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Is being trans a social fad among teenagers?
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 12:01:00 +0000 UTC[This is a transcript with references.]
Should transgender teens transition? This rather personal question occupies a prominent place in the American culture war. One the one side you have people claiming that it’s a socially contagious fad among the brainwashed woke who want to mutilate your innocent children. On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy and could someone please summarise the facts in simple words, which is what I’m here for.
So what’s going on? Is it true that the number of teenagers who identify as transgender is rising rapidly? What’s gender affirming care? Does it work? And why are some countries, like Sweden, Finland, and the UK, rolling back gender affirming treatments for children? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
The vast majority of humans are born with an unambiguous biological sex that’s either male or female. While there *are some intersex conditions, they are rare. For the most part, biological sex in humans is fairly simple:
People with XX chromosomes are biologically female, have ovaries and grow breasts. People with XY chromosomes are biologically male, have testicles and leave the toilet seat up. It’s more difficult for some fish who can change their sex, but there are few fish among my subscribers, so with apologies to all the fish who may be watching, I’ll leave this complication aside.
Gender identity is as difficult as sex is simple. Gender refers to our internal sense of being female, male, or something else. As everything internal, it’s subjective and hard to properly define. Gender identity comes about by a mix of genes, acquired biological traits, environmental and social factors, and cultural expectations.
When someone’s perceived gender doesn’t align with their biological sex, we’ve come to call them “transgender”. The other case, when sex aligns with gender, is often called “cisgender”. Transgender people may feel like they are trapped in the wrong body. Not all, but some of them, are distressed by this experience, and develop what is called “gender dysphoria”, a recognized psychological condition which might severely limit their quality of life.
Some transgender people prefer not to draw a distinction between sex and gender, and instead distinguish between their experienced gender and the “assigned gender” or the “gender assigned at birth”. For the rest of the video we’ll do the same.
Being transgender is neither new nor necessarily detrimental to mental health, it’s just a not-very-common variation of normal human development. Personally I find it highly questionable there is such a thing as normal human development to begin with. Have you ever seen a normal human? I haven’t. More seriously, records of transgender people date back thousands of years. Several cultures, for example in India and Thailand, have communities of a third, neutral, gender.
Unfortunately, transgender people have historically been stigmatised in many societies, have been ridiculed, been targets of violence, and been forced to fit into the binary masculine-feminine pattern. In many places this is still happening, and in some countries, such as Indonesia and Nigeria, being transgender is still illegal.
The combination of social and physical challenges makes the lives of transgender people, especially young ones, difficult. A 2017 survey of 125 thousand American high school students found that transgender students were much more likely to report having suffered sexual violence while on a date, a problem that affects more than one in five, and about one in three reported having attempted suicide, that’s more than three times higher than the suicide risk among cis women.
This is why, starting in the 1970s, the medical profession took steps to prevent psychological distress of transgender people, the Dutch leading the way. This isn’t a history channel, so I won’t go through all the twists and turns, let me just tell you how gender dysphoria is defined today.
Psychiatrists classify mental disorders using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM for short. Its latest edition is the DSM-5-TR, that’s a 2022 update. It specifies gender dysphoria in children as a “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration” that is accompanied by “a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender, or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender”. It must be associated with significant distress, and at least five other symptoms such as a strong preference for toys or clothes stereotypically used by the other gender, or a strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.
That is the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, now let’s talk about the self-identification as transgender. The share of people who identify as transgender in the developed world is typically around half a percent. For example, in the 2021 UK government census, about 0.5 percent of people older than 16 answered “No” to the question of whether their gender is the same as their sex registered at birth. The US Census Bureau did a similar survey in 2021 and saw 0.6 percent identifying as transgender. A 2021 census in Canada, among people aged 15 and older, saw 0 point 1 9 percent identify as transgender and 0 point 1 5 percent as non-binary.
Curiously, though, the fraction is considerably higher among teenagers than among adults. For example, last year a survey from the Williams Institute at UCLA found that in the age group 13 to 17, the percentage of Americans who identify as transgender is about 1 point 4 percent, more than twice as high as that among adults. And while the percentage of adults that identify as transgender has remained roughly stable, that among teenagers has almost doubled from 2016 to 2021.
It’s a steep increase. In the United States, the number of gender clinics which treat children has grown from basically none to more than 100 in 15 years, just like the wrinkles in my face, a good reminder that correlation is not causation. According to data collected by the American health tech company Komodo Health for Reuters, the number of insured children aged 6 to 17 diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the US has increased from 15,000 in 2017 to 42,000 in 2021, so roughly a factor two to three. About six-thousand of them are either on puberty blockers or undergoing hormone therapy. One expects the true numbers to be somewhat higher because they didn’t count cases that were not covered by insurance but it’s probably not a huge difference.
