To be fair: There ain't unified views on this on any side, I consider myself a pretty "leftist", never voted conservative in my life, yet I take great issue to the way the political left has picked up identity politics like it did.
At times it feels like they are demanding an unlimited right to "self define", spawning cultural oddities like "headmates" in the social media sphere, which basically normalize mental illness as something that shouldn't be treated but merely seen as being "different".
People identify as a pansexual muffin collectives and society is supposed to accept that "identity" with all seriousness, complete with "feeling" insulted when people don't use the "proper" made up pronouns to address them.
Yes, that's an example from the rather extreme end of this issue, but they do exist and to me they exemplify where this kind of "everything is made up, I am whatever I wish I am" thinking will ultimately lead.
It's not me doing that equation, that equation happened when you pick up the banner of "identity politics" and all kinds of weird folks rally under it to celebrate how weird they are. [0]
> There's a growing pile of evidence (such as the OP) that mental perception of gender is at least partly biologically based and independent of outward presentation
The OP, while being mostly anecdotal, is pretty much evidence that this whole "gender is 100% a social construct!" idea can't be the full story. These biological boys were misgendered by society, as a result society educated and treated them like girls, yet the boy from the story turned out to be.. a boy and feeling just like that.
If anything it's evidence for the exact opposite of "gender is a social construct".
> So it doesn't seem like transgender people are saying "everything is made up" — they're probably accurately describing a real phenomenon.
Actual transgender people, with mismatching biological gender and brain chemistry, most likely are nowhere near as prevalent as some circles pretend. While it is an issue that society should come to a resolution about how to deal with, I fail to see why it became one of the cornerstones of a whole political movement.
It seems like in doing so, the left has gotten a lot of bycatch in the form of mentally ill people suddenly having a justification for why they are not "mentally ill" but rather it's society's fault for not accepting them for their mental illness.
This might sound harsh, but I'm saying this as somebody with mental health issues himself who knows very well how difficult it can be to "fit in" and the doubts about if one should actually aspire to "fit in" or instead simply declare one owns "oddness" as a character trait and run with it.
It's not easy and imho everybody has to deal with this to a certain degree, regardless of how "normal" or "odd" they are, it's simply part of the experience of living as an individual in any society.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMEtfqAdmM&list=PLjBnqlVZLi...
I agree there probably aren't that many transgender people, but the best estimates I've seen suggest that there are probably a little over a million in the US. It is a tiny fraction of the US population — less than half a percent — but on the other hand, cities with that many people are considered a pretty big deal. It seems like an issue worth considering — not the cornerstone of a political movement, sure, but I don't think it is the cornerstone of one, unless you're considering "trans rights" as a political movement of its own (in which case, that's kind of tautological).
Where did I criticize "transgender people"? I merely pointed out how identity politics, which is not just about transgender people but covers a whole field of people, has been pretty much been the sole focus of "leftist social politics". Probably because there ain't actually that much left it could pick up to rally behind, which in itself is already a success.
Nothing of what I said was intended as a direct reply to people making claims here, but rather as a discussion of the general phenomena which does include the claim of "gender is a social construct" but also includes plenty of people who normalize mental illness in the course of said discussion.
Look, my goal is not to make people who don't fit the mold "undesirable", this isn't an especially easy topic to discuss because there are no clear-cut answers and it can be very touchy for some people.
Somewhere in there, there is a very valid issue hidden of how do we deal with mental health issues. Do we consider them part of the course and accept people living with them affecting everybody around them? Do we consider them "broken" and "not compatible with society" and try to change their personality?
These issues seep into the general issues of psychology and sociology not being very hard sciences, so science can't give us any clear answers about what to do. In that regard, I find it disingenuous how the left, with the help of gender studies, tries to construct a consensus that ain't there and most likely won't be there for the foreseeable future.
I think it's a bit more extreme than that. It's not just they want to be able to self-define, but they also want to command others to accept those definitions. There are really two kinds of personal identity: the identity you apply to yourself and the identity that another person applies to you. They aren't the same, and are unlikely to align if the self-applied identity is unconventional.
