The Trump administration defining transgender out of existence.

[BookShaka]

Be it out of fear, ignorance, hate, or a need to pander to the moronic minions that make up the base-this policy is literally a death blow to Transgender rights, dignity, and identity.

“moronic minions that make up the base” is a great way to pave to way for open dialogue. Why would I want to read an article written by an asshole?

 

[BookShaka]

"The government of U.S. President Donald Trump is attempting to strip transgender people of official recognition by creating a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth, The New York Times reported on Sunday."

How is a scientific fact deemed a "narrow definition"?

If you're a guy, you're a guy. Silicon implants and cutting your dick off doesn't change that. It just means your dress-up costume is permanent.

If You're a idiot you're and idiot. I was going to start this topic but was beat to it. This is what I wrote. Read it real slow and then read it again. Get help from your special ed. teacher if necessary. People like you- and Trump- will have blood on your hands if this happens:

Trumps Latest and Most Egregious Attack on Transgender People

I am hoping that at least some people here will find this latest transphobic move by the Trump Administration as disturbing as I do. Be it out of fear, ignorance, hate, or a need to pander to the moronic minions that make up the base-this policy is literally a death blow to Transgender rights, dignity, and identity.

These are people who struggling daily with the emotional impact of being transgender in a society that tends to marginalize them. it’s apparent that the architects of the reactionary and bigoted policy either do not understand the impact that this measure would have- or simply do not care. Worse, yet, I suspect this sadistic and diabolical move was well-planned and intended to do maximum harm while in no way making society better for anyone- nor will it make America great. Quite the contrary

In addition to ignoring the social aspects of it, they also care little about- or are willfully ignorant of - the biological science underlying the transgender issue, as evidence by stating that gender is fixed and immutable from birth.

This is the proposal:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

That right there is proof of the depths of their ignorance as I will demonstrate. It is a total dumbing down of the issue and everything that we know about transgender. There is more to what determines gender than external genitalia and it is simply not always obvious what a child is at birth,

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

Grounded in science? What a fucking joke!! The science is clear that not everyone is clearly 100% male or female which may or may not be obvious or even detected at all at birth. That is called intersexuality, which is not the same as transgender but is related and likely is the underlying cause of gender dysphoria. In the past, and sometimes even now, the medical response when there was a question of gender was to surgically “make the child into one gender or the other. Often the choice was the wrong one resulting in a life of torment and confusion. Case in point:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-new-era-for-intersex-rights

Jim Ambrose was born in 1976, with, he wrote last year, “genitals that frightened my parents and caregivers.” He had one X and one Y chromosome, but his sex organs were ambiguous, resembling a large clitoris or a small penis. Doctors have an easier time eliminating tissue than adding it, and so they decided to surgically remove the organ and the nearby testes. The baby was raised as a girl, named Kristi Bruce.

When Ambrose was twelve years old, he began to take female hormones. At eighteen, he prepared to undergo a vaginoplasty, the surgical reconstruction of the vagina. Suffering from depression, Ambrose contemplated suicide. “I knew that I wasn’t a girl,” he later told a reporter. The following year, Ambrose obtained his medical records, and discovered what had happened to him as an infant: “I was sterilized at birth—and no one ever told me.” Ambrose was born with a condition that inhibited testosterone production; after adolescence, he began to take testosterone shots, and had surgery to remove his breasts.

How will the Trump policy deal with something like this at a time when we are beginning to realize that genital mutilation of a child like this is not the wisest choice? It will likely result in a premature and possibly wrong choice- if not surgically- then certainly in terms of a forced gender social construct that will be confusing and damaging to the child.

I have to wonder why some people are so freaked out and afraid of people who may be unsure of their gender identity and who want the option of exploring their gender issues and making an informed and appropriate choice when they are ready to. ?


Here is a little more on the issue

Trump Admin. Preparing to Deny Trans People Exist, Erase Protections

“Setting a destructive precedent, the Trump-Pence administration intends to erase LGBTQ people from federal civil rights protections and eviscerate enforcement of non-discrimination laws,” said HRC President Chad Griffin in a press release. “Defining ‘sex’ in this narrow language tailored to the talking points of anti-equality extremists is part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate federal protections for LGBTQ people. This is a direct attack on the fundamental equality of LGBTQ people and, if this administration refuses to reverse course, Congress must immediately take action by advancing the Equality Act to ensure that LGBTQ people are explicitly protected by our nation’s civil rights laws.”

