Treatments for trans children and politics, world-wide

[Zorral]

30 minutes ago, mormont said:

The Tories have nothing left but to smash that 'trans panic' button* over and over in the hope that it somehow saves some seats.

 

 

*OK, and the 'immigrant panic' button. 

Presumably toilet seats?

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

41 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Are those my only two options? I was making a point; you can’t have your cake and eat it. Either biological sex exists and there are those who aren’t born into the sex they wish they were, or it’s big murky slippery nothing and then, what are trans people complaining about? What do you mean you weren’t born into the sex you wanted? How are you defining sex? 

I don't think that your point that you are making is particularly good here. It still frames sex in terms of a simple binary rather than as bimodal while also presenting a false dilemma with a splash of slippery slope.

Biological sex exists, which is also has not been argued otherwise, but it's generally understood by biologists as bimodal rather than binary, which is something that even Jerry Coyne agreed about in his 2018 blog post before he started complaining about wokeness. Sex being bimodal effectively puts sex on a spectrum, even if populations tend to clump around two primary modes. 

As I said before, I am not the best equipped person to answer your questions about what trans people are complaining about, which probably should be directed in good faith towards people who are trans or gender non-binary. Again, here I am assuming good faith with your questions, and I would hope that you would give them the time of day to listen earnestly and genuinely without making silly arguments such as identifying as an ewok doesn't make people ewoks. I would also advise caution with viewing the gender identity of trans people simply as something that they "want" rather than how they are or identify. 

That said, let's go back to your earlier point here: "Either biological sex exists and there are those who aren’t born into the sex they wish they were,..." The issue is that you are again conflating (1) the existence of biological sex with (2) biological sex existing as a binary and possibly (3) defining biological sex simply in terms of gametes.

Earlier I mentioned phenotypic sex, which includes gametes, chromosomes, but it also includes things like brain hormones/chemistry, other genetic markers, outward appearance, development, etc. Phenotypic sex generally plays a much bigger part than simply genotypic sex (e.g., gametes, chromosomes, etc.) when it comes to trans identities because these issues involving their brains, genetics, hormones, and their development, etc. may impact their gender identity and dysphoria. So there can be an incongruence between their mind and their birth assigned sex. However, the degree of correction or gender-care treatment required will vary with each individual trans person. But often the people who put a lot of personal research into this issue tend to also be trans people or people only slowly realizing they are trans who are trying to make sense of their experiences around their gender and their birth-assigned-sex. 

I would welcome to be corrected by any trans person if my information above is incorrect as I cannot really speak from a place of trans identity, dysphoria, etc. 

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Biological sex exists, which is also has not been argued otherwise, but it's generally understood by biologists as bimodal rather than binary, which is something that even Jerry Coyne agreed about in his 2018 blog post before he started complaining about wokeness. Sex being bimodal effectively puts sex on a spectrum, even if populations tend to clump around two primary modes. 

Sex is binary. Many of the characteristics exhibited by sex are bimodal. Ovaries and testes are not bimodal.

Seems to me you are talking past people with your use of language.

Edited May 6 by Heartofice

[DMC]

How people define biological sex - no matter how they do - is consequently a use of language.

[Ran]

Managed to give myself a nice deep gash under the thumb that required stitches (my birthday present to myself, it seems), so I will try to be brief, and then will sadly have to bow out for the rest of the day because I really shouldn't be typing.

7 hours ago, felice said:

The type of gamete produced can't be swapped, but the whole gamete production system can be removed, and virtually every other sex-related characteristic can be changed (particularly if started before puberty). Defining people's sex on the basis of a bit of anatomy they don't even have any more seems kind of unreasonable. The remnants of original biological sex are utterly irrelevant outside of certain medical contexts that will likely never come up in any given individual's lifetime.

As baxus says, none of this changes the person's biological sex, but it's all true... and it's basically what I've already said if you had read my posts, that we can make greater or lesser changes to secondary sexual characteristics such that a transman may have a deep voice, facial hair, and a phallus, or a transwoman may well be very feminized, have a vagina, etc. (FWIW, the matter of stopping someone's puberty before it even begins with the intention of giving them a puberty associated with their chosen gender seems, from evidence from Europe and some gender clinicians in the UK and US, to be ill-advised as a clinical approach to dealing with gender dysphoria -- it leaves these young transchildren with very little in the way of genitalia to work with to fashion a neo-vagina or a new phallus, and may leave them with very little sexual function as well. Maybe once we are capable of cloning organs to use to donate tissue, this won't matter too much.)

