I can see that Kor and Serafina have not been kind to each other, but seem to have chosen to take themselves off for vacation. Which is good, because I'm tired of issuing bans. Perhaps they are done with their discussion.
At the risk of stirring the issue back up, I will issue another reply while waiting, primarily on the topic of how to argue effectively. If I have not missed it, I think WILGA promised me another post in our discussion on the topic.
Serafina wrote:And it still is.
And thus is precisely not a strawman. Case closed.
And if you could kindly explain to me how their appeal to authority is valid to start with, i will be amazed.
Validity is one thing; relevance and efficaciousness is another. In the case of appeals to authority, it is an age-old question: What role does expertise have in us knowing things?
Start
here if you like - or you can take my word for the fact that invoking an expert is
effective in argument. Even if experts are not
necessarily correct, they are likely to be correct, which means that in order to argue effectively, you must address the expert with one or more of three possible lines of attack.
- Attack the expertise of the expert; say they are not an authority. This is the method you chose, and it was a poor choice here.
- Produce contrary experts. This will usually be the start of a long argument. You've claimed this repeatedly but have tended not to actually back this up.
- Address the argument of the expert. Here, this is what you should have done. Zucker's claims of a high "cure" rate are hokey salesmanship at best, rather than scientifically rigorous conclusions.
I actually expected that other could make that connection as well.
Never expect that the people you're talking to now will make several loose connections in order to tie in what you posted a hundred posts ago to what you're posting now and fill in your arguments for you.
Either way, the "precisely female brain in a precisely male body" is a strawman you swallowed whole from our little trio here.
Actually, it is something I called you out on earlier. You
said that transsexuality was as simple as having a female brain in a male body. I pointed out that it was a rather more complex picture than that.
It is not a strawman; it comes straight from what you have posted in the past, and what you seem to be inclined to returned to whenever given slack.
That is NOT required, since many elements of male or female brains have been shown to be completely irrelevant to gender identity.
An interesting claim, but have you at any point backed that claim up, or are you piggy-backing this on what
I brought up earlier regarding the sexually indeterminate nature of many brains and the presence of numerous feminine brains in cis-men and numerous masculine brains in cis-women?
Yes. I have pointed that out - and Kor is ignoring it. As he always does if evidence contradicts his prejudice.
Perhaps he ignored it because you didn't cite a single one of those studies or a single source. You just claimed it to be true and left it at that.
There are, because Zuckers method is not used anywhere in Europe to my knowledge.
Is that supposed to convince Kor of anything? He doesn't think you're good at finding these things, and doesn't seem to think that Europe is superior to the US, either, both facts that would be necessary for this argument to work.
That is a case study
The case study I linked to is precisely the level and type of evidence you yourself have seen fit to supply as to the invariant nature of gender.
And it's not exactly long-term either. Even if we assume that he treated 17-year olds, his average adult subject is only 25 years old. Given the younger age of his patients, the actual number will be closer to 18-20.
Given that transsexuality is often only expressed at ages of 30+ or 40+ because these people grew up in repressive, gender-restrictive environments very similar to Zuckers "treatment",
Is it because of that? Blanchard disputes that. Blanchard sees there being two primary populations of male-to-female transsexuals, one class marked by childhood GID and presenting in early 20s, one class not and presenting later in life - and it's Blanchard's model that Zucker is working in, with his patients belonging apparently to the former category. 8 years is unquestionably
long term. There does remain a question of whether or not it is long
enough of a term, but Zucker's 1995 follow-up is certainly long term. Importantly, Green's study (with its near total lack of adult transsexuals) was carried out over a much longer term. It was not, unfortunately, substantially different in size.
Which brings us back to the problem of needing to either cite experts to defeat experts or address the experts' arguments directly. In the case of Zucker's studies, comparison with other studies, such as the one coming out of the clinic in the Netherlands from one of his frequent co-authors, shows that the tie between childhood GID and adult transsexualism is weak. It is unclear
how weak; none of the studies have been large enough to express anything with great confidence.
But perhaps I should make a constructive suggestion. It has been some 15 years since Zucker's 1995 follow-up. Those young adults are now middle aged. If you e-mail Zucker, or perhaps his secretary, or perhaps the center itself, very politely inquiring about the center's long-term success, you might be able to acquire some data, learn what obscure publications it might be located in, or discover the reason for its lack.
Bravo, JMS. Another strawman, you are doing the same thing as Kor again - mixing up GID and TS without making any distinction.
As far as those working under APA guidelines are concerned, the diagnosis of transsexualism was entirely replaced by the diagnosis of GID with the transition from DSM-III to DSM-IV.
When Zucker says someone qualifies under a diagnosis of GID, and you say that transsexualism is psychologically inherent and invariant, Zucker's diagnosis of GID is him saying that someone appears to be transsexual as you have defined the term.
Understand? It is not a strawman, but a simple translation. The diagnostic criteria for GID include strength and persistence; GID does not mean "transsexual lite." In American psychiatric jargon, GID
is the diagnosis for transsexualism.
I don't give a damn about Kors opinion.
Which would explain why you cannot argue worth one. In order to argue effectively, you should at least
seem to be trying to convince your opponent.