Supporting Trans Youth is Good. Using Technology to Produce Sexual Images of Children is Bad

[Jim Burton]

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking- ... k-csam-bad

Protecting children from sexual exploitation and abuse is something nearly everyone agrees is both important and good. In our highly polarized political moment, however, a divide has opened up between people on the left, who are concerned about the proliferation of technology to sexualize images of children against their will and people on the right who claim the acceptance of transgender people is related to childhood sexual abuse in some way. Giving full weight and consideration to both sides, it quickly becomes clear that those on the left are completely right while there is absolutely no merit to the concerns of those on the right.

It is an undisputed fact that Twitter (also sometimes called X) hosts an AI called Grok, and that Grok has created child pornography when asked. It’s not difficult to understand why this is wrong, as the harmful effects of deepfakes on adult women have been well documented. Subjecting children to the intimidation and disgust of seeing sexualized images of themselves created without their consent is obviously as bad or worse. For those images not based on a photo of a real child, it’s still completely reasonable to believe realistic depictions of abuse can normalize acts of abuse and lead to actual abuse.

The arguments against allowing Grok to create child pornography are straightforward, easy to follow, and based on information about something widely reported and true.

[Not Forever]

Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I honestly think people are going after Grok because it’s Musk’s, not because it does anything that a lot of other models—or even Photoshop—can’t already do.

And how did we go from “been well documented” for something that’s only been around for a few years to “it’s still completely reasonable” for something that, if it were actually real, would’ve been documented since cave paintings?

And just to be clear, I’m all for minors having the freedom to do what they want, including transitioning. But how can people completely ignore where the right’s concerns are actually coming from? It’s about the fact that psychologists can be wrong when diagnosing a condition. (From what I’ve read, that margin of error seems pretty small—but it’s not zero. So it’s kind of understandable that a group that’s extremely sensitive about protecting minors wouldn’t be okay with even a small margin of error. Especially when that margin might still be larger than the chances of a specific minor being traumatized because they somehow stumbled across a sexualized image of themselves.)

[Jim Burton]

If the essay I cited were a school project, I'd mark it a D-.

[Scorchingwilde]

Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I honestly think people are going after Grok because it’s Musk’s, not because it does anything that a lot of other models—or even Photoshop—can’t already do.

And how did we go from “been well documented” for something that’s only been around for a few years to “it’s still completely reasonable” for something that, if it were actually real, would’ve been documented since cave paintings?

And just to be clear, I’m all for minors having the freedom to do what they want, including transitioning. But how can people completely ignore where the right’s concerns are actually coming from? It’s about the fact that psychologists can be wrong when diagnosing a condition. (From what I’ve read, that margin of error seems pretty small—but it’s not zero. So it’s kind of understandable that a group that’s extremely sensitive about protecting minors wouldn’t be okay with even a small margin of error. Especially when that margin might still be larger than the chances of a specific minor being traumatized because they somehow stumbled across a sexualized image of themselves.)

Even when it comes to gender dysphoria being misdiagnosed, the person has to figure out their gender for themselves. Unlike high cholesterol that could be due to any number of causes, gender identity is ultimately self-defined, and the 'concerns' on the right often extend to fully reversible matters like social transition, just pronouns and clothing choices - AKA they want to take away minors' autonomy over their body for things that can be fully changed in a matter of minutes. That, and medicine is changing so rapidly I wouldn't be surprised if detransitioning were much easier in just a couple of years for that small margin who face regrets. I agree though that going after Grok is probably because of Musk - a ketamine addicted billionaire who reposts white nationalist content and defunded child cancer research through DOGE is such a low hanging fruit it's practically on the ground.

[Not Forever]

Even when it comes to gender dysphoria being misdiagnosed, the person has to figure out their gender for themselves. Unlike high cholesterol that could be due to any number of causes, gender identity is ultimately self-defined, and the 'concerns' on the right often extend to fully reversible matters like social transition, just pronouns and clothing choices - AKA they want to take away minors' autonomy over their body for things that can be fully changed in a matter of minutes. That, and medicine is changing so rapidly I wouldn't be surprised if detransitioning were much easier in just a couple of years for that small margin who face regrets. I agree though that going after Grok is probably because of Musk - a ketamine addicted billionaire who reposts white nationalist content and defunded child cancer research through DOGE is such a low hanging fruit it's practically on the ground.

