Author Topic: So what IS transgender, anyway?  (Read 18820 times)

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Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #45 on: November 08, 2012, 07:02:04 pm »

Well yes, this one case does manage to prove no, because the fact of the matter that is possibly most defining was that David Reimer was not a transsexual. He was someone who would have grown up as a perfectly normal cis male, had he not had a botched circumcision. This didn't start of with a potentially androgynous child, this was a male who was forced to live as a female, it is about as 100% definition of transsexuality that you can get. This single experiment basically proved the lack of upbringing and environment as being a determining factor because all aspects of the example were taken to absolute extremes.
1. That still wouldn't prove that psycholinguistic causes of transsexuality don't sometimes occur. If that were the case for even 1% of cases then that would be important to identify and separate.
2. David Reimer was born a male, he had XY chromosomes. Chances are being a male would greatly increase any inclination to imitate other males, so this doesn't disprove my hypothesis that instead of "innate gender identity" it could be "innate role modeling" giving rise to "gender identity".

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Give children some credit. While the example you gave of injuries meaning glasses is unique, children figure out the basic difference between boys and girls at an extremely young age. They may not understand the full sexual complexities of that meaning, but they know enough to not have some strange confusion like you are implying.

Please show this somehow. The two facts that make me doubt you on this are:
1. Children are not born with a dictionary in their head. They must learn words by being exposed in their environments.
2. Nudity is taboo, so noticing through enough contexts to figure out that a male has a certain body and a female has a certain body at a very young age is not a guarantee, and indeed by the time they have figured it out they've likely already heard "boy" and "girl" and their synonyms attached to so many other situations, including ones referring to themselves or to their friends that they link it more to "behaviors". A child may even mistakenly think an adult was referring to them as a "girl" and then if they have enough feminine behaviors they associate with "girl" they are likely to accept this as the reality, engrain it as part of their identity, and then feel like it means their body is wrong when they learn that "girl" really means you have to have a certain body type. For such a child the healthy thing would be to come to realize he is effeminate, not a "girl", to accept his personality but to come around to accepting that he is a "boy". That may not be all of the cases that result in a person feeling "Trapped in the wrong body", but it's certainly a possible complication that could lead to it.

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Even in the case where there was some initial confusion, such confusion is removed relatively quickly during childhood.

Assuming you mean the second confusion, the confusion of "maybe I have the wrong body" that would come about after learning the words "boy" and "girl" and synonyms actually refer to body parts then how exactly would it be removed quickly? What would guarantee the child realizes they aren't really trans?

Especially if they express this to their parents and then get encouragement from parents and counselors who miss the signs that it's not real transsexuality (which is especially likely since psycholinguistics is just starting to get big i.e. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, enough experiments have not been done to determine what sort of specific problems people may face from misinterpretations of what words mean during childhood).

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Of course the best example to prove that this has no impact or effect is to simply ask transsexuals if they ever encountered such a scenario. I can tell you on my side I know I never had such a problem.

That would prove nothing. That isn't scientific. I would have to ask hundreds of them in a randomized fashion. And even then they might not remember how they came to identify themselves as "male" or "female" even if it was because of how they associated the words and not innate gender identity if it started happening early enough in their lives.

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Additionally, role model has no effect because if it did we would be seeing problems with single parents, or single sex boarding schools. Neither of these scenarios have had any influence on either the occurrence of homosexuality or transsexuality. If anything what you are describing, influences learned gender roles which have already been proven to be unrelated to transsexuality by the behaviors of transsexuals themselves.

1. It's "role modeling has no effect" otherwise the sentence doesn't make sense.
2. You have a highly simplified view of how "role modeling" effects people.

Sometimes people can be influenced by society in ways society does not intend. Just because something looks rebellious, or looks anti-mainstream doesn't mean the influence for it did not come from other people. Look up "contrarian". I'm not saying transsexuals are mostly contrarians or ODD, although I'd hope that's something the doctors try to look for to make sure they are for real.

