rae
1yr ago
There is growing evidence that associates being transgender with a cluster of physical disorders linked to a genetic abnormality on chromosome 6p21. An enormous proportion of transgender patients have nearly all of the below conditions:
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Hypermobility/Ehler-danlos syndrome
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impaired thyroid functionality
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gastrointestinal issues of varying severity
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autism
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adhd
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dysautonomia/postural orthopedic tachycardia syndrome
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in natal females, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and PCOS
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some more random markers like acidic urine
Transgender healthcare specialist Dr Powers*, who noticed the above list and corroborated it with other doctors, also managed to successful treat teenage female dysphoric patients with a completely different approach: prescribing them anti androgens. The earlier, the higher the chance of the dysphoria being “cured”. Unfortunately he has not had much luck with natal male patients and the hypothesis is that it could be due to androgen exposure in the womb.
In the light of the above, a hypothesis based on endocrine disruption instead of cultural contagion makes more sense as an explainer of gender dysphoria. Perhaps elevated micro plastics in the environment, or perhaps chemical in the water turning people gay, I don’t know.
But the “wait until they’re adults to do anything” approach for dysphoric teens is clearly not optimal, especially when you have patients that fit so neatly in a cluster, and have some for who transition is not necessary if the endocrine abnormality is treated early enough.
Now the medical treatment needs to be optimised for the best outcomes, sure, but currently the detransitioners are a small minority (2-5%), with most of them detransitioning because of social reasons and not due to desistance of dysphoria, and many retransitioning later. You are thus suggesting throwing 95% of the trans population on the bus to protect 5%.
*Dr Powers is also known for reversing sterility in transgender patients and also enabling normal genital development in younger patients by the use of topical HRT.
rae
1yr ago
I disagree, I couldn’t care less about gender “identity” myself. I have gender dysphoria and the most effective treatment has been to transition. I don’t care about “really” being a woman or not, what matters is, does my body distress me, and do people perceive me in ways that make me uncomfortable? If I look enough like a woman that people assume I am one when they see me, that’s good enough for me.
I suppose I didn’t make that clear enough - I didn’t mean I want to people to see me, know that I’m a trans woman, and then classify me as a woman because they respect my gender identity and that they should thus consider me a woman. Instead I want to pass well enough that people see me and just assume I’m a woman based on how I look, sound and act, and not give them any reason to think I’m actually a feminine man instead of a normal woman. If once they learn of my chromosomes they come to another intellectual conclusion, that’s a different story than a shopkeeper calling me “sir” or “ma’am” when they see me.
Both the modern left and right perspectives on gender is wrong imo. People won’t think you’re a man or a woman based on your chromosomes, but neither will they think that because you have a tag with your pronouns on it. They’ll look at you and their brain will subconsciously put you in one category based on your physical characteristics - with mental effort, you can force yourself to go “oh, this tall broad shouldered person with a deep voice is a woman”, but the brain is still making that snap judgement. Note that it also goes both ways - in a recent video Ben Shapiro instinctively called Hunter Schafer “she” and had to consciously correct himself, in an ironically similar way to how some leftists correct themselves when they misgender someone.
I guess you could call me a gender descriptivist, which is oddly enough a perspective I haven’t seen much of.
rae
1yr ago
That’s the current medical consensus (for teenagers - actual pre-pubertal children don’t need hormones).
I can only speak to my personal experience, but I’ve been through childhood gender dysphoria and I wish I had know transition was an option then. I grew up outside of America and before it became engrained in the popular consciousness, so when I was a child the only thing I could come up with was pretend I’d gotten in an accident that cut off my genitals, so doctors would be forced to reassign me. I didn’t go through with it due to low pain tolerance, but that would have been actual (self-)mutilation, and I had no awareness that being trans was a thing so you cannot blame social contagion.
I think it was a mistake for current trans activists to focus on a nebulous concept of gender identity instead of gender dysphoria, which is a serious psychiatric condition that has widespread medical consensus about how to treat it. For people with it, puberty is an unwanted, traumatic experience that ends up giving you a body you despise and that you end up spending tragic sums of money fixing. Perhaps if that was the primary discourse, you’d also get fewer people that only do it because it’s trendy or whatnot.