For me, gender is synonymous with sex, and in Western societies it has always been synonymous with sex. Society then built stereotypes on top of that, and in recent times these stereotypes (behavioral, clothing-related, occupational, etc.) have been criticized, but gender has never been seen as something different from sex.

Then some social sciences analyzed society and used the term “gender” to analyze these constructs. They used the same term to analyze other societies as well, and people began to talk about other genders, understood as other social constructs. (Which could include: nuns, priests, children, adolescents, adults—if we want, from this point of view they can all be considered different “genders.” Or at least they could be, if we had a stronger distinction between nuns and women, similar to the one we currently have between adolescents and adults, with different rights, duties, and expectations, seeing them as distinct entities.)

Gender identity dysphoria is yet a third thing, and it concerns distress. This distress can take various forms: not perceiving oneself as belonging to a given gender, not being perceived by others as belonging to a given gender, etc., with varying intensity and things like that.

For me, there is no such thing as “figuring out one’s gender on one’s own,” because for that it’s enough to look between one’s legs. If instead we are talking about a construct, then it will vary from culture to culture, and it is not the individual who decides it, but rather something assigned to them by society (which they can reject, even simply by emigrating). Then there is the third issue, which is dysphoria, but even there it’s not about “figuring it out,” it’s about the distress one feels—and given that living on psychotropic drugs sucks, it is certainly less traumatic to undergo a gender transition.

That said, for me there isn’t even a need for dysphoria for a person to undergo a gender transition: it’s enough that they want to do it. But if, instead, one wants transition to be allowed only for those who have dysphoria, then I think it’s useful to know whether it really is gender dysphoria and not bodily dysphoria, or a misunderstanding, or things like that. (I myself had a problem of this kind. But to be clear, if I had transitioned it would have been solely my responsibility, even if it stemmed from persuasion.) And here the concerns of the political right toward psychologists are well founded.

Given that I believe there are very few people who, like me, would allow a minor to undergo a gender transition (perhaps without dysphoria, paid for with their own money; if the motivations are medical, then funded with public money) simply based on their desire to do so, even if only as a game—after having informed them about the risks, etc., as is done with any medical procedure.

[Scorchingwilde]

Even when it comes to gender dysphoria being misdiagnosed, the person has to figure out their gender for themselves. Unlike high cholesterol that could be due to any number of causes, gender identity is ultimately self-defined, and the 'concerns' on the right often extend to fully reversible matters like social transition, just pronouns and clothing choices - AKA they want to take away minors' autonomy over their body for things that can be fully changed in a matter of minutes. That, and medicine is changing so rapidly I wouldn't be surprised if detransitioning were much easier in just a couple of years for that small margin who face regrets. I agree though that going after Grok is probably because of Musk - a ketamine addicted billionaire who reposts white nationalist content and defunded child cancer research through DOGE is such a low hanging fruit it's practically on the ground.

For me, gender is synonymous with sex, and in Western societies it has always been synonymous with sex. Society then built stereotypes on top of that, and in recent times these stereotypes (behavioral, clothing-related, occupational, etc.) have been criticized, but gender has never been seen as something different from sex.

Then some social sciences analyzed society and used the term “gender” to analyze these constructs. They used the same term to analyze other societies as well, and people began to talk about other genders, understood as other social constructs. (Which could include: nuns, priests, children, adolescents, adults—if we want, from this point of view they can all be considered different “genders.” Or at least they could be, if we had a stronger distinction between nuns and women, similar to the one we currently have between adolescents and adults, with different rights, duties, and expectations, seeing them as distinct entities.)

Gender identity dysphoria is yet a third thing, and it concerns distress. This distress can take various forms: not perceiving oneself as belonging to a given gender, not being perceived by others as belonging to a given gender, etc., with varying intensity and things like that.

For me, there is no such thing as “figuring out one’s gender on one’s own,” because for that it’s enough to look between one’s legs. If instead we are talking about a construct, then it will vary from culture to culture, and it is not the individual who decides it, but rather something assigned to them by society (which they can reject, even simply by emigrating). Then there is the third issue, which is dysphoria, but even there it’s not about “figuring it out,” it’s about the distress one feels—and given that living on psychotropic drugs sucks, it is certainly less traumatic to undergo a gender transition.

