Prospect Magazine: Kathleen Stock v Robin Moira White

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

Great discussion.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/gender-wars-two-opposing-perspectives-on-the-trans-and-womens-rights-debate

Gender wars: two opposing perspectives on the trans and women’s rights debate
A lawyer and philosopher respond to seven propositions—ranging from single-sex spaces to puberty blockers for children

Further to the comprehensive comment posted by PurgatoryofPotholes at 01:28, I just wanted to add that in the sheep study where puberty was blocked and then allowed to continue, the measured effects were permanent. The affected sheep were worse off even though they had eventually gone through puberty.

That's why I consider this push for puberty blockers as a harmless pause to be highly irresponsible. Yes, in terms of their primary function - to stop puberty - they are indeed reversible. But the emerging data shows that the side effects are not. That includes neurological and physiological changes that have a detrimental effect on the quality of life for these children.

And before anyone says but at least they haven't committed suicide, the underlying assumption, that puberty blockers reduce the risk of suicide, is false.

Puberty blockers are now known to cause depression and suicidal ideation even in children that previously had suffered neither depression nor suicidal ideation. So much so that patient leaflets now have to carry a warning that they do.

I don't think we can have an honest discussion about the use and usefulness of puberty blockers if that fact isn't acknowledged by both sides.

I hate to bang on, but I really would still like an answer to this question. It doesn't have to be Robin who answers. Anyone who supports the idea that Transwomen are Women could have a bash:

Why does Robin's desire to use the ladies' in Tesco trump my desire to have that space single sex?

Well, it’s quite telling which questions get answered, and which go unanswered.

Charlie, I was reading this, just now. I don't know if you've already seen it, but I hadn't read it before.

Commentary: Cognitive, Emotional, and Psychosocial Functioning of Girls Treated with Pharmacological Puberty Blockage for Idiopathic Central Precocious Puberty

Gonadotropin releasing hormone agonists (GnRHas) have been found to impair memory in adults, so the study byWojniusz et al. (2016)on the possible cognitive effects of these drugs on children treated for idiopathic central precocious puberty (CPP) represents an important contribution to research in this area. Recent findings that GnRHas increase depression symptoms (Macoveanu et al., 2016) and slow reaction time (Stenbæk et al., 2016) in healthy women, and reduce long-term spatial memory in sheep (Hough et al., 2017) underline the importance of the research thatWojniusz et al. (2016)have undertaken. However, their reassuring statement in the abstract that girls undergoing GnRHa treatment for CPP and controls “showed very similar scores with regard to cognitive performance” and their conclusion that “GnRHa treated girls do not differ in their cognitive functioning … from the same age peers” (Wojniusz et al., 2016) may be overly optimistic. These statements minimize the fairly substantial difference found in IQ scores and may also overemphasize its lack of statistical significance, as given the small number of participants in the study statistical significance has a high threshold. The statements should be qualified to indicate that the research has, in fact, reinforced concerns over the impact of GnRHas on cognitive performance in children. [bold mine]

Girls treated for CPP with triptorelin acetate were tested with the short form Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III. It was found that the girls had a mean IQ of 94, as against a mean IQ of 102 for the matched control group (Wojniusz et al., 2016). These IQ estimations are presented as standardized IQ scores, which places a girl scoring 102 at the 55th percentile, and a girl scoring of 94 at the 34th percentile. It is questionable whether scores that indicate a percentile gap of this size can be described as “very similar.” The 8 point gap is not statistically significant (p= 0.09) but, as the authors point out, this may be a function of the small number of participants (15 treated girls, 15 controls).

