Transgenderism

[HanoiVillan]

born without the sock chromosome

[Stevo985]

18 minutes ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

Can you though? I ask this from a genuine place of ignorance on the subject. If I can't even reference the fact that he used to be called Ellen (dead naming?) can I just say their biological sex is female without fear of social reprisal?

 

Deadnaming is a tricky one, but it's really separate to the point. But from my understanding it's generally fine if it's an accident. If someone is deliberately using someone's previous name then that's when it's an issue as it's rightly seen as deliberately disrespectful.

 

And yes I believe you can say someone's biological sex is female, but again the context is important. If you said his biological sex is female but he identifies as a male then nobody will bat an eyelid I would have thought. 
If you said "I don't recognise her as male because her biological sex is female" then it's obviously totally different.

 

Think of it like race. A black man wouldn't have an issue with me referring to him as a black man if the context is appropriate. If the context is inappropriate then there may be an issue

[maqroll]

I read a simple poll question recently that asked "Are there more than two genders"? Loaded question these days. If I were to answer the question in a biological sense, I'd have to say that there are two genders, but that doesn't cut it in universities these days, and saying so will get you outcast. I'm sympathetic to the nuances of gender fluidity as it pertains to self-identification. There were a few gay kids in my elementary school who were definitely born that way, but it didn't make them female. 

Just because you intrinsically identify with the opposite gender from which you were born doesn't make you that gender. While I do believe homosexuality is biological and transgenderism is also a biological force to a degree (people are born that way and often feel different as children), there is not a "third sex", is there? Am I missing a fundamental element in tis argument? Has a third gender been discovered?

The girls athletics debate- don't they have a point that it's unfair if a testosterone-fueled person with hairy testicles dominates an event as a "woman" or "girl"?

 

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, maqroll said:

I read a simple poll question recently that asked "Are there more than two genders"? Loaded question these days. If I were to answer the question in a biological sense, I'd have to say that there are two genders, but that doesn't cut it in universities these days, and saying so will get you outcast. I'm sympathetic to the nuances of gender fluidity as it pertains to self-identification. There were a few gay kids in my elementary school who were definitely born that way, but it didn't make them female. 

Just because you intrinsically identify with the opposite gender from which you were born doesn't make you that gender. While I do believe homosexuality is biological and transgenderism is also a biological force to a degree (people are born that way and often feel different as children), there is not a "third sex", is there? Am I missing a fundamental element in tis argument? Has a third gender been discovered?

The girls athletics debate- don't they have a point that it's unfair if a testosterone-fueled person with hairy testicles dominates an event as a "woman" or "girl"?

 

Intersex

I think we’ve covered this a bit previously, up stream in this thread.

Whether you are talking about chromosomes or whether you are talking about having balls, there are more than two options.

Some kids get assigned a sex at birth, that is, it’s not obvious at birth ‘what they are’ when you just think boy / girl, foof / winky. So sometimes there is surgery and they are declared male or female and it later transpires it’s far more complicated than that.

Old fashioned word for you ‘hermaphrodite’.

Probably also mentioned upstream I’d have thought, the runner Caster Semenya, investigated to see if she ‘qualified’ as a female. It took them about a year to decide?

That would suggest there’s more to it than a simple binary choice. 

 

[villa4europe]

There was a pic of Elliot Page doing the rounds at the weekend... 6 packing hell!!

[Stevo985]

3 hours ago, maqroll said:

I read a simple poll question recently that asked "Are there more than two genders"? Loaded question these days. If I were to answer the question in a biological sense, I'd have to say that there are two genders, but that doesn't cut it in universities these days, and saying so will get you outcast. I'm sympathetic to the nuances of gender fluidity as it pertains to self-identification. There were a few gay kids in my elementary school who were definitely born that way, but it didn't make them female. 

Just because you intrinsically identify with the opposite gender from which you were born doesn't make you that gender. While I do believe homosexuality is biological and transgenderism is also a biological force to a degree (people are born that way and often feel different as children), there is not a "third sex", is there? Am I missing a fundamental element in tis argument? Has a third gender been discovered?