I am supportive of transgendered people and part of the LGBT community but I’m going to be chastised and demonized bc of this. Bc Trump voters agree with everything he does, right? They don’t have a mind of their own... say the profoundly ignorant.

I do not agree with this but I’d still take Trump over Hillary and therefore my vote would be the same if I’d have known this was a possibility.

You’re not going to change anyone’s mind by sharing an article written by a biased and miserable dipshit.

 

[The Purge]

And you, your mentally disorder!

Thank you so much for your informative and cogent comment on an important topic. You are a indispensable asset to the intellectual quality of the discourse on the USMB Keep up the good work. We'll all be looking forward to your next riveting post

The Trump Administration Isn’t ‘Dehumanizing’ Transgender Americans

The administration is proposing to conform the law to the truth.

Today I learned something truly new. I’d lived my life on this earth almost 49 years before I understood that federal anti-discrimination law defines human existence. Changing that law can thus literally “negate the humanity of people.”

At least that’s what I’m learning in response to the news that the Trump administration is considering rolling back the Obama administration’s lawless expansion of Title IX, the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. At issue is the definition of the word “sex.”

In April 2014, the Obama administration quietly expanded the definition — without an act of Congress or even a regulatory rulemaking process. In a document called “Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence” it stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

Again, this was done without an act of Congress and without even a regulatory rulemaking process. Democratic members of Congress had tried — and failed — to amend federal nondiscrimination statutes many times. So the Obama administration did it without Congress. Obama’s legendary “pen and phone” purported to change the law.

When the Trump administration gained power, it rolled back Obama-era transgender directives, including the sweeping education mandates, but it has not formally responded to the previous administration's expansion of the scope of the statute.

Read more at nationalreview.com ...

These unfortunate people need medical help with their mental issues. Not surgical enablement of their abnormal ideations.

The National review?

RIGHT BIAS


These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

This is a highly biased opinion piece the completely ignores the damage the Trump Administration is about to inflict on human lives. It alleges that Obama skirted the law, and rule making procedures by extending tittle lX protections to Trans people but defends Trump's move to declare - in defiance of science, common sense, and human decency that gender is fixed at birth and immutable. Give me a fucking break with this horseshit

But YOU'RE not biased!.....Give us a break!

I have my biases- but I back them up with facts. You people have nothing but dumbed down horseshit

What facts? A bunch of SCARED SCIENTISTS that changed decades old thoughts on mentally ill people after they were threatened?

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Thank you so much for your informative and cogent comment on an important topic. You are a indispensable asset to the intellectual quality of the discourse on the USMB Keep up the good work. We'll all be looking forward to your next riveting post

The Trump Administration Isn’t ‘Dehumanizing’ Transgender Americans

The administration is proposing to conform the law to the truth.

Today I learned something truly new. I’d lived my life on this earth almost 49 years before I understood that federal anti-discrimination law defines human existence. Changing that law can thus literally “negate the humanity of people.”

At least that’s what I’m learning in response to the news that the Trump administration is considering rolling back the Obama administration’s lawless expansion of Title IX, the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. At issue is the definition of the word “sex.”

In April 2014, the Obama administration quietly expanded the definition — without an act of Congress or even a regulatory rulemaking process. In a document called “Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence” it stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

Again, this was done without an act of Congress and without even a regulatory rulemaking process. Democratic members of Congress had tried — and failed — to amend federal nondiscrimination statutes many times. So the Obama administration did it without Congress. Obama’s legendary “pen and phone” purported to change the law.

When the Trump administration gained power, it rolled back Obama-era transgender directives, including the sweeping education mandates, but it has not formally responded to the previous administration's expansion of the scope of the statute.

Read more at nationalreview.com ...

These unfortunate people need medical help with their mental issues. Not surgical enablement of their abnormal ideations.

The National review?

RIGHT BIAS


These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

This is a highly biased opinion piece the completely ignores the damage the Trump Administration is about to inflict on human lives. It alleges that Obama skirted the law, and rule making procedures by extending tittle lX protections to Trans people but defends Trump's move to declare - in defiance of science, common sense, and human decency that gender is fixed at birth and immutable. Give me a fucking break with this horseshit

But YOU'RE not biased!.....Give us a break!

I have my biases- but I back them up with facts. You people have nothing but dumbed down horseshit

What facts? A bunch of SCARED SCIENTISTS that changed decades old thoughts on mentally ill people after they were threatened?