To put these numbers into context, there are about 25 million children in the US in that age group, which means we’re talking about roughly three in a ten-thousand children who are taking medication for gender dysphoria. So we may be looking at a steep increase, but the total numbers are small.
Still, it’s puzzling and not an exclusively American phenomenon either. The same has been observed in the UK, where the number of referrals to the British Gender Identity Development Service has increased by more than a factor of 20 from 2011 to 2020. It’s also been seen in Sweden and in Canada and pretty much everywhere where they’ve collected numbers.
Curiously enough, the big bulk of the increase comes from children assigned female at birth, wishing to transition to male. This is weird because in earlier generations the ratio was the other way round or approximately equal. The same thing has been observed in the Netherlands, in Spain, the UK, Canada, Sweden, and is also the case in the USA: Most of the increase in gender dysphoria reports comes from girls.
Pretty much no one questions this. What is more controversial is the question whether the typical age of girls to report gender dysphoria is also changing and if so, why. In 2018, the American physician Lisa Littman argued, in a paper based on survey results among parents, that the girls being referred to gender clinics in recent years are different from those of earlier generations. They show an onset of gender dysphoria during adolescence but without prior symptoms, a combination that was previously basically unheard of.
Littman dubbed it “rapid onset of gender dysphoria” and suggested that it’s a case of social contagion. Adolescent girls get the idea from social media or their peers, or both, and come to believe they want to be men, hoping it will improve their lives.
Superficially, the hypothesis makes sense. According to data from the World Health Organisation, adolescent girls are twice as likely as boys to suffer from mental health problems such as depression and anxiety so they’re more likely to have a problem to solve in the first place. Littman speculates that girls that age are more vulnerable to social contagion than boys though there’s little evidence to back this up.
Littman’s paper was strongly criticised for not being a scientific study but a collection of experience reports from parents. The parents were recruited among frequent visitors to websites who are sceptical that transgender self-identification among teenagers is genuine. This means the sample is unlikely to be representative. Indeed, Littman herself writes in her paper that it’s a “descriptive, exploratory study.” She describes what those parents say. What to conclude from that is a different story.
A paper that came out in August last year claimed to have found evidence for the *absence of this rapid onset symptom. However, this paper was also strongly criticised for severe shortcomings, such as, most importantly for phrasing their survey questions in an ambiguous way and creative methods of interpreting their data.
The brief summary of this controversy is that at the moment there is no conclusive evidence neither for nor against the existence of rapid onset gender dysphoria, though it seems to be supported by anecdotal reports from doctors working in clinics who treat the children. The steep increase in the number of girls reporting gender dysphoria is however clearly evident in the data.
Another issue that physicians have brought up is that many of the adolescent children assigned female at birth, who are now presenting with gender dysphoria have other psychological problems, too.
So what happens to those children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria? The treatment regime is called “gender affirming care”. It starts with the child adopting a new name and pronouns that fit their chosen gender. They begin to change their appearance and join groups that belong to their gender. For example, if you want to be a girl, you join the physics club.
At the age of 10 or so, they begin taking puberty blockers, which are drugs which prevent the onset of puberty and stop the development of secondary sexual characteristics, such breasts, body hair, or collections of sanitary pads from every possible brand in existence, which is what’s happened in our household. Puberty blockers are used to prevent the dysphoria from getting worse and also to give the children time to make up their mind. The medication is typically given as injections, either monthly or every three months, or through an implant placed under the skin of the upper arm which needs to be replaced every twelve months.
If the children and their parents wish to go forward, then at the age of 15 or so they proceed with hormone therapy to induce puberty of the newly chosen gender. This means those assigned male at birth take drugs to block testosterone and instead increase oestrogen levels. Those assigned female at birth instead suppress oestrogen and take testosterone.
At least in previous cohorts, most children who took puberty blockers continued with hormone therapy. According to estimates from the Netherlands as much as 95 percent. Some of them might eventually choose surgery, to reshape genitals and breasts, or remove internal organs. But surgeries are almost always delayed until adult age. They are basically unheard of in children and very rare in teens.
The American health care system isn’t exactly known for being affordable, so you won’t be surprised to hear that the costs for gender affirming care in the US can be substantial. Costs for hormone therapy are typically 100-200 dollars a month, plus expenses for the doctor's visits and the counselling. Surgery starts at 3000 to 10000 dollars for top surgery, whereas bottom surgery typically costs around 25,000 dollars, and let’s be clear that those innocent-sounding euphemisms mean they’re cutting off parts of the anatomy that will never come back.
This is only the cost for the surgery itself, not the care they’ll need afterwards. There are no reliable numbers on the total cost, but experience reports that you find online say the total expenses for gender affirming care can exceed 100 thousand US dollars, even with insurance coverage.
Okay, so some people are making a lot of money with this. Does it at least work?
