Transgender man wins women's 100 yd and 400 yd freestyle races.
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Well, to be precise, it can be detected before inception (in the case of IVF).
But this thread has taken a weird turn away from sports to telling everyone gender doesn't exist.
And the few usuals who went quiet for a while are back telling everyone to, effectively, get rid of female sports, bit of course don't have the courage of their convictions to say it that way and whatabout all over the place (I mean, delving all the way around intersex conditions with embarrassingly low understanding of such, really?).
The other option is to get rid of competitive sports, but that usually comes from someone who doesn't understand why people compete in the first place and underestimate the drive some have to be "first" both good (training everyday to be better) and bad (Armstrong suing all and sundry till caught or getting caught and insisting a burrito is to blame, or a friend, funniest was cyclist who got caught with a motor who insisted they took the wrong bike, competitive sports people can be really strange).
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Ahh there’s no need to be so dramatic - nobody is telling anyone, effectively or otherwise, to get rid of female sports. Competitions, associations and organisations which provide for and promote opportunities for women, men and children will always exist and aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
But in the spirit of funny stories about unfair advantages in sports, one of the better and more recent ones was the whole furore over running shoes which some athletes claimed gave their wearers an unfair advantage in competition -
Usain Bolt said that advances in spike technology that could help wipe out his world records are laughable and that the new shoes also give an unfair advantage over any athletes not wearing them.
After athletes ripped through the record books in distance running with carbon-plated, thick-soled shoes, the technology has now moved into sprint spikes, where – although there is less time in a race for the advantage to make an impact – it is still enough to make a difference.
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Weighing in on developments in shoe technology, World Athletics said: “The current regulations [July 2020] were designed to give certainty to athletes preparing for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, to preserve the integrity of elite competition and to limit technological development to the current level until after the Olympic Games in Tokyo, across all events.”
It said a working group on shoes aimed to set parameters to achieve a balance between innovation, competitive advantage and availability of the products.
Performing in the Nike Air Zoom Maxfly, Jamaican two-time Olympic gold medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce clocked the fastest 100m time in 33 years on 5 June in Kingston with a career-best 10.63s.
Only American world record holder Florence Griffith-Joyner has gone faster – 10.49s in Indianapolis in 1988. But Fraser-Pryce was unwilling to discount the work she has done to become the fastest woman alive, even as she trains and competes in the spike.
“You can give the spikes to somebody else and they’ll probably not do the same things that I’ve done, so I’m not counting myself out of the hard work me and my coach has put in,” the four-time 100m world champion said.
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The embryo produces (more) testosterone because of the SRY (sex determining) gene. The fact there are exceptions doesn't invalidate the general rule.
As regards DSDs and trans, the only connection between them is not anything to do with biology, as trans athletes sex is not in doubt, whereas it is in the case of DSDs. The commonality is the rules that sports organisations, not medicine itself, has decided to apply to them in the past. These rules (testosterone suppression) have been shown to be hopelessly inadequate in the case of trans athletes, and possibly so in the case of athletes with DSDs. So, it's possible this could change leaving nothing at all in common.
As regards sex testing, I think it should be pointed out that it was a good faith attempt to be fair to women with very specific conditions like complete androgen insensitivity, but which ended up being hideously unfair to the majority of women, subjecting them to degrading sex tests at the Olympics. If the world is coming round to accept that not everyone can be accommodated fairly at the highest levels, then maybe it makes sense to go back to the chromosome rule and test, which accounts not only for the 99.998% of people without DSDs, but also the majority of people with DSDs. It accounts for trans people too, but not in the way that trans women want. While I'd agree that participation in sport is a general human right, I don't think you can say that competing at the Olympics is a human right. Elite level sport can put its own rules in place that are different from how sport is run generally imo.
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There are no rules in nature plodder, but apart from that, all the rest of it sounds perfectly reasonable, as long as you’re prepared to ignore the fact that it changes nothing and still permits treating athletes unfairly on the basis of either gender or sex. That might fly in countries where they have a very different concept of human rights than we do here in the West, where it wouldn’t matter what the world sees as fair or unfair, but what matters is what is determined as fair or unfair by the courts in accordance with law.
