08 July 2020

When is a "TERF" not a TERF?

In the responses to JK Rowling’s challenge to the more extremist (and vocal) factions of transgender activists, there has been much more name-calling than reasoning.  The most common such epithet has been to call her (or anyone else) a TERF, a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” 

Having been deeply involved in the science and clinical care of trans people for more than two decades, I have watched this particular term evolve and lose whatever meaning it originally had.  It used to refer to the most extreme of the other side:  There do indeed exist genuinely transphobic people who will refuse to recognize anyone’s transition under any circumstances and are accurately called TERF’s.  Now just a social media meme however, the term is bandied so broadly that it no longer carries any meaning at all.

I must first challenge the ironically binary premise that “exclusion” is all or none.  It’s only in the current climate of extremism that no moderate views get discussed.  Here is a range of some areas in which sex/gender require protection:

• Employment
• Housing
• Public accommodation…
• Locker rooms/showers, with nudity (sauna, hottub…)
• Locker rooms/washrooms, sex segregated
• Competitive sports teams, where physical size is an advantage

It would be perfectly accurate to call someone “trans exclusionary” for rejecting transpeople from all of these.  But that’s not meaningfully the same as (for example) a cis-woman who supports all civil rights, but feels uncomfortable naked in a locker room with a person whose every external feature is male (i.e., their female features are all internal).  I’m not saying I *agree* with this hypothetical cis-woman—I am pointing out the error of painting this entire range of opinions with a single dichotomous brush and dismissing them all as if they were all the most extreme imaginable.

Also on a spectrum is the point during transition at which one can/may/should be deemed which sex:

• Upon declaration
• Upon psych/medical exam/approval
• Upon declaration *despite* psych/medical exam results
• Upon part-time social living
• Upon full-time social living
• Upon hormone treatment
• Upon genital surgery
• Never

It’s easy to recognize “never” as genuinely transphobic/exclusionary.  But it is not meaningful to use the same term for everyone who breaks from the opposite extreme, based only on a recent (sometimes even curiously convenient) self-declaration.

Relatedly, there also exists debate over the age at which a youth should be permitted to begin to transition, socially and/or medically:

• Prepuberty (upon request/demand from child)
• Age 12 (mid-puberty, breaking point in outcomes research)
• Age 16 (usual age of consent for sex)
• Age 18 (legal age of adulthood)
• Age 25 (final brain maturation)
• Never

I support age 12, not for any ideological reason, but because that is what the (current) evidence supports:  The majority of prepubescent kids cease to feel trans during puberty, but the majority of kids who continue to feel trans after puberty rarely cease.  To someone who supports “upon demand,” however, everyone everywhere else on the spectrum is the same as the farthest opposite extreme.  It is not meaningful to claim that wait-until-12 is the same as never.

To repeat, I am not actually taking sides on any of these issues (except to indicate what is vs. not consistent with the science).  Rather, I am pointing out that “TERF” does not meaningfully convey anyone’s ideas about anything.  It is being used only as an epithet, to discredit rather than inform, holding even the slightest symbolic evidence of the smallest departure from one extreme as proof of membership of the other extreme....It is being used as an excuse not to engage with what the person is *actually* saying.

20 comments:

  1. Women in the USA lost their right to their prescribed contraception without the approval of her employer today, 7/7/20. I posted this online. A trans responded "contraception has nothing to do with being a woman".
    Gender does not equal sex. Feminine does not define female. Trans does not define me. I am a woman. Transgender is a psych disorder.

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    1. You are an exemplar specimen of one type of radicalism. The trans person who gave you that answer is another.

      You are both part of the problem this post is discussing.

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    2. The subject of Contraception is about furthering and preventing reproduction. It is not about being a man or woman. There are both males and females, young and old, who can't contribute to reproduction. That being said for those who can contribute, males and females each genetically contribute 50% to the possibility of reproduction. The methods of furthering or preventing reproduction may focus on males, females, or both. The Trans person is correct.

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    3. Are there pharmaceutical contraceptives, prescribed by physicians, available to men in the US? If not, then the contraceptives referred to do not impact men or transwomen.

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    4. Other than condoms no prescribed oral contraceptive has been able to pass FDA because of the side effects in males under experimentation. So yes it concerns biological women or transmen only as do many other issues involving biological reproductive systems. Even women who have never given birth can get uterine, and ovarian cancer unless they have had a hysterectomy.

