Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[Trausti]

Transgender people are genuinely born with their brains connected a little bit differently. I can support this point-of-view with tungsten-hard scientific research if you want to go there.

I am actually interested in some references. I'd also appreciate your personal opinion on whether this applies to all people who currently fall under the "trans umbrella", or whether some of the current crop of transpeople might be responding to a social construct as a panacea for ills unrelated to gender dysphoria.

Eh, not really difficult to accept that a transperson has different wiring in the brain, is it? There were transexuals long before our Woke age - seems if you’re willing to cut off your pecker you really mean it. Unless it’s a coerced adolescent, don’t see how mutilating your body to match a mental self-image is something done lightly. But off wiring in the brain doesn’t change the rest of the body.

 

[Emily Lake]

"You don't think I'm a man? Look at my beard! Look at my motorcycle jacket! Look at my boots!" But, feminists would say "those things don't make someone a man."

Many feminists would agree that neither the motorcycle nor the boots make someone a man... but the beard is usually a rather strong secondary sex indicator.

And aside from whether a person is a feminist or not, most people consider what makes a person a man or a woman to be dictated by their biology, but if one is good enough at mimicking those sex-based signals (through surgery, hormones, voice coaching, practicing body language and gait, and even skillful application of social stereotypes), they will generally be treated as their identified gender in situations where that assumption is not demonstrated as false.

 

[Emily Lake]

\What has you confused is ideology. I do not care a rodent's rectum about it. I am telling you that my brain is physically different, and I really preferred being called "she" and "her" when you talk about me in conversation, bitte-danke. Beyond that, I believe that most of the ideology about gender, either way, is stupid. I cannot be bothered to provide you with several years' worth of education about neuroanatomy, and getting my gender right, whenever you talk about me with others, is probably the easiest way that you will ever make friends with somebody.

Furthermore, I disagree with the deconstructionist approach. According to Nick Haslam, it is a counterproductive approach, and when fighting back against essentialism, we are better off focusing on entitative essentialism, which is the kind of stereotyping that denies diversity within a group or intersectionality with other groups. For instance, a transgender man can also be a misogynistic conservative Protestant that likes to watch football. Not all of them are like that, but they can be. Transgender women can be like that, too. Some trans-women are also rednecks that like to go deer-hunting in the autumn. A surprising number of them are fat and lazy computer programmers that have not actually looked believably feminine since middle-school. Only a few of them actually look like the glamorous models off of RuPaul, and a truly amazing number of them just look like normal, everyday people. The point is that we come in all possible flavors. You might even like some of us.

See Essentialist beliefs about social categories, by Nick Haslam.

I have given you the neurobiological explanation for why I am the way that I am. If you need sources, then I am happy to provide them for you, but you could always look them up on your own if you prefer. Also, I have given you simple instructions for how to make a good start on turning me into a friend if that were ever your inclination: just call me by the gender that I prefer to be called.

I am not complicated. Life is complicated, but I am not. When you get right down to it, I am the easiest person ever.

I can see what you are saying. I also never said I don't like trans people. I do. My issue is with the definitions of these words "man" and "woman." I can see pictures of trans women and trans men online. They don't bother me. What does bother me is me wondering, "What do they mean by "man" and woman?"

Also things like, "you don't have to wear dresses and make up to be a woman" but a lot of trans women DO wear dresses and makeup which seems to be conforming to the stereotype feminists are trying to erase in the first place. Same how trans men like to dress in stereotypical male clothes while claiming that gender norms shouldn't exist. It just seems weird to hear someone say, "You don't think I'm a man? Look at my beard! Look at my motorcycle jacket! Look at my boots!" But, feminists would say "those things don't make someone a man." You see what I'm saying? Not trying to be hateful or hurtful here. It's just confusing to me.

And what do you do about medicine? A trans woman gets into a car accident or something and the paramedics come, I think it would be helpful for the paramedics to know that her body is male, right? This is just so confusing to me. There's a difference in medicine for women's bodies and men's bodies. It's not as simple as, "just treat me like a good person!" I can do that, but what about every other scenario that doesn't involve simple conversation?

I don't pay very much attention to what normal people think about anything. I am a beautiful mutant, and my inclination is to stay that way.

