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uncloseted · 3 years

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I hope to be better one day. I believe in only two genders because I believe science doesn’t care about your feelings and I feel trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people. I was born female and I’m not always included in everything and I don’t turn around and call people sexist and transphobic, sometimes u get left out cos that’s called life. I’ve tried changing I cant. I just keep my opinion to myself and just agree publicly with what others say. I know I am not a bad person but just wonder what it is that I don’t get it, I honestly think this is just me.

Against my better judgement, I'm going to answer this ask. I'm not entirely convinced it's a question that's in good faith, and the fact that this ask is in my inbox at all suggests to me that you didn't really engage with the nearly 4,000 words I've already dedicated to this subject, so I don't know how much I'll be able to add to your thinking here. But I know a lot of people do genuinely have these questions or questions like these, and so I think it's important to take them seriously for anyone else who might read this answer. If you really hope to "be better" or to change your views, anon, maybe you'll get something from this, too.

Science Doesn't Care About Your Feelings

So, you start by saying that you "believe in only two genders because [you] believe science doesn’t care about your feelings". What exactly do you mean by this? Maybe science doesn't care about your feelings, but science also doesn't support the assertion that there are only two genders. The scientific community is in agreement that trans people exist. The scientific community created the term "gender dysphoria", and it appears as a medical diagnosis both in the DSM-5 and ICD-10 (and will appear in the ICD-11). The scientific community supports the use of medical and social transition to alleviate the stress and discomfort that trans people experience. The scientific community views social and medical transition as an important tool to reduce the number of trans people who will die by suicide. None of those positions are based on "feelings". They're based on scientific fact- on findings that are testable, observable, repeatable, universal, and measurable. If you want to dig into the scientific research that has been done on trans identities we can, but I have a feeling that's not really where you were going when you said "science doesn't care about your feelings."

Are you talking about "gender essentialism", where your gender is defined only by the sexual characteristics you have? In your previous ask, you yourself seemed to me to be unconvinced by biological essentialism. Are we just arguing over the proper use of the words, "sex" and "gender"? Science views sex and gender are fundamentally separate concepts that are often linked. For example, the World Health Organization, an international, scientific agency of the United Nations, says that, '[g]ender' refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women" and that "'masculine' and 'feminine' are gender categories." The FDA, a federal, scientific agency of the US government, uses "sex" as a biological classification and defines "gender" as, "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation."

But even if you were to take gender essentialism to be fact (and to be clear, I don't think we should), the idea that there are "two genders" is still incorrect. As many as 1.7% of people have at least one intersex trait, and there are many more who don't have all the sex characteristics we associate with being "a boy" or "a girl". As I mentioned in my previous post, some girls don’t have a menstrual cycle (due to menopause, hormonal birth control, low body weight, PCOS, etc), but they’re still "biological girls". Some girls don’t have a uterus (for example, if they’ve had a hysterectomy), but they’re still "biological girls". Some girls never develop breasts, but they’re still "biological girls". If you take gender essentialism to be fact, what is your definition of "a biological girl" or "a biological boy"? Could trans people who have transitioned be considered, perhaps, "a biological girl" or "a biological boy"? Why not? And where do intersex people fit into that paradigm? Would they, perhaps, be a third gender, if we take gender essentialism to be fact? And if not, why do intersex people get to be "a biological girl" or "a biological boy", but post-medical transition trans people don't?

Finally, there are very much times where science cares about your feelings. The entire scientific field of psychology is dedicated to caring about people's feelings and understanding what they mean. So is cognitive science, and psychiatry, and frequently, neuroscience. Behavioral economics and linguistics care about your feelings. Even the field of artificial intelligence and human/computer interaction cares about feelings. Feelings aren't a bad thing. They can help us to understand ourselves and others, and to create systems that work better for everyone. Feelings prompt us to ask the right questions so that science can answer them with facts. In this case, the feelings of gender dysphoria that trans people feel and a feeling of curiosity on the part of scientists led to scientific research about gender dysphoria and the development of scientifically supported treatments to alleviate that gender dysphoria.

Trans People Are Really Attention Seeking

"Trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people" feels like a strawman argument to me. It's just something that can't really be proven or disproven. It's a feeling that you have, but not a scientific fact.