The authors contend that despite the small number of participants the results can—probably—be relied on to indicate that if GnRHasdocause a decline in IQ, this decline will be under 1 standard deviation (SD), which “represents a boundary of what is a clinically interesting difference” (Wojniusz et al., 2016). The contention that a decline only becomes clinically interesting if it is of at least 1 standard deviation is unconvincing. Any findings which indicate that GnRHas cause a decline, even a modest decline, in IQ are likely to be of considerable interest to patients and their parents. It is a factor that they may well want to consider in deciding whether or not to take the drug. They may, for example, wish to consider the possible effect of GnRHas on a child's school and exam performance. In this respect it can be noted that 2 of the treated girls had been held back a year at school. Given their advanced physical maturity, children with precocious puberty may find it particularly uncomfortable to be put in a class where they are a year older than their class mates. If GnRHa treatment does cause a reduction in IQ, this may contribute to the decision to place a child in a lower age year group. Certainly, treatment that has a deleterious effect on IQ will do nothing to help children who are academically behind to catch up. [bold mine]

Continues: www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00044/full#B8

One possible answer, @ArabellaScott, is that they believe they have actually changed sex, as India Willoughby claimed very recently. By those lights the space has remained single sex. Presumably that doctor, James Ma?, who criticised Margaret McCartney's Tweet yesterday, would back that view.

Not my opinion, I hasten to add.

That’s quite shocking. How can clinical experts continue to recommend blockers without substantial further research? A significant decline in IQ points is a damning finding that surely no TRA could defend - take puberty blockers and get stupider!

I wonder whether Robin’s retrospective desire for blockers would in reality actually have damaged the likelihood of succeeding in an academic subject and profession. Certainly no barrister I’ve ever met would be keen to have a few points lopped off their IQ.

I doubt that anyone whose brain is a tool of their trade would want to have a few points lopped off their IQ, really.

Well, exactly - though I can imagine TRAs arguing that it was better to have a slightly lower IQ than be unhappy, have dysphoria, risk suicide, etc. etc. However, that only really works if you don't expect to be trading on your academic intelligence later on.

@Rightsraptor

One possible answer, *@ArabellaScott*, is that they believe they have actually changed sex, as India Willoughby claimed very recently. By those lights the space has remained single sex. Presumably that doctor, James Ma?, who criticised Margaret McCartney's Tweet yesterday, would back that view.

Not my opinion, I hasten to add.

I think you're right. But as sex as understood biologically cannot change, this begs the question 'what do you mean by sex?'. Sadly answers to clear questions like this seem to be impossible to obtain.

'Who can say but the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done.'

Uh huh. It's a great sentiment. But it's also more hyper-rational, linear self-determination, viewed through the clear lens of hindsight, with over-emphasis on the power of one, of the will and exhibiting a belief in a personal autonomy that sits outside any social context.

Total lack of acknowledgement of relevant social structures, ideas and behaviours, their complexity, interactions and implications, or of the individual's unavoidable, intractable situation within them. Of the ways in which that situation - how the individual is viewed and acted upon by others - is beyond their control (and often outside their knowledge. It not the doors that appear challengingly closed to you that count, it's the ones you didn't know were doors, and those doors that you were never invited into the building to see).

This sort of exaggerated belief in the social reality of personal autonomy, is male privilege in a nutshell.

It is also and overlappingly, a classic example of the fallacy self-determined success. The idea among successful people, particularly those who never really experienced failure on their way up, that they earned their position justly and meritocratically; completely underestimating the role of luck, or acknowledging the existence of many equally talented and hardworking people who were simply less lucky and for this reason alone, less successful.

It is also the sort of argument one hears from a certain kind of male commentator in cases involving domestic abuse. 'Why didn't she just leave? If someone did that to me I'd leave. Therefore she must have wanted to stay, her actions demonstrate a choice to stay, so consent to everything that continued to happen'.

The idea that personal autonomy is not absolute, that it can be compromised by circumstance; socially, emotionally, financially and cognitively, just doesn't exist in the minds of some people (more commonly but not exclusively men).

There is something interesting in the performed autonomy of someone who does understand their social situation and context well enough to know that they wish to change it, that they wish to control the way they are viewed by others - and who believes that this is possible, that they have the power to control others' perceptions of and interactions with them. Yet who demonstrates no awareness of the lack of total personal and social autonomy inherent in the social condition they wish to enter and adopt.

@foxgoosefinch

Well, exactly - though I can imagine TRAs arguing that it was better to have a slightly lower IQ than be unhappy, have dysphoria, risk suicide, etc. etc. However, that only really works if you don't expect to be trading on your academic intelligence later on.

And I can think of a fair few who are in extremely academic fields.

