Today is Bi/Pan Invisibility Day.

All beliefs are inherently acts of faith and thus irrational.

 

Going to slightly challenge this.

I do get the argument that physically transgender people (at least before reassignment) anyhow aren’t necessarily the sex they label themselves as. I’ve always found the idea that someone born one sex who then identified as another should automatically be regarded as the other sad to be a bit disingenuous. There is a certain denial of biological reality there.

However, and it’s an important however, I don’t think people like Paladin grasp that there is a difference between physical sex and gender indentity. He’s basically ignoring the latter as a concept. Gender identity is when his argument becomes one dimensional. He is arguing pure biology. But he is giving no consideration to psychology, including how a person sees themselves and how deep and internal their indentification with a gender is. There are copious amounts of scientific research on this. Do people like Paladin not realise the ridicule that people in Nova’s place in society, as a married (formerly) conservative man, open themselves up for in choosing to identify as their gender they feel they are? You don’t do what she did unless you have a deep mental identity as a woman. It’s at that point that the argument that she is a woman arises to my mind.

In calling Nova “him” Paladin is waving his hand away to gender identity and just focusing on physiology. He is refusing to acknowledge the very concept, even though science does. Some might suggest that is bigoted. One assumes he doesn’t hand wave away other psychological concepts, like PTSD for instance, so why do it for gender identity?

 

Given that medical science is constantly backing up the claims of trans people with evidence, there is some biological reality to what trans people experience. Gender dysphoria a form of stress that some (but not all) trans people experience can only be treated by transitioning. It's why doctors prescribe hormones to trans people instead of putting them into mental hospitals or trying to cure a "delusion". Paladin's claims can't be backed up by anything, just his personal feelings on the matter which are extremely misinformed. He might as well argue the world is flat, he'd have just as much scientific proof.

 

Not sure I agree with all of that. I mean I certainly agree there are biological elements, hence the hormones, but an non reassigned transgender person still has the genetic physiological they were born with. That doesn't qualify as zero scientific proof of physiological sex to my mind. If you are born with a penis and a certain set of chromosomes then at least physically you are still in part a man. Pretending that is not the case is denying an obvious physical fact surely?

Like I say, I think the issue is the blurring of the lines between genetic physiology and gender identity. What I am trying to say above is that even if you double down on the idea that retaining a penis and certain chromosomes makes a transgender woman a man, and you dismiss any biological counter arguments at all, you still have to then consider the psychological concept of gender identity. For me it is when the gender identity conflicts with the physical aspects that you cannot just say "that person is still a man".

In other words, even if you accepted Paladin's genetic argument, you then still have to consider gender identity regardless. I'm saying that he's essentially approaching it as a one tier "argument", when in reality it is multi tiered.

 

Yet intersex people exist, there are women who were assigned female at birth and raised female with XY chromosomes, something they don't discover until sometimes adulthood. Even genitals are a bit iffy at times. It's not common, but it's something that happens. Biologically sex and gender seem to be a spectrum with the vast majority of the population being in the cis range, but that doesn't mean they're the default with everyone else being defects. A fetus is influenced by hormones at two stages, one mainly affecting the brain and the other affecting the sexual characteristics. There's some evidence that with trans people, they get one and not the other. Causing the brain to develop one way and the body another. Since any problem associated with being trans is entirely from transphobia, it's likely this is just another element of being human that was ignored until recent history. Some people are cis, some are trans, some are straight, some are gay, some are bi, some are asexual, some are righthanded, some are lefthanded, humans are complex and shoving us into boxes is based purely on social reasons and not biological ones.

You'll notice that there aren't many scientists who agree with him. Ask actual biologists and not internet randos is a flimsy memory of high school biology class and they'll tell you when examine anything biological the lines begin to blur. Humans aren't even limited to XY and XY, it's just more common. There's no guarantee that any of us have the chromosomes we assume we have, because many times there are no noticable effects and it doesn't affect reproduction. Unless you go get a test, you're really just making assumptions based on what is most likely. According to actual scientists, trans woman are born female, they just happen to have a penis and were raised male because of it.

There's an article that's a great intro to it, with links to farther reading.

 

Actually, it's not as simple as it appears at all, there's increasing evidence the idea of a "female brain in a male body" may literally be true. This isn't just about someone's personality or self perception but is identifiable by physiological markers within the structure of the brain and furthermore has a clearly documented set of developmental precursors based in the prenatal hormonal environment.

The upshot is it isn't simply a case of someone "choosing their identity" or disregarding simple biology, but rather that biology is more nuanced and complex than we had previously imagined, with someone's gender identity being arguably more intrinsic to them than simply genitalia.

