Hacker News Reader

Comment by arkaniad | Hacker News Reader

Transitioning is centered around the needs of each individual - many choose not to or are outright unable to receive surgery or medical transitioning, yet that doesn't make them any less trans.

At the end of the day, it's their decision what to do with their body, not yours. All that is asked of you is to respect their decisions and treat them with the same amount of respect as you'd treat any other non-trans individual.

View on HN

It's their decision what to do with their bodies, absolutely, but then why should everyone be forced to accept their view of themselves as an objective fact? I don't doubt that in the vast majority of cases their view is sincere and sound- but shouldn't this judgement be left to those who know them rather than being imposed?

It is an objective fact. Each individual is free to express themselves as they see fit. Nobody is responsible for proving that they're a -real trans- and we really shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping that anyways, because we already did that decades ago and the APA and AMA now move in line with WPATH guidelines which are far more reasonable.

If we meet in public and you say "Hi, my name is Michael" I can only assume that that's objective fact. If I then say "You know, you don't really seem like a Michael. I think you're more of a Denise based on what I've seen." You would be right to take offense for disregarding your own right to self expression based on my own interpretation of your person from the limited information gathered in a first impression.

This is a very similar thing, except by the time someone is out as trans you can best believe they've spent years agonizing about whether it's even a good idea to do so knowing they'll face this kind of a conversation every time the topic comes up around people who they aren't close with / are not sympathetic.

Meh... what you're describing is rarely where the actual conflict is. What about situations where it does affect other people (and unfortunately those situations tend to be ones where merely articulating your concerns is enough to earn you all sorts of labels and hate)?

> It is an objective fact.

An attribute that can change based on someone's feelings is definitely not objective. And all of the genders that are neither male nor female were invented in the last few decades, so membership in one can't be factual. Likewise, membership in a construct called "gender" which is divorced from biological sex was also invented within the last century, so that can't be said to be factual either.

Objective [1]:

1. Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality.

2. Not influenced by the emotions or prejudices.

3. Based on observed facts; without subjective assessment.

Fact [2]:

1. Something actual as opposed to invented.

2. Something which is real.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/objective

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fact

Non-binary gender identity and roles have been present in human societies dating as far back as 4500 years ago[1]. The only thing relatively new in the last 100 years is the moral panic about it.

Furthermore, from a scientific standpoint, there's not really any such thing as a clean binary division between male and female. Chromosomes get messy, and even absent issues with the X and Y chromosomes themselves [2] there's some fun stuff with the SRY gene [3] and hormonal receptors in utero that can affect gender identity and presentation [4].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history [2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9396296/ [3] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20184645/ [4] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6235900/

We can be sensitive about edge cases, but we don't generalize from them.

Actual intersex conditions occur at a rate of approximately 0.018%. [1] This is a pathology, not a third category.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com