But other than that people can be confused about society's expectations, and people may give more weight to certain members of society than others and even then more weight may be given to some people on their fashion sense, others on the nature of reality, others for one's views on morality, others for one's politics. If a person's innate tendency is to give more weight to the opposite gender in trying to learn what games to play or what clothes are best and they keep hearing the word "girl" next to it they may conclude that liking it means they are a "girl". If they ever dress the way society expects the opposite sex to dress and get mistaken for a girl they are more likely to think they are a "girl" and then by the time they learn that "girl" means you have to have certain body parts they may think there's so much other stuff as evidence showing they are a "girl" that they have to have the body parts.

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Again this was addressed in my previous post. The current cis and hetronormative environment and society would only encourage children to act like their birth sex and to fight against their cross gender feelings. Further, with societal pressures being what they are, any early confusion would be quickly resolved, I even gave the example of how I was chastised for feminine behavior and that led to me stopping such behavior.

1. Each individual is influenced differently. Otherwise with societal pressures being what they are why would anybody voluntarily do anything "different"? But people do and it's not always "contrarianism" and it's not always "genetics", sometimes they are conforming to a subset of society or to a misinterpretation of society or a misinterpretation of a subset.

Furthermore, being chastised for feminine behavior reinforces the idea that gender means you act a certain way rather than it meaning you have certain body parts. What would've happened if they didn't care about you acting like a girl, and maybe even let it go that you liked calling yourself a girl. And then when you're like 10, showed you what "girl" means in the dictionary, what "boy" means, and then what "feminine" means. Maybe today you would be a feminine male rather than an mtf transsexual. Or maybe you still would be trans. Unfortunately, we can't construct a time machine and go back and figure it out.

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This piece is just plain rubbish, while the argument can be made that children will rebel against excessive pressure from a parent

Not what I was arguing at all. Pointing at certain behaviors and saying "boys can do this" and "girls can do that" would reinforce the notion that these things are part of "what it means to be a boy" and "what it means to be a girl". Looking at what he would prefer to do it would be the logical thing, given the information he had to identify as a "boy".

Society as a whole tends to do this, and the effects on the individual interacting with society would more likely than not be uneven because every individual is exposed to different messages, even down to what they were watching on tv one day.

We'd really have to purposefully create a gender-neutral society where the view that boys can do girl things and they are still just as much boys and girls can do boy things and they are still just as much girls is pushed and any media that would suggest otherwise is censored and the way children are taught things is construed in a careful manner to prevent psycholinguistic confusion of any kind(I think we should do this already, why adults expect children to understand context as well as they do when they've been at for so long compared to the children has always puzzled me) see how many people still want sex change operations as adults.

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, the case of David Reimer proved that was not the case. There are plenty of cis children who are pressured both socially and environmentally to fit gender roles. These children do not rebel against such actions to the degree where they develop a gross gender identity. They are you more typical hyper-masculine males for example.

Some of them do, most of them don't. However, most people don't grow up to be transsexuals.

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Even if some cases or even most cases are legitimate, to me it just seems too easy for a kid to come to strongly associate a set of traits with a word, any word including "boy" or "girl" and then come to feel like he/she needs to change their physical sex once they learn their body doesn't fit in with which word they prefer to think of themselves as. Too easy for it not to make up at least a small fraction of the cases.

Lastly, gender roles and term definitions have nothing to do with trans-people. As I already pointed out, the scope of the significant gender dysphoria only manifests during puberty.

Then why are people always so believing the kid is really trans instead of cautious about it whenever there is a kid who says he thinks he is a "girl" and she thinks she is a "boy"? The fact that significant gender dysphoria only manifests during puberty is a red light that it's even more likely to be from reasons other than innate gender identity if it happens earlier.
When a young child, like 5 or 7 says they are the wrong gender do doctors currently consider the potentiality of psycholinguistics in shaping their worldview of what things like "boy" and "girl" and "sex" and "gender" mean? Do they consider that words that may seem commonsense to adults sometimes have totally different meanings to children? If not, then this could mean there are an awfully large number of mistakes being made.

