Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is another example of a social contagion, perhaps even worse than the ones described in the article as it leads vulnerable teenagers to permanently disfigure and mutilate themselves, with the backing of a predatory medical establishment.
I've said it in the past and I will say it again. "Gender affirming" surgeries will be looked at in a couple of decades the way lobotomy is being looked at now.
This is a clear result of the over-representation of the left in popular media and educational institutes, resulting from the previous over-representation of the right.
It might be analogous to helping the mentally ill walk off a bridge.
Not an easy topic by any means, especially in the context of a culture that so stigmatizes mental illness (even mentioning that it might be an issues is controversial to the ignorant on these topics).
With all respect, this strikes me as a really terrible analogy on multiple levels.
First and foremost, it seems extremely problematic to argue that a female-assigned individual who deeply believes they were supposed to be born without breasts is experiencing a mental state that resembles anything like suicide. Regardless of any legitimate concerns about gender surgery, this analogy immediately breaks down.
Treatments and behaviors surrounding mental illness are usually framed in terms of how adaptive they are, i.e. walking off a bridge leads to death, therefore not adaptive (ever). Having a mastectomy, if it allows someone to live a happier more fulfilling life: potentially adaptive.
Many people still believe that being gay is a mental illness, and that this is an affliction that must be “cured”. Many people still argue that the LGBTQ+ community is essentially leading hordes of people off of bridges by the thousands.
I’m not accusing you of holding this view, but I bring it up here because in the minds of many, both issues lie somewhere on the same slippery slope, and at its foundation, the analogy assumes that these people are deeply ill, and the only cure is to change one’s brain.
As our understanding of consciousness grows and we learn more about the links between our physical bodies and mental states, many avenues of mental health treatment increasingly acknowledge the role of the whole body in this picture.
To your point, this doesn’t make the topic an easy one, and I have plenty of concerns about people making decisions without the proper education and counseling. But it seems that many people project their own inability to comprehend such changes onto those who are not locked into the same world view, and the result starts to look a lot like the rampant homophobia of recent decades past: understandable given the trajectory of culture up to that point, but extremely problematic.
As medical technology advances, such surgeries may become less and less risky. In a hypothetical future, if someone could “try out” the body parts of the gender they identify with without that being a permanent decision, would that change your assessment of these surgeries and their potential utility?
Your last part about a future technology is very interesting.
Part of the confusion around this topic might come from the many different perspectives on what it means to help someone in need.
Any parent knows that a child could (and have been known to) kill itself given the option to only eat what they want (candy, cookies, etc.) There are documented cases of near-death experiences of children due to parents who gave in and only fed the child favorite sugar rich-cereal for every meal.
It may seem unfair to the child that their parents are disrespecting their deeply held beliefs about their diet, but they aren’t mentally developed enough to understand what’s best for them.
Another analogous phenomenon is transeablism: “The desire to acquire a disability through choice rather than happenstance”
People suffering from this have been known to band-saw off their arms, or throw themselves into machinery to acquire disabilities to help their body match their internal mental identity/state.
One could imagine a nice doctor helping someone band-saw off their arm to achieve their mind/body peace if the technological cost on everyone was zero in some future, just as today we see well-meaning doctors chemically band-saw off people’s healthy body functions through chemical castration.
Yeah, I think the fact that humans often want things regardless of whether or not those things are conducive to life/happiness is a huge factor. This factor is magnified when the individual is young enough to have a brain that is still developing, but arguably applies at all ages, with the primary difference being that we generally trust the consistency of the internal states of adults more than we do the states of minors.
Clearly wanting something isn’t enough to justify it, for many reasons.
I think the thing that needs more examination is how we tell the difference between the kind of mind that wants to saw its own arm off for no apparent direct gain from the kind of mind that knows it was born into the wrong body. These are clearly both deviations from the norm, but as a bisexual man, I also realize that a large portion of the population still believes I’m mentally ill, even if wanting other body parts isn’t part of my “illness”, and so I can’t reduce the plight of a pre-op trans person to just a simple matter of wants.
Continuing on the future tech thought experiment, I also wonder how opinions would change if a test were developed that could reliably predict if someone would be happier after an operation. Something that detects/indicates compatibility.
It seems that most opposition to these operations fall into two buckets:
1. The religious one, where this is an abomination and no amount of progress will change the nature of the opposition. I have little interest in arguing against this, since the premise is inherently illogical.
2. The logical one, built on the legitimate concern that an operation can’t be undone, and therefore could potentially cause more harm than benefit in the long run if the patient later realizes that they were mistaken.
In regards to 1., the axioms of the value of a life are inherently illogical, because they are axioms, so I would be hesitant to disregard having the argument, since a good argument can refine your position on any topic.
