The left eats JK Rowling over transgender comments

[ronburgundy]

Right. A mental issue best left between a therapist and patient has been made a political issue imposed on us all.

This is pure bigotry, and just as irrational and anti-science as the denial of biological sex based on reproductive systems. Psychological gender is real and a productive of brain biology. The brain undergoes sexual differentiation that is only partly influenced by chromosomes but also influenced by factors that do not impact the development of reproductive organs. That leads to people having brains that have structural features far more similar to what is typical of people with reproductive systems of the "opposite" sex. It is no more a psychological disorder than it is a disorder of their reproductive system. It is neither. It is a discordance between the reproductive system and brain development that only leads to psychological problems and only requires a "therapist" b/c it is atypical and society does not accept or accommodate what is atypical, especially as relates to biological sex and gender roles.

This is the kind of bullshit that has lead to the forms of counter-extremism I'm arguing with Politesse about. Some trans-activist seek to suppress the reality of biological sex, b/c bigots try to use that reality against them, to harm them with accusations of delusion, and to deny the equal scientific realty of brain based psychological gender. At least their unreasonableness stems from self defense and not a desire to be a cruel bigot.

Why should someone’s gender dysphoria be a political issue? It wasn’t before recently. Yet now everyone has to sit in on the group session.

You make it a political issue with your demeaning anti-science claims about it. They don't suffer from a delusion, you do. They don't believe they actually have different genitalia than they obectively have. Focusing on the majority of transgenders, they believe something that is objectively true, that their psychological gender which is determined by their physical brain features is more similar, both experientially and neurologically, to people who have different a reproductive system from themselves. In fact, it would be delusional for them to think they are not objectively more similar to the other sex in brain-based psychological gender. Thus, it is conservatives like yourself too mentally weak to handle the complexity of reality who try to force them into their own delusion that sex and gender are the same and are binary.

Some activists may make unreasonable demands and/or unscientific claims, but that is an emotional reaction to unprovoked pervasive anti-science bigotry that has long been directed at transgenders.

 

[Politesse]

Why would we accord you the "right" to deny someone else existence on their own terms?

I identify as part of the British Monarchy, from now on you must address me as "Your Royal Highness" or "Your Majesty".

There's a difference between positive and negative rights. I don't think you should be obliged to treat me as royalty, but neither would I tolerate you treating me as though I weren't a full citizen.

 

[Politesse]

Wouldn't that imply that eh obstetrician could look at a freshly delivered infant with ten fingers, ten toes, two testicles and a penis... and "assign" that child the sex of female?

They could, but it would be unlikely. Here's the kicker, though; a person whose genome revels them to have an XY pattern might still, for any number of reasons as it turns out, be born with "seemingly female" features. A nurse "eyeballing" an infant is not a scientific fact. But it is a practical and legal fact that they made the call they did. So "assigned female at birth" is a fact, but "biologically female" isn't necessarily.

Wouldn't that imply that for the 99% of cis-gender people out there, we might be wrong about what our actual gender is, since it's not related to our biology but is just whatever the doctor "assigned" us?

I said nothing about being "unrelated to biology". In fact, the quoted post explores the relationship between biology and society in a far more nuanced fashion than you are currently managing. And no, your gender is not determined by a doctor, and it is influenced very heavily but not determined by your biology. Gender is a social fact, wrapped around some biological realities to be sure, but also created by culture, experience, and psychology. You have some say in it, so did the doctor, so does your family and community. Even if you all agree on a label, which for most people is a very likely outcome, you don't necessarily agree on what that label means.

As if biological sex is just a human fallacy with no relation to reality.

It's not either/or. If I say to you "you're old", and you reply "but I don't feel old", we are probably both referring to biological facts that we have observed about you. But neither of us is necessarily right or wrong. The biological facts are what they are. The category was created by our culture, and is malleable by nature despite being based to some degree on biological processes that aren't in dispute. If I say "Barrack Obama was our first black president", and I reply "Barrack Obama was our forty-fourth white president", we are both equally correct from a biologist's point of view, and to some extent both of us must have certain biological facts in mind. But you are more correct than me from a social scientist's perspective, because the biological underpinnings of race are the red herring in the conversation, irrelevant to the social identity that racial identities in fact connote.