Puberty blockers work in the sense that they block puberty. Side effects include but are not limited to weight gain, headaches, reduced growth, and a significant decrease in bone density. The effects of those drugs are often described as being reversible, in the sense that normal development resumes once children stop taking them, but this is a dangerous oversimplification.
There are few long-term studies on people who have been taking puberty blockers, but those that exist show that bone density is unlikely to entirely recover, which means a life-long increase of the risk to break bones. Other studies have suggested that taking puberty blockers increases the risk of heart problems and may result in genital underdevelopment or fertility complications. Though I have to warn you that at the moment none of those studies are particularly conclusive because sample sizes are small.
On top of this comes the psychological problem that not entering puberty when all your peers do isn’t easy to cope with either.In 2016, the American Food and Drug Administration ordered makers of puberty blockers to add a warning about mental health problems to the drugs’ label after they received several reports of suicidal thoughts in children who were taking them.
So clearly you want to have a good reason to put your child through this. Unfortunately, the evidence that puberty blockers actually improve the mental health of children presenting with gender dysphoria is slim.
Some studies have found a small benefit in the reduction of suicidal tendencies, but these studies didn’t have control groups, so the benefit might have come simply from receiving a treatment and being cared for. Other studies have found that puberty blockers given to kids with severe and persistent gender dysphoria had no significant effect on thoughts of self-harm, or body image.
The UK’s National Institute for Health did a systematic review of the literature in 2020 and found that the results of the reviewed studies were “of very low certainty” and that the studies “suggest little change with [puberty blockers] from baseline to follow-up” in gender dysphoria, mental health and psychosocial impact. They also say that, quote “studies that found differences in outcomes could represent changes that are either of questionable clinical value, or the studies themselves are not reliable and changes could be due to confounding, bias or chance,” end quote.
Let’s then look at hormone therapy that replaces the hormones of the assigned gender with that of the chosen gender. This is usually done at the age of 16 to 18 or so, so much later than the usual onset of puberty.
When hormone therapy is later discontinued, some characteristics, such as skin texture, muscle mass, and fat deposition, are partially reversible. Others are not. Adam’s apple protrusion, voice changes, male pattern baldness and breast development are irreversible once developed. Yeah, once your hair is gone, even oestrogen won’t make it come back, sorry guys. The effects of hormone therapy on fertility are presently unclear.
Does it benefit the well-being of transgender people? Just a few months ago a team of American researchers published the results of a study on gender affirming hormone therapy in adolescents. They followed 315 transgender and non-binary participants aged 12 to 20, for two years.
In the abstract they claim they found an increase in reported appearance congruence, that is, how well the participants felt their gender aligned with their appearance, positive affect, and life satisfaction. They also found a decrease of depression and anxiety symptoms.
These decreases are statistically significant but that doesn’t mean they’re large. Life satisfaction, for example, increased by 2 point 3 points per year on a 100-point scale and depression scores decreased by 1 point 3 points per year on a 63-point scale.
You might say that’s better than nothing, but these numbers in and of themselves don’t tell you anything because the study didn’t have a control group. Many previous studies have found that life satisfaction in this age group on average declines, which makes you think they either had a non-representative sample to begin with, or the fact of being treated itself had a positive effect.
If you look closer at their data, it also turns out that the researchers only saw the psychological improvements for anxiety, depression and life satisfaction among those designated female at birth but not among those designated male at birth, a fact that interestingly enough isn’t mentioned in the abstract.
The authors speculate that the reason may be that they only followed the participants for 2 years, but it usually takes longer for trans girls to grow breasts of a decent size. So maybe it just takes longer for the benefits to become apparent. They also point out that social acceptance of trans women and trans men is different. Maybe that’s the right explanation, or maybe not.
As we’ve seen previously, young women on average suffer from more mental health problems than boys. And a 2019 meta analysis of 27 randomised placebo-controlled trials found that testosterone treatment is associated with a significant reduction in depressive symptoms in men. So maybe the hormones did it. But does it have to do anything with a gender transition?
Another issue pointed out by Jesse Singal is that the variables analysed in the paper are not those they said they’d analyse in the pre-registered protocol. This means they had an opportunity to cherry pick their results which makes their measure of statistical significance obsolete. I’m not saying that that’s what they did, but since they didn’t adhere to the protocol which they themselves pre-registered, it’s a possibility that their results are just random noise.
Another paper that is often presented by people favouring hormone treatment is one that was published in 2022 in the journal Pediatrics. They followed about 100 young Americans that were either transgender or non-binary. Or at least they tried. By the end of the trial only 64 were left. So we’re talking about a really small sample. About two thirds of the participants began a therapy either with puberty blockers or gender affirming hormones during the trial, the remainder served as control group.
The researchers observed 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidal thoughts among youths who had initiated puberty blockers or hormone therapy compared with those who had not. They saw no effect for anxiety.
In case that sounds good, here’s the fine print. The mental health of those who were treated did not improve. What happened instead is that the mental health of those who were *not being treated got worse. And in the end, the untreated control group totalled 7 people.
