In the project that I'm currently working on with Peter, Greg, and Eric, I'm writing the chapter on Users. In the section discussing the systemic bias, I'm going to try to go into detail as to the gender gap and possible reasons why this exists.

It's obvious why TS/TV individuals post as women, so that's pretty self-explanatory (dare I say "normal"?) However, it would seem that a great many non-TS/TV males contribute to WP as females, either via sock puppets (à la Kristen Erikson) and also as their main personae. I'm looking for people who would be willing to discuss how posting as females changes the experience on WP. I would also be interested in women who post as males and why they do that. (I know of at least one experience of this happening and I'm sure that there are more....)

Just send me a private message here and we'll discuss it.

Dude you post under the guise of a cat?

Most of the "TS/TV" identify as males irl and just say that online because they were caught pretending to be female. It is all nonsense. They just want attention and demand to have their fantasies indulged or are trying to justify/hide that they were pretending to be female to manipulate others. I love when the furries demand to be addressed as their imaginary characters on IRC too.

There may be more than one reason why someone would pretend to be something online that they are not in real life. I think this was a request for people to come forward and contact the fieryangel, not an inducement to start a discussion on the topic.

There was an interesting study http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mind_the_Gap linked to in another thread, which suggested (using gender-identifying words) that many editors on Wikipedia who identify as female, may actually be male.

Or skew male-like, or have adapted to Wikipedia's male culture by "fitting in" with male-like output.

Yet not everyone is able to actually send private messages, and it is posted publicly and not locked. So....



By the way, I saw at least 2 males who are known to merely have been pretending to be females before (and both came out as TV to hide from censure) be given the "survey" for women. Wonderful stuff.

Perhaps they are "TS/TV", which is why they would say that they were so and why they might adopt an online female identity? It seems odd to me that someone would admit to being something that opens them up to ridicule, misunderstanding, and abuse rather than admit to lying about their gender. I'm not discounting that trolls are going to, well, troll, but I don't understand why you assume that their claims are false. Is it simply that transgendered people are an impossibility in your worldview?

They walk around as males irl.

Furthermore, the whole TS/TV thing is bs. Merely putting on an outfit or an identity does not make you such, or there are a lot of Hamlets out there.

{{fact}}

edit: a mod may want to split the thread if it keeps going this way, just a thought

I'm going to assume that by "such" you mean "the gender normally associated with such clothing". What if a biological male dresses and acts like a female at all times, takes female hormones, gets breast implants, and has their penis reconstructed into a simulated vagina? Does that count? Just curious.

Non-judgmentally: Peter, it will be very difficult to develop some kind of even-half-reliable statistics
on this, because of the inherent manchild wargaming culture of WP. I've tried already, with the admins.

By definition, women are not welcome, and it encourages men to pose as women (Poetlister and
many more) to score "points" or to manipulate others. WP's culture is inherently hostile, which is why
the "Mind the Gap" business is a joke. Wikipedians are hostile to actual experts, they are hostile to
outsiders, they are hostile to paid editing (good or bad), they are hostile to critics. They are hostile to
people who want to balance the editorial content away from the sports-gaming-military-comic book bias
it already shows, and in a more "encyclopedic" direction.

Of course they'll be hostile to women who want to bring new female editors in.

Judgmentally: Jeff, please spare us the Catholic "social engineering". It obviously won't work on WP,
and it adds nothing to the conversation here. We're supposed to be studying a dysfunctional social
system, not editorializing about it.

Look at it this way:

The guy who inked his skin blue, put in metal and bone implants into his body, and cut up his ears to make himself look like some kind of freakish cat person is still human.

There is less genetic difference between a male chimp and a male human than there is between a male human and a female human. You cannot change your genetic code because you cut your body apart, used chemicals, etc.

Johns Hopkins stopped sex changes because they determined that it was a mental disease. You can read about it here. Note, they were the ones that pioneered the sex change operations, and the guy who started it all was the one to realize that it was really, really problematic. The people need psychological counseling in the same way furries do and anyone else who needs to play pretend.

