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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

new to this - What about all the transgender people who are 'living their best lives'?

129 replies

lily444 · 04/09/2023 10:49

hi,
I am new to this world - please be patient with me.

When I talk about gender ideology with other people - I peaked a few months ago and now can't stop talking about all this - I get a lot of anecdotal evidence of very happy transgender adults and young people.

I am starting to feel like I'm in a bit of a GC echo chamber and am now doubting myself.

While I realise that this is a very complicated issue, my natural inclination is to see these huge increases in trans identity among young people as a form of self-loathing, inability for self-acceptance, a rigid belief that to change gender would be a rebirth of a different self.. etc etc.

Of course there are transgender people and I do not doubt their existence or expect them to justify their existence to me (I feel like I have to say that or I will be accused of being transphobic).

Are there a vast majority of very happy young people and adults who are delighted with life now that they have transitioned?

Are GC people mainly worried about the vulnerable people who are being caught up in this and who are not truly transgender?

many thanks for reading.....

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MadCattery · 04/09/2023 21:51

I have a friend with a ten year old son. He has not gone through puberty yet. When you see him with girls his age, he is obviously male. He is taller, stronger, has more muscle. The bones are stronger in males, girls are made for bearing young. These are facts. Girls get periods and are shy about it around other girls. They shouldn’t have to avoid a bathroom because a young male is in there posing as female. Sorry. This is basic biology. If a man wants to say he’s a woman, that’s fine. But biologically, even after surgery, it’s written in our DNA.

PorcelinaV · 04/09/2023 22:12

that was just one study . A systematic review of the literature makes it crystal clear that transition is good for transgender people.

Are the individual studies long term over decades?

Do they follow everyone up, or do they only use evidence from a percentage of people that are willing to take part?

You can't really use placebo control, but what you could do in theory is randomise people to different groups. Did the studies do that?

Seagullchippy · 04/09/2023 22:15

MadCattery · 04/09/2023 21:51

I have a friend with a ten year old son. He has not gone through puberty yet. When you see him with girls his age, he is obviously male. He is taller, stronger, has more muscle. The bones are stronger in males, girls are made for bearing young. These are facts. Girls get periods and are shy about it around other girls. They shouldn’t have to avoid a bathroom because a young male is in there posing as female. Sorry. This is basic biology. If a man wants to say he’s a woman, that’s fine. But biologically, even after surgery, it’s written in our DNA.

My ten year old son is smaller and less muscly than his female friends the same age, in fact, most of the girls in his class are taller and stronger than most of the boys, which I thought was because girls begin puberty younger. But yes, once puberty has begun it's true there are distinct physical differences visible when fully clothed!

Rudderneck · 04/09/2023 22:37

Seagullchippy · 04/09/2023 20:41

Possibly, but scientists seem not to have found any evidence, whereas there is a lit of research showing how culture causes gender differences. Of course feminism is an ideological position, but I'd need some evidence of the brain differences or other essences that some trans people claim make them the opposite sex to that 'assigned' to them.

Physiologically based differences in behaviour rooted in sex don't mean that there is such a thing as being "born in the wrong body" or whatever you want to call it. You don't have to admit the latter because of the former.

It's also not all down to structural brain differences, that's a very reductive conception of sex based behaviours. What about hormonal influences, for example?

I don't think you'll find that most scientists in this area of study would agree that there is no evidence, the most common consensus is that there are, and culture also plays a part. I know that people on FWR like to think Cordelia Fine is the end all on this, but her viewpoint is not particularly typical. What they would say is that it's very difficult to pull apart evidence because you can't really isolate the factors.

From the side of studying culture though, there are some significant repeated patterns that occur across cultures and in different cultures over time. If it were simply a matter of completely culturally created differences, you would expect to see quite a lot more variation. We don't, and that in itself is suggestive.

PorcelinaV · 05/09/2023 00:08

And, also, importantly:

”4. Regrets following gender transition are extremely rare and have become even rarer as both surgical techniques and social support have improved. Pooling data from numerous studies demonstrates a regret rate ranging from .3 percent to 3.8 percent.

With especially young people, I don't believe that "regret rate" is the key thing to consider.

Imagine you transition two kids, and neither of them regret it. So that's a success then?

Well actually it may still be a disaster, if one of them would have naturally recovered from their gender dysphoria, had you not had the medical intervention.

This is why you really need randomised studies imo.

thirdfiddle · 05/09/2023 00:37

RebelliousCow · 04/09/2023 11:42

There are generalised sexed differences in terms of general populations. It is hard to deny this.

There are differences on average. It would be surprising if there weren't.

On average males are also taller than females. It doesn't mean a particularly short male is a kind of a female. A short male is a short male. As is a male with a less typical personality or interests.

