Gender Dysphoria, Embodiment, and the Political Creation of the “Trans Child”

Strawman.
The point you are spectacularly missing is trans people know average gendered behaviours because they possess them. For the zillionth time, sex & gender aren't the same thing.

Like religion or political beliefs?

You walked into that one.

what's between your legs is kinda important if the question is 'might I get pregnant if I have sex?', or 'I'm bleeding from my genitals. Do I go to hospital or go find a sanitary towel?'

I really wonder how people like you think babies are made. there's no such thing as the 'right' to have a body that can get pregnant

"No human being knows what it feels like to inhabit the body of the opposite sex any more than we know what it feels like to inhabit the body of an elephant".

In checking back in a video that came up with a previous discussion with Howsa, I came across Germaine Greer very clearly stating that there was a difference between (my paraphrase) identifying and ‘knowledge’. That people can talk all they like about identity but no man ‘knows’ that he is female because that is clearly impossible.

I will see if I can find it again

Baileyonice But the point you are missing is trans people aren't saying gendered behavioural averages apply to all people in a group but only to themselves as individuals. They are simply saying they as an individual have more in common with average behaviours of one group more than the other & as such consider themselves as part of that group for this reason.

If that is in fact what trans people are saying - I'll take you're word for it Baileyonice - it is very easily refuted, due to that last phrase.

'Considering yourself' to have more in common with a group is not objective proof that you belong to that group and are entitled to be part of that group.

'Considering yourself' to be part of a group fails to take into account two big stumbling blocks:

1. observable facts and
2. acceptance by the group that you are part of it.

'Considering yourself' to have some shared behaviours is not a substitute for basic , factually observable identifiers, like being tall, or left handed, or male or female.

An individual attempting to join a group that they don't objectively/factually belong to on the sole basis that they 'consider themselves' to be part of the group - an able-bodied person in a people with disabilities group, or a non-parent in a support group for single mothers, for example - will probably be advised to 'reconsider themselves' into a group that they actually share basic characteristics with.

Average differences aren't stereotypes. Stereotypes are expectations.

Stereotypes are expectations based on average differences. What do you think stereotypes are based on? Do you think someone just picked them at random?

They are simply saying they as an individual have more in common with average behaviours of one group more than the other & as such consider themselves as part of that group for this reason.

The point you are missing is that lots of people have more in common with one group than another. That doesn't make them part of that group.

The point about average differences is that they are averages. They don't apply to everyone.

To take some examples from the link you posted.

On average, young boys prefer male-typical toys like trucks, blocks, and toy soldiers, while young girls prefer dolls and kitchen equipment.

But a boy who likes dolls and kitchen equipment is still a boy, and a girl who likes trucks, blocks and toy soldiers is still a girl.

On average, women have more interest in people than things, which partly explains why occupations like computer science and engineering are dominated by men while the health and social sciences harbour far more women.

But some women go into computer science and engineering. They're still women. Some men go into health and social sciences. They're still men.

And this bit is utter bollocks:

Related to this are observations that men are better than women at “systematising”, defined as “understanding and reasoning about systems, including natural systems like atoms and galaxies, abstract systems like logic and maths, and human-made system like machines and computer programs”. Women, in contrast, are better at “empathising”: putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings and motivations.

You, along with the authors of this article, seem to want to take us back in time to when girls were told that they weren't good at things like maths and they should go back to being pretty little things who should just search for a husband and produce children. And, of course that men should all be macho and not show any emotions or feelings.

There are so many problems with that excerpt you've quoted that I'm not going to argue them through, and instead say that if everything it says is true, and sex differences are innate and fixed, then I still don't see what you think that proves about trans people? To take the most obvious and stark sex difference in that list, propensity to criminality: are you saying that women who commit crimes must actually be transmen and just not know it because they have such a strongly masculine trait? Even if we think that, say, wearing a dress is a very feminine trait, why does it then follow that a man who likes wearing a dress is a woman rather than an unusual man?

Sure

And why should others treat self identification as being meaningful and as being something that is materially real if it has no basis in material reality only subjective reality?

Sex based rights are indeed conferred by sex. The clue is in the name. They are not up for debate, open for negotiation or part of a balancing of rights for an individual. Where ever did you get the idea that something written in law could be negated by someone's feelings, especially when that person is not covered by that part of the law?

Lmao, as if I 'm gonna read transphobic bullshit with absolutely no acknowledgement that trans people are individuals.

I have a very small account on there. The fact I've already got them blocked tells me all I need to. I'm not ruining my day by exposing myself to bigotry. I only block hateful people, so they definitely said ignorant, nasty stuff in the past. Why would that have altered?

It suits accounts like that to believe that being trans is an 'ideology' or they'd have to confront their own bigoted behaviour.

It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else how trans children live. They're perfectly normal people with full lives, and treating them as abstract ideas requiring an origin story is tragic as fuck. Trying to profit from the hate which makes trans kid's lives hell with Substacks, books and merch is sickening.

