I see it as a result of mainstream feminism that tried and tries to point out that such inherent gender paradigm needn't exist. But some form of this psychology seems to emerge from sex differences and the culture around it evolves and shifts, and thus no such understanding will be meaningfully reached beyond the philosophical level.
US 2024 Presidential Election
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There is a distinction, and this gets into the waves of feminism. Feminist have argued it needn't exist, and they largely won that argument decades ago. But then there are those who go a step further, and instead argue it shouldn't exist, which puts them in conflict with all the people who enjoy those things that needn't exist but exist for understandable reasons. And now you have those that act as though these things only exist as a form of male oppression in a patriarchal society, and they have thoroughly left behind any semblance of reason.
But all of this is a bit aside from the thing that makes transgenderism form: the notion that gender is not a description of people's actions, but rather an immutable character within themselves distinct from sex. Without that, the argument is about people being allowed to do what they want. With that, doctors start prescribing chopping off sex organs as medical treatment. People being allowed to do what the want is generally reasonable, obviously with exceptions. People being allowed to mutilate themselves is even still largely reasonable in certain ways. A society that collectively encourages people to senselessly mutilate themselves, promising to solve the problems that society imposed in the first place, is a problem that needs answering, that is not something to just idly allow to happen.
Close but no cigar. "Ulterior" is just superfluous, because you haven't tried to conceal a motive. I assume there is always a motive, because there is always a motive.
The views we are discussing here have huge implications for trans people as policy, including (as you allude to) the risk for severe harm to a substantial number of people. The debate is how to make the world better, and one would assume a key aim of someone vested in others' welfare would be to arm themselves with the best information to achieve that. Mostly, you appear to be advancing nothing but sophistical fuckery about what you think gender is, but this strikes me as trying to do anything other than engage with what trans people actually think - as Silvanus also notes.
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I have my own conception of gender. It is not the same as yours. But its also not terribly relevant to the point being made right here.
You imagined that people self-identified with something that they do not. They self-identified with something else, which they (and I) hold to be distinct. It is your view that its the same thing. You cannot use your presumption on that matter to define how someone else (who does not share it) self-identifies.
Yet you oppose the approach that lessens the suicidal behaviour. You support the approach that increases it. Your concern for wellbeing is shallow window-dressing.
If you genuinely cared, you'd listen to the people about whom you're speaking, when they describe the issue they're experiencing.
No: nothing about acknowledging the existence of gender requires that it be immutable. Plenty of trans people believe gender can be fluid.
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We've pathologized the concept of gender over the last few decades, and the population that falls into the "trans" category are disproportionately suicidal.
Within our lifetimes, estimates of how many people identify as trans in western countries have exploded, from <0.1% of the population pre-2000 up to >1%. There is no evidence that this population in that scale has always existed, people trying to be the other sex historically are fleetingly rare, and the suggestion that they (1% of the entire population) always existed and were just in hiding would imply secret millions of people in despair for centuries without any record of it. The majority of that increase is in the youth, with older generations not identifying as trans at nearly the same rate. If you want to claim that trans is a fixed thing and we are just discovering the pre-existing magnitude of it, that would imply that there are millions of older adults still living hiding their transness, more even than those who would even privately identify as trans, and that's one hell of a big claim. It is far more rational to view this as an actually increasing population, that there are 10x as many people who feel transgender than there used to be.
As far as the effectiveness of "gender affirming care", there are studies that the other two here would likely scoff at suggesting it's just not effective long term, but steel manning the case for it, I have seen studies suggesting as high as a 60-70% reduction in depression and suicidality among those treated. Let's take that for granted, and then also pretend that the upward trend in identification has plateaued. In the last few decades, we've seen 10x increase the number of people in a population associated with depression and suicidality, and found treatments that reduce those thoughts in 60-70% of them, which conservatively leaves us still with 3-4 times as many people wanting to kill themselves over gender related issues as there were before the word "transgender" existed.
My point is that gender is whatever we collectively decide it to be, and the view of gender you all advocate for drives millions of people to despair globally.
It is very relevant, cause if you are encouraging people to mutilate themselves based on arbitrary criteria, you're out of your mind.
Your view, at best, is reducing the suicidal tendencies of people it made suicidal in the first place. When you make 100 people drink poison, you don't become a hero by giving half of them ipecac.
Yes, I understand, they like the ipecac better than dying of poison, and they've told you as much. I'm trying to preempt the poison.
Sure, and it makes sense that people confused, insecure or unhappy with their gender are more prone to depression. Yet you seem to be suggesting that if we treat their depression, that'll magically sort out their gender uncertainty.
Yes, and this all makes sense.
Back in 1960, gender dysphoria was essentially not talked about or understood, and many people may not even have had a cognitive framework to address their feelings. They compensated and learnt to work with it as best they could, and where necessary just repressed and hid it. Step forward 60 years, young people have a whole new way to think about gender, and they are doing so. The older generations who already found their way might well not rethink it. And incidentally, I think that ">1%" you cite would include all categories of gender difference or fluidity (e.g. nonbinary).
The issue is what is better for trans people, gender dysphoria and society now. To say that some people in 1960 coped doesn't mean that coping like in 1960 is better, and trying to frantically shove them back in a 1960 box as the right currently seems determined to strikes me as the worst impulses of ignorant, narrow-minded, witless conservatism. Why not let them do their thing, support them and see how it works out? Call it experimentation, if nothing else. And from that over time we should expect with knowledge and refinement that we can better help people develop to their own and society's benefit.
