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Should morphology be the tie-breaker for sexual categorization?
A common tact one sees in trans skeptical circles is to put forward gametes as the tie-breaker for sexual categorization. In some ways, I like the simplicity of this solution, even as someone who is fairly pro trans. I'm not, in principle, opposed to a categorization scheme that would occasionally split transwomen and ciswomen, since I feel there's always a basic lumpers vs. splitters problem in all categorization problems, and I'm comfortable with either tiny base categories with supercategories above them, or larger categories and smaller subcategories. It's all the same, and the choice between various models of reality seems largely to be a matter of what is useful and what traits we find salient in a given context where we seek to categorize.
But I've always had a slight discomfort with the gamete-focused definition of sex. Even if we allow that sexual categorization is based on a cluster of traits, like chromosomes, genitalia, bone density, face and body shape, etc., where we're just using gametes as the tie breaker, I think we run into some problems. First, a gamete-focused definition is not naturally a binary. There are only two types of gametes, but there are technically four possible ways those two gametes could manifest:
Produces only sperm
Produces only eggs
Produces neither sperm nor eggs.
Produces sperm and eggs.
The last situation has never been observed in humans, though it is theoretically possible for a human chimera formed from a male and female zygote to fuse into a single embryo and result in a human with functional gonadal tissue of both types. We do observe ovotesticular syndome in humanity, but 50% of such cases ovulate, and only two such people have been found to produce sperm. Maybe the reason sperm and egg producing intersex conditions haven't happened is for some complex set of issues that result from such a chimera, and so it is effectively impossible.
But even ignoring that, it leaves us with three categories, not two. Now, there isn't actually an a priori reason to expect there to be exactly two sexes in humans, especially when we observe fungi like Coprinellus disseminatus, which has 143 different mating types that can each mate with any of the other mating types besides its own, but most people's intuition before they do any fancy book learning is that there are two sexes, so it seems unsatisfying to have a tie breaker that seems to naturally produce three categories.
Now, it's possible someone will object here that I have framed the problem wrong. Maybe the true proposal for sex categorization is not to use gametes as a tie breaker at all. Given that there seems to be an impulse in some trans skeptics to say that, for example, a trans women who has had her testes removed is still a man, one might conclude that, while gametes are (one of) the most important factor(s) in sex categorization, it is not actually the tie breaker. Maybe they will say that it is a much more fuzzy, amorphous categorization scheme based on a a wide variety of traits, and even lacking the ability to produce gametes altogether doesn't result in a sexless/third-sex categorization if a person has enough other traits common to either of the two (only two) sexes.
Or, they might put forward that it is actually some abstraction like "natural tendency to produce gametes" that is the true tie breaker, and not a person's current ability to produce gametes at all. A eunuch is not sexless, or some third sex - they are always a man, albeit a maimed man. This might still leave us with some problems in classifying people who are naturally infertile and don't produce gametes as mature adults (especially in the case of intersex conditions like ovotesticular syndrome where infertility is common and sex characteristics are mixed), but if that abstraction is truly a tie breaker and not the entirety of sex it would still rescue the idea of there being two sexes in humans.
I grant that either of these approaches could, in theory, rescue a truly two sex humanity.
But there is another misgiving that I have with such a framing, and it applies to all three of these models.
If gametes or some abstraction of them are an important component in sex categorization, then we get an entire class of epistemological problems surrounding sex categorization. I do not have the time or means to sequence the DNA, collect the gametes or see the genitals of every human being I interact with. And yet, my intuition is that I'm reasonably certain about the sex of most of the people I interact with in everyday situations. Here one might be able to make some arguments from evolutionary psychology, or the likelihood that there is some sort of sex categorizing module innate to humans that needed to be fairly accurate in order for humans to successfully mate with compatible mates. Maybe the bias towards thinking there are only two sexes goes fairly deep into human biology and psychology.
