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)

Yeah, this ludicrous "you are denying trans folks existence". Gets pretty tiresome. Smacks of a teen complaining that the object of their desires "doesn't even know I exist" 😭😭😭
Perhaps TRAs should try using some more grown up language if they would like respectful debate.

Of course people who call themselves trans exist. We wouldn't be having this conversation if they didn't.

The sticking point is that people with a grip on reality KNOW no one can change sex. Not sure where the trans part features. Transing to what?
Because it categorically cannot be the other sex. You can decide to present differently to the stereotypes of your biological sex - yes! Please do! I love it when people don't subscribe to the artificial stereotypes of what it means to "look like" a woman or man. I'm all for it ❤️ be your true self.

But it stops there. Because reality kicks in. You stay in the sex defined spaces of your sex.

Life may seem unfair, but sometimes it just is.

Bingo.

The fact that Dadjoke cited this as evidence is the real joke.

I wasn't aware that Dadjoke was into pesky ethics TBF.

This needs reposting. Spot on.

I do wonder if gender identity is the 21st century incarnation of phlogiston theory.

This is the meat of it to me. Scientific research is a mess particularly the social sciences where there is a major replication crisis. In the research world it’s publish or perish so a lot if bad research is churned out.

Academic publishing makes ridiculous amounts of money and there are plenty of journals that will publish anything or where authors pay to be published. Peer review is often completely slapdash or, even if done well and the reviewer has a lot of reservations, it’s published anyway.

Pubmed does include a lot of prestigious journals, but it also includes PubMed Central which is open access and the articles are not necessarily peer reviewed.

People cite bad research or make misleading claims about other research and then the cycle continues and we have people believing that puberty blockers are completely harmless.

@SabrinaThwaite ffs stop making us all google 😂

@GenericMNwoman yes rinse and repeat innit

Oh no, I definitely agree with you, the whole concept of a "Gendered soul" is bizarre to me -

"But there are people who want to be the opposite sex or mistakenly believe they are in some way the opposite sex. Those people obviously exist, and if 'being trans' means 'thinks they are the opposite sex or wants to be the opposite sex', then 'trans people' exist." <--- This part of what you said is what I was meaning with my ultimately very simplistic comment - Apologies if that didn't come across, I should've taken time to be clear, I'm just so insanely sick of the argument "You're erasing my existence" that I let my frustration get the better of me I think!

I believe it may well "feel" like someone is trapped in the wrong body, but just because something feels a certain way doesn't make it objectively true.

I often times "feel" like the world is against me with how much seems to go wrong or backfire in my life, but ultimately I know that my simply "feeling" this way doesn't make it so!
That would make me genuinely insane, quite self absorbed, and very "main character syndrome-esque"!

Instead of accepting the reality of gender identity,

No one has yet defined or explained "gender identity" in a way that I understand. Until I get an explanation and definition that makes sense, I will continue to file it under "mythical concepts".

I feel noticeable body dysmorphia related to my female secondary sexual characteristics as a consequence of female puberty, which is traumatic for autistic girls and even more so when it comes whilst still at primary school. This isn't gender identity, it's a failure to adapt to uncontrolled change. This "inner sense of being a man" or a woman isn't something I've experienced. I can see how an autistic girl could mistake that pubertal trauma for "being a man really", and this makes me terrified for autistic girls.

It is the “loud Trans campaigners” who have dictated societal response to people who identify as transgender. It is they who have managed to persuade so many people that it is “transphobic” to use third person pronouns the way they have been used for most of my lifetime (and I am not young!), because some people think they have a right to dictate how everyone else sees them and relates to them. Unfortunately, most trans people now demand that everyone treats them as they wish to be treated; this is unrealistic, and often it descends into coercive behaviour, with threats of “going no contact” if family members do not toe the line unilaterally imposed by the transgender people themselves or their “allies”. In my experience, the allies are the most dogmatic and coercive.

Who knew the Pope was so on the money eh? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought “phlogiston” several posts ago too!

The article said “trans is made up.” If they mean it is made up in the sense that all words are made up, it’s trivially true and devoid of useful meaning. If they mean it in any other sense, it’s nonsense.

He was a sick fuck who believed that his unethical experiment would demonstrate that gender identity was cultural, He was wrong.

