Sisters, some of you may lack experience evaluating scientific evidence, yet are confronted with TRAs saying “science proves trans people exist!” and providing links to scientific studies claiming to have found a biological basis for trans identity, or proof that transition is beneficial to trans people.
I’d like to outline a few concepts that may help you understand the problems with the science that has been conducted on the subject of trans people. I am not a scientist, so I’d much appreciate any feedback or corrections.
1. Begging the question
Here are some of the studies being held up as proof that trans people are “valid”:
You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Are you ready to learn why these studies were giant wastes of time? And no, it’s not even because of the obvious problem right off the bat (How did they know there were no closted trans people in the “cis” groups? How could they be sure there were no future detransitioners in the trans groups?).
It’s because, if you want to do science, you cannot start by assuming what you are trying to prove. This is known as the fallacy of “begging the question.” They relied on the self-reports of trans people to sort them in a group apart from cis people. In attempting to prove the biological basis for the category “trans”, they assumed the category “trans” had a biological basis. This is what pseudoscientists do.
This fallacy comes up a lot in arguments with the devoutly religious: “The human eye is too complex to have evolved, it must have been designed. Therefore, God exists.” Sir, no…. you cannot assume that the eye is too complex to have evolved that way. You must prove that to me.
What they should have done, right from the start, is study the brains of self-identified trans people, and from there predict the future detransitioners. Or they could have studied the brains of self-identified non-trans people, and predicted which ones were closted trans people. That would have been real science.
“I am not convinced. After all, they found something that looks “female” in the brains of the trans women! Maybe their methods are flawed but they must have found something!”
Not necessarily. I think what may be going on is known as:
2. P-hacking
When I was a young child, I saw a History Channel Special that claimed to prove that the Bible predicted the JFK assassination. I think the letters of a certain translation were arranged in grid form, and certain words related to the JFK assassination were grouped in close proximity. Stupid, right?
But I was just a kid, so I told my dad “Dad! Did you know the bible predicted the JFK assassination?” And my father recognized that as an excellent opportunity to teach me about p-hacking.
“No,” he said, “those are just coincidences.”
“Dad, are you blind? What are the odds that those exact words would be found together like that?”
“Not very high. But don’t forget… they weren’t looking for evidence that the bible predicted the JFK assassination. They were looking for evidence that the Bible predicted anything, in the history of ever. It’s actually quite unlikely, using their methods, that you’d find NO uncanny predictions of anything that’s ever happened in human history. And you’d probably find a few uncanny predictions in the Harry Potter books, using this method.”
These researchers in the second study cited did not set out to find whether trans men had similar fractional anistropy levels in posterior part of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus to cis men. They were looking at whether the white matter patterns of trans men had any similarity to cis men (of course, in doing so they flagrantly beg the question, but I digress).
The brain is highly complex. When you conduct an MRI scan, you generate mountains of data. And if you set out to prove that a similarity exists somewhere in this mile-deep well of data you have generated for these individuals, you are going to find something that appears statistically significant. It’s actually unlikely that you will find no similarities between any two groups of people who have their brains scanned. And, if you are engaged in anti-scientific motivated reasoning, you will take this and claim to have found evidence for a biological basis for trans identification.
“Perhaps there is faulty science going on but you can’t argue with the results! Transition saves lives! Studies have shown that it makes people feel so much better!”
Well, there’s a problem with that, too.
3. The placebo effect
The neurological basis of the placebo effect has been extensively studied. We know, for example, that it can be augmented or dampened by certain drugs. We know that it exists even when you know you are being given a placebo. And we know that the more elaborate a placebo is, the more effective it is: so a surgery will be more effective than an injection, which will be better than a pill.
Do you see where I’m going with this? Have you ever heard of a more elaborate treatment than gender transition: surgery, hormones, clothing, hair, name, pronouns, every aspect of your life can change.
But transition has not been proven to be any more effective at treating gender dysphoria than some kind of equally elaborate placebo. That’s the piece that’s missing, that would usually be accounted for when studying any sort of medical treatment.
“But there are a lot of health benefits to placebos. If they help people, then they help people.”