I think it's also an example of a "relevant logical fallacy", or what's more colloquially known as a "toupee fallacy." The toupee fallacy is a type of selection bias where a negative trait is obvious but neutral traits are not. Its nickname comes from the phrase, "all toupées look fake; I've never seen one that I couldn't tell was fake," which is an example of this fallacy. You've never seen a toupee that you can't tell was fake because you assume the ones that look real are just natural hair. The same applies to trans people. If a trans person passes, you may not know (or notice) that they're trans at all. Or if a trans person "acts normal", you may not notice because you're only looking for "toupees"- trans people who are, in your view, "acting inappropriately".

Which brings me to my second point, that this is also an example of the Baader-Meinhof (or "frequency" phenomenon. This is a phenomenon where, after you notice something for the first time, there's a tendency to notice it more often, especially if it's something that makes you react emotionally. Maybe it's not true that all "trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people." Maybe it's that you're noticing it more frequently because it bothers you when this occurs, but you're not noticing all of the trans people who are just quietly living their lives.

Finally, I suspect that if we were more inclusive as a society, trans people would have to talk about their transness less frequently. If people are consistently calling trans people by their deadname or using incorrect pronouns for them, of course they're going to always be reminding people that they're trans. If people are consistently excluding them, of course they're going to be seeking inclusion. This is anecdotal, but one of my best friends is trans, and she never really talks about it unless it's directly relevant. And I think she can do that because she's always respected, included, and just generally treated like "one of the girls" (because she is just one of the girls). I said this in my last post, but I think it bears repeating- the people who are most insistent on their identity being respected tend to be the people who have been the most hurt by people not respecting who they are. Being insistent about who they are is the only way they feel they can be recognized or seen. They're operating from a place of pain. And isn't that sad more than it is annoying? It certainly is to me.

But even if we accept the (incorrect) premise that "trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people".... so what? Does being attention seeking and validation seeking mean that a person's rights should be taken away from them? Because if it does, a whole lot of Instagram influencers are about to lose their rights. Does wanting to be included mean you should be ostracized from society? I think we all want to be included in one way or another. We all want to be part of a community that's bigger than we are. Does always reminding people of you are warrant people rejecting your identity? If you believe that, you should never correct that one person you know who always gets your name wrong and just accept that that's your new name now. You don't have to like people who you find annoying, but you can't just take away their rights or deny them rights because of it.

I Was Born Female and I'm Not Always Included

"I was born female and I’m not always included in everything and I don’t turn around and call people sexist and transphobic, sometimes u get left out cos that’s called life." Isn't that a bad thing, though? Don't you want to be included in spaces that you're excluded from right now? Don't you want people to be less sexist towards you? Don't you want the same rights that men have? I certainly do, and I think it's important to fight for those rights. It sucks to be left out, but more importantly, it's damaging to be left out. Being excluded from spaces has very tangible financial impacts on people, even if you don't care about the very real emotional impact it has. I don't want that exclusion to happen to me, and I don't want that to happen to the next generation of girls. Whatever I can do to make sure that stops, I'm going to do it. And yes, that includes calling people out on sexist behavior. It sucks to have to do that work, but if we don't advocate for ourselves, nobody will advocate for us. And I'm lucky that I'm in a position where I can try to be an ally to the trans community and use some of the privilege I have as a cis person to fight for them so they don't have to do it all themselves. I know how much I would love for men to use their privilege to advocate for women in spaces where we can't, and I hope I can do that for trans people in spaces where they can't advocate for themselves.

Final Thoughts

So once again, this brings me to my final thoughts, and a few questions I would encourage you to think about. What are you really worried about here? Are you worried that including trans women in women's spaces will make it more difficult to talk about issues that people with female sex characteristics face? Are you worried that trans people will center themselves in those discussions? Are you worried that cis men will masquerade as trans women to infiltrate women's spaces with nefarious intent? Are you worried that you'll say something wrong or offend someone? Are you worried that including trans women in women's issues will set women back in terms of the progress we've made? Is it a general discomfort with societal change?

Once you understand where your emotions are stemming from, then you'll be able to address them in a meaningful way. I don't think that "this is just [you]" or that you "can't change". But I do think it will be hard to change your view until you know the reasoning- might we even say... the feeling? - behind your views. You're not coming at this from a rational, emotionless, scientific perspective, and that's okay. But that means that, despite my best efforts, I probably won't be able to debate you into changing those feelings. Only you know where those feelings are coming from, and only you can choose to change them. I think you can "be better one day", but you have to choose that for yourself.