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By that time gender roles would be primarily focused on ensuring that the child follow their birth sex's roles and they will also have an accurate understanding of what the term boy and girl means.

Um, no focusing on gender roles means it's more likely to lead to things like the child thinks the word "girl" means "wears dresses". As to "accurate understanding" an accurate understanding would be "boy"="male body parts" "Girl"="female body parts". Think about how squeamish parents are about even talking about sex to their children. Plenty of parents will never verbalize to their children that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, and even then it will likely be after all the times they say "boys/girls play with...".

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I've noticed the "children can't know any better" argument doesn't seem to apply when a child is cisgendered or straight.

Just a thought.

I think the main reason for this is really just statistical numbers. Homosexual and trans people make up a small percentage of the total population. Hence in any given situation is it assumed that the majority would be cicgendered and straight. Further the very existence of the closet with regards to homosexuality proves that non cis and heterosexual people will attempt to fit the norm of being cisgendered and straight.

Because if the child "makes a mistake" about being cis here they can correct it (as much as any transsexual) with surgery. If the mistake is about being trans and they go through with surgery they can only half-correct it.

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Although to be honest, for someone to actually come out as such, given all the pressures to remain in the closet, they should be given more credit for their statement.

Based on that logic whenever someone says they think they are supposed to be a minority race and want treatment since that just seems so weird we should give them more credit.

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There are plenty of homosexual and transsexual children who would swear they are normal, simply because they don't understand or know about the meanings of the feelings they have.

Talk about an abstraction. Them saying they think they are "normal" and what that means depends on their understanding of the term in context.

How society interacts with the individual is extremely complex, not a simple society says something and the individual does it or rebels. It's how does the individual perceive(doesn't matter what society says, all that matters is how it is perceived) society and its various parts(such as girls or religious preachers) and in various ways(such as fashion tips even if you don't care what their opinions are on right and wrong or vice versa) applying to various aspects of life and how does the individual respond to it?

Offline erictheblue

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #46 on: November 09, 2012, 09:26:16 am »
Please show this somehow. The two facts that make me doubt you on this are:
2. Nudity is taboo, so noticing through enough contexts to figure out that a male has a certain body and a female has a certain body at a very young age is not a guarantee, and indeed by the time they have figured it out they've likely already heard "boy" and "girl" and their synonyms attached to so many other situations, including ones referring to themselves or to their friends that they link it more to "behaviors".

Guess you've never seen kids playing doctor...

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A child may even mistakenly think an adult was referring to them as a "girl" and then if they have enough feminine behaviors they associate with "girl" they are likely to accept this as the reality, engrain it as part of their identity, and then feel like it means their body is wrong when they learn that "girl" really means you have to have a certain body type.

Do you have a basis for this theory, other than pulling out of the ether?

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For such a child the healthy thing would be to come to realize he is effeminate, not a "girl", to accept his personality but to come around to accepting that he is a "boy".

Who are you to determine what is "healthy" for any child? Maybe the healthy thing for the child would be transition at some point in life.

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Especially if they express this to their parents and then get encouragement from parents and counselors who miss the signs that it's not real transsexuality

If it isn't right, the person will know. When I started transition, I had support from friends who had already transitioned. But even with that support, the idea was only a possibility until the first time I dressed as male and looked in the mirror. That is when I knew it was right for me. No matter how much support and encouragement I had, the only one who could make the final decision was me.

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If a person's innate tendency is to give more weight to the opposite gender in trying to learn what games to play or what clothes are best and they keep hearing the word "girl" next to it they may conclude that liking it means they are a "girl".

There is a long jump from "I like feminine things" to "I am a girl." There are a lot of feminine men and masculine women who know they are not TS.

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If they ever dress the way society expects the opposite sex to dress and get mistaken for a girl they are more likely to think they are a "girl" and then by the time they learn that "girl" means you have to have certain body parts they may think there's so much other stuff as evidence showing they are a "girl" that they have to have the body parts.

I will again ask what your basis for this theory is.

