The topic of gender essentialism is fascinating, as many trans and GNC people say that they haven't changed gender at all, it's just that other people misgendered them. Or, if you like, you don't become trans.
However, the actual processes behind gender acquisition seem obscure at the moment, although you can see the obvious polarization between biological and cultural, although the notion of the biological sub-divides, e.g., chromosomes, hormones, brain, etc. Olson has a job for life.
... It's more social influence and manipulation in the context of a first love relationship with this young person who has felt quite low for most of school years and not accepted. The first major acceptance and love resulted in being convinced of something not of their own free choice. So far as we can tell. It's not rapid onset of gender issues, it's long term adjustment, social and developmental problems, labelled and pressed into a gender mould.
...
When you put it that way, it makes even more sense. One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family, which left them vulnerable to bullying and abuse and is the likely root cause of the "long term .. problems". Like most parents of screwed-up kids, these parents are refusing to accept responsibility for the effects of their parenting and are seeking alternative explanations for why their kid has been struggling for so long. Maybe their child isn't really trans or non-binary or queer, but not letting them discover that for themselves will continue to make them feel unloved and unaccepted. And that, I'm sorry to say, is how so many trans kids end up homeless and dead. :-(
The topic of gender essentialism is fascinating, as many trans and GNC people say that they haven't changed gender at all, it's just that other people misgendered them. Or, if you like, you don't become trans.
I'm wary of the word "gender essentialism", since it seems to suggest a monolithic "male" identity and a monolithic "female" identity, which seems to cause anxiety in many quarters especially (understandably) among feminists. In reality gender identity seems to be something more nuanced and variegated than that.
That said, my understanding is that most people who end up identifying as trans report some experience of at least feeling "different" from a very early age, even if this experience doesn't crystallize as some form of cross-sex gender identity until later in life.
Yes, that is the danger of that word. It might be better to refer to innate gender, and stress that this doesn't imply black and white male/female, but a full palette. In other words, innate doesn't mean binary.
... It's more social influence and manipulation in the context of a first love relationship with this young person who has felt quite low for most of school years and not accepted. The first major acceptance and love resulted in being convinced of something not of their own free choice. So far as we can tell. It's not rapid onset of gender issues, it's long term adjustment, social and developmental problems, labelled and pressed into a gender mould.
...
When you put it that way, it makes even more sense. One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family, which left them vulnerable to bullying and abuse and is the likely root cause of the "long term .. problems". Like most parents of screwed-up kids, these parents are refusing to accept responsibility for the effects of their parenting and are seeking alternative explanations for why their kid has been struggling for so long. Maybe their child isn't really trans or non-binary or queer, but not letting them discover that for themselves will continue to make them feel unloved and unaccepted. And that, I'm sorry to say, is how so many trans kids end up homeless and dead. :-(
No I'd say "One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family" is not correct. In adolescence some young people reject what the parents offer and stand for. Like the idiot Mark Twain said his father was when Mark was 18, and how much father learned 10 years later. There are so many heart broken and good parents whose children volitionally chose wrongly for themselves, like a family of 5 children I grew up with, one of whom got into behavioural trouble from young, and continues with maladjustment as an older adult. How is it that one is Wednesday's child and the others aren't? "It's the parents' fault" is not helpful is it?
The "not letting" a child discover for themselves cuts both ways. The aggressive affirmation approach is as unhelpful and the transphobic.
"One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family" is not correct. In adolescence some young people reject what the parents offer and stand for.
For instance if they stand for a rigid gender binary that is always correctly assigned at birth. Yeah, I can see rejecting that if one is trans.
There are so many heart broken and good parents whose children volitionally chose wrongly for themselves, like a family of 5 children I grew up with, one of whom got into behavioural trouble from young, and continues with maladjustment as an older adult. How is it that one is Wednesday's child and the others aren't? "It's the parents' fault" is not helpful is it?
Who knows what dynamics cause what, but a few suggestions:
the child was labelled as the "difficult" or "naughty" child by the family dynamics and that label has stuck;
the child has some undiagnosed needs that the busy family did not support - undiagnosed dyslexia can lead to school difficulties, it's easier to act out and get into trouble for something the child can control, so behaviour issues start - and if the family isn't supportive, pushing the child's needs, this can lead them to crash out of society. I've worked with a lot of children in this situation, not just dyslexia, but speech and language needs, ASD and ADHD;
the child has never felt accepted because their needs are not met within the family - that they felt brought up in the wrong gender/homosexual/whatever, and the family was not supportive of their needs - see @mousethief.
I'm sure I could think of more reasons if I bothered to try.
"One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family" is not correct. In adolescence some young people reject what the parents offer and stand for.
For instance if they stand for a rigid gender binary that is always correctly assigned at birth. Yeah, I can see rejecting that if one is trans.
