Quote:
Originally Posted by BitchiBee
theres never been a study that suggests transitioning helps mental health outcomes for transgendered people.
Sure. I assume by transitioning you mean various interventions like surgery, hormone therapy, etc? On the one hand, I would make no claims about what the best options for trans people are. I think it's a difficult and open question. I think that it makes sense to understand trans peoples' desires in the context of the culture they live in, which tells them that there are only two legitimate sex/gender categories, and that thus they must either be men or women, wholly and completely, in order to have a legitimate sense of identity. I wonder if, to some extent, the desire to transition is conditioned by that social reality. If there was a third socially legitimate gender category (the "legitimate" part is important here), would some transgender people choose to leave their biology alone? I don't know the answer, but I suspect yes. Underneath specific requests about the use of pronouns or etc. I believe there is more fundamentally the basic human need for social validation, to be able to harmonize one's identity with the social world in which gender and sexuality are so fundamental to our social sense of ourselves.
But, because of those considerations, I doubt that research could really establish the effectiveness of transitions, at least as of yet, because you're still transitioning into a cultural milieu which is highly suspicious of transgender people, transitioned or not. How much of a person's psychological well-being is conditioned by social acceptance? I believe there is research in this direction in social psychology, although I've never methodically reviewed it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BitchiBee
I'm for a live and let live approach. but the current leftist propaganda is not pushing live and let live, its pushing laws like c-16 in Ontario.
My guess is that it's not really effective to legislate cultural change, at some point. So I would focus more on just basic equality of rights and anti-discrimination. But I think, again given the above considerations, that there's some tension involved with people who are both opposed to adding gender categories to embrace transgendered people but also opposed to transgender people being identified with their chosen gender. As unreflective as Wil or nomaddd's position is, for example, I'm at least mildly sympathetic to the idea that it is culturally difficult to collapse all distinctions between cis and trans men or cis and trans women. This comes up as a problem even in some very "leftist" contexts, like feminist safe spaces that want to exclude men and MTF transgender people.
But, if you accept that transgender and intersex are real phenomena, not some random choice people make because apparently they like to make themselves miserable, and you recognize that social acceptance and legitimacy is foundational to basically every human's psychological well-being, then what are the good options for trans or intersex people whose assigned gender conflicts with their experiences of themselves? To me it seems like the most stable cultural configuration involves recognizing transgender in some way as a legitimate third category, as has happened in various cultures. Now, obviously anyone can struggle with their sense of identity relative to what culture tells them they ought to be. Cis-men may struggle to be "masculine" in the approved ways. Women to be "feminine" much the same. All of the ideas that underlie gender are contested. I doubt any configuration removes that part of being human. But it seems to me that as much as I may rebel against certain conceptions of masculinity, I have no doubt about my gender identity being accepted in some basic way. I don't know exactly how culture should adapt to transgender people, but there is no good argument against trying to find a way to allow them to feel that their struggles with identity are also in-bounds, as it were.