I like the fish and whale and border examples. The ancient Jewish fish / land distinction makes sense and there was no reason why it shouldnt be so if it was the most helpful separation for their needs or at least if taxonomy by habitat had no disadvantages. The peanut is a legume but it doesnt affect our day to days lives not to know that isnt a nut. Although I dont think any complex phylogenetics and evolutionary theory would have been needed to explain why a whale was more similar to a cow. Pointing out that it gave birth to live young which was suckled by mammary glands and that it was warm blooded may well have created a ‘well wouldnt you know that’ moment in ancient times.
How we categorise different things, where we draw the line is often not clear cut. The problem with the argument of Pluto as planetoid or planet is that we can not say on this basis that Jupiter is a planetoid, because it is distinctly still a planet. Another example is the difference between a lake and a pond? Everyone’s line seperating the two might be in different place. But equally this doesnt mean that Lake Victoria can be called a pond purely on the basis that there is a blurred line in the middle between small lakes and large ponds. Likewise the existence of grey does not mean that black can be white.
What these arguments are really analgous to are intersex conditions where it can be very difficult to call whether someone is male or female. Indeed there are intersex conditions which are more clearly one or the other sex whilst true hermaphrodites are rare but its clearly a tricky business as to where to draw the line and what should take precedence in determining that line—gonads? genitals? chromosomes? phenotype? sexual orientation? personal feeling?stereotypical behaviours? There were times when gay people could seen as hermaphrodites because the idea of same sex attraction was seen as against nature.
The problem with this analogy is that trans people are not considered to be intersex. They are unequivocally one biological sex or the other with matching gonads, genitals and genes. It is only their self assessment that differs from the reality of their bodies. The argument is as you say that the over riding determent of sex should then not be anything objectively observable but instead a strongly held subjective feelings. This make things more tricksy opening as it does a huge can of philosophical worms.
The Napolean argument touches on this and yes its true it doesnt seem to be a common condition, probably because he’s not as well known a figure as others these days. My psychiatric nurse friends tell me there are far more many Jesus’s to be found—they having met several in their time. Though its true no one has found any evidence for genetics predisposing one to this specific delusion. There is indeed some evidence to suggest suceptiblity to hormones in utero may result in a trans gender identity via over or under expression of hormones due to genetics. Yet this and some minor brain area differences only really prove that people are telling the truth—that they genuinely feel they should have been born the opposite sex.
There are also genetics markers and brain area changes observable in people who develop schizophrenia. And also genetic markers and brain area changes in those people prone to be very religious. So we know these people genuinely believe what they see as truths, be it that they are being followed by an anarchist cabal, voices talk to them or that they experience a feeling of a divine presence. Yet we do not use their quite genuine experiences as a basis for everyone else having to affirm these experiences as objective truths. Unless of course we live in theocratic dictatorship or think schizophrenic people have a hotline to some higher power.
We support freedom of belief and religious freedom. The argument that ” I could point out that if the extent of somebody’s trans-Napoleonness was wanting to wear a bicorne hat, and he was going to be suicidal his entire life if he couldn’t but pretty happy if I could, let him wear the damn hat.” is more difficult that it first appears. Of course it will not harm a person to wear a bicorne hat so why they shouldnt they wear it and I agree. But what the argument proposes is that everyone must also affirm his belief that he is Napolean. This is asking a lot. It insists that the rest of the world keep up a facade in order to protect the feelings of would be Napoleans. Whilst that can be a very sweet thing to do—cf the films Lars and the Real Girl or La Vita e bella, it does mandate mass mendacity.
I agree that if theres no harm in holding up a pretence and a person will be happier then there’s a good argument for doing it—which is widely respected up to a point in the acceptibility of white lies- the building block of social interactions. “I like your new hair cut” or “I cant make tonight because I have a cold” are fairly inoccuous white lies which do more good than harm. But when it comes to Chinese officials making a fake show field of wheat to demonstrate to Mao their glorious leader the success of his agricultural policy when in reality millions are starving, then protecting someones sense of their copetance is distinctly problematic. The potential for harm must be outweighed by the potential for good.
“If it’s a psychiatric disorder, then attempts to help transgender people get covered by health insurance, and most of the ones I know seem to want that, so sure, gender dysphoria is a psychiatric disorder.”
I agree here with this pragmatic approach. If people feel better after surgery and it relieves their dysphoria there is a good argument for saying that they should be given this treatment. Presumably you also agree with the removal of limbs for those with body integrity identity disorder. Though I think both types of patient should be given a full run down of other psychological causes which may be affecting their beliefs before they can volunteer for surgery removing healthy body parts- having met people who later realised this wanst really the issue at all.
The hair dryer solution seems fair enough. Though if the woman had swapped her anxiety onto the iron and then the curling tongues and the lamps and then the tumble dryer it may not have been quite such a genius stroke. But whilst it was just a hairdryer no harm done. And there was no principle of reality that was being breached-the woman was correct in knowing that the hair dryer could not burn her car down when it wasnt plugged in. I have though another example of such an unusual solution which then created further problems.
I asked my psych nurse friend was it not sometime easier to play along with patients delusions than to constantly fight against them. He gave me an example of a woman who was convinced her house had a flea infestation. Yet no fleas could be found. It caused her great deal of distress and finally a practitioner had the idea of hiring environmental health to go fumigate her house to see if that worked.And it did. The woman was overjoyed to have finally rid herself of the fleas and all was well.
Until a few months later when she became convinced that a new infestation had taken root. She asked again for the fumigators to be called but this time the practitioner declined saying no fleas were present. The woman was really confused and said ‘But they were here before, otherwise the fumigators wouldnt have been called to exterminate them’ So what seemed a simple fix actually ended up propping up a persons delusion.
“Imagine if we could give depressed people a much higher quality of life merely by giving them cheap natural hormones. I don’t think there’s a psychiatrist in the world who wouldn’t celebrate that as one of the biggest mental health advances in a generation.”
Hormones permanently change the body as well as there being as with most drugs, dangerous side effects. It would seem better to investigate drugs which might remedy the dysphoria by addressing the brain issue rather than the body.
“Imagine if we could ameliorate schizophrenia with one safe simple surgery, just snip snip you’re not schizophrenic anymore. Pretty sure that would win all of the Nobel prizes.”