I know as a particle physicist I may have unreasonably high standards of statistical significance and sample size, but I’m not impressed. Aren’t there any better studies? No, there are not. There are at present no high quality studies that conclusively demonstrate these treatments are beneficial. The British National Health Service looked at this in 2020 and found evidence from 5 observational studies which “suggest that… gender-affirming hormones are likely to improve symptoms of gender dysphoria, and may also improve depression, anxiety, quality of life, suicidality, and psychosocial functioning” but they point out that those studies were uncontrolled and that that “all results were of very low certainty”
An often-made comparison is that between transgender identity and left-handedness, which was recently popularised by the British comedian John Oliver. Until the 1970s or so, children were forced to learn to write with their right hand, until it occurred to someone to just let them write as they wanted. Rather suddenly, a lot of people switched to writing with the other hand. This had nothing to do with social contagion, it was just that now they could be who they had wanted to be all along.
You expect a similar thing to happen with transgender identification, that as it becomes socially more acceptable, you see more people being comfortable being who they really are. And, so the argument goes, no one would put themselves, or their children, through a gender transition if they didn’t think it was really necessary.
But. For one thing, this doesn’t explain why the gender ratio of those seeking treatment for gender dysphoria has suddenly changed. And also, as much as I like John Oliver, it’s an extremely unfortunate comparison. You can switch a pen back from one hand to the other and back within a few seconds and without lasting consequences. Puberty blockers and hormone therapies are not as easy to undo, and we don’t understand the long-term consequences.
In summary. What I take away from the data is that the sudden increase in the number of teenagers identifying as transgender is both real and substantial. It’s also clear that the demographic group is markedly shifting, now heavily skewed towards those assigned female at birth, many of which present with other mental health disorders. Evidence that those children would benefit from puberty blockers or hormone therapy is slim with large uncertainties, the side-effects can be substantial, and the long-term consequences are mostly unknown.
Just exactly what is going on no one really knows, but the reasonable expectation is that the current increase in reports of gender dysphoria is caused by a mixture of two causes. Young people are more comfortable being openly trans *and some of them erroneously believe they are trans because they’ve heard so much about it. I’d say that anyone who insists that one of those possibilities doesn’t exist is pushing an agenda, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. The question is how do you tell these two possibilities apart.
This is currently unclear and this is why countries like Sweden, Finland, and the UK are asking doctors to hold back with prescriptions. Because at the moment they don’t know how to deal with the sudden surge of girls presenting with gender dysphoria, and they don’t want to do any harm.
So what do you think? Do you have children in that age group and are worried about them? Are you transgender and see the situation differently? Let me know in the comments.
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Comments
Katheryn S
Fantastic article. Thank you!
I'm happy now, such a discussion should be useful for more clarity. Your position has my respect and I see another perspective now
Being transgender isn't illness or pathology. They deserve to be regarded as equals to cisgender people, whatever culture they're in. They're not some seperate part of humanity.
Thanks. I wasn't aware then that there were problems with sources being from transphobes, apart from Jesse Singal. I don't think the video was all bad however and Sabine did make some important points herself.
Think you misunderstood, Colleen. You're right, of course. What I wanted to say to Celeste was, that even on a topic, where the facts are clear (global warming) you find different positions, people who deny the facts. How difficult then, to navigate through a topic, thats so unclear and polarized. This has gone a bit too far here, I guess. I worked on a boring night watch last night, had time to go through the web, and found a terrible irrelevant fighting on different 'responses' to Sabine. I remember, that you expressed to be thankful for Sabine's video at the first place. Sometimes the first view is the best. Anyhow, a nice day for you
Climate change and climate science are not equivalent to the very lives and experiences of individual people, as anything regarding transgender people and transitioning is.
It wasn't a good joke though, honestly. As though people who advocate for the rights of transgender people and for information, therapy & medical care to be provided to children regarding gender dysphoria are crazy. We're not. I just decided to not react online previously. Other people besides Watson have given their unimpressed reactions as well. The other concerns Watson discussed are valid. I am aware that Sabine wasn't seeking to misrepresent transgender people in her video - I also have seen her other interactions regarding transgender people, and LGBQTIA+ people in general. It's no good though to encounter such criticism of the people we trust, like and admire (as we do Sabine and others) without spending at least a few seconds evaluating if such criticism might be valid. I'm in no way interested in attacking Sabine as a person, because she's a rather good sort.
Yes Hauke, I totally agree
Well, just 'found' Rebecca and her video, must say, I was bored about her five minutes intro about Sabine's intro, that was just a joke, a sarcastic view on society. How petty and lame, to hang on it. If I learned something, then that it's easier to critisise and to take just one position, than trying to reflect both sides.
