
I’m a trans woman – here’s why algorithms scare me - amyjess
https://www.dazeddigital.com/science-tech/article/43211/1/trans-algorithm-machine-learning-bias-discrimination-chelsea-manning-edit
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natchiketa
> These false ideas about gender have been thoroughly debunked by science.

As much as I wish that were true, it's not. And not only does claiming it to
be solid science not change anything, but also it weakens the standing of the
person saying it. And by extension, the rest of us who live as we feel we need
to live, but not at the expense of truth and intellectual honesty.

~~~
eyelidlessness
Can you clarify which ideas are scientifically disputed?

~~~
belorn
I would guess they refer to the suggestion that gender is determined by the
genitals that a person is born with, which the parent comment think is
correct. Just like the article however, I agree that science has debunked that
theory. Androgen insensitivity syndrome for example prevent the
masculinization of male genitalia in the developing fetus with male phenotype.
They are described by science as XY female, but does not have ovaries or a
uterus.

There is also studies done on neuroscience of sex differences, which found
that transsexual individuals tend to have the brain characteristics and
structures that do not match the genitals that the person was born with. Again
a rather strong indication that gender and genitalia do not always match.
There is quite a lot of research that indicate transgender as caused by
biology, where individuals get a mix of both male and female traits, and
genitals in those cases is simply one of many traits.

~~~
eyelidlessness
I gave you an upvote because this is all important information and likely
helpful for other readers, but unless I've misunderstood the parent commenter
I'm not sure this is what they meant. All of this information is consistent
with the article author's claims, which the parent commenter disputed.

~~~
belorn
Yes. I was a bit unclear but I was trying to addressing that the top parent
comment disagree with the article and think that genitalia determine gender
and that there is no science that disproves it. The article is right however
that science has pretty much proven that gender is a multitude of traits, and
as with any other collections of biological traits those does not always align
in every individual.

I edited the post slightly to hopefully make it more clear.

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dlivingston
> At the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, researchers created a
> system that attempts to identify transgender people before and after they
> medically transition with hormone replacement therapy. To do this,
> researchers scoured YouTube for ‘transition timeline’ videos, which
> typically involve a series of photographs charting a person’s face changing
> over time. These videos are extremely personal, and a source of empowerment
> for the trans community...

This isn't a trans issue, this is a 'digital consent' issue. As noted in the
linked Verge article, "[t]he MegaFace dataset compiled by the University of
Washington, for example, contains 4.7 million images of roughly 627,000
individuals — all taken from Flickr users." It is fair to say that many of
those photos are deeply personal.

So then, this raises a much larger question - not about digital ethics as
applied to trans people, but digital ethics as applied to _people_ : where are
the lines drawn in fair-use for public content? Do you get to dictate what
happens to your data that you upload to someone else's server publicly?

~~~
crooked-v
I find it entirely reasonable to hold mass aggregation of content to different
standards than use that's either individual or low-context.

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maceurt
An algorithm that trys and detect a male or female is not bad or unethical
period. Gender != sex, males and females have different bodies and faces based
on different genetic makeup between XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> If the researchers had consulted any trans people prior to beginning the
> project, they would know that many of us transition because we don’t want to
> be linked to our past name or appearance. We want to live our truth in the
> present and define our own future – not be algorithmically chained to false
> identities we were forced to wear in the past.

The concern doesn't seem so much to about the existence of the algorithm, but
instead it's uses.

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cwkoss
I think that the best solution to this problem is to ban gender-based
discrimination by advertisers and data-aggregators.

These algorithms only exist because marketers want to buy impressions from
"25-34 year old _men_ " If that was not a legal option, these algorithms would
not have an economic incentive to exist.

Surely "people who like power tools" as a demographic is much more targeted,
both excluding "men who don't care about power tools" false positives and
including "non-men who do" false negatives. A system of advertising that
allows gender based targeting inherently reinforces gender stereotypes.

~~~
dlivingston
Targeted ad placement is much more valuable for advertisers and those who
profit from ad placement. Surely there are use-cases that warrant a sex-based
discrimination: sports bras, as an example, or hair pomade, or gendered
magazines (i.e. Men's Fitness; Seventeen).

~~~
cwkoss
You're certainly right that advertisers and advertising platforms have little
to no financial incentive to mitigate the externalities of reinforcing
stereotypes by segmenting demographics on the basis of protected class
distinctions.

However, I think as a society, we should discuss whether these externalities
are worth the value that advertising provides to society.

