rae
1yr ago
I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.
This happens on a micro scale as well in trans issues; the trans people that will attract the most attention will naturally be the most divisive, e.g. Dylan Mulvaney. Fewer people care about say, Rebekah Bruesehoff, the trans girl activist who plays field hockey and just looks like your typical boring blonde American girl; but everybody knows Lia Thomas because leftists look virtuous defending a male looking 6’1 broad shouldered trans woman, and most importantly, they can have a flaming debate with conservatives online about it.
According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.
With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures. To me, this just seems like a moral panic amplified through the news in order to distract the masses from real issues - the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, inflation, wealth inequality, social services being stripped away, the erosion of the middle class. Why do you care about this? Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?
You know what issue really affects children in the US? 1 in 4 kids are obese or overweight. Where is the medical establishment there? What about the 8.4% of kids on psych meds, some of whom are on them involuntarily?
Also maybe it’s because I don’t live in America, but in my modern Western country, transitioning isn’t a matter of waltzing into a clinic and getting your breasts chopped. Just getting evaluated by the gender service takes upward of 5 years, and you need to be vetted by a series of psychologists. Getting any kind of surgery requires an official gender identity disorder diagnosis and a letter from 2 separate professionals (and good luck getting those). Sure, you can go private - have you got ten thousand pounds in cash? You have to be incredibly dedicated, child or adult, to go through this system.
And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill. You can get all sorts of crazy ridiculous procedures, even as a minor, if you have more money then sense. Is it not absolutely disproportionate to have so much air time occupied to whatever most likely very low % of those few hundred kids from privileged backgrounds that might regret it later?
rae
1yr ago
Yes, though I was under the impression that cancer treatments are extremely potent, and dangerous, and are only prescribed when you actually have cancer, rather than given out like candy as a prophylactic?
There are many kinds of medications used as cancer treatment. Chemotherapy would probably fit the description of extremely potent and dangerous, and you don’t want to go on it unless you have cancer.
Meanwhile bicalutamide is a popular cancer treatment for malignant prostate cancer, but is also given out to cis women with androgen-dependent conditions like acne, hirsutism, hair loss; it’s also given to men who have overly long erections. It has very few side effects except rare liver interactions (so you have to get frequent blood tests).
Either "some form" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, or this is plain unlikely to be true? Even WPATH kept the 18+ age limit for female bottom surgery, even as they abolished limits for every other procedure.
I was talking about hysterectomy, which many cis women get for cancer prevention (or treatment). Removing the uterus and ovaries will obviously go a long way in preventing uterine and ovarian cancer. The 18+ limit seems sensible to me in any case.
Thanks!! The only thing I’d disagree with is that transition isn’t necessarily an irreversible all-or-nothing process. You can start by changing your presentation to something more feminine or masculine, transition socially, and even HRT is a very gradual process that leaves you with multiple months to decide and for MtF patients there’s one irreversible change and that’s breast growth, but they’ll rarely grow big enough that they would require double incision mastectomy should you detransition. FtM patients will get voice deepening, male pattern baldness, facial hair growth (although laser hair removal isn’t a big deal), and bottom growth, but it’s much easier for FtMs to socially transition than MtFs without hormones.
What made the gender dysphoria go away for you if I may ask? I was able to repress it for a while after adolescence, but it came back with a vengeance once the infamous “twink death” hit.
rae
1yr ago
For MtF patients, estrogen and anti androgens makes you risk of prostate and testicular cancer extremely low (did you know the medications trans women take for HRT are the exact same as those for people with prostate and testicular cancer?). Also, castration in animals tend to increase lifespan - Korean eunuchs lived an average of 14-19 years longer than other male aristocrats, and castrated mental asylum patients in the mid-20th century would live longer the earlier they were castrated.
Most likely, it would mean this effect is reversed for FtMs, unfortunately. But top surgery at least drastically reduced the risk of breast cancer, and some form of bottom surgery would do the same for various cancers associated with the female reproductive anatomy.
rae
1yr ago
Tbh that sounds like a cool hook for a sci-fi dystopia story where the population is addicted to AR glasses that personalise reality to their own wants and desires. Basically one step below living in the Matrix.
Which are pretty nebulous as far as I know. There are plenty of flat-chested short-haired females out there but you needed long-hair and neo-breasts to feel better about yourself.
I don’t care that much about the hair or the breasts, but I need to compensate for my other male characteristics. There’s also other things like softer skin, facial fat deposition, hip/waist/bum fat, hairiness, which are changed by hormones.