We are talking about biological facts related to transgender and intersexual occurrences. But I see, you can't deal with that so now you allude to homosexuality and mental illness.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

Trump administration trying to define transgender out of existence: NY Times | Reuters


This won’t be the first attack on the gay community and it certainly won’t be the last now that they have Kavanaugh in office.

Republicans are funny. They think that they can just attack the gay community and attack blacks and attack Hispanics and that’ll be the end of it.

But when you start following these Nazi tactics. That’s never the end of it. It’s only the beginning.

With all due respect, Mr. Deanrd, you're trying to make something bad out of nothing bad.

He deserves no respect.

He gets no respect.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

Trump administration trying to define transgender out of existence: NY Times | Reuters


This won’t be the first attack on the gay community and it certainly won’t be the last now that they have Kavanaugh in office.

Republicans are funny. They think that they can just attack the gay community and attack blacks and attack Hispanics and that’ll be the end of it.

But when you start following these Nazi tactics. That’s never the end of it. It’s only the beginning.

They are coming to get you.

Be very afraid.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

See what I mean? Republicans are just nasty people. They prove it every day on the USMB .

But it’s honest people like me who are likely to be banned.

Most conservatives are ignorant and frightened, and their ignorance and fear soon manifest as hate – in this case an unwarranted hatred of gay and transgender Americans.

As usual, your hyperbolic quotes don't do you any favors.

I noticed your ratings as a moron have gone up.

Most conservatives are concerned with real issues.

They don't spend their time worrying about this crap.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

Most conservatives are ignorant and frightened, and their ignorance and fear soon manifest as hate – i

As usual, we can always count on you to provide a cogent and appropriate comment and to raise the level of intellectual discourse on important topics.

Except this isn't an important topic.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

The science is clear that not everyone is clearly 100% male or female which may or may not be obvious or even detected at all at birth.

Mr. Patriot, Science can still determine with precision whether the child is male or female in spite of such anomalies, and I quote "The infants who have ambiguous genitals are examined carefully to determine their actual sex. Often blood tests are necessary. Since males have XY pattern and females have XX pattern of chromosomes, the blood test to determine the chromosomal make-up correctly detects the sex of the infants." Neonatal Genital Defects (Male And Female Defects) - You Ask MD Answers

​

I don't suppose that you bothered too read the story that I posted about the child who was incorrectly determined to be a girl at birth-for the sake of expedience- and the ensuing ordeal. ?? What you posted is outdated, dumbed down crap, that goes against the grain of what is considered best practices today.

What did you not understand about scientific chromosomal identification?

It's not what I don't understand. It is what you don't understand- and that is that it is not as simple as XY vs. XX. Some children are not clearly boys or girls biologically and the premature assignment of gender by surgical alteration can be and often is disastrous.
The Transgender Brain

 

[Oldstyle]

See what I mean? Republicans are just nasty people. They prove it every day on the USMB .

But it’s honest people like me who are likely to be banned.

LOL...you won't be banned because you're "honest", R-Derp...you'll be banned because you waste so much of the board's space on stupid strings!

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Most conservatives are ignorant and frightened, and their ignorance and fear soon manifest as hate – i

As usual, we can always count on you to provide a cogent and appropriate comment and to raise the level of intellectual discourse on important topics.

Except this isn't an important topic.

You would be singing a different tune if you were trans or born with intersexual features.

 

[The Purge]

The Trump Administration Isn’t ‘Dehumanizing’ Transgender Americans

The administration is proposing to conform the law to the truth.

Today I learned something truly new. I’d lived my life on this earth almost 49 years before I understood that federal anti-discrimination law defines human existence. Changing that law can thus literally “negate the humanity of people.”

At least that’s what I’m learning in response to the news that the Trump administration is considering rolling back the Obama administration’s lawless expansion of Title IX, the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. At issue is the definition of the word “sex.”

In April 2014, the Obama administration quietly expanded the definition — without an act of Congress or even a regulatory rulemaking process. In a document called “Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence” it stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

Again, this was done without an act of Congress and without even a regulatory rulemaking process. Democratic members of Congress had tried — and failed — to amend federal nondiscrimination statutes many times. So the Obama administration did it without Congress. Obama’s legendary “pen and phone” purported to change the law.

When the Trump administration gained power, it rolled back Obama-era transgender directives, including the sweeping education mandates, but it has not formally responded to the previous administration's expansion of the scope of the statute.

Read more at nationalreview.com ...

These unfortunate people need medical help with their mental issues. Not surgical enablement of their abnormal ideations.

The National review?