That could be. It isn't the only explanation. Hammer see nail okay. Hammer see screw not okay. But perhaps you are taking a specific and making a general.
[*] the child has some undiagnosed needs that the busy family did not support - undiagnosed dyslexia can lead to school difficulties, it's easier to act out and get into trouble for something the child can control, so behaviour issues start - and if the family isn't supportive, pushing the child's needs, this can lead them to crash out of society. I've worked with a lot of children in this situation, not just dyslexia, but speech and language needs, ASD and ADHD;
Possibly they went undiagnosed because the particular conditions had not been recognised and classified at that stage. When was dyslexia, for example, first recognised as a medical condition and the same for ASD and ADHD? I can't remember any of these being spoken of when I was a school.
Those conditions have all been recognised for a long time. What has been changing is their inclusion in mainstream schools, particularly selective schools, which tend to select against special needs. Children either coped, or if they didn't, went to special schools or borstals.
But how publicly recognised? None was being talked of when I was at school and indeed I can't think of any mention until around the late 80s. What I'm suggesting is not willful rejection by the parents but a complete lack of knowledge of any of these matters
Possibly they went undiagnosed because the particular conditions had not been recognised and classified at that stage. When was dyslexia, for example, first recognised as a medical condition and the same for ASD and ADHD? I can't remember any of these being spoken of when I was a school.
It's also possible they went undiagnosed because the majority of kids didn't have access to the kind of medical care or testing that would identify those condition. If diagnosed, they were excluded from public schools; when undiagnosed and in school, they were considered troublesome or dumb and even expelled. There would be no reason for anyone to talk about it in schools then. I agree, not wilful rejection, and the parents' lack of knowledge may well be due to inadequate schools, poor health care, class and geographic barriers, etc.
That also is possible. What I was trying to do was get away from the comments by Curiosity Killed which suggested to me that some parents in times past deliberately ignored illnesses/conditions which contributed to the child's behaviour; rather they did so as they shared the general lack of knowledge about them.
<continuing tangent>@Gee D there was no intended wilful neglect implied in any of those suggestions. They were all reflections as to ways families tend to dysfunction, unintentionally. I was suggesting some of the many ways that one family member may turn out differently. Because everyone has their own psychological baggage from their own family backgrounds.</continuing tangent>
NicoleMR - My recollection from the old Ship is that you live in NY???? It's quite possible that there was greater ecognition there than here. Or else different terms were used, but still, I can't recall can't medical condition as underlying the behaviour of "difficult children".
That 1% would suggest in a normal secondary school there will be 5 to 15 students experiencing some degree of gender variance.
Would I be right in thinking that that is a significantly greater proportion than you recall from your own schooldays ?
Can we agree that there has been a real change in the last 20-50 years ?
And that therefore conservatives - those for whom the past is normative - will tend to approach the question of transgenderism differently ?
Seems like the progressive narrative is that the underlying incidence of gender dysphoria hasn't changed and that back in the Bad Old Days those with that condition were cruelly coerced into denying their Real Selves.
Whereas the conservative narrative might be that we know from the Good Old Days that the real incidence of serious gender dysphoria (those who can't just pull their socks up and get over it) is tiny, and the 1% figure represents "social contagion", attention-seeking behaviour and fake statistics.
The fact that tells against your theory, @Russ, is that the average age to transition in 2013 was 42. That means there were many, many people who hid their gender dysphoria for years.
And some of your phrasing is so Hell worthy, I'm going to take it there.
Julia Serano has an interesting comparison with left handedness, which in some countries has shown a rise in incidence since the war. You could argue that the genetics of handedness has changed in that time; more plausible is the idea that lefties were formerly suppressed and punished by teachers and parents, as it was considered to be shameful and aberrant. But since the war, this kind of suppression has abated, and kids are no longer forced to write with their right hand.
So you can suggest that variants in sex, gender and sexuality used to be frowned on, and in fact, punished, but that we live in more liberal times, when variations are accepted, and people come out of the closet. Of course, conservatives hate this, and want to suppress again.
So you can suggest that variants in sex, gender and sexuality used to be frowned on, and in fact, punished, but that we live in more liberal times, when variations are accepted, and people come out of the closet. Of course, conservatives hate this, and want to suppress again.
Variations are accepted? By a fragment of the society. Surely not at large.
Supreme Court accepts Trump ban on trans people in the military, although thousands have been serving since 2016. I wonder how far the anti-trans measures will go. Lower courts have been resisting the ban.
Have either of the following two things been discussed in this thread so far?