But we need to remember that according to statistics, only a small portion of trans people actually have gone so far as to have gender-affirming top/bottom surgery, and something like 50% don't even take any hormones. So why are we making policy with the least male transwomen and least female transmen in mind as if they are the typical trans person? How do we make policy that encompasses people who are for all intents and purposes 100% female or 100% male but are gendered as men and women respectively?

I'm not opposed to self-ID, you see. I don't think it's my business what gender any adult says they are. But when their gender identity ends up leading to a conflict with others tied to their natal sex and their readily apparent sex, then we need to start figuring it out rather than pretending that sex differences don't exist and may be relevant on a case-by-case basis.

 

7 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

 

Just briefly, to your link:

Quote

I point this out because saying “scientists define sex as…” makes it sound as though we all got together at a meeting and unanimously decided this, when in reality, it seems more like a definition that has taken hold in this one particular subfield. In fact, even within this subfield, some researchers treat this more as a claim than a definitive fact. For instance, Gorelick et al. (2017) say, “The production of eggs vs. sperm is often cited as a way of distinguishing between the sexes,” and Henshaw et al. (2023) state, “Anisogamy is often taken as the defining difference between ‘male’ and ‘female’ sexual strategies” [emphasis mine].

Gorelick and Henshaw are speaking of simple  eukaryotes and, well, non-mammalian species. Scientists do in fact agree that humans have only two biological sexes. You are a male or female person, and then you have your various variations and maybe DSDs.

The thing about gametes is the organs that produce them are also the organs that produce  the majority of hormones that make our bodies masculine or feminine, triggering the development of the sexual organs like the penis and the uterus, the sexual dimorphism we have later in life, etc. They are the basic foundation of all things sexual. So trying to dismiss them and to argue that sex isn't binary seems a fool's errand.

At the same time, biology should only matter so much and only in certain circumstances. Which basically means we're in agreement, and I think we can leave it at that.

 

4 hours ago, karaddin said:

Can someone please tell me what the fuck is the relevance of the gametes one used to produce when kicking said person off a hospital ward for making someone else feel irrational uncomfortable?

If a woman who had testes and a  consequent penis still has those things, I can see why another woman might not want to share an overnight hospital bedroom with a person they don't know who is a different sex from them. If a person who once had testes and a penis no longer has them, I don't know, I think the argument for putting them in a room with another woman seems stronger, but then I think fewer women would object to that situation.

 

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

There's nothing contradictory if you think the most important factor is whether your endocrine system is estrogen or testosterone dominant and then you fix that by changing it. There were some anatomical issues for me as well and I changed them too. I'm not pretending I didn't change anything, photos of me in my 20s and 30s make it pretty clear there were some big ones, but the changes happened. 

I can't change society by taking hormones though so that shit remains.

I think the anatomical issue tends to be the biggest for people in regards to things like changing rooms and bathrooms. Western society, even the rather liberated Nordic society, largely separates the sexes when you undress or are undressed, and people grow up with a certain sense of what is modest and comfortable and what is not modest and no comfortable, and in particular at what ages it's appropriate to see the other sex nude or not and thereby learning about the different anatomy.

I don't really know how to make policy around the fact that we should support all trans people, including those who do not medicalize in any way, while also being sure that all stakeholders are reasonably comfortable. It's invasive to ask how modified ones body is. Like, if a gym changed its locker rooms from "Women" and "Men" to "Penis-free zone" and "Vagina-free zone", would that be better? It still leaves some trans people having to go into a room they aren't comfortable with, but at least we're moving away from "women" and "men" and trying to get into the .... nevermind, I was going to use an unfortunate phrase.

 

3 hours ago, HexMachina said:

I'll admit I found the proposals a bit confusing but my reading is the opposite to yours - new builds MUST provide single sex facilities, unless there is not sufficient space. They may still provide GN spaces but this is not a requirement.

That's how I read it too.

I will say that just giving males urinals would speed things up. They take up less space and reduce demand for the stalls/rooms.

3 hours ago, HexMachina said:

Personally, gender neutral toilets have been excellent for me,

I'm all for them, personally. It seems the straightforward course to me (not everyone agrees, just on grounds of the argument that one gender tends to be cleaner than the other when it comes to the state of toilets, remembering to put the ring up, cleaning up any spills, etc... but I've seen mixed evidence in this regard).