For example, I have met utilitarians that have little regard for life that has no economic value, but they are upfront regarding the value of life in economic terms, versus inherent value which a decision one has to make that is inherently illogical.
If I could rewrite that sentence, I’d replace “illogical” with “fictional”.
My point is that I have little interest in arguing against the claims in a book or books, written by men, claiming to be the infallible word of whichever god or gods in a discussion about an individual’s bodily autonomy and pursuit of personal well-being. I think it is as irrelevant as invoking any other random work of fiction.
Someone else can have that argument and I’ll eat popcorn, but as a child and survivor of a dogmatic and traumatic religious upbringing that taught me to hate my own sexuality, I have no interest in wasting more energy on it.
Why are you posting this drivel? The links show a much more nuanced discussion than what you are trying to imply.
The French demanded to end the discrimination against gay men as by law gay sex was prohibited until the age of 21, but the age of consent for straight sex was 18. Nothing to do with pedophilia. Oh and that happened in 1977 - almost 50 years ago.
You are obsessed with the left vs the right culture war. It’s not healthy.
They were not just about making the age of consent equal for gay and hetero sex. They were also pushing for lowering and abolishing the age of consent altogether. You can see this as a 'submarine'. From the wikipedia article:
"Michel Foucault argued that it is intolerable
to assume that a child is incapable of giving
meaningful consent to sexual relations."
There is clearly a structural similarity between contemporary apologists for genital mutilation under euphemisms such as 'gender affirming surgery' and the what the french intellectuals demanded 50 years ago.
Firstly, you are twisting my words. I have never said that genital mutilation is culture war, only that you are obsessed with it.
Secondly, you have demonstrated your inability to have an honest discussion without trying to “mutilate” your opponent’s view. For this reason I will not spend time translating the French sources just to prove you wrong. You did it yourself already by linking to that WikiPedia article while mis-representing its content.
"Michel Foucault argued that it is intolerable
to assume that a child is incapable of giving
meaningful consent to sexual relations."
The action of the french intellectuals or the German Greens was very clearly not just about equating the age of consent between homosexuals and heterosexual, but also about enabling sex between adults and prepubescent children.
Yes, at that time men under the age of 21 were considered children not being able to give consent specifically to having gay sex. However, men of the same age were not considered children when having straight sex. Do you see a problem with that?
More importantly, are you as furious that _today_ children as young as 13 are able to give consent in many mostly republican states in the US?
Are you OK with 13 y.o. girls being able to give consent in Tennessee? It’s happening today in your own country, led by your own party, not in France 50 years ago.
The children that Foucault has been referring to were not 21 year old men, as you know perfectly well, and as the Wikipedia article makes and the other links I gave make perfectly clear. And the German Greens also did not refer to 21 year old men, what they all were supporting was more something like the Kentler experiments [1].
What is "my own party" and what is "my own country", are you not making unwarranted assumptions?
Absent strong social pressure, humans tend to start having sex when they reach puberty. I doubt that there is even one human on the planet who does not have ancestors that had children at 13. Why is this relevant?
What is not acceptable, as you know very well, is genital mutilation of children without consent (children cannot give consent) that renders them permantently infertile and dysorgasmic. Stop defending child abuse!
It’s absolutely hilarious that you justify 13 year olds being able to give consent today while posturing about some French petitions from 50 years ago (that did not result in any laws even remotely allowing pedophilia). What a grand delusion!
Regarding your country. Yes, it’s an assumption on my part since you are talking about the right and the left and the culture war. Unless you are from the UK and meant that as a criticism of the woke left wing Tories who have been in power for a very long time now?
I find the comparison with lobotomies deeply problematic and reductionist for a number of reasons:
1. Lobotomy was generally not voluntary on the part of the patient.
2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
3. Given what we’re learning about the fluidity of sexuality and gender dysphoria, there’s at least some argument to be made that these surgeries have at least the potential for net benefit, even if the jury’s out on the actual degree of benefit or the specific circumstances under which benefit is experienced.
With all of that said, encouraging these surgeries nonchalantly and without regard for their permanence and real world impacts is hugely problematic. The problematic parts are amplified when the patient is too young to legally make other life changing decisions.
But to me, comparing these surgeries with lobotomies reduces issues of dysphoria and its potential remedies to a caricature of the situation and shuts down lines of thinking regarding potential benefits.
After all, if these are truly as problematic as lobotomies, all discussion should turn to how we should campaign against said surgeries. Reality is not nearly this simple.
I’m curious how you feel about other forms of body modification, from the routine (nose job, breast augmentation, etc) to the more extreme (extreme jewelry/piercings, tattoos, etc).
It seems to be culturally acceptable (for the most part) to modify one’s body based on other characteristics of one’s identity that are arguably far less innate than sexuality.
It’s puzzles me that people see gender surgery so differently.