Sports organisations have had nearly 100 years to acknowledge that they needed to change their rules to actually be fair to everyone and promote the sports and competitions and so on, but they chose instead to try and exclude people for as long as they could possibly get away with it, and worse - they chose to exclude people knowing what they knew long before it was generally known about chromosomes and gender identity and all that stuff, ensuring that people wouldn’t be given a fair opportunity. The whole sex verification testing is done in anything BUT good faith, it’s done on the presumption that it’s capable of confirming suspicions that athletes are cheating.
All your suggestions are doing is upholding that same presumption that athletes intention is to cheat, and innocent athletes must be punished by being excluded in order to maintain the impression at least, of fairness, integrity, competition etc in women’s sports. I’m not a woman, but I’m still capable of smelling BS off that one! 😂
And if everyone has the same opportunities to participate in the Olympics, then of course that applies to everyone, as that is everyone exercising their right to participate in sports, as opposed to the idea of some people having the opportunity to exercise a right, and other people being denied the opportunity to exercise the same right, because of claims of needing to maintain competition and fairness and all the rest of it, by regarding women as if though they are nothing more than congenitally defective men.
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That would be relevant to this discussion if the thread title was related to DSDs it is not its related to trans women and men.Specifically it refers to Lia Thomas, do you think that biological males who have been through puberty should compete against females? Do you think they retain an advantage?
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I completely understand that it would be infinitely more convenient for you if you could ignore the relationship between gender incongruence and intersex conditions as though people with these conditions actually should be regarded separately in terms of the discrimination and prejudice against them that they share in common… but that’s just not going to happen.
The discrimination faced by both groups is based upon all sorts of negative assumptions based upon innate characteristics which are part of their unique makeup as human beings.
Do I personally think genetic males should compete against genetic females? Not if they don’t actually want to. I’d apply the same standards to genetic females - they don’t have to compete against genetic males if they don’t want to either. To those cyclists and runners who thought to protest unless they could decide who should be permitted to compete against them, they’re more than welcome to exclude themselves from competition if they want to, there’s no shortage of women who will be eligible to participate in their place and will be only too happy to be given the opportunity to do so.
Do I think transwomen and athletes with DSD retain any advantages after puberty? No idea, I don’t know them all personally, I’m sure there are no shortage of disadvantages either in finding themselves in the position they do, but there are organisations like the International Federation of Sports Medicine are interested in collecting more data to determine whether the exclusion of transwomen and female athletes with DSD from women’s sports is actually justifiable based upon scientific evidence and data, or should these characteristics be regarded as advantages unique to each individual athlete.
There simply isn’t enough data or scientific evidence available to determine anything one way or the other about integrating transwomen and female athletes with DSD into Elite competition -
Conclusions
Ultimately, even the most evidence-based policies will not eliminate differences in sporting performance between athletes in the elite category of female sports. However, any advantage held by a person belonging to an athlete in this category could be considered part of the athlete’s unique individuality. Whatever the solution, there is an urgent need for a well-coordinated multidisciplinary international research program, backed by appropriate research grant funding and athlete participation, to generate the evidence to inform future objective policy decisions. Such decisions should be based on the best available scientific evidence from the best available scientific practice and the decisions made will also require a firm political resolve to fairly integrate transwomen and DSD women athletes into elite female sport.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-021-01451-8
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There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the religious concept of "gender identity" is "innate" in any way.
None.
Men who want to take part in women's sport because they'd prefer to do feminine things and think that somehow makes them not a man absolutely do mean to cheat. Deliberately, and I suspect, in most cases, with malicious, misogynistic intent.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~C.S. Lewis
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I don't know how much reading you do around this topic but people with DSDs seem to be quite clear in the majority that they would like trans activists to keep their conditions out of their mouths.
A person with a DSD is not the same as a man with a feeling.
And a man with a feeling is not a woman.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~C.S. Lewis
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Lord thats some level of bluster I'm struggling to understand your first paragraph - discrimination prejudice .....sport is about fairness its about ensuring that there are no unfair advantages for competing athletes. Imagine a sporting organisation wanting fairness in sport. DSD athletes are absolutely an anomaly for sporting organisations. DSD is a disorder of the human condition and rightly deserves to be treated seperately to trans athletes. Yes these are real people and they deserve to be treated fairly and so do all the other female athletes. Why should they be treated unfairly?
The man who goes in depth into when sex is determined in human biology doesnt know if a trans female athlete who has been through male puberty has an advatage over biological females? Pull the other one.
