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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16192 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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encouraging closeted people to come out as gay" is not the same thing as "making them gay

I think an insurmountable gap here is that it's easy to accept that gay people exist. Sodomy and homoeroticism has been documented since biblical times and even some animals do it. Meanwhile people wanting to chop off their own oragans and pump themselves full of hormones is a modern world.

Average people can also easily understand how it's possible to achieve sexual pleasure throug homosexual activity even if they do not personally want to participate. Meanwhile the average person cannot understand why soemone would gain satisfaction from severe genital and body mutilation. Therefore they can only conclude that it must be the result of either mental illness or brainwashing.

In the 70's conservative activists opposed laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring because it would permit gay teachers in public school. The logic behind the "Save Our Children" campaign headlined by Anita Bryant was that gay people could not reproduce biologically so they must "recruit" children into being gay and therefore could not be trusted to be teachers. I don't think the average person who opposed gay teachers intuitively understood "gay people exist" I think they were concerned about "brainwashing" or "recruiting" the way people now are concerned about kids being "transed".

The broader framework of "we're concerned sexual minorities are recruiting children" vs. "there's no recruitment people are just born a certain way" isn't at all new. There are other features of the debate, like the consequences of medical treatment differing from sexual experimentation being different, that are new. But, I don't think it's all accurate to say that people in the past intuitively grasped that gay people existed and were not concerned about children being brainwashed.

Were they wrong?

With the rise of gay identifying it’s obvious people can be gayed. And then there are lavender marriages which produced children meaning most men can still get off to women. And honestly I think most gays are happier in lavender marriages where they get all the benefits of being a father and their children get a mother (plus not having to do childcare etc).

With the rise of gay identifying it’s obvious people can be gayed.

The rise in LGB self-identification is driven women who only date men identifying as bisexual. They haven't been gayed, they are claiming an oppressed identity for clout. The much smaller risk in gay male self-ID is entirely consistent with less closeting over time.

Citation needed? Last data I saw was that half of straight 18-34yo women in Britain were "unwilling" to date a bisexual man. Presumably some significant percentage of the remainder are at the "bisexuality is a negative, just not an utter disqualifier" level.

That "unwilling to date a bisexual" percentage is dropping fast from generation to generation, but I'd be very surprised if there was any age group for whom "unwilling to date a non-bisexual" exceeded it.

I don't think we disagree.

Last data I saw was that half of straight 18-34yo women in Britain were "unwilling" to date a bisexual man. Presumably some significant percentage of the remainder are at the "bisexuality is a negative, just not an utter disqualifier" level.

And that is part of why there has been minimal increase in bisexual identification among men who date women. I hope no citation is needed for the claim that men are much less squicked by female bisexuality than vice versa. The increase in bisexual identification I pointed to was among women who date men.

Ha! Egg on my face. I'm so sorry, I just utterly misparsed your sentence.

You intended "(women who only date men) identifying as bisexual"; somehow I read "women who only date (men identifying as bisexual)".

I figured maybe this was the latest stage of an anti-cis-hetero-men purity spiral somewhere but you were exaggerating it.

I hope no citation is needed for the claim that men are much less squicked by female bisexuality than vice versa.

True, but there's some squick! 20% of young men in that poll. I suspect that the demographic of women considering self-identifying as bisexual don't think they want to date any of those men either way, though.

Because in sexual intercourse, the woman is the fuckee, not the fucker. It’s a degradation to a woman’s self-concept as it is to a man feeling emasculated for a woman to admit to either herself or someone else that her husband took a nut to the face. I’d stake a grand on it that if you polled a line-up of pornstars about how they feel about what they do in the industry (save for the ones who engage in active drug use which is common to it) all of them or almost all of them will say they feel some variety of “empowered.” If you then ask them if they wanted their daughter (or hypothetical daughter) to be involved in the industry or what they do, all of them or almost all of them will say no. What gives? It’s because they’re lying to themselves, and they know it. Women often know that the observations men make about them are accurate, which is often why they will so strongly fight you and get upset and angry when you pull back the curtain on their attempts to conceal what they so frequently mislead people about.

Even the very strict gay/lesbian amount is double in Gen X than the Silent Generation. There is a lot more going on than people listing themselves Bi. The Bi thing explains only the last 10 years surge.

I haven't seen a good time series for men who have sex with men, but going back as far as Kinsey we know that the number of men who have had sex with another man is higher than the number of men who self-identify as gay or bi. There is a reason why early AIDS researchers used the term "men who have sex with men" and not "gay or bi men".

