Nobody's preventing such a celebration. Just don't accept enthusiastic cheering from people who are forced into a role they did not freely choose. — Vera Mont

Noone freely chose to be born.

We are talking about women in relatively free western societies when they have the choice to be what kind of women they want to be and not about enforcing a role on anyone.

We all have our sex imposed on us by biology at birth and women display different traits then man that are not imposed on them as statistics show but are consistent.
Denying these trends in women and females is denying womanhood and femaleness.

If men and women have children and women end up doing the majority of the childcare for instance
the men can step in and be a stay at home dad or help out heavily in the care. If this is not happening it may be through choice of both parties or the mans lack of commitment to equality.

But we are creating a situation of confusion where trying to find out what works and what is a an imposition or stereotype is benefitting few people and people are being experimented on such as in the case of childcare
Where what is best for the child is being held ransom to arguing about who should look after the child and why and for what reason.
If a couple create a child the child should be the priority not the parents career aspirations etc in my opinion. It will usually be the mother who does the caring in the end or a female nursery nurse, nanny or female teacher.

I think the problem with the theory of social construction of identities is that no one can have a real or true identities.
Because you can never know how you reached you current identity whether by a valid procedure of self selection due to social pressure.
On the other hand you can accept that people are living their preferences.

We all have our sex imposed on us by biology at birth — Andrew4Handel

Also birth defects, but many of these can be surgically corrected. I think that if someone who is suffering can be repaired, we should repair them.

Also birth defects, but many of these can be surgically corrected. I think that if someone who is suffering can be repaired, we should repair them. — Vera Mont

I don't know what you are referring to here.

Are you saying being born male or female is birth defect? I am saying sex differences are real not imposed.

We can celebrate them without imposing expectations on non conforming people.

I have to accept that most men are straight and a lot like sports and cars. At some stage I may have felt like an outsider and frustrated but I now don't expect men to change for me a minority.

Are you saying being born male or female is birth defect? — Andrew4Handel

Could be. Nature is imperfect; reproduction is chancy; genetic errors are not unusual. Only the person living inside a body can really know how living in that body feels.

Could be. Nature is imperfect; reproduction is chancy; genetic errors are not unusual. Only the person living inside a body can really know how living in that body feels. — Vera Mont

Now I am just discussing your average man or women. Being a man or women is a biological fact with medical ramifications and psychological and physical ramifications.

Denying facts is not helpful. If that is the route you want to go I see no benefit to it other then maybe to you personally. Treating people and children in particular as if they there are not male and female is ridiculous. People need to be told the reality of their body and likely psychological and pohysical outcomes. Anything else is anti scientific.

Only the person living inside a body can really know how living in that body feels. — Vera Mont

What does that mean?

Yes we are subjective beings with inner private worlds. Anyone can dislike any aspect of their body and mind but is that healthy, is it delusional and where does it lead us?

It is is irrelevant anyway to the majority of people who are happy being male or female and who exhibit common traits of their sex.

your average man or women. — Andrew4Handel

I don't have either. Why do you?

Only the person living inside a body can really know how living in that body feels. — Vera Mont

What does that mean? — Andrew4Handel

It means you don't know, the parents don't know, the GP doesn't know, the psychiatrist doesn't know, the cleric doesn't know, the journalist doesn't know, the MP doesn't know. Yet all these unknowing people are sitting in judgment.

It is is irrelevant anyway to the majority of people who are happy being male or female and who exhibit common traits of their sex. — Andrew4Handel

Unless they either care about the welfare of their fellow humans, or want the power to shove their fellow human beings into assigned roles.

Unless they either care about the welfare of their fellow humans, or want the power to shove their fellow human beings into assigned roles. — Vera Mont

It is irrelevant to this topic because we are discussing the majority of people. Your responses have been unhelpful so far but are you saying the majority of people should suppress or tone down their identities for a minority?

I want more evidence that you are committed to subjectivity and respecting peoples inner worlds.

Unfortunately society does not work on that basis it works on useful generalities. We can only go so far to cater for everyone's unique identity.

Your responses have been unhelpful so far but are you saying the majority of people should suppress or tone down their identities for a minority? — Andrew4Handel

Not at all. I'm not telling the majority what they should do. I'm not telling any minority what they should do. I'm not telling anyone how they should feel, how they should conduct their private lives, or what norms they should conform to.

