Chap wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:01 am
Let us try to clarify the situation in relation to the question of gender and transgender identity. We can take it step by step as follows.
A: The initial big picture (but too crude to use nowadays)
At birth it is simple to identify who is a girl and who is a boys. You just look at the genitalia, and it is obvious. If you do a chromosome check, you will find that the girls have two X chromosomes, and the boys have an X and a Y. The girls grow into women, and the boys into men.
B: A developmental complication: (but not really relevant to this thread)
In about 1% of cases the baby has somewhat abnormal genitalia, but is still clearly a somewhat abnormally developed girl or boy. In 0.1-0.2% of cases, the genitals are abnormal enough to make it difficult to tell:
https://www.childrensmn.org/services/ca ... genitalia/
This is not however very relevant to transgender identity as nowadays discussed.
C: Taking account of the transgender issue.
In about 1% of the population, people are born with unambiguous genitals that enable them to be identified as a girl or as a boy, and those genitals match their chromosomes. However, as they grow up, they begin to make it plain by their behaviour or by their explicit statements about themselves that instead of being a girl (as identified at birth and by their normally developing genitalia and chromosomes), they consider themselves to be a boy, or vice versa. In what I have just written, the figure of 1% is deliberately taken from a source with no interest in minimising the data, so we can take it as a realistic maximum:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/truth-about-trans
D: Finding a more useful terminology to talk about the issue
At this point, we will find it useful to adopt a more precise terminology that will enable us to talk about this issue with less confusion than is usually found in relevant discussions. We distinguish:
(1) Sex: Based on genitalia at birth and XX/XY chromosomes, we can easily classify all but about 1% (see (B) above) of human bodies as female or male. This is a matter of objective medical science.
(2) Gender: This is a social distinction, based on the roles people play in society, how they are recognised by others, and how they think about themselves. We may classify most people as being, in social terms women or men.
E: Talking about the trans issue:
In all but about 1% of cases (see (C) above), sex and gender correlate: possession of a body with female sex expresses in gender terms as identifying a person as a woman, and male sex expresses as identifying a person as a man. Overwhelmingly, what trans people want from the rest of us amounts to no more than saying:
"I was born with a female body, and my parents called me Mary and dressed me as a girl. However, I passionately wish to be recognised in gender terms as a boy/man, to call myself Mike, and to dress and be treated as a man."
"I was born with a male body, and my parents called me Mike and dressed me as a boy. However, I passionately wish to be recognised in gender terms as a girl/woman, to call myself Mary, and to dress and be treated as a woman."
F: Dealing with transgender people
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the 1% of the population (at most) who wish to live in a gender not usually associated with their birth sex simply want the rest of us to let them live normal lives in their preferred gender. They just ask, in effect, that we should be kind and tolerant, and let them live trouble-free existences, in which (most of the time) we shall not notice that the accountant, store clerk or taxi driver we meet has crossed from one gender to another (i.e. is "transgender"). Overwhelmingly, people being transgender causes the non-transgender 99% of the population no problem at all, and the accommodation needed is no more than (say) providing toilet or changing room accommodation that takes account of their otherwise not troublesome identity. And that is the decent and humane standpoint from which this issue should be approached.
G: Rare cases
Non transgender men are about 50% of the population. The overwhelming majority of violence and sexual assault against women is committed by non-transgender men. A very small proportion of the 1% of the population who are living transgender lives may act so as to be a threat to women, but mathematically the threat they pose is a minimal part of the dangers women face. All the same, it needs to be dealt with in the case of artificial environments such as prisons and women's refuges. But since we do not treat all non transgender men as a threat to society, there is no reason to treat the overwhelming majority of the 1% of people who are transgender as any kind of threat.
Such, at any rate, is the way I see things.