RIGHT BIAS


These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

This is a highly biased opinion piece the completely ignores the damage the Trump Administration is about to inflict on human lives. It alleges that Obama skirted the law, and rule making procedures by extending tittle lX protections to Trans people but defends Trump's move to declare - in defiance of science, common sense, and human decency that gender is fixed at birth and immutable. Give me a fucking break with this horseshit

But YOU'RE not biased!.....Give us a break!

I have my biases- but I back them up with facts. You people have nothing but dumbed down horseshit

What facts? A bunch of SCARED SCIENTISTS that changed decades old thoughts on mentally ill people after they were threatened?

We are talking about biological facts related to transgender and intersexual occurrences. But I see, you can't deal with that so now you allude to homosexuality and mental illness.

What biological facts....mental illness is rampant in liberals?

 

[beautress]

The science is clear that not everyone is clearly 100% male or female which may or may not be obvious or even detected at all at birth.

Mr. Patriot, Science can still determine with precision whether the child is male or female in spite of such anomalies, and I quote "The infants who have ambiguous genitals are examined carefully to determine their actual sex. Often blood tests are necessary. Since males have XY pattern and females have XX pattern of chromosomes, the blood test to determine the chromosomal make-up correctly detects the sex of the infants." Neonatal Genital Defects (Male And Female Defects) - You Ask MD Answers

​

I don't suppose that you bothered too read the story that I posted about the child who was incorrectly determined to be a girl at birth-for the sake of expedience- and the ensuing ordeal. ?? What you posted is outdated, dumbed down crap, that goes against the grain of what is considered best practices today.

What did you not understand about scientific chromosomal identification?

It's not what I don't understand. It is what you don't understand- and that is that it is not as simple as XY vs. XX. Some children are not clearly boys or girls biologically and the premature assignment of gender by surgical alteration can be and often is disastrous.
The Transgender Brain

I'm glad you found a source that parrots my earlier link and post. I'll do my best to lower my expectations of you as an American citizen of the loyal opposition. No hard feelings here.

 

[well named]

Mr. Patriot, Science can still determine with precision whether the child is male or female in spite of such anomalies, and I quote "The infants who have ambiguous genitals are examined carefully to determine their actual sex. Often blood tests are necessary. Since males have XY pattern and females have XX pattern of chromosomes, the blood test to determine the chromosomal make-up correctly detects the sex of the infants." Neonatal Genital Defects (Male And Female Defects) - You Ask MD Answers

The author you are quoting is oversimplifying the biology of sex, in a couple of ways. First: it's not always true that a person will have entirely either XY or XX chromosomes. Some intersex people are both with a mix of both, i.e. some cells contain XX and others XY. Some people are born with an extra sex chromosome. Those conditions are rare, but not unheard of.

Secondly, the biology of sex involves more than just chromosomes. There is in general a complicated relationship between genetics and phenotype, where gene expression depends on environmental conditions in a great many complicated ways. A lot of sexual development depends on various hormones, and hormone levels in early development rely on more than just X and Y chromosomes. That's how you end up with ambiguity in genitalia, but there's also some evidence of brain differences between people who identify as transgender and those who do not.

"Male and female brains are, on average, slightly different in structure, although there is tremendous individual variability. Several studies have looked for signs that transgender people have brains more similar to their experienced gender. Spanish investigators—led by psychobiologist Antonio Guillamon of the National Distance Education University in Madrid and neuropsychologist Carme Junqu Plaja of the University of Barcelona—used MRI to examine the brains of 24 female-to-males and 18 male-to-females—both before and after treatment with cross-sex hormones. Their results, published in 2013, showed that even before treatment the brain structures of the trans people were more similar in some respects to the brains of their experienced gender than those of their natal gender. For example, the female-to-male subjects had relatively thin subcortical areas (these areas tend to be thinner in men than in women). Male-to-female subjects tended to have thinner cortical regions in the right hemisphere, which is characteristic of a female brain. (Such differences became more pronounced after treatment.)"
​

Obviously the topic is complicated. It's not really surprising that medical doctors (who may not be specialists in this area), speaking to clients who tend to expect their children to either be male or female, will try to provide them with answers that fit their expectations. And it's true that biologically humans are nearly sexually dimorphic. A large majority of people are unambiguously male or female, and do not experience any gender dysphoria. Just like a large majority of people are heterosexual. So it's understandable that gender categories (social norms, values, expectations tied to biological sex) tend towards being dichotomous. But the absoluteness with which some people treat those categories does not exist neatly in the underlying biology. Maybe only 1-5% of people will have any intersex traits, and some of those traits (like the brain differences) will not be readily apparent. The biology is not even well understood yet. But that 1-5% of people do exist.