The truth is that transgender people find it just as hard as everybody else to understand it. If you think it's weird from the outside, then it's weirder from this side. It is like a seriously bad acid trip, my friend, and it's not even good acid. It's that brown acid that Chip Monck was warning the people at Woodstock about. It's so horrifying that 40% of us attempt to kill ourselves within our lifetimes, and it's worse for trans-men than it is for trans-women! The worst people to ask about this subject can be the transgender people, themselves. Most of us can barely cope.

The mainstream transgender community has begun to cling to an ideology that is not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely right, in my opinion. They have imbued something that is actually based partly in factual evidence with a substantial amount of magical thinking, and that's anathema to how I think. I understand why they are doing it, but they are just making it more confusing.

What happened was that, sometime during my gestation in my mother's uterus, shortly before I was born, my brain got saturated with a flood of estrogen or suffered from an unusual shortage of testosterone, and it happened at exactly the same time when certain very delicate structures, in my brain, were taking shape.

Well, apparently, we humans are evolved to be able to comprehend what sex we are. Regardless of what dumbass deconstructionist types of feminists say, men and women are born with different brains, and most of the time, they know which sex they are. MOST of the time. Almost all of the time. Think about it: 97-99% of the time does not make for bad odds that your brain actually thinks it goes with your body!

Unfortunately, we are not really "intelligently designed." If I had an employee that made me something like that, I would tell that employee, "You get a B." I certainly would not worship that employee. If that employee demanded that I worship them, then I would call that unprintable son of two strangers a treacherous scoundrel, and I would have one less employee. It works great until it doesn't, but when it doesn't, then you end up with one very confused and unhappy kid. That's barely a B. It's a B-.

As far as we can tell, the main part of the brain that is responsible for this, at least in one sub-set of transgender people, is the right inferior fronto-ocippital fasciculus. It is nothing in the world except a giant cluster of axons that are stretched out between the front-end and ass-end of your brain, to put it very roughly. Apparently, there is some kind of feedback mechanism in it that is responsible for deciding whether we identify ourselves as female or male.

It's a product of human development not being a perfect process. While it works great, most of the time, it can be a little bit sloppy around the edges.

Anyhow, most transgender people are not really sophisticated enough to understand the brain science stuff, and if you tried to go into that discussion, you would just confuse them. Transgender people can be almost any kinds of people. They can be people like me, but they can also be people from incredibly poor socio-economic backgrounds. Most of the time, they are probably more confused about this stuff than you are, and many of them find it to be mortally terrifying. Most of them are going to use their own idiosyncratic language to try to talk about it, and in most cases, they are going to be about three degrees off from the truth, even though they are generally not wrong. I can't help you much, on that, except to say "pick your battles."

There is literally a part of my brain that does the job of deciding what gender I am supposed to be, and mine did not develop in quite the normal way for a dude. Transition has made me feel substantially more comfortable with being me. That's where the rubber hits the road.

It's difficult to tease out the effect of social conditioning... but contrary to what some types of feminists insist, we're NOT blank slates. We're mammals, and just like nearly all other mammals, we're sexually dimorphic both physically and behaviorally. The behavioral aspect is a lot fuzzier than the physical is, but it's still dimorphic.

Dogs are also dimorphic. Male dogs lift their legs to pee, female dogs squat. Once in a very long while, you run across a male dog that squats (more common in breeds with very short legs relative to their body length), and even more rarely you run across a female dog that lifts her leg. But 99% of the time, that's a pretty clear observable behavioral difference between male and female dogs. I sincerely doubt that's a learned behavior, rather I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's an innate prompt from their sexed brains.

 

[Emily Lake]

You're fixating on a label rather than the reality. I don't care what the label is.

I disagree. It's a matter of being able to accurately name the reality.

When the word "man" is forcible expanded to include female-bodied people with vaginas who have had mastectomies and take exogenous testosterone, then if Met says that he is "sexually attracted to men", it implies that he would be attracted to those transmen as well. And I sincerely doubt that he is. I actually suspect that Met is not attracted to transwomen who have boobs either, even if they have lovely dicks. He might be attracted to some feminine males, but I would bet that if they have boobs it's an instant turn-off. Because Met is attracted to standard issue human males; Metaphor is homosexual.

 

[Emily Lake]

I wouldn't date a trans person--but I wouldn't date a smoker, either. Does that make smokers not women?

Nope, but apparently it does make you a bigoted transphobe who should give some serious thought the the driver of your genital fetish...

