Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, asks a good question (in the NYT). And another good question:
I wonder, if we were a more tolerant society that welcomed all types of gender identity, what the impact might be on gender dysphoria. How many transgender individuals would feel the need to physically change gender, if they truly felt accepted with whatever gender role they choose?And:
Several studies... strongly suggest[] that gender dysphoria in young children is highly unstable and likely to change.... So if you were a parent of, say, an 8-year-old boy who said he really wanted to be a girl, you might not immediately accede to your child’s wish, knowing that there is a high probability — 80 percent, in some studies — that that desire will disappear with time....ADDED: There seem to be far more male-to-female transsexuals than female-to-male. (Is it something like 3 times as many?) To me, that suggests an answer to Friedman's question: "How many transgender individuals would feel the need to physically change gender, if they truly felt accepted with whatever gender role they choose?" There is, I think, much more acceptance of females who express themselves in a way that is perceived as masculine.
Some argue that the medical and psychiatric professions have a responsibility to respond to the child as he or she really is. But if anything marks what a child really is, it is experimentation and flux. Why, then, would one subject a child to hormones and gender reassignment if there is a high likelihood that the gender dysphoria will resolve?...
Clinicians who take an agnostic watch-and-wait approach in children with gender dysphoria have been accused by some in the transgender community of imposing societal values — that boys should remain boys and girls remain girls — on their patients and have compared them to clinicians who practice reparative therapy for gays.
I think that criticism is misguided. First, there is abundant evidence that reparative therapy is both ineffective and often harmful, while there is no comparable data in the area of gender dysphoria. Second, unlike sexual orientation, which tends to be stable, gender dysphoria in many young people clearly isn’t...
Posts
108 comments:
I believe Corporal Klinger was teaching us that 30 years ago.
C'mon people!
I wonder, if we were a more tolerant society that welcomed all types of gender identity, what the impact might be on gender dysphoria.
I wonder, if the APA were a more tolerant professional society that welcomed all healers regardless of educational background, what the impact might be on gender dysphoria and ten thousand other neuroses and psychoses? The APA could fix the mental healthcare shortfall by a stroke of the pen.
It's so embarrassing when you are the only girl at lunch with prostate enlargement.
I'd bet anything that the APA does not use the word neurosis to describe any condition.
Is Professor Friedman saying that there's a lot of dubious assumptions involved in the modern treatment of gender dysphoria?
No! What's that you say. Well, bust my britches.....
"It's so embarrassing when you are the only girl at lunch with prostate enlargement."
I don't know how many remember Christine Jorgensen but "she" died of prostate cancer.
It is now acknowledged that a frontal lobotomy is not an effective or even palliative cure for mental illness. People sure were stupid back then. Not like now when we humanely amputate the penis to help people integrate their body and body image with their sexuality.
Michael K
Which brings up an interesting question. Should Caitlyn get regular PSA checkups? DREs?
I wonder, If Hasheem Thabeet would only self-identify as a midget, what the impact might be on height dysphoria?
Have they tried giving LSD to transgendered people? Abby Hoffman, Ken Kesey, and Timothy Leary claimed that it worked wonders. In helping people understand their true being and the nature of the universe.
It's not "nothing more than" a social convention, but it is a social convention. As usual, reactionaries have trouble getting beyond all/nothing-either/or thinking.
"I'd bet anything that the APA does not use the word neurosis to describe any condition."
Not even conservatism?
Can you say in a blanket way that reparative therapy doesn't work? Perhaps it would have saved Anne Heche some trouble. I think reparative therapy probably works on the people it works on.
I don't know how many remember Christine Jorgensen but "she" died of prostate cancer.
Apparently not many, as her official cause of death is recorded as bladder and lung cancer. But it's understandable that a guy like Michael K. would find the difference between a bladder and prostate to be confusing. He probably can't even tell the difference between his own bladder and prostate.
As usual, Rhythm and Balls has trouble thinking. Full stop.
"I'd bet anything that the APA does not use the word neurosis to describe any condition."
Not even conservatism?
They can usually be described as "paranoid". Which is often how the autistics, sociopaths and narcissists filling their ranks would be expected to feel.
"A more tolerant society that welcomed all types of gender identity, what the impact might be on gender dysphoria."
Given human nature that's probably impossible. There is a fine line between idealism and misanthropy, after all.
And if, as history seems to demonstrate, creating sex norms is natural and instinctive, wouldn't it be "repression" to try to block it?
Or, as I once asked a friend, "why is repression only good in this case"?
Yep, you'd better "full stop" yourself before your brain actually gets to the thinking part, Queester.
What is it with reactionaries and this expression "full stop", anyway? I notice there are certain annoying expressions that they seem to find especially trendy. Does it have to do with "standing athwart history and yelling 'Stop!'"?
Thinking gets reactionaries into trouble. So they usually stop short of that. Full stop short of that.
Of course, any new toleration for gender fluidity will just produce new intolerance for those who insist on distinctions, for themselves or society at large.
It's interesting that they limit their empathy to only transgenders (e.g. homosexual orientation). Why the selective exclusion?
Also, their concern is not tolerance, but rather promotion or normalization. More women have been reduced to "barefoot and pregnant" in order to establish transgender equivalence (e.g. a father, guardian, and absentee mother) than any other social change since the feminist revolution and the progress of "planning".
