Puberty blockers have almost universally been shown to result in positive outcomes and to be safe

Over at CDL Lost247365 answers a question about the safety of puberty blockers in the treatment of transgender kids, and provides some really useful references to relevant science papers.

She writes:

Puberty blockers have almost universally been shown to result in positive outcomes and to be safe.

Review: Puberty blockers for transgender and gender diverse youth-a critical review of the literature - PubMed

Given the potentially life-saving benefits of these medications for TGD youth, it is critical that rigorous longitudinal and mixed methods r

PubMed

QUOTE: “Studies reviewed had samples ranging from 1 to 192 (N = 543). The majority (71%) of participants in these studies required a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to qualify for puberty suppression and were administered medication during Tanner stages 2 through 4. Positive outcomes were decreased suicidality in adulthood, improved affect and psychological functioning, and improved social life. Adverse factors associated with use were changes in body composition, slow growth, decreased height velocity, decreased bone turnover, cost of drugs, and lack of insurance coverage. One study met all quality criteria and was judged ‘excellent’, five studies met the majority of quality criteria resulting in 'good’ ratings, whereas three studies were judged fair and had serious risks of bias.”

https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-r … -blockers/

QUOTE: “Researchers found a 60% decrease in moderate and severe depression and 73% decrease in suicidality among transgender and non-binary youth who received puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones over a 12-month period, according to a study abstract presented during the virtual American Academy of Pediatrics 2021 National Conference & Exhibition.”

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics … redirected

QUOTE: “This is the first study in which associations between access to pubertal suppression and suicidality are examined. There is a significant inverse association between treatment with pubertal suppression during adolescence and lifetime suicidal ideation among transgender adults who ever wanted this treatment. These results align with past literature, suggesting that pubertal suppression for transgender adolescents who want this treatment is associated with favorable mental health outcomes.”

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/land … cestitle70

QUOTE: Gender incongruence in children and adolescents is complex, and medical treatment raises several ethical considerations. Clinical decision making has been fostered by research efforts, but there are still substantial knowledge gaps that warrant examination to inform best clinical practice (panel 4). The limited available evidence suggests that puberty suppression, when clearly indicated, is reasonably safe. The few studies that have examined the psychological effects of suppressing puberty, as the first stage before possible future commencement of CSH therapy, have shown benefits.

All of this should also show that puberty blockers are not experimental and are life saving:

Is puberty delaying treatment ‘experimental treatment’?

PubMed Central (PMC)

QUOTE: “Puberty delaying medications are currently provided off label to adolescents affected by gender dysphoria and this particular use cannot be investigated by a RCT. We have shown that this does not mean they are experimental drugs or are provided experimentally. Whether or not these (or even approved drugs) are ethically prescribed depends on whether they are likely to serve the patient’s health interests based on the evidence available at the time of prescription.

"The published literature provides insight into the likely benefits of GnRHa. In summary, they reduce the patient’s dysphoria (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011, p. 467), reduce the invasiveness of future surgery (for example, mastectomy in trans men; treatment for facial and body hair, thyroid chondroplasty to improve appearance and cricothyroid approximation to raise the pitch of the voice in trans women) (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171); GnRHa is correlated with improved psychosocial adaptation (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011, p. 467) and reduced suicidal ideation and attempts. Hembree noted increased suicidal ideation where blockers were not given (Hembree, 2011; see further, Imbimbo et al., 2009; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011; Murad et al., 2010; Spack, 2008).”

Some people think that puberty blockers might cause kids to think they are transgender and convince them to wrongfully go on to take HRT. The research shows this not to be true:

Association of Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Analogue Use With Subsequent Use of Gender-Affirming Hormones Among Transgender Adolescents -

In this cohort study of TGD adolescents, GnRHa use was not associated with increased subsequent GAH use. These findings suggest that clinici

PubMed

QUOTE: “In this cohort study of TGD adolescents, GnRHa use was not associated with increased subsequent GAH use. These findings suggest that clinicians can offer the benefits of GnRHa treatment without concern for increasing rates of future GAH use.”

