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Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
The current lead reads:
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier and published by Regnery Publishing. In the book, Shrier states there had been a nearly 400-fold increase in teenagers in the United States identifying as transgender from 2010 to 2020, and attributes this to rapid onset gender dysphoria (an unrecognized and contentious diagnosis), which Shrier considers a form of social contagion.
I have three issues with this version:
1. The demographic stats of trans kids is not really part of her book's thesis. The statistics aren't something she came up with, what the book does is attribute the increase to Littman's "ROGD" hypothesis. The sources we have don't focus on her "claim" that there has been an increase in the number of openly trans kids. They focus on her language/treatment of child subjects, her activism, and her endorsement of Littman's hypothesis.
2. "Rapid onset gender dysphoria" is not and has never been a diagnosis
. The RSs we have don't call it a diagnosis. Even Littman/Marchiano/etc don't call it a diagnosis. Even Shrier doesn't call it a diagnosis. It's a hypothesis, and one that departs significantly from medical consensus has been met with considerable controversy among the medical and scientific community. We
must frame it as such.
3. ...which Shrier considers a form of social contagion
: again, the "social contagion" thing is not an innovation by Shrier. The premise of the "ROGD" hypothesis is that gender dysphoria and transgender identity are a social contagion, that's the whole point. I believe the paper contains the phrase "cluster outbreaks of transgender identification", which sums things up pretty well. The current wording makes it sound like Shrier is independently interpreting this as a social contagion, which she is not.
The most glaring issue here is #2, but #1 and #3 are important as well. Srey Sros talk 02:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier and published by Regnery Publishing. In the book, Shrier states there had been a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery just from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this to rapid onset gender dysphoria (an unrecognized and contentious diagnosis), which she considers a form of social contagion unrelated to true gender dysphoria.
she considers a form of social contagion unrelated to true gender dysphoria). Additionally, the quote from Shrier is hardly deathless prose. Including it both dilutes the meat of the description of the book we already have and unnecessarily misgenders the book's underage living subjects. Srey Sros talk 02:12, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
girlstwo more times, which isn't exactly NPOV - that pretty much takes one side of the underlying dispute, right there. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
implying that she's wrong- it is the NPOV, reliably sourced term. Referring to this group as "transgender boys" would be saying that she's wrong, and nobody has proposed to do that to my knowledge. By quoting Shrier repeatedly calling them "girls" without comment, the current text is normalizing Shrier's POV that they are girls, which is literally the main point at stake (and where hers represents the minority view). Also,
biological girlsdoesn't help nor would that term add anything helpful to the article, since the whole idea of "biological girls" represents a POV layer as opposed to AFAB, an expression the entire purpose of which is to be accurate and scrupulously neutral. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".Crossroads -talk- 21:14, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Crossroads, have you seen any recent, reliable sources on transgender boys that characterizes them as girls
? If so, I would appreciate you presenting it here. There are many, many reliable sources on this topic using assigned female at birth
, which is why I believe it to be the neutrally descriptive term.
Newimpartial (
talk)
21:17, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available.I don't think this falls under that umbrella. Srey Sros talk 22:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girls, and I've seen plenty that use
assigned female at birth. Have you seen any that use the former? Newimpartial ( talk) 21:17, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
the myth of biological sex. They are quite dwarfed by the WSJ opinion pieces, even then. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:46, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery just from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among a high-anxiety, depressive, and mostly white group "who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".or
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".? Crossroads -talk- 21:59, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" [among teenagers(?)] in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".Just making sure what I said was clear. Crossroads -talk- 22:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
But Korny, "biological girls" is a term deployed by one side of this debate- a populist side without much scientific or specialist support. "Sex assigned at birth", like AFAB, is a term used by neutral, reliable sources. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:53, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Neanderthal knuckle-draggers(not my term), and the reason for that is that the whole purpose of those phrases is to deny that the terms "women" and "girls" are polysemic and somewhat fraught, and to insist by contrast that "if someone is AFAB, we should be able to call them girls/women regardless of how they identify".
Sex refers to the biological characteristics of males and females. Gender includes more than sex and serves as a cultural indicator of a person’s personal and social identity. An important consideration when referring to sex is the level of specificity required: specify sex when it is relevant. Choose sex-neutral terms that avoid bias, suit the material under discussion, and do not intrude on the reader’s attention.
