rae
11mo ago
What do you mean by competitive advantage? It sounds like you're saying males have a raw physical advantage (e.g. being bigger and stronger) against females in every single case but that females can have better techniques/training, which is what I disagreed with. Male puberty by itself gives you larger and stronger bones, increased muscle mass, higher circulating hemoglobin, etc., but you can still end up with a weaker physique in absolute terms than a genetically lucky female with access to the best nutrition and sports science while growing up. What competitive advantage do you have then?
You can argue that male puberty gives you a competitive advantage all else being equal - same environment, same nutrition, but different sex - but in absolute terms, you don't necessarily have an advantage because you went through male puberty. What competitive advantage does a 5'4 twink with slender body type (narrow shoulders, small joints, etc.) have against say, Brittney Griner? I doubt any amount of training could bridge that gap.
rae
9mo ago
I’m a bisexual trans woman so I got to experience some manner of both, but I do agree that the effect is greatly confounded by deeper issues like dysphoria.
My main experience would be that sex with men is a lot more variable, in that the bad is much worse but the good is a lot better, and the quality depends quite a lot on your partner, while with women it’s generally fairly average and depends more on your own state than the other person. So casual sex would be better for most men, but relationship sex would be better for women with the right partner.
The peak physiological pleasure is definitely greater when you’re a woman though, multiple full-body orgasms aren’t really a thing for men (trans men generally keep the ability to have multiple if they had it before, but they become otherwise closer to the male ones: brief and concentrated in the genitals). I certainly don’t miss the male sexual experience at all and see it as the equivalent of sexual fast food vs. going to a proper restaurant.
rae
5mo 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
11mo ago
If an adult is trans but not taking hormones and has no intention of taking any in the future, their trans status is highly questionable unless they have a medical contraindication or live in a hostile environment where transitioning is dangerous.
rae
11mo ago
“Getting a sex change” is also an old timey term for gender reassignment surgery, so I’m seeing more of a general move from sex towards gender when it comes to trans discourse. Definitions are generally fuzzy and shift over time anyway and nature doesn’t care for human’s need to categorise everything into neat little boxes.
Even sex doesn’t have an easy binary scientific definition (how do you categorise intersex individuals?) and so best to precisely detail what you’re saying. I personally think it’d be better to use terms like “chromosomal sex” and “phenotypic sex” - the former you can’t change, the latter you can to some degree. Then you have gender which relates to phenotypic sex but is mostly irrelevant to your chromosomes - we didn’t even know they existed until the late 19th century.
I don’t agree with some of the philosophy behind trans activism but our goals are largely aligned, and obviously I will be more sympathetic to an ideology that supports my existence than one that does not.
Gestures wildly at Europe
In what sense? I live in a European country and transgender HRT, along with many surgeries, are available through the public healthcare system. One of my trans friends got put on blockers and transitioned as a minor. Sure it’s not as easy as the US where you have informed consent, and the public healthcare system has hideous waiting lists (in general), but the medical consensus here is still to treat gender dysphoria with transition.
rae
11mo ago
Fair point, that was a straw-man. My uncharitable interpretation was perhaps motivated by my own personal experience of being in the >95th percentile of teenage boys and not being able to match my overweight, untrained male classmates despite going to the gym 3x a week and trying to average around 3k calories a day. I didn't feel like my male puberty had given me much competitive advantage when I would get beaten in arm wrestling by random female classmates or the teacher assigned me to play football with the girls in PE, so while I agree that the male/female athleticism distribution is bimodal, overlaps do exist.
rae
5mo 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.
I’m the opposite, I don’t understand why anyone would find feminine behaviour attractive. Why wouldn’t you much rather have a partner that’s strong, stoic, driven, ambitious, practical, able to provide for both themselves or for you, takes the lead, etc? Versus one that’s submissive, meek, relies on you for emotional and physical reassurance, is more anxious and stressed out, doesn’t have grand ambitions beyond their family, is more interested in people than concepts, and forces the relationship into artificially divided roles based on gender?