That said, for me there isn’t even a need for dysphoria for a person to undergo a gender transition: it’s enough that they want to do it. But if, instead, one wants transition to be allowed only for those who have dysphoria, then I think it’s useful to know whether it really is gender dysphoria and not bodily dysphoria, or a misunderstanding, or things like that. (I myself had a problem of this kind. But to be clear, if I had transitioned it would have been solely my responsibility, even if it stemmed from persuasion.) And here the concerns of the political right toward psychologists are well founded.

Given that I believe there are very few people who, like me, would allow a minor to undergo a gender transition (perhaps without dysphoria, paid for with their own money; if the motivations are medical, then funded with public money) simply based on their desire to do so, even if only as a game—after having informed them about the risks, etc., as is done with any medical procedure.

But gender being defined as synonymous with sex is also itself a construct. It probably isn't productive to discuss the nuances of gender further here, but I will add there don't even exist psychotropic drugs that can make gender dysphoria lessen as an alternative to transitioning for people with sex dysphoria, or even just social gender dysphoria. I think that desire itself is also reason enough to transition, on that we can agree.

I bring up the examples related to people denying children the ability to change clothes, hair, i.e. gender presentation, only to point out that social conservatives who feign genuine concern over transition regret among minors who receive medical interventions have an ulterior motive related to enforcing gender stereotypes and behaviors. I understand that there are people who have a knee-jerk reaction and immediately concern over any medicine or surgery for children, but the people who have those opinions who've actually thought them over do not have genuine concern for trans minors in their hearts, which is something I can agree with the anti-MAP author of that article about. That's what I suppose I'm trying to get at.

[Not Forever]

But gender being defined as synonymous with sex is also itself a construct. It probably isn't productive to discuss the nuances of gender further here, but I will add there don't even exist psychotropic drugs that can make gender dysphoria lessen as an alternative to transitioning for people with sex dysphoria, or even just social gender dysphoria. I think that desire itself is also reason enough to transition, on that we can agree.

I bring up the examples related to people denying children the ability to change clothes, hair, i.e. gender presentation, only to point out that social conservatives who feign genuine concern over transition regret among minors who receive medical interventions have an ulterior motive related to enforcing gender stereotypes and behaviors. I understand that there are people who have a knee-jerk reaction and immediately concern over any medicine or surgery for children, but the people who have those opinions who've actually thought them over do not have genuine concern for trans minors in their hearts, which is something I can agree with the anti-MAP author of that article about. That's what I suppose I'm trying to get at.

Well, yes and no. Everything starts from the body and from its role in reproduction. The term sex came first, and only later was gender used as a less direct term by recycling it… well, if I’m not mistaken it originally meant lineage/origin or something like that. This isn’t really a construct, but rather the evolution of language—how terms change meaning over time.

Later on, it was decided to label all sets of stereotypes under the term “gender,” which for me was a mistake, because it leads to today’s disputes, which are basically tied to terms and definitions. They’re complaints like “don’t call it a vegan hamburger because hamburger by definition includes meat.”

But I think the modern view of social constructs is different from ancient ones. In the past, there was a need to know what a child would grow up to do. A man is on average stronger, so you train him from childhood to till the land; therefore he needed a different diet and to spend his day differently. (Then again, it’s not true that women didn’t till the land—let’s say it depended on the place.) If you wanted to go to war, you took the males, and things like that.

In short, there was a necessity.
Then, like every society, we built on top of it: we gave it meanings and values, and we kept unnecessary things even when society changed. That brings us to today, where someone with long hair is considered “feminine.” But also because we’re visual animals, so we easily make associations. We therefore see makeup as feminine, heels as feminine, certain clothing styles as feminine. Interests that have biological, social, and other motivations, but since they’re prevalent in one sex they become part of that stereotype. This also exists in other areas, like the categories of emo, punk, and similar subcultures.

And those who step outside their own stereotype end up struggling, because they’re isolated and misunderstood by society.

But this is also why I somewhat dislike today’s attitude when talking about social constructs, because my idea of progress should be to give them less value, not more. “Gender presentation” was supposed to lose importance, not to have the intention of presenting as another gender attributed to anyone who doesn’t fit stereotypes.
The point is not to consider males with long hair as “women/female,” because that reminds me a bit of the mockery aimed at those who deviated from stereotypes, whether aesthetic or sexual.