This is a very worrying example. For in fact there was such an operation and it may have even got a Nobel prize. It was called the frontal lobotomy and in an age before anti psychotics it was a very useful operations allowing schizophrenic and manic patients to live perfectly peaceable lives no longer confined to the asylums. And it had the bonus of making everyone’s life around these people a lot easier. What was then hailed as a wonder cure, a panacea for all mental health ills is now seen as one of the worst psychiatric human rights abuses. You would then think the psyciatric profession would be a little more cautious and less gung ho about the introduction of another surgical procedure claimed as a cure.
“Imagine that we could make a serious dent in bipolar disorder just by calling people different pronouns. I’m pretty sure the entire mental health field would join together in bludgeoning anybody who refused to do that. We would bludgeon them over the head with big books about the side effects of lithium.
”
Another very dubious conclusion here. That psychiatrists like some form of modern priests would insist that the population at large lie en masse to prevent a very small percentage of the population from having to take drugs with unpleasant side effects to help their condition by affirming a delusion.
“Sometimes when you make a little effort to be nice to people, even people you might think are weird, really good things happen.”
This is really the crux of the article’s entire argument. We should do it to be nice. Only where are the rights of other people in this? Why should everyone be forced to endure cognitive dissonance, to lie about their own perceptions of the world in order to humour a small subsection of the population who are unfortunate enough to have what may be a developmental brain glitch or a misapprehension caused by any number of other psychiatric conditions—and where there is no way of knowing which.
It would be salient then if this is considered a good thing, if everyones elses sense of authenticity is expected to be compromised that the potential harms also be considered. What for example if your trans man patient or trans man friend commits a crime and is sent to prison. How do you feel about them being sent to male prison whilst in possession of a vagina. (No surgery is necessary to legally change sex) Much like allowing someone who identified as a wolf into the wolf enclosure at the zoo. Is this not where reality hits abrutly up against niceness? Only this week a trans man was raped in a hostel by a man who didnt much care that she told him she identified as male. Because he percieved her quite correctly, to be female.
This also runs into hot water the other way round. Now male sex offenders can claim they feel like women. Some may be genuine some not. On this basis they can then be moved to female prisons. What of the rights of the women in the prison? Who is being nice to them? Housing a woman in a cell with a serial rapist doesnt seem that fair an idea. Nor does destroying the ability of all women to ever congregate without males, be it in a changing room, a domestic violence centre, a rape crisis centre or any other spaces where women might be vulnerable to sexual assault. Which is statistically carried out far more by males, regardless of how they identify.
This problem with self identification has already been flagged up by gender specialists who state there is a huge rising tide of male sex offenders now identifying as women, most of whose claims they think are false. But of course they will be in no position to decide if self declaration is the only criteria necessary. If it is a psychiatric disorder then its the first one where the patient is allowed to diagnose themselves and demand the treatment of their chosing.
Here we see that yes it is nice to be nice, but sometimes being nice by dint of dishonesty has many unintended consequences which are not quite so nice. Do you think the right to be affirmed as one percieves oneself for 0.3% of the population is more important than the rights to safety for 51% of the population? From a utilitarian perspective it certainly doesnt add up.
“I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life. ”
The suggestion that we should be hostage to people suicidal threats or attempts is a very morally dubious one. We do not advocate women to stay with men who threaten to kill themselves if they leave or to give into terrorists because otherwise they will blow themselves up. There is a emotional blackmail angle here that in any other circumstance as a psychiatric professional you would surely question.
“There’s no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn’t, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.”
There are plenty of rules of rationality saying that you shouldnt. And a very restricted version of human decency that you should. One that only flies if you consider the feelings of a tiny fraction of the population to be more important than everyone elses right to safety, freedom of belief and authenticity. Which doesnt seem very decent at all.
I don’t often post to public forums about topics like this, but from reading the FAQ I believe I’m supposed to point out poor arguments where they show up. Sorry I know this thread is very old but if I go around recommended articles on this site then I can’t in good conscience not point out the number of logical leaps you’ve made in this response. Many of these were pointed out by An_Amazing_Login but she was understandably upset about the whole thing. I have no personal stake in the politics at hand, this is mostly just a rational rebuttal.
Firstly, I think its easy enough to point out this bad-faith argument-
“This is a very worrying example. For in fact there was such an operation and it may have even got a Nobel prize. It was called the frontal lobotomy and in an age before anti psychotics it was a very useful operations allowing schizophrenic and manic patients to live perfectly peaceable lives no longer confined to the asylums.” While that’s true, it’s also functionally irrelevant to the topic at hand. Medical ethics have advanced rather far since the age of the lobotomy and clearly Mr. Alexander wasn’t referring to a horrifically damaging procedure in his offhand example of why low-cost treatments to debilitating psychological conditions would be nice. I imagine the obvious counterexample would be to say “nobody thought lobotomies were unethical when they were performed on marginalized people and yet they still destroyed people’s lives. Perhaps most doctors don’t think sex-change operations are unethical now but in 50 years we will consider the cutting-off-of-penis surgery (not mentioning the converse because you seem fixated on this one) to be highly unethical as well. I would consider that a good-faith argument, and I think the easy answer of bringing up the virtual infinity of other medical procedures that could be considered highly unethical one day to be a good point to begin with in response.
Your argument on the proposed medical treatment for depression is somewhat similar. We already prescribe drugs for depression, so clearly medical ethics boards think risking (frankly horrific) side effects is in some cases worth it. I personally disagree, but then if I could actually, you know, see the side effects of the mythical hormones in question I would consider it. In reality, the side effects of hormone therapy on trans people seem to be passing my personal bar for ethical treatment standards, to a far greater extent than the prescription of benzodiazepenes or opiods.
Second bad-faith argument-examples of the rape of trans men and the question-would you want to send a man in possesion of a vagina to a male penitentiary? As the other commenter rightly pointed out, I don’t think a man being raped is any better than a women being raped, so this argument doesn’t really make much sense. Unless you’re arguing that the presence of a biological female makes a man rape where he otherwise would not, which I would argue seems to be a problem with the man, not with the sex of the other person in the room. To put it another way, if your issue with transgenderism is that it will lead to people with vaginas being raped where they would otherwise not be, then I suppose giving all biological females penises and reproducing via surgical procedures would be a moral imperative that we should get on making affordable. Similar reasoning applies to the other way around, unless you think that women can’t rape other women. In fact, your arguments on this subject boil down to “the inherent physical advantage that going through male puberty confers means that most men will have the advantage in raping trans men and trans women have the advantage in raping other women.” People who train effective martial arts for several years have a similar advantage over the general population—should we ban martial arts training? No, because it turns out we have different system of incentives in place to prevent rape.