So you think that if female athletes object to trans females participating that they should withdraw and allow other women to step in and take their place? ANd you beleive there are many who would happily step in and take part? The tide I would suggest is turning on that one. The nothing to see here and everything is discrimintion mantra is wering thin. Essentially its discrimante against trans athletes or females and you are choosing trans athletes because they suffer from so much discrimination already?
Do you see this becoming an bigger problem with the number of trans athletes increasing inline with the current recorded levels of trans identyfing women?
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Surely there's a stronger argument for athletes with DSDs to participate as disabled athletes than to change the whole definition of female sport on the basis that some athletes with congenital issues don't fit easily into the traditional system for able bodied athletes?
Reem Alsalem UNSR Violence Against Women and Girls
@UNSRVAW"Very concerned about these statements by the IOC at Paris2024 There are multiple international treaties and national constitutions that specifically refer to
#women
and their fundamental rights to equality and non-discrimination, so the world has a pretty good idea of what women -and men for that matter- are. Also, how can one assess whether fairness and justice has been reached if we do not know who we are being fair and just to?"
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"There are no rules in nature".
That's basically a denial of science. It's saying that when a fetus has the SRY gene you can't predict with a high level of confidence it will turn out male.
"'The whole sex verification testing is done in anything BUT good faith, it’s done on the presumption that it’s capable of confirming suspicions that athletes are cheating."
Cheating implies intent and testing can't prove that. All it proves is whether the rules are being observed or not. Athletes are certainly capable of cheating as the drug testing regime proves, though it's clear in many DSD cases there was no intent to cheat. And the New York Times article you quoted does acknowledge that several Russian athletes dropped out when sex testing was introduced. Those Russians would never cheat would they? So, the tests technically never detected any imposters, it just prevented them which is the same outcome.
As I said before, chromosome testing is a more humane and less invasive test. It was abandoned already in the vain hope that rules could be put in place that are inclusive and fair to everyone. It's questionable whether that is possible with DSDs. It's definitely not possible with trans women unfortunately.
By the way, I see you posted about the technological advance in running shoes and regard it as "a funny story". I don't see what's funny about it. World Athletics had to react one way or another. The Vaporflys have a proven advantage. They either have to try and ban them or regulate them in a way that levels the playing field, such as by making sure they are on the market for long enough that everyone (who can afford them) can buy them and you don't have a situation where eg. only the US team is using them at some big championships.
"I might as well add that if anything should be considered meandering, it’s the attempts by some people falling over themselves to invent new terms such as “biological males”, “biological females”, “trans identified males”, “trans identified females”, in an attempt to distinguish between men and women according to their own personal beliefs. I prefer to keep things simple and just say men and women, but for the purposes of being reasonable, I’ll make accommodations for people who don’t refer to people using basic terminology."
I think that's a good example of how this is nothing more that a battle of wills over controlling the every day words we use. I could just keep things simple and say men and women with the meanings they have had for centuries, but that doesn't capture what the debate is about, and hence the need for qualifiers like biological or trans. So, posters here aren't falling over themselves to make distinctions merely according to their beliefs. They are trying to engage with the topic with clear language. But, it's good of you for being "reasonable" to accommodate this.
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There’s plenty of scientific evidence to support the idea that gender identity is as legitimate as any other innate identity that contributes to an individuals sense of self, and people with intersex conditions are a pretty good example of the just how innate the concept of gender identity is in humans -
A 2005 study on the gender identity outcomes of female-raised 46,XY persons with penile agenesis, cloacal exstrophyof the bladder, or penile ablation, found that 78% of the study subjects were living as female, as opposed to 22% who decided to initiate a sex change to male in line with their genetic sex. The study concludes: "The findings clearly indicate an increased risk of later patient-initiated gender re-assignment to male after female assignment in infancy or early childhood, but are nevertheless incompatible with the notion of a full determination of core gender identity by prenatal androgens."
A 2012 clinical review paper found that between 8.5% and 20% of people with intersex variations experienced gender dysphoria. Sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men, and 6% unsure. At birth, 52% of persons in the study were assigned female, and 41% were assigned male.