The breasts are real, not implants, so the term “neo-breast” would be inaccurate.
Either way you provided evidence suggesting that women with dysphoria should get anti-androgens to be cured, not cross-sex hormones (androgens).
What about you, have you tried supplementing androgens instead?
Unfortunately the anti-androgen “cure” only worked for adolescent natal females, the earlier the better. I didn’t know about this during puberty, but there’s no evidence of supplementing androgen working in adolescent (or adult) natal males working - Dr Powers did try, and I recall some old studies but I can’t find them. B-12 and methylfolate supplementation has anecdotally worked in reducing dysphoria in adults but only by a small amount, not enough to cause someone to detransition.
In my case I had already very high androgen levels prior to transitioning with surprisingly little masculinisation, so I don’t know what would have helped.
Idk about other conservatives but when I think "normal monogamous life" I'm not thinking about your situation.
Compare my situation to the stereotypical gay man hooking up with a new partner every weekend, a queer polycule, or a straight incel addicted to porn? I want to get married, have kids and a home. Like ideally, I would go stealth, move to a suburb with my husband, and the neighbours would never know we’re not a normal monogamous couple with a normal life.
Also the guy you're dating, would he care if you told him to call you 'dude' instead of 'sweetie'?
“Dude” isn’t a term of endearment like “sweetie” is so he might be confused. If you mean, would it change our relationship if I asked him to call me my male pronouns? If that’s the only thing I changed, it would not, although it could be weird with my appearance (but he/him HRT femboys do exist). If I detransitioned, well, being bisexual he would still be attracted to me, but in a different way that makes me uncomfortable. In the past I did experience men and women being attracted to me for characteristics I hated, and it made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
All I'm saying is that the glasses and headphones would come together to create the perfect 'I am a woman'-simulation, no matter what other people are actually saying.
Wait, how?? If I didn’t transition and all I did was wear the headphones and glasses, people’s actions wouldn’t reflect them seeing me as a woman no matter how you edited their words. Like if I went to a bar, no straight man would actually want to take me home (and they might punch me if the AR system edited their words to mean sexual advances). I’d still be asked to lift heavy things, certain clothes wouldn’t fit or look right (and others might treat me worse as a result). I would still have male genitals and feel there them even if I didn’t see them, and the outline of my body wouldn’t match where I put my hands. Also if I applied makeup wouldn’t it look all wrong since it would edit my facial proportions?
rae
1yr ago
I don’t understand or see the point of neo-pronouns. If anything I’d prefer if there were no gendered pronouns at all in English, like in Hungarian or Turkish.
Non-binary can have multiple meanings. It could mean having dysphoria, but not enough to make you want to fully transition - plenty of butch lesbians are like that. It could mean preferring an androgynous presentation and not being comfortable with being/looking completely male or female. Some straight people also adopt the label to be trendy.
rae
1yr ago
Some trans men don’t get dysphoric when it comes to pregnancy, or just want a biological child badly enough that they go through it anyway. Medical professionals should be aware of the fact that a person that looks like a man could be pregnant, as it’s a medical reality.
With regards to the emoji, current standard practice is to have a non-gendered, female and male version for every emoji. Given that pregnant trans men and non-binary people exist, why not be inclusive follow the standard? Although they did deviate from the usual, which is to make the default emoji non-gendered and have the gender be a modifier, for backward compatibility reasons.
rae
1yr ago
I'm not sure if you're trolling at this point, but have you seen some before/after pictures of burn victims? There is a reason face transplants are a thing and it's not because people are a "little bit" bothered.
rae
1yr ago
It is indeed. The question is then what's the percentage of detransitioners, and how reversible the changes are. Even if there is say, a 80% detransition rate, but it happens all in the first month of puberty blockers, that's a very different situation from it happening 10 years down the line.
Unfortunately the statistics are currently very murky and the studies are ideologically charged. I could be swayed to opposed childhood transition if it was shown that the cons outweighed the pros, but unfortunately I'm going via my personal experience and biases for now.
rae
1yr ago
On the other hand, you have people like Kim Petras, Hunter Schafer, Valentina Sampaio, etc., young transitioners who seems to be mostly ignored by the right. I also know some trans women that transitioned early-ish (~14) and they have no regrets or sexual dysfunction. If you're trans, you're very unlikely to care about being sterilised or not having biological children the "natural" way anyhow.
rae
1yr ago
So women with a mental illness making them think that they are men took medication to reduce T levels (anti-androgens) and that helped them feel better about being women? Why aren't you taking anti-estrogens to cure your gender dysphoria then?
