Thanks for sharing this. It was a rewarding read.

Yeah, that is the idea. Instead of transmitting an entire worldview, I just want to prove that their current one cannot be correct. Based on feedback from this post, I'll also prioritize not setting anyone up for a truscummy, trans-medicalist view in the future.

only thing most transphobes are good for is target practice

I think transphobes can be clumped into categories, and some of those categories are persuadable to an extent while others are not.

I actually just finished with a thread that went way better than expected. When I got there the thread was all really fucked up transphobic memes, pictures of intermediate stages of phalloplasty, etc.

I've been copying down the exchange to study it later and maybe post it, but i got the memes to stop and i talked to one of the anons about how phalloplasty actually turns out and why trans men get them, and there were a lot of long pauses between the anon's posts but they eventually seemed to adopt a more understanding mindset

I'm still monitoring the thread but it looks like the transphobic anon has left, hopefully to go think things through

transitioning works. It's empirically verified to reduce stress/depression in queer people and detransitioning stats are blown way out of proportion by terfs. 90% of detrans ppl do so because of social pressure, not because they have regrets.

Excellent! this is another line of rhetoric I want to build up. Do you have any studies on hand? Should I make a new thread?

I guess I'm looking for two lines of evidence: differences in the brains of adults, and developmental stuff (hormone levels during pregnancy?) that might be expected to produce differences in the brains of adults.

Also looking for good studies demonstrating that transitioning is the best treatment. Bonus points if the studies can be compressed into concise soundbites.

I do not expect to find a paper that says "we found the trans gene," although there might be some interesting genetic cluster analysis out there.

White nationalist recruiters are active on 4chan. They know how to be manipulative and to "one step at a time" a gullible mark toward some nazi position. They also post a lot of threads meant to prime people. A lot of the "BBC" threads are posted by them, for example. In threads like those it's pretty easy to provoke a response from the OP revealing their motives.

it works exactly like a cult

this is also what brought me around. I'm not sure how to turn it into rhetoric though.

transphobes are coming from the position where they currently doubt a trans person's self-knowledge and motives. If I say "actually their self-knowledge is pretty damn good and they tend to be good people with good motives" the response will be "nuh uh, I don't believe you." If I mention trans people who are obviously intelligent and kind and have good motives, like Chelsea Manning for example, the response can be "small sample size, cherrypicked." I tried this and that was the response I got, although the person who said it had some red flags for impersuadability and I stopped talking to them soon after. Someone more persuadable might react in a different way.

what do you think of this approach https://hexbear.net/post/196621/comment/2473672

biology is definitely an easy answer, which I think is what led me to it.

A biological basis swats much of that aside, but it also potentially restricts socially acceptable expression of sexuality, like you mentioned, especially if the biological basis is one we claim to fully understand. We end up with an approved list of ways people can be, and it'll be a list reactionaries can attempt to modify.

What do you think about the following middle ground approach: I point to some biological patterns that have been found and say "obviously at least some trans people were born this way and have no control over it" but then add "it'll be a long time before we fully understand all the biological factors that contribute, so maybe we should just let people live their lives how they want to as long as they are not hurting anyone. There aren't that many, and overwhelmingly they are not hurting anyone. Trans people have been around throughout human history, this is just part of the human condition."

is there a subreddit you would recommend me posting a question like this in?

also, I saw the twins thing mentioned on wikipedia but I'm wary of mentioning it because I anticipate someone pointing to something like this , where two twins separated at birth end up living similar lives and having similar idiosyncrasies

I've heard of truscums and how toxic they've been. Do you think I risk doing more harm than good when I bring biology into these discussions online?

What are your thoughts on this thread?

I tend to agree with you, but on the other hand I'm the person who might be construed as "just asking questions" about who is allowed to identify as trans, because I centered biology by posting this thread

will do

*edited the post

I have javascript disabled (pretty sure) and it's still paywalled for me

Thank you!