Puberty blockers are in fact a wonder drug. Extremely safe and they can prevent trans kids from experiencing irreversible changes to their body due to the wrong puberty while they reach an age where they are old enough to consent. Similarly, they prevent confused Cis Children (who make up only about 2% of all the kids pursuing puberty blockers) from making a mistake that would create irreversible changes to their body as well. Meaning that this drug helps both trans and cis kids!

You can read the whole post here.

How did a biologist like Richard Dawkins end up dismissing real science, becoming an ally of transphobes?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ha published a podcast where he has a friendly chat with the transphobic TERF Helen Joyce regarding the identities of transgender women.

Dawkins find it “distinctly weird that people can simply declare that ‘I am a woman, though I have a penis’”. He sees this as “a strange distortion of language.”

He backs the anti-trans gospel of reducing gender to biological sex, while defining biological sex on the basis of X and Y chromosomes.

The more he speaks the clearer it becomes that he has not read up on studies of gender incongruence and gender dysphoria, he does not understand contemporary science on social and cultural processes and he has a pretty banal understanding of how science works. He does not even grasp what biology – his own discipline – says about gender identity variation. So how on Earth has he gotten the standing he has?

Being an expert in a narrow field does not make you an expert in another

In the article Why is it so hard for a scientist like Richard Dawkins to understand the difference between sex and gender? we make the following observation:

Science is about looking at specific observable phenomena, trying to explain why they are as they are and to understand their role in larger systems. Science is not limited to physical objects that can be weighed and measured. Science also look at behaviors, emotions and thinking.

Transgender identities are real. They are observable. There are people who persistently and strongly experience that their gender is not in harmony with the gender role they are forced to play. This is a scientific fact. And trans people have been around for millennia.

Gender incongruence is real. Gender dysphoria is real. This is clearly not about people just deciding, on a whim, that they are male or female.

So would it not make sense for a curious scientist to try to understand this phenomenon instead of dismissing it is a “distortion of reality”?

The reason is that scientists like Dawkins may succeed academically as long as they stay inside the narrow silo of their own sub-discipline. As soon as they step outside that community it becomes clear that they do not have the knowledge and experience needed to critically address phenomena that goes across disciplines, social systems or that are encompassing the whole complexity of the mind, the body and the environment that surrounds them

Scientists are as caught up in prejudices and self-interest as everybody else. If they do not use the scientific method to look at all their beliefs, they may also end up as bigots.

Read the whole article here.

Science tells us that sex is not a binary, and nor is gender identity

In the article Richard Dawkins has abandoned science to justify his transphobia Hermant Mehta writes:

The podcast episode dropped days after Dawkins wrote an essay for the British magazine The New Statesman answering the question, “What is a woman?” Dawkins’ reductive response boiled down to “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes,” as if the absence of a single chromosome answers the question. That flies in the face of what many scientists have said about the subject.

“There are cisgender women who have XY sex chromosomes, and many other exceptions to binary sex. Around 1 in 1,000 people are intersex,” said Jey McCreight, a science communicator with a Ph.D. in genomics who has consulted on trans inclusivity for biotech companies. McCreight added in an email: “That’s pretty common as far as biology goes. A study may treat sex as binary out of practicality, but scientists understand that reality is more nuanced.”

Despite acknowledging those exceptions exist, Dawkins casually dismisses them, just as he dismisses the genetic influences many experts believe contribute to the development of trans identities. Those exceptions and influences are reasons the American Medical Association and other major medical organizations have supported gender-affirming care.

Maybe trans people are an exception to a common binary. I do not think this is that simple, but let for the sake of argument say that it is so. That does not make the exceptions to the rule, which will be intersex and transgender people, less real. That does not make their identities and their experiences a figment of their imagination.

We cannot let the common use of both everyday and scientific language stop us from understanding what being trans is and means. Because the only reason for doing that would be to force intersex and transgender people into hiding, so that the dogma of fearful people can continue to rule us all. That is not science. That is toxic politics.

No, it is not “just a fetish”

Many, if not most, gender variant people go through a phase where they question their own feelings and experiences. “It is only a fetish, right?” they ask, partly hoping that the answer is “yes”, so that they can stop dreaming about living the life of their target gender.

Doc Impossible has written a great article analyzing the role of kinks and fetishes plays in all kinds of people, cis and trans, and concludes that nothing can be said to be “only a fetish”.

