# Transgender People, your opinion: so now sex DOES mean gender?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 15, 2015, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089 "2015-05-15T03:51:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/41 "2015-05-22T14:22:36Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > How did they even know? Because she didn’t pass. > [@](#): > > Why would that even be a customer’s business? Indeed. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/42 "2015-05-22T14:43:47Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > … **they’re trying to simplify the definitions down to two simple things: my business and none of my business**. If they want me to refer to them using a particular pronoun, they use the term that heads me in the right direction. If I want to know what kind of plumbing they’ve got, I need to learn to live with disappointment because it’s none of my business. So by saying that a person who feels she is female uses all female terms for every label that can be applied, that makes a certain amount of sense. When she is dealing with somebody whose business it actually is as to what kind of plumbing is involved (doctor, lawyer, potential intimacy partner), then yeah, it’s time to pull out some more terms and explanations… (bolding mine) I like simplicity. I like this post. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/43 "2015-05-27T21:05:40Z")
I keep my pants on … does that make my gender neuter? ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/44 "2015-06-03T11:28:32Z")
Former Johns Hopkins chief psychiatrist writing in the [WSJ](http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120)characterizes the transgendered as having a mental disorder, like anorexics who pathologically believe themselves to be fat. Hence, “Transgender surgery isn’t the solution:” > [@](#): > > Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes. > > The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight. Sounds to me like the guy’s most certainly full of shit, but I’d be interested in knowing what the actual literature on this subject has to say about his argument. Any psychologists care to weigh in? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/45 "2015-06-03T12:44:22Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > I keep my pants on … does that make my gender neuter? Depends how tight they are. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/46 "2015-06-03T16:21:54Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > Sounds to me like the guy’s most certainly full of shit, but I’d be interested in knowing what the actual literature on this subject has to say about his argument. Any psychologists care to weigh in? Skeptoid ran [a blog piece about McHugh](http://skeptoid.com/blog/2015/02/18/bruce-jenner-paul-mchugh-and-science-denialism/) awhile back that may shed some light on the subject. Long story short, the mainstream academic community thinks he’s a crank; > [@](#): > > McHugh rejects, as do all trans denialists, the notion that one’s biology (“sex”) is separate from one’s self-identity (“gender”), a position that is increasingly in the minority of both psychology and society. This position puts him at odds with the likes of the World Health Organization and even his own employer Johns Hopkins University. > > McHugh instead embraces the idea of autogynephilia, otherwise known as “Blanchard’s autogynephilia typography,” or BAT. BAT argues that transgender women are actually just extremely gay men and that the rest are just heterosexual men with a fetish for their female identities. Autogynephilia was never widely accepted as science, has been highly criticized since its introduction, and only exists in any form today because the idea’s originator, Ray Blanchard, sat on the board that compiled the DSM-V. Even then, it’s relegated to a small sub-section of the “paraphilic disorders” category, nowhere near the diagnosis of gender dysphoria… > > Furthermore, the study McHugh used to justify the cessation of the surgeries at Johns Hopkins was flawed. It is is often held up as “proof” that such surgeries are ineffective, but that study was done in the late 1970s, at a time when the procedures were still rare and experimental; and it was done by Johns Hopkins, under the purview of McHugh himself, and focusing only on a small sample size of patients at Johns Hopkins. This all suggests ample conflicts of interest for a man who admits to having been opposed to GRS from the start. I have trouble with the whole sex/gender thing myself because it pretty much makes no sense to me and I’ve stopped trying to figure it out, but I can say I’m pretty sure that this guy is little more than a sexual creationist cherry-picking whatever facts he thinks can “prove” what he’s already decided to believe. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/47 "2015-06-03T18:34:49Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Skeptoid ran [a blog piece about McHugh](http://skeptoid.com/blog/2015/02/18/bruce-jenner-paul-mchugh-and-science-denialism/) awhile back that may shed some light on the subject. Long story short, the mainstream academic community thinks he’s a crank; Thanks for the link. Seems to be another page out of the usual WSJ op-ed playbook when it comes to scientific matters. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/48 "2015-06-03T19:58:53Z")