1. This op-ed from the NYT. The author argues against the need for a trans person who wishes to undergo gender confirmation surgery to have to prove to a doctor that surgery will result in a better mental health outcome for them. I'm not quite clear what the author specifically means when she says "surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want." I think it's a bit more nuanced than saying that anyone can walk in and schedule a surgery as easily as someone can schedule an early-term abortion or even a nose job. (Sorry if I offended anyone with those comparisons. I was trying to paraphrase the criticism that I know certain quarters would want to lodge at the op-ed.) The whole op-ed is a bit short on specifics in terms of what she is recommending. But it's worth discussing. (I don't know what the author thinks but if I were writing her op-ed - not that I necessarily agree with the author's argument - I would say her recommendations apply more for trans adults rather than for trans teenagers.)
2. The film Girl, and in particular the criticism of it from parts of the Trans and LGBT community. (Make sure you read the "Criticism" part of the Wikipedia article. For clarification, the scene that everyone is talking about is not something that actually happened in the life of the dancer that was the inspiration for the film, although it is something that she approved including in the film.) I haven't seen the film, and I'm not quite clear whether the main character in the film is taking just puberty blocking hormones or estrogen as well - or whether she is taking puberty blockers in the beginning and estrogen later.
I get the feeling, unfortunately, that, whether or not I agree with the creators of 1. or 2., people who have a dim view of hormones and surgery (or of the "contagion" of social liberalism run amok) will have a field day with both examples (in the context of teenagers especially in the latter example).
Difficult to comment as I haven't seen the film, and can't access NYT. As to surgery, I doubt if the NHS would sanction it, just because you wanted it. If you go private, maybe. I though the point about treatment of trans people was to help them feel better.
The Times article seems to be specifically an attempt to reply to an article in the Atlantic by Jesse Singhal (which I think someone linked to way upthread). I haven't read the Singhal article, which was controversial at the time it was published, but even on the assumption that Singhal is confused (which strikes me as not unlikely), I'm not sure this article is a particularly helpful response to his confusion.
I haven't seen Girl either. As I mentioned somewhere upthread, I did see Daniela Vega's "A Fantastic Woman" (somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a KLM flight), and it is a very good movie.
Finally managed to access the article, which is intriguing. I doubt if it will change anything, as helping people to feel better or well, is embedded in medicine, isn't it? If you say to someone with gender issues, well, if we treat you, you'll still feel like shit, and you may feel suicidal, that could raise questions about the treatment.
There might be a parallel with breast reduction, which the NHS will not fund if it's for cosmetic reasons, but will if you are suffering psychological distress. Well, it would be odd to say that we will fund this, and you will still feel awful. (Having said that, such surgery is very limited on NHS).
Reminds me of an old joke, when I worked as a psychotherapist, that it made you feel so bloody awful, that everyday life was a pleasant relief. Not talking about gender.
Finally managed to access the article, which is intriguing. I doubt if it will change anything, as helping people to feel better or well, is embedded in medicine, isn't it? If you say to someone with gender issues, well, if we treat you, you'll still feel like shit, and you may feel suicidal, that could raise questions about the treatment.
There might be a parallel with breast reduction, which the NHS will not fund if it's for cosmetic reasons, but will if you are suffering psychological distress. Well, it would be odd to say that we will fund this, and you will still feel awful. (Having said that, such surgery is very limited on NHS).
I think the issue is not so much in funding of the surgery - although that may be part of it - but what rules determine whether a surgery happens at all. The author is vague. I'm not sure I agree with the author. I think she means that the desired outcome of the surgery should not be happiness or a reducing of the risk of suicide to the level of a happy person, but should be based on a more careful consideration of trans individuals as whole persons who experience a host of emotions for a host of reasons and who will feel discomfort with their bodies whether or not they have surgery. The surgery is about a whole host of other emotions other than happiness and depression. Having surgery creates new challenges with body image. Weighing a person before and after a potential surgery on some kind of happiness scale, especially when it is done by a cisgender doctor, is what she is criticizing.
I'm assuming that when she talks about "want" she still means the desire of a trans person to have a body more in alignment with their gender identity, not just a whim like getting a tattoo. She is emphasizing how it is hard for a person other than the trans person in question to quantify want, need, risk, "quality-adjusted life years" (as insurance actuaries like to use in medical cost-benefit analysis), etc., especially with something as intangible as gender identity and what is called gender dysphoria.
Here is a better link to the NYT op-ed. Here is the core of it, for those who are not able to read it:
an assumption...People transition because they think it will make them feel better. The thing is, this is wrong...I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones. One reason is that, absent the levees of the closet, years of repressed longing for the girlhood I never had have flooded my consciousness...Like many of my trans friends, I’ve watched my dysphoria balloon since I began transition...When [my girlfriend] tells me I’m beautiful, I resent it. I’ve been outside. I know what beautiful looks like...I was not suicidal before hormones. Now I often am...I won’t go through with it, probably...I still want this, all of it. I want the tears; I want the pain. Transition doesn’t have to make me happy for me to want it. Left to their own devices, people will rarely pursue what makes them feel good in the long term. Desire and happiness are independent agents.
