MMX2010

A man who is not in touch with his genuine emotions has no self-worth. And a man who has no self-worth is much more likely to feel that it's his moral duty to sacrifice his needs and wants to please women/society. (Sorry for being redundant by saying "women" first, and then "society".) Within this past month, I've made major strides in personal growth, all thanks to Stefan's podcasts. And I know that the number-one reason these changes have happened is that I've become much more in touch with, and completely non-judgmental towards, my every single emotion. Last night I spent about six hours reading every article in this list: http://therationalmale.com/the-best-of-rational-male-year-one while also listening to these two songs on repeat: To me, Buzzcut Season illustrates the "magical thinking"-based, highly-sheltered "reality" that young women inhabit. (The lines "So we live beside the pool, where everything is good" and "Nothing's wrong when nothing's true." fill me with mildly-contemptuous bemusement.) Whereas "Glory and Gore" illustrates the hard-won, philosophy-based internal security (a) that women find highly attractive, (and then, predictably-tragically try to undermine), (b) that most men find utterly frightening, impossible to attain, and threatening, and © that women try to acquire by making such men fall in love with them. (Stefan's repeated-admonition that there's no external solution to the internal problem of insecurity is highly appropriate here.) I used to feel shame / self-attack because I'm 38, single, and living rent-free with my abusive parents. Now I realize that those long years alone, lonely, and confused are a badge of honor. I tell myself, "You can do this - (living alone, embodying the culturally-described/assumed image of 'loser') - again, again, and again...if that's what it comes down to." (If my business fails, no matter how hard I tried to make it work, I can always happily and humbly move back. If my friends desert me, no matter how hard I tried to form a serious connection, I can always happily and resignedly move back.) Women's refusal to accept that they, too, can "always move back" is precisely why they try to manipulate, trick, bully, and threaten secure men into "loving" them. But any woman who tries to pull that on me is going to meet both the chorus: "You can try and take us. But we're the gladiators. Everyone a rager, but secretly they're saviors. Glory and gore go hand in hand! It's why we're making headlines. You can try and take us, but victory's contagious." and the final stanza: "Words in [her] brain: secretly you love this, do you even really want to go free? Let me in the ring; I'll show you what that big word means." of Glory and Gore. I can thoroughly understand every man's decision to either go MGTOW or learn the Crimson Arts.

Accusing someone of being abusive on the FDR board is highly serious. As such, I would respectfully ask that you either: (a) copy-and-paste which posts (or parts of my posts are abusive), and explain why, or (b) withdraw the claim with profuse apology.

You're right about that. I can't even think of a re-phrasing to improve what I posted. I'm stuck.

This may not be accurate, but my impression of the rule is, "If you're talking about yourself, use whatever words you want. But if you're talking to someone else (or about someone else), be really careful."

How many clinics are referred to in the sentence above, and are those clinics spread among multiple cultures or localized in singular cultures?

Agree with this 100%. If transgender is a biological reality, then the ratio of male-to-female-transitions divided-by female-to-male transitions should be roughly equivalent across all cultures. But if this ratio fluctuates from culture-to-culture, (and especially if there are significantly more examples of demeaned-gender-to-esteemed-gender-transitions), then this strongly suggests that transgender is a cultural-myth. Liberalismus said earlier: "From being around other children, the lessons I learnt were that: Girls were allowed to be more sensitive, expressive and open about their emotions." But is he (and are you) familiar with a sociological study mentioned (I think) by Lloyd DeMause in "The Origins of War in Child Abuse"? In it, infants were spread into four groups: girls-wearing-pink, girls-wearing-blue, boys-wearing-pink, and boys-wearing-blue. Females of varying "caregiving ages" were told to interpret each infant's "fussy behavior". The results were: (1) If the infant was wearing pink (girl colors), the females interpreted "her" fussy behavior as sadness. (2) If the infant was wearing blue (boy colors), the females interpreted "his" fussy behavior as anger. This is highly important because sadness is a "bonding emotion" - in that, whenever someone you love feels "sad", this creates sympathy, and spurs you to help. Whereas anger is an "anti-bonding emotion" - in that, whenever someone you love feels "angry", this creates distress, and spurs you to defend yourself. Hence, FROM BIRTH female-caregivers discriminate against the fussy behavior of male infants. And Liberalismus noted this as a (what seemed to me) highly-influential reason that he became transgendered.

