University of York / NHS insanity

[JudithHarper]

Saw this at work today. They want to look into stress in men who work in the NHS. However, participants only need to identify as a man. Study is unreliable before it starts, isn't it?

Got me thinking though. Just say they found a potential cure / vaccine for cervical cancer. Start a trial but participants only need to identify as a woman. A significant number of men who say they are women may sign up. Say the medicine cures / protects 99.99% of true women against cervical cancer but kills over 90% of men who take it.

Do you think that common sense would prevail or would the medicine be deemed a failure?

Common sense prevails for a few years and they get their diversity tick

Until children grow up too confused whereupon things start to fall apart

that study is about a psychological treatment / talking therapy, so I think there is nothing wrong with targeting it at people who identify with masculinity. Those people might be particularly vulnerable to toxic effects of masculinity (e.g. hide your emotions / boys don't cry) and this kind of program could help them.

it is quite different to the example you gave of treatment for cervical cancer which is a physical condition linked to a particular physical body configuration.

I do take your point, but I'd be interested to know how many women who identify as men ARE vulnerable to toxic effects of masculinity, especially if they'd lived at least their early life as a girl/woman.
I think this makes for a muddy starting point for the study.

there is nothing wrong with targeting it at people who identify with masculinity.

So they are not actually looking at the effect of stress in (all) men either, then.

But women who don't identify as men might "identify with masculinity" and men who identify with men might not. Are they looking at the effects of stress on men or on people who identify with masculinity. If the latter, they need to set out what they mean as it might include/exclude people of either sex.

Sauce for the goose etc.
Of course women who identify as men should take part in this research - there's evidently no physical, psychological or any other difference between them and born males. Frankly it's a bit of a relief to see NHS research & data about men being screwed up for a change by this nonsense.

Transphobia is not excluding trans-identified people from supportive situations irrelevant to them (eg excluding transwomen from a menopause group). Transphobia is excluding trans-identified people from supportive situations that are relevant to them, such as this one.

How can they justify excluding transwomen from a men's mental health initiative? They're not even giving lip-service to inclusivity by saying "We are looking for participants who have/have had a prostate."

Agree with this: I'd have thought a male struggling with being a man when they don't meet whatever male stereotypes are prevalent in their experience ,would make them need this more than a Trans man?

Given the extremely tiny numbers of transgender men I doubt they could affect the overall findings of any study on men's mental health. The same is also true of trans women participating in health studies about women, just because the groups of trans people are simply too small.

But then, of course, it would be interesting to ask why all women's language is to be altered for the sake of such an incredibly tiny group, while it has taken a very long time for men's language to be affected at all (no "people who ejaculate" seen anywhere). It took the nonbinary activists almost no time to get their own category and prize money in some US marathon events, even though it took women a very long time to even be allowed to run. The difference is interesting, but then it is probably explained by the same thing as the fact that the winners of that category have been male.

@Nicedayout22

Agree with this: I'd have thought a male struggling with being a man when they don't meet whatever male stereotypes are prevalent in their experience ,would make them need this more than a Trans man?

Trans women do not regard themselves as men so would view all this as irrelevant.

I have not been able to understand why there is no pressure from the trans activists to see inclusive language about how prostate, testicular etc. cancer advice is written, while there is tremendous pressure from them to be inclusive about female cancers (i.e., erase the female sex).

It's as if the health of trans women is of no concern whatsoever to the activists, even if they themselves belong to that group.

Given the extremely tiny numbers of transgender men I doubt they could affect the overall findings of any study on men's mental health. The same is also true of trans women participating in health studies about women, just because the groups of trans people are simply too small.

Most studies are quite small, though. One or two people with mislabelled sex could mess things up. And some trans people are particularly drawn to anything marked as being for the opposite sex, because it is validating.

This could be a problem in extremely tiny studies, by pure random fluke, and it could be a problem with the types of online studies where people self-select into the study (which are not based on statistical sampling and produce results which can't be generalised). But if a study is drawn so that it matches the population proportions of various demographic groups and if it is large enough, then trans people would be less than one percent of the sample, so should not affect the results much.

This is probably NOT true about studies of Lesbians, because Lesbians is a tiny group to begin with, so could be swamped in studies which define Lesbianism based on gender rather than sex, as most men who transition start heterosexual so still prefer women after transitioning and regard themselves as Lesbians.

And this could also be a problem if studies of adolescents are carried out with gender identity as the basis, because a higher percentage of teens identify (whether temporarily or permanently) as something other than what their biological sex is.

Because transwomen think they are intelligent enough to know their medical needs, but that women aren’t?

I’m thinking of medical or psychology studies like the one on this thread. Lots of them are small and they have to recruit volunteers through various means e.g. putting up posters like this one, which could disproportionately draw in validation seekers.

They won’t be weighted for demographics like an opinion poll, you would need unfeasibly big numbers of participants to do that and massive numbers of volunteers.

@Transparent2

Because transwomen think they are intelligent enough to know their medical needs, but that women aren’t?

I would love to know the answer to that question. What I have noticed, over the years, is that both trans men and trans women (and nonbinary, too) spend much effort to cause inclusiveness when it comes to women's health, but I have seen almost zero attempts to do the same when it comes to men's health.

Seeing is this unfold, and the consequences from it (men and menstruators, fathers and gestational parents, men with prostate cancer, individuals with cervical cancer etc.) does look exactly like sexism or at least the willingness of women to bend over backwards to accommodate others while men, on the whole, don't care.

Probably both are happening, but it is shocking to see that much of this is pushed by young feminists.

I interpret their attitude differently: that they are more interested in control than in safeguarding.

the actual website talks only about men although it does state that "behavioural activation" which is the type of talking treatment offered is "particularly suited for adaptation as a gender-sensitive intervention because of its practical, action-oriented strategies that are consistent with a strengths-based masculinities approach, aiming to reinforce men's sense of autonomy, control and independence."...whatever that means. Its one of those situations that i find confusing as the website talks about gender but also highlights the following : "Male frontline workers in particular are often reluctant to acknowledge or seek help for mental health concerns even though they are more likely to suffer from such issues."...which for me is linked to being of male SEX not a gender issue.

Given the extremely tiny numbers of transgender men I doubt they could affect the overall findings of any study on men's mental health. The same is also true of trans women participating in health studies about women, just because the groups of trans people are simply too small.

I think this is interesting as it doesn't always apply and can cause problems in subgroups where numbers are naturally small.

For example I recently did some work involving a breast cancer study which included a couple of hundred females but only 1 male. If there had been, say, 3 people in the "men" group but 1 was male and 2 were trans men, that would have massively skewed the results for the men's subgroup.

Same if you include trans women in stats for murders or sex offences committed by women. There are so few of these crimes committed by females that this can greatly affect the numbers.

“I have not been able to understand why there is no pressure from the trans activists to see inclusive language about how prostate, testicular etc. cancer advice is written, while there is tremendous pressure from them to be inclusive about female cancers (i.e., erase the female sex).”

It’s almost like TRAs and others can tell the difference between these two groups of humans. A binary distinction maybe between two groups with different biologies 🤔

A good point for studies where small sub-samples matter, true. But overall the results about, say, the gender gap in wages (which is almost entirely a sex gap in wages) will not be greatly altered by the inclusion of transwomen, though this could happen in, say, leadership positions in IT firms where transitioning seems to be common for male people and where women are scarce.

A lot of apparently psychological symptoms in women are physiological. A transman is not going to have the same physiology as a man working in the NHS.

The various effects on a transman must be extra complex, and in a class of their own.