This is true. There’s a problem, though. Transition is not tumeric pills or reiki or like… journaling frequently. In fact, it comes with risks of absolutely nightmarish consequences. Trans women are walking around, right now, with colostomy bags because of botched vaginoplasties. Trans men are stuck with chronic kidney infections from phalloplasties, as well as the risk of gangrene and lifelong weakness in their donor sites, as well as phantom pain and progressive tightening and sclerosing from their mastectomies. Puberty blockers disrupt brain development and put a child at risk of osteoporosis, sterility, and sexual dysfunction. Hormones cause powerful and systemic changes that have not been fully studied, but consider this: what happens when the cartilagenous valves on a male-sized heart become thinner and more flexbile under the influence of estrogen? What happens when the cartilage structures in a female sized brain become larger and tougher in response to testosterone? Do you know?
You don’t, because nobody knows. We aren’t studying these treatments. We are experimenting on human beings, just like they did in the Nazi camps, and for what: treatments that have not been proven to be better than a placebo, that are based on faulty science, and that don’t even hold up to common sense. Why would you amputate a healthy young woman’s breasts? Because she begged you to? Is that how medicine works?
“But why does the trans rights movement need to lean on junk science? Why don’t they do real science instead?”
Because it is a religion. That’s it, that’s the only explanation left. They believe that they have gender identities, that are at odds with their physical bodies. Theses gender identities have not been demonstrated to exist. These gender identities seem to want things of trans people, and they seem to be placated with certain rites (going to the beach after top surgery, standing to pee after phalloplasty) and certain prayers (compelled pronoun usage). Gender identities act similarly to the members of any polytheistic pantheon.
I have no problem with anyone’s religion. But it is time the scientific establishment, and the government, understand that in “affirming” trans people, while defacing the scientific method, logic and common sense, they are in fact respecting an establishment of religion. They do this to the ultimate detriment of trans people, who have come to them for help, for answers, and are made a mockery.
“Why do you care so much about trans people?”
Because they’re human beings and they deserve better than this horseshit. Because I used to be one. Because if not me, then who?
What I have found with similiar studies is the results will say trans women have similiar brains to straight cis women but gay cis men have the same similarity, so concluding that it is a signifier of transness and not sexuality is jumping to conclusions
Anyone want to take a stab at evaluating this study or some like it? I’m trying to understand, but I’m struggling.
Doesn’t exactly seem like there are consistent and drastic differences in trans vs control population like they conclude… but I’m out of my depth. I copied the basic info here, but linked the full study.
Just a note - that the red text I highlighted in the intro and abstract seems like a huge red flag - as if the researchers are literally just fishing for data to back up their claim of gender identity. They began the study intro with the following statement:
From an early age, people develop an inner sense of being male or female. Transsexuals however, identifywith a physical sex opposite to their biological sex. Such individuals might seek to alleviate their distress by altering their bodies through hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery (1).
Abstract
Background:There is a likelygenetic component to transsexualism, and genes involved in sex steroidogenesis are good candidates. We explored the specific hypothesis that male-to-female transsexualism is associated with gene variants responsible for undermasculinization and/or feminization. Specifically, we assessed the role of disease-associated repeat length polymorphisms in the androgen receptor (AR), estrogen receptor beta (ERbeta), and aromatase (CYP19) genes.
Methods:Subject-control analysis included 112 male-to-female transsexuals and 258 non-transsexual males. Associations and interactions were investigated between CAG repeat length in the AR gene, CA repeat length in the ERbeta gene, and TTTA repeat length in the CYP19 gene and male-to-female transsexualism.
Results:A significant association was identified between transsexualism and the AR allele, with transsexuals having longer AR repeat lengths than non-transsexual male control subjects (p=.04). No associations for transsexualism were evident in repeat lengths for CYP19 or ERbeta genes. Individuals were then classified as short or long for each gene polymorphism on the basis of control median polymorphism lengths in order to further elucidate possible combined effects. No interaction associations between the three genes and transsexualism were identified.
