Transgender Documentary on BBC2 Thursday 2100 "Transgender Kids: Who Knows best?"

Ageing that Page on 4th wave now is shocking. As a woman, as a mother, but most of all as a doctor it is truly horrifying. What appears to be a complete disregard for the complex ethical issues here is extraordinary. Who decides what's in a child's best interest for such major and life changing treatment? What is pushing these medics to take such an approach? Yes there are always cavaliers who want to "advance" medicine and their own reputation as far as possible but on the whole we're usually a pretty cautious, and very evidence driven bunch. There just seems to be a total disconnect in this area and I'm struggling to get my head around it. I practice in a rural area and am yet to come across a transgender child professionally. Obviously a lot of the info there relates to clinics in the USA (or Canada?). I have never heard or seen any advice on this transition affirmative approach in the UK though I understand from another poster here that it is the attitude taken. Does anybody know how widespread this is in the UK? Is it largely London based?

I remember reading about that finch SomeDyke - really interesting case, but as you say, not much to do with humans. Humans are good at telling human males and females apart, so it's hard to think of us as basically identical in some ways, but other species would probably have to look pretty closely (or use smell) to tell us apart.

Just checking to reiterate, yet again that there is no, zip, zero evidence of male or female brains. Nada. There is a fairly enormous corpus of evidence that brains are as sexed as livers.

That sounds like chimerism SomeDyke and sounds like a fascinating article, I'll see if I can dig it up properly. Thanks for posting about that!

And yes ItsAll that graphic pretty much sums up intersex conditions. I know a few intersex people and they (and their community) gets mightily pissed off when people try and co-opt their bodies to gratify their need to explain themselves.

Great article, ageingrunner but not the whole story. There is an understandable focus on the infertility and loss of sexual function caused by giving puberty blockers then hormones. But puberty affects the entire body - the brain as much as the genitals. We have no idea of the long-term effects of preventing people from ever going through it. Puberty blockers were developed & tested for use on children with precocious puberty, to postpone it until the normal age. They were never intended to prevent it forever.

The only clear-cut case I know of really proper differences between male and female brains is in something like songbirds (okay, not a biologist, I'll admit). Cos there was a fascinating example of a bird they found where one half of the bird was female, the other half male:

"The discovery of a rare bilateral gynandromorphic zebra finch presented us with an opportunity to test this hypothesis, because cells on one half of its brain and body were genetically male and cells on the other half were genetically female."

The difference being male finches sing, and females don't. So not just the brain was different on the two sides, but also male plumage on one side of the body, female plumage on the other.

But as regards humans, recent research says that male and female brains aren't this simple. There are overlaps all over the place, and brains are a mosaic of male-like and female-like structures. But that doesn't mean that there are really maley male brains, and really femaley female brains, with some in between brains in the middle. Or that it's all somehow a continuum between 'proper' males and 'proper' females. We're all mostly in the overlap, from what I understand of the article.

As they said:

"For another, she says, the extreme variability of human brains undermines the justifications for single-sex education based on innate differences between males and females, and perhaps even our definitions of gender as a social category."

Which is basically what feminists have been saying for years, the social differences between being a man/boy and being a woman/girl are because we put them there, not because we are innately different in the head.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds

The fact that they could produce female monkeys with male brains just by prenatally exposing them to testosterone

That's not what the research found though. The research found that if you deliberately create intersex offspring by dosing pregnant females then you get offspring who have ambiguous genitalia and sexual behaviours that more closely align with the opposite sex. The research concluded this was due to neural development, I admit I didn't read to the end but I would think it far more likely that the offspring were producing more of the opposite sex hormone than would be usual which would account for opposite sexual behaviours.
Transgender people aren't intersex. I understand that you wish there was a scientific explanation for why you feel feminine or uncomfortable with your male bodies but this isn't it.
The vast majority of trans people have physical appearances including genitalia, and sex hormone levels commensurate with normal levels within their sex. The vast majority of trans people aren't even vaguely intersex.
It's possible that being a very feminine man or a very masculine woman (by which I mean the type of femininity or masculinity that is visible physically, skeletal structure, muscle and fat distribution etc) may fall somewhere on the intersex spectrum, I really don't know. However, without clear evidence of that (hormone levels, ambiguous genitalia, residual gonads) then it's simply not accurate to claim intersex as a condition. At best it's a guess. And a guess that may apply to a tiny minority of trans identifying people.

bbc

They are all so young

Some sterling examples of mental gynastics here. (Link was shared by friend on FB.)

4thwavenow.com/2017/01/26/shriveled-raisins-the-bitter-harvest-of-affirmative-care/#comments

This is very informative on the problem of hormone treatment causing sterility if commenced in childhood, and the hypocrisy of adult transactivists )with biological children) advocating such treatment

Read your study. It says there there is no qualitative difference in the behaviour of male and female rhesus monkeys.

It doesn't say there is such a thing as a male brain, much less a male brain in a female body.

So, I see hugh is still trying to use the science of intersex people to try and prop-up the trans agenda (the trans is 'invisible' brain intersex stuff).

Which AFAIK pisses off the intersex community.

Also, I should add that the recent celeb who came out as intersex said what I think the intersex community in general was fighting for, which was not doing unnecessary surgery on kids. The trans activists want the opposite, so it seems, and without even the clarity of diagnosis that you get with intersex, cos it's biology not feelz......................