I apologize if I dwell on one point, even if it’s only secondary, but it’s a topic I’ve been involved with for a while. For various reasons—both because I was pushed toward undergoing a gender transition and because I was mistaken multiple times for a woman despite not being one. I wouldn’t want it, but if we ended up there, so be it, that it became culturally acceptable for those who don’t fit a stereotype to have to go under a doctor’s knife in order to align their body with their personality, effectively returning to not accepting males or females who don’t align with stereotypes.
A bit like, exaggerating, someone responding to a gay person’s coming out by saying: transition genders so you’ll be normal again.

Of course, we’re far from that point, but since I don’t expect any moderation of rhetoric tied to acquired rights, I prefer to prevent rather than cure.

(And here I want to bring back one concept: even if people were to undergo surgery due to social pressure, for me the result of that pressure should still be considered an individual choice. Pressures of all kinds always exist and always will. As long as they aren’t outright blackmail, individual choice is always involved.)

[John_Doe]

But gender being defined as synonymous with sex is also itself a construct. It probably isn't productive to discuss the nuances of gender further here, but I will add there don't even exist psychotropic drugs that can make gender dysphoria lessen as an alternative to transitioning for people with sex dysphoria, or even just social gender dysphoria. I think that desire itself is also reason enough to transition, on that we can agree.

I bring up the examples related to people denying children the ability to change clothes, hair, i.e. gender presentation, only to point out that social conservatives who feign genuine concern over transition regret among minors who receive medical interventions have an ulterior motive related to enforcing gender stereotypes and behaviors. I understand that there are people who have a knee-jerk reaction and immediately concern over any medicine or surgery for children, but the people who have those opinions who've actually thought them over do not have genuine concern for trans minors in their hearts, which is something I can agree with the anti-MAP author of that article about. That's what I suppose I'm trying to get at.

Well, yes and no. Everything starts from the body and from its role in reproduction. The term sex came first, and only later was gender used as a less direct term by recycling it… well, if I’m not mistaken it originally meant lineage/origin or something like that. This isn’t really a construct, but rather the evolution of language—how terms change meaning over time.

Later on, it was decided to label all sets of stereotypes under the term “gender,” which for me was a mistake, because it leads to today’s disputes, which are basically tied to terms and definitions. They’re complaints like “don’t call it a vegan hamburger because hamburger by definition includes meat.”

But I think the modern view of social constructs is different from ancient ones. In the past, there was a need to know what a child would grow up to do. A man is on average stronger, so you train him from childhood to till the land; therefore he needed a different diet and to spend his day differently. (Then again, it’s not true that women didn’t till the land—let’s say it depended on the place.) If you wanted to go to war, you took the males, and things like that.

In short, there was a necessity.
Then, like every society, we built on top of it: we gave it meanings and values, and we kept unnecessary things even when society changed. That brings us to today, where someone with long hair is considered “feminine.” But also because we’re visual animals, so we easily make associations. We therefore see makeup as feminine, heels as feminine, certain clothing styles as feminine. Interests that have biological, social, and other motivations, but since they’re prevalent in one sex they become part of that stereotype. This also exists in other areas, like the categories of emo, punk, and similar subcultures.

And those who step outside their own stereotype end up struggling, because they’re isolated and misunderstood by society.

But this is also why I somewhat dislike today’s attitude when talking about social constructs, because my idea of progress should be to give them less value, not more. “Gender presentation” was supposed to lose importance, not to have the intention of presenting as another gender attributed to anyone who doesn’t fit stereotypes.
The point is not to consider males with long hair as “women/female,” because that reminds me a bit of the mockery aimed at those who deviated from stereotypes, whether aesthetic or sexual.

I apologize if I dwell on one point, even if it’s only secondary, but it’s a topic I’ve been involved with for a while. For various reasons—both because I was pushed toward undergoing a gender transition and because I was mistaken multiple times for a woman despite not being one. I wouldn’t want it, but if we ended up there, so be it, that it became culturally acceptable for those who don’t fit a stereotype to have to go under a doctor’s knife in order to align their body with their personality, effectively returning to not accepting males or females who don’t align with stereotypes.
A bit like, exaggerating, someone responding to a gay person’s coming out by saying: transition genders so you’ll be normal again.

Of course, we’re far from that point, but since I don’t expect any moderation of rhetoric tied to acquired rights, I prefer to prevent rather than cure.

(And here I want to bring back one concept: even if people were to undergo surgery due to social pressure, for me the result of that pressure should still be considered an individual choice. Pressures of all kinds always exist and always will. As long as they aren’t outright blackmail, individual choice is always involved.)