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Even if some cases or even most cases are legitimate, to me it just seems too easy for a kid to come to strongly associate a set of traits with a word, any word including "boy" or "girl" and then come to feel like he/she needs to change their physical sex once they learn their body doesn't fit in with which word they prefer to think of themselves as. Too easy for it not to make up at least a small fraction of the cases.

Except that society does not put such options in kids' minds. Society does not let kids know that TS/TG exist. Without such knowledge, a kid is not going to just decide (permanently) that they are in the wrong body. Heck, even a lot of adults do not know that FtM's exist, which further minimizes the chance that someone who is XX will just decide one day to transition. (If someone does not know an option exists, there is no way they can take that option.)

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Then why are people always so believing the kid is really trans instead of cautious about it whenever there is a kid who says he thinks he is a "girl" and she thinks she is a "boy"?

Little kids think this a lot. Anyone who freaks out over a little girl saying "I want to grow up to be a daddy" is overreacting. An overwhelming majority of kids who say things like this do not actually feel the need to transition.

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Because if the child "makes a mistake" about being cis here they can correct it (as much as any transsexual) with surgery. If the mistake is about being trans and they go through with surgery they can only half-correct it.

I cannot imagine a doctor allowing a child to transition. Hormone blockers to delay puberty, yes. Surgery? No.
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Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #47 on: November 10, 2012, 07:32:05 pm »
Guess you've never seen kids playing doctor...

Far from a universal experience. I never played doctor as a kid.

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Do you have a basis for this theory, other than pulling out of the ether?

The basis is that you are born with ZERO linguistic knowledge, and then you need to try to figure it out, so in the course of trying to figure it out what's to stop a boy from hearing an adult use "girl" and thinking the adult is referring to him?

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Who are you to determine what is "healthy" for any child? Maybe the healthy thing for the child would be transition at some point in life.

Who am I? Wow, so who is who to determine anything? Maybe we should all just throw up our hands and just trying to figure anything out.

A sex change is a BIG thing. If it's not really the kid's innate gender identity and is instead just the result of the development of words and associated concepts at a young age then that's important.

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If it isn't right, the person will know. When I started transition, I had support from friends who had already transitioned. But even with that support, the idea was only a possibility until the first time I dressed as male and looked in the mirror. That is when I knew it was right for me. No matter how much support and encouragement I had, the only one who could make the final decision was me.

People can get confused. A person who was influenced by the psycholinguistic develop of concepts might very well feel the same.
Also, you knew by dressing as a male? What if it just felt right because of the clothes?

You are essentializing gender roles. Why can't a woman dress like a male and still be a woman? Why can't a man dress like a female and still be a man?

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There is a long jump from "I like feminine things" to "I am a girl." There are a lot of feminine men and masculine women who know they are not TS.

You are overgeneralizing. Just because one person gets confused by that doesn't mean every single one of them will.

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I will again ask what your basis for this theory is.

Children are born without a knowledge of what words mean. They have to learn them over a long period of time and that involves associated the words with a variety of things. Typically the kid is not going to open up a dictionary at the age of 2 and learn every definition according to the official definition.

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Even if some cases or even most cases are legitimate, to me it just seems too easy for a kid to come to strongly associate a set of traits with a word, any word including "boy" or "girl" and then come to feel like he/she needs to change their physical sex once they learn their body doesn't fit in with which word they prefer to think of themselves as. Too easy for it not to make up at least a small fraction of the cases.

Except that society does not put such options in kids' minds. Society does not let kids know that TS/TG exist. Without such knowledge, a kid is not going to just decide (permanently) that they are in the wrong body. Heck, even a lot of adults do not know that FtM's exist, which further minimizes the chance that someone who is XX will just decide one day to transition. (If someone does not know an option exists, there is no way they can take that option.)[/quote]

It could become permanent if as a young child they start talking about it and get encouragement from their parents and counselors.