Now sure I’m not a straight guy so it’s hard for me to empathise, but I honestly can’t understand why men fall in love with feminine women when I hear them complain so much about how they can’t understand their partner, how they don’t share interests, how they’re [insert stereotype of women here], how they don’t initiate sex, etc. Why not go for an equal life partner who shares your drive, focus and interests, and is just as sexually motivated as you instead?
rae
11mo ago
This both not at all universally the definition trans advocates use and in fact a minority opinion(see truscum discourse) as well as a phrasing that obscures more than it enlightens. What is distress? What are the experiences of a natal sex and how do you differentiate them from those of the complimentary sex having only experienced one of them(or in the case of prepubescent children neither of them)? Memes are powerful things, anyone in the wrong side of a social media pile on can attest to their ability to induce distress.
There’s a lot of medical literature documenting gender dysphoria but I can tell you my own experiences: while I didn’t know what it was like to be female, I knew what it was like to gain the attributes of adult men by going through puberty, and that was a profoundly negative experience. I would constantly try to minimise those attributes by shaving every inch of my body, taping away my genitals, and fantasise about mutilating my penis so doctors would make me a girl. I had no awareness that transitioning was a thing; my body just felt wrong, and socially I was upset whenever I would be put into male roles. Whereas when I transitioned, the constant negative thoughts and obsession about the wrongness of my body traits slowly went away, and I could finally bear to look in the mirror without being absolutely disgusted.
What I reject is appropriating a place in society that was not carved out for you
What places in society aren’t carved out for me? I’m fine with sports being segregated based on hormone levels (present and during puberty), but I see any attempt at sex segregation to be outright harmful. Sending trans women to women’s prisons or not should be decided on a case-by-case basis, a petite passing trans woman is going to get sexually assaulted and likely raped by going to a men’s prison, while a large natal male sexual criminal who’s not on HRT but self-IDs as a woman is a different case entirely.
What else? I’m generally opposed to making things like scholarships and awards based on identity rather than merit. Women’s shelters? Same as prison’s - and I’m not sure they’d let in a 6’ trans man with phallo so it’s not just about biological sex. Women’s bathrooms? Toilets should be unisex tbh, but a passing trans woman will look more out of place in the men’s than the women’s.
rae
11mo ago
You don’t transition because you have the internal experience of the opposite sex - you transition because you have distress at having the experience of your natal sex. You don’t need any exposure to the modern trans gender discourse to develop gender dysphoria, simply existing in a society with different genders is enough.
Trans people don’t believe they are actually changing their sex, which is which the term “transsexual” was abandoned in favour of “transgender”. But hormones are not purely aesthetic and feminisation/masculinisation of the brain is actually scientifically observable - not only on MRI scans but also on test scores, e.g. post HRT, visuo spatial ability is enhanced in FtMs, while verbal working memory is enhanced in MtFs (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453020301402).
If anything, I’d say trans people experience distress at their internal experience not aligning with their desired gender and post HRT it does - many anecdotal reports of how your mental state changes on estrogen or testosterone, not only from trans people but cis people who also undergo HRT (e.g. men with low T who report increased energy, confidence, etc).
As someone who has dysphoria and tried many ways to deal with it, I have yet to see any treatment that’s better than transitioning - it’s the current medical consensus for a reason - but if you know of any, feel free to link them.
rae
3mo ago
That picture shows Buck next to Laverne Cox who’s quite tall and wearing heels, he’s actually the average height for a cis man in many countries at around 5’9. I personally wouldn’t use Buck Angel as the go-to trans man because he’s turned into a proto-TERF himself strangely enough, and far more physically impressive trans men absolutely exist, see Mitch Harrison who can stand next to the Rock and is 6’3 and is quite muscular.
How are you supposed to enforce sex-segregated bathrooms anyhow? Should you pepper spray anyone who you think doesn’t belong, like what happened to this tall biological female thinking they were in the presence of a biological male?