Listen to trans children instead of writing and reading about them. I see so many people here acting like they're ethnographers trying to interpret data, and it's just desperate stuff.

Stop theorising, stop seeking answers and try accepting the humanity of trans people. It'll be tea leaves and secret signs in crystals next.

The problem with this 'analysis' is it assumes rights are conferred only by sex when in fact they come about from proportionality/balancing of rights.

Translation: What is & isn't between your legs isn't necessarily a rights trump card.

That's a really fair point. I think I should maybe declare my personal interest, and the emotional reason I am so bothered by 'being a kinda feminine man makes you a woman', aside from the logical ones. I have an 8 year old boy who is 'feminine' by stereotypes, and who is not very socially skilled or comfortable and so does not easily fit in. I am terrified by him growing up in a world that tells him that the best solution to the fact he likes painting his nails, doesn't like sport and prefers female friends might be to give up his fertility and ability to orgasm at an age where he doesn't really know what either means, call himself a girl and therefore make actual girls less safe. I am so relieved that this seems to be shifting as he gets closer to the age where it becomes a more acute danger.

The problem with this 'analysis' is it assumes rights are conferred only by sex when in fact they come about from proportionality/balancing of rights.

Translation: What is & isn't between your legs isn't necessarily a rights trump card.

Great post.
It's interesting that these discussions about children are so often swerved to talking about adult fantasies and fake facts - anything rather than discuss safeguarding children. It's very telling when certain posters do this. Not criticising those responding btw, just highlighting the repeated derails on threads about keeping children safe. 🙄

Average differences aren't stereotypes. Stereotypes are expectations.

Stereotypes are expectations based on average differences. What do you think stereotypes are based on? Do you think someone just picked them at random?

They are simply saying they as an individual have more in common with average behaviours of one group more than the other & as such consider themselves as part of that group for this reason.

The point you are missing is that lots of people have more in common with one group than another. That doesn't make them part of that group.

The point about average differences is that they are averages. They don't apply to everyone.

To take some examples from the link you posted.

On average, young boys prefer male-typical toys like trucks, blocks, and toy soldiers, while young girls prefer dolls and kitchen equipment.

But a boy who likes dolls and kitchen equipment is still a boy, and a girl who likes trucks, blocks and toy soldiers is still a girl.

On average, women have more interest in people than things, which partly explains why occupations like computer science and engineering are dominated by men while the health and social sciences harbour far more women.

But some women go into computer science and engineering. They're still women. Some men go into health and social sciences. They're still men.

And this bit is utter bollocks:

Related to this are observations that men are better than women at “systematising”, defined as “understanding and reasoning about systems, including natural systems like atoms and galaxies, abstract systems like logic and maths, and human-made system like machines and computer programs”. Women, in contrast, are better at “empathising”: putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings and motivations.

You, along with the authors of this article, seem to want to take us back in time to when girls were told that they weren't good at things like maths and they should go back to being pretty little things who should just search for a husband and produce children. And, of course that men should all be macho and not show any emotions or feelings.

Great post.
It's interesting that these discussions about children are so often swerved to talking about adult fantasies and fake facts - anything rather than discuss safeguarding children. It's very telling when certain posters do this. Not criticising those responding btw, just highlighting the repeated derails on threads about keeping children safe. 🙄

Average differences aren't stereotypes. Stereotypes are expectations.

Stereotypes are expectations based on average differences. What do you think stereotypes are based on? Do you think someone just picked them at random?

They are simply saying they as an individual have more in common with average behaviours of one group more than the other & as such consider themselves as part of that group for this reason.

The point you are missing is that lots of people have more in common with one group than another. That doesn't make them part of that group.

The point about average differences is that they are averages. They don't apply to everyone.

To take some examples from the link you posted.

On average, young boys prefer male-typical toys like trucks, blocks, and toy soldiers, while young girls prefer dolls and kitchen equipment.

But a boy who likes dolls and kitchen equipment is still a boy, and a girl who likes trucks, blocks and toy soldiers is still a girl.

On average, women have more interest in people than things, which partly explains why occupations like computer science and engineering are dominated by men while the health and social sciences harbour far more women.

But some women go into computer science and engineering. They're still women. Some men go into health and social sciences. They're still men.

And this bit is utter bollocks:

Related to this are observations that men are better than women at “systematising”, defined as “understanding and reasoning about systems, including natural systems like atoms and galaxies, abstract systems like logic and maths, and human-made system like machines and computer programs”. Women, in contrast, are better at “empathising”: putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings and motivations.

You, along with the authors of this article, seem to want to take us back in time to when girls were told that they weren't good at things like maths and they should go back to being pretty little things who should just search for a husband and produce children. And, of course that men should all be macho and not show any emotions or feelings.

You have just posted about stereotypes.

Average differences aren't stereotypes. Stereotypes are expectations.

Again, these are not reliable at all for categorising sex in humans or even defining ‘genders’ if gender identity exists. There is always going to be people who will have a mixture of these traits mentioned.

