What is being mandated
Yes but it’s even worse than that. It mandates the recognition of other people’s subjective individuality. How the hell are we supposed to be able to do that? How can we recognize something internal to someone else? We can’t; it’s literally impossible, impossible by definition.
We try to do that up to a point with people we have some connection to – with friends, family, colleagues. We take their word for it that they feel X, in general, unless we have good reasons not to. But that’s all we’re doing – taking their word for it. Their feelings remain internal, as do ours. We can’t literally “recognize” something hidden.
And as for total strangers, as for the world at large – we are under no obligation to take their word for it. None, zip, zero. We can’t “recognize” it and we’re not required to declare belief in it. The whole idea is literally nonsensical.
I recently came across a TRA argument for accepting self-report ( the mind) over biological data (the body) using (of course) analogies.
If a patient reports that their back is hurting — and they behave as if their back is hurting — then a good doctor accepts their self-diagnosis even though the MRI and other tests don’t show anything wrong with the back. The same with ‘phantom limb syndrome,’ in which someone who has had a leg or arm amputated insists their foot or hand feels twisted or painful. And it’s an even better example, since advances in technology have now confirmed that there are issues with the nerves which used to go to the extremities. The individual’s self-identification of what they’re experiencing is reliable data. Mind over body.
And being transgender is like that. TERFS and other transphobes are refusing to engage with reality, replacing reasonable evidence with ideology.
Except that that isn’t like that. The subjective assertion that someone has a mind of one gender in the body of another is more like an amputee insisting that the hand or foot is really there, and they’re not really an amputee at all. Stop saying they’re disabled. Or it’s like diagnosing one’s own back pain as caused by an undetectable spinal tumor or even bad chi. They’re not reporting how they really feel; they’re supporting some new categories in reality.
In epidemiology, “self-report” data is always taken with more of a grain of salt than objective measurements. You can tell me you weigh 100lbs, but I’m not going to take that over having you step on a scale.
People lie, forget, misreport and, most of all, just don’t know the correct answer. How much salt did you eat last week? How much alcohol do you drink in a typical week? What do you weigh? When was your last tetanus shot?
Even with self-reported race, we know that it is a poor proxy for ancestry. Genetic epidemiologists like me can use genetic markers to make a better estimation. People don’t know their ancestry, not as much as they might think.
So no, I’m not taking self-reported gender as gospel. All it tells me is what your perception is.
One of the basic facts about psychological research is that people are objectively TERRIBLE at understanding what’s going on in their own brain, why they’re feeling the way they are, etc etc. Especially where big emotions are involved, the brain’s modelling facility is very easy to confuse (see, for example, the old seduction technique of taking your date to a scary high place or a roller-coaster, cos the rush of fear feels a bit like the rush of attraction).
This is enough of a known issue even when it applies strictly to internal feelings, that it baffles the hell out of me when people start taking it as evidence for easily-debunked external realities, and expecting everyone else to follow suit. If the feelings in your brain conflict with the material world, it’s not gonna be the material world that’s wrong.
Oh, excellent point. (I didn’t know that about the old seduction technique!)
It does continually grate on my every nerve that people who used to identify as skeptics take declared feelings as gospel when they’re about gender idenniny.
This fits in with a lot of trends, though. I am currently being told that I should allow my students to decide how I should assess their learning, because they are the experts on how they are best able to report their learning. This is so bogus, but it is gospel in education. (Glad I’m near retirement – they’re about to force this on us.) Students actually aren’t experts on that, anymore than they are experts on content. I have used the method of allowing students to choose in the past, and they invariably choose what they think will be easiest, and do poorly because they are not expecting me to actually give them a challenge, require them to do independent, critical thinking in the method they selected.
I, on the other hand, have been watching my various teaching methods evolve over the years, and have some idea what does work in general (though I would never bet my life on any of it, because things shift and change). I also have collected objective data that shows they actually don’t know the best way to assess themselves, because they do better on the assessments I select than on their own selections.
Yes, and no. A good doctor will also be alert to the possibility that the individual is faking it, either to get out of work or to score drugs, or both.
Another thing that is relevant on that back thing. I worked for Social Security Disability for a number of years, and they will not give you disability based on subjective accounts of back pain. There must be objective data to back up a reason for the back pain, and the severity of the condition.
In short, the government doesn’t recognize subjective feelings as a validation. They require something more concrete.
#1 Sastra
Another difference is that if the doctor sees nothing on scan/examination, they will not prescribe anything, let alone ordering surgery to permanently lop bits off. I’ve had a doctor tell me point blank that he wasn’t going to prescribe the antibiotics I was hoping for, because an examination of my ear canal looked clean and healthy rather than infected, my testimony of heavy itchiness notwithstanding.
That’s not dismissing or ignoring my stated discomfort, it’s just a matter of professional responsibility – don’t order things without indication that those things are warranted. And it bears repeating a point: if the patient’s word alone is not good enough to warrant an antibiotic, it sure as shit doesn’t warrant permanent alterations via surgery.
Holms, that’s like my experience. My shoulder pain required an MRI before the doctor would do anything other than order physical therapy. Once he saw my MRI, he gave me cortisone shots, and planned surgery, because the MRI showed something wrong with me that warranted treatment. When I complain of back pain, I show no changes so the doctor tells me to change positions at the computer more often and do back exercises. I actually solved my problem by getting new glasses and changing the position of my computer so I held my head in a better position during the day. Subjective pain doesn’t always mean medical treatment.
iknklast, similar experience. I used to suffer a lot of back pain. When I stopped spending most of my working day sitting on a 3″ wallet in my back pocket, pain ceased. It may not sound like much, but that is a lot of hip dispalcement.
Roj, I wouldn’t say that a 3″ wallet doesn’t sound much; even folded that’s a fair old wedge of dollars :-)
As for those people who think that self-reporting trumps biological data (and by extrapolation medical expertise), would they, I wonder, refuse to be monitered by ECG because they have shooting pains in the arm and just know that their problem is with the arm, not the heart?
Of course, when jt involves transgender then they have to strongly promote self-reporting because they know that (genuinely interpreted) biology does not support their claims.
I think a good analogy (especially to gender dysphoria) may be anorexia. If you are anorexic, you really do believe and feel that you are too thick, even if you only weigh 40kg. IIUC, therapy needs to accept that you are actually feeling this, but your doctors will still not do surgery on you to remove fat or tie your stomach.
BTW, to describe the fact that our self-perception is unaccessible to others but that it still of course provides some data on our inner state, Dennett (in “Consciusness Explained”) coined the term “heterophenomenology”. From the Wiki page:
“heterophenomenology considers the subjects authoritative only about how things seem to them.”
@ Min, #3
In a minor way, I get verification of what you say (i.e., people aren’t necessarily good at interpreting what they feel) frequently. When I do drills with my trainer, he explains in words and also demonstrates what movements he wants me to perform. I do my best to imitate or comply, but it’s a regular problem that what I feel like I’m doing with my body is not what I’m doing at all.
Ophelia, #4.
Indeed. It’s one Hell of a leap from accepting that people genuinely feel the way they do to accepting their feelings as material reality. It’s also more than a tad hypocritical when it comes from the crowd that regularly dismissed the opinions of others with the patronising phrase feelz ain’t realz (with or without cupcakes).