“Your brain isn’t different because you’re trans”

Doc Impossible does her best to debunk the idea that there are female and male brains, and that this can explain the gender identity of trans people.

She writes:

One of the most persistent myths in our entire community is that a person is trans because our brain structures are more like our real gender than our gender assigned at birth.

In many ways, this hypothesis has been the transgender version of the old 00’s hunt for the gay gene (spoiler, there isn’t one; it’s complex genetic and epigenetic influence, just like being trans is)—it’s given us a biological explanation for why we’re trans, and why gender transition is an absolute necessity for so many of us….

That hypothesis was dealt an absolute death-blow a few years back, though, and it wasn’t even the direct target of the death-blow. Eliot et al, in 2020, published the largest meta-study ever even attempted on the structure of human brains and how they were related (or not) to sex, including all research done in the last thirty years on brain structure. 

They weren’t even looking at trans brains here, not directly—though they included all of the research on trans brains too, since it met their inclusion criteria—they were looking at how gender and sex interacted for brain structure for all people, trans and cis.

After all this work, they found that there was no significant difference between male and female brains so decisively that they titled the damn paper “Dump the ‘dimorphism.’”

Their research said, in short, that only about 1% of the brain had any difference at all between male and female people, structurally, and the only real difference was sheer size, because males are, on average, bigger than females.

No, this does not mean that there are no biological components to the gender identities of trans people. There probably is. But there is no definite proof of trans men having a blue chip in their brain or trans women having a pink one.

Instead the more likely explanation is that transgender identities, like non-heterosexual sexual orientations, grow out of complex genetic and epigenetic processes, shaped by culture and lived lives.

What We Know About Trans Brains

Illustration: akinbostanci

A guide to gender affirming care for transgender people

The Association of American Medical Colleges has published a good guide to gender-affirming care.

They write:

Gender-affirming care, as defined by the World Health Organization, encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth.

The interventions help transgender people align various aspects of their lives — emotional, interpersonal, and biological — with their gender identity. As noted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), that identity can run anywhere along a continuum that includes man, woman, a combination of those, neither of those, and fluid.

The interventions fall along a continuum as well, from counseling to changes in social expression to medications (such as hormone therapy). For children in particular, the timing of the interventions is based on several factors, including cognitive and physical development as well as parental consent. Surgery, including to reduce a person’s Adam’s Apple, or to align their chest or genitalia with their gender identity, is rarely provided to people under 18.

“The goal is not treatment, but to listen to the child and build understanding — to create an environment of safety in which emotions, questions, and concerns can be explored,” says Rafferty, lead author of a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on gender-affirming care.

Read the whole presentation here.

Photo: FG Trade

 A new look at “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD), a transphobic pseudo-science

“While the ROGD theories claim that these people are ‘becoming’ trans, the truth is that we were always here.”

Two papers pretending to prove that trans youth becomes trans because of social contagion have been redacted.

The first one, by Lisa Littman, asked parents visiting transphobic sites about the gender variance of kids, while the second, mentioned by Faefyx Collington in Into, was redacted this year due to lack consent from the participants.

Collington explains why ROGD is a pseudo-science:

The basic idea is that there are now more people being diagnosed with gender dysphoria and identifying as transgender and nonbinary because it is “cool” to do so…

While there has certainly been a significant rise in people coming out as trans, nonbinary, gender-non-conforming, etc., there is also a much simpler explanation…

The increase in our recognized population is centered around greater knowledge of trans identities and increased social acceptance, not some sort of “social contagion.”

Ultimately, this comes down to the same sort of survivorship bias that we see with things such as autism. Something that was once misunderstood or shunned by society is now more likely to be accepted and understood, and thus seems to be more common.

We also see this with the seeming increase in the number of lefthanded people from around 1910 to 1950. People weren’t suddenly becoming lefthanded; the idea of being lefthanded was simply no longer as likely to be demonized and people were less likely to try and beat or train it out of children.

Read the whole article here: Your favorite anti-trans pseudoscience is back but now it’s just sad

Photo: itchySan

The answer to the question of how many sexes exist differs depending on the context

Scientific American looks at the debate on “biological sex” and gender. The answer to “what is sex” depends on what you are trying to find out, the authors argue.

How many sexes are there? Well, in most species the number is zero. The vast majority of life-forms—including bacteria and archaea—do not reproduce sexually.

As for reproductive sex in humans, the answer would seem to be two. But as Charles Roseman and Cara Ocobock point out in this article:

…when you are out and about in the human social world, are you checking everyone’s gametes [i.e. sperm and eggs]? And what of the substantial number of people who do not produce or carry gametes?

They argue that the most important question in this debate is “If ‘sex’ is the answer, what was the question?”

Binaries are indispensable when asking evolutionary questions about many sexually reproducing organisms, they write.

Problems arise when we compare humans to other species:

…when we refer to clown fish changing sex to emphasize the diversity of ways in which sexual beings move through the world, we risk losing sight of the issues of consent, autonomy, well-being and self-determination that form the bedrock of all dimensions of human health, sexual or otherwise.

Charles Roseman and Cara Ocobock study evolutionary genetics and human physiological responses to extreme environments. They point out that the questions they ask about sex in their research must be different from those used in a health context, such as practicing gender-affirming care through erectile dysfunction medication or pubertal hormones:

Scientists like us would do well to embrace intellectual humility and listen carefully before deciding that any one definition of sex is useful for understanding the living world.

Read the whole article here.

