11 ms·

> What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignme

by jolux 5y ago

> What little research exists on the topic says that most of those girls will grow out of their gender dysphoria, and well-meaning attempts at gender reassignment surgery for them will backfire. This is frequently claimed but is untrue, or at the very least highly uncertain. The studies most often referenced have serious methodological errors, including inconsistent definitions of dysphoria (owing partially to problems with the Gender Identity Disorder diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV that have since been fixed with the DSM-5) and desistance (in some cases counting anyone who didn't follow up with the clinic conducting the research as having desisted) https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/desistance-articles-and-critique https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/desistance-articles-and-crit... Julia Serano has also written extensively on this topic with much depth and nuance, at least in my opinion: https://juliaserano.medium.com/detransition-desistance-and-disinformation-a-guide-for-understanding-transgender-children-993b7342946e https://juliaserano.medium.com/detransition-desistance-and-d...

btilly 5y ago
I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. But then again, most research in the social sciences isn't very good. See the Replication Crisis. Or as we used to say, news at 11.
- jolux 5y ago
  > You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I removed that part as I agree it wasn't relevant. > As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. Unfortunately it's so poor that I judge it as being insufficient to use to form an opinion on this issue. It's much worse than the replication crisis at large, it's not clear that their methods prove what they claim in the first place if you look at their work. The pages I linked go into greater depth about why this is a difficult question to study and what the existing research gets wrong. > The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. That's as may be, but I suggest you read the WPATH standards of care if you're interested in what the medical community in general thinks about the medical treatment of trans people, including kids. It's a little out of date (2012), but if you can't find a knowledgeable medical professional nearby it's pretty much the gold standard, and is very well supported by evidence: https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc In particular, adolescents seem much less likely to desist than younger children.
- scubbo 5y ago
  > any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-to-entry to such major decisions (especially for children), even while there's also a simultaneous reasonable concern that such barriers will be used to prevent access to folks who genuinely do need, want, and would benefit from it. But how can anyone _possibly_ deny the first part? How could anyone contradict an individual who states their own gender - on what grounds can you claim to know how someone feels about themselves better than they themself do? Even the position of "they are confused" or "this is a phase that will pass" or "they have been pressured into that belief" doesn't hold water - until that phase passes, that person's gender, their self-image, _is_ whatever that phase dictates. That doesn't make the current situation any less true. If you told someone "I like broccoli" and they responded "that's just a phase, you'll grow out of liking broccoli soon", your response would, presumably be "...so? I like broccoli _now_, what does your guess about the future have anything to do with it?" Does your position on "accepting gender at face value" change if the statement "I am male" is replaced with "I see myself as male"? Are you more comfortable accepting the fact that someone's self-image can change over time, rather than imagining that gender is some abstract immutable inherent property?
  - jhrmnn 5y ago
    I think your last paragraph hints at the root cause. Many people simply have a trouble seeing gender purely as self-image since it has originated from sex, which is objective. And this development is quite recent.
    - lordCarbonFiber 5y ago
      Two things here. 1. Sex isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. It's a bimodal spectrum of correlated traits; meaning there isn't a single marker you can choose to separate everyone into neat buckets that wouldn't misclassify some cis people (and jeez yall get mad when you get misgendered). [0] 2. None of this is even remotely new, Im not sure where you're getting that impression from. Germany had an entire institute dedicated to studying trans people at the turn of the 20th century [1]. I'd agree that for a variety of (usually discriminatory and religious) reasons it hasn't been well studied, but trans people certainly arent new. [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289718803639 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/24702897188036... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
eloff 5y ago
The fact that it spreads inside friend circles should be all it takes to defeat the idea that it is based on some fundamental internal gender dysphoria. It's more akin to a social meme. In not saying that applies to all cases, but definitely a good number of them among young people, especially girls.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Birds of a feather flock together.
  - eloff 5y ago
    I do not find that sufficient to explain away the phenomenon. It could account for part of it.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Why?
      - eloff 5y ago
        I could just as easily ask you why you think it is sufficient to wholly explain it away.
        pseudalopex 5y ago
        I don't know if it is. But even you agree it plausibly explains at least part of the effect. All you offered is your personal incredulity.
        eloff 5y ago
        Which is as much as you offered. It wouldn't be easy to prove something like that, because you're claiming the causation is inverted. You can't very well construct a controlled study out of people's social connections or gender identity. I don't think either of us can do more than an educated guess here.
pgsimp 5y ago
Since the explosion of kids identifying as trans is a rather recent phenomenon, it seems likely that there is no good research on the outcomes yet. The people identifying as trans who were studied ten years ago may be very different from the people who identify as trans today (their reasons for feeling trans may be completely different). It seems rather obvious that something like social contagion is going on, similar to anorexia. There may be cases with other causes, but a lot of them at the moment are probably social contagion. If you think about it, onset of puberty is when the bodies of kids undergo drastic changes, and it is normal that they struggle to come to terms with it. Maybe worse for girls because their bodies change in more obvious sexual ways. So they are in a vulnerable state where their bodies feel wrong until they have adjusted to their "new world". I don't find it surprising that they are vulnerable to people telling them the reason their body feels wrong is because they are really trans, and they desperately grasp for an offered cure. That is just me thinking, not "medical research", mind you. However, I think parental common sense is underrated when it comes to such issues. Too much expert bullshit has been injected into child rearing over the centuries.

