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)

As I'm sure you're aware, the term 'trans people' covers anyone who says they are trans, from the moment they declare this. Most of these people won't have any medical treatment. Only about 5% of males who identify as transgender have genital surgery.

While children are encouraged down the medical route, middle-aged males often do no more than put on a dress and a wig. Males like Jamie Wallis MP who 'came out' as trans shortly after crashing his car whilst wearing a mini skirt and high heels. Most of these men are what we would have called transvestites or cross-dressers only a few years ago. Now they are described as 'trans' and we're supposed to believe that they're having a difficult life.

I’d tend to feel most trans people deserve sympathy and kindness rather than othering as treatment of some kind of homogenous ‘community’ online.

I agree that they shouldn't be lumped together. Adolescents who are struggling with puberty or being encouraged to believe that they're 'trans' because they're same sex attracted are not the same as middle-aged heterosexual males (with wives and children) who like to dress up in women's clothes.

One group deserves far more sympathy and kindness than the other.

feel most trans people deserve sympathy and kindness

why?

if “dadjoke” had or applied critical thinking skills he would be GC. Thats why TRA’s are so circumspect and evasive.

Later this morning in the HoP.

I’d tend to feel most trans people deserve sympathy and kindness rather than othering as treatment of some kind of homogenous ‘community’ online.

Everyone deserves sympathy and kindness, not just "trans people".

Thats precisely why we had this whole phase of 'educate yourself' because activists didn't understand what they were being told. They just go along with it and take it as gospel and think other people should too.

If you understood the studies or knew they were good quality you'd link to them and explain them.

You wouldn't go 'oh look at the quantity' if you understood the studies or knew they were of value to your point. We know that quantity isn't a marker for quality.

There was a spell on here where TRA did link studies. They never seemed to have read them though as they either had clear flaws, conclusions which didn’t match the data, or more often the paper showed the opposite of what they claimed it did.

They stopped posting about them so often when they realised we would immediately go and read the paper rather than take their word for it.

Quite.

The emotional manipulation of the idea that trans people deserve sympathy and kindness annoys me.

It suggests they aren't getting any.

I think theres a fair few of us who have/had every sympathy and tried to be kind but had it thrown back in our faces as not being good enough and not being kind enough.

And eventually shook ourselves down and went 'why am I putting up with this unacceptance lack of respect and at times out right abuse. I wouldn't tolerate it from anyone else, so why do I tolerate it from them?'

This is true.

I love reading the studies because often I wouldn’t have come across it before. There is also something to learn from them. Like that even in 2016 or 17 there was a study that looked at long term status of medically transitioned patients and discovered a 8-9% detransition rate. It never gets mentioned, it wasn’t a study into detransitioning. And the study was posted as a ‘gotcha’ to try to show the satisfaction of the patients or something.

Another posted the bone density study as proof that it apparently wasn’t a problem. But it showed that it was indeed a problem, for female patients. The male poster was gleefully posting the study and had not even bothered to consider the impact on female bodies. It wasn’t important to him at all.

Now we just see that bank of 51+ studies in the Cornell blog. The posters never bother to read them and they never realize they don’t show the current affirming only treatment plan improves the lives of the current cohort of children. But we have read them.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read Cracked by James Davies?

It is a few years old and doesn't cover anything about trans (and I have no idea if the author has a bias / blind spot in this area or if he's sensible across the board) but I think it is relevant in describing the situation within psychiatry and culture in which trans ideology was born.

It details the absolute lack of scientific rigour at the heart of many psychological diagnoses; and the way it all so often points back to pharmaceutical companies making money. You can kind of join the dots to apply it to the trans health situation (and it's well worth reading in it's own right).

I think @Catiette found a particularly interesting article actually, and one which I could find myself agreeing with.

If I understood it correctly the point made was that the modern Western idea of "trans" is particular to this present time and our culture. Other cultures and in other times have found different responses, ( much more positive for all of society) but this outburst of expression came as a response to an underlying feeling of the not fitting in with the 2 human sexes, male or female.

I believe that there are differences between males and females, and these differences stem from biological reality. However these differences don't limit themselves to the most obvious biological differences in our bodies, so reproduction, but also differences that occur to enable this vital process to have the best overall outcome.

Whilst it's not helpful to continually push this idea, it's equally unhelpful to pretend it doesn't exist at all. And while there will be a proportion of people where the differences are minimal, on the opposite ends of the male/female divide there will be noticeable differences, not only due to socialisation.
The sexual stereotypes are not completely made up, and even though they have been also greatly manipulated throughout history, and socialisation has played a significant part , it doesn't mean to say that they are without substance, particularly in certain points in life, puberty, childbirth, menopause etc.

