictive as to visit my comment history and downvote tens of older comments from threads that were a few days old. At least I cannot explain the unexpected loss of precisely 1 karma point from multiple comments in multiple threads at once.
I wonder how such people look into the mirror without feeling even a slight pang of doubt about themselves.
I have 3 kids in college right now, actually one just graduated with a computer science degree. All 3 of my kids have talked about how much gender ideology has creeped into the classroom at the college level, to the point where virtually every class including computer science, engineering and science courses, has to start off with addressing pronoun preferences. It is a political hot-topic for sure, and those often go horribly in online forums but to say that it's not related to software development and startup culture is a bit disingenuous. It is effecting higher education in a big way, and it is creeping into corporate culture.
> has to start off with addressing pronoun preferences
To which I can only respond: "so?".
There are a decent number of folks in my circles who are gender-nonconforming. I'll bet, sans decades-plus of social pressure, there are more in your kids' classes. What's the problem with asking? And why does asking make you characterize the effect upon higher education as "big"?
How is it "bigger" than a prof or a TA asking if I want to be called Edward, Ed, or Ted?
Certainly I am finding it very difficult to be heard. As a member of the trans community I’ve tried to be kind and helpful in my comments in this thread but I’m getting downvoted to hell.
I just really want people in this thread to learn about emotional labor and to consider what they’re asking of marginalized people when they want to “discuss” the validity of their needs.
Trans people are a hot button issue these days but it feels like we don’t really have a seat at the table in that debate. The healthiest thing you can do for yourself is just live your life, surround yourself with people who make you feel safe, valued and loved, and stop trying to convince random strangers online that you’re worth something. I take a lot of inspiration from the ball room / drag culture - how it creates families for LGBTQ folks where none exist and uses expression as a form of activism. It’s not my place to change anyone’s mind; all I can do is live my life and hopefully others will grow as a result of observing me.
This is the goal and the ideal and what I myself choose to manifest, but it does bring me sadness to see a place I go to lurk on the tech and science grapevines and stay away from the 'discourse' start featuring threads articles debating how many rights I should have and in which ways should I be segregated from the people that need to be protected from me, particularly when honest attempts to reach out and foster understanding and sort out confusions get talked past.
I'm a trans individual. I celebrate this and all the healing and personal growth that's come from coming to terms with this fact and so does mostly everyone I've ever been close with, and I live far outside the 'liberal bubble' of SV/etc. I am comfortable with having discussions and educating, but merely existing and advocating for one's own safety and happiness seems to be enough to start debates, even here. I don't want to have a 'culture war' or participate in a 'gender agenda', but as an adult human who wishes (i'd argue that it's somewhat of an obligation) to have an active role in civil society I must also advocate for myself and people like me.
I urge people to listen more if they haven't been through it themselves. I know there's a lot of information out there about trans individuals that has inspired a lot of confusion and concern. It can be a confusing topic! Trans people tend to know a lot about it by necessity but seem to be listened to the least when the topic comes up. I personally think there's more intellectual curiosity to be had in the meta-conversation around why this discourse is the way it is given the fact that we have plenty of testimony, data and research to indicate the talking points being wheeled into the discussion are mostly facile and misconstrued to stoke fears, much like we did already over homosexuality?
Well, the thing is I want to like Hacker News. And usually I do. But whenever issues around marginalized groups come up, out come the people who just can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
When I entered this discussion, the top comment on the article was talking about how trans people freak out when you just bring up the issue of one trans women in sports and try to “have a discussion”.
And it’s just like… I cannot leave that as the top comment and not say something. I mean, I could leave it, but I have to decide which is more upsetting - saying nothing or trying to engage and being shot down. We deserve better than that as the top comment on a thread about us.
Really glad dang stepped in and remoderated some comments.
I think HN is an excellent forum for this topic. It’s not just about development here, it’s also about the business of building tech companies. It’s not an accident HN was built on the side of Y-Combinator. Also if we can’t have a productive and civil discussion about it here, where can we? Sure we get trolls and wing nuts here, but fortunately there are enough adults that even divisive issues can get discussed productively. Not always, not on every topic, but it happens.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Yes, gender ideology is pretty political (should it be?). But learning about it can obviously gratify one's intellectual curiosity if they're approaching it in good faith. So I don't think you're necessarily able to just make a blanket statement like "this isn't appropriate."
As for having much to lose, if you feel alienated by a good faith intellectual discussion -- regardless of topic -- that's your problem. This sort of thing is discussed daily in liberal arts programs across the US and in most of the world. You have to be able to discuss and learn about topics, even divisive ones, without losing your shit.
So the next time one of my co-workers suggests we should do more to be inclusive when our software asks a user if they are male/female, I should tell them that gender has nothing to do with software development?
I agree that this isn't the most productive HN thread ever, with a lot of comments repeating tired talking points or going for quick jabs instead of reasonable discussion. However, I would prefer to keep this topic open because it signals to me that there is still so much work to be done to educate people.
Trans people are a tiny minority that is only now coming into the public consciousness. We're going to have to work through a lot of ignorant discussions and bad faith actors to get to a healthier place.
These discussions used to be a lot worse. I think occasionally having people butt heads a little with good moderation has helped relax people a bit on the subject. This is the most productive thread I've seen on the issue on HN.
I don't believe anyone here was holding off discussing any particular topic until we got the go-ahead from oofbaz. You don't get to decide what we discuss. If you don't want to discuss it you can close the tab and move on.
For a while I'd really enjoyed HackerNews for the lack of politics. It was great not to hear about Trump during the Trump presidency, but since then and COVID times I find more and more highly politicized editorials being propelled to the top of the front page.
Yeah, I just tend to avoid political posts and threads altogether. Speaking as a trans woman who doesn’t use Twitter or most other social media, it can feel like I don’t have a voice and I’m just seeing this debate play out. But in a way I’m fine with that. Online it’s like people either hate me because I’m trans or hate others on my behalf because they’re not trans-inclusive enough. My lived experience is nowhere near as extreme. To most of my friends, family and coworkers, I’m the only trans person they know and the topic of gender rarely comes up. Aside from a few friends and family who disowned me early in my transition, I’ve found that people are generally respectful. Strangers can sometimes be mean / scary / creepy and dating isn’t easy (most guys aren’t into trans girls or if they are it’s usually a fetish thing) - so I just try to avoid situations where I’m unsafe or feeling bad vibes.
I know that was a bit off-topic but I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s okay to create distance between you and the things that bring you down. I’ve found so much interesting content through Hacker News and it would be a shame to throw that away just because the politics here don’t always align with my own.
I'm not sure why you couldn't simply skip the topics that you don't like, and completely avoid them, regardless of whether the reason for your lack of interest is politics or just that you never owned a ZX Spectrum or whatever.
True, but a counterpoint: One may not like the topic but it may be best to be aware of what the conversation is should one find oneself someday blindsided by some political decision with negative consequences informed by these discussions.
Supporting evidence: I've gotta keep tabs on which places I shouldn't travel to in my own country where I was born and raised because people keep trying to make it illegal to use the bathroom safely [1] after getting scared by conversations such as the ones I've seen in this thread.
On other subjects on HN (software, mostly), I find curious, questioning people, who will, for the most part, engage very seriously with the subject matter. I think this is because users here engage with software -- the creation, maintenance, collaboration, the joy and misery of it all -- frequently and with a passion for nuance.
When high-visibility articles on trans people show up, it's almost inevitably when our transness -- our ability to move through the world, to exist in certain spaces, or even if we exist at all -- is the subject of debate. I don't know how many cisgender folks here really get how fundamentally exhausting it is to have some part of your identity always be part of a debate, to be talked about or on rare occasions talked to, but almost never engaged with in a substantive way.
It's just fear fear fear, 24/7 -- simulating hypothetical nightmare worlds where trans rapists lurk in bathrooms and prisons, where every Olympic gold medal is taken by a man masquerading as a woman, roving hordes of red-faced trans activists screaming incoherently online at nice, well-meaning, harmless people who just want to learn.
I just wanted to put out there that the flattened, simplified perspectives trans people are portrayed with may not give you the whole picture, and I'd encourage people here to give perspectives from trans people the same (well, more, preferably) curiosity and interest that you might give to scare quotes and soundbites about prisons, bathrooms, and sports.
I agree that there is more heat than light in these debates.
The Gender Critical Feminists do make up bogeyman stories about rapists in prisons, trans women disrupting breast feeding groups etcetera.
The Trans lobby though has also been guilty of the same sort of thing. E.g. I am no fan of professional sport (I hope this kills it dead) but to claim that trans women have no advantage over natal women is opinion not fact. The main fault line ion our society is gender, and to claim otherwise is simply wrong. (Not all Trans activists do that, just as not all Gender Critical Feminists are mean).
To me it is heartbreaking that this is not about fixing that fault line. No person has the right to take a interest in another person's gender unless they are their doctor or fancy them and are fussy. That is the issue we should address - how boys are raised to be violent sexual predators requiring female admiration and women are raised to be weak victims requiring male support.
That is getting lost, instead of helping fix the fault line, this debate (the excess of heat, deficiency of light) is making it worse.
As I said in another comment, this is far from a bogeyman story - there was already a case in the UK of a male-bodied convicted rapist being housed in a woman's prison because "she" decided post-conviction that "she" identified as female. She then went on to sexually assault multiple female inmates. Look up the name Karen White.
I put "she" in quotes not because I have a problem with respecting trans people's pronouns in general but because there have been suggestions that this particular criminal didn't really identify as trans and the whole thing was a cynical ploy to get access to easy victims.
Obviously the vast majority of trans people are not Karen White, but then this is the exact kind of thing that people warned would happen when self-id gets taken to its logical conclusion. Sweeping it under the rug isn't a good look.
Obviously there are transphobes out there who'll point to Karen White and disingenuously say "we're only trying to stop female inmates from getting raped!" when in fact that's just a cudgel for their real, more sinister agenda. But that makes it more important that decent people be allowed to discuss these issues in good faith.
If normal people aren't allowed to have an honest conversation about the thorny aspects of (say) gender self-id, the only people left to discuss it will be the lunatics who don't care about appearing respectable. They'll even be empowered, because it lets them say to their base "look! The authorities are trying to hide this from you!"
Here’s what I mean when I asked us to consider perspectives of trans people —- I want you to understand us not just as potential perpetrators of violence here, but also as recipients. Trans women are subject to prison rape at apparently disproportionate levels [1][2] when housed in men’s prisons. Instead of framing this as “is it ethical to move a woman to a women’s prison on the off chance she’s a man gaming the system,” I would consider asking “is it an acceptable tradeoff to keep a woman in men’s prison on the off chance she’s a secret rapist, even if her chances of being raped herself are increased as a result?”
It’s worthwhile to interrogate some of the ways we frame these kinds of discussions, implicitly or otherwise, myself included!
That's a fair point, and I don't know what the solution is. Thanks for engaging with my post in good faith.
Self-ID in particular is a salient issue in the UK because the Conservative government had plans to implement it, but recently scrapped those plans in favour of the existing system (trans people in the UK can get legal recognition of their gender change but it's a medicalised process that takes one year; the proposed changes would have made it as easy as signing a single piece of paper.) I don't know what the perfect system looks like, but we need to be able to talk about edge cases.
By the way, Karen White wasn't suspected of being a "secret rapist" - she was a rapist. The reason she was in jail in the first place was that she had been convicted of raping women.
I’m glad you’re able to see it as an edge case, but part of the reason we get so defensive is precisely because people who typically cite the story don’t want to see it as an edge case.
I used “secret” with a clear intention here, because on the gender-critical side, categorical rejection of trans women from womanhood is a core belief. It follows that if you don’t believe any trans woman is “actually” a woman, that every trans woman is just a man trying to be sneaky, then every trans woman in prison, regardless of existing convictions, is a potential Karen White.
White’s rape conviction is probably the more germane data point in that particular edge case. From there the question might be: how do women’s prisons handle cisgender women with rape convictions against other women right now? What potential problems, if any, would arise if we implemented similar procedures for trans women? How might those procedures help or hurt trans people?
(This might also lead to higher level questions about the efficacy of prisons in a broader sense, but that’s outside our scope here.)
When, as trans people, we see edge cases brought up like this, they’re so often used as a means of depicting us as potential Karen Whites that, to the extent that we even bother engaging, it comes from a defensive place. I hope you can understand that I’m choosing to engage here both because I do see well-meaning people like you on this site and because I think the site needs a counterpoint to the FUD about trans people, even if I dread some of the nastier responses.
> - there was already a case in the UK of a male-bodied convicted rapist being housed in a woman's prison because "she" decided post-conviction that "she" identified as female.
That is my point about gaolers being sadists. What do they do with aggressive women who get their thrills sexually predating on other women? They should not go into general population if the gaolers are not sadists....
In my country a young man (about twenty years) was housed in a cell with a known rapist who raped him every night for nine months.
That is my point: Prisoners need to be protected from each other, they are not, because by ad large gaolers are sadists and the general public does not know or really care much.
How is the sports concern illegitimate? It seems it's already a major issue today, as we speak. We're past the point of hypothetical worst-case scenarios in that respect.
Being trans is one of many possible attributes a person can possess (tall, short, skinny, fat, and so on)! There are lots of ways a person's body can be built that may give them an advantage or disadvantage over another person.
Strength and speed are not the sole metrics by which Olympic medals are awarded, either. Some people are taller than other people, some people are shorter, some are trans and some aren't. None of that categorically excludes trans women from womanhood, so I don't see why that would preclude them from entering into women's events. It comes back to a fundamental distrust of trans women as containing some vaguely cited percentage of lying cisgender men.
For a bad-faith actor to take advantage of the current system, they'd have to transition medically and socially, wait for years (in Laurel Hubbard, the potential first trans Olympian's case, at least five -- she quit in 2001, transitioned in 2012, then began competing in 2017), and then stay that way for as long as it would require to convince people that you've fully transitioned (could be decades or the rest of their life, depending on how they'd want their legacy to live on). The incentive structure is just completely out of whack. You'd have to fight tooth and nail for something you don't actually identify with, and live with the physical and psychological effects for years or possibly decades, plus living with the general harassment people would give you for perceiving you as trans and for trying to compete in the Olympics, and then what? You think with how stringent the IOC tries to be with doping that they wouldn't figure that one out? You think the backlash wouldn't be absolutely enormous?
