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Allow me to rephrase this as fairly as you have represented my position. The pro-trans camp tries very hard not to actually think of the ground truth of what transgenderism means. If they do the farce of trying to hold in their head that gender is both a social construct and also an innate characteristic will cause painful cognitive dissonance. So when a topic, like sports, comes up that noticing the physical reality of trans people comes up they just obfuscate and point to the applause lights of "We're doing something important to blah blah blah past injustice, blah blah blah equality blah blah blah representation". It doesn't matter even a little bit to them that the ground truth of what they're arguing for is impossible to justify. That including trans women in women's sports defeats the entire purpose of the division. It is not about women's sports at all to you, it is about dissolving the category and you do not care about the costs.
It is my opinion that there is literally no such thing as an MTF trans person. It is a made up category that will not exist in two decades. It is incoherent to reason about giving or taking things away from people who share a common memetic delusion. You and your allies have created this suffering you are attempting remedy.
Saying MtF trans people don’t exist is a bizarre viewpoint - what do you call the obviously real number of people who are born male, have gender dysphoria, and are transitioning to have the characteristics of females by taking hormones and going through surgery? Those people clearly exist, and MtF is an apt descriptor, as they are going from male to female - in some cases successfully enough to pass, in some cases not. The “MtF” term is useful to distinguish between MtFs and FtMs - I don’t see any commonly used alternative words that avoid confusion (many times I’ve had to explain to people the direction of transitioning of people I know - e.g. X used to be a girl and now is a boy).
Also trans people have existed since recorded history, there’s ancient Sumerians trans priestesses called Gala, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, and kathoeys (aka Thai ladyboys) are not a recent western phenomenon.
I’m a trans woman (so not surprisingly in the pro-trans camp) and I have thought very hard about the ground truth of transgenderism, and am exceedingly aware of the physical reality of being trans - the entire point of transitioning is to have fewer of the physical traits of your natal sex, as those are what’s causing psychological distress. There’s nothing requiring cognitive dissonance there, HRT and gender reassignment surgery do make you take on the characteristics of the opposite sex, albeit not all and with varying degrees of success.
The social construct of gender is a very real thing in that other people will identify you as a man or a woman and treat you differently, and that may not align with your preferences. If you transition, your goal is then to be perceived as the opposite sex (again, you may not be successful). I don’t see how this requires any cognitive dissonance, or creates any contradictions with my position towards sports, which is allowing trans women in women’s sports if they didn’t go through male puberty or if it can be medically proven that they have no physical advantage resulting from their natal sex.
There is no epistemicly coherent method to differentiate between the experience of being a man who actually has the internal experience of a woman and being a man who mistakenly believes they have the internal experience of a woman but in fact has typical male internal experiences. The difference between the two interpretations of experience is purely memetic, as one of these interpretations leads to pathology it is a harmful meme. Taking hormones and mimicking the opposite sex is a behavior and esthetic decision and has no bearing on the person's sex. Just their presentation.
These are other memes and are nothing like actually transitioning from one sex to the other. In every one of these cultures this is a third state, usually of weaker men who could not provide being used by the other men rather than being simply killed.
You don’t transition because you have the internal experience of the opposite sex - you transition because you have distress at having the experience of your natal sex. You don’t need any exposure to the modern trans gender discourse to develop gender dysphoria, simply existing in a society with different genders is enough.
Trans people don’t believe they are actually changing their sex, which is which the term “transsexual” was abandoned in favour of “transgender”. But hormones are not purely aesthetic and feminisation/masculinisation of the brain is actually scientifically observable - not only on MRI scans but also on test scores, e.g. post HRT, visuo spatial ability is enhanced in FtMs, while verbal working memory is enhanced in MtFs (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453020301402).
If anything, I’d say trans people experience distress at their internal experience not aligning with their desired gender and post HRT it does - many anecdotal reports of how your mental state changes on estrogen or testosterone, not only from trans people but cis people who also undergo HRT (e.g. men with low T who report increased energy, confidence, etc).
As someone who has dysphoria and tried many ways to deal with it, I have yet to see any treatment that’s better than transitioning - it’s the current medical consensus for a reason - but if you know of any, feel free to link them.
This is rather misleading. While it's true in the sense that even without exposure to the discourse, there will still be individuals exhibiting dysphoria (as proven by their documented existence prior to them being exposed in mass media), it's also true that exposure to the discourse absolutely dwarfs whatever factors make someone transgender absent the exposure, as shown by the massive increase in referrals to gender clinics, and the flip in age/gender ratios of people being referred there. The fact that we can observe something similar with other disorders like anorexia, multiple personality / DID, TikTok Tourette's, or outright delusions like recovered memories or alien abductions, would also indicate that this isn't merely a case of more people coming out due to increased acceptance.
That sounds plausible, and even detransitioners talk about it, but it's an open question what it all sums up to in the grand scheme of things. For example, how come it inevitably turns out that 90% of women in communities like this turn out to be trans? How come trans bros hardly ever show up?
Hormones aren’t magic and while they will nudge you some percentage towards the neurochemistry of the opposite sex depending on age, they can’t undo years of male/female socialisation or drastically change an existing personality. If I had transitioned as a minor, I probably would have ended up with more of a “typical” female personality and I’d be on tumblr/TikTok instead.
Socialization is kind of TERFy argument, and I simply don't buy it's much of a factor. Years of "more women in STEM!" initiatives have yielded basically no results. As for personality, I thought the whole point is that trans people fit better with the personality of the opposite sex. We simply shouldn't be seeing the kind of patterns I pointed out if that was the case.
Some trans people do fit in better with the personality of the opposite sex, but some don’t; there is indeed a cluster of trans women that are attracted to women, into STEM, have interests typical of male nerds and are generally not very feminine. But AFAIK they tend to be high IQ contributing members of society and if transition improves their life and mental health, what’s the harm? The dysphoria can manifest differently but be just as real, and it’s better that they transition early than later in life when they are married and have kids, which was the average situation for female attracted trans women back in the 80s and 90s (see Blanchard’s research).
To the extent there's harm being done, I actually think it's mostly being done to trans people, rather than by them. In my tinfoilier moments I think the whole thing is an active eugenics program to get rid of the autists.
But my point is that I just don't buy the "woman trapped in a man's body thing". I do believe in dysphoria, and I am in favor of accommodating people who suffer from it, but if this is just about helping people with a disorder to alleviate their suffering, it's also fair to set boundaries, like in spas, sports, prisons, locker rooms, etc. If there was no harm in having these things be mixed sex, we wouldn't have segregated them to begin with.
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