It isn't a coincidence in my mind that Pre teen/ teenage Autistic girls make up a large proportion of people who feel "wrong" in their bodies. It goes without saying that a girl who for whatever reason feels more comfortable being nearer the middle ground rather than displaying her development into a "reproductive female" is just as much a woman as the girl who embraces this with positivity. However where once being a Tom boy was a socially acceptable response to this awkward feeling of change during puberty, nowadays it doesn't seem to be

This is why I can go along with the idea that people who feel "trans" are expressing, ( in a particularly unhealthy way in my opinion) the feelings of "inadequacy" of not "aligning" with the far end of the spectrum of stereotypes.

We need to find a more positive way for people to express this feeling, without resorting to surgery and attempting to distort reality for the whole of society.

Amazingly, these types of discussions have been happening on threads here for years and TRAs have had years to work on their arguments and come up with something good. And it hasn’t happened. None of them manage it.

@iverpickle - thank you - well expressed... esp.:

We need to find a more positive way for people to express this feeling, without resorting to surgery and attempting to distort reality for the whole of society.

I am completely GC and post on here fairly robustly against the current ideologies which would try and fool people into believing something that just doesn't happen or make sense - but that doesn't mean that there aren't those who do genuinely have body dysphoria and feel out of place in their body...

I think there are a number of things which we need to do as a society:

• de-gender society - there is no need to so rigorously promote differences in societal expectations - very often they are done for power reasons and even outside this discussion they can be harmful to children - esp. girls. It would be an interesting experiment to legalise against gender stereotyping - so e.g. don't allow any item to be targetted at boys / girls / men / women - unless specific to their biological sex - so it makes sense to sell bras to women, but no sense to only sell dinosaur tee-shirts to boys...
• promote positive views of both sexes - celebrate all the things people can do without reference to sex, but celebrating both sexes doing it - jobs / sports / hobbies / etc.
• work with children pre-puberty to build resilience and positive images of being a boy / girl so that when their body changes they have tools to deal with it
• work with children pre-puberty to understand becoming an adult and the positives - most children I know have at some point articulated that they are happy being a child and don't want to be an adult - but that is just a natural expression of uncertainty about the future - not an excuse to pump them full of hormones and chop bits of their body off!
• take mental health more seriously - as well as the above, look at mental health as a life long strategy...
• consider more seriously the effect of the internet on child -> adult development. Despite all the advantages of the internet I think we are only just waking up to the negatives and the impact it is having on our youth...

and no doubt, lots more - there is so much we need to do - recognising that for the vast majority of children and teenagers, body dysphoria is real - but it's solution is in mental health, not surgery or medication...

as for the trans activists who use this for power and other reasons - totally different approach...

All of this.

But yelling at them online obviously doesn’t help does it.

Even calling them ‘them’ is problematic (aware I’ve done it myself). Surely we know from history that when we take a cohort of people and ‘other’ them, and decide they all think the same way about certain issues and behave in the same socially unpaletable ways, we’re into dodgy territory.

When we yell online we polarise the discourse. You’re doing it now, with this thread, ‘why don’t THEY agree, what’s wrong with THEM’.

If you believe, as I do, that the term or presentation of trans likely covers a massive spectrum of conditions, the diversity of the underlying community is really apparent.

Amongst trans people i’m 100% certain there are…

some nasty people
some nice people
some people who always shout
some who never do
some who genuinely truly believe they were born in the wrong body
some who believe that changing their identity will solve some other problem in their life
some who are pursuing a fetish
some who have no fetish at all but are mentally unstable
some who really want to use their identity to harm women
some who love women and really do wish they were one

and of course the women who want to be a man too.

All totally different issues and different problems which would need to be dealt with separately.

I totally agree the way to respond as a society isn’t just to say ‘ok that’s fine’. Your comparison of anorexia is a great one. We don’t say ‘well you have a right to be really really thin and we’ll support that’. We help them.

But we also don’t yell at them and send them links about how being anorexic is really really a bad idea do we 🤨

I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from Moneys research other than he was a sick fuck that should never have been allowed around children

🙋‍♀️I've concluded that even though research ethics boards can be a pain in the ass, there's a very good reason for them...

@ZippyGoose - I don't disagree and honestly, I am not throwing things at "them" online, it doesn't help, though I would say when people do it's a reaction to the angry ones (TRAs for want of a better term) turning up to a party they weren't invited to, pissing in the punch, smacking the host and then accusing everyone of a hate crime because they are told to leave.