Extra Credit

If you're interested in digging further into this topic (or if you're looking for a fun and educational way to spend thirty minutes), I recommend the ContraPoints video "Pronouns":

youtube

It absolutely will not dissuade you of the notion that trans people are attention seeking, because Natalie is, at her core, a fabulous performer who uses elaborate aesthetics and sarcasm to illustrate her points and to make her philosophy lectures more fun. But it does directly argue against Ben "facts don't care about your feelings" Shapiro in a rational, logical way. It delves into a lot of the topics I was talking about the other day and also a lot of the topics you bring up in this ask. Natalie even talks herself about how the polite, easy thing to do is call someone by their preferred pronouns, but that she wants to truly understand why people use the preferred pronouns they do instead of defaulting to them because it's "dogmatically the woke thing to do". In my opinion, it's a good video, but even if you don't end up agreeing, it's not that long, so try it out anyway.

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chelseaandthediscourse · 7 years

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Recently, I found myself embroiled in a debate with another user on Tumblr in a back-and-forth that encompassed issues such as trans rights advocacy, the medicalization and pathologization of trans identities, and the exclusion of non-binary identities from the trans community. These, I feel, are very important issues that the entire trans community needs to look at more critically and decide what kind of movement we want to be. The politics espoused by the person with whom I was debating are harmful to some of the most marginalized of our community and by excluding them we risk repeating the mistakes of the past in throwing those of us who are ‘too transgressive’ under the bus for our own gain, an issue I expand on during the debate. This debate, in my opinion, is an example of transnormativity and intercommunity bigotry in action, and it shows precisely why we need to combat the biases within the trans community if we want a trans rights movement that isn’t a repetition of the hegemonic assimilation that has hurt so many in the broader LGBTQ+ community.

The debate started with me responding a post which was lauding the ‘truscum’ ideology. For reference, truscum, short of ‘true transsexual scum,’ is a term, usually pejorative, denoting a trans identified individual who believes that trangender identities are a medical, typically psychological, disorder, which requires strict diagnostic guidelines and subsequent medical treatment in order to be considered ‘valid.’ Typically, those who espouses truscum ideology are also very set in thinking that gender and sex exist as a binary, often acknowledging that while gender is social construct, sex is a biological truth based on genitals and other physical markers.

I have transcribed the debate in its entirety below, but the original post containing my participation in the debate may be found at https://chelseaandherself.tumblr.com/post/159568375672/truscum-more-like-common-sense. In the beginning, there are a few other participants, but it swiftly moves to just being between myself, Tumblr name Chelseaandherself, and by debate opponent, tumblr name Thathighclassbitch. I have underlined all usernames to denote the start of a new post, and bolded the usernames of myself and Thathighclassbitch to make them stand out.

Thathighclassbith: Truscum? More like common sense.

Softtrains: truscum? More like let people live their lives fucker

Asprodente: More like have an at least semi-verifiable way of identifying a real condition.

More like stop justifying people’s whimsical identifications, especially when it hurts the case for real transgenders to be accepted because they’re thrown into the boat with people who throw on a new change of clothes and call themselves trans for snowflake points. You’re participating in swaying the science side of the right away from transgenderism.

You are not helping and you’re making it worse.

Softtrains: hey… if people identify as a gender they weren’t assigned with at birth… guess what theyre a “real transgender”

Asprodente: Let me ask you something, what does it mean to identify as something? What is the requisite?

Softtrains: it means being the goddamn thing youre identifying as

Asprodente: Actually, you know what, I’ll just skip beating around the bush and get right to it.

Calling yourself something and being that something are vastly different. If I said I was trans, right now, would you believe me? Is my word the only factor worth consideration?

How about an example: / I say “I have diabetes.”. You don’t have much reason to doubt that, but you don’t know if I really have it. Someone else asks me, “Are you sure you have diabetes?” Now, this question is quite rude, yes, but I fail to present a doctor’s note, a prescription, or any medication for diabetes, and have not presented enough of the symptoms. I tell them that I identify as a diabetic.

