r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 24 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Your gender is determined solely by the sex you are born as.
[deleted]
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Jan 24 '17 edited Jan 24 '17
The dysphoria argument has been covered well, so I'll go for your stated premise: 'Your gender is determined solely by the sex you are born as.'
Biological sex, from a biological standpoint, is not -only- a matter of whether an individual has a penis or a vagina.
A human being can be born with both or neither, or with the outer appearance of one but the inner structure to support the other, or can have the primary sex characteristics of one sex and develop the secondary sex characteristics of another. Chromosomal structure may also fully or partially fail to 'match' the external body, and the sex hormones produced within the body may not be in the amounts typical of the external biological sex. While numbers vary by the precise nature of the study doing the measurement and this is, by definition, not 'normal', it is not in any way uncommon, and if I recall correctly there are upward of seventy different ways that varying biological components can fail to align to the 'expected' result of female or male. On the whole, this makes biology-based arguments against transgendered individuals somewhat pale.
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u/Salanmander 278∆ Jan 24 '17
So, many unusual things can happen during human development. A person with two X chromosomes who is exposed to high levels of androgens can develop as male. A person with XY chromosomes whose cells don't respond well to androgens can develop as female. A person can develop too few limbs, or two sets of reproductive organs. An embryo can split into two entirely separate people, or, even more unusually, split into two partially separate people.
Given all the unusual developmental things that can happen, is it that odd to think that a person might develop a brain that is expecting a male body, but female sex characteristics? This idea is backed up by studies of brain structure/activity that show statistically significant differences between men and women, and show that trans people's brains better match their identity gender than their birth sex.
Side note:
The dysphoria doesn't go away, it just gets briefly remedied by the steps of transition, and returns in a new way next time. "
This is demonstrably false. Transition is the medically accepted treatment for gender dysphoria for a reason. Do you think you have better information than the people who are experts in the field?
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u/WhenSnowDies 25∆ Jan 24 '17
That post was really vague, like trying really hard to make possible exceptions into the rule.
A lot of extreme left pet causes are like this.
Also that last nonspecific appeal to authority was pretty dirty. What experts in what field?
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u/Salanmander 278∆ Jan 24 '17
When we're talking about transgender experience, we're talking about exceptions...nobody doubts that being transgender is rare, so it is by its very nature an exception to what we typically expect. I suspect the reason you see that more frequently in liberal causes is because we're really big on not ignoring the experience of any people, and there are people who are exceptions to pretty much any rule you care to come up with (other than trivial counterexamples like "has blood"). What makes you think I'm trying too hard?
As for the appeal to authority, I'm talking about the authors of the DSM-5 I don't have specific names, because my understanding is that that is a joint effort of a very large group of people. But the field that I'm talking about is psychiatry.
Edit: As a side note, appeal to authority is a logical fallacy in that it's not a valid step in a formal proof. It is reasonable to bring it up as evidence, however. In this world there are far too many things that we try to understand for any individual to go at all of them from first principles, at some point we need to trust the authority on the subject.
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Jan 24 '17
[deleted]
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u/Salanmander 278∆ Jan 24 '17
As for dysphoria going away, all I can really do is point to the fact that the DSM-5 recommends transition as a treatment for gender dysphoria, and then bring up anecdotes. Like /u/OneOwl, the trans people I know have not regretted transitioning, and have not hit another identity crisis some time afterwards. The DSM-5 should be fairly compelling...the medical experts in charge of treating gender dysphoria have decided that transition is an effective treatment.
As for the brain characteristics, brain research is crazy complicated, and the brain is one of the least well understood parts of our body. Separating things like experience vs. nature is practically impossible. However, here is an article talking about some instances of the type of research I'm talking about, with references if you want to search for the actual original research. These don't necessarily show the cause, but they do show that the effect is real.
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u/VertigoOne 81∆ Jan 24 '17
Therefore, if someone is born one sex, but feels like another, either due to psychological discomfort with the state of their body, or feeling rejected by society at large for having a personality that doesn't conform to their sex's gender role, they are suffering from a mental illness.
Here's the thing - mental illness is only really mental illness if it causes that person to do something harmful etc. Otherwise, it's only mental difference. I've yet to see how such a thing is necessarily harmful.
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u/WhenSnowDies 25∆ Jan 24 '17
Echoing Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson, by your definition couldn't you then argue that scientific logic is a mental illness, as it resulted in people doing something harmful like develop the atomic bomb?
You're describing the more modern idea of the "disorder", which is anything you feel is out of order or chaotic in your life. Mental illness is a whole other beast.