What about this is "worst" case, anyway? We might get our first trans person who's even allowed to compete this year. It's a totally disproportionate response.
What a tough problem to solve. My current thought on the gender identity issue is that society should default to the absolute minimum amount of categorizing people by their gender. What you identify as only matters to the extent that we divide people. Nobody would care if you used the women's bathroom, if such a thing did not exist. And when it is absolutely necessary for a distinction to exist, then we can spend the effort required to justify why, and along with that justification we should be able to clearly identify how it applies to transgender individuals.
This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too.
I don't know. I don't have a really good answer I feel comfortable with. I do think a significant part of the problem, however, is not ideological, it is technological. It's way, way too easy to pile on with very little effort.
> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too.
You realize having a woman's bathroom was a thing many early feminist groups fought for right?
> This would mean throwing out a lot of the more epheremeral complaints "I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why? Let's fix that part, then. Because there are going to be scary women too.
Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a woman might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 men in it?
It took a lot of mental self-awareness on my part, and reading a lot of such statements, to recognise how strongly I've been mentally programmed (brainwashed) by society to think of men as evil, and not even flinch when I used to read statements like the one above (implying / assuming that men are, by default, extremely violent and dangerous, and that everyone is justified by judging every man as such).
It's easier to see if you replace "men" (currently a non-favoured demographic) by e.g. "black" (currently a favoured demographic).
> Do you recognize that there are actual reasons that a white person might not want to go into a bathroom with 5 black people in it?
Classes of people are different from each other. That's not to say that one person is better than another. It's also not saying that any class of person is better than another. It is saying that all people are different, and there are classes of people, such as men, women, blacks, whites, trans, cis, and all sorts of classifications that differ in aggregate.
The reason we humans can get through life is by discriminating, in the sense of distinguishing, classes of people. This is NOT prejudice but is sensible. After all, there is a difference between discrimination and prejudice.
Please consider this: "Honey, stay here. Don't play with those 5 men at the end of the block." Are all strangers bad? Are all men bad? Are older people bad? Are all people at the end of the block bad? No, of course not. But, we need to remain sensible to circumstances and sensitive to people's situations.
I am a man, and I don't want to go in to the same bathroom as 5 other men, especially not of they are a group and drunk. The reason is simple: I have found it much more common for men to take pleasure in having power over other people by threat of violence.
They are assholes of course, but that shit is pretty common. I would even claim that anyone that says otherwise probably never did more than 4 pub rounds. Or went to a public school.
There’s also actual data that black people commit an outsized percentage of violent crime in the US yet any statement like this with “black” substituted for “men” would be downvoted into oblivion. The common argument is that it’s really society’s mistreatment of black people which is to blame for the criminality. Why is that same argument not applied here?
Let's concede your argument that Black men are more dangerous than white men (I don't think so, at least not due to genetic differences). At best the data shows a factor of 2 more violent.
Men are more violent than women by 2 orders of magnitude. And, unlike your example, there is no doubt its physiological in nature
We have testicles and therefore are frothing with testosterone. And it's not unique to humans; farmers castrate bulls to make them docile in an ox team.
> I am a man, and I don't want to go in to the same bathroom as 5 other men, especially not of they are a group and drunk. The reason is simple: I have found it much more common for men to take pleasure in having power over other people by threat of violence.
Five drunk guys at the urinal? Heck, there's reason enough to avoid that just because they're liable to piss all over your shoes.
This is a sore subject, but the difference here is that rape is an evolutionary artifact left over from when it was advantageous (from a reproductive standpoint) to do so. It was, quite frankly, an evolutionary advantage for men to rape women. I personally doubt this urge is different based on race. In fact, women’s fear or rape is one of the only times I find it acceptable to use phrasing like you described.
We are already so far into hating men that we’re fine with basically saying the desire to rape is evolutionally wired into all male brains? No complaints about sexism or anything?
You can acknowledge that premise without ‘hating men’. I am a man, and I have no problems admitting that rape was a legitimate tactic for our ancestors to pass their genetics along. It’s a fact that we’ll have to deal with. On the other hand, when it comes to issues of race, I’m hard pressed to believe there are massive evolutionary/biological differences that need to be accounted for.
Rape was a legitimate tactic for females to pass their genes along too, because if your male kid inherits rapist tendencies he’s more likely to procreate. So female brains really evolved in such a way that they want to be raped, and that’s why seductive clothing and rape kinks exist.
The point being: evolutionary biology is great for rationalizing just about any theory and therefore isn’t really a solid foundation for making conclusions about large swathes of the population.
Putting forward an argument like this doesn’t add much except for more male self hate. I don’t think you should have no problem “admitting” this.
Your point about using evolutionary theories to justify absurd arguments has merit - however the example you provided is a bad one. There are many species of animals in which males engage in rape [1] and almost none (that I can find) in which the females do.
Any way, every step we take towards admitting the biological differences that exist between men and women, is a step towards a more healthy society. Getting so angry over this is unhealthy.
I think you misread my example. I’m also not sure where I come across as angry.
> admitting the biological differences that exist between men and women, is a step towards a more healthy society.
Asserting to 50% of the population that they are, by nature, literal rapists, when the vast majority will never commit anything even close to such a crime, is not a sign of a healthy society.
> Asserting to 50% of the population that they are, by nature, literal rapists
That’s not the assertion here at all. The assertion is that men are more likely to commit rape, and that women have a _valid_ fear of this happening because of purely biological phenomena.
Calling a man a rapist, and telling him he is more likely to commit rape than a female is, are two completely different things. The healthy society I was referring to does not find anyone guilty of a crime they never committed, but acknowledges the fact that certain crimes are committed more often because of biological reasons.
Right, we're calling them "more likely rapists" instead of "rapists". That's still not a healthy message. Or would you also call black people "more likely murderers"?
I think you're mistaking 'healthy messages' with 'the truth'. Political correctness often separates the two. "Men are more likely rapists than women are" is simply a statistical fact that you are going have to come to terms with. Also, if you haven't understood why differences between men and women can't be compared to differences between black and white people, then there is no point in continuing this, to be honest.
> differences between men and women can't be compared to differences between black and white people
Why not? You never argued this before.
> "Men are more likely rapists than women are" is simply a statistical fact that you are going have to come to terms with.
If you can't be bothered to explain the above, maybe you want to tell me instead: did you oppose the firing of James Damore due to his memo in which he argued "statistical facts that people are going have to come to terms with"?
What? Women have all kinds of rational reasons to be wary of strange men they don't know, especially in a secluded place like a bathroom. This isn't because "men are evil" or that all men are violent and dangerous, it's because some men are violent and dangerous, and even if that's only 1% of men, it only takes one violent man to ruin your life, so women don't like to take risks. The same isn't true in reverse because women don't pose a physical threat to men in anything resembling the same way.
I'm male. My relationships with women improved dramatically once I realised just how safety-conscious women need to be on a regular basis, at a level that men don't experience at all.
There are other solutions than what you're describing. I've been in a number of bars with unsexed bathrooms, where the sinks are all in the open and there are private secure individual stalls. I don't know that this is the best solution, but it does remove the gender distinction from the bathrooms and it certainly isn't "a bathroom with 5 men in it".
I recognize that. But isn’t that also a form of discrimination? The suggestion is that all men are capable of being perverts, using their camera phones inappropriately, bathroom harassment, etc.
To build gender-specific bathrooms because of that generalization of men is hypocritical of the entire gender discrimination movement. Reverse discrimination.
I agree except that I don't think we understand which ways of dividing ourselves are really biologically (including psychologically) important and which are just cultural and can be changed with the right environment. Culture often encodes biological needs that we don't really understand.
I would rephrase it as:
"Culture often encodes biological needs that we are not sure we did understand because nothing like that was written down and today we have a very good idea of our biological needs and can probably design more consistent or at least more utilitarian rules of culture"
>"I feel unsafe if there is a man in the bathroom." Why?
Because men (biological males if we're being pedantic) are statistically overwhelmingly more likely to commit rape and other forms of sexual assault (and other violent crimes) and to be horny creepy perverted sex pests in general. Add to that the fact that men are much more physically strong than women (a ~5th percentile male is about as strong as a ~95th percentile female) and the options a woman has to defend themselves against such a creep are severely limited.
But if you insist on creating a New Soviet Woman that isn't afraid of men, be my guest. Just do it far away from me in a different country, please.
From a statistical perspective, black Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than white. Yet we got rid of white/colored restrooms, and claiming "I'm afraid of blacks" is rightly considered racist and offensive.
The counter argument to this is that African Americans are more likely to commit crimes because they are, on average, more poor because of systemic racism, not because they are biologically predisposed to committing crimes.
Are you saying that it would be okay to have segregated restrooms if someone could prove a biological basis for the somewhat higher violent crime rate among black Americans?
Because if you're not saying that, I don't see how this is a counter argument.
If you could find statistical evidence (controlled for income) that shows black Americans commit _insert violent crime_ at 9x [1] the rate of other races, then I would absolutely be in favor of taking steps that mitigated that crime happening. That's an extremely controversial thing to say, but the point is moot - as far as I am aware nobody has done such an analysis, and nobody wants to. However, there are plenty of species in which the males rape the women [2] because such a thing is simply advantageous from an evolutionary standpoint.
I want to unpack that statement to make sure I understand you correctly.
Did you just say that if statistics show that black Americans commit violent crimes at a much higher rate than whites, controlling for income, you would be in favor of racially segregated restrooms?
I personally find the idea of segregated restrooms to be incredibly offensive, no matter what the cause of this graph:
Looks like the homicide offender rate for blacks is 5X-8X for whites, depending on year. It isn't broken down by income but from my cursory knowledge of the statistics, that's not going to make the effect go away.
We could explore the root causes of this but I really don't think they matter. Segregated restrooms have no place in a civilized society, full stop.
As an aside, there are also plenty of species where females eat the males after mating. The problem with evolutionary arguments is that there's plenty of examples to choose from to advance any claim you'd like to make. We aren't those species.
I never said anything about racial segregation - you put those words in my mouth. I said “ I would absolutely be in favor of taking steps that mitigated that crime happening”. Whether that be education, support groups, whatever, I don’t know, this is an outlandish hypothetical scenario. Society settled on separate bathrooms for men and women because it’s convenient. Men use urinals, women don’t. Women need trash bins near toilets for tampons. Women don’t want to pull their pants down around men. Separating bathrooms was a relatively small concession to make.
> It isn't broken down by income but from my cursory knowledge of the statistics, that's not going to make the effect go away.
That is a huge assumption to make. In every study ever done on the matter, there are huge correlations between crime and income. Massive. Enough to explain the chart you showed. I really don’t want this to become footnote fight over statistics, but crime is definitely correlated with income, and black people make much less money on average in the US.
IMO bringing statistical likelihoods into it is a dangerous road to go down and could lead to some seriously problematic outcomes.
For example, what if people in certain socioeconomic groups are more likely to commit rape? Or people of certain ethnicities?
Would it make sense to require them to use separate bathrooms? Or is it only ok to slice and dice the stats based on certain characteristics? To me it's kind of a scary idea— just because a certain demographic is more likely to commit a crime doesn't mean we should make life difficult for all members of that demographic. Even if their facilities are, in theory, separate but equal.
My rule for any of these things are all or nothing, in the margins lie chaos. I think a private business should be able to have as many or as few bathrooms for as many categories and groups as they feel like. But if you're going to block them from doing that, you'd better block them from splitting up bathrooms on any basis, otherwise all sorrs of special interest groups and lobbying groups will be looking to make special exceptions and cutouts that help their group and hurt their enemies, it's inevitable.
All bathrooms should be a single private stall, first come first serve. If you need more than one stall, then install them.
On average females take twice as long males in the bathroom. Sometimes some events have a disproportionate ratio of male/females. Both are evidence that having the same number of stalls for each of the two genders is wrong - even before talk about more than two genders.
Can't violent men just enter these bathrooms or dress up as women anyway? Rape is already a crime, no matter what gender you are. I don't see what a bathroom bill would meaningfully solve. Plus bathroom bills have already been shown to force trans men into women's washrooms.
Sure they still can, but without such a bill the women in the bathroom can't take actions like calling security until the man actually starts doing something violent/criminal/creepy/whatever. With such a bill their mere presence is enough.
I sympathise. Sadly society seems to be moving the other way recently: my gym and pool both have significant women's only hours and classes. My previous employer had women only sessions with the ceo to promote more women faster.
There was a brief moment a few years ago when the government here (limey Britian) said people would be allowed to pick their gender without involving doctors/bureaucrats. I liked the idea, it's equality on steroids. Long queue for the ladies? Identify as a man for 5 minutes! Accidently go to the gym at 7 on a Wednesday? Be a girl for 90 minutes so you can work out!
Let us say that the OP believes in reincarnation and believes that his soul is black, used to live in black bodies, and was mistakenly reincarnated into a white body on this occasion, but still feels black and carries memories of being black.
Quite a lot of people on Earth believe in reincarnation and would find such a situation entirely possible. The question is, is a Western country obliged to respect a religious argument like this?
Maybe yes. After all, race is said to be a social construct. Why not add reincarnation into the mix.
This person willfully admitted they are not black, which is far different than your criteria of someone who "believes that his soul is black, used to live in black bodies, and was mistakenly reincarnated into a white body on this occasion, but still feels black and carries memories of being black." The analogy falls apart because the stance is based on trolling, not actual beliefs.
But I hate identifying so at work because I don't want to be "the gay guy". I don't want to be promoted early to boost the company stats. I don't want people thinking I was promoted for that reason either.
I don't know why anyone would want those things. I'm gay, but I'm here because I'm good at my job and I work hard. I'm taking your bonus, but not using my genitals, using my impressive mathematical skills!