"Assigned female at birth" is only a construction that is used in fairly niche sources specifically dedicated to transgender issues.As I mentioned above, this article is about a transgender issue and necessarily already uses niche language ("gender dysphoria", "transgender hormone therapy", "sex reassignment surgery", etc.). When discussing very specific topics we sometimes have to use niche language, such as those terms and assigned gender at birth. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Korny, to get back to your terminological isssue, there are differences, in many reliable sources, between phrases like "an intact male (or female) reproductive system" and "a female", or "a male person". The former - using male or female to describe something fairly specific, like anatomical features or hormones - is something some (not all) reliable sources do, and can't be considered "fringe". On the other hand, statements like a trans man is still female, in some biological senses
are not anything I see in reliable sources published over the last ten years or so, and line up with referring to trans men as "females" or "girls" in your knuckle-dragger
category. The standard term that has emerged for the set of cis women plus trans men (and certain nonbinary people) is AFAB, not females
or biological girls
, and the usage in recent, reliable sources is remarkably consistent on that point.
Newimpartial (
talk)
18:22, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biologically maleis used in recent sources other than op-edsters and axe-grinders has, ahem, not been provided with evidence.
adolescent girlsis their potential future fertility rather than who they know themselves to be - especially as, unlike the case of heifers, their identities and how they live them out will largely determine their actual, as opposed to potential, future fertility. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girlas a category is that it groups together cis girls, teen transmen, AFAB nonbinary teens, and people who just haven't figured things out yet and interpolates them as
girls- which is, as you point out, primarily a social category. Careful language that allows these aspects to be distinguished thoughtfully features quite different terminology. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girlsas anything other than a phrase identifying young people based on AFAB anatomy and then prescribing identities or social roles for them based on this "biology"? Because that's literally all I can find. Newimpartial ( talk) 04:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
biological girls. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Your assertion that She is not including trans men and non-binary persons in that sentence
seems bizarre to me, and in need of some kind of support. Elsewhere in the book, she says'I refer to biologically female teens caught up in this transgender craze as ‘she’ and ‘her’
- note "biologically female teens", with no attempt whatsoever to separate out supposedly "actual" trans people from cis girls victimized by social contagion
. The group she describes as girls
in the quote formerly included in the lede seem to be exactly the same people. What am I supposed to be missing?
Newimpartial (
talk)
22:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
While gender dysphoria has always been vanishingly rare among females, social contagion has not. These are the same high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder. Now it’s gender dysphoria, sometimes along with some or all of those other conditions.She is clearly saying that those "falling prey to ... gender dysphoria" (those expressing a masculine gender identity) are "girls" who would in previous decades presented symptoms of anorexia or MPD. She isn't excluding trans teens from her category of "girls suffering from social contagion" - they are the whole point of what she is doing. So yes, these are in whatever proportion actual trans teens she is talking about, and we have to treat them with respect although she does not. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
- I will ask this again, Crossroads: Why do you think the sentence in question does not apply to the teens who then seek solace in "social contagion" and gender dysphoria (according to Shrier)? It seems BLUESKY obvious to me that it does apply to it.
And FFS, your trans men on testosterone
comment is completely baffling. The category "AFAB trans teens" (a subset of "AFAB teens") would include all AFAB teens with trans identities, whether or not they are on testosterone (or even blockers). And if you think that AFAB teens - on blockers or not - do not receive the unwanted attention of straight boys, as well as "isolation, online social dynamics, restrictive gender and sexuality labels, unwelcome physical changes and sexual attention", then you are clearly (and perhaps happily) very much insulated from the life experience of this group.
So yeah, if you could explain using words why you exclude from Shrier's sentence the people it most significantly refers to - the ones who report gender dysphoria due, according to her, to social contagion - that would be just great, thanks. So far you have just asserted this over and over again without any kind of evidence.