I think trans is real and trans people exist. I think they are a product of lack of understanding of the rich tapestry of the way it's ok for people to present themselves and a confusion of that with stereotypes. I also think that they don't literally change sex and thus have no business entering spaces or positions reserved for a particular biological sex. How they choose to dress or present and who they choose to have sex with is irrelevant.

I have absolutely no obligation to answer your or anyone’s questions and neither does any other poster. I have been AFK.

Yes, of course.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, however. For example if an apparently rigorous study suggested climate change wasn’t real, or gender identity was not innate, there would be a seismic shift in our understanding of science, and I would expect it to be challenged and reproduced by other scientists.

However, other claims related to transgender issues would not require that standard of proof.

I don’t know about the Pope because as far as I know he is expressing a valid opinion not facts, but I do agree with Lord Robert Winston , emeritus professor at Imperial, member of the HOL, respected world wide for his life time of work on fertility - and he is adamant that there are two human sexes, female and male. And that they can’t change.

Team LRW all the way.

I was asked which scientists were researching gender identity. I provided a list of 3490 peer reviewed papers written by such scientists. It’s pretty much the most comprehensive list I could have given.

Now do the same for papers which dispute the existence of gender identity except as a belief. A search on pubmed which returns results will do just fine for me.

He's genuinely trying to compare the (as-yet unlinked) scientific evidence for the existence of some specific defined phenomenon called gender identity with the solid, extensive scientific evidence demonstrating the existence of climate change 🤣

Mate. You need to learn how to search if you're going to make claims like that.

You've brought up a list of the items in pubmed that contain the words "gender" and "identity" somewhere in the record (not necessarily together).

Such a list will contain some papers that are attempts to explain the concept of gender identity as a biological phenomenon (fmri studies for e.g), but also others that attempt to do the opposite (fmri studies again). The vast, vast majority will do neither.

In fact, someone answering your demand for research refuting your list of papers could point to that same link. It would be useless in either case.

You can do better than this. Settled science has key references, widely cited, that are relied upon in such arguments (your use of climate science is a good example). Use them. It should be a trivial task to produce such a list since all those organsations will have cited them when producing their statements agreeing on the innate exisitence of gender identity in humans.

You can do better than this

He really can’t.

Have NCed for this

PubMed contains articles from only certain disciplines. Not much psychology, sociology, physics etc. The way you are using it @DadJoke tells you diddly squat. You would have to read every single one of those articles to determine whether they are assuming or have concluded in some way that gender is innate rather than socially constructed. Your handwaving and lack of specificity is getting a bit tedious.

And here is the kicker. I spend my life surrounded by scientists and have been one myself. I have been in rooms where there have been discussions about the sex of animal models (in a shocking turn of events, most experiments use male mice). I have seen sensible science led discussions on how to shift this turn absolutely bonkers by single activist scientists backed by activist university staff make these discussions totally charged by bringing gender identity into the discussion. Gender identity. IN FRICKIN MICE.

Dropping this gender bomb in, paralysed discussions. Scientists predominantly work in universities, which are gender sodden, as are many of the funders and certainly the publishers (these all tend to be run by failed scientists). Like the rest of us, they just want to get on and do their research. So, they bend the gender knee.

But, there is a reason that male mice were almost exclusively used in research. Sex is has a huge influence on the organism. Being male or female influences almost every system and pathway in the body. Using only one sex makes experimental data less variable and much easier to interpret and as we know, male is the default sex, regardless of gender identity.

Isn't it odd, that this inner sense of gender that has such a profound effect on the individual, driving some to have brutal surgeries has absolutely no consistently observable external phenotype or any internal measurable correlate. The other innate senses you mention of sexuality and proprioception can both be observed and/or measured. Its almost like gender doesn't exist in any real sense.

I am wondering @DadJoke if you have a child who has transitioned. You seem so determined to cling to the idea that gender is innate rather than socially constructed (i.e. made up).

That and any research that questions the validity of gender identity doesn't get published because "transphobia" 😶

Not just TRAs - people who otherwise seem like sane educated individuals. You present a fact and the reply is either trans people are so vulnerable, have you heard of intersex people or something to do with the far right. DadJoke’s reply was a perfect answer in its polarity.