...
Transgender people have been forced, for decades, to rely for care on a medical establishment that regards them with both suspicion and condescension....The medical maxim “First, do no harm” assumes that health care providers possess both the means and the authority to decide what counts as harm. When doctors and patients disagree, the exercise of this prerogative can, itself, be harmful. Nonmaleficence is a principle violated in its very observation.
...
Let me be clear: I believe that surgeries of all kinds can and do make an enormous difference in the lives of trans people...no amount of pain, anticipated or continuing, justifies its withholding...Nothing, not even surgery, will grant me the mute simplicity of having always been a woman...There are no good outcomes in transition. There are only people, begging to be taken seriously.
But presumably having a body more in alignment is a step towards wellness? Otherwise, you would have the odd situation of visiting a GP, and saying, I don't want to feel better, or well. Well it reminds me of Freud, who used to cackle, when people asked him if the treatment would make them happy, of course not.
But presumably having a body more in alignment is a step towards wellness? Otherwise, you would have the odd situation of visiting a GP, and saying, I don't want to feel better, or well. Well it reminds me of Freud, who used to cackle, when people asked him if the treatment would make them happy, of course not.
Perhaps the author of that op-ed is trying to distinguish between happiness and wellness. She refers to what I am calling wellness as the freedom to live out one's desires with respect to gender identity and one's body - but not in a hedonistic way. I don't think desire is the best word for what she is describing. It is an invitation for conservatives to say "you can't just cut your arm off or take heroin because you want to." But I don't think she is talking about the same kind of desire. I am guessing here - but I would say it is a desire to be whole or free, which is different from being happy and might not coincide with a cheerful mood at all.
I think the reason she takes issue with the term "feeling better" (which many would say is the same as feeling more well) is she is using the term "better" to mean "in a happier mood."
[Deleted duplicate post. I seem to keep having double posts where the second is a quote of my last one. I am probably pushing something by accident but it seems odd.]
I won't be able to read the NYT article until February, but the impression I get from the quoted passage is that transitioning isn't going to magically make a trans person's life perfect in every way. It may even create a whole new set of emotional challenges.
I've read a few reports by parents of trans kids, who say that after treatment began, their child calmed down, was happier, less anxious. Presumably, this is partly because of being accepted.
Of course, this may be a kind of glossy picture, and there are kids who don't feel so good, but the idea of feeling better is not so alien.
Here is a better link to the NYT op-ed. Here is the core of it, for those who are not able to read it:
an assumption...People transition because they think it will make them feel better. The thing is, this is wrong...I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones. One reason is that, absent the levees of the closet, years of repressed longing for the girlhood I never had have flooded my consciousness...Like many of my trans friends, I’ve watched my dysphoria balloon since I began transition...When [my girlfriend] tells me I’m beautiful, I resent it. I’ve been outside. I know what beautiful looks like...I was not suicidal before hormones.
I though it would make me feel better and it didn't.
Therefore people think it will make them feel better and it won't.
Spot the hasty generalization.
What I find interesting about both the op-ed and the movie Girl is that the controversy around them swirls around defining trans people by their suffering and reducing them, in public discourse, to a set of genitals.
Say the word "trans" to most cisgender people and their first thought is probably of a penis or vagina. Of course, the words "gay" and "lesbian" used to instantly call to mind certain sex acts in the minds of most straight people, but increased exposure of how gay people are whole persons with complete lives (and complete love lives) beyond just sex has helped alleviate this somewhat (although you certainly still see this association rear its ugly head quite a lot). The standard cultural image of a gay man or a lesbian just a few decades ago was also of someone who had to be depressed and conflicted. This is also changing.
With sexual orientation, what much of society had to do was learn to look at the entire person and realize that they aren't sick and, aside from whatever hardship is imposed on them by society, didn't have to live a life of suffering any more than anyone else.
The issue that society is grappling with now with transgender persons is how to celebrate their triumphs and mourn their losses that are unrelated with their bodies while at the same time acknowledging that the many of them with gender dysphoria do suffer and that many of them do benefit (I'm not going to get into a big discussion of the semantics of "benefit" as with the op-ed above) from treatment that involves their bodies.
Being trans is not defined by having something snipped or rearranged down there. It is not synonymous with being constantly on suicide watch.