I want more evidence that you are committed to subjectivity and respecting peoples inner worlds. — Andrew4Handel

You will want in vain.

Unfortunately society does not work on that basis it works on useful generalities. We can only go so far to cater for everyone's unique identity. — Andrew4Handel

Pity!

The need for acceptance is so fundamental that more than one psychologist, can think it insane for even a slave to resist their identification as such. And more than one slave can accept the identity in order to be accepted. We go back again and again to our abusers, because to be abused is to be confirmed and accepted as part of the society. To be alone is death.

But again, all this must be denied, and the identity of the self-interested rational responsible man who is the captain of his fate etc must be affirmed, because to be so dependent and fragile in one's identity is also death. — unenlightened

I think we generally agree about identity, personality and those like concepts being (to a large degree) socially constructed. I appreciated your point about the need for acceptance being more fundamental than whatever plane of social relations identities are constructed within. It's good to highlight that there are some conditions of possibility/generative presuppositions for the formation of a psyche; those capacities which render us social, feeling beings.

I've got two points+questions about it. I'll reiterate that I'm not authoritative and I'm not in a position to judge the veracity of a study, I'm just trying to use them to make sure what I'm saying isn't beyond the pale.

( 1 ) While I'm not sold on this one. I think it's worth considering that while a given identity is socially constructed, we do have these psyche generative mechanisms/capacities which apply at the individual level. They're shared capacities to be sure, they apply to everyone. I intuit that those capacities are manifested by bodies in different ways, though. How I am rendered social is different from how you are rendered social - our tendencies for psyche-genesis will have been different. Examples there might be synesthesia, neurological conditions and disabilities. Bodies have some say in the psyches which may dwell within them.

I don't mean to suggest that there are male or female brains (like @Isaac highlighted, this is bogus), I mean to suggest that we've not ruled out that an individual's body constraints the genesis of their psyche differently than others. As far as I'm aware there is some evidence that this is the case here, some of which consists of review content.

To my understanding, those differences can arise from genetics, the developmental environment, and possibly epigenetic effects. The epigenetic aspect there renders biological factors socially mediated, and social factors biologically mediated.

I'm not trying to suggest that gender stereotypes should be naturalised, I'm more approaching this from the angle that the genesis of social identity implodes a hard distinction between nature and culture - since they both mediated the others' mechanisms.

The question I have in that respect is - what gives you the intuition (if it does) that the most part of trans identity comes from social factors rather than the body those social forces can inhabit/en-mind? Further, do you see these individual level bodily differences as showing that it's plausible that trans identity isn't entirely socially determined?

( 2 ) More broadly, I think your comments apply (and perhaps are even designed to apply?) to other identity categories. One of your example was race and your daughter going to nursery, if I understood it - race was being sustained/generated in their mind by the differences in expectation they've picked up. What's the practical import of your criticism for trans people vs racialised people? What ought people do and not do?

I don't think it's bad, just misplaced, as long as doctors stick to agreed ethical standards. — Benkei

Really? You must be unaware of the campaigns here.

Mermaids (a trans charity in the UK) are pushing for faster turnaround times and greater availability of puberty blockers and gender-affirming endocrine treatments for children. Treatments which our country's leading paediatrician has had to close the country's main gender clinic for over prescribing.

They were implicated by the commission with helping to create an environment which put children at risk because drugs with little clinical evidence of success and marginal data on long term effects were promoted out of fear of being labelled transphobic by charities like Mermaids. According to the testimony of some of the 35 clinicians who resigned from Tavistock before it was shut down "We are extremely concerned about the consequences for young people... For those of us who previously worked in the service, we fear that we have had front row seats to a medical scandal".

The report goes on to say...

Primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters

I think promoting an environment where clinicians are unable to prescribe in the best interests of their patients for fear of consequences is a little more than 'misplaced'. It's been bad here. thing are improving since Tavistock, but there's a lot of pushback even on the decision to close it.

Ideally default positions have arguments for them IMO. But I doubt we need to get into it here. — fdrake

Fair enough. I suppose I'd argue for it in terms of not creating new models where old ones are adequate. we already have a model of societal intolerance creating pressure to conform, we do not already have a model of how brains might create identities out of what are seemingly social categories which are nonetheless clash somehow with the body. If I can explain the phenomena using existing models, I'm not sure I need to go looking for a new one.

