I don’t think that the transgender issue has anything to due with sexuality, safety in bathrooms, societal prudishness, etc. The salient point is, as Bill Clinton portended: “it depends on what the definition of is is.”
If anyone can “identify” as anything without any basis in observable facts and that identification forces, by law, everyone else to acknowledge and de facto verify the identification then we are in a brave new world.
I will have to go back and read the chapters in Becoming Nicole which discuss the evidence which is mounting that transgender individuals have “observable” differences in brain structure compared with biological males and females whose “gender identity” matches their genitalia. Also, there have been discoveries in genetic research which indicate biological basis for a lot of the gender issues being discussed. It was a lot to take in, so I need to read it again. I found it very interesting.
I suspect that eventually, biology will be proven to be behind gender identity issues, as well as sexual orientation. Which will probably really disappoint people who like to apply moral judgments to these people or make this about “choice,” “wrongdoing,” “sin,” etc.
It’s also important to note that it presents in many children at a very young age. Before there is really an awareness of sexuality.
“Not normal” simply means not the norm. There’s no good/bad judgement.
I think we can all agree that transgendered is not the norm.
You cut that quoted sentence off midstream @GMTplus7. There is plenty of judgment in that sentence read in it’s entirety. Which is fine, I accept that we are all entitled to our opinions. But let’s not pretend through the use of semantics.
You’d have more credibility on this question if you used the correct terminology.
I’m typing on my fone. Too many extra keystrokes.
I have no idea what this post means.
Many conditions present at a young age before puberty - so what? Presenting at a young age does not mean that it is something to be accepted as a lifelong condition,which has some automatic scientific unchanging, untreatable underlying cause.
What people are confusing here is “presenting” and “causing.” Just because someone presents with something does not mean the apparent cause is in fact a reality or that the presenting subject has some underlying unchangeable condition. And, it for sure does not mean the presenting subject is normal just because they present early.
For example, that is why there is the condition of false pregnancy (pseudocyesis) exists where the mind’s belief of pregnancy is so strong that the body reacts like it is pregnant. The women presents as very pregnant, but the cause of the presentation is not a real pregnancy. Everything happens like pregnancy - menses ceases, some even have multiple positive pregnancy tests. breasts enlarge, uterus expands - yet, no fetus within a thousand miles. A percentage of these women never had sex, ever in their lives. It is a dissociative disorder that needs psychotherapy, but recurrence rates can be very high.
Therefore, please stop implying that if something “presents” that the cause is automatically legitimate and normal. And worse, please stop implying that if something presents in children before puberty that it gets some automatic level of scientific legitimacy and should be treated as a lifelong condition. This is simply not just the case.
Actually, GMT uses the term correctly.
I recall on this thread or the maybe prior thread on the same topic that a couple posters corrected me (and few others) when I wrote this and I just ignored them and decided since they were ignorant about proper use of the scientific terms and that I would not waste time explaining it to them.
In psychiatry, the term used is “transgendered” because it is a diagnosable condition that is clearly not the norm that presents with particular identifiable assumption traits. Specifically, as a group, individuals with these traits are referred to as “the transgendered.”
From the mouth of a leading psychiatrist in the country (taken from Post 536):
Of course, posters are free to contact the doctor above and all his psychiatry colleagues and tell them they are clueless about the term.
This is naked political correctness masquerading as science. And that is a major problem with this issue - there are people trying to make laws and tell others what is scientifically and behaviorally normal when they have zero evidence that what they are claiming is demonstrably factual.
In the fairness of on-going scientific inquiry, who knows, these people may be correct and being transgendered is normal, but just saying so and calling others haters and the like for not rolling over and taking their word for it does not make it so. As with anything else, they need to prove their hypothesis and validate their theory with some real evidence prior to disrupting societal order.
(Emphases mine)
Oh my, this thread is starting to sound pretty angry. Personally I don’t care what the cause is on why some people are transgendered. Whether it’s choice, disorder or biology. The fact is these people exist and have never hurt anyone. I’m very uncomfortable with passing laws that hurt a innocent group of people because some of you feel uncomfortable or ‘icky.’
I am morally opposed to hunting, I disagree with taking of any life especially for pleasure but I’m not out there trying to pass laws to ban hunting.