From memory (I went through the thread maybe days ago), I largely agree with your position on gender. If you define 'gender' and 'sex' differently it's not clear to me what the connection between them is supposed to be (it seems to undermine the point of transition, at least if you accept that biological sex and the stereotypes around maleness or femaleness that we're calling 'gender' are fundamentally unrelated and can exist independently, so I don't understand the concept of matching your outer body to your psychological gender). I don't on principle care about what I see as the misunderstanding (as in I don't care if people are mistaken about objective reality in some way that doesn't have moral/morally relevant implications) or necessarily see a need to publicly correct it but I do have a problem with the concept of psychological gender (which, through essentialist stereotyping, can lead to stereotype threat and inhibit who people feel they can be, and also seems to be the justification for normative gender roles that 'conservatives' champion, ironically), transition regret and introducing/sustaining the idea of being in the wrong body (I imagine that in some cases that might exacerbate gender dysphoria in people who might not otherwise suffer from it). I've never personally understood the hostility that a lot of conservatives have to transgendered people who aren't advocating for children transitioning (and if the idea is that they're promoting an ideology that harms people, as children or later on in life, why would they themselves not be viewed as victims of that same brainwashing) and I think it's ironic that some conservatives are so bothered by something that I believe 'conservative ideals' (normative gender roles) are largely responsible for to begin with (if you tell atypical men or women that they're not true men or women; or masculine or feminine which is what that implies, because of their personality traits or hold them to gendered standards that they don't find appealing or realistic for them you shouldn't be surprised when some of them conclude that they are actually women or men in the wrong bodies, or 'non-binary,' or find a gender switch in identity to be more appealing than what's expected of them with their current identity).

I've been toying with the idea that, on paper, conservatives who reject the transgendered ideology should be more open to 'adult'-teen relationships (even if they oppose sexual promiscuity or premarital sex) but I don't think I can really justify that (at least not in terms of an acceptance of teen-adult relationships being logically implied by their stance, maybe you can expect them to hold my view of adulthood but I don't think they're being logically inconsistent, as conservatives, to reject it). My idea was that because conservatives accept a reproduction-based standard for maleness and femaleness that that would translate to the criteria for adulthood as well. Regardless of whether or not any given woman can reproduce, what makes her a biological woman is that her body is adapted to produce egg cells (I know that mammalian females are likely or at least more or less born with all of the egg cells they will ever have. It's interesting to note that humans are apparently among the few species where the females undergo menopause and aren't capable of reproducing throughout their lives), likewise; males are adapted to produce sperm cells/fertilize women's egg cells. Again, I'm not saying that a reproduction-based standard for femaleness logically implies a reproduction-based standard for adulthood (although I do believe that's the only coherent standard, whether it should be on an individual case-by-case basis or the age at which menarche/spermarche is considered medically delayed if it hasn't yet occurred, etc. reproduction is ultimately the only coherent standard) but it seems intuitively harder to draw a line between girls and women if the standard for determining femaleness is the role that females are adapted to play during reproduction and, under normal circumstances, 15-year-old girls are capable of reproducing (most 13/14-year-old girls are capable of reproducing, even if menarche isn't considered delayed until 15 and pregnancy within 2 years after menarche is higher-risk and anovlatory cycles are more common), so if not the ability to reproduce; or at least having a body that's 'designed' for that, what is the definitive absolute trait that separates girls from women? Conservatives seem to have a greater problem with sexual deviancy (e.g. their attitudes toward homosexuality, especially or at least if they're religious) but even if you oppose middle-aged men being with 17-year-old girls on ethical grounds you cannot claim that it is 'deviant' in the way that homosexuality and true pedophilia are (I am not using 'deviant' in a way that has negative connotations but, frankly, I do think that they are, in some sense, 'deviant' or maladaptive). Under normal circumstances, an average 30-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl can reproduce together (since sperm quality begins to decline at 35 and egg quality begins to gradually decline as early as 25, a woman in her late teens/early twenties with a man in his early 30s are the ideal pairing; in terms of a healthy pregnancy and healthy children), it's hard to imagine why God would allow this if he opposed teen-'adult' relationships on principle and if you replace God with nature, again, it is the standard in 'nature' for males and females of the same species to copulate with each other if they appear to be fertile (in many species, females give off certain cues that indicate ovulation that trigger male pursuit, if I'm not mistaken. In some species rape is the default male strategy, I'm sure some males pursue females who don't give off such cues, in some species the females are induced ovulators, homosexuality is also common and bonobos include juveniles in their sexual activities, etc. etc. but my point is that there's no natural deterrent to older members of a species mating with younger members who are sexually mature; by contrast, many species have evolved different mechanisms that lead to the deterrence of inbreeding), not that I think 'natural' translates to good or acceptable but lumping R.Kelly or Drake in with true pedophiles is dishonest. If you are anti-age gap you are in some sense trying to obstruct a natural process, for whatever that's worth.

