Finish the transgender argument

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JimG said:
If a man can declare himself a woman simply because he feels like it, then women’s sports is done. Already several biological males identifying as females have taken first and second place in several women’s sports events, displacing biological women.
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There are also people, both men and women, who havea exceptionally high natural testosterone levels, which can be indistinguishable from artificially-enhanced testosterone levels. I will not be surprised if there is a movement to define a “woman” as a competitor with a testosterone level in a certain range. The problem, of course, is that individuals who take treatment to change their physical appearance from masculine to feminine will have had the advantage in competitive sports of having gone through adolescence with testosterone levels higher than essentially all female competitors.

Yes, that is a problem that challenges the reason for creating a separate competitve class for female competitors in the first place. I don’t know how organized sports is going to handle that.

As for those who experience a deep-seated sense that their bodies are not suited to the realities of how they experience their unchanging “self,” certainly the first and last thing that is called for is a sense of empathy. That would be an extremely difficult condition to be in. Mere toddlers can tell male peers from female peers better than adults can tell boy toddlers from girl toddlers, so we’re talking about a very deeply-ingrained part of identity. This is something that matters to human beings, it matters a lot, it always has and it always will.

Some people find that it is also something that causes a deep internal conflict. These people are more prevalent than we ever appreciated when such an interior conflict was an unspeakable possibility. There is the risk that they may become more prevalent among people experiencing deep interior conflicts when the possibility is something talked about in glowing terms. It is particularly concerning that the conflict itself is presumed to reflect an unchanging physical fact about a person. Going forward, we have to recognize that the work of being truthful, kind, timely in our remarks and clear about what we even mean is not as easy as humans might have assumed in the past. Whatever we do, we have to remember that this issue strikes very deep. It is not something for flippant or callous communication.
 
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The problem is that words have a way of being diluted when the definition of a word is expanded so that it includes all exceptional cases, rather than adding qualifiers to the word when there is a case that is outside more narrow boundaries of definition.

In other words, there is less and less that can be said of “women” in general when the term encompasses more and more people. There gets to be a point at which there is little that can be said of “women” that cannot be said of “people.” In that case, what is the point of having two different words? In the beginning, the two words differed in meaning enough to be useful. What over-expanding the meaning of the word does is not to increase inclusivity but to reduce the usefulness of the word.

I’ll append a new post with a C.S. Lewis passage that demonstrates the problem in “deepening” the meaning of “woman” and “man” so much that exceptional meanings of those words are presumed to be included without qualification:

To start: People ask: “Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?”: or “May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?” Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another, and very much less important, word. (cont.)
 
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(cont) The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone “a gentleman” you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not “a gentleman” you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said - so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully - “Ah but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than John?” They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man “a gentleman” in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is “a gentleman” becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker’s attitude to that object. (A ‘nice’ meal only means a meal the speaker likes.) A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.

Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening’, the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to he a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.

C.S. Lewis, [Mere Christianity]
 
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That kind of depends on the prevalence of people who (a) deal with gender dysphoria by surgical reassignment and (b) compete in sports. Based on Renée Richards (née Richard Raskind), I don’t think that it can be presumed that sports for typical women will die out. That athlete was counted one of the best male players in the country while in college, so rising to 20th or so in the world while competing with women had to be partly assigned to tennis ability (coordination, understanding of the game, etc) rather than an unsurmountable advantage coming from the advantage of male hormones during adolescence and young adulthood.

A lot of guys are competitive, but essentially none who self-identify as men are competitive enough to literally have their primary sexual characteristics surgically abolished in order to win.
 
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I was not aiming my comment about the dangers of being flippant or callous at you. It is more of a general risk in discussing a subject that we feel we understand intuitively even when we are toddlers.
 