Third-”There are also genetics markers and brain area changes observable in people who develop schizophrenia. And also genetic markers and brain area changes in those people prone to be very religious...” I don’t claim to be an expert in ANY way on brain physiology but this argument seems ridiculous if I read it as is. Wouldn’t you know, human minds are governed by the physiology of their brains. There are endless arguments on nature vs. nurture, but from even a slightly deterministic view of personality development your argument can be used to call someone liking vanilla ice cream a psychosis. (I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree). If instead you are just pointing out that Mr. Alexander’s argument proves too much and you just chose bad examples, I can see where you’re coming from, but would point out that some people have the opposite problem of believing transgenderism to be entirely dependent upon upbringing/personal choice, and it is worth pointing out the science on the issue as it is. Full disclosure, I do not know if the science has changed at all in the past three years, but that has no direct bearing on the fallacies in your argument here. I will do some research on my own.
Fourth-”This is really the crux of the articles entire argument—we should do it to be nice.” I didn’t get that at all. The title of the article is “The Categories Were Made For Man, not Man For the Categories.” It isn’t “Be Nice to People.” This is the issue with entertaining bad premises to point out how they’re bad premises—a third party gets to cherry pick the argument and make an easy rebuttal. The question at hand is not whether it is nicer of cis people to accommodate trans people or of trans people to suffer in silence. The question is one of semantics. Now I’m going to do what I just said is a bad idea and say this—I am skeptical that the negative utility of accommodating reasonable requests of trans people (use preferred pronouns, for example) is greater than the positive utility of trans people on the receiving end of such tolerance. But more on the semantics point later.
Fifth- Accommodating trans-Napoleonism. See above, esp. including the “cherry-picking the easy argument to rebut” since you made no mention of the more robust objection in Mr. Alexander’s article. I have nothing to add on this one until I hear such a rebuttal.
Sixth-Self identification. Some googling couldn’t turn up the study you cite, but assuming it exists, then the issue would appear to, again, be largely regarding the prison system and not transgenderism.
One argument I thought was somewhere in between was the one comparing gender dysphoria with body integrity identity disorder. I’m tempted to dismiss this one because it seems like reducio ad absurdum, but its a fairly compelling argument. I could point to any number of other instances where we respect a patient’s choice to effectively do themselves permanent harm. I believe by the same train of logic you would require a full psychiatric evaluation before any person ever got a tattoo, though that argument feels a little too absurd to be fair. There is a whole body of medical ethics on this and similar issues, but in my personal opinion it appears that the consequences of treating gender dysphoria with reassignment surgery are vastly different to the consequences of fulfilling a patient’s desire to paralyze themselves. It is a very, very difficult thing to determine when a person is of sound mind and I pretty much agree that gender reassignment surgery should come along with an intensive psycholgical evaluation process. For similar ethical questions—is it moral for the bartender to let intoxicated people poison themselves further and pay him for the privilege? At what point is it allowable for an elderly cancer patient to make the decision to move to hospice care? These are difficult questions and do not lend themselves to universal answers. But if the doctor, medical ethics board, and patient in question are all in unity on the subject, I think it would be very difficult to argue either way.
Okay, that’s all for bad-faith arguments I think. Now as far as my position on this matter and how it might differ from what I get from you—as I said, at the end of the day the argument you’re putting forth is essentially semantic. Scratch that—part of it is semantic and part of it is misattributing societal flaws to the existence of trans people. (Can you put forth a actual reason why men, let alone trans women, shouldn’t go in women’s bathrooms that doesn’t devolve into victim blaming? Did we start posting guards at bathroom doors to check peoples genitals when I wasn’t looking?)
But the semantic bit. My point, and I think Mr. Alexander’s point, is as follows: if you define “male” as a person with a Y chromosome and apply this rule unilateraly, you will produce a group of people who mostly share similar characteristics, with few enough outliers that it is still a good label. If you identify “man” as a person who identifies themselves as a man, you also produce a group with functionally the same degree of similarity. What makes one category better than the other? Well, if you ask me, you can have your cake and eat it too, since I just used two different words to describe two different, self-consistent groups. As a medical professional, I think of sex along biological terms and gender along self-identification terms, and have thus far managed to avoid asking a biological male if he is menstruating regularly. Language is sufficiently versatile and subject to change that the semantic portion of the argument that boils down to “should we change the meaning of a few words” appears to be a resounding “yes” for me. The obvious counter is that, if we keep changing the meaning of a few words for a relatively small group of people, eventually our language will become nonsensical. I won’t point out that this hasn’t seemed to be an issue for any of the other words that evolved in response to new social phenomena, but I will say that I would be much less in favor of my (and others’) proposed changes if they weren’t so obviously precise. And, in fact, I am in favor of adding words to the language to accommodate any person who needs accommodating, since the only way such changes would become widespread is if enough people are in need of accommodation that adding the word would appear to be a good idea after all.
Now then, I know you will probably never read this response, but I hope it provides some balance to anyone else reading this article in the future. (To the person I recommended this to about an hour ago, I didn’t mean to write this when I did).
Can you put forth a actual reason why men, let alone trans women, shouldn’t go in women’s bathrooms that doesn’t devolve into victim blaming? Did we start posting guards at bathroom doors to check peoples genitals when I wasn’t looking?
Thanks for this question! I really tried to find an actual reason (without the stop signal answers like “culture” or “religion”) and found following (it’s probably highly flawed, but at least worked for me):
Clothes were invented for protection and convenience → civilization development created social disparity → poor and slaves couldn’t afford clothes → nakedness ≈ slavery and slaves were the easiest source of sex → it’s shameful and dangerous to be naked → shame and abscense of genitals around free people sexualized genitals → slavery slowly becomes illegal in the vast majority of cultures → majority of people already conditioned that naked opposite genitals ≈ sex, nudists are minority and not mainstream → with such conditioning (or simply, culture) we can’t have common bathrooms.
Btw, prisoners rape prisoners regardless of genitals.