Thinking you are the wrong gender is no different from thinking you are the wrong race, species, etc. It is all about self-loathing. It takes a lot of insanity to think "maybe if I chop up my sexual organs that will make me better". It is related to body dysmorphia and other major illnesses.

And this is assuming the people aren't just doing it for attention, which 99.9% of the people on Wikipedia do it for (and many, like Poetlister, abuse that attention to try and gain power, trust, etc).



Eric:



You are forgetting one thing: the old idea that "only a man knows how to please a man" (the theme from M Butterfly) - i.e. men pose as women and then manipulate other men in ways women would not.



It has nothing to do with religion and all to do with psychology. Read the Johns Hopkins report. They stopped sex change surgeries because they determined that it was a horrible mistake in indulging these people who need psychological treatment instead.

Ottava, if you ever go on a date with a real girl, you should bring along a guy buddy with more experience than you as a chaperone. Hell, bring Horsey... even he might no more about girls than you.

Really Ottava, you're going to use NARTH as a resource. That alone is just wrong.

And on top of that, the article doesn't even say what he apparently wants us to believe it says. And this isn't the first time, either...

At the same time, I would agree that it's a very bad idea for physicians to agree to perform SRS operations if the person requesting them hasn't had a significant amount of psychological, if not actual psychiatric, counseling. Thankfully, I believe that's considered standard procedure in the USA, though there are probably surgeons who would do it without that, just for the money.

Really?

John Hopkins's press release on the matter.

They halted it 100%. Not "until major counseling".

"A second, smaller category of the sex unit’s patients suffers from serious “disorders,” like gender dysphoria—the technical diagnostic term for people who think they’re trapped in the body of the wrong sex—and paraphilias such as transvestitism and pedophilia. These people, according to Paul Costa, Ph.D., an expert in personality assessments, “are more problem-prone as well.” Besides their sexual conflicts, they have a tendency toward high levels of anxiety, hostility and neuroticism." - Johns Hopkins.

That isn't the commentary of a group who believes that these people are "normal" or "psychologically sound".

More:



They even say that there was no science backing the surgery and their own people wanted it stopped back then.

Instead, they counsel people to accept themselves instead of helping them alter their bodies to match their psychological illness.



P.S. - Somey, the quotes from Paul McHugh in NARTH piece are damning and say 100% reason why the stuff is a psychological disorder and not something that we should indulge in others. You have not proven that the quotes are wrong. Hard to deny this quote from him: "I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. ... We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it."

He published the quote in his book discussing the matter.

"As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their 'true' sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it." p. 228 Dr. Paul McHugh, one of the few world experts on Sex Reassignment Surgery and has a background that few can compare.



By the way, Thekohser below -

Males have XY Chromosome while females have XX. That difference provides for more of a genetic difference than the humans and the chimps of the same gender. The point is to illustrate that even if a man "thinks" he is a woman, that Y is doing things that would not happen in an XX.

Here is a source. It is a very common statement. I'm surprised you haven't seen it before.

My bad.

Jeez, not only did you not read the article at the original link, not to mention what I actually posted, you didn't even read the article you linked to as a rebuttal. Has nothing changed since I went on vacation?

There's nothing in either of those articles that says they stopped doing SRS because they somehow "concluded" that the desire to obtain a sex-change represents a mental illness. It does say that they followed up on several such operations and found that rather few of the people who had been reassigned were "comfortable" with their new gender, but is that really so surprising? If you ask me, that's a bit like saying "we went back and checked with all the people whose arms we'd cut off, and found that rather few of them had gone on to become pitchers for the Baltimore Orioles."

Seriously, Ottava - it might, in some cases, be a sign of mental illness, I'll freely admit and agree with that. But it might also be a sign that the person has been messed up genetically from birth, can't get his/her shit together as the gender he/she was born as, and just wants to give it a shot in the hopes that he/she will be better off. And if Johns Hopkins didn't want to be a part of that, it doesn't mean they were making some sort of blanket pronouncement about the mental state of those people - it's far more likely to mean they're just a conservative, controversy-averse institution, just like the article says they are.

You question my ability to read, but honestly, you haven't bothered to read.

"damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it" is really, really, really clear on the topic.

That is from the guy who stopped the program.

Both articles show that the program was closed because the people in charged believed that all desires for sex changes were a psychological illness and you do not treat a psychological illness by mutilating a body to indulge in fantasy.

That is indisputable. Merely covering your ears and going "la la la la, I don't hear you, anything you say is wrong because I magically declared it so" wont change that Somey.



Which could be true if they weren't the developers of the procedure and pioneered the field before they got evidence 100% debunking the surgeries as a whole.

Ottava, you may be conflating the sexual reassignment of infants born with ambiguous or malformed genitalia with the sexual reassignment of adults. This is part of the Johns Hopkins case you present, and the subject of one of the studies cited.

In any case, that wasn't my point. I was simply curious about your views on gender. I am not at all surprised by your answers here. (Nor am I surprised to see your fingerprints all over Paul R. McHugh's BLP...)

Ottava, you're reading what you want the articles to say, not what they actually say. It's the classic modern-conservative problem.

As for what's clear and what isn't, the first article says, in paragraph 2, "The prevailing theory at the time was that while sex was genetically determined at birth, the concept of gender was culturally shaped and malleable and that being female or male were interchangeable." It seems more likely to me that by "madness," he's referring to the fact that this was the prevailing theory, and not necessarily a specific reference to the mental states of SRS patients.

I haven't really met a lot of people who were considering gender-reassignment (in fact, I'd say the total is exactly 1). But you don't hear a lot of stories about such people running around frothing at the mouth and shooting up high schools, do you? No, because the vast majority of them are perfectly sane, even if in many cases they're depressed or anxiety-ridden over their self-perception issues. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that a decent psychiatrist might have said they were "collaborating with depression" or (more likely) "confusion" if he was talking about the patients... but certainly not "madness."

There's one thing I've come to understand from my interaction with transgender people: it's impossible to grasp what they're going through unless you're transgender yourself. Keep that in mind.

LOL - it's Ottava, folks! Didn't we have a very similar Ottavian conversation already? Yes, I believe we did, yet here he is, back hijacking threads and spouting the same old nonsense

Bear in mind that this is a guy who doesn't know what a vagina is. Yet here he is, pontificating on matters sexual, all the while he's yanking everyone's chain ... again

Yes, we did. And I'm going elsewhere.

Well, I didn't need to know anything about people who identify as TS/TV. That's outside what I was asking about.

What I was asking about is "guys who post as girls in order to work the system on WP". I've gotten a few bites from people who have my email address. If anybody else wants to give me their stories (I'm only interested in case studies, so I'm not going to out you....Unless you're a well-known female WP cabal member such as Slim Virgin and really a guy...Wouldn't that be funny?).

My email is oscarlechien AT gmial dot com.

As far as the rest of it, been there, done that...Thanks in advance.

What I quoted

"As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their 'true' sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it." p. 228 Dr. Paul McHugh, one of the few world experts on Sex Reassignment Surgery and has a background that few can compare.


It has nothing to do with children.

It is shameful that the people who believe that such things are anything but an illness are blatantly making things up.

Dr McHugh makes it clear that 1. they are adults and 2. they are all mad. There is no way to argue against that. You can say that Dr. McHugh is wrong, but you cannot say that he doesn't think all TG is a mental illness. He is one of the biggest opponents of transgender operations in the world because of years of studying and realizing that it is nothing more than an illness.



Somey



You bash me over sources, but you are taking one source and saying it refers to another when it is clear that it does not.

" by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it" from Dr McHugh clearly means "we need to make these people realize that their gender is the right one and that they were not born with the wrong gender". That means the whole gender confusion is a mental illness. There is no other way to interpret it.



Alison

"Bear in mind that this is a guy who doesn't know what a vagina is. Yet here he is, pontificating on matters sexual, all the while he's yanking everyone's chain ... again"

You know very well that vagina is used as short hand for vaginal area and that all nicknames refer to the crotch as a whole. You are quibbling over my using a colloquial and non-specific phrase by substituting a medical definition in order to make an outrageous claim, then you state that -I- am the one trying to go off topic. Odd, I put up actual, credible experts who make it clear that TG is an illness and cannot be anything but, and the opposition has to stoop to outright fantasies or crazy attacks.

