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Fact Check: No, A New Study Does Not Show "Being Trans Is Just A Phase"
(www.erininthemorning.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Since you seemed to miss what exactly was meant by the headline:
To complete the paragraph you grabbed from:
Yeah, the author is making that up though, drawing conclusion based on their own biases. The question is not "do you feel dissatisfied with your sex". It's asking, directly, about the surveyed's desire to be the opposite sex. Which is literally what it means to be transgender.
The second quote is just semantic straw-grasping "the study didn't use the literal words 'gender confused'!"
Please. It is completely fair to describe "desire to be the opposite sex" as gender confusion, especially in years of childhood where one's sense of self is in active development.
Being transgender is a constant and persistent condition. Even for genderfluid people the "fluidity" needs to be repeatable. If a girl/woman suffering from cramps during her period thinks "I wish I was a boy/man so that I didn't need to suffer through this every month", she doesn't become trans because of it.
And "gender confusion" isn't a fair description. It's basically saying "they are wrong about what they're feeling". And you're not a telepath to know that
Yes. The whole point is to show that only a small minority of children who exhibit the hallmark 'sign' of being transgender, actually are.
That 2-3% of adults still feeling those same desires consistently, are obviously transgender.
No, you're imbuing meaning that isn't there, by conflating confusion with incorrectness. Being confused is not the same as being wrong. Confusion means uncertainty--not being sure of what's true about yourself is definitely not the same as being wrong (what are you even wrong about? If you're currently "confused", then you have not reached a conclusion yet, and you have to do that before you can be correct or incorrect).
A "hallmark sign" of having gender dysphoria is persistent identification with or insistence on being the opposite sex for at least a period of six months. And "not everyone who is questioning their gender ends up being trans" is not a statement anyone would argue with.
And no, confusion does imply being wrong. I rarely if ever saw it used as a short-hand for "not having an answer". It usually means either "fail to understand" (e.g. "I'm confused, is the birthday on the 5th or on the 15th?") or "made a mistake" (e.g. "Oh, sorry, I confused you for a friend of mine"). The term you're looking for is "questioning their gender" or "exploring their gender identity".
So gender dysphoria is not a thing then? You don't even have a base understanding of what you're talking about.
It's important because wanting to be the opposite sex "sometimes to often" is an entirely different beast from being gender confused.
Is it also fair to lump gender confusion with being transgender, and then make the conclusion that "being trans is just a phase"?
Notice how every step of your argument relies on saying that two distinct things are "fair to describe" as being the same. Eventually the results of a survey that asks "have you ever wanted to be the opposite sex" proves that transgenderism is a phase.
If a child said they wanted to be the opposite sex, and then as an adult said they did not, it doesn't mean they ever were transgender, or changed back from being transgender. It's an entirely different thing altogether.
Gender dysphoria is part and parcel of a "desire to be the opposite sex". Seems pretty obvious that such a desire can't manifest without dysphoria about one's sex being present.
So...I have no idea why you would think I was claiming gender dysphoria isn't a thing. It obviously is.
You're doing the same semantic straw-grasping. Confusion is uncertainty. Until/unless that desire to be the opposite sex becomes either "always" or "never", that is, objectively, a state of confusion.
Well, if there is anything to criticize the original article (the one this linked article is talking about, I mean) for, it's the fact that those children who have those feelings, and then no longer do in adulthood, should be considered never to have been trans in the first place.
It would have been more accurate for it to say instead "most children who experience the desire to be the opposite sex are not actually trans".
Do you disagree with this?
It seems we are in fact in agreement on this, after all, as I basically wrote the exact same thing before I got to this part of your comment.