My personal opinion is that we have already spent more time, ink, and electrons on Bruce/Caitlyn than the subject deserves. If you make the simplifying assumption that there are two genders, male and female, you will be correct for all practical purposes.
Isn't it physically more difficult to change physically from a woman to a man? Muscle mass, beard, overall size, voice and speaking patterns and of course the penis. The penis may be easier than the rest. My guess is that the reason women do not transition to male as often is that it does not work out as well.
Plus if you are a man you are supposed to do something if a terrorist shows up on a plane pr a train. This does not seem to be expected of women. How myscoginistic of us.
Got "Server not found" message when trying to follow link to referenced article.
Probably just as well. Smells like a real time waster.
R&B
Good work on using your new word "reactionaries" in sentences. The best way to learn new words is to use them although it is generally suggested that one use them appropriately and not indiscriminately.
It's interesting that they limit their empathy to only transgenders (e.g. homosexual orientation). Why the selective exclusion?
That's a good point, n.n. Few of us know the difficult road you've had to walk in life as a pretend heterosexual who's been desperately hiding your transgender identity from so many including yourself for so long. It couldn't have been easy. No one should have to suffer like that.
I've been asking this question for the longest, and this is met with "You are a bigot" by the pro transgender is a right crowd. But of course, it logically makes sense.
If gener is a social construct there isnt' a need to change your genitals to match your sex.
I slightly disagree with the doctor when he asks this question though: I wonder, if we were a more tolerant society that welcomed all types of gender identity, what the impact might be on gender dysphoria. How many transgender individuals would feel the need to physically change gender, if they truly felt accepted with whatever gender role they choose?
The point is not what WE accept its what the person suffering from the dysphoria accepts. And thats' always been the problem. The person suffering is the one who is asking for the sex change and is uncomfortable with their natural state. Its not about us and our acceptance. It's about the sufferer acceptiong his own state.
Michael:
There is nothing "conservative" about recklessly and forever overthrowing the legacy of every American president from FDR (one of our most successful) and the ten administrations that followed his. "Reactionary" is an appropriate term for people who are pissed off at the simple truth that progressive is the simplest way to identify the American spirit, from the Revolution onward. The only past that inspired the Founders was Rome's, not the 15 hundred years of history between them and the Enlightenment that America's pretend "conservatives" instead look to for inspiration and guidance.
To be anti-enlightenment while preferring a history that predates that of the founders is in no way conservative in any American sense of the word.
IF transgendered didnt' feel the need to change their sex, would doctors give them surgery to replace their genitals? See where the impetus is comging from? Not from me, or the intolerant society. But from the person suffering the dysphoria.
So then, for such a person, would they ever be happy if they weren't transoformed into that other gender through body modification.
That's simply what people on my side of the aisle say SHOULD be happening. therapy so that people who are born as men but identify as women accept their natural state and NOT have surgery. That sint' good enough for the trans community, and that would be met as bigoted.
First, do no harm.
The social conventions of gender id-entity should play out first in sports. Full stop.
Let's allow a few male-to-female athletes to dominate all of womens' sports for a change. That should changed the troubled minds of many old white women who are driving this overweening sympathy mind-fuck for transgenders.
There is nothing "conservative" about recklessly and forever overthrowing the legacy of every American president from FDR (one of our most successful) and the ten administrations that followed his.
And yet, the 1952 elections were exactly what the country needed at the time. Sweeping change is good for the nation from time-to-time. Some call that progress regression, but they are mostly partisans.
One of the supervisors (Swarthmore-BS/Cornell MS) was looking at a linkedin page of a candidate we were going to interview. He thought she may be trans and was excited about hiring the first trans at the company.
He was disappointed that we just just your typical dyke; we hired her. She went to Smith and they allow the trans now; but no just another Smith carpet muncher. Northampton is the lebanese capitol of the world. Wellesley allow the trans too.
I don't want trans linked to the mos. I am transphobic.
Do you know there is a bar in Boston where straighties hook up with trans. I guess some straighties get off on it.
Tits.
R & B said: "But it's understandable that a guy like Michael K. would find the difference between a bladder and prostate to be confusing. He probably can't even tell the difference between his own bladder and prostate."
It's understandable that R & B doesn't comprehend that people don't die from prostate cancer. You die when the prostate cancer spreads to other organs. While it is technically correct that prostate cancer is not the direct cause of death, death would not have occurred without the cancer starting in the prostate and then spreading. Technically, prostate cancer is the cause of death, but not the proximate cause.
The receptionist at work and I are best girlfriends. She is 40 and fierce-similar to a Jersey housewife. But she lives with her 30 year old El Salvadorian boyfriend; his mom and third husband and their twelve year old kid; the grandma; the sister and her three year old kid; and the brother and his wife and three kids. The receptionist told me the sister can't have any more abortions because she has reached her max.
The sister fucks her drug dealing black boyfriend in front of her kid-from a previous guy. The sister recently found out she had a son in El Salvador-so he now lives there.
The mother fucks her third husband in front of her kid-they all share a bedroom.
The receptionist boyfriend just took a DNA test which proved he is the father of two other children by different women.
The mother and her third husband are legal and they sponsored the grandma to cum here-she has free healthcare.
