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tptacek 7 days ago

I want to be sympathetic to Singal, whose writing always seems to generate shitstorms disproportionate to anything he's actually saying, and whose premise in this piece I tend to agree with (as someone whose politics largely line up with those of the outgoing editor in chief, I've found a lot of what SciAm has posted to be cringe-worthy and destructive).

But what is he on about here?

Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior."

(a) The (marked!) editorial is in no way a refutation of the concept of the normal distribution.

(b) It's written by a currently-publishing tenured life sciences professor (though, clearly, not one of the ones Singal would have chosen --- or, to be fair, me, though it's not hard for me to get over that and confirm that she's familiar with basic statistics).

(c) There's absolutely nothing "surreal" about taking Wilson to task for his support of scientific racism; multiple headline stories have been written about it, in particular his relationship with John Philippe Rushton, the discredited late head of the Pioneer Fund.

It's one thing for Singal to have culturally heterodox† views on unsettled trans science and policy issues††, another for him to dip his toes into HBD-ism. Sorry, dude, there's a dark stain on Wilson's career. Trying to sneak that past the reader, as if it was knee-jerk wokeism, sabotages the credibility of your own piece.

Again, the rest of this piece, sure. Maybe he's right. The Jedi thing in particular: major ugh. But I don't want to have to check all of his references, and it appears that one needs to.

term used advisedly

†† this is what Singal is principally known for

slibhb 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> (c) There's absolutely nothing "surreal" about taking Wilson to task for his support of scientific racism; multiple headline stories have been written about it, in particular his relationship with John Philippe Rushton, the discredited late head of the Pioneer Fund.

The reason it's not surreal is because it's so banal.

Wilson viewed Rushton as a case of scientific freedom. I.e. research shouldn't be suppressed for socio-political reasons.

You're allowed to disagree with that. But you should understand that the scientifc freedom side isn't racist, even if ends up on the same side as racists.

I don't know what to make of you accusing Singal of "dipping his toes into HBD-ism". Maybe you just phrased that wrong. But it sounds like you're saying "Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he's a racist, Singal defended Wilson so he's a racist". Is that how racism works?

rzwitserloot 7 days ago | parent [-]

Where on the line are we talking?

It's one thing to say: "In my view, EO Wilson's association with Rushton is defensible and should not be considered a stain on his career".

It's quite another to say: "That, and I believe it so much that I cannot take seriously anybody who disagrees with me on this, I shall call them and their viewpoints names such as 'surreal' and make grandiose claims that their opinion is so ridiculous, it requires a cultural change at this magazine".

The latter is what was said.

I see no conflict between holding both of these ideas:

* EO Wilson's association with Rushton isn't a problem, and it wasn't about him supporting those ideas themselves, it was about supporting the idea of 'let ideas be, do not censor them'.

* Singal is wildly inappropriate with this, and the plan as stated is cancel culture/crazy politication of a magazine.

In:

> "Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he's a racist, Singal defended Wilson so he's a racist"

You've made an evident mistake. It's instead:

> Rushton was a racist, Wilson defended Rushton so he might also be and we should look into that, Singal called that very thought of questioning Wilson's association with Rushton as ridiculous - and THAT means he's a racist'.

Maybe still wrong but not nearly as crazy as you seem to think it is.

slibhb 7 days ago | parent [-]

I think your post is very reasonable. Singal may be exaggerating how bad SciAm is. Though my view is that the Wilson article is part of a pattern.

I responded to this because I read a biography of EO Wilson recently. It's strange to say his association with Rushton was a stain on his career because his career was massive. He published an absurd number of papers, did lots of field work, discovered many new species, wrote many popular science books, and was influential as an early conservationist. He was, by all accounts, an incredibly kind person. His link to some racist is a footnote, not a stain.

It's worth asking why it's even coming up. Here are a few possible reasons:

1. A number of left-wingers attacked Wilson following Sociobiology and it's been open-season on him ever since

2. It's trendy to call famous white scientists racist

3. Highly accomplished people cause envy in others which leads to tendentious attacks

tptacek 6 days ago | parent [-]

For what it's worth: I'm not saying Singal is exaggerating how bad SciAm is. I think I agree with him, and have complained about it elsewhere.

I do have a problem with him dipping his toes into defenses of scientific racism (which is what he's doing when he implicitly imputes wokeism to an editorial calling E.O. Wilson out for dabbling in scientific racism). This is a problem with the reflexive contrarian rationalist sphere Singal has allowed himself to be relegated to (listen to his podcast, it's even more obvious there).

A lot of stuff SciAm has written is real dumb and even destructive. But not everything that anti-woke people object to in SciAm is wrong; if you adopt that stance, you can launder all sorts of crazy things into the discourse. He did that here.

umanwizard 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Wilson article really does say:

> First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.

That’s at best sloppily written, regardless of what one thinks about Wilson. The normal distribution is a mathematical tool; it doesn’t “assume” anything about some particular concrete topic like measuring humans.

andriesm a day ago | parent [-]

The normal distribution does indeed make some assumptions. Certain natural qualities tend to be notmally distributed like height, but other things like net worth are NOT normally distributed because of feedback loops. The choice of distribution either makes an assumption or validates some other prior assumptions.

Thr choice of using a normal distribution vs another mathematical distribution is not purely a mathematical device, the choice either reflects some assumptions (which one would quickly see if they're valid or not generally).

An interesting case in point for me is when a lot of mathematics assume bell curve distribution in stock market price distributions, like the black scholes option equation does, and it turns out to not really be the best fit. It sort off almost works, but systematically underprices extreme events.

This is what can happen when your assumed distribution turns out to be wrong.

So far though, I haven't heard of refutations that height or IQ (as measured on standardised tests and processed in prescribed ways) are indeed bell curve distributions.

jtbayly 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What a minute, this sentence was literally in the SA piece: “First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.”

Is that not a denunciation of the normal distribution?

andrewla 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think so -- the comment in context was not about the "normal distribution of statistics" per se, because when we're talking about Bernoulli trials and the law of large numbers, it clearly is not necessary to assume anything about "default humans".

Rather the article is critiquing the specific use of the normal distribution in assessing population and sub-population statistics. I do think that this critique is kind of nonsensical because the normal distribution assumes nothing of the kind -- a person who is of average height, a "default height" human, is a concept utterly distinct from the concept of a person who is of average weight, a "default weight" human.

jayd16 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's saying multi-modal data should not be crammed into a simple normal distribution.

leephillips 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

taeric 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed fully on the JEDI stuff. I was somewhat hoping it was from an April first issue. That was bad.

And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse.

I thought the complaint on the normal distribution was supposed to be claims that many things are not normally distributed? Which, isn't wrong, but is a misguided reason to not use the distribution?

tptacek 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I read it as a contrarian think-piece, what people used to call a "Slate pitch" when Slate was still relevant. It lands with a big wet gross "thud" in the context of a lot of the rest of what SciAm has been running.

taeric 6 days ago | parent [-]

I think most of the concern over "woke" themes in entertainment are straw men arguments. Such that it is frustrating to see opinions like this given credence.

I still feel the discourse is overblown. Would have preferred to see those lines as jokes, though. That said, will look into "slate pitches." Strong chance I am just ignorant in a new way here.

blessede 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And I thought I recognized the name. I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse.

Much of it is pushback against widespread ideological capture, and in particular the authoritarian idea that everyone else has to change and restrict their behavior to accommodate increasingly absurd and harmful requests from an overly demanding identity group.

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

What is the group demanding that is "over" what you would consider appropriate? How do their demands restrict your behavior?

Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever. And I say this as a devout member of a rigorous and conservative religious tradition.

blessede 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Many demands, but probably the most egregious is the insistence that males be incarcerated in women's prisons if they say they are women. Several states now have policy that enables this, and female prisoners have been sexually assaulted, raped and even impregnated as a result of this.

