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Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

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So how would you explain the twin studies?
I've only ever known one set of identical twins but they lived their lives in a remarkable closeness that involved doing the same thing at the same uni, dressing very similarly etc. I think hanging 'transness is genetic' onto this finding about 40% of identical twins who are trans having their twin also come out as trans is ridiculous.
As is the claim of the man interviewed in your link saying this number is not higher because hey the other twin might just not have come out yet.
 
Twin studies are notoriously tricky to draw conclusions from. Confounding factors are plentiful. This is year 1 social science stuff.

If it is genetic, how come 60% of those individuals with gender dysphoria had a genetically-identical twin that did not have it too? At the very least, that implies incredibly strong environmental factors.
 

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That doesn't look much like an emerging scientific consensus to me. Just a paper.

Innit! Not only that :

OBJECTIVE:
To review current literature that supports a biologic basis of gender identity.

METHODS:
A traditional literature review.

RESULTS:
Evidence that there is a biologic basis for gender identity primarily involves (1) data on gender identity in patients with disorders of sex development (DSDs, also known as differences of sex development) along with (2) neuroanatomical differences associated with gender identity.

CONCLUSIONS:
Although the mechanisms remain to be determined, there is strong support in the literature for a biologic basis of gender identity..

So they reviewed the papers only which supported a biological basis for gender identity, and came to the conclusion from those papers there is a biological basis.

Ben Goldacre has written a lot about it in his All Trials campaign. It is problematic to only look at positive results which which support your theory, and can lead to false positives.
 
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Twin studies are notoriously tricky to draw conclusions from. Confounding factors are plentiful. This is year 1 social science stuff.

None of which is to say there *aren't* any biological or genetic bases to gender issues, but so far this doesn't look like a scientific consensus to me (having admittedly only looked at bits of it, and not in detail).
 
Twin studies are notoriously tricky to draw conclusions from. Confounding factors are plentiful. This is year 1 social science stuff.

But it's not the only evidence is it? The truth is no-ones knows whether there is a biological basis for transgenderism, including you, but there is growing evidence to support it. Hanging millions of transgender people out to dry and the basis of a scientific hunch that it's all to do with patriarchy strikes me as a pretty closed minded.
 
There’s actually growing evidence that supports humans having extraordinary brain plasticity that adapts to its environment and is against the idea of pre-written templates. I don’t know about this opposite thing to that growing consensus as suggested by you. Certainly, your linked paper is wholly unconvincing.
 
None of which is to say there *aren't* any biological or genetic bases to gender issues, but so far this doesn't look like a scientific consensus to me (having admittedly only looked at bits of it, and not in detail).

I'd suggest the evidence means it shouldn't be ruled out, so blanket statements about the impossibility of transgenderism having some kind of biological basis are unscientific. And given the unknowns perhaps taking seriously how transgender people often desribe experiencing their bodies might prove fruitful.
 
I'd suggest the evidence means it shouldn't be ruled out, so blanket statements about the impossibility of transgenderism having some kind of biological basis are unscientific. And given the unknowns perhaps taking seriously how transgender people often experiencing their bodies might prove fruitful.
"growing scientific consensus" not exactly what you meant to say then.
 
If 60% of dysphoric individuals with a genetically identical clone growing up in very, very similar environments have non-dysphoric clones, that strongly implies genes play at most a small part to gender dysphoria.
 
"growing scientific consensus" not exactly what you meant to say then.

Endocrinologists seems to be heading in that direction

The medical consensus in the late 20th century was that transgender and gender incongruent individuals suffered a mental health disorder termed “gender identity disorder.” Gender identity was considered malleable and subject to external influences. Today, however, this attitude is no longer considered valid. Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity.1,2 Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity.

