Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Consul]

Transsexuals are not "all completely damaged and insane." They do have sex-related mental issues, but I doubt these are best described and explained in terms of (the vocabulary of) gender (identity) theory.

Just a bit of cognitive therapy is all they need, eh?

Counterquestion: Invasive and irreversible body modification is all they need, eh?

The following judgement is based on the most reliable empirical evidence available:

"For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems."

Source: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home ... al-report/

For comparison: Do you think the default or standard therapy for body integrity dysphoria should be surgical crippling?

"6C21: Body integrity dysphoria
International Classification of Diseases for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, 11th Revision, v2024-01

Body integrity dysphoria is characterised by an intense and persistent desire to become physically disabled in a significant way (e.g. major limb amputee, paraplegic, blind), with onset by early adolescence accompanied by persistent discomfort, or intense feelings of inappropriateness concerning current non-disabled body configuration. The desire to become physically disabled results in harmful consequences, as manifested by either the preoccupation with the desire (including time spent pretending to be disabled) significantly interfering with productivity, with leisure activities, or with social functioning (e.g. person is unwilling to have a close relationship because it would make it difficult to pretend) or by attempts to actually become disabled having resulted in the person putting his or her health or life in significant jeopardy. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorder, by a Disease of the Nervous System or by another medical condition, or by Malingering."

Source: https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-256572629.html

[Lagayascienza]

The complaint about "a lack of rigorous scientific evidence for gender affirming treatments is naive. Even a moment's thought makes clear that any transperson who successfully manages to meld into mainstream society will not welcome being questioned about their that from which they risked everything to escape. There is an inherent problem with studies in this area, which is no doubt why rigorous evidence is hard to find.

How do researchers get ten and twenty-year follow ups, when most of the subjects want nothing to do with researchers and just get on with life? Thus, most cases will be those who ran into trouble, who gain (or seek) attention, and it is these who tend to shape the public's opinions because they are weird enough to be newsworthy.

Exactly. What has happened in the past was that young trans people had to manage the best way they could without gender affirmative care, or even acceptance, until they could get hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery as adults. In bodies that felt wrong to them, some of them did not survive that long. They were destroyed by their parent's and their society's reaction to them and not by their gender dysphoria. Those who successfully managed the transition could generally go on to live relatively normal and productive lives. Whether they were "biological" males or females was, pretty much, irrelevant. No one was interested in their chromosomes and they were, at last, comfortable in their own skins.

Today, the question is really about whether young gender dysphoric people deserve to be treated as the gender they perceive themselves to be. Those who say they should not be so treated are, IMO, simply wrong. It seems obvious to me that when a gender dysphoric child is provided with gender affirmative care by parents who love them unconditionally, the child will be less likely to develop a mental illness and the outcome is likely to be a better one for both the child and the parents than if the child had to do battle with their parents and their wider society. Hell, it's hard enough being a non-gender dysphoric pubescent child and teenager. It's hard to imagine the suffering of a trans kid and it's almost a miracle that any of them survive.

[Pattern-chaser]

No! I'm using these terms synonymously, i.e. "gender" as a euphemism for "sex".

<Quotes from sundry commentators elided.>

It's easy to quote what other people think, but those quotes do nothing to strengthen (or weaken) your argument. Argument from Authority is well-known and understood to be a logical fallacy.

You are out of step with most others, who recognise a clear distinction between sex and gender. Your refusal to do so is your own affair. Your denial of how most people see it is unsustainable: most people do see it differently from you. Such matters as these are decided by cultural consensus. This is not to deny facts; this is to use those facts as a foundation for a social and cultural understanding that forms our consensus.

"Sex" and "gender", and all words, mean what we say they mean. Language is not static or fixed; it belongs to its speakers. And they (we) say that you are wrong to treat sex and gender as synonyms.

[Pattern-chaser]

Just a bit of cognitive therapy is all they need, eh?

Oh, don't get me started on cognitive 'therapy'! [No, I know that's not what you were getting at. ] Cognitive 'therapy' is most often used as a coercive attempt at 'reprogramming', to force people to behave according to an arbitrarily-defined 'norm'. It is toxic and perverse.