I'm wary here of p-hacking on a massive scale. We wouldn't want to start with the notion that trans identity has to be such as to be resolved by sex-change and then go searching for data sets that might show that.

like "passing" there's a question about whether this is even an atypical response to particularly salient and fundamental norms about society. You can find similarly strong norms about race, disability and sexuality. There is a third possibility, which I think unenlightened is close to (though please correct me if I'm wrong), in which all identity works like passing, and passing is nevertheless expressive. — fdrake

Yes, the models of identity I typically work with take this as a stating point - I mean, at one time I was working on the social construction of perception, so I'm pretty heavily invested in the notion of social construction in general (perhaps too heavily to get a sufficiently detached picture, I'll grant). As we've discussed before with perception though, the space within which social construction works is itself constrained by an external world which imposes limits on what can be believably constructed. Likewise I'm sympathetic to your raising the idea (reading your exchange with @unenlightened) that identity construction might be similarly constrained by biological factors (both somatic and psychological).

It's just that, as above, there doesn't appear to be a need for such constraints en masse insofar as the phenomena is already explained by well-trodden models of social acceptance. I needn't theorise that some, as yet hidden, genetic constraint limits the selection of identities from the 'supermarket shelf' of society's offerings in such an alarming way that one's own body must be rejected and replaced with another in order to make a satisfactory choice. It's plausible, but seems unnecessary.

If we think of passing as a moral imperative, that "if you are X then you ought to behave as expected of X", it raises the question of where those expectations are coming from. I don't think it's reasonable to explain the imperative to conform to cisgender+heteronormative gender norms as arising from trans activist pressure to pass, transition etc - that expectation arises from a social consensus. — fdrake

Absolutely. If I had a complaint about the mainstream trans movement it would be of being overly conservative, of undermining the hard-won progressive achievements of feminism over the last decades which finally allowed a slightly wider range of societal roles for natal women.

Society as a whole imposes the notion that some of it's smorgasbord of identities are available only to those with breasts, or only to those with penises (as well as other such restrictions). Thus anyone whose internal biological constraints might limit their choice of socially constructed identity to only those society makes available to the female form will be stuffed if they happen to have a male body. The solution is for more people to choose those options anyway. It is not for people to change their body to comply with society's arbitrary criteria as to who can have what identity.

As I said to @Benkei above, one option here is that people, quite understandably, not able to cope with the conflict this creates, choose the easier route. But then the appropriate response is one of sympathy for the individual and anger at society. That's not the message we're getting from groups like Mermaids who are pushing medical transition as the end goal, not as an unfortunate necessity for many because of the weight of social pressure (which needs to stop), but as an 'affirmation' of who they 'really' are. It's this narrative that I think is dangerous insofar as it reinforces these arbitrary restrictions on choice. It attempts to replace the notion that these restrictions are societal with a medicalisation of them. It makes the problem one of an individual's biology, not of a society's arbitrary sex-based role assignments.

It is majorly affirming to have something which you identify as a core aspect of your being affirmed socially. Not just for "fleeing shame", but by skilfully controlling an aspect of your presentation to better perform your identity. — fdrake

Yes. I can see an argument for this. No different to getting a tattoo. Essentially a 'modelling' of one's body to match an idea one has of it as an aesthetic construction - an art project. I don't see any issue with that. I don't doubt that some small quantity of plastic surgery falls into that camp too. but that wouldn't pathologise the problem. No child is traumatised by their inability to get a tattoo despite feeling strongly that they want to present that way. Individual ideas about presentation may drive some gender expressions (and include bodily re-forming), but it's society which renders the inability to achieve that traumatic, as opposed to merely frustrating.

Again we're in danger of searching out data to match the theory here. It's possible that people's need to express their body image is so great that the trauma is internally generated (or partially so), but it's not necessary. There's already explanations with existing models which don't in any way fail to capture the nature of the phenomena.

if we're talking about whether it's permissible to surgically transition or delay puberty, we've got informed consent for that right? — fdrake

Well, yes, but that's not how we handle other similar issues. We don't use such an approach with other medical interventions on offer, for example. We have strong systems in place to control recommendations based on efficacy, cost, and other factors. We don't simply give patients the Pfizer catalogue and say 'take your pick'. Consent to drugs and/or surgery is not like consent to some act (like sex, or skydiving). One hands over a good deal more trust to the medical professional given that details of the potential consequences are not generally part of public knowledge. As we've seen at Tavistock, that trust can be interfered with by social pressure and campaigns. That's not a good thing.