In a way, their behavior could be interpreted as "revolting against categorizing humans by inventing ridiculous new categories", which might be a nobel and idealistic cause (as categories are often the source of prejudice) but it's also unrealistic because it denies certain biological realities of which none are subjective in any way.
Yeah, that's true, but for more conventional identities the possible misalignments are not as extreme and basic.
> Thus, this "girl" wasn't a girl at all. Biologically and scientifically speaking, he was a boy with an undeveloped penis.
Actually, scientifically speaking, a different developmental path than the one to which you are accustomed happened. There are real differences that conflict with a desire held by some that people fit in neat categories that do not exist as the clean, platonic ideal they want it to be.
I think "we" should accept the reality that gender is not binary rather than using the political process to harass people who are living proof of that fact.
His delayed sexual development doesn't change the scientific reality that he had, and still has, male hormones and male chromosomes. Biologically, he is a male.
So is this woman:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MedicalMysteries/story?id=54657...
That isn't normal & healthy development, any more than blindness is normal & healthy. Rather, AIS is a medical condition, a syndrome that causes suffering.
People exist who do not fit into either-or gender boxes. It is just reality.
The thing is, many of these young people had a strong sensation of being a "boy" despite societal pressure otherwise.
This notion of an internal representation of gender identity is backed by science, and this isn't even the only example.
So there is no argument here that these people are anything but boys with a different developmental path. But is suspect most could have told you that, despite what a non-invasive examination of their body would tell a biological essential-ists.
> Where we differ with leftists is how to view the transgender phenomenon.
Yeah, conservatives want to make it illegal or at least economically infeasible to be transgender. The irony here being that this type of developmental path would rock many conservatives in America to their very core if it happened in their family.
My claim, backed by science, is that this child was a biological male: he had male hormones and male chromosomes. His delayed development didn't change that scientific reality.
This is actually a nice way to reinforce my prior statement, so thanks. You're claiming someone was "biologically male" but hey that person didn't even express a penis until age 7-12. They're not even really intersex people, it's just the traditional definition of "biologically male" is comically incapable of dealing with this.
What's more, before that change most (there is other documentation of this) of the people you would have lectured about being biologically female felt a very strong affinity to the male identity. By happy coincidence, their hormonal cycle gifted them with anatomy they felt more comfortable with.
> he had male hormones and male chromosomes
Well, he specifically lacked some hormones, but...
Look, trans advocates for the most part don't disagree that a trans man and a person born to the traditional definition of men are exactly the same. They're obviously not precisely the same. What trans people want is an opportunity to be trans people without violence, discrimination, and fearmongering.
Trans activists tend to object to the biological essentialism argument not because it is founded on an observation of scientific facts about DNA (which, btw, a lot of people get wrong). They object to it because it's often used to justify acts of violence or discrimination by appealing to defending a biological norm that needs no guardians.
For example, something is a "disorder" has historical been used as a bit more value neutral word for variance, but the more it is used the more it has become synonymous with disease. Similar for "medical condition". For example, we don't call left handed people to have some form of mental disorder, as that would imply today that there is some form of problem rather than simple variance. It also don't match at all those people who are ambidexterity.
If we found a genetic marker for handedness, it would likely also not be called a genetic disorder. If the variance cause additional problem, then the additional problems would be the disorder and the handedness a simple side effect.
One could argue that gender is more important than handedness, but then we enter values and believes into the mix and that would definitely be political in nature.
A whole other issue is segregated bathrooms; I have yet to see people get past the label-flinging stage to ask the fundamental question: why are bathrooms segregated (hetero/cis M/F) in the first place?
I think a much better question would be "Why aren't they all private?" If you create individual bathrooms with lockable doors, you just label it "rest room" and you don't need to assign a gender or make a private matter a public issue.
Why should trans individuals have to deal with the question of which bathroom they "belong" in? What's next? Questioning which bathroom gay people belong in?