The receptionist is italian and she said they all hate white people. She said this type of living arrangement is very common with latinos in Boston.
I am seriously not making this shit up. She has a new story for me every week. I cringe when she tells me these stories but I am also fascinated in a car crash kind of way.
The receptionist is voting from Trump.
tits.
R&B's: "Thinking gets reactionaries into trouble. So they usually stop short of that. Full stop short of that."
Yes, one mustn't spend too much time pondering why there is such a dearth of toilet paper and food in the peoples paradise of Venezuela. That kind of thinking will definitely get a "reactionary" in trouble there.....
Hey RhythmBalls,
"Full stop" is British English for "period."
Examples:
"A declarative sentence ends in a full stop."
"I'm absolutely opposed to that course of action, full stop."
Amen!
No. Brace yourselves.
Monty is right.
The thing now is indeed reaction. Conservatism-at this point, conserving what? The remnants?
I would prefer a restoration, at this point. Perhaps, for the simple, a reset button. Maybe a Constitutional Convention isn't unthinkable. If that would even help - but if we're to be shepherds and sheep, let's get it in writing.
Would it be possible to skip the part where I am a poopy head racist sexist genocidist meanie, if not, tirez les premiers.
"...the peoples paradise of Venezuela."
Another reactionary who never left his mom's basement gives his pseudo-authoritative expertise on all that he knows about the world around him.
R&B
Good job, R&B. You learned the word, you used the word and then you explained why it was the appropriate word for the thought you were trying to impart. Good job.
Now, you might consider, or reconsider, your statement about the founders and their total and absolute reliance on Rome for their model. It is spectacularly wrong. Locke, Hume, Machiavelli. For instance.
Your final sentence is, of course, a complete muddle. Unusually inarticulate.
A few words you can couple with reactionary that will enhance your status among those you practice on: dialectic, proletarian, and, the word that best describes you, bourgeois.
Now, you might consider, or reconsider, your statement about the founders and their total and absolute reliance on Rome for their model. It is spectacularly wrong. Locke, Hume, Machiavelli. For instance.
I said no such thing. I twice referenced something called the "enlightenment" (something with which you might be familiar) as the other part of the founding. Thus, your correct reference to Locke, whose influence was essential. But also thus, your surely incorrect reference to "Machiavelli" - an apologist for government of, by and for the sociopaths who had nothing to do with the Enlightenment, and especially not as a source for revolutionary thought. But you do have a way of muddling things, yourself. Perhaps it was Montesquieu of whom you thought, the hugely influential political philosopher who developed the concept of separation of powers, upon which the founders relied for devising a government with three separate, co-equal and independent branches.
So perhaps the word I'm searching for in describing you, a man who sprinkles mealy-mouthed backhanded praise with pretend-compliments in the few areas where you're actually mentally aware enough to perceive them, is "dipshit."
Yeah, you're a dipshit, Michael. Always were one and always will be one.
There's nothing wrong with being successful, or as you call it, "bourgeois". You pretend that Americans can't distinguish between psychologically intact successes and the glorified sociopaths you identify with. But they can, and they do, and they don't fall for Cold War rhetoric that elevates a clash of the titans to the point of eclipsing that basic distinction.
And Michael - do me a favor and don't reply with a complaint where you pretend not to understand what I just said. I understand that basic morality escapes you. Your inability to comprehend it is not my problem. I don't do morality welfare for the overprivileged assholes of the world. You can instead pay a PR consultant for that, at several hundred times the cost I'd even care to charge, for the privilege of it when "the time is right". Probably after your next major scandal.
Hey, R&B, I must agree with Michael's critique, especially the part where your post did, in fact, trail off into incoherence. Really, try and rewrite that so that people can be expected to understand what you meant. Unless you like it that way which is probably the case because everybody says you're just a troll.
If Android ate your narration, now is the time to blame the phone. I do it all the time.
"But it's understandable that a guy like Michael K. would find the difference between a bladder and prostate to be confusing. He probably can't even tell the difference between his own bladder and prostate."
Delicious stupidity. Why not check the hospital where "she" died ? Idiot. I was there.
If this is another Ritmo thread, I have a good book to read.
Bladder is an unlikely site for metastases, although probably less so with a prostatic site as the primary. Either way, she hid mention of it well and none of it is public. People are left to go on the assumption (there is no prior evidence from which to conclude it) that Michael K had privileged information, and is now violating what would otherwise be a HIPPA protection to divulge that. (It would apply to anyone with ability to access a hospital's records, though to be fair. Not just Michael K. And no, I'm going to be willing to test the case law on violating a patient's confidentiality post-mortem.
But anyway, he has a book to read. It must be tiring lecturing the peons of the world on those things.
Niche, advocating "oversimplifed thoughts through simple writing" is a line that gets used here a lot. Trust me, you're saying nothing original. (And why would you? Simply stated simple thoughts are an unoriginal mind's specialty. Simpletons love both to say them and to read them).
But if you want to sit in on a writing course for night school students, GTFO. I know you know how to annoy. If you don't have any original thought of your own to say, then you're useless to everyone here.
I wonder if your literary preferences are the visual art collector's equivalent of a Thomas Kincaid painting. Very simple, warm, happy and fuzzy. Not a stray, challenging mark anywhere to be found. No complexity to confuse the simpletons with. Everything fits together in the nice, cuddly way that the polite vulgarians (like Niche) can handle.