My view is that it's understandable that we make gender as a social category -- distinct from biological sex but based in it -- an absolute, admitting only male and female. Although other cultures exist which do not do this (cf. Hijras in India and Pakistan). But it's something like a reasonable first-order approximation of the underlying biology. The whole "50 genders" thing is mostly a straw-man; very few people even on the left hold such a view. But the flaw with that idea is that it mistakes social construction for individual construction. It misunderstands the sociology of gender. Society collectively determines what categories are legitimate (in large part based on the above approximate dimorphism), and individuals don't really have the power to confer legitimacy on their own unique understanding of themselves.

But, that in itself explains the conundrum that transgender people find themselves in. Imagine that you experience extreme gender dysphoria from a young age -- a phenomena that very likely is rooted in some biologically intersex characteristics. What can you do? Your socialization tells you very strongly that you must either be male or female. Those are the legitimate options. So you try to adapt yourself to fit one of them, because it's very hard to develop a normal and positive self-image if you can't see yourself as belonging to a legitimate category. But clearly trying to accommodate transgender people simply by treating them as members of their self-identified sex is also culturally problematic, as evidenced by the uproar over bathrooms and locker-rooms. It seems to me that recognizing that sexual dimorphism is not absolute is the first step towards resolving the dilemma. You can't actually define transgender people out of existence. If social pressure were enough, there would already be no transgender people, just as there would be no gay people if social stigma were enough to discourage it. Maybe it doesn't always make sense to see an MtF transgender person as being identical to a cisgender female person, whether biologically or in terms of their experience of the world. Recognizing that sexual dimorphism is only nearly dimorphic, rather than being absolutely dimorphic, might allow us to come up with better ways, as a culture, to accommodate the existence of transgender people, by allowing us to recognize that our gender categories are also not absolute.

 

[beautress]

Mr. Patriot, Science can still determine with precision whether the child is male or female in spite of such anomalies, and I quote "The infants who have ambiguous genitals are examined carefully to determine their actual sex. Often blood tests are necessary. Since males have XY pattern and females have XX pattern of chromosomes, the blood test to determine the chromosomal make-up correctly detects the sex of the infants." Neonatal Genital Defects (Male And Female Defects) - You Ask MD Answers

The author you are quoting is oversimplifying the biology of sex, in a couple of ways. First: it's not always true that a person will have entirely either XY or XX chromosomes. Some intersex people are both with a mix of both, i.e. some cells contain XX and others XY. Some people are born with an extra sex chromosome. Those conditions are rare, but not unheard of.

Secondly, the biology of sex involves more than just chromosomes. There is in general a complicated relationship between genetics and phenotype, where gene expression depends on environmental conditions in a great many complicated ways. A lot of sexual development depends on various hormones, and hormone levels in early development rely on more than just X and Y chromosomes. That's how you end up with ambiguity in genitalia, but there's also some evidence of brain differences between people who identify as transgender and those who do not.

"Male and female brains are, on average, slightly different in structure, although there is tremendous individual variability. Several studies have looked for signs that transgender people have brains more similar to their experienced gender. Spanish investigators—led by psychobiologist Antonio Guillamon of the National Distance Education University in Madrid and neuropsychologist Carme Junqu Plaja of the University of Barcelona—used MRI to examine the brains of 24 female-to-males and 18 male-to-females—both before and after treatment with cross-sex hormones. Their results, published in 2013, showed that even before treatment the brain structures of the trans people were more similar in some respects to the brains of their experienced gender than those of their natal gender. For example, the female-to-male subjects had relatively thin subcortical areas (these areas tend to be thinner in men than in women). Male-to-female subjects tended to have thinner cortical regions in the right hemisphere, which is characteristic of a female brain. (Such differences became more pronounced after treatment.)"
​

Obviously the topic is complicated. It's not really surprising that medical doctors (who may not be specialists in this area), speaking to clients who tend to expect their children to either be male or female, will try to provide them with answers that fit their expectations. And it's true that biologically humans are nearly sexually dimorphic. A large majority of people are unambiguously male or female, and do not experience any gender dysphoria. Just like a large majority of people are heterosexual. So it's understandable that gender categories (social norms, values, expectations tied to biological sex) tend towards being dichotomous. But the absoluteness with which some people treat those categories does not exist neatly in the underlying biology. Maybe only 1-5% of people will have any intersex traits, and some of those traits (like the brain differences) will not be readily apparent. The biology is not even well understood yet. But that 1-5% of people do exist.