I'm pretty sure that the book The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, is where I got that information. By individually googling "Big Five psychology", "Big Five personality", and "OCEAN mnemonic", you'll see a crap-ton of articles related to those five personality traits. But I'm strongly sure that Haidt's book said, "These five traits are highly heritable, and sort independently from each other - except for General Intelligence and Openness to new experience, which are slightly correlated."

No transgendered person in this thread has made "a claim about one's internal sense of self", Lucas. Instead, they've attached moralistic words like "oppressed", "involuntarily coerced", and "lacking in empathy". Moralistic words are clear attempts to control other people's reactions/behaviors. Statements that would qualify as "an individual making a claim about one's internal sense of self" are, "For the longest time, I've felt confused about my gender. Please don't assume that you owe me any sympathy because of this. Please don't assume that you're at all a bad person if you don't offer me any sympathy. Heck, feel free to be weirded out, confused, or annoyed by my feeling - if that's what you feel; that's what you feel." Lucas, we're not going anywhere, because you refuse to answer my very simple question, "Have any scientists attempted a double-blind examination of transgendered people? Meaning, has a blend of (a) transgendered people, (b) non-transgendered people pretending to be transgendered, and © transgendered-people pretending to be non-transgendered ever been assembled to challenge scientists to differentiate the real-transgendered from the pretend-transgendered?" Shall I assume that, because you're not answering the question, the answer is No? I didn't read the study, but I'm assuming that "the participants who received hormone therapy": (a) Voluntarily signed up for hormone therapy, and (b) expected that it would work. But if transgender is a biological-reality, rather than a socially-constructed myth, then transgendered people who would never sign up for hormone therapy because they don't think it'll work, or because they think it's "wrong for them" should: (a) be involuntarily placed on hormone therapy, and (b) report identical-satisfaction with it, as do transgendered people who voluntarily accept hormone therapy. Now, if you say it's unethical to force transgendered people to undergo hormone therapy, I'd agree with you. However, because the study you cited focused only on those who both voluntarily-accepted the treatment and expected it to work, it is flawed-scientifically.

I can add some scientific support to your conclusion. There are six personality traits that are highly-heritable: General Intelligence, Openness to new experiences, Conscientiousness - (otherwise known as "discipline", or "the ability to work long and hard on a specific task"), Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism - (otherwise known as "proneness to worry"). Those six personality traits are distributed independently of each other, except for two: General Intelligence and Openness to new experience (which are either slightly or strongly correlated). (Can't remember which.)