Furthermore, the whole issue is about societal pressures, which, if real, precede consent. One consents to that which one feels one ought to consent to. If society is creating unhealthy pressures then it will act on consent as much as any other choice made. Women were not, centauries ago, dragged kicking and screaming into loveless marriages of servitude. They consented to them. They consented because society imposed, from birth, the idea that they ought to consent.

I'd side with yes if we're comparing it to unestablished future risks vs established reports that individuals tend to be satisfied and have low levels of regret for surgery , but I don't think I've got a fortress of an argument for that claim. — fdrake

That's understandable. As I said, I think there's arguments for both sides and the evidence is far from clear either way (one of the main criticisms of the Care Quality Commission was the lack of data gathering meaning we could not reach properly informed decisions here). If, as has been established in the Tavistock case, medical professionals are in fear of their livelihoods if they do not conform to certain narratives, then we're in even more of a position of wariness than usual when it comes to results from a handful of small trials with (usually) methodological holes you could drive tank through.

The issue, though, is one of framing. Framed as a concerned political debate about the efficacy of medical treatments, the direction society ought to take to be as inclusive and just as possible... in that context I think the jury is out on how we ought proceed. But that's not the framing. One only need read a few comments here (but more pervasive in wider society) to see that it is framed as progressives vs bigots, as The Science™ vs 'conspiracy theory'. In essence that's a bigger problem because if that toxic approach to disagreement can't be surmounted then the idea of any future direction being hashed out between concerned parties for the best might as well go out of the window.

If I can explain the phenomena using existing models, I'm not sure I need to go looking for a new one. — Isaac

Eh, assumes that the phenomenon can be explained with existing models. Think that's be problematised enough nowadays where it can no longer safely be assumed as the reference position. And even then, the question of how that default position ought be managed societally is different still.

Society as a whole imposes the notion that some of it's smorgasbord of identities are available only to those with breasts, or only to those with penises (as well as other such restrictions). Thus anyone whose internal biological constraints might limit their choice of socially constructed identity to only those society makes available to the female form will be stuffed if they happen to have a male body. The solution is for more people to choose those options anyway. It is not for people to change their body to comply with society's arbitrary criteria as to who can have what identity. — Isaac

The meaningful therapeutic distinction between gender therapies (like puberty blockers and reassignment) and one of "those options" is something that would need to be established. Just like with cosmetic surgeries - do you think someone who's had a single breast mastectomy is similarly obliged not to get a suitable breast implant because to do so would reinforce stereotypes on women's appearances? Those two things could be consistently asserted (both ought not for the same reason, permissible to do it for both) but I don't find moral preferences in this situation consistent at all.

No child is traumatised by their inability to get a tattoo despite feeling strongly that they want to present that way. Individual ideas about presentation may drive some gender expressions (and include bodily re-forming), but it's society which renders the inability to achieve that traumatic, as opposed to merely frustrating. — Isaac

Yes! I think that's true. My perspective on that is largely harm minimisation, I think there's a compelling case that gender therapy ought to include transition as part of it on that basis. But we probably don't need to get into that here.

There's already explanations with existing models which don't in any way fail to capture the nature of the phenomena. — Isaac

I don't believe that's conclusively demonstrated. Like DSM-5 distinguishes gender dysphoria (which AFAIK is the explanation you're gesturing toward?) from transgender identity:

Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5-TR as clinically significant distress or impairment related to gender incongruence, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria...

Family and societal rejection of gender identity are some of the strongest predictors of mental health difficulties among people who are transgender.14 Family and couples’ therapy can be important for creating a supportive environment that will allow a person’s mental health to thrive. Parents of children and adolescents who are transgender may benefit from support groups. Peer support groups for transgender people themselves are often helpful for validating and sharing experiences.

You have gender dysphoria coupling with other mental illness among the trans population, but nevertheless they aren't determinative of trans identity. The probability of being trans given self reports of gender dysphoria is definitely much higher than the probability of reporting not trans, regardless that probability increase isn't determinative of having trans identity. That's also baked in the DSM right, you need clinically significant distress for gender dysphoria (so someone who's trans but doesn't have clinically significant distress), and if you didn't satisfy enough of the diagnostic criteria you wouldn't have it anyway:

The DSM-5-TR defines gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults as a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender, lasting at least 6 months, as manifested by at least two of the following:

A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

(it's 6 for kids)

The overall thrust there is that transgenderism isn't reducible to societally induced trauma, just strongly correlated with it. Analogously to what you said later, it would be like defining heterosexual partnership only using womens' forced consent into marriages of servitude. Since at the time marriages of servitude were the gold standard of romantic relationships.