A study by Reiner & Gearhart provides some insight into what can happen when genetically male children with cloacal exstrophy are sexually assigned female and raised as girls, according to an 'optimal gender policy' developed by John Money: in a sample of 14 children, follow-up between the ages of 5 to 12 showed that 8 of them identified as boys, and all of the subjects had at least moderately male-typical attitudes and interests, providing support for the argument that genetic variables affect gender identity and behavior independent of socialization.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity
Being honest with you, I don’t do a whole lot of reading around the topic, I’d say I was barely even scratching the surface as it’s such a vast area of study, but one thing I have no interest in whatsoever is the kind of nonsense that plays out on platforms like twitter, facebook and Snapchat and whatever the new and cool platform is. I mean, I’m aware that the people you’re referring to do exist alright, and I get the point you’re driving at, but between myself and yourself, I really don’t have any time for that sort of identity politics and attempting to police other people’s right to freedom of expression. That’s a rabbit hole I’d rather not go down -
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Right so basically now the level of discussion is that trans women just dont exist 🤣
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
Terry Pratchet
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It’s not a denial of science, it’s the very opposite. Your point was that the exceptions don’t make the rule, something like that anyway, and I was pointing out the fact that in nature, there are no rules. Science is just the tool by which we observe natural phenomena, it doesn’t determine anything.
You make the point that cheating implies intent as if that isn’t the intent, and then ask what I have to assume is a rhetorical question about whether or not Russian athletes would cheat. Are Russians predisposed to cheating because they’re Russian or something? Are you confident enough in your assertion that you would argue that Russians should be banned from sports on the basis that they’re likely to cheat? I don’t need science to be fairly confident you can see the parallels with that idea and the same idea applied in a whole boatload of other contexts.
Fair enough if you don’t think the furore about the shoes giving their wearers an unfair advantage was funny, I thought it was hilarious that the fastest man on the planet was complaining about the wearer having an unfair advantage, while the fastest woman on the planet pointed out fairly IMO, that such arguments were an attempt to undermine the hard work she and her coach have put in. I dunno if you read the article, but both Bolt and Fraser-Price are Jamaican, as is the veteran sprint coach who made the point that there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the shoes offer the wearer an unfair advantage -
Veteran Jamaican sprint coach Stephen Francis admitted faster times are being run in Nike’s new sprint spikes.
“Based on anecdotal evidence and based on the fact that you have people who never would have run as fast as they are running, I suspect that there may be a point, but there is no scientific basis to make that point,” Francis said. Whatever the advantage, he said, anyone can benefit from Nike’s technology based on the rules set by World Athletics.
If I were to speculate, I’d suggest the placebo effect is largely in play in those circumstances tbh.
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No rules in nature then. What about all the rules listed on the page below?
Science is more than "the tool by which we observe natural phenomena". It encompasses theories that explain these phenomena too.
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I genuinely can’t tell if you’re actually being serious right now, or if you’re only messing 😂
It’s difficult to tell seeing as you couldn’t see the funny side of Usain Bolt complaining about the runners, and even in those circumstances I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his objections had nothing to do with the fact that he’s sponsored by Puma, one of Nike’s biggest rivals 🤔
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Bolt doesn't run competitively anymore, his concern was about his records being broken (and they will, probably by someone with better shoes, just as Bolt had better shoe technology than those running in the 80's or 90's, about the only certainty is that the person who breaks them won't have been born female).
As pointed out above, sports regulate equipment so that everyone can have access, it's one of the reasons the swimsuits were banned (along with their ridiculous single use nature), however today's more accessible swimsuits have a lot of the same advantages anyway, the technology has matured and more people can access it.
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about the only certainty is that the person who breaks them won't have been born female
So you’re telling me there’s a chance… 😬
Dear God if that goes over your head there’s no hope 😖
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I'm quite serious. It's an extraordinary thing to say there are 'no rules in nature'. And then say this claim is consistent with science. What about Newton's laws, or the laws of thermodynamics? Aren't they real?
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Ok you were serious then.
They’re rules in science, there are still no rules in nature.
Weird hill to want to die on, but have at it.
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So, take Rapoport's Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapoport%27s_rule) off that page for example, which states:
"that the latitudinal ranges of plants and animals are generally smaller at lower latitudes than at higher latitudes."
If that is a rule of science which clearly refers to nature. How can it not be a rule in nature?
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Just on your conclusions why bother having a well-coordinated multidisciplinary international research program, if the outcome is already pre-determined; to fairly integrate transwomen and DSD women athletes into elite sport.
