The Glinner thing

[JohnnyW2001]

Hello! Yes, I'm a dreaded new user, and I registered here just to reply to @glinner's post. I don't wish to gloat or insult. I just wanted to reply to one specific point:

"a dangerous ideology that tells children it's possible to be born into the wrong body"

Unfortunately it seems I cannot reply to that thread? So I'll write what I have to say here. Hopefully it will be taken in the spirit it's intended: Non confrontational sharing of science.

The problem with the sentence I quoted is that it's scientifically unsound. Female and male brains are biologically different in ways that have been observed and studied, again and again. There are certain physical traits that identify a female brain and a male brain.

What's especially interesting is that when you put people who claim to feel in the "wrong body" (as you put it) into brain imaging, they do indeed appear to have the wrong gendered brain for their body. There are observable unique characteristics that indicate a difference. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in studies for decades, and as our imaging technology has improved, it's only become more supported by science.

There are so many studies supporting this from the last 40 years, that it's difficult to pick one. Here's a few for you to Google (I can't seem to post links):

"Neuroimaging studies in people with gender incongruence", Kreukels, Baudewijntje, et al
"Grey and white matter volumes either in treatment-naïve or hormone-treated transgender women: a voxel-based morphometry study",
Giancarlo Spizzirri, et al

(Also, before anybody brings this up, I'm aware there are some scientists - namely Gina Rippon - who believe there is no biological brain gender, and that the entire brain is blank-slate shaped from birth. For those who are unaware, her argument is that society is what shapes female and male brains, due to the sheer elasticity of that organ, and that is why we see differences. One of the many problems with this argument is that the same gendered biological differences are also seen in animals. The exact same differences we see in humans. Society isn't playing role in rhesus monkeys.

Another is that there is measurable differences in male and female brains just 24 hours after birth.

To be brief: Scientists like Rippon, who claim there zero biological differences between male and female brains are, to put it mildly, are very much on the fringe and not the mainstream, despite the incredible amount of press they get.

Mainstream science says that when it comes to the gendered differences between our brains, biology plays a role and society plays a role -- not exactly controversial or difficult to believe.

Here's an article from Stanford Medicine which goes through the countless ways in which we have demonstrated biological gendered differences between brains over the decades, and how it cannot just be society as Rippon insists: "Two minds: The cognitive differences between men and women", Bruce Goldman at StanMed. Many of the falsehoods in Rippon's work are pointed out in Professor Simon Baron-Cohen's review of her book in The Times (March 2019), too.)

Just to be clear, I'm not making a political statement, I'm just sharing the science. And all mainstream science indicates that it is indeed biologically possible to have a female traited brain in a male traited body, and vise versa.

I will add one personal note: I have to say that this doesn't surprise me at all. Our genes are programmed to be occasionally random: Some people are born without a sense of smell, or missing limbs, or extra limbs, or whatever. So if there is such a thing as a female brain and a male brain then it makes perfect sense to me that occasionally someone would get a male brain in a female body, or vise versa.

And history has also repeatedly shown us that people who claim to be suffering from something that ultimately complicates their life in ways that anyone would rather avoid (like being gay, for example, which opens you up to persecution and complications and which historically was seen as a malady to be "cured") are usually right. These people really ARE suffering, and today we even have the science to prove that their complaint appears to be true.

Again, just to be clear, I'm not pushing any political agenda, or even suggesting the best way to address this situation, I'm just sharing the science, and hopefully appealing to your higher self. Pointing out that those who listen with compassion and empathy tend to sit on the right side of history.

Thanks.

JohnnyW2001: you contradict yourself. You say that there is such a thing as a male brain and a female brain. Then you say that some people with male bodies have female brains and vice versa. No - if it is in a male body then it is a male person's brain. If it is in a female body, then it is a female person's brain. It may not be the average male or female brain, but it should be the basis to accept variety in male and female thinking and behaviour, not the basis to deny their biology.

Tork. What really finally proper fucked me off about the JKR pile on was the wokesters picking up on the fact that she felt she might have transitioned, given the chance. There was some dismissive comment about ‘oh all T3RFS* pretend they have some kind of trans history .. as though that was some gotcha that we were trying to prevent people having surgery and lifelong untested medication just out of badness.

I mean, you wouldn’t buy a fucking dishwasher or book an Air B&B without reading at least a couple of reviews, so why the fuck are we in a place where the people who have direct real experience of this are ridiculed.

Oh, yes, I remember. We are women. The boring cunty kind.

Oh do fuck off, Johnny, there's a good boy.

Agree completely Furx

In no other context would we be so blasé about life changing hormones and surgery. FFS, I think about the amount of trouble I had getting the right contraception.

What a load of complete twattery. and go away back to twitter where you can block people and shout jn your echo chamber to people that care.
Lady brain pffft

@Diptheria23

JohnnyW2001: you contradict yourself. You say that there is such a thing as a male brain and a female brain. Then you say that some people with male bodies have female brains and vice versa. No - if it is in a male body then it is a male person's brain. If it is in a female body, then it is a female person's brain. It may not be the average male or female brain, but it should be the basis to accept variety in male and female thinking and behaviour, not the basis to deny their biology.