This is an incorrect view of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria isn't thinking you're the opposite sex, it's being uncomfortable about being the sex you are and feeling more comfortable if you adopt the characteristics of the opposite sex.
Sounds like pretty bad science to me. They should have at least given cocaine to some of them and see who reports feeling better.
Cocaine doesn't last for very long and the side effects/crash are very severe, but there's other stimulants out there! Given the high proportion of trans people that have ADHD, giving them one like Adderall or Ritalin might not be a bad idea.
Can you explain? The gay men that you were previously pursuing unsuccessfully finally took an interest in you after you grew your hair long and breasts? Or did you manage to attract a straight man who just can't wait to get married, 2 children and a white picket fence in the suburbs?
I dated and hooked up with plenty of gay men prior to transitioning. Gay men are actively uninterested in femininity and lost interest after I grew my hair long and such. I receive plenty of attention from bisexual/bicurious men - sexually speaking there's a ton of seemingly straight men that are very interested in trans women. I'm now in a long-term relationship with a bisexual man and we could certainly get married, adopt children (or go through surrogacy) and buy a house in a suburb. Ironically, I'm more comfortable now with having a family and the normal monogamous life that conservatives are a fan of, than I ever was before.
Only because you have a point of reference to what the opposite sex is like. If you moved to a male-only monastery for life eventually you would have no idea what a woman behaves like. You could also get smart glasses that correct every dumb thing any woman say around you and you'd get the impression that women are rational, pragmatic people while men are the irrationally angry, ditzy sex.
Why the thinly veiled misogyny? Your post has a fairly hostile, sarcastic tone in general. Is this a response informed from bad real life experiences with women and/or trans people?
Well that's what the headphones are for.
Not sure I understand this part?
What kind of medical treatment has other people than the patient as targets?
Any cosmetic surgery to correct a deformed but otherwise functional appearance?
You seem to believe PCOS to be a symptom of gender dysphoria while it could very well be that gender dysphoria is a symptom of PCOS, or a symptom of another underlying cause causing both dysphoria and PCOS.
I only said trans people often have those conditions, I didn't say anything about the causal chain. I agree that gender dysphoria could be a symptom of PCOS or another disorder. How else would treating the patient with antiandrogens work? If you read the post, the FtM patients had elevated testosterone levels, took medication to reduce those levels, and the gender dysphoria went away.
Source? They gave placebo hormones to transists and they compared results to transists with the real deal?
That's hard to do since hormones have obvious physical changes and you could tell easily you're in the placebo group. This is unfortunately only self reports from people that transition medically, but not socially (including some of the famous "detransitioners" on conservative media - a few said they detransitioned but admitted to still being on HRT).
It is possible to learn how to break away from negative thought patterns (for example: this part of my body is male and I need to see a surgeon, instead of: I love how male this part of my body is!)
It seems to me that you are not your gender dysphoria. If you are a person who is bad at math, then you can study hard and get a to a certain skill level where you can be confident solving some math problems.
It appears to me that if you are a person who is bad at seeing herself in her birth sex, then this is something they can practice and grow more confident in, instead of lobbing off body parts and playing with disguises for their whole life.
I tried this, I tried seeing a therapist, I tried living as a gay male. I tried everything I could not to transition because I disagreed with the leftist trans movement, for many many years. Yet a few months after I started HRT, my quality of life hugely improved, and I finally had a decent dating life. If anything, refusing to accept that I was trans and telling people I was a gay male - that was the lie.
You're telling me I should stop HRT and go back to that state of suffering - what for? I already did break away from a huge amount of the negative thought patterns, compared to before, and I have no desire to go back.
What would that even look like? How would you know what the opposite sex proprioception feels like? Even if you took cross-sex hormones and then feel that your skin feels different, how would you know that this is the same feeling that somebody of the other sex feels?
Sexual secondary characteristics are a thing - trans women have differently distributed body fat, develop breasts, softer skin (others have confirmed this), trans men get hairier, develop deeper voices, larger muscles and grow a small sort-of micropenis. Spatial and verbal abilities also change following HRT (this is where the infamous brain scan study of transwomen comes from). Proprioception in terms of those characteristics is real - I don't care that this is the same feeling that someone of the other sex has or not, it's different from the feeling I had before and externally matches the opposite sex, and that's good enough for me.
I don't see in which version of 'gender-affirming therapy' you would not be aware that you had your bones shaved etc.
The point is that other people see it too. A more interesting point would be, what if everyone wore these glasses and could alter how others saw them? Cosmetic surgery would be pointless in those circumstances, that I agree with.