Making private individual bathrooms the norm would also eliminate many other issues. The line to the women's room tends to be longer than to the men's because using a urinal takes less time and the use of urinals is more space efficient, so a men's bathroom sometimes has more toilets plus urinals than a women's bathroom has toilets. This has caused some people to decry this as yet another form of sexism that they would like redressed.
Meanwhile, the men's room can have a long wait if you need to have a bowel movement. Lots of urinals is great if everyone just needs to pee, but problematic if that is not the case. Small public men's rooms often have only one toilet, the rest urinals. What if two men are traveling together and both need the actual toilet?
Historically, men's bathrooms tended to not have changing tables, reinforcing the expectation that only women change diapers. Individual bathrooms also eliminates that issue.
The list of problems it would solve is no doubt much longer, but you get the idea.
I think that just skips the original question by assuming the answer. Why is there no convention for privacy from other members of the same gender? You have to consider the economy of providing totally private bathroom facilities too.
> Why should trans individuals have to deal with the question of which bathroom they "belong" in?
Because everyone does.
> This has caused some people to decry
If those people have good arguments, let's hear them.
> The list of problems it would solve
But are we forcing establishments to provide these facilities? It's easy for Google to spend another million on individual cubicles to impress its employees; not all small businesses will find it so easy or rewarding..
> This has caused some people to decry
If those people have good arguments, let's hear them.
So, you are open to hearing these arguments, but out of hand dismissing my solutions.
> Why should trans individuals have to deal with the question of which bathroom they "belong" in?
Because everyone does.
But it isn't some big burden for most people the way it is for trans people. Trans people are a little bit like platypuses: they defy our established categories and don't readily fit our little boxes. That fact will never really change. But it doesn't have to be some big problem wrt bathroom use if we just have more private restrooms in public spaces.
I was homeless for nearly six years. I got off the street earlier this month. Private bathrooms allowed me to do things like brush my teeth without being thrown out. There is very much a classist double standard in what is socially acceptable use of a public bathroom.
Traveler brushing their teeth in a public bathroom? Totes fine. Homeless person doing the same thing? Excellent excuse to ban them from the premises.
Muslim washing their shoes and feet before praying in the hallway on a college campus? Totes fine. Homeless person washing their shoes or feet in the same bathroom? Misuse of the facilities and we need to ask you to leave.
There are lots of ways in which public bathrooms are burdensome for anyone who does not readily fit in with whatever the social norms happen to be. Some of the groups for whom it is burdensome lack the means to make their problem part of the public debate. Other than me occasionally commenting on it in public forums, I am not aware of anyone advocating for the rights of homeless people where it comes to public bathroom use.
There are old TV shows where, for example, cross dressers have to decide which bathroom to use. If someone is successfully passing for female socially and not trying to sleep with me, I gives a damn what bits are between their legs and I don't see why we need a public debate about their bits and bathrooms. There is an available robust solution that could make it a non issue.
Why is there no convention for privacy from other members of the same gender?
Most people are not actually comfortable pooping or dealing with their period, etc, in a public toilet with other people around. There are some people who cannot make themselves poop in public.
In private homes where we share bathroom facilities with our closest people, such as blood relatives or a spouse, the convention is that bathrooms are private and the door gets closed. Most folks don't want to use the toilet with witnesses, even when those witnesses are their most intimate friends and family.
So, I really fail to see why anyone would give push back on this idea. Most people do not actually like using public bathrooms to begin with and public facilities create undue friction for the most marginalized people, like homeless people and trans people. If private bathrooms were the default, we wouldn't even be having a public, nationwide debate about which bathroom trans people should be using. That wouldn't solve all their problems by any stretch of the imagination, but it would remove one burden from their life that is excessive and that unnecessarily sets them apart from other people.
If you think it is not excessive, try spending the day just not using the toilet at all. Most people use the toilet multiple times per day and cannot hold it for eight or ten hours straight. Unless they work from home and basically live as shut ins who get all groceries delivered, etc, this will be a nightmarishly large problem on an ongoing basis.
> So, you are open to hearing these arguments, but out of hand dismissing my solutions.
What do you mean? What "out of hand dismissing"?
