What do you think about cases of young boys raised as girls, but eventually realizing they are boys?

submitted by FlanJam from self.GCdebatesQT

Sorry for the vague-ness of this question, I dunno the precise cases that QT talks about. But I often hear them appeal to cases of young boys having their penises removed in infancy (intersex?) and being raised as girls. Apparently, despite missing a penis and being told they are girls since birth, these boys exhibit masculinity and eventually figure out they were lied to about their sex. QT claims this is proof of gender-identity, since the boys knew they were boys despite socialization and surgery that said otherwise.

What does GC make of these cases? How do you explain the boys' masculinity and realization of their sex despite being told otherwise? What does QT think? If these cases are about males realizing they are male, how do you make the leap to apply it to trans people?

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[–]ZveroboyAlinaIs clownfish a clown or a fish? 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

QT claims this is proof of gender-identity, since the boys knew they were boys despite socialization and surgery that said otherwise.

???

It disproves QT points. Boys were born as boys, they are male sex. And even thought they were growing up with other gender identity, they still found out biological reality of being males. This means that gender identity is not overriding physical reality, even if you force different socialization on kid since birth and lie to them that they are biologically female.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What happened to David Reimer was a tragic case of abuse. I don’t really think much supporting either side can really be drawn from it. Maybe there are other times this happened, but I don’t know enough about those cases. Doctors shouldn’t do those things to children whether they are intersex or had an accident happen. I feel like even if you were told you were a girl and had confirmation surgeries before you could remember it, you would eventually realize your body wasn’t like those of girls around you and you’d want to know why. Parents aren’t capable of hiding that forever.

[–]FlanJam[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Agreed. Looking at the case in context, I don't see how anyone can draw conclusions about gender from it.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 9 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 4 fun10 insightful - 5 fun -  (4 children)

Not GC. What was done to David Reimer was absolutely detestable. There’s maybe something to be said anecdotally about gender identity but I don’t know how you parse it through the medical abuse.

[–]FlanJam[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yeah, there was so much abuse and such involved with this case. This case is more about child abuse and medical abuse than about gender.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

I think gender is still very relevant but not just in the trans sense. David was forced not just to live as a girl but as an extremely feminine stereotype barred from any masculine activity. It was very messed up.

[–]FlanJam[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh yeah, obviously gender was involved. I just meant its not a case study for gender, we shouldn't be drawing conclusions about gender from this case.

[–]adungitit 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

There’s maybe something to be said anecdotally about gender identity

That a boy being raised as a "girl" despite very obviously not being one didn't actually make him a girl?

[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Cherry-picking. For every case of a boy that went back to identifying as a boy, there is a boy who continued identifying as a girl. Plus, going by how someone identifies does not give you an accurate result – look at trans people. They identify as the opposite sex, despite not being the opposite sex biologically or socially. Plus in the cases of intersex boys, who went on to identify as boys, despite being brought up as girls, it wasn't their gender identity that won out in the end, it was their sex. Any sex reassignment surgeries they would have undergone, never actually changed their sex. So if anything, these examples prove you can't change sex.

No one is born with a gender identity, since it's a cultural construct & varies from culture to culture. Gender identity is as much socialised as every other social identity. You're not born with a culture, & gender is just the cultural norms associated with it's respected sex.

Trans people prove that it's socialisation rather than self-identification that determines their gender identity, seeing as their gendered behavioural trends are the majority of the time consistent with their socialisation & in opposition to their self-ID. For instance, trans sex offenders should all be female if their self-ID is to be believed, turns out, they're all male.

Even the guy who coined the term 'gender identity' understood the difference between self-identification & gender identity. He said that trans children understood that they were boys who wanted to be girls, proving that their "core gender identity" is that of a boy.

That being said, gender non-conformity is overrepresented in the homosexual population, as a result homosexuals are overrepresented within the transgender population. But an effeminate gay male doesn't have the same gender identity as a straight woman, so how does he acquire one as soon as he self-identifies as a woman? There is actually no difference between a man who identifies as a femboy & a man who identifies as transgender, other than an ideological difference.

The thing about the nature vs. nurture debate is that both play a role in shaping a person, by contrast, according to trans ideology, self-ID totally overrides both nature & nurture – this is why it can't be taken seriously. At best they are all non-binary, seeing as sex & socialisation play a (huge) role.

Obviously, I'm ignoring the fact that the self-ID cult claims that their self-ID is not invoking free will, but rather the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate. I'm ignoring it because their sex can be measured, unlike their self-ID. It's physically & biologically present. Their sex is the nature part of the debate (which they try to convince can be changed via hormones).

Sure, if they are homosexual then allegedly parts of their brains resemble the opposite sex, but that can be thrown out since not all homosexuals are trans & not all trans people are homosexuals. It's also true that gender dysphoria, like many metal disorders, has a physical manifestation neurologically, but again, not everyone with GD is trans & not all trans people have GD. So there is no physical/biological evidence for being trans, therefore it doesn't belong anywhere near the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate.

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 7 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 4 fun8 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

I think they are conflating a lot of things in an attempt to justify their preconceptions, which is nothing new.