For example, Dr Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health in the United States

Or Victoria McCloud
Victoria McCloud is a British judge. She is the most senior public figure to have transitioned from male to female. In 2010 she became a Queen’s Bench Master, the youngest person ever and only the second woman.

first100years.org.uk/master-victoria-mccloud-biography/

In many ways reading this thread is very much like overhearing a number of accomplished, level-headed adults holding a conversation with a 12 year-old boy.

Or with the sort of adult I've met, also lawyers in a number of instances - very into the black and white thinking about personal autonomy, justice and choice, combined with the stereotyping and sentimentalisation of others, interestingly - who come across much like overgrown 12 year-old boys in many ways. Often very charming and socially competent, yet without quite grasping that other people are complex, unpredictable, uncontrollable individuals too. Or that finding ways to get along together might be more important than endlessly pursuing personal perfection.

I feel I'm digressing there though.

@lottiegarbanzo

'Who can say but the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done.'

Uh huh. It's a great sentiment. But it's also more hyper-rational, linear self-determination, viewed through the clear lens of hindsight, with over-emphasis on the power of one, of the will and exhibiting a belief in a personal autonomy that sits outside any social context.

Total lack of acknowledgement of relevant social structures, ideas and behaviours, their complexity, interactions and implications, or of the individual's unavoidable, intractable situation within them. Of the ways in which that situation - how the individual is viewed and acted upon by others - is beyond their control (and often outside their knowledge. It not the doors that appear challengingly closed to you that count, it's the ones you didn't know were doors, and those doors that you were never invited into the building to see).

This sort of exaggerated belief in the social reality of personal autonomy, is male privilege in a nutshell.

It is also and overlappingly, a classic example of the fallacy self-determined success. The idea among successful people, particularly those who never really experienced failure on their way up, that they earned their position justly and meritocratically; completely underestimating the role of luck, or acknowledging the existence of many equally talented and hardworking people who were simply less lucky and for this reason alone, less successful.

It is also the sort of argument one hears from a certain kind of male commentator in cases involving domestic abuse. 'Why didn't she just leave? If someone did that to me I'd leave. Therefore she must have wanted to stay, her actions demonstrate a choice to stay, so consent to everything that continued to happen'.

The idea that personal autonomy is not absolute, that it can be compromised by circumstance; socially, emotionally, financially and cognitively, just doesn't exist in the minds of some people (more commonly but not exclusively men).

There is something interesting in the performed autonomy of someone who does understand their social situation and context well enough to know that they wish to change it, that they wish to control the way they are viewed by others - and who believes that this is possible, that they have the power to control others' perceptions of and interactions with them. Yet who demonstrates no awareness of the lack of total personal and social autonomy inherent in the social condition they wish to enter and adopt.

So much better put than me! I could not agree more.

Who can say but the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done.

It's interesting that this comment of Robiin's seems to have resulted in so many comments that this is a very 'male' attitude. My first thought on reading that was 'sounds just like me' (particularly when I was younger). Often in the context of being told that I couldn't do something because 'that's not for girls'.

Are people here really saying that they've never reacted to someone saying 'you can't do that' with an attitude of 'I'll show them'? Or have I misunderstood? I do feel I must have misunderstood some context or something.

I would also like to post this link as I think it is very pertinent when discussing 'access to puberty blockers'. Robin did state their belief that doctors know best (and we would ALL like to have that confidence, but then there are the doctors holding up buckets of discarded breasts from young teenagers, and saying 'yeat the teat'. Plus we KNOW how easy it is to get hormones via one UK targeted but internationally based internet GP service... but they are subjects for later).

What I want to point out is that clinicians in every country have been attempting to draw attention to the fact that treating gender dysphoria has become very hard due to 'pre formed expectations' that teenagers and children arrive in the clinics with.

^Published April 22, 2021
Kasia Kozlowska, Georgia McClure et al^

Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26344041211010777

I cannot imagine that Robin does not know about this study. I am sure there are others like it.

Maybe if they come back, Robin could answer just how clinicians are supposed to have the confidence in their diagnosis at this time?

lottiegarbanzo I agree completely.

