Via Kevin Drum, here's a fairly large study of teenagers who received "gender affirming" care and mostly felt good about it; of 220 subjects, only 9 expressed regret.
Which is interesting, and this looks like a pretty good study. But:
The sample in the present work was unique in a few ways that are notable for interpretation of these results. Most showed signs of their transgender identity by 4 years of age. On average, they socially transitioned at age 6.7 years, and most were fairly binary in their gender identities and gender expressions throughout childhood. Early-identifying youth who are especially insistent about their identities are also more likely to socially transition in childhood and identify as transgender or continue to show gender dysphoria in adolescence and early adulthood.
Right. This study says nothing about the strange recent surge in "sudden onset gender dysphoria", those teenagers who suddenly have doubts about their genders as puberty kicks in, and who have remarkable levels of other mental health problems. It also only concerns strict gender switchers and says nothing about the non-binary or the gender-fluid.
I mention this partly because I keep meeting older liberals who think they are pro-trans but whose model only concerns people like the subjects of this study, those who have identified strongly since childhood with the gender that doesn't match their biology. When I say to them, ok, but that's not what most trans discourse is about these days, now we have people who think they can change their minds about their genders at any point and should be able to switch back and forth whenever they feel like it, they often react by saying, "That's not trans!"
As I have said here several times, I try not to care about what other adults do; none of my business, really, and I am perfectly willing to be respectful to anyone who is respectful to me. And I don't have any real issues with the kind of children covered by this study. But that doesn't mean there are no questions to ask about the trans movement as currently constructed, particulary on the subject of teenagers with mental health issues, quite a few of whom have sued the people who, as they now see it, responded to their adolescent mental health crises by encouraging them to transition.
But my real beef with trans activists is their habit of insisting "you should think X," to which my response is always, "no." What I think is nobody else's business, and I refuse to engage with anyone who says otherwise.
I think this is very well said and nicely balanced. I agree that there are "questions to ask about the trans movement as currently constructed." But I also want to say that, for a reason that I think is largely apart from the main lines of the debate, I'm struck by the line, "people who think they can change their minds about their genders at any point and should be able to switch back and forth whenever they feel like it." This recalls to me, as a counterpoint, the whole world of ideas and s-f lit associated with transhumanism and cyberpunk. Transhumanism seems to envision changes to human body structure, capabilities, longevity, etc., as part of a noble quest to "be all we can be." Wikipedia (yes, I always go there first) quotes Teilhard de Chardin thus: "Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of 'trans-humanizing' himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent." Cyberpunk, one might say--at least as I remember it from Neuromancer--is a sort of gritty, 1970s-decayed-city, Blade-Runner-esque version of that.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be at all surprised if some s-f author (S. R. Delaney? Someone like him?) has written about gender change at will as a noble, life-affirming thing related to seeking all experiences and a heroic blowing-past of all boundaries, etc., etc.
In all these examples, my interest is in the heroic (including, if you will, glamorized anti-heroism in cyberpunk) quality attributed to human body modification and transformation. I'm thinking about the philosophy and fantasy I'm referring to. I'm not trying to weigh in on the current trans debate in our society, about which I confess I have so far failed to develop strong feelings or cogent thoughts.
It seems to me all these heroic visions ignore a whole other side of humanity, ambivalent and depressive. Maybe we should imagine this realm of the future as something we might not stride into heroically, but back into via ambivalence and mental-health dilemmas. I suggest we should remember this aspect of humanity as well when we think about other imagined strides into the future, like AI and VR. We've already got chatbots serving as very deep object-cathexes for some people (including leading to suicide, according to one reported lawsuit). Humans have heroic aspects, but we are also a troubled species.