I'm not quite sure how society can learn to de-pathologize and de-fetishize being trans while continuing to offer people with gender dysphoria support and, when wished and when appropriate, treatment. A large part of it might be simply learning to mind one's manners and get one's eyes and mind away from being fixated on a trans person's crotch. Part of the criticism of the movie Girl is that it was too luridly focused on the main character's genitals, often graphically. Even if the main character's dissatisfaction with her body - not only as a girl but also as a ballet dancer - was a key element of the plot and of the life experience of the dancer who helped inspire the film, it is hard to see the camera's voyeuristic gaze as not helping to reinforce that of society.
Or not. I haven't seen the film, anyway. I do find the discussion around it very interesting, though.
I think that's right. There is often a prurience and obsession with genitals of trans people. The tabloids often regale their readers with details about surgery. I suppose partly there is a curiosity about what transgender means, but also a negative slant.
But this happens with gender as a whole, for some people, who seem to define it via genitals, since they dismiss the idea of gender identity. In fact, this gets rid of gender. As I often say, I don't just judge people by their genitals, and I don't ask to inspect them.
The Genderbread person is an attempt to explain the issues of gender identity, gender expression, sexual attraction and anatomical sex.
Good but it misses out people who are not attracted to anyone at all, and people who do not particularly identify with either man-ness or woman-ness (Vi Hart is one famous example, famous to certain nerds, anyway).
There are far more ways folks identify and experience sexuality, so a helpful way to think about that is to distinguish between our romantic and sexual attraction. Some folks experience both, some experience one more than the other, and some folks experience little to none of either.. Many of us experience seuxal attraction and romantic attraction at about the same levels, and to the same genders, and therefore may not feel a big difference between the two. However others, like people who are asexual but who are not aromantic, may experience romantic attraction (wanting to go on dates, have intimate conversations, etc) without experiencing sexual attraction. I think of it like this - there are some celebrities that I find very sexually attractive but I don’t experience a desire to like wine and dine them out to dinner, whereas there are others who I am like, “I just wanna go on a date with this person,” without experiencing sexual attraction.
which would be less confusing if I hadn't had to correct aromantic from aromatic.
And identification with maleness and femaleness:
A simple way to think about non-binary gender is with a scale that goes from man-to-woman, where folks could plot how they identify somewhere along the line. Perhaps close to the “man” end if they strongly identify as “man,” close to the “woman” end if they strongly identify as “woman,” or somewhere in-between if they identify as genderqueer, bigender, or another one of the non-binary gender identity labels we have.
I think it does confuse a lot of people, partly because people use the idea of gender to mean different things. 30 years ago, it was used to refer to masculine/feminine, but then began to be used to mean sex identity. So the term "transgender" is often used to mean identifying with the opposite sex. Then the idea of gender identity is used a lot today, to mean one's internal sense of being male/female, as distinct from biological sex. Feminist critics then argue that an internal sense is wishy washy, but trans theorists such as Julia Serano argue for an innate sense of gender.
Confused? In a way, practical work with gender non-conforming people cuts through all this. If a young girl says, "I'm a boy", you can start from there.
Interesting stuff going on in athletics, with the question, "who is a woman", coming back again and again. The term "intersex" seems to be being replaced by "differences of sexual development", often meaning women with high testosterone, or with male testes, or with XY chromosomes.
The IAAF seems to want women with high T to reduce this via medication. However, there is opposition to this since a DSD is "natural". Also, there is talk of fair competition, but what about tall people? They may have an advantage.
I bet the trans world is watching this, as the question, "what is a woman" is clearly relevant. I noticed that Semenya said she was raised as a woman, which seems incontrovertible. What if you were raised as a boy, then lived as a woman?
Last I heard for CIS (Cdn inter-university sport) defined it as trans men can now compete “without restriction,” and trans women must solely prove that their testosterone levels are below 10 nmol/L for 12 months before competition. Which derives from IOC (international Olympic committee). Surgery was required in the past.
Like in all sport random urine and blood samples are a requirement. Recalling the cheating Russia did in the Sochi Olympics and the pre-1989 countries behind the Iron Curtain and what they did.
Sport doesn't really care much about anything other than unfair advantage, yet all of it is always about unfair advantage, whether Dutch speed skating garb, American swim suits, Canadian directional curling brooms, drugs or hormones.
Upthread, re the "genderbread person". This is appears to be an educational and advocacy tool more than anything.
There are far more ways folks identify and experience sexuality, so a helpful way to think about that is to distinguish between our romantic and sexual attraction. Some folks experience both, some experience one more than the other, and some folks experience little to none of either.. Many of us experience seuxal attraction and romantic attraction at about the same levels, and to the same genders, and therefore may not feel a big difference between the two. However others, like people who are asexual but who are not aromantic, may experience romantic attraction (wanting to go on dates, have intimate conversations, etc) without experiencing sexual attraction. I think of it like this - there are some celebrities that I find very sexually attractive but I don’t experience a desire to like wine and dine them out to dinner, whereas there are others who I am like, “I just wanna go on a date with this person,” without experiencing sexual attraction.
which would be less confusing if I hadn't had to correct aromantic from aromatic.
