Guest post: Belief ≠ physical reality
Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on And then communicate it clearly and accurately.
The progress of science has helped us better understand who we are as trans people.
Maybe it has, but science isn’t any closer to showing that trans are the sex they claim than it was a century ago. Explaining why trans people might have their beliefs about their sex is not the same as confirming those beliefs as facts. Further, taking scientific findings about conditions such as intersex or atypical chromosone combinations out of context to back up transgender claims is not science, it’s exploitation of people with conditions only tangentially related to transgender.
I was thinking about that latter part earlier after reading PZ’s hit-piece on Jerry Coyne for his lack of belief in sex as a spectrum, a piece in which PZ once again pulls out the intersex and chromosome argument to ‘prove’ that science supports the core belief of transgender religion, and the conclusion I reached was this:
By use of visual examinations, blood tests, testing chromosone combinations, and without requiring any input from the person being examined, doctors can diagnose whether a person is intersex, standard xx-female or xy-male, chromosonally atypical, and so-on. There is no scientific test that can detect whether a person is transgender: there is no way of diagnosing transgender independently of having that information supplied by the transgender person, ie. self-reporting/self-diagnosis. So, science clearly does not support claims that transgender people are the sex they claim for themselves. True, neuroscience and psychology can confirm that people can and do believe themselves to be the wrong gender for their bodies, but confirming that they believe something is not confirming any physical reality behind the beliefs.
Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.
The part I’ve bolded there is transgender heresy. I have seen so many TRAs insist that being transgender is something one is from birth, not something that can or is caused by anything that may have been experienced since birth. Of course they have to make that argument because to admit that being transgender can be influenced by life experiences would negate that core belief that they are born with a discrepancy between their bodies and their ‘actual’ sex.
Plus, their use of the term “actual sex” is nonsense. “Actual Sex” is the fundamental biology with which one is cursed/blessed. They are again conflating the social concept of “Gender” with “sex”
Intersex/chromosome issues/genitalia issues are such a minute percentage of the population when compared to the “I FEELZ LIKE A WRMAN” crowd, anyway.
To elaborate on a powerful point in the guest post above, the American Atheists statement quoted this sentence from the American Psychological Association:
The APA wrote that in a paragraph here:
https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender
I’ve simply bolded the other two sentences of the paragraph, to round out the APA position.
If there were a scientific test for being transgender, I tend to doubt most advocates would accept it. That is, they’d gladly accept the positive results, but not the negative ones. Gender Identity Theory draws its rhetorical and emotional strength from the idea that we ought to have the right to define ourselves: don’t let anybody else tell you about you, you’re the expert. A doctor or scientist informing a distressed someone who just KNOWS they’re a woman trapped in a male body that they can relax — it’s just a form of gender dysphoria which responds well to psychological treatment — isn’t going to go down well.
Despite the emphasis on the “scientific basis for TWAW,” gender identity and the theories around it aren’t falsifiable. What sort of evidence would suggest we aren’t all born with an innate sense of being male or female, which may or may not match the type of gamete our bodies developed towards? They’re making the claim: the burden of proof is on them.
Gender Identity Theory draws its rhetorical and emotional strength from the idea that we ought to have the right to define ourselves: don’t let anybody else tell you about you, you’re the expert.
Just underlining.
That’s an excellent point. If, say, it should turn out that there were indeed a set of identifiable genetic or neurological markers that were reliably linked to trans identity, what’s the chance that TAs would accept this as evidence that TIMs who didn’t have such markers were simply wrong to identify as women? Heads: gender ideology wins. Tails: gender critics lose.
And that gets thrown out the window the instant they label someone “cis.”
Unless the claim is expanded to become “You’re the expert on everyone else too. Oh, hi Chase!
Hm. Now where have I encountered that phenomenon before? It’s on the tip of my tongue …
Oh, right. The religious relationship to evidence and argument for God.
Post modernist social media has returned us to the Dark Ages. Emotional accusation, followed up with protestation of superior virtue, followed by stirring of the crowd, bullying by assent, and immediate condemnation to the cheering throngs, some of whom go along hoping to avoid the stake themselves. Facts, well, they don’t really fit into this progression.
In the 15th century it worked for witches, now it’s TERFs – similar in many ways – women trying to live their own lives, on their own terms, in a superstitious male dominated world.
Yah progress!
(Note to Pliny- never comment before coffee…)