Conclusions:This study provides evidence that male gender identity might be partly mediated through the androgen receptor.
Figure 1
Graphical representation of the allele frequency distributions of (A)androgen receptor(AR), (B)estrogen receptorB(ERB), and (C)aromatase(CYP19) genes showing repeat number for each gene polymorphism. Individuals with 7 TTTA repeats with further classified into those with or without the three base pair TCT insertion polymorphism within this polymorphism.
Here, I will give another example of begging the question (which this study shamelessly does), using an example from the brilliant TT Exulansic of Youtube.
Back in the day, pseudoscientists called “phrenologists” believed that the bumps on a persons head were caused by the way their brains developed. Therefore, certain behaviors, such as criminality, could be predicted from the bumps on a person’s head.
Now you and I, sitting here today, know that this is nonsense. Yet the phrenologists were able to prove their hypothesis “scientifically” over and over again. How? By begging the question!
They’d start with a group of criminals and a group of non-criminals, much like your study starts with a group of self-IDed trans women and non-trans men. They’d take many, many painstaking skull measurements, like these researchers have trawled through their subjects gene profiles. And lo and behold, statistically significant differences would jump out. Clearly, criminals have distinctive head bumps, and there is a “trans” gene.
Except, no. In neither case was science performed. A truly scientific phrenology study would have started with a group of non-criminals and then predicted who would go on to commit crimes later. They would have been able to predict this because they would have already had a solid hypothesis about which skull bumps indicate criminality and the mechanism by which these skull bumps develop. They wouldn’t have to just fish for data from test subjects who are ALREADY known criminals!
Back to the study above. They took a group of self IDed trans women, and a group of non-trans men, and went fishing around in their gene profiles and found *shocked pikachu face* definite, statistically significant differences between the two groups. They set out to look for something, and they found it.
This is no less pseudoscience than the phrenology studies. They have not explained the mechanism by which this gene differences they found might cause transgenderism. They CERTAINLY have not found evidence to support transition as a treatment for this gene difference.
If they were real scientists, they’d have taken a group of trans women, and, already armed with a hypothesis that purports to explain the genetic causes of trangenderism, that describes as actual mechanism by which transgenderism could be encoded in ones genes, sought to predict who will later go on to detransitions… who “was never really trans”, in other words.
Another thing they might have done is taken a group of self-IDed “cis” people and predicted who the eggs were.
The fact that these medical scientists (who, if I know what they are doing, DEFINITELY know exactly what they’re doing) don’t seem interested in conducting real science seems to suggest certain ulterior motives afoot. Are they seeking to provide a veneer of scientific legitimacy to the new religion for some kind of financial reason? We know the transition industry is growing hyperbolically, backed by big, opaque donations.
I don’t exactly know what the root of all this is. But I have faith that if we keep questioning this anti-science, anti-woman, anti-homosexual, anti-child, anti-family religious ideology, eventually the other shoe will drop, and the full story will come out.
I just thought of something else: there’s no mention of the possibility that they may have found genes associated with homosexuality instead, and that transgenderism is some kind of culturally mediated expression of homosexual identity. This is because they are engaged in motivated reasoning: they are trying to advance a particular ideology.
this stuff is harrasment/ bullying, if you do this you are breaking the law in quiet a few countries and breaking tumblr rules of service, not only is it uncalled for and disgusting you are commiting a crime/breaking terms and conditions
if you see ANYONE (gay,straight,trans cis,black,white doesn’t matter) telling ANYONE to go die report it Immediately because it is crossing a line
^^^^^^^
This shit is absolutely disgusting. What sorry excuses of human beings willingly go out of their way to harass people because of their sexuality…….oh wait
And it’s still not over either. Check out some of this new and truly disgusting aphobic bullshit:
Apparently, being against telling ANYONE to go die or kill themselves is being pro-terf… (ughhhhh!!! i’m also against the death penalty, does that make me a super terf then?!?! like honestly, go read a book)
Oh and this:
So, hearing about the corrective rape experiences of aces is “annoying” bc “aces aren’t lgbt” according to the above aphobe, and so we all just need to shut up about it. JOY
Maybe the above is not a death threat or anything like that, but dehumanization like this is the exact type of shit that rationalizes and reinforces all this aphobic violence.