PhilippePhiloppe · 05/09/2023 01:04

Source?

Ramblingnamechanger · 05/09/2023 01:27

What about us women actually being able to “live our best lives” without having to deal with this shit as well as all the other crap that men use in our day to day lives. No I will never call a man “she” I will not allow males to creep about in changing rooms where women and girls are present. I will not interfere in these peoples lives if they stay out of mine. I have had enough.

Delphinium20 · 05/09/2023 02:09

Just this week, I took my DD to a teen girl underwear/sleepwear store. 2 males, one at least 6'4 and both with large barrel chests were taking bras into the changing rooms. There is NO WAY any of the clothing in that store would have even fit these men. I don't know the men's gender identity or motivation but decent men don't lurk in teen girl dressing rooms.

My DD was uncomfortable-she's a young teen girl-as were other girls in the store.

Girls and women don't consent to this kind of behavior.

PermanentTemporary · 05/09/2023 02:26

Fucking hell, just reading that survey @DadJoke. Eg

''Alyssa Rogers, a White 26-year-old trans woman who lives in Austin, said she first knew when she was around 5 years old. Her mother had been arrested for drug use, and Rogers was sent to live in an orphanage. While she was there, Rogers tried on a pink princess dress for the first time, and she immediately felt “right.”'

I appear to be reading about either deeply traumatised people coping with multiple losses, often of a parent, or depressed young people who identify as nonbinary. It seems genuinely odd that these groups are considered to be the same.

As a comfortably off graduate myself, the trans people I know tend to be comfortably off graduates. The girls who have transitioned are certainly happier than they were in their stormy adolescence. Most people are happier than they were in adolescence, that's what growing up does for you. I continue to be angry with the surgeons who in my view offload responsibility for their outcomes onto the mental health services, and angry with the mental health services who offload responsibility to the surgical teams. Outcomes for the two people I know who've had surgical transition have been poor on any objective view.

I'm glad that transitioning has helped a lot of people feel happier. I continue to think that statistics in this area are mostly used to conflate and conceal.

FroodwithaKaren · 05/09/2023 09:08

Stormydayagain · 04/09/2023 16:00

Is this an attempt to bolster their 'genocide' claims by including a group that have actually been subjected to a real (not literal) genocide within the last century?

That's going really low even for the TRA.

At a guess, it's yet more 'that's a group that influence people into doing stuff/can be weaponised, we've grabbed them, owned them, dumped all the elements of them (and the non compliant ones) who won't be useful to us and we're now even more powerful in controlling what 'diversity' means'.

It's long since been a political movement that's grabbed, broken down for parts, slung out everyone from that group who isn't useful and then insisted they speak for them (while threatening to punch, rape and kill any of them who dare argue, such as lesbians not wanting to do men.)

As Romany women are one of the most vulnerable groups to being excluded from mixed sex spaces where a state of undress is required, I doubt many have been asked. As lesbians weren't and as people with DSDs weren't. The more I see of it, the more I see that this political movement has absolutely no conscience or even a capacity for conscience.

As to the 'regret rate' - as I said earlier. How many people should be collateral damage for a person with a TQ+ identity to be free from all boundaries? Stick a number on it. How many women are we ok with being raped, injured and worse for a male person to be happily enjoying themselves in a women's prison? How many kids/young adults are we ok with leaving crippled and distraught for a person with a TQ+ identity to enjoy their absolute freedom from limits and safeguarding?

And then explain why some TQ+ people (not all, again only the ones useful to the political agenda) are so much more valuable people than any other humans in this country?

DadJoke · 05/09/2023 10:23

@PorcelinaV the study of studies includes those with negative or mixed results, and your response is anecdotal.

By all means, if you have a peer reviewed systematic review which shows the opposite, post it. In general, transition is good for transgender people. Another recent one with a high response base here shows that earlier intervention has better outcomes.

it’s possible to be gender critical and still acknowledge that people benefit from transition.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html

Better mental health found among transgender people who started hormones as teens

Transgender adults who started gender-affirming hormone therapy as teens had better mental health than those who waited until adulthood or wanted the treatment but never received it, a Stanford-led study found.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html

Britinme · 05/09/2023 17:03

@DadJoke - that's a very interesting article. Do you know if there are long-term studies about this? This seems a fairly recent group of people (not saying there weren't earlier examples but numerically it was a fairly small number who did anything other than cross-dress.) I would like to know how transitioners feel twenty or thirty years later. I'd also like to know how the physical health of transitioners pans out over time, considering that the hormone regimen must be lifelong. It seems to me that when we're talking about adolescents whose frontal cortexes will not be fully developed until they're in their mid-twenties, you're dealing with a group of people who really aren't equipped to consider the long-term consequences.