But such a "sex categorizing module" doesn't really solve the epistemological issue. Evolution is "lazy" and frequently does a hack job with its solutions. I find women attractive, I love boobs and cute feminine faces and the like. But I still find f1nnst5r, a male crossdresser, attractive in many of his photos. It turns out, it's much harder to code a computationally light sex categorizer when your only lever is whether the genes for your sex categorizer get passed on to the next generation. As long as guys who are attracted to femboys tend to also have sex with fertile women, the mesaoptimzer within you doesn't need to be perfect - just good enough.
All this to say, we can do better than the sex categorizing module in our brain. But if we try this route, we are forced to conclude that we don't know the sexes of most of the people we interact with. Sure, we can go the Bayesian route, and say based on base rates of the sex categorization module in our brain, checked against population-wide data, we can be 98% sure of a person's sex, regardless of definition being used. It might even be an isolated demand for rigor to expect more than 98% certainty. After all, humans also have a "face recognition module" that sometimes sees faces in tree bark and clouds, and yet we trust it to see human faces all of the time.
But I think if we do go the Bayesian route of trying to justify using the "sex categorization module" in the brain, we have actually conceded that the most important thing is actually how a person looks, their sexual morphology. Now obviously, a person could want biological children, and so, for reasons separate from their sex categorization module, care about about whether a particular person they are with is able to carry children, or produce sperm, but that would be something that only matters for potential romantic partners. For ordinary shop keepers and people you pass on the street, the only thing that really matters is the "sex categorization module."
Now, I'll concede that if this is accepted, non-passing trans people would have to be classed as their assigned sex at birth. That's almost exactly what it means to be non-passing in the first place - most people's sex categorization modules see you as the sex you were assigned at birth. But in the case of passing trans people, it would tend to mean that we can lean in to our wonky evolution-addled brains, and accept what we see at first glance. Of course, when we're going to interact with people frequently in our social circle, we could accept nicknames and nickpronouns, and allow these to override our brain's sex categorization modules, but that is a separate discussion.
I actually agree with you. I’m happy to call any transwoman who passes a woman.
However, I have never encountered a truly passing transwoman. Ever. Perhaps 5% can pass in (posed) pictures. Maybe 1% can pass on video. 0% in real life, where the tiny tells and minutiae of body language are a clear giveaway every single time. Put me in a room with 999 cis women and 1 transwoman, and after 5 minutes of conversation with each I’ll be able to identify the latter.
Go on /r/transpassing and sort by top all time. Even the MOST passing transwomen on Reddit as voted for by their own peers don’t pass. And that’s in posed photos!
Nobody truly passes.
Maybe you personally have an extremely good ability to detect trans women, but most people don’t. Plenty of trans women don’t arouse suspicion in their daily lives, some are able to go stealth, some are able to have medical professionals think they’re biological women and get asked about pregnancy/periods (a real anecdote). Have you not heard stories of straight men flipping out once they’re told the woman they’re attracted to/slept with is trans? E.g. this story of a teen flirting with a trans woman, them going to his hotel room, then going back to hers and violently beating her once she says she’s trans, because he had no idea and felt humiliated.
There are very very few trans people. The fact that any can be clocked in public is evidence that a decent portion of them do not pass. The Canadian census says they are only 0.3% of people age 15 and up (closer to 0.1% for those over 50). And that's including nonbinary (aka trend chasers). You are three times more likely to meet a schizophrenic than a trans person. If you are seeing enough to notice they don't pass, the fact that you're noticing them at all is proof that a large portion of them do not pass. I've been on /lgbt/, I've seen the photos on trans subreddits, profile pictures on twitter, and from lesbian dating apps. These are not cherrypicked sources, they are as close to the modal trans person as you can get. There is a sea of obvious men in dresses, and a few who are young enough/got enough surgery and drugs that they can fool someone, at least in a photo. This mythical mass of unclockable transwomen going about their lives incognito simply does not exist. This becomes even easier in certain male-dominated spaces. 100% of "female" doom modders and professional foreigner starcraft players are transgender. I wouldn't be surprised if 70-90% of "female" speedrunners are transgender. Certainly they outnumber ciswomen massively.