Although the specific mechanisms guiding the biological underpinnings of gender identity are not entirely understood, there is evolving consensus that being transgender is not a mental health disorder. Such evidence stems from scientific studies suggesting that: 1) attempts to change gender identity in intersex patients to match external genitalia or chromosomes are typically unsuccessful3,4; 2) identical twins (who share the exact same genetic background) are more likely to both experience transgender identity as compared to fraternal (non-identical) twins5; 3) among individuals with female chromosomes (XX), rates of male gender identity are higher for those exposed to higher levels of androgens in utero relative to those without such exposure, and male (XY)-chromosome individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome typically have female gender identity6; and 4) there are associations of certain brain scan or staining patterns with gender identity rather than external genitalia or chromosomes7,8.
 
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Innit! Not only that :



So they reviewed the papers only which supported a biological basis for gender identity, and came to the conclusion from those papers there is a biological basis.

Ben Goldacre has written a lot about it in his All Trials campaign. It is problematic to only look at positive results which which support your theory, and can lead to false positives.
god forbid a literature review on a subject looks at literature on that subject and assesses it.

however, a literature review isn't at the top of the medical evidence pyramid, which is occupied by systematic reviews.
 
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I did look at the link, and at the disgusting comments left by contributors.
Yes, like both of mine. "No woman should have to identify with her shackles. Gender is the oppressor not a mere "identity"" and "People asking women to give up their hard won seats at the political table should ponder on why do those seats need to be taken from women when men are the one's who are over represented on that table."


Since my first posts on this thread I’ve been arguing that they are a marginal and politically defeated fringe group. Since my first posts on this thread I’ve been arguing that they are a marginal and politically defeated fringe group. They only have any real significance in so far as they provide seemingly progressive arguments and a stream of shock stories for the use of the actually rich and powerful transphobic lobby, the forces of social conservatism, and help to disorient left wing responses to transphobia.
I've no doubt you believe this. I have a suspicion it's all you're willing to believe. Because being led into deserted site by an adult man who makes you touch his fucking penis knowing a priori your word won't be believed if you complain on the grounds that **you're a child** and, if that fails, you can always be deemed a precocious little whore which is somehow all to do with choosing one's woman's "gender identity" and **nothing** to do with you happening to be having a vagina. I'm too fond of my blurb but I may just change it temporarily to
unwilling to be emotionally manipulated (again) into letting go of my needs out of compassion towards others who constantly make a race out of suffering in an effort to keep the forces of right wing conservatism at bay.
If they didn’t play that role nobody would care about their views at all and the only people who would even have heard of them would be people like me who happen to have an interest in bizarre political sects and subcultures.TERFs are so marginal in fact that I’ve never once heard anyone make a left wing or feminist transphobic argument in real life. It’s almost entirely an online phenomenon, particularly outside of Britain.
I can but to give you my own example which is pretty much splashed out on this thread. I was asleep and now I've woken up. Tell you more. I'm making it one of my missions to wake other women up to what may lie in waiting for their daughters, grandaughters, nieces and friends. Tell you what more. Even in deep leafy right wing Surrey, women don't forget where they have come from and how they got here. They certainly don't think men like you and your brogressivehood suddenly decided to, by the kindness of your hearts, relinquish power to women. Tell you even more. This is not the only forum I stop at. I also talk to feminists in Portugal and Brazil for example. It may seem strange to you but in my brief voyage of discovery the most informative links I found were not in English even though some linked to some English language thought. Conversations are being had. Have not doubt about it.
 
Like a white person saying they've never seen racism. Gobsmacking.

I thought I could let this go but I really, really can't.
You want to get personal. Let's get fucking personal. Don't you dare come to me with race after insisting on labeling me as cisgender as you did when you knew fuck all about me on the Dolezal thread (yes, it took me a while to work out that was you but I got there... eventually).

Let me enlighten you on something. I DO NOT wake up thinking I'm a woman or having to reassure myself I am one, or having to deny I am one any more than I wake up thinking I am black and having to reassure myself I'm not as unacceptable as society deems me to be. Does that, as CBB India put it, "penetrate"?

