Such as?
The language used to describe transgender people is pretty germane to thread and not really derailing. Especially considering the language that used to be used to describe them was quite negative (to say the least).
I disagree with your (apparent) assumption that this is a bad thing. Take “menstrual products” - the target audience for those products are “people who menstruate”, which is a subset of “women”, “people with XX chromosomes”, etc AND anyone who may not seem to be what is usually called “a woman”- intersex people, gender fluid, people in gender transitioning, etc. It’s actually a more precise and accurate term. Saying tampons are for women quote/unquote doesn’t fit me, as I am a woman who does not menstruate. Saying tampons are for “woman” excludes people who may not present as women (intersex, trans man pre-transition, perhaps during it as well, genderqueer, etc.) who might also need such products. They really are for “people who menstruate”. How is that phrase a problem, really?
I don’t see the problem you’re seeing. Again, defining the produce by who actually uses it and why doesn’t in any way diminish that I am a woman, even if I don’t happen to be a woman who needs them.
I was startled by the OP. The first openly trans people came out after I was grown up. I don’t think I exaggerate one little bit when I say that they were regarded as freaks. It is entirely different these days. Trans people elected to congress. This would have been inconceivable 40 years ago. In the military? unthinkable. It is vastly better today. Still not perfect. I assume Trump didn’t care when he banned them from the military but believed his base did.
We just recently had a thread with nearly 10,000 posts where many users spent a significant amount of energy discussing the “people who menstruate” issue. Maybe we don’t want to turn this thread into the same discussion.
My earliest introduction to transgender people that I can recall came from Sleepaway Camp, a 1983 slasher movie I saw when I was entirely too young, where it’s revealed that the female murderer was in fact -spoiler alert- a boy the whole time! And most often in movies transexuals (as they were known back then I think) were depicted as depraved, criminal, or both.
I think for most Americans it was the murder of Brandon Teena in 1993 that really put transgender people on the map for us. And even then, I remember reading an article positing that “she” was a self-loathing lesbian who couldn’t reconcile her attraction to women with the rampant homophobia present in society and adopted a male persona to cope with that. The article was written by a lesbian so transgender people didn’t necessarily met a lot of acceptance in gay communities either.
The issue is not limited to menstrual products. “Woman” and “female” is being scrubbed from female reproductive health messaging. We are being referred to as “people with cervixes” now in materials that are supposed to raise awareness of diseases exclusive to our sex class. If a big chunk of the female population doesn’t even know what a cervix is, let alone who possesses one, surely you can see the problem with this? Language is being politicized without regard to the impact this might have on communities with limited health literacy and English fluency.
You can’t be looking at this from an “I” perspective. This issue could effect thousands of others who lack your privilege.
Me too. In the past we were portrayed typically as freaks, perverts, or criminals, so things have definitely changed as far as the perception of us (except for some people.) I think the current backlash is due to us transpeople demanding people treat us fairly and with the rights we should have. I have noticed that most of the arguments used against us nowadays are the same used against me as a gay man previously. Especially being in the military during DADT. Transphobia is just repackaged homophobia as the bigots have shifted their focus.
To answer the OP, I think it depends on how you define “better”.
In the past, when gender dysphoria was viewed as a mental health issue, there was more emphasis on psychotherapy before doing anything medical or surgical. People who went on to have surgery were people who were determined, after a thorough professional evaluation, to be people who would likely benefit from body modification. In other words, there was significant gatekeeping.
Gatekeeping is viewed as negative by most trans advocates I’m seeing online nowadays, but from a medical care standpoint, it is important because it keeps down the number of misdiagnosed people given drugs and invasive procedures that 1) they don’t need, 2) could have negative and long-lasting consequences on their health, and 3) do nothing for their dsyphoria, and 4) create more social issues without giving them the tools to manage these issues.
From what I’ve read, before the rise of gender affirmative care, 80% of juvenile gender dysphoria cases would resolve with therapy and time, with no cross-sex hormones and surgery necessary. It’s certainly possible this figure is wrong, but i haven’t yet found clinical evidence that transgender people are experiencing better longterm health outcomes than transexuals did in the past. Makes answering the OPs question difficult.
Socially, it’s inarguable that trans acceptance is higher now than in the past.
If you’re talking about materials directed at medical professionals then using the term “cervix” is entirely appropriate and accurate.
People with XX chromosomes who present as women yet do not have a cervix do exist. There are also people who present as women from birth who have XY chromosomes and they do not develop a cervix even if they have a (short) vagina.
Again - it seems to me you’re objecting to precise medical descriptions.
Yes, the problem is that “sexual education” as we as “human biology” as taught to our young people is a joke where it exists at all. From my viewpoint the solution is to teach what a cervix is as part of the normal school curriculum. Also with other biological facts and labels so people have knowledge of what is inside the human body and can speak in adult words to each other and/or their health care providers.
Then let’s make everyone as privileged as I am - I want to share that with everyone.
I’m talking about materials directed to women.
Um… How are “directed to medical professionals” and “directed to women” mutually exclusive? Haven’t you ever met medical professionals who happen to be women as well?