Variety is the spice of life. Flexibility and adaptability are a significant part of the reason our species survives and prospers. We *need* the variation, to retain as many different skills and abilities as we can. Life changes unpredictably, and we never know when a particular skill will be vital to our survival. This is why coercing conformance is bad for all, not just the victims.

Cognitive therapy is, at best, a practice that should be employed with caution and great care.

[Pattern-chaser]

Just a bit of cognitive therapy is all they need, eh?

Counterquestion: Invasive and irreversible body modification is all they need, eh?

No, they need care, careful consideration, and understanding. As with most things in life, there are no quick fixes, and no solutions that work in all cases. Every case is different, because every "case" is actually a unique human being, with unique feelings and needs.

Care; consideration; understanding.

[Sy Borg]

Transsexuals are not "all completely damaged and insane." They do have sex-related mental issues, but I doubt these are best described and explained in terms of (the vocabulary of) gender (identity) theory.

Just a bit of cognitive therapy is all they need, eh?

Counterquestion: Invasive and irreversible body modification is all they need, eh?

The following judgement is based on the most reliable empirical evidence available:

"For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems."

Source: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home ... al-report/

For comparison: Do you think the default or standard therapy for body integrity dysphoria should be surgical crippling?

"6C21: Body integrity dysphoria
International Classification of Diseases for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, 11th Revision, v2024-01

Body integrity dysphoria is characterised by an intense and persistent desire to become physically disabled in a significant way (e.g. major limb amputee, paraplegic, blind), with onset by early adolescence accompanied by persistent discomfort, or intense feelings of inappropriateness concerning current non-disabled body configuration. The desire to become physically disabled results in harmful consequences, as manifested by either the preoccupation with the desire (including time spent pretending to be disabled) significantly interfering with productivity, with leisure activities, or with social functioning (e.g. person is unwilling to have a close relationship because it would make it difficult to pretend) or by attempts to actually become disabled having resulted in the person putting his or her health or life in significant jeopardy. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorder, by a Disease of the Nervous System or by another medical condition, or by Malingering."

Source: https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-256572629.html

You are shifting the goalposts. The thread is "Is there such a thing as an innate sense of gender?".

It is not, "Should children be given hasty life-changing treatments without assessment?".

You seem to be using the latter to argue against the former, which is completely illogical.

The issue is that there are gender clinics where the kids are changing their pronouns and names every other day, which is ridiculous. Anyone so unstable needs to sort that out out before considering gender transition.

Still, the existence of many kids where the dysphoria is clearly not innate, in not related to to the question of whether gender identity per se is innate. It obviously is. Transsexualism was not always trendy, rather it was about the most stigmatising thing possible, so it's clear that many transsexuals of the past were the real deal. They were not ushered into medical clinics, rather some were ushered into electroshock therapy. And that did not work. Nor did CBT, lobotomies or anything else attempted work. That's why sex change surgery exists. It was not something created to satisfy the whims of neurotic children with depression or BPD.

[Fried Egg]

The complaint about "a lack of rigorous scientific evidence for gender affirming treatments is naive. Even a moment's thought makes clear that any transperson who successfully manages to meld into mainstream society will not welcome being questioned about their that from which they risked everything to escape. There is an inherent problem with studies in this area, which is no doubt why rigorous evidence is hard to find.

The Cass Review simply recommends that these services operate to the same standards as other services aimed at children. Hardly an unreasonable suggestion.

How do researchers get ten and twenty-year follow ups, when most of the subjects want nothing to do with researchers and just get on with life? Thus, most cases will be those who ran into trouble, who gain (or seek) attention, and it is these who tend to shape the public's opinions because they are weird enough to be newsworthy.

From what I read about the Tavistock clinic is they made no attempt whatsoever to follow up on their patients after treatment. In many cases they didn't even keep records. It wasn't a matter of former patients just wanting to get on with their lives, no attempt at follow up was made.