And identification with maleness and femaleness:
A simple way to think about non-binary gender is with a scale that goes from man-to-woman, where folks could plot how they identify somewhere along the line. Perhaps close to the “man” end if they strongly identify as “man,” close to the “woman” end if they strongly identify as “woman,” or somewhere in-between if they identify as genderqueer, bigender, or another one of the non-binary gender identity labels we have.
The current gingerbread person (at least the one that was linked to somewhere above) doesn't show sexual attraction as a spectrum with "to maleness" on one end and "to femaleness" on another, but instead has two different spectra, with one for how attracted to maleness someone is and one for how attracted to femaleness one is. An asexual person would be low on both spectra. There are similar separate spectra for gender identity (one for how male one identifies as and one for how female), for gender expression (one for how masculine one considers one's lived expression of gender to be and one for how feminine) and anatomical sex (one for how male one's anatomical phenotype is and one for how female). (There maybe should be a fifth category for romantic attraction, to differentiate it from sexual attraction.)
I linked both the Genderbread person and the materials. They both came from the same place, with the teaching materials giving the explanations I quoted. That's as intended by the authors.
Going back to athletics, the attempts to define what a woman is, go back decades. There were gynaecological examinations, intrusive, and not always obvious; chromosome analysis, which faltered when XY women showed up as good runners. I think in the end they have given up, and now argue that testosterone confers an unfair advantage. Some campaigners have wondered why extra-large quantities in men are OK? There is also doubt about the advantages of T, but men are faster than women, and T enhances musculature, as some trans men find. On and on it goes.
Comments
However, the actual processes behind gender acquisition seem obscure at the moment, although you can see the obvious polarization between biological and cultural, although the notion of the biological sub-divides, e.g., chromosomes, hormones, brain, etc. Olson has a job for life.
When you put it that way, it makes even more sense. One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family, which left them vulnerable to bullying and abuse and is the likely root cause of the "long term .. problems". Like most parents of screwed-up kids, these parents are refusing to accept responsibility for the effects of their parenting and are seeking alternative explanations for why their kid has been struggling for so long. Maybe their child isn't really trans or non-binary or queer, but not letting them discover that for themselves will continue to make them feel unloved and unaccepted. And that, I'm sorry to say, is how so many trans kids end up homeless and dead. :-(
I'm wary of the word "gender essentialism", since it seems to suggest a monolithic "male" identity and a monolithic "female" identity, which seems to cause anxiety in many quarters especially (understandably) among feminists. In reality gender identity seems to be something more nuanced and variegated than that.
That said, my understanding is that most people who end up identifying as trans report some experience of at least feeling "different" from a very early age, even if this experience doesn't crystallize as some form of cross-sex gender identity until later in life.
No I'd say "One would hope that a child's first and most enduring "major acceptance and love" would be that of their parents. The child obviously has never felt truly accepted or loved by their family" is not correct. In adolescence some young people reject what the parents offer and stand for. Like the idiot Mark Twain said his father was when Mark was 18, and how much father learned 10 years later. There are so many heart broken and good parents whose children volitionally chose wrongly for themselves, like a family of 5 children I grew up with, one of whom got into behavioural trouble from young, and continues with maladjustment as an older adult. How is it that one is Wednesday's child and the others aren't? "It's the parents' fault" is not helpful is it?
The "not letting" a child discover for themselves cuts both ways. The aggressive affirmation approach is as unhelpful and the transphobic.
For instance if they stand for a rigid gender binary that is always correctly assigned at birth. Yeah, I can see rejecting that if one is trans.
Who knows what dynamics cause what, but a few suggestions:
- the child was labelled as the "difficult" or "naughty" child by the family dynamics and that label has stuck;
- the family scapegoats, and this child was the scapegoat;
- the child has some undiagnosed needs that the busy family did not support - undiagnosed dyslexia can lead to school difficulties, it's easier to act out and get into trouble for something the child can control, so behaviour issues start - and if the family isn't supportive, pushing the child's needs, this can lead them to crash out of society. I've worked with a lot of children in this situation, not just dyslexia, but speech and language needs, ASD and ADHD;
- the child has never felt accepted because their needs are not met within the family - that they felt brought up in the wrong gender/homosexual/whatever, and the family was not supportive of their needs - see @mousethief.
I'm sure I could think of more reasons if I bothered to try.Possibly they went undiagnosed because the particular conditions had not been recognised and classified at that stage. When was dyslexia, for example, first recognised as a medical condition and the same for ASD and ADHD? I can't remember any of these being spoken of when I was a school.
Dyslexia was first recognised in 1877.