"Straight" being the operative word. I have about as much confidence in their straightness as that French spy who somehow didn't notice the Chinese spy he had sex with for years was a man (intact, even!) More likely they are deeply closeted gays, got drunk/high enough that they took a transwoman to bed after their inhibitions were lowered, then the cognitive dissonance became overwhelming, and they lashed out because they have deep emotional problems. Chasers claim they're straight too, doesn't make it true.
Chasers aren’t gay, they’re GAMP (gynandromorphile), meaning they’re attracted to the combination of female and male traits, generally a standard female body + male genitalia. Genital arousal studies have been made on this.
Also this reflects my experience, the type of man I attract as a trans woman is different from the type of man I attracted as a gay man. The former type is genuinely attracted to femininity - they love when I wear make-up, lingerie, or otherwise act feminine, whereas gay men don’t care about that one bit and are often actively turned off.
I’m fine dating bisexual men so I don’t care too much, unlike some trans women who are absolutely obsessed with getting straight men to validate their femininity. But I couldn’t date a gay man.
Just like the gay men who usually are turned off by displays of femininity so are most GAMP turned off by overtly masculine features.
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I don't condone such violence and cried during 'Boys don't cry', but I think this points to something important that I'm not hearing in the debate. Being trans and trying to pass is a deeply ambivalent stance both for the trans person and those they engage with. Because I am a scientific realist I recognize the difference between someone appearing as a woman and being a woman. If a man appearing as a woman were to encounter me in a romantic sense and not disclose that, I would count it as a deep betrayal. I hope I wouldn't react violently but I would feel violated in some way. This is no judgement on the man and their choice necessarily but when the rubber hits the road, ie biology becomes relevant, then it's fundamentally dishonest to pass yourself as something your not.
Also the psychological stance of trying to pass and worrying about it seems burdensome for the individual and an example of iatrogenic harm. People that are clearly trans and don't pass actually are much easier to accommodate and I can imagine might find relationship building outside their immediate identity more psychologically natural, though this is just a guess.
What exactly is the harm in a trans woman passing as a woman? I agree that you should disclose to your romantic partner and medical professional, but otherwise, why do you owe work colleagues, acquaintances, random service workers on the streets the need to know your biological sex?
But out of curiosity, why would you feel violated if you were attracted to a woman and found out she was trans? By a romantic sense, are you talking about just going on a date, or having sex? In either case, how exactly were you harmed? You were attracted to her, had a presumably enjoyable experience (assuming she is post-op)… so what pushes you towards wanting to inflict violence on her?
I personally would always disclose to a romantic or sexual partner, and would keep doing so even if I was stealth and post-op, both out of principle and desire for my own safety. But I still don’t see how you are harmed in this interaction. There’s certainly straight men out there who have no problem having sex with trans women and don’t let it impact their sexuality, and some who aren’t into it at all but just politely decline and move on.
I have no problem with those that choose to experience sex with trans, all the power to them. It's not my cup of tea because I like women, real women, that sounds somehow prejudiced or old fashioned but if you believe sex is real then it actually means something. I viscerally would not want to have sex with a man, and especially a man pretending to be a woman. This is just me and is no reflection on the other person.
The harm I've tried to tell you is deceiving me with appearance. A man passing as a woman can not have babies, and is inhabiting a psychology of pretense that creates a distance that fails the test of intimacy at the first hurdle as far as I'm concerned. It's just not how I'm built I'm afraid.
Now if people disclose, that's entirely another matter. I have no problem with people in all their variety. I'd question whether the person couldn't have found another way that didn't involve medical intervention but I'd take them as they are, I wouldn't likely consider romantic involvement but Id be happy to partake in conversation if they're interesting. But the body to me is not just a sack of meat, it is the primary link to reality and a failure to accept it seems to me like a failure to truly accept oneself. That probably sounds judgemental but it's how I orient to life. Be gay, be a feminine man, be gender non-conforming but why change your body drastically with all the attendant risks, or if someone is trans why would they pretend to be something that they are not - if someone is not born a woman, how could they ever know whether they are a woman? The most one that person could know as far as I can tell is that they feel comfortable appearing as a woman. Well why would they hide that truth in the pretending to be a woman?