Trans people who have not transitioned may, for instance, fantasize about crossdressing, forced feminization and/or body transformations.

The question we need to ask, Doc explains, is “what need is this fetish meeting?”

“So, a fetish is never about sex or sexual gratification in and of itself. Whatever sexual is gratification involved is only a means to the end of satisfying the sexualized need that that fetish is sublimating. That doesn’t mean that you don’t crave sex, or that it’s not a need at some level—but it does mean that it ranks on the third tier of Maslow’s hierarchy, not the first or second. That’s the tier that deals with authenticity and human interpersonal connection.”

All kink exists to meet other needs.

While kink is certainly stigmatized, being transgender is far more stigmatized, Doc writes, which means that many trans people feel safer exploring feminization and transformation fantasies than considering that they are some shade of transgender.

“I never tell people reaching out to me whether what they’re feeling is or isn’t a fetish, because I can’t possibly know. I can’t. I haven’t lived their life,” Doc writes. “And, frankly, neither has anyone else; anyone claiming they can speak with authority about what someone’s identity is or what is or is not a fetish is absolutely, totally, and completely talking out of their asshole.”

Yet, by the end of the article she reports that “Every single person I’ve ever talked to who was both wrestling with their gender and the kink question turned out to be trans.”

The kink fantasies gave their psyche a way of expressing a suppressed identity.

In other words: If you have cross-gender or crossdreaming fantasies (and have looked into the transphobic pseudo-science of “autogynephilia”) you should start asking the most important question: “What do these fantasies tell me about who I really am and my real needs?”

Read the whole article here.

New study shows that women have been, and are, hunters too.

Science have been used actively to uphold gender stereotypes and gender roles. One narrative that has served this purpose is that in hunter-gatherer societies men hunt and women gather. This division of labor has been seen as inborn and natural, and has therefore been used to defend a society where men work outside the home and women take care of the kids.

NPR writes:

Until now, the general sense among scientists has been that [the accounts of hunter gatherer societies] overwhelmingly pointed to men mainly hunting and women mainly gathering, with only occasional exceptions, says Robert Kelly, professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming and the author of influential books and articles on hunter-gatherer societies.
But Kelly says that the views he and others held of the typical gender divisions around hunting were based on anecdotal impressions of the reports they’d been reading, combined with the field work many had engaged in personally. “No one,” says Kelly, had done a systematic “tally” of what the observational reports said about women hunting.
Enter the researchers behind the new study: a team from University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University. “We decided to see what was actually out there” on hunting, says the lead researcher Cara Wall-Scheffler, a biological anthropologist.

Wall-Scheffler notes “our goal was to go back to the original ethnographic reports of those populations and see what had actually been written about the hunting strategies.”

Their findings — published in the journal PLOS One this week — is that in 79% of the societies for which there is data, women were hunting.

An Awá woman holds hunting bows and arrows in Brazil’s Caru Indigenous Territory in 2017. Photo: Scott Wallace.

The researchers write:

Evidence from the past one hundred years supports archaeological finds from the Holocene that women from a broad range of cultures intentionally hunt for subsistence. These results aim to shift the male-hunter female-gatherer paradigm to account for the significant role females have in hunting, thus dramatically shifting stereotypes of labor, as well as mobility.

To be fair, a lot of researchers have questioned these stereotypes before. The main culprits have been researchers from a field called “evolutionary psychology”, a discipline notorious for its development of pseudo-scientific theories aimed at reinforcing gender roles.

However, the narrative has spread to text books and popularized versions in the media. It fits the prejudices of many and is therefore considered good content by many editors.

“I think that next to the myth that God made a woman from man’s rib to be his helper, the myth that man is the hunter and woman is the gatherer is probably the second most enduring myth that naturalizes the inferiority of women,” says Kimberly Hamlin, a professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

It has fueled the idea, she says, that “men are supposed to be violent, they’re supposed to be aggressive – one of the core elements in the soup of toxic masculinity.”

Read the whole article here.

Why Are People Trans?

In the video below Lily Alexandre warns us that any explanation for why people become trans will be exploited by transphobes. If it is cultural, culture is to blame. If it is biological, trans people can be “fixed” or aborted.