I’m going to come clean here: Your post has made me so ANGRY that I have to respond. Usually I’d leave it be, to conserve resources needed for a hostile world and because the chance that you’re being intellectually honest is not high enough. Politics is the mindkiller; You are a transphobe, and it shows. There is also no way for me to argue that you couldn’t just respond with: “He thinks he’s a woman! He must be crazy, pay no heed to him!” (for outsiders sake, I’m a trans-woman)
But honestly? You argue for my existance being an invalid way of human life. You argue that everyone sees me not as I present myself socially, but rather that they see my genotype. Somehow. You are also wrong about calling my being trans a psychiatric disorder, just like being homo, hetero or bi isn’t. I’ll show you using this list. [1) Not as far as science can tell, currently research points to complex interplay of biological, neurological and sociological reasons for being trans. 2) Yes, being transgender is not something you choose. 3) Yes, There are more Cis-people than trans-people. 4) No. Dysphoria is unpleasant, but the rate of trans-people who regret their choice later in life is astronomically small.
″...regrets were extremely rare (1–1.5% of MtF patients and <1% of FtM patients; Pfäfflin, 1993).
I have never been as happy in my life as I am now. 5) No, This isn’t a discrete phenomena, as many people are non-binary and would not consider themselves only male or only female. 6) yes, it’s commonly treated with hormonal therapy and surgical help.] I do not consider this sufficient grounds to remove someone’s agency. I think you are wrong.
Therefore, I should be able to refute the claims you have which are wrong. I’m going to respond to your paragraphs thusly:
1: Yes, but Solomon would not have changed his opinion on what his words mean. But you are mostly correct.
2: I agree! Black is not equal to white, but grey is actually grey. Remember this.
3: Yes and No. These arguments are analogous to intersex conditions when viewed as pertaining to the concept of SEX, but they are also analogous to transgender people when viewed as pertaining to the concept of GENDER. SEX is not equal to GENDER, which is showed by the intersex women who have an XY-chromosomal pair. They clearly are women{GENDER} but they are not clearly women{SEX}. Likewise, I’m personally clearly a man{SEX} but I hope that I can convince people that I’m at least by default a woman{GENDER}.
4: No, we do not say that the “determent” of SEX is personal identity. Because it would rightly be considered dumb. We do say that the “determent” of GENDER is personal identity.
5: Please stop saying that I’m delusional. Also read this on why it IS different being trans-gender as opposed to believing that you are another person, or non-human animal etc.
6: Where can you find an objective truth regarding someones GENDER? The whole concept of GENDER falls apart pretty quickly outside of other peoples ideas and affirmations of it. My truth is infact reliant on other people, as is yours. I have been misgendered before my transition (someone thought i was a girl) and I am properly gendered now. I’m just as much of a woman{GENDER} as any of the other women I know are.
7: Your point falls on paragraph 6: being wrong. Other people do not need to affirm my belief, they just happen to do it regardless.
8: I agree! The potential for harm must be outweighed by the potential for good! As I see it, the potential for good is such: People get to live happier lives. Nice. The potential for harm? No discernible difference compared to otherwise.
OP quote: Yes! gender dysphoria is a psychiatric disorder, just like depression is.
9: Good job, you’re being reasonable. I agree.
10-12: Yes, you’re right. What you are implying is however false. I’m not delusional when saying that my GENDER is that of a woman. Just like someone isn’t delusional when they are homosexual.
OP quote+13: Why change the brain when you can change the body? If you feel bad because you’re overweight due to other clinical conditions, why decide that poking around in the brain is a good idea? Like REALLY?
OP quote +14: did you read “Safe” in that text? This is WHY I dislike the idea of poking around in the brain, directly or indirectly. Frontal lobotomy does not work for helping transgender people, nor does it help anyone to outweigh it’s cost.
Op quote +15: It’s not a delusion if everyone is sharing it. There is only one defence for you if I think you are not your self-reported GENDER. It is as follows: “I feel like I am a [Preferred GENDER], I look like my [Preferred GENDER] and people refer to me as a [Preferred GENDER]. Therefore I am a [Preferred GENDER].”
Op quote +16: Your argument falls on paragraph 6: being wrong. Again. To use a metaphor: perceived grey is grey. No, Transpeople are not the same as Cispeople, but they use shared words. You misuse language by saying that GENDER is SEX.
17: Ahhh, here transphobia rears its ugly head. It’s been great not seeing you. Go away. Anyway, I would be very annoyed indeed if my trans-man friend got sent to a womens prison, instead of a mens prison. Not even slightly like allowing someone who identifies as a wolf into the wolf-enclosure. AND SOMEHOW YOU THINK THAT BLAMING THE VICTIM OF A RAPE FOR IT IS RIGHT! IF YOU HOLD THE BELIEF IMPLIED THAT THE POOR TRANSMAN WHO WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO HIM THEN YOU ARE A MONSTER. A rapist does not care what their victim thinks, that comes with the crime. Your point is moot.
18: What about male sex offenders who get sent to male prison? What about female sex offenders who get sent to female prisons? Housing ANYONE in a cell with a serial rapist seems dumb. You also do not destroy womens ability to congregate without males, remember that GENDER is not the same as SEX. Disallowing access to gendered spaces means that you are forcing transmen to use womens spaces, and transwomen to use mens spaces. Groups of people who are especially VULNERABLE to sexual assault. does that seem reasonable?
19: What gender specialists? Argument from authority seems weird here since I’ve never heard of this authority. I’ve never heard of a rising tide of male{SEX} sex offenders claiming to be female{GENDER}. In absence of reliable sources, I disregard statistics. Sex offenders are also unlikely to follow any rule given given to them to follow, thus safety would not be increased.
20: Your point is moot by 19: being disregarded. Is it unsafer being a woman when accompanied by a transwoman than when accompanied by a Cisman? I don’t know, but I have my suspicions.
Op quote +21: I agree with you! That is not the reason to call someone their preferred pronoun. There exists so many better reasons!
Op quote +22: What rules of rationality? Is there any Epistemiological reason to not separate SEX from GENDER? About freedom of belief, authenticity and safety , both freedom of belief and authenticity is moot because you don’t separate SEX from GENDER whereas those you argue against do. Safety is a fun one. Riddle me this: Is it safer to have unbalanced men and women who are not allowed to live properly take to violence to get said right, or is it safer to have balanced transmen and transwomen who are content and productive citizens? Is it safer to have people who desperately needs to find out whats wrong via any means necessary than it is to have content people who knows what they want?