 

[Emily Lake]

I guess that what confuses me is why anybody lets an intellectual concern dictate their sex lives for them. The way I think about it, you are either attracted to somebody or not. It has never been difficult for me to find happiness, and I think that part of the reason why is that, in my sexuality and my romantic inclinations, I just let stuff happen. I let go.

I like my way.

I don't think anybody is letting intellectual concerns dictate their sex lives. On the other hand, some of us have been observing how this 'intellectual' concern is driving and altering policy and social interactions.

I have a cousin who used to be an out and proud lesbian. But she got harassed so much by very aggressive transwomen that she is re-closeted. They insisted that if she refused to consider them as a potential dating or sex partner, she was a horrible bigoted transphobe. They denigrated and hassled her because she, as a lesbian, didn't want to have penetrative sex with their 'lady penises'. All of her lesbian hangouts and nightclubs ended up flooded with males in women's clothing who considered themselves to be lesbians and didn't want to take no for an answer.

Lil Nas got jumped on and dragged because he was very clear that he likes dick. He's one of a very few out gay black men... and he faced an immense amount of backlash because he's gay and doesn't include transmen in his interests. Because he likes dick. What's bizarre to me is that he gets lambasted as transphobic... but he's at least (if not more) heterophobic, seeing as he excludes all females, including those who are not transgender.

 

[Metaphor]

This study is approachable: Structural connections in the brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation
For me, it does a good job of defining sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. It might be helpful to others.

The study does not even define what it means by 'gender', except circularly.

Sexual orientation signifies the sex of the object of one’s sexual attraction, whereas gender identity denotes the sex and gender role one identifies with.

What's circular about that?

They use the word 'gender' to define 'gender identity'.

That's not circular. Circular would be using 'gender identity' to define 'gender'.

Using a word to define itself is circular. It's like defining 'woeful' as 'full of woe' but then not finding 'woe' in the same dictionary.

What is gender?

The word gender was not being defined, the phrase "gender identity" was being defined. It makes sense to reference "gender" when defining a phrase that includes that word, just as it makes sense to reference the word "sex" when defining "sexual orientation", which occurred in the first half of the sentence, and with which you apparently had no problem.

I know gender wasn't defined, because I looked in the article for the authors to define it. That was my entire problem in the first place: that the authors use 'gender' without defining it, as if we are all supposed to know.

I don't need the authors to define 'sex' for me because I know what it is.

 

[Emily Lake]

The definitions we have are adequate: when someone says "I am a man" they say "you, person, treat me as you would any man". Same with "woman".

How should a man be treated? How should a woman be treated?

The fabulous part about this is that YOU are the one who gets to decide that. That's how the game is played. They ask to be treated "the way Emily Lake treats women", and that's all they get to ask. If they demand be treated in a certain way "as a woman", then they go to far.

You know how you treat "women".

You treat half of everyone like so, or thereabouts.

They are asking you extend exactly that courtesy.

I treat men and women the same. I make no distinction.

There are cases where I treat females differently than males, and a person's gender identity doesn't change that. If they don't ping as male, I will treat them as if they are female. If they don't ping as female, I will treat them as if they are male. That pretty much means being wary of male-appearing people when they are intoxicated, avoiding big masculine people in dark alleys and being on guard against them when I'm alone... and assuming that the small, female-appearing person is massively less likely to sexually assault me.

 

[Metaphor]

II am not so much offended by the fact that some people have hang-ups over my assigned sex at birth, but I just find them to be very confusing.

Most men that end up being attracted to me are bisexual. My husband identifies with the gay community, but he has actually been married to a woman twice in his lifetime. This is characteristic of the kinds of men that I have had in my life. They are not exclusively gay.

I think the second paragraph explains the first.

Most of us are exclusively attracted to one set of anatomy. A trans person will generally have mismatched anatomy and thus not meet our requirements. A bisexual person, however, won't mind the mismatch as they are attracted to all the bits involved.

That's a weird assumption. I like wagyu steak and I like cookies and cream ice-cream, but I wouldn't want a wagyu-steak/ice-cream thickshake.

 

[Emily Lake]

I definitely do not see these as masculine or feminine, but as masculine stereotype and feminine stereotype.

No kidding.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

II am not so much offended by the fact that some people have hang-ups over my assigned sex at birth, but I just find them to be very confusing.

Most men that end up being attracted to me are bisexual. My husband identifies with the gay community, but he has actually been married to a woman twice in his lifetime. This is characteristic of the kinds of men that I have had in my life. They are not exclusively gay.

