Kat, labeling people is _not_ useful. When you label someone, you disparage them, and brand them in a simple way that might not describe how they actually are. A label leaves out all the nuance.

I am not a troll. Not at all. My interest is always intellectual - not emotional. I am a scientist at heart (and by training). I seek the truth. When I am shown to be wrong, I pivot immediately to embrace the truth.

The trans issue is one that I have taken an interest over the years because my step son influence a number of his friends to declare that they were trans. I do not have a personal stake or interest in the issue - my interest is strictly intellectual.

I have heard every argument that the trans community uses, and have not heard anything that is not easily explained by the view that many trans people suffer from a compulsive disorder. I have a minor compulsive disorder, so I have experience with that.

A compulsive disorder is very real. It is not imagined. Those who have one should not be mistreated. One can alleviate the anxiety of a compulsion by performing the behavior. I support the right of trans people to claim a different "sex" in order alleviate their anxiety. That is a good thing.

One argument often used by trans people is that they "must" be, say, a "woman" because they "feel like a woman". That makes no sense to be, because if one's sex is only one's reproductive capabbility and nothing else, then there should be no such thing as "feeling like" any particular sex. I am a man (reproductively), but I don't "feel like a man". I just feel like me. I don't know what a trans person means when they say they "feel like a man" - to me that is like saying you "feel like a tomato" - I don't get it.

I don't get it because I feel no anxiety about who I am. But a comulsion can easily explain the trans phenomenon. That explanation is resisted by the trans community because they want it to be political: they want to "normalize" the condition.

Science has shown that our bodies are complex. There are many traits that are more or less common among males or females, respectively, but just because someone has, say, a brain trait that is more common in females does not make that person a female. They are a female if they have female sex organs.

I believe that if I were growing up today, I would conclude that I am a woman, because I have traits that are common among women: I tend to relate better to women, I don't like most typical male activities and my attitudes tend to be more feminine about many things. But I feel no anxiety about that. I don't "feel like a woman" - I feel like me. No label. No anxiety. Because I don't have a compulsive disorder.

Having a compulsive disorder does not make one a bad person. It is just something to deal with, and if the best way to deal with that is to masquerade as a female or a male, I am all for that.

But what if there were a simple fix? What if the compulsion could be treated? What if all the anxiety could be taken away?

We need to be careful to not make trans like the deaf community. There are now cures for deafness, but the deaf community does not like that, because they want deafness to be normalized. They want to perpetuate deafness. Any movement seeks to perpetuate itself.