 

[ronburgundy]

This is pure bigotry, and just as irrational and anti-science as the denial of biological sex based on reproductive systems. Psychological gender is real and a product of brain biology. The brain undergoes sexual differentiation that is only partly influenced by chromosomes but also influenced by factors that do not impact the development of reproductive organs. That leads to people having brains that have structural features far more similar to what is typical of people with reproductive systems of the "opposite" sex.

This is one of the aspects of transgender activism that I bristle at. It comes full circle right back to "lady brain". It puts women, in general, right back into the box of stereotypes that have been a barrier for ages. It lends credence to arguments that women aren't "suited" for certain kinds of roles, like leadership, politics, etc. It reinforces gender bias. And it tacitly supports misogyny.

It can be misused towards those ends, but it doesn't actually do any of those things in itself. It just acknowledges scientific reality that the brain undergoes sexual differentiation during gestation, and that the mind isn't magic, it's a brain byproduct. It doesn't deny that many and possibly all aspects of gender roles are either socially constructed or at least reinforced, or that there is variability within each group (bimodal is not binary). Also, if males and females are clustered around psychological qualities A and B respectively. Society can shape those qualities into X and Y respectively, such that men and women are not naturally X and Y, but they are different in some way that with social influence produce X and Y tendencies.

I realize that some feminists do have an issue with this and unfortunately sometimes deny the science because of how it's misused. But that's misguided. The core goals of feminism can still be achieved by acknowledging these realities. And without accepting these realities, transgenderism does become a kind of delusion, b/c it means there is no such thing as being born anything but a human and sex is the only innate dimension, and gender is nothing but a choice or something people can be socialized into (and thus socialized out of if it doesn't fit the norms). It puts transgenders into the same position homosexuals were put into by centuries of insistence that heterosexual attraction is the only innate impulse and anything else was an arbitrary "choice".

 

[repoman]

Ron,

If it can be shown that a very small portion of transgender people came to be (what at surface looks to be) trans for reasons not related to deep brain regions as you described...

But rather from other causes, similar to anorexia, or a self directed fetish what would that mean?

Anorexics don't have choice, nor do cross dressers who are aroused by dressing as women to head you off at the pass. I don't think people will say that there is an anorexia or cross dresser center in a dedicated region of the brain.

There a couple videos by cogent youtubers that are excellent for opening up this debate

First is a transman talking about extreme dysphoria from having periods


I have a lot of respect for Jammi to be able to be so public about this. Actually, Jammi seems to be a top end highly functional person.

The second is a very effeminate gay man rightly or wrongly concerned that gay boys like he was a child may be sent down a transition pathway now


I think making the gender to sex behavior binary extremely rigid might do that in a few cases of kids with other problems. Letting people be cool with early Bowie, Grace Jones and Boy George androgyny and NOT asking them all the time will they transition seems for the best. People on social media are asking this of the new "Boy Georges" all the time now. It is wearing them down.

Social media is cool in small doses for fun and cute stuff and as an RSS news feed, but the negative social effects can be devastating



Having your gender and orientation being scrutinized by thousands of strangers, even if well meaning, is not a good thing

 

[ronburgundy]

Unless you're talking to an actual scientist, who will happily point out that there is no real scientific definition of "maleness" and "femaleness", at least not one that would apply to all theoretical cases in a dichotomous fashion.

I don't know about "maleness" and "femaleness", but actual scientists, including almost all biologists for centuries constantly discuss and define "male" and "female" in highly consistent reproductive terms that apply across species. There is little confusion or equivocation among them and there is extreme reliability between them in term of which category different members of a species belong to, including which of the 1% or so members don't clearly fit into one of those categories. In addition, countless thousands of research studies, particularly in medicine and biology show that these categorizations reliably predict numerous medical or biological outcomes, thus showing that the defining criteria used are highly meaningful and important. The fact that 99% of people can be reliably sorted into the two categories doesn't mean "binary" but rather bimodal, but with the two curves have minimal overlap.