Quite.

The only thing that makes a brain male is that it belongs to a body with male reproductive organs.

The only thing that makes a brain female is that it belongs to a body with female reproductive organs.

Anything else is sexist bollocks.

I read the Briggs study linked

It does indeed show that dysphoria and also suicidal thoughts are worse rather than better after puberty blockers for girls although the boys felt better. It's only on 30 children though and there were 60 in an earlier Dutch study.

Probably the real scandal (as he says himself barely concealed by formal language) is the lack of any decent evidence positive or negative for this unlicensed treatment being given to young children.

1. there are only 3 small published studies into the effects of giving these drugs to young kids in the whole world. About 150 kids only in total have been enrolled in these studies.
2. In each study about half the participants failed to complete the follow up questionnaires. Usually when there is a such a high drop out rate it suggests that these people are experiencing negative effects. If the study is published with the results only from those who remained in the trial it will underestimate the negative outcomes ie the true results were probably even worse.
3. The studies were not randomised or blinded only observational with no control group and all got psychotherapy as well as hormones so any effect might be due to that. A properly conducted study would need a placebo control group.

Despite this treatment being billed as a 'pause' in fact 96% go on to have cross sex hormones. The average age of starting the puberty blockers in the Tavi study was 13. 13 year olds starting on a road to permanent infertility and bodily mutilation from which there seems to be relatively little chance to back track with barely any evidence to support this at all. There has to be some doubt surely over their capacity to consent to be experimented on in this way most of them without even being in an actual clinical trial just being given unlicensed drugs by Drs who have an ideological belief in them.

Over 300 under 15s have been given puberty blockers at the Tavistock since 2011 and yet they have published no results for this group (only for a group of 60 over 16s). They presented this data that he's taken for the paper to their board on 30 children only and never sought to try to publish it so he has done.

Compare what happens with a novel cancer drug. Every single person who gets that new cancer drug gets enrolled in a clinical trial as a condition of having it and then all the results are published so that everyone can see if this new treatment works. They should have enrolled all those 300 children into proper clinical trials and published the data. That is the only ethical way to be giving novel unlicensed drugs to children.

So now Johnny do you agree that this is literally a dangerous ideology that is harming children.

Yes, TheID that was him as the lead author. The paper is from 2000 I think, when he was a firm believer in biology is destiny.

The most ludicrous thing for me in the whole study is that like the OP most people believe they showed babies an object that looks nothing like a face and a face (like a PP said, a spanner for instance).

But that isn't at all what the setup of the experiment was.

Test A: newborn is held on mum's lap, facing the actual researcher who holds their head at a 20 cm distance from baby's eyes. Trying for a neutral expression and gently moving their head. So baby can smell the researcher and hear them moving and feel their presence.

Test B: the newborn lies in a cot, on the back. The researcher dangles a mobile at a 20 cm distance above baby's head.

(See screenshot for the face and object)

The object is deliberately made to mimic the shape of the researcher's head as well as the skin colour. It also has a nose like feature, and dome random jumbled up facial features (whatever that means).

A second person is recording the baby's eyes to later analyse whether they think the baby is looking and how long for.

Half the female babies and a third of the male babies showed no preference at all, and the parameters for preference are tight as this was measured in seconds. And their extraordinary conclusions that male babies are more interested in mechanical objects than female babies from birth are based on the assumption that these newborn's somehow differentiated between the "physico-mechanical motion" of the mobile and the "biological motion" of the face and then had a preference for one or the other depending on sex. I mean talk about nonsense.

There is no explanation as to why the researchers had two different setups to begin with (why not on the lap each time, or why not in the cot for both tests). No explanation why they didn't make sure the researcher didn't know the sex beforehand. We know that people treat babies differently from birth depending on sex, at the very least subconsciously and frequently deliberately. How can they adjust for unconscious bias in this set up?

So, no, these newborns weren't shown something clearly mechanical and definitely not human as an object, but something that for someone who can barely see may look like a face. As we know now, newborn's pattern recognition doesn't even work the way we thought it did just 20 years ago, so the conclusions the authors draw seem even more questionable in light of that.

(And speaking as someone who can't even see facial features at a few feet without my glasses, I honestly don't know what they thought they were measuring. I would probably try to figure out what I'm looking at from other clues, like smell or sound and movement. And we have no clue whatsoever what may have motivated the difference in attention.)

Most gaze studies in older babies use photos of clearly human faces and clearly inanimate objects btw.

So evidence of precisely nothing apart from that some people will go to a lot of lengths to try to prove their theories...

Someone just asked me on another thread if I thought researchers would find something just because they are looking for it.

Well erm yes. That's a pretty well known fact called bias.

So...... What about the whole 'tucutes' v 'truscum' thing? Would love to hear a TRA talk about that sometime instead of doing whatever they can to stifle debate.

