Which gender are you?

[BrandonD]

From my POV, modern classifications of illness or imbalance all include a hidden subjective value judgment.

In the case of both beliefs and physical conditions, if something is ubiquitous enough then it is considered normal and balanced.

A cell in a petri dish is touched by the scientist's instrument. It responds by moving away from the contact. As this action is repeated, the cell's response decreases.

Individuals are the way they are as a response to their environment. If the environment changes and the organism cannot adapt in a corresponding manner, then this is often seen as illness. An example would be psychological complexes, in which an organism is acting upon environmental conditions from their youth that have long since changed.

This illustrates to me that one broadly fitting definition of health and balance could be flexibility or adaptability. If the physical body can adapt to its changing environment quickly and efficiently, if the psyche can adapt to its changing environment quickly and efficiently, then both are healthy and balanced.

If this is the case, then is a "transgender" person suffering from an illness, or not?

As I see it, one arbitrary classification cannot in itself indicate illness or imbalance. Many other factors of that person's environment must be taken into account.

[RocketMan]

.
I'm a lesbian in a man's body.

what I mean by that is that I have quite a strong feminine side but am not in the least bit attracted to men

Me too Thanks for putting it into words. Being a man can be a hassle.

I continue to find it fascinating that gender-related threads seem to arouse more passions here than most other subjects. Then again, I consider myself a fairly open-minded person but ideas of (ideals?) masculinity, gender, gender roles, feminism, male privilege etc. do have the power to make me feel uncomfortable in a hurry, sometimes regressively so.

[slomo]

Oh lord, sometimes I just can't help myself.

Homosexual orientation is totally fixed biologically, but gender is completely fluid, and has nothing to do with biological sex.

Got it.

OK, maybe if you squint really hard and push, I mean push, you can wring out a few nanoliters of sense. But it is far simpler to posit a large variety of personality traits, each of them representing a spectrum (gasp!) of possibilities, but that in a population these traits tend to cluster around two central tendencies, which typically (in most human cultures) map to the two biological sexes, and that the distribution of these traits ultimately has a biological cause (in the statistical, not fully deterministic, sense). That the mostly likely biological mechanism for this phenomenon is two distinct developmental cascades that lead to two different patterns of neuronal connection, but that there is enough opportunity for error in these cascades that the patterns can get mixed up, leading to a wide variation in traits (across a spectrum) and in sexual orientation. The default sexual orientation, which facilitates actual biological reproduction, arising in over 90% (and probably over 97%) of the cases.

Every one of you who insists that gender is a spectrum!!!!!!! seems to fail to appreciate that it is scientifically insufficient to describe a probability distribution as simply continuous, it is also important to describe the shape of such a distribution. And, in this case, the shape in almost every human population is bimodal, which is how it leads to the male/female stereotypes that every culture has. But without fail, every proponent of gender theory I've ever met has been allergic to even the most basic of quantitative methods.

Oh well, I guess it's better than Black Friday shopping.

[slomo]

If I had a dollar for every straight sensitive-new-age-guy who claimed to be a lesbian, I could buy that remote mountain fortress I've always wanted and retire early.

[Wombaticus Rex]

If I had a dollar for every straight sensitive-new-age-guy who claimed to be a lesbian, I could buy that remote mountain fortress I've always wanted and retire early.

I like your new avatar. It represents how I engage with the internet about 60-70% of the time.

[slomo]

If I had a dollar for every straight sensitive-new-age-guy who claimed to be a lesbian, I could buy that remote mountain fortress I've always wanted and retire early.

I like your new avatar. It represents how I engage with the internet about 60-70% of the time.

Meeeeee tooooo!

