What was going on?
A long thread by Steve Moses on joining the Green Party in 2009, and feeling confident that the Greens were on the right side of issues involving women and “the gay community” and that he could focus on issues he knew more about…until…
Aaaaaand…he can’t do it.
And now we’re being told even more scientifically delusional things, that they didn’t become a woman, they always were one, but no one recognized it, or would admit it. That’s the whole belief that lies behind AMAB. So not trans so much, just woman. Woman with a penis, and a beard, and an Adam’s apple, and a big, muscled body that is stronger, faster, and larger than those of a woman.
@Iknklast@
The reasoning behind this seems to be that mind is over matter. If there is a conflict between how the brain developed an “I am a woman” module and how the body developed a “you are a man” set of gametes-n-gonads, then the brain takes precedence over the body, and the individual takes precedence over the society. The inner experience of knowing who you are cannot be changed by other people trying to make you fit what they want you to be.
There’s a loose analogy here to homosexuality (“you’re not allowed to like boys because you ARE a boy”) and just general bullying and control (“no you can’t be a scientist because you are a GIRL.”) But no analogy should be left unexamined and turned into an argument, which it seems to me is what’s happening here.
And there’s a suspicious series of gaps between 1.) the claim that we’re all born with a part of the brain which tells us what sex we really are 2.) the evidence for that 3.) why it should be what determines sex 4.) how we rule out alternative explanations for our beliefs about what sex we are and 5.) how it’s both life defining to be either a man OR a woman and, at the same time, in no way whatsoever connected to social conditioning, stereotypes, or believing in sexist ideas about men and women being very, very different.
“If people misgender me and refer to me as a boy instead of a girl it cuts me like a knife and makes me want to kill myself — but why, no, I don’t think there’s some silly reason men and women can’t have any kind of personality they want.”
iknklast, just to make sure they have all the bases covered, they always were the sex they identify as except when they weren’t. PZ:
Yes. Dan Barker once said that trying to argue with a Christian was like nailing soup to a wall. It’s the same way with trans.
Sastra, the weaknesses of those analogies are:
It seems to me that if girls are allowed to like boys, why can’t boys like boys also? Any opinion to the contrary fails as a simple test of fairness, not to mention the abundant example of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom.
And as far as “girls can’t be scientists”, I don’t think anyone can explain why girls can’t be scientists, any less than boys can. Being a scientist is just something we made up in our heads, quite recently in the grand scheme of things.
But the baffling thing about transgenderism is that it is so obviously, face it, a delusion. Men who think they’re women couldn’t be more obviously wrong about that. As a determinist I don’t believe such people have any control over that, and I am sympathetic to their distress, although I am less sympathetic those among them who use their shouty male voices and attitudes to bully their way into women’s private spaces. But we do them no favor if we indulge them in that delusion! We don’t tell bulimics “you’re fat all right, indeed you’re disgustingly fat!” And we don’t congratulate them when they finish every meal with a dose of ipecac. And if they say they’re so miserable they’re suicidal, we try to help them — not by indulging their delusion, but by seeking ways to help them live happily in the bodies they have.
Not that I’m disagreeing with Sastra. [Hasn’t happened yet!] Just pointing out the vacuity of those analogies, as did you.
I can think of only two instances where indulging a delusion is seen as standard:
– in an emergency, to talk someone off a ledge or to hand over the baby or put the gun down;
– in end of life care for dementia patients.
In the first, your whole life cannot be treated as an emergency. Once authorities have convinced the delusional person to get down from the ledge and have secured them, they get right back to talking reality and trying to therapeutically bring the person around, no matter how painful the circumstances that drove them into the delusion in the first place.
In the second, it’s done because there’s no cure, and at their age they are approaching death. So you put them in a secure facility with a mock bus stop and pretend cafe and post office, and the residents live like it’s the Truman Show, minus the audience until they die.
I’m sure that trans people have no need of such indulgence. If reality is so distressing that you cannot cope with it, then that is what therapy is for. Indeed, indulging such delusions hinders, rather than helps, recovery.
Peter N, good points. When I was anorexic, literally no one other than myself (and my ex) told me I was fat. They mostly said I was too skinny, unhealthy in my thinness. At 5’10” I weighed slightly under 100 lbs, and was still losing.
And when I compared my value to that of pond scum, my therapist certainly did not agree with me, did not suggest I sleep in a petri dish or a farm pond, and did what he could to cure me of my delusions of being worthless. It was only imperfect, I still struggle with it, and I recognize it as a disease now and not reality or truth. I do not insist other people see me the same way I see myself…or how I saw myself then.
iknklast, pretty shitty ex, by that account.
Eating disorders, delusions of grandeur, are considered illnesses, and treated as such. Gender dysphoria should be the same.
Just this week a local man has been jailed for 4 years for “impersonating a Police Officer”. The court did not accept his self ID’ing as a Police Officer.
I suspect that diagnosis could apply to TIMs as well.
————————————————————————
PS – Ophelia this is my new, permanent email address.
Well, in fairness, then, he also fulfilled most criteria associated with being a police officer.
I’ll get my coat.
One the one hand, they were that sex all along and how dare you say that a trans person’s sex mismatches their gender identity… and on the other, “people change sex all the time” – directly implying that trans people were not that sex to begin with. A logical impossibility, and far from the only one.
It goes back to all those ‘bathroom bills’ of the oughts. ‘Real’ trans folk should be able to function in their declared gender; otherwise you put an impossible burden of policing bodies. Gender passports? Genital-checking doormen?
It all sounds so reasonable. Until the sociopaths, deranged misogynists, and creeps around the fringe have to be considered. Gay rights groups don’t have to constantly explain that they aren’t pedophiles, because they recognized and acted upon the fact they risked being infiltrated by REAL ones.