Now go away, I will not respond to more Transphobic shit here.
I like the fish and whale and border examples. The ancient Jewish fish / land distinction makes sense and there was no reason why it shouldnt be so if it was the most helpful separation for their needs or at least if taxonomy by habitat had no disadvantages. The peanut is a legume but it doesnt affect our day to days lives not to know that isnt a nut. Although I dont think any complex phylogenetics and evolutionary theory would have been needed to explain why a whale was more similar to a cow. Pointing out that it gave birth to live young which was suckled by mammary glands and that it was warm blooded may well have created a ‘well wouldnt you know that’ moment in ancient times.
How we categorise different things, where we draw the line is often not clear cut. The problem with the argument of Pluto as planetoid or planet is that we can not say on this basis that Jupiter is a planetoid, because it is distinctly still a planet. Another example is the difference between a lake and a pond? Everyone’s line seperating the two might be in different place. But equally this doesnt mean that Lake Victoria can be called a pond purely on the basis that there is a blurred line in the middle between small lakes and large ponds. Likewise the existence of grey does not mean that black can be white.
What these arguments are really analgous to are intersex conditions where it can be very difficult to call whether someone is male or female. Indeed there are intersex conditions which are more clearly one or the other sex whilst true hermaphrodites are rare but its clearly a tricky business as to where to draw the line and what should take precedence in determining that line—gonads? genitals? chromosomes? phenotype? sexual orientation? personal feeling?stereotypical behaviours? There were times when gay people could seen as hermaphrodites because the idea of same sex attraction was seen as against nature.
The problem with this analogy is that trans people are not considered to be intersex. They are unequivocally one biological sex or the other with matching gonads, genitals and genes. It is only their self assessment that differs from the reality of their bodies. The argument is as you say that the over riding determent of sex should then not be anything objectively observable but instead a strongly held subjective feelings. This make things more tricksy opening as it does a huge can of philosophical worms.
The Napolean argument touches on this and yes its true it doesnt seem to be a common condition, probably because he’s not as well known a figure as others these days. My psychiatric nurse friends tell me there are far more many Jesus’s to be found—they having met several in their time. Though its true no one has found any evidence for genetics predisposing one to this specific delusion. There is indeed some evidence to suggest suceptiblity to hormones in utero may result in a trans gender identity via over or under expression of hormones due to genetics. Yet this and some minor brain area differences only really prove that people are telling the truth—that they genuinely feel they should have been born the opposite sex.
There are also genetics markers and brain area changes observable in people who develop schizophrenia. And also genetic markers and brain area changes in those people prone to be very religious. So we know these people genuinely believe what they see as truths, be it that they are being followed by an anarchist cabal, voices talk to them or that they experience a feeling of a divine presence. Yet we do not use their quite genuine experiences as a basis for everyone else having to affirm these experiences as objective truths. Unless of course we live in theocratic dictatorship or think schizophrenic people have a hotline to some higher power.
We support freedom of belief and religious freedom. The argument that ” I could point out that if the extent of somebody’s trans-Napoleonness was wanting to wear a bicorne hat, and he was going to be suicidal his entire life if he couldn’t but pretty happy if I could, let him wear the damn hat.” is more difficult that it first appears. Of course it will not harm a person to wear a bicorne hat so why they shouldnt they wear it and I agree. But what the argument proposes is that everyone must also affirm his belief that he is Napolean. This is asking a lot. It insists that the rest of the world keep up a facade in order to protect the feelings of would be Napoleans. Whilst that can be a very sweet thing to do—cf the films Lars and the Real Girl or La Vita e bella, it does mandate mass mendacity.
I agree that if theres no harm in holding up a pretence and a person will be happier then there’s a good argument for doing it—which is widely respected up to a point in the acceptibility of white lies- the building block of social interactions. “I like your new hair cut” or “I cant make tonight because I have a cold” are fairly inoccuous white lies which do more good than harm. But when it comes to Chinese officials making a fake show field of wheat to demonstrate to Mao their glorious leader the success of his agricultural policy when in reality millions are starving, then protecting someones sense of their copetance is distinctly problematic. The potential for harm must be outweighed by the potential for good.
“If it’s a psychiatric disorder, then attempts to help transgender people get covered by health insurance, and most of the ones I know seem to want that, so sure, gender dysphoria is a psychiatric disorder.”
I agree here with this pragmatic approach. If people feel better after surgery and it relieves their dysphoria there is a good argument for saying that they should be given this treatment. Presumably you also agree with the removal of limbs for those with body integrity identity disorder. Though I think both types of patient should be given a full run down of other psychological causes which may be affecting their beliefs before they can volunteer for surgery removing healthy body parts- having met people who later realised this wanst really the issue at all.
The hair dryer solution seems fair enough. Though if the woman had swapped her anxiety onto the iron and then the curling tongues and the lamps and then the tumble dryer it may not have been quite such a genius stroke. But whilst it was just a hairdryer no harm done. And there was no principle of reality that was being breached-the woman was correct in knowing that the hair dryer could not burn her car down when it wasnt plugged in. I have though another example of such an unusual solution which then created further problems.
I asked my psych nurse friend was it not sometime easier to play along with patients delusions than to constantly fight against them. He gave me an example of a woman who was convinced her house had a flea infestation. Yet no fleas could be found. It caused her great deal of distress and finally a practitioner had the idea of hiring environmental health to go fumigate her house to see if that worked.And it did. The woman was overjoyed to have finally rid herself of the fleas and all was well.
Until a few months later when she became convinced that a new infestation had taken root. She asked again for the fumigators to be called but this time the practitioner declined saying no fleas were present. The woman was really confused and said ‘But they were here before, otherwise the fumigators wouldnt have been called to exterminate them’ So what seemed a simple fix actually ended up propping up a persons delusion.
“Imagine if we could give depressed people a much higher quality of life merely by giving them cheap natural hormones. I don’t think there’s a psychiatrist in the world who wouldn’t celebrate that as one of the biggest mental health advances in a generation.”
Hormones permanently change the body as well as there being as with most drugs, dangerous side effects. It would seem better to investigate drugs which might remedy the dysphoria by addressing the brain issue rather than the body.