> Lobotomy was generally not voluntary on the part of the patient [...] curious how you feel about other forms of body modification
In what sense can children consent to genital mutilation, since they do not understand at all human sexuality and the human sex drive, since the have had absolutely no experience with it?
Virtually all other forms of body modification are also not legal for children.
Contrary to popular hysteria, it's extraordinary rare that anyone under the age of medical consent is given what you would call "bottom surgery".
As far as parents forcing children into genital mutilation, this is actually very popular and common elective medical procedure, but the word you're looking for is circumcision.
Murder and bank robbery are fundamentally criminal acts. There is no version of these acts that become acceptable upon reaching the age of majority.
Calling out the fact that the majority of sex change operations happen at the behest of an adult who elects to have the operation is not derailing the discussion, but inserting a rather critical point of context when examining the issue broadly.
That doesn't mean the concern about minors is not legitimate, but clarifies that the conversation is much broader than this subset.
> Neither male nor female circumcision affects the ability to have children.
Why is this relevant? I have not been mutilated, but I choose not to have children either. I haven't yet undergone a vasectomy, but plan to do so at some point in the future so I don't have to worry about it. But this seems like a non-sequitur, unless you're implying there is some moral compulsion to procreate.
> Female circumcision is forbidden almost everywhere.
It's estimated that ~200 million girls/women alive today have undergone FGM, and a significant number still undergo this yearly. While the practice is in decline in many places, there are countries where no such decline has started.
But regardless of that, it's an orthogonal issue, and no more belongs in a conversation about sex change operations than bringing up ritual organ harvesting in a conversation about appendectomies.
> Too much apologia of child abuse!
Again, acknowledging that surgery is often necessary is not the equivalent of apologizing for non-consensual ritual sadism.
"extraordinary rare" is still too much, and trivialises the issue. There is serious lobbying in place in many countries to make it happen more. As you know, the only acceptable rate is 0. One important
stepping stone in getting this rate back down to 0 is to make it illegal tout court even for adult. There should not even be medical infrastructure for such mutilation.
Aside, your user name here is after an organisation founded by one of world history's worst mass murderers. Can I suggest to show empathy with his victims, and not use this term? Using it trivialises his crimes.
> In what sense can children consent to genital mutilation
First, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between the practice of genital mutilation - a practice that is alive and well in various cultures and maims significant numbers of kids every year in the name of religious superstition - from sex change operations.
Regardless of what you think about the appropriate age for such a decision, reducing this to “genital mutilation” trivializes the issue and tries to draw a comparison with a barbaric practice despite there being no connection between the two.
Almost all forms of surgery would appear barbaric on the surface if not for the significant utility of undergoing those surgeries. That doesn’t mean we should equate cutting someone open and removing their appendix with a ritualistic religious practice that appears similar at face value.
That said, I made no claims about the appropriateness of these surgeries for minors, nor do I believe someone at that age is mature enough to understand the implications of such.
That doesn’t change anything that I wrote though, even if it’s an important factor to consider for a subset of potential patients.
(1) it is a sex change operation, please do not misrepresent modern genital mutilation. Sex is a biological phenomenon
to do with reproduction and, simplifying a small bit: there are two sexes, male and female. A man whose genitals are mutilated
does not become a women (i.e. gains the ability to give birth to children).
(2) the purpose of modern genital mutilation for the mutilatee is to facilitate sex fraud, and for the mutilator is, one imagines,
money.
(3) if
believe someone at that age is mature enough to understand the implications of modern genital mutilation, you will have to face
the question why you trivialise it. Your writing here may, directly or indirectly lead to more modern genital mutilation.
Speech has consequences.
The whole point of all treatment is to alter our subjective experience of consciousness and thereby experience a greater sense of well-being. In effect, alter our minds.
That is true whether you're taking advil for your headache, anti-depressants to help you through PTSD, or the removal of body parts that have become toxic to your existence (e.g. your gall bladder).
That doesn't mean that all mind-altering treatments are created equal, and hormonal changes result in fundamentally different outcomes than changing (destroying) the underlying physical structures those treatments are operating on.
Put another way, lobotomies alter the hardware that all of these subjective experiences run on. Other forms of treatment are effectively modifications to software, or modifications to accommodate existing software. Drawing analogies between lobotomies and other forms of treatment is interesting as a thought experiment, but means little in practice.
But the real issue is that lobotomy just doesn't work. If lobotomy worked, it'd still be in the modern doctor's repertoire along with bloodletting and other practices. It's used here to represent a "Bad Idea", and we know far too little about gender dysphoria to relegate existing treatments to the same category.
The brain isn't like a piece of silicon and you really can't use an analogy like that. The "Software" "running" on the brain actively modifies the brain. That's why it has been shown that even a single dose of magic mushrooms alters regions in the brain permanently.