I am very happy to just be dumped into the same pool as everyone else (metaphorically and for swimming)
I don't think the story here is about a backlash to gender ideology on campus per se: it's about a backlash to certain protest tactics that get used a lot.
Namely, the practice of protesting a respected lecturer whose ideas you disagree with, and pressuring the administration to support your position with a formal denunciation so strong it starts looking libelous against the lecturer, damaging their career and sometimes their personal lives.
Sooner or later, this is bound to backfire legally, so the administration has to be worried about it becoming widespread. It also changes the power dynamic in the university, making administrators defer to students out of intimidation, and probably creating a lot of enmity in the process. Until convinced otherwise, I'm viewing this as an example of the administration trying to reassert itself, and this particular gender ideology case just happens to be the proxy battle for that.
I'm surprised that the article isn't more sports-centric.
This "battle," has been mostly an elite-ish, university-centric one this far. Gender studies departments were always known as bastions of avant garde quirkiness. The Germaine Greare's of the world have always been at war with someone, name-calling and whatnot. Theatrical protests aren't new, and neither is their intensity.
Leakage into the real world was indirect at best, and leakage into the elite world was usually in the form of recreational rhetoric. When ordinary people hear about it, it's usually from the politically polar... reaching for examples of crazy social progressives.
Sports though... sports is something people actually care about. That's where "gender ideology" is now, and this is where things start to get serious... where we see what sticks and what doesn't.
Prisons and shelters... those are bystanders, one way or another.
^ I'm not talking about the actual changes or lack thereof affecting trans people. I'm talking about the war over abstract philosophical points.. which manifest in specific areas such as prisons, sports, etc. The "fat man on a rail cart" scenarios.
The battle has very much leaked off-campus, and not just in sports. One intense area of disagreement involves the rights of trans children to medically transition without their parents' knowledge or consent. Research consistently shows that most children who identity as trans revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]. However, more states are now enabling children to seek and obtain irreversible gender transition care on their own, without parental consent, to include surgery and hormone therapy [1]:
>[Seattle] minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for “sensitive” conditions, which include both “gender dysphoria” and “gender-affirming care.” Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of “gender-affirming treatments” from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.
>Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up.
Similarly, in a Canadian family court case involving a 14 year old trans child [2]:
>Attempting to persuade AB to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria; addressing AB by his birth name; referring to AB as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.
In the event where the trans child de-transitions post-puberty, these procedures may leave them with severe body dismorphia or render them unable to produce or bear children.
I don't have kids (yet), but I had body dismorphia as a young adult. It almost killed me, but I grew out of it in time. Fortunately, it wasn't the kind that compelled me to seek life-altering medical procedures. I fear that my future child may suffer from a similar case of temporary body dismorphia, seek and obtain permanent life-altering procedures which I am legally unable to prevent, and later come to deeply regret the damage done to their body by these procedures. Again, the best data we have on trans kids shows that most choose to revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0].
I didn't mean literally. However, like prison & shelter issues, this is something that most people don't encounter. Most often, you'd hear about it from political polars as a "look how crazy these guys are."
It's never going to rival sports as a populist issue.
while this article focusses on the gender ideology issues, IMHO the censorship in universites is on a wider range of issues, with the common denominator being the viewpoints espoused in far-left circles (not passing judgement here on whether they are right or wrong)
Enforced group-think is going to be the death of these universities.
Funnily enough, I spoke earlier this week with an academic whose concern about recent developments was that legal/policy papers he was writing for government departments were much more likely to be unpublished or partially redacted than in previous decades, for reasons which had nothing to do with culture warring.
Easy to see why governments would prefer the public believe the real threat to university research was a handful of students picketing the intentionally provocative...
Well then you're both 1) of the same political mindset of the majority and therefore less likely to notice and 2) unwilling to take the social temperature of such things because it's obviously happening [1] and there is a mountain of empirical evidence to support the fact that students and faculty are wary of speaking their minds.
I very seriously doubt that a middle-aged white male economics professor (who grew up in the sticks in North Dakota, no less) is of the same political mindset of "the majority".
> students and faculty are wary of speaking their minds
If you're worried about disapproval of others, being an academic is the wrong industry for you. If academic freedom and the first amendment aren't enough to protect your speech, you'd really be in trouble working in any other industry.
Now if you're going to claim that in society at large you have to use restraint when talking, and that you'll be attacked by people of all political views, I'd probably agree. That's pretty different from what you wrote.
By expunging, shaming, expelling, disinviting, cancelling, eschewing, not offering positions, denying grants, avoiding publication, demoting those that don't meet the requirements of a radical orthodoxy.
Noam Chomsky of all people (!), and a bunch of other staunchly centre-left luminaries had to take out a full page ad in Harper's to make the point. [2]
How far would an ugly trend have to exhibit itself in order for these fairly respectable and otherwise mild mannered people to not only 1) notice but 2) act and then 3) make a big show out of it in a worldwide signal?
They tried to cancel Stephen Pinker [2] for postulating that the problem of Law Enforcement in the USA is a generally overbearing justice system, not necessarily specific to one race, although conceding that's a problem. For that utterly reasonable statement, they tried to remove his Chair and participation a bunch of groups. He was fine, but 'they came for him' and were he to have been less prominent, 'they' would have won.
It's intellectual cowardice and social bullying by angry people. My belief is that it's not even ideological at the end of the day, rather, it's the petty expression of power by those who've never had it before and who were transgressed themselves at some earlier point in their lives.
The late (devout Christian!) William Stuntz wrote an entire book (in front of me right now) about the overbearing justice system and and never got cancelled for it.
Mostly because it is a rejection of first principles thinking, which is a key tool in the toolbelt of critical thinking, supposedly part of any university's mandate.
One of my favorite sci-fi authors is Ian M. Banks (discussed here on HN with regularity). His Culture series describe a post-scarcity interstellar society of human(oid)s who among many, many things can change their own gender just by thinking about it. After suitable body alteration time, you can be a male, female, or even something in between (that happens to be important part of one of the characters in one of the books), with most citizens transferring back and forth at least once to act as both a father and a mother at least once in their long lifetime.
A society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other; within the population, over time, there will gradually be greater and greater numbers of the sex it is more rewarding to be, and so pressure for change - within society rather than the individuals - will presumably therefore build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity is established.
Until our science invents this, this is a great thought experiment to conduct.
The Ian M. Banks quote equates gender and sex. That's probably a product of when it was written (1994) and I don't think too badly of Banks for writing it, however, in the contemporary dialogue, these are not equivalent terms. I caution you against getting caught up in an uninteresting semantic argument here: the question isn't one of definitions, but rather whether the phenomena classified as gender (clothing, hairstyles, etc.) are or should be tied to the phenomena classified as sex (genitalia and/or chromosomes). I won't comment my opinion on that as I don't have the time to do it justice, but I will say that to ignore the fact that those phenomena are very much in debate, misses a pretty big point:
That point being, that you can actually change your presentation of gender with relative ease. Norah Vincent did it (dressed as and pretended to be a man) for a year and wrote the book Self Made Man about her experience. The fact that the majority of people never change their presentation of gender and those who do change their presentation tend to feel strongly about it, says that there's more complexity to the choice of how to dress or style your hair than an economic cost/benefit analysis. The fact is, people want to be their gender even while claiming that their gender is treated poorly, and in the case of trans people, choosing to present in a way that is obviously treated poorly. If the hypothesis that people will gravitate to the gender presentation which is treated most positively were true, few people would choose to be the gender that gets spit on in the grocery store (happened to a trans friend of mine).
This won't happen though. It reminds me of 'Star Trek' futurism where we crudely apply some neat technology to our own circumstances, without thinking about the real dynamic changes that would come about if the tech did exist.
If we ever get to the point of this level of technology, then the notion of 'gender' would be completely arcane.
People would be 'growing' wings, tails, horns, extra limbs, extra large brains, fur, hoofs, cross breeding with animals, creating new species in petrie dishes.
The 'regular humans' in that culture would be viewed like we view Amish people or Mennonites.
This seems very interesting, however instinctively I would have thought otherwise, meaning a society would tend towards the most rewarding, to the extreme of resulting in a non viable civilization. If you can change at will, why pick up the losing side?
As much as I would like it to be different, I wouldn't trust the human race with this capability.
You may also enjoy some of John Varley's early work (the short stories and books about the Eight Worlds). Physical sex changes (by cloning a new body and plopping the brain in, plus some extra "science magic" to make that work) are routine.
I worked for a company that hired 4 trans women (out of 7 people total) during a "diversity hiring" push, then touted the diversity of the hires. All of the trans women had been raised and had gone through university as white men, earning comp sci degrees, before transitioning in their mid- to late-twenties. While I do not debate that those individuals represent a type of diversity in the current company makeup, it always struck me that they likely received the same privileges that most white males do in technical degree programs. As competent programmers, I'm glad they found good jobs. Did they represent diversity hires? I still wonder how HR departments take this into consideration when pushing for diversity.
I think meaning of the term diversity is often twisted into a binary outcome. If a company is 65% white and 35% Chinese is that more diverse than a company that is 70% white, 10% Chinese, 10% Indian, and 10% Vietnamese?
Often, the above two examples would be flattened to just 35% or 30% Asian. But even my example is very reductive - China, for example, has many dozens of ethnic groups.
I think 'diversity' is a very hard thing to quantify, which makes it more difficult to measure the effectiveness of initiatives to increase diversity.
Can anyone point me towards better methods of measuring diversity? If society or a particular organization wishes to increase diversity, it seems important to be able to measure it with more nuance.
> Can anyone point me towards better methods of measuring diversity?
It depends on what you want to achieve, but for companies, the goal is probably diversity of belief, opinion, culture, and experience. That way you can have a good spread of ideas and increase your odds of being able to understand your customers (who are probably also diverse).
So you could run anonymized surveys of your staff asking things like "have you ever changed a baby's diaper", "do you play any instruments", "do you speak the same language at home as your grandparents do", "if you could only have one carbohydrate would you choose rice, pasta, bread, or potatoes", etc, and then measure the entropy of the responses.
> it always struck me that they likely received the same privileges that most white males do in technical degree programs.
They also completed those degrees while going through a very intense personal and medical struggle that likely added significant challenges that very few others have faced or would even be aware of.
> We don't operate our universities on the heckler's veto.
I've seen a few videos from various Universities where invited speakers are shouted down because of supposed wrong views. But then it isn't the heckler's veto if their views are wrong or what?
What's weird is that not long ago is popular to say "I disagree with everything you have to say, but I'd die for your right to say it". It's amazing how times have changed from that shared belief.
The videos you haven't seen are the ones that were never made because the wrong-view person was stopped from even giving their scheduled talk via "de-platforming".
Among a certain sect of internet libertarians, maybe. And we saw that the result of that was the proliferation of communities on popular websites dedicated to legal but sexually suggestive pictures of girls (ex. /r/jailbait on Reddit), communities dedicated to voyeuristic photography, vitriolic hate against people who are overweight, etc.
I'm sorry but Evelyn Beatrice Hall first wrote those words in 1906, as a description of the beliefs of Voltaire, who died in 1778 and whose ideas were extremely mainstream at the time the US was founded.
These ideas long predate the internet and the Libertarian political party and to box them in as such and dismiss them carelessly is extremely intellectually dishonest and bordering on flamebait.
Additionally, if your best evidence against freedom of speech is Reddit, I suggest you retool your arguments from scratch.
Following on nemo44x's response, we also don't really have much written evidence to the contrary.
Literacy rates in late colonial America were 85-90% north of Virginia and around 60% in Virginia and south of it. If large numbers of people were disagreeing, they surely weren't writing about it.
Western Liberalism is a self correcting, evolving system of ideas and rigorous analysis of what is considered knowledge. So yes, per the people that were considered "the people" during those times, this belief was very strongly held indeed.
It was popular to say, but I challenge the idea that people have somehow become less tolerant of speech they disagree with than, say, Christians in the 1980s or the US government during the Red Scare.
They were wrong then, and these people are wrong now. Unfortunately, they also have an indelible record of the internet to hunt down those they don't like for words uttered back to their pubescent years.
Someone having a right to say something doesn't mean they are entitled to every platform to broadcast it.
Not everyone can go and speak at a University, there is not enough time and space for that to be viable, just as not everyone can demand to be broadcast on TV.
If you can't get enough support at a University to speak, the public square and the soapbox are always at your disposal. The government can't arrest you. That is the freedom of expression that is protected.
You are talking about enforced speech, where private individuals must listen to a speaker, and/or use their platform to amplify the speaker's words. It is a violation of their freedom of expression to tell them they cannot refuse or protest against what someone else wishes to say.
The person in the article was invited by the university. This isn't a random person demanding to be heard. This is the university succumbing to pressure from a small group to ban a guest from sharing their ideas with the student body that choose to attend.
The students have a right to freedom of expression in protest.
The University should absolutely be providing speakers that challenge the student's views and offer ideas they may not agree with, but that's an educational decision, not a free speech one.
If the student body wants to lobby the University not to accept you as a speaker, that's their freedom of the speech, and it is up to the University to weigh that against the potential educational value.
For example, to start somewhere obvious, someone coming in to talk about how your friends are subhuman doesn't provide a lot of educational value, and students rightly don't want their tuition spent enabling it.
Don't like it, use your freedom of speech to demonstrate enough value to your ideas the University and student body are willing to listen. Students are at University for an education, and they have a right to say what they find valuable and demand value from the University. Denying them that is limiting their freedom of expression.
I think another point of the article is the masses of silent people are starting become less silent. Their politeness has been mistaken for agreement.
The university should only allow speakers that the students agree with? That’s sort of ridiculous and an abdication of the university’s responsibility to expose their students to challenging and possibly hurtful intellectual thought. I listened to no shortage of intellectuals that criticized white men in western society in many ways for example. And that’s Ok if it’s thoughtful and with a point, however idiotic I might think it is.
The university has the job of determining what this level is. This speaker wasn’t claiming anyone was subhuman. And you don’t have to attend - it’s simple.