I've also heard stories from de-transitioners who said that they felt dumped after the treatment was done with no after surgery support/care. Which relates to another of Cass's recommendations which said there should be follow through services for young people who have been treated, going on well into adult hood "to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey."

[Fried Egg]

What has happened in the past was that young trans people had to manage the best way they could without gender affirmative care, or even acceptance, until they could get hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery as adults. In bodies that felt wrong to them, some of them did not survive that long. They were destroyed by their parent's and their society's reaction to them and not by their gender dysphoria. Those who successfully managed the transition could generally go on to live relatively normal and productive lives. Whether they were "biological" males or females was, pretty much, irrelevant. No one was interested in their chromosomes and they were, at last, comfortable in their own skins.

Well, it is only relatively recently that there has even been any kind of transitioning medical pathway available to anyone. Although even now the medical pathway for transitioning only goes so far and is largely about outward appearance. It's more about being able to pass as the opposite sex in day to day life. But when it comes to forming intimate relationships with people, most people probably do care about the chromosomes of their partner...

Certainly I agree that traditionally we tended to have much firmer ideas about gender roles and how members of each gender should appear, act and do. But that's another thing that puzzles me; in most western societies, we have been liberated from our traditional gender roles like probably never before (in part largely thanks to feminism). People are more free to be appear, act and do whatever they want to than ever before. That's why I find it so puzzling the need for gender affirmation. All that is is just using their preferred pronouns. If they are already free to dress, act and do things associated with either gender why are the pronouns so important?

Today, the question is really about whether young gender dysphoric people deserve to be treated as the gender they perceive themselves to be.

As I have said above, I think people are already pretty free to look, act and be however they like. So, with respect, I don't think that is what most people are concerned about today. What is of concern to many today is whether what is behind the recent explosion in numbers of trans identifying young people and how many of these are being mis-identified as being trans when there are really other underlying problems that should be being treated.

Those who say they should not be so treated are, IMO, simply wrong. It seems obvious to me that when a gender dysphoric child is provided with gender affirmative care by parents who love them unconditionally, the child will be less likely to develop a mental illness and the outcome is likely to be a better one for both the child and the parents than if the child had to do battle with their parents and their wider society.

If a child actually has some form of social anxiety, depression, neural diversity, but have come to believe erroneously that they are not the right gender, do you think it matters if they are simply treated for being the wrong gender instead of the underlying problem?

To be honest, if all we are talking about is adopting their preferred pronouns and paediatricians treating such children don't stop looking for other problems that might be an underlying cause, then I don't have a problem with it (and I don't see who would).

[Consul]

"Sex" and "gender", and all words, mean what we say they mean. Language is not static or fixed; it belongs to its speakers. And they (we) say that you are wrong to treat sex and gender as synonyms.

If gender ≠ sex, what is gender?

[Consul]

If gender ≠ sex, what is gender?

If the female/male gender ≠ the female/male sex, what is the female/male gender?

[Consul]

If the female/male gender ≠ the female/male sex, what is the female/male gender?

I think it's clear that we're not talking about grammatical gender here; so what is the female/male gender if "gender" refers neither to grammatical gender nor to biological sex?

[Consul]

Oh, don't get me started on cognitive 'therapy'! [No, I know that's not what you were getting at. ] Cognitive 'therapy' is most often used as a coercive attempt at 'reprogramming', to force people to behave according to an arbitrarily-defined 'norm'. It is toxic and perverse.

This is a mischaracterization of Cognitive (Behavior) Therapy as developed and practiced by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, who (as far as I know) didn't approve of any coercion in psychotherapy.

Cognitive therapy is, at best, a practice that should be employed with caution and great care.

That's a truism, because which psychological or medical therapy should not "be employed with caution and great care"?

[Sy Borg]

The complaint about "a lack of rigorous scientific evidence for gender affirming treatments is naive. Even a moment's thought makes clear that any transperson who successfully manages to meld into mainstream society will not welcome being questioned about their that from which they risked everything to escape. There is an inherent problem with studies in this area, which is no doubt why rigorous evidence is hard to find.