This research program may well find that it's not possible to fairly integrate them, surely the goal of this research program should be to determine if it is possible to fairly integrate transwomen ( and DSD women) into elite sport
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How can it be a rule in nature, when by your own admission, it’s a rule that refers to a phenomenon observed in nature? It’s a rule based upon observation, much like laws, principles, theories, etc, all observations in the life sciences which refers to phenomena in nature. Like, the explanation is right there in your previous link:
From the birth of their science, biologists have sought to explain apparent regularities in observational data. In his biology, Aristotle inferred rules governing differences between live-bearing tetrapods (in modern terms, terrestrial placental mammals). Among his rules were that brood sizedecreases with adult body mass, while lifespan increases with gestation period and with body mass, and fecunditydecreases with lifespan. Thus, for example, elephants have smaller and fewer broods than mice, but longer lifespan and gestation.[3] Rules like these concisely organized the sum of knowledge obtained by early scientific measurements of the natural world, and could be used as models to predict future observations. Among the earliest biological rules in modern times are those of Karl Ernst von Baer (from 1828 onwards) on embryonic development,[4] and of Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger on animal pigmentation, in 1833.[5] There is some scepticism among biogeographers about the usefulness of general rules. For example, J.C. Briggs, in his 1987 book Biogeography and Plate Tectonics, comments that while Willi Hennig's rules on cladistics "have generally been helpful", his progression rule is "suspect".
That’s what I mean when I say that science is a tool, it was developed by humans and has it’s origins in philosophy, as a means of explaining phenomena observed in nature. To go back to the earlier example you gave and at least make it somewhat relevant to the thread - science can be used to predict with a high degree of confidence the progression of human development, and based upon these observations, the observers formulate their ideas of how the process of human development should go.
Because there’s no conscious agent involved in nature, it would simply be incorrect to suggest that nature has the capacity to determine how anything about human development should go. Nature just doesn’t have a set of rules to follow. Humans came up with the rules, and we’re pretty rigid about them, to the point where we suggest that any phenomenon which doesn’t conform to our expectations is classified as a disorder. That’s not nature determining that whatever phenomenon is a disorder. It’s humans who are choosing to classify their observations the way they do.
Where it gets dodgy is who gets to determine what is or isn’t classified as a disorder, and how they determine it should be addressed. Scientific history is littered with examples of how pseudoscience was used to justify discrimination against people who didn’t conform to other peoples expectations, or rather - the rules that those people invented and upheld which gave them the greatest advantages in terms of being able to dictate social norms or rules which everyone in society would be expected to adhere to, and everyone who couldn’t, was aware of the negative consequences of violating social norms and non-conformity.
It was easier then to make an example of the few who made themselves known, as a signal to anyone else not to get ideas, and faced with the choice of either suffering in private, or suffering in public, many chose the former over the latter, for fear of the consequences.
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In order to reach the desired outcome of integrating transwomen and DSD women in women’s sports. That IS the goal of the research program.
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The fact that androgyny, "masculine" women and "feminine" men exist doesn't change anything whatsoever about sex. Those are judgments made on the backdrop of a society that is increasingly obsessed with dictating what behaviour is acceptable for women and men in order to allow an increasing number of self-obsessed youngsters to define themselves as outside of it on the basis of perfectly normal behaviours.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~C.S. Lewis
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It’s all bluster. And it’s failing very badly now.
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Men who want to live as women exist. Women who want to live as men exist. They always have. But as you can’t “transfer” biologically from being a man to a woman or vis versa then where does the “trans” element come into it?
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How can it be a rule in nature, when by your own admission, it’s a rule that refers to a phenomenon observed in nature? It’s a rule based upon observation, much like laws, principles, theories, etc, all observations in the life sciences which refers to phenomena in nature. Like, the explanation is right there in your previous link:
So, something can be observed in something else, but not be in it. That doesn't seem right.
From the birth of their science, biologists have sought to explain apparent regularities in observational data. In his biology, Aristotle inferred rules governing differences between live-bearing tetrapods (in modern terms, terrestrial placental mammals). Among his rules were that brood sizedecreases with adult body mass, while lifespan increases with gestation period and with body mass, and fecunditydecreases with lifespan. Thus, for example, elephants have smaller and fewer broods than mice, but longer lifespan and gestation.[3] Rules like these concisely organized the sum of knowledge obtained by early scientific measurements of the natural world, and could be used as models to predict future observations. Among the earliest biological rules in modern times are those of Karl Ernst von Baer (from 1828 onwards) on embryonic development,[4] and of Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger on animal pigmentation, in 1833.[5] There is some scepticism among biogeographers about the usefulness of general rules. For example, J.C. Briggs, in his 1987 book Biogeography and Plate Tectonics, comments that while Willi Hennig's rules on cladistics "have generally been helpful", his progression rule is "suspect".
