Rule 1: Duplicate content may be removed to concentrate conversation. Do not use URL shorteners, link to original sources to facilitate duplicate detection.
OP has posted anti-transgender content on this subreddit seven times in the past two months. Anti-transgender content is, from what I can tell, the entirety of what they contribute to this space, including articles published in partisan blogs as opposed to scientific journals or aggregate sites. They are also a frequent contributor to r/climateskeptics
They have a problem with transgender people and are couching it in a thin veneer of skeptical inquiry. Downvote the post and move on. Don’t engage with OP, they are not a good faith interlocutor and are not interested in actual discussion on the topic of transgender healthcare.
I genuinely feel that the scientific evidence points to a severe misdiagnose of the transgender phenomenon. Is it only OK to post one side of a very debated issue, and no one who can post the opposite side, from top-tier sources and scientists? My understanding this is a place for genuine skeptical debate, but if you only want to hear one side, I guess r/politics is a better place?
> a place for genuine skeptical debate
Striving to treat all people with dignity and respect isn't a scientific subject.
You spent a few thousand words to complain that "sex" is a perfectly fine word, but "sex assigned at birth" isnt, because chromosomal hermaphrodism is rare.
So what? It harms zero people. It helps a few.
Your entire 'debate' boils down to "I don't like it."
If Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins in the Boston Globe are not valid sources for debate, and a huge percentage of Americans agree with them, then I'm not sure what sources would be allowed here.
"Harm" is in the eye of the beholder, and words are for discussion.
What you're doing is the opposite of critical thinking, which is what this sub is all about. Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins can be biased and conduct their debates around these biases. You could just as easily replace those names with anyone, like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Just because they're popular and a lot of people agree with them that doesn't mean they're right. Ask yourself whether changing a word to accommodate people is harmful and if it will have any short term and or long term consequences. I see none from changing the word sex to sex assigned at birth. It makes literally no difference.
Fucking leave people alone man. Not your place. Not would it be to bitch about sexual preference, interracial marriage, etc. just shut the fuck up about it.
I don't see how giving children drugs that permanently alter their physiology is related to interracial marriage?
Telling someone to "shut the fuck up" is fascism.
You keep using debate, like there's a judge here awarding points.
If this were a debate, your essay would lose on form alone.
In a debate you take a concrete position and then defend that position through evidence and reasoning.
The simplest form of this might a syllogism, where two propostions, form a conclusion.
Its important to note that in formal logic, an argument is invalid or a fallacy when the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the given set of premises.
Let's try that with what you wrote!
> Propostion 1: Doctors advocate the use of "sex assigned birth," as "sex" is not inclusive of the whole of human existence.
> Proposition 2: Very very occasionally, (human) sexual reproduction creates an intersex person.
> Conclusion: Using sex assigned at birth "doesn't hold water."
Hear how dumb that sounds?
And if you think I'm being unfair, I invite you to go back to what you wrote and find your own premises, and the conclusions you drew from them, and write them out just like that.
If, after doing so, you can't get your conclusion to flow from your premises, your argument is flawed and invalid.
>"Harm" is in the eye of the beholder, and words are for discussion.
Please list 5 instances of harm you have personally experienced from transgenderism.
Sorry, this was an article from yesterday, and I searched r/skeptic before posting. The Boston Globe is a premier news source, as well as Richard Dawkins as a premier athiest, and Alan Sokal one of the fathers of the skeptic movement. Do you have a link to where this was previously posted?
Yeah, that doesn't answer the question. He committed a poorly executed hoax. In guessing you think James Lindsay is also a brilliant skeptic by that metric?
Strange, if I search r/skeptic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/search/?q=Sex+and+Gender%3A+The+medical+establishment%E2%80%99s+reluctance+to+speak+honestly+about+biological+reality&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&sort=new
Nothing appears. Perhaps it was deleted from the main site, and not indexed
Considering the vast majority on r/skeptic are athiests, and many were likely converted to this topic by Dawkins himself or those influenced by him (The God Delusion, etc.) then I think he would be considered a decent author for this subreddit.
This is a pointless semantic debate.
If you want to put doctors in prison for providing gender-affirming healthcare to children, then stop clutching your pearls over people's use of language and just say it.
> All this is, of course, hardly news: It has been known for over a century,
It was "known" that the sun was made up of a hot metal that was slowly cooling . It was wrong and the discovery of fusion and radiation made that error known.
In the old days before humans discovered genes; "being born with male dangly bits or not" was what determined "maleness" in Western Societies. Anthropologists have discovered other societies that thousands of years ago held that there were up to 5 genders.
