I can. I can also see how some religious parents are upset that little boys and girls are allowed to play together. (Or that girls are allowed to be in school at all.)
The point being, of course, that the existence of upset parents does not mean carry enduring merit.
This is the article I was thinking of. It’s very disturbing. I think parents have every reason to be concerned.
Let’s try to stay on topic, and not create a strawman.
Not a strawman at all. Simply shedding some light on the validity of ‘people are upset about x’ as a measure of x’s worth.
As an aside, lots of religious people are fully on board with the measures you described, so we should take ‘religious’ off the board as a characteristic of those on one side or the other.
Yes, It was a strawman. You came up with an example to argue with that most people would consider foolish.
How’s this for more clarity.
Crikey, that is a depressing read. IF this is a biological reality then can’t we at least agree to slow the heck down? The kids transitioning, and/or delaying puberty through hormone treatments…I mean, just damn. But, if we are going to increasingly allow and accept such radical interventions, then surely we couldn’t deny the hypothetical intervention I spoke of, right?
I think it’s wrong to medically treat children in that way.
I wouldn’t agree with it and you don’t agree with it, but parents have a right to do it within certain boundaries.
Like I said it’s none of my business. Whether or not it’s ideal or what’s best for said kid is not mine to decide.
You bring up some good points. Gender or body dysmorphia is not idealistic for anyone. It’s a tough road for anyone.
Depending where you are on the scale, it makes sense to make the wiring match the machine rather than the other way around. If your needle is pegged to full dysphoria, then making the machine match the body makes more sense. If the needle is barely registering, it’s better not to let someone go down a road they cannot come back from. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Actually it is yours to decide since we are all part of the law making process. I think these identity politics issues have outpaced our ability and in some cases willingness to address them scientifically and rationally.
Word up!!!
But what if a man that believes he experiences the world with a woman’s brain, doesn’t actually feel like a women? If feeling like a woman is indeed a different experience (due to biological reasons) than feeling like a man, how does a man know that the feeling he is experiencing is that of a woman? Perhaps that’s his conclusion, and he acts it out. But, is he really experiencing the world as a woman? Does he then get “reassigned” and realize, “nope, still feeling suicidal, still dealing with other mental issues. If not more so. I want my penis back. Maybe what I felt really wasn’t a woman’s experience?”
If a male can supposedly FEEL like a female, and we accept that, then we do accept that men and women ARE different (at a more fundamental level than genitalia and mammary glands, I mean), with different ways of being in the world.
So, how does a man then know he is actually feeling like a woman? What if something or somethings merely cause him to put his hope into becoming a woman as a source of relief for various mental/mood issues?
I mean, a man may BELIEVE he feels like he is a gorilla, but he doesn’t actually feel like a gorilla (he mentally can’t actually experience the world as a gorilla). So what if you have men that truly BELIEVE they feel like women, but the reality is they can’t actually feel like women (they simply can’t experience the world with a woman’s mind).
Well, certainly there’s reason to proceed very cautiously. Especially if the gender dysphoria is of a late onset, just seemed to show up in a teen, particularly if that teen has peers at school who are identifying as TG, or has other mental health issues.
Yeah, the Quillette article is really concerning. Particularly in 18-19 year old young adults, who may be encouraged to go on hormones or have breasts removed without parental consent. I was alarmed to see how the therapists seemed intent on telling the young woman that her parents are transphobic if they felt cautious, or wanted to really be sure before she embarked on some intervention with lifelong effects.
Also disturbing to me, I have a friend who had her 5-year-old come home from school and inform her mom that “I can be a boy!” and points to little brother, “And he can be a girl.” I’m not sure if this was part of a diversity training, or if the teacher was trying to accommodate a family who has a child with gender dysphoria, or if it was in answer to some question at school. Anyway, if I had a little tomboy, I’d be pretty upset if the teacher told her “you can be a boy.”
Agree. We’re beginning to see clusters of teens identifying as Trans. I think it’s very possible that we have a contagion effect going on, as mentioned in the Quillette article.