[Scorchingwilde]

There's a lot here that would be ripe for discussion, but at the moment my mental resources are exhausted. As such, rather than directly responding to all of this I will simply address the distinction between gender and sex and also introduce *gender expression,* which is what people who think social gender transition is reinforcing stereotypes usually mean when they're referring to such stereotypes. Clothing, behaviors, and personality traits that are coded as masculine or feminine (dresses, assertiveness, body language, etc.) are forms of gender expression, that is that people conceptualize them in a gendered way that isn't inherent, whereas gender identity refers to an internal sense of oneself as a man, woman, girl, boy, or other gender category. It's also important to note that gender expression isn't even binary, that people of the same gender with different relationships to their society's encoding of masculinity or femininity in certain traits are regularly categorized and included in the norm (tomboys, femboys, butch lesbians, macho men, etc.). Gender is also not equivalent to sex because sex is external and subject to intentional change to an extent technology allows, or nullification altogether of certain characteristics. What makes gender identity exist is widely debated but just like research on sexual orientation change efforts, gender change efforts do not work, and when it comes to people whose identities in these realms naturally flows back and forth in a fluid manner, this is pretty much entirely unintentionally driven and is a characteristic of their sexuality or gender that persists throughout their life.

Getting back to the matter at hand, the importance of acknowledging gender as a category outside of the stereotypes encompassing gender expression and sex (which one can want to change for reasons other than distress and dysphoria, one can feel desire to be a different sex, that's called euphoria) can be illustrated by the following extreme hypothetical.
A cisgender man who appears male at birth, has no gender dysphoria or euphoria at the thought of changing his sex to be female or female-adjacent, and who follows some gender stereotypes while rejecting others is abducted by aliens and his brain is transplanted into a female body grown in a vat by the aliens for some purpose. If this individual wakes up and notices their new body, they're not going to suddenly think of themselves as a woman. It would be accurate to say that their sex became female, unless someone were to count brain sex, which people who think gender only consists of oppressive stereotypes (that I would categorize as gender expression) would generally not do. Say this person is given the freedom to roam back on Earth and is provided with all the necessary legal identification to be recognized as female in a place with the same gender roles as their initial residence but now in their new body, and as a gift for being part of this experiment, the aliens have given them near-infinite wealth to utilize in their new life. If they go to the mall to buy clothes and no one else is around but a robotic clerk and there are differently gendered sections, including a small unisex one, they can choose freely. Depending on their sexuality, they may choose clothes in the women's section and fit their tastes for the body they've been given, but still probably won't think of themselves as a woman, but as being in a 'woman's body' because they're seeing this image in the mirror they associate with women now that clothes, a matter of gender expression, have been added to their appearance. They might instead try and go for something similar to what they would have worn in the past, let's say they wear skinny jeans and a plaid button up for example. Internally, this person's likely to feel glad to be wearing familiar clothing regardless of gender because it suits how they'd prefer to present, and because the choice is rather androgynous in the west today, there's no issue of gender expression involved, but because of their internal gender they'll be thinking of their clothes as fitting their gender expression of being an average guy, a regular Joe, not an average gal.

In the above example, the gender expression of the person didn't change, their sex changed, and their internal gender identity and experience of a gendered self didn't change to match their sex. The point is that gender can exist independently of gender expression and stereotypes without being connected to a body, it's about one's relation to one's self and others rather than masculine and feminine traits or external markers of sex. There are plenty of masculine trans women and feminine trans men, and for trans kids who confirm more to the stereotypes associated with their sex assigned at birth who are often just changing their name and pronouns, yet it's still important to them. Personally I think anyone denying children the right to transition is weakening pro-C map arguments for both trans MAPs and people who want to be logically consistent when it comes to granting children's autonomy. If a kid can't be allowed to know or define their own relationship to their body's sex, and if they can't be accepted as the gender they tell potential partners they are because "they're just gender nonconforming," then how can any kid meaningfully be allowed to consent to AMSC, especially any trans kid with sex dysphoria who would be forced to endure either that pain or the stress of abstinence until they reached an arbitrary age at which they were given the right to transition? That logic kept me in an anti-c bubble for a long time because of the anti-minors transitioning arguments I would see on the pro-C side, and because of an anti-trans worldview is held by some of the few controversial researchers willing to argue against the idea of intrinsic harm in AMSC.