> The university should only allow speakers that the students agree with?
I was very clear that was not what I was saying, I said literally the opposite, so it seems like you didn't even bother reading my post.
> The university has the job of determining what this level is.
Exactly, and they decided that it wasn't valuable enough. I think they were right, you may well disagree. Either way, it isn't "academic freedom" under attack—as this is framed.
There will always be people pissed they don't get that platform for their idea—more people want a platform than there is time and budget to offer. It is a decision about the value of exposing students to the idea weighed against the cost of doing so.
If other students feel they are being denied value, they are free to go to the University and push back. Of course, we all know where this is going, just as with the reactionary response to homosexuality, it will become increasingly unpopular because the cat is out of the bag: people have trans loved ones and don't want them to be discriminated against.
You have cognitive dissonance in your thoughts then. On one hand you claim the students should be able to protest the speakers that the administration invites and on the other hand you suggest the administration should decide which intellectuals are educationally valuable. But yet, after the administration picked a speaker a minority of students protested and that same administration revoked the invitation under pressure. This suggests the minority of students, not the administration, decided what was of value.
This is a problem akin to letting a spoiled child instructing their parent just what’s for dinner. An abdication of duty.
There’s a difference from wanting discrimination against people and having a forum on very real issues regarding an ideology that claims a special access to a certain Knowledge. In a scientific liberal institution, no one is irrefutable and no one has the final say pending new evidence.
Of course the current motif is to dismiss scientific liberalism as racist and suspicious. You only have to read critical theory literature (race, queer, colonial, etc) , which oddly is not receptive to criticism itself.
Plenty of TERFs consider it a slur and negative. JK Rowling, for example, wrote: "...activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF."
The term "TERF" is exclusively used by people who attack and criticise "TERFs". It's never said without hostility, and it's often accompanied by explicit calls for violence (try searching Twitter for "kill TERFs" and "punch TERFs".)
So yes, it certainly is an offensive slur - those who use it invariably mean it an offensive way.
In a shared space, should the people that share that space have the right to exclude someone if it makes the majority feel unsafe? What about if it makes just one of them feel unsafe?
If one person says they feel unsafe, should they be asked to leave instead of the newcomer, with whom the majority are ambivalent?
Basically what I’m getting at is what’s the algebra / game theory of creating safe spaces based on tolerance and intolerance?
When ever I see someone talk about “safe space”, I ask myself, “safe space for which ideas?”
The things that are safe to discuss are different at thanksgiving dinner, a college designated safe-space, a therapist’s office, or a church meeting. There is no such thing as a universal “safe space” for all ideas.
Ostracizing people based solely on one own feeling sits squarely against the whole concept of presumption of innocence, it's the apotheosis of prejudices against coexistence.
Presumption of innocence is a legal presumption, and it exists there for very good reasons that would take too long to get into. Requiring such a presumption outside of a legal context in the way you're suggesting would undermine a different fundamental right, the freedom of association. People should have the right to associate (and disassociate) with whomever they like for whatever reasons they like, no matter how arbitrary or petty.
a and b want to associate, a want to associate with c, c don't want to associate with b, b doesn't care as long as he can associate with a, as per the grandparent comment statement, given that neither a, b and c did anything reprehensible yet.
everyone is free to act, but still a problem presents itself. what's the more just option for person a according to ethics and morals? that's the core of the conundrum, the right to associate and disassociate impacts other people freedoms, as such is the nature of interpersonal relations; of course individual have their individual freedom, but should A act on C prejudice, or in other word should C demand limits on A freedom (i.e. cancel culture)
mind you, the issue is about C own personal perceived feeling of unsafeness, not on B having done anything against C.
I think we should accommodate trans people as much as we can, up to and including letting them be legally be considered the sex of their belief as long as they have transitioned to some degree, by taking hormones or surgery.
However, I disagree with getting rid of biological sex. It’s absurd. Even down to the genetic level there is a biological definition of male and female and to say there isn’t is anti-science. We shouldn’t destroy science over this.
Because of that I also don’t believe that trans women should be allowed to compete in competitive sports especially those that have dedicated their lives towards it. To put it in perspective, Serena Williams, one of the greatest if not the greatest tennis athlete of all time. She and Venus Williams were destroyed in her prime by the 200th ranked tennis player. The male tennis player felt like they were equivalent to a 600th ranked male player. The point being, you can’t make up for some genetic differences between men and women.
>I think we should accommodate trans people as much as we can, up to and including letting them be legally be considered the sex of their belief as long as they have transitioned to some degree, by taking hormones or surgery.
See as they make up a smaller minority than most minority people in the US, I personally think that helping poor and working class people first would uplift them a lot quicker than letting trans people be trans. I mean it's great an all you get to be your own gender, but everybody will despise you knowing you got that way by tax payer money. If you got that way through working and paid for it yourself but were able to via worker protections and rights, the cultural stigma around it would be significantly far less vitriolic.
I don’t think there’s an if/else clause. Allowing trans women to legally be claimed as women is really just an adjustment in a database, as well as just treating people the way they want to be treated. It doesn’t cost anything to be respectful to people regardless of who they are.
>up to and including letting them be legally be considered the sex of their belief as long as they have transitioned to some degree
What you're suggesting is something simple. What the parent was suggesting was 1% of the population multiplied by $40k+ in surgeries and drugs leading up to $120million for funding people transitioning meanwhile telling lower class people who work at crappy general labor jobs "yeah just pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
Universally we can agree, helping all of the working class helps out all minorities seeing as most minorities are...working class.
> I think we should accommodate trans people as much as we can, up to and including letting them be legally be considered the sex of their belief as long as they have transitioned to some degree, by taking hormones or surgery.
Why do you think it's any of your business what other people do with their body?
> To put it in perspective, Serena Williams, one of the greatest if not the greatest tennis athlete of all time. She and Venus Williams were destroyed in her prime by the 200th ranked tennis player.
Looks like she is only the 201th greatest tennis player.
One thing I find very troubling about articles like this is the tendency to frame hot political topics as essentially academic, while they are in fact very practical. Across the US and England, trans people are being denied access to health care, medically necessary operations, and effective therapeutic treatment. But this article doesn't discuss those issues, it only discusses the ramifications of this political reality.
This article also doesn't discuss the plight of the Uyghurs, bee colony collapse or the atmosphere of Venus. Because that's not what this article is about.
The plight of the Uyghurs does not relate to the political oppression of trans people. Political oppression of trans people is inextricable from the discussion of anti trans ideology on college campuses. To make an analogy, this article is like writing about the Uyghur genocide, but instead of discussing concentration campus or the Chinese government, focusing instead on one individual who wasnt allowed to speak because they said "China has done nothing wrong." Do you see the problem? Instead of focusing on actual tragedy, I have derailed the conversation by framing the plight of this poor pro China individual as the real issue. Now the comments are debating the subjects of academic free speech and cancel culture instead of the real issue at hand.
My view on gender is the same as anything else. We should accept the cards we're dealt and focus on our strengths.
Nobody is making you focus on your problems, you can choose what to focus on. If you were born as the wrong gender, why would you focus on that? You will probably never win that battle. You can never be satisfied because you will never have what most other people have. You should try to focus on other things where you actually have a reasonable chance of success; of feeling satisfied.
Most people are deepy dissatisfied with certain aspects of themselves and if you ignore these things long enough and focus on other things intensely, eventually, after a decade or two you may stop caring about your complexes completely.
While this adopting this positive attitude will improve anyone's situation it might in fact only lead to a local Optima in the wellbeing of certain people and I find it unfair to restrict them away from a path leading to better solution for them.
Not everyone works as you do.
In my case, I focused away from my personal complexes for so long that nowadays I don't care about them at all. The negative emotion is completely gone. When I was younger, I was obsessed with my appearance and the sound of my voice. Thinking about them constantly and always feeling terrible about myself 24/7. Stuck in a loop. This led to a constant sense of self-loathing and kept my self-esteem low which probably made things worse.
I had to bury myself in something difficult for years and really struggle at it in order to escape these negative feedback loops.
I think the courts are the right place for this battle, some fundamental free speech rights for both sides need to be enforced. I didn't think this would the necessary in academia but with universities turning into service industries it seems inevitable.
As an adult return student in college currently, while I could engage in "free speech," the college is also free to expel me for creating a hostile environment for my views (I'm speaking generally here).
Everybody hates Illinois Nazi's. But if a group them sprouted up at your school, can you really say it's fair freedom of speech-wise to shut them down at a publicly funded institution? No you can't. Not only that, but instructors can at whim grade you based on if they like you as opposed to legitimately getting good grades.
Ultimately it just creates a system to be gamed by those wise enough to survive it. It's never been about education in the US. It's always been about "who can navigate the waters without getting labeled."
It’s not really a choice, rather than an often very difficult process of discovery, if they manage to accept it at all. A good friend of mine struggled for years with their self acceptance and I only realized that in restrospect. But coming out liberated them and an avalanche of happiness, productivity and positivity happened.
It’s a real struggle, and by belittling or ignoring it we can only make it worse. It’s time to listen, respect and embrace.
You shouldn't assume that nonbinary and trans people "choose" their identity. They might choose to acknowledge it, to themselves or to others. At least, that's been my experience. It was a realization, not a choice.
so you can't gain an identity by choosing to do certain things? I can't identify as a runner because I didn't inherit the genes that make me in the top 0.1% of all runners?
excellent to see. its been one of the more Orwellian trends I've seen in the US in recent years. I wouldnt say its even a top 5 or top 10 problem, but it is bad. its been increasingly unpleasant having to always worry whether any given sentence or idea shared on social media will be jumped on by an indoctrinated online mob, blind to all nuance.
LGBT+ are humans. And humans rights are for all. I tend to ignore articles about squabbling but groups influence change and adaptation is key to getting along [1]
I learned new terms in the article like TERF and gender-critical. I'm sure there will be more jargon and terminology to fill the DEI consultancy industry. Not sure of the downstream effects but so far my USB cables are not gender fluid, but maybe that is not a good thing. Meanwhile, the globe is warming.
A relative of mine taught at a small art college a few years ago.
The situation for college students, at least a certain segment, is that people with the transgender identity are far more common than they once were. That's the base reality, not the product of any ideology. And whatever it's point of origin, this reality for these isn't going to change.
Now, you can object to various qualities of current gender ideologies and I'm not necessary uncritical myself. But these ideologies also mechanisms for accommodating the ability of transgender people existing minimally in the world. If someone intends to simply discard entirely these processes, they are essentially taking aim at this ability of transgender people to minimally exist.
It's active question, to say the least. Transpeople today have a significant and growing chance of being murdered for being trans [1]. The attention put on this by the right wing also has resulted in violence masculine-appearing women.
It should be noted that the Economist was talking about debate concerning whether transwomen should be put in men's or in women's prisons. How much do you think that's a matter of survival for these people?
I'd love to see the details of gender ideology, the complex choices involved with hormones and surgery, etc debated more deeply but when the "debate" allows the question "should we allow these people to continue living?", you will see people willing to completely shut down discussion.
>The situation for college students, at least a certain segment, is that people with the transgender identity are far more common than they once were. That's the base reality, not the product of any ideology. And whatever it's point of origin, this reality for these isn't going to change.
A significant number of people who identity as trans later return to their original gender identity. This is known as "detransitioning:"
It's a controversial topic, as many trans people see the existence of detrans people as a threat to the validity of their own identity. For their part, many detrans people resent the medical practitioners who they feel didn't adequately provide council or obtain informed consent before facilitating their transition, sometimes involving expensive, painful, and irreversible medical procedures. Some research also indicates most (!) children who identify as trans abandon this identity post-puberty:
The Blocked and Reported podcast, which I generally find to be fair-minded and evenhanded, recently interviewed a detrans person who had worked at a SF gender transition clinic. I found their experience illuminating:
A significant number of people who identity as trans later return to their original gender identity.
Whatever the percentage of people who chose to do this, that situation doesn't actually change my point - that significant number of trans people exist and their situation is quite threatened.
And the way that you (and other) think that this is a "counter argument" is something of a demonstration that people making these points aim to threaten the existence of transpeople, which is why such points get a lot of flak.
Edit: Note, some number of people identifying as gay later chose to identify as straight. Is this a counter argument to gay people being a reality? Does that illustrate the problem with your point?
>Note, some number of people identifying as gay later chose to identify as straight. Is this a counter argument to gay people being a reality? Does that illustrate the problem with your point?
You have misunderstood my point. It was directed specifically at this statement:
>And whatever it's point of origin, this reality for these isn't going to change.
For some, but not all, trans people this reality does change. They exist, and they also deserve empathy and support.
We should focus on giving ALL humans a nurturing environment and allow them to grow to achieve their full potential and in turn be able to share their talents to help others.
There is pain, sorrow. There is also place to grow and live a meaningful life and be happy.
Anything else is just nitpicking and a red herring. Creating an infinity of subcategories of humans is not the solution, because it incentives the us-them paradigm, and of course polarization of discourse.
Intolerance in any forms is destructive in nature.
With the focus on academic freedom and ideological hegemony, I can't help but feel like this article is tilling the soil for something akin to a "teach the controversy" campaign [1], i.e. the sort of thing that ideological movements turn to when they've run out of actual arguments that can stem the tide of a shifting consensus and have no option left but to invoke a sort of meta-debate about whether their ideas are receiving a fair hearing. It's not clear to me that "gender critics" are more broadly embracing this stance, but it wouldn't be much of a shock at this point.
I suppose I'll keep an eye out for the announcement of "Expelled 2: No Gender Allowed" [2].
Gender politics is a cancer on the left, even though I agree with it, it takes up so much time and energy away from things that would benefit everybody including trans people, like universal healthcare, better employee protection laws and better, more available education. Such a small percentage of the population has been the center point of so much discussion and debate, and for what benefit? All I see it doing is give the right-wing more ammunition to harden their bases.
