rae
9mo ago
I’m an atheist and consider myself a moral relativist, which is to me is quite distinct from being a moral nihilist. Morality, to me, is a subjective human construct but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist; it exists in that same sphere as concepts, ideas and beliefs. It’s based on axioms which are essentially arbitrary; the only thing you can do is point out logical contradictions ensuing from them. In that manner, it’s quite similar to maths, which also don’t materially exist but certainly can be studied.
I find the very concept that morality could ever be objective to be logically incoherent; whatever moral “truth” you come up with, I can immediately just invent another worldview that contradicts it due to having different axioms. Even if God existed, I don’t see why I couldn’t disagree with his morality. The fact that he created me or the universe doesn’t grant him any philosophical authority any more than my parents, and being omnipotent just makes him a cosmic dictator with the power to punish me if I stray from his own personal beliefs.
rae
5mo 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?
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
One of those truths is someone who went through male puberty will always, in every single case, have a competitive advantage over a woman.
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.
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.
rae
10mo ago
I’m a trans person and I’m honestly tired of how politicised this condition has become. I’m going all-in on the hypothesis that’s it’s a physical condition caused by an endocrine abnormality. I highly recommend reading this post or any of Dr Powers’ posts on his subreddit.
All of this philosophising on the nature of transgenderism is like trying to psychoanalyse the cause of stomach ulcers (which is something clinicians did until they were revealed to be caused by bacteria). There’s clearly something physically abnormal with transgender people and their brains, and one of the manifestations of that is gender dysphoria and behaviour atypical of the patient’s birth sex.
I don’t care one iota about my “gender identity”, following any gender scripts, or whether my interests are typical for men or women. I don’t “identify as a woman”, whatever that means. I would vastly prefer if pro-trans clinicians focused on actual clinical markers like improper methylation of testosterone, or the extremely high rates of PCOS in trans male patients, or MTHFR mutations. This is the kind of scientific research that would actually help our understanding of transgender people.
Instead we have this focus on babies turning their onesie into a dress. Anybody on both sides can write a lengthy essay full of navel gazing on the sociological basis of gendered behaviour that supports their pet theory, and turn being trans into a moral problem. You can debate endlessly about what is a woman, which is a philosophical problem. Or you can do DNA testing on trans patients and discover rates of certain mutations far in excess of the normal population, examine aromatase and sex hormone production, and look at correlations between gender dysphoria and other physical conditions.
Seems to be like the latter is far more useful. Plus, no one can have a political argument over DNA methylation patterns.
rae
1yr ago
I’m a trans person and I don’t really have the attention span to watch a 2 hour video, but I’m familiar with Contrapoints and willing to engage on a few points you mentioned.
What would refusing to acknowledge that “trans women are women” entail? If you use a trans person’s preferred pronouns, don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender, and support their right to the healthcare they need, it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is, which is largely fruitless - see many LessWrong and SSC posts i.e. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
However, the terms and arguments you are using would get you quickly lumped in with the transphobic crowd, regardless of your own opinions. Namely - calling gender affirmation surgery “mutilation” and implying that pro-trans right individuals want it done on kids. For most trans people the focus is on hormone replacement therapy, not surgery; allowing trans teenagers access to HRT would actually drastically reduce the need for surgeries for both FtMs and MtFs: FtMs wouldn’t need top surgery (which is almost all what’s done in minors) and MtFs wouldn’t need facial feminisation surgery, tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hair transplants, etc.
You’d also be solving what l think is the crux of the issue that conservatives have with trans women: they find them disturbing to look at and interact with (FtMs, who pass more easily and at worst look like effeminate men, don’t trigger any of that same response as MtFs). People who transition early enough wouldn’t trigger that “uncanny valley” effect and would just pass as their new gender to anyone interacting with them.
Personally it also stems from the fact that I wish I’d transitioned when I was younger, and like many other trans people, would like to spare others from the hell that’s going through the wrong puberty and be stuck with a body you hate that you want to surgically alter.
As a trans woman, this post is like reading the world view of someone from a completely different civilisation. While I did grow up as a male, none of the points you mention about it hit close to home - I don't know how much of it is because I grew up outside of the Anglosphere, and because of my personal background. I was going to write a lengthy quote-by-quote reply, but I think it would suffice to say that all of your points would do as well to convince any pro-trans, liberal person as a trying to convince an atheist vegan to eat meat by invoking the Bible. It's not just the facts you mentioned that are dispute, but the very core values.
The transgender debate is tiresome at this point, but what draws my attention more is the gender essentialist arguments you mentioned, especially with regards to interactions between men and women. I've personally mostly grown up friends with women (although it has varied depending on the years), as they were a lot friendlier and I had more shared interests, and with none of the issues your described. I'm not even gay (I used to be 50-50 bisexual prior to transitioning, now it's about 95-5 in favor of men).
