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Author Topic: LGBTQ+ Thread  (Read 78207 times)

TD1

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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #510 on: March 10, 2023, 06:49:28 am »

Hm, are you saying that gender is like an Operating System (or rather a part of it) which is independent of memories but needs time to form? And that merely copying memories into an empty brain will fail to produce a person because there is no OS in place which needs to be naturally developed? And that, unlike computers, hardware changes software, and software changes hardware and they can't be separated cleanly?

I like this perspective and it gives some food for thought.

So I looked into gender-as-social-construct, and there's a huge amount of supporting evidence. There's also evidence to suggest a biological basis for some gendered things, with this suggesting that hormones in the womb (which differ wildly according to the child's sex, apparently?) could have some influence. In the nature v nurture debate, gender seems to lean heavily towards nurture with a sprinkling of nature for seasoning.

So, in most ways gender is mutable and depends on how one views one's relation to a social construct. In other (negligible) ways it's immutable and linked to biological sex.

Edit: Considering this, it seems... unlikely to me that gender is hard-wired into neurology in any meaningful way. Which is good news for transgender folks! It lends validity to the idea that it can change. Though the 'nature' element also seems to imply that at least some distinctions exist between the genders based on their sex.

Edit edit: the academic paper the article linked above was based on.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2023, 06:57:37 am by TD1 »
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #511 on: March 10, 2023, 08:22:44 am »

Again, it comes to definitions.

If your definition of gender is something that looks like

Gender is norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other.

Then your study will show that norms, behaviors, and roles are mostly socially constructed with some hard-to-quantify influence of evolved behavioral patterns (aka gender according to a different definition).
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Starver

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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #512 on: March 10, 2023, 08:54:23 am »

Hormones of course differ in the womb according to the child's sex, as that's how development (usually) goes from chromosomal cues to physical outcome. And subtleties of brain formation would be as likely to be subject to the basic mix as whatever form/placement your gonads took and the rest.

And it may be that there are secondary effects from trans-placental chemicals, too. The old 'second boy is more likely to be gay' chestnut[1] being that of those hormones that do cross the boundary, some might have been in the mother's system due to the prior pregnancy.

Not so simple as permanently hanging around, and the placenta does do a lot to inhibit much transfer across the barrier that isn't vital for foetal survival, but some trace of transferable 'signal' left over by the general wash of chemistry might wash back again in the next instance. Any advantage (e.g. the "aunt and uncle effect", where there are handy co-parenting individuals who are able to help bring up the generation after them) could find itself evolved into the natural variation of the brain through subtle cues such as this, perhaps an epigenetic element that gets squirreled away, chance triggering a different valid path of brain (and thus mind) development that on balance is positively advantageous to the lineage that holds that potential to hold all such roles.



I wouldn't rule out nurture effects also. For tipping the post-natal potentiality one way or other from a tottering position as set up by genetics and the rest. As long as such differences have been historically an advantage to the holders (if not users) of the inbuilt likelihood, once the possibility exists then it will happen.

Not that evolution has had time to work with such influences as social media or totalitarianism, which could perhaps exagerate or prosecute such tendencies. Such things as global social evolution and possible medical interventions being something we haven't had for much of human (and precursor) history, as well as the will and opinion of heads of tribes being far less impersonal (within their own little huddle of people) than it became once there started to be kings, emperors, leaders of superpowers or indeed other political/social influencers with alternate jurisdictions to exert their power across. What may have integrated seemlessly into intrinsic human behaviour in ages past (unnoticed, because it always seemed perfectly normal to have whatever mix of personalities and social reactions one grew up amongst and lived in) now looks weird (or interesting, or terrible) as you get to notice the clumping together of meta-tribal behaviours into groups that either reinforce or seemingly destroy the place one perhaps thinks one inhabits in the world.


So is gender (in any sense) a social construct? No, I think it's probably no more that than anything else not entirely phenotypical (the purely physical sense of gender is phenotype, mostly arising from genotype; in its bare and entirely unclothed sense, in the absence of socially-inspired surgery). But I think society may amplify and even catalyse the expression and diversity of it (when not suppressed or forced into narrower expectations[2]), in a highly visible manner. Whilst the underlying cause of all this variation is down to some massively chaotic mix of long- and short-chained molecules interacting in a staggeringly huge variety of ways that tends to produce a person who is an individual l. Who is going to be unique amongst other all the other unique individuals, however you try to conveniently pigeonhole everyone (or force pegs of one shape into holes of any other).