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  2. Excellent points that highlight the type of discussion we "should" be having in society with respect to trans rights. The extremist position that's been staked out is entirely policy capture without any attempt to balance different perspectives or concerns. The biggest risk is that the public loses trust in government, the media and the law as people slowly wake up to this "new reality" being imposed on us. What then?

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  3. Terrific and balanced analysis, yet it fails to mention the "elephant in the room"--the fact that probably 90% or more of the cases that the debate is about are NOT childhood-onset gender dysphoria that persisted into adolescence.

    As you undoubtedly know, today, today the predominant GD presentation is ROGD, where the young people (primarily female) become dysphoric about their sexed body for the first time in adolescence. For many it happens right around 11-12, and they are gleefully transitioned with hormones by healthcare professional citing the evidence referenced above, and ignoring that 100% of the Dutch study's subjects had classic, childhood-onset GD that persisted into adolescence. This fact is so central to the debate of what appropriate care for young GD should look like, that it's omission, along with the endorsement of 12 as the appropriate age for hormonal interventions, will likely play right into the hands of those who support biomedical interventions on youth as the first line of treatment. After all, nobody, not even the most committed proponents of hormonal interventions for youth, would suggest hormones for those <11-12.

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    1. What would you think with a proposition like :

      - age 12 (mid puberty), with at least "2-6" years (I don't know à correct value for this) of precedence in feeling as being trans.

      Maybe it could allow ppl to transition at 12, when it's established as a good time for, without risking to make ppl transition on a whim?

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  4. "Also on a spectrum is the point during transition at which one can/may/should be deemed which sex"

    The answer to that is never. Homo Sapiens cannot change sex. To think that they can is disingenuous at best and delusional at worst.

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  5. James,
    I've appreciated reading your thoughtful and informed commentary. When you say:

    Also on a spectrum is the point during transition at which one can/may/should be deemed which sex:
    ...
    It’s easy to recognize “never” as genuinely transphobic/exclusionary.

    I am not sure what you mean by "genuinely". I understand what sex is, having in education in biology and chemistry . I know how complex cells are and I know that "never" is *entirely* correct. There is no plausible way a person can change their general potential to produce the opposite type of gametes since that's tied to a great deal of molecular machinery. We are each a unique bag of molecules, but those molecules come in clear types (proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates etc.). Different arrangements of those molecules demarcate different cell types (brain cells, ova, sperm), clusters of which can be classified into different tissue types and ultimately organs. "sex" is just another one of those sorts of clear types. The borderline cases in any of those types don't invalidate any of the types themselves.

    I know better than to think that someone who has undergone superficial surgery or hormone injection is *actually* the opposite sex. No examination of cell types in tissue etc. would pass scrutiny. Such an adult would never be enrolled as the opposite in a clinical trial. Adults have considerable liberty in doing what they want to do to their bodies, I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of SRS-related interventions but I (and I think most people) are not interested in standing in the way of an adult making a decision for something that is available to them. I have no intention of treating anyone uncivilly because they elect such interventions, but I can't just turn off my brain and "deem" them to be of the opposite sex. You seem to be asking me to do that in your writing and that's quite dubious.

    Genetic males/phenotypic females etc. certainly do deserve the ability to self declare sex given most people don't understand enough about molecular biology to understand those conditions. There are such few individuals easily certified, and I've never met anyone that is interested in telling them to do anything other than what they think is good for them.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for that critical clarification. I too was annoyed to see my scientific opinion on sex characterised as "genuinely transphobic/exclusionary," particularly within a blog post illustrating many of the reactions I've had from gender activists immediately calling me all manner of insulting names, when my position was of the middle ground, acknowledging reasonable rights as you describe, whilst protecting children, in particular, from potentially dangerous, premature "affirmative care".

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  6. James,
    I've appreciated reading your thoughtful and informed commentary. When you say:

    Also on a spectrum is the point during transition at which one can/may/should be deemed which sex:
    ...
    It’s easy to recognize “never” as genuinely transphobic/exclusionary.