by jolux 5y ago

btilly 5y ago

I made a claim about ideology. You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I stand by my claim. The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. But then again, most research in the social sciences isn't very good. See the Replication Crisis. Or as we used to say, news at 11.

jolux 5y ago
> You made a claim about medical professionals. That is not particularly relevant to what I claimed. I removed that part as I agree it wasn't relevant. > As for criticism of the research that exists, I agree that it isn't very good. Unfortunately it's so poor that I judge it as being insufficient to use to form an opinion on this issue. It's much worse than the replication crisis at large, it's not clear that their methods prove what they claim in the first place if you look at their work. The pages I linked go into greater depth about why this is a difficult question to study and what the existing research gets wrong. > The online echo chambers that children, including my own, seek out very much push the ideology that any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. That's as may be, but I suggest you read the WPATH standards of care if you're interested in what the medical community in general thinks about the medical treatment of trans people, including kids. It's a little out of date (2012), but if you can't find a knowledgeable medical professional nearby it's pretty much the gold standard, and is very well supported by evidence: https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc In particular, adolescents seem much less likely to desist than younger children.
scubbo 5y ago
> any claim to be male, female, non-binary or whatever must be accepted at face value. And that the person who is making the claim should have the right to any treatment that they wish, up to and including surgery. I can understand some caution around the latter part of this quote, given how traumatic, invasive, and costly surgery can be. It is a defensible and reasonable position that there should be _some_ barrier-to-entry to such major decisions (especially for children), even while there's also a simultaneous reasonable concern that such barriers will be used to prevent access to folks who genuinely do need, want, and would benefit from it. But how can anyone _possibly_ deny the first part? How could anyone contradict an individual who states their own gender - on what grounds can you claim to know how someone feels about themselves better than they themself do? Even the position of "they are confused" or "this is a phase that will pass" or "they have been pressured into that belief" doesn't hold water - until that phase passes, that person's gender, their self-image, _is_ whatever that phase dictates. That doesn't make the current situation any less true. If you told someone "I like broccoli" and they responded "that's just a phase, you'll grow out of liking broccoli soon", your response would, presumably be "...so? I like broccoli _now_, what does your guess about the future have anything to do with it?" Does your position on "accepting gender at face value" change if the statement "I am male" is replaced with "I see myself as male"? Are you more comfortable accepting the fact that someone's self-image can change over time, rather than imagining that gender is some abstract immutable inherent property?
- jhrmnn 5y ago
  I think your last paragraph hints at the root cause. Many people simply have a trouble seeing gender purely as self-image since it has originated from sex, which is objective. And this development is quite recent.
  - lordCarbonFiber 5y ago
    Two things here. 1. Sex isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. It's a bimodal spectrum of correlated traits; meaning there isn't a single marker you can choose to separate everyone into neat buckets that wouldn't misclassify some cis people (and jeez yall get mad when you get misgendered). [0] 2. None of this is even remotely new, Im not sure where you're getting that impression from. Germany had an entire institute dedicated to studying trans people at the turn of the 20th century [1]. I'd agree that for a variety of (usually discriminatory and religious) reasons it hasn't been well studied, but trans people certainly arent new. [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470289718803639 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/24702897188036... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...

eloff 5y ago

The fact that it spreads inside friend circles should be all it takes to defeat the idea that it is based on some fundamental internal gender dysphoria. It's more akin to a social meme. In not saying that applies to all cases, but definitely a good number of them among young people, especially girls.

pseudalopex 5y ago
Birds of a feather flock together.
- eloff 5y ago
  I do not find that sufficient to explain away the phenomenon. It could account for part of it.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Why?
    - eloff 5y ago
      I could just as easily ask you why you think it is sufficient to wholly explain it away.
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        I don't know if it is. But even you agree it plausibly explains at least part of the effect. All you offered is your personal incredulity.
        eloff 5y ago
        Which is as much as you offered. It wouldn't be easy to prove something like that, because you're claiming the causation is inverted. You can't very well construct a controlled study out of people's social connections or gender identity. I don't think either of us can do more than an educated guess here.

pgsimp 5y ago

Since the explosion of kids identifying as trans is a rather recent phenomenon, it seems likely that there is no good research on the outcomes yet. The people identifying as trans who were studied ten years ago may be very different from the people who identify as trans today (their reasons for feeling trans may be completely different). It seems rather obvious that something like social contagion is going on, similar to anorexia. There may be cases with other causes, but a lot of them at the moment are probably social contagion. If you think about it, onset of puberty is when the bodies of kids undergo drastic changes, and it is normal that they struggle to come to terms with it. Maybe worse for girls because their bodies change in more obvious sexual ways. So they are in a vulnerable state where their bodies feel wrong until they have adjusted to their "new world". I don't find it surprising that they are vulnerable to people telling them the reason their body feels wrong is because they are really trans, and they desperately grasp for an offered cure. That is just me thinking, not "medical research", mind you. However, I think parental common sense is underrated when it comes to such issues. Too much expert bullshit has been injected into child rearing over the centuries.