More generally, this graphic has an astute depiction of the problem: https://i.ibb.co/ZcMWLvM/no.jpg

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Is sexual assault in prison otherwise a particular concern of yours? I understand it's a massive issue affecting hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people, is activism on that broader issue how you came to be aware of this? Do you have a connection to any prisoner advocacy groups that have policy recommendations on this? I assume the sexual violence outcomes for trans women in mens prisons isn't very wonderful either.

I can't relate to the comic. like I said I have not really felt personally affected by trans people at all on any level ever.

blessede 7 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

sofixa 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

[flagged]

jl6 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> How many instances of trans athletes in female sports have there been?

If it’s a small number, then presumably it’s not worth fighting over and sport can just have Open and Female categories?

sofixa 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe, yes.

But what is "female"? The Algerian boxer was born female, but has high testosterone due to whatever medical condition, which ruled her out of some previous competitions that had conditions around that. Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests? Especially when it gets into kids' sports territory, this gets very iffy very fast.

jl6 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

“Female” is well-defined for 99.99%+ of the population (and for most non-human species too, in fact). For those with DSDs, a judgement call can be made. For example, a person with XY chromosomes and the 5-ARD DSD (who was raised as a female due to the appearance of their external genitalia) has testosterone in the normal male range and thus is likely to have an advantage over females, and thus should not compete in the female category.

Cases of genuinely ambiguous sex are vanishingly rare, and are nothing to do with trans identities which are differences of social gender that do not change the underlying biology.

fiffled 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The available evidence indicates that Khelif is actually male: two blood tests from two independent labs revealing an XY karyotype, a member of Khelif's training team describing problems with hormones and chromosomes and that Khelif has been on medication to adjust testosterone to within the female range, and a leaked medical report which describes Khelif as having the male-specific disorder of sexual development 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD).

This implies that Khelif is not female but is male, and went through male puberty, therefore having the male physical advantage in sport caused by male sexual development.

sofixa 7 days ago | parent [-]

So what you're saying is that she transitioned from male to female in Algeria? That sounds unlikely.

fiffled 7 days ago | parent [-]

No, just erroneously assumed to be female and issued with identity documents stating this.

Same as has happened previously with other male athletes in women's sports, such as Caster Semenya who also has 5-ARD and also competed in the Olympics, back in 2016 in the women's 800m track event, winning gold. The silver and bronze medals were taken by males too.

Khelif does not identify as trans, and described such accusations as "a big shame for my family, for the honor of my family, for the honor of Algeria, for the women of Algeria and especially the Arab world."

immibis 5 days ago | parent [-]

So you do not believe that a penis or vagina makes someone a man or a woman?

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The Algerian boxer was born female, but has high testosterone due to whatever medical condition,

Imane Khelif has an X and a Y chromosome. She has 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which leads to the development of a pseudo-vagina and internal testicles. Crucially, though, the hormone levels are the same as typical males. In terms of upper body strength, red blood cell count, bone density, etc. Khelif is the same as other males.

She wasn't disqualified due to hormone levels. She was disqualified because the International Boxing Association's criteria for participating in the women's category is having a female karyotype (no Y chromosome).

> Do you want sports governing bodies to inspect genitalia? Do blood tests?

Chromosomes can be checked with just a mouth swab.

foldr 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's a potential option, but a lot of anti-trans folks wouldn't be happy with that either. It also doesn't solve the theoretical problem of fairness, since trans men on testosterone (who presumably compete in the 'open' category in your model?) might have significant physical advantages over cis women in some sports. I don't think there are any glib solutions to the issue of gender in sport. The current moral panic about trans people certainly won't go any way to help with solving it.

fonfont 7 days ago | parent [-]

Female athletes taking testosterone, regardless of if they believe themselves to be men or not, would be excluded from competition for doping.

foldr 7 days ago | parent [-]

Another layer of complexity to consider. Some of those rules may need to change to enable full participation of trans athletes. I do not have a fixed view on what the rules should be. I'm just saying it's complicated.

fonfont 7 days ago | parent [-]

Or maybe those that take performance-enhancing drugs will just have to accept that their body modification choices preclude participation in competitive sport.

There are trans-identifying female athletes who don't take testosterone and compete in women's sports, recent example in the last Olympics being Hergie Bacyadan in women's boxing. There's no exclusion on participation as long as the same rules as for everyone else are followed.

foldr 7 days ago | parent [-]

Again, you’re just highlighting the fact that trans people’s bodies are very variable and that this is a complex issue. There isn’t a simple, obvious solution that everyone (currently) agrees is fair. The current rules around trans athletes receiving testosterone as part of gender affirming care are quite complex and variable. I don’t have a take on exactly what the rules should be. I’m just making the point that there are no easy solutions.

linhns 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> There probably have been more instances of furore over a _potential_ trans athlete who aren't trans

Actually, most of those "potential" trans turn out to be actual trans. That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by her own teammate.

> It's a "problem" way overblown by anti-trans activists.

I get that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.

sofixa 7 days ago | parent [-]

> That college volleyball athlete has even been sued by her own teammate.

And there has never been a shred of proof of her being trans. Exactly my point.

> et that there are many loud voices on this topic right now. But I rather having this right now then later down the road, where the right has become wrong and the wrong has become right.

Yes, better for women with high testosterone to get death threats now for winning in the Olympics instead of thinking if this is really a problem.

HideousKojima 7 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

foldr 7 days ago | parent [-]

Her body has both male and female characteristics. If she'd been raised as a man, you could make an equally meanspirited comment about her body with reference to one of its female characteristics.

The fact that she was raised as a woman in Algeria (a notorious hotbed of wokeness) should tell you something.

Also, while it is gross to pick over people's bodies like this, I have to point out that you omit to note that her testicles are internal.

fiffled 7 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

foldr 6 days ago | parent [-]

You made your account 51 days ago and literally the only thing you've commented on since then is the anatomical details of this woman's body. What a strange and distasteful obsession. She has always been a woman and meets the criteria to compete as one under current rules (which long predate any changes made in relation to trans people).

fiffled 6 days ago | parent [-]

Still a male pummelling female competitors though. Who is being excused in this through the spread of a considerable amount of misinformation, your earlier comment being an example of such.

nradov 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You can find a list of trans athletes in women's sports here. I can't vouch for the site's accuracy or completeness, just providing a source for those who want to do further research.

https://www.shewon.org/

sofixa 7 days ago | parent [-]

The inclusion of golf and poker makes me think this website isn't really concerned about women.

fonfont 7 days ago | parent [-]

These are still examples of males imposing themselves on what are supposed to be women's competitions. Every single one of these cases highlights an unwanted male intrusion.

HideousKojima 7 days ago | parent [-]

Also, given that biological males dominate even for non-physical sports and esports like chess (talented women like Judit Polgar notwithstanding) or Starcraft, a biological male playing in a woman's-only league is a probably an unfair advantage even then.

umanwizard 6 days ago | parent [-]

I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about your overall point, but I just want to point out for clarity:

Examples like Judit Polgar (who was around the top 10 players in the world at her peak) do indeed prove that chess is nothing like (physical) sports in this way. In physical sports like basketball, soccer, etc. the best women in the world can’t compete against even moderately athletic amateur men. A famous example is the fact that the US women’s national soccer team practices against young teenage boys (and routinely loses). In chess it would be like if the best woman was rated 1800 or something.

This isn’t meant to disparage women in sports — they really do have a categorically different kind of body from men, and pushing those bodies to their limits is just as impressive as it is for men. But they don’t appear to have categorically different kinds of brain, at least insofar as it matters for chess skill.

hackable_sand 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

blessede 7 days ago | parent [-]

Thanks for your input but your wild assumptions about what I do and don't take issue with are incorrect.

Clubber 7 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So what do the prisoner advocate orgs you work with have as a statement or policy rec? The one I volunteer with has decided that it's not effective to have a specific policy about such a small group until meaningful measures addressing sexual violence in prisons generally (which again affects hundreds of thousands or millions per year) have been attempted.