The fact is that most experts in the field these days think gender variance is the end result of a mix of a lot of variables - genetic, hormonal, cultural, psychological - and of the interactions between these factors.

As far as transgender rights go, however, this does not matter. Gender incongruence and gender dysphoria are real phenomena, persistent, insistent, and stable over time. We know that the lives of trans people get better, much better, if they get help that addresses their needs.

Giving trans people room to live their own lives represents no threat to others.

Lily says:

I think people like us are a lucky coincidence, one of those things that emerges as an ecosystem iterates: marine mammals, bright-feathered birds, sunflowers, trans people.
The process isn’t ordained by a higher power, it’s a shared effort by all living things, causing one another with each interaction. Trans people emerge from the clay of the earth, like everyone else, and mold ourselves by some inconceivable blueprint, like everyone else.

Photo of trans woman by Igor Alecsander.

Estrogen is Made from Testosterone and other T&E facts that will Confuse Bigots

We been told this over and over again. Testosterone (T) is the male drug that makes men “real men”, and estrogen (E) is the female drug that makes women sweet and dainty.

This is a story that makes the hypermasculine narrative about traditional gender roles seem “sciency”. The fact is, however, that this is not how the hormones work.

Did you know that E is made from T?

Gemma Stones writes over at twitter:

If you block your testosterone receptors then your T says “fuck this I’m transitioning” and becomes oestrogen. Your actual hormones themselves can change sex. This is a biology fact.
“Can people change sex” seems like a really fucking dim question in the face of facts like this huh.
This is also why gym bros who take T sometimes get lil titties. your T receptors can only handle so much and the rest of it has to go somewhere! so it becomes oestrogen!
More hormone facts I’ve been told today: Pretty much all of the E in everyone’s body was once an androgen like Testosterone. This happens more in bodies with ovaries because they have more of the enzyme that does it. All oestrogen is transgender.

And here’s a fun graph showing that across a cis woman’s life time she has significantly more testosterone than oestrogen. again, smashing the binary thinking we have of these lil chemical boyos.

[This graph is from a tweet by the urologist Ashley Winter MD, who writes:

“So your whole life, you should have been shown a better graph. Like this one. With Y-axis labelling. Which shows that (in average over the lifespan), WOMEN HAVE MORE TESTOSTERONE THAT ESTRADIOL. Thats right. Every goddamn human has more testosterone than estradiol.”]

Photo from Barbie movie.

Transphobes have a very old-fashioned ideas about reality

Having discussed gender variance with TERFs and other transphobes for some time now, it strikes me that they have a very old-fashioned view about what the term “real” means.

Take the idea that gender can be reduced to “biological sex”. Indeed, they say that gender is biological sex. What does this “is” actually mean?

Why are genitals more real than the brain?

They must know that what they do as gendered beings is not the same as what they have between their legs, their gonads or their chromosomes.

When they fall in love, it is not their genitalia that fall in love. Their X or Y chromosomes are unable to feel a thing. It is the whole person who falls in love, body and soul.

Much of that experience is anchored in the brain, but the body rides along: A beating heart, flushing cheeks, fidgeting hands…

The same applies to their sense of being a man or a woman or a nonbinary person. This sense is not located in their penis or their vagina (although it may feel that way under some circumstances). It is, again, anchored in the brain and experienced by the whole body.

Yet, for some weird reason, they think that the genitalia are real, while what is going on in the brain is not.

The systemic nature of nature

Contemporary science, whether this is the natural sciences and biology or the social sciences, underlines the systemic nature of nature. This means that everything that happens is caused by feedback loops between a wide variety of factors: genetic, epigenetic, hormonal, cellular, mental, psychological, social, cultural or environmental.

Your life experience affects the way your genes are working. Your cultural upbringing affects the way courtships and romantic relationships play out.

1960s reductionism

So where does this bizarre idea that gender can be reduced to biological sex come from?

I think we need to go back to the 1960s and 70s, where there were strong reductionistic, positivistic or materialistic schools of science, especially in the natural sciences.

Their dream was that everything around us could eventually be explained by the smallest common physical denominator, namely atoms. Social processes were unreal, biology was somewhat “realier”, while the true reality was found in physics.

