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If I had to place bets I'd say being transsexual is much more like being otherkin than it is like being a member of the opposite sex who has a misshapen body. I'd also happily bet that being homosexual is much more like being into BDSM or the various fetishisms than being in possession of the mechanism of attraction a member of the opposite sex typically has for one's own sex. Why? Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and "being a woman in a man's body" is an extraordinary claim without compelling evidence and the concept of a "sexual orientation" is also an extraordinary claim without compelling evidence. There are also clear parallels - and even overlap - between the various different communities that make categorising transsexualism and homosexuality with pursuits such as BDSM, fetishism, etc, compelling.
I don't intend any of this in a derogatory way. It just seems like there's a general explanation for all these things in terms of sexual development and the various sorts of interests it can lead to - some more encompassing and life-changing than others - that doesn't require the addition of mechanisms that would legitimise certain outcomes over and above others (i.e., the idea that a male-to-female transsexual is genuinely a woman in some sense whereas an otherkin or animal roleplayers are not genuinely what they might take themselves to be). It's also worth noting that there isn't even agreement within communities. Some transsexuals will identify strongly as male or female, some will identify as a third gender category or a special category of male or female, and so on. Equally, among the gay community you find all sorts of identifications, including those who strongly identify as having a sexual orientation in every way equal to heterosexual orientation, those who identify as straight men who have sex with men, those who merely take themselves to be indulging a kink, etc. There are differences among cultures, eras, and so on.
To make sure I'm understanding you correctly, do these predictions follow from your idea?
Those seem generally accurate. My introspection (as a cis-gendered male homosexual) suggests that I'm interested in male mating patterns.
I'm one of the 'straight men who have sex with men' but I know people who are essentially straight women happy with their male bodies. That suggests to me that MtF transsexuals are women who are unhappy with their male bodies. Is your claim that the primary difference between a MtF an a female-gendered gay is the body dysphoria, which is similar to Otherkin?
One of the mysteries in all this is that sex roles are getting somewhat softened and blurred. How much would transexuality mean if the sex roles aren't there?
My experience is that transsexuals have an uneasy existence in genderqueer communities because they tend to have a very solid, traditional gender identity that's just mismatched with their biological sex. And so when a theorist argues that gender is just a social construction that can mean whatever we want it to mean, the transsexuals all cough nervously.
That is to say, enough of the sex roles is biological that I don't think whatever makes transsexuals dislike their bodies pre-transition will go away as social pressure to conform diminishes.
Transvestism is usually framed as wanting to dress like a member of the other sex. However, there's no such thing as dressing like a woman or dressing like a man. There's only dressing like a particular time and place's idea of a man or a woman.
I assume there's imprinting involved, but as I said, I don't think I understand gender. I'm not completely blind to what's considered normal in my culture, but when I think about it, I find evidence that there's something weird underneath.
It's possible that, if there's imprinting involved, that's part of why none of the standard theories make sense. And I don't have an explanation why human societies (all of them, so far as I know) set up sex roles in such a way that there's something to imprint on.
Your point of view would be valid if there wasn't any evidence, but there's studies (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7456588.stm) and studies (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-09-homosexual-brains_x.htm) about actual documented neurological differences between sexual orientations, and those were just 2 I found in 2 google searches.
furthermore "being a woman in a man's body" is obviously an actual extraordinary claim, but "I have the FEELING of being a woman in a man's body" is barely even an interesting claim in the range of psychological disorders.
I'm aware of the research but I don't find it compelling. There are, of course, neurological differences for all types of behaviour, regardless of origin (learned, unlearned, innate, etc). These studies tend to draw conclusions that don't follow from the data. For example, in the first study you link to there's no evidence for the claim that the difference is present at birth and in the second study they are, for some reason, claiming that neurological differences imply that something is not learned.
"some reason" is that even people who are otherwise not susceptible to supernatural beliefs often picture human volition as being composed of a material brain being "driven" like a car by a disembodied mind. So if you can't tell the difference between two brains making different decisions then it must be because those decisions came from the mind, and if you can tell the difference between those two brains then it must be because those decisions were mandated by the brain.
As you say, every difference between human decisions is going to be due to some combination of random chance and preexisting physical differences, and it will merely be up to the quirks of human biology and the advancements of human biologists to determine which internal differences become diagnostically detectable when. So there may be many decades of public confusion ahead of us.
One also sees the opposite, especially in rationalist, materialist circles, including LessWrong. Even people who are otherwise not susceptible to supernatural beliefs often picture human volition as being composed of a disembodied mind being "driven" like a car by a material brain.
ETA: Correction: the view is more that the disembodied mind is being "driven" like a car passenger by the material brain.
The wording here is strange and overcomplicated, and I think you're stacking the deck. In common usage, a man is called homosexual if he is interested in taking men to bed and uninterested in taking women to bed. Why is that an extraordinary claim, and why would it require evidence beyond the say-so of the man in question?
I'm discussing the concept of a "sexual orientation", the mental model of which is a mechanism of attraction within individuals that can be either for the opposite sex or the same sex but is essentially the same thing, and juxtaposing it with what I believe to be the more accurate account that homosexuality falls on a continuum that includes various fetishisms. The problem is that political acceptance of homosexuality has become almost completely (and needlessly) aligned with a particular mental model of how homosexuality functions and it's therefore difficult to talk about it without sounding like you're on the wrong side of the politics. But essentially I'm saying that the mechanism underlying same-sex attraction is potentially not at all similar to the mechanism underlying opposite sex attraction.
You might be right that there are important differences between the attraction that a typical gay man feels for a man and the attraction that a typical straight man feels for a woman. Certainly there are important cultural differences. But the claim, from a man, "I feel about men the way most men feel about women" is far more innocuous than your contrary idea that he feels about men the way some men feel about feet, or rubber.
Most gay men after all report feelings of romantic love for other men. A fetishist who claims his object or activity of erotic focus is something more than an entertaining sex fantasy is much more rare, or so I think. Also note that there is something obviously culturally contingent about many famous fetishes, while men who take men to bed have existed in thousands of cultural contexts across thousands of years.
The scientific understanding of fetishism is even poorer than the scientific understanding of sexual orientation. By positing a "continuum of fetishism" you're already on dubious ground, whether or not we would go on to accept that homosexuality falls on that continuum.
BDSM is often spoken of by practitioners as being integral to their identity and to the emotional content of their romantic relationships.
Eric Raymond has a good discussion here of just how culturally contingent models of homosexuality are. He analyses four "types" of homosexual behavior:
He goes on to say that for male homosexuality acceptance of the "romantic homosexuality" type is the exception, and by exception he means that
"Models" of heterosexuality are also culturally contingent.
The essay is interesting but not altogether convincing. Socrates would not recognize pederasty as a category distinct from romantic homosexuality, as the author does.
Not in the sense that Eric uses the term. In particular, he wouldn't consider consensual homosexual relations between people of comparable ages in any way normal.
Your wording was ambiguous.