" Bringing genetics into trans identity is a terrifying path" The Guardian

[TrashyTerf]

Some gems:

"The study, called “Sexuality, gender and self-image” had a demographics section that implied that people who were trans were not real women, instead separating them into a category of their own."

Yes, not all trans people transitioning into women, isn't "Fury" forgetting about trans men and non-binary people here?

One word ... autogynephilia ...

these men will go through infinite mental contortions to disguise their sexual fetish.

What a strange article.

Arguments I have heard from trans advocates:

1. trans brains are like women's brains because science
2. trans is linked to certain genes
3. trans is based on hormones in the womb

from here there's a bit of a jump because none of the above is testable on an individual level, but the outcome is that we should do X (where X is let someone with a penis into a female changing rooms or whatever).

However this person seems to be arguing that trans is 'just because'. So if John Worboys says he is a woman, she is and if you don't agree you are an evil Nazi who wants to genocide trans people.

So er yeah.

Well I suppose what it does say is that this particular, er, chap, recognises that for him at least it's just a fetish - he identifies as a (? not clear from the article) just because he wants to.

At present, to access gender affirming treatment such as surgery, trans people have to go through an expensive and rigorous series of medical appointments.

"Expensive"? So this was written by someone who's not a Brit, most likely an American. What is it doing in the Guardian without any sort of indication that the statements made may not apply to the UK?

I mean, most of the rest of it is hysterical nonsense too, but that bit jumped out as particularly inapplicable to the audience being addressed.

But EVERYONE should be able to express themselves how they wish. Feminists are really all for that in general. You just can’t change sex. You can be a boy and like pink frills, it really is OK. You aren’t a girl if you dont like football.

And this, also. Why should someone need to be trans to experiment with how they present themselves? Does this person think that it should be illegal for men who call themselves men to wear makeup, or for women who call themselves women to get buzzcuts and wear stompy boots?

The article is very confused. I would like to read the study it refers to.

Fury seems to suggest that people can present how they wish - well, yes, is that not what feminists argue?

The point about gender dysphoria being innate is that it really should be sex identity dysphoria because the dysphoria comes from the disjuncture between ones sexed body and wanting to be the opposite sex. Surely it is possible that this dysphoria has a genetic component - so do other neurological conditions.

So the problem comes from calling sex identity dysphoria gender dysphoria.

No-one is suggesting that there is a genetic marker of people who wear clothes normally associated with the other sex, that is personality and choice, and not gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is clinical distress at not being the opposite sex, and that may be partially genetically determined - I thought that was accepted.

Where the eugenics comes in - this is the same as any condition which has a genetic component, namely the fear that if the gene causing it can be identified, it can be screened for. The same arguments relate to a number of medical conditions, most notably chromosomal abnormalities. It comes down to what disabilities society tolerates and supports. It is eugenic in origin.

However, I am not sure how this enforces gender stereotypes - it only does so because the trans movement has mixed up gender and sex. The research is not saying gender dysphoria is the same as wanting to express and present how you wish, it is a recognised clinical condition.

I am not sure if I mean that gender dysphoria is a disability rather than a medical condition. But if it affects your life to the extent that you cannot go out the house and you make assignment surgery choices which curtail your fertility and longevity, it may be one. Which i mean in a supportive manner rather than a judgemental one.

Trans activists seek to educate people on their fundamental human right to experiment with dress, movement, identity and presentation.

How is this right denied? How do people need educated on this? Do what you want on your own time, you just don’t then have a fundamental right to impinge on other people’s rights, like women.

this sort of research can easily be weaponised

A while back on FWR there was a really good discussion and links about the use of the word “weaponise”. I think it was in relation to someone from MNHQ using the word in one of their telling off posts. It was “2017’s buzzword” apparently. Do editors at the Guardian read their own articles?

www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/27/weaponise-the-meaning-of-2017s-political-buzzword

Fury work across media in poetry, journalism and playwriting

So not science then. Got it.

Also, if dysphoria is a real thing that has a genetic basis and you really have it then the idea of trying to figure out what's causing it, genetically speaking, shouldn't be terrifying at all. Quite the opposite in fact - if a genetic basis is found then you can prove that you have it, which will put you in a much stronger position in terms of being entitled to medical treatment.

If you just have a fetish that you've allowed to take over your life or an obsession with stereotypes otoh...

Surely it is possible that this dysphoria has a genetic component

If I had to make a guess, I’d say that there are likely to be several genes involved which will give the individual a predisposition to dysphoric thought.

So that will give the individual a predisposition to that - what I suspect is the case is that that can manifest in a number of ways depending on the environment the person is in. So anorexia for example, or gender dysphoria.

