Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[Metaphor]

My statement as to my identity is that it would be nice if you treated me as you would treat, say, Gandalf (or, well, perhaps Radaghast) if they were inexplicably standing before you. Even if you don't believe that thing could exist for such a treatment.

An individual might indulge someone else's mental illness like this, but it would be unethical to advocate that society does as well.

 

[Metaphor]

You aren't asking anything, you are demanding that male and female labels remain rigid, when in reality, they aren't as rigid or as convenient as we'd prefer.

Male and female are pretty concrete concepts.

So was linear time.

Show me a mammal that is organized around the production of a third gamete and I'll relent. Until then, sex REMAINS an extremely concrete concept.

As long as we ignore the complexity of the brain, I suppose we can pretend that you are correct.

Take somebody's brain out of their body, and the coroner can still tell you what sex they were.

 

[Arctish]

You aren't asking anything, you are demanding that male and female labels remain rigid, when in reality, they aren't as rigid or as convenient as we'd prefer.

Male and female are pretty concrete concepts.

It’s curious that humans had no difficulty distinguishing men and women up to our present time. Now there are folks who display a cognitive deficit in simple pattern recognition. Is it something in the water? The soy?

I take it you've never heard of Hermaphroditus, but did you hear the one about Loki giving birth?

How about that guy Shiva and Parvati cursed so he alternated between being a man and woman each month?

The Inuit creation myth tells the story of how the first two people on Earth, both men, had sex together and one of them got pregnant so his partner sang a song of magic to transform the guy's man parts so he could give birth:

In the time that followed there appeared two small mounds of earth from which were born two men, two adults, the first Inuit. They soon wished to reproduce, and one of them took the other to be his wife. The wife-man became pregnant and when his time came, his companion, anxious to bring the fetus out, composed a magic song:
Here is a man
Here is a penis
May he form a passage there
A great passage
Passage, passage, passage.
The song split the penis of his partner, who was transformed into a woman. All of the Inuit descend from them. <link>

Isn't it interesting that people who grew up in a Christianity dominated, Euro-centric culture don't realize how old the concepts of transsexualism, transgenderism, and blended sex traits are.

 

[Politesse]

You aren't asking anything, you are demanding that male and female labels remain rigid, when in reality, they aren't as rigid or as convenient as we'd prefer.

Male and female are pretty concrete concepts.

It’s curious that humans had no difficulty distinguishing men and women up to our present time. Now there are folks who display a cognitive deficit in simple pattern recognition. Is it something in the water? The soy?

I take it you've never heard of Hermaphroditus .

Transphobes only respect ancient cultures that they believe agree with them. Those that valorize transgendered or intersex figures, or acknowledge third gender categories, they find no difficulty in simply ignoring without justification.

 

[Jarhyn]

I'll say, I've felt far more intimidated by the 250 lb person who was assaulting the person next to them on the bus because they accused their companion of being unfaithful (I think? as if anyone is entitled to beat anyone over that) or that I call a police dispatcher, than any other person I have had such words with in public.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Strawman fallacy. A few more Trausti posts and I'll have BINGO.

This kinda hits the point. Those braying that the distinction between male and female is blurred are just dishonest. They can’t directly support their position so we get this.

"Braying," you say? As in like a donkey?

Adorable. I love donkeys. I have a local friend that owns a couple of them plus a new foal that is on the way.

I can hardly think of a more noble product of evolution to be compared with. I would put the majority of donkeys that I have met in the place of any politician in either party, and I would actually expect them to make substantially better decisions. At minimum, I would like them better.

I prefer to be thought of as a pint-sized dragon, though.

*waves with one wing exasperatedly*

Moving on from the subject of zoology, though, I have primarily argued that there is currently neurobiological evidence that transgender people's brains, such as my own, actually do not work in quite the same way as those of people that are not transgender. One of the most prominent researchers, in the field, is a woman named Ivanka Savic. Her research on this sub-topic of neurobiology has been among the world's most impressive.