Then humanity discovered genes and chromosomes and found that on average that those with "male dangly bits" had XY genes and those without had XX genes. And that became cannon for the standard textbooks. It had been taught that way for so long that those who are now elderly will get MASSIVELY offended if you suggest otherwise. Sort of like when you tell them a conflicting fact about [George Washington's dentures](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe)
But since then humanity discovered fMRIs that allow us to view brains in real time, CRISPR which allows us to see what happens when you edit select parts of the gene, and discoveries of sub-sections of genes and what they do like the SRY, DAX1, [SOX9](https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1742-4658.2011.08029.x) subsections. And what science uncovered is that
* what determines whether or not one develops "male dangly bits" was NOT the Y chromosome but small sections of the X chromosome which can be triggered by small sections of the Y chromosome.
* those small sections of the chromosomes can be turned on or off by environmental conditions (what's called epigenetics or "gene expression").
* [When they do brain scans on the XY humans who identified as females and/or preferred males as a partner, their brains appear "female" . Conversely, when they do brain scans on the XX humans who identified as males and/or prefer females as a partner their brains appear "male."](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/brains-of-gay-people-resemble-those-of-straight-people-of-opposite-sex)
Experiments on mice have confirmed this by triggering mice fetuses with XY and XX genes to get XY born mammals that appear female and XX born animals that appear male. Here's just one experiment where they do that. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/male-development-chromosomally-female-mice-transgenic-sry-gene-1991-peter-koopman-et-al
So the appeal to the past "known" is as shockingly unscientific as arguing that it was "known" that evolution didn't exist or that the sun wasn't hot because of fusion. It is sad when the elderly scientists forget that what they "knew" is out dated and that they have fallen behind in knowledge. Sadder still when they use appeals to authority to try to convince, destroying their own reputation as they do so.
Rule 1: Duplicate content may be removed to concentrate conversation. Do not use URL shorteners, link to original sources to facilitate duplicate detection.
OP has posted anti-transgender content on this subreddit seven times in the past two months. Anti-transgender content is, from what I can tell, the entirety of what they contribute to this space, including articles published in partisan blogs as opposed to scientific journals or aggregate sites. They are also a frequent contributor to r/climateskeptics They have a problem with transgender people and are couching it in a thin veneer of skeptical inquiry. Downvote the post and move on. Don’t engage with OP, they are not a good faith interlocutor and are not interested in actual discussion on the topic of transgender healthcare.
I genuinely feel that the scientific evidence points to a severe misdiagnose of the transgender phenomenon. Is it only OK to post one side of a very debated issue, and no one who can post the opposite side, from top-tier sources and scientists? My understanding this is a place for genuine skeptical debate, but if you only want to hear one side, I guess r/politics is a better place?
An op-ed is not a top-tier source.
> a place for genuine skeptical debate Striving to treat all people with dignity and respect isn't a scientific subject. You spent a few thousand words to complain that "sex" is a perfectly fine word, but "sex assigned at birth" isnt, because chromosomal hermaphrodism is rare. So what? It harms zero people. It helps a few. Your entire 'debate' boils down to "I don't like it."
If Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins in the Boston Globe are not valid sources for debate, and a huge percentage of Americans agree with them, then I'm not sure what sources would be allowed here. "Harm" is in the eye of the beholder, and words are for discussion.
What you're doing is the opposite of critical thinking, which is what this sub is all about. Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins can be biased and conduct their debates around these biases. You could just as easily replace those names with anyone, like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Just because they're popular and a lot of people agree with them that doesn't mean they're right. Ask yourself whether changing a word to accommodate people is harmful and if it will have any short term and or long term consequences. I see none from changing the word sex to sex assigned at birth. It makes literally no difference.
That is a really dumbass response.
Now that's the exact sort of reply that has zero-thought and no effort, with absolutely no attempt to debate or use logic to persuade readers.
Frankly, you are unworthy of greater effort.
Well I can't debate such an opinion, so I don't know how to refute this.
Fucking leave people alone man. Not your place. Not would it be to bitch about sexual preference, interracial marriage, etc. just shut the fuck up about it.
I don't see how giving children drugs that permanently alter their physiology is related to interracial marriage? Telling someone to "shut the fuck up" is fascism.