The people who tried to replicate Kinsey's work found that about 6% of men have had sex with another man. (Kinsey got a much higher number which is almost certainly bogus). A good modern meta-analysis gets about the same number.

but going back as far as Kinsey we know that the number of men who have had sex with another man is higher than the number of men who self-identify as gay or bi. There is a reason why early AIDS researchers used the term "men who have sex with men" and not "gay or bi men".

How much of this is just among ethnic groups who refuse to admit to being gay, though?

I don't know enough about the US context to comment. In the UK, it would have been men who were "situationally gay" in all-boys boarding schools or the Navy. But it doesn't matter - the point is that the number of men who have sex with men has not increased materially as a result of changing cultural norms since 1960, this is evidence that you the culture doesn't determine men's sexuality, only the language used to describe it - in other words that you can't "gay" men by cultural osmosis, only get men who are already gay or gayish to self-identify that way.

That still sort of fits with can create gays. One thing I’ve found in dating is my taste of female body types seems to have some relationship to (1) earliest gf (2) who I currently have an emotional bond with.

I could see 1.8% of men being very gay and perhaps 1.8-6% having some fluidity. If you repress homosexuality then the extra 4% have less opportunity for gay sex so the gay sex attribute declines in them. They then develop relationships with females which develops emotional bonds and become more attracted to females.

Of course the LGBTQ people would say those people are gay. The bigots would say they can be straight.

From a traditional Christian conservative perspective or a public health perspective, the problem is sodomy, not gay self-identification. If all changing cultural norms does is causes men having sex with men to stop self-identifying as gay, you haven't really achieved anything.

From the traditional Christian conservative view changing a man from “has gay sex and identifies gay” to “has gay sex, identifies straight, married with 3kids suburbs” the problem is gay self-identification not sodomy.

And yes I’m using Christianity as more a fertility cult and developed behaviors that lead to male happiness than if you do “X” you go to hell. But also the latter person would be more likely to embrace Christianity and repent in a way that would lead to redemption in the Christian context.

I'm not interested in doing "social contagion" vs. "inherent predisposition towards behavior previously repressed by social sanction" round 237 with someone who throws out wild speculation like "honestly I think most gays are happier in lavender marriages" without supporting evidence.

Regardless of whether you like my views. My main question “Were they right”

Is 100% yes. And it’s supported by the data

Silent Generation 1.8% gay. Gen Z 23.1% gay. And a key point here is it’s socially beneficial to be gay now and this is current data not how silent generation polled when they were kids. Silent Generation didn’t start being gay when it got cool. 3.4% of US adults are gay or lesbian (so completely excludes the huge rise in bi) so the Silent generation at 1.8% is still way below.

It's certainly unclear whether it was just activists making that claim versus it being widely accepted in the anti-gay community. I find it more likely that people hated the gays first (while understanding their existence) and came up with rationalizations second.

I think there's also a nuance in the understanding in that they can believe that someone can be brainwashed into actually being gay, and actually legitimately enjoying the feeling of guzzling cock. But anti-trans will believe that nobody can be trans. Their claim is that trans people literally cannot exist and trans identifying people are simply brainwashed into participating in self mutilation. That trans identifying people won't be happy about it, but won't be able to speak up while being imprisoned by ideology and a destroyed body.

I think the fact that Anti-Gay campaigns were titled things like "Save Our Children" suggests that at the very least, the leaders of the anti-gay community in the 1970's thought concerns about gays "recruiting" kids were widespread in the anti-gay community. While I am hardly effort posting, "anti-gay activists at the time acted like the public believed this" is some sort of evidence about the state of public concerns, whereas you are purely speculating based on your own intuitions.

Average people can also easily understand how it's possible to achieve sexual pleasure throug homosexual activity even if they do not personally want to participate. Meanwhile the average person cannot understand why soemone would gain satisfaction from severe genital and body mutilation. Therefore they can only conclude that it must be the result of either mental illness or brainwashing.

I agree that's probably a factor, but I think there's more to it than that. Humans are pretty good at guessing the sex of other people. A lot of the time when I meet a trans-identifying-man, my subconscious brain instantly says "man" even if the person is wearing lipstick, makeup, and a dress. So it feels like I am being asked to believe a lie. Of course it doesn't help that a lot of these trans-identifying-men seem to derive personal benefits from being treated as women such as an advantage in sports or easy access to women's changing facilities.

I think my reaction is pretty typical: "No, that's a dude pretending to be a chick" says my monkey brain. "This seems like a scam" says my frontal cortex. "Ewwww" says my lizard brain.

Meanwhile the average person cannot understand why soemone would gain satisfaction from severe genital and body mutilation.

I think most people can easily make sense of the idea that you might wish that certain aspects of your life were different. Someone might wish they were taller, or they had a million dollars, or they lived in Germany instead of America. These are all considered normal and comprehensible; most people don’t have trouble with the mere notion of a counterfactual.