I'm not attacking your point on whether a lobotomy worked or not. Or whether transitioning works or not. I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
> The brain isn't like a piece of silicon and you really can't use an analogy like that.
Of course it's not like silicon, and that's why it's an analogy. Neither is a lobotomy anything like a sex change operation.
The basic structure of this particular analogy is highlighting that:
- Solution A: Literally destroys the machinery
- Solution B: Brings about changes in how the machinery operates by altering the processes running on that machinery
That these processes are further self-modifying is interesting, but irrelevant to the point.
The implications of these outcomes are meaningfully different whether we're talking about silicon or organic brains.
> I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
This is not the point I was trying to make, and as I pointed out in the beginning of my comment, the entire point of any medical operation is to "change the brain", either directly or indirectly.
My point was more about the nature of the change, and how the literal destruction of a brain is a very different kind of change and is therefore an even more problematic comparison to make in the original comment.
Going on a road trip also permanently alters the brain.
That they are self-modifying is the entire point. You can't just sweep that under the rug. This is what you said:
> 2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain. You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
> That they are self-modifying is the entire point.
From my perspective, physical destruction was the primary point, and I was very specifically calling attention to how that destruction is meaningfully different from other kinds of changes.
That the brain is self-modifying was assumed, and self modification becomes a moot point when the brain is no longer capable of the traditional processes of self modification due to physical destruction.
> And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain.
A point that I acknowledged explicitly above. That doesn't mean that attacking a region of the brain with a metal spike and hammer is somehow the same thing.
> You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
Obviously my words were not very clear since you've taken some meaning from them that I never intended.
Hopefully this comment clarifies the original intent sufficiently (which, incidentally is not back pedaling, since nothing about my position has changed).
Yeah people really seem to have gotten (purposefully?) lost in the weeds with that analogy. If it’s worth anything to you, I think your original point holds up.
Care to share the perspective you have on the subject? Speaking with such conviction about something that can have so much real impact on the lives of others, I’d really hope you have some direct and first hand experience.
> Lisa Littman, at the time an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created the term based on an online survey of parents on three anti-trans websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group.[6][7][8] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders.[1]
it’s great anyone can just conjure an an intimidating acronym to give the air of legitimacy, but this is very much not the scientific rigor i’d expect from hacker news
> The rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy centers around the concept of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), proposed in a 2018 study to be a subtype of gender dysphoria caused by peer influence and social contagion.[1] It has not been recognized by any major professional association as a valid mental health diagnosis, and use of the term has been discouraged by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and other medical organizations due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence, major methodological issues in existing research, and likelihood to cause harm by stigmatizing gender-affirming care.[2][3][4][5]
This isn't science.
> Lisa Littman, at the time an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created the term based on an online survey of parents on three anti-trans websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group.[6][7][8] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders.[1]
Spreading this garbage is grotesque and bigoted. Stop it.
you can't act like surveying people who are ideologically against the concept of trans people can make for an unbiased basis on which to claim things about trans people
You could probably make the same argument that the obsession with trans issues by people who have no first hand experience and are completely unaffected by them is also some form of social contagion.
Reputable being the key word here, where their reputation is based in how well their science adheres to the popular discourse among the intelligentsia.
> You could probably make the same argument that the obsession with trans issues by people who have no first hand experience and are completely unaffected by them is also some form of social contagion.
You could further make the argument (and people have!) that all spread of ideas and behaviors among people is a form of social contagion.
I wonder if there is an interplay between gender dysmorphia and the commodification of identity and sexuality.
I can't speak from experience, but what I see often seems like a treadmill of trying to obtain something external (recognition and validation) to make yourself happy and complete.
Do you remember how schadenfreude, became part of popular culture? It put a name to a feeling that people were already experiencing and people shared the concept because it helped explain part of themselves to themselves? It's like that.
Does the signifier schadenfreude alone commodity the feeling? That's a complicated question. In the way all signifiers commodify signifieds. See works by semioticists for opinions on this.
It feels like by interplay you might be suggesting is that commodification acts to produce more gender dysphoria. That's a but like asking if the word "anger" acts to commodify the embodied emotion and produce more angry people. I suspect the feeling would still be there, but far fewer people would self-identify as being angry at times because of an inability to recognize and communicate their experience. The inability to identify and communicate the feeling would cause a bunch of nth-order effects.
We've all been taught at a young age that there is a word for being angry, "anger" as explained to us by our parents, but by teaching us this word our parents didn't instill anger in us. Rather we've been taught to identify a pre-existing emotion.
As to the later, you can perform the thought experiment of closing your eyes and imagining how you would react if everyone approached and interacted with you as if you were the opposite gender. How would you reconcile your personal identity with that of people's behavior towards you? Do you suspect it would cause you to turn inwards and modify your internal sense of self or do you suppose your internal sense of self is foundational and that you would attempt to persuade those around you to instead adjust their perceptions?
