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https://unherd.com/2023/04/is-trans-the-new-anorexia/
I’m not sure exactly how culture war-like this idea is, but I’ve never actually heard anyone else compare Anorexia with trans people before. I can see the social contagion factor in both especially for women who are much more conforming than men tend to, and because women have higher neuroticism than men. What I’m not sure about is some of the other ideas, that being trans is about self-negation and a sort of renouncing of their body.
The 'social contagion' theory isn't implausible, although I think no small number of pro-trans people would frame it instead as people who were already trans but now realized that they were and that it was possible to do something about it. And they're not exactly wrong : it's rude to make guesses about people before/unless they come out, but the transhumanist philosophy (and even transhumanist aestheticists) has had no small number of people who have had decades-long fascinations with body transformation as a form of self-improvement who weren't exactly a surprise when they turned out to be trans.
((FTM examples exist, but are small-crowd enough that I'm not hugely comfortable linking them.))
There's some important philosophical and pragmatic arguments about this even within the pro-trans framework -- not everyone who thinks those thoughts actually wants them, some who want something end up in some non-binary variant, and there are a variety of tradeoffs and physical limitations of existing technology such that even people who want to transition might be better-served by using some things and not others in a way that's getting obfuscated by a lot of mainstream discourse.
However, even outside of that, both perspectives have missed that they're looking at a metric, not a measure. You don't have a magical "this many people are trans" marker any more than you have a good definition of what being "trans" even is, but under that you don't really have good measures on even specific events. "How many people are using Tavestock" isn't the same thing as even "how many people are injecting sex hormones", as anyone who's noticed bodybuilders can guess. There already was a small industry of XX-chromosone'd people injecting testosterone, going butch as hell, and wanting to be called "sir" in the late-90s; there's some fun discussions about whether they're more trans now that they've been able to get hysterectomies easier, but it's not exactly the most practical of questions.
And there's been a lot of moving these to be higher-visibility, both in the general sense (trans pride) and in the seeing-like-a-state one (required coverage for insurance providers, changing rules for various government IDs). I don't think it's enough to explain the entire change, but it makes any attempt to use the metrics without acknowledging their limitations more than a little frustrating.
I'm a transhumanist, and my position on the whole trans issue is that I sympathize with their goals, but simply disagree that they can be realistically achieved with the current science and engineering of the time. The day when it's possible to turn a natal male or female into the other gender while being biologically indistinguishable on the metrics I care about, we have no room for disagreement at all.
I'm certainly not trans, for what that's worth.
That's potentially interesting, though there's a lot of feeling from the pro-trans side that this is a space where goalposts either get set to pretty unusual places or moved there pretty rapidly. Some of that's due to nutpicking -- one particular radfem mistaking her own silhouette for a transwoman's is nearly a year old now and still goes around the tumblr-sphere, and there's a general class of people who start grabbing the phrenologist tools -- but on the other hand at least part of the drive toward earlier transition reflects adult transitioners who had an unpleasant puberty but also had some side effects from it that were either difficult to change or incompletely changed. And a lot of trans people regularly celebrate whenever tech related to things like cloned organs or less invasive surgical interventions are proposed or developed.
On the flip side, it kinda raises a "what about now" question. Not in a 'dissolve the question' pure-philosophy sorta way, but were it an actual possible proposal would it be acceptable. Presuming no massive technological or engineering changes in the near future, would you have issues if we instead had them put X (malex?/womenx? would at least be less dumb than latinx) as gender ID, widely available transition-as-currently-developed, and otherwise only have trans-specific rules for places where those metrics you care about are directly exposed? Do you think the general populace of trans-skeptics would?
((In practice, I don't think the trans side or the trans-skeptic side has enough trust to make such a compromise, or even the group coherency to make a decision on the matter -- you're going to have different perspectives from the socon catholics, just as the average trans dude's going to have different ones from the high priests of transdom. It seems relevant to explore.))
Yeah, it's definitely far from a universal pattern among transhumanists, and not even all transhumanists with the associated philosophical and aesthetic characteristics have the pattern, and some small portion who otherwise have the pattern aren't trans or don't identify as trans (or gender-whatever).
See if it weren’t for the children angle, I’m not convinced this is worse or better than any other body modification you can do. There are people who insert horns in their heads, dye their eye-whites blue, tattoo themselves on every inch of their body, and split their tongues. They’re freaks, and they accept that as do most of the rest of us. But when you’re talking about children making permanent and life-altering decisions, the issue isn’t trans human, it’s kids not quite having the maturity to understand the gravity of their decisions. If I choose at forty to dye my eye-whites blue (yeah eyes of iblis) I’m forty, I can understand the issues in that decision. I understand I could go blind. I understand that people will see me differently, and that I’m probably not getting conventional jobs after I do it. A kid just saw Dune and thinks it looks cool.
Body dysmorphia is just plain disturbing.
