Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[Marvin Edwards]

...
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 think you may have just answered your own question. Medical treatments that rely upon knowing a person's sex, will require knowledge of their physical sex. But doctors must also deal with the patient as a person, which means knowing the person's gender. I presume that, because physically transgendering will often involve hormonal treatments which may alter the course of treatment for the current medical issue, the doctor will need the complete picture. And the complete picture will be found in the patient's medical records.

So, this is something new for the doctor to deal with. But, then again, so was Covid-19. And doctors already treat people who have underlying conditions, like Powell's blood cancer, differently than they would treat someone without that condition.

Each person has their own unique medical history. And, each person has their own combination of sex and gender.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

False. Nouns in general don't have a sex but they have a gender. Humans have a sex and some humans have a gender, but noun usage in humans has always been sexed.

Depends on the language.

Have you ever noticed how Chinese speakers butcher gender? That's because their language does not have gendered nouns other than a few family relationship words.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

\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.

 

[Metaphor]

False. Nouns in general don't have a sex but they have a gender. Humans have a sex and some humans have a gender, but noun usage in humans has always been sexed.

Depends on the language.

Yes, it does, which makes the imperialistic butchering of Hispanic languages, for example, by non-Latino white progressives in America, so funny....and frightening.

Have you ever noticed how Chinese speakers butcher gender? That's because their language does not have gendered nouns other than a few family relationship words.

Actually the primary way I have seen Asians with English as a second language struggle is with plurals rather than gender. But it's certainly true that there is a non-English perspective to the pronoun debate that is not considered by trans ideologists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I segregate the people I will have sex with and the ones I will not, based on their 'dangly parts'. (Based on their primary and secondary sexual characteristics, actually, but 'dangly parts' usually correlates well enough). Are you suggesting that instead I should abandon my sexual orientation and base it on being oriented to a particular gender?

So? Most people are that way. There are plenty of women I would have absolutely no sexual interest in--and having the wrong anatomy is merely one reason amongst many

Now: if instead you will allow my sexual preference but want me to say "I want to fuck only adult human males", well, I find that odd that I would have to change my language to suit some females who want to call themselves men.

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

 

[Loren Pechtel]

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won't Date Trans People

Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences.

No surprise here. Personally, I suspect that only people which are at least somewhat bi would date someone with anatomy not matching their presentation.

Once you enter the dating realm trans becomes important. I wouldn't date a trans person--but I wouldn't date a smoker, either. Does that make smokers not women?

 

[Metaphor]

I segregate the people I will have sex with and the ones I will not, based on their 'dangly parts'. (Based on their primary and secondary sexual characteristics, actually, but 'dangly parts' usually correlates well enough). Are you suggesting that instead I should abandon my sexual orientation and base it on being oriented to a particular gender?

So? Most people are that way. There are plenty of women I would have absolutely no sexual interest in--and having the wrong anatomy is merely one reason amongst many

So: I am attracted to sex, not gender, and being told that 'homosexuality' is an attraction to my own gender (and I don't have a gender identity) is gaslighting fucking nonsense.

Now: if instead you will allow my sexual preference but want me to say "I want to fuck only adult human males", well, I find that odd that I would have to change my language to suit some females who want to call themselves men.

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

Trans ideologists want to change the label in order to change the reality, and they call anybody who does not conform to their agenda a transphobe.

I intend to resist that.

 

[Metaphor]

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won't Date Trans People

Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences.

No surprise here. Personally, I suspect that only people which are at least somewhat bi would date someone with anatomy not matching their presentation.

Once you enter the dating realm trans becomes important. I wouldn't date a trans person--but I wouldn't date a smoker, either. Does that make smokers not women?

It makes you a transphobe, according to trans ideologists. It also makes you a 'genital fetishist', according to trans ideologists.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

I segregate the people I will have sex with and the ones I will not, based on their 'dangly parts'. (Based on their primary and secondary sexual characteristics, actually, but 'dangly parts' usually correlates well enough). Are you suggesting that instead I should abandon my sexual orientation and base it on being oriented to a particular gender?

So? Most people are that way. There are plenty of women I would have absolutely no sexual interest in--and having the wrong anatomy is merely one reason amongst many

So: I am attracted to sex, not gender, and being told that 'homosexuality' is an attraction to my own gender (and I don't have a gender identity) is gaslighting fucking nonsense.

Now: if instead you will allow my sexual preference but want me to say "I want to fuck only adult human males", well, I find that odd that I would have to change my language to suit some females who want to call themselves men.

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

Trans ideologists want to change the label in order to change the reality, and they call anybody who does not conform to their agenda a transphobe.

I intend to resist that.

Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to do this thing of getting to know somebody, visiting with them several times, getting lost in conversation, getting a little bit stoned once in a while, talking about our feelings, and just letting things happen the way that they happen.

 

[Trausti]

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won't Date Trans People

Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences.

No surprise here. Personally, I suspect that only people which are at least somewhat bi would date someone with anatomy not matching their presentation.

Once you enter the dating realm trans becomes important. I wouldn't date a trans person--but I wouldn't date a smoker, either. Does that make smokers not women?

It makes you a transphobe, according to trans ideologists. It also makes you a 'genital fetishist', according to trans ideologists.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

I am pretty sure he's gay, @Trausti.

There are plenty of gay men that actually would be glad to literally date a penis. They have this cute idea called a "glory hole." I have also seen some charming pornography involving large boxes with strategically placed holes in them. That is just the tip of the iceberg. This man ought to have absolutely zero trouble getting as much penis as he wants.

I 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.

