Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[beesonthewhatnow]

I note that you in no way consider me to be a woman.

And still you wonder why people don’t want to engage with you.

 

[spanglechick]

Sure, find me a single instance of a male who produced an egg which was fertilised which he then gestated.

It's not bigotry, prejudiced or hateful to recognise facts.

If that's your definition of a woman, what the fuck am I, as a cis woman with no kids?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

​

And here's what the author of that study says about how the findings have been misreported: Fact check: study shows transition makes trans people suicidal – The TransAdvocate

That study is a bit frustrating. In the interview, she says:

The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.

But this bit's not in the study. I've no idea why not. It's crucial, as it turns the conclusion the study's been used to support on its head. I guess the authors were focussed on the need to provide data to help better care and little else, but it's still an unfortunate omission of a very interesting finding. It's tucked away here, but not fully explained.

Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

This thread is 100% bullshit. If no trans person is able to contribute meaningfully it's just cis people spouting hot air.

I'm trans (I've been 'out' for three decades) and I am able to have meaningful conversations here with a number of people who disagree with me, and this is okay. Why spoil the fun for all of us? Why not engage, I mean who knows you may find you and I can agree on some things.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

That study is a bit frustrating. In the interview, she says:



But this bit's not in the study. I've no idea why not. It's crucial, as it turns the conclusion the study's been used to support on its head. I guess the authors were focussed on the need to provide data to help better care and little else, but it's still an unfortunate omission of a very interesting finding. It's tucked away here, but not fully explained.

Something that is overlooked by EVERYONE who comments on this study is that the study was commissioned to justify the continuation of a program of pre- and post-operative care for transsexuals in Sweden. The second cohort reflected better pre- and post-surgery psychological and somatic care, and lent weight to this treatment protocol. It is a tragedy this type of care for transsexuals is not taken seriously in the UK, or the USA, as we only stand to benefit from this.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

If that's your definition of a woman, what the fuck am I, as a cis woman with no kids?

A 'cis woman' with no kids who is attempting to derail. HTH.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

After that I think I'm going to leave for a while. If anyone needs to contact me they won't be able to do it via this thread.

Is this thread going to become one of those legendary 'flounce' threads?

 

[elbows]

We had a couple of interactions on here and you became abusive instead of making a coherent argument. If you've been in this debate for so long, if you can actually argue the point, please go ahead, I'm all ears, I'd love to be shown to be wrong...

There are many points, and I've read all of yours in this thread, picked on a few, watched other people getting their teeth into the others. In many cases I've nothing to add or hope for far more voices to listen to that arent mine or yours.

Also if we are doing recent forum thread history lessons, I will point out that one of the reasons I've been especially abrupt with you today is that you misgendered Roz. And I posted the following tweet by Roz in this thread many pages ago, sometime in November I think. I find the phenomenon very depressing and your justifications for your actions dont help me think any differently about that. Thats the real problem I have with your stance, it works for you but it cant even offer the modern basic standard of politeness towards trans people, let alone better lives for people. So its shit in my book.



If I were more concerned with trans rights than womens rights, then I'm not convinced I'd even be interested in this thread in recent months. But I am exceptionally interested in both. All sorts of food for thought and interesting points have been raised and although sometimes the complex realities can be overwhelmed with extreme positions and even acts of violence, I do feel I understand better some of the risks people are concerned with. I'm pretty disgusted with the rate of progress in terms of womens rights, equality, safety, freedom from sexual violence, coercion and abuse, and the same for every other sort of human that ends up a victim. It's very difficult when one groups rights are seen to clash with anothers, its important to look at the details of this stuff but also to consider the myraid ways humans are drawn towards seeing things in terms of differences rather than similarities, conflict and competition, dogma and baggage.

 

[smokedout]

Something that is overlooked by EVERYONE who comments on this study ...