If someone could wish for all these things, then why couldn’t they wish to be the opposite gender as well? Is it so much of a stretch?

And if you can accept the comprehensibility of that sort of wish, then I don’t think the comprehensibility of SRS is too much of a stretch, although I absolutely understand why many people would evaluate that the drawbacks are not worth the benefits, and that it might be considered odd or disconcerting for that reason.

It's not about attainability but relatability. Nearly everyone in the world would want 1 million dollars if you offered it to them. Moving to germany is a bit more situational but most people can acknowledge that germany has pretty good sausage, kraut, beer, and fast cars. But ask a random person what's in it for someone who wants to be a woman and he'd likely be at a loss.

And it's not just that they want to be a woman. They want it so bad they'll chop off their dicks and pump their bodies full of chemicals to make a poor imitation of this.

But ask a random person what's in it for someone who wants to be a woman and he'd likely be at a loss.

I mean, let me just ask: do you really think that there's so little to recommend in the lives of half of all humanity, approximately 4 billion people, that no rational actor, under a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, could ever want to be one of them?

If you do believe that to be the case, then the logical corollary is that you should become the most ardent of committed feminist activists. Alleviating their suffering would surely be the most pressing of political issues.

(I'm intentionally being a bit glib, but, what you said could be interpreted in that way.)

I'm sure there will be many people who can answer this. And they will probably be more sympathetic to the trans cause. But to the average person's point of view the trans person's pov is so alien as to be indistinguishable from insanity.

Well now I'm kinda curious. Do you think being a woman is that much worse than being a man? (I don't want to draw you into a long obnoxious argument, I just want to make sure I'm properly understanding you.)

I don't think it has anything to do with "better" vs. "worse". I just think the imaginative gap is so large that a lot of people struggle to even get their heads around the hypothetical.

The average person with a net worth of less than a million dollars does not struggle to imagine what it would be like to have a million dollars. The average person who does not live in Germany does not struggle to imagine what it would be like to live in Germany. (I'm not even saying their imaginary conceptions of these two counterfactuals are accurate: I'm just saying that most people don't struggle to imagine them, even if their imaginary conception thereof is wrong.) But waking up tomorrow morning as a member of the opposite sex is such a bizarre and alien concept that the average person struggles to get their head around it. I think the average person would have an easier time imagining what it would be like to be blind or paralysed than to imagine what it would be like to wake up as a member of the opposite sex.

I think you're making some good points and my argument is phrased quite poorly. I think it kind of conflates and the idea of wanting to become a woman and the idea of wanting to transition. I'm kind of too tired to put this coherently for now but you're definitely largely right.

They want it so bad they'll chop off their dicks

That is not the first time that bottom chirurgery has been characterised in such a way on this forum, and I would like to correct the record:

To the best of my knowledge, vaginoplasty (male-to-female) does not involve 'chopping off' anything. The male genitals in their entirety are rearranged into female genitals, with the penis becoming the clitoris and the scrotum becoming the labia; phalloplasty (female-to-male) is the same but in the other direction.

Also, the methods used are very similar to those used in within-sex reconstructive chirurgery in cisgender patients who have suffered genital injuries.

and pump their bodies full of chemicals

My brother in Christ, what do you think the endocrine system does?

to make a poor imitation of this.

It may have been a 'poor imitation' a century ago, but much progress has been made; the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.

  • -15

If it's feasible to fashion an entire penis from no-penis-at-all, why aren't dick enhancements as common as breast enhancements?

There's a clear strain of denialism and wishful thinking around physical gender transitioning, both surgical and endocrine, that sells it as being as good as the real thing. Meanwhile away from the transgender sphere people deal with all manner of complications around relatively simple and far more common procedures within those same realms of medicine, whether it's nose jobs, butt lifts, HRT or cosmetic dentistry.

The male genitals in their entirety are rearranged into female genitals

Rearranged yes, female no. This is three card monte rhetoric. I'll be charitable and grant that they are rearranged into feminine genitals. You raise objections to imprecise language and then use the same means to smuggle in your own favourable biases.

If it's feasible to fashion an entire penis from no-penis-at-all, why aren't dick enhancements as common as breast enhancements?

Because no man will admit he has a small penis. Why do you think condoms come in sizes of “large,” “extra large,” and “super extra large?” You can mostly tell which men have a small dick by how angry they are on average.

If having a small penis is something to be ashamed of that's more incentive to crack the problem of making a small penis bigger. 50% of men have a smaller than average penis. The potential market is, ahem, sizeable.

Then people would just knock you for needing an artificial penis.