To extend, personally, I would love to see a treatise on Stoicism as applied to gender dysphoria. My gut reaction though is that if an ingroup is suggesting stoicism to an outgroup, something has already gone very very wrong.
To follow your analogy, I think I am rather asking why people feel schadenfreude or anger.
When it comes to gender idendity, maybe the dysphoria and discomfort was always there, and at the same rates. However, social conditions and trends can make the feelings of schadenfrede and anger more or less common, independent of if we have a word to call it.
As an example, if we lived in a society that imbued less meaning into gender, and it was less of an important part of identity, would gender dysphoria be as common? This example is just a tool to ask what goes into a gender label, and why do people want it?
It is basically a the same question I struggle with when I perform your thought experiment and want to be treated as a different gender? What goes into the label, and why do I want it?
I imagine that if I was given the label, but none of the meaningful attributes I ascribe to it, I would still be unhappy.
Im not really trying to prescribe any solution like stoicism, or invalidate the feelings people have, but ask what gives rise to those feelings.
> I think I am rather asking why people feel schadenfreude or anger.
I wish I had a better answer for you. The only emotional model I've come in contact with is the two-factor theory[1] and even that's just a passing familiarity. More specifically, I haven't seen an incorporation of the two-factor model into gender dysphoria.
> As an example, if we lived in a society that imbued less meaning into gender, and it was less of an important part of identity, would gender dysphoria be as common?
Anecdata, but there are many many trans people I've talked to[2] who wish gender played a less prominent role in society(up to and including gender abolition). Given that goal is unlikely to be accomplished in our lifetimes, the very next best thing is to live the rest of their life as the gender they self-identify as.
> What goes into the label, and why do I want it?
Anyone who honestly engages with trying to understand the social ontology of gender[3] has the very difficult task of peeling back successive layers of social questions and answers that most folks foreclose on because it involves unanswerable questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and truth.
I'd be happy to discuss more, but the sensitivity of the topic leaves me hesitant. Contact info in bio.
61 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadThis is a clear result of the over-representation of the left in popular media and educational institutes, resulting from the previous over-representation of the right.
Not an easy topic by any means, especially in the context of a culture that so stigmatizes mental illness (even mentioning that it might be an issues is controversial to the ignorant on these topics).
First and foremost, it seems extremely problematic to argue that a female-assigned individual who deeply believes they were supposed to be born without breasts is experiencing a mental state that resembles anything like suicide. Regardless of any legitimate concerns about gender surgery, this analogy immediately breaks down.
Treatments and behaviors surrounding mental illness are usually framed in terms of how adaptive they are, i.e. walking off a bridge leads to death, therefore not adaptive (ever). Having a mastectomy, if it allows someone to live a happier more fulfilling life: potentially adaptive.
Many people still believe that being gay is a mental illness, and that this is an affliction that must be “cured”. Many people still argue that the LGBTQ+ community is essentially leading hordes of people off of bridges by the thousands.
I’m not accusing you of holding this view, but I bring it up here because in the minds of many, both issues lie somewhere on the same slippery slope, and at its foundation, the analogy assumes that these people are deeply ill, and the only cure is to change one’s brain.
As our understanding of consciousness grows and we learn more about the links between our physical bodies and mental states, many avenues of mental health treatment increasingly acknowledge the role of the whole body in this picture.
To your point, this doesn’t make the topic an easy one, and I have plenty of concerns about people making decisions without the proper education and counseling. But it seems that many people project their own inability to comprehend such changes onto those who are not locked into the same world view, and the result starts to look a lot like the rampant homophobia of recent decades past: understandable given the trajectory of culture up to that point, but extremely problematic.
As medical technology advances, such surgeries may become less and less risky. In a hypothetical future, if someone could “try out” the body parts of the gender they identify with without that being a permanent decision, would that change your assessment of these surgeries and their potential utility?
Part of the confusion around this topic might come from the many different perspectives on what it means to help someone in need.
Any parent knows that a child could (and have been known to) kill itself given the option to only eat what they want (candy, cookies, etc.) There are documented cases of near-death experiences of children due to parents who gave in and only fed the child favorite sugar rich-cereal for every meal.
It may seem unfair to the child that their parents are disrespecting their deeply held beliefs about their diet, but they aren’t mentally developed enough to understand what’s best for them.
Another analogous phenomenon is transeablism: “The desire to acquire a disability through choice rather than happenstance”
People suffering from this have been known to band-saw off their arms, or throw themselves into machinery to acquire disabilities to help their body match their internal mental identity/state.