Society does not need to teach kids about the concepts/words of "Transsexuality/transgender" for a child to come to think that they should change their sex. The child could just as easily reach such a conclusion just because they have come to understand the words "boy" and "Girl" to mean certain things including referring to a physical body type but also behavioral and personality traits which they then ascribe to themselves and then internalize themselves as being "boy" or "girl" which could later lead to them reading about "transsexuality" and thinking "That's it, I must have been born in the wrong body and should transition" even when it's really just because through a long process starting before they can remember most things they came to think identify as for example a person who likes to play with dolls, a person who likes pink, ... and then learned that such persons were typically labeled "girl" and so decided they were a "girl" and then learned that "girl" meant "you have a vagina" and then instead of realizing "ok I'm actually a boy" they think "that means I should have a vagina too".

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I cannot imagine a doctor allowing a child to transition. Hormone blockers to delay puberty, yes. Surgery? No.

And what happens when the kid changes his/her mind and doesn't want to transition after hormone blockers? Is there any way to restore them to how they would've been otherwise?

Offline Smurfette Principle

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #48 on: November 11, 2012, 02:40:33 pm »
Guess you've never seen kids playing doctor...

Far from a universal experience. I never played doctor as a kid.

So your experience trumps that of other people's? And you seriously never took a bath with other people as a kid? Or saw people getting dressed ever? Or saw babies being changed?

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Do you have a basis for this theory, other than pulling out of the ether?

The basis is that you are born with ZERO linguistic knowledge, and then you need to try to figure it out, so in the course of trying to figure it out what's to stop a boy from hearing an adult use "girl" and thinking the adult is referring to him?

Please show evidence that this theory is in any way plausible and that kids are really so ignorant that they assign gender based on arbitrary characteristics. Because from what I'm given to understand (having two much-younger siblings and babysitting a shitload of kids), if you tell a boy "only girls like pink" and he likes pink, he is more likely to stop liking pink (at least publicly) than declare that he's a girl.

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Who are you to determine what is "healthy" for any child? Maybe the healthy thing for the child would be transition at some point in life.

Who am I? Wow, so who is who to determine anything? Maybe we should all just throw up our hands and just trying to figure anything out.

A sex change is a BIG thing. If it's not really the kid's innate gender identity and is instead just the result of the development of words and associated concepts at a young age then that's important.

You have to prove that your theory is valid using science before you start frothing at the mouth, dude.

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If it isn't right, the person will know. When I started transition, I had support from friends who had already transitioned. But even with that support, the idea was only a possibility until the first time I dressed as male and looked in the mirror. That is when I knew it was right for me. No matter how much support and encouragement I had, the only one who could make the final decision was me.

People can get confused. A person who was influenced by the psycholinguistic develop of concepts might very well feel the same.
Also, you knew by dressing as a male? What if it just felt right because of the clothes?

You are essentializing gender roles. Why can't a woman dress like a male and still be a woman? Why can't a man dress like a female and still be a man?

What the fuck, dude. That's not the point at all and you are being deliberately obtuse.

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There is a long jump from "I like feminine things" to "I am a girl." There are a lot of feminine men and masculine women who know they are not TS.

You are overgeneralizing. Just because one person gets confused by that doesn't mean every single one of them will.

Oh, you're accusing Eric of over-generalizing? Are you seriously going to down that route, Mr. No-Child-Knows-What-Gender-Is?

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I will again ask what your basis for this theory is.

Children are born without a knowledge of what words mean. They have to learn them over a long period of time and that involves associated the words with a variety of things. Typically the kid is not going to open up a dictionary at the age of 2 and learn every definition according to the official definition.

Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

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Even if some cases or even most cases are legitimate, to me it just seems too easy for a kid to come to strongly associate a set of traits with a word, any word including "boy" or "girl" and then come to feel like he/she needs to change their physical sex once they learn their body doesn't fit in with which word they prefer to think of themselves as. Too easy for it not to make up at least a small fraction of the cases.

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Except that society does not put such options in kids' minds. Society does not let kids know that TS/TG exist. Without such knowledge, a kid is not going to just decide (permanently) that they are in the wrong body. Heck, even a lot of adults do not know that FtM's exist, which further minimizes the chance that someone who is XX will just decide one day to transition. (If someone does not know an option exists, there is no way they can take that option.)