Hi Celeste, you think, you can make it right for everyone's opinion? "Unfortunate" might be, but I call it courageous, to go inside such a controversial topic. It is quite clear, that now, there are coming the shitstorms from both sides of the battlefield. Well, hope you stay being patron here, if you look on "climate change", you find the same polarized positions, although the situation should be quite clear in this case.
Happy Sunday! I understand and that wraps up in my 'accept people for who they are' point. There will be those that will decide to use surgery, and that's fine, that would be their choice. Development doesn't always produce the desired results from the person's perspective.
I think the issue is that she is concerned with some recent events in the USA whereas I have been addressing the general global situation and didn't say anything about those developments.
It takes a lot of time to collect references and I need to pay my people, it's as simple as that. I think that 2 Euro a month for 8-10 new referenced transcripts plus more than 100 earlier ones isn't asking for much.
It isn't just about expected behaviour, it's also about body image.
She wouldn't have needed to pay more than once either. Ah well.
Compared to your thorough work particularly on climate change, your solidly materialist perspective in your book, and your balanced take on trans sports, this is an unfortunate unforced miss, and at an unfortunate time in much of the US. I’ll always be a fan, but I think I’ll step back from patronage for now.
The first four minutes or so of Rebecca's video are mere introduction, the next four are spent disecting a quote that I believe to have been the result of awkward phrasing. After that, she gets into the nitty gritty and seems to raise some valid points. I would have loved to hear her take on SEGM, the group Sabine and her team cited in the section regarding health risks associated with puberty blockers. Too bad Rebecca decided to take a general stand against paywalls in scientific communication. I see her point, but I think in this case an investment of two dollars would have allowed her to go a lot more in-depth with her analysis.
It is actually valid criticism that Rebecca Watson gives, and Sabine would do well to take it on I believe. As much as I do adore Sabine I have to say she and her team did fumble the ball here, if not outright dropping it.
Well, I tried to open the website, but wasn't available. Don't know Rebecca Watson, but I've learned to be very careful about videos, that claim to debunk others. Often it's just a trying to sell people their own explanation, which is sometimes smart packaged nonsense, and the wish, to benefit from the more popular channel. Anyhow I admire Sabine's courage to do this video, it's a topic, you will never get reconcile everyone.
The gender binary is eroding but the concept of gender will be with us for a fair while, if not always. Just among my own friends and acquaintances there's 3 transgender women, at least 2 non-binary people and one who counts faerself as agender. (Pronouns are fae, faer.) My 3 trans friends are all more feminine than me by a long way. One non-binary friend is into showing makeup and skin care products. online. People can and do eschew the gender binary but there's still people for whom living as men and women with their own takes on what that means. Sexism, patriarchy and misogyny (that triad - enforced by conservatives and worse) are among the drivers of 'gender' problems, in my opinion, rather than people mixing or matching gendered style conventions based on male and female. There is more to that self expression to what our biology happens to be regarding gender, self-expression and life. This might not be as lucidly expressed as I'd like because I've not been to sleep yet but wanted to answer now.
ASDF
https://youtu.be/r6Kau7bO3Fw Rebecca Watson has some valid criticisms of your presentation of these data. In particular she is critical of your claim that ROGD is “[supported] by anecdotal evidence from doctors” without a citation (in the video). I’m disappointed that you put your references behind a paywall. That’s bad scientific practice. She does her best to track down references for some of your claims. You should consider changing your policy here. She also correctly points out that you misinterpreted the size of the control group in one of the studies. You should consider responding to this video. Be careful not to get too riled up when she calls you an “older physicist”.
Hi Colleen. There are two issues here: sex and gender. Sex is the M/F thing, that XX/XY, egg/sperm thing. Gender is the, as Merriam-Webster states it, that "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex' thing as in masculine and feminine. Therefore, to clarify, my point is that we should end the use of gender, end the use of masculine and feminine, and their dictating how M and F are to feel and behave then the trans thing will disappear as people will be allowed to act how they feel and accepted for who they are. The gender thing is a conservative problem, most social issues are, IMO.
For further knowledge: I've found this on Twitter, shared by someone who I'm following on Twitter who I think is transgender, and is a transgender rights advocate: https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/
I just found this from a transgender person I'm following on Twitter to help clarify about de-transitioning: https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/
Hi Jeffery, I don't entirely disagree with you, we need to not care about dividing people by their gender, assigned or otherwise. But we do have gender, it's not going away any time soon. As Sabine mentioned, there are cultures that have more than 2 gender categories of M & F. Westerners and many others have made it a BIG FUCKING DEAL to be transgender, in a negative way. If we accept, empower and enable people to transition to the degree they require whether that's just using their correct facilities, presentation, correct pronouns or full-scale body modifications, it's up to the individual. The best thing we can all do is take transgender people at their word in good faith, and use their correct namea and pronouns. We can do that for children and adults - just give them basic respect.