The same could be said for most wedge issues. In the US, gun rights and and abortion also become a focal point of US politics despite the existence of issues that deal with millions of preventable deaths (automobile safety, obesity epidemic, poverty), issues that deal with hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples and killed civilians (Afghanistan and Iraq war, war mongering over Syria, Libya, Iran, etc), and climate change, which our brightness minds continue to tell us could lead to not insubstantial percentages of all forms of life on our planet going extinct and billions or trillions of dollars of economic cost.
But we just focus on emotional trigger point issues. See focus on and mass protests because of police brutality (hundreds of deaths a year) compared to zero widespread action on the injustice of the prison system (hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, literal slavery and imprisonment in cages over antiquated unequally applied drug laws).
There's truth here, feels-over-reals is very much a problem in US politics. That said, feelings/perceptions have consequences if left unchecked. A few hundred people being "made an example of" by the police each year can functionally oppress an entire ethnic group in a country.
All that said, in light of the previous example, it makes the abortion fight seem particularly...whimsical...given the stakes. The evangelicals believe they themselves are going to heaven regardless of what the non-evangelicals do and those getting abortions don't care so it's rather hard to point to a group being oppressed by their beliefs here.
> it takes up so much time and energy away from things that would benefit everybody including trans people, like universal healthcare, better employee protection laws and better
Distraction working as intended then? Neither political party has really shown any clear legislative intention on delivering on those things you ask for.
Gender politics are interesting because they are mostly just a source of in-fighting within various factions of the left [1] but because they cover a set of topics that seem so foreign to the right, it gives them lots of ammunition for cruel memes to distract themselves from their own internal struggles.
That said, it's a nuanced issue that touches a lot of aspects of life and effects more people than one would initially assume. It's very much worth sorting out, but it's the kind of issue that's easily going to be derailed by toxic personalities because much like guns and religion, it's an attack on one's self image. If you're a billionaire wanting to cause havoc to prevent wealth taxes or environmental regulation, throwing money at either side of this cause seems like a pretty good way to get high political-chaos ROI.
Yeah I’m not on the left any more and now an independent due to the left trying to use identity politics for political engagement. Still support what Bernie/Yang are doing though with trying to universalize healthcare and income though.
This article seems to confusingly mix together free speech issues with the issue of whether things are true/moral. A lot of things are completely legal to say, but obviously false (eg, 2 + 2 = 5) or abhorrent (eg, Kim Jong Un is a great leader). You can support free speech without agreeing with a particular viewpoint.
About freaking time, this has been way overdue. The ability to offend is to critically think. If you have cannot handle dissenting opinions or facts, this invalidates your movement or ideology. So that is why many are silenced. Academia is full of those who stifle others for power...
When I was in high school, we read both "1984" and "Brave New World."
At the time I kind of thought: "liberals are more like BNW with drugs and 'karma' and such, and conservatives are more like 1984 with endless wars and refusing to acknowledge things."
At some point in my life, it feels this has flipped.
I now see conservatives as consuming soma (tv) to lull them into a false and simple world, and liberals as enforcing wrong-think.
Obviously, life is much more complex than two books, and similarities can be drawn in any direction. But I still find it interesting having watched my perceptions flip.
Gender is a social construct. Sex is a medical definition. Gender can be fluid and ever changing. Sex is fixed at birth.
This is obvious, but it is at the crux of every debate that is happening surrounding transgender people and so I really think people are struggling with the definitions. Or, more likely, it is all ideological lines in the sand.
Can trans women compete in women’s sports? Well, why do women’s sports exist in the first place? They exist because there are phisological differences between males and females that render competition unfair in most all athletic contests. Each college and pro sports would be dominated by one sex. Most sports would be exclusively male, though gymnastics would likely be female dominated. If gender is fluid anyone could switch between the two at any time.
Will people do this? Probably not.
Will suddenly trans women take over womens’s sports if allowed? No. Almost certainly not, but it does kind of beg the question of why the category exists at all.
People should be able to be themselves and do what they want as long as they aren’t infringing on others rights. And trans people are most certainly included in that. However, some people feel that transwomen are infringing upon women’s rights laws such as title ix. The answer to that lies in the question of are sports divided by gender or sex. If by gender every gender, of which there are many, would have equal claim to the same rights under title ix. This would be an impossible requirement to fill. The intention of the law was always to be divided by sex, not gender, even if historically we, as a society, have used the terms interchangeably.
I can't imagine what this debate must feel like to someone who grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Until 10 years ago gay marriage wasn't official policy of Obama or Clinton or I believe the majority of the Democratic party. The pace is dizzying.
It feels like a race to the bottom, but I don't know where the bottom even is. Without push back this could spell the end of women's sports, women's prisons - heck, pretty much all institutions for women (except natal/health related) are facing an existential crisis over this. Women's sports are the most obvious. Why would a woman participate in the highest level of competition if she has no chance of success no matter what she does because she was born with XX chromosomes? One transgender athlete in the meet is one thing. What happens when gold, silver and bronze are all taken away? Of all our recent societal enlightenments this one seems most ill-fated. Trans activists should be able to foresee this eventuality and realize it's a bridge too far.
At the end of the day, we live in a culture where identity self-actualization is the paramount freedom without which one is considered oppressed. My question is really where do we settle out? Where are the boundaries that we recognize as a society are put there for our own protection? What happens when one person's self-actualization is in direct conflict with another's? When one group's (cis women) is in conflict with another's (trans women)?
> Until 10 years ago gay marriage wasn't official policy of Obama
I think you are misremembering. Obama was actively against gay marriage and defended his views against gay marriage through the 2012 election. I think Biden was the one to first broach the topic in 2014 with his active support for it.
I'm not going to read or respond to any of the comments in this thread because I don't want to self-harm today. However, I have to comment on the site linked in the article, noconflicttheysaid.org, because it's absolutely hilarious. It has stories about the supposed negative impact of trans women in women's spaces. I'm not cherry-picking; from the top, the stories on the first two pages are:
1. A woman and her two daughters went into a unisex bathroom. As you might expect, there were men there. Then nothing happened. Also, several years earlier, she went into a women's bathroom that indicated it allowed transgender women, but there weren't any there. https://www.noconflicttheysaid.org/post/scienceworks-immunol...
2. A trans woman in a Facebook group for mothers was trying to simulate a pregnancy and asked people there to share their experience with miscarriages since she knew she couldn't have a baby in the end. She also said she would like to breastfeed someone else's baby. As far as it's indicated, these requests were not made to anyone in particular, they were just posted in Facebook group. https://www.noconflicttheysaid.org/post/online-group-for-bre...
4. A trans woman cursed at some counter-protesters at a trans rights rally. In the included video, we see that this was in reaction to the counter-protesters (although not the same ones apparently) spraying water(?) at people. https://www.noconflicttheysaid.org/post/who-s-unsafe-on-camp...
5. A woman who was previously sexually assaulted by men says that she gets nervous and her body tenses up when she's sees a large man. She claims that this is something trans women will never understand. This is completely ridiculous: I myself have this reaction too if I'm alone or it's at night (in a way I did not before I transitioned), and I know other trans women who have similar anxieties about men in general. Anyway, the story is that a trans woman on a bus (where trans women have always been allowed) told some young women that they were pretty and asked them where they bought clothes and underwear. I'll admit that's a bit creepy, but no more so than things men already say to women in public spaces. And again, is the suggestion to ban trans women from buses? https://www.noconflicttheysaid.org/post/trans-woman-harassin...
Should teachers be allowed to say anything they want to students, regardless if it offends them? If a student asks a teacher not to call them something that offends them, is the teacher required to stop using the slur?
Yes they should offend their students because history is offensive.
We should also teach about the Holocaust and read the uncensored version of huckleberry Finn, even though it may be offensive.
People (students) will be offended but they will learn how history has changed, be able to think for themselves, and not fall into ideological line. If this scares the left/right establishments that is a great thing.
The question wasn't whether the teacher was allowed to talk about things that might upset a subset of students. In some cases, like talking about the Holocaust or slavery in the US that will not be possible to avoid entirely. The question was this:
> If a student asks a teacher not to call them something that offends them, is the teacher required to stop using the slur?
If a teacher calls a student a slur, or otherwise directly addresses the student using a slur/derogatory term, should this teacher stop doing this? Stop moving the goalpost.
There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).
What exactly is extreme speech? I don’t recall for advocating for illegal speech.
Everything up to imminently calling for violence in the US is protected so if that is what you are saying then I’d agree with you.
However what is “hate” or “intolerant” depends on the person and identity group. E.g. “All lives matter, marriage is between a man and a woman, men can’t get pregnant, Muhammad was a pedophole, flipping the bird to a police officer” all would offend different groups of people but are protected speech.
There are also historical reasons to think that tyranny has to suppress free speech in order to survive. So even if extreme speech can lead to tyranny, free speech can lead you back out - if you can keep the tyranny from destroying the free speech.
My point is to keep track of the order of cause and effect. Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. But tyranny always at least tries to limit free speech. So when you see a limiting of free speech, you should ask "Is this really in defense of liberty? Or is it just tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself?"
Note that tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself almost always says that it's in defense of liberty...
The usual citation is the Paradox of Tolerance but that posited a right to protect against people using fists or pistols, rather than ideas, to debate and premised it on the right of self-defense from physical harm.
"Is this person defending free speech in favor of liberty? Or because his anti-liberty extremism won't be tolerated otherwise?".
It works both ways so this isn't a practical way of looking at implementation of free speech. You can't keep a system that doesn't protect itself free forever - propaganda travels faster and further than truth, and I doubt the founding fathers wrote the first amendment with mass media in mind.
You can start the argument of who gets to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't, and in the current political climate (at least in the USA) the answer to that is obviously nobody. Ideally those decisions would be made during a time of cultural unity, where a whole nation can say "These are our values that we want to write in stone", like Germany did with the new constitution in the 20th century where it put well-defined limits on what kind of speech should be forbidden.
It's doubtful if that kind of unity is even possible in the USA anymore, so I'm worried that, on a long enough time-scale, unfettered free speech will inevitably lead to tyranny of a kind because there is no system in place to protect it.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation.
> There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).
You think the Weimar Republic is a point in favor of that claim?
In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti‐Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti‐Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti‐Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective public relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews.
Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre‐Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti‐hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti‐Semitic speech…
> In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times.
Streicher and his fellow editors were already active members of the NSDAP (Nazi party) during the 1920s. Streicher and other editors were taken to court, yes, but the assertion that it was for the content of his magazine and not actions like the Hitlerputsch is not something I can find support for in any source.
> Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933.
Antisemitism was alive and well in the Weimar Republic, the claim that people were taken to court for antisemitic speech is another one that I can't find a source for. People were taken to court for violence against Jews, as they were still full German citizens in the Weimar Republic. I looked up the passages of the Weimar Republic constitution around religion and freedom of assembly and there is nothing about hate speech or similar kinds of discrimination. One of the major causes of increasing violence against Jews was Der Stürmer and similar publications, because they could be circulated without impunity.
In fact, I looked up Alan Borovoy's quote, he said:
> During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech.
I find this number of 200 interesting, because 200 is roughly the same number as Jewish cemeteries that were desecrated between 1923 and 1933, and makes me suspicious that he's taking court cases about desecration and equating them with hate-speech - which are obviously not the same things.
> In einer regelrechten Schändungswelle wurden zwischen 1923 und 1932 fast 200 Fälle registriert [1]
Sorry it's in German, but it should be easy to translate. In any case, the passages you posted have no substance other than a quote from one guy that from anything I can see seems to be conflating two different things to support his argument.
This is a great comment. It seems to me that some in the US far right and left wings have an analogous view of using the political system as a way to garner publicity rather than governing. It's less obvious in the court cases. Many of the people associated with the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol folded pretty rapidly once they were indicted.
For decades the ideological left preached, quite aggressively and consistently, that we must move to a post racial society, that race should not matter. This was the clear majority belief on the left as recently as the beginning of Obama's first term. My entire childhood was filled with that preached gospel: a person's character is what matters, do not pay attention to their skin color, look beneath that, their skin color is not what's important, what is important is what's on the inside. And so on. That ideology made tremendous sense to me.
Now they are saying the exact opposite 24/7. Their messaging has entirely changed. Now race is paramount, the color of a person's skin matters in a huge way, everyone is to be divided by race, everyone is to be treated differently depending on their race. Society must be splintered by race. They're segregating everyone into tribes and pitting them against eachother.
So was the former ideology bullshit, or is the new ideology bullshit. Their credibility is shot, not that anyone cares. Next week they'll switch it again if it serves their pursuit of power, and proceed to memory hole whatever the last ideology was that they were pushing as though it never happened.
I think the "they" in your post is actually a bunch of disparate groups. You are acting like there is internal inconsistency, but that's because the conflicting beliefs came out of different camps.
Anyway, I think most people in support of the "new" ideology, as you call it, would say that the "old" ideology was flawed. Some might say it was bullshit, some might just say it was misguided or overly hopeful.
Ideas change over time, I'm not sure why you think society's views on race should remain static, especially considering that the Civil Rights Movement was only a few generations ago. Every generation our theories of race change.
The ideological right has also changed its stance on a lot of things. Do you also think that makes them have no credibility?
It doesn't matter if the ideas are nuanced, we know they are.
It's deeply hypocritical and exposes lack of intellectual consistency if morally shaming people into doing 'XYZ' for several decades, then castigating them as literally 'Upholding White Supremacy' for doing those very same things some time later.
The 'internal conflict' that will arise in anyone of those people will be insurmountable, and the 'New Camp' will never have legitimacy in their eyes, just the opposite in fact, even if there is some validity in their ideals.
This is borne largely out of the absolution, radicalism, lack of self awareness, inflexibility and binary thinking of the 'New Camp' (it's usually that way with 'New Camps') and because those who are 'just a bit older' have the life experience to reflect back on their own experiences of being 'too black and white' and can therefore contextualize any of the supposedly 'New' ideals at least in terms of individual's own life progress.
The assumption by the 'New Camps' is that they are the righteous inheritors of the fairly unambiguous social victories of the 1960's, that among them are the MLK's and JFK's who will have statues made and words etched in stone as the new moral impetus etc. - but this would be wrong. Despite some obvious things that can and will be improved, most of today's social populism is nowhere near unambiguously on the right side of history.