[American Dream]

I think it's important to deeply question shaky arguments about gender that revert on binaries, essentialization and reductive biological models of gender. Here is are some alternate perspectives:

BORN THIS WAY?
WHY AN EVIDENCE-BASED STANCE ON SEX AND GENDER IS GOOD FOR SCIENCE AND FOR FEMINISM



So while there is some strong evidence for certain behavioral differences between men and women that hold across cultures, age groups, and educational levels, there is also evidence that social factors can play a role in mediating even the most powerful and consistent differences. These findings underline the importance of scientific approaches that examine how different social and biological factors interact rather than homing in on a single cause. In many cases, the nuanced debates on the scientific evidence are glossed over, if not lost entirely, in public communication of the results, creating the artificial polarization of “nature vs. nurture.”

An important weakness in all of this research is the exclusion of nonbinary and non-cis people, as well as the exclusion of non-Western conceptions of gender, says Lawson, who researches human sexuality and the links between sex and gender. This isn’t just a matter of inclusiveness, he argues, but a methodological problem: Claims are being made about all of humanity without taking into account important dimensions of variation. Understanding more about gender identity and what causes it to align or not align with biological sex, as well as how all these differences present in a wider variety of people, could give us insight into group behavioral differences. “Gender identity doesn’t seem to be purely cultural,” he adds, citing as an example the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision but resumed male identity in his early teens.

A further argument for a biological role in gender identity is the fact that “people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth—and who very often identify as members of the other sex—are found in all cultures and throughout history, suggesting that the phenomenon is a part of natural human variation,” says Serano. “An even more compelling fact is that there have been numerous instances of genetically male children who were born without penises and who were raised female from birth at the suggestion of doctors. Despite not being told about their past, the majority of these children rejected the idea that they were girls and spontaneously adopted a male identity.” Although prenatal hormonal exposure has been put forward as an explanation for innate gender identity, the evidence for this is “patchy at best,” says Lawson.

Serano argues that denying the role of biology in gender harms trans people by positioning their gender as fake. “Some people who forward strict social-constructionist stances assume that, because gender is ‘just a construct,’ we can all simply deprogram ourselves and start expressing our genders in certain—supposedly politically righteous—ways.” Serano believes this particular manifestation of strict social constructionism “is harmful to trans people and others, as it denies the reality that people are heterogeneous and will differ from one another in countless ways, including our genders and sexualities.”

https://bitchmedia.org/article/science- ... m-research

[backtoiam]

You left out that the trannie epidemic may also be caused by demons, cultural Marxism, or [insert other terrible thing here]. Sure, we just don't know the reason--admittedly, it could indeed be "mental illness," to use that deadly-loaded term from a field that has licked power's boot since its inception, but then again perhaps it's divine intervention or a grand evolutionary scheme. As you say, we just don't know.

It is only an epidemic in the minds of those that actually believe it is an epidemic, or those who compile bogus statistics and shove them down the throat of humanity in an effort to spark confusion and social change. Tell me again why this is an epidemic because I keep forgetting. If I was a transgender person I would hate everybody that kept publicly discussing my situation and causing me to believe that the whole world could see me and thought I might be a freak.

I don't think of gender as a binary, but rather as a broad spectrum of possible self-expression.

That was comedy gold. There is no such thing as little boys and little girls, and that they might be different, and actually be attracted to one another.

Got it...(major fucking eyeroll)

The Heterosexual Questionnaire
1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
2. When and where did you decide you were a heterosexual?
3. Is it possible this is just a phase and you will out grow it?

That heterosexual mental illness is a rough way to have to live isn't it? You should be relegated into a sub forum instead of being allowed to junk up the main discussion page, and I do indeed mean that.

[slomo]

I'm sure bitchmedia.org is a high-impact neuroscience journal.

Because of course, unless it's good for feminism, it's not good science!

[guruilla]

From my POV, modern classifications of illness or imbalance all include a hidden subjective value judgment.

Classifications possibly, since knowledge that is systematized always seems to relate to structures of power and social control. But what are you arguing for now? A total embracing of all forms of behavior? Are you going to allow that any acts show psychic imbalance? If so (& I am sure you would allow that), what's your point?