I know what both my male and female babies had a strong preference for at 1 day old and that was boobs. You'd have been quite lucky to catch them with their eyes open at all let alone really looking at anything.
Any woman who has ever given birth can tell you that study has to be bollocks just from personal experience.

@JohnnyW2001

It's useless replying to you because you have gone but...with regard to the baby study, as others have pointed out, of course the researchers coded the object as masculine and the face as feminine. They say in their conclusion that male infants show a stronger interest in mechanical objects, while females prefer faces. This stems from a theory by Cohen that boys orient to mechanical objects (because it is attractive to their systematising 'male' brain), and girls like faces because they are more sociable. If you are arguing for biological sexual dimorphism in perception and cognition, you are obviously going to look for results that explain the observed differences between the sexes. They weren't just passively recording 'differences'. It would have been quite awkward for them to accept opposite results whereby male children strongly preferred faces. That was my point - the researchers are looking to confirm their gendered assumptions from the very outset.

And you say the researchers didn't conclude anything, they just reported the difference. That's false. From the study blurb itself the researchers equate longer looking times with a 'preference.' I was just pointing out that babies gazes don't necessarily reflect a 'preference' but could equally stem from confusion or fear.

FFS, I think about the amount of trouble I had getting the right contraception

Tork Colour me fucking surprised. Me too.

I ended up with an emergency dash to hospital in the early hours of the morning,bleeding, in agony and off my face on morphine before they’d take out the fucking coil that had made me bleed for 8 months continuously prior to that. And that was only because it was a different medical team. GP wasn’t impressed they’d removed it.

Let’s not even discuss the appropriateness or otherwise of various pill types.

@CharlieParley

Thanks for showing the images from the study. That...'mechanical' thing is really horrifying looking. It's giving me the creeps just looking at it. It if moved in an unnatural way as well the male babies may have just been spooked and keeping their eye on the weird object!

It looks like one of those mechanical parts inside the hosts from Westworld. Creepy bad science.

OP it is a dangerous ideology . A seventeen year old girl I know was Put on cross sex hormones and then given a double mastectomy a very short time after declaring that she wanted to be a boy. This is too young to vote, too young to get a tattoo, too young to drink in a pub, but somehow not too young to irreversibly alter her body, with no delving into the why of this. No “has she experienced sexual abuse ?” No “is she on the autistic spectrum.” No “is she a lesbian in a country where being a lesbian is a very bad thing ?” .
Do you really think that medically sterilising a 17 year old girl and amputating her breasts is ok ? Giving her facial hair ? Changing her voice irreversibly? Would you like to be held all your life by the things you believed at sixteen ?

Last week I saw a go fund me for breast implants for a 16yo girl who had been given a double mastectomy at 15yo because trans.
Never happens apparently.
ASD of course, but nobody bothered to investigate co-morbid because affirmation only.

@TheId

It looks like one of those mechanical parts inside the hosts from Westworld. Creepy bad science.

Creeps me the fuck out too. Why anyone would want to show that to unsuspecting newborns is beyond me.

I couldn't make heads nor tails of the description, so I went looking for the paper which included the picture.

This thread turned out to be excellent. Thanks for all the brilliant posts vipers. I’ve learnt heaps.

Prole, was that in the U.K. or us?

Regarding dysphoria, this has just been published by Michael Briggs (sorry for the enormous link). It seems to conclude that after puberty blockers, dysphoria worsened for girls. I am not a scientist, my degrees are in Eng. Lit. so I'd be interested to hear what anyone has to say on this. Is this likely/ possible? Seems horrific is so, especially with places like the Tavistock acting as they have been.

Yes, lots of data has been showing this. It's fucking horrendous.

They think that going through puberty actually helps ease a lot of the dysphoria.

It's useless replying to you because you have gone but...with regard to the baby study, as others have pointed out, of course the researchers coded the object as masculine and the face as feminine

It’s like the now debunked study where female monkeys chose to play with cooking implements, males wheeled vehicles, proving male/female brains.

Yep, because monkeys understand what cookIng and driving is. Those girl monkeys have a natural urge to cook for their families in those pans..

Isn't there a distinct biological difference in the eyesight of males and females?

Something like females recognise patterns and/or minor variations in colour that males don't?

Could that have accounted for anything in the baby test?

I’m pretty sure women have a wider peripheral vision than men too - so if true, then female children wouldn’t need to have such a direct stare to see something.

@Datun

Isn't there a distinct biological difference in the eyesight of males and females?

Something like females recognise patterns and/or minor variations in colour that males don't?

Could that have accounted for anything in the baby test?

To be fair, had they employed a less dodgy experimental set up and still got these results, that's where I would be going to. Also, with the numbers being so small in this study (102 newborns, 44m/58f), and so many babies showing no preference at all, I think the logical conclusion would be to question whether there is a difference in eyesight between these babies. If only to exclude this as a factor. Which would require a longterm follow up. AFAIK though that is not usually done with these infant gaze studies.