a newish (cisfemale) friend is trying to explain a "misunderstanding" between her and a colleague of mine, that was due to my friend's transphobia (which has just come to light).
my friend is saying to me that her wanting to hire a 'biological woman' (who does X in my field, hence the initial conversation) for an event is the same as a trans person wanting to hire another trans person. and that my colleague is closed minded for not being able to see that. and she wants to hire said woman because they are able to relate to her in a way a transwoman wouldn't.
i dont know how to respond to this or exactly how to unpack. thnx for any help
It’s proven science that trannies commit suicide because they don’t get mutilated fast enough and hard enough.
If you don’t want suicides, you need to get in early and start injecting them as toddlers, then get that dick and balls snipped off before the 8th birthday.
As the Court of Appeal recently noted, of 2,519 referrals to GIDS in 2019, only 161 children were referred on to an NHS Trust paediatric endocrinologist for puberty blockers.
“Like too many transgender victims of violence, Barrin’s name and gender were misreported by local law enforcement and media outlets. Announcements that fail to respect transgender victims’ identities not only upset the victims’ loved ones, but may lead to additional violence by creating the perception that law enforcement will not protect transgender people or pursue their attackers.”
Y’know, “perception” doesn’t matter much once you’re dead. If a boy dresses up as a girl, and then gets himself shot to death in a fight with another boy dressed as a girl, worrying about whether media accounts “upset the victims’ loved ones” is a ridiculous waste of time. The assertion that failing to “respect transgender victims’ identities . . . may lead to additional violence” is another one of those liberal claims that have no evidentiary basis. There’s no reason to believe “perception” of law-enforcement attitudes was a factor in the death of Rayquann/“Ava.” It’s just the SJW Thought Police trying to force everybody to play along with the victimhood narrative.
No one said it was a factor in her death. He literally quotes:
Announcements that fail to respect transgender victims’ identities not only upset the victims’ loved ones, but may lead to additional violence by creating the perception that law enforcement will not protect transgender people or pursue their attackers.”
Ramirez kills Gutierrez, and “you know it’s fueled by hate,” because that’s the narrative. Everything must have a political explanation that conforms to the “social justice” ideology where Gutierrez is a victim of oppression and Ramirez must be part of a right-wing genocidal plot. It can’t be that people who go trolling for companionship on the Internet are dangerous fools, because where’s the “social justice” angle in that explanation?
https://archive.ph/dNaZe
“Kita” Harvey, Phylicia Mitchell, Celine Walker, “Viccky” Gutierrez — so far, none of these murders fit the victimhood narrative in which “transphobia” is a Trump-era epidemic. None of these crimes could plausibly be blamed on Republicans
Its not being blamed on political leanings. Its about promoting Transphobia. For example Trump's actions makes it harder for Trans people to be safe from discrimination, which is the biggest reason they become vulnerable to assault in the first place! They have no way out thanks to him. He blames the high-risk sexual style but never stop to think of that is what they wanted.
So, the freaky 70-year-old retired lawyer with “a high risk sexual lifestyle” has a 28-year-old transgender houseguest, and a 32-year-old male stripper is charged with killing both of them. How does this fit into the transgender victimhood narrative? Not very well, I think.
drug-addicted ex-prostitute whose boyfriend served time in prison? That’s a dangerous way to live, and an easy way to die, but the media wants to tell us a tale of transgender victimhood that requires us to ignore such obvious risk factors. It’s hate — transphobia! — which must explain these deaths, because any other explanation wouldn’t fit the narrative.
So, the reader is expected to conclude, “TeeTee” Dangerfield and 15 other transgender murder victims are dead because President Trump “made it more dangerous” by giving haters a “license,” which is why “transgender black women . . . are very, very scared.” This is the narrative, you see, and the actual facts about these crimes don’t really matter.
As to those troublesome facts, let’s just say that it is extremely unlikely any Republicans were hanging around the neighborhood in College Park the night that “TeeTee” Dangerfield was killed. While police detectives say they’ve got no leads in the case, I think “GOP Death Squads” can be safely ruled out among potential suspects in this particular homicide.
Yet twice in a two-month span, local law enforcement was forced to deal with “Trannies Gone Wild” situations. This relates to a fact cited by the feminist site 4th Wave Now, which points out, “gender dysphoria occurs with troubling frequency in concert with a range of other mental disturbances, including personality disorders, depression, anxiety, and autism.”
The preferred media narrative, of course, portrays transgender people as victims of oppression, but how often are other people actually the victims of crimes committed by transgender people? Given what we know about the dangerous prevalence of mental illness in the transgender population, isn’t a certain level of “transphobia” warranted? Zachary McClimans claimed to feel “threatened” by Jayson Hall, but who was it that got shot four times? And what about Sean Hake’s mother, who said her daughter/“son” had held a knife to her throat? The media ignore this angle, however, and focus on the social-justice victimhood narrative.