Joking aside, penis enlargement procedures are a real thing.

[the death] was caused by the hyaluronic acid injection

That's just pumping it full of cosmetic lip filler to make it a bit wider with the caveat that the additional width will be soft and squishy. I've seen photos of people who have pumped their dick excessively full of synthol too but it looks less like a big dick and more like a rugby ball with a puncture.

Point is that it's hard enough to alter one type of man or woman's body into another type of man or woman's body even with all the inherent similarities.

I need a penis reduction if anything else (😤).

phalloplasty (female-to-male) is the same but in the other direction.

This is just flat wrong, and brings your supposed expertise about "gender-affirming care" into question.

You may have noticed that female people have no flesh in between their legs which can be used to fashion a crude imitation of a penis. To accomplish this, surgeons (or "chirurgeons" as you insist on calling them, apparently for no better reason than obfuscation and misdirection) must carve out a chunk of tissue from elsewhere on the patient's body, typically the forearm or thigh. It's similar to a skin graft, except that much more flesh is required, meaning the tiny minority of trans-identified females who undergo phalloplasties have telltale scars on their thighs or forearms for months or years afterwards. Wikipedia has some NSFW photos. So much for "correcting the record".

It may have been a 'poor imitation' a century ago, but much progress has been made; the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.

Even if it was the case that the majority of trans people who undergo bottom surgery don't regret doing so, that doesn't tell us anything about how poor the imitation is. Even if 100% of people who get breast implants don't regret doing so, that wouldn't tell us anything about how realistic breast implants are. Satisfaction is not perfectly correlated with realism.

the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.

I've heard so many trans activists independently recite this canard, and they never provide a source. Until one is provided, I'm taking this about as seriously as "trans panic laws have enabled people to literally get away with murder!!!1!"

"chirurgeons" as you insist on calling them, apparently for no better reason than obfuscation and misdirection

I've seen the word used interchangeably with vivisectionist in media that want to have an archaic flavor (like early MtG cards), so it's quite something to see a pro-trans-surgery person use the word for doctors performing those surgeries.

A Freudian slip?

If the pro-trans side wants to start calling their doctors vivisectionists, it could be a rare moment where I agree with them.

Isn’t this just the German word for surgeon?

It was also alternative word for "surgeon" in English centuries ago. Copying Romance languages even though English already had a word for it.

In french too: chirurgien.

I don't speak German, but ChatGPT informs me that the terms are the similar Chirurg and Chirurgin.

I don't know if he's German, but I would find it equally annoying if he insisted on using Krankenwagen rather than "ambulance" in a comment otherwise written in English.

This is just flat wrong, and brings your supposed expertise about "gender-affirming care" into question.

I said that it was to the best of my knowledge. I am not an expert compared to professional chirurgeons, but compared to those who think a vagina is a lack of penis, and imagine the male-to-female operation to be something akin to the work of Lorena Bobbit, I think I'm doing fairly well, much in the same way as, while I do not claim be able to run the U. S. Defense Department better than James Mattis, I am fairly certain I could do a better job than Pete Hegseth.

You may have noticed that female people have no flesh in between their legs

This is a common misconception held by many men, leading to an epidemic of bed-time headaches among their wives.

which can be used to fashion a crude imitation of a penis. To accomplish this, surgeons (or "chirurgeons" as you insist on calling them,

'Chirurgeon' is from the Greek 'χείρ' (hand) + '-ουργός' (worker); 'surgeon' is an eroded form of the same.

apparently for no better reason than obfuscation and misdirection)

I am getting just a wee bit tired of the snide insults.

must carve out a chunk of tissue from elsewhere on the patient's body, typically the forearm or thigh. It's similar to a skin graft, except that much more flesh is required, meaning the tiny minority of trans-identified females who undergo phalloplasties have telltale scars on their thighs or forearms for months or years afterwards.

The same applies for cis-men, who were born biologically male in all respects, identify as men, and suffer injuries between their legs. Does this make such a man less male, or is this merely an appeal to disgust?

Even if 100% of people who get breast implants don't regret doing so, that wouldn't tell us anything about how realistic breast implants are.

Well, are we talking a woman whom you never suspected had implants because she went to a chirurgeon who made them look natural, or a woman who chose a doctor whose work was obvious at first sight so that everyone would know that she could afford them?

I've heard so many trans activists independently recite this canard, and they never provide a source.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/transgender-debate-gender-affirming-surgeries-have-a-regret-rate-of-one-per-cent-or-less-for-knee-replacements-its-17-per-cent-vic-valentine-4258947

I'm taking this about as seriously as "trans panic laws have enabled people to literally get away with murder!!!1!"

D. F. McLaughlin?

Paris Lee?