I use "They" and "Them" because I'm not in the group and so they are a they and them, I'm not part of that collective. I do have personal immediate experience and I am in no way impartial, but I don't think othering people helps, it makes us all assume an extreme and it's not a subject that should be.

We should be able to talk about these issues in a non politicised way and we can't

@ZippyGoose I think you are mistaken. @DadJoke is not claiming to be trans.

He is just trying to bash women who recognise that women should have rights and that children should be protected from harm with what he says is scientific evidence, and is refusing to answer questions on why it is not adequate evidence.

No one is talking about treating individuals badly but a LOT of harm has been done to women and children by some extreme trans activists. What we are doing is speaking out against that and the ideology that has allowed it to happen.

I agree that I don’t know the majority of trans people. I know two personally, and at least three trans allies, and many more people just going along with what they have been taught is correct polite behaviour. What I have observed is that societal expectations have been very successfully set by the vocal people, and trans people, the sort who just want to get on with their lives, are usually subject to the same societal expectations. They have had their expectations set, and if I (or anyone else) do not meet those expectations, by using their chosen name and preferred pronouns, and accepting their appropriation of opposite sex spaces, then I (or anyone else) hate them and am transphobic.

This is an unhealthy viewpoint and harms trans people, the sort who just want to get on with their lives. It means that they can very easily see themselves as victims of people who in reality do not hate them, but do disagree with them. This is a particularly visible example of a wider trend in society, to equate disagreement with hate. Hate is a strong word and should be reserved for vicious attacks, not polite disagreement.

So I can have a healthy disagreement with a Muslim. Or I can say very nasty things about one or more Muslims. In between is a whole grey area, so it is sensible to try to avoid the reasonable perception of hatred or dislike. But I draw the line at accepting coercion. If a group of vocal Muslims was demanding that I pay lip service to their beliefs, I would resist that.

But we may not actually be disagreeing, and I don’t want to derail this thread further. Thank you for helping me to think about this.

The fact that DadJoke is trying to claim that Money's 'research' proves anything speaks volumes about how unscientific gender ideology is.

For anyone who hasn't read about Money's horrible experiment, in short there was a little boy who's penis was injured during circumcision. When he was a toddler, the boy's parents were advised by Money to have his penis and testicles removed, have a 'neovagina' created and to bring him up as a girl. This despite the fact that the child lived in a close-knit community who all knew he was a boy. When he was 15, unsurprisingly he realised that he was, in fact a boy, despite being given oestrogen during puberty.

(Loads of other bad things happened including Money sexually assaulting the boy and his twin brother but I won't go into that).

That anyone could argue that this is proof of an innate sense of gender is baffling.

This looks like it might be important and need it's own thread.

@Lion400 This bill? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3560

There's a thread already at https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5026911-quick-way-of-emailing-your-mp-if-you-wish-to-support-liz-trusss-private-members-bill

It will be of interest to see how this discussion is approached by all parties. Or if it’s ignored by some, that tells us a lot in itself.

The fact that it is well recorded that David Reimer was bullied about his ‘gait’ and his body being ‘masculine’, is just a glimpse as to why the conclusion of this study was always flawed. And if Dadjoke had any care about this case he would have taken the time to understand just how weak this ‘evidence’ is.

The evidence:

A boy was castrated and lied to about a fundamental fact directly impacting his body and his identity.

That boy was identical enough to his brother that he would see himself reflected everyday as a male person. Something fraternal twins did not experience.

The boy would have known that he did not have the genitals like female children. But was teased for ‘male cues’.

Then he realised he did not develop like female people.

All this sick ‘study’ showed, was that despite the abuse of the child, that child worked out that adults had been lying to him.

“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.”

@DadJoke You did a search using the words ''gender'' and ''identity'', and turned up 3490 papers that included the words ''gender'' and ''identity'' but not necessarily together.

Explain how these two papers support your assertion that gender identity is a well understood scientific concept? They're both from the list of 3490 papers you provided.

Do women sometimes say no when they mean yes? The prevalence and correlates of women's token resistance to sex.

Or this one

The experience of social determinants of health within a Southern European Maltese culture.

You've made the unscientific rookie mistake of believing that the magnitude of results from a search somehow provides robust support for your argument, regardless of how few actually address the topic. This is only going to convince those who don't understand how a scientific argument is constructed. A good argument only needs to provide evidence from a few papers that directly address the point being made. You have failed to do that.