Dawkins describes trans ID as a meme

[nythbran2]

Very surprised he didn't say this year's earlier (or did I miss it?). Still an unpleasant man though. www.thetimes.com/article/3f4adf27-3fb8-463a-9c1c-3a90ba605b2f?shareToken=0f280c08e52b86d1cd6b0cd7a3a7b3ba

Dadjoke I "refer you" to the concept of thinking for yourself. Scooping up dodgy claims from google like "only 1% detransition" and "look at this left-handednes graph" without asking yourself any questions or probing further is not doing you any favours.

Re detransition, you do know that many detransitioners describe being so ostracised by their trans friends and/or ignored by the clinics who transitioned them that they don't report it or if they do they get ignored and it's not recorded? You do know that gender clinics have failed to keep follow-up info and have played tricks like misrecording sex and trans status in studies to skew the outcomes? Do you ever wonder why it's in anyone's interests to minimise reports of detransition? Could it be because of the big bucks to be made from experimental drugs and surgeries, perchance?

And I ask you again. If a friendship group of 10yo girls gets the LGBTQ rainbow shoved down their throats at school and gets told that trans is beautiful and sees trans-identifying kids get special treatment and celebration and pretty flags, then they all decide they are LGBTQ and share out the different labels like sweets, then beg for flags and badges off amazon, then leave it all behind because they can't be arsed and got distracted by harry styles 6 months later.,... what do YOU think is happening? Not your tired easily dismantlde Internet sources - you, your brain, your own logical reasoning. What do you think is happening? Loads of us have seen this play out. What's going on? If it's not social contagion, why did this happen?

Left-handedness also isn't actively encouraged and made out to be super-cool and "beautiful", and it doesn't involve being put on a medical pathway where you get your health ruined by experimental drugs and surgeries while making $$$$$$$$ for pharmaceutical companies and unscrupulous doctors.

No, it was actively discouraged and left-handers were punished. Suggesting that there was nothing wrong with being left handed and giving let handed people the right tools where appropriate allowed people to be left handed.

@MrsWhattery I am familiar with the literature on detransitioning, and your delightful anecdotes about social contagion are not research.

What type of methodology does constitute valid research, do you think?

I am familiar with the literature on detransitioning, and your delightful anecdotes about social contagion are not research.

And again, I'm not asking about research, I'm asking you to assess, consider and explain the situation I described. Even if it was hypothetical - would it be social contagion or not?

I mean, I know I've seen it happen at first hand, so have many of my friends and other MNers. Yes that's anecdotal, so let's leave research aside for now. I'm asking you: what do you think could cause that? You're deliberately evading the question, which is interesting. Because if you don't think trans identities spread through social contagion, you surely have a clear, convincing understanding of, and explanation for, why all or most of the girls in a group would claim a special gender identity when it's super-fashionable, then drift away from it. That is to do with it being their trrue, innate gender identity.

Instead all you can say is "no, only research matters" when you yourself are making reference to lots of debunked, misrepresented and biased "research".

Haver you actually arrived at any of your views through a process of rational pondering, or do you literally only think what you're told to think by genderist propaganda in order not to be tarred a bigot? Because that would be pretty meme-like in itself.

There is literally nobody who is the opposite sex to that which they are. Though some people with certain types of DSD may be socialised in gendered ways which are considered appropriate in a particular culture - until it is discovered that that person has actually through the puberty of the opposite sex to that which it was originally thought that they were.

I can see how someone ( a male person) who experienced this on some level feels themself to be say a girl, because they have been socialised since childhood thinking of themselves in this way- and the facts of their puberty and the subsequent acceleration of opposite sex characteristics must come as a shock to them.....I can appreciate that this person's self identity/ feelings of self must be quite complex - but it still doesn't fundamentally change their sex.
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i suspect in many cases the revelation of their true sex might well explain why they felt they never fitted in somehow.

No, it was actively discouraged and left-handers were punished. Suggesting that there was nothing wrong with being left handed and giving let handed people the right tools where appropriate allowed people to be left handed.

Yes, and this is similar to being gay. Which is why when people are free to live their life as a gay person without repercussions, a fairly steady, sex-balanced proportion of people do so. This is reasonable comparable to left-handedness.