It's certainly a point for the social determination of all of these surrounding categories, but by my reckoning a point against any reductive explanation. Broadly speaking because, in both cases, the underlying constructs which are being used are at least historically variable - and currently in visible flux for the gender identity ones, and also there's good reason to suspect there are relevant biology-society interaction effects here (again AFAIK, provided a citation to @unenlightened for it).

As we've seen at Tavistock, that trust can be interfered with by social pressure and campaigns. That's not a good thing. — Isaac

Are you meaning this in a judgement neutral sense? Like "the trust was interfered with which resulted in a good change)" vs "the trust was interfered with which resulted in a bad change" - all you care about is the societal pressure on treatment one way or the other, not that one could be better than the other. I'm sure we could have a long political/ethical discussion about Tavistock elsewhere too.

Furthermore, the whole issue is about societal pressures, which, if real, precede consent. One consents to that which one feels one ought to consent to. If society is creating unhealthy pressures then it will act on consent as much as any other choice made. Women were not, centauries ago, dragged kicking and screaming into loveless marriages of servitude. They consented to them. They consented because society imposed, from birth, the idea that they ought to consent.

Definitely, though it isn't a specific issue for transgender surgeries. A whole swathe of surgeries and interventions can be argued against using this as a premise.

So that we don't go down infinitely many rabbit holes at once, I suggest we focus on one or two subdiscussions. I don't know how to do that though, any guidance?

( 1 ) While I'm not sold on this one. I think it's worth considering that while a given identity is socially constructed, we do have these psyche generative mechanisms/capacities which apply at the individual level. They're shared capacities to be sure, they apply to everyone. I intuit that those capacities are manifested by bodies in different ways, though. How I am rendered social is different from how you are rendered social - our tendencies for psyche-genesis will have been different. E xamples there might be synesthesia, neurological conditions and disabilities. Bodies have some say in the psyches which may dwell within them. — fdrake

Thank you for engaging with me on this; I'm not used to it. I am not saying that brains are all exactly alike. I am not saying that they are not affected in their development in the womb by the experiences and diet of the mother, I am not saying that there cannot be a brain that is, to put it crudely female-like in structure in a male body, or vice versa. Brains are plastic from the beginning, and are moulded by the environment from the beginning, and as the individual grows up, with luck, the brain becomes more and more able to reciprocally mould the environment.

But the question of identity is not the question of individual character. Every zebra has a unique bar code, but no bar code gives rise to an identity problem.

So if there is a male with a female brain, this might give rise to some odd behaviour and some odd feelings. They might be 'effeminate', they might be homosexual, they might be particularly nurturing, less aggressive than most males, and so on. But why should any of this be problematic in any way or cause them to be unhappy with their condition? "I am what I yam!" being the default.

The challenge to anyone who wants to reject my thesis is to come up with an answer to this question that is not based on relations with society.

( 2 ) More broadly, I think your comments apply (and perhaps are even designed to apply?) to other identity categories. — fdrake

Certainly. I start from a completely general idea of identity, as distinct from what I can call 'character'.
One's character does not require any thinking about or effort. My hands are unsteady, so that my handwriting is almost illegible and my drawings scribbles. I am good at maths, terrible at recognising faces or remembering names, I am rather passive and quiet, but can get angry and passionate too. I am a hetero male. This is more or less a description of character, but by comparison still with some vague 'normal' or average, and descriptive of social activities. But it is an attempt to describe something like my innate being rather than the way I think of myself. That is not really possible without some hand-waving.

When that character interacts with the education system, quiet passivity becomes laziness, unsteady hands become carelessness, forgetting names and faces is inattention and rude, and so on. I become moralised, and these things become 'wrong' with me rather than mere facts about me.

Otherwise than through they eyes of convention, how could there be anything wrong, uncomfortable, conflictual with being a man with a vagina, or a woman with a penis? One's physicality can only possibly be in conflict with an image of an ideal, which necessarily must come from others.

I suggest we focus on one or two subdiscussions. I don't know how to do that though, any guidance? — fdrake

Good idea. No guidance, though, beyond just mentioning the areas that most interest me.

