Thank you for your kind comment, and apologies for the late reply; I am quite busy with school.
Aww… I don’t agree. I think the FtM direction is just as politically relevant!! Plus MtFs are overrepresented on LW so it’s really nice to read your post!
Thank you! At least in the US, FtMs are politically invisible (thank the Lord); if I wanted to play college football or something with the men’s team and use the appropriate locker room after, governors and Congressmen who definitely have more important things to be doing wouldn’t rain fire upon my head and act as if I kicked puppies for a living.
This is a really fucked up thing to say to a child. Also, your dad refusing to speak to you for days after you got your period… what the fuck???
Eh, pretty normal in my area. They tolerate it now, which is what matters.
Is this a joke, a cry for help, or both :p
Neither, actually. Compared to how my mental health was from puberty up until the moment I started transitioning, I am actually much better off. Even though once every two weeks might not be normal for other people, I consider it such because it no longer at the forefront of my thoughts or even present at all most days. :D
I don’t attempt to elucidate a specific cause in my post because, for genetics (per my research, ~40% of the cause) we don’t have the data.
Likely because you have a higher standard for posts than me; I am alright with speculation as long as it is disclosed as such. I’m aware the studies have small sample sizes and the modern ones are tainted by bias, but based upon what can be garnered from them, I speculate upon a possibility. You, on the other hand, only post what can be confirmed, which is unfortunately not much.
I’ve spent very little time on TikTok (mostly Reddit and Discord)
Same here, fortunately; I know such people are prevalent there and on Tumblr due to outside reports (screenshots on Reddit, Fox News, people at school).
Current medicine—for legal/political, not scientific reasons—seems incapable of predicting whether gender transition will benefit someone’s health. Dysphoria is too noisy to measure as a gatekeeping tool. Reasonable people disagree here, but the social, legal, political, administrative, and financial barriers to transition are already high. So I think an informed consent model is better than trying to use dysphoria as a tool for social or medical gatekeeping. It is not good to give people an incentive to interpret their own symptoms as dysphoria.
I’m a libertarian, and accordingly completely insane in support of informed consent for all medical procedures, regardless of how any given doctor, husband, religion, or government feels about it. There should be no barriers to medical care other than basic mental competence and full knowledge + responsibility for the procedure. (In a perfect world, finances would not be a consideration either, but we are not at that point yet.) Besides, the optical trouble is not people who want to transition, but the people who don’t, yet claim to be transgender.
I don’t think it’s helpful to impugn or deny the validity of trans people who claim not to have dysphoria. … Also, nonbinary identities like genderfluid and genderqueer are compatible with dysphoria.
How so? (I speculate that) gender dysphoria is an endocrine disorder or a neurological disorder, and your organs don’t just flip on and off. Nobody but a very small subset of the population claims to “feel” a gender as some do. I am genuinely curious about how biological gender dysphoria is comparable with quickly slipping genders and genders outside the binary. (I do believe that genuine non-binary people exist, albeit in lesser numbers than self-reports would indicate.)
These identities are not inherently politically harmful.
I’m not the Pew Research Center, but the area I grew up in was generally pretty reasonable and politically neutral, and I can personally confirm from speaking to many of the people around me that the notions of gender as an identity and the conclusions that followed pushed those who would otherwise have been supportive into being ridiculing, as evidenced by the support they gave me when I provided my own speculations.
Allow me to copy-paste a segment from my other comment here, which is a bit more aggressively worded than I intend for this conversation, because it might be somewhat relevant and I am lazy: “I consider myself, my family, and the majority of my peers back home to be reasonable people, who simply ridiculed what is ridiculous. The notion of gender as an “identity” that one could pick and choose, with transgender people “feeling” like one gender or another, sometimes two at the same time, or even a super secret third animal gender that nobody else has, when people don’t “feel” a gender at all, is ridiculous. It is no surprise that I was closeted, even to myself, if acknowledging I was “transgender” meant I was that. The same is true for the people who surround me, who are generally reasonable and not politically extreme in one direction or the other. Once I was able to explain to my family what gender dysphoria entailed, that it was not a choice or an “identity” but a medical condition, and that I would not be shitting in a litter box (this was a genuine concern of my mother), they were quite receptive. Of course, there were people who would have accepted me even if I did make use of the litter box (such as my elder sister, who told my mother about such things), and there are people who do not accept me now, but both groups are by far in the minority. People can respect “poorly understood endocrine disorder”; they will not respect “gender identity”. … The people who demagogues use to frighten and provoke people like my parents are detranstioners who were told that experimenting or the usual adolescent confusion rendered them trans, those who act ridiculous/provocative/promiscuous, and those who support the notion of gender as an identity; that last group is a majority among the mainstream transgender community and progressives in general.” (Apologies for the wall of text.)
I am genuinely curious about how biological gender dysphoria is comparable with quickly slipping genders and genders outside the binary.
so, obviously there is a lot of nonsense on tumblr/tiktok. But I have also hard from people who—based on my general impression of their character and language when interacting with them—should be taken intellectually seriously—who report kinds of trans identification outside the standard medical dysphoria model. I don’t understand this myself but I’ve seen it in enough other credible people at this point than I think I need to take their self-reports seriously.
i have no proof that this model makes sense but imagine that a brain has both strongly “male” and “female” patterns in different regions. it’s not that these are getting switched on and off necessarily but there seems to be a lot of complex stuff going on psychologically in how “brain sex” gets turned into behavior. And if the “male” and “female” regions are both signaling strongly and/or in conflict that could produce a nonbinary/genderfluid phenotype.