The girls athletics debate- don't they have a point that it's unfair if a testosterone-fueled person with hairy testicles dominates an event as a "woman" or "girl"?

 

There's 2 sexes.

There's more than 2 genders.

[mjmooney]

39 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

There's 2 sexes.

There's more than 2 genders.

Perhaps we need to redefine that as: 

(Except in a very few rare cases) there are two sexes. 

There are no genders. 

There are just people. 

[Rugeley Villa]

15 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Perhaps we need to redefine that as: 

(Except in a very few rare cases) there are two sexes. 

There are no genders. 

There are just people, and Blues fans 

Fixed 

[a m ole]

15 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Perhaps we need to redefine that as: 

(Except in a very few rare cases) there are two sexes. 

There are no genders. 

There are just people. 

Ideally, I think a big cause of gender dysphoria is the idea that there’s one way to be based on your genitals. I’ve always thought that if society was more accepting of kids and people being how they want to be there would be less people who identify as a different gender as they’re not brought up with that construct in the first place, although it’s just a theory.

 

[a m ole]

17 hours ago, villa4europe said:

There was a pic of Elliot Page doing the rounds at the weekend... 6 packing hell!!

isn’t it interesting that a year ago they wouldn’t have been allowed to show his nipples?

[Chindie]

On 29/11/2020 at 18:22, icouldtelltheworld said:

The outcome of this trial 

on Tuesday may have a significant impact on the prescription of puberty blockers and treatment of gender dysphoria in children under the age of 17. Legal action has been brought against the Tavistock gender clinic by an ex-patient who now regrets undergoing hormone treatment and claims that they should have been challenged more vigorously by health professionals. At the heart of the issue is the degree to which children can give consent to treatment and the suitability of the affirmation model advocated by groups such as Mermaids and Stonewall. As with so much of this topic, this is a messy and complex issue that will likely be the source of much debate for a long time to come.

Overturned at appeal.

Headed to the Supreme Court shortly no doubt.

[ender4]

13 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Overturned at appeal.

Headed to the Supreme Court shortly no doubt.

strange that the cut-off is under 17, not 16 or 18 like most other things.

[foreveryoung]

Pleease let this topic drop off the page again, before I make a comment.

Edited September 17, 2021 by foreveryoung

[chrisp65]

Oooh Friday night teasers…

[Rds1983]

3 hours ago, ender4 said:

strange that the cut-off is under 17, not 16 or 18 like most other things.

Probably over simplifying things but I have always wondered why there are varying age cut-off for things such as this and also driving, buying alcohol, gambling, voting, getting married, having sex etc. Why isn't there just one set cut-off for all of it?

Mostly due to wondering why at 16 you're old enough to have sex but not drive or get drunk? 

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

Probably over simplifying things but I have always wondered why there are varying age cut-off for things such as this and also driving, buying alcohol, gambling, voting, getting married, having sex etc. Why isn't there just one set cut-off for all of it?

Mostly due to wondering why at 16 you're old enough to have sex but not drive or get drunk? 

There was an MP on the TV during the Afghanistan exit that was lamenting the pressure our poor 17 year old brave soldiers were under.

I couldn’t help thinking that if we really had put 17 year olds on that front line, we were kind of despicable.

Of course I guess the MP might have been a liar.

You can vote at 16 in Monmouth, but have to wait another 2 years if you live up the road in Ross.

[Rds1983]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

There was an MP on the TV during the Afghanistan exit that was lamenting the pressure our poor 17 year old brave soldiers were under.

I couldn’t help thinking that if we really had put 17 year olds on that front line, we were kind of despicable.

Of course I guess the MP might have been a liar.

You can vote at 16 in Monmouth, but have to wait another 2 years if you live up the road in Ross.

Hadn't considered the military but that is an interesting one. 

I have no idea what the answer is in any of this but there does seem to be better ways to do some of it. 