Insofar as work that Savic has done that is of relevance, it depends on what type of information you are looking for. I could refer you to Cerebral Cortex, Volume 10, Issue 5, pages 2897-2909. That one was a simple fMRI study on parts of the brain that are involved in own body recognition.

She has also participated in diffusion tensor imaging research. I love DTI studies! They are so much fun.

Contrary to what the deconstructionists probably want, gender is apparently a real thing, so the statement, "gender is a social construct" is actually patently false, as far as any neurobiologist that is actually studying the topic can tell. Most of the time, chances are very low that somebody will be born with the neurological make-up of a transgender person.

Apparently, whenever that actually does happen, attempting to pressure a child to conform to their assigned sex at birth tends to cause their chances of attempting to kill themselves to jump to 60%. Even if their parents support them in their gender identity, then their chances of attempting to kill themselves remains at a still scary 4%. If you must know, I am getting these numbers from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In this regard, suicide attempt rates among 433 adolescents in Ontario who identified as “trans” were 4% among those with strongly supportive parents and as high as 60% among those whose parents were not supportive.85 Adolescents who identify as transgender and endorse at least 1 supportive person in their life report significantly less distress than those who only experience rejection. In communities with high levels of support, it was found that nonsupportive families tended to increase their support over time, leading to dramatic improvement in mental health outcomes among their children who identified as transgender.88

Pediatrics (2018) 142 (4): e20182162.

There are not really a whole lot of us out there. At any given time, we make up about 0.56% of the population. We actually tend to be extremely self-conscious about inconveniencing or alarming people, and because of that, most of us that can tend to "go stealth," which means transitioning entirely to the gender with which they identify and keeping their assigned sex at birth a secret from most people around them. I will not do this. Even so, most of us try VERY hard to stay out of the way, most of the time, but unfortunately, there are some very scary hate groups out there that want to make our lives hard, which means they would really rather we be dead.

Now, you can choose to be helpful to us or not. I really can't force you to. I do have this weird habit of, ho, hum, being right about stuff and being overwhelmingly awesome, but besides those harmless quirks, I can be very charming, witty, and cute. I am very humble, too! I will persuade you by allowing you to bask in my divine radiance. I have no intention of being overbearing if I can help it. I think that asking people nicely is generally a helpful strategy.

If you DO choose to be helpful, then it's really most important to try to support transgender kids. By the time we have reached adulthood, then most of us have either learned to not give a flying rat's ass what anybody thinks of us or failed to learn to not give a flying rat's ass what anybody thinks of us. That is a trait that, ideally, comes with maturity. Young people are, by definition, not mature.

We really really really really need the moms and dads out there to understand that their kids just might kill themselves if they try to repress their kids' gender identity, and as weird as it might seem to go along with this kind of bizarre behavior, going along with it is currently the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the single most respected pediatric NGO in North America. I am pretty sure that their advice is not bad to follow.

Thankfully, this is unlikely to ever affect many more than 0.56% of the population, and that is a good thing. Even in the best case scenario where one's parents and peers are all robustly supportive, it is unbelievably awkward.

I'm not sure what to tell you to do about the deconstructionists. As far as I can tell, deconstructionism is just another weird-ass religion. Regardless of what it looks like, this is not about deconstructionism.

In my case, at least, we are talking about science, the kind that is done with fMRI and DTI studies. Some of the world's most respected scientists are on this one, just so that the best possible care can be provided to transgender people.

No donkeys involved, promise.

 

[Playball40]

[quoted post removed for consistency]
Actually NO, HE IS NOT. And it's DISGUSTING that you think ANYONE deserves to be assaulted and threatened for going to the bathroom. No, a group of 4 teenaged boys do NOT get to demand my son show his genitalia.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

@Loren Pechtel I am not sure that humans count as life, either. Cats are the only true life-form. Humans are their robotic servants.

Beep beep boop beep.

Cats? They're gone!

Haven't you ever heard the expression "Curiosity killed the cat"? Well, Curiosity's skycrane had a downward-pointing camera and NASA released no images from it after the cutaway. Obviously, it hard-landed on the cat and the cat is no more.