I find the Gender Mosaic theory (cf Daphna Joel) to be the most plausible, but I see it as a Sex Mosaic where there are male-typical and female-typical neural wirings for different brain regions. It’s very high-dimensional and the sex of each region can vary independently and (mostly) continuously based on the prenatal hormone wash. This easily explains the vast phenotypic variation in gendered behavior, and why it seems like we have every different possible combination of person.
when I say “not inherently politically harmful” I mean “try to avoid trying to explain or justify them to most regular americans but this is a liberal society and in general we should be respectful and welcoming of diversity in contexts where people are enlightened enough not to take it the wrong way”.
Anyway, it’s easier to cis-pass (i.e be “invisible”) as an FtM than an MtF but what I mean by political salience is if you look for example at Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier—a lot of the rhetoric focused on banning HRT for minors is about FtMs, and positive examples of FtMs who transitioned young or knew young and were harmed by not being allow to transition sooner—can help fight this.
Thank you for your kind comment, and apologies for the late reply; I am quite busy with school.
Thank you! At least in the US, FtMs are politically invisible (thank the Lord); if I wanted to play college football or something with the men’s team and use the appropriate locker room after, governors and Congressmen who definitely have more important things to be doing wouldn’t rain fire upon my head and act as if I kicked puppies for a living.
Eh, pretty normal in my area. They tolerate it now, which is what matters.
Neither, actually. Compared to how my mental health was from puberty up until the moment I started transitioning, I am actually much better off. Even though once every two weeks might not be normal for other people, I consider it such because it no longer at the forefront of my thoughts or even present at all most days. :D
Likely because you have a higher standard for posts than me; I am alright with speculation as long as it is disclosed as such. I’m aware the studies have small sample sizes and the modern ones are tainted by bias, but based upon what can be garnered from them, I speculate upon a possibility. You, on the other hand, only post what can be confirmed, which is unfortunately not much.
Same here, fortunately; I know such people are prevalent there and on Tumblr due to outside reports (screenshots on Reddit, Fox News, people at school).
I’m a libertarian, and accordingly
completely insanein support of informed consent for all medical procedures, regardless of how any given doctor, husband, religion, or government feels about it. There should be no barriers to medical care other than basic mental competence and full knowledge + responsibility for the procedure. (In a perfect world, finances would not be a consideration either, but we are not at that point yet.) Besides, the optical trouble is not people who want to transition, but the people who don’t, yet claim to be transgender.How so? (I speculate that) gender dysphoria is an endocrine disorder or a neurological disorder, and your organs don’t just flip on and off. Nobody but a very small subset of the population claims to “feel” a gender as some do. I am genuinely curious about how biological gender dysphoria is comparable with quickly slipping genders and genders outside the binary. (I do believe that genuine non-binary people exist, albeit in lesser numbers than self-reports would indicate.)
I’m not the Pew Research Center, but the area I grew up in was generally pretty reasonable and politically neutral, and I can personally confirm from speaking to many of the people around me that the notions of gender as an identity and the conclusions that followed pushed those who would otherwise have been supportive into being ridiculing, as evidenced by the support they gave me when I provided my own speculations.
Allow me to copy-paste a segment from my other comment here, which is a bit more aggressively worded than I intend for this conversation, because it might be somewhat relevant and I am lazy: “I consider myself, my family, and the majority of my peers back home to be reasonable people, who simply ridiculed what is ridiculous. The notion of gender as an “identity” that one could pick and choose, with transgender people “feeling” like one gender or another, sometimes two at the same time, or even a super secret third animal gender that nobody else has, when people don’t “feel” a gender at all, is ridiculous. It is no surprise that I was closeted, even to myself, if acknowledging I was “transgender” meant I was that. The same is true for the people who surround me, who are generally reasonable and not politically extreme in one direction or the other. Once I was able to explain to my family what gender dysphoria entailed, that it was not a choice or an “identity” but a medical condition, and that I would not be shitting in a litter box (this was a genuine concern of my mother), they were quite receptive. Of course, there were people who would have accepted me even if I did make use of the litter box (such as my elder sister, who told my mother about such things), and there are people who do not accept me now, but both groups are by far in the minority. People can respect “poorly understood endocrine disorder”; they will not respect “gender identity”. … The people who demagogues use to frighten and provoke people like my parents are detranstioners who were told that experimenting or the usual adolescent confusion rendered them trans, those who act ridiculous/provocative/promiscuous, and those who support the notion of gender as an identity; that last group is a majority among the mainstream transgender community and progressives in general.” (Apologies for the wall of text.)
all good :)
so, obviously there is a lot of nonsense on tumblr/tiktok. But I have also hard from people who—based on my general impression of their character and language when interacting with them—should be taken intellectually seriously—who report kinds of trans identification outside the standard medical dysphoria model. I don’t understand this myself but I’ve seen it in enough other credible people at this point than I think I need to take their self-reports seriously.
i have no proof that this model makes sense but imagine that a brain has both strongly “male” and “female” patterns in different regions. it’s not that these are getting switched on and off necessarily but there seems to be a lot of complex stuff going on psychologically in how “brain sex” gets turned into behavior. And if the “male” and “female” regions are both signaling strongly and/or in conflict that could produce a nonbinary/genderfluid phenotype.
for the general model, see my comment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rt2yai8JkTPYgzoEj/why-i-transitioned-a-response?commentId=nHYdFcmBqjnpWZize
when I say “not inherently politically harmful” I mean “try to avoid trying to explain or justify them to most regular americans but this is a liberal society and in general we should be respectful and welcoming of diversity in contexts where people are enlightened enough not to take it the wrong way”.
Anyway, it’s easier to cis-pass (i.e be “invisible”) as an FtM than an MtF but what I mean by political salience is if you look for example at Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier—a lot of the rhetoric focused on banning HRT for minors is about FtMs, and positive examples of FtMs who transitioned young or knew young and were harmed by not being allow to transition sooner—can help fight this.