As I said above, I'm most interested in the environment within which this debate takes place. I've not personally been affected, but I know people who have. It's an issue in certain circles of the academic world . So that's one avenue - are alternatives to the mainstream trans position actually viable, or are the detractors right and they're nothing but bigotry dressed up? To address this we only need see if the models reach the much lower bar of being reasonable, rather than preferable. Is it at least reasonable to hold that there's no such thing as an internal, pathological, need to modify one's body (such that one might suffer more than everyday frustration at being unable to), or does existing evidence preclude such a view?

The other, possibly related, issue that interested me was this...

assumes that the phenomenon can be explained with existing models. Think that's be problematised enough nowadays where it can no longer safely be assumed as the reference position. — fdrake

I'd be interested to hear your thinking on what problems the account I've given runs into (different from merely the plausibility of alternative models), such that it might fail to account for some aspect of the phenomena. That might also serve to focus the discussion - what aspects of the phenomena do we see which stand out as requiring certain types of explanation?

Some brief notes nevertheless...

do you think someone who's had a single breast mastectomy is similarly obliged not to get a suitable breast implant because to do so would reinforce stereotypes on women's appearances? Those two things could be consistently asserted (both ought not for the same reason, permissible to do it for both) but I don't find moral preferences in this situation consistent at all. — fdrake

I think there's a meaningful difference (in the context we're talking about here - societal expectations) in replacing a body part you once had and altering or creating a body part you never had. The difference being that parts you once had are selected, not from an image given by society, but an image given by you. To replace a lost breast is not to say "society expects someone like me {typical woman gender role} to have two breasts so I'm going to conform to that expectation". It doesn't require society at all. One could, as a complete hermit, say "damn, I want to look how I looked yesterday, I feel different". This isn't even possible with transitioning, let alone likely. The objective body-image is given by society, it cannot be given by the individual because the individual, without society, has no way of even knowing what that image is. The difference is between "I want to look like me (but me yesterday)" and "I want to look like them".

Another interesting issue you touch on here is that of how we treat medical and experimental data in this debate. We know from Tavistock (and a number of other sources now) that medical professionals and academics are feeling pressured to conform to a narrative (good or bad - I'll answer your question on that later), but knowing this, and knowing as you do, perhaps more sharply than most, how data can be, shall we say, 'encouraged' into whatever answer is being sought, what weight do we put on data here?

NICE did a meta-study recently and the results were distinctly under whelming, they concluded...

The results of the studies that reported impact on the critical outcomes of gender dysphoria and mental health (depression, anger and anxiety), and the important outcomes of body image and psychosocial impact (global and psychosocial functioning) in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria are of very low certainty

...and for gender-affirming drugs...

This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty.

The largest suicide rate study I know of was done through Tavistock and based it's findings (5.5 times more likely than controls) on just four suicides out of the 15,000 or so patients. Other studies are generally smaller. One I read (cited by Mermaids) turns out to have had a cohort of just 27, a positive group of 13 and all were self-referred into the study cohort (they actively wanted to take part). The data here is manifestly inaccurate and if clinicians can be persuaded by social influence to actually medicate where they later think they oughtn't have, then it seems impossible to believe that active researchers aren't submitting to the equivalent pressures. Add to that the ever present and entirely malign influence of the lobby groups selling the drugs being advocated for and you have an environment that is distinctly not conducive to evidence-based decision making.

So - to your question. Is it judgement neutral? I doubt it. I don't know anyone's capable of that, but here I'm small-c conservative. If we're to accept that clinicians are pressured into conformity (and assuming they can be persuaded out of it eventually) then I'd far rather they conform to existing societal pressures (which at the least are well known, if not all that healthy) than conform to what essentially can be indistinguishable from the latest fad. We have an obligation to do no harm, and I don't think that's met by rushing into treatments with low quality evidence when the evidence of the harm being mitigated is only of similarly low quality.

I don't know what I am allowed to say on this topic now but here are some videos about transgender regret.

Make your own mind up.





"Neko
3 months ago
Bottom surgery was the biggest mistake of my life, I am in agony all effin day if Im honest. It’s been 7 years and 12 revisions and it still is a mess.. Being with a partner is impossible, the smell is like a rotting corpse only a few hours after cleaning. I was fine before. Nobody wants to sleep with this I am so sad"

That's enough videos thanks. This isn't a platform for your campaign; it's a discussion.