See you knew that study didn't support the claim you were trying to make but you posted it anyway. Did you hope no-one would notice? It's this kind of dishonesty - dishonesty intended to portray transwomen as violent men - that undermines any claims to want to support trans rights, to be opposed to abuse of transpeople or the ever innocent 'just asking questions and raising concerns'. It's nasty shit, and I hope people can see that.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Everything is about cis people I know that

Although the interaction that caused you to want to leave is with another trans person.

E2a: I see that’s already been pointed out.

 

[Treacle Toes]

A 'cis woman' with no kids who is attempting to derail. HTH.

You what? You've defined womanhood as the ability to produce eggs that can be fertilised and gestated. Perhaps you can have a little think about why that is a really limiting definition and how fucking offensive your accusation of derailing is considering the fact that some women can't have children.

 

[smokedout]

You are aware that, for example, the murder rate of trans people is no different to that of the general population?

life is good, make it better: the appropriation of black and hispanic trans deaths by white trans women and political opportunists

(Written by a transgender activist I disagree with on many points!)

I'd caution any attempts to analyse the murder rates of transpeople in the UK because no-one knows how many trans people there are. The GIRES estimate of 3-500,000 includes anyone who is gender variant to some degree. Using this figure then trans murder rates look lower than amongst the general population. Using the number of people who have ever accessed treatment for gender dysphoria, currently about 12,000 I believe, and the trans murder rate looks staggeringly high. The truth is no-one knows.

The hate crime statistics speak for themselves however. These people were victims of crime because they were trans, and there were 1,248 hate crimes recorded against trans people last year. A recent Stonewall survey found 41% of transpeople experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months, double the percentage for LGBT people overall. Until better data comes along on how many trans people exist then perhaps this is where people should be looking.

 

[spanglechick]

A 'cis woman' with no kids who is attempting to derail. HTH.

How is responding to the point you raised, a derail? Aren’t cis women entitled to contribute to the debate about what makes someone a woman?

 

[spanglechick]

And thanks, Rutita1 - there’s something pretty irritating about being dismissed when there are currently so few women posters (Trans, cis or otherwise) involved in the discussion.

My point was a direct challenge to the entire substantive point Miranda Yardley had made in the post I quoted. Quite how they get to frame that as a derail is mid-boggling.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

See you knew that study didn't support the claim you were trying to make but you posted it anyway. Did you hope no-one would notice? It's this kind of dishonesty - dishonesty intended to portray transwomen as violent men - that undermines any claims to want to support trans rights, to be opposed to abuse of transpeople or the ever innocent 'just asking questions and raising concerns'. It's nasty shit, and I hope people can see that.

transadvocate.com is a very good website, btw. Ta for that. There are a few excellent resources out there showing the results of serious hard graft by trans advocates. Committed trans activists of the kind that seem to be strangely ignored by some in favour of retweeting ranty teenagers.

 

[pengaleng]

A 'cis woman' with no kids who is attempting to derail. HTH.

that is fucking low.

 

[8ball]

How is responding to the point you raised, a derail? Aren’t cis women entitled to contribute to the debate about what makes someone a woman?

I think it was to do with relating the definition of ‘woman’ to male vs female sex at birth, and the socialisation that usually comes with it, as opposed to some kind of elevation of reproductive characteristics.

It was clumsy, though (the formulation, I mean) and the response to you wasn’t warranted at all.

 

[editor]

For the various reasons, I'm putting Miranda Yardley and Sea Star on mutual ignore.

This means that neither poster may respond to, or reference, the other.

 

[Pickman's model]

How is responding to the point you raised, a derail? Aren’t cis women entitled to contribute to the debate about what makes someone a woman?

miranda yardley's approval apparently

 

[MochaSoul]

After that tweet she tweeted this one

... and later still this one


In love and [TERF] war...

 

[SpookyFrank]

A 'cis woman' with no kids who is attempting to derail. HTH.

Just who the fuck do you think you are, rocking up here and spreading shit like this?