A person in the wild who eats the wrong plant and dies spitting blood is in imbalance. There's no value judgment in that.

A child who is sexually interfered with, bullied, emotionally manipulated, terrorized, brutalized, any or all of the above, suffers adverse effects. Look at the ACE study if you doubt it.

PIE consider it a value judgment to say that having sex with small children isn't harmful to them. It's not a value judgment, it's an energetic fact. We don't know the energetic facts about everything, or even most things, currently being endorsed and (occasionally) prohibited in our culture; that doesn't mean they are unknowable.

Individuals are the way they are as a response to their environment.

Only that? That's a presumption which I don't agree with. The environment also responds to us, so we must be bringing something to the equation.

This also challenges the idea of innate biological but nonphysical traits, which some people at this thread might balk at.

If the physical body can adapt to its changing environment quickly and efficiently, if the psyche can adapt to its changing environment quickly and efficiently, then both are healthy and balanced.

That's a bit Darwinian for my taste. A rapid adaptation to an insane environment is not really a sign of health or balance. Who has adapted best to our current social environment? The Jimmy Saviles and Donald Trumps.

Homosexual orientation is totally fixed biologically,

Really? Then what about people who make a choice to only have homosexual sex ad self-identify as queer (allowing that choice exists at all)? Or the correlation between childhood experiences (e.g. mother-bondage) and homosexuality? Is that pure heresy nowadays & am I going to get tarred & feathered for mentioning it?

Since I am already out on a limb, is it just me and my sour grapes, or is the main purpose of AD at this thread (and with his timely little "brother-thread") primarily to distract attention from any potentially "subversive" (i.e, genuinely challenging) points being raised here? If so, he's pretty effective.

[slomo]

Really? Then what about people who make a choice to only have homosexual sex ad self-identify as queer (allowing that choice exists at all)? Or the correlation between childhood experiences (e.g. mother-bondage) and homosexuality? Is that pure heresy nowadays & am I going to get tarred & feathered for mentioning it?

Actually, I was just holding up the whole package (homosexuality is fixed, but gender is fluid) to be shot down as mind-numbingly inconsistent.

[slomo]

Oh, while we're pretending that isolated low-probability individual cases should determine the entire discourse.... I notice that nobody has remarked on my biographic vignette above, i.e. that it is possible for a mixed-race person such as myself to have substantially better socio-economic position than a fully "white" English/Irish guy such as my partner. Because, clearly, my individual case means that the whole paradigm of white privilege and racial disparity is false.

[guruilla]

Actually, I was just holding up the whole package (homosexuality is fixed, but gender is fluid) to be shot down as mind-numbingly inconsistent.

Oh; that wasn't clear, to me at least; I guess it indicates how easy it is to get lost in the shadows of this new ideological twilight language: when stressing the irrationality of a belief can be mistaken for advocating said belief?

[guruilla]

Oh, while we're pretending that isolated low-probability individual cases should determine the entire discourse.... I notice that nobody has remarked on my biographic vignette above, i.e. that it is possible for a mixed-race person such as myself to have substantially better socio-economic position than a fully "white" English/Irish guy such as my partner. Because, clearly, my individual case means that the whole paradigm of white privilege and racial disparity is false.

Also, how an already privileged group can increase their status by identifying as a persecuted minority. The Power of the Victim is quite evident in many of the offensive-defenses launched at this thread. Not to state the obvious, but there is personal empowerment in taking up the cause of seemingly victimized minorities, and it's both a license and a cover for power abuse (which I saw in my own family).

[slomo]

Actually, I was just holding up the whole package (homosexuality is fixed, but gender is fluid) to be shot down as mind-numbingly inconsistent.

Oh; that wasn't clear, to me at least; I guess it indicates how easy it is to get lost in the shadows of this new ideological twilight language: when stressing the irrationality of a belief can be mistaken for advocating said belief?

Well, you know, Poe's Law and all.