Thank you for sharing this detailed account of your experience.
I’m a libertarian and a transhumanist. I strongly believe in and stand up for the principle that people should be able to do whatever they choose to with their own lives and their own bodies. People can be wildly different from each other, and what would be a terrible existence for one person is often a happy and fulfilling life for another.
Also, I’m attending to your addendum, and not assuming that your experience generalizes to all transpeople, or all transwomen.
But that said, speaking personally, I find this account disturbing. And more analytically, this makes me more sympathetic to the view that the increasing transgender identification is a symptom of some kind of social problem.
On the face of it, people taking drastic, permanent, alterations to their biology as a strategy to cope with social isolation seems unhealthy? I would guess that, for most people transitioning for broadly these reasons, that strategy will fail to address the underlying desire to be loved, and will impose additional large costs on their life.
It’s additionally concerning if, as you describe, the motivating desire is to be loved as a cute anime girl. Feminists complain about the unreasonable body-image expectations imposed by “society”. But anime girls are literally cartoons, with inhumanly cute proportions. From the post, it sounds like it’s not so a desire to look like an an anime girl, but to adopt the social role of an anime girl, and to be loved and appreciated the way they are loved?
(I’m not sure how concerning that should be to me. People often take inspiration from fictional examples, and that can be totally healthy and good. Maybe this is no different than eg someone who starts studying martial arts after watching anime? Real martial arts are different, from the fictional versions, but there’s some overlap in what’s cool about them.)
Also, while socially or even medically transitioning doesn’t preclude having kids, my understanding is that fertility rates are much lower for transpeople. I don’t think that “some people switching sexes” is even on the top 10 list of the reasons for declining fertility in developed countries, but I also think there’s something to “family values”, and that it’s not unreasonable for society to try to incentivize people, on the margin, to follow life paths that entail having kids, in the context of stable marriages and families. My impression is that there are plenty of transwomen who, if they had lived only a few decades ago, would have have been fathers.
Possibly they would have been fathers living lives of quiet desperation, much worse for them the now more-available option of socially or medically transitioning (which is why it’s so important to allow people the freedom to opt out of societal defaults). 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.
While transitioning might be the right choice for some people, I’m now newly worried that there are a small number of people who have a strong innate self-identity that differs from their sex-assigned at birth and a larger number of people who are lonely and depressed, and who are latching on to a drastic and a priori harmful[1] life choice, as a misguided attempt to address those basically social and and emotional problems.
Is this a wrong takeaway for some reason?
I’m attempting to be careful writing this. I imagine that a comment like this can be threatening to lots of transpeople, because it seems to invalidate their identity and give license to disregard their experience or limit their freedoms. I’m confident that there are people that would read a post like the above and weaponize it in the culture war. But I’ll, just say again, I don’t want to do that, at least. I’m interested in the project of how to build a healthy and flourishing society, and committed to allowing people to make choices, including those that seem bad to me.
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.
I don’t have a lot to say in response. I think you make several good points, especially about fertility. I’m not so sure about the following though:
On the face of it, people taking drastic, permanent, alterations to their biology as a strategy to cope with social isolation seems unhealthy? I would guess that, for most people transitioning for broadly these reasons, that strategy will fail to address the underlying desire to be loved, and will impose additional large costs on their life.
Maybe I’m way too pessimistic, but for many people, it may be very difficult (or even impossible) to otherwise satisfy this desire.
But if many of those transwomen are following a life path [...] 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.
Likewise, I’m not sure there are viable alternatives in many cases, much less more effective or functional ones.
Thank you for sharing this detailed account of your experience.
I’m a libertarian and a transhumanist. I strongly believe in and stand up for the principle that people should be able to do whatever they choose to with their own lives and their own bodies. People can be wildly different from each other, and what would be a terrible existence for one person is often a happy and fulfilling life for another.
Also, I’m attending to your addendum, and not assuming that your experience generalizes to all transpeople, or all transwomen.
But that said, speaking personally, I find this account disturbing. And more analytically, this makes me more sympathetic to the view that the increasing transgender identification is a symptom of some kind of social problem.
On the face of it, people taking drastic, permanent, alterations to their biology as a strategy to cope with social isolation seems unhealthy? I would guess that, for most people transitioning for broadly these reasons, that strategy will fail to address the underlying desire to be loved, and will impose additional large costs on their life.
It’s additionally concerning if, as you describe, the motivating desire is to be loved as a cute anime girl. Feminists complain about the unreasonable body-image expectations imposed by “society”. But anime girls are literally cartoons, with inhumanly cute proportions. From the post, it sounds like it’s not so a desire to look like an an anime girl, but to adopt the social role of an anime girl, and to be loved and appreciated the way they are loved?
(I’m not sure how concerning that should be to me. People often take inspiration from fictional examples, and that can be totally healthy and good. Maybe this is no different than eg someone who starts studying martial arts after watching anime? Real martial arts are different, from the fictional versions, but there’s some overlap in what’s cool about them.)
Also, while socially or even medically transitioning doesn’t preclude having kids, my understanding is that fertility rates are much lower for transpeople. I don’t think that “some people switching sexes” is even on the top 10 list of the reasons for declining fertility in developed countries, but I also think there’s something to “family values”, and that it’s not unreasonable for society to try to incentivize people, on the margin, to follow life paths that entail having kids, in the context of stable marriages and families. My impression is that there are plenty of transwomen who, if they had lived only a few decades ago, would have have been fathers.
Possibly they would have been fathers living lives of quiet desperation, much worse for them the now more-available option of socially or medically transitioning (which is why it’s so important to allow people the freedom to opt out of societal defaults). 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.
While transitioning might be the right choice for some people, I’m now newly worried that there are a small number of people who have a strong innate self-identity that differs from their sex-assigned at birth and a larger number of people who are lonely and depressed, and who are latching on to a drastic and a priori harmful[1] life choice, as a misguided attempt to address those basically social and and emotional problems.
Is this a wrong takeaway for some reason?
I’m attempting to be careful writing this. I imagine that a comment like this can be threatening to lots of transpeople, because it seems to invalidate their identity and give license to disregard their experience or limit their freedoms. I’m confident that there are people that would read a post like the above and weaponize it in the culture war. But I’ll, just say again, I don’t want to do that, at least. I’m interested in the project of how to build a healthy and flourishing society, and committed to allowing people to make choices, including those that seem bad to me.
ie In almost all contexts, we consider it a tragedy if someone’s body parts, and maybe especially sexual organs, are amputated
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.
I don’t have a lot to say in response. I think you make several good points, especially about fertility. I’m not so sure about the following though:
Maybe I’m way too pessimistic, but for many people, it may be very difficult (or even impossible) to otherwise satisfy this desire.
Likewise, I’m not sure there are viable alternatives in many cases, much less more effective or functional ones.