"But it's understandable that a guy like Michael K. would find the difference between a bladder and prostate to be confusing. He probably can't even tell the difference between his own bladder and prostate."
Delicious stupidity. Why not check the hospital where "she" died ? Idiot. I was there.
R&B- you are officially full of total BS. I would encourage you to apologize to the good doctor, but I don't think it would mean anything coming from a narrow-minded,chronically uncivil, and abusively insulting person like yourself.
R&B
Someone using your name wrote the following:
"The only past that inspired the Founders was Rome's, not the 15 hundred years of history between them and the Enlightenment that America's pretend "conservatives" instead look to for inspiration and guidance."
Why someone would pose as you is beyond me.
Wonder what the words "The only past that inspired the Founders was Rome's" mean.
And now you are a urologist as well as a fool? I am certain your finger has followed that path, but professionally?
Put more simply, Niche is to literary appreciation what Jim Davis and Kilroy were to art appreciation.
If it's not reduced to the format of a cartoon, he can't understand it.
But he does see his piteous inability for appreciating detail to be a virtue. So obey his preference we must! The simpletons have decreed that details must go!
Long sentences will be reduced to shorter ones, for the sake of simplicity. Acceptable examples include: "War is peace," "ignorance is strength," and for the Germanophiles out there, "Arbeit Macht Frei."
I would encourage you to apologize to the good doctor, but I don't think it would mean anything coming from a narrow-minded,chronically uncivil, and abusively insulting person like yourself.
And a law-abiding one! Don't forget that!
No, I won't apologize to anyone violating and encouraging the violation of federal laws for the sake of playing King of the Internet Chat Room.
Not to mention that I thought the good barber was retired anyway.
Wonder what the words "The only past that inspired the Founders was Rome's" mean.
It means that the Enlightenment ideals were somewhat contemporaneous for them. Since the "Age of Enlightenment" is recorded as having lasted through the 1780s, the founders were not looking to any "past" in being inspired by it. They were being inspired by a contemporary reality.
Or does time work differently for jumpy Wall Street types? Do you not see the difference between a past individual's "past" and his own present time?
And now you are a urologist as well as a fool? I am certain your finger has followed that path, but professionally?
First off, I'm pretty sure MK is just a surgeon, not a urologist. Second, I'm pretty sure the "fool" is a guy like you, who can't tell the difference between the "past" and "present" of a past event or individual. Someone who thinks 1780 was the past to a guy in 1776. And finally, I'm not willing to flirt with violating federal laws to the extent that MK is in order to make an obscure, and unverifiable point. If he wants to, that's his business. But I think it would be rather foolish to make it mine.
Now go stroke the line on the DJIA charts and pretend it's what you were really thinking about while scolding me.
The sex of a human organism is exclusively determined by its chromosomes. The gender is predominantly determined by its chromosomes, but also environmental factors including promotion or normalization of transgenderism (i.e. choice).
I wonder what other pro-choice policies the doctor supports.
I wonder if the feminists, doctor, and others of their kind are responsible for promoting or normalizing gender confusion in order to force male-female equivalence.
Is the professor transgendered?
It was a transgendered judge that overrode the Democrat minorities, Blacks and Hispanics, in California, so that he could promote transgenderism in the general population.
The gender is predominantly determined by its chromosomes, but also environmental factors including promotion or normalization of transgenderism (i.e. choice).
When people say things like this, it makes me wonder what they would make of intersex people. Commonly called "hermaphrodites", they serve as another sobering reminder that medical and physiological reality does not always easily fit within the narrow confines and social expectations of a lay public out there.
For years, these poor people were routinely and without consent mutilated with surgeries in infancy that essentially deformed their admittedly odd anatomy in ways that removed the functionality of whatever functional tissues/organs they retained - simply for the sake of conforming to ignorant social expectations. That haters of the transgendered attempt to use biological pretensions to justify or even entertain similar impulses is sad.
Oh yes, hip-hop, now I remember. Carry on. Silly me, I was trying to treat you as an honest interlocutor again. My mistake.
Less than two hours ago, my granddaughter declared that she couldn't get out of the pool because she was a mermaid and mermaid can't walk. Alas, it is clear that she IS a mermaid and I must raise the money to have her surgically transformed into one.
Well, Niche, Michael did say I was right on their being inspired by ancient Rome and is now working on figuring out whether he can stomach admitting that their other inspiration (by Enlightenment thinkers) was for them a current reality rather than one through which they needed to hearken back to the past. And once he makes the right conclusion on that one then I'll be ready to accept his apology at any time. I mean, I am a lowly non-billionaire so dealing honestly and neighborly with me must really be a difficult thing for him. But I don't begrudge him that. Everyone has their challenges in life.
Because I'm not vindictive like that. And if you have a problem with it, you have my sympathy. In all honesty, feel free to trip me up when I make an actual error (preferably a serious one and not a trivial one), and I'll be convinced that honest dialogue is your aim no less than it is mine.
But fixating on trivialities and a need to "one-up" for its own sake doesn't get you any further with me than it would with you - if you really aim (as it would seem you claim) for something other than ego stroking, alone.