One could imagine a nice doctor helping someone band-saw off their arm to achieve their mind/body peace if the technological cost on everyone was zero in some future, just as today we see well-meaning doctors chemically band-saw off people’s healthy body functions through chemical castration.
Definitely a difficult topic.
Clearly wanting something isn’t enough to justify it, for many reasons.
I think the thing that needs more examination is how we tell the difference between the kind of mind that wants to saw its own arm off for no apparent direct gain from the kind of mind that knows it was born into the wrong body. These are clearly both deviations from the norm, but as a bisexual man, I also realize that a large portion of the population still believes I’m mentally ill, even if wanting other body parts isn’t part of my “illness”, and so I can’t reduce the plight of a pre-op trans person to just a simple matter of wants.
Continuing on the future tech thought experiment, I also wonder how opinions would change if a test were developed that could reliably predict if someone would be happier after an operation. Something that detects/indicates compatibility.
It seems that most opposition to these operations fall into two buckets:
1. The religious one, where this is an abomination and no amount of progress will change the nature of the opposition. I have little interest in arguing against this, since the premise is inherently illogical.
2. The logical one, built on the legitimate concern that an operation can’t be undone, and therefore could potentially cause more harm than benefit in the long run if the patient later realizes that they were mistaken.
Difficult for sure.
For example, I have met utilitarians that have little regard for life that has no economic value, but they are upfront regarding the value of life in economic terms, versus inherent value which a decision one has to make that is inherently illogical.
My point is that I have little interest in arguing against the claims in a book or books, written by men, claiming to be the infallible word of whichever god or gods in a discussion about an individual’s bodily autonomy and pursuit of personal well-being. I think it is as irrelevant as invoking any other random work of fiction.
Someone else can have that argument and I’ll eat popcorn, but as a child and survivor of a dogmatic and traumatic religious upbringing that taught me to hate my own sexuality, I have no interest in wasting more energy on it.
The French demanded to end the discrimination against gay men as by law gay sex was prohibited until the age of 21, but the age of consent for straight sex was 18. Nothing to do with pedophilia. Oh and that happened in 1977 - almost 50 years ago.
You are obsessed with the left vs the right culture war. It’s not healthy.
Did you actually read the french (and german green) petitions?
https://web.archive.org/web/20050404190912/http://www.decadi...
Here is the letter from the well-known intellectuals:
https://www.dolto.fr/fd-code-penal-crp.html
They were not just about making the age of consent equal for gay and hetero sex. They were also pushing for lowering and abolishing the age of consent altogether. You can see this as a 'submarine'. From the wikipedia article:
There is clearly a structural similarity between contemporary apologists for genital mutilation under euphemisms such as 'gender affirming surgery' and the what the french intellectuals demanded 50 years ago.Secondly, you have demonstrated your inability to have an honest discussion without trying to “mutilate” your opponent’s view. For this reason I will not spend time translating the French sources just to prove you wrong. You did it yourself already by linking to that WikiPedia article while mis-representing its content.
More importantly, are you as furious that _today_ children as young as 13 are able to give consent in many mostly republican states in the US?
Are you OK with 13 y.o. girls being able to give consent in Tennessee? It’s happening today in your own country, led by your own party, not in France 50 years ago.
What is "my own party" and what is "my own country", are you not making unwarranted assumptions?
Absent strong social pressure, humans tend to start having sex when they reach puberty. I doubt that there is even one human on the planet who does not have ancestors that had children at 13. Why is this relevant?
What is not acceptable, as you know very well, is genital mutilation of children without consent (children cannot give consent) that renders them permantently infertile and dysorgasmic. Stop defending child abuse!
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...
It’s absolutely hilarious that you justify 13 year olds being able to give consent today while posturing about some French petitions from 50 years ago (that did not result in any laws even remotely allowing pedophilia). What a grand delusion!
Regarding your country. Yes, it’s an assumption on my part since you are talking about the right and the left and the culture war. Unless you are from the UK and meant that as a criticism of the woke left wing Tories who have been in power for a very long time now?
1. Lobotomy was generally not voluntary on the part of the patient.
2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
3. Given what we’re learning about the fluidity of sexuality and gender dysphoria, there’s at least some argument to be made that these surgeries have at least the potential for net benefit, even if the jury’s out on the actual degree of benefit or the specific circumstances under which benefit is experienced.
With all of that said, encouraging these surgeries nonchalantly and without regard for their permanence and real world impacts is hugely problematic. The problematic parts are amplified when the patient is too young to legally make other life changing decisions.
But to me, comparing these surgeries with lobotomies reduces issues of dysphoria and its potential remedies to a caricature of the situation and shuts down lines of thinking regarding potential benefits.
After all, if these are truly as problematic as lobotomies, all discussion should turn to how we should campaign against said surgeries. Reality is not nearly this simple.