In psychology this lead to “behaviorism”, a school of psychology that refused to look at the mind at all, as what went on in the psyche could not be “objectively” observed and measured.

By the end of the previous century this kind of thinking was all but dead, but it seems that the transphobes have not caught up. I suspect many of them rely of what they remember from their own school text books (which always leave out the complexity of the real reality) and popular science of the mid 20th century. These misconceptions are then seen as “science”.

In total denial

When we point out that both natural and social scientists that actually have studied gender, gender variance and sexualities actually accept transgender identities and that the medical manuals (DSM-5 and ICD-11) see gender incongruence and trans lives as very real, they have to dismiss that as “gender ideology”. The “real” scientists think like them.

This is completely absurd. Not only do they not understand concepts like biological sex, gender and gender identity. They do not understand the relevant science, either.

What the transphobes do understand, however, is how to be cruel.

Jack Molay

An amazing must see cartoon about queer and transgender animals

Marcel Barelli‘s cartoon Dans la nature (In Nature) has won a lot of awards, and for good reason.

In a wonderful way it documents the diversity of animal sexuality and gender, documenting once and for all that nature does not care a bit about the binaries of bigots.

Marcel Barelli, the director, says:

“It was a long time that I wanted to do a film about homophobia, but I couldn’t find a good idea. One day, I read a book about animal homosexuality [Animaux homo: histoire naturelle de l'homosexualité by Fleur Daugey]”.
“I asked Fleur Daugey, the French ethologist and journalist, to help me write a short film. We chose to write a film for children too; we decided it’s possible to talk about this to children. We don’t even need to talk about sexuality, just about love and feelings of love between the animals”.

“I prefer not to use the term ‘natural’ here, but homosexuality is everywhere. It is in insects, it is in animals; there is nothing bad about it.”

Note also that the movie not only covers same sex relationships. It also looks into gender diversity and animals that change sex.

PS

Some will probably say that using words like “queer”, “gay” and “trans” is misleading. From a scientific point of view that might at least be partly true, but when we discuss the diversity of gender and sexuality in humans, it makes sense to look for similar phenomena in animals. It is not a coincidence that we find same-sex relationships and shifting genders in nature as well. Humans are, after all, animals too.

Photo of Marcel via Swiss Films.

More:

The Woke Conspiracy

Over at twitter Typewriter Monke (@tpwrtrmnky) explains why the Chemistry Agenda has gone too far. If the four elements were good enough for or forefathers they are good enough for us (#TraditionalValues):

The elements are air, water, earth and fire. We shouldn’t redefine concepts that have been known since ancient times to suit the chemistry agenda!

And look at the queer pride colors of the so called “Periodic Table of Elements”! They are solid proof of the sinister goals of the Chemistry Cabal:

We take pride in the following fundamental principle: Any scientists that disagree with our understanding of the world are part of the Woke Conspiracy. Any kind of science that can be adapted to our agenda is real science, even if we have to misrepresent it to make this work.

There are only four elements. Get over it!

New research shows that only 0.3% regret gender affirming surgery

A peer reviewed paper in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports that only 0.3 percent of trans people who have had sex reassignment surgery requested reversal surgery or transitioned back to their gender assigned at birth.

Let us put this into perspective: Research by Medical Accident Group found that 65% of people who have had plastic surgery regret having gone through the procedure. Most of them are – we guess – cisgender people. Yet that surgery is not on the political agenda.

Anti-transgender politicians and activists are aggressively attacking surgery for transgender people, however, arguing that they are protecting trans people from making a mistake. They trans people are not making a mistake.

Out of 1989 individuals included by the researchers, six requested reversal surgery or detransitioned. A 0.3 percent regret rate is extremely low. And keep in mind that many of those who do regret transitioning are doing so because of a transphobic environment, and not because they were wrong about their gender identity.

For comparison: A recent meta study of gender affirming surgeries found that prevalence of regret after gender affirming surgery was, on average, 1 percent. The meta study included data from a total of 27 studies, pooling 7928 transgender patients who underwent any type of gender affirming surgery.

In other words: The arguments made by anti-trans activists are based on lies and misinformation.

Illustration photo: Drs Producoes