It could become permanent if as a young child they start talking about it and get encouragement from their parents and counselors.

Society does not need to teach kids about the concepts/words of "Transsexuality/transgender" for a child to come to think that they should change their sex. The child could just as easily reach such a conclusion just because they have come to understand the words "boy" and "Girl" to mean certain things including referring to a physical body type but also behavioral and personality traits which they then ascribe to themselves and then internalize themselves as being "boy" or "girl" which could later lead to them reading about "transsexuality" and thinking "That's it, I must have been born in the wrong body and should transition" even when it's really just because through a long process starting before they can remember most things they came to think identify as for example a person who likes to play with dolls, a person who likes pink, ... and then learned that such persons were typically labeled "girl" and so decided they were a "girl" and then learned that "girl" meant "you have a vagina" and then instead of realizing "ok I'm actually a boy" they think "that means I should have a vagina too".

You're extrapolating without any actual proof. If what you say is true, and we only associate gender based on what we see in society, then I should be genderqueer right now, because as a kid I did "boy things" (played with boys in the dirt, hated wearing dresses, thought Barbie was boring, ripped off spider legs) and "girl things" (cuddled baby dolls, pretended to be a princess, wanted to wear nail polish and high heels and makeup). The evidence is more in favor of the media influencing gender expression (through adherence to gender roles and conventional attractiveness) rather than gender itself.

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I cannot imagine a doctor allowing a child to transition. Hormone blockers to delay puberty, yes. Surgery? No.

And what happens when the kid changes his/her mind and doesn't want to transition after hormone blockers? Is there any way to restore them to how they would've been otherwise?

Short answer: yes. Long answer: Hormone blockers simply delay puberty. If the kid changes their mind, then they simply get taken off them and go through puberty later, say in their twenties instead of their teens. It's not like giving hormones which shunt you in one direction or another.

Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #49 on: November 11, 2012, 03:14:21 pm »
Guess you've never seen kids playing doctor...

Far from a universal experience. I never played doctor as a kid.

So your experience trumps that of other people's? And you seriously never took a bath with other people as a kid? Or saw people getting dressed ever? Or saw babies being changed?

Eric contends that linguistics is irrelevant to the formation of identity even for a tiny number of cases. Eric insists this couldn't possibly even happen to even one child. So, no I am not claiming my experience trumps that of other people's. I am saying that Eric's example would only be valid if it was universal since I'm not contending that everyone's self-perceived gender identity is ultimately because of linguistics, just that given that we are not born with a knowledge of what words mean it's likely to happen at times.

As for a baby taking a bath, baby isn't ready to put together the word "boy" or "girl" with their genitals at that stage.

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Please show evidence that this theory is in any way plausible and that kids are really so ignorant that they assign gender based on arbitrary characteristics. Because from what I'm given to understand (having two much-younger siblings and babysitting a shitload of kids), if you tell a boy "only girls like pink" and he likes pink, he is more likely to stop liking pink (at least publicly) than declare that he's a girl.

This isn't about explicitly telling children things. I'm thinking more of subtle and unintended effects.

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Oh, you're accusing Eric of over-generalizing? Are you seriously going to down that route, Mr. No-Child-Knows-What-Gender-Is?

Where did I say "no child"? Every child is different.

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Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

Offline Smurfette Principle

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #50 on: November 11, 2012, 04:19:13 pm »
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Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

So you just invalidated the gender identity of every single trans person ever. Great job, asshole.

Offline Sylvana

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #51 on: November 12, 2012, 06:26:54 am »
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Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

Congratulations!
You have just undermined your entire linguistic influence hypothesis. If the meaning of terms can change with time, they will clearly not have a long term effect on the person involved. They will learn about the difference and understand the real meanings of words. Hence, though a very young child may be confused initially this will not continue into early adolescence. However the transgender feelings remain regardless of definitions of words. Further more, transgender feelings are discordant and prominent before most trans people even learn that things like transgender even exist.