There are a lot of other orgs though and especially if you're in an area with a lot of trans people and it's a more active issue, I'm interested in what other groups have had to come up with. Like I said if the goal is preventing sexual violence I can't imagine that moving trans women into the mens prison is going to be effective either.

mrguyorama 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"This graphic (an image macro) has an astute depiction"

The actual graphic:

"Lesbians must have sex with me!"

Get the fuck out of here. This is nonsense.

blessede 7 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

immibis 6 days ago | parent [-]

wtf are you talking about?

utbabya a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To address "over", here's my perspective. The invisible force is much stronger than any explicit demands. Would you agree sociopolitically trans transformed from the underdogs to a politically correct blessed identity group at least in the western world in the last 10 years or so?

I was more supportive of their rights when they were the underdogs. Being on the side of the eggs instead of the high wall is second nature for lots of people so I'd guess there are significant number of people going through the same transition.

Ultimately they're the minority though. A specific example is pronouns. Majority of the population is perfectly happy with gender based pronouns, making it sociopolitically disadvantaged or uncomfortable to use them freely is not in the best interest of the majority.

It's always about compromise when we're talking about not stepping on each others feet, and number dictates the power, that's fundamental to democracy. Their demand in general turned from having dignity and freedom to love - say legal marriage, slowly into not being offended - say pronouns. Not being offended is a privilege not a right, particularly so when it makes overwhelmingly majority of the population feel like walking on egg shells, can't say it is what it is, aka censorship.

IMHO, being a minority in the western society myself, it's much smarter and considerate for others to stop focusing on identiy politics when you have comparable sociopolitical rights and status to everyone else, which is a spectrum not a line. The problem is they (or a vocal minority within that minority) keep pushing when they're well pass that spectrum. IMO stop the pride parade in western society because they are just one of us, the differences have already been well acknowledged and accepted, so instead of sexual preferences or gender identity which they differ from the majority, how about holding a parade that is about some common grounds. Just stop talking about it, when or if systemic unjust creeps back in, find evidence and fight for it again.

wtcactus 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Personally I've never noticed trans people and their push for rights & recognition having any impact on my life whatsoever.

Do you have young children? I don’t live in the USA, I live in Europe, but I have a very small baby and I already did. The daycare, just this year announced they aren’t going to be celebrating Mother and Father’s Day anymore. Instead we will have to celebrate a Parents day.

This is just a small thing of course, there are many other situations where it’s clear an agenda is being pushed over the general population. The only way I can see you never felt it, is if you don’t have children.

gjm11 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Do you actually know that switching from "Mother's Day" and "Father's Day" to "Parents' Day" has anything to do with trans people? Without the context of your comment I would have guessed it was more about (1) trying not to upset children who have lost a parent, (2) trying not to upset or confuse children who've never had two parents around, and/or (3) trying not to upset or confuse children brought up by same-sex couples.

Of course you might consider any or all of those to be Stupid Woke Nonsense, but whether right or wrong, sensible or stupid, they're not about trans people.

immibis 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What does that have to do with transgender mothers and transgender fathers?

specialist 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Replacing two Hallmark Holidays with a third Hallmark Holiday is unforgivable.

PS- Blame Bill Clinton.

hobs 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And would you say that "everyone else has to change and restrict their behavior to accommodate increasingly absurd and harmful requests from an overly demanding identity group" and that a parents day has harmed you?

As a person entirely out of the "trans debate" it almost always seems to me like right wingers or anyone who is asked to change anything at all catastrophizes it beyond all sane response.

The mild "huh that slightly bothers me" and the "they are TRYING TO CHANGE MY CHILDREN!!!" seem to be conflated to the point of making no sense.

Going from "I noticed a trans person" to "this must be stopped!" makes no sense whatsoever.

blueflow 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I want to live my way outside of superficial constructs like gender. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who think that gender identity is something relevant.

The current political climate sucks for agender people.

amanaplanacanal 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

There is a thing I've noticed.

Some percentage of people do not strongly identify with any particular gender. I was assigned male at birth, I look stereotypically male, everyone assume I'm male and addresses me as such, but honestly, I don't care one way or the other and if I was female instead I doubt I would care. Let's say 50% fall here.

Another group of people strongly identified with one gender or the other, and can't imagine it being any other way. These people care deeply about gender because it is an important part of their identity. Let's say the other 50% fall here. Most of them are happy because they present as the gender they feel they are, and everyone treats them as such. In a small percentage, there is a mismatch and it makes their life hell.

I suspect the typical mind fallacy makes it very hard for most people to understand those that fall into the other group. And for those that are in the "happy with their gender" group to understand those in the "unhappy with their gender" group.

ruszki 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Some percentage of people do not strongly identify with any particular gender.

I’m the same. But, and this is a huge but: it’s my privilege to be able to think this way. I know that there are people who simply isn’t allowed to do this.

The same thing with skin color. I don’t care. However, my brother has a darker skin tone, he simply cannot have that luxury to not care, because other people force him. For example, when he wasn’t allowed to buy stuff at the nearby bakery because of his skin. He had to move to a country where people care less, because he didn’t want to put up his kids to the same. (Btw our country of origin is Hungary)

blueflow 6 days ago | parent [-]

This is not an argument. That your brothers rights are not respected does not say anything about your rights and whether you are morally right to enforce them.

blueflow 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I noticed that too, and not only that. I and my peers in school had words for it: "girl" for people that were just female, and "girl girl" for people who were female plus "extra ideas". Same for boys.

dogleash 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm pulling for you.

However. Cultural attitudes are propagated by people who's livelihood is frequent publishing. In that scenario, I think teams "what's to talk about?" and "it's not that complicated" are always going to lose to team "I've got a lot to say about this."

yamazakiwi 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I want to live my life outside of superficial constructs like religions. I do not want to be forced to accommodate people who believe religion is relevant. The current political climate is challenging for areligious people.

I don't get to have this opinion because conservatives are censoring me and are always shoving religion down my throat.

Imitating conservative argument style is fun, you get to tell how you feel but then still get defensive when people say you hate other people based on their identity.

blueflow 7 days ago | parent [-]

I think you are being sarcastic but i actually agree with that.

yamazakiwi 7 days ago | parent [-]

I'm being sarcastic but also agree.

lotsofpulp 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The operators and customers of this spa noticed:

https://x.com/KatieDaviscourt/status/1858611351901663550

https://x.com/ItsYonder/status/1858673181315506307

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah that judge, a woman, explicitly labels that "notice" as discriminatory. Seems pretty clear cut.

lotsofpulp 7 days ago | parent [-]

Judges are not infallible, and the judge being a woman is irrelevant since she does not represent all women.

I think it is reasonable for a woman to want a shared nude space to be free of people with penises, regardless of what that person identifies as, for simple logistics reasons of not being able to be sure if someone is being deceptive.

tiahura 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does your daughter play competitive sports? Has she been knocked down by a boy playing on a girl’s team?

dgfitz 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Nah that isn’t the problem. If that happened to my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid over.

The problem is maintaining the integrity of sports and competition. Only an uneducated person would ever try to argue that “the best women’s college basketball team would beat the best men’s college basketball team” even 1 out of 100 times.

tiahura 7 days ago | parent [-]

my kid they would get back up and shove the other kid over.

Therein lies the rub. Some sure do, but most 13 year old girls don’t.

dgfitz 7 days ago | parent [-]

My 10 year old daughter would.

xhkkffbf 7 days ago | parent [-]

Wait until the hormones kick in. Personalities change.

dgfitz 7 days ago | parent [-]

What is your point? Puberty is a thing? No kidding. I choose to believe that how I rear my children has a larger affect on their psyche than hormones.

fireflash38 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Amusingly, in my experience, it was the girls in coed soccer that were doing the knocking down. For a few seasons, they were bigger than the boys, and they could more easily use their hips to check people off the ball without drawing fouls.

lupusreal 6 days ago | parent [-]

True, girls hit puberty first and for a few years outperformed boys in athletics. That was my personal experience in a coed sport.

