A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities • Hacker News Board

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#451

Post by jolux » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #370

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

That is hard to say. In a world full of discrimination against trans folks, who knows how many people who would prefer being trans have failed to be identified? But the topic is much bigger than that. You see, the ideology being pushed says that everyone who has gender dysphoria should be assumed to be trans. But a LOT of teenagers, particularly girls, go through a period of gender dysphoria when they hit puberty. Wh…

> What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire.

This is frequently claimed but is untrue, or at the very least highly uncertain. The studies most often referenced have serious methodological errors, including inconsistent definitions of dysphoria (owing partially to problems with the Gender Identity Disorder diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV that have since been fixed with the DSM-5) and desistance (in some cases counting anyone who didn't follow up with the clinic conducting the research as having desisted) https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/desistance-articles-and-crit...

Julia Serano has also written extensively on this topic with much depth and nuance, at least in my opinion: https://juliaserano.medium.com/detransition-desistance-and-d...

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#452

Post by TaylorAlexander » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #238

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see some introspection here. Can you imagine why they would respond so strongly? I’ll tell you. The trans experience is one that is in many ways beautiful and joyous but is sadly also fraught with trauma. Trans people experience a lot of pain that stays with them. Much of that pain has to do with people who refuse to accept who they truly are. Or people will “just want to have a discussion” where they try…

People who have had trauma have my empathy, but I really don't think there's a tenable path forward besides dispassionate debate. How do we work through a conflict without dispassionate debate? If trans people insist that the only parties to the debate are trans people or those who already agree with them (ignoring that trans people aren't the homogeneous entity that activists make them out to be), then how are they…

> I really don't think there's a tenable path forward besides dispassionate debate. How do we work through a conflict without dispassionate debate?

I will explain my understanding of the answer. I do not claim my answer is the right one, but it is what I see.

Let’s say there are two groups. One group we will call a marginalized minority and another group we will call the majority or dominant group.

The answer is not for the marginalized people and the dominant group to debate directly. Imagine people from the black civil rights movement debating whether or not they should be guaranteed the right to vote with no interference. What really was there to debate?

Instead of direct debate I see it like this. First, both groups recognize their position. Trans people have been marginalized by a broadly cisgendered society. If you learn a little bit about the murder of trans people throughout the last 5 decades and the lack of investigation, I think that is evidence enough that they are a marginalized group.

Okay so step one is recognize the power dynamic. Step two is for the people in the dominant group to listen, without challenge or debate, what the people in the marginalized group want.

Step three: the people in the dominant group discuss with themselves how to make those changes. How do we make sure trans people feel welcome and comfortable in bathrooms and sports? How do we make sure trans kids grow up feeling welcomed by society as their whole self?

Fourth, the people in the dominant group discuss their difficulties they have with the changes, and they do their best to work it out on their own.

Five, some members of the marginalized group who have agreed to discuss this will talk to people in the dominant group and try to address their questions.

Six. Having made some changes, the people in the dominant group ask for feedback, and the process repeats.

At no point in that course of action do random members of the dominant group need to discuss these changes with members of the marginalized group. As a white person I simply do not challenge what people of color say. There is no need for me to challenge them and I recognize that as a member of the dominant group it could be emotionally distressful for them to have to discuss it with me.

Anyway that’s my answer. I hope it helps. Sorry I didn’t answer the rest of your post but I found this the part that felt most salient to me.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#453

Post by kerkeslager » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

danielodievich wrote: post #138

One of my favorite sci-fi authors is Ian M. Banks (discussed here on HN with regularity). His Culture series describe a post-scarcity interstellar society of human(oid)s who among many, many things can change their own gender just by thinking about it. After suitable body alteration time, you can be a male, female, or even something in between (that happens to be important part of one of the characters in one of the…

The Ian M. Banks quote equates gender and sex. That's probably a product of when it was written (1994) and I don't think too badly of Banks for writing it, however, in the contemporary dialogue, these are not equivalent terms. I caution you against getting caught up in an uninteresting semantic argument here: the question isn't one of definitions, but rather whether the phenomena classified as gender (clothing, hairstyles, etc.) are or should be tied to the phenomena classified as sex (genitalia and/or chromosomes). I won't comment my opinion on that as I don't have the time to do it justice, but I will say that to ignore the fact that those phenomena are very much in debate, misses a pretty big point:

That point being, that you can actually change your presentation of gender with relative ease. Norah Vincent did it (dressed as and pretended to be a man) for a year and wrote the book Self Made Man about her experience. The fact that the majority of people never change their presentation of gender and those who do change their presentation tend to feel strongly about it, says that there's more complexity to the choice of how to dress or style your hair than an economic cost/benefit analysis. The fact is, people want to be their gender even while claiming that their gender is treated poorly, and in the case of trans people, choosing to present in a way that is obviously treated poorly. If the hypothesis that people will gravitate to the gender presentation which is treated most positively were true, few people would choose to be the gender that gets spit on in the grocery store (happened to a trans friend of mine).