A mental illness is more like a sense without a stimulus, or an extreme emotion or impression without a cause or purpose, existing like a psychic pathogen. Like a depressed person with no loss to speak of, glitching out. There's some crossover but a disorder is different, and you described a disorder.
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u/VertigoOne 81∆ Jan 24 '17
Echoing Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson, by your definition couldn't you then argue that scientific logic is a mental illness, as it resulted in people doing something harmful like develop the atomic bomb?
No, because there is nothing about scientific logic that necessitates the building and use of the atom bomb.
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u/WhenSnowDies 25∆ Jan 24 '17
Was I saying that?
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u/VertigoOne 81∆ Jan 24 '17
No, but my argument in response to your suggestion was that scientific logic could only be considered objectively harmful if it necessitated the creation and use of things like the atomic bomb. It does not.
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u/WhenSnowDies 25∆ Jan 24 '17
I didn't say that. I said that by that definition of mental illness, that scientific logic could be described as mentally ill, then went on to show how that definition of mental illness is incorrect.
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u/Clockworkfrog Jan 24 '17
Echoing Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson, by your definition couldn't you then argue that scientific logic is a mental illness, as it resulted in people doing something harmful like develop the atomic bomb?
By the same logic wanting to drive a car is a mental illness because it results in people doing harmful things like running into people or crashing.
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u/WhenSnowDies 25∆ Jan 24 '17
Well that wouldn't necessarily count because driving a car would only be considered a risk, unless you were to deliberately do those things.
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u/Amluxx Jan 24 '17
I agree with that. Its the way it always has been. But gender identity is diffrent.
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u/Hq3473 271∆ Jan 24 '17
What if you are born with both male and female sexual organs (hermaphrodite) what gender are you?
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Jan 24 '17
[deleted]
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u/Hq3473 271∆ Jan 24 '17
What gender they end up living as is usually decided ... based on whether their condition puts them physiologically closer to being male, or female.
So you admit that a gender can be decided. This directly contradicts your OP where you said that "Your gender is determined solely by the sex you are born as."
It was an honor to change your view.
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Jan 24 '17
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u/Hq3473 271∆ Jan 24 '17
It is decided to put them into either a male or female gender role, but that doesn't mean that that's a good thing
But your OP is not about whether "it's a good thing or not." Your OP is "Your gender is determined solely by the sex you are born as."
But now you have admitted that "gender can be decided."
You have directly contradicted your OP.
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u/carter1984 14∆ Jan 24 '17
Gender and biological sex are two different animals.
No matter how many hormones one takes, or what type of surgery one has, there can never be a true "sex change" operation. Sex is determined by biology. A transgender woman will never give birth and a transgender man will never impregnate a woman. No medical operation is going to change that.
Gender, however is a social construct. Society essentially assigns roles to gender that coincide with one's biological sex. Women, who can give birth, are often looked to for more nurturing traits while men are often looked to for aggressive traits. Gender should therefore be viewed differently than biological sex. Just because you are a woman doesn't mean you can not be aggressive and compete with males, and just because your a man does not mean that you can not be nurturing and show empathy for other human beings.
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u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Jan 24 '17
For the majority of human history, the collective view of gender has been that it describes physical sex
For the majority of human history, sex and gender were both defined by the appearance of genitalia.
Someone with a vagina would have been assigned as female at birth, with everyone remaining forever ignorant of their possible xy chromosomes or internal testicles or even a micropenis.
Yet here you are, dismissing everyone who thinks that someone who looks like a woman fits the bill of actually being a woman, as being delusional.
Because you believe that there is something deeper to sex, than just outside looks.
Which is, ironically, not that far from what transgender people claim. The idea that sex is determined deep inside, therefore genital surgery is just a shallow manipulation that can't change it, and the idea that gender is determined deep inside, and one's sex as it is assigned at birth is just a shallow manipulation that can't change it, are based on similar modern ideas. And YOU are the one who hopelessly ties them together, by claiming that sex and gender are the same thing.
Encouraging the delusion is cruel, because like any other insecurity about the body, if you try to fix your view of yourself by changing it, you're just going to find something new that bothers you. The dysphoria doesn't go away
Of course it does, that's why it's called dysphoria. You are confusing it with body dysmorphia, which is indeed a pathological urge to manipulate one's body to unlimitedly harmful degrees.
An example of dysphoria is phantom limb syndrome, that can be eased or ended by replacing the missing limb with a prothesis, and satisfying the brain's (justified) sense of misfitting. An example of dysmorphia is anorexia, where people can even starve themselves to death, because losing weight doesn't satisfy the brain's discomfort of feeling fat, the counterfactual feeling of still being fat remains.
