Gender Critical Science

[Terfulike]

We are hoping to ascertain interest in gender critical science discussions and activities. Please let us know here or via pm if you are scientifically or medically trained and wish to join our discussions and /or activities.

Great idea. This is so needed.

I'm not trained but interested. I can follow most articles in New Scientist but not Scientific American.

Sounds potentially interesting ... can you clarify who's 'we' and do you mean discussions on MN or elsewhere (I'm an FB refuser) please?

I am being deliberately vague because we are not allowed to advertise on mn. We is a couple of molecular biologists who have worked in academia.

I don't do FB either. We would be continuing to post on mn of course, but would also be looking to meet up virtually (currently by email) or physically if we can.

How about creating a Reddit?

We would seek, as a starting point, to write cogent letters/articles for publication as a group of scientists, including medics. We would also be pleased to act as a source of scientific or medical expertise for any group which required it.

We would welcome interested non-scientists who have other skills which could be relevant to our aims. Our aims are not yet agreed upon, but, roughly speaking, to provide an active scientific hub for GC feminists.

Reddit

Not absolutely sure what that is but if there is general agreement then that could indeed be our organising method. This needs to be decided upon.

Reddit is where you can create a board (similar to Feminist chat within Mumsnet), and you control and moderate it.
It could be a way of publishing or distributing articles to the general public, or you can set up a private Reddit where only invited guests can visit or post.

Here's an example board, Gender Critical Reddit;
www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/

Each of the white boxes is a link to a new post. Pinned posts are at the top of the list, board rules are listed on the right of the page.

terfulike i'm up for this (as you know from our PMs). The stated aims sound good. I guess it may be important to some people to be able to contribute anonymously? I'm OK with (was going to say 'happy with', but that doesn't really cover it) putting my head above the parapet to some extent, but I understand others will feel differently. I'm currently reading around the literature on the biology of sex/gender with the aim of collating and synthesising what is known and what isn't.

Not currently a reddit user, but I guess I can figure it out if that's what you want to do. I quite like the idea of a closed board, at least at first, if we do take the Reddit route.. what do others think?

That sounds good to start with Flower. Hopefully a website as a second step.

More of a social scientist - but good luck! Fantastic idea.

I'm not trained in life sciences but it's always been an interest. I end up grinding my teeth at a lot of the crap paraded online.

One immediate aim could be to collate a central bibliography of relevant peer-reviewed articles. This would naturally be more comprehensive if multiple members were conducting independent literature searches and then pooling their findings.

Flowers is already on task with this: as a courtesy I would suggest that Flowers should have first refusal to be a compiler of a central bibliography.

I have a life science degree from hundreds of years ago and work in science publishing. Am not sure how much time I would have but would be really interested to know more - feel free to PM me as and when. Love the idea.

You might also want to consider Discord. It's technically a chat app but whilst it's not as good as Reddit for structured discussion (it doesn't have threads but you can create "channels" for specific topics), it's better for privacy and controlling who can see what. You can create "servers" for specific sub-groups of people. I'm just thinking of scenarios in which you have to be a bit more careful over who has access to conversations and the question of Reddit site-admins being able to read what people post.

It has both app and web-based interfaces and might be worth a look. Different purpose to Reddit - more like a chat room where you can make certain conversations restricted - but useful nonetheless.

Thanks for your suggestions old man

Yes please. Whatever is on offer in terms of discussion.

Thank you terfragette.

You're welcome. I mention it mainly because the IT profession is over-represented in the Trans Activist community we've seen examples of some pretty duplicitous behaviour by some individuals. If you want a ten minute run-through on Discord, or if I can help in any other way, just send me a message here or on Twitter.

I will PM you later, can't do it on my tablet, and have to get back to work. I am a GP Registrar, and horrified at what looks like being the biggest medical scandal since lobotomies.
Have been intending for a while to look more systematically at the evidence for medical transition, this will spur me on.

Happy to collate a bibliography if people want to send me stuff. URLs to publications would be good.

TERFragette
My starting point is collating evidence that humans are essentially sexually dimorphic. TRAs are keen on quoting evidence that sex is a spectrum. This tends to consist of using intersex conditions and/or mosaicism to argue that there are people who are outside what they call the gender binary, while actually meaning the sex binary. To me, it's like arguing humans aren't bipedal because some have more or less than two legs. And doesn't have much to do with transgenderism. But the evidence needs reviewing and setting out clearly.

Then there is the question of how many people actually have gender dysphoria and the physical nature of the condition. How common is it? Is it all or nothing or are there degrees of severity? We need a review of evidence for this too.

Plus, and probably most urgently, what is the best way to help kids presenting with dysphoria? How much of the recent rise in people presenting can be attributed to a rise in social acceptability and is there an element of social contagion? Again, who is working on this and what has been published?

Intersex, as you say, has little to do with the rest of Trans. It's a physical condition. But then what has Autogynephilia to do with Gender Dysphoria? That could be a category in itself. I think the bringing of both under the same umbrella has been a tactic of some TRAs that is detrimental to discussion.

Have you contacted youths transcritical professionals

they've now protected it