And of course, here’s more aphobic hell (including racism & more death/suicide baiting):
What “exactly” is it that we have supposedly collectively done to deserve this kind of seething, violent hate?!?!?!???? Read those tags on the last one, it’s the things of nightmares!!
But yeah, no, of course,
I mean, it’s not as if wishing to deny us aspecs our right to life (often in very violent ways) just because we’re aspec isn’t invalidating in any way…. /s
Aaaaand here’s some new stuff:
damn wtf did aces do to these people?! why so much hate towars em
did terfs and radfems actively argue to get roe v. wade overturned? no, definitely not. did they buddy up with conservatives who did in the name of fighting off us icky trannies? yes. did they give them money and a platform? yes.
Proof?
The parallels between this kind of rhetoric, and the rhetoric according to which the working class is responsible for the rise of right-wing nationalistic sentiment, couldn’t be more clear. Classic Liberal move.
First, call yourself a leftist party while implementing right wing politics, backed by powerful lobbying = call yourself feminist / pro gay rights while actively pushing for a anti-women / anti-homosexual ideology backed by the pharmaceutical and beauty industries.
When you have purposefully worsened the very conditions of economical misery you pretend to be fighting (= when you have worsened women’s protections / homosexual recognition), and the people affected start to complain, violently repress their right to speech and protest to maintain your power. Anyone who criticises you is now a Fascist. Systematically destroy all oposition from the left, while cultivating the ever more extremist right wing “adversary” (the Conservative party / Openly homophobic and misogynistic crowd) by not focusing any effort on silencing them.
Backed into a corner, witch-hunted, seeing their allies more and more scared of speaking for them, the working class / women and gays start growing desperate and some may attempt alliances with the also bad but not as powerful nationalistic right-wing party / anti-trans right-wing crowd. When shit inevitably hits the fan, make sure to blame it on these desperate people, not the right-wing people and especially not yourself. So that everyone remembers to never, EVER dispute Liberalism as the one true barrier against Fascism. When people point out none of it would have happened without Liberalism, shut them down. Rinse, repeat.
OP, you do know that the majority of radfems don’t live in the U.S? Radical feminism is most popular in non-Western countries (look up feminism in Latin America, India, South Korea etc). All those radfems are women you would consider “TERFS”. Tell me how are they responsible for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, when there’s an ocean dividing some of them with the U.S? Maybe just maybe, it’s the conservative mostly male, Republican party responsible for the restriction of women’s rights. Maybe just maybe, don’t blame women for men’s misogyny.
You heard it here first, ladies, feminists are *read post* responsible for Donald Trump and co putting in power conservatives in the Supreme Court and - more generally - in positions of power ! The vast majority of us don’t even use the T slur that you wrote in your rag of a post, OP, don’t even try to push this shit on us, the attempts for a very limited amount of feminist/gender critical women to talk with right-wing women on the specific subject of gender activism is not responsible for the conservatives (mostly men) who push endlessly against the right for women to get an abortion. Putting the blame on women is a classic misogynistic tactic, learn better.
for one its ofc the internalized misogyny and the believe that its gonna make you the cool chill girl when you laugh about this but at this point im sick of giving women a pass - its straight up egocentrical and unempathetic. we all know that if this womans ex-bf texted her ‘i have other plans for your throat that dont involve injury’ shed be telling her friends and posting a call out post on twitter. because she knows this is sexually aggressive and misogynistic. but hey, fuck those other bitches, as long as it isnt going to happen to me, right?
It really didn’t take a genius to work out that attacks on trans healthcare and lgbt protections in general would only be followed by attacks on reproductive rights lol
Like all the cis women who allied with the right wing to take down trans people because we are supposedly a threat to their rights are gonna have a shock when their new allies actually rollback their rights when they are done with us and its kinda happening in real time
this is literal victim blaming btw. this is how the trans women who we “owe our rights to” are reacting to this massive blow to women’s rights. by telling us that we are to blame for it.
as if the GOP hasn’t been trying to repeal Roe v Wade since 1974.