The first man to be diagnosed with autism was born in 1933
ADHD was first recognised in 1903
Those conditions have all been recognised for a long time. What has been changing is their inclusion in mainstream schools, particularly selective schools, which tend to select against special needs. Children either coped, or if they didn't, went to special schools or borstals.
It's also possible they went undiagnosed because the majority of kids didn't have access to the kind of medical care or testing that would identify those condition. If diagnosed, they were excluded from public schools; when undiagnosed and in school, they were considered troublesome or dumb and even expelled. There would be no reason for anyone to talk about it in schools then. I agree, not wilful rejection, and the parents' lack of knowledge may well be due to inadequate schools, poor health care, class and geographic barriers, etc.
NicoleMR - My recollection from the old Ship is that you live in NY???? It's quite possible that there was greater ecognition there than here. Or else different terms were used, but still, I can't recall can't medical condition as underlying the behaviour of "difficult children".
Would I be right in thinking that that is a significantly greater proportion than you recall from your own schooldays ?
Can we agree that there has been a real change in the last 20-50 years ?
And that therefore conservatives - those for whom the past is normative - will tend to approach the question of transgenderism differently ?
Seems like the progressive narrative is that the underlying incidence of gender dysphoria hasn't changed and that back in the Bad Old Days those with that condition were cruelly coerced into denying their Real Selves.
Whereas the conservative narrative might be that we know from the Good Old Days that the real incidence of serious gender dysphoria (those who can't just pull their socks up and get over it) is tiny, and the 1% figure represents "social contagion", attention-seeking behaviour and fake statistics.
?
And some of your phrasing is so Hell worthy, I'm going to take it there.
So you can suggest that variants in sex, gender and sexuality used to be frowned on, and in fact, punished, but that we live in more liberal times, when variations are accepted, and people come out of the closet. Of course, conservatives hate this, and want to suppress again.
Variations are accepted? By a fragment of the society. Surely not at large.
1. This op-ed from the NYT. The author argues against the need for a trans person who wishes to undergo gender confirmation surgery to have to prove to a doctor that surgery will result in a better mental health outcome for them. I'm not quite clear what the author specifically means when she says "surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want." I think it's a bit more nuanced than saying that anyone can walk in and schedule a surgery as easily as someone can schedule an early-term abortion or even a nose job. (Sorry if I offended anyone with those comparisons. I was trying to paraphrase the criticism that I know certain quarters would want to lodge at the op-ed.) The whole op-ed is a bit short on specifics in terms of what she is recommending. But it's worth discussing. (I don't know what the author thinks but if I were writing her op-ed - not that I necessarily agree with the author's argument - I would say her recommendations apply more for trans adults rather than for trans teenagers.)
2. The film Girl, and in particular the criticism of it from parts of the Trans and LGBT community. (Make sure you read the "Criticism" part of the Wikipedia article. For clarification, the scene that everyone is talking about is not something that actually happened in the life of the dancer that was the inspiration for the film, although it is something that she approved including in the film.) I haven't seen the film, and I'm not quite clear whether the main character in the film is taking just puberty blocking hormones or estrogen as well - or whether she is taking puberty blockers in the beginning and estrogen later.
I get the feeling, unfortunately, that, whether or not I agree with the creators of 1. or 2., people who have a dim view of hormones and surgery (or of the "contagion" of social liberalism run amok) will have a field day with both examples (in the context of teenagers especially in the latter example).
I haven't seen Girl either. As I mentioned somewhere upthread, I did see Daniela Vega's "A Fantastic Woman" (somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a KLM flight), and it is a very good movie.
There might be a parallel with breast reduction, which the NHS will not fund if it's for cosmetic reasons, but will if you are suffering psychological distress. Well, it would be odd to say that we will fund this, and you will still feel awful. (Having said that, such surgery is very limited on NHS).
I think the issue is not so much in funding of the surgery - although that may be part of it - but what rules determine whether a surgery happens at all. The author is vague. I'm not sure I agree with the author. I think she means that the desired outcome of the surgery should not be happiness or a reducing of the risk of suicide to the level of a happy person, but should be based on a more careful consideration of trans individuals as whole persons who experience a host of emotions for a host of reasons and who will feel discomfort with their bodies whether or not they have surgery. The surgery is about a whole host of other emotions other than happiness and depression. Having surgery creates new challenges with body image. Weighing a person before and after a potential surgery on some kind of happiness scale, especially when it is done by a cisgender doctor, is what she is criticizing.
I'm assuming that when she talks about "want" she still means the desire of a trans person to have a body more in alignment with their gender identity, not just a whim like getting a tattoo. She is emphasizing how it is hard for a person other than the trans person in question to quantify want, need, risk, "quality-adjusted life years" (as insurance actuaries like to use in medical cost-benefit analysis), etc., especially with something as intangible as gender identity and what is called gender dysphoria.