There doesn't have to be a reliable way to categorise humans when it comes to self declared identity because that is a personal subjective determination based on values & beliefs not facts or objective truths….just like it is for sex realists.

This is not evidence that someone who has a tick list of traits that are associated more with male people have a male gender identity or sex.

Again this is a personally subjective determination only an individual can decide for themselves based on how they understand the world as it applies to them. Its in no way saying one size fits all.

Of course, I would also say feminists have been fighting against such categorisations for decades. Isn’t this the very foundational belief of feminists critical of gender stereotypes?

But the point you are missing is trans people aren't saying gendered behavioural averages apply to all people in a group but only to themselves as individuals. They are simply saying they as an individual have more in common with average behaviours of one group more than the other & as such consider themselves as part of that group for this reason.

It's not sexist to state the fact that group commonalities exist & an individual might have more in common with one group despite not having other commonalties.

On the contrary there's more than enough evidence below to dispense with the OP's article's claim that sex differentiations in behaviour are learned.

''The first notion Stewart-Williams dispels is the blank-slatist claim that there are no average differences between the sexes. In a useful appendix, he summarises research on the behaviours and personality traits that have shown large and repeated differences between males and females. Some of these are obvious but not often recognised as innate sex differences. One is the strong difference in sexual attraction: most—but not all—men seek women as sexual partners, and most women seek men.

Psychological research indicates that men and women also differ strongly in how they seek mates. On average, women prefer older partners with high status, while men are more drawn to youth and physical attractiveness. Men have a higher sex drive and are more willing to seek casual sex. And once in a relationship, men show far more sexual jealousy than women, being preoccupied with a partner’s sexual infidelity, while women’s jealousy is more emotional than sexual, focusing on a partner’s commitment to the relationship.
Another difference we know well: in every country surveyed, men commit vastly more crimes of violence than women, including roughly 90 percent of all homicides in America.

One of <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01624-7?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the largest and most repeatable differences between the sexes is <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/icd.2064?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the toy preferences of children. On average, young boys prefer male-typical toys like trucks, blocks, and toy soldiers, while young girls prefer dolls and kitchen equipment. This difference shows up very early in childhood and holds across societies worldwide.
The list goes on, but I’ll end by mentioning differences in preference that seem to translate into professional inequities. On average, women have more interest in people than things, which partly explains why occupations like computer science and engineering are dominated by men while the health and social sciences harbour far more women. Related to this are observations that men are better than women at “systematising”, defined as “understanding and reasoning about systems, including natural systems like atoms and galaxies, abstract systems like logic and maths, and human-made system like machines and computer programs”. Women, in contrast, are better at “empathising”: putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings and motivations.

You can see this last difference in <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2839314?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a compilation of sex differences among young American doctors in different branches of medicine. Fields involving less contact with patients regularly show higher proportions of men: anaesthesiology (62 percent), radiology (71 percent), neurological surgery (73 percent), and orthopaedic surgery (76 percent). Fields demanding more contact with patients, and presumably requiring more empathy, show a preponderance of women: hospice and palliative care (63 percent), dermatology (66 percent), and paediatrics (75 percent). Yet across all fields of medicine, the proportion of women among young doctors is precisely 50 percent, suggesting little bias against women entering medicine.

Stewart-Williams notes that such differences could reflect sociocultural pressures like socialisation or bias rather than innate preferences, but we have some data against purely social explanations. <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-15054-001?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Two big <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4945059/?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">meta-analyses, for instance, show little evidence for the differential socialisation of boys and girls—and, anecdotally, we all know of despairing parents who tried to give their children gender-neutral upbringings, only to see them revert to behaviours characteristic of their sex.

In some areas there is also evidence against systemic bigotry. <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.md/o/cbCEc/journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/15291006231163179?ref=quillette.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A recent study of sex bias in STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—examined six metrics of professional success: grant funding, papers accepted, strength of letters of recommendation, hiring, teaching ratings, and salaries. The data showed parity between the sexes in the first three areas, a preference for hiring women, and an advantage for men in teaching ratings and salaries."

Can you remember the day you selected your gender? Did you stick a pin in a list or did your parents tell you what gender they'd decided to orient you to?

That article is self-serving nonsense, the author has no clue about developmental biology. Try replacing 'trans' with any other developmental trait and see how stupid it looks. "I wasn't gay but my parents oriented me towards a gay reality so now I'm gay", said no one ever.

What exactly is a gender identity again?

It's a person's internal, deeply held sense of their own gender.

What exactly is being diagnosed as incongruent that isn’t simply not conforming to sexist stereotypes ?

Its not conforming to typical behaviours associated to one's sex.

Bio essentialism is the belief that a person's behaviour, personality, and social roles are completely determined by their biology and genetics rather than by social, cultural, or environmental factors. Not sure why this is relevant to the discussion of self identification.

It is the epitome of sexism to make statements about having a checklist of behaviours that define sex categories which then propagate through to gender identities.

Strawman. Sexed behaviours are averages so literally noone is saying they apply exclusive to one sex….expect maybe incels & gender critical feminists.