Remind me, which rule of misogyny is “Women are responsible for what men do”?
first rule of misogyny.
Op acts like they arnt pro “life” Conservative women who are actively anti feminist and also believe in banning abortion. Not everything is about you.
@silkypicrew your movement will die as time goes, and I’ll welcome that.
the women’s rights movement will die over time and you welcome that? damn. mask off moment
I’ve been for years vocalizing my discomfort with radfems in particular and all ideologies that prioritize cis women and gloss over situations where cis women are abusers/oppressors in general.
If you call it a “mask off moment”, it means you weren’t listening. Which is very weird for someone who responds to every single post I tag as “terfs” or “anti terf”, on this account and on my other ones.
feminism is for females. it’s obviously going to prioritize individuals of the female sex. radical feminism doesn’t gloss over situations with abusive women or female oppressors so idk where you got that from
By gender axis, cis women in general are oppressors of trans people of all genders and often an active threat to trans people.
Till you care about that, your movement is garbage.
And I’m just very much not into any movement that prioritizes my oppressors.
gender is not an axis of oppression. sex is an axis of oppression. how are “cis” women “often an active threat” to trans people? do you have a source for that claim? how do “cis” women oppress trans people?
Okay guys that’s it, as a feminist who isn’t from the USA I have to say that shit like that makes it obvious there’s a rise in sexism in your country. With that we can tell OP feels wary of feminism in general, hiding it in such sentences as “my discomfort with all ideologies that prioritize cis women” as if it was any less revolting. Why would trans people have a movement just for trans people, or a black movement just for black people, etc, but women cannot have our own, in your opinion ?!
The words of someone fed with so much misogyny it’s spilling everywhere around them, and all this on the day I’ve learned y'all are on your way to have Roe vs Wade overturned. Feminism has been fighting for women rights and that includes you OP, based on sex, regardless of anything you have to say about the movement, trying to sound like a MRA who doesn’t give a flying fuck about feminism won’t make you more of a man, I promise. Who do you think fought for women to have the right to get an abortion in USA ? Not that movement you want to see dying ? The very movement that made it possible for any of you in USA to have that option ? Option that keeps getting harder to get ? Trans men get targeted by this just the same and you know that, there’s a reason for it but you prefer not naming the common denominator. All the while the real oppressors keeps pushing their boots on our necks.
as serious and real as trans people frustration is with terfs is. Whatever danger terfs seem to think they pose to them isn’t. Trans people aren’t going to harm terfs on any real level and all this “Kill terfs” is a essentially a joke in the same way “down with cis” was, used to vent frustration against a group actively oppressing a group unable to do anything about it. Those threats aren’t real.
What is real is the dangers terf’s ideologies put transwomen in on a daily basis, and the mistrust it instills in feminism in every transwoman whose’s ever been harmed by those ideologies.
“Men threatening to rape and murder women they disagree with isn’t actually dangerous, no, womens’ words are what is truly dangerous!!” nice deflection but the trannies are wrong yet again
“Those threats aren’t real” and yet they were when y'all beat up and stole from a 60 yr old woman for just saying gender should be abolished.
Give me ONE example of a “terf” actually harming a trans person. Michfest has a ton of examples of trans women harming women, and we have video proof if someone hurting a woman because they viewed her as a “terf.”
And also, fuck you. Men HATE radfems more than they hate trans people, don’t shift the blame of male violence on women that are hated by men. You’re an idiot.
In other words, MtF’s were seven times more likely to be convicted of violent crimes than women, and just as likely as “cis” males to be convicted of a violent crime.
Trans-women violence against females and children:
The few studies that have examined personality disorders among transsexuals usually have found that these disorders in general—and disorders in Cluster B, which includes Narcissistic Personality Disorder (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000), in particular—are more common in transsexuals than in nontranssexuals
Douglas Wakefield/Tai Pilley Wakefield – strangled his uncle, beat him with a hammer and stabbed him 48 times with a garden fork. While incarcerated, he strangled, stabbed, beat and killed an inmate, held prison officers hostage twice and attempted to kill one of them:http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/293991/Sex-swap-lag-s-wedding-chop
Sorry I haven’t been super active, twitter has been absolutely disgusting and wild recently.