Anyway, I'm sure I've clarified as much as any reasonable and honest person could ask me to for now. Good night.
R&B
Since your breath-taking arrogance won't allow you to see when you are clearly flat wrong, and admit to it, you will be wrong again, again, again, and soon, despite your large fund of knowledge and your considerable rhetorical skills.
I doubt you have ever influenced much of anybody with your numerous prolix screeds.
Good night and don't let the door hit you in the butt.
Cheers
So the thought of the founding fathers was based entirely on the Romans (no Greeks? not even Polybius?) and the Enlightenment (no Magna Charta, Edward Coke, Common Law?) while modern conservatism is based entirely on what came in between, presumably an uneasy mixture of Mediaeval Scholasticism and Renaissance thought? And we're supposed to take 'Rhythm and Balls' seriously as someone worth arguing with?
Well, Skeevy Weevil, if you can't find those Mediaeval (nice spelling!) and whatever other influences in their works, then it's safe to say that they didn't figure into them as much the influences I cited. That's what history is about, not about making shit up but about looking at what the evidence shows, and the evidence for their influences in Roman and Enlightenment models is abundant. But I understand that being a reactionary is about making up the evidence that agrees with your preferences and gut instincts, so go with what you feel. It's all about the feeling. Maybe next you'll tell us that they corresponded heavily with the Pope and that "Publius" was a mix-up for Polybius.
As far as Greece, someone less of a wishfully thinking ignoramus than you might understand that while ancient Greece was rife with models of direct democracy (of the sort American conservatives HATE), they didn't have a model as structured as the Roman Republic. Further, democracy wasn't everywhere in Greece, but perfected in Athens. As an example, Sparta was a military oligarchy of the sort a guy like you might idolize, replete with even a complicated sort of monarchy, but the furthest thing from the sort of democracy with which a real American would identify.
But whatever allows you to get your talking points in. It's all cool. I understand how hard it is for a guy like you to admit when he's wrong.
NB, Greek juries had hundreds of jurors or more. Also probably not the sort of democracy that English colonists might recognize but at least it can be intimated at as such by a guy with a burning hatred of me as a way of mitigating my own point. In a completely wrong way, mind you - but it's not right or wrong that matters. Just that I'm made to look worse than people with political axes to grind.
Mockery is all "Rhythm and Balls" deserves. Anybody who offers more than that reduces himself in my mind.
Speaking of Christine Jorgensen, my father mentioned him/her in a letter he wrote as a young soldier back in 1953: link. He was writing to his parents who had sent him a newspaper clipping about the sensational news. I think that back in the 1950's, common people were curious and perhaps more sympathetic about such transformations. There wasn't the LGBLT enforcement squad out there policing thought. That is one reason why Trump has appeal.
Hilarious. Fools are determined to prove their foolishness.
The book is pretty good. It's about the Battle of Waterloo. I am visiting the battlefield in about 3 weeks.
Ritmo, you have a lot to learn. You won't learn it.
"Bladder is an unlikely site for metastases, although probably less so with a prostatic site as the primary."
If you mean less unlikely/more likely..yes..much less unlikely/more likely, given the proximity of bladder to prostate...as in my Father's. And much, much, much, much more likely than dying from 2 separate primary cancers of the lung and bladder...with undisclosed mets. I think some informational wires were err..crossed..en route to public disclosure...or a shitty or misleading coroner filling out DC.
But I'm more concerned about you stalking Michael K. at his mother's house. Time for a restraining order?
And while we discuss transexuals during an Obama administration, our futures market is down 50 handles.
I wonder what happens to an economy when Rome burns and the Emperor plays golf?
R&B's: "Another reactionary who never left his mom's basement gives his pseudo-authoritative expertise on all that he knows about the world around him."
Shorter R&B: There is no possible clever response to why another socialist wet-dream is circling the drain.
So, 'Rhythm and Balls', am I supposed to be the one with the "burning hatred" of you, or is it Michael K? As usual, you write so imprecisely it's hard to tell what you're getting at, though your burning hatred for everyone on the other side comes through. Project much?
Just for the record, my feelings about you involve far less hatred than contempt for your tedious trolling and your pretense that you and your allies never have any "political axes to grind". (Unless of course you're saying that you're paid to write the crap you write here and don't actually believe any of it, in which case I will gladly grant that you have no ax to grind: is that what you're saying?)
I am of course well aware that the founding fathers looked more to Rome than to Greece for their models, but your attempt to divide all history into the parts that influence the founding fathers (Rome and Enlightenment) and the parts that influence conservatives and reactionaires (not the same thing by the way - namely, Mediaeval and Renaissance) is an idiotic oversimplification that looks like it may well be motivated by antiChristian bigotry - a desperate attempt to delete or deny influence from anyone who was not either preChristian or postChristian. Intellectual crosscurrents are far more complex than that, and if you'd ever heard of Polybius (quoted by Madison in Federalist 47 and 63) you'd know that.
R & B
How can we miss you if you won't go away?
Because women in America aspire to "undergo facial surgeries, take hormones and remove her body hair" Jenner did likewise as what he perceives a woman in America would do.
Facial surgeries are rare due to limited sources which isn't a problem for Jenner. Removing body hair in CA is not abnormal, among men (not beards either but pubic hair) nor women.