  • -14

chirurgeon

So, for real, what’s the deal here? I don’t have a dog in this ongoing argument, I’m sincerely curious. I had never even seen this word before skimming through this thread, and a quick google only gives “archaic synonym for surgeon”. To my knowledge it’s not used by any surgeons or even seemingly medical historians. Where did you pick this up? Are you just a super-hellenophile classicist, or something?

Indeed an archaic fake synonym for surgeon since English already had "surgeon" and people tried to replace it with a "correct" version like they had in other languages such as French. It didn't catch on.

Might be french; we still use "chirurgien" to mean surgeon.

'Chirurgeon' is from the Greek 'χείρ' (hand) + '-ουργός' (worker); 'surgeon' is an eroded form of the same.

If you're trying to convince anyone here of anything (and not just shit-stirring), this cringeworthy attempt at verbal elitism is really not going to help. We know how to speak English very, very well around here. Feel free to join us.

I said that it was to the best of my knowledge. I am not an expert compared to professional chirurgeons, but compared to those who think a vagina is a lack of penis, and imagine the male-to-female operation to be something akin to the work of Lorena Bobbit, I think I'm doing fairly well, much in the same way as, while I do not claim be able to run the U. S. Defense Department better than James Mattis, I am fairly certain I could do a better job than Pete Hegseth.

And despite not being a professional "chirurgeon", I can do a better job than you. So you were obviously wrong to arrogate to yourself the responsibility of "correcting the record" on bottom surgery. (There's actually a specific Facebook group devoted to cataloguing this kind of behaviour.) If I ask someone if they can drive a car, I want to know if they can actually drive a car. Being able to drive a car better than an amputee who just drank a fifth of vodka is not a high bar to clear.

This is a common misconception held by many men, leading to an epidemic of bed-time headaches among their wives.

Har de har har. You knew perfectly well that I meant that female people have no flesh between their legs which could be used to fashion a crude facsimile of a penis. A clitoris (even a massively engorged clitoris) cannot be used to make a neopenis. We both know this. Why do you insist on wasting both our time with crude potty humour?

The same applies for cis-men, who were born biologically male in all respects, identify as men, and suffer injuries between their legs. Does this make such a man less male, or is this merely an appeal to disgust?

It's not an appeal to disgust: it's pointing out that you were mistaken. You described a phalloplasty as "the same [as a vaginoplasty] but in the other direction". You were wrong: there was a massive piece of the procedure that you were conspicuously omitting. The appropriate response to this being pointed out to you is to admit your error. The appropriate response is not to throw a strop, bring up a completely irrelevant "analogy" and say "oh whatever, stop trying to make gender-affirming care sound gross!"

I could just as easily make the same argument in the opposite direction: that by failing to accurately describe what a phalloplasty entails, you were either ignorant about what the procedure entails, or you were knowingly trying to make it sound less invasive than it really is. Neither is a great look.

I am getting just a wee bit tired of the snide insults.

I will happily desist, if you can provide me with a better explanation for why you insist on using antiquated terms that aren't even terms of art in the professions under discussion.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/transgender-debate-gender-affirming-surgeries-have-a-regret-rate-of-one-per-cent-or-less-for-knee-replacements-its-17-per-cent-vic-valentine-4258947

I note that this is an opinion piece, and that Valentine doesn't actually show where they got their figures from:

Of nearly 3,500 trans people attending the UK’s largest clinic in London just 16 of them – 0.47 per cent – had any regrets. And an analysis of studies from around the world found a regret rate of one per cent for gender-affirming surgeries. It is hard to compare different interventions (as I say, we’re all different) but, as a yardstick, the regret rate for knee replacements is 17 per cent and for hip replacements five per cent.

This paragraph doesn't contain any hyperlinks. I asked you for a source for the claim that knee replacement surgery has a higher regret rate than gender-affirming care, and instead you provided me with an example of someone else making the exact same unevidenced claim as you.

D. F. McLaughlin?

From the source you provided: "The jury acquitted Patnode of second-degree murder and convicted him of second-degree manslaughter".

Paris Lee?

From the source you provided: "Ward was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025." I understand a retrial is pending, but Ward certainly hasn't "gotten away with murder" yet.

I suppose technically being convicted of manslaughter rather than murder is "getting away with murder", but I'm not aware of a single person who used the "trans panic" defense and then walked, which is the affirmative claim that dozens of trans activists have independently made to me. Show me an example of that, and we can talk.

Har de har har. You knew perfectly well that I meant that female people have no flesh between their legs which could be used to fashion a crude facsimile of a penis.

The same works the other way. Two inches isn’t a penis. It’s a large clit.

It's an enormous clit.