It's a bit like when people assume someone just hasn't tried hard enough. I would never say that if I'd been born to illiterate parents in the Ferentari slum, I'd still be living in the UK and doing the job I do. There's an enormous chance I wouldn't be. The cards would be stacked against me. Likewise if I grew up in Darfur, or other such places where life is immeasurably tough.
If I'd been born fifty year earlier, likewise. If I'd been born with a disability, likewise.
You just can't know that you'd have the same outcomes and have achieved the same success with a totally different set of cards dealt to you.

Some people do succeed in difficult circumstances, but having an easier start has to be taken into consideration. Not doing so is arrogant in the extreme. I'm very grateful for the chances I have had; I don't assume they were all unnecessary niceties I could have done without.

We could argue all day about exactly what difference being born female would have had for a (theoretical) British man in a prestigious job, but we'll never know, and he'll never know. We don't have any way of knowing.

Assuming it would have made no difference is either a rejection of the documented and well established factors that hold women back, or a ludicrous degree of confidence in one's exceptionalism.

No, it's a common sentiment Old Crone . The question is though, how reliably does that attitude result in success? And which kind of success?

In my response above I address structural sexism. That a woman or trans-woman with that attitude might not succeed, including for reasons they don't fully understand or even perceive at all. Opportunities just aren't made available to them that are made available to male peers, often subtly, socially, untraceably.

Further, they might not even recognise that they have not succeeded, because they are not aware of the opportunities they didn't know about. So, in terms of the 'field of play' they understood themselves to have operated within, they were successful. It's just that others were playing a different game, in a differently defined field of play. Mysteriously, it seems, some of those others ended up in rather wonderful positions.

Other posters have addressed the ways that female socialisation might affect the practical adoption and persistent pursuit of this attitude. Lack of personal and societal support and encouragement, plus expectations and pressure to focus on other, more socially useful or acceptable tasks.

Then there's an important point about how we perceive success, especially in retrospect. We tend to draw a line from where we started to where we are. To perceive an inevitability in all, or most of that line, which in fact is entirely retro-fitted. Really, a messy cobweb of possibility would better describe the routes we took, the choices made, opportunities offered, happenstance and luck that resulted in our moving from one point to another, while not travelling other routes.

Finally, this idea of someone telling you you cannot do something, of that point being made clearly enough that you are able to perceive a gauntlet being thrown down, is simplistic and somewhat solipsistic, in that it implies a level of interest in you by others, that generally does not exist.

Sure, you can see that certain A-levels, degree courses or career paths are less frequently taken by women and girls. But few people are going to taunt you with the impossibility of your following an 'old school tie', masonic, golf-club mafia or other restricted route to success that only persists because it is unspoken. Far less one based on sexism, prejudice, unacknowledged bias, the desire to employ 'people like us' and a 'face that fits', which may not even be recognised overtly by the people who apply it.

People do not know why they succeed and why they do not, in many instances. Or even what the potential parameters of success are. Therefore they are in no position to control how they might succeed; how can you win, when the terms of the game you are playing are not made clear to you?

So, had Robin been feminised from pre-puberty, life would have been different and most likely, according to the retrospective line drawn by middle-aged Robin, successful. But Robin would never have known how else that life and career path might have proceeded, or quite why it went in the direction it did.

We could argue all day about exactly what difference being born female would have had for a (theoretical) British man in a prestigious job, but we'll never know, and he'll never know. We don't have any way of knowing.

But isn't that exactly what Robin said?
Who can say but the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done.

I read that as meaning that the outcome is unknown, but that Robin would have tried hard for the best outcome. Not that success was certain. (But since Robin appears to have flounced, we'll probably never find out what was really meant.)

Assuming it would have made no difference is either a rejection of the documented and well established factors that hold women back, or a ludicrous degree of confidence in one's exceptionalism.

I don't think Robin made that assumption (not in that post, anyway).

I'm happy to be corrected if I've totally got the wrong end of the stick (it wouldn't be the first time ).

Interesting too that that was your attitude when younger Old Crone.