As for sports, it is not a requirement for a biological man to have any surgery whatever in order to self-identify as a woman and thus be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
 
My sense is that the exceptions will be so few that competition will be allowed but (let us be frank) those who compete after having had a body that developed as a male cannot help but be aware that they will be considered an “asterisk” winner if they have success in women’s athletics. If they developed as males, they’re not going to be able to conceal that nor overcome the suspicion in the general public that they may not have had the same success if their adolescent development had not had testosterone enhancement. That reality can’t be legislated or socialized away.
JimG said:
As for sports, it is not a requirement for a biological man to have any surgery whatever in order to self-identify as a woman and thus be eligible to compete in women’s sports.
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Competitors usually do have to have reduced levels of testosterone in order to compete as females, though. (By talking about losing primary sexual characteristics, I was only trying to make a blunt point using a little more delicate terms. There are extremely few males who would go through that for a competitive advantage, because most males do not dream of being better than the best women in the world. Only the ones who honestly self-identify as women would find that prospect attractive.)
 
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Keep in mind, though, that a good number of these individuals are feeling a lot of suffering over their self-concept. They are having this possibility given to them as a possible solution by their professional psychiatrists, by other people who are contending with similar difficulties, and so on.

In other words, I wouldn’t condemn anyone who was willing to entertain treatments within the prevailing standard of care for suffering they just don’t know how to alleviate. People with cancer go to foreign countries or seek help from questionable practitioners because they feel desperately in need of relief. I would hope that people will only accept treatments that the Church deems to be medically ethical, but at the same time I recognize that they have a condition that is more difficult than any I’ve ever had to deal with.

There are a lot of well-meaning people in this world who fight for the vulnerable who are taking up causes contrary to Church teaching. We have to oppose them, but we also have to recognize that they may be cases of good intentions and courage that are afflicted with a sort of invincible ignorance that they’re also doing damage.
 
PetraG said:
Yes, that is a problem that challenges the reason for creating a separate competitve class for female competitors in the first place. I don’t know how organized sports is going to handle that.
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Its easy. Have 2 categories: Female (XX) and Open (all other chromosomal combinations). If testosterone levels of an XX female exceed a particular range, they move up to the open division.
 
KMC said:
Its easy. Have 2 categories: Female (XX) and Open (all other chromosomal combinations). If testosterone levels of an XX female exceed a particular range, they move up to the open division.
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That’s a possibility, too. I don’t know that “easy” describes its likelihood of success, but it seems as unambiguous as any other possibilities.
 
The thing standing in the way of that is the born-XX athletes who went through adolescence with typically-XX levels of testosterone, not to mention their parents and their grandparents (if you want to talk about a wheel that’s surely gonna squeak…)

If relatively few of them complain, then what is the complaint? They’re the most affected.
 
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If you’re going to intentionally use language in a way that makes it difficult to have discussion, you need to actually defend your use of the terms. At the very least, then there is something to discuss, but as it is now, your attitude means there’s no way for anyone to get anywhere.
KMC said:
I’m not sure what you mean by “Christian opposition”
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I mean Christian opposition to the current philosophy. Yes, it often comes along theological grounds.
KMC said:
If so, which denomination?
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Well, my background is Protestant, and the theme can go for just about any conservative Protestant group. Unfortunately, certain Protestant groups can’t even separate transgenderism and homosexuality.

To be fair, I have read better Catholic arguments, and I think the Catholic Church has a much stronger foundation to address the matter. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Catholics as a whole are better at discussing the matter, and I think this thread is a testament to that.
KMC said:
treat the topic of gender dysphoria as an exact science
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But they aren’t. It’s very well know that the causes of gender dysphoria aren’t entirely known, but enough is known that, combined with the current secular philosophy, leads us to where we are. I already kind of addressed that, though, and I don’t really want to repeat myself again.
 
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Uh, no, if people reared through adolescence with high testosterone, beyond the lot of the XX-born, start taking over women’s sports, the XX-born are not going to be afraid of being ostracized or persecuted and they’re not going to be shouted down. They’re going to complain often and loudly.
 