    I am not sure what you mean by "genuinely". I understand what sex is, having in education in biology and chemistry . I know how complex cells are and I know that "never" is *entirely* correct. There is no plausible way a person can change their general potential to produce the opposite type of gametes since that's tied to a great deal of molecular machinery. We are each a unique bag of molecules, but those molecules come in clear types (proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates etc.). Different arrangements of those molecules demarcate different cell types (brain cells, ova, sperm), clusters of which can be classified into different tissue types and ultimately organs. "sex" is just another one of those sorts of clear types. The borderline cases in any of those types don't invalidate any of the types themselves.

    I know better than to think that someone who has undergone superficial surgery or hormone injection is *actually* the opposite sex. No examination of cell types in tissue etc. would pass scrutiny. Such an adult would never be enrolled as the opposite in a clinical trial. Adults have considerable liberty in doing what they want to do to their bodies, I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of SRS-related interventions but I (and I think most people) are not interested in standing in the way of an adult making a decision for something that is available to them. I have no intention of treating anyone uncivilly because they elect such interventions, but I can't just turn off my brain and "deem" them to be of the opposite sex. You seem to be asking me to do that in your writing and that's quite dubious.

    Genetic males/phenotypic females etc. certainly do deserve the ability to self declare sex given most people don't understand enough about molecular biology to understand those conditions. There are such few individuals easily certified, and I've never met anyone that is interested in telling them to do anything other than what they think is good for them.

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  7. I think the key word there is "deemed" - perhaps as with the concept of "legal fiction", or "treated as". There are cases where a person who is male in the sense of having proceeded some way down the developmental pathway for producing small gametes is rightly treated socially as a woman and it would be transphobic or some sort of meanness to refuse.

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    Replies
    1. If we presume the contexts already listed in the post (under "require protection") and other obvious ones (medical treatment, clinical trials etc.)...what does it mean to "rightly" treat someone as a woman?

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  8. Honestly, a lot of casual onlookers to the trans debate ought to be shown this article, whichever "side" they feel inclined to take. It's such a simple and straightforward summary of how complex the debate actually is.

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  9. It's probably no coincidence that the sex drive usually kicks in around age 12.

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    1. But is that true for people on the autistic spectrum, which many trans identifying people are? If this is a disorder characterized by people who poorly understand social norms feeling like they do not fit social norms, perhaps the binary is the problem, not the person?

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  10. “Here is a list of the Human Rights of Women that transactivism is eliminating. No-one is saying trans-identified individuals should not have rights civil protections such as housing, employment etc. But what IS wrong is that the transactivists are erasing females as a protected sex class and erasing the sex-based protections of women and girls.”

    • Removing the right of women to assemble outside the presence of men.

    • Removing the legal right of women to organize politically against sex-based oppression by males.

    • Elimination of the patient right of dependent females to hospital/facility/bed assignments separate from males.

    • Removing the legal right of women to be free from the presence of men in areas of public accommodation where nudity occurs.

    • Elimination of the right of dependent females to prefer female providers for their intimate personal care requirements.

    • Removing the legal right of women to educational programs created for women outside the presence of men.

    • Elimination of sex-based crime statistics.

    • Elimination of the human right of female prisoners under state confinement to housed separately from male prisoners.

    • Eliminating athletic programs and sports competition for women and girls.

    • Eliminating data collection of sex-based inequalities in areas where females are underrepresented.

    • Elimination of grants, scholarships, board and trustee designations, representative positions and affirmative programs for women.

    • Removing the legal right of women to create reproductive clinics, rape crisis services, support groups or any organisation for females.

    • Eliminating media and all public discourse specific to females.

    • Removal of the right of journalists to report the sex, and history, of subjects.

    • Eliminating the legal right of lesbians to congregate publicly.

    • Elimination of lesbian-specific organisations and advocacy groups.

    • Removing the legal right of women to free speech related to sex roles and gender.

    • Elimination of the legal right of women to protection from state-enforced sex-roles (appearance/behaviour/thought).

    • Elimination of the legal right of girls to protection from state-enforced sex-roles in public education

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    Replies
    1. I would also say that in terms of social norm, it reinforces a rigid gender binary instead of allowing people to do as they like

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    2. Thank you so much for this. I get in frequent debates over the loss of biological women's rights. I want Trans people as human beings to have rights but no ones should be stripped of their to comply. Women have been fighting since the dawn of time to be considered equal to men.

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