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
1yr ago
I do see your point, although I'd say it's more that language didn't develop in an environment where there was any distinction to be made between the proxy measurement and biological sex. Linguistically speaking, I think it makes more sense for "man/woman" to refer to the phenotype - the traits and appearance - and "male/female" to the karyotype - the genetic sex - and due to the practical impossibility of verifying the latter in typical social interactions, to use pronouns depending on appearance. I don't see how insisting that pronouns be used according to biological sex and not how the person would be perceived by bystanders is useful or practical.
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
1yr ago
First, let me say that I appreciate you commenting, since so many posters here are conservative and/or rightist, so it's nice to also hear from people with a different perspective. That being said, I'm still going to disagree with you, since that's kind of the point of this place.
Thank you, I see a lot of posts about trans issues here but I don’t see many from actual trans people, so I thought it could be an interesting perspective.
It sounds like you are a homosexual transsexual (HSTS) to use Blanchard's typology, which means you are quite different from autogynephiles like Contrapoints. I don't think your experiences are typical of trans-identified males in general.
I think there’s a few different clusters of trans women and more than just the two Blanchard identified. I don’t know if the so-called AGP types are the majority, or if they’re just more visible - something like 50% of transwomen identify as bisexual, from what I remember.
I would put sex-fakers in the same category and afford them little sympathy.
That’s a difference in values between us; you consider sex to be an important characteristic that carries with it a certain weight and thus should be truthfully communicated, while I think it’s an unfortunate holdover from our evolutionary history that has trapped people in roles they didn’t want, both biologically and socially. I recognise the usefulness of having police officers and military service members be correctly identified, but I think the sooner we make biological sex irrelevant, the better.
I don’t view my transition as “faking” being a woman. I’m taking medication that truly does give me female sexual secondary sexual characteristics, and even alters my neurochemistry to be closer to cis women’s. I think it would be accurate to describe me as chemically intersex - medically speaking, I need to be checked for both breast cancer and prostate cancer, for instance. Otherwise I don’t intentionally go about trying to be called a woman, although I’m happy if I do.
Do you think that recognizing someone as a woman is contingent on them passing as one? If so, do you agree that it is more than fair to call obvious men like Lia Thomas, Rachel Levine, Emilia Decaudin, Jessica Yaniv, Alok Vaid Menon, etc. men?
My mental concept of them is “men”, yes. But I respect non-passing trans women’s pronouns and gender identity out of kindness and empathy, in the same way I won’t call someone ugly or fat to their face because it’s insulting and unproductive, and there’s no benefit to drawing attention to that fact in most contexts. If prompted, I can give advice on how to pass better in the same way I’d give advice on how to lose weight.
Yes. And I feel that way when suddenly my relative is claiming their little boy with a penis is really a girl.
I think that conception of being trans - that someone is on some level the opposite sex but trapped in the wrong body - to be misleading. It's not that the little boy is a girl, it's that the little boy is unhappy being a boy and would prefer being a girl, or as close to one as you can get with modern medicine.
Hard no to all of these. I don't want the lesbian trying to get my daughter into "experimenting." And I have no guarantee the gay boy isn't sometimes into sex with women, a lot of guys who might seem gay will swing both ways now and then. Also, there is just a very basic difference in values between those of people who identify as gay or trans, and the values I want to foster in my family.
What's wrong with your daughter experimenting - and there's a chance any girl your daughter is with could be bisexual or attracted to women, not just the obvious masculine lesbians. I take it you wouldn't prevent a hypothetical son from hanging out with girls though? Double standards like these were a contributing factor in me being very upset with cis-heterosexual norms.
Also, good luck enforcing your values in your family - plenty have tried and failed. The odds are in favour of your daughter rebelling against your strict parenting in her teenage years as countless have done before, and if you are not preparing her to deal with the modern world - such as teaching her safe sex - the consequences could be dire.
Do you have deep one-on-one friendships with other gay men that stay entirely non-sexual with no drama over a long time?
Sure, I'm not sexually interested in most gay men anyway. Post-transition, most aren't interested in me.
A lot of the deep one-on-one time is talking about dating other people, but once you are married, it feels unseemly to be talking about relationship problems with another women. Also, there isn't much relationship drama to make interesting conversation. And in general, without an element of flirting and sexual tension, I don't actually find women that interesting to talk to. The number of friendships I can maintain is limited by my free-time. So all-in-all, I do not miss out on having deep one-on-one friendships with other women.