I "live" woman. I've always "lived" woman. My mum gave me a woman name because I had a **vagina**. I might have been given a man name like João or Manuel, in which case, I'd also be given a first name of Maria because I had a **vagina**. My biological father felt free to lie to my mum about his being married and get her pregnant and then attempt to compel her into an abortion because my mum had no legal recourse to the law because she had a **vagina**. My dad gave me his name because not doing so would condemn my mum to the fringes of society because she had a **vagina**. Even so, when we lived in right below the roof of a house, an abode for which rent my mum was overcharged because she had a **vagina**, where we didn't have a bath or a shower but only an oversized plastic bowl that my mum also used to do the laundry, my dad (when he turned up, seeing as possessing a **penis** meant he went about his life largely unchallenged for his paternal lack of responsibility) made sure my brother was always the first to be bathed (even though I complained the water was cold when my turn came) because he had a **penis**. And, one year, when I wanted to be dressed as a cowboy, for carnival, like my brother, rather than as a Minnie Mouse as my sister liked or as a Mumuíla girl, as my mum always preferred, my dad told me "no" because I had a **vagina**.
He beat my mum up under the roof which rent she paid because she had a **vagina** and my neighbour never called the police because *vaginas* were below defending.
My mum made me and my sister learn to sew and cross-stitch despite our lack of interest in both because she deemed those skills as needed for people with **vaginas**. And, to this day,in my mums's eyes, I live in the shadow of my brother, that **penis** owner who probably got into cooking more than I did because he wasn't pressured into it and learned out of interest rather than an obligation foisted upon **vagina** owners like moi.
When I was young I remember listening to the gossip around the town's grown ups with a keen interest. I remember one of my teenage neighbours got pregnant by her boyfriend. He, not wanting to take up the responsibility of a child, the case went to court and, this being before the rise of DNA testing, he took all of his friends to stand before the judge and claim they had had sex with her. Her word meant nowt in the face of so many men corroborating the one bastard's story and I can only imagine what a spectacle of woman humilliation those proceedings must have been and the effect of that on my neighbour of a whole society not just abandoning her in her hour of need but also punishing her for the sole sin of possessing a **vagina*. And that's just one of the incidents what yours truly pondered later on opening my mouth about one of my school colleagues friends dad sexually abusing me could mean more trouble to me that it may have been worth.

Your bringing up race to this only diminishes **your** own case. To me, race is one of the oppressors just like gender is. To you gender is an identity and, in your struggle to be accepted as a mere woman, one you seek to foist upon me and in total and complete disregard of me, of my individuality and of my claim to **humanhood**. Got it? Humanhood not womanhood. My sex is female. Womanhood was thrust upon me like a fucking penis and I find it the height of ideological privilege for you to even think you know more about me than *I* do.
No wonder you find it "Gobsmacking". Had you actually been subjected to womanhood quite as profoundly as I have, you wouldn't be so convinced of having somehow seized a moral high ground from which you think yourself justified and entitled to bring race into it on a day when black women are mourning their ancestors whose bodies were used to advance gynecology for the benefit of white women (those with **vaginas* that is). How dare you to try and emotionally manipulate me into thinking sex and race are any way similar outside their raisons dêtre to oppress. Your views on gender are much more insidiously pernicious than any of the KKK on race because they blur the waters so much as to politically disempower women. And you call yourself my sister. Ah! With sisters like you...
 
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There are anti trans editorials in the Morning Star for fecks sake. TERFs - some who are powerful and wealthy with good political and media links - are managing to lobby government, their arguments particularly seem to appeal to right wing christian Tories who seem to be parroting radical feminist arguments in some of their literature now, and getting their arguments into The Times, The Express (can you believe that the Express have turned feminist all of a sudden just so they have an extra argument against trans people?), the Mail, on to Mumsnet.
Last time I checked, The Morning Star was the political voice of those closer to socialism. Where do you think gender critical socialism should have a voice, especially now that you and your sisters want any one with an ounce of doubt about trans ideology or simple concern about the direction of travel for women be expelled from the Labour Party?
And before that, since your tactics were to silence women either 1. by appealing to their, no doubt very feminine, "maternal instincts", or compassion to somehow think that the suicides (or attempts) of transgender women are somehow more worrying or worthier of concern than the suicides of women in general to the point of accusing them of deliberately causing them by pointing to biology as the starting point of woman oppression; or 2. Verbally attacking women who so much put their heads above the parapet online and otherwise; 3. Misrepresenting many of those women's views 4. attempting to get women removed from their jobs such as Kiri Tunks; until 5. the physical attack that's in the origin of this very thread and which, from what I have seen so far, has been the greatest propelling force to getting people to talk about the implications for women of an ideology little understood (even the remote and snoringly boring corner of womanhood that is my local WI is taking an interest in radical feminism, I hear, and I welcome it).
Where exactly should our views be aired when you close all venues to us? Did you not have a responsibility to hear us out as opposed to hounding us out by force or by cunning?
This stuff is getting into schools now in order to undermine us at the most fundamental level.