Perhaps the author of that op-ed is trying to distinguish between happiness and wellness. She refers to what I am calling wellness as the freedom to live out one's desires with respect to gender identity and one's body - but not in a hedonistic way. I don't think desire is the best word for what she is describing. It is an invitation for conservatives to say "you can't just cut your arm off or take heroin because you want to." But I don't think she is talking about the same kind of desire. I am guessing here - but I would say it is a desire to be whole or free, which is different from being happy and might not coincide with a cheerful mood at all.
I think the reason she takes issue with the term "feeling better" (which many would say is the same as feeling more well) is she is using the term "better" to mean "in a happier mood."
Of course, this may be a kind of glossy picture, and there are kids who don't feel so good, but the idea of feeling better is not so alien.
I though it would make me feel better and it didn't.
Therefore people think it will make them feel better and it won't.
Spot the hasty generalization.
Say the word "trans" to most cisgender people and their first thought is probably of a penis or vagina. Of course, the words "gay" and "lesbian" used to instantly call to mind certain sex acts in the minds of most straight people, but increased exposure of how gay people are whole persons with complete lives (and complete love lives) beyond just sex has helped alleviate this somewhat (although you certainly still see this association rear its ugly head quite a lot). The standard cultural image of a gay man or a lesbian just a few decades ago was also of someone who had to be depressed and conflicted. This is also changing.
With sexual orientation, what much of society had to do was learn to look at the entire person and realize that they aren't sick and, aside from whatever hardship is imposed on them by society, didn't have to live a life of suffering any more than anyone else.
The issue that society is grappling with now with transgender persons is how to celebrate their triumphs and mourn their losses that are unrelated with their bodies while at the same time acknowledging that the many of them with gender dysphoria do suffer and that many of them do benefit (I'm not going to get into a big discussion of the semantics of "benefit" as with the op-ed above) from treatment that involves their bodies.
Being trans is not defined by having something snipped or rearranged down there. It is not synonymous with being constantly on suicide watch.
I'm not quite sure how society can learn to de-pathologize and de-fetishize being trans while continuing to offer people with gender dysphoria support and, when wished and when appropriate, treatment. A large part of it might be simply learning to mind one's manners and get one's eyes and mind away from being fixated on a trans person's crotch. Part of the criticism of the movie Girl is that it was too luridly focused on the main character's genitals, often graphically. Even if the main character's dissatisfaction with her body - not only as a girl but also as a ballet dancer - was a key element of the plot and of the life experience of the dancer who helped inspire the film, it is hard to see the camera's voyeuristic gaze as not helping to reinforce that of society.
Or not. I haven't seen the film, anyway. I do find the discussion around it very interesting, though.
But this happens with gender as a whole, for some people, who seem to define it via genitals, since they dismiss the idea of gender identity. In fact, this gets rid of gender. As I often say, I don't just judge people by their genitals, and I don't ask to inspect them.
Good but it misses out people who are not attracted to anyone at all, and people who do not particularly identify with either man-ness or woman-ness (Vi Hart is one famous example, famous to certain nerds, anyway).
And identification with maleness and femaleness:
Confused? In a way, practical work with gender non-conforming people cuts through all this. If a young girl says, "I'm a boy", you can start from there.
The IAAF seems to want women with high T to reduce this via medication. However, there is opposition to this since a DSD is "natural". Also, there is talk of fair competition, but what about tall people? They may have an advantage.
I bet the trans world is watching this, as the question, "what is a woman" is clearly relevant. I noticed that Semenya said she was raised as a woman, which seems incontrovertible. What if you were raised as a boy, then lived as a woman?
Like in all sport random urine and blood samples are a requirement. Recalling the cheating Russia did in the Sochi Olympics and the pre-1989 countries behind the Iron Curtain and what they did.
Sport doesn't really care much about anything other than unfair advantage, yet all of it is always about unfair advantage, whether Dutch speed skating garb, American swim suits, Canadian directional curling brooms, drugs or hormones.
Upthread, re the "genderbread person". This is appears to be an educational and advocacy tool more than anything.
The current gingerbread person (at least the one that was linked to somewhere above) doesn't show sexual attraction as a spectrum with "to maleness" on one end and "to femaleness" on another, but instead has two different spectra, with one for how attracted to maleness someone is and one for how attracted to femaleness one is. An asexual person would be low on both spectra. There are similar separate spectra for gender identity (one for how male one identifies as and one for how female), for gender expression (one for how masculine one considers one's lived expression of gender to be and one for how feminine) and anatomical sex (one for how male one's anatomical phenotype is and one for how female). (There maybe should be a fifth category for romantic attraction, to differentiate it from sexual attraction.)