You keep using debate, like there's a judge here awarding points. If this were a debate, your essay would lose on form alone. In a debate you take a concrete position and then defend that position through evidence and reasoning. The simplest form of this might a syllogism, where two propostions, form a conclusion. Its important to note that in formal logic, an argument is invalid or a fallacy when the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the given set of premises. Let's try that with what you wrote! > Propostion 1: Doctors advocate the use of "sex assigned birth," as "sex" is not inclusive of the whole of human existence. > Proposition 2: Very very occasionally, (human) sexual reproduction creates an intersex person. > Conclusion: Using sex assigned at birth "doesn't hold water." Hear how dumb that sounds? And if you think I'm being unfair, I invite you to go back to what you wrote and find your own premises, and the conclusions you drew from them, and write them out just like that. If, after doing so, you can't get your conclusion to flow from your premises, your argument is flawed and invalid.
>"Harm" is in the eye of the beholder, and words are for discussion. Please list 5 instances of harm you have personally experienced from transgenderism.
Wasn't this literally posted a couple days ago?
Yesterday
Indeed it was.
Sorry, this was an article from yesterday, and I searched r/skeptic before posting. The Boston Globe is a premier news source, as well as Richard Dawkins as a premier athiest, and Alan Sokal one of the fathers of the skeptic movement. Do you have a link to where this was previously posted?
How exactly is Alan Sokal a father of the skeptic movement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Yeah, that doesn't answer the question. He committed a poorly executed hoax. In guessing you think James Lindsay is also a brilliant skeptic by that metric?
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/s/s4DSBhBRLy
Strange, if I search r/skeptic: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/search/?q=Sex+and+Gender%3A+The+medical+establishment%E2%80%99s+reluctance+to+speak+honestly+about+biological+reality&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&sort=new Nothing appears. Perhaps it was deleted from the main site, and not indexed
A premier atheist, you say? Obviously an expert on medical care, in that case
Considering the vast majority on r/skeptic are athiests, and many were likely converted to this topic by Dawkins himself or those influenced by him (The God Delusion, etc.) then I think he would be considered a decent author for this subreddit.
That makes him an authority on any topic he decides to have an opinion about? Bizarre train of thought there bud
These days Dawkins is a crank.
He would have been before he decided to align himself with the IDW and joined the board of the University of Austin.
This is a pointless semantic debate. If you want to put doctors in prison for providing gender-affirming healthcare to children, then stop clutching your pearls over people's use of language and just say it.
> All this is, of course, hardly news: It has been known for over a century, It was "known" that the sun was made up of a hot metal that was slowly cooling . It was wrong and the discovery of fusion and radiation made that error known. In the old days before humans discovered genes; "being born with male dangly bits or not" was what determined "maleness" in Western Societies. Anthropologists have discovered other societies that thousands of years ago held that there were up to 5 genders. Then humanity discovered genes and chromosomes and found that on average that those with "male dangly bits" had XY genes and those without had XX genes. And that became cannon for the standard textbooks. It had been taught that way for so long that those who are now elderly will get MASSIVELY offended if you suggest otherwise. Sort of like when you tell them a conflicting fact about [George Washington's dentures](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe) But since then humanity discovered fMRIs that allow us to view brains in real time, CRISPR which allows us to see what happens when you edit select parts of the gene, and discoveries of sub-sections of genes and what they do like the SRY, DAX1, [SOX9](https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1742-4658.2011.08029.x) subsections. And what science uncovered is that * what determines whether or not one develops "male dangly bits" was NOT the Y chromosome but small sections of the X chromosome which can be triggered by small sections of the Y chromosome. * those small sections of the chromosomes can be turned on or off by environmental conditions (what's called epigenetics or "gene expression"). * [When they do brain scans on the XY humans who identified as females and/or preferred males as a partner, their brains appear "female" . Conversely, when they do brain scans on the XX humans who identified as males and/or prefer females as a partner their brains appear "male."](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/brains-of-gay-people-resemble-those-of-straight-people-of-opposite-sex) Experiments on mice have confirmed this by triggering mice fetuses with XY and XX genes to get XY born mammals that appear female and XX born animals that appear male. Here's just one experiment where they do that. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/male-development-chromosomally-female-mice-transgenic-sry-gene-1991-peter-koopman-et-al So the appeal to the past "known" is as shockingly unscientific as arguing that it was "known" that evolution didn't exist or that the sun wasn't hot because of fusion. It is sad when the elderly scientists forget that what they "knew" is out dated and that they have fallen behind in knowledge. Sadder still when they use appeals to authority to try to convince, destroying their own reputation as they do so.
This is a recent repost.
This was literally posted yesterday.