And finally: I'm not discounting any single idea presented by any individual or group acting in good faith. I'm discounting whether or not they should or will be recognized universally, and pointing out the problems with their assertive posture.
> Anyway, I think most people in support of the "new" ideology, as you call it, would say that the "old" ideology was flawed. Some might say it was bullshit, some might just say it was misguided or overly hopeful.
While there are of course real injustices, which different people think motivate different responses, what we're talking about here feels manufactured in (mostly) American universities. Nothing like deliberately splitting people along the lines of immutable characteristics to create problems for social scientists to "solve".
That's been my feeling -- one of them had to be wrong. And if you're wrong once, you can be wrong again, so perhaps it would be wise to be less certain of oneself.
May I also add that prior to the current wave, educators were of opinion that kids need to be protected, at any cost, even to the point that grading system discriminates against kids, it can make them feel inferior. Now they basically shove every kid into corner, either as an oppressor or a victim.
I suspect you are confusing using characteristics to correct for existing bias versus using characteristics for discrimination itself. Specific scenarios may help us explore this better.
Any form of dogma, no matter which side of the isle it comes from, is poison. Even things that seem silly like pronouns can be the seed from which serious problems arise. It’s because dogma is the absence of rational thought, and in that absence irrational beasts can grow very large.
Yet "Any form of dogma, no matter which side of the isle it comes from, is poison." is itself a dogma. Curious. Hoffstädter might have enjoyed this strange loop.
> The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate speech and try to suppress it.
This is 100% my personal experience also. Even on HN last week someone said I should try to be a "better human" and compared my suggestion that maybe someone might oppose transgender women in women's spaces for reasons other than pure hatred or phobia of trans people, to segregation of blacks and whites. It's just absolutely impossible to have any disagreement with them without them trying these inane mob bully tactics. Being outraged should not be your only argument.
Take the case of Fallon Fox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallon_Fox): a mixed martial artist transgender woman (who didn't even disclose she used to be a he while she was competing against women), or Laurel Hubbard, the New Zealand transgender olympic weightlifter in the news this week. Even mentioning these cases which clearly have more to them than pure hatred or phobia of trans people, still get lambasted with abuse.
What's really frustrating is that they don't really listen to what you actually say, but instead "read between the lines" and assume everything you say is just a ruse hidden behind some immense hatred and bigotry. How about no? Just take what I say at face value. No, I'm not full of hate. Yes, I know being transgendered must be hard. Yes, I do know some transgendered people (why is this relevant?). Yes, I am cisgendered myself. No, I really do think transgender women have an advantage in combat sports. No, again, I'm not full of hate... It's quite ridiculous.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Can you please not do that? It's against the rules here because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of what their ideology happens to be. See [1] for more explanation.
Ok I promise. My last topics I posted on were about this, a security blog post, the news, Simone Biles and accents. I do actually talk about lots of topics on HN but I tend to get drawn into political discussions which are replied to a lot more. Also it's hard for me not to respond when someone calls me a bigot, etc. I'm definitely not on HN just to troll about politics. I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational?
Ok, I've taken the rate limit off your account. To prevent it kicking in again, please remember that on HN the idea is to value quality over quantity, and please stay up to date on the site guidelines.
> I really think it's unfair to say I'm on HN to "battle" anyone. I don't think my comments here have been particularly confrontational?
When I skim through your recent comments I'm mostly seeing posts like these (just a random sample) - these are examples of what we don't want on HN:
If you don't like the words "political/ideological battle" or "flamewar" we can find a different description; the point is that this is not the curiosity-driven, respectful conversation that the site is supposed to be for.
Without doing a deep-dive into the way you communicate I'd recommend that you broadly reconnect on shared values, like the importance of human dignity and compassion, before trying to proceed further in a conversation where it is starting to feel like other parties are treating you like a faceless adversary.
I’d like to see some introspection here. Can you imagine why they would respond so strongly? I’ll tell you.
The trans experience is one that is in many ways beautiful and joyous but is sadly also fraught with trauma. Trans people experience a lot of pain that stays with them. Much of that pain has to do with people who refuse to accept who they truly are. Or people will “just want to have a discussion” where they try to see invalidate the persons identity.
When a cis person enters a discussion like this, to the cis person it’s just an intellectual discussion. But to the trans person it can be threatening and it can trigger memories of past trauma they’ve gone through.
So yes, trans people get upset when you bring things like this up because you’re bringing up a topic that may have been used as a “gotcha” to invalidate their identity, and it can be unclear if that’s what you’ll try to do. This makes the whole conversation upsetting to them.
Imagine if a man who didn’t believe in women’s rights wanted to discuss it with a woman who has been discriminated against. That would be a difficult conversation and it wouldn’t be surprising if she got upset and didn’t want to have a “rational debate” about her rights.
What you’re doing when you bring up difficult topics to a marginalized person is you’re forcing them to re live traumatic memories in order to educate you. I learned this from learning about the experiences of people of color. (If you’re white) DO NOT go ask a random black person to explain to you the everyday racism they feel, because inevitably it won’t make sense to you and when you challenge something they say it will become a lot of emotional labor for them to try to make it make sense. Sure some people are fine explaining this stuff but not everyone.
Instead what people of color say about this is: go do the learning on your own. Go find out what people in this marginalized group say about your issue without making one of them explain it. Their identity is not up for you to debate. But you can read articles written by people within the community or listen to YouTube interviews. You can find the answers without making a marginalized person re live their trauma to educate you.
This is all surrounding the topic of “emotional labor”. Debating someone’s trauma requires huge amounts of emotional labor for them to stay civil and most people don’t have the energy for that, so you should not ask that of them. There are other better ways to educate yourself.
EDIT: Folks, I’m trying to honestly tell you the experience I’ve had. I had to learn this stuff too. I know that this community hates being told they have to change their behavior, but I’m kindly and honestly explaining what I know and you’re downvoting me. Please stop.
People who have had trauma have my empathy, but I really don't think there's a tenable path forward besides dispassionate debate. How do we work through a conflict without dispassionate debate? If trans people insist that the only parties to the debate are trans people or those who already agree with them (ignoring that trans people aren't the homogeneous entity that activists make them out to be), then how are they going to gain acceptance in society more broadly? By fiat?
Yeah, it sucks that individuals in the majority don't have the same emotional skin in the game as in the minority, but progress of any kind requires that we can talk through stuff. For those of us with trauma (i.e., my trauma isn't "trans trauma"), we should excuse ourselves when the debates hit too close to home too often. We explicitly cannot use our trauma to discredit others (e.g., to conflate their criticism with 'hate') is not going to garner sympathy even if a lot of people who are already "allies" upvote our post on social media or wherever.
And indeed, if it's not in the best interest of the legitimately traumatized to use their trauma to silence others, who in their right mind would allow their "allies" to use their trauma to bludgeon others? What rational person would let someone else spend their credibility in contradiction with their own best interests? If the traumatized person overreaches, it might be overlooked on account of the trauma, but what excuses can we make for the mere "allies"?
> I really don't think there's a tenable path forward besides dispassionate debate. How do we work through a conflict without dispassionate debate?
I will explain my understanding of the answer. I do not claim my answer is the right one, but it is what I see.
Let’s say there are two groups. One group we will call a marginalized minority and another group we will call the majority or dominant group.
The answer is not for the marginalized people and the dominant group to debate directly. Imagine people from the black civil rights movement debating whether or not they should be guaranteed the right to vote with no interference. What really was there to debate?
Instead of direct debate I see it like this. First, both groups recognize their position. Trans people have been marginalized by a broadly cisgendered society. If you learn a little bit about the murder of trans people throughout the last 5 decades and the lack of investigation, I think that is evidence enough that they are a marginalized group.
Okay so step one is recognize the power dynamic. Step two is for the people in the dominant group to listen, without challenge or debate, what the people in the marginalized group want.
Step three: the people in the dominant group discuss with themselves how to make those changes. How do we make sure trans people feel welcome and comfortable in bathrooms and sports? How do we make sure trans kids grow up feeling welcomed by society as their whole self?
Fourth, the people in the dominant group discuss their difficulties they have with the changes, and they do their best to work it out on their own.
Five, some members of the marginalized group who have agreed to discuss this will talk to people in the dominant group and try to address their questions.
Six. Having made some changes, the people in the dominant group ask for feedback, and the process repeats.
At no point in that course of action do random members of the dominant group need to discuss these changes with members of the marginalized group. As a white person I simply do not challenge what people of color say. There is no need for me to challenge them and I recognize that as a member of the dominant group it could be emotionally distressful for them to have to discuss it with me.
Anyway that’s my answer. I hope it helps. Sorry I didn’t answer the rest of your post but I found this the part that felt most salient to me.
I appreciate your perspective. I agree with a lot, including that trans people are legitimately marginalized in our society in some measure (certainly the extent to which authorities fail to investigate murders of trans victims is abhorrent).
> The answer is not for the marginalized people and the dominant group to debate directly.
To be clear, this isn't "trans people" vs "non-trans people". There are lots of trans people who don't think it's appropriate to change our bathroom policies and non-trans people who think we should change those policies. The parties to the debate are different ideologies, not different trans/non-trans identities.
With respect to your steps vs debate, I think your steps describe a national debate, except for the earlier caveat that the debate isn't "trans vs non-trans" but rather different ideological positions and also that at any given moment different individuals in the debate (on any side) are at different "steps" in the process, and also that individuals on all sides vary in their willingness to listen or participate in good faith.
So basically a debate is a mess because people aren't uniformly acting in good faith nor are they uniformly disciplined about listening before speaking nor are they acting in synchrony (everyone within a group meets to listen to an ambassador for the other group, and then carefully considers together, and so on). However, over the course of months or years, things do tend to converge in a direction that most people feel pretty good about. That's what progress looks like.
> At no point in that course of action do random members of the dominant group need to discuss these changes with members of the marginalized group. As a white person I simply do not challenge what people of color say. There is no need for me to challenge them and I recognize that as a member of the dominant group it could be emotionally distressful for them to have to discuss it with me.
With respect, I disagree in the strongest possible terms here. No doubt you mean well, but black people and white people are equal, and race doesn't confer anyone with either authority or fragility with respect to having their positions criticized. If any given black person or white person feels triggered (in the clinical, not pejorative, sense), they are certainly not obligated to engage with the criticism, but to assume that someone is fragile on the basis of their race is the height of racism (however well intended).
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I’m in the go so I will try to make a quick reply.
> The parties to the debate are different ideologies, not different trans/non-trans identities.
I think the concept of intersectionality is useful here. Ideology is one component but identity is another. If we treat this like a simple ideological debate the potential trauma of the marginalized group could be ignored, potentially causing the mere act of the debate to re traumatize people in that group.
> No doubt you mean well, but black people and white people are equal, and race doesn't confer anyone with either authority or fragility with respect to having their positions criticized.
Respectfully I think this is a misunderstanding of my view. I learned to keep my mouth shut not because people in marginalized groups are fragile. I learned to keep my mouth shut because I learned that my outsider status means a lot of things marginalized people say night not make immediate sense to me. Trying to interrogate (neutral sense) their reasoning can be a traumatic experience for them. I learned this when I asked women at Google to explain their sexual harassment to me. A female friend took the time to explain to me that even asking the question could cause distress in women. Now when someone says something I disagree with I stay silent and I go and google the thing and learn more about it on my own.
Certainly in some cases the person wants to discuss the thing with me, but I don’t assume that to be the case.
I also learned this from a person of color who did not appreciate similar questions from me. While there is a LOT of worthwhile criticism of Robin DiAngelo, her talks helped me understand that concept better.
The idea is to set up rhetorical either-or's and then browbeat the majority into silence:
Either you support unlimited immigration or you are a racist.
Either you are 100% on board with the entire vaccine schedule or you are an anti-vaxxer.
Either you say that Covid was a natural occurrence or you are a conspiracy theorist (and probably a racist too).
And so on.
Say what one will, but it's effective.
I think one reason it works so well in the US is our puritan heritage, which has always had a strong manichean current in it. As the elites lost their religion, they retained this characteristic and it now manifests itself in the secular realm.
Sometimes the either-or's are not just either-or's, they're catch 22's. Trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria and denying that is transphobic, but if you say trans people are suffering from gender dysphoria you're a transmedicalist truscum. Checkmate atheists!
If it can happen spontaneously, is it impossible that sometimes therapy might speed that spontaneous process along? Would that be a "cure"?
I have struggled with obsessive behaviour ever since I was a child. I probably have undiagnosed ASD (I have many other traits of ASD than just obsessions). I'm actually on a waiting-list to see a psychiatrist for an ASD assessment. Some of my obsessions are more ASD-like (pleasurable rather than anxious), others more OCD-like (anxiety-driven), so sometimes I wonder if I might have OCD too. I'll let my psychiatrist work that one out, when I see him. But what I realise now is that my gender dysphoric feelings were just another one of these obsessions. And like most of my obsessions, with time they fade and get replaced with new ones. If I had this self-understanding 15, 20 years ago, I think my gender dysphoric feelings might have remitted faster.
If I'd sought help back then, would they have helped me gain that self-understanding of my own obsessiveness? Or would they have encouraged me towards transition? I'm glad I never transitioned, I think I'd be in a far worse place now if I had. But I worry with this idea of "affirmative care", people like me may be encouraged in that direction whether it is the right thing for them or not.
What about your comparison with homosexuality? Does homosexuality ever "spontaneously remit" in the same way that gender dysphoric feelings sometimes do? I honestly have no idea. My feelings about my birth gender (male) have waxed and waned, but a constant for me has been attraction to women with never more than fleeting feelings for men; given that, the equivalent question for homosexuality is beyond my personal experience.
(Sorry for the throwaway. I hope one can understand why. I wish I had the courage to talk about this stuff under my real name. I hope that one of these days I will, but not today.)
> If it can happen spontaneously, is it impossible that sometimes therapy might speed that spontaneous process along? Would that be a "cure"?
