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The scientific evidence, from what I’ve read, seems to say that both sexuality and gender identity are influenced by the exposure to prenatal androgens and other hormonal factors. Gay men and trans women would have less androgen exposure than straight men - resulting in different physiological traits such as higher digit ratio and the infamous “gay face”. A gay man will be involuntarily aroused by homosexual sexual stimuli and there’s no evidence that psychological interventions can change that baseline physiological response. All kinds of men (bisexual, or straight men in prison) can have sex with men, but for gays, their attraction is fundamental physiological trait.
Meanwhile a trans woman is a biological male with some degree of gender dysphoria that takes steps to alter their gender presentation and goes on cross-sex hormones to alleviate that dysphoria. Again, gender presentation is a choice, but the gender dysphoria itself is an involuntary (possibly hormonally caused) condition, and psychological interventions will also have limited success - trans repressors will attest to the psychological toll it takes.
One difficulty I see is distinguishing between one’s inner state and one’s actions. A man is not gay because he has sex with men, he is gay because he is attracted to men. A gay man can be married to a woman and need to fantasise about men to have sex with her, and a straight man can have sex with men (e.g. in prison, on a ship) while thinking about women. There are people that will argue that if you’re a man who has sex with men, then you’re gay, but then does that mean that men who masturbate are attracted to their own hands? That teenage boys are attracted to couches, apple pies or whatever objects that they stereotypical use as masturbation aids?
Same with gender identity, except there definitions get even more controversial (i.e. “what is a woman”). The mainstream trans orthodoxy, from what I understand, says there is an inner “gender state” that can be reflected by your gender presentation, and the inner state is what we should call man/woman/non-binary/etc. Conservatives say there’s just biological sex and someone that’s an adult human male is a man, and someone that’s an adult female human is a woman. Personally I’m not sure there is really an inner “gender identity” in the same way there’s an inner sexual orientation, but gender dysphoria is definitely a thing, and it’s possible to change your gender presentation so that other people see you as the opposite sex and consequently call you a man/woman.
I think that this is what I have read the scientists wish the evidence showed. But instead it shows little if any of that, and instead shows nothing of the sort. To the extent there is any scientific inquiry on this question (and there is little, for reasons most people understand), it appears more to show that we know basically nothing. The brain scan stuff that was hyped up early on is totally bupkiss. For both homosexuality and transness. As has the small amount of research into things like hormone imbalances. Also, both being nit very highly heritable does point to environmental causes, but whether that is in the womb, early home, puberty, etc is simply not known to any real extent.
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What about trans-identified males who profess not to experience gender dysphoria of any kind, do not medically transition, and make little if any effort to alter their gender presentation? In your opinion, are these people noncentral examples of trans women, or are they not really trans women?
People with no dysphoria who don’t medically transition but ask to be considered the opposite sex, well, I’m fairly suspicious of their motives. I’ve personally seen people like that on dating apps, and it seems to be either men who want to hook up with female-attracted trans women, or women that want to hook up with gay men; both think that just stating they’re trans but doing nothing else is enough.
I don’t think it’s useful to gatekeep trans identity too much, but I think mainstream trans views have gone too far and made the definitions useless. If you’re trans you should at least want to transition. Allowing sexual predators and fetishists to claim the label is hurting actual trans people, who just want to be seen and function as normal members of the opposite sex.
Agreed.
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Objective tests in the form of penile plethysmography exist, though they're most commonly employed to assess pedophiles in niche situations or the unlucky men with erectile dysfunction, but I agree that forcing people to take it for the purposes of giving them a certified gay card is out of the Overton Window for the foreseeable future!
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Indeed. The anthropological evidence appears to tell a different story, though.
There are 3 "genders": women, tops (as in 'dominant partner': men attempting to perform their standard sociobiological role 'properly'), and bottoms (as in 'submissive partner': all boys, and men not attempting to perform their standard sociobiological role 'properly'). One can transition between the latter two (and some men may find a niche that allows them to be successful despite not operating as a man should- but it's still an edge case for which the conditions that enable its prosperity -> visibility don't arise outside of highly dense urban areas), but never between the latter two and the first, because that is not how human bodies work.
This is why men who fuck boys in societies where that's a thing don't identify as "gay" (and why medical systems say "men who have sex with men" and not "gay"). The gender role of men is, after Maslow's Hierarchy has been mastered, to pursue whatever/whoever catches their fancy and so long as they're doing that we (provided your personal risk tolerance for disease is high enough and your culture lacks certain memes; Abramic religion being the most famous) usually don't care all that much about what that is. And while it's still somewhat of a duty to acquire a wife and maybe some kids of one's own too, dom men fucking sub men (outside of the confines of the financial relationship of marriage, or if the man is powerful enough that he doesn't have to worry about that) is not a property crime the same way fucking a virgin woman is, so it's more a curiosity than anything else.
Of course, this equilibrium can be disrupted by things like human ingenuity inherently creating conditions for an ever-shrinking top/male gender role while advancing the one for women (and the few bottom/males, but that's more a coincidence). But I can't see how putting the interests of a gender whose incentive structure is completely different on par with the gender that's still wired to work for a living would in any way change how society understands gender dynamics. If women are sufficiently incentivized to see themselves in the top/bottom structure as men do, there will be a lot more women in the bottom category, and they might completely destroy this compact in favor of... something else.
They also would, understandably, treat boys and bottom/men as women rather than their own distinct thing, but in fairness their parents didn't fully understand it either due to a meme or because they lived through the transition and didn't know what to make of it, so...
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