[1] This turned out true for a friend of mine. Though as his first child was by a different mother, I can't see it counting as evidence towards the cross-placental assumption. ;)

[2] Not just towards binary, but "you're gay if you're not not straight" anti-Bi prejudice within "LG" circles, or Trans-excluding, etc.

edited for typo and minor clarification
« Last Edit: March 10, 2023, 10:24:39 am by Starver »
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TD1

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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #513 on: March 10, 2023, 09:25:49 am »

Again, it comes to definitions.

If your definition of gender is something that looks like

Gender is norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other.

Then your study will show that norms, behaviors, and roles are mostly socially constructed with some hard-to-quantify influence of evolved behavioral patterns (aka gender according to a different definition).
Of course. The rules of any game change depending on how you define the pieces. This argument pertains to the WHO definition.  Other definitions bring different conclusions - for instance, the findings are mostly meaningless if one considers gender to be identical to sex.

But that doesn't invalidate the findings themselves, just how we interpret them.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #514 on: March 11, 2023, 07:06:47 pm »

To move away from the topic of the past few days, how long did it take anyone who's been on hormones to actually start looking more like their gender? Seems that some lucky buggers get that within months of starting hormones, but I'm not sure about the less-lucky timescale.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #515 on: March 11, 2023, 11:15:45 pm »

So if you're just talking natural changes, I generally recommend tracking that with selfies every 3 months or so. Less than that, and changes are largely unnoticeable. After 3 months, you might notice a little difference, but there's probably too much ambiguity as to whether it's better or not. After 6 months, you'll probably notice differences between then and the start; though again subtle. In my experience, it just sorta like, accumulates at that rate and continues to do so for years.

Personally, I wasn't out at work until 6 months on hormones. At 5 months, it wasn't obvious what was changing, but it was obvious enough that something was changing for a coworker to tell me I was looking healthier lately, and asked whether I started working out or something.

At around 15 months I was starting to feel comfortable with my natural appearance; and it just kept getting better from there. 5 years in, and without any effort I get gendered in both directions by people who don't know me. (There's several fascinating tidbits about how people perceive gender I've gleaned over the years from this, such as 'people will gender you as a woman if you have a beard, so long as electrolysis makes your skin mostly clear of hair from the jaw line forwards' or 'people's gender recognition process is asynchronous, and when multiple brainparts positively identify you as different genders, they flip flop between them and panic if trying to use sir/ma'am or other gendered forms of address')
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Strongpoint

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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #516 on: March 13, 2023, 10:16:01 am »

I'd like to point out that Strongpoint is arguing for access to HRT, and so is moderately [slur] on-side despite all the words we've exchanged.

Death before detransition.  Literally.
I can't do it again- the decade and a half as a scared adult, repressing, or the couple months where my hormones didn't work.  F'ing castor oil.

I can't do it again.  I won't.
All the changes to my sex, they're just gravy.
I lived a half-life until I started hormones.  So, so late.

Somehow missed this the first time around, and noticed only after rereading.

I am most definitely not against access to HRT for adults. If someone I care about would ask me if should they do HRT or not, my advice would be strong no (not going to give a breakdown why because it is a very wrong place to do for obvious reasons) but my opinion is irrelevant because A) it is not my decision. B) They know what they need for their mental health far better than I do.

Body autonomy is an important right and any mentally healthy adult person should not be denied using it. I find it especially idiotic when people are denied routine cosmetic surgeries like breast-size reduction or changing their face to a more masculine\feminine. More serious stuff like... cutting off body parts is something close to my limits of body autonomy but within it.

But the story is very different when we talk about children. They are not mentally stable enough to make such decisions. Furthermore, to know that they don't want to be of the same gender as their sex, they need to have experience of being the same gender as their sex.

Do you say you suffered? I totally believe you. Problem is that your personal experience should not be a basis of a policy. Doing it without proper care will result in the suffering of other people. Society should minimize  Stories of people who transitioned and then changed their minds and went for detransitioning are also not happy and fluffy.

Teenagers are... stupid unexperienced.  Maybe that boy who thinks he is trans. is just a gay, maybe that girl thinks she is a trans because she finds existing gender roles idiotic and wants to dress like a man and not bother with makeup. Or maybe that teenager wants to be like a celebrity they follow on Tik Tok. Or maybe that young person went too hard into politics way earlier than they should and was convinced that being straight white and cisgender is lame and close to something to be ashamed of. Or...