I’m curious how you feel about other forms of body modification, from the routine (nose job, breast augmentation, etc) to the more extreme (extreme jewelry/piercings, tattoos, etc).
It seems to be culturally acceptable (for the most part) to modify one’s body based on other characteristics of one’s identity that are arguably far less innate than sexuality.
It’s puzzles me that people see gender surgery so differently.
In what sense can children consent to genital mutilation, since they do not understand at all human sexuality and the human sex drive, since the have had absolutely no experience with it? Virtually all other forms of body modification are also not legal for children.
As far as parents forcing children into genital mutilation, this is actually very popular and common elective medical procedure, but the word you're looking for is circumcision.
Calling out the fact that the majority of sex change operations happen at the behest of an adult who elects to have the operation is not derailing the discussion, but inserting a rather critical point of context when examining the issue broadly.
That doesn't mean the concern about minors is not legitimate, but clarifies that the conversation is much broader than this subset.
> Neither male nor female circumcision affects the ability to have children.
Why is this relevant? I have not been mutilated, but I choose not to have children either. I haven't yet undergone a vasectomy, but plan to do so at some point in the future so I don't have to worry about it. But this seems like a non-sequitur, unless you're implying there is some moral compulsion to procreate.
> Female circumcision is forbidden almost everywhere.
It's estimated that ~200 million girls/women alive today have undergone FGM, and a significant number still undergo this yearly. While the practice is in decline in many places, there are countries where no such decline has started.
But regardless of that, it's an orthogonal issue, and no more belongs in a conversation about sex change operations than bringing up ritual organ harvesting in a conversation about appendectomies.
> Too much apologia of child abuse!
Again, acknowledging that surgery is often necessary is not the equivalent of apologizing for non-consensual ritual sadism.
Aside, your user name here is after an organisation founded by one of world history's worst mass murderers. Can I suggest to show empathy with his victims, and not use this term? Using it trivialises his crimes.
I'm just being generous, I'm not technically aware of a single instance.
> even for adult
Is this a theocratic totalitarianism thing or a hatred for humanity and hatred of personal freedom thing?
First, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between the practice of genital mutilation - a practice that is alive and well in various cultures and maims significant numbers of kids every year in the name of religious superstition - from sex change operations.
Regardless of what you think about the appropriate age for such a decision, reducing this to “genital mutilation” trivializes the issue and tries to draw a comparison with a barbaric practice despite there being no connection between the two.
Almost all forms of surgery would appear barbaric on the surface if not for the significant utility of undergoing those surgeries. That doesn’t mean we should equate cutting someone open and removing their appendix with a ritualistic religious practice that appears similar at face value.
That said, I made no claims about the appropriateness of these surgeries for minors, nor do I believe someone at that age is mature enough to understand the implications of such.
That doesn’t change anything that I wrote though, even if it’s an important factor to consider for a subset of potential patients.
(2) the purpose of modern genital mutilation for the mutilatee is to facilitate sex fraud, and for the mutilator is, one imagines, money.
(3) if believe someone at that age is mature enough to understand the implications of modern genital mutilation, you will have to face the question why you trivialise it. Your writing here may, directly or indirectly lead to more modern genital mutilation. Speech has consequences.
That is true whether you're taking advil for your headache, anti-depressants to help you through PTSD, or the removal of body parts that have become toxic to your existence (e.g. your gall bladder).
That doesn't mean that all mind-altering treatments are created equal, and hormonal changes result in fundamentally different outcomes than changing (destroying) the underlying physical structures those treatments are operating on.
Put another way, lobotomies alter the hardware that all of these subjective experiences run on. Other forms of treatment are effectively modifications to software, or modifications to accommodate existing software. Drawing analogies between lobotomies and other forms of treatment is interesting as a thought experiment, but means little in practice.
But the real issue is that lobotomy just doesn't work. If lobotomy worked, it'd still be in the modern doctor's repertoire along with bloodletting and other practices. It's used here to represent a "Bad Idea", and we know far too little about gender dysphoria to relegate existing treatments to the same category.
I'm not attacking your point on whether a lobotomy worked or not. Or whether transitioning works or not. I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
Of course it's not like silicon, and that's why it's an analogy. Neither is a lobotomy anything like a sex change operation.
The basic structure of this particular analogy is highlighting that:
- Solution A: Literally destroys the machinery
- Solution B: Brings about changes in how the machinery operates by altering the processes running on that machinery
That these processes are further self-modifying is interesting, but irrelevant to the point.
The implications of these outcomes are meaningfully different whether we're talking about silicon or organic brains.
> I simply find your point that transitioning is not permanently changing the brain very silly.
This is not the point I was trying to make, and as I pointed out in the beginning of my comment, the entire point of any medical operation is to "change the brain", either directly or indirectly.