I think I'm doing fairly well, much in the same way as, while I do not claim be able to run the U. S. Defense Department better than James Mattis, I am fairly certain I could do a better job than Pete Hegseth.

No, I'm sorry, you're doing worse than Pete Hegseth. You don't need to know the fine details of the surgery to know what you're proposing could never work. It's basic anatomy.

This is a common misconception held by many men, leading to an epidemic of bed-time headaches among their wives.

If you really actually believe it can be fashioned into a penis, how do you explain doctors carving out huge chunks of forearms during phalloplasties?

I am getting just a wee bit tired of the snide insults.

Is he wrong though? What's the point of using a form of a word that no one uses when writing in English?

The same applies for cis-men, who were born biologically male in all respects, identify as men, and suffer injuries between their legs. Does this make such a man less male, or is this merely an appeal to disgust?

You claimed a vaginoplasty does not involve chopping anything off, and that a phalloplasty is the same process in reverse. He's pointing out how you're completely wrong on the facts, why are you trying to change the subject now?

http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/transgender-debate-gender-affirming-surgeries-have-a-regret-rate-of-one-per-cent-or-less-for-knee-replacements-its-17-per-cent-vic-valentine-4258947

Of nearly 3,500 trans people attending the UK’s largest clinic in London just 16 of them – 0.47 per cent – had any regrets. And an analysis of studies from around the world found a regret rate of one per cent for gender-affirming surgeries. It is hard to compare different interventions (as I say, we’re all different) but, as a yardstick, the regret rate for knee replacements is 17 per cent and for hip replacements five per cent.

The only link around these statistics is the word "London", it leads to the "London" tag of the newspaper you just linked to, not a study done in a London clinic.

It may have been a 'poor imitation' a century ago, but much progress has been made; the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.

Sure, if you don't count people that stopped responding to your surveys, the responses you get will tend to say they're quite satisfied.

Also, if the results were so great, you'd think the overwhelming majority of trans males wouldn't be avoiding it like the plague.

It may have been a 'poor imitation' a century ago, but much progress has been made; the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.

Suicide rate post gender reassignment still a lot higher than it is post knee replacement.

To the best of my knowledge, vaginoplasty (male-to-female) does not involve 'chopping off' anything. The...

To the average person, what you describe and "chopping off" are basically the same thing and repugnant for basically the same reasons. If it isn't literally "chopping off", that's a technicality, like "the burger doesn't taste like sewage, it tastes like excrement, so you're wrong when you say it tastes like sewage!".

I think most people can easily make sense of the idea that you might wish that certain aspects of your life were different. Someone might wish they were taller, or they had a million dollars, or they lived in Germany instead of America. These are all considered normal and comprehensible; most people don’t have trouble with the mere notion of a counterfactual.

You're gerrymandering because these are all harmless as desires. Consider another example: I understand why people might want another roll at the die of high school. This is normal, in the sense that people often have regrets.

It's not normal, nor does it make sense to me, to actually make this into a life project. In fact, it would be very alarming and I would not trust the person who sincerely attempts to redo their high school experience (at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars and medical procedures with non-trivial effects) to have a good view of what would fulfill them since they seem mentally imbalanced/lacking basic prudence and social insight to explain why this is a very bad thing to try to impose on people (the mental health comorbidities make it even harder with trans).

In any case, it would not suffice as a justification to let them pull a Steve Buscemi even if they could convince me they'd be happier. High school doesn't exist for the pleasure of adults.

You’re conflating two things that I never conflated. There are two separate questions:

  1. Whether the desire for SRS (or being trans in general) is coherent and understandable, outside of being a product of “mental illness or brainwashing”.

  2. Whether society should rearrange itself to accommodate the desires of trans people.

I was only addressing (1). Personally, I answer yes to (1) and no to (2).

I don’t believe that, at our current level of medical technology, men can become women. If you’re born a man then you’ll stay a man. And as a corollary, I don’t believe that MTFs (i.e. men) should be given access to women’s spaces, nor should they expect to be recognized as women by other people. But, in line with my general libertarian priors, I think that consenting adults should mostly be free to dress how they want and get whatever medical procedures they want, and I understand why some people would opt for SRS for psychological comfort, even though it can’t actually at the end of the day fully realize their desires.

I don’t believe that MTFs (i.e. men [by chromosomes and natal biology, women by identity]) should be given access to women’s spaces

I'm not sure that there ought to be separate men's and women's spaces, if their existence leads to things like a trans woman dying of cancer because she isn't allowed in the women's ward, and also isn't allowed in the men's ward.

The mother's version of events has not yet been established by a judiciary. I'm guessing there's a lot more to this case that hasn't come out yet.