If you had a case, you would have put up evidence. You validate that there is no way to justify these people.

Sarcasm is always more effective when it is spelled correctly.



It was funny with Jaye Davidson in the movies...not so funny in real life!

LOL - I'm not here to debate with you, Ottava. You've clearly and repeatedly shown me that you're utterly impervious to reason. Being ignorant of what a vagina is (and lemme tell ya: if you have one, these things matter ) is just one indicator as to how pig-ignorant you are. I have plenty to say on these matters and have posted at length on related issues, so can stand up to proper, scientific criticism. But when someone's "rebuttal" consists of "f'off with your pc hippie bs", then I know we're done and there's truly no point in continuing. Cleaning out my cat's litter box would be a far better use of my time and arguably more intellectually stimulating.

tldr; There's no point in attempting to discuss anything here as you're just here to troll others and stroke your own ego.

Er, yes, but? It's equally impossible for a transgender person to know what it's like not to be transgender, or what it's like to be unfortunate enough to be a Californian.

Good point. But I'd rather be Californian than someone from Illinois.

I suppose California has a more congenial climate, but there's a heavy price to pay for it.

Because I don't use words with a technical specificity of someone who is trying to be a douche?

Both "vag" (444k hits) and "vagina" (3.37 million hits) are quite common when talking about "shaving".

In common usage, it is done quite often. You aren't right, just a snob.

The really sad thing is that Ottava imagines he can win arguments. He is current involved in many threads (particularly at Wikiversity and meta) where he's completely out to lunch, yet he attacks everyone else as obviously wrong, and worse than wrong, with evil intentions to boot. Almost everything he sticks his fingers in becomes Ottava's Right, You are Wrong. When someone comes back with a cogent answer, he then says, "See! Look how Wrong you are! You shouldn't be allowed to say anything, you are so wrong. You should be banned."

And then when he's banned, he's so amazed. Why is he being banned? After all, he was Right, and they are the ones who should be banned!

I understand the problem with being Right, it's one of my afflictions. But I don't try to ban people who disagree with me. I actually try to listen and respond. It takes all kinds. If everyone agreed with me, it would be totally boring, not to mention agreement on an error, at least sometimes!

Case in point: Ottava's latest on meta. Ottava's on a bender about XML import, has no clue, fails to understand that XML import is far more powerful when it comes to handling massive imports, as with some new wikis. Yeah, it's a very dangerous tool, it could make a huge mess. But it's really only being proposed as a transient user right for new wikis, as part of the set-up.

The user group that Ruslik has created will only be assigned temporarily, to those setting up a new wiki. As matters are now, I believe it takes a developer to handle that type of import. This is not a tool to be allowed for an operating wiki, because it can imitate edits by named users, merging them with existing contributions, probably not at all easy to distinguish. It can also create thousands of edits in a single import, if I'm correct, on hundreds of pages. This tool should only be assigned for a narrow time, and local 'crats should not be able to do this.

In any case, Ottava thinks he can tell a steward what he can and cannot do. Ottava has always been totally clueless as to how wikis really operate. He thinks that The Rules are The Rules. And he interprets the rules, always, in his own unique way. Rules, however, usually don't consider all the cases, which is why executives have discretion. Ruslik is being pretty patient, given how completely off-the-wall Ottava is.

I was blocked on meta for far, far less. How long will it be before Ottava's return to form is noticed?

...?

Fuck off, snob.

Could a mod please split off Ottava's trans-bashing to somewhere else (preferably a nice dark room filled with grues) as it is entirely off-topic? Thanks.

Wr is the only place I have encountered males (above the age of 10) who does not know, or care, what a vagina is (Ottava is not the only one, Sigh.)

Ok, for the ignorant; here is an educational video:

You should really know better than to continue Alison's trolling. She made the comment because I used "vagina" instead of a more cruder word. She then tried to be technical, even though common usage especially by -females- as shown in the links, verifies my usage because there is really no polite word of describing the area people would shave there.