PorcelinaV · 05/09/2023 17:50

DadJoke · 05/09/2023 10:23

@PorcelinaV the study of studies includes those with negative or mixed results, and your response is anecdotal.

By all means, if you have a peer reviewed systematic review which shows the opposite, post it. In general, transition is good for transgender people. Another recent one with a high response base here shows that earlier intervention has better outcomes.

it’s possible to be gender critical and still acknowledge that people benefit from transition.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html

No, my response wasn't "anecdotal".

It was asking you about the quality of the individual studies and pointing out that "regret rate" isn't necessarily that important.

If the individual studies aren't great quality in their design, then you can't magically turn them into good evidence just because you have looked broadly at the research that exists.

I would have no problem endorsing transition as working well for some people, or many people. If that's the case then fine.

As far as I have looked into this issue however, the evidence is weak.

BezMills · 05/09/2023 18:33

I wonder how much regret is because the surgeries and cross sex hormones aren't that great and often have horrible side effects, rather than regretting the idea of transition itself.

If I wrecked my body I would for sure regret that.

One of the things men especially need to take on board is acceptance of a much wider gamut of male personality as normal. If we men could accept our brothers who reject or play with gender, they would not have such a shit time, and might decide they can live happily with the body they have.

PorcelinaV · 06/09/2023 04:40

DadJoke · 05/09/2023 10:23

@PorcelinaV the study of studies includes those with negative or mixed results, and your response is anecdotal.

By all means, if you have a peer reviewed systematic review which shows the opposite, post it. In general, transition is good for transgender people. Another recent one with a high response base here shows that earlier intervention has better outcomes.

it’s possible to be gender critical and still acknowledge that people benefit from transition.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html

Criticism of your latest source:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment

In conclusion, then, Turban et al.'s finding that access to cross-sex hormones 'during adolescence and adulthood is associated with favorable mental health outcomes compared to desiring but not accessing' such hormones can be extracted from the USTS only by denying the difference between testosterone and estrogen. The authors' recommendation 'that these medical interventions be made available for transgender adolescents' has no justification. Perhaps one could claim that the survey provides some evidence that testosterone reduces distress and suicidality in females. But then one must also admit that it also provides evidence that estrogen increases suicidality in males and that puberty blockers offer no benefit. It is not legitimate to pick out the results ostensibly favoring medical intervention while ignoring equally credible evidence for its detrimental effects. The real question is why the authors return again and again to this online surveywhich did not even measure the condition supposed to be treated, namely gender dysphoriarather than conducting randomized control trials or collecting longitudinal patient data.

Access to gender-affirming hormones during adolescence and mental health outcomes among transgender adults

Objective To examine associations between recalled access to gender-affirming hormones (GAH) during adolescence and mental health outcomes among transgender adults in the U.S. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Sur...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=10.1371%2Fannotation%2Fdcc6a58e-592a-49d4-9b65-ff65df2aa8f6

nepeta · 06/09/2023 08:02

It's extremely difficult to try to disentangle which sex differences (outside the obvious ones having to do with reproduction) are innate, because what used to be called nature and nurture seem to interact in much more complicated ways than previously understood, so that there's now some evidence 'nurture', i.e., environmental effects may sometimes determine which genes get turned off and so on.

The additional reason this is difficult to do is that the it's easy to confuse proximate causes with differences which are regarded as more directly genetic.

Take interest in extramarital sex, the kind with no strings attached, for example.

The traditional view was that it's men who want it more than women do, and in the past surveys even tried to argue that men have it much more than women (even though this is impossible, given that most people are heterosexual and ultimately marry or have permanent partnerships, unless some small number of women have enormous amounts of sex with a vast number of men or unless much of the extramarital sex is gay sex).

But this is probably untrue, and to the extent it is true, it is due to the fact that traditionally sex couldn't be "no strings attached for women" who could get pregnant and who are also much more at physical risk when seeking sex with strangers than men are. Besides, societies tended to punish women for it while men went largely unpunished. Even today men who engage in this kind of sex are seen as players and women as sluts.

Those causes are proximate ones, and should be considered before we simply assume that in their absence women would be less likely to prefer extramarital sex.

Similar problems apply when addressing sex differences in aggression. It could be that men are innately more aggressive in all the different ways, but it could also be that physical expressions of anger don't work as well for women which makes them less used and which may also be why girls in many cultures are trained not to engage in physical fighting (and boys may be encouraged to learn how to physically defend themselves or dominate others). Girls and women can clearly be verbally aggressive.

This problem even partly applies to some of those differences which are seen in many cultures and so might have genetic components, if they are linked to reproductive roles vs. provider roles and the way those have defined women's status (i.e., the environment ('nurture') might be the same in all the different countries/cultures).

