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Comment by jamesrcole | Hacker News Reader

> despite of course not having any frame of reference for those feelings

the question hinges on whether they need a frame of reference for those feelings. You seem to be implying that it's obvious that they do. Why?

Perhaps it is like the feeling that you're hungry, that it's some sort of innate reporting that doesn't require an external frame of reference. Or like the feeling that you're attracted to either males or females, or both. That seems to be just there, coming from inside.

Personally, I don't know the answer. I don't know if there's any relevant research, but on the face of it at least, it's not obvious that it should be one way or the other.

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I don't have the feeling I am a man. I am a man by the definition we all(used to) work with. It's not a word encompassing a set of feelings or doings. If one wishes to use the word "man" for something else, question is: why the same word? If someone with a vagina and breasts says she is a man, I have to ask: how do you know? I don't know what the man next to me feels like or thinks. I could not possibly identify as his way of being. Let alone a biological woman.

And seems that no one really cares about the theoretical issues we, transphobic people, have in accepting such views. We're just that. And problem is if our daughters or sons will come one day saying they're transgender, they will have no arguments, but just hurt feelings and the requirement to accept them as they are, or believe to be. We, as parents, may do so out of love. But others will not. And we, as parents, will have to accept the high risk of suicide for a view that has no sane arguments behind.

> And problem is if our daughters or sons will come one day saying they're transgender, they will have no arguments, but just hurt feelings...

I'm not sure why you say hurt feelings, rather than just "feelings".

On a separate note, historically, the medical profession has been terrible at ignoring or dismissing real issues that people have faced because we didn't have an understanding of them at the time. There's a very strong positivist bent that, if we don't formally understand an issue then it doesn't exist. Which completely ignores the fact that our knowledge of the body and brain and all their complexities (and all the ways they can vary and go wrong and so forth) was and is quite incomplete.

The attitude that, if we don't have an objective theoretical account of some mental/physical then the right thing to do is basically discount its reality has led to so much needless suffering.

This of course is not itself any evidence that someone's claims about themselves is true, but it is something that should always be seriously taken into consideration.

> And we, as parents, will have to accept the high risk of suicide for a view that has no sane arguments behind.

This is a risk of depression as well, and refusing to accept that someone is depressed does not make them any less likely to commit suicide.

> refusing to accept that someone is depressed

The depression is not what's being contested. The claim that they belong to the opposite sex just because they say so is what's being contested.

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