Is that okay? In that scenario, should I be defended to identify as diabetic? What if diabetics nationwide are facing discrimination? Well, after my stunt, the anti-diabetics have gone around saying “Hey, they might be one of those fake diabetics!” to justify their treatment. Diabetics are now being treated worse than they were before. / We do have a way of determining whether someone is trans. It’s called dysphoria. We’ve observed mental discrepancies between trans brains and cis brains, which make MtF trans brains look more similar to cis female brains than cis male brains.

Geekandmisandry: There is some, but minimal and conflicting evidence that brain waves are different in trans people, relying on that is ridiculous when the researchers THEMSELVES tell you not to because it’s not conclusive and there are a great number of variables.

Trying to test trans people is fucking ridiculous, comparing it to diabetes is willful ignorance. There isn’t a blood test for transness and don’t pretend you’re on a “science side” when you clearly haven’t actually looked at the finding, you’re just doing a hopeless regurgitation of some cherry picked data.

It shows.

Sex and gender are complex and anyone who claims to know the exact nature of them at this point of our scientific research is a liar.

Chelseaandherself: Sex and gender are social constructs.

Blood sugar is not.

Thathighclassbitch: Actually

Vagina equals female Penis equals male And when you have gender dysphoria, you either want to have a dick or a vagina. It’s not a social construct.

Chelseaandherself: Buddy, pal…listen…please actually read legitimate sources on the matter before coming on to my blog with this stuff.

There’s absolutely zero scientific reason to equate having certain genitals with certain genders or sexes. You’re erasing the entire spectrum of intersex just to create a binary system. What do you call someone with a penis who has an XX karotype? Because that’s possible. Someone with a vagina with an XY karotype? Because that’s also possible. As is any number of other assortments of genital and chromosome combinations that make it impossible to actually have a binary system of sex. We made it up. That’s the definition of a social construct.

Thathighclassbitch: That’s rare and not exactly a ‘normal’ thing. Normal people have xy if they’re male, and xx if they’re female. That’s science. And intersex is a mutation, and is not a normal thing. And even so, it wouldn’t be SOCIAL.

And buddy, pal…maybe give some backup for the shit you’re saying before coming onto MY post. Because this is my post. And I don’t care if you respond, it’s public. But don’t shit me with coming onto your blog.

Chelseaandherself: http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

http://www.isna.org/faq/ten_myths/rare

http://oii-usa.org/2563/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/

Most estimates put intersex conditions at about 1-2% of the population, but it’s hard to get an accurate measure and these are fairly conservative estimates. This may not seem like a large portion of the population, but it’s actually pretty significant. And ignoring that large of a population is just bad science.

https://sites.psu.edu/evolutionofhumansexuality/2014/02/19/third-genders-new-concept-or-old/

Prior to colonization, multiple cultures around the world recognized genders and sexes outside of the binary, demonstrating that our understanding of such matters is constructed by our culture. Even within western society, understandings of sexuality and gender have not been static; for a long time, what we now consider to be homosexual men were considered a third gender. I do not have a convenient online source to link to you for this, but consider checking out Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBTQ Studies by Jonathon Alexander, et al.

http://sociologyinfocus.com/2016/08/sex-is-a-social-construction-even-if-the-olympics-pretends-its-not/

Here’s a nice little article that discusses the issue and provides a few other sources.

Sources I can recommend off the top of my head but can’t link you to as they aren’t available online:

Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling

Bodies That Matter by Judith Butler (or any number of her other works)

A significant portion of the works of Michel Foucault, most notably The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, both of which discuss how knowledge in the sciences is constructed through a social and cultural lens.

I could provide you with a significantly better selection of sources if you had access to a university level research database, but…

Thathighclassbitch: I’ll check out the links later, alright? So do consider that when I’m replying right now, since I haven’t checked them out yet.

But intersex and such is still a rare case, and people can usually identify with either one of the sexes. Plus the belief of more genders is, like I said, a belief, and should not be connected to being transgender, since it harms people like me in various ways.

Chelseaandherself: Intersex is a rare case compared to some things and not when compared to other things. As some of those articles mention, the 1-2% estimate puts it at being about as rare as being born with naturally red hair and more common that cystic fibrosis. The point is, it’s not a statistical anomaly, and ignoring it is bad, reductive science. And further, some people do not know they are intersex.