The big issue is that there are some people who are pinning their hopes on feeling at home with themselves by getting plastic surgery and taking medications to change their appearance to match the way they want other people to see them.

I cannot see how that doesn’t leave a residual interior conflict. The idea that someone with an interior conflict with their unadulterated reality can feel at peace with themselves if they can only project an image that matches what they feel they ought to be and how others ought to see them? That isn’t one with a really good track record. It is what we all do, to some extent, don’t get me wrong, but when is that ever a healthy strategy? Doesn’t our complicated reality always catch up with our manicured public image?
 
@(name removed by moderator):

Dear friend:

That comment was not directed toward you. I’m interested in social science and came across that book eons ago. I thought some posters might be interested.

God bless you!
 
The psychiatrists are treating people suffering from this issue by suggesting that they might get relief if they present themselves as they see themselves. I’m not blaming patients for wanting relief and being willing to believe that they actually are what they feel in spite of physical attributes to the contrary, including DNA. If I felt upset because I thought I was Cleopatra and everybody was treating me as if I were someone else and I went to a doctor and was told, “well, you’re upset because you actually are Cleopatra, but narrow-minded people can only see your outsides so they won’t believe you!” then of course I’d insist that what everybody needed to do was to come around and accept that I am and deserve to be accepted as Cleopatra. What else would I do?

Well, if they try this method, they cannot use the bathrooms of their sex (meaning, their DNA sex). It isn’t as if they can simply stop using bathrooms in public. Considering the treatment they’re opting for, I can understand why they want to believe what they do about physical attributes being irrelevant to identity. I can’t believe they’re going to convince even themselves in the long run, let alone those of us who have a very strong emotional connection to common sense, but that seems to be the route psychiatry wants everyone to accept. No, I don’t think it is going to work, but no, I don’t blame the patients who are ready to take whatever medications and have whatever surgery they have to have in order to pass themselves off as what think will make them the most comfortable.
 
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We’re talking about people who truly believe (and are being taught by their mental health care providers to embrace) that they are actually members of the sex they experience in their minds, not the sex with the characteristics their body has.

It isn’t the people with this dysphoria who are re-inventing what gender means for society as a whole. It is the people who are treating their dysphoria who are proposing that the patients’ perception is the truth and their bodies are irrelevant distractions.

I don’t blame the people suffering from a mismatch between their bodies and their deeply-felt inner perceptions of themselves for this state of affairs. I blame the social engineers who think they can treat their patients by re-training society to disregard general truth in order to accomodate the idea that an exceptional experience is actually typical.

Having said that, people who experience this atypical difficulty have a problem that is not easy to live with. It is really hard to live with. They don’t deserve to be vilified for the handiwork of the social engineers, work they have been lead to believe is necessary to relieve their suffering.
 
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No, actually, because think about it: People suffering from this condition who don’t believe the societal cost of the treatment is warranted wouldn’t be the ones advocating for this.

The ones advocating for this are the ones who actually believe they are their interiorly-experienced sex. From that point of view, they’re just insisting that everyone come around to recognizing reality, a reality that is absolute and true, not relative or invented, albeit a reality that only they experience directly.

This doesn’t have to do with intelligence!! It has to do with a pervasive perception. Very intelligent people who get depressed still commit suicide, because their perceptions are so strong they override their intellectual ability to theorize.
 
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I really am saying that only someone who had been lead to believe that he or she really and truly is a she or a he instead would of course insist that they were the ones who were being asked to subjugate reality.

Honestly, if someone really convinces themselves that we aren’t human with all the same dignity as any other human from conception until natural death but somehow magically become human beings at some court-appointed time (such as at birth) or when we belong to a court-appointed class of people (such as those who possess a sufficient quantity of “quality of life”) then of course at that point abortion or suicide would seem to be not just some option but the right of the patient who wants it. You have to be convinced that reality really is something other than what it is to say this stuff and mean it.
 
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