The sources I’ve looked up show no link between gender inclusive bathroom policies and crime rates, but if you have any that contradict that, feel free to share.
rae
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
10mo ago
I personally am for giving minors access to gender affirming healthcare if they have gender dysphoria, and I’d say you pass the ideological Turing test as I’m pretty much in agreement with those points. Can I ask why you’re against it?
rae
11mo ago
I like women, real women, that sounds somehow prejudiced or old fashioned but if you believe sex is real then it actually means something.
Sex alone doesn’t govern your attraction. You’re not attracted to ovary ducts or XX chromosomes, you’re attracted to the female phenotype. Otherwise you’d be attracted to the very good looking trans men I linked earlier.
I viscerally would not want to have sex with a man, and especially a man pretending to be a woman. This is just me and is no reflection on the other person.
Getting called a man, especially a “man pretending to be a woman”, is distressing for trans women. That is why many attempt to pass. It’s also a way to avoid the negative attention that being a visibly trans person can bring - many people are hostile towards trans women, but if they see you as a regular woman, you’ll be safer.
Personally, I’m hoping that one day we have the technology to have good enough sex changes that trans women are indistinguishable from cis women including in terms of reproductive capabilities. At that point, would you still say they are men pretending to be women, or would you agree that they are men who have turned into women?
But the body to me is not just a sack of meat, it is the primary link to reality and a failure to accept it seems to me like a failure to truly accept oneself. That probably sounds judgemental but it's how I orient to life.
Why should I accept it when I can change it? The option is literally there, it’s not perfect but it made a noticeable improvement in my life.
If anything, accepting being trans is what took the most courage. I tried to deny it for years, and tried to be something I wasn’t.
Be gay, be a feminine man, be gender non-conforming but why change your body drastically with all the attendant risks,
Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. I couldn’t stand my body before I transitioned, now I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror. Life is short, and the option not to have a body I despise is literally right there. Why shouldn’t I take it? What’s the upside of being miserable?
Now, I can have real relationships, I can enjoy sex, I can be a lot more intimately fulfilled than I used to be. I’m grateful for all the physical changes I am experiencing, a marked difference from how I dreaded puberty (I may not know what it’s like to be a woman, but I certainly know what it’s like to become more of a man by going through male puberty and male aging, and that was an awful experience).
Some trans people would argue that such a “cure” would fundamentally change who they are as a person, as opposed to say, plopping the same brain in a new body of the opposite sex. It would be akin to having a pill to cure homosexuality when you could instead just accept people for who they are.
I’m somewhat ambivalent about it because going from one sex hormone to the other also changes who you are as a person (I’ve experienced this as someone who went on HRT), and there’s reports of dysphoric biological female teenagers going on testosterone blockers and that significantly reducing their dysphoria to the point they no longer need to transition.
But, given the two options, I would probably go with the perfect transition, because it’s a lot more interesting.
rae
11mo ago
Bit of a late reply but unfortunately I lost my previous attempt, so here goes:
I do think there’s a very good point you’re making about the risks of allying with people who are ostensibly after the same end goals but for completely different reasons; but I think the differences between say, your position on firearms and one motivated by self-defence are smaller than between you and someone pro gun control. Ideological purity is a fractal and I don’t think it’s possible to agree 100% with any individual on policy or societal goals, but that doesn’t mean there’s not individuals with whom you agree more than others.
And while from your perspective the world where they rule, warts and all, is worth it for your own reasons from my perspective there are a lot of kids who will be mutilated by these people on this pyre. Just like many kids will die in school shootings for lack of gun control I have a hard bullet biting answer for it being worth it but I recognize I'm biting quite a bullet here.
