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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32944 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I agree that the things you've outlined (everything is a tournament profession; success at being a man is measured in terms of impossible ideals; the previous masculine success parameters are less attainable than they used to me) are real problems. Probably solving them would mitigate the kind of gender issues that "end on incel forums" (or in suicide, another thing that's been trending up).

But I'm not sure I buy that these are root causes of a substantial fraction of MtF transitions. Are the majority of transitioners really people who have decided they should become a woman because they think they will fail (or have failed) at being a man? I'm curious as to what evidence makes you think that is the case. If you're right, that makes the problem much easier than I think it is, which is a really good thing!

Are the majority of transitioners really people who have decided they should become a woman because they think they will fail (or have failed) at being a man?

I have no idea, and we aren't really asking that question to transitioners. Detransitioners often talk about things like that, but they are a particular subset of people, and if nothing else subject to the same biases that eg Ex-Mormon or Ex-Muslim forums are subject to.

I'm curious as to what evidence makes you think that is the case.

I can go dig through forums to find evidence, but this isn't an issue I think about a lot so this is more the gestalt from the Myers-Young Associated Statistical Survey, acronym for short.

I can recall, though not cite offhand, numerous examples of trans people in writing and in real life telling me what feeling like "not a man" and "not a woman" felt like. And it always involved some kind of assumption that because I am a man I strongly feel a constant sense of being a masculine stereotype. When my experience of being a man is constantly falling short of that stereotype, from 13 to 31, and probably onward to the grave. I'll try to find the Slate(?) article in particular that I'm remembering, but it was a piece by a transwoman contra-TERFS arguing that transwomen never had male privilege because before transition they "weren't the men who were hitting on their secretaries, the guys making dirty jokes in the locker room after the football game, the frat boys having competitions in objectifying women." Right away you have the apex fallacy, equating "men" to executives, athletes, popular fraternity brothers; and not to autistic nerds, janitors, or obese unemployed. The idea that if you aren't a really great man then you aren't a man at all.

If you're right, that makes the problem much easier than I think it is, which is a really good thing!

I think this problem is much bigger and harder to deal with than a "medical illness" answer; this is a society wide phenomenon experienced by most people, transitioners are just those at the bottom of the fragility/mental stability totem poll who slide off into the strange.

I have no idea, and we aren't really asking that question to transitioners. Detransitioners often talk about things like that, but they are a particular subset of people, and if nothing else subject to the same biases that eg Ex-Mormon or Ex-Muslim forums are subject to.

Not only are we not asking, the question is so politically fraught we probably couldn't get good answers anyway.

I can recall, though not cite offhand, numerous examples of trans people in writing and in real life telling me what feeling like "not a man" and "not a woman" felt like. And it always involved some kind of assumption that because I am a man I strongly feel a constant sense of being a masculine stereotype.

I wonder if that assumption is more likely to be a cause or an effect. By which I mean, you've observed a certain misconception in your trans acquaintances about what it's like to be a normal man; how do we tell the difference between the chain (have this misconception) -> (think they fail at being a man) -> (want to be a woman) -> (trans), vs the chain (want to be a woman) -> (trans) + (reinterpret ordinary experiences as evidence for transness) -> (implicit misconception)? Not saying you're wrong, just the second seems more intuitively plausible to me and I'm not sure how one would tell.

I think this problem is much bigger and harder to deal with than a "medical illness" answer; this is a society wide phenomenon experienced by most people, transitioners are just those at the bottom of the fragility/mental stability totem poll who slide off into the strange.

Ah, I see what you mean. It's an easier problem only for the narrow question of "how hard is it to deal with trans ideation once you are intervening in someone's life", but a broad social problem is much harder to fix than a few people with mental illness.

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