Newimpartial (
talk)
12:24, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
You're quite right it would be easy to quote GCN here—I didn't only because I'd already quoted the exact phrase above and thought it was sufficiently clear that I was referring to the same portion of the source: "Shrier admits in her book that she misgenders transgender youth, saying, 'I refer to biologically female teens caught up in this transgender craze as ‘she’ and ‘her’' — a choice by the author that disrespects transgender teens’ gender identity and falsely assumes that all trans boys or non-binary individuals assigned female at birth have the same biological makeup." GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
And if you think that AFAB teens - on blockers or not - do not receive the unwanted attention of straight boys...Okay, but you also stated:
that we make social determinations of roles and interactions...in the basis of biological characteristics of bodies rather than social identifiers....that isn't the way the recent scientific sources treat these topics...So on what grounds are these straight boys giving AFAB teens unwanted attention? If it's being AFAB, that contradicts the statement that it's all about social identifiers and not biological characteristics.
if you could explain using words why you exclude from Shrier's sentence the people it most significantly refers to - the ones who report gender dysphoria due, according to her, to social contagion- sure. She is saying that the people supposedly with ROGD came from the group of people suffering these issues - girls - and that these individuals get away from that. Honestly we're going in circles at this point. Crossroads -talk- 04:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
So on what grounds are these straight boys giving AFAB teens unwanted attention?- for the most part, they are interpolating them as "girls". I didn't say anything cognate to "it is social identifiers all the way down" (and that isn't what I believe), but rather people create and act on social identifiers that they impose on others against their will, in this case "girl" or specifically "dyke" being the most relevant to the "unwanted attention" directed at AFAB trans and questioning teens.
She is saying that the people supposedly with ROGD came from the group of people suffering these issues - girls - and that these individuals get away from that- she is also saying, repeatedly and emphatically, that they are still "girls" and should be treated (medically and socially) as such. The argument "she isn't misgendering them, because they aren't really trans" doesn't work, either on WP or in the real world, and I really hope that is not the argument you're making. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
WP should not be misusing "assigned X at birth" in this way. It is medical jargon that refers to intersex persons, and doctors making a judgement call on whether they should be classified as biologically more male or female as to their genitalia (sometimes after surgery to go more one direction or the other). No one who is not born intersex is "assigned" anything; they're simply observed to be physically male or female, i.e. having external or internal sex organs, and it takes no medical expertise of any kind to make that observation. The fact that progressive activists in general (about 8% of the US population, and even lower in the UK and many other countries), including critics of this books and possibly the book itself (I have not read it) love to hijack this term and incorrectly apply it to transgender and nonbinary persons (those whose subjective gender is different from, or fluid in regard to, what is more socially expected based on their genital sex and their secondary sex characteristics) is no rationale for Wikipedia, in its own voice, doing likewise. We have a encyclopedic duty to not abuse language in such a way, as a general matter, as well as a WP:NPOV reason not to do it in a topic like this, in which terminological shenanigans are clearly serving a socio-cultural, doctrinaire purpose. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:01, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
hijacking languagein service of
termininologival shenanigans? [7] [8] I. Can't. Even. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Obviously speech communities differ, but cbc.ca - which is a mainstream public broadcaster - uses "assigned female/male at birth" as a completely routine statement of fact. 20:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
"Assigned female at birth" makes technical sense when talking about intersex people where a doctor/the parents said "IDK, girl I guess".. A significant number of people will read it and think we are talking about intersex babies because "assigned" carries connotations of being unsure and of arbitrariness. I've offered ways to reword to avoid it but nobody is pursuing ideas in that direction; we're stalled out that this term has no downsides and that we have to use it. Pretty much at a loss on this one. Crossroads -talk- 20:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Crossroads, Statistics Canada is an arms-length national agency, with the population statistics units run by professional demographers; it has at least the standing in the field of demographic statistics that the Centers for Disease Control has in the field of epidemiology, and I dare say it is subject to a great deal less political interference than the latter. Yes, it is a primary source but it is most certainly a reliable source on demographic statistics and demographic classification, as it is also a reliable source on economic statistics and environmental statistics for that matter, since it is much less subject to pressures on those matters than are national governments or international organizations. From the US Census Bureau you might form the impression that national statistical methodologies are routinely impacted by political interference from the executive branch, but the US is actually an outlier in that respect, and the UK and Australia, as well as Canada and the EU, are generally much more successful than the US or China in collecting accurate national statistics without political interference.
As far as the standing of "assigned female" (or male) "at birth" with lay readers, all I can say is that is used routinely in coverage of trans biographies by the CBC, very much a centrist, mainstream broadcaster, and doesn't seem to confuse anyone. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
used routinely. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
The current lead reads:
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier and published by Regnery Publishing. In the book, Shrier states there had been a nearly 400-fold increase in teenagers in the United States identifying as transgender from 2010 to 2020, and attributes this to rapid onset gender dysphoria (an unrecognized and contentious diagnosis), which Shrier considers a form of social contagion.