It is not comparable to announcing that you have a "gender" that doesn't "match" your sex and that this means you must be treated as the opposite sex - and there is no way for anyone to tell if you are telling the truth or not.

I can see how someone ( a male person) who experienced this on some level feels themself to be say a girl, because they have been socialised since childhood thinking of themselves in this way- and the facts of their puberty and the subsequent acceleration of opposite sex characteristics must come as a shock to them.....I can appreciate that this person's self identity/ feelings of self must be quite complex - but it still doesn't fundamentally chage their sex.

Absolutely - and also, this is a specific situation for someone whose body goes through a particularly confusing, and rare, process. None of the mistakenness or confusion involved in that situation means that someone who doesn't have a DSD or any ambiguity at all, can claim they were wrongly "assigned" at birth and are actually the opposite sex. Transgender "identity" has nothing to do with DSDs, they've just appropriated the concept of being "wrongly assifgned at birth" from people who do actually go through that.

It does seem deeply regressoive that after all of those years of women and gay men fighting and struggling for the right to be gender non conforming - that it is now suggested that non conforming men and women, girls and boys must really be the opposite sex.

Feminine, flamboyantly camp men are still men.....and the raging testosterone levels apparent in the gay male dating and club scene attest to this.

But I'm pretty sure Rich D has likened the CofE to a mild vaccination that protects the young of the UK against the more aggressive religion of eg the USA

Interesting - I always thought my C of E primary school education inoculated me against religion in general.

DH had some interaction with* *Dawkins early in DH career - he was pleasant enough to DH that DH always spoke well of him. DH did say later he thought arguing with fundamentalist Christians had perhaps entrenched Dawkins views somewhat which is not an unknown phenomenon.

Also knew he did few year ago speak out against trans ideas and face some backlash.

(edited for spelling as having a bad morning with it)

Yes - if you observe that you don't share character traits with those labelled as being "for" your sex (or aligning with expectations of you based on your sex) you have three possible conclusions - that the labels are wrong, that your body is wrong, or that your character traits are wrong and you must "really" be a different kind of person.

How are we at the point where people can't throw away the notion that the labels are fixed and correct?

He didn't just 'invent the term meme.' He recognised a social phenomenon, defined it and gave it a name. He literally decided the definition, so he actually does get to say if something fits that definition. You, who are neither a specialist in this field, nor the person who recognised and defined the phenomenon, don't. I mean you can argue all you want, but you're objectively completely wrong and making yourself look like an arrogant fool.

He is talking about his actual specialism. He's an evolutionary biologist. This bullshit is claiming to be part and parcel of his literal specialism and he's clearly saying that it isn't. You don't get to claim to be part of something and then criticise specialists for call bullshit, by bullshitting that it's not their speciality anyway. JFC, this is pretty much that most pathetic attempt at an argument I've ever seen from a non-toddler.

Being gay is a protected characteristic - if someone is sacked for that they have a case in law.

Being left handed - or identifying as such - isn't. If you can't use that machine meant for the 90% then here's a P45. Some machines simply aren't made for the left handed, and some that are can cost tens of thousands of pounds.

I always thought my C of E primary school education inoculated me against religion in general.

Did you avoid the addiction to woolly jumpers and cake though ?

@MrsWhattery I do not know the explanation for you anecdote, but me not knowing does not make it research. One explanation is coincidence. If you have 32,000 schools and 10 million school children and the majority of trans kids in those schools were able to come out, you would absolutely expect a handful of schools to have a disproportionate number of trans kids. The maths on the chance of this, I am afraid, is beyond me know, but I'd be very surprised if there weren't a few classes with multiple trans kids, and those are the ones which get reported.

But that's just speculation. We need research.

Another demerit for the social contagion argument is that there are many older transgender people who literally had no language for themselves, were absolutely stigmatised, and did not have any transgender people at all, and yet they still transitioned despite all that. And, of course, there are twin studies which support the fact that gender identity has innate genetic components. You would not expect to see that with social contagion.

If Dawkins did an in-depth study of the literature rather than an ill-informed flip comment in an interview, I'd be very interested to read it. I greatly admired his work on evolution and it's a shame he turned into such a dick.