Don't you worry, big mama - I'm here to fill in the void. (Literally and figuratively!)

Genital area.

Pubic area, pubic region, bikini area, "down there", etc, etc, etc.

Really? Because the "pubic" area, meaning the bone, wouldn't have led to also sarcastic and stupid comments? Or bikini area also referring to breasts?

You were trolling and looking for any excuse, like you are now. An apology would be warranted, but you don't apologize for your ill behavior. I already proven that it was very common, and you have proven that you just want to cause problems. You are acting like a child.



The Adversary: "Genital area." As I pointed out, Alison would have found some inane excuse to try and make the same claim. After all, genitals refer to the sex organs and not necessarily the skin around them. There is no defense of Alison blatantly trolling, and her current action and trying to bring it up shows that she is incapable of dealing with the actual critics that prove that TG is insanity. She hates that, knows she has no way to prevent the reality of it, and must turn to side games, shows, trolling, etc., to try and hide that fact.

Johns Hopkins refuses to give those people sex changes and instead deems them mentally ill. There is no way around that, and it makes her case look utterly stupid.

Keyword: area

Mons pubis = pubic mound, from the Latin. You done now? :roll eyes:

EDIT: And, as I keep saying, there's no point in endless 'debate' with Ottava. He's impervious to reason ...

(I'm going to take my own advice and stop posting now. This is a complete waste of time ...)

Oh, thank goodness the conversations here on WR are becoming more interesting! For a while, there was nothing here for me to read!

Ottava never learned the trick of *shutting up* when he is out of his, ah, "field."

So a "bikini wax" would mean waxing the breasts? Say what? It just got worse. Words carry meaning from usage, not from Ottava Logic. If you haven't used the words, or heard or read them enough, you can only imagine what they mean. "She shaved her pubic area" is extremely clear in usage, it refers to shaving "public hair." "
For maximum effect, I'll link again to the post Alison was pointing to. Ottava, again, doesn't know how to laugh and say "Oops! That was stupid! Now, pass the beer!" Or whatever. Instead, he has to be Right, and he will go on for years about how Right he was, imagining that it is, in the least, convincing, and he proceeds to accuse anyone bold enough to point out his gross bloopers of this or that, such as "you are acting like a child."

Does Ottava know what "waxing" involves? I've helped a woman do it. Geez, the things women will do! And that was legs.
When Ottava's arguments are utterly demolished, he then asserts that the others are trolling, pretending, lying, and in blatant denial of the obvious truth, i.e., whatever Ottava is asserting. It's amazing. It's consistent, and he seems to be completely unable to stop, no matter who tells him, friends, enemies, passers-by. Arbitrators, administrators, etc.

"She shaved her genital area' would not refer to the "genitals," it refers to an area, the "genital area," part of which will grow hair. Ottava is with language like he is with wiki policy: he assumes that policies should be applied strictly, just the way they are written, according to the meanings he assigns to the worlds. He has no concept of changes in meaning due to context. My God, he interprets poetry? How does he pull that off?
Ottava cited what he called a "press release." This was it. It's not a press release. It's an article in a Johns Hopkins magazine. It does mention, in passing, that Johns Hopkins stopped doing "sex change surgeries," but it doesn't really say why. This is what is said about it:
That's it. Ottava's turning this into a source for his idea that people who want sex-change surgery are sick, his citing it as if it denied what the user he'd just replied to was saying -- when, in fact, the article is consistent with that -- shows how, for Ottava, first and foremost, the principle on which he operates is that he is Right. Period. No room for any dispute. And if you dispute it, well, you must be a liar, deluded, a fool, or worse.

What Johns Hopkins operates is a sexual behaviors clinic. My guess is that after sufficient counseling, some patients are referred to those who do surgical modifications. But the article doesn't say that, it's just my understanding of what happens in the field.