My view is that it's understandable that we make gender as a social category -- distinct from biological sex but based in it -- an absolute, admitting only male and female. Although other cultures exist which do not do this (cf. Hijras in India and Pakistan). But it's something like a reasonable first-order approximation of the underlying biology. The whole "50 genders" thing is mostly a straw-man; very few people even on the left hold such a view. But the flaw with that idea is that it mistakes social construction for individual construction. It misunderstands the sociology of gender. Society collectively determines what categories are legitimate (in large part based on the above approximate dimorphism), and individuals don't really have the power to confer legitimacy on their own unique understanding of themselves.

But, that in itself explains the conundrum that transgender people find themselves in. Imagine that you experience extreme gender dysphoria from a young age -- a phenomena that very likely is rooted in some biologically intersex characteristics. What can you do? Your socialization tells you very strongly that you must either be male or female. Those are the legitimate options. So you try to adapt yourself to fit one of them, because it's very hard to develop a normal and positive self-image if you can't see yourself as belonging to a legitimate category. But clearly trying to accommodate transgender people simply by treating them as members of their self-identified sex is also culturally problematic, as evidenced by the uproar over bathrooms and locker-rooms. It seems to me that recognizing that sexual dimorphism is not absolute is the first step towards resolving the dilemma. You can't actually define transgender people out of existence. If social pressure were enough, there would already be no transgender people, just as there would be no gay people if social stigma were enough to discourage it. Maybe it doesn't always make sense to always see an MtF transgender person as being identical to a cisgender female person, whether biologically or in terms of their experience of the world. Recognizing that sexual dimorphism is only nearly dimorphic, rather than being absolutely dimorphic, might allow us to come up with better ways, as a culture, to accommodate the existence of transgender people, by allowing us to recognize that our gender categories are also not absolute.

You have some good points in your science, and I have deepest regard for absolute transgender persons as well as those who have uniquely rare gender issues on the infinite difference and variety of the human sex continuum. True equality in any person is fighting the good fight, which points in the direction of tolerance in my book. Even so, with no judgment on my part about it, mankind has does its best through us to cause us to abandon some behaviors and keep others. Part of life is accepting the role you are born with, although that is not everyone's schema. Our founders taught through their constitution, the belief that all of us are equal, I believe people have free will and the right to follow it in practical matters.

However, I don't buy into the brainwashing people are now receiving as the role of parents has been doled out to the education system, which has a tendency to expropriate tenets of religion, which was never intended to be part of a public supported educational system in the Founder's America. I'm not here to debate the public education of our children, but simply to notice it. I also think that if education expropriates much more of traditional family mores, it will find itself sans government support and will have to go back to private education, which will knell a toll on political parties that get fat on experimentalism, which seems to have become the easy way out of civilized behavior in public, IMHO.

That said, I'm done with this thread and its demanding participants that marginalize traditional people and often celebrate or tolerate atheism with the warning is that is precisely how the Nazis came into popular power, dismantling the church by marginalizing its leadership and followers. The rest was easy. Without interference from the holy people, Hitler had free access into brainwashing his nation that certain members of the nation would have to choose between life and death--namely, Jews and other groups they considered a threat to expedient takeover of human thought in the Germanic realm which came to first snub, then to deport, and then finally, kill racial and medical groups, namely Jews, handicapped peoples amd as well all persons they deemed deviants, whether by nature or choice.

And most notably, the Nazis divorced the doctrine of forgiveness, which is why they marginalized all institutions of faith. It was a control freak's jubilee, and it deeply damaged one of the cleverest, gifted societies on the face of the earth. Did we learn a single thing from them and the result of these diverse marginalizations? You decide.

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

The National review?



This is a highly biased opinion piece the completely ignores the damage the Trump Administration is about to inflict on human lives. It alleges that Obama skirted the law, and rule making procedures by extending tittle lX protections to Trans people but defends Trump's move to declare - in defiance of science, common sense, and human decency that gender is fixed at birth and immutable. Give me a fucking break with this horseshit

But YOU'RE not biased!.....Give us a break!

I have my biases- but I back them up with facts. You people have nothing but dumbed down horseshit

What facts? A bunch of SCARED SCIENTISTS that changed decades old thoughts on mentally ill people after they were threatened?