No way. The scientific-study of religion is very helpful here. At first, scientists used to believe that there was a "God Spot" - a particular region in the brain that, when electrically stimulated, produced a sense of "transcendence", of "oneness with the universe", and so on. This discovery was extremely important because knowing that direct-brain-electrical-stimulation can produce a specific feeling also indicates that many other experiences (both natural and artificial) can produce that exact same feeling. Scientists then concluded that religion propagates something like this: (1) A person is placed in an environment, such as a "church", wherein their "God spot" is stimulated, and then (2) That person is offered a specific "religious/spiritual explanation" as to why they're feeling-what-they-feel. Now, scientists don't believe there's a "God spot". But they do believe that a multitude of brain images collaborate to "facilitate an individual's spiritual/religious experience". This "multitude-of-brain-areas" explanation doesn't dramatically change how scientists believe religion is propagated. (It just replaces "God spot" with "a multitude of brain areas".) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/god-spot-in-brain-is-not-_n_1440518.html Religions and forms-of-spirituality are non-natural (a.k.a. mostly socially-spread). We know this because: (1) there are way too many types of religions/spiritual practices, and (2) whenever a religious/spiritual person defines "god" in a scientifically-testable way, (such as when Christians claim that God heals believers), science debunks the claim. In response, religious / spiritual people define "god" or "spirit" in deliberately non-scientifically-testable terms, and then "dare everyone" to disagree with them. That's extremely important, though. An overwhelming majority of people are religious / spiritual. And every religious / spiritual person explains their "god" or "higher being" with a "core" of similar, if not identical, language - such as "a benevolent higher power", or "a feeling of oneness with the universe", or "a loss of self that feels so pleasant, because it merges with a higher being or dimension". AND YET, this agreement among over 75% of people IS NOT sufficient evidence to support their claims that religion / spirituality is objectively real. (And religions / spiritual-forms are universally agreed upon, by scientists, to be socially-spread, a.k.a. "not natural processes".) Worse, it's easy to imagine how either frequently attending religious services (or engaging in meditation) can strengthen one's religious/spiritual experiences. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/god-spot-in-brain-is-not-_n_1440518.html That article puts it perfectly, "It is like playing the piano, the more you train your brain, the more the brain becomes predisposed to piano playing. Practice makes perfect." Thus, the majority of people deliberately engage in routine practices that produce a strong feeling; but this "strong feeling" IS NOT objective evidence that God/spirit exists in "natural" form. (Instead, it's very strong evidence that God exists in "social", or "imaginary" form.) Thus, if religious/spiritual people cannot prove that their Gods/spiritual feelings are natural despite comprising over 75% of the human race, then neither can transgender people prove that their transgendered-feelings are natural.

Are you familiar with the phrenology-debacle that plagued scientists way back when? Society used to believe two falsehoods: (1) that larger brains equal higher intelligence, and (2) that women were genetically and permanently intellectually-inferior to men. During this time, a group of scientists attempted to prove that women's brains are significantly smaller by using a "grain-filling" measuring-method on empty skulls. But the problem was that, when the scientists knew which gender applied to which skulls, they performed the measurements in a self-serving way. (When scientists knew the skull was male, they really "packed in" the grain to produce a larger measurement; but when they knew the skull was female, they didn't really "pack in" the grain - which produced a smaller measurement.) Such scientists universally concluded that men's brains were much larger, making them much more intelligent. However, when scientists did not know which gender applied to which skulls, they performed the measurements with equal proficiency. And this equal-proficiency measurement produced the opposite conclusion that men's brains and women's brains are roughly similar in size. ----------------------------- Ever since I learned about the phrenology-debacle, I've preferred blind-experiments over sighted ones. So, I ask you, has any study of transgendered-people followed this procedure: (1) collect 100 people who are blended as follows: transgendered-people declaring themselves transgender, non-transgendered-people pretending to be transgender, and transgendered-people pretending to be non-transgendered. (2) challenge scientists to separate the transgendered people from the non-transgendered people. If no such study exists, (and I suspect it doesn't), then literally every scientific study of transgendered-people has been performed by a scientist who: (1) was told to accept / believe that a person is transgender, in (2) an environment wherein everyone is loudly yelled at to be tolerant of transgendered people. These two conditions pretty much guarantee that scientists will eventually find some collection of brain measurements / brain scans that define transgender people. However, if scientists really have discovered such brain measurements, they should easily pass the "separate the real transgendered people from the phonies" experiment I've proposed earlier.