Thanks, you're entirely right, interesting, that an error on Y can cause a pre-condition, but logic. Of course the lady, I told about, just wanted to blame Sabine with that saying about CGTP, in the sense, Sabine wouldn't even know, what a woman is. For her, it was already to much, that Sabine reported about that topic. Agree with your comment at the below.
"ask chatGPT what a woman is" Two problems with that suggestion, it's muddy and chatGPT is incapable of knowing anything. For example, the muddy part, there are two pathways to sex in the fetus, the Wolfian (M) and the Muellerian (F). These exist in parallel and which is expressed is determined by genetics. Maleness must be expressed as female is the default. Therefore, if there is a failure in the Sex Determining Region (SDR) of the Y chromosome, maleness will not be expressed and so female will develop from the Muellerian duct thus resulting in a true female who has XY (M) chromosomes! People don't understand AI and so assume that it has brain-like capabilities. It doesn't, it doesn't 'know' anything. It merely is an algorithm that acts to minimize the error between prediction and data. So, garbage in, garbage out.
Regarding the DSM: I argue that 'gender dysphoria' is not a mental disorder, it is a social problem due to society developing a culture that dictates how people will feel and act in accordance with their perceived sex. Psychologists should have gotten this right in the first place and their 'definition' merely muddies the water as it implies that the way a person feels with regards to how society tells them that they should feel is the person's problem when it isn't. Psychology and psychiatry are not hard science, they are soft science as they are driven by belief and not hard data. This 'gender dysphoria' definition is evidence of that. The entire 'trans' thing wouldn't exist if people didn't use the idea of 'gender' in the first place, it's time that we drop using it and simply allow people to be who they are from their underlying genomic reality and not making them feel that they aren't 'right'. When enough people stop using 'gender' as a concept, it will die and so will the 'trans' issue. Of course, there will always be those that feel that they need surgery to 'fix' something, such is life, but leave that to adults unless the issue is a real problem. We'll leave that to the medical profession that should be based on solid physical reality.
But they ARE more pathological than the average person, as the data clearly shows. Whether their pathology diminishes after their resource intensive treatments has not been clearly determined yet. And as I've said, there is a huge difference between other cultures and this one: this one is itself pathological, though there are no scientific studies to show this clearly. Part of the pathology is the belief that we can have whatever we want with no consequences to anyone else or the life support systems that comprise our planet, as long as we can pay for it with money. Another part of the pathology is that many no longer have small groups (such as families and tribes) to offer resilience to the traumas of life. In native cultures, trans people do not undergo harmful, irreversible medical treatments. They might do inner work through vision quests, and are have special, well-defined roles to give meaning to their lives within the context of the tribe. Trans people are not just a curiosity for me (though I am interested in many other groups, as a social scientist). I think they are symptomatic of a social illness of our culture. But unlike right wingers, I don't want to kill them or send them away, and unlike left wingers I don't want to just give them whatever they think will heal them, because the illness is not just theirs, it is our culture's. We're going to have to learn some things that native people knew, about how to live well within a community, in a recursive way all the way from our internal community of psychological parts, to families, companies, villages/tribes, municipalities, nations, trans-national organizations, and the whole planet.
Transgender people have been born for thousands of years in multiple cultures and societies. They need to be accepted in our society, not pathologised.
People can decide for themselves what risks and side-effects they are willing to take on board, for the vast majority of people transitioning is worth it. Not transitioning kills the spirit, if not the actual person. There are resources and personal accounts for and by transgender people, go and read/watch those.
That's a pretty screwed-up assumption.
Transgender people don't need to be hypothesised about when you can read, hear & talk to them about their experiences. If you want to talk about intra-personal emotional regulation, cisgender people are often really bad at it but nobody ever thinks our entire set of identities is an issue for that. Nobody is treating *us* like some sort of curious topic to debate.
And also: some hamepering one's life is something necessary for living in an emergent, higher level of human organization, such as a family, tribe, municipality, state, UN, EU, etc.... And also on planet earth. Limits are real things, despite the fact that money can make us forget that fact.
As I've already said:"I feel the same way about other procedures that are about managing social appearance, like breast augmentation, penis enlargement, botox, etc." Self acceptance goes much deeper than wearing high heels, having pink clothes or purses.... And I suspect also that trans people are a canary in the mine for the other form of acceptance that I alluded to, which is inter-personal, or tribal acceptance
If a cisgender person had a body that was such that it hampered their life but there were ways to fix and improve their body's functionality and increase their well-being, would you say anything like this to them? I hope not. Self-acceptance isn't a fix for everyone although it obviously helps.