Bro I'm gonna be deadass honest with you, there are a lot of freaks who are just gonna hang out in the bathroom and listen to women fart and piss if we don't have separate bathrooms. But if women are cool with that then sure, tear down those walls.

As a resident of a PNW city with a large trans population I'd say the way things are going is many newly constructed spaces have only a gender neutral single shared room with sinks and a mirror and then a series of stalls that have full floor to ceiling walls and wooden locking doors. This is certainly more expensive than "two rooms with plastic dividers around stalls" but it would be difficult to hear anyone fart or pee through the doors (which honestly I appreciate for entirely non gender issues reasons).

I personally welcome the proliferation of single-occupancy bathrooms, as I feel that American-style public restrooms are absolutely barbaric. But there's a challenge here besides cost, especially visible in PNW cities, which have drug users as another large population, which creates a pressure for public spaces to take things the other way.

In Dublin, some fast food restaurants have (or had) fluorescent or blue-tinted lighting only in the toilets, as you can't see your veins under fluorescent lighting.

This worked pretty well at stopping junkies shooting up heroin in the toilets, but then the junkies stopped using heroin and started using crack and meth. That's the problem with dealing with junkies: the meta is constantly shifting.

I've never seen that, the more common adaptation where I live is that all bathrooms have a keypad and you have to enter a numeric code so the door unlocks. You have to ask the staff for the code, and I assume they will not give it to you if you are a visibly disturbed drug user.

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If a person desires to have a limb amputated (which does happen) we accurately assess this to be mental illness.

If they desire to become the different gender, we say that is valid and give them the medical option to pursue it.

I really can't see a space morally between allowing a doctor to amputate someone's arm and allowing them to amputate someone's genitals. I can see why someone might want it. But I can't see why it should be allowed under our current system of medical ethics. Although, as a libertarian, perhaps you are okay with both surgeries, which would be a logically consistent position.

If a person desires to have a limb amputated (which does happen) we accurately assess this to be mental illness.

Not in Canada. Some medics actually were willing to bite the modus ponens (or the modus tollens, I forget which is which.)

Although, as a libertarian, perhaps you are okay with both surgeries

Yes.

I'm actually mostly ok with saying that transsexuality is a mental illness. On the one hand, from a certain perspective that's literally what it is: it's an abnormal neurological development that causes adverse health effects, most notably to the reproductive system. On the other hand, I want to stress that it's not merely a mental illness. An individual's reasons for wanting to transition, or wanting to be the opposite gender, can be very complex and multifaceted, and they can go beyond a simple "my body just doesn't feel right". The "wrong body map" theory is a convenient and digestible PR narrative that the trans community can use to explain the phenomenon to normies and make it more medically legitimate, but it only covers a small portion of people's actual experiences.

I do think that the neuroscience underlying transsexuality differs in crucial ways from the neuroscience underlying other types of body dysmorphia, but I don't know the current state of research in this area and I have no way of directly proving it, and at any rate it's a largely academic question.

Regarding the references to amputation, I feel compelled to note, contra Freud, that a vagina is not the mere absence of a penis; it is its own organ, it's just as much of a positive presence as a penis is. The ideal for MTFs is not to engage in a simple act of self-destruction, but to trade one functioning sexual organ for another (current surgical techniques, of course, cannot actually achieve this, but can only provide a facsimile of it).

I mean even if the neuroscience underlying transexuality differed in a crucial way from other things, is 'something being a naturally occurring pattern in the brain' enough to legitimize it as a way of life? If there was a particular brain configuration that made you attracted to infants, which occurred naturally and spontaneously, it doesn't really seem sensible for society to say 'oh that's natural get out of his way'

I just feel like the metaphor obviously doesn't work. If a trans woman gets SRS and has a functional neovagina that she can have sex and orgasm with then she still has genitals that do most of what people use genitals for. Whereas if someone gets their arm chopped off they don't have a different appendage that does most of what an arm does, they just don't have an arm anymore.

Also if you're for example, a trans woman, your penis is not often "usable" sexually either because of psychological issues with using it, or because of long term atrophy from hormones, or because you're straight and wouldn't be using it anyway. In such cases using the tissue to construct a neovagina allows for functionality where previously none existed.

If a trans woman gets SRS and has a functional neovagina that she can have sex and orgasm with then she still has genitals that do most of what people use genitals for.

The word "functional" is doing a lot of work, here.

Female genitals are reproductive organs. If they cannot be used for reproduction or any related ancillary functions (e.g. menstruation), we would not typically say they are healthy, functioning organs (prepubescent and menopausal women excepted). Indeed, if a female person is unable to get pregnant or suffers from amenorrhea, that constitutes a health problem. Imagine if a woman went to her GP and said that she'd missed her last three periods but didn't think she was pregnant, and he shrugged and said "but you can still fuck and come, right?" He'd likely be struck off the medical register, and rightfully so.