 

Edited May 6 by Ran

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

But we need to remember that according to statistics, only a small portion of trans people actually have gone so far as to have gender-affirming top/bottom surgery, and something like 50% don't even take any hormones. So why are we making policy with the least male transwomen and least female transmen in mind as if they are the typical trans person? How do we make policy that encompasses people who are for all intents and purposes 100% female or 100% male but are gendered as men and women respectively?

Statistics don't tell the whole picture. We need to remember why that is often the case, because it's not always a lack of desire, but also a lack of an ability to undergo the gender-affirming care that they want: e.g., age restrictions, social pressures (e.g., religion, family, spouse, friends, community, etc.), lack of monetary funds, lack of available (or reputable) medical services, etc. Sometimes it's also because they are still jumping through all the hoops required for transitioning: e.g., psychological examinations, hormonal therapy, medical consulations, etc.

We should be mindful of these other factors or else we may think that women in red states naturally have less need for abortions though really it's because there are social factors restricting their ability to get birth control: e.g., education, laws, medical policies, geographic availbility, etc. 

 

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

You are a male or female person, and then you have your various variations and maybe DSDs.

Sounds bimodal to me. 

 

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

So trying to dismiss them and to argue that sex isn't binary seems a fool's errand.

Gametes are binary (sorta),* but biological sex is bimodal. 

* Again keeping in mind that the gamete options in humans basically amount to Male, Female, Both, and Neither. 

 

39 minutes ago, Ran said:

If a woman who had testes and a  consequent penis still has those things, I can see why another woman might not want to share an overnight hospital bedroom with a person they don't know who is a different sex from them. If a person who once had testes and a penis no longer has them, I don't know, I think the argument for putting them in a room with another woman seems stronger, but then I think fewer women would object to that situation.

How is this all that different from fears of gays making straight people feel uncomfortable/unsafe in rooms? Or even that mixed racial rooms make whites feel uncomfortable/unsafe? There is often a fear of the unknown based on irrational social prejudices. I would personally prefer that we do not give those prejudices credence by treating them as if they were rational fears. 

[Heartofice]

18 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

How is this all that different from fears of gays making straight people feel uncomfortable/unsafe in rooms? Or even that mixed racial rooms make whites feel uncomfortable/unsafe? There is often a fear of the unknown based on irrational social prejudices. I would personally prefer that we do not give those prejudices credence by treating them as if they were rational fears. 

Is that really the appropriate way to frame it? Why not ask the question as to why there might be single sex wards in the first place? What reasons would there be for them to exist?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

39 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Sounds bimodal to me. 

I can't say for sure, but I am assuming that at least some of the disagreement in the binary/spectrum debates is that some people use binary when they really mean bimodal (or "basically binary"), while others invoke a "spectrum" to mean the same thing. In the former case, the person is accentuating the dominant pattern among the majority of people, while in the later the emphasis is on the room for exceptions and intermediate cases. But the underlying idea is the same, despite those different emphases.

[Heartofice]

22 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I can't say for sure, but I am assuming that at least some of the disagreement in the binary/spectrum debates is that some people use binary when they really mean bimodal (or "basically binary"), while others invoke a "spectrum" to mean the same thing. In the former case, the person is accentuating the dominant pattern among the majority of people, while in the later the emphasis is on the room for exceptions and intermediate cases. But the underlying idea is the same, despite those different emphases.

I dunno, to me I think the distinction is clear. I think Matrim is not being careful enough with his language. Some elements of sexual development are binary and some are bimodal. Primary sex organs are binary, but secondary sexual development like facial hair and wide hips are bimodal.

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Primary sex organs are binary, but secondary sexual development like facial hair and wide hips are bimodal.

So you're saying there are zero exceptional cases with regard to sex organs? Even if they're rare cases, it's not really a true binary if exceptions exist beyond your two possibilities.

Even if bimodal distribution itself is not quite the right framing (as its distribution is across one continuous variable), it gets closer to the reality than binary does. 

[Heartofice]

11 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

So you're saying there are zero exceptional cases with regard to sex organs? Even if they're rare cases, it's not really a true binary if exceptions exist beyond your two possibilities.