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has yours? As far as I can tell there are no trans student athletes in my state at any age or competitiveness level. There are several active anti-trans organizations that consider this an issue but no specific cases of it locally for me to assess or be affected by.

spamizbad 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

as a parent of a child athlete this is always a silly argument. Kids in sports get knocked down all the time! Sometimes pretty hard! I feel like people who clutch their pearls on this stuff either don’t have kids, don’t have kids in sports, or aren’t the parent who actually shows up to the games.

rurp 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Speaking for myself, in terms of policy this issue wouldn't even crack my top 100. But in terms of electoral politics? I think the evidence is pretty good that it had a lot of salience in the last election. Many swing voters who broke for Trump have said that gender and/or trans issues were a big factor for them. Something like a third of Trump's closing ads were about this topic and Kamala's campaign checking a box that they were in favor of sex change operations for criminals became a huge talking point.

As someone who cares deeply about a lot of separate issues that Trump will be terrible on, I wish progressives would STFU on this topic and stop stabbing their party in the back. Treating trans people with dignity and respect should go without saying, but some of the left wing rhetoric on this issues goes too far like when they deny that there is any biological difference between men and women. A lot of the efforts on the left look more like virtue signaling and fighting for the sake of it, rather than trying to achieve better real world outcomes.

ryandv 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On a personal level, linguistic imperialism. For all the rhetoric spewed regarding the impacts of colonialism and cultural imperialism and fervent calls to decolonize various aspects of society, the whites spewing that very same rhetoric have found a way to launder their own modern brand of imperialism into gender diversity and inclusivity by inventing and then imposing new language on that of other ethnic minorities: "Filipinx." This word shows a shocking ignorance of basic facts of Tagalog that it can't be construed in any way other than racist: there is no letter "x" in Tagalog, and the grammar of the language is already genderless. This point becomes readily apparent if you are conversing with a native Tagalog speaker who uses English as a second language, as they will readily confuse the pronouns "he" and "she" in everyday speech, the concept of gendered pronouns being, quite literally, foreign to them. Is this transphobic bigotry?

The Philippines has already undergone multiple rounds of colonization over centuries, leading to the slow-motion eradication of their native language as Spanish and especially English have overtaken it to the point where many Filipinos cannot even speak pure Tagalog any more [0]. Hasn't the western white already colonized the Philippines enough? First it was, "your pagan religion is immoral and barbaric; here, read this Bible." Now, it's, "your transphobic language is bigoted and uninclusive; here, take these pronouns." How about obeying Starfleet's Prime Directive by leaving other cultures the fuck alone?

If you don't find this top-down imposition and control of language disturbing, I suggest you review your Orwell.

On a more abstract level, "the group's" intolerance of dissenting opinion and academic inquiry, especially when such inquiry shows its positions to be internally contradictory. Take for instance Rebecca Tuvel's paper In Defense of Transracialism, published in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, which argues that "considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply equally to transracialism." [1] Rather than judge this assertion on its merits and attempt to defeat it rationally, the community demanded the paper be retracted, the author was pilloried for her hateful language and dangerous ideas, and there were multiple departures from Hypatia's editorial team.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYLFoUTJuGU

[1] https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/hypa.12327

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I believe both "Latinx" and "Filipinx" were introduced by queer people of the respective ethnicities, not white Anglos. Basically every culture on earth has deep seated views on gender that don't match reality, and a strong reactionary response when that's interrogated from within the community.

Philosophy as a field has very little to contribute to basic object-level facts -- this is the whole reason science ("natural philosophy") split from traditional philosophy back in the early Renaissance. This isn't something you can reason out within your brain, this is entirely evidence-driven. There is a tremendous amount of evidence for transgender people and next to none for "transracialism".

ryandv 6 days ago | parent [-]

> I believe both "Latinx" and "Filipinx" were introduced by queer people of the respective ethnicities, not white Anglos.

This kind of cultural ignorance is highly insensitive. I would suggest that you refrain from making assertions, without corroborating evidence, about other cultures and matters that you have no experience with.

My lived experience, as a Pinoy, speaking with other Pinoys, both here in the west and in the Philippines, is that very few people, especially amongst the older generations, have ever heard of Filipinx; of those who have, nobody respects the term as valid, and indeed many regard it as colonialist.

From an opinion piece in The Philippines' newspaper of record, the centre-left [0] Philippine Daily Inquirer [1]:

    The practice of gender-neutralizing all gendered words began in the 1960s with the purpose of supporting gender equality. Though we may see Filipinx as
    something to be celebrated for its obvious acknowledgment of gender neutrality borrowed from the Latinx and Chicanx communities in the United States, we
    must resist such adverse essentializing of our identity.

    If we use Filipinx here in the Philippines, many people would probably react in shock at such a strange word, and would immediately resist such naming.

    Absurd as it may seem, these Filipino-American digital natives prove once again the naming power of the American establishment to co-opt identities in their
    own sense. Haven’t we learned from history? The Philippine revolutions, the massacres, the campaigns for sovereignty, our fight to wield the Philippine flag
    and sing the national anthem? To legitimize Filipinx as gender-neutral is to efface and silence Filipino as gender-neutral.

    What could be more gender-neutral than the Philippine languages themselves spoken by our fellow Filipinos?

    We, the Filipino virtual community, have to resist this Western hype and instead empower our languages in the Philippines. We are all Filipinos. Our
    concerns are deeply rooted in our social realities than in the post-postmodern neutralized revision implied by Filipinx.
The media is replete [2] with [3] other [4] examples of how poorly this term is received overseas, despite its adoption by a small subset of the western Filipino diaspora. Take this interview conducted by VICE with "Nanette Caspillo, a former University of the Philippines professor of European languages" [2]:

    While it is intended to promote diversity, the word instead sparked arguments about identity, colonialism, and the power of language. 

    Right now, most people in the Philippines do not seem to recognize, understand, relate to, or assert Filipinx as their identity. Therefore, “the word
    [‘Filipinx’] does not naturally evoke a meaning that reflects an entity in reality,” [...]

    “Filipinx has not reached collective consciousness,” Caspillo said, perhaps because fewer people have heard of and relate to the new term.
> This isn't something you can reason out within your brain, this is entirely evidence-driven.

This just sounds like a justification for tolerating double standards and self-contradiction, to the tune of "rules for thee, and not for me."

> There is a tremendous amount of evidence for transgender people and next to none for "transracialism".

Beyond the question of Rachel Dolezal's transracial identity as discussed in Tuvel's paper, there is also the recent Canadian headline regarding a self-identifying Indigenous group that has received tens of millions in federal cash [5]. Is this group Inuit, or is it not? Who decides? Would you, in their words, "want to take food out of the mouths of our people? Why would you want to hurt our people and our communities?” All because you refuse to respect their self-identification and long-documented history as an Indigenous people?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Daily_Inquirer

[1] https://opinion.inquirer.net/133571/filipino-or-filipinx

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/filipino-vs-filipinx-debate-...

[3] https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/filipinos-fili...

[4] https://tribune.net.ph/2022/08/08/why-filipinx-is-unacceptab...

[5] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-self-identify...

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent [-]

I said queer people of the respective ethnicities, not residents of the Philippines. I am aware that this comes from mostly queer people in the diaspora, but that doesn't take their ethnicities away.

Saying "Filipino" or "Latino" is gender neutral is similar to saying that "he" in English writing is gender neutral. It is not an unreasonable stance from a purely descriptive standpoint, but the amount of sensitivity that comes if anyone tries to interrogate it indicates a deeper rot in the respective cultures.

Like — why is the default descriptor not "Filipina"? Why is it not "Latina"? Why is the gender neutral term the same as the male term? The answer is quite obviously the patriarchy.

(By the way, "Latine" is what the queer people of that ethnicity I know use. I think between Latine being a better grammatical fit and cishet feelings being damaged, Latinx mostly fell out of favor. And linguistic imperialism? Really? There is a far more fundamental and insidious reshaping of the territory to fit the map at play, which is to turn all of human gender and sexual diversity into a single male/female binary.)

dariosalvi78 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> why is the default descriptor not "Filipina"? Why is it not "Latina"? Why is the gender neutral term the same as the male term? The answer is quite obviously the patriarchy.