What I do know is that some people are born with ambiguous genitalia. What used to be done was to decide, early, that they should be this or that, and early surgeries were done. That's almost completely discredited now, the trend is entirely to accept people as they are, and not try to force them into some clear gender physicality. When they are older, they may make informed choices. But that's a different phenomenon than the situation with those who are physically one gender, clearly, and presumably genetically so, and who decide to change that. Not being such a person, and not knowing any personally (yet, I'm actually working with a woman whose ex-husband, the father of her children, is now a woman), I'd really hesitate to judge them. And this is entirely different, really, from "homosexuality," and simply shows how shoving people into categories is damaging to their humanity.

How about "troll"?

You shouldn't have posted to begin with. You were trolling. You attack me, and you can't dispute that there is a substantial amount of people, including women, that use the phrase I use. Instead, you make all sorts of absurd and idiotic claims. The only reason why you are acting so embarrassingly is because you know that there is no justification for transgender anything because it is insanity and nothing else.

Poor, poor Jeffrey Peters...

I think you should probably stop posting about vaginas until you've actually touched one. Your (alleged) birth does not count.

You need to find an Amy Farrah Fowler as soon as possible. Your obvious sexual tension regarding TS/TV people is completely transparent and a bit disturbing. Ditto your obsessive personal issues with naked, but not pornographic, pictures of children.

Here's your TODO list Jeffrey:
1) Seek professional psychiatric help. Be honest when answering the background questions.
2) Find an analogue for Amy Farrah Fowler. Rid yourselves of your pent up sexual tension.
3) Finish your useless thesis so you can step over the PhD line in the sand.
4) Never edit anything related to wikipedia again. You are not well suited to collaborative work with others.

Your friend,
Vigilant

Of course, he can't edit Wikipedia. His edits on meta recently are amazing. See this discussion with Michael Suarez and Seth Finklestein. Ottava claims that he's for the bans because it's right. He's not quite got it there. He's for the bans because Ottava is Always Right. And because Poetlister is Bad.

Notice his rationale, it's diagnostic.
Ottava is a throwback. This is a justification for capital punishment, and against any idea of forgiveness or possibility of redemption. Even the older systems of tribal justice limited response to return of like action. Whom did Poetlister seek to ban?

It's argued that he harmed someone. What he did wasn't illegal. It may have been foolish, and it might even have been a civil tort, but far worse, in terms of actual damage, was apparently done to him. And none of that is really relevant. What he did was years ago. Some have argued that he's still pretending to be a woman. I'm still trying to figure out how this is harming someone. What, "wrongful incitement of erections?" What?

Gives the word "tort" new dimensions.

Ottava was unable to function civilly at Wikiversity. That's why he lost his tools there. He called someone a liar, without necessity -- it wasn't anyone's business at Wikiversity -- and when this was challenged, he was warned, he said, "But it's true. He's a liar." So I blocked him. Somebody had to stand up to the Ottavan Emperor. So I lost my tools for a time (immediately, because Ottava unblocked himself, revision-deleted his own block log -- cool eh, sometimes I bring this out in people, revealing what's been hidden --, then went to meta and lied to them about the situation. Yes. He lied. I don't say that very often about people. Okay, maybe he was merely delusional.). So? Ahem. I did it because it was right, and I took the consequences, and, where it counts, I was vindicated.

Steven Walling had removed Ottava's previous debate with Finklestein because it went off topic. Ottava takes it off topic in the same way, deja vu all over again. I really doubt he is long for meta. He has an open RfC there. Maybe its about time it get closed with the obvious conclusion. I've supported Poetlister on Wikiversity because he really was making positive contributions there, besides the issue of upholding local block policy. Ottava makes few positive contributions, mostly window dressing, like welcoming newcomers to meta. However, he incites a huge amount of useless debate, and he's utterly unresponsive, there is little or no redeeming value. Is there anyone who could mentor him? What I've seen is that he's been blocked, and then unblocked with no safeguards at all. It's a common error, not limited to Ottava. If you are going to unblock someone and want them to be successful, you need to watch them, given them guidance, and restrain them when they start going off the path.

Wikipedia is lousy at that, and so are a lot of Wikimedians. All or nothing. Kind of like this new idea of global bans that Ottava is fiercely promoting.