I think we need to be careful and precise when using the word "cure". Is one outcome preferable over another? Preferable to who, and why? What, precisely, are we curing? What effect does using the word "cure" have on people? Anecdote: When I realized I had dysphoric feelings, my mental health _improved_ overnight and has stayed that way. I took up piano. Became more expressive. I even began working out! What would my cure be? Everyone's different - as you seem to suggest (correct me), pushing for self-understanding is a good way to navigate this. I think my personal positive outcome is in no small part due to key people in my life making it clear that no outcome is preferred over another, and that they'll support me no matter what I find. I count myself as extremely privileged in this regard, and by my reckoning anything we can do to foster this kind of support is time well spent.
> But what I realise now is that my gender dysphoric feelings were just another one of these obsessions.
That may be. And that's OK. Very few people figure everything out the very first try. And people can sometimes change over time. But equally, sometimes they don't. In any case, we can't expect people to understand themselves if we take away the tools to learn. In some sense, aren't these transient obsessions a vehicle for experimentation and learning? For mine, they are.
You, have2throwaway, are valid. Here's to your journey.
> Is one outcome preferable over another? Preferable to who, and why?
For me personally, I believe the outcome in which these feelings went away without me acting on them (by which I especially mean hormones and surgery) is much better for me than one in which they stuck around and I did act on them. And I'm sure I'm not the only person for which this true.
On the other hand, I totally accept there are other people for whom the feelings are unlikely to ever go away, and for those people, if they believe that acting on them is the best option for them, it isn't my place to disagree with them.
The problem is how do we tell the two groups apart? How do we help people having these feelings work out which group they belong to? I don't have any confidence that the current system is good at doing that. Part of the reason why, is that those who transition have their stories celebrated by much (of course, not all) of the culture, while those who remit without transitioning (or who detransition) are mostly hidden in the shadows. That ends up presenting the former stories as more valid than the later, something which I see as problematic.
Yes and no. Yes, it's effective at shutting people up. No, it's not very effective at convincing people that you're right. It's more effective at convincing people that you're completely unreasonable, and that it's better to just not talk to you at all.
"Yes, it's effective at shutting people up. No, it's not very effective at convincing people that you're right."
I see things differently, through the lens of power and influence. How much power does the opposition have if it's been effectively silenced? Members of the other side certainly aren't convinced of your cause, but what difference does it make? You've already gotten them to submit.
As time goes on the younger people will pretty much only hear from the intolerant folks because the people who were silenced can't propagate their worldview effectively.
> Either you say that Covid was a natural occurrence or you are a conspiracy theorist (and probably a racist too).
Interesting how media coverage completely changed. Under the previous administration it was considered racist to even mention the theory and it's proponents were considered racists or conspiracy theorists. Why such a sudden change? China certainly didn't change its position on the issue...
Trump is gone. Since he was the main proponent of the idea, and he was despised by half of the nation, they had to despise the idea too, even if it was quite fitting in the context of the anti-China rhetoric of the last few years. Now Trump is gone and the other half of the US is free to pick up his ideas.
But why would you discuss someone's medical suffering by leading with a topic on trans elite sports, which focuses on an extreme niche and elite phenomena?
Because I am making the point that even mentioning something as extreme as that still gets me lambasted with abuse. So if we can't even discuss that civilly, how on Earth are we meant to discuss more nuanced issues?
People don’t like their identity being debated. Bringing up trans women in sports as a talking point would be pretty upsetting to most trans women as it is likely to feel like you’re invalidating their personal experience of being trans.
There’s this thing with marginalized communities where people outside of the communities “just want to have a discussion” but the stakes of that conversation are way too high for marginalized people. Trans people’s existence is not for you to challenge or debate. The best thing to do in situations like this is to let the marginalized people figure out what they need and then quietly listen to their conclusions. It’s not really something that’s there for you to “discuss”.
Yes funnily enough those who wanted to "Just have a discussion" were the ones who forced us into this mess in the first place.
People might not like "having their identity being debated" but people also don't like having their opportunities taken away or being forced into situations they don't feel comfortable in or ones that threaten their safety.
I think the best thing for you to do in situations like this is quietly listen to the counter points being given to you and gently and wholesomely get your hands off of the people and their lives that you are reaching for. It's really not something you are entitled to have or control.
Everyone here agrees that they oughtn't be harassed. We disagree on whether or not folks who disagree with trans activists have the right to speak on the matter.
> There’s this thing with marginalized communities where people outside of the communities “just want to have a discussion” but the stakes of that conversation are way too high for marginalized people.
Presumably the "high stakes" are that they might fall out with the majority population, right? In that case why not do all you can to engage productively with them? There was a time when civil rights activists wished for good faith participation.
> The best thing to do in situations like this is to let the marginalized people figure out what they need and then quietly listen to their conclusions.
There are a couple of problems here.
The first is that "their conclusions" are often the conclusions of certain activists and not the marginalized people in question (e.g., "defund the police"). I find this to be the most repulsive kind of rhetoric, because it exploits marginalized groups to the harm of everyone else and to the exclusive benefit of the activist and their ideological comrades.
The second is that it dehumanizes everyone else: others are to simply keep quiet and listen to the marginalized group's needs; to acquiesce. We are all (aspirationally, at least) equal participants in a free society, and we need to find something that works for all of us. Debate is how we do that, even if the topic hits closer to home for some than others.
I'm sorry, but this is a classic example of what I'm talking about.
> People don’t like their identity being debated.
But this is reframing. I'm not debating that someone is trans or should be treated with respect or anything like that.
> Bringing up trans women in sports as a talking point would be pretty upsetting to most trans women as it is likely to feel like you’re invalidating their personal experience of being trans.
Ok? Feelings might be hurt. Feelings are subjective. That's not an argument. It's also pretty upsetting for the women who are now competing at a biological disadvantage. Particularly in combat sports where there's potentially dier consequences for losing. What about their feelings?
> Trans people’s existence is not for you to challenge or debate.
Again... That's not what I'm challenging or debating at all. I'll be honest, I fucking hate this debate switcheroo. I'm not challenging someone's existence. Listen to what I'm actually saying. This is so annoying to me.
> The best thing to do in situations like this is to let the marginalized people figure out what they need and then quietly listen to their conclusions
No, it isn't. Not when it affects more than just the marginalized community. If their actions affect others (e.g. women) then it's not primarily up to just them to figure out what they want to do.
Again, this is nothing to do with hate or bigotry. I'm not "debating their existence". I literally don't know how much clearer I can be here.
Sorry, I can't respond anymore since my account has been rate limited.
You can say you’re not debating their existence till they’re blue in the face, but I’m telling you that’s how it will feel to 9/10 trans people when you try to discuss this topic with them.
You can ignore their feelings but that’s the problem. You don’t care that it’s upsetting. To you it’s just some abstract intellectual thing to discuss but to them it could be a source of trauma and pain. I don’t think you’re appreciating what you’re asking a trans person to do when you bring up topics that relate to trauma they’ve experienced.
> You can say you’re not debating their existence till they’re blue in the face, but I’m telling you that’s how it will feel to 9/10 trans people when you try to discuss this topic with them.
Indeed. Though I'm honestly not sure if it's "9/10 trans people" or just the gender ideology crowd. Regardless, having strong feelings doesn't win the debate. I can give platitudes all day about how sympathetic I am to people with gender dysmorphia or any other difficulties in life, but when it comes to debating issues, we need to be more dispassionate as my original point and the point of the Economist article is that these topics are nuanced and shutting down the conversation as "hate speech" is not productive at all.
> You can ignore their feelings but that’s the problem. You don’t care that it’s upsetting.
No, in my view, this type of comment is the problem. You're assuming I don't care at all just because I disagree. Please just take my comments at face value. I said in my original comment I have sympathy for trans people.
> To you it’s just some abstract intellectual thing to discuss but to them it could be a source of trauma and pain
Take the women in mixed martial arts. To them, it's a source of actual, physical pain.
You’re presuming that there’s a debate here that you’re part of. I don’t see why you think that. No one owes you an explanation for their needs. No one owes you debate.
I wrote a comment describing how I think these differences should be resolved without forcing marginalized people to endlessly participate in “debate” about the legitimacy of their needs:
Again, there quite clearly is a debate going on in society and I think the salient point you’re missing is that trans folks aren’t just deciding for themselves among themselves; there’s obvious negative externalities for women involved (such as in sport). Literally, world records have been broken, women lose spots in the Olympics, and there are even potentially severe physical consequences for fighting trans women who have massive strength differentials. So I think just to say “shut up and listen!” snd “don’t deny my existence!” aren’t really arguments here. So let me ask you: why do you think only trans voices are allowed in the debate? Why do their feelings superseed everyone else's?
I have actually read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and for the most part vehemently disagree but to be honest I don’t want to comment so much on it right now as I’m afraid my account will be rate limited again...
But listen, as I said before, I understand being trans must be hard. But that’s simply not good enough. You don’t get everything you want just because it’s hard for you. You don’t (necessarily) decide if you can compete with biological women on a level playing field. That’s really the realm of science, not feelings. Also, is it really that traumatic if trans women have to compete with men as opposed to women if they want to compete in certain sports? Not to sound callus, but given there’s biological reasons for it, I honestly don’t think it’s that offensive? It's reality. And, again, it’s not denying their existence and bigotry and hatred, etc. It’s just a question of science and what’s fair: There’s a reason we separate men and women in certain sports.
Let’s even stick to combat sports as my original, extreme example, to find some common ground. Do you agree trans women shouldn’t be the only ones deciding if they’re allowed to fight biological women? Do you at least think women, and scientists, and combat experts should get a say in that debate? Do you agree they shouldn’t fight them at all? Or do you think us even talking about it is too traumatic (or at least inappropriate) for trans people to listen to? Honestly, if it's the latter, I don't see us finding any common ground at all, and that's what my OP and The Economist article was talking about.
But people are literally proposing a separate a set of laws and class of citizen for trans people over a fear that, as you admit, something that happens so seldomly that it's irrelevant.
The same thing happened with the "debate" about gays in the military. Bigots brought up the problem of shared showers in the military even though most gym showers are individual stalls. Still, this was used actually used as a rational to keep a ban on gay people, not recognize gay marriage (which means less pay for gay people in the military) and more.
Now we have proposals to ban trans people from public facilities, outlaw medical procedures for trans people and defund any publicly funded trans-related medical drug. And what is fueling this "discussion"?: bullshit stories about trans women assaulting people in bathrooms and sports being dominated by trans athletes (both of which are demonstrably false).
> And you are saying if we can't discuss elite trans sports with nuance, then how can we discuss an even more nuanced topic than trans elite sports?
That's all i'm saying. It's pretty obvious having an objection to Fallon Fox fighting biological women has more to it than pure hatred and bigotry towards trans women. If the gender ideology crowd can't acknowledge that or debate that civilly, I really see no chance of debating less clearcut topics. I deliberately chose it as the most extreme example I could think of to demonstrate how unreasonable and emotional I think that segment of the political spectrum is.
> So did you want to discuss trans elite sports or were you trying to demonstrate that people cannot handle a conversation with greater nuance? Or both at the same time?
The latter, but if you want to talk about the former we can do that too.
I think threatofrain is proving your point. Their approach seems to be to try to find something, anything, that they can argue, no matter how unrelated to the point at hand, and to keep arguing forever. Points that they can't answer get silently dropped, with no admission that the other side has a point.
I've seen this pattern before. At best it's someone so committed to a position that they are determined to do battle rather than actually have a conversation. At worst it's someone arguing in bad faith.
Or, I suppose, most charitably, it's someone who lost the thread of the conversation and replied to the wrong person.
You're the person who entered the discussion by assuming that the original post was a tactical argument, rather than a good-faith post of a reasonable position.
And, what on earth does Joe Rogan have to do with the original topic? You keep bringing him up, and he's irrelevant to Moodles' point. What on earth does clinical suffering have to do with the original topic? You keep bringing that up, and it's irrelevant to Moodles' point.
You're giving off this really strong "only here to do ideological battle" vibe. That's not what HN is for.
> In this case it was validated by an admission that an argument was tactically made.
Huh? Essentially all I have said is this:
"I agree with the Economist article. This is my personal experience also. Here's an example."
Tactually made? What does this even mean? Do you think I have a hidden agenda of bigotry towards trans people or something? What exactly am I doing wrong in your eyes? Is there any actual specific sentence I have written you disagree with?
> > The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate speech and try to suppress it.
> This is 100% my personal experience also.
And it's looking a lot like your experience here. You're getting told that you can't have put forth your comments in good faith, that it was "tactically made". (Which I interpret as meaning that it's to push an agenda rather than in good faith. I could be mistaken, but threatofrain is not clarifying what that accusation means.)
So, yeah, I stand by my statement that this whole thread proves your point...
Good discussion is give and take. There should be no competition, even if someone decides to bring up sports as an example.
Maybe if people tried to listen and understand more, they could ask followup questions and try to get what the other person had in mind, instead of trying to tear down opponents?
In order to partake in give and take, you have to have something to give.
When you pick up the microphone, that is your chance to make an offering of what you have to give. What we have here an offering of Joe Rogan debates.
> What do you have to say about the primary phenomena of clinical suffering? Its etiologies and its course in medical debate across the west? That is a discussion which hits squarely on "What is trans?"
The response is "I think clinical suffering is bad?"
You ask me "what do you think of suffering?". I honestly have no clue what you expect as a response. Yeah, it's bad. I don't want people to suffer. What is your point? What has this got to do with what I was saying?
And again, the only person who keeps bringing up Joe Rogan is you. What has this got to do with anything? Can we just focus on actual points being made here?
My OP was about how impossible it is to have sensible debates about trans issues without being lambasted. Where is this thread going now? What direction are you taking it?
> I'm mostly bothered by the focus on trans elite sports, because I find it to be a niche phenomena, and it suggests the curation of those who lead with such an argument.