That’s what I mean when I say that science is a tool, it was developed by humans and has it’s origins in philosophy, as a means of explaining phenomena observed in nature. To go back to the earlier example you gave and at least make it somewhat relevant to the thread - science can be used to predict with a high degree of confidence the progression of human development, and based upon these observations, the observers formulate their ideas of how the process of human development should go.
Right, but science is more than a tool to observe things. Tools are not the same as theories. Some rules do get superceded over time, but others don't. And, even when one rule or theory looks to be superceded, it is still valid in certain contexts. Like, you could argue that the centuries old branch of Physics, classical Mechanics, has been superceded by Einstein's theories of relativity, but in practice that's not the case at all. NASA was able to send the Apollo missions to the moon, while ignoring relativity. They didn't need the tiny bit of extra precision it provides.
Because there’s no conscious agent involved in nature, it would simply be incorrect to suggest that nature has the capacity to determine how anything about human development should go.
That doesn't follow. Charles Darwin taught us that evolution progresses without a conscious agent in nature. Instead it happens through natural selection. So, whether we can determine anything about human development doesn't depend on a conscious (or divine) agent.
Nature just doesn’t have a set of rules to follow. Humans came up with the rules, and we’re pretty rigid about them, to the point where we suggest that any phenomenon which doesn’t conform to our expectations is classified as a disorder. That’s not nature determining that whatever phenomenon is a disorder. It’s humans who are choosing to classify their observations the way they do.
I think this is the nub of your point. Humans identified the rules and sometimes can be excessively rigid about them. But, that doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist and doesn't have predictive power. It is actually the case that a fetus with the SRY gene will turn out male 99.98% of the time. I think you are saying that unless a rule has no exceptions then it's not really a rule or it's effectively bad science, in some higher epistemic sense.
I found an interesting thread yesterday on Twitter discussing this exact point
Where it gets dodgy is who gets to determine what is or isn’t classified as a disorder, and how they determine it should be addressed. Scientific history is littered with examples of how pseudoscience was used to justify discrimination against people who didn’t conform to other peoples expectations, or rather - the rules that those people invented and upheld which gave them the greatest advantages in terms of being able to dictate social norms or rules which everyone in society would be expected to adhere to, and everyone who couldn’t, was aware of the negative consequences of violating social norms and non-conformity.
There has been plenty of bad science all right. Even still you find scientists clinging to their theories long after they have been disproven. But, the scientific method is able to deal with that and produce theories that explain huge swathes of the natural world even if they don't explain everything 100% of the time.
It was easier then to make an example of the few who made themselves known, as a signal to anyone else not to get ideas, and faced with the choice of either suffering in private, or suffering in public, many chose the former over the latter, for fear of the consequences.
Right
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The trans element comes into it, in the form of having no choice in the matter, analogous to the way in which people have no choice in their sexual orientation.
There are still people who believe that homosexuality isn’t a thing and anyone who is homosexual is just putting it on to peeve them off, but that idea is based upon their own egocentric perception.
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I found an interesting thread yesterday on Twitter discussing this exact point
Given you only found the thread yesterday, I think to be fair to you I’d have to assume you’re not familiar with Jesse Singal. He’s come up in the thread before, but basically if you were to look into his background, the idea that Jesse “doesn’t understand what the end-game is here”, while posting a screenshot from article, without even linking to the source, suggests that Jesse is engaging in his usual bad actor behaviour 🙄
The article he’s referring to, and I’m not gonna lie, I found it difficult to follow because it reads like two five-year olds having a conversation, but it’s here, if you haven’t already read it for yourself. I’m not sure whether you did or you didn’t as you didn’t say anything about the actual article -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/how-junk-science-is-being-used-against-trans-kids2/
Basically what they’re discussing is the influence of John Money on the fields of psychology and biology, and the way that had it not been for his attempts to prove his theories, and his theories gaining the influence they did in spite of the evidence contradicting his theories, precisely because of the prestige which was afforded Money because of who he was, the course of history could have been very different -
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
Edit: The rest of your post - yeah we’re more or less there or thereabouts on the same track.
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