Have you found, as I know I have and suspect may be the case for many others, that as you have grown up and older and gained responsibilities and priorities outside of your own individual fulfillment, that you are no longer able to expend all your energy proving people wrong and demonstrating your brilliance to the world? That you no longer really want to? That you have many things you'd rather be doing that seeking to define yourself in opposition to other people's prejudices?

I read that as meaning that the outcome is unknown, but that Robin would have tried hard for the best outcome. Not that success was certain. (But since Robin appears to have flounced, we'll probably never find out what was really meant.)

I wouldn't specify an individual anyway, I'd get deleted or banned for that. I was talking in general terms, because lottiegarbanzo's post resonated with me.
Whether RMW would have tried hard also isn't a given; we have no time machine or other way to play out a timeline in which RMW was born female. We can't know if RMW would have become discouraged. We can't know if RMW would have been as motivated. There are a myriad of factors and we can't know. But in general terms, it's common to see successful people assume their own inner drive was the deciding factor in their success, instead of luck.

But as sex as understood biologically cannot change, this begs the question 'what do you mean by sex?'. Sadly answers to clear questions like this seem to be impossible to obtain.

I think it's something like "sex is an archaic misunderstanding of gender. Gender is the real difference between individuals but society misattributed what it observed to physical sex. So single sex stuff was always really meant to be single gender and that's why it can be flipped to mixed sex single gender without any issue".

Underlying that is an assumption, which may or may not be consciously acknowledged, that a high enough proportion of woman-gender people must also be woman-sex people to have lead to this false assumption that womanhood is a sex not a gender in the first place. I'm not going into that aside in detail right now but I think it's a critical concept to explore and nail down because it simulateously underpins important genderist concepts like cis-majority-powerful/trans-minority-opressed or the importance of "passing" and therefore need for pre-puberty medical intervention, but also shifts around when it comes to the likelihood that so many teenage girls are really boy-gender, or the fairness that when the needs and voices of male and female women clash, needs and voices of the male minority are put ahead of needs and voices of the female majority rather than a solution looked for that is fair to both. Not time or space to get into that now but alwsys worth thinking about when faced with genderist demands.

But getting back to "sex is a culturally constructed misunderstanding of gender", the three huge flaws in that analysis are of course

(1) that if sex really was a misunderstanding of gender, it means the single-sex provisions were not just misdelivered to one sex instead of one gender, but actually misdefined in their entirity, being based on a flawed picture of womanhood and woman's needs in the first place. So it's not enough to just sticker "for sex read gender" on top of what's already there and say "job done", the only consistent thing to do if you really believe gender is real and sex is a misapplied cultural concept is to go back to the start, work out the needs of Women-by-gender based only on the characteristics of gender and not on sex, and build brand new single gender, mixed sex provisions from scratch. For example, if "women's sport" wasn't a pre-existing concept because of the sex differences between male and female bodies, which gender (not sex) differences between men and women would lead us to invent it?

(2) that whether sex is really real or not, it is undeniably true that the group of people formerly known as women were historically grouped together because of a set of shared characteristics that were classed as "female sex" , and that classification disadvantaged and disempowered them vs the group (albeit erroneously in the genderist view) classed as Men/male sex. And that has gone on for so long that it has shaped our culture and our attitudes in thousands of ways that still act on the group formerly known as Women today. So even if you believe that original concept of sex was wrong, it does not follow that there is no real world impact of it, any more than believing God doesn't exist means the crusades, and the myriad obvious and subtle ways we still see their impact today, didn't happen. So it's entirely valid to believe society was wrong about sex but realise the group of people formerly known as women need single sex provisions even though they are based on a flawed understanding of sex as a counterpoint to the disadvantages that they suffer because of the same flawed misunderstanding.

(3) the type of body that builds a baby carries a much higher reproductive cost both physically, temporally and as society is currently structured, socially and economically than the one provides the sperm, and juggling labels around doesn't change that. So the baby-building group exists and has physical and social needs unrelated to gender.

the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done

Robin,

protecting female humans and providing them with equal access, equality, voice, quality of provision, safety, compassion, kindness and diversity and comfort in mixed sex women's provision...

cannot be done .

(Sits back and hopes.)

@Blibbyblobby

But as sex as understood biologically cannot change, this begs the question 'what do you mean by sex?'. Sadly answers to clear questions like this seem to be impossible to obtain.

