It's healthy and good to be skeptical. But it's not healthy or good to be deliberately ignorant, then judge those about whom you are deliberately ignorant. Before I write more, I encourage anyone who is interested in the topic to watch this video. Watch it first, because if you disagree with my arguments, you will already be in an oppositional state of mind when you watch the video. Watch the video with a clean slate, first.
People like to draw a line between how gays used to be seen and how transgender people are seen now by saying that being gay has no impact on who you "are." It's not a desire to change a characteristic of yourself. Therefore it's fine. But being transgender is a desire to be other than you are, so it's not fine. That's the argument. "I want to be a dolphin." Good South Park episode, not a good argument. There is a real thing called gender that is different from sex. There are scientists who study gender and gender identity. It is a continuum, and we are all at some place on the continuum between purely masculine and purely feminine (some experts argue they are separate continua, so you can be both high masculine and high feminine, or low on both, etc--but that's not important here). Some say that gender is purely a social construction; we only identify with a gender because we are groomed by society to act and think in certain ways. If you take that position, you have a good platform to argue that gender dysphoria, as it is now called, is not what people say it is (more on this later). However, if you take that position, you also have to take the position that men and women choose leadership positions at different rates purely due to societal values, that sexual behavior between men and women is not ingrained and society really does have a "double standard" when it comes to manwhoring vs sluttiness. At this point, you may say "no, our sex and sex hormones determine those behaviors." It's a good thought, but physical characteristics and gender-stereotyped behavior are not that highly correlated. I don't know the literature on this, so I can't say for sure, but I suspect that male- or female-stereotyped behavior is more strongly correlated with one's gender than sexual characteristics (e.g. hairy chest, larger stature for men; curvier, softer skin for women).
On the other hand, if there is something called "gender" that is in some way a part of our internal identity even in absence of cultural influence (and cases like Jazz from the video strongly convince me that there is - she was acting like a girl before she even had much of a concept of what a girl is), then we have a strong argument for treating transgender people through hormone therapy and sometimes sex reassignment surgery.
The debate between these two perspectives (gender is a social construction vs gender is a part of our internal identity) exists even in the scientific literature among experts. I've read many primary sources (ie journal articles) on the topic from both sides, and I am about 65% on the side of the identity perspective, 35% on the side of the social construction perspective. This does not make me even close to an expert, but the relatively little I've studied of the topic still puts me probably at the 99 percentile among the public in terms of knowledge of the topic. The debate is not "is it 'real' versus 'not real'," but it is "is gender dysphoria an inherent condition of someone who feels like they were born in the wrong body, or is gender dysphoria a result of society's non-acceptance of atypical gender expression?" In one article, a researcher studied Samoan society because they appear to be the most tolerant culture in the world in terms of gender nonconformity. They have a term for a 3rd gender, men who present as women, and they are seen as different from both biological men and women, but also widely accepted. When men have sex with these people, it's not considered homosexual (score one for Antarius!). Anyway, gender dysphoria, especially the feeling of hated toward one's genitalia (which is an extremely common manifestation among those with gender dysphoria in other cultures), is much lower there. However, even there, some transgendered people feel a hatred or revulsion toward their penis. From this, it looks to me like gender dysphoria is largely a product of societal nonacceptance of atypical gender presentation, in addition to there being some piece that is inherent to the individual.
I haven't gotten into the most simple argument, the "I wanna be a dolphin" argument. However, just watching the Jazz video or really thinking about the process and obstacles to becoming transgender (hormones, painful surgery, absolutely massive oppression), make it obvious it's not some superficial wish like the desire to be prettier or getting a nose job. The people who experience this experience it as a core of their identity.
Again, skepticism is healthy, and experts, I believe (again I haven't read enough to challenge experts), haven't been able to address some criticisms. For example, there is a real phenomenon in which people hate and want to surgically removed a limb from their body. As the field currently is, we approach them as disordered for wanting to chop the limb off, yet we approach gender dysphoria people as almost a disorder of the body, ie the body is wrong for the person. There is an inconsistency there. We may discover they are essentially the same phenomenology, or we may discover that there really is something unique about gender dysphoria. For example, I think it's been found that gender dysphoric people's brain activity more closely resembles their identified gender than their biological sex. This is off memory so I may be wrong.
My arguments aren't perfect, but again we are really just beginning to understand this phenomenon. The important thing is to be open-minded that your initial impulse may be wrong, and that it may be the next, justified, human rights issue of our generation. Just because it makes you feel weird to see someone who's transgendered (and I get that feeling too), doesn't mean it's wrong. Maybe you are. Gay people made others feel weird and icky too.