Sex alone doesn’t govern your attraction. You’re not attracted to ovary ducts or XX chromosomes, you’re attracted to the female phenotype. Otherwise you’d be attracted to the very good looking trans men I linked earlier.
Getting called a man, especially a “man pretending to be a woman”, is distressing for trans women. That is why many attempt to pass. It’s also a way to avoid the negative attention that being a visibly trans person can bring - many people are hostile towards trans women, but if they see you as a regular woman, you’ll be safer.
Personally, I’m hoping that one day we have the technology to have good enough sex changes that trans women are indistinguishable from cis women including in terms of reproductive capabilities. At that point, would you still say they are men pretending to be women, or would you agree that they are men who have turned into women?
Why should I accept it when I can change it? The option is literally there, it’s not perfect but it made a noticeable improvement in my life.
If anything, accepting being trans is what took the most courage. I tried to deny it for years, and tried to be something I wasn’t.
Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. I couldn’t stand my body before I transitioned, now I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror. Life is short, and the option not to have a body I despise is literally right there. Why shouldn’t I take it? What’s the upside of being miserable?
Now, I can have real relationships, I can enjoy sex, I can be a lot more intimately fulfilled than I used to be. I’m grateful for all the physical changes I am experiencing, a marked difference from how I dreaded puberty (I may not know what it’s like to be a woman, but I certainly know what it’s like to become more of a man by going through male puberty and male aging, and that was an awful experience).
Right, he clearly isn't looking inside someone's chromosomes to tell what sex they are. I think @ShariaHeap probably thinks something like this:
He's attracted to the female phenotype, and maybe trans women can manage to fool him, by mimicking that. But there are other factors that he might want in someone attractive, like having ordinary genitalia, or maybe being able to bear children, or maybe just that he wants to be in a relationship with a woman on a level other than what's attractive, and doesn't think that passing is sufficient to count for that. (and knowledge can affect attraction, as well)
And then by passing and attempting to be in a romantic relationship with him, the hypothetical trans person would be wasting his time by holding out in front of the appearance of a relationship he wants, that in actual fact he can't have.
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I'm not discounting your experience, it sounds like it is working out for you.
I am describing my private mental experience of finding out that someone who I thought was a woman, was not. Im not at all convinced that I wouldn't suspect it in any case.
Perhaps the man 'pretending to be' is overdoing it, 'identifying as' is kinder. And I'm not necessarily talking about public life, but private spaces. I don't know why someone would hide that info and I find it condescending, or even infantilising for people to agree that trans identified are that sex, and self-denying of the person to deny their actual situation.
More broadly on the topic, i think that society should change to be more accepting generally of difference. It feels like a regression from social liberal goals to accept that hiding as a woman is the best path. We also don't know enough about the effectiveness of transition to push it as a culture. Its not ubiquitous that people experience relief, some people suffer regret, ongoing medical problems and persistent dysphoria post-transition. I'm worried about the child safe-guarding implications of pushing transition to younger ages so boys can look more girlish and pass better and I think we should run solid research that tests other approaches and gives us a more robust evidence base. We should seek to understand body-identity issues better and investigate why the rates are increasing.
None of this happens if we adopt a trans-human stance and push trans as a solution as a culture. We are not even currently measuring the desistors well.
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Yeah, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for attraction. You can't claim it's bigotry just because it excludes you.
Aren't there a whole bunch of trans women who claim to have no dysphoria, and isn't using dysphoria for gatekeeping seen as bigoted?
For the same reason we tend to think it's better for people with other forms of body dysmorphia to accept their body rather than change it. The option for them to modify their body is also literally there, and for a person who doesn't like their leg the result of amputation is probably more perfect than a typical result of transition.
