"Trans people have always been here!"

[GoldenBracelet]

God I'm tired of reading "Trans people have always been here!", like it's some kind of unarguable gotcha 🙄

Yes, there have always been men who think they are women.
No, they have never been women.

See also women who think they're men.

It’s no accident that historically the appearance of an idea of “trans” (sexual or gender or anything else), from first around the 1930s onwards but mainly from the 1950s, is completely coextensive with two things:

• women’s legal rights; and
• the development of modern surgery/antibiotics.

Pretty much all instances of “trans” people that gender ideologists lay a claim to that were documented before 1900 were actually homosexual men and women, living at a time when sexual orientation was understood as inseparable from sex and sex roles, and wanting to be the other sex was thought of as evidence of homosexuality, not “gender dysphoria”. Gay and autogynephilic men might have played at dressing up in women’s clothes; but there was no appeal to “living as a woman” in eras where that meant a very severe loss of autonomy, money, agency and legal rights.

“Transsexual”, as something rooted in a desire for surgical alterations of the body, also did not exist as anything other than pure fantasy before the era of modern surgery and antibiotics. It’s almost impossible for us to think ourselves back into a time where routine, safe surgery didn’t exist. Surgery was minimal, noninvasive or only in extremis before modern medicine (and, crucially, antibiotics), made infection and complications generally rare.

People might have fantasised about turning themselves into the opposite sex - Joyce has Leopold Bloom do this in a satirical section on Havelock Ellis and Kraft-Ebing in Ulysses - but it remained a fantasy, because complex body-altering plastic surgery simply did not exist then. They weren’t “trans” in the contemporary sense, because the idea of being one “gender” trapped in a different sex also simply didn’t exist. People might even have wished quite hard that they had been born the opposite sex: but until very recently in history this wish was on the level of any other impossible wish — like; I wish I had been born tall, or rich, or possessed of great beauty or good fortune — ie. it remained merely a desire/fantasy.

It would have made as much sense to someone in 1820 to say that a man was “really” a woman trapped in a man’s body, as to say that the King secretly thought he was spiritually a pauper trapped in the body of a monarch; or that Adam Smith thought he was a Frenchman trapped in the body of a Scot.

The reason you don’t see actual historical evidence of “trans people always having been there” is that for most of history it simply didn’t register as an idea that was any more than merely fantastical or metaphorical. Aside from gay men, a very few lesbian women, and women who didn’t much like their social role as chattels, there isn’t much of any evidence in history of “trans” anything at all.

Calling religiosity a psychological condition is not something everyone would agree on, but never mind.

My original post you quoted said "psychological condition/disposition".

"Yes, legally, that's what "rights" are about: the law. And let's stick to the UK. What rights don't trans people have in the UK, that other people have?"

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

They are not restricted from public toilets though.

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed.

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

Really? They can't go to the doctor, or go to a public toilet?

They have the equal access to male single sex provisions the same as all other male people if they are male. And the same for female people. In addition, there are many places providing mixed sex access single sex provisions too.

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

"There are also plenty of other groups who would like to access medical treatment that is not funded by the NHS. However, the treatment you describe has also been shown to have poor quality evidence of improving the outcome for children. I think you claim of discrimination on grounds of health care is flawed."

For them & experts globally, their health care is necessary to their psychological wellbeing so being deprived of it is discriminatory .

They are discriminated against in terms of access to health care & are restricted to access of public toilets.

How so? Doctors cannot refuse to see them because they are trans. Hospitals cannot turn them away because they are trans. They can't be refused treatments for illnesses because they are trans. So how exactly are they discriminated against in terms of access to health care?

As for toilets: they have exactly the same rights as other people: the right to use the toilets according to their sex. That they don't want to do so is not the law's problem.

They don't identify with their sex though so for them it's problematic.

Oh dear, you're a bigot. They don't just identify as women, they are women!

I experience a society that accepts the neo-sexist idea that "a woman" is a type of personality as problematic and bad for my psychological well-being.

Trans minors are restricted from access to puberty blockers.

Access to appropriate basic ammenities becomes the law's problem if there are potential harms involved like physical abuse.

Trans minors are restricted from access to puberty blockers.

Because they are minors, not because they are trans. So that's not trans discrimination.

Access to appropriate basic ammenities becomes the law's problem if there are potential harms involved like physical abuse.

Not quite. It becomes the law's problems when there's evidence of harm happening. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that trans women are at risk of harm if they use the men's toilets, so there's no reason for the law to get involved.

They probably have more access to health care than non trans people. You can’t have free electrolysis, boob jobs etc unless you are trans. I wonder if that is discrimination against people with the protected characteristic of non gender reassignment.