You offer free plastic surgery to every woman in America and you will get one Hell of a lot of surgery going on.
Based on the illogic of Jenner denying basic truths about himself, he may be playing a big joke in that he sees women as irrational and therefore becomes a women to excuse his irrationality.
"It's not "nothing more than" a social convention, but it is a social convention. As usual, reactionaries have trouble getting beyond all/nothing-either/or thinking."
Ah yes, that's why transgender activists all the time say things like "gender is, among other things, a social construct" and "gender is at least partly a social construct."
Look, has it been determined beyond all doubt that Bruce Jenner had his genitalia altered or removed? I am unclear about this point. Is he a true trans-sexual or is he just a guy in drag with a face lift and hormones? It does make a difference in a sense.
Lastly, no matter what treatment Jenner had his genes are still encoded for XY. So is he still a male?
@ Michael K.
Bernard Cornwell's popular history of Waterloo is pretty good, but weak on the politics. The best I've read are two companion volumes by Andrew Field: Waterloo, the French Perspective and Quatre Bras, Prelude to Waterloo. Ney may have been an inspiring leader, but he really f'ed Napoleon's very slim chance to stay on his throne at Quatre Bras and put the icing on the cake at Waterloo.
My parents took me to the Waterloo battlefield twice, the first time it rained so hard that we stayed in the tour bus. The driver put the air conditioning on full blast to keep the windows clear of condensation. My mother almost froze. She saw nothing of interest and was very cranky for days after. The second trip was on a beautiful August day, that allowed me to explore as far as my legs would hold out. Later I saw the 1970 Russian/Italian film with Rod Steiger, which I dissed as inaccurate. Waterloo is very flat, I told my classmates. I've been there twice and I know. Little did I know that the construction of the Victory Mound altered the terrain of Wellington's position considerably, and that Sergei Bondarchuk had done his homework. His "Waterloo" near Kiev was a better Waterloo than the real thing.
I understand there's a movement afoot to remove the Victory Mound and return the contours to something more nearly like 1815. Do ask when you're there, please.
There are none so blind as those unwilling to see.
Some folks, if you tell them "head East 2 miles to I-90, then take the interstate 500 miles West to Lincoln" will declaim "I am trying to go 500 miles West, you are an idiot to say I should start off by going East."
They have a bit of knowledge, in that heading the opposite direction you ultimately want to end up isn't 100% logical to a person strongly influenced by partisan politics. They have little to zero wisdom, and an effrontery to changing that status.
Explaining that heading a couple miles the opposite direction so you can average 64 mph to Lincoln on a high-speed roadway instead of heading in a more directly West direction the entire time averaging 51 mph on low-speed streets doesn't compute.
Damn, R & B needs a lot of words to thoroughly beclown himself.
Garage manages to beclown himself much more efficiently, with a minimum of verbosity.
Ritmo should take lessons from garage.
Lastly, no matter what treatment Jenner had his genes are still encoded for XY. So is he still a male?
Yes, in the same sense that a eunuch is still male. Study the history of castration and one learns that junk and testosterone isn't the whole story.
Ritmo reminds me of the obnoxious douchebag who has just returned from his first year at college where he learned the word "reactionary" and proceeds to make an ass out of himself lecturing his betters at family gatherings.
Blogger Jason said...
Damn, R & B needs a lot of words to thoroughly beclown himself.
Garage manages to beclown himself much more efficiently, with a minimum of verbosity.
Ritmo should take lessons from garage.
The thing I appreciate about Ritmo is that he writes so damn much, it's easy to skip. Usually the only thing I read of his anymore is Althouse on a really slow day, or if someone is quoting him.
As long as this thread is about stupid perceptions by mentally mixed-up people - riddle me this, Batman:
Does Caitlyn Jenner's successful transformation from male to female relieve Bruce Jenner from standing trial on the charge of vehicular manslaughter because he no longer exists?
I, False Grackle, declare that Fellation on Demand would solve more problems than Abortion on Demand.
Ann says, ""How many transgender individuals would feel the need to physically change gender, if they truly felt accepted with whatever gender role they choose?" There is, I think, much more acceptance of females who express themselves in a way that is perceived as masculine."
I don't have an answer, anymore than what would the world be like if there were no evil.
I noticed as a child that girls had more options than boys. I never like being a boy but I did enjoy the things boys did, more than what girls did. I always thought that someday I would feel different, and someday never came, even after succeeding in my major life goals. Growing up I was very aware that feminism expanded the role of women to the point where there was no difference between me and them, except for the anatomy between my legs.
I sometimes wonder what I would have done if women had stayed in their traditional roles.
Here's what was striking to me when this was in the news, e.g., Jenner's top-only transformation and some articles telling us that what you look like "down there" has nothing to do with anything (plus a strange item from reddit, I think quoted on this blog, that it's bigoted for one to object to one's girlfriend to have a penis; it should be treated as a sort of unusual birth defect, kind of like having a large mole, I guess):
these surgeries seem, at least in 2015, and for many trans people, at least, to be far more about appearance than about what they physically are at a basic level. A MTF surgery seems fundamentally about getting boobs through estrogen/implants, and hair removal. The reverse seems fundamentally about lopping them off, and growing body hair.