The temptation issue is also why I would never allow my daughter when she is 14-years old to go on a sleepover alone with any guy. It's not so much about the guy being a potential "rapist" -- it's about the very real possibility they both could be succumb to temptation.
Would you rather your daughter go on a sleepover alone with a masculine lesbian friend, or a very feminine gay boy? What about a trans guy of the same age, vs. a trans girl, both being straight (i.e., the trans guy is attracted to women and the trans girl to men).
I believe that men and women have a deep need for spending at least some time in sex segregated clubs. And this is rooted in biology in all the biology I noted above, that men and women have different strengths to develop and challenges to overcome. When you add just one opposite person to a group the dynamic changes -- immediately you get status posturing, sexual drama, and white knighting.
I have often been the only male in a group and this has not happened. If anything, I would be vastly more awkward in a traditionally masculine men-only group, due to having few interests in common, and I would be far more sexually attracted to them. When I was with a group of male friends and an attractive guy I had a crush on joined, I developed those behaviours you mention - white knighting, favouritism, always taking his side, etc. It has nothing to do with the sex of the person, and you should learn to deal with it rather than avoid the opposite sex altogether.
From time-to-time, I sometimes do an overnight getaway and spend a night out on the town with an old friend, maybe I crash on his couch, etc. As a married man, I feel like this would be very inappropriate to do with a woman. Even if I had certainty that it would be entirely chaste, it would cause my wife anxiety. But I also don't even want to lead myself into temptation.
Time away spent purely in fun with a woman friend might seem magical...temptation would arise... From everything I've heard, deep one-on-one time with someone of the opposite sex is the fast road to ruining a marriage.
This just seems sad. Are you clearly not capable of having deep one-on-one time with a woman without it being potentially sexual? I'm sexually attracted to a lot of my male friends and I had to learn to resist the temptation, and was able to develop strong friendships with people I was attracted to regardless of their gender.
I've shared beds and hotel rooms with both men and women with no issue. I'm bi and could potentially have sex with anyone I spent the night with - should my boyfriend be anxious whenever I'm alone with literally anyone? Especially in my liberal circles, a lot of people are bi, or open-minded enough to have sex with a trans woman.
Otherwise he will arrive at young adulthood, and the girls he was friends will forget him, as they will be interested in actual masculine guys, and he will not have the experience in relating to other guys as guys.
I was a feminine bisexual man and this was not my experience. If anything, women were even more interested in me, both sexually and as friends, once I became an adult. Flip it around - wouldn't you rather have your girlfriend be interested in the same masculine hobbies you have, than feminine ones you have 0 interest in? It's the same with women.
When I say with regards to a person 'he is a boy' the words 'he' and 'boy' refer to biological sex, as the words always have meant in the English language up until a few years ago.
That I don't get. We gender people based on secondary sexual characteristics, not biological sex. If you see someone who looks like Hunter Schafer or Emma Ellingsen (https://aschehoug.no/media/catalog/author/e/m/emma_ellingsen_foto_jakob_landvik_mg_7819.jpg), your brain will go "she" and you will have to correct yourself. If you're meeting Emma at a restaurant and you say "I'm meeting a blond guy" to the waiter, do you think you'll be pointed in the right direction? If you're mugged by Buck Angel, are you going to point and yell "catch her, that woman robbed me!"? Even Ben Shapiro had to correct himself when he subconsciously referred to Hunter by she/her.
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
5mo 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
Suppose you asked a black person which historical period of the USA they would rather live in. Very few would prefer to live in the 19th century, or during Jim Crow laws, or during racial segregation, or any time before the recent present. Would you also conclude that black people are accelerationists, and be surprised when they also agree that they would rather live in a less socially cohesive environment but also less racist environment? Same would go for gay or transgender people - my own answer wouldn’t be any different from the women you talked to.
Also I don’t understand why the answer to “in which historical period would you rather live” would be anything but “now” for literally anyone (except for a cop-out answer like 2013). What advantages are there to living in any pre-21st century period? Even setting medicine aside - higher rates of violence and warfare, fewer social opportunities (most people lived and died as farmers), living under the threat of famine, much worse food, living conditions and sanitation, repressive social conformity (look what the Catholic Church did to slightly different versions of Christianity, no need to be an atheist). All this for… what, having a vague sense of purpose? Surely you have a higher chance of getting purpose and social cohesion today by joining a community, movement or even forming one around your idiosyncratic belief system (see Rationalist), without abandoning any of the modern advancements that truly make your life better?