First of, GC rejects the notion that to "exhibit masculinity" means anything other than labeling behaviors anyone and everyone can and on occasion probably participate in. There simply is no refutation of this. Every man and women exhibit masculinity and feminity. People just choose what they observe in putting labels on people. If I like things others label as masculine or if I behave in a way others label as masculine, does that say more about their label than it does about my behavior? It really says nothing about me than I'm someone who behaved in some instances in a particular way. Extrapolating anything bigger from that about me, to put a label on me, denies the elasticity of our minds and how our ability to adapt to circumstance allows us to behave in infinite ways. It also intentionally ignores the times I would behave in ways contrary to "masculine". It is filtering the available data and focusing not on all of what is there but instead on what they want to see to draw the conclusion they want.

Is an identity that is somehow gendered separate from one's measurable and empirically observable sex (either before the surgeries or through some other means), or not? In addition to taking a tragedy some kid suffered and turning it into some sophistic talking point, they instead seem to be spinning a loss for their sophistry into win. Did the person come to realize their actual sex, or did they discover their so called "gender identity" which can not be proven to exist? Before they can make any of the conclusions you credit them for making, they have to show they have validly ruled out that the person came to know their sex instead of came to know their gender.

As for your last question, I can make no leaps. I need certain definitions for words, and then upon receiving real and workable definitions (if such exist) I will need additional things defined and clarified. Anytime we attempt to overthrow established ideas or established science (of sexual reproduction) and the language describing them, we need put their proposed replacements (reality's replacements) on a firm footing, if possible, or we have to reject it. What is "trans" with regard to sex and with regard to gender? What is gender with regard to how we define and classify humans based on their observable physical characteristics? What is sex with regard to how our species (not clown fish) reproduce? What is a person's own identity as a separate thing from their physical characteristics by which we can identify them? Why is that personal, stated and not empirically observable, identity considered fixed or treated as if it were fixed when our sense of our self is always changing as we learn more about ourselves and our place in society?

If anything, I think our sense of our own identity is more like an alias we use to accept our place in society or to create a place in society we want to inhabit-- like when a kid moves to a new town and they create a new identity for themselves to be cool. Since these things are socially constructed by society and by our culture when then our brains find the nexus of them all to create a sense of self (which is probably one of many), and since society and our culture are constantly changing, how is giving an external name to an inner sense of identity not like trying to grab the wind? How is trying to cling to a momentary sense of identity not making it static and stiff and cumbersome and, regardless of how well it may have seemed to adapt to some specific moment in time, how is it not at least partially stuck in that moment unable to move forward? How will clinging to an identity not make you topple over metaphorically instead of moving forward with time and with the changes that always come and are ever in motion? I reject trans ideology and 'queer theory' and all the ridiculous ideas that come along with them, but I welcome an honest a rigorous attempt to change my mind-- not red herrings and bad rhetorical tricks.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Idk who besides David Reimer this was done to,

But I’d say it just kind of sounds like even young children intentionally being abused and confused have more common sense and a better grasp on reality and biology than qt 🤷‍♀️

[–]BiologyIsReal 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Besides being subjected to unnecessary cosmetic genital surgeries and lied to about his sex and medical history, David Reimer was forced by John Money to role play certain sex acts with his twin brother. According to Money this was supposed to help developing his “female gender identity”. Reimer rebelled against this when he was a teen. He re-identified as a man after being told the truth by his parents. But even if he hadn’t be sexually abused, it’s unlikely he would have never figured out his actual sex. It doesn’t exist any technology to actually change someone’s sex, so things like a lack of a menarche and lack of worry of his parents and doctors about this would likely had clued him. So, what was the point of raising him as a “girl”?

There is nothing to be inferred from Money’s experiment besides that medical and sexual abuse are bad.

Nevertheless, Money claimed his experiment with Reimer was successful and used it to implement the “optimal gender policy”, by which children with atypical or ambiguous genitalia would be assigned a sex of rearing and subjected to cosmetic genital surgeries. Feminization surgeries were preferred because of the difficulties of making a functional penis. Like Reimer, these children were lied about their medical histories.

David Reimer and John Money Gender Reassignment Controversy: The John/Joan Case

Changing attitudes to sex assignment in intersex

Deciding on Gender in Children with Intersex Conditions. Considerations and Controversies

[–]FlanJam[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

It just dawned on me how recent this case is, Reimer was born in '65. So this all happened in the 60s and 70s. That's shocking to me.

There is nothing to be inferred from Money’s experiment besides that medical and sexual abuse are bad.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too.

Thanks for the links, better than wikipedia lol

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Also, the sort of medical and sexual abuse the Reimer twins were subjected to causes trauma that many people find difficult to "get over" and "move beyond." Both Reimer twins died by suicide, Brian at age 36, David at 38.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

“What does GC make of these cases?”

What other case is there? Seems clear Reimer was abused.

“How do you explain the boys' masculinity and realization of their sex despite being told otherwise? What does QT think?”

First- what do they mean by “masculinity”?