They could be surgically-implanted as well.
The glasses wouldn't change how others treated me beyond the superficial - which pronouns and intonations absolutely are.
rae
1yr ago
"Never" is a strong word when it comes to technological progress, uterus transplants exist and egg cells could be made from stem cells.
How is my current existence a lie? I'm very aware that I'm not biologically female, but my male characteristics are causing me pain, and I can correct them and have a superior quality of life. After transitioning I became functional both romantically and sexually, and much less prone to anxiety, depression, and despairing over my physical appearance. People close to me know I'm trans, and I don't particularly care to correct strangers about the pronouns they use with me.
Body dysmorphia is a tragic thing and often co-morbid with gender dysphoria. But you can absolutely reach the point where you pass in your daily life to average people, and then reach diminishing returns.
rae
1yr ago
How so? The changes from hormones and surgery are real, felt by your body, and perceived by others, instead of being an audiovisual illusion that only you can see. The parallel would be like having some sort of moderately advanced but not perfect prosthetic arm, versus superimposing a CGI limb that no-one else sees, and that you can't use for anything since it's just pixels on a screen.
Do note that I have a somewhat transmedicalist point of view, which is different from the mainstream leftist view or what conservatives call "gender ideology".
rae
1yr ago
But how does anything like this make one a woman? I don't think women need to shave their bones etc to be 'women'.
If it is successful, it makes other people perceive you like a woman, which is one of the goals.
Wouldn't it be easier to address the underlying psychological issues? Allegedly, meditation and other buddhist practices aim to free one from their every desire, wouldn't such practices help liberate one from the desires of having shorter bones, higher voice, etc?
It's not purely a psychological issue. A large number of trans people have underlying hormonal issues - in FtMs, PCOS and congenital adrenal hyperplasia are very common, and there's growing evidence that a number of mutations and physical conditions are associated with it. The controversial trans health practitioner Dr Powers found he could treat gender dysphoria in natal females by administrating them anti-androgens, if it is done early enough. Otherwise, trans people report better functioning and mental health on cross-sex hormones even if they change nothing else.
Meditation and Buddhist practice help you come to peace with what you can't change, sure. But why accept suffering when you can change it? Transition might not be able to give me all of the changes I want, but I am exceptionally grateful for all the changes it did.
Alternatively, there are great advances in technology every day. If at the crux the issue is of self-perception, couldn't some version of virtual glasses help with that? AI software miniaturized in smart glasses + headphones could potentially overlay corrected audio-visual information in real-time. That way the patient would have the impression of a body matching their idealization of it, and in every social interaction, correct the pronouns, intonations, and speech content to avoid any misgendering distress.
The audio-visual self-perception is only a small part of it. This sound similar in effect to giving amputees a headset that superimposes a CGI limb on top of their prosthesis - it can help a little, sure, but it does nothing for touch and proprioception, actual functionality. Others will still see an amputee, plus you'll be acutely aware that you're living a lie - in addition to having to occasionally take off the glasses.
rae
1yr ago
Personally, I'm very happy it's out of the news cycle. I think the mania goes both ways and it's incredible how much both the left and right have completely blown out of proportion this private medical issue that affects a small amount of people, and I believe the ideological obsession over it (including from the left) does more harm than good.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm transgender, and I had dysphoria since I was a child myself, but I am a bit of an old-fashioned "truscum" as I don't really fully subscribe to the mainstream leftist trans views. I do know some people in the "neutral middle" - most of my more right-wing friends are opposed to the excesses of the trans movement, but otherwise either don't care or just passively go with the medical consensus.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about.
Lifelong medicalisation happens anyway no matter when you transition, but if you do it as an adult, it's much worse. You have to pay huge sums of money (tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars) for very painful, potentially risky surgery - for MtFs, facial feminisation surgery - which is literally slicing your face open, shaving your bones with a saw, and stitching it back up - tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hairline reduction, and some more. All of this you do if you want to pass as a normal member of the opposite sex instead of a freak that's the butt of jokes.
Meanwhile if you transition around the start of puberty, you don't have to do any of these surgeries - you'll go through the rest of your life as a normal-looking member of the opposite sex, and won't have to go through the trauma of watching your body turn into something that gives you psychological pain every day. There's only one surgery you might have to do and that's sex reassignment surgery, and there I don't have any issue with not allowing minors to go through it.
You know what pre-emptively narrows your life choices before you understand what consent means? Good old fashioned puberty. If given the option between a natural puberty that tortures you psychologically has you spend significant amount of effort and money trying to undo its consequences, and a different medically induced one that does not, what is the justification in going with the first one, apart from the naturalistic fallacy?