I admit I always had trouble understanding dysphoria, but I can concede there's some amount of people for who transitioning is the best option. OTOH it seems obvious that the option to accept your body the way it is, is far superior when it's available.
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If you had to put rough numbers on 'percent of trans people that pass' (among some specific groups of trans people, and for some specific groups of observers), what would they be?
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Interesting that you mention this.
There's a pattern in certain "women-only" public online spaces (like lolcow.farm for example) where people get quite paranoid about trying to identify which posters are actually male and which aren't. "That's a male way of writing", "that's a male opinion to hold", etc.
On the one hand, it's not surprising that a dynamic like this would develop in an anonymous or pseudonymous online space. If you want to have a community for only X, but the only way to identify if someone is an X or not is by their writing, then that's fertile ground for people to start making accusations. The interesting thing rather is that it would be harder for this dynamic to take root in a hypothetical "male-only" forum. It seems to me that there is no particular male way of thinking or male way of writing - a man can be anything (except, perhaps, a woman).
Similarly with your example of trying to identify the one trans person in a room. I'm not at all confident that I would by able to identify the one FTM in a room of men (even trying my best to ignore the fact that T can make FTMs look very convincing on a purely physical level). I don't know of any special pattern of "male behavior" that I could look for. There are loquacious men and terse men, autistic men and flamboyantly gay men, frat boys and feminine types and everything in between. Maybe if I asked pointed questions about gender relations and politics then I could be pretty accurate. But if all I had to go on was "tiny tells and minutiae of body language"? No way. And I don't think that's just me being on the spectrum - I think men are just too varied in their presentation and comportment.
I think there's this idea, consciously or unconsciously, that women have a certain special "it" factor (an "it" that could, among other things, identify them as women to other women, as you suggest), and this idea helps explain both why some MTFs want to transition in the first place (they want to have "it") and also why people react so negatively to MTFs: they're transgressing on restricted territory in the social-symbolic space that doesn't belong to them.
FTMs don't draw the same ire because maleness is the position of universality rather than particularity. A man can be anything and anyone can be a man (sort of). It's a public park rather than a gated community.
The "it" is basically automatic Wonderfulness, an automatic halo effect. Hence why MTF trans garner much more controversy than FTM.
MTFs are often viewed as attempting to steal the valor of women, attempting to co-opt the Wonderfulness, privileges, and protections usually afforded to women. In contrast, FTMs are attempting life on a more difficult setting, which may just garner an understanding pat-on-the-back from the bros.
Sometimes TERFs and the like have momentary blue screens of deaths where they wonder "Are we the baddies? Is my opposition to MTF transsexuals rooted in... misandry?"
Maleness is open league. Sports provide literal examples of open leagues, where “men’s” professional sports teams are actually sex-agnostic. It's not the case for women's sports, e.g., the WNBA, WTA, etc., spaces carved out for women to play.
Bathrooms are another example. Men using women's bathrooms is far less accepted than women using men's bathrooms. It's pretty much a regular occurrence in nightlife, that women will use men's bathrooms. It's also another opportunity for chicks to double dip in attention whoring and advertising their wares for male attention: Ugh, why are these thirsty scrotes staring at us while we elephant-walk past them to use their bathroom.
Doesn't sound reasonable, TERFS are usually down with the misandry.
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Will your opinion change when technology advances enough that biological cis women are no longer necessary for reproduction?
Already you sure maleness has no privilege in and out of itself? By default, men are taken far more seriously in professional situations, have medical professionals disbelieve their medical conditions less often, get sexually harassed a lot less, and the ability to cooperate easily with other men is a certainly advantage. It depends on what you’re after, but if you’re trying to say, be a successful businessperson, being a woman can be a double edged sword - the extra attention you get from men comes with strings attached. As a male if you have an investor or customer interested in you, you can be pretty sure it’s because they’re interested in the business and not because they want to sleep with you.
Also, why does it make you angry? What impact is there on your life that some trans women out there pass and get treated socially as women?