I would be very interested to see if/how rates of anorexia have changed since 2010 (big increase in presentations to gender clinics seems to happen roughly 2013) and whether there are any markets for the dysphoric fidorders in common. We have seen work that shows changes in the insula (a bit of brain seen to be altered in disorders where the sense of self is affected.) however, we don’t know if that’s causal, correlated/unrelated or an end product.

Something in our society at the moment is catastrophic for people who have a predisposition to a fragile sense of self. THAT is what the research should be looking at. How genetic and environmental/societal factors work together to create a lot of very unhappy, very lost young people. Pornified cultire, smartphones, rigid gender boundaries, and the deluge of sexual demands on even young girls would be my guess, along with a visual culture / trial by popularity (social media.) it’s a toxic soup.

This model of several genes giving you a predisposition and then the environment tipping the balance is fairly widespread. Schizophrenia (note for TRA screenshotters, I am not conflating the two, I am saying the threshold/tipping point model may apply to both along with many other disorders) for example is one thing we suspect might work this way. Fibromyalgia as well.

Fury work across media in poetry, journalism and playwriting

I just noticed that there is no s at the end of work, making Fury plural. Is Fury a collective of people, or can we now identify as more than one person? Or is it a typo, it being the Graun? How have we arrived at the stage where all three are equally likely?

Thanks bowl I am not a scientist, so your comments are helpful. When I said genetic component, I didn’t really mean a single gene which could be isolated but that genetic factors came into it (this -along with environmental factors - was cited in a paper I read recently, probably hormones also have a role). But if a single genetic component is identified, then the concern that it can then be screened for is valid (if screening is done at a prenatal stage in the context of potential termination but this is no different from other conditions).

I agree with you about anorexia, I was reflecting on this yesterday for work-related reasons I cannot go into. I am not sure where you would find these figures, but it is a good question. But it’s not just young women (although this is the largest and fastest growing group), it is men as well (and I mean men who are genuinely body dysphoric and clinically distressed). In my (limited) experience, I am coming across comorbidity with mental health conditions and it concerns me. These are very vulnerable people.

Both groups are then failed by a societal/medical response which rushes to label them and push th down a medical pathway, instead of just accepting that people can present how they wish and providing mental health support. The whole push to self-ID takes away the means of support.

I don’t know, I find it very concerning. You can argue the eugenics connection in a number of ways, but some of the logical inconsistencies in Fury’s position come from the conflation of two points - those who suffer gender dysphoria and need support; and the need to be able to present how one wishes without having to be labelled trans. That is before we get to AGP - illustrated to me by a middle-aged transwoman in a coffee shop engaging a young female barista in a rather creepy discussion about his female name (which was about her validating his identity as a woman and relying on the fact that she had to be polite). A man engaging a young female barista in this manner would raise eye brows and in all my coffee drinking days, I have never seen it.

None of which is very coherent.

No I get your point and it is coherent! The single gene thing is just to point out that the general public has an idea sometimes that there’s ‘a gene for’ stuff (the media’s fault really) and its almost always more complex than that.

I also agree with it being boys too - I suppose I’m biased by my own experience of growing up female so I havent directly experienced the pressures on boys. I suspect they have overlap but are somewhat different?

If the push was for greater acceptance and help and support for people suffering I’d have no problem with it at all - but it’s not. It’s using those people to push an agenda and that agenda will damage the people it’s purported to be for. It’s all pretty grim.

You raise a very good point about society medicalising normal life experience and that’s a discussion in itself because I think we pathologise a lot of what is normal. Grief, puberty... there’s a drug for everything. But society doesn’t benefit from this - it just masks and eventually destroys the traditional support methods and makes profit for whoever makes the pills. And society falls apart a little more as we do t support each other

So my take away from this is:

People don’t want trans to be medicalised, but they do want it recognised as condition so they can access the medical services, the cosmetic procedures they “need” and areas of life normally reserved for women?

If it's to be deemed not a medical condition then why on earth should the NHS be responsible for treating it? If on the other hand the NHS is to be responsible, then why would there not be medical gatekeeping? There is when patients attempt to access any other sort of treatment.

Which is why it’s tagged into LGB - despite not being a sexual orientation.

If it gets socially accepted and legally codified as being ‘like being gay’ - ie normal range of human states of being but not a mental illness or a condition, that’s the only way that it can be solidified in order to become a protected characteristic but not a condition. It’s the goal because it wins on both fronts.

And thus the tagging onto LGB. And the aggressive lobbying to remove GD from the DSM and ICD.

Of course, this works to the detriment of anyone actually suffering from gender dysphoria Because right now they can access treatment- but remove it as a disorder and that goes.

Which should be a strong indication that the TRA movement is NOT working for people with gender dysphoria. It’s working very well for everyone else under the umbrella though.

I never understood why trans people need surgery anyway. If a woman is anyone who says they're a women, then why change your appearance?