“Imagine if we could ameliorate schizophrenia with one safe simple surgery, just snip snip you’re not schizophrenic anymore. Pretty sure that would win all of the Nobel prizes.”
This is a very worrying example. For in fact there was such an operation and it may have even got a Nobel prize. It was called the frontal lobotomy and in an age before anti psychotics it was a very useful operations allowing schizophrenic and manic patients to live perfectly peaceable lives no longer confined to the asylums. And it had the bonus of making everyone’s life around these people a lot easier. What was then hailed as a wonder cure, a panacea for all mental health ills is now seen as one of the worst psychiatric human rights abuses. You would then think the psyciatric profession would be a little more cautious and less gung ho about the introduction of another surgical procedure claimed as a cure.
“Imagine that we could make a serious dent in bipolar disorder just by calling people different pronouns. I’m pretty sure the entire mental health field would join together in bludgeoning anybody who refused to do that. We would bludgeon them over the head with big books about the side effects of lithium. ”
Another very dubious conclusion here. That psychiatrists like some form of modern priests would insist that the population at large lie en masse to prevent a very small percentage of the population from having to take drugs with unpleasant side effects to help their condition by affirming a delusion.
“Sometimes when you make a little effort to be nice to people, even people you might think are weird, really good things happen.”
This is really the crux of the article’s entire argument. We should do it to be nice. Only where are the rights of other people in this? Why should everyone be forced to endure cognitive dissonance, to lie about their own perceptions of the world in order to humour a small subsection of the population who are unfortunate enough to have what may be a developmental brain glitch or a misapprehension caused by any number of other psychiatric conditions—and where there is no way of knowing which.
It would be salient then if this is considered a good thing, if everyones elses sense of authenticity is expected to be compromised that the potential harms also be considered. What for example if your trans man patient or trans man friend commits a crime and is sent to prison. How do you feel about them being sent to male prison whilst in possession of a vagina. (No surgery is necessary to legally change sex) Much like allowing someone who identified as a wolf into the wolf enclosure at the zoo. Is this not where reality hits abrutly up against niceness? Only this week a trans man was raped in a hostel by a man who didnt much care that she told him she identified as male. Because he percieved her quite correctly, to be female.
This also runs into hot water the other way round. Now male sex offenders can claim they feel like women. Some may be genuine some not. On this basis they can then be moved to female prisons. What of the rights of the women in the prison? Who is being nice to them? Housing a woman in a cell with a serial rapist doesnt seem that fair an idea. Nor does destroying the ability of all women to ever congregate without males, be it in a changing room, a domestic violence centre, a rape crisis centre or any other spaces where women might be vulnerable to sexual assault. Which is statistically carried out far more by males, regardless of how they identify.
This problem with self identification has already been flagged up by gender specialists who state there is a huge rising tide of male sex offenders now identifying as women, most of whose claims they think are false. But of course they will be in no position to decide if self declaration is the only criteria necessary. If it is a psychiatric disorder then its the first one where the patient is allowed to diagnose themselves and demand the treatment of their chosing.
Here we see that yes it is nice to be nice, but sometimes being nice by dint of dishonesty has many unintended consequences which are not quite so nice. Do you think the right to be affirmed as one percieves oneself for 0.3% of the population is more important than the rights to safety for 51% of the population? From a utilitarian perspective it certainly doesnt add up.
“I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life. ”
The suggestion that we should be hostage to people suicidal threats or attempts is a very morally dubious one. We do not advocate women to stay with men who threaten to kill themselves if they leave or to give into terrorists because otherwise they will blow themselves up. There is a emotional blackmail angle here that in any other circumstance as a psychiatric professional you would surely question.
“There’s no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn’t, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.”
There are plenty of rules of rationality saying that you shouldnt. And a very restricted version of human decency that you should. One that only flies if you consider the feelings of a tiny fraction of the population to be more important than everyone elses right to safety, freedom of belief and authenticity. Which doesnt seem very decent at all.
I don’t often post to public forums about topics like this, but from reading the FAQ I believe I’m supposed to point out poor arguments where they show up. Sorry I know this thread is very old but if I go around recommended articles on this site then I can’t in good conscience not point out the number of logical leaps you’ve made in this response. Many of these were pointed out by An_Amazing_Login but she was understandably upset about the whole thing. I have no personal stake in the politics at hand, this is mostly just a rational rebuttal.
Firstly, I think its easy enough to point out this bad-faith argument-
“This is a very worrying example. For in fact there was such an operation and it may have even got a Nobel prize. It was called the frontal lobotomy and in an age before anti psychotics it was a very useful operations allowing schizophrenic and manic patients to live perfectly peaceable lives no longer confined to the asylums.” While that’s true, it’s also functionally irrelevant to the topic at hand. Medical ethics have advanced rather far since the age of the lobotomy and clearly Mr. Alexander wasn’t referring to a horrifically damaging procedure in his offhand example of why low-cost treatments to debilitating psychological conditions would be nice. I imagine the obvious counterexample would be to say “nobody thought lobotomies were unethical when they were performed on marginalized people and yet they still destroyed people’s lives. Perhaps most doctors don’t think sex-change operations are unethical now but in 50 years we will consider the cutting-off-of-penis surgery (not mentioning the converse because you seem fixated on this one) to be highly unethical as well. I would consider that a good-faith argument, and I think the easy answer of bringing up the virtual infinity of other medical procedures that could be considered highly unethical one day to be a good point to begin with in response.
Your argument on the proposed medical treatment for depression is somewhat similar. We already prescribe drugs for depression, so clearly medical ethics boards think risking (frankly horrific) side effects is in some cases worth it. I personally disagree, but then if I could actually, you know, see the side effects of the mythical hormones in question I would consider it. In reality, the side effects of hormone therapy on trans people seem to be passing my personal bar for ethical treatment standards, to a far greater extent than the prescription of benzodiazepenes or opiods.
Second bad-faith argument-examples of the rape of trans men and the question-would you want to send a man in possesion of a vagina to a male penitentiary? As the other commenter rightly pointed out, I don’t think a man being raped is any better than a women being raped, so this argument doesn’t really make much sense. Unless you’re arguing that the presence of a biological female makes a man rape where he otherwise would not, which I would argue seems to be a problem with the man, not with the sex of the other person in the room. To put it another way, if your issue with transgenderism is that it will lead to people with vaginas being raped where they would otherwise not be, then I suppose giving all biological females penises and reproducing via surgical procedures would be a moral imperative that we should get on making affordable. Similar reasoning applies to the other way around, unless you think that women can’t rape other women. In fact, your arguments on this subject boil down to “the inherent physical advantage that going through male puberty confers means that most men will have the advantage in raping trans men and trans women have the advantage in raping other women.” People who train effective martial arts for several years have a similar advantage over the general population—should we ban martial arts training? No, because it turns out we have different system of incentives in place to prevent rape.
