Talk:Causes of gender incongruence

Why the Use of FtM and MtF?

I noticed this page makes frequent use of the abbreviations FtM and MtF. Why is this? From what I understand these terms are more casual, slang terms that shouldn't be used in an article about science, or even really on an encyclopedia. They also seem to be falling out of use generally. Would anyone be against me editing to remove them and use better language?

Sudonymous (talk) 02:16, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Simply refer to the kind of people traditionally known as MtF's as "trans women". Also, please note that trans women contrast with cis women, not real women, biological females, or women-born-women. Georgia guy (talk) 02:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

There is no grounds for a blanket change, although it's possible there are some where it isn't needed. However, we need to stick to the terminology of the sources. "Transsexual" (which "MtF" often appears next to) is a smaller set than "transgender", referring specifically in these sources to those who sought medical transition and surgery. And "MtF" does appear in many of the sources. How common it is in everyday discourse does not matter as this is a science article which uses more technical terms when the sources do. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:21, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I haven't heard of them falling out of usage, but I think these terms are more informative than trans woman and trans man. People who are unfamiliar with the terms may think trans woman means ftm because afab who is trans or trans man means mtf because amab who is trans, even well intentioned people. There was a twitter meme a while ago based on this https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/a1fv1o/transmenarenotwomen/ mtf makes it clear they are born male and transitoning to female and vice versa for ftms MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 16:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It also covers more of the "spectrum" (to put it somehow) of transition, e.g. transmasculine and transfeminine individuals that identify outside of the gender binary in cases like this. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:46, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@A. C. Santacruz I think MtX and FtX are the preferred terms for nonbinary people, but yes mtf is still a better term for an amab enby than trans woman MaitreyaVaruna (changing name to Immanuelle) please tag me (talk) 06:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It is cited directly from the sources used, i think. Cactus Ronin (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

The use of trans-eliminationist terminology matches the tone (and quality of the sources) of the article. 2600:1700:86AA:F010:4D82:2706:270B:1DDB (talk) 21:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Writing an encyclopedia article instead of a literature review

Just a friendly reminder that this article should be following the normal rule that we Cite sources, don't describe them. Factual information should be written as simple statements of fact, like "Taking hormones causes measurable changes to the brain", and not as "A 2011 review article by Prof. I.M. Portant in the Journal of Important Things found that taking hormones causes measurable changes to the brain". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, this article over-relies on primary sources; I have tagged many of the sources so that it will be easier to find the individual sources that should be reconsidered and (mostly) replaced. We sometimes see this happening when academics are contributing, because they're accustomed to the academic rule of priority (~always cite the oldest paper, because you want to give credit to the 'discoverer' instead of the ones who prove it correct [or wrong]). At the English Wikipedia, we are much more interested in making sure that the contents are up to date, so it's best to cite only sources published in the last five to ten years whenever that's feasible. For example, it should be possible to cite last section (about Blanchard's taxonomy) to a single university-level textbook or reference work that tells the whole story, instead of individual primary sources published during the last four decades. As a bonus, if you can cite the whole thing to a single good secondary source, then nobody will be able to whinge about editors cherry-picking sources to push the 'wrong' POV or editors engaging in original research by SYNTHing together sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I have added several secondary sources under "some sources to use" (don't think they discuss Blanchards model tho) Zenomonoz (talk) 10:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

"Brain sex" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Brain sex has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 8 § Brain sex until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:21, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

External factors?

The article Gender_dysphoria states: "The causes of gender incongruence are unknown, but a gender identity likely reflects genetic, biological, environmental, and cultural factors." Gender_identity goes over a number of "factors influencing formation," including social and environmental factors. One of the supplementary references at the top of this talk page, "Gender Identity Development: A Biopsychosocial Perspective," has a section on the social factors of gender-variant development. Yet this article is focused exclusively on biology and genetics and has nothing about social, cultural, or environmental factors. Clearly I'm not an expert; I had a general idea of the biological side of gender incongruence and was reading these articles to learn more about external factors, and I was surprised to find there was nothing about that here. 32.223.113.159 (talk) 22:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Those pages seem to be out of date (and the papers cited for these claims seem to all be over 1 decade old, same with the one at the top of the talk page). Going back in page history you can see how this page went from almost all external factors to almost all biology as the state of evidence changed. Flounder fillet (talk) 21:42, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a list of WP:RS secondary sources on this topic in the box at the top of the talk page. 'External factors' are hypotheses that could be discussed, but broadly speaking they failed to gather much empirical evidence and scientific support.