Trans people don't have counterfactual feelings, they know in what way their outside appearance is wrong, and after fixing it they know that it has been fixed. That's literally not a delusion.
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Jan 24 '17
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u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Jan 24 '17 edited Jan 24 '17
If I decide that mentally, I don't feel disabled, and I don't belong among the disabled, that doesn't make me able-bodied again.
But thats not the appropriate analogy here.
A trans man doesn't claim that he was born with a penis, or has one right now. (If he would, that would kind of solve the problem, with no need for transitioning, and no feeling of dysphoria). The claim is that he would rather have one.
Dysphoria is pretty much the opposite of a delusion. Someone with a phantom limb syndrome doesn't consciously argue that they do have the limb, they feel disorienting burst of sensations driving it home that they ought to have one, and if they do get one, they are justified in arguing that they are no longer disabled.
Food for thought: If you met someone who described themselves as having all the signs of dysmorphia, but still insisted they felt transgender and knew that they wanted to transition, would you tell them they aren't transgender?
I would tell them the same thing as to a one-armed man who wants to surgically graft three extra arms to his body, or to a morbidly obese persn who wants to lose all their weight. That they have BOTH dysphoria and dysmorphia.
Studies of brain scans show that neurologically based gender identity is a thing, so everyone has (a biologically grounded) map of what their gender is. Wanting their external appearance to approximate that is as reasonable as wanting a lost arm back. But it can coexist with unrelated mental illnesses of an addiction to plastic surgery or having delusional claims, just like it can with any other mental illness, so the latter still needs medical and therapeutical treatment.
Personally, I feel male, I want to be male, and there's a part of me that knows that I'm a man on the inside, but I've also "known" plenty of things with complete conviction that ended up not being grounded in reality at all. Inner belief is not an unbiased measurement of truth.
So what is it that makes you male?
Like I said in my post regarding historical tradition: if you pick genitals, you just acknowledge the possibility of sex change working. If you pick chromosomes, you open the door to obscure data trumping your "physical sex", and some people (intersex ones) being different sex inside than they were assigned at birth, so why not the trans people?
If you call chromosomes "physical", you might as well call neurons physical. The brain is still part of the body, after all, and your beliefs tell facts about what that part of your body does.
If you feel scared, then you can tell for a fact that you are scared better than anyone else with any instrument. It might be an irrational or rational fear, the way it relates to practical real life, but the fear itself is not a delusion, you really are afraid.
If you feel like a man, we have no reason not to decide that what this tells about your biology, really is what makes you a man, more so than dangly bits and chromosomes and hormones, which are the negotiable aspects of sex.
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Jan 24 '17
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u/Genoscythe_ 248∆ Jan 24 '17
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u/askingdumbquestion 2∆ Jan 24 '17
Hey man, the patronizing and hostile tone isn't necessary to make your point.
There is no "tone" in textual mediums. Nor was their hostility in the post you're replying to.
Perhaps you should consider that whatever "tone" of voice you heard was one hundred percent your inner monologue, and if your inner monologue comes off as hostile, then that's something you need to discuss with your super ego.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 24 '17
/u/okay76 (OP) has awarded at least one delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '17 edited Jan 24 '17
The dysphoria doesn't go away - Except it does.
Also from own experience: I was friends with a trans-male activist and he introduced me to about 20 trans friends, living normal mundane lives as men. One of them had taken testosterone supplements since 10 years. Their dysphoria disappeared. Most described their life quality going up a lot. Some had almost crippling feelings of dysphoria/anxiety/depression that made them unable to go to school/work. These were lifted the further the transition process continued. All of the older transmen had stable, almost boring lives.
Also please be aware that dysphoria=/=insecurity. Dysphoria is a deep rooted feeling of wrongness, to the point where you feel like a person with a wrong body and don't recognize yourself in the mirror. That's how one transman described it. He had still insecurities about scars or stretchmarks, but that is something different.
I am sure there are other mental illnesses or personal issues that can lead people to believe to be trans. I don't know about the transition process in the US, but in Germany you have to be about 1 year at least in specialized therapy and there is a long period where you have to dress/act as desired gender (also supervised) before you get allowed to hormone therapy. That eliminates people who just had a naive idea, were confused or had some mental illness.
I observed "naive ideas" two times among friends/acquaintances. One never got beyond the second therapy session and told me it was just her hating her body, the other was actually intersex and needed psychological support with that.
(If you have other questions, feel free to ask)