You’re Wrong About Why People Change Gender - Dr Az Hakeem interview

I understand what you are saying @illinivich but I think it suits the TRA to have trans identifying men under one rather vague umbrella. They don't want to much scrutiny especially if this would highlight that a form of fetish was a motivation factor for many adults. This would never do as the arguments for trans rights and protections would fall onto stony ground.

It depends on what you are trying to do I suppose.

But I would say the fact is there is in many cases kind of medical argument being made for approaching gender in a particular way, medically, legally, and socially. The claim that it is a kind of dsd, for example. That calls for a medical refutation.

It reveals some thing about why TRAs do certain things as well, which sometimes seem contradictory.

And it's useful in itself for the people that have these kinds of problems and disorders. I knew a woman about 10 years ago, when a lot of this was becoming mainstream, who was really beside herself with her 17 year old son, who was engaging in cross-dressing and convinced he was a woman. She had no idea what to do for him. At the time I was thinking maybe AGP, but having just watched this interview, it's possible he was actually the autistic type. If she could have had some guidance I think she would have been so relieved.

I also think a better understanding of how and why these conditions appear in young men might allow us to minimize them somewhat.

Theres a danger this has been over complicated or over analysed.

Trans identifying men are just men and therefore will be all sexualities, all personalities, all different attitudes to cosmetic surgery.

By concentrating on the differences and sub dividing between types of trans identifying men, we may be losing what they all have in common and why they are doing it.

A wonder if a gay man could be fine with his own sexuality but dislike it in other men, ie. he's only attracted to 'straight' men and where that could take him.

I think this is definitely a thing, but it doesn't have to be about "disliking" other gay menthough that does seem to be a thing too.) It's more about being romantically/sexually attracted to straight men. Which is an unfortunate conundrum.

Male sexuality can be so labyrinthine I bet there's no twisted path or weird corner it couldn't find itself in. A wonder if a gay man could be fine with his own sexuality but dislike it in other men, ie. he's only attracted to 'straight' men and where that could take him.

Thinking about something that Butters brought up earlier in the thread, the 'many studies', I'm sure a tra trailed a couple of years ago some sort of scientific test for being transgender that they were shortly going to unveil. I'm sure they were expecting plaudits instead of the pile on they got from other trans allies. The last thing they wanted was a 'true trans' test that would have potentially uncovered all those who were AGP, indulging some other fetish or just troubled in some other fashion. Not that they worded their objections like that though. I don't believe the test, if it ever existed, was forthcoming.

I think you could read it either way, but I also thought he meant that it wasn't the clothing as such. Might be impossible to say without asking him.

So he was saying that JM was Anatomic AGP? I thought he was saying that he fell into the asexual transsexual category. I'll have to watch the interview again. I may have misunderstood.

AGP was generally accepted within the sex therapists world for a couple decades until trans activists didn't want their secret known.

Dr Ray Blanchard is not a hack, and the theory on AGP was detailed after conducting interviews with thousands of transsexuals.

Always amusing that AGP gets written off so quickly and then we get told about "gender souls".

Personally I believe there is credibility in the theory around hormones and "feminised" brains in homosexual men leading to gender transition. But I also believe that heterosexual men (the AGPs) do not have a "feminised" brain. There is likely a wiring issue in the brain leading to internalised sexual attraction.

I think terms like "feminised brains" are better then "female brains", because all males have a male brain.

Essentially the heterosexual male transitioners would rather you believe that they are like the homosexual male transitioners, when in fact it is due to sexual arousal (AGP).

As explained elsewhere, I was talking about particular subsets of AGP, and those two mentioned would be Anatomic AGP, rather than transvestic AGP. So they wouldn't stand out as they wouldn't wear sexual/fetish wear because they wouldn't gain arousal from the clothing.

Yes, I've read that review.

I don't think Morris was very insightful about Morris, and it's not at all clear to me, from the categories that Dr Az was describing, that Morris fit the AGP rather than transvestite category

Yes, there's guesswork, but JM wrote a whole book about JM's transition which tells us much of what we need to know. There were some excellent reviews of it as well, notably by Rebecca West and Nora Ephron.

This is from Rebecca West's review:
She sounds not like a woman, but like a man’s idea of a woman, and curiously enough, the idea of a man not nearly so intelligent as James Morris used to be…when Miss Morris writes of the result of her hormonic treatment, ‘my small breasts blossomed like blushes,’ one feels sure she is not a woman. Almost any woman not feeble-minded would know that is a remark one must leave for other people to make.