They don't bother saying "biological male" or "biological female" b/c that is redundant and it's widely understood that the male and female categories are defined by the two types of qualitatively distinct reproductive systems that almost all members of sexually reproducing species can be reliably categorized as.

 

[Politesse]

Unless you're talking to an actual scientist, who will happily point out that there is no real scientific definition of "maleness" and "femaleness", at least not one that would apply to all theoretical cases in a dichotomous fashion.

I don't know about "maleness" and "femaleness", but actual scientists, including almost all biologists for centuries constantly discuss and define "male" and "female" in highly consistent reproductive terms that apply across species. There is little confusion or equivocation among them and there is extreme reliability between them in term of which category different members of a species belong to, including which of the 1% or so members don't clearly fit into one of those categories. In addition, countless thousands of research studies, particularly in medicine and biology show that these categorizations reliably predict numerous medical or biological outcomes, thus showing that the defining criteria used are highly meaningful and important. The fact that 99% of people can be reliably sorted into the two categories doesn't mean "binary" but rather bimodal, but with the two curves have minimal overlap.

They don't bother saying "biological male" or "biological female" b/c that is redundant and it's widely understood that the male and female categories are defined by the two types of qualitatively distinct reproductive systems that almost all members of sexually reproducing species can be reliably categorized as.

There are entire human lives in within that overlap. If you're starting to use hedge words like "almost all", but your feelings about social identifiers are soaked in absolutes, you only have one foot in the realm of science.

 

[ronburgundy]

Ron,

If it can be shown that a very small portion of transgender people came to be (what at surface looks to be) trans for reasons not related to deep brain regions as you described...

But rather from other causes, similar to anorexia, or a self directed fetish what would that mean?

The neuroscience shows that isn't true. People sorted by their self-identified transgender status show particular brain features that are significantly closer to their identified gender. That wouldn't occur unless it was true for at least a majority of them.

 

[Politesse]

There's an interesting hypocrisy involved in defining sex partially by supposed fundamental differences in psychology, while at the same time, blustering about how people's psychology is irrelevant to the question of what their "biological sex". If there are genuine sex differences in how one thinks, why wouldn't someone who thinks in a supposedly "male way" be as much a valid indicator of likely intersex status as ambiguous genitals would be? You can't eat your cake and abstain from the calories.

 

[ronburgundy]

Unless you're talking to an actual scientist, who will happily point out that there is no real scientific definition of "maleness" and "femaleness", at least not one that would apply to all theoretical cases in a dichotomous fashion.

I don't know about "maleness" and "femaleness", but actual scientists, including almost all biologists for centuries constantly discuss and define "male" and "female" in highly consistent reproductive terms that apply across species. There is little confusion or equivocation among them and there is extreme reliability between them in term of which category different members of a species belong to, including which of the 1% or so members don't clearly fit into one of those categories. In addition, countless thousands of research studies, particularly in medicine and biology show that these categorizations reliably predict numerous medical or biological outcomes, thus showing that the defining criteria used are highly meaningful and important. The fact that 99% of people can be reliably sorted into the two categories doesn't mean "binary" but rather bimodal, but with the two curves have minimal overlap.

They don't bother saying "biological male" or "biological female" b/c that is redundant and it's widely understood that the male and female categories are defined by the two types of qualitatively distinct reproductive systems that almost all members of sexually reproducing species can be reliably categorized as.

There are entire human lives in within that overlap. If you're starting to use hedge words like "almost all", but your feelings about social identifiers are soaked in absolutes, you only have one foot in the realm of science.

Nonsense. "Almost all" is a qualifier that applies to every question in science. To be complete you'd need to use it to refer to how scientists think about gravity, and every aspect of human biology, not just sex. The rare exceptions do not disprove what is generally true and do not undermine to scientific validity and utility of the categorization scheme.

 

[Politesse]

Nonsense. "Almost all" is a qualifier that applies to every question in science. To be complete you'd need to use it to refer to how scientists think about gravity, and every aspect of human biology, not just sex.

Which is why when people to use the implied legitimacy of science to justify absolutism in the social realm, they're "almost always" full of shit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But vanishingly rare intersex conditions do not make sex not binary, nor do they mean humans can change their sex.