[Eidolon]

Well by and large this thread is a lot less of a dumpster fire than these things can often be on the internet, well done guys

Me personally, I don't get bent out of shape over terms like biological sex. Terms like A(M/F)AB (assigned male/female at birth respectively) are great short hand and are probably the easiest ways to avoid arguments though.

As long as people extend common courtesy to me and understand that my birth name is legally not my name any more so I probably am not going to respond to it as they would any other person they might meet in their day to day who has changed it for whatever reason (like getting it off a vacuum cleaner) then that's good with me although I view that more as manners than a trans thing.

I think some of 'us' can respond to the real dangers and crap we do get for being trans by going out of our way to be a bit precious over certain things which I don't think helps anyone at all. You aren't going to win any friends by yelling and branding people bigots at the drop of a hat for relatively minor shit on a topic that a lot of people don't have exposure to and I think we'd get a lot closer to where we want to be without doing that so much as you see. As far as bathrooms go I kind of err on the side of you should probably go with whichever bathroom you pass as, if the average person on the street would look at you and think 'that's a woman' use that one and if its the other way around then use a stall in the mens...why risk making people uncomfortable for something so minor? The whole toilet thing is such an overblown issue though and I think can sometimes get in the way of actual problems like access to employment, health care and consistently being taken seriously by law enforcement in cases of violence against us.

FWIW on the topic of how early a kid should be able to start transitioning my take is more on the side that kids shouldn't be prescribed anything more than puberty blockers until they are at least 16. Most kids by and large don't know what they want and its strikes a good balance of not leaving them in a position where changes might happen that are hard to counteract medically (breast growth, hair, facial bone structure etc) if you do decide that transitioning is necessary when you are more equipped to make an informed decision on your long term future. This would still allow you to pretty much kickstart puberty again without having done anything but delayed those physical changes by just coming off the blockers and a short course of your body's naturally occurring hormones if you decide that maybe you weren't as set on it as you thought. The topic of trans regret is a relatively uncommon occurrence as it is, it does happen but it's always very much the minority response in surveys of trans people of either persuasion with the vast majority of us responding that transitioning has been pretty much life saving and a lot more self harm and suicides coming from either a sense that you might have missed the boat to get the transition you want (this is becoming more of a problem though with kids getting frankly unrealistic transition goals from social media and stuff like that) and other factors trans people ( trans women in particular) are at increased risk of i.e addiction, sexual violence and exploitation, abuse, bullying and garden variety depression.

For me personally I first thought I was going to transition at 12 and that never wavered and now I couldn't be happier but I have friends who realised maybe they just didn't enjoy what society expects of a masculine or feminine person and HRT would have definitely not been right for them. A good friend of mine is a ballet dancer and made the good point that her dance training did more to impact how her body actually grew in regards to bone structure, musculature and joints than puberty blockers do and I doubt you are going to see dance studios in court any time soon for warping kids bodies for life.

EDIT: Edited to clean up my sleepy spelling and grammar mistakes from this morning and make my ideas more coherent. Thanks for all the nice feedback guys :3

Edited September 18, 2021 by Eidolon
General tidying up

[chrisp65]

So much of this subject appears to regularly come around to which toilet to be seen to be using.

Makes me feel like the problem is at least partly toilet design.

Our local schools were split boy school / girl school until recently. Now they’ve split them east of town / west of town, mixed sex. They’ve knocked the front wall out of the toilet blocks so you’ve essentially got an open shared wash area and private cubicles. No need for boy girl symbols on doors. Such a silly little thing, but a trauma removed for some people.

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So much of this subject appears to regularly come around to which toilet to be seen to be using.

Makes me feel like the problem is at least partly toilet design.

Our local schools were split boy school / girl school until recently. Now they’ve split them east of town / west of town, mixed sex. They’ve knocked the front wall out of the toilet blocks so you’ve essentially got an open shared wash area and private cubicles. No need for boy girl symbols on doors. Such a silly little thing, but a trauma removed for some people.

I think @Xelawould never have made it out of school, he'd have been traumatised by the age of 12

Girls being able to hear his private impression of carpet bombing Dresden might just have sent him over the edge