I thought married people loved to complain about their spouse? That's one of the stereotypes I heard. Anyway I suppose it is telling that you don't find women interesting to talk to. I personally find the average woman easier/more interesting to talk to than the average neurotypical straight man (I do like artsy guys or men on the spectrum, as long as they're not into anime, Marvel or video games).
Also, the sexuality of a born biological-male-person-who-is-attracted-to-men is not at all the same as a biological womans. You can't cuck him, hypergamy and pair-bonding doesn't work the same when in gay men as it does in straight women, etc. etc.
That's another reason I didn't like dating gay men, my sexuality is closer to that of biological women (I've discovered that while talking to my female friends in detail). I'm more hypergamous than promiscuous and don't really get anything out of hook-ups, and very much like the whole ritual of flirting, seduction, dating, etc. which is not very popular in gay men - most just wanted to have sex one the first date or even without even a first date.
This is a fair criticism -- although in this case my relative boy who says he is a girl is not actually feminine and does not have feminine hobbies. A weak, effeminate, opposite-of-Chad boy with male nerd hobbies will have a lot of trouble relating with the ladies.
Well I was a weak effeminate opposite-of-Chad boy with male nerd hobbies - books, D&D, comics - and in the few years I spent in public school, the only ones that shared my nerdy hobbies were girls. When I joined the school D&D group, the only other male was the teacher who organised it. All the high-achieving students - girls (and me). It was only when I went to a private school that I could finally meet guys I related to, but still my friendship groups were mostly female. I grew out of my nerdy childhood interests and became more interested in relationship drama, fashion and art though, so perhaps that's a contributing factor.
rae
1yr ago
I don't think there's enough studies on the sexual development of trans women who completely blocked male puberty, as it's fairly rare. I probably would have preferred that at the time, since my sexuality made me feel very distressed in general, but "completely block puberty" and "transition as an adult" aren't the only two options. I don't see why I couldn't have transitioned shortly after the onset of male puberty, enough to gain the ability to orgasm and some sexual functioning, but before my voice dropped and height increased. And there's also the potential use of topical testosterone for normal genital development, that's very promising but under-studied.
rae
1yr ago
Yes, in fact post-menopausal women are the biggest consumers of hormone replacement therapy. However it's very tricky and has many potential side effects and risk of some cancers if not adequately managed - I've read studies where it was suggested that the benefits did not outweigh the risk unless it was started before menopause.
rae
1yr ago
Trans women will look younger than cis-women of the same age is what I meant. Surely you must be familiar with how obsessed many women are with looking younger, how does it not make sense that trans women would aspire to stay youthful as well?
rae
1yr ago
Do you think a normie would be impressed if they asked “who are you and why should I care” and the person answered they got 2k GitHub stars on their Rust tokenisation library? I personally don’t see how becoming the master of an incredibly niche and nerdy domain that no one cares about would be motivated by the desire not to be worthless. It would explain high-status jobs like doctor, lawyer, stock broker, etc.
I think it’s more explainable by the rates of autism in trans women. Autistic people tend to be deeply obsessive from a young age and aren’t motivated by social reasons or even a sense of cosmic worthlessness - some autistic fixations are absurdly pointless. Also, programming has an immediate, intrinsically rewarding feedback loop that can be pursued entirely solitarily, and the people in it famously don’t care about fitting into social norms (if you’re a good programmer, you’ll get a job even if you’re an awkward nerd, a furry, or a trans woman).
I’m an autistic transwoman and I spent most of my childhood in obsessive fantasy worlds - programming appealed to me because it was inherently “depersonalising” - I could get lost in code and forget about who I was, and it didn’t matter to other people as well. If anything, I’m motivated by the opposite of status-seeking.
Before that I was an artist and a writer and similarly enjoyed the deep work aspect, but in today’s shamelessly self promoting world you can’t really have art speak for itself anymore, it’s all about the story and the creator behind it. And I got far more appreciation from other people by doing artistic works, than by working alone on weird technical projects that I don’t even share with anybody.
rae
1yr ago
Raising your child in a conservative environment won’t help. I know a transwoman from a Muslim family with a father who’s vehemently anti-trans and anti-gay, and she still ended up transitioning. Also read about Eden Knight, a Saudi trans woman who committed suicide after her wealthy family did everything to try to get her to detransition.