Looking at the Gender identity page, I think the discussion of 'social factors' is rather poorly cited, and hypotheses and speculation are written in WP:VOICE as though these are established facts, when this is far from the case. Zenomonoz (talk) 21:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

What does that mean for the Gender page? Much of it is devoted to the social and cultural aspects of gender, and the section on biological factors makes up only a small fraction of the page. It even calls the concept of gender a "recent invention" which suggests it exists on an almost purely social basis. I'm assuming that what's been said here would apply there as well, as gender incongruence couldn't exist without the concept of gender. 32.223.113.159 (talk) 01:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I notice this article was once called "causes of transsexuality". Sex is a biological trait (per the article), so it would make sense for an article on "sex incongruence" to focus on biology, but the current title uses the term "gender incongruence", of which sex incongruence is only one part (in the same way that transsexual is a subset of transgender, as stated in both articles), hence my surprise that this article seemed to focus on only one aspect of the topic to the detriment of others. 32.223.113.159 (talk) 02:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

"Sex incongruence" is probably a better name than "gender incongruence", but on Wikipedia we use the common names of whatever we're writing about to name pages (see WP:COMMONNAME), and unfortunately "sex incongruence", having been coined by you ~20 minutes ago, isn't a common name. Flounder fillet (talk) 02:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think their argument is that the article should include more information about proposed social/environmental ("gender") causes of transness, as opposed to only genetic/physiological ("sex") causes. I don't think that analogy really tracks, and I can't find any sources using "sex incongruence" (between sex and what?) as a distinct term or subset. Some sources[1] use gender-sex incongruence to mean the same.

But I am in agreement that we should attempt to consult some more modern (and secondary!) sources to balance out all the brain science and Blanchard stuff. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 02:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I am indeed suggesting that the article be expanded rather than renamed. 32.223.113.159 (talk) 03:23, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Then I'd encourage you to try searching on Google Scholar or logging into your public library's database, and finding some sources. You could suggest excerpts here, or be bold and improve the article's text directly.

I'm just hoping that "environmental factors" isn't code for something like ROGD or "vaccines cause transism" or "my son didn't play tackle football enough and looked at the color pink too many times and now he's one of them lesbians". Ha-ha. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 03:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

That terminology is used in the Wikipedia articles I linked above, so I too hope it isn't code. I also hope someone more knowledgeable than me is available to work on the article, as I'm clearly out of my depth. If Flounder fillet is to be believed, experts use the term "gender incongruence" when what they're really talking about is sex. If that's true, then my proposed additions may not be appropriate and what the article really needs is an explanation for readers like me who don't realize the title is based on a misleading technical term. 32.223.113.159 (talk) 03:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 25 October 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn, closing per WP:RMEC to re-raise with different title/focus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Raladic (talk) 04:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

---

Causes of gender incongruence → Causes of gender dysphoria – The DSM-5 and general WP:COMMONNAME is Gender dysphoria, whereas Gender incongruence is merely the ICD coded name for gender dysphoria. Ngram as well as Scholar (Gender incongruence at 5,900 vs gender dysphoria at 17,200) that gender dysphoria is the common term (which is also why our main article uses it), so I propose renaming this article to match it per WP:CONSUB. Raladic (talk) 03:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. These terms are not synonyms; gender incongruence is merely the state of being transgender (or some other non-cis identity), of which dysphoria is a common but not essential component. Conflating dysphoria (caused by "the mismatch") with the mismatch itself is a frequent mistake, but also a pathologizing and transmedicalist narrative. Frankly I think the article would be clearer and better off at Causes of transgender identity (oh, nice, a redirect already exists), since that's what we're actually talking about. "Gender incongruence" is a technically more inclusive term, but it's also probably more confusing to lay readers and the definition we give in this article is isomorphic to our definition transgender. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 03:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I revisited the 2022 RM discussion to see if there were any other arguments I was missing, and was shocked to discover Roxy from two years ago making this exact same argument. Time truly is a flat circle. I would repeat sche's point from the RM that "Causes of gender dysphoria" is ambiguous with the day-to-day emotion of dysphoria (e.g. "they're usually fine, but my outfit and my voice are causing dysphoria today") as opposed to the ongoing condition. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 03:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Raladic: If we're gonna run this discussion again I think we should notify those who took a stance in the previous RM. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 03:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm amenable to your alternative Causes of transgender identity (looks like someone made that redirect as a result of the previous RM), and either gender dysphoria or gender incongruence were definitely an improvement over the pre-2022 title. Also I wholeheartedly agree with avoiding the transmedicalist aspect. I think in MEDRS, gender incongruence and gender dysphoria are often used interchangeably (DSM and the majority of the medical community use dysphoria, ICD chose incongruence) and gender dysphoria is the clear COMMONNAME between those two, so while I didn't read the full 2022 RM earlier (as it didn't cross my mind that that aspect would have been discussed from just the title in the talk hat notice), I now see as you pointed out that it was touched on, though I think most people do not go to the detail of differentiating the two, so maybe your alternative proposal would really be better?

Since no one has supported the move yet, I'm going to withdraw the current RM it and re-raise it with your proposed name instead, which I think helps clear up the confusion. Raladic (talk) 04:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.