People like to draw a line between how gays used to be seen and how transgender people are seen now by saying that being gay has no impact on who you "are." It's not a desire to change a characteristic of yourself. Therefore it's fine. But being transgender is a desire to be other than you are, so it's not fine. That's the argument. "I want to be a dolphin." Good South Park episode, not a good argument. There is a real thing called gender that is different from sex. There are scientists who study gender and gender identity. It is a continuum, and we are all at some place on the continuum between purely masculine and purely feminine (some experts argue they are separate continua, so you can be both high masculine and high feminine, or low on both, etc--but that's not important here). Some say that gender is purely a social construction; we only identify with a gender because we are groomed by society to act and think in certain ways. If you take that position, you have a good platform to argue that gender dysphoria, as it is now called, is not what people say it is (more on this later). However, if you take that position, you also have to take the position that men and women choose leadership positions at different rates purely due to societal values, that sexual behavior between men and women is not ingrained and society really does have a "double standard" when it comes to manwhoring vs sluttiness. At this point, you may say "no, our sex and sex hormones determine those behaviors." It's a good thought, but physical characteristics and gender-stereotyped behavior are not that highly correlated. I don't know the literature on this, so I can't say for sure, but I suspect that male- or female-stereotyped behavior is more strongly correlated with one's gender than sexual characteristics (e.g. hairy chest, larger stature for men; curvier, softer skin for women).
On the other hand, if there is something called "gender" that is in some way a part of our internal identity even in absence of cultural influence (and cases like Jazz from the video strongly convince me that there is - she was acting like a girl before she even had much of a concept of what a girl is), then we have a strong argument for treating transgender people through hormone therapy and sometimes sex reassignment surgery.
The debate between these two perspectives (gender is a social construction vs gender is a part of our internal identity) exists even in the scientific literature among experts. I've read many primary sources (ie journal articles) on the topic from both sides, and I am about 65% on the side of the identity perspective, 35% on the side of the social construction perspective. This does not make me even close to an expert, but the relatively little I've studied of the topic still puts me probably at the 99 percentile among the public in terms of knowledge of the topic. The debate is not "is it 'real' versus 'not real'," but it is "is gender dysphoria an inherent condition of someone who feels like they were born in the wrong body, or is gender dysphoria a result of society's non-acceptance of atypical gender expression?" In one article, a researcher studied Samoan society because they appear to be the most tolerant culture in the world in terms of gender nonconformity. They have a term for a 3rd gender, men who present as women, and they are seen as different from both biological men and women, but also widely accepted. When men have sex with these people, it's not considered homosexual (score one for Antarius!). Anyway, gender dysphoria, especially the feeling of hated toward one's genitalia (which is an extremely common manifestation among those with gender dysphoria in other cultures), is much lower there. However, even there, some transgendered people feel a hatred or revulsion toward their penis. From this, it looks to me like gender dysphoria is largely a product of societal nonacceptance of atypical gender presentation, in addition to there being some piece that is inherent to the individual.
I haven't gotten into the most simple argument, the "I wanna be a dolphin" argument. However, just watching the Jazz video or really thinking about the process and obstacles to becoming transgender (hormones, painful surgery, absolutely massive oppression), make it obvious it's not some superficial wish like the desire to be prettier or getting a nose job. The people who experience this experience it as a core of their identity.
Again, skepticism is healthy, and experts, I believe (again I haven't read enough to challenge experts), haven't been able to address some criticisms. For example, there is a real phenomenon in which people hate and want to surgically removed a limb from their body. As the field currently is, we approach them as disordered for wanting to chop the limb off, yet we approach gender dysphoria people as almost a disorder of the body, ie the body is wrong for the person. There is an inconsistency there. We may discover they are essentially the same phenomenology, or we may discover that there really is something unique about gender dysphoria. For example, I think it's been found that gender dysphoric people's brain activity more closely resembles their identified gender than their biological sex. This is off memory so I may be wrong.
My arguments aren't perfect, but again we are really just beginning to understand this phenomenon. The important thing is to be open-minded that your initial impulse may be wrong, and that it may be the next, justified, human rights issue of our generation. Just because it makes you feel weird to see someone who's transgendered (and I get that feeling too), doesn't mean it's wrong. Maybe you are. Gay people made others feel weird and icky too.