I have three issues with this version:
1. The demographic stats of trans kids is not really part of her book's thesis. The statistics aren't something she came up with, what the book does is attribute the increase to Littman's "ROGD" hypothesis. The sources we have don't focus on her "claim" that there has been an increase in the number of openly trans kids. They focus on her language/treatment of child subjects, her activism, and her endorsement of Littman's hypothesis.
2. "Rapid onset gender dysphoria" is not and has never been a diagnosis
. The RSs we have don't call it a diagnosis. Even Littman/Marchiano/etc don't call it a diagnosis. Even Shrier doesn't call it a diagnosis. It's a hypothesis, and one that departs significantly from medical consensus has been met with considerable controversy among the medical and scientific community. We
must frame it as such.
3. ...which Shrier considers a form of social contagion
: again, the "social contagion" thing is not an innovation by Shrier. The premise of the "ROGD" hypothesis is that gender dysphoria and transgender identity are a social contagion, that's the whole point. I believe the paper contains the phrase "cluster outbreaks of transgender identification", which sums things up pretty well. The current wording makes it sound like Shrier is independently interpreting this as a social contagion, which she is not.
The most glaring issue here is #2, but #1 and #3 are important as well. Srey Sros talk 02:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a 2020 book by Abigail Shrier and published by Regnery Publishing. In the book, Shrier states there had been a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery just from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this to rapid onset gender dysphoria (an unrecognized and contentious diagnosis), which she considers a form of social contagion unrelated to true gender dysphoria.
she considers a form of social contagion unrelated to true gender dysphoria). Additionally, the quote from Shrier is hardly deathless prose. Including it both dilutes the meat of the description of the book we already have and unnecessarily misgenders the book's underage living subjects. Srey Sros talk 02:12, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
girlstwo more times, which isn't exactly NPOV - that pretty much takes one side of the underlying dispute, right there. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
implying that she's wrong- it is the NPOV, reliably sourced term. Referring to this group as "transgender boys" would be saying that she's wrong, and nobody has proposed to do that to my knowledge. By quoting Shrier repeatedly calling them "girls" without comment, the current text is normalizing Shrier's POV that they are girls, which is literally the main point at stake (and where hers represents the minority view). Also,
biological girlsdoesn't help nor would that term add anything helpful to the article, since the whole idea of "biological girls" represents a POV layer as opposed to AFAB, an expression the entire purpose of which is to be accurate and scrupulously neutral. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".Crossroads -talk- 21:14, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Crossroads, have you seen any recent, reliable sources on transgender boys that characterizes them as girls
? If so, I would appreciate you presenting it here. There are many, many reliable sources on this topic using assigned female at birth
, which is why I believe it to be the neutrally descriptive term.
Newimpartial (
talk)
21:17, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available.I don't think this falls under that umbrella. Srey Sros talk 22:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girls, and I've seen plenty that use
assigned female at birth. Have you seen any that use the former? Newimpartial ( talk) 21:17, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
the myth of biological sex. They are quite dwarfed by the WSJ opinion pieces, even then. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:46, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery just from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among a high-anxiety, depressive, and mostly white group "who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".or
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".? Crossroads -talk- 21:59, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Shrier states in the book that there was a "sudden, severe spike in transgender identification" [among teenagers(?)] in the 2010s, including a quadrupling of the number of those seeking female-to-male reassignment surgery from 2016 to 2017. She attributes this jump to social contagion among "high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder".Just making sure what I said was clear. Crossroads -talk- 22:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
But Korny, "biological girls" is a term deployed by one side of this debate- a populist side without much scientific or specialist support. "Sex assigned at birth", like AFAB, is a term used by neutral, reliable sources. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:53, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Neanderthal knuckle-draggers(not my term), and the reason for that is that the whole purpose of those phrases is to deny that the terms "women" and "girls" are polysemic and somewhat fraught, and to insist by contrast that "if someone is AFAB, we should be able to call them girls/women regardless of how they identify".
Sex refers to the biological characteristics of males and females. Gender includes more than sex and serves as a cultural indicator of a person’s personal and social identity. An important consideration when referring to sex is the level of specificity required: specify sex when it is relevant. Choose sex-neutral terms that avoid bias, suit the material under discussion, and do not intrude on the reader’s attention.