If there’s trans people in Saudi Arabia of all places, what hope do you have as a parent in a western country?
rae
1yr ago
How does this prevent anyone from transitioning? I’m a trans woman and I’m very much aware of my chromosomes, and sex differences are the entire reason I’m trans. If anything I probably know more about sex differences than the average poster here due to constant hyper-scrutiny of my own physical traits, heck I’m even aware of extremely specific things like the difference in shape between typical male and female navels, philtrum length, mid-face ratio, pelvic obliquity, etc.
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?
If you check my post history, you'll find my tale of attending a cabaret show, one run by ladyboys. And I genuinely couldn't tell that they weren't real women, despite straining my eyes trying. Is there something about the Asian physiognomy that makes it easier for them to pass? The closest thing I found to a tell was the waists, but even then they were well within the range for natal women. The railway community in the West take note, that's how you pass with flying colors.
In addition to selection effects (non-passing ladyboys wouldn't attract much clientele), you've probably been less exposed to Thai faces and so have less practice distinguishing males and females. Funnily enough, it goes both ways; I'm a trans woman and when I visited Asian countries (e.g. Malaysia, not known for its wokeness) I got called ma'am a lot more than back home in the West.
rae
1yr ago
I grew up in a majority-Asian city so I'm not sure I'd agree with the "Asians are more naturally feminine" hypothesis, as opposed to other factors such as estrogen being available without a prescription, and Thai trans women DIY'ing from a young age (the younger you start HRT, the easier it is to pass). I think it's more to do with the fact that there's no similar visible "kathoey culture" in the West so trans women are much more dispersed; you won't find a high concentration of them in any one location as easily as you would in Thailand. But there's plenty of passing trans women, e.g. famous actresses like Indya Moore, Hunter Schafer, Valentina Sampaio (a number of Euphoria viewers didn't even cop on to the fact that she was trans, despite playing a trans character in the show), and a number of models, sex workers, and OnlyFans performers that anyone who's sufficiently terminally online can discover.
rae
1yr ago
It’s also possible your “trans detector” has high sensitivity but low specificity, giving you a high false positive rate. One could correctly identify most trans women as trans due to their masculine traits, but could also identify many cis women as trans.
Nowadays with the growing trans hysteria you have many masculine cis women being harassed or even assaulted when using the women’s bathroom, due to getting “clocked” by their wide shoulders or being over 6’ or just having the wrong shape. You also have “transvestigators” who take it to an extreme and think a huge amount of celebrities or random people in the street are secretly trans - they think that Elon Musk is a trans man because of the curvature of his spine, or that some female celebrity is a trans woman because she has straight clavicles and a prominent jaw.
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.
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
1yr ago
Even in a good faith debate about the grains of gray that exist when categorizing men and women, trans people in no way, shape or form fit as a 'gray'. From their time in the womb to everything else. From the tips of their fingers, shape and size of their brain, to the soles of their feet. Men and women are not the same.
While I mostly agree with the rest, this marks to me as odd. Aren't trans people the definition of gray? If you take opposite-sex hormones, you end up with opposite-sex characteristics and are more-or-less pharmacological intersex - especially if you start before puberty. There's been studies showing that brain structure is altered to resemble the opposite sex, and a trans woman will typically be half-way between a natal male and a natal female when it comes to athletic performance (as shown in military studies).
rae
1yr ago
Incorrect. You're separating by sex. Sex is more than just hormones, although hormones are significant. There's simply no way for a female to go through male puberty, hormone supplements or no. If you want to make that case, go ahead, but I'm not willing to simply accept this second clause despite agreeing with the first clause.
Sexual differentiation in humans is mediated almost entirely by androgens (e.g. testosterone) - individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome have an XY chromosome but end up with a typical female phenotype externally indistinguishable from XX females, although internally they will lack a uterus or ovaries (instead having undescended testicles - the vagina generally appears normal but will not lead anywhere). Before the 1990s the diagnosis was typically hidden from the patient and they never knew they weren't ordinary women.
However, you can certainly make the argument that sex is more than just puberty - males are exposed to androgens in the womb, and develop differently from the 7th week of gestation onwards. But without any androgens at all, genetic males end up externally indistinguishable from females.
rae
1yr 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.
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.
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