The reason I mentioned combat sports is because it's literally the clearest example I can possibly think of where one can have objections to transgender women in women's spaces without having hate in their heart, and yet still one gets lambasted for bringing it up. So my overall point is about the lambasting, as the Economist article talks about.
> By tactical argument, I mean an argument you make which you don't think is your leading argument, but you make it anyway because you want to demonstrate an effect.
My leading argument is: "the gender ideology community lambast people way too much. Here's an obvious example of something which they shouldn't lambast about but they do anyway.". I honestly don't know how I can be any clearer here. There is no hate. No hidden agenda. Just what I've actually said at face value multiple times. Please stop trying to read between the lines.
> You keep wondering why I bring up Joe Rogan. It's because I don't think any discussion here will rise above the playground of arguments made by Joe Rogan, a major player on the conversation of trans elite sports.
I find this ironic since you're the one bringing down the quality of discussion with all the red herrings. What do you actually want to discuss? Where am I going wrong and what do you want to convince me of?
This is an invitation to track the course of medical debate through the west. That's a very open platform from which to discuss transgenderism, its etiologies and its impacts.
>> What do you have to say about the primary phenomena of clinical suffering? Its etiologies and its course in medical debate across the west? That is a discussion which hits squarely on "What is trans?"
And surely you don't think we're the only conversation in town. Look at this entire post and see if there's anything which rises above the Joe Rogan level of debate. It won't.
> I find this ironic since you're the one bringing down the quality of discussion with all the red herrings. What do you actually want to discuss? Where am I going wrong and what do you want to convince me of?
I don't accuse you of hate. I accuse you using the topic trans elite sports as an intellectual point to push around.
I'm so confused. I never mentioned Joe Rogan. But even if I did say "Joe Rogan said X", then let's talk about X? How is the fact that Joe Rogan said something automatically invalidating the argument itself? I don't even like the premise that it's a bad thing to even speak the guy's name.
I'm not sure it is. There are disimilarities of course, but there are enough similarities to support the point they were making. That it makes you uncomfortable doesn't invalidate that.
Right, but "slur" by itself is used as shorthand for "offensive slur" - typically racially-offensive slurs or homophobic slurs, and so on - I'm not aware of normal public discourse referring to everyday insults as "slurs" - whatever the original definition slur had it now has a connotation of insulting the target by way of comparing the target to an intentionally hurtful stereotype. (I could enumerate examples but nothing good can come from that, methinks...)
Whereas "TERF" is an acronym - it isn't appealing to anyone's emotional opinions about what a "TERF" represents - that is if anyone is even clued-up enough to know what it actually means.
Maybe the people complaining are assuming that TERF is an offensive slur without doing their research first? I'll admit it does have that feel to it, the way it sharply rolls off the tongue...
TERF both manages to connote something that should be stepped upon and is used to box in a person's opinions to a caricature so that a label can be applied (a stereotype, in other words), rather than listening to what they say. I'd say that between that, karen, anti-vaxxer, and anti-masker, a number of niche slurs have been popularized recently.
It’s not shaming to say someone is against trans people nor is it disparaging unless someone is bringing politics and moralism into it. Like I said I don’t want even more gender politics from the other “side” as some kind of “backlash” journalistic piece. It’s all a wash of nonsense.
It's a disparaging remark to make it clear that the other person's opinions are wrong and that they as a person is of lesser value and should be ignored or attacked. It's used as a conversation stopper and to polarize the discussion, i.e. rally support from like minded and suppress the other party.
It's also not used merely to say that someone is against trans people, like you suggest. It's used by a toxic community that are immune to nuance and opposed to debate other than to force their own view on everyone else. Very few people are against trans people, but maybe some doesn't buy all of the identity politics. Saying that women menstruate is enough to be labeled a terf by the online mob. There's also rarely any radical feminism expressed by the people being labeled as terfs.
I would suggest that it is a slur because it is used as a term of disparagement that often doesn't even accurately describe the target. The label gets thrown at women who are not RF, and sometimes women who, for whatever reason (for example, a religion they adhere to) would be reluctant to even call themselves F. At that point, I don't see how the word is any different than people e.g. referring to any Arabs as "camel jockeys".
I think the economist's usage was OK, as it appears in the supplied context to have been used as a slur (I'm not adequately connected on the topic to know what the "normal" usage would be).
> The whole article is suspect to be sympathetic to anti-trans politics as a result.
Clearly, given what I said above, I don't agree with this diagnosis. In particular I think a few articles like this are a good antidote to the "the universities are insane and have been taken over by crazy extremists" narrative.
Perhaps if this commend page doesn't descend into vitriol, more contextual discussion could lead me or you to modulate our opinion. As I said I don't follow this topic particularly closely, so my interpretation could be naïve.
There’s a difference between saying it’s used as a way to disparage someone and as a slur here. I’ve generally associated the term slur with a significant history of using it against a demographic, such as fggot, nggr, ch*nk, etc. saying that TERF is on the same level as those terms struck me as politicking and not journalism, which made me suspect the rest of the piece as political nonsense from the right.
Language is dynamic. Use something as a slur often enough, and it becomes a slur. And here it's clearly being used as a slur. That doesn't make it always a slur (yet), but here it clearly is.
I’ve associated the term slur in the common understanding with an actual history of marginalization, and I think the claim is totally unnecessary politicking in the reporting.
A slur is any term that’s “a disparaging remark or slight” according to dictionary.com. It’s hard to argue they’re not using the term TERF as disparaging.
The problem is that you are saying "TERF" is a slur by using a wide definition but then using the narrow definition to claim it's a travisty to be called a "TERF". The point is that "TERF" is not on the same level as the n-word, f-word or the t-word which you are likening it to when you insist it's a slur. It's simply not harmful to call someone a "TERF" like it is to use slurs against the groups that TERFs are marginalizing.
Sure, if someone uses it in their paper on, for example, history of feminist thought I wouldn't assume it to be offensive. On the other hand I don't think that the intention behind a sentence like “shut the fuck up, terf” is very unclear.
It seems like the critical thing at stake in this thread is what 'slur' means. Like you, I think of slurs as being only the words associated with minority violence, maybe curse-words+, the sort of thing that would make me feel uncomfortably speaking aloud due to the associations. Evidently other people feel that it means something more like 'insult'. I can't say what this means in the broader context, but it might be a good signal to re-evaluate how you interpreted its use-age in the article.
> No one has successfully beaten and killed a woman while calling her a TERF and then got away with it in court like the gay panic defense and the trans panic defense has. No one was lynched for being a TERF like black people have been.
That is a bizarre standard for what constitutes a slur, and would exclude the vast majority of slurs. This reads more like an attempt to inject an emotional appeal to deny a point you personally disagree with.
TERF is a phrase pretty much always used to attack its target. Coupling it with "shut the fuck up" makes the intention pretty clear.
"Gender critical" people claim that someone's sex cannot be changed, not even using surgery and hormones. So what is sex then? Obviously not one's hormones as those can be replaced just fine. That leaves chromosomes, primary and secondary characteristics.
They also claim that gender is more important than sex. When they, for example, address someone as "Dear Mr. Smith", they must be referring to their sex then. Which means they mean something like:
- "Dear Smith, who has XY chromosomes"
- "Dear Smith, who has a natural grown penis"
- "Dear Smith, who has a penis that works well enough that I consider them a man
- "Dear Smith, who can grow a beard"
- "Dear Smith, whose shoulder width is typical for a human male"
All of these are either bafflingly irrelevant, fucked up or inaccurate. So how exactly is one's sex relevant to anyone except their doctors and partners?
> In February, when Donna Hughes, a professor of women\u2019s studies at Rhode Island University, published an article critical of gender ideology, petitions sprouted calling for her to be fired.
The article, which the Economist didn't bother to link to:
It's more of a pamphlet filled with lies, sexism and conspiracy theories. I think academic freedom is too important to fire her over this, but I understand the petitions.
> In February Holly Lawford-Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne, launched a website which invited women to describe their experiences of sharing female-only spaces with trans women. It is not a research project and its reports are unverified. Most describe a feeling of discomfort rather than any form of physical assault.
So? I'm sure some women feel uncomfortable around black women. Or lesbians. Someone feeling uncomfortable around people of a given group is a common cause of discrimination and bigotry.
> If Maya Forstater, a British researcher who lost her job because of her gender-critical views
No, Mr. Forstater lost his job not because of his views but because "It is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".[1]
A huge part of advocating for the right to self-identify is about respecting identity whether you like/respect someone or not. She didn't get her contract renewed because she made it clear she was going to be an asshole to coworkers on this exact dimension.
Correct gendering/identification is not something you have to earn. I still write J.K. Rowling's name out like that because it's how she goes by even though I wouldn't waste spit on her in hell.
J.K. Rowling has stated her love of transpeople and her wish to see them be fully accepted members of society. She has differences of opinion about the best political approach to achieving equality.
Because she makes a rational, temperate argument that you do not like, you "wouldn't waste spit on her in hell."
Right. Another loud article published on a very mainstream media about how a very established academic is being silenced and prevented from "debate". I wonder, if one collates all the articles on British media about transgender people, how many of them would actually concern the daily experiences of real transgender people, versus how many that consist of an established writer complaining loudly that they have been silenced?
Or to put it more quantitatively: how many words uttered by real transgender people have been published on British media, and how many words of these brutally silenced "gender-criticals"?
You put "debate" in quotes like it's somehow a dirty word, which is shocking and depressing to me. I DO care about what real transgender people have to say, and to be honest, especially on college campuses in the US, it is very easy to see they have a voice and are able to speak there opinion.
I have no idea whether this academic's opinion is one I agree with. Primarily because she wasn't allowed to speak.
She was allowed to speak far more than any trans people has been allowed to speak - she is speaking on The Economist. I do not see any trans people speaking on The Economist. The same applies across the entirety of published British media. That you willfully ignore this epistemological injustice, does not render it irrelevant.
The university ground is one of the very few places where real transgender people, along with other socially marginalised groups, are generally allowed to speak, and allowed to speak for themselves. They are particularly visible on campus, precisely because they are effectly not allowed to speak in other places. Such as The Economist and other print media.
And yes, certain "debates" are quite dirty. Debates are not neutral fields of free intellectual inquiry, but potent manifestation of prevailing epistemological injustices. It is shocking and depressing, that certain people must again and again defend their own existence in "debates" premised on a claim to the absurdity of their condition. It is shocking and depressing, that sincere experiences of trans people are not taken, but rather must be put under the forensic lens of "debate" to be constantly challenged and invalidated. These "debates" are dirty constructs, serving as a powerful mechanism of collective gaslighting.
I am not British, so I can't quite comment as well on the media landscape there, but I see tons of articles about transgender issues, with lots of commentary by trans people, in mainstream American media. A few simple examples:
And your last paragraph about claiming people are debating about forcing certain people to, as you put it, "again and again defend their own existence", is what I find so frustrating, because this is absolutely NOT what is going on in this instance. Yes, there are a tons of examples where this DOES happen, but lumping all honest debate about difficult problems (say, how does one determine if someone is eligible to compete in women's-only sports) as "defending your own existence" is just silencing all views that don't 100% agree with you.
Not "allowed" to speak? Jesus, the hyperbole doesn't help your case. Trans people are a tiny, tiny minority. That doesn't mean these organizations are actively excluding them. Get a grip.
> Yet the most worrying effect is likely to be invisible. An unknown number of university employees avoid expressing their opinion for fear it will damage their career or turn them into pariahs. The report about Essex says witnesses described a “culture of fear” among those with gender-critical views.
Why the hell is this a bad thing? I also don't want to hear from conservatives about their anti-women abortion stances (which they Doublespeak-ingly refer to as their 'pro-life' position). Yes there are a bunch of conservatives in Europe, but fuck no can they stop women from having autonomy over their body and choosing to have an abortion.
Also once you have a trans friend and you hear first hand about their journeys to figure themselves out, why would you intentionally misgender this friend and not honor their request for their chosen pronouns? At same point it's just purely about intentionally causing others pain; likely it's some unconscious pain originating from some traumas, which ends up getting directed and projected onto others.
The Economist is neo-liberal and conservative drivel. Can't believe my economics teacher was trying to get us to read it.
Nothing wrong with neo-liberal stances. I'll take that over the progressive left who seem to have missed every Econ class when they went to college (and operate exclusively on identity politics, like you)
>“shut the fuck up, TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a slur)
I stopped reading there. The protestors are framed as crazy and insane but TERF is a slur, there's no "opinion" marker on the article, it's pretty clear the author is coming from a biased perspective although framed as objective. When they can't even start the article of a controversial topic with even a weak attempt at objectivity I know enough not to indulge.
How does that help??? TERF is not a slur, it is definitely used as an epithet, but only the targets of the term call it a slur making it obvious the authors are sympathetic to the terfs.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making between "slur" and "epithet", but I suspect you're reading too much into that choice of word.
The point I was making is that when you say "The protestors are framed as crazy"... it's not just framing. They sent a picture of a gun to a speaker--that IS crazy. If you can't even quote an entire sentence about the people you're defending, it's you that's doing the framing here.
And yes, the author clearly has a bias. But if you refuse to read anyone who has a bias, you'd better just give up reading. You certainly showed a bit of bias in your selection of which parts of that sentence to quote. It seems like your real complaint is that you don't agree with the author--if that's the case, then this is your opportunity to say why you think the author is wrong. That's how you have a discussion with people you disagree with: you don't accuse them of bias, you don't try to shut them up, and you definitely don't send them pictures of guns.
The truth has power. If what you're saying is actually true, you can get people to recognize it without making inane accusations, silencing naysayers, or making death threats.
To be clear: I think it's perfectly fine to call someone a TERF if the accusation is true, and it's bad to be a TERF. But sending pictures of guns to people has no place in a civilized discussion, and we shouldn't be tolerating that behavior or covering it up.
The Economist is not neutral on this - it has numerous editorial staff with a long history of transphobia, and a very vested interest in trying to propagate a general backlash against rights for trans people.
Much of this article is vague - things are "growing" with little evidence to back such assertions up. The reason for that is that they are primarily wishful thinking.
