https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: your account history consists largely of uncivil and/or unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart? We're looking for thoughtful conversation, not snark, putdowns, or intellectual face-smacks.
Maybe we could try to imagine what it's like to be a different human first before moving on to bees.
> are to be
Have asked to be, usually repeatedly and in the face of a great deal of opposition.
Do you really think they are the ones trying to change the world by force, rather than the other way round? Traditionally quite a lot of force, including murder, has been levelled against trans people.
And what does any of this have to do with bees?
the question hinges on whether they need a frame of reference for those feelings. You seem to be implying that it's obvious that they do. Why?
Perhaps it is like the feeling that you're hungry, that it's some sort of innate reporting that doesn't require an external frame of reference. Or like the feeling that you're attracted to either males or females, or both. That seems to be just there, coming from inside.
Personally, I don't know the answer. I don't know if there's any relevant research, but on the face of it at least, it's not obvious that it should be one way or the other.
And seems that no one really cares about the theoretical issues we, transphobic people, have in accepting such views. We're just that. And problem is if our daughters or sons will come one day saying they're transgender, they will have no arguments, but just hurt feelings and the requirement to accept them as they are, or believe to be. We, as parents, may do so out of love. But others will not. And we, as parents, will have to accept the high risk of suicide for a view that has no sane arguments behind.
I'm not sure why you say hurt feelings, rather than just "feelings".
On a separate note, historically, the medical profession has been terrible at ignoring or dismissing real issues that people have faced because we didn't have an understanding of them at the time. There's a very strong positivist bent that, if we don't formally understand an issue then it doesn't exist. Which completely ignores the fact that our knowledge of the body and brain and all their complexities (and all the ways they can vary and go wrong and so forth) was and is quite incomplete.
The attitude that, if we don't have an objective theoretical account of some mental/physical then the right thing to do is basically discount its reality has led to so much needless suffering.
This of course is not itself any evidence that someone's claims about themselves is true, but it is something that should always be seriously taken into consideration.
This is a risk of depression as well, and refusing to accept that someone is depressed does not make them any less likely to commit suicide.
The depression is not what's being contested. The claim that they belong to the opposite sex just because they say so is what's being contested.
> Why not? Just about every other medical treatment require far greater standards of evidence than just a subjective feeling. For example there seems to be wide consensus in medicine that those with body dysmorphic disorder are to be denied amputation of healthy limbs.
I'm not talking about the medical treatment.
My question was why do you believe those people need an external frame of reference to know whether those feelings are correct or not?
You implied they do, but haven't explained why.
>> Perhaps it is like the feeling that you're hungry
> To which the equivalent conditions would be the various eating disorders,
that statement assumes your position on the issue in question. Is it like an eating disorder or not?
> And unless there is a disorder like this, it's easy enough to gain a frame of reference, we all know what it's like to be hungry vs. not hungry.
I can't parse the meaning of this sentence.
I don't know. I'm sure many genuinely feel this way and I'm sure there are those who pretend in order to fit in, but then again you can say that about anything.
What's in my opinion much more interesting is how to deal with it in the public forum. I think it's fair to require something more than just a subjective feeling in order to treat these people as being of the opposite sex, up to and including performing surgeries on them to make them look the part.
> You implied they do, but haven't explained why.
I can't possibly tell what people are thinking, I can only discuss what people say and do.
> that statement assumes your position on the issue in question. Is it like an eating disorder or not?
I think they are distinct conditions with distinct causes and treatments, but I think in both cases I think treatment should value physical facts over subjective feelings, which is an uncontroversial position for eating disorders, but a controversial one for gender dysphoria.
> I can't parse the meaning of this sentence.
I mean that even without an external frame of reference you do have a perfectly good internal one. Most people alternate between being hungry and not being hungry several times a day and know perfectly well what either feels like.
Most people. There are of course some people who don't, in either direction, for various reasons e.g. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prader-willi-syndrome/
Common side effect of hypo- or hyper-thyroidism, too.
What you describe has a medical term, it's called gender dysphoria and is widely studied within the medical community.
My interest isn't with the politics, it's with the science, which does seem like it's well within the scope of Hacker News.
Maybe you should write a blog post about that and post that to HN and see how it does instead of hijacking completely unrelated threads with deliberately incendiary comments. You did that and it's lame as is trying to hide behind 'science' or the scope oh HN.
That only follows if that outcome is inevitable and that highly invasive treatment is the only solution. For example I have a hard time seeing it as particularly necessary for patients with autogynephilia, which seems to be the largest group among men.
> at least enough to prevent this outcome.
Hardly enough, see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
Maybe there is some comorbidity, which if treated, the gender dysphoria could be resolved as well without invasive treatment.