Affirmative care and cosmetic surgery for transgender people to match their minds' eye and ear to their bodies isn't merely cosmetic, and in cisgender people too there's some deeper needs than 'looking good' so arguably, at least some cosmetic surgeries and procedures are required. I am happy to have my cybernetics - glasses when I need them, a mobile phone for communication & internet access away from free wifi/broadband, computers I was gifted by relatives who didn't require them, my headphones for music... and the Big Mama for me, my pacemaker. That's the one I can't do without. I see transgender people's transitioning treatments and adjustments as on the same level of necessity and wellbeing as all my medications, my pacemaker and other accoutrements that keep me alive, able and ticking over.
Of course there is variation, as is true in any population. But we can test the hypothesis that there is a significant difference between the mean of this population with the general population far as bad intra-personal emotional regulation. If then we want to understand reasons for this, we can devise further hypotheses. I've come up with several already here, and others are possible.
There's no reason at all for transgender people to be markedly different from cisgender people in how they behave and regulate themselves, there's as much variation in transgender people as in everyone else because they're from as many different countries, social and ethnic backgrounds as others.
If there is a significant correlation between being trans and having poor self-emotional-regulation, we would still need to figure out the causation. Perhaps by doing studies on post vs pre-transition to see if the emotional regulation improves post transition. Anyway, I don't have any more time for this rabbit hole...
This might be what I'm talking about:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31961180/ and. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-018-9741-z#:~:text=We%20examined%20the%20role%20of,may%20vary%20across%20racial%20groups. I predict that trans people will show lower mean levels of intrapersonal (but perhaps not inter-personal) emotional regulation than the rest of the population (falsifiable)
Um, I doubt you are doing your stats right. There are very few trans people and very few shooters. So the ratios might be the same, and it's probably not going to be statistically significant. I wonder if there are survey data on abitity to manage emotions (including anger) thoug, that compare trans people with the rest of the population.
https://www.facebook.com/643603445/posts/pfbid0mRJPrnxowFNXSGJWnB1XwsvP9Cic1iHPcrSBzKP3XKPCLjEzK8AUJZoWkYSZFtxYl/ A few minutes ago I read this on Facebook, published by my aforementioned friend Drew. THIS is what it's like to be a transgender person now:
Colleen, your understanding of conservatives will be greatly enhanced if you read Our Political Nature by Avi Tuschman, and also anything by Jonathan Haidt (or watch his youtube videos), such as The Righteous Mind. They are not necessarily bigots, and even if they are, they have good socio-biological reasons for being so.
Transgender people arehuman beings, FFS. They're not some sub-type of human. So what if a transgender person was a mass-shooter, most mass shooters are cisgender. We're the killers, the rapists, the physically and mentally violent, the child-abusers at large in society in far greater numbers than transgender people are. They're not the major threat to society, we cisgender people are.
Still, even without surgery, there are many side effects, and we don't even know the long term ones, as you mentioned in your presentation. And even without surgery, there are resources consumed, and doctors getting wealthy preying on these poor people. Not to mention mental resources. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the other two important problems we have as a culture, that we should be paying attention to instead of trangender: dark matter and quantizing gravity, or geometrizing QM ;-) I want to transition into Sabine, but I bet I can't do it without surgery.
I am against having any surgery that is not strictly required. I find it bad idea to pass the risk of it just to look better. We are all on the verge of becoming cyborgs. We cannot live without shoes, clothes, glasses, mobiles...
I don't know anyone personally but you can look for them online, or for information about them.
They don't have to have surgery, in fact many don't. There are mental illnesses in which people begin to hate some parts of their body and want it removed or altered but it's a different problem. There are desisters, but few and there's no data just anecdotes that we didn't know how reliable they are, which is why I didn't talk about it.
Probably true for some transgender people, but I don't know what percent. The recent school shooting here in TN was by a trans person. Some trans people are probably as peaceful as British Liverpool (soccer) fans, or roman chariot team fans, i.e. they are tribal humans who hate the other team and can having feelings of belonging from that mutual hatred of the other team. And even if the long-term effects of gender reassignment surgery were benign, it's still a waste of finite resources for frivolous reasons, even if they or the insurance companies can pay for it. I feel the same way about other procedures that are about managing social appearance, like breast augmentation, penis enlargement, botox, etc. I think there is some data about how status seeking does not lead to long-term happiness (see Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis). Maybe the fundamental problem is that we need other more constructive and less resource-intensive ways of feeling like we belong to a tribe, a family or some other larger-than individual entity, something that global capitalism seems to go against (it dissolves group boundaries, down to individuals, or even down to certain dopamine-driven psychological parts of individuals )
Hope you both can come together, because in my mind, you both are right
I agree, thank you. Shows that there's still something wrong in the reflection of being a girl/woman in society, and therefore bad self reflection? More girls to physics clubs?
My opinion on the rise in AFAB children wanting to transition is that maybe they're seeing what's in store for them as teenagers and women and want out of being female. It's well-noted by people who've transitioned as adults how people's behaviour towards and perceptions of them change for better or worse for female-to-male and male-to-female people respectively.