We are talking about biological facts related to transgender and intersexual occurrences. But I see, you can't deal with that so now you allude to homosexuality and mental illness.

What biological facts....mental illness is rampant in liberals?

Now your just trolling. Scram,

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Mr. Patriot, Science can still determine with precision whether the child is male or female in spite of such anomalies, and I quote "The infants who have ambiguous genitals are examined carefully to determine their actual sex. Often blood tests are necessary. Since males have XY pattern and females have XX pattern of chromosomes, the blood test to determine the chromosomal make-up correctly detects the sex of the infants." Neonatal Genital Defects (Male And Female Defects) - You Ask MD Answers

The author you are quoting is oversimplifying the biology of sex, in a couple of ways. First: it's not always true that a person will have entirely either XY or XX chromosomes. Some intersex people are both with a mix of both, i.e. some cells contain XX and others XY. Some people are born with an extra sex chromosome. Those conditions are rare, but not unheard of.

Secondly, the biology of sex involves more than just chromosomes. There is in general a complicated relationship between genetics and phenotype, where gene expression depends on environmental conditions in a great many complicated ways. A lot of sexual development depends on various hormones, and hormone levels in early development rely on more than just X and Y chromosomes. That's how you end up with ambiguity in genitalia, but there's also some evidence of brain differences between people who identify as transgender and those who do not.

"Male and female brains are, on average, slightly different in structure, although there is tremendous individual variability. Several studies have looked for signs that transgender people have brains more similar to their experienced gender. Spanish investigators—led by psychobiologist Antonio Guillamon of the National Distance Education University in Madrid and neuropsychologist Carme Junqu Plaja of the University of Barcelona—used MRI to examine the brains of 24 female-to-males and 18 male-to-females—both before and after treatment with cross-sex hormones. Their results, published in 2013, showed that even before treatment the brain structures of the trans people were more similar in some respects to the brains of their experienced gender than those of their natal gender. For example, the female-to-male subjects had relatively thin subcortical areas (these areas tend to be thinner in men than in women). Male-to-female subjects tended to have thinner cortical regions in the right hemisphere, which is characteristic of a female brain. (Such differences became more pronounced after treatment.)"
​

Obviously the topic is complicated. It's not really surprising that medical doctors (who may not be specialists in this area), speaking to clients who tend to expect their children to either be male or female, will try to provide them with answers that fit their expectations. And it's true that biologically humans are nearly sexually dimorphic. A large majority of people are unambiguously male or female, and do not experience any gender dysphoria. Just like a large majority of people are heterosexual. So it's understandable that gender categories (social norms, values, expectations tied to biological sex) tend towards being dichotomous. But the absoluteness with which some people treat those categories does not exist neatly in the underlying biology. Maybe only 1-5% of people will have any intersex traits, and some of those traits (like the brain differences) will not be readily apparent. The biology is not even well understood yet. But that 1-5% of people do exist.

My view is that it's understandable that we make gender as a social category -- distinct from biological sex but based in it -- an absolute, admitting only male and female. Although other cultures exist which do not do this (cf. Hijras in India and Pakistan). But it's something like a reasonable first-order approximation of the underlying biology. The whole "50 genders" thing is mostly a straw-man; very few people even on the left hold such a view. But the flaw with that idea is that it mistakes social construction for individual construction. It misunderstands the sociology of gender. Society collectively determines what categories are legitimate (in large part based on the above approximate dimorphism), and individuals don't really have the power to confer legitimacy on their own unique understanding of themselves.

But, that in itself explains the conundrum that transgender people find themselves in. Imagine that you experience extreme gender dysphoria from a young age -- a phenomena that very likely is rooted in some biologically intersex characteristics. What can you do? Your socialization tells you very strongly that you must either be male or female. Those are the legitimate options. So you try to adapt yourself to fit one of them, because it's very hard to develop a normal and positive self-image if you can't see yourself as belonging to a legitimate category. But clearly trying to accommodate transgender people simply by treating them as members of their self-identified sex is also culturally problematic, as evidenced by the uproar over bathrooms and locker-rooms. It seems to me that recognizing that sexual dimorphism is not absolute is the first step towards resolving the dilemma. You can't actually define transgender people out of existence. If social pressure were enough, there would already be no transgender people, just as there would be no gay people if social stigma were enough to discourage it. Maybe it doesn't always make sense to always see an MtF transgender person as being identical to a cisgender female person, whether biologically or in terms of their experience of the world. Recognizing that sexual dimorphism is only nearly dimorphic, rather than being absolutely dimorphic, might allow us to come up with better ways, as a culture, to accommodate the existence of transgender people, by allowing us to recognize that our gender categories are also not absolute.

