My thinking on transgender issues
Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerEvery so often I see some politician Gotcha'd with "Can women have penises?" - and the results have always either be flailing or in a very rare case (new Greens leader Zack Polanski) just saying "Yes", in a way which basically hands everything to the interviewer.
And I know that it's really hard to deal with an interviewer who is determined to make you look bad. But it bothers me occasionally that people don't try and explain "But here is my point of view, and where it comes from" - because while saying "Yes" might be very reassuring to people already on your side, it does nothing to persuade others who are just confused by/mildly hostile.
So here, in a simple set of 4 steps is my view.
1) Nobody is choosing to be transgender. It's a difference in brain development.
See here. This isn't new, it's the medical view, and has been for many years.
2) Forcing people to live in the gender that they don't identify as is incredibly destructive to their mental health.
This is also long well known. The vast majority of attempts to raise boys as girls and vice versa have appalling impacts on people. The poster-boy for this was David Reimer, who suffered a terrible accident as a baby which destroyed his penis (in the 60s), never knew he was born a boy, and was raised a girl (on the advice of a doctor who believes that gender was just cultural conditioning). And it made him *incredibly* unhappy - within weeks of his parents breaking the rules they'd been given and telling him (at age 13) that he had been born a boy he'd changed his name and presentation. Details here.
3) Most transgender people are not publicly out.
You might get the impression that trans people are all out activists. But the vast majority aren't. They don't want to be "The person who was born one way and is now another", they want to be the person that they are on the inside. So almost nobody they interact with on a daily basis knows that they are transgender. The ones where "Everyone knows about this transgender person" are the exception, most of them are not public about it. As a friend said "My identity is female and back when I transitioned the advice was to deal and vanish into the big bad women's world."
4) Therefore, as a society, we have a choice between either forcibly outing people whenever they want to use a toilet, get married, throw a ball, or otherwise interact with society, or letting them live in the gender that they are presenting*.
There you go. That's the humane, liberal approach to transgender people. And every time you get hooked into arguments about the definition of the word "woman", you get pulled away from those very simple things: Nobody asked to be born in a body that destroys their mental health. Most people don't want to be public about that having happened to them (because it stops them just living as the gender they are in their brains). So we can either be supportive or we can torture them.
*And that's the approach that the European Court of Human Rights took, in Goodwin vs The United Kingdom in 2001. They balanced the right of someone to not have to out themselves, against the the negative consequences thereof. And found that the proven negative consequences were basically nonexistent. Which is what then led to Labour being forced to pass the Gender Recognition Act. The rights coming from that, to live in the gender that you choose, are what is currently under attack.
And I know that it's really hard to deal with an interviewer who is determined to make you look bad. But it bothers me occasionally that people don't try and explain "But here is my point of view, and where it comes from" - because while saying "Yes" might be very reassuring to people already on your side, it does nothing to persuade others who are just confused by/mildly hostile.
So here, in a simple set of 4 steps is my view.
1) Nobody is choosing to be transgender. It's a difference in brain development.
See here. This isn't new, it's the medical view, and has been for many years.
2) Forcing people to live in the gender that they don't identify as is incredibly destructive to their mental health.
This is also long well known. The vast majority of attempts to raise boys as girls and vice versa have appalling impacts on people. The poster-boy for this was David Reimer, who suffered a terrible accident as a baby which destroyed his penis (in the 60s), never knew he was born a boy, and was raised a girl (on the advice of a doctor who believes that gender was just cultural conditioning). And it made him *incredibly* unhappy - within weeks of his parents breaking the rules they'd been given and telling him (at age 13) that he had been born a boy he'd changed his name and presentation. Details here.
3) Most transgender people are not publicly out.
You might get the impression that trans people are all out activists. But the vast majority aren't. They don't want to be "The person who was born one way and is now another", they want to be the person that they are on the inside. So almost nobody they interact with on a daily basis knows that they are transgender. The ones where "Everyone knows about this transgender person" are the exception, most of them are not public about it. As a friend said "My identity is female and back when I transitioned the advice was to deal and vanish into the big bad women's world."
4) Therefore, as a society, we have a choice between either forcibly outing people whenever they want to use a toilet, get married, throw a ball, or otherwise interact with society, or letting them live in the gender that they are presenting*.
There you go. That's the humane, liberal approach to transgender people. And every time you get hooked into arguments about the definition of the word "woman", you get pulled away from those very simple things: Nobody asked to be born in a body that destroys their mental health. Most people don't want to be public about that having happened to them (because it stops them just living as the gender they are in their brains). So we can either be supportive or we can torture them.
*And that's the approach that the European Court of Human Rights took, in Goodwin vs The United Kingdom in 2001. They balanced the right of someone to not have to out themselves, against the the negative consequences thereof. And found that the proven negative consequences were basically nonexistent. Which is what then led to Labour being forced to pass the Gender Recognition Act. The rights coming from that, to live in the gender that you choose, are what is currently under attack.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 09:14 am (UTC)"We can be supportive or we can torture them" - yup, that's basically what it comes down to. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem really keen on torture.
(a trans player was outed and removed from a UK women's ice hockey team this weekend; what little I've seen of social media commentary has been very depressing)
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 10:14 am (UTC)Since transitioning causes great benefit to one person (the trans person), and zero harm to anyone else, then we should let people be themselves!
Being trans is not like eg smoking or drink driving, where there is demonstrable harm to other people.
Absolutely no one is harmed by trans people being themselves, despite what right wing dickheads and TERFS claim.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 03:28 pm (UTC)Sadly, he committed suicide in 2004, He was only 38.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 05:47 pm (UTC)This wasn't just bad advice or misguided.
Additionally, his brother died by suicide after struggling with schizophrenia for a long time. We don't know the exact cause of schizophrenia, but we do know it's highly hereditary. We also know that one of the risk factors of suicide is having a close relative who died by suicide or who had a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia.
Everything about the story is tragic, but it's sufficiently complex that there is no easy moral other than "if you're going to circumcise your infant, make sure the doctor isn't intoxicated". Even a straightforward "yes, support your child's gender identity" can't really be gleaned from his story because of the child molestation.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-23 01:35 am (UTC)No idea how they can ever come to that conclusion, it's wild, but between the complexity of the tragedy and their obtuseness, I prefer to never bring it up.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-23 08:56 am (UTC)I wonder which is the more harmful?
no subject
Date: 2025-10-22 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-23 01:35 am (UTC)