Men are also more likely to be abandoned to their fate if they are marginal (see the homelessness rates) and I don't see why I'd give men "privilege" for the ability to cooperate with each other unless I also gave them a malus for being more likely to violently assault one another and attribute the absence of that amongst women to "female privilege".
IME few feminist or purveyor of privilege theory do this. In fact, they seem to do the opposite: men's heightened risk of assault and violence and longer prison sentences are the result of "toxic masculinity" (with the not-subtle implication that it is men's fault and issue, unlike problems that impact women) and women are EDIT: not privileged for avoiding it.
What if I, as a man, want to be a successful kindergarten teacher?
A stay-at-home dad?
And what about all of the benefits that can come from leveraging sexuality? Or just the general "women are wonderful" effect?
“Privilege” is a loaded word and I personally don’t like it.
My point is that maleness has intrinsic advantages. So does femaleness. Those advantages may be more or less relevant to you, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any drawbacks; an advantage in one area does not necessarily nullify a disadvantage in another.
Historically, men’s ability to co-operate in large hierarchical social structures was hugely beneficial, and the aggression was harnessed towards the “enemy”. That competitive streak can still be an advantage today.
Men are generally more aggressive due to testosterone and a culture that perpetuates and encourages male aggression. Women tend to be hyper vigilant about the risks of being assaulted while men are the opposite - I had a lot of guys surprised at how I’m always paranoid walking alone at night or being suspicious of male strangers.
Women would be more likely to be successful at those, yes. Pros and cons.
As I said, double edged sword. Not everyone is comfortable with leveraging their sexuality and there are risks; some men will blacklist you because you didn’t sleep with them, and sleeping your way to the top is a reputation hazard. Wouldn’t you rather be valued for your skills and abilities rather than your success be based on how much men want to have sex with you? The latter is quite dehumanising.
Here's a claim I'll put out there: men are already largely valued by how much women want to have sex with them. Or speaking more precisely, there are certain markers of social fluency / status / desirability that matter more, when it comes to making snap social judgments regarding a man's value, than his skills and abilities. This is where you get anecdotes like this one related in Chapter 3 of Volume I of Feynman's Lectures on Physics, in which the nuclear scientist's girlfriend laughs at his attempt to demonstrate value through his (scientific) skills and abilities. Or alternatively, all the scoffing and schadenfreude-ing at Minecraft creator Notch for leading a life of loneliness despite creating the best-selling video game in history (although that can be argued to be driven by sour grapes ("I might not be friggin' rich like him, but at least I get poon!") and general antipathy towards his politics). Actually, it might be more apt to say in men's case that they are devalued by how much women don't want to have sex with them.
[ Note, by the way, that I'm talking about "value" here rather than "success" (the latter of which I'm taking to mean "success in a corporate / academic / career context", given that words like "skills and abilities" and "success" tend to be used more in that domain these days rather than, for instance "skills and abilities as a parent" or "skills and abilities as a Little League coach"), because I don't believe that career success and the like for women is all too tied to sex appeal. Here's an anecdote, but most high-achieving Women In STEM that I see are not lookers, to say the least. I've heard similar from people in other "intelligence-heavy" (so to speak) fields such as law. Now, maybe the situation is different in more public-facing or "soft-skills"-heavy roles like marketing or management - but frankly, we know that men in those areas are also selected for attractiveness. So if the claim is that women are only able to advance in their careers to the extent that they're attractive, then that's a claim that I personally don't buy. (I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.) ]
But returning to the original idea: if women value me because they all wanted to have sex with me - well, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world by me. Of course, one could note that sex is for men what commitment is for women, and say that a fairer analogy would be to say "how would you feel if women valued you to the extent that they found you emotionally useful?" In that case, I wouldn't be quite as happy; but to say that this analogy would be fairer would be to ignore a key component of what it means for a man to be sexually attracted to a woman. It's the same component that's ignored when women get mad at guys for asking them on dates after a long period of friendship: "Uggh, he only wanted to use me for sex?" No: for a man (going by my own experiences and those of other men I know), when you're attracted to a woman sexually, then everything about her becomes more attractive. Her jokes become funnier; her insights more profound. It leads to a self-reinforcing feedback loop of attraction (because when these other qualities become more attractive, then this raises the level of physical attraction as well). Take that into consideration and being valued as a woman because a guy wants to have sex with you seems pretty nice, given that it comes as a package deal with him valuing you as an intellect and a wit.