> But it isn't some big burden for most people the way it is for trans people. Trans people are a little bit like platypuses: they defy our established categories and don't readily fit our little boxes
Are many (pre or none op) trans-women refused entry to male toilets? The controversies I hear are of the opposite nature.
> If someone is successfully passing for female socially and not trying to sleep with me, I gives a damn what bits are between their legs
Again - why are bathrooms segregated in the first place?
If it's to protected women from predatory men, is the suggestion that trans-women are not predatory?
> Most people are not actually comfortable..
This doesn't answer the question though. Why are toilets not totally segregated within the same sex already?
I have seen parks where toilets were in individual little rooms and sinks were outside and public. I have also seen arrangements where each little room had both a sink and toilet. They both work okay, though it is nice to have the sink be private as well. I don't see any reason why we can't work on coming up with new standard patterns to try to address issues like cost and space efficiency while improving privacy.
As for the existing toilet situation and why it is the way it is, my suspicion is that it was something that worked reasonably well historically when more than half of all people were rural residents. Sometime in the lifetime of my children, we crossed the point where more than half of all people live in cities.
Things that work reasonably well in a relatively homogenous small community or rural area don't work so well for highly diverse big cities. Times have changed. The ongoing national debate about bathrooms makes it clear that our current setup is now problematic.
I fail to grasp why you are so hung up on this detail. Historic precedent is very often a matter of "it was what they could afford in a poorer society than modern America" or "it was the first thing someone thought up without really studying the problem space in earnest." The fact that this is the status quo in no way whatsoever suggests that it is some kind of best practice that we should dread altering.
When I was growing up, I lived on the edge of town. In one direction, there was more housing, plus shops and businesses. In the other, there were wooded areas. It was really common for men to relieve their bladder on a tree somewhere while out and about. I also learned to relieve myself in the woods, though it is less convenient for a girl.
In a situation like that where it is logistically feasible and socially acceptable to just pee on a tree, there is less need for public toilets. But that does not translate well to the big city. You don't have sufficient privacy nor sufficient greenery. Peeing on a tree occasionally in a wooded area is not a threat to public health. The tree will consider it to be fertilizer and it will not cause the spread of disease amongst people.
But in the big city, if lots of people pee and poop on sidewalks or in alleyways, this is a public health hazard. There is currently a hepatitis A epidemic in Southern California that is killing people. It is related in part to large numbers of homeless people relieving themselves exactly that way.
Public toilets are just less of an issue in rural settings. People routinely just pee on a tree. In some parts of the world, population densities reach small city levels, but they are too poor to build the kind of infrastructure for modern bathrooms. People continue to relieve themselves in a nearby field. One result: Women get raped and sometimes murdered while trying to pee and poop.
Bathroom facilities are a real need in highly populated areas in a way that they just are not with fewer people. We now have 7 billion people on the planet. This is unprecedented. It should be no surprise at all that it leads to unprecedented problems in areas that no one would have ever expected.
https://www.livescience.com/54692-why-bathrooms-are-gender-s...
http://theconversation.com/how-did-public-bathrooms-get-to-b...
It's not that we political conservatives believe transgender people are faking it. Transgenderism is real. We conservatives acknowledge some folks are born with a sincere belief or feeling they are the wrong gender.
I personally sympathize with such people; it must be torturous and painful to be a particular biological sex, with hormones and chromosomes of one biological sex, but feel and believe you are a different biological sex.
Where we differ with leftists is how to view the transgender phenomenon. This article, for example, states that this "girl" became a boy due to a "rare genetic disorder occurs because of a missing enzyme which prevents the production of a specific form of the male sex hormone - dihydro-testosterone - in the womb." It was a genetic disorder; a birth defect.
Thus, this "girl" wasn't a girl at all. Biologically and scientifically speaking, he was a boy with an undeveloped penis.
So it is with transgender folks in the West. We see transgenderism as an outgrowth of the medical condition known as gender dysphoria. Folks suffering with gender dysphoria should seek help, whether that be a medical sex change operation or counseling.