Why are they wasting any breath or thought on hating someone that is really such a tiny fringe? Something about that doesn’t add up to me.
As a parent, I’ve encountered a radical feminist argument that holds that transgender children do not exist, but rather are "transgendered’ by their patriarchal and heteronormative parents who would prefer to have a trans (and presumably straight) child rather than a gay child.
See, for example, Sheila Jeffreys, 2012, “The Transgendering of Children: Gender Eugenics,” Women’s Studies International Forum 35(5): 384-393.
It’s a profoundly idiotic argument. As any trans child or parent of a trans child could tell you.
Because sometimes anti-trans assholes on the internet will use the existence of this minority of radfems to say that women or feminists dislike transwomen. You know, like you tried to. So mainstream feminists vocally refute it. Ironically those same assholes will then take their refutation as evidence that they are a larger group! Which just proves you can’t argue with hateful idiots.
Well, you started this thread. The same argument would apply to it, wouldn’t you say?
Very seriously Slacker - if I am a member of group X and a small segment of my group is doing something I consider reprehensible or even that I merely seriously object to I am very likely to care: they give me a bad name and I feel I some obligation to police my own. Here’s an example - I am Jewish and I would object to both Jews for Jesus and some hypothetical group that promotes killing all Arabs in Israel and the West Bank from having space in a Jewish Community Center to meet or having any Jewish forum to promote their positions. If they got any publicity (and small fringes often do get publicity) I would be out front making sure that people know that these whackjobs do not represent mainstream Jewish thinking, that they are a small fringe, and that no “decent amount of” American Jews shared those positions. I would find someone pointing to a few dozen Jews who did as evidence that those views are endorsed by some “decent number” of Jews to be stupid and/or intentionally misleading and find a claim that my objecting to them was somehow suspicious that maybe there actually are many of them or else I would not care to be infuriating. Substitute whatever group you are a member of and some hateful thing some fringe number of that group’s members may state. You would likely react the same way. Does that make sense to you?
In any case, you made a claim. You provided something as evidence of that claim. That something not only fails to support your claim, it supports the opposite claim. Just accept that and that you misunderstood what Una had meant and move on. I don’t get why so many have such a hard time doing that. We are all wrong sometimes.
I admit it when I’m wrong. Or more precisely, when I become convinced that I am wrong. If I have not so admitted, I am either not wrong or do not agree that I’m wrong. Presumably you would not expect me to admit something I don’t believe?
Well, except that the latter type of group has a huge amount of power in the Israeli government, thanks to Likud needing their votes to maintain a coalition. And their numbers are growing like crazy thanks to the huge families they have with no expectation of having to work or join the military. Thus I would say this is a bad analogy, as radical feminists of any stripe are not nearly so powerful, nor (as noted upthread) are they a growing population.
Okay, my attempt to get you to understand why a member of a minority group cares what about objectionable behavior a small fringe subset of that group does, and why baseless claims that the fringe is somehow representative of some “decent number” could be offensive has failed (partly due to your completely false political beliefs … but please let’s not hijack … I was trying to choose something ludicrous). You’ve totally missed the point. I can live with that. Did my best.
How you can’t get that your cite fails to support your claim in any way, especially given your agreeing in this last post how small, not powerful, and not growing radfems are, I cannot comprehend. But whatever. I’ll move on.
How do you all feel about the so-called"transabled"? Legit or not? Is it ethical for the doctor to offer to do a spine-severing operation for 16,000 quid?
It’s been thoroughly documented in stroke patients that a person can lose “ownership” of a bodypart. Oliver Sacks described this in at least one of his essays/case histories but I’m not, at least not today, going to scan every Sacks book in my library looking for the exact one. In stroke patients this can manifest as, say, a person winding up falling out of bed due to throwing out “that other person’s leg” and his attached body following it. So there is no question that such a situation can arise out of disease or injury. So far as I know, though, such conditions are not treated by amputation, rather, by trying to get the brain to recognize the “alien” limb as part of the body again.
The problem with BIID is that apparently healthy and physically normal people are making such a claim. Just as we normally expect surgeons to leave healthy, functional testicles on a person rather than convert them to part of a neo-vagina, we expect surgeons not to amputate healthy limbs. Transsexuals represent a very, very small subset of people that are an exception to “leave healthy, functional genitals unchanged”. I supposed the argument made by BIID sufferers is that they, too, are an exception to the usual rules regarding healthy parts and removal.
It has taken a long, long time for transsexuals to gain as much acceptance for reworking their bodies as they have now and as this thread shows that acceptance is far from universal.
While I am open to the possibility that BIID is a real disorder in the sense that these people may have some sort of organic brain malfunction or defect I am far from convinced at this point.