I’m not American so the concept of the 2nd amendment or frequent school shootings is very foreign to me, but I admire the fact that you don’t brush them aside. I do understand the concerns with surgeries on minors, but the number is very low (56 genital surgeries between 2019-2021, 776 top surgeries) and my experience is that there is a significant amount of gatekeeping - I’m not sure about the US but in my country you need a gender identity disorder diagnosis + referral letters from two psychiatrists and that’s as an adult. Calling it “mutilation” is emotionally charged language that brings to mind violent traumatic maiming, when the end goal is a surgery that improves the patient’s life.
Let me see if I can pass the ideological turing test on your position and let me know where I fail:
Your attempt at the Turing test is mostly correct except for the comparison to a BID patient getting an arm amputated; no pro-trans rights person would make that point.
Firstly, the end goal of becoming an amputee vs becoming the opposite sex is very different; if done perfectly, the former will impair your daily functioning and makes you unable to do things the average healthy person can, while a perfect sex change wouldn’t - unless you want to argue that 50% of the population is somehow impaired compared to the other.
Current technology doesn’t give you a perfect sex change, but I don’t see how any of the modern treatments give you any impairments to your daily life, let alone any that are comparable to amputation. Fertility is the main thing that is impacted; but you can plan around it by freezing sperm or eggs beforehand (or by halting HRT - at least for MtFs, it’s possible to have normal sperm counts once T levels are back to normal). Fertility is also not relevant to your daily life in the same way having limbs is, and I personally wanted a vasectomy anyway which is something that’s available to cis men.
Let’s go step by step for each modern treatment;
-
You can go on HRT and have the hormone levels of the opposite sex, giving you some of their sexual secondary characteristics. The main thing you risk is loss of fertility, but it’s generally reversible at that stage. Otherwise, there are no changes that make your daily life worse than either the average man or woman.
-
If FtM, you can get top surgery. This is a cosmetic procedure but you will be unable to lactate after; this is desirable for many, as men don’t lactate. Larger breasts will have visible scars but this is a purely cosmetic feature once they’re healed.
-
Bottom surgery is more complex; the loss of fertility is permanent at that stage, and you have to remain on hormones for the rest of your life. But, if it goes well, you can have a healthy, fulfilling sexual life with genitals that you actually like, instead of ones that you can’t stand.
Also as a side note, did you know that there was a study in the mid-20th century on institutionalised patients that showed that castrated males lived on average up to 12 more years than intact males (depending on age of castration)? See also medieval eunuchs who had a considerably longer lifespan than their aristocratic peers. So a transfem patient could very well have a longer healthier life by going through the so-called “mutilation”. Personally if any procedure could give me an extra decade of life, I would heavily consider it.
rae
11mo ago
Sure, according to Wikipedia the terms MtF/FtM have been superseded by trans woman and trans man precisely because of the need to separate gender and sex. However I’ve found in some conversations, some people are confused by trans woman / trans man and that MtF/FtM is less confusing. If there was a better unambiguous term, I would use it.
But also, I’m personally not a big fan of the sex/gender dichotomy anyway, and I prefer the older sex types as seen in Harry Benjamin’s work (which I linked in my other post), where you have chromosomal sex, reproductive sex (do you make female or male gametes), phenotypic sex (how the sex is expressed in your appearance), and social sex. There, MtF/FtM is fine as it refers someone going from one phenotype to another.
rae
11mo ago
MtF/trans woman (and FtM/trans men) are the commonly used terms for the phenomenon. Are there any other terms that you can use that would be understood? Otherwise you can add it to the list of many terms like horseshoe crab (not actually a crab), peanuts (actually a legume), mincemeat pie (has no meat), etc. If you tried to call peanuts “pealegumes” people would just be confused, even if you’d be right.