Now there is a risk of regret - catching teenagers that think they're transgender but later desist. This is where I'm against the leftist discourse glorifying the state of being transgender - you want to make it clear that it's an unpleasant, undesirable medical condition. From what I've seen, the rate of detransition is fairly low; say it was theoretically 10% (it is much lower than that from what I've read), why is preventing the regret of that 10% more important than preventing the regret of that 90% from not going through transition early?
I’m as grey tribe as they come and to me the pendulum has swung firmly the other way. I’ve come from being sympathetic to the right in ‘16, to seeing it as my complete ideological opponent. I started as an edgy online atheist watching Creationism Debunked videos, got into the Intellectual Dark Web, cheered when the libs lost in ‘16, only to realise that maybe the so-called SJWs might have had a point when the hardcore Christian Right took over the movement.
The latter were the same people I was opposed to at the start of my political journey; anti-science, anti-intellectual, dogmatic theocrats who want to suppress anything that doesn’t agree with their outdated religious views. They’ve just repackaged the old stodgy pearl-clutching views we used to mock in the Bush era as somehow “based and redpilled”. They just stole the colours of the cool, rebellious counter-culture to make the grey tribe forget they used to be their ideological opponent.
rae
1yr ago
Your links are comparing natal parents to step-parents, not adoptive parents; a single mother remarrying is completely a different environment compared to two infertile parents deciding to adopt and raise a child from infancy. Adoptive children seem to have poorer physical health but greater parental support than biological children, interestingly enough.
Also if a gay couple adopts a child, it’s not as if the child is being deprived of a mother and a father; the alternative to the gay couple is the child being raised in an orphanage and then going from foster home to foster home.
And in case you suggest it, I’m not sure a closeted gay biological parent in a sham straight marriage is preferable long-term to a stable gay marriage either.
rae
1yr ago
So why does the terminally online alt-right link itself to Trump so much? I remember in 2016 when the left accused Trump and his followers of being white supremacists, misogynists, homophobic, far-right fascists and the response from them was that Trump wasn't any of those things; what the right movement stood against was The Establishment. I remember Trump waving the LGBT flag and being proud of receiving support from Blacks and Latinos.
I personally thought the accusations of Nazism towards the Trump movement were an exaggeration, but now ZHP and his ilk are saying, no, the left was right, we are all of bad the things they said we were. Things the average Westerner would consider not only to be morally repugnant, but the very values of the most reviled enemy in recent history. Debate between a Democrat and a Republican is possible because at heart they both share similar core values and goals; but is there even a point to debating those that admit to views that are the complete antithesis of Western civilisation?
rae
1yr ago
Yes, men need to be successful to be psychologically healthy in a manner that isn't the same for women.
That’s true for certain men but is that so for a huge numbers of men who seem content to work at a dead end job, and do nothing but play video games and watch porn? I’ve met and unfortunately dated men like that, and they genuinely have no drive and no ambition, no matter how hard I tried to push them.
I’ve seen that perspective on Reddit very often, many men said that if it weren’t for women, they would be content to live in a cardboard box. Achieving a minimal standard of living is pretty easy in a modern western society, so it feels to me like the ambitious, career driven man is in the minority.
rae
1yr ago
People with no dysphoria who don’t medically transition but ask to be considered the opposite sex, well, I’m fairly suspicious of their motives. I’ve personally seen people like that on dating apps, and it seems to be either men who want to hook up with female-attracted trans women, or women that want to hook up with gay men; both think that just stating they’re trans but doing nothing else is enough.
I don’t think it’s useful to gatekeep trans identity too much, but I think mainstream trans views have gone too far and made the definitions useless. If you’re trans you should at least want to transition. Allowing sexual predators and fetishists to claim the label is hurting actual trans people, who just want to be seen and function as normal members of the opposite sex.
Why do you feel disgust at trans people? Is it disgust at the concept of being trans, or the uncanny appearance some of them stereotypically have? Many trans people look perfectly normal. Trans men especially just tend to look like short effeminate men and it’s very likely you’ll interact with them without noticing they’re trans if you don’t know what to look for.
Tbh it’s the same as with any minority. Once you get to know them as people and realise they’re not the caricatures the media portrays them as, the disgust and hate tends to go away. What Daryl Davis did would probably work quite well for trans people as well; if you’re not familiar with him, he’s a black man that befriended members of the KKK. Many left the organisation as they couldn’t reconcile what they’d been taught about black people, and the normal human being they were talking to.
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