This is particularly for the Gender Critical types that have been appearing in the comments a fair bit lately.
You all seem to be a little confused about the concept of what constitutes evidence to support your positions.
For example, somehow one article about a trans person acting like a horrible person in public somehow is supposed to be evidence that all trans people are “bad” somehow, or at least this is sufficient to tear fundamental civil rights away from all trans people.
This is actually a generalization error. You are using one, or even a small number of individual cases to malign the entire transgender population. Unless you live on an island with a tiny population (like 10 people), one or two individual cases simply doesn’t provide a statistical basis that you can use to generalize to a larger population.
If you want to generalize to a larger population, you’re going to need to cite a study that actually asks the question you’re really driving at. In the case of the example above, the question would be something along the lines of “Are transgender women likely to be sex offenders at the same rate as cisgender men?”. Then you’re going to need to look at that study and understand not only the size of the data sample, but also the strength of any correlations drawn. Yes, there are actual statistical techniques for such things.
Coming into the comments and dropping a link to some random news article is going to get shown the door - especially when you try to hang the entire transgender population on the basis of that one individual case.
Similarly, twisting studies that aren’t designed to support your position is simply an abuse of the results of that study. For example, pointing to the unusual characteristics of the transgender population currently incarcerated in Canada, and saying that it tells us that transgender women are as dangerous as cisgender men, is simply ludicrous … especially when you later cite the perverse incentives that exist in the prison environment as a motive for some to attempt to transition in prison.
Prison populations are distinct from the general public for a whole host of reasons, but in particular because every person held in the Canadian Federal prison system have been convicted of serious crimes that carry extended ( > 2 year ) incarceration penalties. That intrinsically distorts the picture of risk that you claim means that transgender women (in particular) have to be excluded from society.
From this writer’s perspective, since you are claiming that transgender women are such an inherent risk to the safety of any and all that might encounter them, it falls to you to provide actual evidence which supports that fundamental claim. Your feeling that there’s a risk is not the same thing as actually demonstrating it.
Likewise, going off about possible side effects from a particular medication without actually bothering to cite sources that tell us the frequency of those side effects is nothing more than scare-mongering to me, and indicates that you are more interesting in spreading fear than having an intelligent conversation.
It’s one thing to say “we don’t know what the probability of that side effect is, only that we have some anecdotal evidence that it happens”, quite another to simply argue that the presence of that anecdote is sufficient reason to ban a particular path of treatment. No medical intervention is risk-free. There are always people who have negative responses to any treatment. The question is one of frequency. One example in 100 is quite different from one case in 10,000,000 isn’t it?
If you want intelligent discussion, I’m up for that. What I’m not interested in is wild claims being made without adequate evidence to support them, or huge generalizations made based on what is at best case study level evidence. Make your claims, but expect me to come back and insist on quality evidence to back them up.
2 comments:
First off, thanks for engaging on these issues. They're important and don't see enough civil debate. Full props to you.
Now let's talk about risk. I don't believe that trans people are an inherent risk to society. I believe that men (adult XY), regardless of how they identify, are an inherent risk, and the historical record of murder and sex crimes in all societies backs me up. Women, girls and boys have disproportionately been men's victims for biological reasons, on the whole being weaker, slower, more easily injured and less able to defend themselves.
To most this is beyond obvious, but how would we prove to doubters that Canadian men still fit the pattern? We'd look at crime statistics. Piece of cake if our statistics aren't distorted by misattributing men's crimes to women, as the media now do. The statistics don't tell the whole story, of course, because they only reflect the crime reported and the criminals convicted and jailed, not the ones who get away with it. But the picture they paint is close enough for government work, and shows that Canadian men haven't suddenly changed their nature. And while we have worrying statistics showing that men who identify as women are significantly overrepresented among the most violent sex offenders, what's important is that men as a class continue to be a disproportionate threat to women and girls regardless of how they identify. Note that this doesn't mean that all men are a threat or that any specific one is.
So how does society protect women from the threat of men in public facilities where women unavoidably expose themselves and are vulnerable? The same way we address other security threats: access control. Our safest places are where we can exclude all others, typically our homes. I don't need to analyze whether the uninvited strangers at my door are security threats before excluding them. The same applies elsewhere. Police put tape around crime scenes to exclude anyone who doesn't need to be there and isn't invited to cross. Business and government offices use ID badges to quickly identify who needs to be there and who's been invited. Anyone without one is excluded. Toilets and changerooms used to work the same way - there are men's rooms with an implicit invitation for men to use, so women simply called security on any man who entered theirs. Problem sorted and nobody's judged on whether they're an actual security threat.
I suppose the problem for a tiny number of men was the reminder that they don't "pass" as women. But other than patriarchy, I've never heard a convincing explanation for why their feelings should take priority over the privacy and security of the female half of the population. In the end, security involves excluding people with no need or invitation to be in a space. "Safe and inclusive" is an oxymoron.
I don't intend to rehash the arguments on the risk of gender-affirmative care. I've provided a link to an academic article in the British Journal of Psychiatry that is fully footnoted with source references and an open letter from an international team of endocrinologists to the American Society of Endocrinologists pointing out that their own studies don't support the case for gender-affirmative care. Suffice to say that anyone who does the full Jazz Jennings ends up infertile. Despite having the best medical care money can buy, Jazz’s vaginoplasty, performed at age 17 following a course of puberty blockers, involved a penile inversion procedure that split apart resulting in several corrective surgeries and a significant reduction in sexual function. Many other doctors are being sued, and Australia's largest malpractice insurer no longer covers gender-affirming care. Honestly, how does a child who has never experienced orgasm give informed consent to the risk of never having one, let alone the guaranteed infertility resulting from the removal of genitals? Especially when faced with affirming parents and doctors.
Your position on exclusion rests upon the arguably problematic assumption that chromosomes define a person wholly and entirely. That is to say, the implication inherent in it is that someone who has XY chromosomes is a man, and that's all there is to it, in particular on the basis of "male aggression".
Although male aggression is unquestionably a real thing, it's also important to recognize that it exists across a wide spectrum in the general population. Certainly, not all men are a direct danger to those around them - a wide range of forces influence that, ranging from biological factors to socialization.
Similarly, the existence of Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) and Partial Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome (PAIS) demonstrates a key point in terms of the biological complexity involved. People with CAIS/PAIS will often appear to be all but normal women in appearance and development, until someone does a DNA test, and suddenly the chromosomal structure becomes apparent. The point here is not to argue that transgender people are examples of this particular condition, but to raise the point that it's overly simplistic to suggest that chromosomes define the person. They clearly do not - there are a ton of other processes that are involved.
Which brings me to the topic of transgender women. As noted in Nguyen, et al (2018) {link below}, there is evidence that transgender people's brains lean structurally towards their chosen gender, even before HRT (see the paragraph titled "Mosaic Brain"). This demonstrates a key point -> asserting that you know enough about a person based solely on chromosomes to assess whether they present a danger is hugely problematic.
Considering that transgender women have been using women's washrooms and locker rooms since the 1950s, mostly without incident until the last few years when it has become a political football issue, I would submit to you that the alleged "threat" has already been shown to be largely moot in the first place.
It's getting late here - I'll address a few other points tomorrow if I have time.
Nguyen et al (2018): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354936/
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