I think its already fairly well established that many people naturally grow out of tendencies they had as children or young adults. This happens all the time. Not every Tomboy is really transgender and brain-washed by society as some here seem to be implying. Not every boy who played with dolls or liked playing with dollhouses was really a brain-washed "girl at heart". Given that transgender is such a small part of the population, this idea that we should encourage all 7-year-olds to be transgender if they have these sort of cross-gender preferences, seems dangerous. Because clearly, for most people, this curiosity at a young age was just a phase and encouraging such would be doing harm to more people than it would help...

Just because someone feels they are transgender, doesn't necessarily mean they have been since birth. Can you honestly tell me you didn't do something associated with the other gender as a kid? I remember playing with my mom's make-up. I just think it's too easy to go back to being a kid and find justification why it really started from birth, but I think proving it is a different story.

And for those proponents claiming its in the brain from birth due to a hormonal abnormality, aren't you in a way calling transgender just a form of brain damage? Is that really what you want to be claiming?

You've actually said something I kind of agree with. Whoa.

I think the issue for both sides is that they see one aspect of gender and focus solely on that. Some people only talk about the biological, some only talk about the social, when gender is both biology and stereotypes / socially constructed.

A lot of the stereotypes are toxic - portraying women as weak and flighty, men as uncontrolled and lazy, etc. Objecting to that stuff is simply common sense. But sometimes people get confused about what's being objected to on both sides of the issue.

Strange thing go down on these forums, so this can be bunched in with those......

I feel obligated to tell everyone I took a painkiller this morning although it probably has nothing to do with it.

I'll respond to this, but I won't argue semantics with you. I said it was an abnormality because a fraction of a percent of the people in the united states are transgender. It's uncommon. Therefore this prenatal hormonal exposure or lack thereof is an abnormality.

I'm talking more toward dtgreene's claims that being transgender has been "proven" to be from birth based on brain scan studies and thus that young children should be encouraged to play out the opposite sex. And while it's possible for there to be birth defects which can cause similar problems, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people identifying as transgender do not have such chromosomal issues.

The danger with claiming it's all in the brain from birth, is now you are essentially claiming it is a form of biological brain damage. For me, it falls more to "different strokes for different folks". There are people who want to live on a commune. There are people who like country life; city life. If people are happy being a gender they weren't born with, why should anyone else care.

And as to bathrooms, I don't even see why this is an issue. My understanding is that custom has allowed men into women's bathrooms to change their young daughter's diapers. It's not like transgenders didn't use restrooms before. People used a restroom they found appropriate. This shouldn't be a big deal. And if a creepy man is hanging around the women's restrooms for an extended period of time, you call the cops, and it shouldn't matter if he's dressed as a man or a woman. None of this changes anything.

It is entirely socially constructed, but "reversing social conditioning" is basically moving the earth with a sufficiently long lever. It's not going to happen any time soon, but the problems real humans face right now need to be solved.
It's like if someone has cancer and you're saying, "But wait, in 300 years humans will be genetically enhanced to never have cancer". Splendid for them, but this particular person needs chemo now.

Like that:
A child is born. The child has a dick. Parents give the child a "male" name, dress the child accordingly, etc. Eventually, the child acquires a sense of self and starts to express preferences. Also, in the course of socialization / social conditioning, the child realizes that there are, apparently, two broad classes of people who behave differently -- men and women -- and decides to be a woman.

(Several times on public transport, I overheard children asking parents about my gender.
"Mom, is it an uncle or an auntie?" "An auntie, I think." "Why does she wear pants then?"
I live in Russia where pants on women are normal, but children do notice the positive correlation between skirts, long hair, painted faces (mine isn't), high voices, hourglass figures and certain behavioral cues and expectations.)

And it's an easy decision to make. Children's bodies are visually the same, with the exception of genitals, but the child's lived and cultural experience doesn't (or at least had better not) involve them. Progressive people are talking about minority representation in the media because black children shouldn't want to be white; but skin color is prominent. Genitals are not and they should not be.

So when the child says, "Nope, I'm a girl", wants to wear dresses and picks a girly name for herself, you can't point at her dick and say, "No, you have a dick, you should do that and that and that instead". That's not an argument she's going to understand. The dick is where the piss comes out. What does icky stuff like piss have to do with dresses and colors and flowers and long hair and a sense of self? In our culture, we laugh at people who incorporate bodily waste disposal into their identities; we think it's not normal; it's insane to expect the opposite of children.