It's easy to blame patriarchy, but is it the responsible? According to linguists, the answer resides in how gender was introduced in European languages from the Proto Indo European [1, 2]. The feminine genus, in grammatical sense, was introduced later as a specialization of the general "animated" category. Therefore, what later became masculine was used for all "general humans", and was left the default form when gender was not indicated. Example even in English (and other proto-German languages) where nouns are (mostly) not gendered: you have the word of "woman" as a specialization of "man", which does not indicate the male, but it originally indicated the "human being" [3]. We are talking about the dawn of European languages, so take these as educated hypotheses, but blaming patriarchy is a very modern (and unsubstantiated) view.

The need to use a gender (either masculine or feminine) as the default gender is a need in the lack of a neutral gender for humans. Other languages in the world, like Maasai, use the feminine as the "default" gender, others have a proper neutral-animated gender.

Having a neutral gender in Spanish would be great, because it removes ambiguity in many cases where the sex is unknown, but introducing it, especially in languages like Spanish or Italian where all nouns are gendered, is a _massive_ undertaking, which would shake the foundations of those languages and would require a lot of energy by all its speakers. Theoretically possible, sure (we can make up any language we like), but I don't see a minority of agendered people being able to move so much inertia.

So how to go about it? The "x" or other non-standard symbols are pointless because unpronounceable. The "e" can work in Spanish (won't in Italian), and only for some cases, example above all: "españoles" is masculine. Choosing masculine and feminine randomly doesn't work either, it causes confusion and can even sound sexist in certain contexts (I've tried it and found myself in that situation).

My personal take is to stick to the rule: "default" gender is masculine. It's just a choice, as it would have been if we chose feminine (also remembering that the grammatical gender has -in most cases- nothing to do with sex). However, I also try to avoid ambiguities, even at the cost of redundancy, and try to introduce variation as much as possible, still within the constraints of the rules.

[1] https://allegatifac.unipv.it/silvialuraghi/Gender%20FoL.pdf [2] https://benjamins.com/catalog/cilt.305.04lur [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent [-]

Patriarchy is ancient! Yes it's quite fucked up that "woman" literally means "of man" — learning that in school was one of the things that radicalized me.

More than the actual policy prescriptions I'm interested in the reactions various cultures have when challenged on this. You get to see a rather extreme amount of emotional fragility, certainly a lot more than would be justified by a mindset of curiosity and openness. To me that is a pretty strong sign that something is deeply rotten in the culture (and I include my own culture here).

As I said elsewhere, I believe that scientific humanism is the most morally robust worldview in existence. I don't want to tell other people what to do, but I am going to live my life with moral conviction, and that includes saying what I believe to be true about other cultures.

umanwizard 5 days ago | parent [-]

The word “woman” never meant “of man”. It comes from the old English “wif mann” which means female person. Of course “mann” evolved to “man” but at the time it applied to either sex. “Wif” never meant “of”.

sunshowers 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you, TIL! https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman

In hindsight, I'm not surprised my horribly misogynistic English teacher lied about this.

dariosalvi78 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I just need to remind that (very) often languages evolve in ways that have nothing to do with the underlying societal structure.

This is my issue with lots of things being said about politics and language. Language is a tool. There is nothing patriarchal in "woman", nor in the use of the default "unmarked masculine" (this is the technical term) that is present in many languages. The unmarked masculine may even be interpreted in a matriarcal sense: the feminine has detached from the "general human" as someone "special", "more important" than the man. But these are all speculations that are all valid and all silly at the same time.

How we _use_ language is another story though. For example, using the masculine with the consequence (intentional or not) to exclude women from a job ad is definitely not acceptable. The unmarked masculine has the problem of being ambiguous, but the ambiguity can be solved (with the added cost of redundancy) by repeating the same words with the feminine or simply by specifying who the message is referring to (example: "madame et monsieur"). This is common sense, but it's worth reminding people to be careful about it. What is not common sense (IMHO) is to ask all speakers of a certain language to change a thousands years old morphology because someone misuses it, and not even providing valid alternatives.

Other examples of politicised language can be found in the words that are used to signal virtue, or to offend, often completely changing the original meaning of the word to the point that it becomes a political slogan with no meaning at all. I have dozens of examples, including the same word "patriarchy", but I can also mention "fascist", "communist", "feminist", "violent" etc.

Some people enjoy this show, some use it as a very convenient way to bring attention to some topics (or themselves), others, like me, find it confusing and extremely tiring and a reason for disconnecting from politics rather than embracing it.

ryandv 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I said queer people of the respective ethnicities, not residents of the Philippines. I am aware that this comes from mostly queer people in the diaspora, but that doesn't take their ethnicities away.

Adoption of new language imposed by whites upon the diaspora of an ethnic minority is different from that minority introducing the term themselves. The neologism "Filipinx" appears to have originated on dictionary.com [0] [1], with no Filipino spokesperson, residing in the Philippines, North America, or otherwise, publicly endorsing the term (quite the opposite). I invite you to provide sources to substantiate the claim that it was in fact introduced by Filipino diaspora. All I can find is a statement by one "John Kelly" [0]:

    “Among our many new entries are thousands of deeper, dictionary-wide revisions that touch us on our most personal levels: how we talk
    about ourselves and our identities, from race to sexual orientation to mental health,” said John Kelly, senior editor at Dictionary.com.
Ethnic minorities overseas in western culture are subjugated to the cultural dominance of whites and expected to adopt their lexicon or risk severe social censure; this is the essence of the definition of "systemic racism" as proposed by DiAngelo.

> Saying "Filipino" or "Latino" is gender neutral is similar to saying that "he" in English writing is gender neutral.

Tagalog is already ungendered. "Filipino" is ungendered. It is you who presuppose, based on Eurocentric linguistic norms, that "Filipino" is a gendered term and is assigned the male gender, and then from that presupposition conclude that the word "Filipino" is gendered and therefore patriarchal. This is an instance of begging the question, where you presuppose the very matter under contention. This is cyclical reasoning based on a predominantly white cultural worldview and linguistic background.

    Some — mostly those who grew up in the Philippines — argue that “Filipino” is already a gender-neutral term because the Filipino language
    itself does not differentiate between genders. Meanwhile, others — mostly from the large Filipino diaspora — say it is sexist, a holdover from
    the gendered Spanish that influenced the country’s languages. [1]
> And linguistic imperialism? Really? There is a far more fundamental and insidious reshaping of the territory to fit the map at play, which is to turn all of human gender and sexual diversity into a single male/female binary.

You again expose your ignorance of other cultures with this comment. Bakla culture [2] in the Philippines has a very long and well-established history that predates Western colonization, and is already considered a third gender, already escaping the male/female dichotomy.

Stop imposing your white framing upon other cultures. That is in fact the definition of cultural and linguistic imperialism.

[0] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1332278/filipinx-pinxy-among-n...

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/filipino-vs-filipinx-debate-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakla

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not white. I'm Indian, and I also happen to be a trans woman. I'm fully aware of cultures with three traditional genders like my own -- I'm also deeply suspicious of them. The third gender is virtually always constructed to be transmisogynistic, to exclude trans women from womanhood. That isn't true binary-smashing gender diversity, that is merely "men", "women", and "we don't believe you're really women".

Traditional third genders also typically only have room for straight trans people -- there is no room for a queer trans person like myself. Even today you have a lot of clueless people wondering how someone can be both bi/gay and trans -- something about it breaks the cishet brain in a way I've never really understood.

Modern western progressive ideas about gender diversity are far closer to reality than any traditional culture's, because they're grounded in science and humanism. (This is not to say that they're perfect -- I have several specific criticisms of queer theory authors like Judith Butler.) I am quite proudly a scientific humanist and I believe it is the most morally robust worldview in existence.

