Does the Transgender community have a problem with well evidenced science? Does the community only ever accept favourable reports, AKA confirmation bias, or is it something deeper?

[HydraDominatus]

Every piece of science or news thats not entirely supportive is buried under accusations of transphobia or bias

Why is this a political debate rather than a mental and physical health issue?

Cancer care isn't bias and politicised, trans health care shouldn't be either. Surely it's all about properly designed and researched programmes, with the outcome not predetermined, that we should be entirely standing behind?

Would the community ever stand behind rigorous, transparent, and ethically conducted research into transgender health care that did not align with its previous, deeply held views? If not, isn't that a problem?

tl;dr Is the Transgender community bias to it's own detriment?

(inspired by recent UK changes which do seem to be well researched, evidenced and guided by true support for people with genuine issues, it just does not line up with existing trans community narrative)

I'd love to know too. I think I had written something about the Equality Act protected characteristic wording being important? Maybe I mistakenly used a banned term?

I think I had replied to this post or one of its ancestors about Equality Impact Assessments. EIAs are tools used in the public sector to minimise the chance of a policy or procedural change harming people with an Equality Act protected characteristic.

If someone was doing an EIA about a change to the procedures for treating simple limb bone fractures, they'd need to consider all nine EA protected characteristics. Stonewall have tried to lobby for "gender reassignment" to be replaced with "gender identity". Now, sex could affect how a bone fracture heals because of menopausal women being prone to osteoporosis as their oestrogen levels fall. Gender reassignment, being defined as a process and often including hormone treatment, could affect how a bone fracture heals because cross-sex hormones and blockers could affect bone density. Gender identity is just a feeling in someone's head, so it wouldn't affect how a bone fracture healed. The important data to collect is the EA protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment, not gender identity.

We had a survey a couple of years back at my last job about whether the building was the right temperature, lighting, etc. The survey wanted my gender identity. Sex affects how someone perceives temperature because of how women's entire circulatory system is plumbed to support a uterus with a baby inside and so our peripheral circulation sucks, sucking less after the menopause as oestrogen levels drop. We might see that high oestrogen levels in women mean cold feet and hands and suspect that adding oestrogen to a male body may affect peripheral circulation and cause the TW to have cold feet and hands too, so collecting whether someone is undergoing gender reassignment would also be useful when checking that our new aircon system isn't discriminatory. But someone's feeling of gender identity isn't going to affect how they perceive the air temperature. Again, we need to collect data on sex and gender reassignment.

Replacing "gender reassignment" with "gender identity" in the Equality Act or in policies via "Stonelaw" arguably harms trans people by erasing the physical differences between transitioners and non-transitioners, undermining our ability to detect unfairness towards transitioners. We need data to protect people and the data has to be based on meaningful criteria, not feelings.

Hopefully I've not fallen foul of any banned terms this time.

Now, now - transdoctor knows best.

Surely even capturing ‘gender reassignment’ is meaningless, given that nobody has to actually do anything to tick this particular box?

In the Equality Act, gender reassignment means proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex. To be protected from gender reassignment discrimination, you do not need to have undergone any medical treatment or surgery to change from your birth sex to your preferred gender.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/your-rights-under-equality-act-2010/gender-reassignment-discrimination#:~:text=In%20the%20Equality%20Act%2C%20gender,sex%20to%20your%20preferred%20gender.

There is, at least, a process involved in that, as opposed to flipping a coin that morning or however one goes about choosing one's pronouns for the day.

But in your example - gender identity isn't going to affect how they perceive the air temperature - neither will gender reassignment affect how someone perceives air temperature if that person only has to be proposing to undergo the process.

I think it would be better to ask 'have you started any puberty blocking or hormonal treatment that may not be on your NHS records' to be honest.

They are more likely to have done something more than blue hair and they/them badge.

That's the kind of question that the fracture process should contain. For the EIA about the process change, we'd ask "are you undergoing or have you undergone gender reassignment?" for the purpose of identifying someone to be in a focus group.

But that's perceived to be transphobic isn't it?

And herein lies the problem....

They really might not have done.

See Jamie Wallis, first trans MP.

...and Alex, mother of four.

If gender critical people acknowledged that people have an innate sense of their gender, which usually aligns with birth sex, we can then discuss how we as a society can deal with that.

Why would I acknowledge that when my lived experience is that gender identity is not innate? I'm gender fluid. Most of the ppl I know who were regularly sexually abused as young children are gender fluid. (Almost all of the ppl I know in this category have CPTSD and many have a dissociative disorder.) Sometimes we feel male, sometimes female, sometimes neither. We didn't know each other until we were adults so I don't think that feeling came about from social contagion, though talking about it was a big relief for many and probably made that feeling more acceptable (to us, not the rest of the world). It seems like a response to our abuse, not inborn. We all hated our bodies, including our sex but not just our sex or gender.

Many non-abused ppl I know don't feel like they have a gender identity. They have a sex and they identify as that sex.

Why do we have to agree to that before we can discuss how society can address the issue?

I wish genderists would acknowledge that by gender they broadly mean "femininity" or "masculinity". We could then talk about what that means and why it doesn't make sense to force those concepts to be aligned with one sex or the other.

It's the "sometimes gender means boobs amd sometimes it means feelings, and we refuse to clearly differentiate" that gets tedious.

Agreed...

what we really need is I don't know - perhaps a dictionary to define the meaning of words?

Oxford English Dictionary:

• Woman: An adult female human being. The counterpart of man
• Gender: ...The state of being male or female as expressed by societal or cultural distinctions and differences...
• Innate: Existing in a person (or organism) from birth...

Once everyone agrees to use the correct meanings, it does make discussion much easier 😁with those definitions - there is no way that gender can ever be innate as at the point of birth you have zero knowledge of and display no cultural distinctions or differences...

Defining words is transphobic. Words mean what I want them to mean when I want them to mean something.

> my sister exclusively dated and had sex with boys when she was a teenager and continued to do so for a couple of years even after she told us she was a lesbian. Life is complicated.

As a Lesbian, it is absolutely impossible for me to have sex with a man. I tried once, with a man who was very "feminine" in appearance (long hair, next to no body hair, slim, 5 foot 3) and it ended with me yelling at him to stop and then crying for the rest of the evening. When I think about it now (nearly 20 years later!), my mind kind of stutters or jumps off the rails a little and I feel awful and frightened. I think my mind and body reacted to it similarly to a rape -although it wasn't one, I agreed to try it out and he stopped when I told him to. I don't see how any actual Lesbian could have sex more than once with a man, unless forced.

That sounds very traumatising.