Third-”There are also genetics markers and brain area changes observable in people who develop schizophrenia. And also genetic markers and brain area changes in those people prone to be very religious...” I don’t claim to be an expert in ANY way on brain physiology but this argument seems ridiculous if I read it as is. Wouldn’t you know, human minds are governed by the physiology of their brains. There are endless arguments on nature vs. nurture, but from even a slightly deterministic view of personality development your argument can be used to call someone liking vanilla ice cream a psychosis. (I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree). If instead you are just pointing out that Mr. Alexander’s argument proves too much and you just chose bad examples, I can see where you’re coming from, but would point out that some people have the opposite problem of believing transgenderism to be entirely dependent upon upbringing/personal choice, and it is worth pointing out the science on the issue as it is. Full disclosure, I do not know if the science has changed at all in the past three years, but that has no direct bearing on the fallacies in your argument here. I will do some research on my own.
Fourth-”This is really the crux of the articles entire argument—we should do it to be nice.” I didn’t get that at all. The title of the article is “The Categories Were Made For Man, not Man For the Categories.” It isn’t “Be Nice to People.” This is the issue with entertaining bad premises to point out how they’re bad premises—a third party gets to cherry pick the argument and make an easy rebuttal. The question at hand is not whether it is nicer of cis people to accommodate trans people or of trans people to suffer in silence. The question is one of semantics. Now I’m going to do what I just said is a bad idea and say this—I am skeptical that the negative utility of accommodating reasonable requests of trans people (use preferred pronouns, for example) is greater than the positive utility of trans people on the receiving end of such tolerance. But more on the semantics point later.
Fifth- Accommodating trans-Napoleonism. See above, esp. including the “cherry-picking the easy argument to rebut” since you made no mention of the more robust objection in Mr. Alexander’s article. I have nothing to add on this one until I hear such a rebuttal.
Sixth-Self identification. Some googling couldn’t turn up the study you cite, but assuming it exists, then the issue would appear to, again, be largely regarding the prison system and not transgenderism.
One argument I thought was somewhere in between was the one comparing gender dysphoria with body integrity identity disorder. I’m tempted to dismiss this one because it seems like reducio ad absurdum, but its a fairly compelling argument. I could point to any number of other instances where we respect a patient’s choice to effectively do themselves permanent harm. I believe by the same train of logic you would require a full psychiatric evaluation before any person ever got a tattoo, though that argument feels a little too absurd to be fair. There is a whole body of medical ethics on this and similar issues, but in my personal opinion it appears that the consequences of treating gender dysphoria with reassignment surgery are vastly different to the consequences of fulfilling a patient’s desire to paralyze themselves. It is a very, very difficult thing to determine when a person is of sound mind and I pretty much agree that gender reassignment surgery should come along with an intensive psycholgical evaluation process. For similar ethical questions—is it moral for the bartender to let intoxicated people poison themselves further and pay him for the privilege? At what point is it allowable for an elderly cancer patient to make the decision to move to hospice care? These are difficult questions and do not lend themselves to universal answers. But if the doctor, medical ethics board, and patient in question are all in unity on the subject, I think it would be very difficult to argue either way.
Okay, that’s all for bad-faith arguments I think. Now as far as my position on this matter and how it might differ from what I get from you—as I said, at the end of the day the argument you’re putting forth is essentially semantic. Scratch that—part of it is semantic and part of it is misattributing societal flaws to the existence of trans people. (Can you put forth a actual reason why men, let alone trans women, shouldn’t go in women’s bathrooms that doesn’t devolve into victim blaming? Did we start posting guards at bathroom doors to check peoples genitals when I wasn’t looking?)
But the semantic bit. My point, and I think Mr. Alexander’s point, is as follows: if you define “male” as a person with a Y chromosome and apply this rule unilateraly, you will produce a group of people who mostly share similar characteristics, with few enough outliers that it is still a good label. If you identify “man” as a person who identifies themselves as a man, you also produce a group with functionally the same degree of similarity. What makes one category better than the other? Well, if you ask me, you can have your cake and eat it too, since I just used two different words to describe two different, self-consistent groups. As a medical professional, I think of sex along biological terms and gender along self-identification terms, and have thus far managed to avoid asking a biological male if he is menstruating regularly. Language is sufficiently versatile and subject to change that the semantic portion of the argument that boils down to “should we change the meaning of a few words” appears to be a resounding “yes” for me. The obvious counter is that, if we keep changing the meaning of a few words for a relatively small group of people, eventually our language will become nonsensical. I won’t point out that this hasn’t seemed to be an issue for any of the other words that evolved in response to new social phenomena, but I will say that I would be much less in favor of my (and others’) proposed changes if they weren’t so obviously precise. And, in fact, I am in favor of adding words to the language to accommodate any person who needs accommodating, since the only way such changes would become widespread is if enough people are in need of accommodation that adding the word would appear to be a good idea after all.
Now then, I know you will probably never read this response, but I hope it provides some balance to anyone else reading this article in the future. (To the person I recommended this to about an hour ago, I didn’t mean to write this when I did).
Cheers.
Thanks for this question! I really tried to find an actual reason (without the stop signal answers like “culture” or “religion”) and found following (it’s probably highly flawed, but at least worked for me):
Clothes were invented for protection and convenience → civilization development created social disparity → poor and slaves couldn’t afford clothes → nakedness ≈ slavery and slaves were the easiest source of sex → it’s shameful and dangerous to be naked → shame and abscense of genitals around free people sexualized genitals → slavery slowly becomes illegal in the vast majority of cultures → majority of people already conditioned that naked opposite genitals ≈ sex, nudists are minority and not mainstream → with such conditioning (or simply, culture) we can’t have common bathrooms.
Btw, prisoners rape prisoners regardless of genitals.