Even if bimodal distribution itself is not quite the right framing (as its distribution is across one continuous variable), it gets closer to the reality than binary does. 

Of course there will be occasional exceptions like disorders of sexual development , but it doesn’t make it bimodal, or disprove the binary.

Edited May 6 by Heartofice

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Of course there will be occasional exceptions, but it doesn’t make it bimodal, or disprove the binary.

Lol, you've basically illustrated my original point. You're using binary in a looser sense ("basically" a binary) to focus on the broader dominant pattern. While folks who want to emphasize the exceptions take umbrage, and often prefer "spectrum"--which has its own problems.

I don't care for pedantry (and I can accept both binary and spectrum as rough models in a discussion as long as other facts are acknowledged). But if you want to be careful with your language as you say you do, you should only use "binary" for something that literally has two possibilities and no more. Binary code doesn't have any intermediary digits. Just 1 and 0.

Maybe gametes are binary. And most aspects of sexual reproduction speak to a sort of functional binary between male and female. But when you dig into the details, it's usually a little fuzzier than a pure binary.

Edited May 6 by Phylum of Alexandria
grammar

[TrueMetis]

14 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

"Biological sex = gametes" is also scientifically not true. It's an overly simplistic understanding that is derived from a human desire to reduce sex to a simple binary. People only started identifying gametes with "biological sex" after those people who believed that chromosomes equated to biological sex got crushed by science. 

When we determine the "sex" humans or other animals, we are not looking just at gametes alone. That is bad science. The sex of a human or other animal is a sum of elements and markers that includes but not exclusive to gametes. Biologists will also use markers like sexual dimorphism, internal/external genitalia, chromosomes, hormone expression, behavior, neurological elements, etc. It's about a phenotypic sex model over andg against a singular aspect of genotypic sex. 

This likely factors into the problem with a lot of discussion. There are people who insist that gametes proves that biological sex is binary. However, those who view sex as a spectrum are using the phenotypical model in which is a person's sex is a sum of gametes, chromosomes, secondary sex expressions, brain chemistry, and behavior. 

Even if they are, "none" is a valid option no matter how much someone obstinately insists "they're just exceptions" as though binaries have exceptions. This shit remind me of religious folks claiming atheists don't exist.

12 hours ago, baxus said:

Excuse me, but what difference does it make if something can be removed? Removing "gamete production system" doesn't change person's sex any more than losing one's legs in a car accident would change their species on the grounds of humans being bipedal.

And no, you can not just "change every other sex-related characteristic". It would take rather heavy medication and surgery. At the very least, it's definitely not a process I'd like to see a child go through before puberty.

Would you please elaborate how "remnants of original biological sex" are utterly irrelevant? 

I mean, using traits to define species isn't really how it's done anymore anyway so...

 

You're a member of a given species if your parents were, that's it. You could have literally none of the traits your parents have and still be that same species. This is, somewhat ironically, because species too are a spectrum. Mostly temporal sometimes geographic.

Edited May 6 by TrueMetis

[Ran]

23 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

none

No human has ever been born without a sex, so far as I know, but if you've found information to the contrary I'd be very interested in reading it.

Edited May 6 by Ran

[DMC]

22 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

You're a member of a given species if your parents were, that's it. You could have literally none of the traits your parents have and still be that same species. This is, somewhat ironically, because species too are a spectrum. Mostly temporal sometimes geographic.

You mean the biological taxonomy I learned in seventh grade is subject to change by scientists?  How dare you!  What’s next, Pluto isn’t a planet?!?

[baxus]

12 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

You're a member of a given species if your parents were, that's it. You could have literally none of the traits your parents have and still be that same species. This is, somewhat ironically, because species too are a spectrum. Mostly temporal sometimes geographic.

Sounds like denying evolution to me.

[TrackerNeil]

On 5/6/2024 at 7:56 AM, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Keep in mind that three scientists have been linked as "credible" - Colin Wright, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne - who have all maligned their opponents by accusing them of just being "woke," which is one helluva dogwhistle. Many have also gone to speak on right wing talk shows, news outlets, or right wing propaganda shams like PragerU. Dawkins has even endorsed and platformed Helen Joyce, an anti-trans activist. Do you think that these scientists are so gullible or naive that they are unaware of how their views on the subject matter are being used by right wing pundits to further anti-trans rhetoric? 