Also, intersex conditions have zilch to do with transgender issues. The vast majority of trans identified people do not and never have had, intersex conditions.

If the chance of intersex is not 0.000% then it's not binary.

Besides, the issue is whether there's some sort of gender to the brain that can be different than the anatomy.

 

[repoman]

Ron,

If it can be shown that a very small portion of transgender people came to be (what at surface looks to be) trans for reasons not related to deep brain regions as you described...

But rather from other causes, similar to anorexia, or a self directed fetish what would that mean?

The neuroscience shows that isn't true. People sorted by their self-identified transgender status show particular brain features that are significantly closer to their identified gender. That wouldn't occur unless it was true for at least a majority of them.

That is why I bolded very small portion.

People will try to use these more rare people to discredit the biological basis for most trans, so be ready for it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

XY - female

You are either dumb or an ideologue.

You mean androgen insensitivity syndrome?

Estimated at 20 to 50 per million for complete insensitivity and a similar number where it's partial.

 

[repoman]

XY - female

You are either dumb or an ideologue.

You mean androgen insensitivity syndrome?

Estimated at 20 to 50 per million for complete insensitivity and a similar number where it's partial.

I was saying that Caster Semenya is a male

 

[Metaphor]

But in this Brave New World of you are whatever you say you are, I could simply rock up to a salon that doesn't want to service me (being a man), claim I'm a trans woman and they would have to service me.

I’m not sure where you get that conclusion from?

The outcome of this case seemed to be that, barring some specific acceptable reason to allow the contrary, if it was your genitals, a waxer offering a women-only service might reasonably be able to refuse, but if it was only your arms and legs, they might not, whether you were a trans woman or a cis man.

Do you think it's reasonable that salons should be forced to wax the arms and legs of men if they don't want to?

 

[Metaphor]

But vanishingly rare intersex conditions do not make sex not binary, nor do they mean humans can change their sex.

Also, intersex conditions have zilch to do with transgender issues. The vast majority of trans identified people do not and never have had, intersex conditions.

If the chance of intersex is not 0.000% then it's not binary.

Besides, the issue is whether there's some sort of gender to the brain that can be different than the anatomy.

No. Intersex is a disorder of development and the existence of intersex conditions does not violate the underlying reality of a sex binary in mammals.

 

[Metaphor]

In regard to sports records being shattered, these are beyond trivial and do not occur in anywhere near the percentages necessary for it to ever be an issue. All you just said in regard to sports is that someone beat someone else's record. So what? That literally happens all the time, where biological "men" shatter biological "women's" records--and vice versa--constantly.

No. Women do not shatter men's records "constantly". Or basically ever.

The fastest women to ever run 100 metres did it in 1988. Every single male semifinalist in the 2016 Olympics beat her 100m record.

You have simply artificially separated competitors as an unjustifiable means of awarding them utterly meaningless medals.

You are either the best at running the 100K in a particular race or you are not. What plumbing you have is entirely irrelevant to that already irrelevant and utterly trivial temporarily held title:

That's delusional.

Why is it that trans activists don't support abolishing sex-based sporting events all together, if sex is so meaningless?

It's clearly a question of time (and training), not a question of plumbing and it is far more important that someone's rights be upheld than whether or not you get a blue ribbon next Tuesday for kicking a ball around for an hour or so, that will then go to someone else the following Tuesday and will then go to someone else the following Tuesday ad infinitum.

No. You already believe men who identify as women have the right to compete on women's sports. If there were no difference between men and women, we wouldn't segregate sports in the first place.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You have argued that people cannot will their beliefs, so that is not a surprising claim, since you also cannot make yourself believe obvious truths as well.

Well there goes THAT irony meter.

 

[Metaphor]

Does anyone here seriously believe that the only reasons why someone would go through the extraordinary step of transitioning to another sex is so that they could have a slight advantage in sports and/or so they could openly walk into bathrooms?

No. Nobody said that or believes it, so I don't know why you think that.

But, it's certainly true that trans women demand those things. They demand access to women's sports and women's private spaces.