The Cass Review simply recommends that these services operate to the same standards as other services aimed at children. Hardly an unreasonable suggestion.

Again, that has nothing to do with whether gender is innate, it's a diversion.

How do researchers get ten and twenty-year follow ups, when most of the subjects want nothing to do with researchers and just get on with life? Thus, most cases will be those who ran into trouble, who gain (or seek) attention, and it is these who tend to shape the public's opinions because they are weird enough to be newsworthy.

From what I read about the Tavistock clinic is they made no attempt whatsoever to follow up on their patients after treatment. In many cases they didn't even keep records. It wasn't a matter of former patients just wanting to get on with their lives, no attempt at follow up was made.

I've also heard stories from de-transitioners who said that they felt dumped after the treatment was done with no after surgery support/care. Which relates to another of Cass's recommendations which said there should be follow through services for young people who have been treated, going on well into adult hood "to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey."

De-transitioners would say that. They divert blame for the fact that they, themselves - no one else - screwed up royally. They should simply own their mistake, not pass the buck. Why not take responsibility? Because that would reduce their chance of a payout.

Most transsexuals would find it intrusive and disturbing to be followed up by professionals when they are trying to move on. Most would surely refuse any approach by a clinic. They are trying to build a new life, so it's impossible to imagine most appreciating having their old life follow them around.

[Consul]

I've also heard stories from de-transitioners who said that they felt dumped after the treatment was done with no after surgery support/care. Which relates to another of Cass's recommendations which said there should be follow through services for young people who have been treated, going on well into adult hood "to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey."

De-transitioners would say that. They divert blame for the fact that they, themselves - no one else - screwed up royally. They should simply own their mistake, not pass the buck. Why not take responsibility? Because that would reduce their chance of a payout.

Teenagers are being seduced into medical transitioning by "gender-affirming" theorists/activists/therapists on the basis of ideological faith rather than scientific facts; but if they later decide to detransition, it's all the detransitioners' fault? Oh, come on!

[Sy Borg]

I've also heard stories from de-transitioners who said that they felt dumped after the treatment was done with no after surgery support/care. Which relates to another of Cass's recommendations which said there should be follow through services for young people who have been treated, going on well into adult hood "to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey."

De-transitioners would say that. They divert blame for the fact that they, themselves - no one else - screwed up royally. They should simply own their mistake, not pass the buck. Why not take responsibility? Because that would reduce their chance of a payout.

Teenagers are being seduced into medical transitioning by "gender-affirming" theorists/activists/therapists on the basis of ideological faith rather than scientific facts; but if they later decide to detransition, it's all the detransitioners' fault? Oh, come on!

De-transitioners are a historical group, people who transitioned before today's strange development. So, no, the issue of gender clinics pushing this activist agenda is new, and we are yet to see de-transition data from their actions. Logic suggests that detransitioning will skyrocket. Dodgy activism should not diminish the valid notion of internal gender identification, just as excesses of second-wave feminism should not detract from the valid aims and concerns of feminists in the 1960 and 1970s.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any respected traditions, people are unable to grasp the concept of "enough", believing that more of everything is better.

Thus, there was probably a need for better care of gender dysphoria in young people but activists took that ball, ran downfield with it, ran past the goals, then past the crowd and out into the street. From there, they kicked the ball to the nearest space station and caught the latest flight into outer space. They only needed to score the goal, and stop there but the word "enough" carries no weight today.

Still, it seems to me that many young people see LGBT very differently to previous generations. In the past, being LGBT would mean missing out of the experience of marriage and having a family. Everything changes once that option has been removed (by tertiary fees, cost of rent and property and reduced career opportunities).

The "gender movement" strikes me as a passive form of rebellion in the west akin to the Chinese youth movements of "let it rot" and "lying flat". Each reflects the fact that Baby Boomers were perhaps the first generation for some time that did not try to leave the world a better place for their children to live in. We see the "hidden" costs of this selfishness, essentially in anarchism. Today it's gender, tomorrow it will be the system of government.