There are cognitive differences. Behaviour is learned. So no. — Benkei

I am not sure about that. True mammals do learn from each other but I don't think that is true of all animals. I think if we were to focus on hormones and behavior, science would indicate hormones do trigger behaviors. Same as an itch triggers the desire to scratch. And an age-related increase in testosterone increases and then decreases aggressive male behaviors. While a female may be consumed with a desire to have a child and later, for hormonal reasons, may have no interest in sex.

In the US we could really use better sex education. Correct information could decrease marital problems and perhaps increase our ability to accept people's sexual differences.

In the US we could really use better sex education. Correct information could decrease marital problems and perhaps increase our ability to accept people's sexual differences. — Athena

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. — Lady Bracknell

I would love to be as attractive and physically fit as I once was when I felt like an Amazon woman who could do anything that was physically challenging. Maybe in another 50 years, the medical community will be able to return us to a better physical condition, but today when us old folks look in the mirror and see an old person, we better be able to say, "I look just like a grandma or grandpa should look" and like it. We must make the adjustment to our changed physical reality. From this perspective, when a see a man who has attempted to look like a woman, I think he is wrong to expect others to accept him as a woman. I mean really, if I were trying to be accepted as a teenager when I look and move nothing like a teenager should I expect everyone to accept me as a teenager?

It is a bit complex. Aging is less complex as we all do it bout the same. But sexually there is a spectrum of differences and a person's voice, appearance and movements are an expression of hormones and hormone receivers, as well as psychological factors playing into the mix.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. — Lady Bracknell

That is a shame. We have so much potential but to manifest it requires education and training. I really do think it a shame to not develop our arete.

Positive characteristics of females? I think males who desire to be females to do not have all the facts of being one, and considering this discussion has advanced to talk of suicide we might consider what hormones have to do with depression.

Abstract
The biological plausibility for the effect of sex hormones on the central nervous system is now supported by a considerable amount of clinical data. This critical review guides the reader through the plethora of data, from the earliest reports of menstrual madness in the nineteenth century to neurobiological work in the new millennium. It illustrates through the scientific evidence base that, although the effect of estrogen on the central nervous system, particularly on mood and depression, remains a controversial area, there is now considerable evidence for the psychotherapeutic benefits of estrogens in the triad of hormone-responsive depressive disorders: postnatal depression, premenstrual depression and perimenopausal depression. The article also reviews the compelling data that testosterone supplementation has positive effects for depression, libido and energy, particularly where patients have only partially responded to estrogen therapy. — J Studd & N Panay

Personally, I love steroids! I was given steroids after surgery and I felt so good I wanted to get a job as a janitor and return to life as it was when I felt like an Amazon woman who could do anything. My daughter was horrified and frantically said I should not get the job because it was the steroids making me feel so good and unfortunately continued use of steroids can lead to serious problems.

I also found my menstrual cycles were hell when I was in a bad marriage but when I was in a supportive man, my menstrual cycles were a period of bliss and feeling in touch with the universe. I would say our environment is just as important as our hormone cycles.

Not that I am recommending silent suppression of speech. I am simply saying that the nature of too much self disclosure on a public philosophy site is worth reflecting upon, mainly for how it may impact on you at some point rather than just those who read it. — Jack Cummins

That is an important warning, especially for those who must work for a living. I have heard some real horror stories about how something said on the internet can seriously damage one's life. Besides our personal experiences are not empirical. I try so hard to not speak of personal experience, but when we experience something, it is very real for us in a way that empirical information or someone else's experience does not have that same quality of reality. And especially when talking about hormones and the female experience or how females are judged, the need to speak from experience is overwhelming!

If gender change meant painful monthly cycles and mood swings, why would any man want that? The way women are treated is not always nice, so again I have to ask why would a man want that? What is their fantasy of being a woman that makes being one of them a good idea?

I just want to illustrate what is at stake in these discussions.

My argument in summary is men and women are different, women have praiseworthy characteristics
but mens characteristics are the most celebrated.
These are all biologically based and not social constructed and cannot be opted in and out of.
The denial of this harmful.

I want people to have all the evidence and this evidence to me is to compelling to be dismissed and should shape further discussion.

I think that there needs to be good grounds in life and philosophy for denying reality or in believing in hidden identities.

It would be just as easy to go on YouTube and find a video of someone happy with their surgery or happy or unhappy with just about anything else. It's a childish and propagandistic way to present an argument. I agree, stop doing it. If you want to present evidence, stick to academic sources.