I think it's something like "sex is an archaic misunderstanding of gender. Gender is the real difference between individuals but society misattributed what it observed to physical sex. So single sex stuff was always really meant to be single gender and that's why it can be flipped to mixed sex single gender without any issue".

Underlying that is an assumption, which may or may not be consciously acknowledged, that a high enough proportion of woman-gender people must also be woman-sex people to have lead to this false assumption that womanhood is a sex not a gender in the first place. I'm not going into that aside in detail right now but I think it's a critical concept to explore and nail down because it simulateously underpins important genderist concepts like cis-majority-powerful/trans-minority-opressed or the importance of "passing" and therefore need for pre-puberty medical intervention, but also shifts around when it comes to the likelihood that so many teenage girls are really boy-gender, or the fairness that when the needs and voices of male and female women clash, needs and voices of the male minority are put ahead of needs and voices of the female majority rather than a solution looked for that is fair to both. Not time or space to get into that now but alwsys worth thinking about when faced with genderist demands.

But getting back to "sex is a culturally constructed misunderstanding of gender", the three huge flaws in that analysis are of course

(1) that if sex really was a misunderstanding of gender, it means the single-sex provisions were not just misdelivered to one sex instead of one gender, but actually misdefined in their entirity, being based on a flawed picture of womanhood and woman's needs in the first place. So it's not enough to just sticker "for sex read gender" on top of what's already there and say "job done", the only consistent thing to do if you really believe gender is real and sex is a misapplied cultural concept is to go back to the start, work out the needs of Women-by-gender based only on the characteristics of gender and not on sex, and build brand new single gender, mixed sex provisions from scratch. For example, if "women's sport" wasn't a pre-existing concept because of the sex differences between male and female bodies, which gender (not sex) differences between men and women would lead us to invent it?

(2) that whether sex is really real or not, it is undeniably true that the group of people formerly known as women were historically grouped together because of a set of shared characteristics that were classed as "female sex" , and that classification disadvantaged and disempowered them vs the group (albeit erroneously in the genderist view) classed as Men/male sex. And that has gone on for so long that it has shaped our culture and our attitudes in thousands of ways that still act on the group formerly known as Women today. So even if you believe that original concept of sex was wrong, it does not follow that there is no real world impact of it, any more than believing God doesn't exist means the crusades, and the myriad obvious and subtle ways we still see their impact today, didn't happen. So it's entirely valid to believe society was wrong about sex but realise the group of people formerly known as women need single sex provisions even though they are based on a flawed understanding of sex as a counterpoint to the disadvantages that they suffer because of the same flawed misunderstanding.

(3) the type of body that builds a baby carries a much higher reproductive cost both physically, temporally and as society is currently structured, socially and economically than the one provides the sperm, and juggling labels around doesn't change that. So the baby-building group exists and has physical and social needs unrelated to gender.

One of the most interesting posts on this thread - and that is saying a lot! Really excellent points.

@lottiegarbanzo

Interesting too that that was your attitude when younger Old Crone.

Have you found, as I know I have and suspect may be the case for many others, that as you have grown up and older and gained responsibilities and priorities outside of your own individual fulfillment, that you are no longer able to expend all your energy proving people wrong and demonstrating your brilliance to the world? That you no longer really want to? That you have many things you'd rather be doing that seeking to define yourself in opposition to other people's prejudices?

Exactly that.

Finally, this idea of someone telling you you cannot do something, of that point being made clearly enough that you are able to perceive a gauntlet being thrown down, is simplistic and somewhat solipsistic, in that it implies a level of interest in you by others, that generally does not exist.

It certainly happened to me as a child, for example with teachers telling me that certain subjects weren't for girls. As an adult rarely, if ever.

But I think the challenge of attempting to do something which others say "can't be done" (by anyone) is somewhat different.

@Artichokeleaves

the best way to get me to do something is to tell me it can't be done

Robin,

protecting female humans and providing them with equal access, equality, voice, quality of provision, safety, compassion, kindness and diversity and comfort in mixed sex women's provision...

cannot be done .

(Sits back and hopes.)