This is a sword that cuts both ways, I think. If Jerry Coyne is to be disregarded because he doesn't like social-justice politics, than isn't Jack Turban in the same boat for his own advocacy? If we go too far down that road, there won't be many expert opinions we can consider at all. 

Also, other scientists who think sex is binary include Luana Maroja, at Williams College, Carole Hooven at Harvard, and Emma Hilton at the University of Manchester.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

9 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

This is a sword that cuts both ways, I think. If Jerry Coyne is to be disregarded because he doesn't like social-justice politics, than isn't Jack Turban in the same boat for his own advocacy? If we go too far down that road, there won't be many expert opinions we can consider at all. 

Also, other scientists who think sex is binary include Luana Maroja, at Williams College, Carole Hooven at Harvard, and Emma Hilton at the University of Manchester.

I don't doubt that there are scientists who believe sex is binary, though being a scientist in itself does not make you an expert on human sex and biology. It makes you a scientist with an opinion on human sex and biology. And while being a biologist potentially moves one closer to the subject matter, the nature of academia also generally involves hyper-specialization, such that being a biologist also requires asking "what kind?" and "what is your research specialty?" 

My issue has primarily been with those aforementioned scientists who are using rightwing dogwhistles like "woke" while appearing also on rightwing programs and media, often using a lot of rightwing rhetoric is that is all too familiar when it comes to a number of other issues. I think that these sorts of things go beyond just scientific advocacy. I think that we have to be cautious about using them for these reasons. 

Often there is a sense that they remain liberal or lefties committed to objective scientific truth who feel persecuted by leftwing ideologues. There are echoes of Ronald Regan's "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me." Colin Wright has constructed an identity around his inability to get an academic position, claiming that he is being persecuted by ideologically-driven academics regarding his views on sex and gender, all while courting right wing people and platforms. Is it actually true that Colin Wright was unable to get an academic position because of his views? You do say that there are scientists in Harvard, Manchester, and elswhere who believe that sex is a binary, so surely viewing sex as a binary is not so large an obstacle as to inhibit getting an academic position. 

That said these are people who believe and frame themselves to be above ideology, and those who challenge their view that sex is a binary are accused of being deluded and pushing an ideology. They believe themselves to speak for a pure objective science. As was all too common with a lot of the New Atheist movement, they have fetishized science, rationality, and truth to create a self-rigtheous sense of moral and intellectual superiority. But it is also a movement that increasingly shifted to the far right, regardless of the political persuasions those scientists may publicly profess. 

I seem to recall you being pretty enamored with the New Atheist movement 15+ years ago on this forum. Is there a particular reason why you are sympathetic to these scientists who are engaging in this sort of anti-woke rhetoric while appearing on rightwing media? 

Edited May 8 by Matrim Fox Cauthon

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I don't doubt that there are scientists who believe sex is binary,

Well I'd say most scientists believe sex is binary, and I would be deeply worried about the scientists who don't believe it. If they do they then really need to start defining why they think that.

Three-in-10-uk-scientists-believe-sex-isnt-binary
 

Quote

58% of academics in the survey agreed with the statement “sex is binary”. A full 29% disagreed, while 13% claimed to have no view or preferred not to answer.

I however would very much agree with this statement:
 

Quote

It’s the equivalent of discovering that a sizeable proportion of scientists believe the earth is flat or fairies exist at the bottom of the garden. And it should worry us because of all the policies which are being pushed by people who promote the fiction that biological sex is not fixed.

 

Edited May 8 by Heartofice

[TrackerNeil]

55 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Is there a particular reason why you are sympathetic to these scientists who are engaging in this sort of anti-woke rhetoric while appearing on rightwing media? 

I don't know what you mean by "sympathetic." I believe sex is binary because I think it makes sense to believe that, not because I think Colin Wright is hot (although he is) or that Luana Maroja is wicked cool (she might be). 

I sense a difference between you and I on the issue of association; that is, the movements or media with whom people are perceived to be aligned with. For myself, I no longer worry very much about that kind of thing; instead, I try to focus on the ideas people put forward. Keeping that model in mind, I can agree with, say, Colin Wright on the binary nature of sex, and disagree with him on pronoun usage. If he gives a talk to Moms for LIberty, I still feel the same way about both positions. I try to separate the message from the messenger, and hopefully I am successful more often than not. Others can pursue a different path, but that's mine.