Thanks for saying this! Do you mind if I push back on a few points? I think I don’t find your post threatening for identity reasons, but I think the data you are drawing from may be a bit miscalibrated.
drastic, permanent, alterations to their biology
I see phrasing like this a lot, I don’t mean to pick on you in particular, but in general I think there is a level of rhetorical alarmism with language like this that isn’t justified by the medical reality, and IME people using phrasing like this rarely have a gears-level understanding of trans medicine (I don’t know if that’s true for you or not). I’m trying not to say stuff that sounds like nitpicking, but I realize it will probably read like that.
Nothing is trans care is altering our genetic physiology at a deep level AFAIK. Basically there is hormones and surgery. In most places including the US we only use bioidentical hormones and in particular the effects of estrogen on a male are a lot less drastic and permanent than I think many people understand. I can go into more detail if you’re interested. Surgery is more complicated so I don’t think I can get into that here without this comment becoming painfully long. The irreversible surgeries for MtFs aren’t terribly common (<20%). The anime girl phenomenon the author describes seems to be exclusive to MtFs. If you’re interested in the latest research on detransition (skewed towards the FtM side), see https://www.thedarestudy.com/
to try to incentivize people, on the margin, to follow life paths that entail having kids, in the context of stable marriages and families...
But if many of those transwomen are following a life path that disproportionately entails not having kids, not because that’s a better fit for their essential being, but because it’s a life path that functions as a coping strategy, which is more cognitively and socially available than (possibly more effective or more functional) alternatives, then I think something has gone badly wrong.
This is all darkly ironic to me, because outside of the terminally-online-anime-LW memeplex, getting married and having kids is a common coping strategy. To your credit, you’re aware that this is something that can happen. But I think you’re underrating the frequency and the harms, especially if you care about happy stable families, vs just getting the birth rate up. In particular, it can be really horrible and unfair for the wives. I personally tried to do this when I was young (unconsciously, long story), and I know several others who got further along and had kids. Our brains are shifted female so some of us can end up much more predisposed to childrearing monogamy than the median cishet man. I just worry that people reading this post are overindexing on a particular kind of MtF.
I can’t give you a full accounting of the internal/external factors affecting fertility among trans people. I can say that people generally aren’t aware it’s possible to restore the production of viable sperm in most MtFs:
I believe very strongly that—if you care about happy, stable families—at the margin, having a default attitude in society that pushes questioning trans people to get married and have kids is bad—it’s not fair to the spouses and kids. Spouses deserve to be married to people who are happily and fully embodied and sexually present with them, and kids deserve to grow up with parents who aren’t fighting each other over a divorce, because one parent got to a point where they couldn’t repress any more, and needed to transition.
Last—and this is kinda separate—I felt surprised reading your post, given you said in the 2nd paragraph you’re a libertarian and a transhumanist.
I wouldn’t expect someone who identifies with either of those labels to endorse some of the things you said, including about voluntary amputation (implied) of a trans person’s gonads being tragic in almost all contexts. Can you help me understand that? Am I miscalibrated about what libertarian/transhumanist means?
My assumption was that a LW libertarian would basically say it’s fine for people to do whatever they want, and if it affects fertility, well, there is an equilibrium process at work, and eventually changing allele frequencies will right the ship.
Thanks for saying this! Do you mind if I push back on a few points? I think I don’t find your post threatening for identity reasons, but I think the data you are drawing from may be a bit miscalibrated.
I see phrasing like this a lot, I don’t mean to pick on you in particular, but in general I think there is a level of rhetorical alarmism with language like this that isn’t justified by the medical reality, and IME people using phrasing like this rarely have a gears-level understanding of trans medicine (I don’t know if that’s true for you or not). I’m trying not to say stuff that sounds like nitpicking, but I realize it will probably read like that.
Nothing is trans care is altering our genetic physiology at a deep level AFAIK. Basically there is hormones and surgery. In most places including the US we only use bioidentical hormones and in particular the effects of estrogen on a male are a lot less drastic and permanent than I think many people understand. I can go into more detail if you’re interested. Surgery is more complicated so I don’t think I can get into that here without this comment becoming painfully long. The irreversible surgeries for MtFs aren’t terribly common (<20%). The anime girl phenomenon the author describes seems to be exclusive to MtFs. If you’re interested in the latest research on detransition (skewed towards the FtM side), see https://www.thedarestudy.com/
This is all darkly ironic to me, because outside of the terminally-online-anime-LW memeplex, getting married and having kids is a common coping strategy. To your credit, you’re aware that this is something that can happen. But I think you’re underrating the frequency and the harms, especially if you care about happy stable families, vs just getting the birth rate up. In particular, it can be really horrible and unfair for the wives. I personally tried to do this when I was young (unconsciously, long story), and I know several others who got further along and had kids. Our brains are shifted female so some of us can end up much more predisposed to childrearing monogamy than the median cishet man. I just worry that people reading this post are overindexing on a particular kind of MtF.
I can’t give you a full accounting of the internal/external factors affecting fertility among trans people. I can say that people generally aren’t aware it’s possible to restore the production of viable sperm in most MtFs:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9873819/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12456576/
I believe very strongly that—if you care about happy, stable families—at the margin, having a default attitude in society that pushes questioning trans people to get married and have kids is bad—it’s not fair to the spouses and kids. Spouses deserve to be married to people who are happily and fully embodied and sexually present with them, and kids deserve to grow up with parents who aren’t fighting each other over a divorce, because one parent got to a point where they couldn’t repress any more, and needed to transition.
Last—and this is kinda separate—I felt surprised reading your post, given you said in the 2nd paragraph you’re a libertarian and a transhumanist.
I wouldn’t expect someone who identifies with either of those labels to endorse some of the things you said, including about voluntary amputation (implied) of a trans person’s gonads being tragic in almost all contexts. Can you help me understand that? Am I miscalibrated about what libertarian/transhumanist means?
My assumption was that a LW libertarian would basically say it’s fine for people to do whatever they want, and if it affects fertility, well, there is an equilibrium process at work, and eventually changing allele frequencies will right the ship.