(November 25, 2024 at 1:11 am)Belacqua Wrote: Earlier Paleo suggested that if a psychologist wanted to determine someone’s gender she could look at that person’s behavior. I don’t think that such behavioral observation would be definitive. In the bad old days people might have thought that men naturally behave one way and women another, but we no longer accept this. There are no behavioral patterns which are intrinsically, inevitably linked to gender. A psychologist who looked at behavior in this way wouldn’t be determining gender, they would be determining the degree to which the subject conformed to social norms. And as we all know, social norms can change.
You misunderstand. A manly man is a man. An effeminate man is a man. A gay, cross-dressing man is a man. A man who expresses the need to be a woman is a trans woman. The converse is true for women. That is the only behavior that you need to observe and it is intrinsically linked to being trans. Once that behavior has been observed you'll want a professional to winnow away a few alternatives, but typically you're dealing with gender dysphoria.
As for objective, quantifiable data, it's pretty trivial to measure stress levels. We have a depressingly large amount of objective, quantifiable data on how homosexuals respond to conversion therapy. People who are treated as if they are one gender when they are actually the other react just as poorly. Both are cases of trying to alter a fundamentally immutable aspect of a person's identity, with predictably disastrous outcomes.