Sexing the Body by Fausto-Sterling specifically addresses the issue of an Olympic athlete who had to undergo genetic testing to participate only to discover that, having lived her entire life thinking she was a “normal” female, she was actually intersex and had latent testes hidden in her body. I’ve switched back to mobile tumblr, otherwise I’d find you a link on her, but her name was Maria Patino, a quick Google search should find her. And there are other accounts of similar things. The belief of more genders is just that, a belief, I agree, but, I’m arguing, that the belief in a binary system of gender is also just that, a belief. I literally have no idea what you being transgender has to do with this discussion. I’m transgender too and I think the discourse your perpetuating is harmful to me.

Thathighclassbitch: No I completely understand that ignoring that issue is bad and that’s not what I was going for when it comes to this post. This post was mainly directed at people who think they are nonbinary in any way. Because these people confuse this for being a different gender, and think they are transgender. Even though you cannot transition to any non binary gender.

Gender identity, however, is a social construct. This is mainly just the way you present yourself and kinda the way you respond to gender roles. (Don’t fully know how to put it.)

And what I meant with the last part was that people who say they are transgender, yet don’t have dysphoria, are hurting people like me with dysphoria. I wasn’t directing it towards me, but more towards a group of people I’m part of.

Chelseaandherself: I know what gender identity is?

But okay, look, this is what it comes down to then. You want non-binary people out of the trans community because you think they somehow hurt trans people. Again, I reiterate that I am a transgender woman, I am part of this group that you claim to be protecting. All you’re really doing is policing people’s identities in the same way that binary trans people have had their identities policed and told they are legitimately the gender they identify as. You’re also perpetuating the same discourses that historically have been used to keep transgender people out of the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement. I speak here specifically of that movement within the US; I see on your blog description that you are Dutch and I cannot speak to the history of any civil rights movements originating in that area of the world. But in the US, trans people were systematically pushed out of the rights movement because we were considered too transgressive and were thought to be hurting the more normative, cisgender members of the community by holding them back from acceptance in mainstream culture. You are doing the same to a marginalized section of an already marginalized minority. What you are essentially arguing to is the idea of trickle down advocacy…much like trickle down economics, the idea is that we fight for the rights of the least oppressed, and those rights will eventually trickle down to those who are more oppressed, and we slowly work our way down the rungs of the social hierarchy. But this isn’t a great model for social rights. Think about it this way, your goal is to fight for the rights and acceptance of binary transgender people, correct? Doing it you’re way will eventually gain those things for binary trans people, and sure, that’s great, but non-binary individuals will still be out in the cold. If you include non-binary people in you’re advocacy, then maybe the fight is a little harder and a little longer, but in the end everyone is better off. Let’s be honest, non-binary identities ARE more transgressive to social norms and people have more trouble accepting those identities. Because of this, don’t you think that if non-binary identities are accepted and recognized within the mainstream, that binary trans identities like yours and mine are also going to be accepted?

Thathighclassbitch: You see, what I’m saying is that nonbinary does not equal trans. It means not confirming to gender roles, and it’s something you cannot transition to.

People should first understand what nonbinary is, and should understand that it’s not a gender, before we can work towards acceptance.

Nonbinary and transgender are two different things. One has something to do with a mental disorder, and the other is not confirming to the stereotypical gender roles. It’s not an entirely new and amazing gender.

Basically, you can be a nonbinary man or nonbinary woman, but you’re still a man or a woman either way. It’s basically another way of saying that someone is a tomboy or a femboy.

However, tomboys/femboys do appear to have different stereotypes than nonbinary people, and nonbinary includes both men and women. So I suppose that would be a bigger community.

But it’s not transgender.

Chelseaandherself: Okay, have fun thinking your identity is a mental disorder and playing identity police.

This is no longer a productive debate as I can see that you are very set in your thinking here, so I really don’t feel the need to spend my time in the futile pursuit of trying to convince you otherwise. Thank you for the mental exercise and have a lovely day.

At this point, I decided to disengage from the debate as it became clear to me that not only did he seem unwilling to actually read the sources which I provided, on his request, but also had no intention of engaging with me with arguments that were more substantial than a reiteration of phobic language. The debate was, in short, entirely unproductive. We, as a community, need to do better than this. We need to stop repeating the same bias that has been thrown at us and using it to further marginalize members of our community. Trickle down social justice isn’t good enough and it doesn’t work.

#transnormativity #gender identity #trans rights #trans advocacy #lgbtgia #queer #queer theory #transgender #social justice #truscum ideology

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