My point was more about the nature of the change, and how the literal destruction of a brain is a very different kind of change and is therefore an even more problematic comparison to make in the original comment.
Going on a road trip also permanently alters the brain.
> 2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain. You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
From my perspective, physical destruction was the primary point, and I was very specifically calling attention to how that destruction is meaningfully different from other kinds of changes.
That the brain is self-modifying was assumed, and self modification becomes a moot point when the brain is no longer capable of the traditional processes of self modification due to physical destruction.
> And transitioning for sure changes the makeup of one's brain.
A point that I acknowledged explicitly above. That doesn't mean that attacking a region of the brain with a metal spike and hammer is somehow the same thing.
> You can backpedal all you want now but your own words are very clear.
Obviously my words were not very clear since you've taken some meaning from them that I never intended.
Hopefully this comment clarifies the original intent sufficiently (which, incidentally is not back pedaling, since nothing about my position has changed).
it’s great anyone can just conjure an an intimidating acronym to give the air of legitimacy, but this is very much not the scientific rigor i’d expect from hacker news
This isn't science.
> Lisa Littman, at the time an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created the term based on an online survey of parents on three anti-trans websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group.[6][7][8] Littman speculated that rapid onset of gender dysphoria could be a "social coping mechanism" for other disorders.[1]
Spreading this garbage is grotesque and bigoted. Stop it.
Just because some research challenges your ideological viewpoint, doesn't mean it's bigoted.
You could further make the argument (and people have!) that all spread of ideas and behaviors among people is a form of social contagion.
I can't speak from experience, but what I see often seems like a treadmill of trying to obtain something external (recognition and validation) to make yourself happy and complete.
Does the signifier schadenfreude alone commodity the feeling? That's a complicated question. In the way all signifiers commodify signifieds. See works by semioticists for opinions on this.
It feels like by interplay you might be suggesting is that commodification acts to produce more gender dysphoria. That's a but like asking if the word "anger" acts to commodify the embodied emotion and produce more angry people. I suspect the feeling would still be there, but far fewer people would self-identify as being angry at times because of an inability to recognize and communicate their experience. The inability to identify and communicate the feeling would cause a bunch of nth-order effects.
We've all been taught at a young age that there is a word for being angry, "anger" as explained to us by our parents, but by teaching us this word our parents didn't instill anger in us. Rather we've been taught to identify a pre-existing emotion.
As to the later, you can perform the thought experiment of closing your eyes and imagining how you would react if everyone approached and interacted with you as if you were the opposite gender. How would you reconcile your personal identity with that of people's behavior towards you? Do you suspect it would cause you to turn inwards and modify your internal sense of self or do you suppose your internal sense of self is foundational and that you would attempt to persuade those around you to instead adjust their perceptions?
To extend, personally, I would love to see a treatise on Stoicism as applied to gender dysphoria. My gut reaction though is that if an ingroup is suggesting stoicism to an outgroup, something has already gone very very wrong.
When it comes to gender idendity, maybe the dysphoria and discomfort was always there, and at the same rates. However, social conditions and trends can make the feelings of schadenfrede and anger more or less common, independent of if we have a word to call it.
As an example, if we lived in a society that imbued less meaning into gender, and it was less of an important part of identity, would gender dysphoria be as common? This example is just a tool to ask what goes into a gender label, and why do people want it?
It is basically a the same question I struggle with when I perform your thought experiment and want to be treated as a different gender? What goes into the label, and why do I want it?
I imagine that if I was given the label, but none of the meaningful attributes I ascribe to it, I would still be unhappy.
Im not really trying to prescribe any solution like stoicism, or invalidate the feelings people have, but ask what gives rise to those feelings.
I wish I had a better answer for you. The only emotional model I've come in contact with is the two-factor theory[1] and even that's just a passing familiarity. More specifically, I haven't seen an incorporation of the two-factor model into gender dysphoria.
> As an example, if we lived in a society that imbued less meaning into gender, and it was less of an important part of identity, would gender dysphoria be as common?
Anecdata, but there are many many trans people I've talked to[2] who wish gender played a less prominent role in society(up to and including gender abolition). Given that goal is unlikely to be accomplished in our lifetimes, the very next best thing is to live the rest of their life as the gender they self-identify as.
> What goes into the label, and why do I want it?
Anyone who honestly engages with trying to understand the social ontology of gender[3] has the very difficult task of peeling back successive layers of social questions and answers that most folks foreclose on because it involves unanswerable questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and truth.
I'd be happy to discuss more, but the sensitivity of the topic leaves me hesitant. Contact info in bio.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory_of_emotion
2. There's definitely selection bias at work and I fully acknowledge this.
3. As it largely exists in the west.
Gender dysphoria. Body dysmorphia is a very different thing, despite the words being similarly shaped.