As a trivial example, there was a historical slice of time when boys were much more likely to be educated than girls, even if it was only upper-class boys.

We now know that this was not because girls can't learn or are not interested in education or must choose between their wombs and minds etc., but at the time the sex differences would have appeared rather universal and so apparent proof of something innate. This turned out not to be the case.

The argument that all sex differences are innate (or decreed by god) has often been used to justify/explain the subjugation of women, and this makes it important to subject any theories about them to strong scrutiny.

This doesn't mean that such differences wouldn't exist; only that the proof for specific types needs to be very strong and rule out alternative or more nuanced explanations, and should not discount the possibility of multiple reasons working simultaneously.

LoobiJee · 06/09/2023 08:52

“The argument that all sex differences are innate (or decreed by god) has often been used to justify/explain the subjugation of women, and this makes it important to subject any theories about them to strong scrutiny.
^^
This doesn't mean that such differences wouldn't exist; only that the proof for specific types needs to be very strong and rule out alternative or more nuanced explanations, and should not discount the possibility of multiple reasons working simultaneously.”

Spot on.

thirdfiddle · 06/09/2023 13:19

Nepeta, great post.
I think we have to factor in though that we are a product of our environment and our environment includes our own bodies. It's not just culture that teaches women that it's not a good idea to get into a fight with a man. It's the experience of growing up in a female body. It's not just culture that teaches women to care for babies, it's also the fact we can grow them, the hormone rush on giving birth, the practicality of having milk on tap etc. Those aspects are innate. You can change culture as much as you want, you are unlikely to be able to change that on average (important) women are more likely to choose to take time off to care for babies than men. What you can do is work towards not unfairly penalising women in the workplace for taking maternity leave and having caring responsibilities, ensuring caring roles are valued in your culture, and ensuring women who don't want to care for their babies and men who do are not seen as lesser women resp men.

We should also consider that our bodies and brains have evolved in parallel. Pretty much all animal species have different behaviours by sex. Do we think that's all culture? I don't see how it can be. Humans aren't special. We can override our instincts with rational thought but the instincts are still there.

Intelligence is something that is of value whatever sex you are in evolutionary terms. It's pretty well established I think that there's no material difference in average IQs. There's some claims that the distribution is different with men having more extreme high and more extreme low.

Competitiveness Vs Cooperation, Aggression Vs Calm - not so obvious that the evolutionary pressures would be the same from sex to sex. Again looking to other species, it's common that males fight and females don't, or not as much. Females who are pg or caring for infants are more vulnerable and probably need help from other tribe members. Having competitive aggressive instincts would be an evolutionary disadvantage.
And we even know the mechanisms, testosterone is known to increase aggression even if given to women.
So I'd be very wary of any claim that the increased levels of male violence and criminality are purely culture. Though as nepeta says it's next to impossible to quantify and the two interact.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 06/09/2023 14:11

If the individual studies aren't great quality in their design, then you can't magically turn them into good evidence just because you have looked broadly at the research that exists.

This.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 06/09/2023 17:57

It's like - as a completely random analogy - concrete blocks.

A block by itself isn’t of much use. Put lots of them together to build, say, a school or a hospital and the whole thing is far more useful and valuable than the sum of its parts.

But if there's a problem with your blocks ...

MrGHardy · 19/09/2023 17:06

Turban as in Jack Turban? The 'Dr.' who advertises on social media, generating his own clients?

justgotosleepffs · 20/09/2023 13:54

I think if you want to meaningfully talk to transpeople who are "living their best lives", you need to find really old ones who have transitioned decades ago and are still really happy with it. Of course you will find loads of 22 year olds who claim to be "living their best life" a year or so after transition. But then you also have 24 year old detransitioners who would say "that was me two years ago but now I realise I was wrong".

If you can find a cohort of 50 year olds who transitioned in their 20s and never looked back, then those voices would carry more weight than a "trans joy 3 months on T" voice.

Bit of a derail, but i think the same is true of "sex-work is empowering". I'll believe it when I hear it from a 60 year old woman who's been doing it by choice in her 20s.

MavisMcMinty · 20/09/2023 15:32

50-year olds who transitioned 30 years ago are a very different category of people to today’s sudden surge of confused teenagers wanting to identify out of their sexed bodies. Back then you were really put through the mill, given years of counselling, forced to “live as” the opposite sex for two years - it was a test of determination. Anyone who went through all of that in a much more hostile social environment than today (where transitioners are lauded as “stunning, brave and inspirational”) clearly had a persistent belief that they were “in the wrong body”.

Now counselling is seen as “conversion therapy”, and affirmation is the only permitted response from professional clinicians. I’m no expert but my guess is that today’s rush to affirm transgender identities will lead to many more regretters and detransitioners than the former treatment protocol.

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