Does the Transgender community have a problem with well evidenced science? Does the community only ever accept favourable reports, AKA confirmation bias, or is it something deeper?

[HydraDominatus]

Every piece of science or news thats not entirely supportive is buried under accusations of transphobia or bias

Why is this a political debate rather than a mental and physical health issue?

Cancer care isn't bias and politicised, trans health care shouldn't be either. Surely it's all about properly designed and researched programmes, with the outcome not predetermined, that we should be entirely standing behind?

Would the community ever stand behind rigorous, transparent, and ethically conducted research into transgender health care that did not align with its previous, deeply held views? If not, isn't that a problem?

tl;dr Is the Transgender community bias to it's own detriment?

(inspired by recent UK changes which do seem to be well researched, evidenced and guided by true support for people with genuine issues, it just does not line up with existing trans community narrative)

It's not a matter of purity standards. It's a matter of words having meanings and those meanings mattering. Otherwise we end up in the situation where someone born with a penis can claim to be a woman and a lesbian, because no one is prepared to stand up and say "'woman (noun): adult human female', so not you, mate". We end up in the situation where someone with a dick is saying to a lesbian "your mate has slept with men and she says she's a lesbian, so why won't you sleep with me?".

You don't need to be a lesbian to stand up for "lesbian (noun): homosexual human female". You just need to be someone who cares about language being clear and words having meanings. You just need to be someone who doesn't want to end up in a world where every conversation resembles Alice's conversation with Humpty Dumpty.

Edit: Removed post as shouldn't have posted before having a coffee... (Content was garbled!)

"We end up in the situation where someone with a dick is saying to a lesbian "your mate has slept with men and she says she's a lesbian, so why won't you sleep with me?"."
And in your ideal world, someone who slept with men before but calls herself lesbian now because she considers herself to be one and has zero interest in men, would have to call herself bisexual, to which someone with a dick may respond "youre bisexual, so why won't you sleep with me?"
I mean in both situations they can say no to the man, so whatever, but I think it's problematic to assume that just because a woman was open to relationships with men at one point many years ago, she must remain open to them forever. Sounds like dick pandering to me.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia you seem to be utterly unaware of all the women now and historically who start their early lives under huge pressure from family and society to conform by having relationships/ children with men and gradually work their way out of conformity to autonomy. Until the last 30 years or so, lots of lesbians grew up without any awareness of a word that described their sexual attraction and assumed they were the only woman in the world who fancied other women. This was the experience of several lesbians I know, who knew they were same-sex attracted from a very early age but didn't know there was a word for it, or other women who felt the same way, until they went to university or in one case, encountered an out woman at work in the 80s.

This insistence that the only women who are allowed to call themselves lesbians are the 'gold star' ones, who've never had sex with a man, is regarded as fascist and divisive within the lesbian community. Any lesbian who entered any of the lesbian groups or communities I've known and argued that only 'gold star' lesbians were real lesbians would be shown the door because women understand. It's an argument usually made by TW ('I'm a gold star lesbian, I've only ever had sex with women') and those who don't have any experience of what it's like to grow up as a woman and a lesbian in our society.

I mean in both situations they can say no to the man

Are you seriously ignoring the decades or more of men telling lesbians "you can't know you don't like men until you've tried one so try me" to get into women's knickers?

just because a woman was open to relationships with men at one point many years ago, she must remain open to them forever.

That's a misreading of what I wrote. What I actually wrote, with bolding on the key bit that you misread:

Even if we accept that sexual orientation can change (and the first study I posted indicates that it doesn't change as much as people tell themselves it does), that person is still arguably bisexual: if they fucked members of the opposite sex and liked it before, they might well revert to liking it again, even if they are currently only shagging same-sex partners.

If sexual orientation is fixed, then someone who fancies men will stay fancying men, even if they decide not to act on it. A straight nun under a vow of chastity remains straight. A female-exclusive bisexual female (aka febfem) doesn't stop being bi, even if she has made a deliberate choice only to have sex with women.

If sexual orientation is fluid, then all bets are off for what any of us might do in ten years' time, in which case the concept of distinct sexual orientations becomes a shared myth. I'm not so keen on this option.

you seem to be utterly unaware of all the women now and historically who start their early lives under huge pressure from family and society to conform by having relationships/ children with men

Are you seriously conflating women being treated as property, and women-as-property-adjacent practices such as dowries and arranged or coerced marriages, with grown-ass women who have the freedom to go barhopping choosing repeatedly to have sex with men? In a free country, in which we got rid of Section 28 whilst I was a teen, the "I had no choice but to marry a man" argument doesn't wash unless you grew up in the kind of ethno-religious community that does arranged marriages and "honour" murders.

I'd like to introduce you to Dirt's essay on the seven kinds of straightbian, all of whom Dirt and Mrs Dirt believe to be harmful to lesbians.

And, returning to the thread topic: it seems that research into whether sexual orientation is fixed or fluid, and whether the meanings of words should be respected, is also highly politicised.

That seven kinds of straightbian link ("essay"??) is misogynistic as fuck so I don't think it's worth arguing with you anymore if that's the kind of thing you agree with.

Re: research into whether sexual orientation is fixed or fluid, it's fine for general intellectual curiosity but how do you imagine the application of it?
Woman: "I'm not attracted to men"
Researcher: "YOUR CLITORAL ENGORGEMENT IN RESPONSE TO THIS VIDEO SAYS YOU ARE"
Just seems dystopian.