I'm sure your whole crowd make you feel very special. As the TERFs' token trans friend you're a vital resource to them. This seems to have given you a profoundly distorted idea of how much of your hateful bullshit the world at large is willing to put up with.

You're not a fucking celebrity here. You don't have a free pass.

 

[Treacle Toes]

What's baffling is just how conservative and archaic that kind of definition is...like decades of feminist struggle/activity hasn't happened

 

[bemused]

that is fucking low.

And astonishingly sexist.

 

[Treacle Toes]

And astonishingly sexist.

Yay, patriarchy!

 

[SpookyFrank]

What's baffling is just how conservative and archaic that kind of definition is...like decades of feminist struggle/activity hasn't happened

Doesn't surprise me that much in the context of everything else they've said tbh. TERFdom is inherently backwards-facing, conservative and authoritarian; so of course they fall back on some Victorian rubbish about women as baby production devices.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

That study is a bit frustrating. In the interview, she says:

The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.

But this bit's not in the study. I've no idea why not. It's crucial, as it turns the conclusion the study's been used to support on its head. I guess the authors were focussed on the need to provide data to help better care and little else, but it's still an unfortunate omission of a very interesting finding. It's tucked away here, but not fully explained.

What the study actually says is as follows:

"Second, regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6; 95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males (aHR 0.8; 95% CI 0.5–1.2). This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime. By contrast, female-to-males had higher crime rates than female controls (aHR 4.1; 95% CI 2.5–6.9) but did not differ from male controls. This indicates a shift to a male pattern regarding criminality and that sex reassignment is coupled to increased crime rate in female-to-males."​

"Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989."​

What she says in the interview contradicts the findings of the study, both in the statistics and reported and the interpretation of these statistics. Dhejne is the lead (of six) authors to the study and there has been no retraction of this paper or 'correction' issued through official channels. I don't think it does anyone any favours, particularly trans people, to muddy the water when what we need is good quality, evidence-based science, and it certainly doesn't help where Dhejne makes statements that directly contradict work she published half a decade earlier.

Some observations:

• the study looks at transsexuals who have undertaken 'sex reassignment' surgery. This is not the same as 'post transition', which generally tends to be more social in nature, and so does not apply to the majority of individuals who would describe themselves as being 'transgender', which is more about cross-gender identity than surgical/medical transition. We can only apply the study's conclusions to the population of trans individuals post-surgery, and any conclusions drawn or claimed by the study relate only to that population.
• the care regime which appears to have conferred significant benefit on the second cohort is not replicated in most other countries care protocols and certainly not within the WPATH guidelines. In my opinion, the pre- and post-surgical care presently given is inadequate and if we want better outcomes for transsexuals, we need to address this; funding this care yourself is very expensive.
• current care protocols focus on a path towards surgery, and do not speak to those who do not wish to have such surgery, or even transition. I think this is incredibly short-sighted, as it ignores a large group of people whose lives may contain significant distress, and recent moves to label any therapy that is not 'gender affirming' as 'conversion therapy' is anti-scientific and dangerous: what this does is it takes the huge number of personal identities that exist under the transgender umbrella and says there is only one valid treatment protocol (affirmation) suitable for a very diverse group of people. Again this doesn't do anyone any favours.

There is a dearth of good quality, evidence-based research and there is a lot of political manipulation of what work is actually being done. Again, this is not good for trans people. I hope it's clear that Dhejne's study is in need of follow-up.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

the TERFs' token trans friend... your hateful bullshit

Please show me anything I have ever said that is hateful.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

...some Victorian rubbish about women as baby production devices.

Who said that?

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Please show me anything I have ever said that is hateful.

Who said that?

You should get a job in the White House with Trump, you’d fit right in.

 

[Red Cat]

I thought MY was using the definition of a woman as a female, a human with a female reproductive system. Makes no difference if you have children or not.