BertrandRussell "Hugh-do you have any data less than 17 years old?"

The Hhorages France study I linked to previously:
www.intechopen.com/books/state-of-the-art-of-therapeutic-endocrinology/behavioral-and-somatic-disorders-in-children-exposed-in-utero-to-synthetic-hormones-a-testimony-case

was published in 2012.

This study:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146061/

was published in 2009. It's particularly significant as far as the dependence of human "brain sex" on prenatal androgen levels, because Rhesus monkeys are one of the closest animal models to human beings, and the research shows that exposure to external hormones can alter the sex of their brain.

"Studies over the last 50 years have verified that prenatal androgens have permanent effects in rhesus monkeys on the neural circuits that underlie sexually dimorphic behaviors. These behaviors include both sexual and social behaviors, all of which are also influenced by social experience. Many juvenile behaviors such as play and mounting are masculinized, and aspects of adult sexual behavior are both masculinized (e.g. approaches, sex contacts, and mounts) and defeminized (e.g. sexual solicits). "

The fact that they could produce female monkeys with male brains just by prenatally exposing them to testosterone, makes it highly plausible that drugs with testosterone suppressing properties (such as DES or progestins) can produce the reverse effect, of driving female brain development in male foetuses. As the experiences of people such as Ailynn and I show, DES definitely has caused female brain development in male assigned human beings, however it's very likely that progestins do the same thing (because they also are powerful testosterone suppressants). The fact that progestins remain in widespread use during pregnancy, perhaps along with third generation effects, would explain why gender clinic referrals continue to soar.

Most of the papers reporting on the high failure rates of infant gender reassignments are clustered around 2000 - 2005, but most likely that's because there was an expose in 1997 showing the David Reimer case to be a failure, and follow up studies of other infant reassignments were most likely organised in response, to see whether there was a problem with them too. There was.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421518/

"Conclusion: Active prenatal androgen effects appeared to dramatically increase the likelihood of recognition of male sexual identity independent of sex-of-rearing. Genetic males with male typical prenatal androgen effects should be reared male."

There most likely haven't been many further studies along those lines since about 2005 because by then the point had already been made: Dr Money (and Dr Zucker) were wrong: your gender identity is hardwired into your brain and already in place by the time you're born, and you can't arbitrarily reassign babies to another sex and expect it to work.

Trending now on twitter, Dr Helen Whatsherface...
#WhatMakesMeAWoman

Cheri DiNovo, that's who it was. Another purveyor of alternative facts. Forget if it's true, will it serve my purpose and will enough people suck it up?

Yes, the pastor was the one who said that eunuchs were actually trans, which displays a somewhat divisive rewriting of history. She also said that there are trans people in the bible. I have to say that, if there are any, they're hiding well!

Was it the priest who came out with the incredibly dishonest line about a eunuch being a trans person? I am astonished by that line whenever I hear it.

The psychologist is a zealot. The very last kind of person you'd want as your counsellor.

Trans people and their allies complaining about women at the women's march carrying placards with pictures of wombs and vaginas because it's cissexist and literal violence has left me

The difficulty I do have, as others have said, is those who insist they are a woman, because they say they feel like one but want to keep all the priveledges that go with appearing externally male

In my experience there is a vanishingly small number of men who even realise there is even such a thing as male privilege, far less think that they have it.

Thank you for your post Ailynn. I imagine it must be difficult to be that open with people, even with online anonymity and I think there's probably very few of us who have felt the need to examine ourselves so closely and deal with what we see. from what you've said it does sound as though your feeling of being a woman sounds more as though you felt you were "not man" and as you liked things that you were told are womanly that led you to believe that you therefore must be a woman. It sounds as though you are what was previously called transsexual- you want to change your external genitalia to resembling that of a woman, or at least to not resemble a man's. I don't have a problem with that although I'm sorry but I don't think that is enough to say you are a woman. It may seem like semantics but I think it misrepresents both your own experiences and the experiences of women to do so. If the term transwoman is not considered appropriate then perhaps a new term is needed? The difficulty I do have, as others have said, is those who insist they are a woman, because they say they feel like one but want to keep all the priveledges that go with appearing externally male and want to then restrict women in their language and choices of what being a woman means to them. If someone can say they are gender queer, cisgender, transgender etc and then should be taken without questioning it, then why can't I say what makes me a woman without other people crying -phobia?

I'm glad it wasn't just me Empress. I can't emphasise how much the person disturbed me. Unusual to have that feeling with a born woman.

There was this almost maniacal glint in the psychologist's eyes. I found that person frightening too.

I found the trans therapist, and the priest equally disturbing - a zealotry to their speech and ideas that just wasn't there for the other people in the doc.

I found the transman psychologist a bit frightening tbh. Something isn't right mentally with that person.

I've been lurking on here for a while I find these arguments around the pink and blue brains baffling and WTAF is that video.

I thought the documentary was very balanced I think it's very worrying that kids aren't being supported in exploring how they feel in a neutral way and instead are being pushed towards sex reassignment at such a young age.

The one part I did find a bit disurbing was the last part of the interview with the trans psychologist he had been very measured but then his mask slipped when he started to rant about how they'd won before he seemed to remember himself.