Dawkins describes trans ID as a meme

🤭 Indeed.

Actually, I understood a huge issue regarding detransitioners is that no one is recording the data. People quietly drop their cross-sex hormones, or revert to dressing appropriately for their sex, revert to their original name.They're not about to announce that from the roof tops; but it appears to be a lonely road.

The detrans boards on Reddit speak of people getting shunned from the community for daring to question, like some religions do.

I had no idea I was trans until I got the meme. It's fab to be so cool, although I fear I probably don't go on and on about it quite as much as I'm supposed to.

As a 1975 vintage GenX I rarely get a chance to feel cool any more and have even received the occasional (devastating) retort of "OK Boomer" from some young whippersnapper born of the late 90s.

The Stonewall definitions of transgender take in many different groups of people; plus the main issue with such definitions, in the case of something so vague and psychological/imaginal as 'transgender', is that these definitions could apply to all sorts of other people too.

We have been told to " believe them if someone says they are trans". You are not supposed to require any kind of evidence or obvious prescription. It is literally self identified.

Source for your first, please?

The second isn't true. Transitioners are very rare indeed. The main paper quoted used the wrong benchmark for being transgender, and used a much broader defintion which encompassed all gender non-conforming kids, and marked people they couldn't trace as detransitioned. As an example, the regret rate for gender confirming surgery is 1% - lower than practically any other medical procedure.

And, of the people who did detransition, it was largely because of pressure from parents, harrasment and discrimination, and employment issues.

He genuinely can't see any difference between a C of E vicar and an Al Qaeda terrorist

I can't cite my source because I've read a lot of his work
But I'm pretty sure Rich D has likened the CofE to a mild vaccination that protects the young of the UK against the more aggressive religion of eg the USA

(I realise that religion is being described as a disease in this metaphor😬)

So you don't know whether it should be clearly defined in order to get accurate data?

You can't even agree with me there?

If your definition of transgender includes everyone, you are clearly using the wrong definition.

I'm using the definition that requires that there are gender identities that either match, or don't match, sex. As per Stonewall etc.

The fact you seem to think this is "clearly wrong" is eye-opening!
No wonder you've not been able to keep up with the discussion on this!

I can imagine all manner of different human cultures and you obviously would still have left handed humans and homosexual humans, regardless of whether or not each particular culture allowed them to be open about it. A left handed person might have been forced into writing with their right hand for instance, but you'd see their innate left handedness in the way they handed objects (your dominant hand is used for precision and novel actions, the other for stability and repeated actions). Similarly a gay person might marry someone of the opposite sex but never be truly sexually happy.

But would you have so many teenage transmen and NB females in a culture with no homophobia and misogyny? With true equity between the sexes? I doubt it. I'm not even convinced you'd have so many straight middle aged male transitions either because the kink / humiliation aspect would be far less strong as it relies on society's subordination of women to exist in the first place.

Ironically, it is from reading accounts of transition by trans people in pro trans ideology media that I have learned so much about the history of trauma, homophobia and sexism that underpins the adoption of a trans identity. It becomes so obvious it is a somewhat understandable reaction to our current cultural environment.

That's a one line quote from an edited article that was in the OP and is the thing we are all discussing. Why have you now said that's his entire position?

Why the weird dishonesty? Find his actual stance and criticise it, but why pretend this is everything he has to say on it?

@DadJoke if you think being trans is innate then how do you explain why girls who think they are trans currently outnumber boys six to one?

How do you explain why most young people desist?

This is Dawkin's deeply thought out position that transgender is meme. He's clearly done a lot of research into the literature on gender identity and RODG.

As it happens, he thinks there may well be a “genetic contribution” to homosexuality in humans — “which does seem to be a bit of paradox” — but he is not buying the idea that there is similar genetic explanation for trans people identifying with the opposite gender. “It’s a meme. It’s a school craze. We all remember crazes for this toy or that toy and children tend to behave in a rather herd-like fashion, following fashion.”

I direct you to the hundreds of papers already written on this topic, and the definitions devised by international medical and psychological bodies. I am not doing that work for you.