All models are wrong, but some models are useful - FtM/MtF (and FtNB/MtNB) is a handy way to identify a trans person. With older folks or those less steeped in LGBT issues, “trans man” or “trans woman” often provoke confusion - sometimes they think a trans woman is an FtM and vice-versa, while the full “female to male” terminology makes it explicit that the person started off as female and now appears male, or is attempting to, even if their biological sex isn’t actually male.
rae
11mo ago
Saying MtF trans people don’t exist is a bizarre viewpoint - what do you call the obviously real number of people who are born male, have gender dysphoria, and are transitioning to have the characteristics of females by taking hormones and going through surgery? Those people clearly exist, and MtF is an apt descriptor, as they are going from male to female - in some cases successfully enough to pass, in some cases not. The “MtF” term is useful to distinguish between MtFs and FtMs - I don’t see any commonly used alternative words that avoid confusion (many times I’ve had to explain to people the direction of transitioning of people I know - e.g. X used to be a girl and now is a boy).
Also trans people have existed since recorded history, there’s ancient Sumerians trans priestesses called Gala, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, and kathoeys (aka Thai ladyboys) are not a recent western phenomenon.
I’m a trans woman (so not surprisingly in the pro-trans camp) and I have thought very hard about the ground truth of transgenderism, and am exceedingly aware of the physical reality of being trans - the entire point of transitioning is to have fewer of the physical traits of your natal sex, as those are what’s causing psychological distress. There’s nothing requiring cognitive dissonance there, HRT and gender reassignment surgery do make you take on the characteristics of the opposite sex, albeit not all and with varying degrees of success.
The social construct of gender is a very real thing in that other people will identify you as a man or a woman and treat you differently, and that may not align with your preferences. If you transition, your goal is then to be perceived as the opposite sex (again, you may not be successful). I don’t see how this requires any cognitive dissonance, or creates any contradictions with my position towards sports, which is allowing trans women in women’s sports if they didn’t go through male puberty or if it can be medically proven that they have no physical advantage resulting from their natal sex.
I didn't mean overlap in the athletes (unless you're comparing modern-day female athletes to early 20th century male ones) but the general athletic level of the population. As for the arm wrestling, I was beaten by a highly athletic female classmate, and then it was a challenge against one that wasn't particularly athletic as far as I know, not petite but fairly average build, perhaps top third to top 50%. There's a possibility I have mild endocrine issues, I have signs of low prenatal androgen exposure (and paradoxically high T levels despite low masculinisation, suggesting some compensation for lowered androgen sensitivity).
Which is another reason that I'm favouring the hypothesis that endocrine disruption is responsible for the surge in transgender identification, and that the focus should be on that rather than nebulous concepts of gender identity, along with waging the culture war over what should be purely a medical issue.
I sort always had the implicit assumption that much of the culture war aspect of the issue comes down to the elite levels. It's not clear to me that the local D level rec-league shouldn't just be an open league. For individual sports no one cares if you win the novice, 35-40 yr old, 65-70 kg, nearsighted division of your local park run. Like if it matters to someone, anyone can find a "competition" where they hand our participation trophies.
Most of the attention is on elite levels sure, but the laws in Kansas block transgender girls from playing in public school and college sports, which as far as I know aren't elite. The culture war debate extends to the trans girl that wants to play on her high school soccer team as well as the top echelons of women's sports, although in both cases the number of trans athletes is still extremely low.
Are you saying that every single person who went through male puberty can beat any woman, including top-level female athlete? That would be blatantly false. Obviously the average male beats the average female, and top-level male beats top-level females, but a top-level female will beat the average male. See average mile run times: 6:30 for top 1% of males, 7:48 for top 1% of females, 8:18 for top 50% of males, 9:51 for top 50% of females. Interestingly enough, the female mile run record is 4:12.33 while the male world record from 1913 was 4:14.4 - the advantages of modern nutrition, sports science etc. can outweigh male puberty without it.
The extreme of rightist gender essentialism is just as wrong as leftist blank slatism, humans aren't that sexually dimorphic a species that you can make such blanket absolute statements. Personally, I went through male puberty, but in high school the female athletes routinely trounced me in every sport or measure of physical fitness. In phys ed I even remember having to play with the girls because I had 0 chance with the boys. This is despite me working out a decent amount - I just didn't have the bone structure or metabolism the other teen boys did.
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