However, I am not exactly making very much of an effort to get straight men to feel attracted to me. My clothing is unisex, I look pretty unisex, and I tend to do this weird thing of having conversations with dudes before actually thinking about the possibility of having sex with them. It can be weeks before I actually get undressed in front of a guy, so by the time we get to that point, the chemistry is already there and out-in-the-open.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

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.

 

[Generation55]

New Research Shows a Vast Majority of Cis People Won't Date Trans People

Virtually all heterosexuals excluded trans folks from their dating pool: only 1.8% of straight women and 3.3% of straight men chose a trans person of either binary gender. But most non-heterosexuals weren’t down for dating a trans person either, with only 11.5% of gay men and 29% of lesbians being trans-inclusive in their dating preferences.

No surprise here. Personally, I suspect that only people which are at least somewhat bi would date someone with anatomy not matching their presentation.

Once you enter the dating realm trans becomes important. I wouldn't date a trans person--but I wouldn't date a smoker, either. Does that make smokers not women?

It makes you a transphobe, according to trans ideologists. It also makes you a 'genital fetishist', according to trans ideologists.

This just made me think of something. If a trans person is OK with their genitalia, say for example a trans woman who gets surgery to alter the body but doesn't have a problem with the penis, how can they be trans? Wouldn't their gender be matching their sex? This is so confusing.

 

[Jarhyn]

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.

 

[TV and credit cards]

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.

 

[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.

 

[ZiprHead]

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?

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Metaphor I would avoid the fallacy of reification, here. By the word "gender," we are literally referring to something that is done by the delicate microstructures in your brain. We cannot even come close to examining it closely without diffusion tensor imaging or something even more advanced. For reasons that are still not well-understood, your brain usually knows what sex you are, but sometimes, it is reversed.

The behavior caused by this reversal is weird, but it is also manageable. Young people can be "socially transitioned" early in life. In fact, if we did not have the technology that we currently have, then social transitioning alone might work in most cases if the people around them were open-minded and decent. Regardless of why, the system works, at least if getting people to live longer is what you are trying for.

It's just another issue like the blind spot in the human eye. There is no "intelligent design." We are not a "perfect creation." We are born with bugs, of one kind or another, all of the time. The fact that gender dysphoria pops up, every once in a while, is just another example of that.

Social transitioning of transgender kids, though, is really the easiest bug-fix ever.

Anyhow, gender is real, but nobody can really show it to you, in the literal and physically manifest version, without having you slog through several hundred pages of diffusion tensor imaging research.

The concept of "gender" that is being peddled by, as you call them, "trans-ideologists" is just a very sloppy metaphorical explanation for the same thing, but it should not be taken too literally. Unfortunately, transgender people are just as human as any other humans, and most humans believe in one kind of magical thinking or another. Transgender people are no exception. They often take the metaphorical explanation of "gender," and they turn it into a patently ridiculous system of magical thinking.

Well, that problem leads you to thinking that the whole thing is sketchy, and I get that. The problem is that you are partway right, just not entirely right. They take the metaphor too far, and they take it too literally. They make it sound like the whole thing is made-up.

Either that, or they go into some sort of deconstructionist parallel universe, which I see as problematic and toxic. I think that deconstructionism is just as problematic as religion. In spite of what deconstructionists tend to think, the brain is not really just gray mud that you can shape any way that you want to. Contrary to what deconstructionists think, there are delicate microstructures in our brains that we are stuck with for life. 97-99% of us will always be "cis-gender." Those microstructures will always come out with a particular type of weird only once in a while. The deconstructionists are wrong.

Worse, the deconstructionists make it harder for people to see the underlying empirically self-evident truth. Again, the only way that you can look at the cause, in the literal sense, is indirectly through diffusion tensor imaging studies, but what is a little bit easier to observe is that socially transitioned kids live longer and have less coping issues. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends something close to what I am talking about, here.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e20182162 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-2162)

Again, transgender people are still people. People cannot really understand most things without some kind of metaphor, but if you give them a metaphor that they can use, then they are probably going to try to take it literally, which leads to magical thinking. People can be like that, and I am afraid that transgender people are not always exceptions. They are not always going to be the kinds of people that are going to be receptive to the complicated truth. You could not reasonably be considered to be at fault for that, so I suggest picking your battles.

"Gender" is both a very messy metaphor and something that is based on a real thing. It's a bad metaphor, but it's the best metaphor we've got. The real explanation takes too long for most people. I get exhausted even trying to explain all of this stuff to other transgender people that are reasonably intelligent.


With warm regards,
Sigma

 

[Jarhyn]

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.

Something I've been struggling to align well enough to get words under the complexities of the thought...

Imagine two people.

One person sees the idea of being able to have sex with a person, and their sexual organs swell.

Another person sees their companion make a conscious decision to put ideas of sexuality aside for the night and just "spend honest time", and their sexual organs swell.

One of these things I would say is "masculine" and one is "feminine".

Of course, I'm with Sigmathe and this is what I've been going on about for years. It's not "a thought in the head", it's "a stable, persistent physical state" just as much as the "stable physical state" of the genitals. It just happens one is way easier to observe.

Someone should call Emily Lake in here though... Seems like something she would be interested in reading, I think?

 

[Toni]

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.

Something I've been struggling to align well enough to get words under the complexities of the thought...

Imagine two people.

One person sees the idea of being able to have sex with a person, and their sexual organs swell.

Another person sees their companion make a conscious decision to put ideas of sexuality aside for the night and just "spend honest time", and their sexual organs swell.

One of these things I would say is "masculine" and one is "feminine".

Of course, I'm with Sigmathe and this is what I've been going on about for years. It's not "a thought in the head", it's "a stable, persistent physical state" just as much as the "stable physical state" of the genitals. It just happens one is way easier to observe.

Someone should call Emily Lake in here though... Seems like something she would be interested in reading, I think?

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