I think the second paragraph explains the first.

Most of us are exclusively attracted to one set of anatomy. A trans person will generally have mismatched anatomy and thus not meet our requirements. A bisexual person, however, won't mind the mismatch as they are attracted to all the bits involved.

That's a weird assumption. I like wagyu steak and I like cookies and cream ice-cream, but I wouldn't want a wagyu-steak/ice-cream thickshake.

This really needs its own Can We Discuss Wagyu Steak & Ice Cream / People thread.

 

[Emily Lake]

This definition is also going to turn out imperfect in some way, and that will prove to be precisely as non-deadly to my overall points about the fuzziness of word definitions as past objections were, and there will still be exactly zero justifications at the end of the day for saying "We shouldn't use the gender words for trans folks that trans folks would like us to use".

What's your thoughts on cases where a female human was raped by a male human, but that male human identifies as a transwoman... and the court demands that if the victim of rape doesn't refer to the person who violently penetrated her with their penis as "she", then the victim could be faced with criminal charges?

Is a rape victim going to give a fuck about pronouns?

The rape victim shouldn't have to give a fuck about pronouns, but the judge does. Punishing the rape victim for referring to her rapist as "he" instead of "she" seems a bit like salt in the wounds.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This definition is also going to turn out imperfect in some way, and that will prove to be precisely as non-deadly to my overall points about the fuzziness of word definitions as past objections were, and there will still be exactly zero justifications at the end of the day for saying "We shouldn't use the gender words for trans folks that trans folks would like us to use".

What's your thoughts on cases where a female human was raped by a male human, but that male human identifies as a transwoman... and the court demands that if the victim of rape doesn't refer to the person who violently penetrated her with their penis as "she", then the victim could be faced with criminal charges?

Is a rape victim going to give a fuck about pronouns?

The rape victim shouldn't have to give a fuck about pronouns, but the judge does. Punishing the rape victim for referring to her rapist as "he" instead of "she" seems a bit like salt in the wounds.

The rape victim can refer to the rapist by their name... which becomes part of the legal record. And are we inundated with cases of this being an issue?

 

[Emily Lake]

Transgender people are genuinely born with their brains connected a little bit differently. I can support this point-of-view with tungsten-hard scientific research if you want to go there.

I am actually interested in some references. I'd also appreciate your personal opinion on whether this applies to all people who currently fall under the "trans umbrella", or whether some of the current crop of transpeople might be responding to a social construct as a panacea for ills unrelated to gender dysphoria.

Eh, not really difficult to accept that a transperson has different wiring in the brain, is it? There were transexuals long before our Woke age - seems if you’re willing to cut off your pecker you really mean it. Unless it’s a coerced adolescent, don’t see how mutilating your body to match a mental self-image is something done lightly. But off wiring in the brain doesn’t change the rest of the body.

Something on the order of 80% of transgender identified male (transwomen) have not been surgically altered and have no plans at all to remove their penises.

Where do you fall on the different wiring question when the person is completely comfortable with their sexed genitalia but demands to be socially and politically treated as the opposite sex on the basis of their declaration?

Where do you fall on the different wiring question with respect the the steadily growing number of females who are desisting from their gender identity as a man, and who regret their mastectomies?

 

[Metaphor]

The problems arise in cases where a person is obviously of a particular sex, but demands that they be treated as if they're indistinguishable from the opposite sex. It's when a 6', 200lb, broad-shouldered, bearded person in a skirt insists that nobody can tell they're a man, and that they feel like a woman and therefore should be entitled to access to women's changing rooms, locker rooms, and lesbian get togethers, and that if lesbians refuse to date them then those lesbians are transphobic bigots who need to unlearn their genital fetishes, that there's a considerable pushback. Vice versa with respect to females and transmen of course.

I find this a particularly fascinating trait among some trans activists: this idea that the only way to tell somebody's sex is to look at their genitals, and that 'misgendering' or 'deadnaming' somebody is unethical partly because it outs the person as trans, as if the people doing this had insider knowledge, access to sealed medical records showing they were born a particular sex.

Vice versa with respect to females and transmen of course.

Before lesbian bars became a thing of the past, and transwomen routinely told lesbians to suck their girl dicks, it was quietly understood that the only kind of men welcome at lesbian bars were transmen. It's almost as if lesbians understood that transmen were still female.

