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

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Looks like an interesting watch, that does not just accept the trans children or they will kill themselves rhetoric. I just hope the BBC actually do show it and aren't bullied into not showing it.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088kxbw

The blurb:

Around the world there has been a huge increase in the number of children being referred to gender clinics - boys saying they want to be girls and vice versa. Increasingly, parents are encouraged to adopt a 'gender affirmative' approach - fully supporting their children's change of identity. But is this approach right?

In this challenging documentary, BBC Two's award-winning This World strand travels to Canada, where one of the world's leading experts in childhood gender dysphoria (the condition where children are unhappy with their biological sex) lost his job for challenging the new orthodoxy that children know best. Speaking on TV for the first time since his clinic was closed, Dr Kenneth Zucker believes he is a victim of the politicisation of transgender issues. The film presents evidence that most children with gender dysphoria eventually overcome the feelings without transitioning and questions the science behind the idea that a boy could somehow be born with a 'female brain' or vice versa. It also features 'Lou' - who was born female and had a double mastectomy as part of transitioning to a man. She now says it is a decision that 'haunts' her and feels that her gender dysphoria should have been treated as a mental health issue.

Ailynn

Thanks for that! You do seem like a nice person and I totally understand how you can feel as though you can only really express yourself through a female persona. We had a trans-women here once who said she felt far more 'vibrant' as a woman. In our gender constrained world, it was more socially acceptable.

However I echo choc's post in that 'hating your genitalia and wanting to express femininity' is not the definition of woman.

I don't know if you identify as having AGP (and I'm not asking because it's personal), but many people who have a similar profile to yours, do.

Can you understand that when those who identify as AGP, say they are women and want access to women's spaces it's a bit of a problem for women?

You feel so much more comfortable as a woman, away from masculinity.
Many women feel the same.

If someone is unhappy with their status as a man, wants to express femininity and be accepted as such I don't think there's anyone who would have a problem with it. It's the wholesale acceptance that the person IS a woman and all the rights and benefits of women (such as they are) should be accrued to them.

If TRAs were a little more upfront and logical and weren't pushing an agenda that has the potential to harm women, they would find a whole load of extra allies.

The fact that you have been subjected to harassment by merely expressing femininity is wrong on every score. Women (believe me) totally get that. It may not be for the same reason, but it's still shit.

And I, for one, would stand shoulder to shoulder with you to stop that. Toxic masculinity benefits no-one.

But women have fought long and hard for their rights and my ideal would be to find mutual support without those rights conflicting.

"“assigned male at birth” because that is usually the polite way of talking on that subject in the transgender community. Saying “born a boy” upsets a large group of people"

A large part of the problem that women have with transwomen is your tendency to get "upset" by actual facts and physical reality.

Nobody "assigned" you a sex when you were born. It was just clear to everyone who was at your birth, be it the doctor, midwife, nurses, your own mother and father and whoever else changed your nappies that you actually were a boy.

"“Feeling female.” ... extreme feeling of aversion toward being perceived as a male."

Most older women have an extreme feeling of aversion toward being perceived as old & fat but they don't go around telling people "I feel like Victoria's Secret models, so I am one. You are exclusionary and _phobic if you don't accept that I am a supermodel with a gorgeous body". That would be crazy.

"Usually, I socially interact much more naturally with women then men."

I interact more naturally with men than women. So?

"I enjoy feminine, pretty things…"

I don't care for feminine, "pretty" things. Again, so? That doesn't mean I am a man or "feel like a man".

"and feel natural when wearing dresses or makeup"

I don't. It's a chore to doll up and teeter on heels for the few events I need to get dressed up for. Again... so what?

"I am kind and nurturing, and genuinely enjoy taking care of people"

Many women aren't and don't. Again, so what? That doesn't mean they are not women.

"I have an aversion toward fighting and violence"

So do many men. I don't mind it, myself.

None of the above makes me NOT a woman. None of it makes me a man, either. Similarly, none of your preferences re the above makes you a woman or not a man.

I get that you want to get doll up and you should do what makes you happy. I also get that you want to be a woman and not a man. But we sometimes desire what we are not and it's part of being an adult to see and accept reality.