Your linguistic confusion premise as a cause of trans-sexuality is undone by your own admission that linguistic confusion is removed with time when the correct understanding is achieved. Hence the net result is such confusion is negligible, especially with regards to the effect on the persons identity.

Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #52 on: November 12, 2012, 10:46:10 pm »
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Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

So you just invalidated the gender identity of every single trans person ever. Great job, asshole.

How so? If we're talking about transsexuals then they want to have a certain set of genitalia so it's too far off the mark.

Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #53 on: November 12, 2012, 10:49:56 pm »
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Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

Congratulations!
You have just undermined your entire linguistic influence hypothesis. If the meaning of terms can change with time, they will clearly not have a long term effect on the person involved. They will learn about the difference and understand the real meanings of words. Hence, though a very young child may be confused initially this will not continue into early adolescence. However the transgender feelings remain regardless of definitions of words. Further more, transgender feelings are discordant and prominent before most trans people even learn that things like transgender even exist.

Your linguistic confusion premise as a cause of trans-sexuality is undone by your own admission that linguistic confusion is removed with time when the correct understanding is achieved. Hence the net result is such confusion is negligible, especially with regards to the effect on the persons identity.

Just because correct understanding is achieved on a dry, logical, formal level does not mean correct understanding is necessarily achieved on an emotional level.

What I have been suggesting is that after this "clarification" the child may still carry the emotional associations they made with the word and the various things in their environment they associate with it, and so even though they now know boy=certain body type and girl=certain body type the emotional connections they made with that word under conditions where they held it to have other connotations is still there and still strong enough that they feel they must be "boy" or "girl" and now that they know a requirement is a certain type of body they will want that. They need not remember that they grew to understand themselves as "boy" or "girl" under a different understanding of what those words meant in order for this to work. In fact if they did realize that it could cause it to not work.

Offline Canadian Mojo

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #54 on: November 13, 2012, 12:08:04 am »
And you base this hypothesis on what?

A post-secondary degree?

Researching the subject out of personal interest?

Relevant work experience?

Being a parent?

Your ass?

Offline Smurfette Principle

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #55 on: November 13, 2012, 12:23:13 am »
Quote
Direct question: a child with a penis tells his parents that he knows he's a boy because he likes cars. Is his conclusion valid?

The conclusion is true, however it does not follow from the premise. At some point the boy will learn that the real reason he is a boy is because he has a penis.

So you just invalidated the gender identity of every single trans person ever. Great job, asshole.

How so? If we're talking about transsexuals then they want to have a certain set of genitalia so it's too far off the mark.

Except that's not how being trans works, which you would know if you read the earlier posts. Having certain parts does not make you be a certain gender, or else men who lose their penises in freak accidents would suddenly be ladies.

Offline erictheblue

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #56 on: November 13, 2012, 08:11:04 am »
If we're talking about transsexuals then they want to have a certain set of genitalia so it's too far off the mark.

Then how do you explain transmen who do not wish to have genital surgery? They take hormones, have a double mastectomy, and live entirely as men, but never change what is between their legs.
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Offline ironbite

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #57 on: November 13, 2012, 08:44:52 am »
So I'm building brick walls for everybody because it sure seems like a lot more fun the arguing with Reasonator here.

Offline starseeker

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #58 on: November 14, 2012, 08:14:33 am »
So I'm building brick walls for everybody because it sure seems like a lot more fun the arguing with Reasonator here.

And a lot more useful.

Offline TheReasonator

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Re: So what IS transgender, anyway?
« Reply #59 on: November 14, 2012, 04:43:11 pm »
If we're talking about transsexuals then they want to have a certain set of genitalia so it's too far off the mark.

Then how do you explain transmen who do not wish to have genital surgery? They take hormones, have a double mastectomy, and live entirely as men, but never change what is between their legs.

I was generalizing. I thought that was apparent. In the vast majority of cases the male child will have a penis. In some cases he will not.

Even when it comes to transmen who do not want genital surgery they still want a body that is reshapen to be masculinized assuming that in the context "transmen" means "transsexual man".