As a side note, I will also say that pronouns based on someone's sex are entirely counterproductive if the argument is that any and all forms of non-sex based identifications with gender perpetuates harmful stereotyping.

[John_Doe]

Scorchingwilde,


I don't want to properly analyze your post but I didn't understand your distinction between gender and gender expression (the personality/psychological traits that we associate with sex). Even with that distinction you still seem to be defining gender identity in a way that's ultimately tied to bodily sex (when you remove gender from bodily sex and the personality/psychological traits that we stereotype men and women as having or see as inherently connected to maleness/femaleness, I don't know what gender could be or why we would mention it in the same conversation as sex, it would be like talking about laptops and baseball bats; what would the connection be?). It seems to me that literal gender dysphoria is rooted in finding one's body generally unappealing (not necessarily in and of itself but in terms of the kind of body that they want for themselves) or unfamiliar (if I've had x body flaw that I dislike my whole life it's familiar to me, even if I want to eliminate it I might almost feel like a different person without it, it might cause me great stress but it wouldn't be for the same reason that waking up and finding myself in an attractive woman's body might. The issue there would be more with my new body not being home, if that makes sense). I would argue that the, er, man whose brain is transplanted into the woman's body doesn't have a male mind but feels not-at-home in someone else's body (I will allow for the possibility that there are transgendered people who feel not-at-home in their own bodies despite having had male or female bodies their entire life but I still don't think that's the same thing as claiming that one has a female or male mind). There are also no definitive brain differences between men and women (men, on average, have more white matter and women tend to have greater cortical thickness but that's like men being, on average, taller. There are short men and tall women and even the difference between relatively short people and relatively tall people is a difference in degree).

You also mentioned that changing one's external sex is possible to some degree but I would argue that what we think of as a masculine or feminine appearance isn't intrinsically so, it is masculine or feminine in indicating maleness or femaleness which is ultimately defined by an adaptation for sperm or egg production/to play the fertilizer-fertilized role during copulation. Maybe in the future technology will advance to the point where people could change their sex, there are some species that naturally change their sex throughout their lives, but the changes that occur today are cosmetic or lead to bodily changes that signal femaleness or maleness in biologically male or female people who haven't actually become truly female or male (trans women can't get pregnant, not because of some kind of medical malfunction with their reproductive system but because they don't have a female reproductive system to begin with, although after surgery and hormonal therapy they might look as though they do).

I don't disagree with your take on it being inconsistent to respect children's autonomy in one area but not the other (a debate around whether or not children can consent to AMSC but not transitioning or vice versa is ultimately meaningless to me because the libertarian argument against either has to be that the child is capable of making an informed choice but the ability to make that choice is being denied them. If the argument against either is that children aren't developed enough to make an informed choice about x then no one can stop them from doing so because whichever direction their preference lies they can't make a choice one way or the other that pro-autonomy people can take seriously (one's autonomy can not be interfered with if one lacks rational agency to begin with; they're not an autonomous being). It's not like someone selling someone else a product on the pretense of it being something other than what it is where you could say that the customer only gave the seller their money on condition that the seller gave them something different than what they actually did in return because the fraud (the seller) in that scenario is withholding information that would affect the customer's choice, the idea behind claiming that children as children categorically cannot consent to sex or transitioning is that there's no information you could give the child that could allow them to make a 'rational' decision about it.

I reject the idea that AMSC is inherently bad because I believe that children are harmed only by their felt emotional distress and insofar as an erotic/romantic relationship with an adult can be a source of happiness for them it should be celebrated; even if the value of their sexual happiness/that pleasurable intimacy should be weighed against risks and costs. If there's a reason to think that children will suffer great trauma if allowed to form such relationships with adults then we should practically discourage those relationships. In short, I think we should value children's happiness, not their autonomy per se or as an end in itself.