And, writing as a AA cup woman, this focus seems misplaced, at least insofar as it communicates "what defines a woman is having (sufficiently-large?) breasts." Almost makes me want to claim health insurance for implant surgery and say I'm being denied on account of my sex, if they would have approved a man going through sex-change surgery (well, except for the fact that I wouldn't want anything implanted inside me for elective reasons).
"I am unclear about this point. Is he a true trans-sexual or is he just a guy in drag with a face lift and hormones?
In other words, what's known as a "pre-op transexual," or "lady boy," or "He/she."
There are a lot purportedly straight dudes who are really into he/shes. Some prostitutes in the New York tri-state are he/shes. Put the two together and you get Eddie Murphy.
"I noticed as a child that girls had more options than boys. I never like being a boy but I did enjoy the things boys did, more than what girls did. I always thought that someday I would feel different, and someday never came, even after succeeding in my major life goals. Growing up I was very aware that feminism expanded the role of women to the point where there was no difference between me and them, except for the anatomy between my legs. I sometimes wonder what I would have done if women had stayed in their traditional roles."
Men are capable of having their own movement, pushing for wider options. Why look with envy on what women did for women and not work on getting something equivalent for men? I guess men had more options to begin with and thus less motivation to ask for more, but still: ask for more. Demand more freedom, less constricting gender roles. I think it's in part misogyny — the feeling that it's wrong to be like a woman. It's one thing to actually be a woman, another to be a man and be like a woman. There's something wrong with that shame I'd say.
When people say things like this, it makes me wonder what they would make of intersex people. Commonly called "hermaphrodites", they serve as another sobering reminder that medical and physiological reality does not always easily fit within the narrow confines and social expectations of a lay public out there.
you mean the dramatically less than 1% of the population? Yes, let's throw out everything because a tiny fraction of 1% of the population doesn't fit into it. Hey, a guy once survived falling out of an airplane --- so, CLEARLY, we should do away with the societal construct of gravity as well.
Again, we're humoring psychological disorders here. Body Dysmorphic Disorder is an identifiable condition on the OCD spectrum. Transgender is simply BDD. No matter how much some want to pretend "mental disorder" is a "civil right", it just is not.
"Isn't it physically more difficult to change physically from a woman to a man?"
I think the saying is, it's easier to make a hole than a pole?
Nonetheless, one might reasonably question the medical ethics of amputating healthy body parts, in anyone but especially in children.
If the problem is in your head and not in the offending body part, why aren't you working where the problem is?
Just for fun, here is an interesting juxtaposition: "The study analyzed data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which documents the bullying, harassment, rejection by family and other assorted horrors. . . . In fact, there are few areas of medicine or psychiatry where the debate has become so heated. I was surprised to discover how many professional colleagues in this area either warned me to be careful about what I wrote or were reluctant to talk with me on the record for fear of reprisal from the transgender community."
Because, for the sake of open-mindedness, the science must be settled.
JtheA said:
And, writing as a AA cup woman, this focus seems misplaced, at least insofar as it communicates "what defines a woman is having (sufficiently-large?) breasts." Almost makes me want to claim health insurance for implant surgery and say I'm being denied on account of my sex, if they would have approved a man going through sex-change surger
That is a really interesting thought.
"But it's understandable that a guy like Michael K. would find the difference between a bladder and prostate to be confusing. He probably can't even tell the difference between his own bladder and prostate."
Delicious stupidity. Why not check the hospital where "she" died ? Idiot. I was there.
R&B outdoing himself in the beclowning category.
What Michael K is not saying, but only somewhat implying, is that he is a medical doctor, has practiced medicine for longer than some posters here have been alive, is a surgeon, and, I believe still has some of the training of the next generation of physicians. What he apparently is saying is that he worked (as a physician) at the hospital where "she" died.
I find the whole thing quite humorous, since I don't have a dog in the fight. It is a fight between fake women and real women, and more accurately, much of it is between two groups of LGBTxyz, the often lesbian feministsts, and the transgendered. My view is that if any tranny males want to use the male restrooms, fine with me. I promise not to look if they have undergone reassignment surgery and now have a fake penis. And, I would like to point out that much of this is a result of a somewhat progressive judiciary, which is partially a result ofthe gender gap, with women voting more than men for politicians who support this sort of nonsense. Of course, they also tend to vote for politicians who want to make the women more vulnerable to rape, etc, by banning guns. Which is why I sometimes question giving women the vote (but if we repealed that Amendment, would trannies like Jenner still get to vote?)
Men are capable of having their own movement, pushing for wider options
Not really. We are part of the patriarchy. We have male privilege. And many of us also have white privilege. The social justice movement is not about to allow us our own liberation movement.
What he apparently is saying is that he worked (as a physician) at the hospital where "she" died.
I actually prefer he/she to "she". It is, in my mind, more accurate, and gives a better idea of the true state of affairs. Still, it would be nice to know how much of a tranny they are, and in particular, whether gender reassignment has been completed.
Johns Hopkins does not do reassignment surgery any more, since finding that those with it suicided at a rate way higher (20x? IIRC) than those who got counseling for their body dismorphic disorder/feelings/issues/ideas/thoughts (what is today's PC word for trannies?).
I'm with Hopkins. Having a since=birth brain issue with one's gender is accepted in medicine; trying to resolve it works best with self-realization, not self-reassingment.