"Assigned female at birth" is only a construction that is used in fairly niche sources specifically dedicated to transgender issues.As I mentioned above, this article is about a transgender issue and necessarily already uses niche language ("gender dysphoria", "transgender hormone therapy", "sex reassignment surgery", etc.). When discussing very specific topics we sometimes have to use niche language, such as those terms and assigned gender at birth. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Korny, to get back to your terminological isssue, there are differences, in many reliable sources, between phrases like "an intact male (or female) reproductive system" and "a female", or "a male person". The former - using male or female to describe something fairly specific, like anatomical features or hormones - is something some (not all) reliable sources do, and can't be considered "fringe". On the other hand, statements like a trans man is still female, in some biological senses
are not anything I see in reliable sources published over the last ten years or so, and line up with referring to trans men as "females" or "girls" in your knuckle-dragger
category. The standard term that has emerged for the set of cis women plus trans men (and certain nonbinary people) is AFAB, not females
or biological girls
, and the usage in recent, reliable sources is remarkably consistent on that point.
Newimpartial (
talk)
18:22, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biologically maleis used in recent sources other than op-edsters and axe-grinders has, ahem, not been provided with evidence.
adolescent girlsis their potential future fertility rather than who they know themselves to be - especially as, unlike the case of heifers, their identities and how they live them out will largely determine their actual, as opposed to potential, future fertility. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girlas a category is that it groups together cis girls, teen transmen, AFAB nonbinary teens, and people who just haven't figured things out yet and interpolates them as
girls- which is, as you point out, primarily a social category. Careful language that allows these aspects to be distinguished thoughtfully features quite different terminology. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
biological girlsas anything other than a phrase identifying young people based on AFAB anatomy and then prescribing identities or social roles for them based on this "biology"? Because that's literally all I can find. Newimpartial ( talk) 04:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
biological girls. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Your assertion that She is not including trans men and non-binary persons in that sentence
seems bizarre to me, and in need of some kind of support. Elsewhere in the book, she says'I refer to biologically female teens caught up in this transgender craze as ‘she’ and ‘her’
- note "biologically female teens", with no attempt whatsoever to separate out supposedly "actual" trans people from cis girls victimized by social contagion
. The group she describes as girls
in the quote formerly included in the lede seem to be exactly the same people. What am I supposed to be missing?
Newimpartial (
talk)
22:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
While gender dysphoria has always been vanishingly rare among females, social contagion has not. These are the same high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder. Now it’s gender dysphoria, sometimes along with some or all of those other conditions.She is clearly saying that those "falling prey to ... gender dysphoria" (those expressing a masculine gender identity) are "girls" who would in previous decades presented symptoms of anorexia or MPD. She isn't excluding trans teens from her category of "girls suffering from social contagion" - they are the whole point of what she is doing. So yes, these are in whatever proportion actual trans teens she is talking about, and we have to treat them with respect although she does not. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
- I will ask this again, Crossroads: Why do you think the sentence in question does not apply to the teens who then seek solace in "social contagion" and gender dysphoria (according to Shrier)? It seems BLUESKY obvious to me that it does apply to it.
And FFS, your trans men on testosterone
comment is completely baffling. The category "AFAB trans teens" (a subset of "AFAB teens") would include all AFAB teens with trans identities, whether or not they are on testosterone (or even blockers). And if you think that AFAB teens - on blockers or not - do not receive the unwanted attention of straight boys, as well as "isolation, online social dynamics, restrictive gender and sexuality labels, unwelcome physical changes and sexual attention", then you are clearly (and perhaps happily) very much insulated from the life experience of this group.
So yeah, if you could explain using words why you exclude from Shrier's sentence the people it most significantly refers to - the ones who report gender dysphoria due, according to her, to social contagion - that would be just great, thanks. So far you have just asserted this over and over again without any kind of evidence.