You know what I said about research into sexual orientation being heavily politicised? You literally proved my point. You seem scared or at least disapproving of research into this field because of how it might be used. James Caspian encountered similar resistance from people with the power to cancel his project when he wanted to research detransition. I can see that research being used to prove that long-term mate choice isn't just about sexual attraction. I can see that research being used to prove that female-exclusive bisexual females exist, by showing that some women are capable of ruling out male partners despite being attracted to both sexes. You think this is "dystopian"? I don't agree with you.

Re Dirt's essay: I found it an amusing polemic, I recognised the academic stereotype in particular as being manifested in the sociology departments of the universities that I've done estates work for and, more recently, in the phenomenon of straight couples calling themselves queer because one of them decided to be nonbinary, and it helped me understand the need for bisexual women to respect lesbian women's boundaries.

• I am very aware that lesbians are wary of bisexual women because many have been hurt emotionally by one of us who has later decided to leave that lesbian for a man. I'm not interested in saying "but I'm not like those other bisexual women, I won't do that" for the same reason that I have no time for NAMALT in feminist spaces. To claim to be lesbian, even if I decided to never touch a man again, would be misleading at best and a form of sexual coercion at worst, because in claiming that label I would be concealing my past with men and invalidating a lesbian partner's sexual consent.
• Dirt discusses in some of her other articles how she believes that butch lesbians sometimes transition to keep a straightbian partner. This is physical harm, never mind emotional harm.
• I perceive the boundaries about who is and isn't lesbian to be a matter of veto, not majority vote, just as I believe that 100% of women have to agree before we let men into female spaces and even one objector is enough to veto that. As long as there is one "gold star" (as a PP put it) lesbian who believes that prior willing sexual encounters with men preclude a woman from being a lesbian, I will respect that definition.
• I rightly have no power to police lesbian spaces. What I can do is respect the boundaries set by lesbians, and that means respecting the boundaries of the strictest "gold star" lesbian in the room. This is about my personal morals as much as it is about words having meanings and meanings mattering.

It seems the Royal College of Physicians has just had a bit of a data issue. They just had a meeting about various issues (not relating to anything trans) and showed a bunch of slides which didn't show what the data actually showed. Half way through voting on matters they've issued this statement.

Royal college of physicians AT RCphysicians
Following the #RCPEGM on the role and regulation of physician associates (PAs), the RCP has now published the full data from its pre-EGM member survey.

We recognise that there is huge strength of feeling among our fellows and members. We recognise the concerns and we have listened.

We are undertaking a major governance refresh that is being led by Council members and we are committed to modernising the college and its working practices as quickly as possible.

The EGM ballot will remain open for fellow to vote until 7.30pm on Wednesday 20 March. The results of the EGM ballot will be shared on Monday 25 March. We will honour the outcome of the vote and our next steps will be decided by RCP Council and the RCP Board of Trustees.

Physician Twitter is kicking off about how this is dystopian to deliberately mislead and then when caught out totally appalling to admit half way through voting and not restarting voting.

The ever amazing Shaun Lintern who is the journalist responsible for exposing the north staff and several maternity scandals is on the case...

Shaun Lintern AT ShaunLintern
So senior figures within the Royal College of Physicians presented a false picture of what its survey found. What a mess. One resignation so far...

I find this highly disturbing and depressing that there's any kind of whiff on anything like this relating to a medical governing body regardless of the subject matter.

But it does highlight there is a problem which at least a minority in the profession think they can get away with...

Thanks @RedToothBrush , that's extraordinary!

Data at https://www.rcp.ac.uk/news/rcp-publishes-pre-egm-member-survey-data

This article might deserve its own thread but seems relevant here
‘We actually don’t know much’: the scientists trying to close the knowledge gap in trans healthcare

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/18/science-knowledge-gap-trans-healthcare

While hormone therapies are today best known for their use in contraception or to manage symptoms of menopause in cisgender women, they have for decades been given to people undergoing gender reassignment.

Just the word women there would do.

Scientists admit that we don't know much about how cross-sex hormones affect people, yet clinicians want to give them to kids.

The cynic in me wonders if this story is the start of the Guardian making a very slow reverse ferret after the WPATH leaks.

Yes, I loathe and resent the term cisgender women. We are biological women, no other term is required beyond woman/women.

That's interesting, the contrast between the transman at the beginning of the article confidently asserting that being taken off testosterone when diagnosed with kidney disease was completely unnecessary since hormones don't affect the kidneys; and then the researchers who talk about the research they're doing to look at how hormones affect the kidneys because currently they don't know.

That's trans-science for you. Good luck with the research if it comes up with something the TRAs don't like - instant Transphoooobia.

Good spot. And the author didn't comment on that contrast.

"Crucially, he says, the decision was completely unnecessary. “We call this within the medical community ‘trans broken arm syndrome’,” he said.
The term refers to medical situations – such as having a broken arm – that are unconnected to gender identity, yet healthcare providers act on the basis there is a connection."

I may be mis-remembering the details, but don't blockers and cross sex hormones impact a persons bone density and make them more likely to receive fractures/breaks over long periods of extensive use of those drugs?
Wouldn't that make a broken arm and a person's gender identity... Oh I don't know... Maybe... Connected in some way?

Yes they do. And HRT - proper HRT, replacing oestrogen in post-menopausal women - protects against osteoporosis. So if we stop some women from producing oestregen long before their normal menopause time what do we expect to happen to their bones? And do we think a transgender or nonbinary identity will be protective?

Answers on the back of a crisp packet or a megabucks research grant proposal, as you prefer.

Trans science only identifies as science.

ETA and I think after about 10 pages that, no, TRAs won’t accept any scientific evidence that doesn’t completely support their worldview.

I have to say that 'trans competent' has made my day as a concept.

I'm so curious what could've possibly gotten deleted by MN ngl!
This conversation wasn't even remotely anywhere reaching Talk Guidelines territory I didn't think? o.o