I’m going to come clean here: Your post has made me so ANGRY that I have to respond. Usually I’d leave it be, to conserve resources needed for a hostile world and because the chance that you’re being intellectually honest is not high enough. Politics is the mindkiller; You are a transphobe, and it shows. There is also no way for me to argue that you couldn’t just respond with: “He thinks he’s a woman! He must be crazy, pay no heed to him!” (for outsiders sake, I’m a trans-woman)
But honestly? You argue for my existance being an invalid way of human life. You argue that everyone sees me not as I present myself socially, but rather that they see my genotype. Somehow. You are also wrong about calling my being trans a psychiatric disorder, just like being homo, hetero or bi isn’t. I’ll show you using this list. [1) Not as far as science can tell, currently research points to complex interplay of biological, neurological and sociological reasons for being trans. 2) Yes, being transgender is not something you choose. 3) Yes, There are more Cis-people than trans-people. 4) No. Dysphoria is unpleasant, but the rate of trans-people who regret their choice later in life is astronomically small.
I have never been as happy in my life as I am now. 5) No, This isn’t a discrete phenomena, as many people are non-binary and would not consider themselves only male or only female. 6) yes, it’s commonly treated with hormonal therapy and surgical help.] I do not consider this sufficient grounds to remove someone’s agency. I think you are wrong.
Therefore, I should be able to refute the claims you have which are wrong. I’m going to respond to your paragraphs thusly:
1: Yes, but Solomon would not have changed his opinion on what his words mean. But you are mostly correct.
2: I agree! Black is not equal to white, but grey is actually grey. Remember this.
3: Yes and No. These arguments are analogous to intersex conditions when viewed as pertaining to the concept of SEX, but they are also analogous to transgender people when viewed as pertaining to the concept of GENDER. SEX is not equal to GENDER, which is showed by the intersex women who have an XY-chromosomal pair. They clearly are women{GENDER} but they are not clearly women{SEX}. Likewise, I’m personally clearly a man{SEX} but I hope that I can convince people that I’m at least by default a woman{GENDER}.
4: No, we do not say that the “determent” of SEX is personal identity. Because it would rightly be considered dumb. We do say that the “determent” of GENDER is personal identity.
5: Please stop saying that I’m delusional. Also read this on why it IS different being trans-gender as opposed to believing that you are another person, or non-human animal etc.
6: Where can you find an objective truth regarding someones GENDER? The whole concept of GENDER falls apart pretty quickly outside of other peoples ideas and affirmations of it. My truth is infact reliant on other people, as is yours. I have been misgendered before my transition (someone thought i was a girl) and I am properly gendered now. I’m just as much of a woman{GENDER} as any of the other women I know are.
7: Your point falls on paragraph 6: being wrong. Other people do not need to affirm my belief, they just happen to do it regardless.
8: I agree! The potential for harm must be outweighed by the potential for good! As I see it, the potential for good is such: People get to live happier lives. Nice. The potential for harm? No discernible difference compared to otherwise.
OP quote: Yes! gender dysphoria is a psychiatric disorder, just like depression is.
9: Good job, you’re being reasonable. I agree.
10-12: Yes, you’re right. What you are implying is however false. I’m not delusional when saying that my GENDER is that of a woman. Just like someone isn’t delusional when they are homosexual.
OP quote+13: Why change the brain when you can change the body? If you feel bad because you’re overweight due to other clinical conditions, why decide that poking around in the brain is a good idea? Like REALLY?
OP quote +14: did you read “Safe” in that text? This is WHY I dislike the idea of poking around in the brain, directly or indirectly. Frontal lobotomy does not work for helping transgender people, nor does it help anyone to outweigh it’s cost.
Op quote +15: It’s not a delusion if everyone is sharing it. There is only one defence for you if I think you are not your self-reported GENDER. It is as follows: “I feel like I am a [Preferred GENDER], I look like my [Preferred GENDER] and people refer to me as a [Preferred GENDER]. Therefore I am a [Preferred GENDER].”
Op quote +16: Your argument falls on paragraph 6: being wrong. Again. To use a metaphor: perceived grey is grey. No, Transpeople are not the same as Cispeople, but they use shared words. You misuse language by saying that GENDER is SEX.
17: Ahhh, here transphobia rears its ugly head. It’s been great not seeing you. Go away. Anyway, I would be very annoyed indeed if my trans-man friend got sent to a womens prison, instead of a mens prison. Not even slightly like allowing someone who identifies as a wolf into the wolf-enclosure. AND SOMEHOW YOU THINK THAT BLAMING THE VICTIM OF A RAPE FOR IT IS RIGHT! IF YOU HOLD THE BELIEF IMPLIED THAT THE POOR TRANSMAN WHO WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO HIM THEN YOU ARE A MONSTER. A rapist does not care what their victim thinks, that comes with the crime. Your point is moot.
18: What about male sex offenders who get sent to male prison? What about female sex offenders who get sent to female prisons? Housing ANYONE in a cell with a serial rapist seems dumb. You also do not destroy womens ability to congregate without males, remember that GENDER is not the same as SEX. Disallowing access to gendered spaces means that you are forcing transmen to use womens spaces, and transwomen to use mens spaces. Groups of people who are especially VULNERABLE to sexual assault. does that seem reasonable?
19: What gender specialists? Argument from authority seems weird here since I’ve never heard of this authority. I’ve never heard of a rising tide of male{SEX} sex offenders claiming to be female{GENDER}. In absence of reliable sources, I disregard statistics. Sex offenders are also unlikely to follow any rule given given to them to follow, thus safety would not be increased.
20: Your point is moot by 19: being disregarded. Is it unsafer being a woman when accompanied by a transwoman than when accompanied by a Cisman? I don’t know, but I have my suspicions.
Op quote +21: I agree with you! That is not the reason to call someone their preferred pronoun. There exists so many better reasons!
Op quote +22: What rules of rationality? Is there any Epistemiological reason to not separate SEX from GENDER? About freedom of belief, authenticity and safety , both freedom of belief and authenticity is moot because you don’t separate SEX from GENDER whereas those you argue against do. Safety is a fun one. Riddle me this: Is it safer to have unbalanced men and women who are not allowed to live properly take to violence to get said right, or is it safer to have balanced transmen and transwomen who are content and productive citizens? Is it safer to have people who desperately needs to find out whats wrong via any means necessary than it is to have content people who knows what they want?
Now go away, I will not respond to more Transphobic shit here.