Our culture doesn't (yet) allow for mixing and matching genders. An adult who looks like a man but behaves as a woman will have a very difficult life; additionally, there are next to no positive (and plenty of negative) examples of such people in children's media to identify with, so having a manly body but doing womanly things simply isn't an option for the child. Thus the need for gender reassignment, so she can have a normal life. Between experiments of varying ethical standards and actual torture techniques, it's been conclusively shown that a person's ability to identify with and control their own body is extremely important for mental health.

Finally, concerning the bathroom issue. Gender reassignment is hard on the body in general and closes off reproductive options, and quite a lot of children do change their minds. Thus, it's really fucking important that they aren't forced into hormones and surgery to be able to live as whatever gender they decide they are.

---
As for adult trans people in bathrooms, testerical alarmists have their panties in a completely misaimed twist. Statistics show that, among classes of strangers, priests present the highest danger to children's sexual autonomy, and if there's a well-populated subclass among bathroom pervs in the US it's Republican politicians. So, dear conservatives, while the Kenyan Usurper crams trans rights down your throats, you're welcome to shove your bibles up the other end.

So you're saying that if a normal child of any sex is left in isolation from society until adulthood, he / she will not have a gender? Or how do you explain hormones being used to change gender? And how does anyone get born with the wrong sex for their gender if gender is socially constructed? Or of course explain the case of the Canadian kid who was recommended to be raised as a girl after a failed circumcision damaged his genitals, and he still didn't feel female despite social ''constructing'' to make him think he was. Please answer.
Gender roles are different from biological gender. Gender roles vary across cultures slightly but biological gender does not. Because its not socially constructed.

Children's bodies are different internally. The amount of hormones to be secreted are different in girls and boys. Taking away genitals doesn't make them gender neutral nor does raising them as the opposite gender.

And how the hell does this ''identification'' thing work? You have some guarantee that every child who sees a film has the same experience or draws the same conclusions? Or that they even draw a parallel with the fictional world and the real one at all? Especially in kids' shows? Its like putting 3 ideologically different politicians in the same room, showing them some video clips and saying all of them will take way the same thing or have the same experience. Its absurd and unscientific and fearmongering. Its just a ''think of the children'' appeal with no basis in fact.

And that's not even close to a permanent solution. People who undergo the operation still have a much higher suicide rate than the reborn fully healthy individuals people like to claim they become. And often they experience dysphoria afterwards when they somehow don't feel like their *true gender* and feel like they are their original birth gender and sex. The use of sex reassignment surgery as a method to eliminate gender dysphoria is not even fully understood or supported : http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/ to the extent that the first hospital in the US to do them stopped offering them.

Know what? Outlaw bathrooms. No bathrooms for anyone.

Piss in the shower, like a normal person.

So gender is entirely socially constructed, but yet a child knows which gender it is even if born with "wrong" genitals.
So which is it?

A kid below the age of 14 is more likely to die from drowning in the bathtub, public pool, or pond than get shot to death with a gun. Also, gun-related deaths include police shootings, justifiable shootings done in defense against actual criminals, and deliberate suicides. Plus, DOJ reports showed the US got safer since the early 90s when state governments gave out conceal carry permits on a widescale.

By the way, Amish shooting was an isolated incident. The suburban and rural areas are way safer than the cities. Mass shootings only make up a tiny fraction of actual killings in the US. Don't be so sensational.

If I want shit from you I'll squeeze your head. :D

Thank you! "Advocacy" science is unfortunately taking over the airwaves and classrooms.

Honestly, the whole transgender movement is being pushed in order to further turn people in interchangeable units and to further undermine individuality. If one has a difficult time distinguishing the difference between man and woman, then one will have a more difficult time distinguishing the difference between an individual named Eric and an individual named Erica.

By the way, this thread is one of the reasons why I rarely ever watch comedians these days. There is plenty of entertainment in it with these hilarious comments trying to support such social justice activism disguised as "science."
I'll take that as a compliment.

Did Hillary Clinton store her homebrew, bootleg server in a gender-neutral bathroom at Platte River? I just gotta know!