Some good points, Sloth.
Our experiences are subjective. And I’m certainly not an expert on this. I put up a couple of podcasts and articles in the old Science thread in PWI about male and female neurological differences. And Haidt talks about it a bit in the Duke video, if you haven’t watched it. It’s long been a progressive idea that ALL of this is environmental. It becomes very hard to explain situations like studies on male primates, where young male monkeys prefer Tonka trucks, and young female monkeys prefer dolls. Anyway, we now have so much more advanced technology for looking at differences in neurological pathways, density of gray matter, etc… Some of that got covered in the Heterodox Academy response to James Damore’s Google memo.
@ TG. Certainly we have people who want to transition back, express regret, or who are still very depressed or suicidal. It’s concerning that some impressionable young people may now be more likely to go down this path, particularly since the risks involved in a mistake are very high. Every parent is going to be concerned about these things.
Worth pointing out that, likewise, it’s long been a conservative idea that ALL of this is genetic.
The primate research was interesting. Very difficult data to interpret unambiguously, though. I’m gobsmacked by the coefficients of variation obtained–never seen them so high. And given the CoVs, I’m puzzled as to why the authors don’t report medians. Maybe @ActivitiesGuy could shed some light.
That would all be covered by the sliding scale of gender\ body dysmorphia. Unless you are full blown woman stuck in a man’s body surgery is probably not the best option for you. Getting the wiring more in line with the biology is preferable because getting the body in line with the wiring is way more difficult and irreversible.
Trans aren’t the only people with body dysmorpia, a lot of bodybuilders do too… Not most, but the guys who’s 5’7" and weighs 310 lbs ripped, while impressive, has a form of body dysmorphia too.
I think it is disturbing as well. Starting to fuck with the way a normal body develops at a young age because you think your child is express his\ herself as the opposite sex is fucked up.
That stuff will emerge with time. And therapy is needed.
However, we need a lot more research on the matter.
All you need is an idiot parent starting hormone treatment only to find out your kid does indeed want to be a boy and now has a 2 inch penis.
That’s the fear of jumping in that rabbit hole, what if you aren’t sure? Or you thought you were sure and now you can’t do a damn thing about it. Meanwhile, we give awards to Bruce Jenner who is still a man with a fully functioning penis. Call him Caitlyn and make him Woman of the Year, when he isn’t a woman and hasn’t been dressing like one for a year.
Can’t see how kids would get confused? It’s obvious, he’s a man, decided to be a woman and hooray! Even though he’s still a man.
Wait until that knife comes near his penis… “WAIT! Nevermind!”
The good news is your both right. There is a genetic and and environmental component. If you grow up in ‘gay-a-topia’ even with ‘strait’ gene’s your likely to be gay. And if you grow up ‘Cis-Normative’ and never see a gay person, you can still be gay.
Well, we need to stop thinking of this as a simple dichotomy. And I think Haidt is right when he says that humans are reluctant to let go of ideas that go against some notion we believe to be true, have thought as “settled,” particularly when we have some almost religious motivation to believe our favorite facts. Not pointing to anyone here. It’s just very human to want to defend facts or ideas we like, and to want to ignore, or disprove other facts or ideas we like less.
@ false dichotomies, this is a nice blog post.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/the_false_dichotomy_of_the
@ Confidentiality in young adults. I was thinking about this in light of the Quillette article. I recently heard about a family who is suing UPenn after their 18 or 19 year old daughter committed suicide. Unrelated to the TG issue, just a depressed student. The family is claiming that the young woman told school officials, and professional counselors that she was suicidal multiple times, and the school failed to see it as a serious danger, failed to inform her parents before she walked into a train tunnel and laid down on the tracks. Horrible.
Obviously, young adults have the right to seek confidential counseling over sensitive issues, and they need to be able to talk to a physician about health issues privately. BUT most of us see our 18-19 year-old students as kids, and we really want to know if something serious is going on.
I suspect cases like this may change policies, on college campuses at least. There are several other cases of parents suing the college over similar circumstances.
edited.