If we start the slippery slope of passing laws over what might happen where does it end? Assaults anywhere and in bathrooms are already illegal, do you think it is helping anyone by alienating an already vulnerable group of people?
Not sure I am following you here. Are you saying society needs to do these things before passing laws? California has had laws in effect protecting the rights of trans people for 2 and half years now. Did California have to validate any theory or “provide evidence” of anything? Has our societal order been disrupted because of those laws?
@awcntdb - please don’t look at the DSM or “leading psychiatrists” to back up your POV. The DSM has evolved from the times when homosexuality was listed as a mental disease, etc. Don’t forget Freud and his penis envy and all that. These things don’t exist without being influenced by our cultural cocoon so you have to step back a bit and evaluate them on that basis.
As for children “presenting” - this does happen. Small children have been quite convinced that they are boy or girl when “science” says otherwise. Children are simple and don’t have a huge weight of cultural experience or bias. It is wise to take their strong feelings seriously. This is not a case of them just wanting candy for breakfast!
Science is just catching up with the complexity of variation in this area. The vast majority of people have gender identity that matches their clearly male or female parts, both inside and out. There is a minority of people who have a gender identity that does not match, or their parts are not clear, or they do not match inside and out. We should not try to force those people into a box - our box.
Rebuttal to the WSJ article:
"McHugh, an eightysomething self-described “orthodox” Catholic, who shut down Johns Hopkins’ pioneering Gender Identity Clinic in the 1970s after a single study suggested that some trans people continued to suffer from adjustment challenges after surgery, has a storied history of using his credentialed respectability to peddle the worst, most discredited, myths about gay and transgender people. He has called homosexuality an “erroneous desire,” filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in opposition to marriage equality, casts transgender women as “caricatures” of real women, and has argued that the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal is the result not of covering up pedophiles but of insufficiently rooting out gay people. In short, he is a dinosaur from an era when psychiatrists relied on narrow, clinical assessments to assert broad generalizations about a whole class of people based on studying the small number who came to them because they already had mental health problems…
Still, it’s more effective to debunk his claims than to censor the op-ed. Genetics researcher Mari Brighe has done a great job of this over at TransAdvocate, so I’ll simply summarize her capable take-down: The single study McHugh cites for opposing gender-confirming surgery is nearly 40 years old, and he misreads its conclusions, failing to note that its authors explicitly state that “no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment” in improving the lives of transgender people; McHugh ignores a growing (though still small) body of evidence suggesting that medical transition has a positive impact on the wellbeing of transgender people; and he ignores the most obvious reality that would explain why post-operative transgender folks might still struggle with mental health challenges: the ongoing prejudice, stigma, discrimination, economic instability, and violence they face as transgender people. None of this is helped by McHugh’s careless and groundless generalizations.
More research is needed. But anyone interested in the truth about transgender experiences should read Brighe’s response, along with other transgender voices like this one in the New York Times, and not rely on the biased assertions of someone clearly incapable of even-handedly processing new information."
So posters who are talking about disingenuous debate are trying to pass off a 40 year old poorly constructed, debunked study promoted by someone with an admitted bias as “evidence”?
Don’t know why I should be surprised by this, but…
Ideally, we are given links to research conducted properly by unbiased scientists and researchers. That’s what I want to see.
Earlier in the thread, I surmised that might be the case. If some of the posts in this thread are any indication, it seems like a plausible theory.
awcn: while the cat’s away, I guess. Your argument is contemptible. Have you ever even met a trans person that you know of? Paul McHugh is an elderly advisor to the Vatican who also believes that homosexuality is a disease. I don’t know if he’s ignorant or dishonest in ignoring all the research that’s gone on in the last 40 years (I suspect the latter), but there isn’t a single psychiatrist who isn’t part of the right wing noise machine who agrees with him. And no, Paul McHugh had zero input into the current DSM. You’re kidding, right?
I’m pretty sure your insults are against the TOS; I doubt you’d get away with slandering gay people here the way you slander trans people. Disgusting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/johns-hopkins-professor-e_b_9510808.html
I’d mention that the ACP is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but you consider that a badge of honor, right?
As for your nonsense demanding scientific studies, and your claims of pathology:
Much more at link.