Second- transwomen are masculine af in actuality, so I don’t think this would mean anything either way

Third- as I said in my other comment, it just sounds like these boys aren’t mentally ill (in the way trans people are) so they allow themselves to accept reality

If these cases are about males realizing they are male,”

Maybe they realized they were male simply because they didn’t develop like females do? It doesn’t have to be some huge “come to gender” moment. Maybe they just were like “oh I don’t have breasts or a period, and… Im still built like a boy even with the missing penis” and then used other context clues to figure things out

“how do you make the leap to apply it to trans people?”

It doesn’t really matter how anyone, including trans people, identifies. Sex is sex. You are the sex you were born and it’s not gonna change so none of this matters.

Why do tras/qt think that the possibility of proving some type of gender identity matters? Why do they think this would change anything? The rest of the world never cared whether or not you genuinely believe deep down in your soul that you were meant to be the opposite sex/gender or that you somehow just are so despite the sex you were born. We just care- we only care- about the fact of your sex. Because that’s all that matters in this issue.

[–]FlanJam[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

What other case is there?

I'd like to know too.

First- what do they mean by “masculinity”?

I'm not quite sure, the way I heard it described was very vague. I assumed they were talking about behavior but I can't be sure.

Maybe they realized they were male simply because they didn’t develop like females do?

That's what I figured. I guess the counter point would be that they were put on hormones so they would've developed closer to how females develop. But I don't think that's enough to fool someone into thinking they're actually female.

Why do tras/qt think that the possibility of proving some type of gender identity matters?

Maybe they think it gives them validity. For example, what's the difference between a drag queen and a transwoman? QT can point to gender-identity, to them that's the extra bit that makes a transwoman really a woman. Without gender-identity, QT has to admit trans people aren't that different from other gender-non-conforming people.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

“I'm not quite sure, the way I heard it described was very vague. I assumed they were talking about behavior but I can't be sure.“

See? It’s always vague. Because specifics dismantles the claim. Every single claim. Every single time.

“But I don't think that's enough to fool someone into thinking they're actually female“

I don’t think it is either. I do think some of the kids being transed irl may believe they will actually change sexes, but I don’t think that it’s an easy feat to successfully convince someone they were actually born the opposite sex.

“Without gender-identity, QT has to admit trans people aren't that different from other gender-non-conforming people.“

But why would this make them different? They still aren’t identifying with anything the opposite sex can understand. So why should it matter to anyone but them?

And to take it further, why should your brain change how I feel about your genitals/your sexed body overall?

You (not you you) say your brain is like mine… okay? And? You’re still a whole ass male so your life experiences are nothing like mine (and vice versa for tm). I still have a female body and female issues and female rights that need to be protected. And since you have a ladybrain too, you should understand and respect that. Why are you contributing to the problems women already have? Why are you telling me what it is to be a woman?

That’s the thing lol- the fact that TW mansplain womanhood and sex to women (while undermining our rights) is so…

male

It’s so stereotypically male that the fact that they don’t see it just makes it more so

How narcissistic do you have to be to think that because you’ve convinced yourself that you have a gender identity, that that somehow matters more than the boundaries and equality of everyone else?

No other type of identity Or community does this.

[–]FlanJam[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But why would this make them different? They still aren’t identifying with anything the opposite sex can understand. So why should it matter to anyone but them? And to take it further, why should your brain change how I feel about your genitals/your sexed body overall?

It doesn't make sense to me either. I can understand why some may find comfort in the idea of gender-identity if they are uncomfortable with their sex. But then they make this massive leap to say gender-identity supersedes sex, and sex doesn't matter at all. This is the core issue with QT ideology imo. You can't just pretend sex doesn't exist when it such a big part of everyone's lives.

And since you have a ladybrain too, you should understand and respect that. Why are you contributing to the problems women already have? Why are you telling me what it is to be a woman?

That's the part that really bothers me. There seems to be no consideration, no sympathy for women. The Wi Spa incident was really a prime of example of how much they dont give a fuck.

[–]anxietyaccount8 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Any time a child is forced to become trans, that's abusive. I've heard of the case with John Money before. But I don't remember what it means to be "raised as a girl?"

GC and radfems would probably say, nobody should be raised "as a girl" because male and female children should not be raised according to wildly different values.

If these trans kids grow up and realize they are actually the opposite sex they thought they were, of course it could lead to an identity change or feeling resentment.

[–]FlippyKingSadly this sub welcomes rape apologists and victim blaming. Bye! 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is "trans kids" the right way to describe them? I think Reimer was a "forcibly transed kid"

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

There was a science paper on some cases. We discussed in the before time in the other place. More things we lost in the fire.

The report was on a very low number so it was hard to judge what was going on.

I think a good number reverted to their biological gender. One of the adjusted from what I inferred was living as a butch a lesbian.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't think cases of boys raised as girls coming to realize they're boys proves gender identity, or it doesn't prove it as some independent feature of human beings. I didn't start identifying with boys once I realized I was one too, I still saw myself as a girl, so all that I feel like can really be drawn from these sorts of scenarios is that it is possible for a child to not recognize their own sex in the face of evidence. There are a lot of children with intersex conditions who grow up without gender dysphoria, too, like in this study showing only 5% of people with a variety of intersex conditions changing their gender total, only 1% of those being after puberty.