For the rest, I am really no sure what you are talking about. If your definition of transgender includes everyone, you are clearly using the wrong definition.

@DadJoke do you agree one would have to define "transgender" clearly in order to see if someone would be counted in any study as such?

Would anyone who doesn't consider themselves to have a gender identity that "matches" their sex count as trans or not trans? (The person themselves would have to be confident of knowing this as well, to work out how they identify).

In working out which genders match which sexes (or not) do you agree there needs to be consensus on which match with which?

We are told that women are both male or female, so presumably either sex "matches" a woman gender identity. But that would mean no-one is trans. So the definition needs clarification.

Of course, if you think you'll get accurate data on terms that are never defined you won't be interested in establishing this, but most would disagree.

(missing the point)

I have never worked with a left handed person who has set up their mouse left handed.

Meanwhile, due to RSI of sorts, I (right handed) have set my mouse up to be left handed and taught myself to use it that way to the extent that I have requested a left handed mouse when doing job assessments. The number of organisations that have no idea it's a thing is quite revealing. Good luck with anything more esoteric like assistive settings.

At least it means no one ever uses my laptop for anything.

As you were 😀

Been a follower of Dawkins since "The Selfish Gene" which I shameless cribbed into my final year dissertation. Cheers Richard !

I saw 'unsourced data from Google' and 'Dadjoke' in the preview and all was instantly clear 😁

…nothing like the graph of trans identifying cohorts.

You really must try to stop the false linking* *of LGB with T. They are separate entities.

In addition to which “identifying” as trans doesn’t actually mean someone is of the opposite sex. Nor does it mean anyone else has to pretend that it does.

Did left-handedness reveal itself predominantly in porn-addicted, paraphilic older men and groups of teen and tween girls who all became left-handed overnight the forgot about it later? Did people get huge kudos and “pride” and celebration for coming out as left-handed? Did right handed people get binned off as uncool? Did pretending to be left-handed help you invade sports categories that are not your own and win? Did a significant minority of left handed people get a thrill from filming themselves masturbating in right handed people’s toilets?

What a load of cak. Left-handedness is innate. That’s why its demographics and how it manifests are so very different from trans identities.

Yeah, the methodology I suggested would demonstrate it. That's why we have p values.
I must have missed the moment when a huge proportion of teenage kids identified as gay and then changed their minds back. Because sexuality is not the same as gender identity.

As has been asked a thousand time, where is the spike in middle aged women wearing their husbands' pants and yearning for male pattern baldness?

i much prefer proper evidence an data from the Cass review, it tells us everything we need to know on the matter.

just to go back to Dawkins, I remember he contributed to an excellent TV series where they dissected animals and he showed how the anatomy of (eg) the wing evolved through different species

Ploppers gonna plop-plop.

You absolutely can demonstrate social contagion if it existed, using the right methodology. Like sexuality, gender identity has innate, environmental and cultural elements, and like sexuality, can shift over time. Sexuality is a better match than left-handedness (which is almost entirely innate) but the graph demonstrated my point. What do you think a graph of people who admit to being homosexual over time would look like?

I wondered when someone would provide, some unsourced data from google.

left and right handed people have a visible preference.

unlike gendered people who only have secret, or not so secret genders.

spurious linkage at its best

Dadjoke if you really don’t think it’s a social contagion, can you explain what you think is happening when a group of 10yo girls all pick themselves a lgbtq identity and buy flags and badges for it, with none of them choosing “straight and cis” even though that would actually be over 80% of people, because that’s terminally uncool, and then forgetting about it when some other trend catches their eye?

And that’s fine - it’s what kids do - trends, memes and social contagions are not necessarily bad in themselves. The problem is adults taking it seriously. If one of those girls has affirming parents, teachers and doctors she could end up being pushed down a pathway that will end up destroying her fertility and health for life, when she would have had a high likelihood of growing out of it and accepting her actual true self - a female, however she likes to present - with maturity. And this is happening to loads of girls.

Do you honestly really think that this is a story of an innate gender identity? How? Please explain instead of just repeating unevidenced dogma.