After all, one can be altered, the other cannot (and nor should it)

 

That's cute, dear.

 

But you and Nova don't disagree about what her anatomy or her DNA looks like, so clearly that is not the disagreement about reality you're referring to. So what is it?

 

that outfit looks very uncomfortable! Why is it the more important/status you have the more stifling/silly you have to dress? That's not fair!

 

I wish I were bi -- so many more opportunities to get laid!

Sorry that you're boxed into the American Beauty lifestyle where you feel like you can't be yourself, OP. But as Kevin Spacey showed us, there are solutions to that.

 

Spaghetti is also straight until it gets wet

 

Sexually assaulting future Star Trek actors?

 

Too soon dude, too soon!

 

Also, what even is pansexuality? People that fuck animals? Plants? Spess alieums?

 

It's a lot like bisexuality, with a few key differences. Someone who is pansexual is attracted to other people regardless of their sex, or gender identity. Many of us reject the notion of binary gender, seeing it more as a fluid spectrum. I prefer to use the term "omnisexual" because that's how the character of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman from Doctor Who) identifies himself, and he's cheeky and fun.

 

So we are just deciding what gender to call you based on what we assume is in your pants? Ok, so given you merely act like a man we will just start calling you miss Paladin because I am pretty sure there is nothing in your pants that resembles a penis.

So I am just going to use female pronouns for you from now on because you act like a little bitch.

Why should anyone respect the gender you portray when you don't respect theirs?

 

I think this is another thread Paladin will quietly vanish from.

 

Huh? That's the heart of the disagreement. I claim Nova's biology is what makes Nova male. Nova claims his self-Identifikation makes him female.
.
I reject that, but Nova's free to dress like, act like, and be surgically/chemically altered to resemble a woman if he chooses. But I'm free not to endorse that position.

 

You're free to do so.

 

yes'm.

 

"I suffer from depression."
"No you don't, I've seen you smile."

 

Because he's a straight, white, cis male and they think they know everything.

 

People who think they know everything are really annoying to those of us who do. Asimov IIRC.

 

I don't need to know everything - these days I can just self-identify as knowing everything.

 

And you've already seen numerous links to up to date scientific articles which bring into question your assumptions about biology.

Gender identity isn't merely a choice to dress like and resemble a particular sex, it's a question of physiologically determined neurological structures which are entirely detectable by clinical means. So you have a situation where someone's biology is essentially out of kilter, some parts of it belong to one gender, others to another. The problem you are having is that whilst one of those physiological components is more visible, the key one really is the other.

Genitalia is simply a piece of skin, it can be altered, adapted or removed without fundamentally changing who the person it is attached to is. The brain, on the other hand, literally defines who we are and is functionally immutable for our purposes here.

Someone who is a trans woman isn't a man who resembles (or tries to resemble) a woman, they are literally in clinical and physiological terms a woman with the wrong external anatomy. It isn't a figure of speech, an opinion or an ideological position, it's objectively verifiable on the basis of clinical and biological data.

 

No, clearly it isn't. If you were in disagreement about Nova's physiology or her genes, that would mean that, for instance -- and I apologize to @Nova for the crudeness of what I am about to say -- you say Nova has a dick but she denies it; or you say she has XY chromosomes but she says she's XX. But that is not the case. The two of you agree about what her physiology is.

What you disagree about instead seems to be this concept of 'making' a male:

I am seriously uncertain what you mean by that, since it is obviously not a statement about physiology in this case, even though you are phrasing it as if it were. It might be that it is intended as a statement about language, i.e. what the word 'male' means? Is that accurate?

If it is neither of those two, then the only other option I see would have to be that this is indeed an essentialist statement about the nature of something that is not part of physical reality, hence indeed an irrational belief on par with religious faith.

 

Oh honey...

My mistake, based on your behavior I assumed you were identifying as a confused old man constantly perplexed at why people don’t think exactly like you.

 

I'm pansexual and my partner is bi and cross dresses. Helps fulfill multiple parts of myself and helps him feel accepted in ways he's not used to.

 

Look oldlady1962, it does not matter what you portray as or know, it only matters what other people want to call you so you need to put on your big girl panties and buck up little miss. I am not trying to be a dick, even though doing such things is entirely dickish, and I am not going to play along with your fantasy of being a man when you clearly are not even close. I am just using the logic of the anti trans community and deciding for myself your gender because it does not matter what you think. Dont let me catch you going into that mens room to stare at the penises in a longing manner wishing you were born with one when we know you weren't.

Or we could just as easily respect each other and if someone is presenting as a man we call him a man and then none of us need to worry about how to insult others while we pretend we are just being real.