As Silvanus has effectively told you, you're not really interested in what anyone else thinks about gender, you've just made your own straw man to beat to death.
No, not really. I don't think these are people who are depressed based on unrelated chemical imbalances being treated with the wrong treatment, I think these are people who are depressed as a response to the environment they are in, specifically with regards to gender.
You are telling people that there is a quality known as gender within them that only they can perceive and determine, and that should it not perfectly match the their perception of sex as acted out in society, they should be depressed about it. Your argument has succeeded in making people depressed.
You are asserting the existence of a population of people you have no evidence of.
That's my point. People were taught a new way to think about themselves, and it has made them miserable. How many decades do you have to experiment before you concede that this way of thinking is bad for people?
No-one's telling them to be depressed about it.
People perceive gender in the absence of being explicitly told about it. They will notice things about males and females and their behaviours that tend to predominate; and they will develop ideas about norms and expectations, and this will relate to their own sense of identity. People with gender dysphoria are likely to have issues with internal stress about their sense of identity. Then external stressors such as adverse treatment by others in terms of rejection, abuse, isolation (and it only takes one bully to make a class of 30 kids unhappy). That's without also considering that gender dysphoria seems to be commonly associated with other conditions such as autism, which confounds measurement.
I am speculating the existence of a population in the absence of compelling evidence one way or the other. Like, a Ugandan politician argued that there were no homosexuals in Uganda before the white man colonised it. Do you think that was true, or was it just that no-one recorded them? Secondly...
You are asserting a change in the prevalence of depression associated with gender, when the way depression is diagnosed has also radically changed.
This is just more of that mental caricature you've constructed. I am not encouraging anyone to do anything.
Again: you shifted to this question to avoid acknowledging that your characterisation of how others self-identified was entirely wrong: foisting your own presumptions onto others.
Of course, this still rests on your sheer speculation that that's what's creating the suicidal tendency in the first place.
So to be more accurate: nobody has made anyone drink poison, yet a subset of people are experiencing a painful symptom. They report that when they take medicine A, their symptoms lessen. I therefore state only that medicine A be accessible to them. You insist that they be denied A, and be given B, which has a long track record of worsening the condition.
"I understand", he says, before delivering another hallucinatory strawman.
If you actually listened, you wouldn't come out with such drivel.
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So trans people don't have the right to get a license in Kansas? Just because the lawmakers forgot to put in a grace period doesn't mean people lost rights. Once when I was changing jobs, If I was born a week earlier, I wouldn't have been able to pass a background check as the agency would've deemed my license invalid. And that was all because of Illinois' incompetence. I didn't come on here saying my rights were taken away now did I? Then, I left Illinois because the state is a joke.
Let me make an analogy you have to understand. Imagine a factory puts out a pollutant that makes people sick. There's a medicine that helps most people's sickness, but it causes impotence. The factory did not exist in the past, it is not needed, and is making a product of questionable benefit.
I'm telling you we should shut down the factory and cut out that pollutant at the source, and you are upset that I would deny people their impotence causing medicine.
Seems like you could allow people the medicine AND abolish gender, as the one doesn't exclude the other. In fact, the former may even help accomplish the latter.
And there's immediately where the analogy breaks down. Because it still just rests on these presuppositions about the source of the problem. If your analogy only works if we adopt all your conclusions anyway, then it's pretty useless.
You have sheer speculation that this factory exists. The evidence we both see is the symptom. And the existence of a medicine which ameliorates that symptom, though it's quite a drastic intervention, granted.
You speculate a factory is making people sick, that we should shut it down, and in the meantime deny the medicine. Those who actually have the symptom consistently tell you they were not exposed to any such factory, and that the medicine can be their lifeline. You refuse to listen, because your personal rationalisation is that such a factory is the only possible explanation.
I'm arguing with people who not only think the factory is necessary, but that it's secretly always been there. It's better to just get everyone away from the psycho factory cult.
You are the factory that is poisoning people. I don't need to speculate that you exist.
So... Now that the US is actively picking a fight with Iran, the only silver lining I'm clinging to is that that hacker wasn't bluffing and will actually release footage of Trump raping little children.
And before anyone gets any ideas; I don't want to watch them, I'm hoping against all odds that this will move the needle a bit regarding there being consequences for his vile actions. Then again... The DOW might be over 50k again by the time they release...
And before anyone gets any ideas; I don't want to watch them, I'm hoping against all odds that this will move the needle a bit regarding there being consequences for his vile actions. Then again... The DOW might be over 50k again by the time they release...
This is no more robust.
You still merely speculate I'm the source. I have not encouraged anyone to act in any way, but you speculate i secretly do, just by holding a concept of gender that's different to yours. The community experiencing the symptom consistently says they do not get it from me, and consistently reports where they do get it from, but you ignore this and refuse to interact with them.
And all the while, you encourage them to pursue an approach that worsens their condition. You routinely express prejudicial dislike for those who belong to this community, insist they should just believe and act as you want. And exhibit no genuine care for their wellbeing.
Why the hell should anyone experiencing this issue listen to you?
I'll guarantee it. Trump's base will loudly blame the child if such a footage ever came to light. Or they'll decide its actually glorious even if Trump would be shown literally eating the child.
They have no shame and nothing will be a deal breaker for them.
They don't have to. They just need to stop listening to people like you.
As Agema said, new generations have a new way to think about gender. That is the thing that has lead to many, many people believing they have conflict within their body this way. If that way of thinking falls away, so will the tragedy, whether anyone is listening to me or not.