The fact that people are able to feel purposelessness today is an utter luxury born of the fact that their life are stripped of the daily struggle for existence and that they have time to engage in activities other than obtaining food, clothing and shelter - the answer to modern alienation is not to return to a life of privation and barbarism but to find meaning in the new social and technological landscape. Is there not a great meaningful story being told in the current digital age, where we are on the cusp of creating generally artificially intelligent beings? Doesn’t being part of an huge interconnected network of minds where thoughts can be beamed across the entire earth in less than second not fill you with wonder? Plus, for the first time you can find your community around something other than mere geographical proximity and the happenstance of your birth - why would I trade that for being an 11th century peasant who lived and died within a few kilometres of the village he was born?
rae
6mo 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
10mo ago
Unfortunately vocal anti-trans activists are just as bad as the vocal trans activists you described. A relatively moderate trans medicalist perspective as you described would be just as vilified by either side.
Also, I’m not necessarily in favour of strict gatekeeping of trans identity when it comes to medical treatment, especially for adults, for the same reasons I’m not in favour of strict gatekeeping for ADHD. You’re incentivising whoever is most motivated to get through the gatekeepers, and those aren’t necessarily the ones that would benefit the most from the treatment. See this excellent post by Scott Alexander.
Although in the case of the trans activists you mentioned, it wouldn’t be a problem as they’re not interested in medically transitioning at all, so removing gatekeeping when it comes to HRT and surgery would have no effect on them. If you’re not actually dysphoric and pursue transition, it will give you reverse gender dysphoria - so having the gatekeeping be the medical treatment itself is self-correcting to some extent.
rae
11mo ago
Maybe you personally have an extremely good ability to detect trans women, but most people don’t. Plenty of trans women don’t arouse suspicion in their daily lives, some are able to go stealth, some are able to have medical professionals think they’re biological women and get asked about pregnancy/periods (a real anecdote). Have you not heard stories of straight men flipping out once they’re told the woman they’re attracted to/slept with is trans? E.g. this story of a teen flirting with a trans woman, them going to his hotel room, then going back to hers and violently beating her once she says she’s trans, because he had no idea and felt humiliated.
rae
11mo ago
I think only in China were lockdowns severe enough to qualify as “home imprisonment”, as far I know in Western countries you were allowed to leave your house to go buy groceries, walk your dog, exercise (albeit sometimes in a reduced area), etc.
Lockdowns were a case of curtailing personal liberties in an emergency, which does not have the same quasi-universal moral consensus as committing genocide. What makes you be against them in particular? Are you against all government intervention that reduce freedom in the name of safety (making you a libertarian), does it violate some moral principle in particular, or do you think the response was mistaken/ineffective in the case of Covid-19? Are you against /all/ travel restrictions, or would you be fine with some level of social measures (see: closing down non-essential businesses, allowing limited scale gatherings, vs. China-level restrictions)?
You may have a different opinion on the matter, but most people will trade some level of freedom for safety. The motivation for lockdowns was slowing down the spread of the pandemic and potentially saving millions of lives; would you be against them even if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they worked?
Even outside of niche I think you’re still ignoring a lot of mainstream art.
What about the Golden Age of Television we’ve had this century? Before shows like The Sopranos and The Wire came along, TV programmes were mostly formulaic, episodic time-fillers and even the best were severely constrained by the need for each episode to be a self-contained narrative, and to stretch the budget across 24 episode per season. Now the most prestigious cinema has mostly migrated to the small screen and the shows we’ve gotten in the last 25 years could never have existed in the 20th century; the 90 minute Hollywood film is no longer as relevant and it’s normal that it peaked in the past.
What about video games? In terms of revenue they now completely dwarf Hollywood and the music industry combined and again the kinds of stories and experience we have today would have been completely impossible in the past. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3, The Witcher 3 are amazing works of art not just in the visuals but in their narrative.
CG animation in general is an amazing new medium and I’m often impressed by even random animated shorts I find on YouTube, let alone big budget productions.
To me what you’re saying would be like a Medieval English bard time travelling to 20th century and complaining that we don’t make good art anymore because we haven’t produced any better epic poems since Beowulf; that’s normal, people move on to new mediums. And before you deride TV, video games and CG as “not real art”, know that previous generations said they exact same thing about films, photography, even novels. The written word was derided by the Ancient Greeks as causing forgetfulness and that true wisdom could only be taught orally; by their standards, the works of Rousseau or any modern philosopher would be worthless.
I’m sure that in the future when we’re all playing fully immersive virtual reality experiences, people will look to the current day with nostalgia and complain that art is dead because we don’t make good video games you can play on a flat screen anymore.