You have some good points in your science, and I have deepest regard for absolute transgender persons as well as those who have uniquely rare gender issues on the infinite difference and variety of the human sex continuum. True equality in any person is fighting the good fight, which points in the direction of tolerance in my book. Even so, with no judgment on my part about it, mankind has does its best through us to cause us to abandon some behaviors and keep others. Part of life is accepting the role you are born with, although that is not everyone's schema. Our founders taught through their constitution, the belief that all of us are equal, I believe people have free will and the right to follow it in practical matters.

However, I don't buy into the brainwashing people are now receiving as the role of parents has been doled out to the education system, which has a tendency to expropriate tenets of religion, which was never intended to be part of a public supported educational system in the Founder's America. I'm not here to debate the public education of our children, but simply to notice it. I also think that if education expropriates much more of traditional family mores, it will find itself sans government support and will have to go back to private education, which will knell a toll on political parties that get fat on experimentalism, which seems to have become the easy way out of civilized behavior in public, IMHO.

That said, I'm done with this thread and its demanding participants that marginalize traditional people and often celebrate or tolerate atheism with the warning is that is precisely how the Nazis came into popular power, dismantling the church by marginalizing its leadership and followers. The rest was easy. Without interference from the holy people, Hitler had free access into brainwashing his nation that certain members of the nation would have to choose between life and death--namely, Jews and other groups they considered a threat to expedient takeover of human thought in the Germanic realm which came to first snub, then to deport, and then finally, kill racial and medical groups, namely Jews, handicapped peoples amd as well all persons they deemed deviants, whether by nature or choice.

And most notably, the Nazis divorced the doctrine of forgiveness, which is why they marginalized all institutions of faith. It was a control freak's jubilee, and it deeply damaged one of the cleverest, gifted societies on the face of the earth. Did we learn a single thing from them and the result of these diverse marginalizations? You decide.

Holy shit!! Now I get it. Tolerating and recognizing transgender people-allowing them their gender identity- will foster the rise of atheism which leads to the destruction of the education system, and traditional families and ultimately Nazism !! Wow, we must immediately outlaw transgender and all that is LGBTQ !!

 

[TheProgressivePatriot]

Update!! Lambda Legal : "This will not stand"

Trump Administration Effort to Erase Transgender Americans Will Not Stand

This effort, spearheaded by anti-LGBTQ extremists in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), not only willfully ignores the long line of federal cases protecting transgender people but also inexplicably disregards the vast consensus of medical authority.

If the New York Times story is accurate, the sheer breadth of what HHS is proposing is jaw-dropping. HHS would be calling on the federal agencies that enforce parts of Title IX – including the Departments of Labor, Justice and Education in addition to HHS – to accept its completely arbitrary definition of what constitutes a person’s “sex” for purposes of applying federal antidiscrimination law in aspects of life ranging from education to employment to health care.

Let us be clear: For years, courts across the country have recognized that discriminating against someone because they are transgender is a form of sex discrimination, full stop.

If this administration wants to try and turn back the clock by moving ahead with its own legally frivolous and scientifically unsupportable definition of sex, we will be there to meet that challenge.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

We are talking about biological facts related to transgender and intersexual occurrences. But I see, you can't deal with that so now you allude to homosexuality and mental illness.

The true biological facts are that in mammals, including humans, male and female are distinguished by objective, observable, physiological differences; that a male is not a female; that a female is not a male; and that one absolutely cannot become the other.

 

[well named]

The true biological facts are that in mammals, including humans, male and female are distinguished by objective, observable, physiological differences; that a male is not a female; that a female is not a male; and that one absolutely cannot become the other.

Your statement is false, even for humans. See for example: Gender change in 46,XY persons with 5alpha-reductase-2 deficiency and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency (full text here). People with this condition literally undergo physiological changes in biological sex at puberty, to varying degrees. As I said earlier, conditions like this are relatively rare (although it can become more common in certain sub-populations, cf. the above article p. 400), but your claim that "one absolutely cannot become the other" is false, as is the claim that sex is strictly dimorphic, which I covered earlier.

To repeat myself, human sex is nearly dichotomous, and that clearly does matter to an understanding of social norms about gender, but it's not the same as being absolutely dichotomous, and the failures involved with treating sex as an absolute binary are important to understanding the existence of transgender people.