You mean, stuff like this?

In what way is this liberatory/liberating for **vagina** owners like me and my nieces? Gender is a spectrum how does that help the pangender woman who has to put her career on hold to bear children at some point or be made to feel undervalued humans if they happen to be infertile or just unlucky? How does that help these thousands of baby girls ? Does whatever I see myself as prevent you from classing me as cis, or some men looking at me out in the street referring to me as "that" as in "I'd have a piece of that"? Nah... this kind of view only moves people away from explanations of why the human world works the way it does and solving the cunundrums they find by giving them a sense that all is alright if you pick a *colour* or make your own. Seriously?

Then the TERFs come along and say those trans adults must be excluded because they "look like men" and were "socialised as boys".

Weren't they? Weren't you? Did people believe you when you started protesting? Did they start treating you as a girl because you said so? What is wrong with you? You tell ostensibly one story and you try to push legislation based on that story and then you condemn us for believing it and thus taking our own conclusions by comparing and contrasting it against our own stories which, incidentally, you find no problem whatsoever with erasing and relegating to a second plane as you try to widen the scope of your story to become THE story of gender? And you wonder about how fast it took to reach 12K of relatively small donations?

Fucking hell... You say this on the same breath as you try to speak of race to people who have lived it as well?

Cis people on the whole can't see it and will often collude in parts of it without realising or they refuse to challenge their own prejudices on this subject

There you go again... Lumping us all again as ever as if we were of the same material condition. Because we all asked to be men or women and be treated as such?
You're quite wrong regarding some of us though... We've only just started to think of the implications of what you say about us (more than whatever you say about you - from your side of the magic fence you lot created, we're living the life, innit?).
 
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What I think is that making political and medical decisions based on unknown science is unethical when those decisions might harm people.
I couldn't agree more.

For example, being exposed to androgens in utero is an environmental factor.
And not one that would go away in a post gender society.
Of course it wouldn't. But the consequences would be vastly different, because gender is a socialised factor.
 
Of course it wouldn't. But the consequences would be vastly different, because gender is a socialised factor.

Arguably it might mean not having to cut bits off people. But I guess that depends to what degree all aspects of gender are created by socialisation rather than just shaped by it.
 
Agreeing that one feature of humans is extreme brain plasticity, what that allows is for us to be socialised into very different cultures. But it also means we need to learn an awful lot of stuff in order to be socialised/socialise ourselves (not a passive learning). Some of that learning involves biological sex. I'm not sure how a 'genderless society' would be possible or desirable, for that reason - men and women have different bodies, men are generally bigger and stronger, women give birth and breast feed. All these things require socialisation so that we treat each other well, and that puts us into the realms of gender, no?
 
Agreeing that one feature of humans is extreme brain plasticity, what that allows is for us to be socialised into very different cultures. But it also means we need to learn an awful lot of stuff in order to be socialised/socialise ourselves (not a passive learning). Some of that learning involves biological sex. I'm not sure how a 'genderless society' would be possible or desirable, for that reason - men and women have different bodies, men are generally bigger and stronger, women give birth and breast feed. All these things require socialisation so that we treat each other well, and that puts us into the realms of gender, no?
men being bigger and stronger doesn't require socialisation, does it?
 
It’s not a gendeless society then!

Not genderless society, ''genderless society''. ie one where gender is not a source of inequality and oppression. Not one where it absolutely doesn't exist in any form. I thought I'd made that distinction clear, but there it is anyway.
 
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