There is also the argument that we perform sexual reassignment treatment (which is not just surgery but hormones, counseling, and everything else that plays into the disorder) because it’s the best option we have for people right now. Keep in mind, as well, that SRT doesn’t (aside from effects on reproduction) produce a disability. The person is left with a fully functional and able body. Is creating an actual disability really the best option for BIID sufferers? The linked article, for example, suggests a nerve block that causes a temporary paralysis for the person discussed rather than a permanent one - would that be more ethical, in that it is reversible with time? Is there a way these people might be made content with braces, wheelchairs, crutches, or whatever so that the option is open to return to able-bodied status in the future?
There is also another issue - disability can shorten your life. The paralyzed are more likely to suffer from a variety of infections and problems and para- and quadriplegics don’t usually live as long as the able-bodied. So far as I know, SRS does not shorten one’s lifespan. Thus, arguably, creating paralysis such as the lady in the linked article desires is arguably far more harmful than SRT, or even the straightforward amputation of, say, an arm.
There has to be a VERY compelling reason to saw off a leg, as an example. Typically it comes down to “save a life” or “enable use of a prosthetic where a prosthetic offers greater mobility than a messed up leg”. No doubt that’s why issues of depression or suicide come up in BIID discussions.
I have to say, if I justify at least in part SRT in order to reduce the incidence of suicide in the transsexual population then if it could be demonstrated that amputation for BIID sufferers significantly reduces their rate of suicide I’d have to support the notion. But do BIID sufferers suicide more often that non-BIID sufferers? Has anyone attempted to research that? The transsexual community has studies that support they are more likely to commit suicide than cisgender people, I’ve never seen as such study on BIID sufferers.
Of course, assuming there is a justification for performing surgery on BIID sufferers, any candidate would have to undergo rigorous screening and live as a disabled person for a time prior to doing anything irreversible. And by “live as a disabled person” I mean NO “cheating” like getting out of the wheelchair to negotiate stairs, they have to really live the life. That would be a multi-year process at the least before they’re wheeled into an operating room.
Already covered in past debates.
There is a simple distinction:
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In BIID cases a physically healthy and physically able person wishes to become less physically healthy and/or less physically able.
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A transsexual who has SRS has a body which is healthy and physically able after surgery. They can have sex. Their body will look normal. Barring surgical accidents or poor healing (a risk of ANY elective surgery, from hair transplants to breast implants).
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In fact, due to psychological issues a transsexual sometimes (often?) cannot use their sex organs anyhow, or cannot use them without distress. SRS repairs this in those cases. Again, barring accident or poor healing.
The only valid comparison would be comparing a BIID person to someone who wanted to have surgery and have NO functioning and normal-appearing sexual organs. I’m sure you can doctor-shop and find someone, somewhere who would do that. But then I’m not here to defend procedures and disorders which have nothing to do with transsexuality or SRS.
Your parenthetical aside might be a big hole in that argument. It’s a fairly mainstream view in biology that everything about us, from our limbs to our brains and everything in between, is just a propagation machine. Therefore, disabling reproduction could be seen as the greatest disability of all.
Do you have a cite on that? When I attempted to look into it just now, I found something that said there was an 20% suicide rate for those denied surgery, but an 18% suicide rate for those who had surgery.
ETA: Una, implicit in your argument seems to be a notion that sex organs which are not capable of reproduction are “fully functioning”. You do see that that is very highly debatable, right? If we were to follow this assertion to its logical conclusion, then it would be a ticket for insurance companies to get out of paying for infertility treatments (though they could be forced to pay for Viagra). And again: enough with the “already covered in previous debates”. I was not participating in those debates so that is irrelevant. If this is a reading room rather than an active current and ongoing debate forum, I am out of here.
By that “logic,” you should be far less concerned about transsexuals, and way more worried about the ~200,000 vasectomies and tubal ligations performed yearly in the US alone.
If you were actually interested in learning about the issue, you could read those previous threads and find answers to many of your questions.
But that’s a pretty big “if.”
It could be, but most people don’t see it that way. Sterility does not interfere with a person’s ability to make a living or use their body or enjoy life. In fact, some fertile people choose to forgo reproduction for a variety of a reasons.
And while there may be an argument for animals being “propagation machines” I can’t think of a single species where reproduction can’t be shut down during adverse conditions either via the body failing to produce sperm or eggs or infanticide (we’ve all heard about stressed rodent moms eating their pups, right?)
A species does not require all individuals to reproduce, just sufficient numbers to guarantee the next generation - hence all those sterile worker bees and ants.
Going back to humanity, those humans with the most primitive lifestyles engage in reproductive limitation, from limiting births to, in some instances, killing all but one baby in a multiple birth. Limitation of reproduction is a natural feature of life, and a natural feature of mammalian reproduction.