Illustration: Amitus

Hormone replacement therapy turns genes around in trans people

Doc Impossible looks at the role of epigenetics in the lives of medically transitioning transgender people in a fascinating must read article.

So what does epigenetic mean? It refers to the fact that genes in our DNA may be turned on or off by the environment, being those life experiences or substances like hormones.

Doc refers to the dramatic bodily changes found in transgender friends undergoing hormone replacement therapy and writes:

Because the genes in our DNA can be activated and deactivated over the course of a person’s life by the things we do. It’s how some whole fish species reproduce at all. And it’s why identical twins can be radically different from one another, even though all their genetic blueprints are the same.

That’s epigenetics: the study of how nurture changes nature on a genetic level.

Researchers have found nearly 10,000 different sites in the DNA that changes when someone is undergoing hormone replacement therapy.

Doc adds:

…every “boy” has a genetically-coded cup size, and taking estrogen will let them know what it is. Or, alternately as my friend is discovering to his delight, every “girl” has a genetically-encoded deep voice waiting to be discovered, and all they need to do is take some testosterone to find out what it sounds like—and the longer they take it, the more they’re going to find out!

This simply reflects that we all have the genes needed to develop a lot of the secondary sex characteristics of both sexes. This alone should prove to people that the strict binary is false.

Read the article here.

Photo of transgender man by CarlosDavid.org

An improved awareness of the complexity of biological sex may help shape the research and teaching of future biologists.

The University of Oklahoma has made a course on the Diversity of Biological Sex Characteristics.

Ari Berkowitz writes:

«…we explore nonhuman sexual diversity, including fungi that have thousands of sexes and aphids that reproduce asexually most of the year but sexually once each fall. Among many others, we also learn about fish that are male or female at different times of their lives; intersex crayfish; and female spotted hyenas that have a penis….»

Keep reading

People who know transgender people are far less likely to be transphobic

Why are transphobes so desperately trying to force trans people out of public spaces, while at the same time making it so hard for schools to teach kids about gender variance and transgender identities? Because they want to stop people from learning to know trans people.

Why?

Because the transphobes know that if cishet people learn to know queer and trans people, they will see them as living and breathing humans and not some made up stereotype of the weird and dangerous.

Research back up this analysis. A new American poll shows that 68 percent of respondents who know a trans person reported being sympathetic to trans people, compared to 35 percent of those who don’t. 

Why are gay people being accepted by so many? Because most people personally know someone who is gay or lesbian.

In this poll 69 percent reported that they know someone who is gay, and 62 percent know something who is or lesbian. This is why many conservative voters support, for instance, same-sex marriage. They see gay and lesbian people as people like themselves.

In other words: The more trans people that become visible, the more support trans people will get.

Some other numbers from the study:

57 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “we need new laws to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination and violence.

48 percent answered that “the political climate has become increasingly hostile to LGBTQ+ Americans.” 

Advocate has more: How Knowing a Trans Person Affects Your Attitude on LGBTQ+ Rights

The Data for Progess numbers here.

Photo: Johnny Greig

Scientific American: Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims

The renowned science journal Scientific American has published an article by By Timmy Broderick that effectively debunks the transphobic ROGD or “rapid onset gender dysphoria” theory.

The ROGD theory is very popular among transphobes who would like to believe that gender dysphoria is caused by social contagion, in the sense that kids becomes transgender because of fashion and transgender propaganda.

From the article:

The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis. And a steadily growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that it does not reflect transgender adolescents’ experiences and that “social contagion” is not causing more young people to seek gender-affirming care. Still, the concept continues to be used to justify anti-trans legislation across the U.S.

“To even say it’s a hypothesis at this point, based on the paucity of research on this, I think is a real stretch,” says Eli Coleman, former president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Coleman helped create the organization’s most recent standards of care for trans people, which endorse and explain the evidence for forms of gender-affirming care.

Read the whole article here.

Photo: Vladimir Vladimirov

New study: FTM transgender and nonbinary patients have no regrets about top surgery

A new study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Surgery, shows that people who had a gender-affirming mastectomy (i.e. top surgery) had extremely low rates of decisional regret and extremely high levels of satisfaction with their decision to have the procedure, CNN reports.

The scientists sent a questionnaire to to patients who had undergone gender-affirming mastectomy at a US tertiary referral center between January 1, 1990, and February 29, 2020. A total of 235 patients were deemed eligible for the study, and 139 responded (59.1% response rate).

The median or average satisfaction score was 5 on a 5-point scale, with higher scores indicating higher satisfaction. The median decisional regret score was 0 on a 100-point scale, with lower scores indicating lower levels of regret.

Sure, the number of respondents is low, but the results speak volumes. As the researchers point out  the results are overwhelmingly positive compared with other medical and nonmedical decisions.

You can read the paper here:

Lauren Bruce, Alexander N. Khouri, Andrew Bolze et al: Long-Term Regret and Satisfaction With Decision Following Gender-Affirming Mastectomy

Illustration: Midjourney

//Virtually all of the research on gender-affirming care consists of observational studies. In fact, there are over 50 studies examining gender-affirming care from various perspectives.

The majority of these studies report large reductions in suicidality, depression, and anxiety. Though there is plenty of strong evidence for gender affirming care, it is observational in nature - and for good reason! Conducting RCTs for gender-affirming care is highly unethical and impossible. The physical effects of hormones are extremely evident, making blinding for such trials unfeasible.

Furthermore, it would be unethical to pretend to treat a transgender person with hormones while withholding them - no such study would ever get approved given the massive weight of evidence in the favor of gender affirming care.//