Actually, in reality medical information is usually offered at several levels of difficulty to accommodate the fact not everyone is, as you put it, equally “privileged”.
I still say knowledge about one’s own body should not be seen as a “privilege” but rather should be part of the basic school curriculum.
She obviously means materials that are directed to women who aren’t medical professionals. She’s a medical professional. She obviously knows that women can be doctors too.
Ditto.
The only thing that’s changed is that I now know what “cis” means, and will use it when applicable.
– To some people I suppose that may feel like a significant change, because they were used to cis being taken for granted. In, say, the 1970’s, I think there was a perception among many people – myself included – that transgender people were so rare as to be almost nonexistent. What was actually going on, I expect, was that most were afraid to say so out loud.
Maybe I’m just extremely cis. I’m gender nonconforming, have been all of my life (though for most of my life I never heard anybody call it that), and I don’t remotely feel that my identity is put in question by accepting the existence of trans people.
Would actually resolve, or would result in the person subjected to therapy giving up and deciding that hiding was better than having to put up with any more of that?
Also, cites please?
The relevant passage:
“Desistance,” in this context, means the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older. All else being equal, this research suggests that the most likely outcome for a child with gender dysphoria is that they will grow up to be cisgender and gay or bisexual. Researchers don’t know why that is, but it appears that in some kids, nascent homo- or bisexuality manifests itself as gender dysphoria. In others, gender dysphoria can arise as a result of some sort of trauma or other unresolved psychological issue, and goes away either with time or counseling. And in still others, of course, it is a sign that the child will identify as transgender for their whole adult life. While the actual percentages vary from study to study, overall, it appears that about 80 percent of kids with gender dysphoria end up feeling okay, in the long run, with the bodies they were born into.
The question we’re discussing isn’t something that an armchair pundit can answer. Speculation only goes so far. It requires evidence from longitudinal studies. But if it’s true a large fraction of kids that might otherwise outgrow their dysphoria are now being medicalized and surgically treated, the costs side of the equation could be outweighing the risks.
“Desistance” seems like the latest way to justify things like conversion therapy. It’s a way to try to pretend it’s just a phase that kids will get over with and that they are just “confused”. I’ve heard this crap before.
It’s true that not all trans kids will remain trans, but the vast majority do. And they shouldn’t have to wait until they are legal adults before they can live as they truly are. Gatekeeping is a big problem in trans communities, where we have to constantly try to prove ourselves to get what we need when it is our bodies and therefore our decision. Transgender kids shouldn’t have to deal with that as well.
That article’s not a study itself; it refers to 11 studies done since 1972, apparently most of them tiny and one of the two larger and more recent ones unpublished.
The article spends most of its time discussing objections to the studies; of which there appear to be quite a few.
I also wonder whether some of the children who were thought to have “desisted” in that specific sense had only desisted in the non-technical sense – that is, that they’d given in to societal pressure, rather than actually changed their sense of their own genders. I’m not sure how, in any study, to distinguish those motivations.
That’s a sizeable ‘if’, in two directions: one of which is that you yourself seem to be saying evidence from better longitudinal studies is needed; and the other of which is the question of whether a “large fraction” of children who express doubts about their gender assignment are being medicalized and surgically treated.
I don’t think I’m the best one to weigh in on this. But can even adults walk into a clinic and get reassignment surgery without considerable consultation beforehand?
– This may be turning way too much into the other thread; people with a lot more knowledge than I have in the area may be unwilling to get back into this argument.
Nope, you need to have lived as your true gender for at least a year and have two separate letters from medical professionals saying it is necessary. It’s not easy for transgender people to get surgeries in general, yet people act like they get passed out to us like candy.
These are questions that professionals who have examined and counseled these kids would be able to answer. A longitudinal study would certainly be able to get useful evidence. If dysphoric children receiving various kinds of care (therapy, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, surgery) are followed over a period of years and asked about their dysphoria, quality of life, mental health, social acceptance, suicide attempts and other indicators, why wouldn’t this be meaningful?
Its notable that a large proportion of these kids are actually gay or bisexual. I find it very plausible that internalized homophobia can sometimes cause feelings of distress that resolves over time as a kid learns to accept his/her sexual orientation.
For me it was the murder of Gwen Araujo, a transgender high school student whose killers found out her “true” gender at a party and strangled and beat her to death, then drove into the mountains, dug a grave, and left her there dead. I lived maybe 10 miles from where they killed her when the murderers were tried and the jury hung, and I still remember the awfulness that she was denied justice when I read that headline. Eventually justice had its day, but that was a sorry day that came too late.
OP, they murdered LGBT people in the past. They still do. I hope there’s less of it, but things aren’t necessarily altogether better.
Thanks. Boudicca90. I suspected that, but didn’t want to write beyond my knowledge.
It might be, if the children (and eventually adults) felt that the people asking them were entirely neutral on the subject, and that the information would be kept private/successfully anonymized.
I don’t know if anyone’s actually doing, or has done, a sizeable study in that fashion.
Aren’t we getting rather off topic for this thread?