The access to toilets issue is probably the same as anyone else uncomfortable using multiple user toilets, if you had OCD or disliked peeing with other people to hear, that sort of thing. It’s basically a you problem. Get over it or find suitable toilets.

Also, of course, they're men. So they're using the relevant facilties.

Transgender people campaigned extremely hard to have gender dysphoria removed from being a requirement of being a transgender person (as well as trying to remove the term transsexual).

Which strangely enough upset a lot of transsexual people as it removed part of their identity and erased what they are whilst allowing a lot of people just to say that they are trans.

Its also quite interesting to note that one of the goals of being a transsexual was to pass as the sex that they "identified" as. (and was probably why very few women had an issue with them)

Whereas now a transgender person looks like a transgender person and are often fully intact and in many/some cases look like a mockery of female stereotypes.

Yes, there have always been men who think they are women.

I would disagree. Transgenderism is actually a quite new phenomena; it was the result of biomedical advances that lead to the availability of 'sex-change' surgeries and hormone administration. These developments captured the imagination of a small number of men who came to believe that it would allow them, in some meaningful way, to become the opposite sex. I.e. it was the possibility that created the phenomena. That's why the very earliest examples to undergo the surgery and hormone therapy were homosexual men with complex reasons for wanting to undergo the treatment, while later it was primarily heterosexuals men with a clear erotic interest in it who sought the treatment.

Cross dressing and homosexuality are well documented in the historical record, but transexualism (or the euphemistic transgenderism) is not. In fact the lack of clear examples of it is rather conspicuous.

Because they are minors, not because they are trans. So that's not trans discrimination.

it is because minors aren't restricted from other health care like puberty blockers for precocious puberty.

Not quite. It becomes the law's problems when there's evidence of harm happening. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that trans women are at risk of harm if they use the men's toilets, so there's no reason for the law to get involved.

Trans women being violently physically assaulted & raped is well documented.

Not all trans people suffer from gender dysphoria as in they might want to live as the opposite gender but not be distressed about their body parts to the point where it becomes an illness.

it is because minors aren't restricted from other health care like puberty blockers for precocious puberty.

Trans minors are not restricted from puberty blockers for precocious puberty either, so there's no discrimination.

Trans women being violently physically assaulted & raped is well documented.

If that evidence existed, it would be easy to present it to lawmakers in a bid to have the law changed. Instead, activists are reduced to an appeal to feelings: "They feel like women! Be kind!"

So has syphilis. It's not much of an endorsement.

Trans minors are not restricted from puberty blockers for precocious puberty either, so there's no discrimination.

The point is trans minors are restricted from health care but other minors are not.

If that evidence existed, it would be easy to present it to lawmakers in a bid to have the law changed. Instead, activists are reduced to an appeal to feelings: "They feel like women! Be kind!"

The evidence is well documented from prisons but it does not necessarily follow that evidence existing persuades law makers particularly if they are incentivised not to. In any case, trans women being accepted in female prison estates has long been done so for their safety not their 'feelings'. Anyone who would imagine trans women aren't at an increased risk of sexual assault in prisons particularly if they have physically transitioned is deluding themselves.

Trans women being violently physically assaulted & raped is well documented.

Can you please present some UK statistics, and can you also please highlight if they were assaulted and raped because they are trans or if they were assaulted and raped and just happened to be trans?

Yes, they aren't quite the same.

I don't think those kinds of programs have anything to do with equal opportunity though. They don't care if their adjustments give extra advantages to kids with helful parents and high salaries, and disadvantage kids with no money from foster care, They only care about equity in terms of certain specific measured outcomes, between the groups they define.

At the level of the concrete individual it can be massively opposed to any recognition of them as a real person who should be treated fairly, all that matters are abstract outcomes for entities that have no concrete reality.

I suspect when they look at trans rights (so called) its similar, nothing to do with individual rights at all really. It's about outcomes for some abstraction, and that can be any group they decide to define. Access to rights in this way of thinking is about belonging to some group, and groups competing for access.

It's a totally differernt paradigm.

Are "trans" children with precocious puberty not allowed puberty blockers then?

Or are you in fact comparing two completey different things?

Here's a couple one being a systemic review. There are many more. Whether they are conducted in the UK is irrelevant as is other universal forms of male violence.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830990/#:~:text=Introduction,2015)%20define%20transgender%20as%20follows:
https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/0/1149/files/2013/06/Transgender-Inmates-in-CAs-Prisons-An-Empirical-Study-of-a-Vulnerable-Population.pdf

I'm comparing the fact that children being provided with necessary healthcare isn't consistently applied.

I think you first have to establish that puberty blockers are necessary healthcare for trans-identifying children before you can assert that the failure to provide them is an inconsistency in providing necessary healthcare.

That's not something widely accepted.