Right. But, to be fair, there are also parallels between "feeling that you're not your gender", and between "feeling that your race is superior", "feeling that your gender is superior", "feeling that a specific God is real", and even "feeling that a particular sports team deserves loyalty. (Those last four items are clearly cultural, which is why I don't automatically accept that feeling transgendered is not primarily cultural.) A whole heck of a lot. From what I remember, many unethical and disgusting "experiments" were performed that attempted to "cure" homosexuality. When none of those experiments worked, it become accepted that homosexuality isn't a choice. I don't know. The only person who posted any research is Lucas, but he's not willing to discuss the research he posted. I'm not sure. But: (1) If there are, but few (if any) transgendered people actually know what these traits are, then this strongly suggests that transgender is a cultural-phenomenon. (2) If there aren't, then this arguably proves that transgender is a cultural-phenomenon. (3) If there are, and most (if not all) transgendered people know them, then this strongly suggests that transgender is a biological phenomenon.

Yes, sorry I wasn't clear on that. Transgender-itself would be biological (a.k.a. "not a social construct") if it emerges at roughly the same percentages in each culture, regardless of the amount of pro-transgender and anti-transgender forces against it. (Much like homosexuality always roughly-exists in the same percentage of the population, regardless of the pro-homosexual and homophobic forces applied to it.) Whereas transgender-itself would be a social construct (a.k.a. "not a natural phenomenon") if: (1) the pro-transgender forces are not willing to correct mistakes in their presentation of "scientific" knowledge, (2) the pro-transgender forces attack the morality and character of those who disagree with them, (3) the pro-transgender forces dismiss established scientific knowledge on biological sex as "irrelevant", (4) transgender-itself is presented as a "feeling that exists in childhood", without any curiosity as to how this feeling biologically arises, and (5) there is no specific set of rules/characteristics that are solidly characterized as masculine/feminine.

Thanks very much for your responses and book recommendations.

Thanks very much for posting this. Dan Ariely is a very respected researcher who wrote one of my favorite books, Predictably Irrational.

Right. But the presence of coercion is not sufficient to prove that "gender is a social construct". By analogy, the desire of heterosexual women to marry wealthy men is: (1) readily apparent in every culture in which women are free to date whomever they want, (2) culturally-enforced via "coercion" - a.k.a. female-to-female hints and nudges, and (3) considered to be a reflection of a natural desire - (meaning: the exact opposite of a "social construct"). (1) If boys were allowed to play with dolls, and if men were allowed to parent young children, it would quickly be discovered that boys/men are equally capable to nurturing young children. This would render women's self-anointed title of "the nurturing sex" a gigantic illusion. And if every man knew this, then no man would marry a woman "because she's more nurturing that me". (2) If girls were allowed to play with toy soldiers, it would quickly be discovered that girls/women are equally capable of fighting / dying for one's country. This would render man's self-anointed title of "the fighting sex" a gigantic illusion. And if every man knew this, then men would be holding the feathers during the "White Feather" campaigns, and women would be receiving them. http://the-white-feather-movement-worldwarone.wikispaces.com/

I've noticed that a couple of posters have concluded that "Egg cells are more valuable, because they're rare." I would challenge that conclusion based on the following facts: In evolutionary history, asexual reproduction existed long before sexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is beneficial because it's fast, cheap, and highly accurate; but it's highly problematic because it produces 100%-accurate genetic copies of oneself. Every highly genetically-similar species is in danger of becoming extinct. If just one parasite or environmental factor is highly dangerous to one member of the species, then it's highly dangerous to all members of that species. Therefore, sexual reproduction arose to create genetic variability within the species to protect it from the threat of extinction. Since every sperm cell and every egg cell contributes equally to human genetic-variance, then sperm cells are responsible for 99.9999999% of human genetic-variance. (The average man produces 525 billion sperm; the average woman produces 400 eggs. Total male variance equal 525 billion divided by 525,000,000,400.) Do you agree or disagree with my analysis?

Thanks very much for introducing me (us) to that channel.