I just want to illustrate what is at stake in these discussions.

My argument in summary is men and women are different, women have praiseworthy characteristics
but mens characteristics are the most celebrated.
These are all biologically based and not social constructed and cannot be opted in and out of.
The denial of this harmful.

I want people to have all the evidence and this evidence to me is to compelling to be dismissed and should shape further discussion.

I think that there needs to be good grounds in life and philosophy for denying reality or in believing in hidden identities. — Andrew4Handel

The difference between men and women is a social construct in relation to a biological foundation. Male and female biology IS different, but the fact that there are characteristics most commonly associated with one biological sex or another, and that some characteristics are celebrated regardless of biology, while others are praiseworthy in association with female biology only, IS socially constructed.

What you call ‘compelling evidence’ is reductionist methodology: colour reduced to monotone, and shades of grey reduced to black or white. We make these judgements most accurately based on the perspective for each interaction, NOT based on some popular or politically-determined binary classification of characteristics. The way I see it, denial of colour or shade variation is harmful - as is asserting that black and white are not socially constructed and cannot be opted in and out of.

I understand your preference for ‘good grounds’, but what constitutes ‘good’ is socially constructed, and you need to recognise the inaccuracy and uncertainty of this in relation to both reality and identity. There will always be someone whose perception of ‘white’ includes what most would call ‘black’, or vice versa - they’re not wrong, and should not be forced to deny their minority experiences as ‘real’ against such limiting constructs so that we can continue to act as if reality consists ONLY of either black or white.

I think what should shape further discussion is not what is considered ‘compelling evidence’ or ‘good grounds’, as if perspective is not a factor, but rather the complex relational structure between biological evidence/observation, social construct (including language, concepts, value, identity) and understanding.

The difference between men and women is a social construct in relation to a biological foundation — Possibility

I agree.

I understand your preference for ‘good grounds’, but what constitutes ‘good’ is socially constructed, — Possibility

I disagree.

Having been brought up watching the Simpsons, I conclude that my skin is not yellow enough, and I have too many fingers. Can I get some medical help?

I claim the Simpsons as a society, and three fingered yellowness as its norm, and how can anyone dispute? One has to say that some social constructions are repugnant, invalid, reprehensible, ridiculous, dysfunctional. But if one says it only relative to the current fashion, it has no moral force at all. Next year it may be absolutely the thing to have a finger removed and yellow stained skin, and unpatriotic to remain encumbered with four fingers and that disgusting pasty white or brown skin.

https://youtu.be/DBG1Wgg32Ok

I understand your preference for ‘good grounds’, but what constitutes ‘good’ is socially constructed,
— Possibility
I disagree.

Having been brought up watching the Simpsons, I conclude that my skin is not yellow enough, and I have too many fingers. Can I get some medical help?

I claim the Simpsons as a society, and three fingered yellowness as its norm, and how can anyone dispute? One has to say that some social constructions are repugnant, invalid, reprehensible, ridiculous, dysfunctional. But if one says it only relative to the current fashion, it has no moral force at all. Next year it may be absolutely the thing to have a finger removed and yellow stained skin, and unpatriotic to remain encumbered with four fingers and that disgusting pasty white or brown skin. — unenlightened

Language is socially constructed, too - that’s not to say it’s a social construct, though. There’s a difference. The Simpsons and the particular ‘society’ it depicts is a social construction: an heuristic device created in relation to aspects of real and/or imagined social structure - to some extent in ignorance, isolation and/or exclusion of a broader understanding of reality. Male and female toilets, too, are a social construct.

Language, on the other hand, is an amorphous relational structure between what we observe/do and what we understand. The notion of ‘good’ is a similar structure: not so much created by society as an aspect of it. Socially constructed, but not a construct of society.

Our understanding of reality isn’t based on what’s ‘good’, but on what’s accurate. What constitutes ‘good’ is continually adjusted and refined according to developments in both our observations and our understanding, with the aim of improving accuracy in the relational structures between what we observe/do and what we understand.

FWIW, I don’t support medical intervention as a solution to gender dysphoria, but I do recognise the attraction, given our fear of prediction error and uncertainty as adults. The solution, as I see it, is to deconstruct aspects of society based on our assumptions (mis-understanding) that biological sex = gendered characteristics = gender identity, and be prepared to navigate the uncertainty towards developing a more accurate relational structure (language, society, morality, etc) between observations and understanding.