ConspiracyFact 5 days ago | parent [-]

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seethedeaduu 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Militant trans activists? That's the vast majority of trans people, not some fringe view.

sunshowers 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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ConspiracyFact 5 days ago | parent [-]

Huh?

sunshowers 5 days ago | parent [-]

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ConspiracyFact 5 days ago | parent [-]

Struck a nerve, did I? I have no problem with trans people; I just refuse to be browbeaten into saying that apples and oranges are the same.

sunshowers 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Obviously no two people are the same. But there isn't some magical gap between cis and trans women that's categorically bigger than the gap between, say, white and Indian cis women. Women raised in different cultures are different -- women that are a different sex at birth are different.

You don't have to say that apples and oranges are the same. What's based more in religious/patriarchal ideas than in rational evidence is the belief that men are like apples and women are like oranges (or that men are from Mars and women are from Venus). There are some differences that the patriarchy magnified into a monstrous set of institutions (coverture! implied consent! vomit). We're on the path to slowly undoing it, but progress isn't monotonic that's for sure.

(By the way, calling a trans woman, especially one who has medically transitioned, a "biological male" is both an HR violation and not rooted in evidence. It is really frustrating to hear your basic dignity being talked about by people who are as confident as they are ignorant. When I was still cis-presenting and didn't fully understand what my trans friends were going through, I didn't spout off my thoughts like a fool. I took the time to learn.)

ConspiracyFact 4 days ago | parent [-]

Are you joking? There “isn’t some magical gap” between cis and trans women? Absurd.

And then you go on to say that there are no real differences between men and women, oblivious to the glaring contradiction between this belief and the entire phenomenon of transgenderism.

You can call me ignorant all you want; that doesn’t make it true.

sunshowers 4 days ago | parent [-]

> There “isn’t some magical gap” between cis and trans women? Absurd.

I know, right? Goes against literally every message either of us received growing up. And yet!

The idea that there is a magical gap between men/amab people and women/afab people is one of the deepest held beliefs of humanity. It's just... not true. Humans have fairly low sexual dimorphism among the great apes.

> And then you go on to say that there are no real differences between men and women

That is not what I said. Of course there are differences between men and women. For example, if you ask men what their gender is they'll say "I'm a man" and if you ask women what their gender is they'll say "I'm a woman". Most men have a generally higher testosterone and lower estrogen level than most women. Most men at any level of strength training can lift much more weight than most women at the same level of strength training.

I think you're arguing against the strawman you have of me in your head, probably formed from the composite of a bunch of people you've heard who might have been wrong on this subject while being right about how to treat trans people.

> oblivious to the glaring contradiction between this belief and the entire phenomenon of transgenderism.

This kind of argument is so strange to me. I've heard variations of this a bunch of times, including yours, and "if men can become women and women can become men, what's the point of transitioning?"

When I'm on a testosterone-dominant hormone profile I feel really bad and I hate my body. When I'm on an estrogen-dominant hormone profile I like my body.

When I'm treated as a man by others and have he/him used for me I have clinical levels of social anxiety and depression. When I'm treated as a woman by others I no longer have much anxiety, though I still have occasional depression.

(These are objective and measured by validated psychometric scales over a long period of time, so can I ask you for a kindness? Please don't try and question whether they're real.)

Trans people exist because cis people exist. Many (likely most) people have a sense in their head of what their hormones and other sex characteristics should be like, and how they would like to be treated by other people. For most people it aligns with what they already have or are. For some of us it doesn't. The rest, as they say, is an implementation detail.

---

I'm going to ask you a question, if you don't mind -- I want to understand the logical and rhetorical progression that happened during the time you read my post and decided to reply with what you did. Could you outline the series of steps you followed to go from what I said to your response?

5 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't see the connection between tagalog and trans people sorry.

aint_that_so 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I got banned from a leftist Discord that I'd spent years on discussing all sorts of topics, just because I dared to question some of the standard left-wing stances on trans issues.

I'd said something like, I don't think claiming an identity is enough, there has to be some sort of dysphoria. And then followed up with another comment like, if they want to keep the cock intact, then they're not actually trans women, as a genuine trans woman would want rid of it even if she couldn't afford the surgery.

This was enough to get me called bigoted and transphobic, and then permanently banned with no recourse, which surprised me because I'd disagreed with people there on the details of a few other topics in the past. Yet somehow this was too much.

It still baffles me how this is the one of the few issues that gets people on the left so riled up that they can't even bear to hear any dissent.

seethedeaduu 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

A cis person trying to define what being trans is? That's very common sadly.

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What is your expertise in the field?

aint_that_so 6 days ago | parent [-]

About the same as anyone else on that Discord.

sunshowers 6 days ago | parent [-]

Well, in that case I guess they were lucky that their views were closer to reality than yours.

I know plenty of trans women who don't wish to have extensive bottom surgery. Given that you don't have expertise in the field and have basically invented your beliefs from whole cloth, I think you should revise them accordingly and take it as a learning experience about the value of study.

aint_that_so 5 days ago | parent [-]

I did take the time to understand more after that, like learning that many trans people broadly agreed with the points I'd made but are now denounced as "truscum" by those who believe that gender identity and not gender dysphoria is fundamental to being trans.

Note also that these were the standard leftie views on trans back in the 1990s, which is when I first heard about it. My beliefs weren't invented from whole cloth as you state. At the time the common understanding was that gender dysphoria is such a debilitating medical condition that accommodating those rare individuals afflicted by this should be done to help them deal with it better. Sort of like how disabled people are provided ramps for access - it was the right thing to do to help a marginalized group.

Anyway my point was more about intolerance of dissenting views on this topic in particular. Being permanently banned from that Discord was an unpleasant surprise when I was just expressing a viewpoint that was previously how most on the left understood the issue.

On the plus side it did help me understand the perspectives on the other side better. I'd previously considered "terfs" to be nothing more than vicious bigots, but once I understood that the trans umbrella had been expanded to include those without gender dysphoria, including men that back in the day would have just been considered common transvestites and not transsexual at all, some of their arguments began to make sense.

Now I'm more middle-ground on the issue, which isn't a bad place to be. This also inspired me rethink other political stances that I had adopted without analyzing them too deeply. So overall I suppose being kicked out of this community was a good thing as it broadened my mind. It also helped me see first hand how political echo chambers are constructed.

sunshowers 5 days ago | parent [-]

No, it is a bad place to be! TERFs are wrong on the facts and wrong on the values.

You completely missed the reason transmedicalism fell out of favor. It's because doctors were given the power to judge if you were truly trans. The way it played out is that they had too much power and routinely abused it in horrifying ways. That is still the case in some medical systems like the adolescent care in Finland, where the doctors ask teenagers questions that if I were asked at that age I would be traumatized for life. It's sickening.

Modern informed-consent trans healthcare is patient-driven. It turns out that if you've put in the effort to seek it out, you almost certainly are trans. Cisgender people do not make a habit of seeking out trans care, because the act of doing so generally induces gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria manifests in several ways — anecdotally, distress at current hormone profile is by far the most common. A belief that bottom surgery must be required is not evidence-based, in the sense that it leads to worse outcomes. It is cis people's projection of their own internal insecurities about sex and gender.

(I do agree by the way that gender dysphoria and healthcare need to be recentered in these discussions. But we have a broader understanding of it than we used to, which is good.)

Anyway, you're welcome to find my GitHub and see all of the open source work I've done. It's work that is, among other things, saves several corporations 8+ figures in CI costs annually each. That only happened because I had a safe environment to transition in. If I hadn't been able to transition and be treated with respect, that wouldn't have happened. (More generally speaking, without trans people Rust wouldn't have happened either, and the IT world would be much worse off! In my experience, people in elite engineering teams fully understand this. TERFism is like Uncle Bob — it appeals mostly to mediocre minds.)

HideousKojima 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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blindriver 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard? Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair. The strict gender binary is the anti-science view I'm sorry to say.