Then again, this entire post is largely a "grass is greener"-type situation, now, isn't it. I do stand by the claims that "men are devalued by how much women don't want to have sex with them" and "being valued as a woman for your sexual attractiveness is pretty nice", but I understand that it's not necessarily all peaches and cream.
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I'm not sure if I'm just reading more into the word choice than is warranted, but I'm not sure how it could be dehumanizing. Men mostly aren't interested in having sex with non-humans, and furthermore, that's a pretty critical part of how we make more humans, which is a pretty significant aspect of being a human. Perhaps it'd be insulting in certain contexts, in that it feels better if one's own success in a field is from one's competence in the field rather than one's sexual attractiveness (holding incompetence constant, it's also an open question if it's preferable to have success in the field due to one's sexual attractiveness compared to having non-success in the field due to one's incompetence being accurately assessed). But I don't see how it's dehumanizing. I'd see it as the exact opposite, if anything.
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I completely agree with you on FTM transitioners. They don't really interest me, they're not what the debate is about and nobody except butch lesbians upset that most of their peers are becoming transmen cares all that much about them as an issue.
I mean, I care because I want them kicked out of gay spaces.
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To be fair, this is not as strong a point as you're making it out to be, given that you already know that each of these people is trans by virtue of the subreddit's name. I agree that many of these pictures look obvious but I'm not sure whether I'd have the same confidence if these were presented in a gallery of portraits of random cis and trans people.
On the rest I agree entirely. It reminds me of this post by @Walterodim. For any given measure men can come arbitrarily close to the female standard, but combine multiple and the difference becomes clear as day almost every time. From a probably highly curated sample like the top posts from your link a number could plausibly be women going by the image alone, but I've never met someone in real life where the full package including voice, stature, body build etc. didn't tip me off immediately.
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The obvious point is that you only notice the non-passing transwomen, so of course you can identify 100% of the non-passing transwomen whom you correctly identified as being transwomen.
I 100% agree that the posted photos of transwomen on reddit rely heavily on makeup, clothing, lighting, and camera angles. And even then, most aren't that great. However, it's my understanding that people who transition before puberty are in much better shape.
You can notice a range of transwomen, some of whom pass better than others. Based on this, you can make deductions that extrapolate the size of the group that passes perfectly, even if you can't directly see them.
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Ability to orgasm seems orthogonal to the quality of one's shape to me. Inability to reproduce seems more relevant, if we're talking about sexual function.
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This downside pales in comparison to the downside that puberty might be one of the most likely things to naturally resolve the issue in the first. The false positive rate is hugely important here.
I’m not sure what you’re saying- that puberty takes away the ability to orgasm(uh, it kind of does the opposite for most people?)
I'm saying that puberty may be what cures some large amount of people of their gender dysphoria. The studies showing how few kids who go on blockers desist are evidence to this. And while not being able to orgasm is quite a problem I'd rank the possibility that we're committing many people who would have desisted to be trans anyways even higher.
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It’s very important to note that most trans teens on puberty blockers do actually start puberty before they go on them, so the effect isn’t total.
There are some very rare cases where a transwoman is ‘fully’ able to avoid male puberty. Jazz Jennings is a good example. Does she pass? I think it’s a more complicated answer than just ‘yes’; she has very broad shoulders as an adult for her build, at least from the 5 minutes of YouTube footage I just watched.
One thing that Jazz and quite a lot of very-early transitioners who are sometimes considered to pass (eg. NikkieTutorials) have in common is that they’re very much overweight. This obscures many minor and moderate physical differences between sexes, and softens out parts of the masculine facial structure.
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