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The issue is that for a lot of trans people, the goal is to look like an ordinary member of the opposite sex, not a someone with a unique appearance. And that’s achievable if the person transitions young: they aren’t going to be a freak who looks visibly different from the rest of the population, they’ll just pass as the gender they transitioned to. Meanwhile an adult transitioner is more likely to be conspicuously trans and require cosmetic surgery to look “normal” (especially in the case of MtFs).
While fewer seem to want to go “stealth” these days as opposed to in the past, many do hold conventional jobs. I know trans hairdressers, programmers, cooks, receptionists, etc, and most go through their daily life without having anybody stare at them the way people would stare at someone with horns or who tattooed their whole body.
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I might mildly dislike it, if it extends to me being forced to use neopronouns at the risk of social disapproval, because I resent being dictated to, but not enough to really care. I'm sure that most trans-sceptics would have a far more negative reaction.
If they look like a duck and fuck like a duck, I'll have no qualms about calling them ducks, but until then it'll only be a minor nuisance and my general desire to be polite means that I'd go along for the sake of people I otherwise respect.
Autistic people are overrepresented in both the Rationalist community and in trans people. I would wager that accounts for what you observe. Scott has written about that association, and wagers that it's likely due to Autistic people being more suggestible and also prone to interpreting their discomfort at the bodily signals neurotypicals take for granted and considering them a sign they're not expressing as the gender they actually are. Since Rats are also more open to experience, they might have been among the first on the bandwagon.
Wouldn’t therapeutics to simply cure gender Dysphoria or any underlying conditions be the straighter line from A to B from a technological point of view?
The idea of an “anti-Dysphoria” vaccine makes more sense than a totally lossless surgical gender swap.
I swear, bringing this up in the debate makes TRAs and their ilk more incensed than anything than anything I’ve ever written. I’ve gotten banned and sent viscous DMs for even suggesting it.
But in this theoretical, transhumanist future with shiny happy people is it not simpler and more likely that no one feels the need to transition at all due to high quality therapeutics than the 24/7 all you can eat Barbie doll body part swap meet that the medicalists seem to assume is going to pass?
FTR, my reaction to the idea of medically altering the identity bits is something like "Could you kill me in a less horrifying way, please?"
That said, my issues are more age than gender, and the mental aspect is a significant part of that (which only grows more ... perplexing... over time). The trouble though is that it's hard to define what fixing that would look like. If I'm imagining a magical mind-alteration solution, I like to include a daily "revert the alterations, reflect on how they work" period, because that crap is scary and I expect easier to get wrong than not. I have no idea how this could be accomplished in reallity, other than simulations. But I'm not sure much of mine could be resolved outside of simulations. Ugh. Reallity is better than not existing, but I still complain.
All of which is to say, I get the vicious reactions you get for suggesting altering it mentally rather than bodily. I'd prefer people not be so vicious about it (I'm here and not there for reasons), fwiw.
I think the “identity bits” is where, from my perspective, an alien morality gets smuggled in.
No one suggests that if you give someone suffering from eczema a lotion that they are committing “genocide” against the “eczema community”. But wave the magic identity wand around and everything becomes moralized.
If we could make gender Dysphoria disappear tomorrow, from the perspective of alleviating real suffering the answer should be a no brainer. The fact that answering this question causes any consternation is indicative of a bait and switch.
I’ve suffered and continue to suffer mental illness in my life, if I could make it go away and restore my brain to full function I wouldn’t hesitate. I’m not part of a “community”, I just have a condition. The fact that people build a wall called “identity” around their maladies is at best an understandable cope, at worse adding fuel to the fire.
I think the primary mission of medicine should be the restoration of natural function of a person. Much like “Free Speech” has a strict legal definition but also heavily implies a cultural attitude, same with the Hippocratic Oath; “First, do no harm.”
Helping people take care, love and accept their bodies should take complete priority over modifying a healthy, functioning body. If you have to modify, do so only with the goal to restore healthy, natural function.
To me that’s the expansive vision of the Hippocratic oath as regards to body modification, and I find it goes into direct conflict with the transhumanist / cyborg vision of (un?)humanity that to my mind, includes transgenderism.
Someone out there coined the term “trad-humanism” and that more or less seems accurate to describe my view on this.
If I'm suffering from eczema and you conditioned me to stop suffering while the outward symptoms are still there, am I cured?
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It is rightly considered hostile to suggest just removing needs. How would you like a proposal for a communist state where the need to stand out and personal achievement is mentally excised from everyone?
I think that’s rather dramatic, do you feel the same way about depressed people taking SSRIs? Adult ADHD sufferers taking adderal?
Focusing on the “identity” aspect as opposed to the clear suffering of a painful & debilitating mental condition is a mindkilled framing from my perspective.
It’s one of the most bizarre and dysfunctional aspects of (post)modern society.
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