For anyone actually interested in learning about the state of scientific research – rather than parroting canned talking points – I recommend watching this: http://www.feelguide.com/2015/06/21/watch-charlie-roses-fascinating-roundtable-on-gender-identity-the-brain-led-by-nobel-prize-winner/
In any event, every argument you make about transness could also be made about homosexuality (and was, for many years). The only reason that one is still in the DSM whereas the other isn’t, is the need many trans people have for medical and/or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria. The only treatment that works to relieve it. Except for an end to societal transphobia. That would help too.
And for anyone who doubt what I say about McHugh, here’s an excerpt from his notorious “First Things” article from 2004. Such a paragon of unbiased scientific inquiry, as opposed to flagrant personal distaste for trans people!
High heels and makeup! Horrors!
In fact, I am neither a gross parody nor a caricature of women — no large hands, no prominent Adams apple or thick facial features. Look, even Paul McHugh can’t possibly believe that all trans women are visibly trans in that or any other way; he couldn’t possibly be that stupid. So apart from everything else, he’s being intellectually dishonest. But so what if I did look like that; so what if I were “visibly trans”? What the hell difference would it make, and why should anyone care? All I’ve ever wanted to do, since long before I had any idea what I would look like when I grew up or that I would be fortunate enough to be able to go unnoticed, was be able to live my life and be myself, and have at least some chance at happiness. Whom does that hurt? Nobody. In bathrooms or anywhere else.
And just remember that in percentage terms, there are probably just as many non-trans women as trans women who don’t conform to McHughian standards of acceptable femininity; there are just as many non-trans women as trans women who’ve been harassed or attacked recently by self-appointed bathroom monitors who think their hair is too short or their clothing too masculine or their shoulders too broad to be “real women.” If people like awcn really cared about protecting women — even just women who aren’t trans – he might realize that the current frenzy about trans people is an incredibly harmful solution to a non-existent problem.
For weeks I’ve been trying to reconcile what it is that proponents of these “bathroom bills” seem to think trans people should do in terms of public facilities, given that we have no way of knowing if that individual who appears quite masculine or quite feminine is trans or not without further inspection. From these and other sources I’ve arrived at an answer, which most of them don’t seem to want to spell out too clearly:
Society/government should simply force these individuals to present in their designated birth gender. Problem solved. When you were born, someone said “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl” so that is what you have to stay. None of this surgery or otherwise appearing as something “you are not”. Should you wish to appear as a gender which “you are not”, use your birth gender bathroom and don’t be surprised if you are attacked or denigrated. That is just society’s way of telling you what you SHOULD be doing and hopefully forcing you to do it out of fear if nothing else.
Fortunately, just as with the anti-gay forces (same individuals, for the most part), these people seem to be losing. The rest of us have more compassion than that or simply take a “live and let live” attitude.
I thought this was obvious to everyone.
Well, given that the case is clearly more research is need, why are people pushing for reforms like current ideological positions are a fait accompli without knowing exactly what is going on and claiming that they know what is actually going on? This alone signals that this is an ideological, political position, not one rooted in truly understanding what are the causes.
On a larger scale, the rebuttal in Slate in Post 572 is not a scientific rebuttal; it is a political brutal. Reads like posters on here - must be religious and rooted in hate. And the rebuttal rebuts nothing that the entire American Association of Psychiatry currently hold as operational. therefor, it is much larger than one man’s position and character assassinating him does not eliminate your problem.
Also, note that Think Progress called the College of Pediatricians a hate group as well for refusing to administer sex hormones to minor children. No care about the effect of hormones on the minors - a pure political position. Again, not just one man’s position.
And that is the problem with this entire issue - people are debating an ideological position and the science is their problem and instead of disprove the science they they go thuggish and bully people with names and character assassination. A very low-end way of addressing any issue and wanting to be taken as intellectually accurate.
Looks like the next step is the “brilliant” people in the know need to character assassinate entire groups of doctors and professionals as religious zealots etc. See how silly this reads because many of those very doctors are progressive as it comes, but they do not let ideology blind them to science.
Thank you. As already stated, I’ve been mulling all of this over and said I was on the fence about whether this is a disorder, and I was playing with the idea that if there is significant distress due to the incongruity between gender identity/sex organs, then I could see how calling it a disorder would be appropriate. I hope my comments were not offensive. I’m still learning!