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
That’s actually a very good question - the answer is that with feminising HRT, you won’t age as a male at all. Estrogen gives you a feminine fat distribution - hips, breasts and bum instead of a beer belly - along with softer skin. Female-level testosterone means body hair is substantially reduced (although I’m still getting laser to be sure), masculinisation of the face and body is halted, and low DHT ensures you don’t go bald (although you won’t magically recover your hairline if it’s already gone).
My fear of aging as a male was part of my motivations for transitioning, and I’m essentially safe from that now. And past a certain age, both men and women kinda start looking the same anyway, outside of hair loss and facial hair. Men’s testosterone naturally lowers with age, and women are far removed from menopause. Trans woman might even age better than cis women as they don’t go through the latter and can maintain appropriate levels of estrogen indefinitely.
rae
9mo ago
Wouldn’t straight men not also be weirded out by an unsolicited labia pic? Dick pics aren’t the same as a nude or a thirst trap, they’re an impersonal, disembodied close-up robbed of context and personality, and when they’re unsolicited, it’s like they’re intentionally there to shock or provoke; the equivalent of someone flashing their genitals at you but in the digital world.
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
Large language models like ChatGPT are simply trained to predict the next token* (+ a reinforcement learning stage but that’s more for alignment). That simple strategy enables them to have the tremendous capabilities we see today, but their only incentive is to output the next plausible token, not provide any truth or real reference.
There’s ways to mitigate this - one straightforward way would be to connect the model to a database or search engine and have it explicitly look up references. This is the current approach taken by Bing, while for ChatGPT you can use plugins (if you are accepted in the waitlist), or code your own solution with the API + LangChain.
*essentially a word-like group of characters
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
9mo ago
And then when those externalities do happen, and a male-born trans person wins against a female athlete (inherently, unfairly), or a trans person assaults a woman in the bathroom, or a trans prisoner impregnates a woman, those objections are at best handwaved away and dismissed as outliers or discredited, or at worst labeled "transphobic" and censored.
As others have said, trans people (and other gender non-conformists) are a significant part of the rationalist community. The points you mentioned simply do not come up when it comes to the daily interactions that people in it would have.
Take the prototypical Bay Area trans woman someone like Scott Alexander would know: autistic, nerdy, moderate-to-high income, involved in tech, polyamorous (but mostly dating other trans women), and largely similar to other rationalists in terms of mentality. This type of individual is not particular athletic (unless it’s rock climbing), unlikely to be involved in criminal activity or engage in violent behaviour (much like the average male nerd).
This is a stereotype perhaps, but familiar to anyone that hangs around those circles; there’s very little downside to being accepting of them, and the factors you brought up have no direct impact and are in fact very low-probability events when it comes to that demographics.
rae
9mo ago
I think there is a definitely a truth to the social contagion aspect for a sizeable amount of FtMs - they comprise the majority of de-transitioners and their numbers have surged in recent years. But I disagree about this part:
The condition has no observable physical symptoms, no objective correlative. If I tell you I’m really a man, you have to take my word for it.
There are a number of physical correlations to being trans, which I’ve previously touched on in a previous post. Mutations associated with MTHFR deficiency were found in 98% of transgender patients in one clinic (versus the expected 20%) and both endocrine abnormalities and auto-immune issues are quite common. Treating the correlates actually seems to improve the psychiatric distress associated with being transgender, although it’s still very early.
The recent surge in trans people could very well be explained by similar factors as to what’s driving the increase in autism, ADHD, autoimmune diseases, inflammation, etc. For instance, micro plastics and other endocrine disrupters in the environment and diet, low vitamin D from not going outside, the recent recommendation for pregnant women to take folate supplements, etc. “Putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay” is pretty close to the truth, funnily enough.
So if you want to stop young adolescent females from transitioning, instead of blaming it on social contagion and the media, perhaps you should first see if they have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, polycystic ovarian syndrome, or abnormal testosterone levels; there’s a high chance that’s the case.
Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war? I don't care about sports one bit so I'm perhaps biased, but it's fairly obvious that testosterone is a (natural) performance enhancing drug with permanent effects, and that you're not separating by sex/gender as much as by hormonal level - it's not "women's sports" as much as "women with T levels below X sports", otherwise women with endocrine conditions wouldn't be barred. I assume if a female took T during her teenage years but later detransitioned and then had normal female hormone levels, she would still be barred from women's sports - otherwise isn't that a huge loop-hole?
In the more general case, I also assume if there was a doping agent that had permanent effects even if the athlete stopped taking it and had undetectable levels during drug testing, they would also be banned from competing.
As a compromise, I think trans women should compete in sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage, such as long-distance swimming, fast climbing, equestrian sports, shooting, etc.
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