You can easily use contrived, tortured reasoning like this to "prove" that everyone has a vagina, in the form of their rectum. Your argument proves too much.

I just feel like the metaphor obviously doesn't work. If a trans woman gets SRS and has a functional neovagina that she can have sex and orgasm with then she still has genitals that do most of what people use genitals for.

Any hole is something a man can have sex with, that doesn't make it a functional vagina. The ability to orgasm post-surgery is also more of a distant possibility than a reliable result. There's a reason why most trans males never go ahead with surgery.

So have I convinced you that your original analogy was wrong? That even if not a "functional vagina" doctors giving a trans women some sort of genitalia that will facilitate mutually pleasurable sex with their preferred partners is a wholly different question from amputating an arm?

Then the issue is just the rate of success? If doctors could consistently produce genitals that allowed trans women to orgasm with minimal side effects you wouldn't think this posed any sort of ethical question anymore?

I think most Mottizens wouldn't be against a hypothetical magical gender-change pill or ray that did what was actually advertised on it. There's just a lot of skepticism around the current state of medicalized gender confirmation especially when you're dealing with inherently mentally skewed people.

My original analogy?

That even if not a "functional vagina" doctors giving a trans women some sort of genitalia that will facilitate mutually pleasurable sex with their preferred partners is a wholly different question from amputating an arm?

I don't think so, no. I could imagine that in the future prosthetics could become so advanced that they're actually better than natural appendages, and at that point it would be an entirely different question. However, if someone wants their leg amputated so he can get a peg leg, because he always wanted to be a pirate, that sounds like a pretty apt comparison to where we are with transgender care.

Another nuance here is that wanting to be the opposite sex and viscerally yearning for SRS are different things. I think @Primaprimaprima was talking about e.g. sad young men who wish that they'd been born as women in a daydreamy, intellectual kind of way but don't have the dysphoric "ick, ick, ick, get that thing off of me" reaction to their penises that pattern-matches to the arm thing, and who, if they attempt a surgical transition, would only do so in an attempt to make the dream come true. I think it's true that that sort of trans desire is no more pathological, and no more difficult for normies to grok, than yearning to have been born to different life circumstances in some other way.

I think it still runs into the category issue under contest, namely, "what is gender", in ways that "Six-foot-five", "has a million dollars", and "lives in Germany" don't. What makes them normal and comprehensible is that the categories involved and adjudicating membership in them are agreed-upon.

The procedures to make someone 6'5", a millionaire, or a resident of Germany are similarly straightforwardly understood as to what they entail and what constitutes a successful intervention. Gender is different: under the GC definition of gender, no amount of intervention will ever be sufficient to move from membership in one category to another. Conversely, and somewhat confusingly, under the trans-activist definition of gender, no amount of intervention is ever required to move membership from one category to another. Many (most?) people seem to have a mushy concept of gender and see current SRS and hormonal interventions as insufficient to move membership from one category to another but are unsure about whether this will always be true and what a sufficient intervention would entail.

Exactly. If my process to 'make somebody a millionaire' was to surgically attach 1 million dollars worth of fake bills to them and then ask nicely at a societal level for everybody to 'treat them like a millionaire' whilst not actually giving them any spending money that's hardly making a millionaire.

To be clear, I personally believe that the criteria for membership in a gender category is relatively straightforward, and I believe that most other people believe this too, even if they claim not to. A man is an adult human male with XY chromosomes that produces sperm. A woman is an adult human female with XX chromosomes that produces eggs. A few edge cases don’t impugn the general validity of the definition. Everyone knows this, including trans activists, probably.

I don’t believe that SRS as it currently exists is capable of changing someone from one gender to the other. But, given that these matters are so deeply intertwined with matters of personal identity, I can understand why some people would opt for the “next best thing”, even if it’s not perfect.

Yeah, I suppose the last category I describe should be expanded to include those with a well-defined concept of gender category rules but who also see the currently-available suite of interventions as insufficient to pass across category boundaries. Perhaps the difference in understanding I was trying to articulate falls somewhere near someone seeing the interventions are insufficient and therefore don't see the motivation to undergo life-altering changes that don't achieve the end goal, similar to what Bingbong described here for the "millionaire" case. It's probably downstream of understanding the categories as discrete and mutually exclusive, and if your available states in the (M, F) category space are (1, 0) and (0, 1), any intervention that doesn't move someone from one bucket to another get evaluated as "0% successful" under that model since (0.2, 0.8) isn't a valid state.

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