No, I don't trust children to make such decisions. Not at all. They feel discomfort growing as a gender they dislike. Well, growing up is always uncomfortable, we can't shield young people from all possible discomfort.

Before I approve any medical transitional steps for children, I need ways to prove that someone is trans BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT. And I fail to see such methodology.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #517 on: March 13, 2023, 10:44:30 am »

Yes, you've already made clear you care less about 100 trans people suffering than 1 cis person suffering, you don't need to keep repeating it.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #518 on: March 13, 2023, 11:05:30 am »

Strongpoint, my dude, the rate of detransition is really, really small. Also, the medical gender-affirming care children get is puberty blockers, which, amazingly, just delay puberty and give the kid time to figure out their gender identity, along with coaching and care for the feelings they feel about gender and how to present in accordance with it. Stop using children as a shield for your opinions, which as you can see firsthand, perpetuate the literal agony transfolk feel when denied care & support.

This is really, really, really not the place to make a statement about how transfolk shouldn't have access to crucial care, nor the place to dither about whether or not gender as you understand it exists. Kindly find something else to argue about elsewhere while the community explores, celebrates, and supports who they are.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #519 on: March 13, 2023, 05:42:35 pm »

I heard about Florida. I don't gave any words that can adequately describe the sheer nightmarishness of the situation. All I can really say is that I suspect there will be riots, if there are no riots already.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #520 on: March 13, 2023, 06:03:49 pm »

I'm finally going to get my 9-month bloodwork done tomorrow (I tried today but there were bureaucratic issues).  I guess I'll fast since they'll be checking my A1C and stuff.  Infinitely more importantly:  Should I put off taking my sublingual HRT before the draw?

I really hope the level's good this time but I don't want to nudge the result either way.  Sublingual is absorbed straight into the blood like glucose, so seems like it could make a huge difference.  I know for weekly injections the blood had to be taken at the "trough" when the level's lowest.

I'll also do my best to well-hydrate myself so hopefully... hopefully there aren't any problems this time.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #521 on: March 13, 2023, 10:01:57 pm »

Skip sublingual before the draw, yeah. Otherwise it'll spike the results.
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #522 on: March 14, 2023, 12:31:56 am »

...

Teenagers are not given genital surgery. That is a misconception. They are only given puberty blockers, sometimes gender-affirming hormones, and sometimes plastic surgery to delay the onset of irreversible physiological changes they may dislike, and even then only after a lengthy consultation period with licensed practitioners where they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

These are procedures often done for others as well at this age range, such as those going through precocious puberty. The concern about gay people or gender role-nonconforming people mistakenly going through the transition process statistically is nonexistent after more than a year of prior observation.

« Last Edit: March 14, 2023, 12:40:44 am by bloop_bleep »
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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #523 on: March 14, 2023, 07:49:03 am »

I'll also do my best to well-hydrate myself so hopefully... hopefully there aren't any problems this time.
At least a pint beforehand to make sure your blood's "properly hydrated" as it were, I was told. More is better, stagger it to about 250ml (or half a pint, it's close enough) every 15 minutes since your body can only properly take up so much water at once.

And can we stop arguing now? Or separate it into another thread? This stuff's in territory that gets very flamey very easily.
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Rolan7

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Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« Reply #524 on: March 15, 2023, 05:05:21 pm »

I drank 4 pints 2 hours before the test, and the phlebotomist said that helped :D  All in all, seems like the clinic that specializes in bloodwork did a much better (and faster) job than my Planned Parenthood which probably does it rarely.

glad that's over with.  PP did great with the paperwork though- helped me out over the phone and faxed (faxed!) my info where it needed to go.  And they covered the test even though it's been a month and a half since they messed up the draw.

also they called me Ro
I kinda forgot I told them that, it was an incredibly nice surprise yesterday.  And an excellent start to my day when they called this morning.

Ro, Rol, Roan, Roanne...  Gosh.  It was like being Truenamed.  Certainly felt magical <3

Edit: OH!  I remember who calls me Rol!  Frumple does that on this very forum!  I always love that, but don't think I've mentioned it!!
« Last Edit: March 15, 2023, 05:18:04 pm by Rolan7 »
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