And again I say this as someone who is a member of a rigorous religious tradition that does not have any real flexibility about this. Nonetheless I've had to come to accept it because, as you say, the science.

aspenth 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> What's the gender of someone born with XX chromosomes, two ovaries, a penis, and develops male secondary sex characteristics like a beard?

Did you just make this up or did you have a specific disorder of sexual development in mind? Presence of two ovaries suggests it's a female DSD anyhow.

> Intersex variants are 1% of the population, it's as common as red hair.

This figure is controversial and includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. The true prevalence is more likely between 0.01% and 0.02%.

The trans discussion is separate to this anyway, as it involves individuals without any DSDs who demand that others treat them as if they were the opposite sex.

giraffe_lady 7 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah it's approximately as hypothetical as all the cases of trans athletes we're apparently taking seriously in this thread. Eg greater than zero known cases but likely no one commenting here has ever encountered either phenomenon in the course of life.

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Intersex are not 1% of the population. That figure comes from a study that included women with Turner Syndrome and PCOS, as well as men with Klinefelter Syndrome as intersex. Even a layperson would have zero trouble classifying the sex of said people if they saw their body.

Intersex as defined by genuine ambiguity of someone's sex is around 0.02% of the population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

> Leonard Sax, in response to Fausto-Sterling, estimated that the prevalence of intersex was about 0.018% of the world's population,[4] discounting several conditions included in Fausto-Sterling's estimate that included LOCAH, Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Turner syndrome (45,X), the chromosomal variants of 47,XYY and 47,XXX, and vaginal agenesis. Sax reasons that in these conditions chromosomal sex is consistent with phenotypic sex and phenotype is classifiable as either male or female.[4]

giraffe_lady 6 days ago | parent [-]

So still like one or two orders of magnitude more common than trans athletes?

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent [-]

It highly depends on your definition of trans. Some estimates place the rate of trans people at ~1.2%. If 1 in 10 trans people are athletes, then that'd be about 6x more common than intersex.

https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-the-us-popu...

immibis 5 days ago | parent [-]

If my mother had two wheels she'd be a bicycle. Whenever these issues come up the number of trans athletes is always... one. Sometimes two.

kgwgk 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Intersex variants are 1% of the population

Only if you use some definition of “intersex” that has nothing to do with the “two ovaries and a penis” you mentioned before.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...

maybelsyrup 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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blindriver 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

immibis 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean... abortion bans?

7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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throwaway5752 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

" I really do not understand how trans debate has come to dominate some online discourse."

It is a wedge issue, simply. It benefits entrenched interests because it allows them to anger and control people, just like they do with the War on Christmas, the War on Guns, Welfare Queens, Baby Killers, Wokeism, DEI, and so many other catchphrases that collapse nuanced issues to a sports slogan.

This entire discussion is grossly disappointing. So many otherwise intelligent people thinking they are debating issues, when they are being played like a fiddle.

ConspiracyFact 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

All of your examples target right-wingers. Can you not think of any examples that target left-wingers, or do you think that things like mansplaining etc are real issues?

SpicyLemonZest 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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mrguyorama 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Would you be willing to defuse it by instituting a policy of always saying "merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays"?

This is nonsensical. This isn't "defusing" it, this is authoritarianism and literal capitulation to the absurd demands that are meaningless

People say "Happy holidays" now because they know some people don't celebrate Christmas and they want to be nice, friendly, and pleasant to them as well.

If you have a problem with people saying "Happy holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas" you are a fucking baby.

throwaway5752 7 days ago | parent [-]

Don't get mad about it. That is the definition of victory for the groups creating these issues. Just ignore it and go about your day as much as possible. Don't comment about it online.

They are only industrial strength memes to create anger and distrust, thereby placing people in more manipulable mental states. You starve them by ignoring them, regardless of the merits. Most of all, don't react with anger.

throwaway5752 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can't "defuse" a wedge issue, you can only decline to be manipulated. That is an individual act. There is no "side" to a wedge issue, it is a false dichotomy crafted to create maximal division. They are focus group tested and refined to do so.

The "War on Christmas" effects a greater sense of persecution while framing it as a nonexistent conflict. There is no War on Christmas. I can say Merry Christmas or not, and it will not effect the wedge issue because it is and never was about saying Merry Christmas to others.

SpicyLemonZest 7 days ago | parent [-]

I agree with most of what you're saying except for the contention that the dichotomy is false. It's a good wedge issue precisely because it's a true dichotomy. Even when attempting to dismiss the debate as fabricated and pointless, you end up taking a side on accident, flatly stating that there's no War on Christmas and that it doesn't really matter whether you say Merry Christmas to others. On the other side of the wedge, people believe that Christmas is quite literally the second most important day in the world, and fear that we might put our immortal souls at risk if we don't properly commemorate it.

amanaplanacanal 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Everybody likes to think their religion is more important than everybody else's, I get it. But there are a lot of holidays around mid-winter, and I wouldn't try to guess which ones another person might celebrate. People maybe should worry about their own immortal souls rather than mine, if that is their concern.

throwaway5752 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't say Happy Holidays in a negative way, and I've always been happy to hear a sincere Merry Christmas. The idea of "war" has no business being anywhere near that day. Choose to be the peace on Earth that we all want and need.

Merry Christmas to you.

6 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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lupusreal 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Would you be willing to defuse it by instituting a policy of always saying "merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays"?

I'm an atheist and this is my approach. I think their religion is complete nonsense but Christmas is a wholly inoffensive Holiday, which is celebrated in a fashion by many secular people anyway. I think the "Happy Holidays" thing is needlessly antagonist. In principle it should be fine but a lot of people take it the wrong way, it is known that many people take it the wrong way, and therefore if I said it then I would be saying it with the knowledge and acceptance that it's going to bother a lot of people (hence, antagonistic.)

amanaplanacanal 6 days ago | parent [-]

You aren't worried about folks of other religions that don't celebrate Christmas? Only about those that do? Is this some sort of Christian privilege thing?

lupusreal 6 days ago | parent [-]

I've never had members of other religions get upset about me wishing them a Merry Christmas, so no I'm not worried about it. If Jewish people started whining to me about it or something then the equation might change, but in fact those that I know are usually more perfunctory about wishing me a Merry Christmas than I am to them.

As to privilege.. whatever man. The simple fact is that Christians are the predominant religion where I live and they are touchy about this matter in a way other people aren't, so why should I go against the flow? Just to spite people I feel no real animosity against? To undermine a holiday I enjoy? Literally why.

7 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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instagraham 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Much of the piece leans on the right's habit of "refuting" leftist academia by merely repeating its summed-up headline form in a sneering voice, without offering a real counterargument.

This is not to say that I don't think there should be a rebuttal of any social sciencey claim, but that it should - and can - be done socratically.

it's like any topic you think is simple until you research even a bit of it and go 'oh'

gadders 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>>It's one thing for Singal to have culturally heterodox† views on unsettled trans science and policy issues††

I think his views are culturally orthodox, outside of liberal-left members of the laptop class.

jl6 7 days ago | parent [-]

Red tribe orthodoxy has a lot of disdain for people with trans identities. Blue tribe orthodoxy has maximal dain for those people. But both tribes are willing to promote pseudoscience to achieve their goals. Singal occupies a narrow sliver of the political possibility space where sympathy for those identities can exist at the same time as supporting evidence-based medicine.

gadders 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I think there is a middle ground. Trans people are clearly going through something, and I think a bit more sympathy from the Right, particularly for adolescents wouldn't go amiss. Puberty in the age of social media, anxiety and other mental health challenges is rough. You can hate the policies/movement and still have sympathy for the individuals.

However, I'm not sure that encouraging young people to make one-way decisions (or decisions where we are not yet sure whether they are one way or not) is the correct approach.

lukas099 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> You can hate the policies/movement and still have sympathy for the individuals.

I think people on the right (outright bigots excepted) would say they do have sympathy, and it's for kids who have been influenced by the media or whatever to think that they are the opposite gender.