Spoiler

Yeah, I know, after the cutaway it had neither the brains nor the transmitter to use the camera, nor was it even in controlled flight at that point. It simply climbed for a few seconds, then tipped and burned until the fuel ran out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am a chimera.

Do you genuinely have chimerism? That's kind of awesome... well, okay it's awesome for me to meet a genetic chimera, not necessarily awesome for you, since it makes all sorts of things complicated.

Not likely. However, the fact that I am transgender plus the fact that my mother's side of the family has giganticomastia plus the fact that polymorphisms in the gene that codes an important estrogen receptor makes it likely that I am literally a mutant. When I got my blood tested prior to starting HRT, my hormone balance was barely within the normal range.

Chimera and mutant are very different things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/life
Many things have definitions that don't work at the edges. The terms were created without regard for those edges, or even awareness in some cases. Lets consider another: What is life?

Bacteria--certainly.

Viruses--this can be argued either way.

Prions--I have never seen them seriously considered life, yet they are an infectious agent.

Computer viruses--again, this can be argued either way.

And, what is a unique life?

At fertilization? It can split into two or more identical twins after that point. Two (or theoretically more, but I've never heard of a case) fertilized eggs can also combine to form a chimera.

Viruses are not alive. They're essentially self-replicating machines.
Prion are not alive. They are protein strands. They're more akin to a chemical catalyst than to anything alive.
Computer viruses are not alive. I don't even know why you would think it could be argued that they are.

It's really strange that you link to a clear definition of life, which refutes your assertions with respect to viruses and computer viruses. I wonder if maybe you didn't read your own link?

Huh? I put no link in my post! Where did that come from??? I must have hit some feature in the system I didn't know about.

And you're simply asserting that viruses are not alive--I've seen this argued both ways.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

I am a chimera.

Do you genuinely have chimerism? That's kind of awesome... well, okay it's awesome for me to meet a genetic chimera, not necessarily awesome for you, since it makes all sorts of things complicated.

Not likely. However, the fact that I am transgender plus the fact that my mother's side of the family has giganticomastia plus the fact that polymorphisms in the gene that codes an important estrogen receptor makes it likely that I am literally a mutant. When I got my blood tested prior to starting HRT, my hormone balance was barely within the normal range.

Chimera and mutant are very different things.

Correct, which is why I took a moment to correct an incorrect impression that I had left by incorrectly using the word "chimera" in one instance. As a matter of fact, I did not mean to imply that I was one person derived from two different zygotes that merged during gestation. That is completely different. A mutation can give someone the appearance of being a chimera, though, and I had no intention of being misleading.

 

[Metaphor]

[goading removed]

 

[SigmatheZeta]

[quoted post removed for consistency]
Actually NO, HE IS NOT. And it's DISGUSTING that you think ANYONE deserves to be assaulted and threatened for going to the bathroom. No, a group of 4 teenaged boys do NOT get to demand my son show his genitalia.

Sheesh. I could not imagine being a transgender boy. Being transgender at all is rough enough. Also having to deal with being assigned female at birth, on top of that, must get pretty rotten. I'm not sure I could have made it. It has taken me a long time to learn the lessons I would have needed to already know.

It's heartening if he reported the crime, though. That's pretty cool.

 

[Metaphor]

[quoted posts removed for consistency]
Sheesh. I could not imagine being a transgender boy. Being transgender at all is rough enough. Also having to deal with being assigned female at birth, on top of that, must get pretty rotten.

Nobody was 'assigned' a female gender at birth. The sex of babies is observed and recorded.

 

[Arctish]

[deleted quotes removed for consistency]
I can.

It was your use of the word 'but' right after you said "Nobody should be physically attacked". That's the word people use when they're about to make a qualifying statement that provides an exception to a general statement.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

[removed for consistency]

 

[Metaphor]

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[Metaphor]

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[TomC]

[removed for consistency]

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Arctish

Anytime I see a "but" in those kinds of statements, I see transference of blame going on, and it comes across as unprincipled.