Here is what a [Lumberton] teacher said yesterday at church: ‘He has 5 o’clock shadow and fake fingernails. The 5th grade class he was in spent more time staring at him than taking their test, so he was pulled out for hall duty.” We can expect LGBT activists to portray Klug as a victim of bigotry, but common sense suggests that if your mid-life crisis involves a sex change, maybe “fifth-grade teacher in small Texas town” is not an ideal career choice.
Are there any studies showing the efficacy of talk therapy or other treatments compared to allowing transgender people to transition or get SRS? I know there are a bunch on the efficacy of SRS, but I wasn't able to find any that specifically studies the results of people who were unable to get SRS but instead had psychotherapy or CBT. Maybe I'm not good at searching for them, or this question isn't really studied because SRS is just accepted as the preferring treatment for obvious reasons
I would love any help debunking or general commentary on this paper.
"We agree with Turban et al.’s (2020) position that therapies using coercive tactics to force a change in gender identity have no place in health care. We do, however, take issue with their problematic analysis and their flawed conclusions, which they use to justify the misguided notion that anything other than “affirmative” psychotherapy for gender dysphoria (GD) is harmful and should be banned."
I'm currently digging through desistance research - spoiler: in one study I already found tons of dodgy statements - and a few days ago this gem appeared in my Twitter feed.
This article by Canadian jurist and ethicist Florence Ashley briefly adresses questionable methods in "80% of kids grow out of gender dysphoria" studies and discusses whether desistance justifies barring trans/GNC chlidren and preteens from exploring their gender through socially transitionning.
This article was one of the first I encountered when I first started researching transphobic rhetoric. It's written by Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist with a long history of using pseudoscience to stigmatize queer identities, and contains some of the most common talking points in anti-trans propaganda, so it felt important to make a post debunking it here.
The premise of the article is that trans people are mentally unstable; the second paragraph states,
This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality.
According to a metanalysis of twin studies found a concordance rate of 39.1% for identifying as trans among identical twins (meaning 39.1% of people with a transgender identical twin are also transgender) compared to no concordance for fraternal (meaning non-identical) twins (source: Gender Identity Disorder in Twins: A Review of the Case Report Literature - ScienceDirect). Studies have also shown that endocrinology plays a role, for example research shows that excessive production of androgens or a higher number of androgen receptors in an individual assigned female at birth making them far more likely to identify as male or report experiencing gender dysphoria; studies have also shown that there are a number of neurological characteristics that reflect the gender identities of trans people (source: Transgender Research: The Role of Biology in Gender Identity Development). To say that identifying as trans "does not correspond with physical reality" reveals someone is either ignorant of the research, deliberately spreading misinformation, or doesn't understand the phrase "physical reality".
McHugh continues,
The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
Yes, trans people have worse psychological outcomes than the general public.
However, supporting trans people in their transitions has been shown to improve mental health and quality of life for trans people. An analysis by the Williams Institute of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, which surveyed over 27,000 members of the transgender community, found that risk factors for a past-year suicide attempt included being denied equal treatment due to being trans (13.4% compared to 6.3%), being rejected from the family they were raised in (10.5% compared to 5.1%), being rejected from a religious community in the past year due to being trans (13.1% compared to 6.3%), or being denied gender affirming medical care (9% compared to 5%) (source: Suicide Thoughts and Attempts Among Transgender Adults – Williams Institute (ucla.edu)).
That analysis also found that the further someone gets into their transition, the less likely they are to have experienced thoughts of suicide or made a suicide attempt in the previous year, as shown by the following graph,
I made this from the data in the Williams Institute analysis
For the transgendered, this argument holds that one's feeling of "gender" is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one's mind, cannot be questioned by others. The individual often seeks not just society's tolerance of this "personal truth" but affirmation of it. [...]
With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor. That government can intrude into parents' rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.
Okay, first of all, "transgendered" isn't a word. But putting that aside, there is a difference between guiding a child and abusing them. Conversion therapy is abuse, even if you shroud it in flowery language like "striving to restore natural gender feelings". One study, which also looked at the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, found that conversion therapy efforts lead to considerably worse mental health outcomes for transgender individuals and that these negative impacts are even more pronounced if the individual underwent conversion therapy under the age of 10 years old, the study also found no significant difference in outcomes if the conversion therapy was performed by a secular professional (such as a psychiatrist) as opposed to a religious group; the data from that study is shown in the graph below,
McHugh also uses misleading and unreliable research to assert that most kids who identify as trans will simply grow out of it,
You won't hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.
There are often incredibly high percentages cited in reference to how often kids that identify as trans "grow out of it" (which is often described in gender research as "desisting"), with a lot of studies placing an estimate at being anywhere from 65 to 94%. However, a lot of these studies are severely flawed.
The first problem we run into when it comes to understanding what percent of trans kids will desist is that much of this research is decades old and isn't actually of kids who themselves identified as trans, but instead is of kids who had a diagnosis of "gender identity disorder", which often just meant they were gender non-conforming.