Newimpartial (
talk)
12:24, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
You're quite right it would be easy to quote GCN here—I didn't only because I'd already quoted the exact phrase above and thought it was sufficiently clear that I was referring to the same portion of the source: "Shrier admits in her book that she misgenders transgender youth, saying, 'I refer to biologically female teens caught up in this transgender craze as ‘she’ and ‘her’' — a choice by the author that disrespects transgender teens’ gender identity and falsely assumes that all trans boys or non-binary individuals assigned female at birth have the same biological makeup." GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
And if you think that AFAB teens - on blockers or not - do not receive the unwanted attention of straight boys...Okay, but you also stated:
that we make social determinations of roles and interactions...in the basis of biological characteristics of bodies rather than social identifiers....that isn't the way the recent scientific sources treat these topics...So on what grounds are these straight boys giving AFAB teens unwanted attention? If it's being AFAB, that contradicts the statement that it's all about social identifiers and not biological characteristics.
if you could explain using words why you exclude from Shrier's sentence the people it most significantly refers to - the ones who report gender dysphoria due, according to her, to social contagion- sure. She is saying that the people supposedly with ROGD came from the group of people suffering these issues - girls - and that these individuals get away from that. Honestly we're going in circles at this point. Crossroads -talk- 04:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
So on what grounds are these straight boys giving AFAB teens unwanted attention?- for the most part, they are interpolating them as "girls". I didn't say anything cognate to "it is social identifiers all the way down" (and that isn't what I believe), but rather people create and act on social identifiers that they impose on others against their will, in this case "girl" or specifically "dyke" being the most relevant to the "unwanted attention" directed at AFAB trans and questioning teens.
She is saying that the people supposedly with ROGD came from the group of people suffering these issues - girls - and that these individuals get away from that- she is also saying, repeatedly and emphatically, that they are still "girls" and should be treated (medically and socially) as such. The argument "she isn't misgendering them, because they aren't really trans" doesn't work, either on WP or in the real world, and I really hope that is not the argument you're making. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
WP should not be misusing "assigned X at birth" in this way. It is medical jargon that refers to intersex persons, and doctors making a judgement call on whether they should be classified as biologically more male or female as to their genitalia (sometimes after surgery to go more one direction or the other). No one who is not born intersex is "assigned" anything; they're simply observed to be physically male or female, i.e. having external or internal sex organs, and it takes no medical expertise of any kind to make that observation. The fact that progressive activists in general (about 8% of the US population, and even lower in the UK and many other countries), including critics of this books and possibly the book itself (I have not read it) love to hijack this term and incorrectly apply it to transgender and nonbinary persons (those whose subjective gender is different from, or fluid in regard to, what is more socially expected based on their genital sex and their secondary sex characteristics) is no rationale for Wikipedia, in its own voice, doing likewise. We have a encyclopedic duty to not abuse language in such a way, as a general matter, as well as a WP:NPOV reason not to do it in a topic like this, in which terminological shenanigans are clearly serving a socio-cultural, doctrinaire purpose. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:01, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
hijacking languagein service of
termininologival shenanigans? [7] [8] I. Can't. Even. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Obviously speech communities differ, but cbc.ca - which is a mainstream public broadcaster - uses "assigned female/male at birth" as a completely routine statement of fact. 20:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
"Assigned female at birth" makes technical sense when talking about intersex people where a doctor/the parents said "IDK, girl I guess".. A significant number of people will read it and think we are talking about intersex babies because "assigned" carries connotations of being unsure and of arbitrariness. I've offered ways to reword to avoid it but nobody is pursuing ideas in that direction; we're stalled out that this term has no downsides and that we have to use it. Pretty much at a loss on this one. Crossroads -talk- 20:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Crossroads, Statistics Canada is an arms-length national agency, with the population statistics units run by professional demographers; it has at least the standing in the field of demographic statistics that the Centers for Disease Control has in the field of epidemiology, and I dare say it is subject to a great deal less political interference than the latter. Yes, it is a primary source but it is most certainly a reliable source on demographic statistics and demographic classification, as it is also a reliable source on economic statistics and environmental statistics for that matter, since it is much less subject to pressures on those matters than are national governments or international organizations. From the US Census Bureau you might form the impression that national statistical methodologies are routinely impacted by political interference from the executive branch, but the US is actually an outlier in that respect, and the UK and Australia, as well as Canada and the EU, are generally much more successful than the US or China in collecting accurate national statistics without political interference.
As far as the standing of "assigned female" (or male) "at birth" with lay readers, all I can say is that is used routinely in coverage of trans biographies by the CBC, very much a centrist, mainstream broadcaster, and doesn't seem to confuse anyone. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
used routinely. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)