TW Sexual assault
Honestly after some anti drew art of a real life pro ship minor being gang raped after they discussed their history with sex trafficking, I’ve been at the end of my tether when it comes to patience with antis. Been trying not to blow up at them, but Jesus. And now they’re telling some 13yo Warrior cats fan to kill themselves.
Hey so JK Rowling went full mask off and is advertising an explicitly terf store now.. Also sure is weird how TERF talking points usually consistently leave trans men out of these conversations and usually always direct their hateful rhetoric toward trans women.
Hey everyone! Just dropping in to post another receipt and make a quick announcement.
The zine is no longer taking contributions/donations. If you would like a copy, please download a free one!
The zine has ultimately raised over 550 dollars, capping out at somewhere around 590. We still have about 12 or so dollars left in gumroad that we’ll donate when it gets into our account. Should anything get tied up in the system, we’ll match it ourselves and post receipts!
We can’t thank you guys enough for your generous contributions, and we’re thrilled to see how well-received the project was.
They’re always taking donations, and during a season focused on giving it’s always good to think of some of the most needy in our community: the homeless, the elderly, the sick and the impoverished. If you can give and would like to, please do!
Thank you again for all your support and help. We’ll be posting any updates on this blog should they come up.
These men swear they’re women until they’re blue in the face but they cannot mask their misogyny. It’s really telling to see how you rejoice in the misfortune and sadness of women.
Take a quart of fine flower, a pint of sacke, halfe a pint of ale, six or eight spoonfulls of faire water, eight yolkes of eggs and three whites, a little nutmegg, ginger, cinnamon and salt, blend all these together and straine them, they will make excellent pancakes.
It’s the middle of the night nd I’m alone screaming about canon lines in season 4 that indicated Dean is trans or interested in femme presentation.
SCREAM. scream scream scream scream scream.
Like, this is from a history of media that conflated not being straight with being trans, but. … Two lines. Two episodes apart. From two different writers.
One a very stealth queercode. One based in misogyny. S4 was so horny. What is happening?!
Dean: Although, if I was turning life into a movie, I wouldn’t do this Abbott and Costello meet the monster crap.
Sam: Yeah, no. I know what you’d pick. … Porky’s II. …
Dean: … Lucky guess.
“If you were a 600 year old hag and you could pick any costume to come back in wouldn’t you go for a hot cheerleader? I would.”
White people have a funny way of remembering history.
“You’re not even a slave, so how would you know how bad the slaves had it?!” “But the Black Panthers were just as bad as the KKK!” “I think Martin Luther King Jr. would be ashamed if he saw you race baiting!”
History is written by and for white folks, romanticizing one side of history while shading the other. They’ll plaster images of sad, poor white folks during The Great Depression but will omit stories of those same white folks stealing and killing Black folks. They’ll loath the existence of the L.A Crips and Bloods but will fail to recognize why these gangs formed in the first place (they were young, poor Black kids who were denied entry into the Boy Scouts.)
Now, people of color (POC) have an opportunity to change that. The more we write, rant and discuss, the more receipts we collect so if one day, 30 years from now, a white dude says, “oh yea, the Baltimore riots started because Blacks were attacking the police!” we POCs can be like,
NOT SO FAST, MR. MCNOODLEBERRY!
Then we’ll pull out our iPhone90, show them this blog and be like:
honorable mention of the day goes to bpdcronusampora, the new url of cronusamporaa, otherwise known as “that guy who decided my hand should be stuck in a meat grinder after i wrote meta about cronus he didn’t like.” he has decided that i am an abuser.
i’m thinking he just doesn’t want people to know who he’s abused. that’s pretty much everyone on this list, is people he’s abused and doesn’t want to get called out for. his new callout blog is yikespng, where he continues to be such an expert at spin that he might have actually reversed the earth’s polarity or something by now.