It does strike me that living a lie (believing you are the opposite sex and getting pissed up when people can see that you're not) must not be a very mentally healthy way to live. I can see why it might seem like the only choice for some people though. The problem is that trans behaviour is reinforcing gender stereotypes, not challenging them. I'm not sure why this is difficult for some to understand really

"It does strike me that living a lie (believing you are the opposite sex and getting pissed up when people can see that you're not) must not be a very mentally healthy way to live. I can see why it might seem like the only choice for some people though"

I agree that it is not healthy. And I don't see how it can be "the only choice" or even doable in practice.

I can't suspend disbelief to believe in a God, or even long enough to enjoy badly-crafted sci-fi movies with unrealistic plots. It is literally impossible for me to go along with the TA delusion that penises are female if found on bodies of men who want to be women. The mental gymnastics necessary to agree to that sort of complete and utter nonsense is beyond my mathematical brain's capabilities.

I do feel sorry for people who need the whole world to lie about what's in front of their eyes to feel good about themselves, but not enough to reconfigure my brain to accept lies and gaslighting as reality.

Mental gymnastics is right. My mind was blown when watching that Riley chap trying to justify his assertion that biological sex doesn't exist. He's obviously spent ages thinking about it, but just in such a bizarre way. You're a man! Own it ffs.
I wonder if his girlfriend believes that she doesn't need to use contraception? 🤔

"There is NO evidence that so called bioidentical hormones are better, or less harmful or have fewer side effects than synthetic ones. It is categorically untrue they are safer and the premise for this is based on the false belief that natural=better. "

Both bioidentical hormones and most synthetics are produced in a laboratory from the same precursor chemicals (usually either diosgenin extracted from yams, or from soybean phytosterols). So they're both manmade from that point of view. The difference is that bioidentical hormones have the identical chemical structure to the hormones that occur naturally in the human body, so your body can't tell the difference, and processes and metabolises them in exactly the same way it would hormones it had produced itself. Synthetics, by contrast, have a chemical structure that's been modified to give them improved properties as medicines, e.g. increased potency, longer duration of action, high bioavailability when taken by mouth (bioidentical hormones all have poor bioavailability when taken by mouth, and really need to be injected to give good, consistent absorbtion).

It's great from a doctor's point of view that they can give the patient a pill instead of having them coming in all the time for injections, however, there is a downside. Tinkering around with the chemical structure means that the synthetics are no longer processed in the same way as the body's own hormones (and bioidentical hormones) are. In addition to acting as hormones, the main sex hormones (estradiol, progesterone and testosterone) all act as raw materials for the production of other hormones (estradiol is converted into estriol and estrone, progesterone into corticosteroids, allopregnanolone and precursors to estrogens and androgens, testosterone into estradiol and DHT). The synthetics are either completely untouched by the enzymes that do these conversions, or converted into other unnatural hormonally active substances which can have unexpected properties (this is probably a big part of the reason why ethisterone and norethisterone turned out to masculinise female foetuses, even though they're only weakly androgenic in adult women).

As a result, the synthetics don't act as raw materials for production of other hormones. This is particularly a problem with progestins, since progesterone occupies a central place in the biosynthesis pathway for multiple other hormones, and if you replace progesterone with a progestin, it's going to affect production of all those other hormones. In our trans HRT group, we think interference with neurosteroid synthesis is why high dose, long term progestin use sends people loopy. Trans women have a reputation for often being depressed and mentally unstable, but this is largely because doctors routinely give them medroxyprogesterone acetate (a progestin) and antiandrogen drugs (spironolactone or cyproterone acetate) which also act as progestins. Once you cut out all the synthetic crap, the depression and emotional instability generally disappear. Progesterone itself actually has an antidepressant effect (or it does for me anyway).

I've attached a simplified diagram of steroid hormone biosynthesis, which shows the central place progesterone occupies in the hormone biosynthesis pathway (this diagram only shows some of the more important hormones, there are actually many more).

Hugh-do you have any data less than 17 years old? Are you perhaps ignoring more up to date research because it debunks the blue/pink brain hypothesis?

Oh god, Hugh - give it up.

There's a gender critical blog called something like 'You think that we don't understand, but we just don't believe you'
You should have a look, Hugh

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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!

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?

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

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.

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......................

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.