There are two problems with your analysis. (1) You may be implying that, "If boys were allowed to play with dolls, and girls were allowed to play with soldiers, then the number of stay at home dads would roughly equal the number of stay at home moms AND the number of female combat deaths would roughly equal the number of male combat deaths." (I use the verb "may", because I'm not sure whether you are, or aren't. And I don't want to paint you into any corners.) However, in practically every culture ever studied: (a) Mothers spend much more time with their children than fathers. And (b) males are a much higher percentage of combat deaths than females. Therefore, if you're making the implication above, you have to concoct: (a) a detailed series of mechanisms that apply in practically every culture to explain why fathers are "prevented" from spending time with their children and why females are "prevented" from dying on the battlefield, (b) a detailed list of reasons explaining why every culture, most of which exist in profound isolation from other cultures, all developed the same gender-based conclusions, and © an explanation of why the development of the same gender-based conclusions IS NOT primarily genetically-based. (Scientifically, whenever the overwhelming majority of independently-existing cultures behave in similar ways, the simplest explanation is, "Oh, that series of behaviors must have a primarily genetic (a.k.a. "natural") cause.") (2) Even if you could prove that such coercion was not primarily genetically-based, you still haven't provided evidence that "Oh, cismales and other trans-un-friendly people have this irrational hatred of transgendered-people; that's why those gender stereotypes exist." (My preferred hypothetical explanation for the existence of gender stereotypes is that they artificially raise the perceived-value of heterosexual women, which enables them to demand more from heterosexual men while keeping a straight face. And I prefer this explanation because NO "gender un-truths" - defined as either: (1) scientifically debunked, yet highly popular, conclusions about gender differences, or (2) not-scientifically-proven, yet highly popular, conclusions about gender differences - are flattering to heterosexual males; they're always flattering to heterosexual females.)

Lucas, you're now choosing to be less-than-clear in your posts, while saying, "You seem to already have the ability to recognize claims." Unloading your decision to be less-than-clear on to me strongly suggests that you're not currently willing / able to deeply explore the topic of transgender.

Some of those are definitions, not claims. Some of them are claims, not definitions. I'm asking you to cut-and-paste your claims, so I can focus on them. Please honor my request by applying more focus to your replies.

Please cut-and-paste the "claims about transgenderism" that you have made.

Pretending that my reasons didn't exist, (which is what you did by eliminating them from my post that you quoted-to-reply), is bullying. Bullying makes you lose credibility with regard to transgender. (Because if you understood transgender sufficiently, you wouldn't need to bully.) Stating that my reasons aren't scientifically, nor logically, relevant to a specific term - WITHOUT discussing whether they're scientifically or logically relevant, PERIOD - is also bullying. If you can neither support your defense of transgender without bullying, nor recognize your bullying when you commit it, nor apologize for it afterwards, then you have no credibility on this issue.

That's so clever! You're not concerned whether the part you eliminated was scientifically or logically relevant, PERIOD. You're only concerned whether the part you eliminated was scientifically or logically relevant to a specific term you chose to focus on. I agree with you. When I was younger, I didn't support gay marriage nor gay rights, because I believed that being gay was a choice. But once I saw the scientific consensus that being gay is not a choice - (i.e. - that hormonal influences in the womb precondition people to be gay), I instantly became a supporter of gay rights. Right now, there's no scientific consensus that being transgender is not-a-choice. And there are too many reasons to suspect that being transgender is both a cultural-construction and a response to childhood trauma. As such, it's not at all the same thing as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual. And so it shouldn't be grouped in with LGB. Nor, especially, should people who disagree with transgendered people be attacked with the same words like "bigoted" and "transphobic". Most importantly, transgendered and trans-friendly people show little, if any, understanding of "biological sex" - whose objective-descriptions and implications are inevitably part of "gender". To me, any avoidance of scientific knowledge is Gigantic-Red-Flag.

That's funny. I presented both my feelings against the term "natal sex", and my reasons (through two examples) of why I dislike the term. But your reply only addresses my feelings, and ignores the reasons.