So no, being able to reproduce is not essential to the life of the individual, and it’s not disabling like losing a limb or a sense or being paralyzed is. You have to be really stretching the definition of “disabled” to have it cover reproductive problems.
And, just for the record, I’m opposed to insurance coverage for most reproductive technologies. There isn’t a people shortage, after all. If someone is having trouble conceiving but wants a child they can finance the process themselves as far as I’m concerned although my fellow citizens think differently in sufficient numbers to have enacted a different scenario.
That is a 2% reduction in suicides, is it not? I don’t require the rate to drop to zero post-surgery to deem it effective. Also, you’re talking about a population with a LOT of confounding factors.
I’m not Una, but I’ve already stated I’m OK with insurance companies and government health agencies NOT covering reproductive technologies, just as they don’t cover cosmetic surgeries.
And it also hinges on how you define “function”. There’s more to a woman’s sex organs than her uterus, and more to a man’s than his testicles. There is reproductive sex - which might not even involve two people ever being in the same room these days what with in vitro fertilization and sperm/egg donation and the like - and recreational sex. SRS might rule out reproductive sex (although with progress in preserving eggs and sperm that is no longer an impossibility for transsexuals, and indeed, on another message board I frequent a transwoman recently announced part of her preparations for SRS was banking her sperm to keep open the possibility of having a biological child in the future), but it doesn’t prevent recreational sex. And that, clearly, is the sense in which Una was using the word “sex”.
Otherwise, you’d have to argue that post-menopausal women are sexually disabled. They aren’t. Not all of them want to have sex, but they certainly can even if their ovaries and uterus are permanently shut down.
There is a continuum between “fully functioning” and nonfunctioning. My quibble is with the use of the word “fully”, not denying that “functioning” also involves other elements aside from reproduction (though that is their fundamental, primary function).
Really? In humans I’d say sex is as much, if not more, about building relationships given how much sex we engage in during times conception can’t possibly occur.
You found this but couldn’t post the link? Why so coy?
And by your argument, what Miller posted.
There’s just an expectation that one does the smallest bit of research before they jump in and try to post on a subject like this and portray an entire group of people in a negative light.
What this is is Great Debates. If you refuse to do the legwork, it becomes “I’m ignorant! I want to talk! Prove me wrong!”
Noting that a point has been covered in previous debates provides one who was not involved the opportunity to take the time to look them up rather than forcing one’s opponents to re-enter all the same information a second, (third, fourth, etc.) time.
Since there are a number of topics that come back to this forum repeatedly, there is really nothing wrong with noting that specific points have been addressed. Both sides could reduce the hostility, one side by providing links and the other by seeking such links through a search or even by requesting them. However, neither the failure to provide a link nor the failure to seek one validates the notion that previous discussions are irrelevant.
Again, those are medical bodies, not bodies of professional biologists. Medical doctors wade into many areas in which they are not expert–that does not make their proclamations expert.
This demonstrate you are behaving dishonestly in this thread. I have specifically emphasized several times I am talking about mammalian sex determination. The fact that you have chosen to ignore that speaks to a dishonest desire to win an argument by trying to make me appear fundamentally ignorant.
Mammalian sex is determined via XX/XY chromosomal sex determination. Yes, many other types of animals have unique and very different types of sex determination, but as I have repeatedly stressed I was talking about mammals I can only view you as a dishonest participant in this discussion after this poor response to my posts.
Only two things are really possible now, one is that you were unable to follow that I was talking about mammalian sex determination, the other is you are being a dishonest participant in this discussion.
This the tail end of either your 2nd or 3rd post where you confuse secondary determinations of sex with primary. Those lists don’t mean “we can pick and choose, or base it on everything in the list.” They serve to explain that you can determine sex using things like observation of the genitals for example, because those typically represent what the animals chromosomes are. But the core definition is still chromosomal for mammals. If there is a conflict between what the chromosomes are and any other factor, the chromosome tells the tale for mammals. Biologists need more than just chromosomes to work on, they were not even understood until the 60s and even today can’t always be easily measured based on what type of animal you’re observing in what type of context. If you’re following a polar bear in a helicopter and observing only with a camera you can’t ascertain what its chromosomes are.
The only one ‘picking and choosing’ the definition of biological sex off a list* is you*. Seriously. Mammalians are also classified as intersex when their chromosomal sex is discordant with their gonadal and phenotypic sex. Just google ‘intersex mammals’ and see for yourself - horses, pigs, dogs, goats, etc, going back as far as 1928. I’m not posting anymore cites for you, not worth the effort.
What is obvious at this point in how determined you are to prop up your own limited definition of biological sex (unsupported by biological science) to support your own bias or prejudice on the issue. Not even the Biology text books you hold so dear, support you. Smearing medical science does not make you or your claims anymore credible on the matter.
Besides the fact, the scope of the thread is about human sexual biology and medicine after all.