Peter wrote:
If the problem is in your head and not in the offending body part, why aren't you working where the problem is?
And this in a nutshell is the real issue.
"Just for fun, here is an interesting juxtaposition: "The study analyzed data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which documents the bullying, harassment, rejection by family and other assorted horrors. . . . In fact, there are few areas of medicine or psychiatry where the debate has become so heated. I was surprised to discover how many professional colleagues in this area either warned me to be careful about what I wrote or were reluctant to talk with me on the record for fear of reprisal from the transgender community."
Describing it as a mental disorder, is in effect bullying to them. That's somehow offensive. Do they view any other mental disorders the same way? If you say someone is schizophrenic does that mean you hate them and want them to die?
You can quickly see how this actually works against treating transgendered with therapy. Which, since they are suffering from dysphoria, they clearly need.
Anyone who thinks that a "woman's body" can include an optional penis has not wanted to be "a woman" - ever. Such a one may have wanted bits of female identity (dresses) as that identity exists in such a one's society but hasn't ever wanted to attract a man. They aren't attracted by that.
BTW, who imagines that Bruce would want to be Cait if he lived in Polish society and he had to dress like the woman in the Fangor poster? or like Hilary Clinton? What if he had to put up with Bill? Or if he could only wear Red Guard tunics? Or had to undergo forced abortion in China? Or be enslaved like a Yazidi? Or give birth? Or want to give birth and not be able? Or miscarry?
Women's chances and choices - Bruce would melt and die if he had to face them. He's no Caitlynn and Bruce doesn't get to define what a woman is just because he's man.
Yes. progressive ideology says Bruce can tell us women what a woman is - but remember Alzheimer's is a progressive disease and it isn't the only one.
It must be tiring lecturing the peons of the world on those things.
HIPPA doesn't apply to dead people. Especially when they are really, really, really dead. For decades.
Rhythm and Balls gives gravity to the meaning of peon.
And, writing as a AA cup woman
Do "AA cup women" go to meetings?
Ann said, "Men are capable of having their own movement, pushing for wider options. Why look with envy on what women did for women and not work on getting something equivalent for men?"
No envy here. Women were dissatisfied with things and the men were fine. I was glad women were speaking up and I realized I wasn't the only one unhappy with societal roles. At the time I understood that my dissatisfaction with the male role was mine alone and not something general to men.
"I guess men had more options to begin with and thus less motivation to ask for more, but still: ask for more. Demand more freedom, less constricting gender roles."
There's no there there pushing for less constricting gender roles for males. Demanding such would definitely qualify as a pissing up a rope exercise. That goal didn't exist in 1970 and it doesn't exist now except for probably a microscopic subset of males.
"I think it's in part misogyny — the feeling that it's wrong to be like a woman. It's one thing to actually be a woman, another to be a man and be like a woman. There's something wrong with that shame I'd say."
Agree there's plenty wrong with societal attitudes but the probability of changing that is slim and none, and Slim just left the room. Good luck to whoever steps up to lead the charge for less constricting gender roles. If change comes it will be because males who are happy being males step up.
What came first, bra sizes, battery sizes or bond and insurance company ratings? Did the others get the idea from the first one?
But wait - what if social convention is the result of objectively-identified gender differences?
"Do 'AA cup women' go to meetings?"
Only when they feel they need to. Or when they don't feel they need to.
Gender is, of course, more than a social construct. It is silly to think differently. The meme about gender being a social construct seems to have come from the feminist movement, and, in particular, the often lesbian gender studies crowd. And, there, you probably have a lot of women with partially masculinized brains (just like most gay males have brains that are partially feminized - or probably more accurately, not fully masculinized).
I think that most of the non-LGBTxyz crowd instinctively understands that males are different than females, and, in particular, normal (average) male brains are different from normal (average) female brains. Male brains tend to be more spatial, while female brains tend to be more verbal. The two sexes tend to communicate quite differently (I would suggest the works of Deborah Tannen for those who question this). Females do much better at regaining speech after a stroke than males do. Typically different symptoms for a lot of conditions, such as heart attacks. I say normal/average because the LGBTxyz crowd is the probably < 5% who don't fit into the stereotypes, whose brains are often not fully masculinized or feminized. Not that most of the rest of us are all at one end of the continuum or the other, but rather, that the clumping is pretty strong. As, it almost has to be for the species to survive.
Part of the danger here is that one of the corollaries of the meme that gender is a social construct is the idea that the traditional family structure is also an arbitrary social construct - which is obviously false, since groups around the world have almost uniformly adopted similar family structures. Nevertheless, the goal there appears to be to convince the populace that males are not necessary in that role. Not maybe that surprising, it is pushed most heavily by the heavily lesbian, often man hating, feminist and academic gender studies crowds. The problem is that despite a lot of wishful thinking, males are necessary, and the longer women try to raise families without fathers, the worse it gets. The children raised in fatherless households strongly tend to not do as well as those raised in a traditional family. The prisons are filled with males who were raised without fathers, as are the roles of unwed teenaged mothers, raising the next generation. It is just wishful thinking to believe anything else.
That said, some things probably are social constructs. For example, males can, and do, learn to walk in high heels quite well. And, to wear makeup, dresses/skirts, etc. We know this because they have in the past. And, likely will again.
Post a Comment