Whether something is a mental disorder is mostly cultural wrangling. People who insist on calling it that often want to stigmatize it, like calling homosexuality a mental disorder. It doesn’t _have_ to be stigmatizing, though. It could be like anything else. Here’s a checklist to see if you have the problem, what degree, here are the treatment options. The most convincing argument IMO is since we have no way of treating the internal mental side of trans, only the physical body, then as far as the treatment works it’s more like heart disease, or a broken arm, or something like that. We’re a long ways off from being able to change someone’s internal gender. Some of the anti-arguments strike me as incomplete, though. One of the most common arguments is that trans people have differently wired brains than cis people, brains that more align with their internal gender. That’s true, but what follows from that? Mental disorders often arise from organic sources, which is why they’re prescribed medicine to change their brain chemistry. Unless you’re a [property dualist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29), all mental disorders and all mental characteristics ultimately derive from organic causes. One could argue if being trans wasn’t a mental disorder there would be no need for surgery or hormone therapy because there wouldn’t be a problem. The gap between internal and external wouldn’t exist, or it would and you wouldn’t care. Another wrinkle of the debate that comes up is if it causes disruption in daily life, which was an argument also used for homosexuality. But a lot of that depends on the social environment. If you’re gay in San Fransisco you’ll be fine. In Afghanistan? Not so much. It seems absurd to say it’s a mental disorder in one environment and not the other. One way to suss it out would be to determine, independent of social feedback (good luck with that one), whether being trans inherently increases depression, suicide, maladaptive social behaviors, etc. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/49 "2015-06-04T04:10:40Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Depends how tight they are. Do you mean in the accusatory case, the dative case or the genitive case? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/50 "2015-06-04T08:44:40Z")
If you had a genitive case, you wouldn’t have to worry about your pants making you gender neuter. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/51 "2015-06-04T15:35:57Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Whether something is a mental disorder is mostly cultural wrangling. People who insist on calling it that often want to stigmatize it, like calling homosexuality a mental disorder. It’s definitely cultural wrangling — for anything to be a disorder or illness, it has to be perceived as an undesirable situation or condition. (That also makes that designation intrinsically political). You also won’t get any disagreement from me that tagging something as a mental disorder is often a tactic of people wanting to stigmatize the thing in question. But for transgender people, the _default_ social attitude has always been “change the personality to fit the body”. Pressure the male-bodied sissy children to be more like the other boys, try to embarrass them if they persist in acting more like one of the girls, take girl toys out of their hands and stick boy toys in them in replacement. The female-bodied butch children get a less intense dose of it as younger kids, then a really intense dose of it as they hit puberty. Anyway, we’ve all seen it and we all know about it. It isn’t labeled “therapy” and it isn’t generally conceptualized as an attempt to “treat the internal mental side of trans”, because being trans wasn’t being recognized, generally speaking, as a thing that existed. But that’s what it amounts to: coercive personality restructuring to fit the body, to prevent male-bodied kids from growing up to be (or to continue to be) girls, to prevent female-bodied kids from remaining or continuing to develop into boys. > [@](#): > > One could argue if being trans wasn’t a mental disorder there would be no need for surgery or hormone therapy because there wouldn’t be a problem. And there is a zone where I have to walk cautiously. I, and people like me (or mirror-image on the female-bodied boy side) do indeed have no need for surgery or hormone therapy. But it’s important to find a way of saying so (and getting our identity onto the map, so to speak) without in any way implying that we’re “doing it right” and that the more conventional transgender people (a phrase one doesn’t expect to encounter often, “conventional transgender people”) should follow our lead and stop trying to obtain physical / medical interventions etc. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089/52 "2015-06-04T15:48:40Z")
What we normally declare as “mental disorders” generally do not have any obvious physical changes in the brain. There are some tendencies, but nothing where a specific physical shape means a certain mental disorder. We’re nowhere near the point where we can treat mental disorders as physical disorders. There may not in fact be a substance dualism, but, where we are medically, there might as well be. Plus, at a certain level, you’d be getting into brainwashing, where the new person might not really be you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-people-your-opinion-so-now-sex-does-mean-gender/720089.md?page=2)