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Does anyone who is pro-trans want to steelman gender ideology for me and try to field questions? It's always seemed rather ridiculous to me (for example, the idea that someone with XY chromosomes, a penis, and the physical size of a man might actually be a woman) but I realized the other day that I haven't looked carefully at the details of pro-trans arguments.
I realize that this is something I could probably look up elsewhere online, but I would like to follow up with critical questions so that the whole argument is laid bare without any motte/bailey pivots.
To start things off, I understand that those who adhere to gender ideology draw a distinction between "sex" and "gender." "sex" refers to the markers such as male versus female genitalia; XX versus XY chromosome; etc. which have traditionally been used to distinguish between human males and human females. "Gender" (according to gender ideology) refers to a person's internal feelings in regards to their sex. So that a person who is of the male sex, might possibly be of female gender and vice versa. The purpose of sex reassignment procedures (hormones, surgery, etc.) is to align the disconnect between the person's sex and their gender. But even in the absence of such procedures, a person who is of the male sex and the female gender should be treated by society as a female (and vice versa). Even to the point where a another person's sexual preferences should go to the gender, not the sex, of a potential romantic partner. So that a straight man or a lesbian woman should be okay dating an individual who is of male sex but female gender, and if not they are a "transphobe."
Is that a fair summary of gender ideology? If not, what did I leave out? Or what did I include that's incorrect?
"Trans" is a word used by woke LGBTWhatever people to capture a large number of wildly different phenomena.
Some of these you may believe in or not believe in, some of these you may have sympathy for:
-Old school cross-dressers.
-Drag.
-People using their appearance for social and financial opportunity (ex: some of the Thai Ladyboys).
-Blanchard Typology Types.
-True "Trans."
-BPD or serious mental illness with identity disturbance.
-Autistic and socially adrift people who latch onto trans identification.
Some of these are social contagion, some of these are "traditionally treatable" (ex: pure mental illness types), some of these are reasonably healthy or unburdensome (fetish types and people looking to make money).
But modern culture homogenizes them and thinks they all need to be treated the same. That's tremendously unhelpful. A true trans person who does great and is very happy after top/bottom surgery does not need the same type of support and engagement from society as someone who just needs some Haldol or protection from being trafficked. Distraught young men need counseling but a different type of counseling, not to be piped straight into LGBT.
So the steel man is something like: "fuck these idiots, real trans people exist but are rare and other conversations obscure what these people are like and what they need."
In your view, what's a "real trans person" and is there any objective way to distinguish such a person from non-real trans people?
A real trans person is pretty much what you expect, they do exist and are rare. The clearest examples I can find are people who have absolutely zero social deficits or mental health issues they just seem to have identification with the opposite sex. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a weird misfiring of biology could create this (rarely) and that in a permissive social environment these people would be allowed to exist.
Slicing these people off from "fake" trans people should be reasonably easy but in the modern environment where you aren't allowed to asks questions it is impossible. A fact of life in medicine is that we treat people who are almost certain not trans (especially a category I didn't mention above - malingering types) as trans because it's not acceptable to ask questions.
Hopefully things will settle down and we'll be allowed to get more focused care each segment.
Is there any objective way to distinguish?
I think the science would have to advance beyond the politics for the answer here to be yes.
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