 

[Emily Lake]

That's a weird assumption. I like wagyu steak and I like cookies and cream ice-cream, but I wouldn't want a wagyu-steak/ice-cream thickshake.

That's where the distinction between bisexual and pansexual comes in.

 

[Emily Lake]

This definition is also going to turn out imperfect in some way, and that will prove to be precisely as non-deadly to my overall points about the fuzziness of word definitions as past objections were, and there will still be exactly zero justifications at the end of the day for saying "We shouldn't use the gender words for trans folks that trans folks would like us to use".

What's your thoughts on cases where a female human was raped by a male human, but that male human identifies as a transwoman... and the court demands that if the victim of rape doesn't refer to the person who violently penetrated her with their penis as "she", then the victim could be faced with criminal charges?

Is a rape victim going to give a fuck about pronouns?

The rape victim shouldn't have to give a fuck about pronouns, but the judge does. Punishing the rape victim for referring to her rapist as "he" instead of "she" seems a bit like salt in the wounds.

The rape victim can refer to the rapist by their name... which becomes part of the legal record. And are we inundated with cases of this being an issue?

I think that one is more than enough.

Wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of the rapist though, right?

 

[Emily Lake]

The problems arise in cases where a person is obviously of a particular sex, but demands that they be treated as if they're indistinguishable from the opposite sex. It's when a 6', 200lb, broad-shouldered, bearded person in a skirt insists that nobody can tell they're a man, and that they feel like a woman and therefore should be entitled to access to women's changing rooms, locker rooms, and lesbian get togethers, and that if lesbians refuse to date them then those lesbians are transphobic bigots who need to unlearn their genital fetishes, that there's a considerable pushback. Vice versa with respect to females and transmen of course.

I find this a particularly fascinating trait among some trans activists: this idea that the only way to tell somebody's sex is to look at their genitals, and that 'misgendering' or 'deadnaming' somebody is unethical partly because it outs the person as trans, as if the people doing this had insider knowledge, access to sealed medical records showing they were born a particular sex.

Vice versa with respect to females and transmen of course.

Before lesbian bars became a thing of the past, and transwomen routinely told lesbians to suck their girl dicks, it was quietly understood that the only kind of men welcome at lesbian bars were transmen. It's almost as if lesbians understood that transmen were still female.

It was also understood that straight women were only welcome if they had been invited by a lesbian or were bisexual.

 

[Metaphor]

I use they often in certain context to refer to somebody of unknown gender. I don't have a particular problem with it, or indeed any polite fictions. But what about 'demonself'? Please note I am not making any of these neopronouns up.

I also use "they" in cases where a person identifies as transgender, but don't reasonably pass (often including very sex-linked behaviors), and I cannot force myself to believe they're the opposite sex. So... at present Elliot Page is a "they", as is Rachel McKinnon.

Slight derail, but Elliot Page is a particularly sad case. The mainstream media fawned over her first 'topless' (post-mastectomy) image, and then again when she was in a suit cut in a men's style (for the Met Gala I believe), as if she looked like the very epitome of masculine physique. She looks like what she is: a tiny, breastless female, desperately play-acting at maleness.

I know the left says 'be kind', but I often feel like the left means 'engage in our delusion in order to be kind'.

 

[KeepTalking]

The study does not even define what it means by 'gender', except circularly.

Sexual orientation signifies the sex of the object of one’s sexual attraction, whereas gender identity denotes the sex and gender role one identifies with.

What's circular about that?

They use the word 'gender' to define 'gender identity'.

That's not circular. Circular would be using 'gender identity' to define 'gender'.

Using a word to define itself is circular. It's like defining 'woeful' as 'full of woe' but then not finding 'woe' in the same dictionary.

What is gender?

The word gender was not being defined, the phrase "gender identity" was being defined. It makes sense to reference "gender" when defining a phrase that includes that word, just as it makes sense to reference the word "sex" when defining "sexual orientation", which occurred in the first half of the sentence, and with which you apparently had no problem.

I know gender wasn't defined, because I looked in the article for the authors to define it. That was my entire problem in the first place: that the authors use 'gender' without defining it, as if we are all supposed to know.

That may all be correct, but you also said "They use the word 'gender' to define 'gender identity'" in response to the question "What's circular about that?".

It is factually incorrect to say that using the word 'gender' to define 'gender identity' is a circular reference.