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#454

Post by chc » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

yanderekko wrote: post #433

chc wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the numbers I've seen, there are slightly more trans people in the world than blind people, but overall — you're not wrong. I don't even think most trans rights advocates would disagree with you that the amount of attention devoted to transgender people is excessive. The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgend…

>The reason transgender people are getting more attention than blind people is because there is currently a strong movement to regress transgender rights Firstly, a resistance to expanding rights is not a movement to regress rights. For the most part (exceptions apply), the margins of the culture war here are not about trans people being on the defensive against long-standing rights being stripped. Secondly, obviousl…

I gave several examples of people wanting to strip long-standing rights, which are probably some of the first examples people would think of when you mention "the trans debate," so I don't know what to say here except that you're mistaken.

I also think your portrayal of the stakes for transgender people is a bit flippant. Gender dysphoria is a pretty painful mental illness that often leads to suicide, so forbidding a transgender girl from getting treatment and forcing her to go to the boys' room does seem both dehumanizing and dangerous to her life.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#455

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #420

dvt wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination. This is provably untrue. Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics (for example, in 2019, the FBI reported ~7000 criminal offenses[2] in the "hate crime" category). I get it, people ar…

> This is provably untrue. Both of you are correct, you're just looking at probabilities conditioned in the opposite way. You're looking at P(trans | killed), which is low. The parent post is looking at P(killed | trans), which is quite high. Understandably, if you are trans P(killed | trans) is a lot more relevant to you than P(trans | killed).

[deleted]

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#456

Post by omginternets » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

mike00632 wrote: post #252

newsbinator wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I defer to nicknames, but if the State or my university or my company forced me to, on pain of getting fired, expelled, fined, or worse, then I wouldn't want to defer to nicknames anymore on principle. I don't care what gender someone calls themselves, and as a nice person I'll try to remember and use it, so long as they don't attempt to get me fired if I get it wrong.

What if you insist on calling that person by the wrong name even though you know it's not what they prefer? That seems like a pretty good example of creating a toxic work environment and you should be fired over it.

It would depend on the specifics. There is a difference between harassing someone and not deferring to their request on the basis that you don't agree with it (however misguided you may be).

Conflating these two things is precisely why there's a backlash against CRT et al. from otherwise left-leaning individuals.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#457

Post by dvt » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #420

dvt wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination. This is provably untrue. Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics (for example, in 2019, the FBI reported ~7000 criminal offenses[2] in the "hate crime" category). I get it, people ar…

> This is provably untrue. Both of you are correct, you're just looking at probabilities conditioned in the opposite way. You're looking at P(trans | killed), which is low. The parent post is looking at P(killed | trans), which is quite high. Understandably, if you are trans P(killed | trans) is a lot more relevant to you than P(trans | killed).

I don't agree, we were talking about proportionality. 0.6% of the US adult population identify as trans (1,254,000). Of that 0.6%, 44 were killed. The math is simple. The overall murder rate in the USA is 0.005% (population: 328 million, yearly murders: 16,425). The per-capita murder rates of trans people in the USA is 0.0035%, barely over half the national average.

To make the claim that trans people are disproportionately affected by crime/violence is simply not true.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#458

Post by secondcoming » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

mabub24 wrote: post #399

deadite wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Interestingly enough, there's not much animosity toward trans-men. These ground exclusively concern themselves with trans-women. I second this. Maybe it's some echo chamber effect or a minority stirring shit up, but I've hardly heard anything over the years about transmen-as-men vs men-as-men. It seems like most of the focus is on transwomen-as-women vs women-as-women. Maybe we're not as vocal? Maybe we care less? I…

I suspect it has much to do with the idea that trans-men are transitioning into a gender "in power." That is, adopting masculine social behavior and lifestyle allow transmen to enter the patriarchal fold and slip quite seamlessly into a male dominant society, as long as they remain unknown . Once they are known, the idea that they must be excommunicated or "proven" as female becomes imperative. Transmen are subject t…

I don't think so, that's a work of fantasy and quite the leap.

It's probably more that in the grand scheme of things trans-men don't pose any sort of threat to other males. I don't recall ever discussing trans-men with my peers.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#459

Post by worik » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

karpierz wrote: post #294

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

On the other hand, there isn't any controversy as to whether blindness is a real condition.

Yes there is.

Being "legally blind" is a thing. The cut off for how little vision is enough to be blind is debatable.

Not that simple.

Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities

#460

Post by nend » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

drenvuk wrote: post #268

Can someone please tell me how important this topic based on the amount of news time and eyeballs it attracts relative to the number of people that it affects? The numbers I can find for US citizens is: 0.6% or 1,988,696 out 331,449,281 of people total for the entirety of the US in 2021. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite... In the UK where the featured article took place the latest poll I…

I mean, 2 million people in the US being discriminated against seems like plenty enough people for this to be a worthwhile discussion. But it's not just the number of people. It's also about how severe the discrimination against them is.

>Personally I don't think this is very important compared to other topics. There are more blind people than trans people.

Ok but is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people don't deserve health care for their disability? Is there a large portion of the population that believes blind people shouldn't be afforded working rights?

You can't just go "there's only 2 million trans people in the US, who cares about their healthcare, there's more important things out there", when the consequence of doing so severely impacts the quality of life of .5% of the population.

I don't think you would be sitting here going "only .5% of the US has type 1 diabetes, why are talking so much about making sure they get appropriate health care? Who cares if they're discriminated against during hiring?"