You can read the whole review here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/14/archives/conundrum-by-jan-morris-a-helen-and-kurt-wolff-book-174-pp-new-york.html

Even the excerpts in the review leave you in no doubt that there was a sexual element to JM's transition.

Use it as frequently as you can get away with.

I always use it to describe transvestites. It stirs a recognition and remembrance in some people.

Wasn't it an interesting interview. I actually liked that he stuck to his specialism. Interesting that this is another psychiatrist that our local transactivist disapproves of. I wonder what it is about these knowledgeable, insightful professionals that triggers them?

If I remember correctly, no brain studies have controlled for sexual orientation, nor have controlled even adequately for the impact of comorbities or interests on the brain and of specific hormones on the brain.

We know that hormones and other chemicals impact the brain, that groups with shared interests and behaviours develops particular brain patterns and sexual orientation has been suggested would be part of that.

I have yet to see any study that controls for these variables adequately.

I liked AG trying to get AH to talk instead about his friend 'Meddie Mizzard' though😂

He wouldn't be drawn on Izzard, probably wise.

The control/mummy point throws interesting light on the “these aren’t women’s clothes, they are my clothes” statement famously made by a comedian who now claims a trans identity.

This is often taken as a sign that he previously took a more sensible position on the issue, but I’m not at all sure it was that.

Maybe someone like Blair White might be an example of this.A homosexual male, but also one who experienced significant sexual trauma as a child.

So Dr Az's ideas about trauma might be relevant, but I think more likely, BW's own theory that it is about sexual shame and wanting to become another person seems very plausible. I think he's also questioned whether sexual trauma is related to his sexuality as well - that's not considered a PC thing to think these days, but when we consider that sexual abuse can be experienced by boys as both arousing and deeply shameful and traumatic that raises some questions about how it could present in an adult.

I did know a transwoman who was in fact a gay male, raised in Ireland in the 1920s. Transitioned surgically in middle age, but it wouldn't likely have been really possible before that - he lived a very peripatetic life as a young man I suspect for similar reasons of not feeling like he fit in.

I don't think you are necessarily wrong though I would not be shocked to find Morris was the one of the control/mummy issues types he describes rather than AGP with the focus on the body.

I get the impression that Dr Az might say that the various sub-categories don''t necessarily understand the distinctions he's making and their own motivations very well, and can be confused by the social messaging and medical pathways.

And I suppose any of these groups could have other issues laid on top of whatever is behind their cross gender identification, like personality disorders, or other paraphilias that will complicate their behaviour.

All of which is to say I suspect that as a therapist talking about someone like JM, there's inevitably an element of guesswork.

@ButterflyHatched Well i have just read the link. It was not an actual direct research study, it was a review of existing literature. So really an essay from one point of view to prove it.

Secondly it admits there is only one very limited study of humans brains of trans identifying people,

Thirdly it does not conclude what you say it does. Thanks Inky, cake and planet, saved me an essay.

From what I can gather, it's internalised homophobia, which leads to the overarching, extreme need to attract a male partner who isn't (apparently) gay.

There are two such men that I can think of, one who practically says that exact thing (although without the reasoning I supplied), and the other who was very disgruntled when a heterosexual man wasn't interested.

In terms of cognitive dissonance, it's got to be very tricky.

The Spanish study seems to be on the brains of homosexual trans people after the effect of wrong sex hormones. It's possibly misrepresentation of this very study that Dr Az was thinking of when he talked about trans-facts in the Andrew Gold interview.

@ButterflyHatched stated: "Multiple teams over multiple years have reported finding statistically significant evidence that, for at least some early-presenting trans people of both male and female chromosomal sex, there are particular neurological phenotypes (brain structure patterns) that are characteristic of people who experience gender incongruence."

I'm sorry to say I can't find any evidence at all of this kind of study. There are studies in brain morphology, which don't show statistical significance in the area they are looking at (such as physical symptoms in children). I did previously find one study that looked at differences between brain morphology in males and females, but again, nothing was statistically significant and their results were inconclusive.

Sure. A Spanish team conducted a review of research in 2016: A Review of the Status of Brain Structure Research in Transsexualism - PMC