Anyway, I have not further time for this today.

Thanks for giving an answer Dadjoke. What about the fact that the co-incidentally LGBTQ-identifying group of girls then mostly desisted (when distracted by other trends)? Also a coincidence?

I adore Richard Dawkins. Yes, he's brusque, direct and occasionally comes across as quite condescending, but he's also razor sharp, intelligent and is heavily evidence-focused. I love his podcast.
He is also capable of being very polite to complete idiots, despite his reputation.
As for DadJoke's derailing, the scientific basis for transgenderism, especially in children, is remarkably weak as proven in the Cass Review which was one of the biggest scientific reviews on the subject.
DadJoke is arguing on the basis of pure faith instead of actual science, and of course, debunking faith using science is one of Dawkins favourite past times.
One of the things I like about Dawkins is that he is open to the fact he will change his mind if the evidence points in another direction, but of course, he has not here because there is none.

I know. I wasn’t suggesting that it was (or should be).

Your post just caught my eye.

Woolly jumper yes - skin reacts to wool- cake not so sure but baking very much a thing in family so was probably already doomed.

There was one village school at it was C of E - so my not very religious family had to send us there so was bemused IL and DH were more horrified it was best option for our kids first school and I was like well yes there's religion but it's not like proper religion or anything it's religion lite rather than a gateway drug.

Dadjoke couldn't even bring himself to agree that one would have to define "transgender" clearly in order to see if someone would be counted in any study as such.

Yet also dismissed a study for using "the wrong benchmark for being transgender, and used a much broader defintion" [sic].

So he's got some idea of what he thinks definitively is and isn't trans, but presumably everyone else has to just guess at what this is, because "it's not his job " to explain what he means when he's telling everyone they're wrong.

Not sure anyone will be looking at the likes of DadJoke when they want scientific rigour...

Trans as a meme. Fancy all that social capital, and actual capital, spent, all those lives and bodies blighted by an equivalent of 'Charlie bit my finger'. It would be hilarious if wasn't for some of the outcomes.

I like Richard Dawkins. I read the Selfish Gene decades ago. It's well overdue a reread.

If you have 32,000 schools and 10 million school children and the majority of trans kids in those schools were able to come out, you would absolutely expect a handful of schools to have a disproportionate number of trans kids.

If we were talking about an illness and the likelihood to have it is .55% in the population, but school children had it at a greater rate - some school having particularly high rate, say 5 out of a class of 30, no it wouldnt just be shrugging off as one of those things. We would look to see why this group is particularly susceptible. If nothing else to gain more of an understanding about the illness.

The fact that school children seem more likely to be trans than middle age women, and some schools more likely than others, and the medical profession is not looking into it, suggests that the gender clinics know its social contagion. Because any other explanation would be useful to understanding trans, wouldn't it?

Robust scientific research. I think it was the Dutch Study which lead to the Dutch Protocol. A cohort of youngsters, boys and girls were asked questions before they ‘transitioned’. Disclaimer: I don’t know what a supposed ‘transition’ entails. I do know that nobody can change their sex.

One thing that struck me was how dishonestly one of the results was collected and presented. The girls (who wished to be boys) were asked about their periods when they first joined. I think dysphoria may have been involved. Not happy bunnies about having periods.

Then there was a sleigh of hand when the question was repeated after the supposed ‘sex transition’. They switched who they called boys and girls. So, instead of asking the girls to whom they initially posed the question, they now asked the boys the follow up question about periods. These supposed ‘girls’ (actually boys) were questioned if they were now unhappy about their periods. The males miraculously had no problems with their periods. Hallelujah, body dysmorphia about their periods cured.

Moral of the story, if you ask biological males about their periods, they don’t mind them too much. We’ll never know how the girls felt as they weren’t given the follow up question.

Sh*te like that was being produced as ‘research’.

Ooh it's like TRA bingo today - I see DJ has trotted out the old 'it's not my job to do the work for you' (a close relative of the argument 'if you don't know then I'm not going to tell you!), when asked for evidence to support his position.

Great way to change people's minds, that is 👌

I do wonder whether he actually believes the stuff he posts.