> However, I'm not sure that encouraging young people to make one-way decisions (or decisions where we are not yet sure whether they are one way or not) is the correct approach.

And I think the response here is that not taking action is also one-way, causing irreversible changes, like to the bone structure.

jl6 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, this is the kind of nuanced take that has been squeezed out by ideological snap-to-grid from the warring tribes.

yamazakiwi 7 days ago | parent [-]

I rarely see sympathy from anyone, it's easier to be staunch and tapped out unfortunately.

6 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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nemomarx 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Before I started transition I read through the available literature (this would be back in 2010-2015 ish, before it was quite so hot button) and the general consensus wasn't with Singals position then. I don't think skepticism ought to be ruled out or anything, but hormone therapy is better studied than the use of most antidepressants at this point. (although it could still use better study on particular dosage and effects - no one seems to have done anything comprehensive on progestin treatment, for instance, even though it's clearly associated with the rest.)

gadders 7 days ago | parent [-]

The Cass report in the UK was pretty clear that there isn't enough evidence to base decisions on https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...

>>>

While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.

The strengths and weaknesses of the evidence base on the care of children and young people are often misrepresented and overstated, both in scientific publications and social debate.

The controversy surrounding the use of medical treatments has taken focus away from what the individualised care and treatment is intended to achieve for individuals seeking support from NHS gender services.

The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.

The use of masculinising / feminising hormones in those under the age of 18 also presents many unknowns, despite their longstanding use in the adult transgender population. The lack of long-term follow-up data on those commencing treatment at an earlier age means we have inadequate information about the range of outcomes for this group.

nemomarx 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

The Cass report is pretty questionable quality wise - it was written with political goals pretty directly in mind and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double blind. (Which is necessarily a hard ask here, medical ethics boards aren't going to let you give hormones to the control group children or anything.)

And that criticism has come from medical boards in the UK and globally, I believe?

Anyway, that's also only for children, which feels politically like a wedge issue. The NHS is very slow at providing HRT and I rather doubt they're treating more than a hundred children for gender dysphoria in any way rn.

in_a_hole 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is a common misconception about the review. It is true that none of the studies they looked at were double-blinded but they were still included if they were designed and conducted well enough. In a Q&A shortly after the review's release Cass demonstrates that she is well aware that exclusion based on this would be silly.

https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-the...

The amount of myths circulating about the review prompted the publishing of an FAQ page which deals with some of the more egregious examples (e.g. the claim that 98% of studies were rejected).

https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...

Levitz 7 days ago | parent [-]

I think it's naive to call a series of "myths" coming from the same camp as misconceptions.

There was a (successful) effort to push misinformation regarding the report.

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's the basis for the claim that the Cass Review was written with political goals directly in mind? Is this just based on the conclusion of the report, or is there actual substance for this statement?

Most of the criticism of the Cass Review comes from the US. Most of Europe has either stopped prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for minors or never did in the first place. The UK is joining the consensus among the majority of developed countries regarding treatment of gender dysphoric youth, now the US and Canada stand as the sole outliers.

strangecasts 6 days ago | parent [-]

> What's the basis for the claim that the Cass Review was written with political goals directly in mind? Is this just based on the conclusion of the report, or is there actual substance for this statement?

Cass meeting with DeSantis staffers [1], for one

[1] https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/cass-met-with-desantis-pi...

> Notably, Hilary Cass met with Patrick Hunter, a member of the anti-trans Catholic Medical Association who played a significant role in the development of the Florida Review and Standards of Care under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent [-]

This meeting was held after the Cass Review was published, so it's odd to try and use it to discredit the review itself. Furthermore, Hilary Cass met with hundreds of people to discuss the findings of the review. Is any researcher who ever speaks with Ron DeSantis simply disqualified in your view? Including research published before meeting him?

strangecasts 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, she met with Hunter before it was published:

> A followup email from Hunter indicates that he met with Cass on September 22, 2022 (ECF 184-1). Even as Paul Vazquez wanted to invite Cass to the Board of Medicine hearing as a subject matter expert, Hunter felt that would put her “in a difficult position”:

Why downplay this link in a discussion about the politicization of science?

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent [-]

The interim report - which had the same findings that gender affirming care in minors had scant evidence - was published in March 2022.

Also, that quote is not appearing anywhere in the linked article. Did you post the wrong link?

Again, is the mere fact that Cass - whose job is to advise governments on healthcare - met with someone in government supposed to disqualify the review as politically motivated? What, specifically, did this DeSantis staffer change in the Cass Review?

This is just straightforward attempts at guilt by association. Given that Cass' job is to advise government on healthcare, meeting with government staffers is hardly surprising.

strangecasts 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Also, that quote is not appearing anywhere in the linked article. Did you post the wrong link?

Linked in the article, about her meeting with Hunter

https://genderanalysis.net/2023/11/new-trial-exhibits-in-doe...

> This is just straightforward attempts at guilt by association.

Call him a "government staffer" all you like, let's call it what it is: her meeting with an explicitly religious interest group

Manuel_D 6 days ago | parent [-]

Again, can you point out how the report was influenced. We have the interim report published before Cass met with this staffer. We have the final report published after this meeting. Can you elaborate on how it was changed at the behest of this staffer?

6 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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sso_eol 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double blind

Sorry but you're repeating disinformation that has already been refuted by the lead author, and is obviously incorrect if you read the Review itself.

http://archive.today/ea0Vi

> Dr Hilary Cass, 66, told The Times last week that one activist had begun posting falsehoods about her landmark review of the treatment of trans children before it was even published.

> She was referring to Alejandra Caraballo, an American attorney, transgender woman and instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic.

> On April 9 — the day before the Cass review was published — Caraballo claimed it had “disregarded nearly all studies” because they were not double-blind controlled ones.

> Double-blind studies see patients randomly given either medicine or a placebo, with neither the patient or doctor knowing which.

> In a post on Twitter/X, Caraballo accused Cass and the review team of holding trans healthcare to an “impossible standard”. This was because, she said, transgender patients could not take hormones “blind”, as the effects of any hormones would fairly quickly become obvious.

> Her tweets were contradicted by the publication of the Cass review hours later.

> During a systematic review, researchers looking at studies on transgender healthcare found no blind control ones — so used another system altogether to determine study quality. Cass told The Times last week how difficult it would be to use blind control studies in relation to trans patients, for the same reasons identified by Caraballo.

> As for Caraballo’s claim that the review team “disregarded nearly all studies”, Cass pointed out that 60 out of 103 studies reviewed were used for the conclusions. They were studies deemed to be of moderate and high quality on the effects of puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

> Despite this, Caraballo’s post has been viewed 871,000 times and has not been deleted.

This is unfortunately quite a typical tactic of activists like Caraballo. They will deliberately lie to further their aims, relying on people who are unaware that their lies are lies to spread this disinformation.

foldr 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The report basically said that there wasn't a lot of evidence that the treatments in question make people happy in the long run, which is an unusual standard to apply. Usually we look for evidence that medical treatments achieve their medical goals, and leave judgments about what will or won't make someone happy to doctors or patients. (For example, it's questionable whether certain cancer treatments that extend life by only a few months will be a net benefit for patients, but we generally let patients and doctors decide for themselves whether or not to go ahead with them.)

in_a_hole 7 days ago | parent [-]

Given that the treatments are meant to address gender dysphoria which is unhappiness caused by a sense of misalignment with one's sexual characteristics I struggle to think of a better measure of success than long-term happiness.

foldr 7 days ago | parent [-]

It's a good measure of success, but if we applied the same standard consistently, then all kinds of treatments for all kinds of partially psychological conditions would have to be thrown out.

Also, it's taking a particular position to characterise gender dysphoria as merely a subjective feeling of unhappiness. I do not have any fixed position on what exactly gender dysphoria is, but I believe many trans people see it as far more than just that.

hnburnsy 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HN has a large discussion on the E.O. Wilson piece at the time...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29990427

tptacek 6 days ago | parent [-]

Note the source of that story.

6 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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