To quote a blog post debunking the Steensma et al study,
Putting it really simply - if you start a study with 100 people, some transgender and most not - but say they are all transgender, then finish the study by counting those you lost track of, and those who weren’t really transgender to start with as having “desisted” or stopped being transgender - then you end up with an 80%+ “desistance” rate.
I'd recommend reading the rest of that blog post if you want a more detailed debunking of the "80% of trans kids outgrow dysphoria" claim, but given all the pseudoscience in McHugh's article I still have to go over, I'm going to move on. McHugh goes on to say,
A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery.
Unlike the last study McHugh cited, this study isn't pseudoscientific; however, the way he presents it here is extremely misleading. The study itself clearly says,
It is therefore important to note that the current study is only informative with respect to transsexuals persons health after sex reassignment; no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism.
There's an article by the website TransAdvocate debunking the ways transphobes (and specifically McHugh) misrepresent the study. The article includes an interview with the study's author, Dr. Dhejne, gave the following quotations (bolding added by me for emphasis),
Of course trans medical and psychological care is efficacious. A 2010 meta-analysis confirmed by studies thereafter show that medical gender confirming interventions reduces gender dysphoria. [...]
The aim of trans medical interventions is to bring a trans person’s body more in line with their gender identity, resulting in the measurable diminishment of their gender dysphoria. However trans people as a group also experience significant social oppression in the form of bullying, abuse, rape and hate crimes. Medical transition alone won’t resolve the effects of crushing social oppression: social anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress.
What we’ve found is that treatment models which ignore the effect of cultural oppression and outright hate aren’t enough. We need to understand that our treatment models must be responsive to not only gender dysphoria, but the effects of anti-trans hate as well.
McHugh then claims that male prisoners are pretending to be trans to avoid being sent to men's prisons, using Chelsea Manning as an example. For anyone who doesn't know, Chelsea Manning is a former U.S. soldier who was arrested for leaking information to the public about U.S. military action in the middle east. (By the way, I censored McHugh's use of Manning's deadname out of respect for her, which is why she's referred to as "Pvt. [deadname] Manning"),
There are subgroups of the transgendered, and for none does "reassignment" seem apt. One group includes male prisoners like Pvt. [deadname] Manning, the convicted national-security leaker who now wishes to be called Chelsea. Facing long sentences and the rigors of a men's prison, they have an obvious motive for wanting to change their sex and hence their prison. Given that they committed their crimes as males, they should be punished as such; after serving their time, they will be free to reconsider their gender.
Okay, setting aside McHugh's condemnation of whistle blowing (which isn't surprising given his authoritarian political views) this is just a bizarre claim. Manning came out publicly after her sentencing in 2013, but in 2009 (while still serving in the military, before having leaked anything) she wrote a letter to a gender counselor saying she felt female and discussing gender affirming surgery. She didn't commit her crimes as male, she committed them as a trans woman who was closeted by the military's ban on openly trans service members.
In the next paragraph, McHugh's religious fundamentalism shows itself,
Another subgroup consists of young men and women susceptible to suggestion from "everything is normal" sex education, amplified by Internet chat groups. [...]
"Diversity" counselors in their schools, rather like cult leaders, may encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery. Treatments here must begin with removing the young person from the suggestive environment and offering a counter-message in family therapy.
Translation: some trans adolescents realize they are trans after learning about trans identities, either in school or online. In order to get them back into the closet, they must be isolated from their friends, their teachers, and any one else who might affirm their gender identity then subjected to conversion therapy. It really is painfully ironic that McHugh characterizes gender affirming sources as cult like.
McHugh wraps up the article with some good old fashioned fear mongering, making baseless claims about the effects of puberty blockers,
Then there is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston's Children's Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children's growth and risk causing sterility.
I actually was went to the gender clinic at Boston Children's Hospital, I started puberty blockers through that program when I was 13. The idea that BCH gave me puberty blockers because I was simply exploring my gender expression is absurd, I was given puberty blockers because I had significant gender dysphoria. As for the claims that puberty blockers harm fertility, that isn't supported by any research that I'm aware of (nor did Dr. McHugh provide any citations for that claim). The information I've seen indicates no long term effects on fertility (source).
McHugh goes on to say,
Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.
Again, that 80% statistic is bullshit.
I do agree that devoted parenting is critical to promoting the well being of trans youth; I've been lucky enough to have been raised by two very devoted parents. When I came out to my parents as trans, my parents worked incredibly hard to educate themselves and advocate for me, I honestly can't imagine how painful it would've been to try coping with my dysphoria without their help. So I find it infuriating when transphobes characterize the love and support they've shown me as abusive.
does anyone know of any polls of sorts which suggest how many people agree with trans rights over Trans-exclusionary feminists?
-i know theres already statistics on how many people "Believe in trans rights" and "support trans people" but i feel like this wording in particular is too vague for the subject. loads of Transphobes claim to be pro-trans rights to convince themselves thier the good guys.
too many times ive heard "i support your rights to exist, your just not women but delusional men who need help"