Transgender and non-binary people want to live in peace, it's bigots that are making this such a big deal that transgender people and their supporters are responding to. Blame transphobes, not transgender people.
I would like to find people who are happy with their transition, 30 years afterwards. Can you refer me to these people?
No, I am very phenotypically liberal. Disgust is not something I feel very often. It's something experienced much more by phenotypic conservatives.
In my admittedly limited experience of surgery, it was horrid waking up in pain still because I couldn't be fully sedated and recovery was rather inconvenient but it was still in one way the easiest part of my recovery - I didn't have to do any of the work. :-9
And also of berserk conservatives who turn to violence because they have been pushed too far. Many years from now, liberal people toiling in concentration camps will regret wasting time on this silliness when they could have put more energy to real problems like climate change, overpopulation, deep political divides, rising totalitarianism, perverse incentives allowed by global markets which lead to multi-polar traps, etc.
Transphobes are unreasonably disgusted by transgender people. I hope you're not disgusted by them.
You need to find out more what people who are happy with their transition think, not just transphobes, you have taken on some bigoted opinions. I think being transgender is like bariatric surgery in a way - it changes the body, and takes a large commitment from the recipient both before and after any changes are made. There are chances of treatment errors and poor results but on the whole the patient's quality of life increases. That's what bigots don't want people to realise - transitining is a huge gain and transgender people are empowered by transitioning.
I AM afraid of doctors and surgeons though....
The next fad will be transitioning into pets. I mean pets have such a better life than modern humans in some sense
I just feel sorry for them, I'm not afraid (phobic) of trans people
And I don't know if there is anything else that is "physical" besides the enotional discomfort they feel, which I'm sure has physical correlated (like stress hormones?) But if they did some therapy, these physical correlates would probably decrease. Or maybe if they lived in a native tribal society both the mental and physical discomfort would decrease. Instead they live in a throw-away, remodel, consumerist culture, and this "get a new body" thing fits in really well with that
I do know some people who started transitioning and then realized what a hoax it was and how they were fooled. And are very happy that they did not go through with it
There aren't 'so many people' de-transitioning. Not every person wants/needs their genitals surgically altered and/or gonads removed. They can't just do Jungian therapy/inner work because the causes and treatment for gender dysphoria are physical as well as mental. With respect to you Iuval, you're repeating transphobe's arguments and exaggerations (mutilations?!) against transgender people and gender-affirming treatments. The effects of *not* transitioning can be devastating. The 'Science Without The Gobbledygook' video page has comments from transgender people, I recommend reading them for their perspectives on life and transitioning.
I realised that if males leave the toilet seat up, they definitely haven't peed on it. I was less annoyed about left-up seats after that. On a serious note, the phrases 'biologically male' and 'biologically female' are often used by transphobes; the rejoinder is that every transgender person is biologically their perceived gender because they're biologically human. (Also as opposed to being cyborgs, made of silicone, or whatever.)
Why is it though that they have to have surgeries/mutilations or other medical interventions for their disphoria? Can't they just do some Jungian integration of their anima/animus? Many cultures would just have these people do some "inner work" and then accept them into the culture, without needing to cut off genitals. There are now so many people who are trying to "detransition", because of all the side effects of transitioning. What if these mentally ill people wanted to transition to another species? Or to famous historical figures? Why are we wasting resources on these medications and surgeries, except that the medical industry can make lots of money from it? What is the environmental impact of using up all these resources? And then there is the issue that this is a sure way to piss off conservatives (phenotypically, not necessarily political conservative) who like firm boundaries. I am predicting that not many conservative teens want to transition. It's mostly rebellious liberal teens who want to piss off conservative parents and other conservatives in their lives.
That's what I meant. Anyhow I agree with Cosmacelf that doctors, parents have to be very careful with hormones, medication and, of course, surgery for kids. Just talked to my wife, she's teacher, and she confirmed for her school, what Sabine reported: the sudden increase of transgender 'problems' especially among young girls in the last years.
Right, I do my best
"People with XY chromosomes are biologically male, have testicles and leave the toilet seat up." Some men pee seated, so the seat stays down. Specially, if they are the ones that clean the toilet where they pee.
Do you have kids Colleen? The reason I ask is that most parents realize that teenager decision making is questionable at best. And mind numbingly stupid more often than not. Giving kids agency to permanently alter their lives isn’t smart.
It's very much a concern of transgender people in poverty. Access to therapy, hormones, surgery and support are aspects of inequality, poverty and discrimination that make life *more difficult* for poor transgender people. I'm lucky to have supportive family, friends and acquaintances but if I were transgender I would be rather worse off I reckon. It would be extremely difficult to deal with gender dysphoria and accessing transgender affirmative care without monetary resources.
Yes Colleen, didn't want to harm you, or anyone else. For me it's ok if everyone gets happy in the way, one likes. Perhaps I can't feel it, because I never had such feelings, and no one else among my family or friends. But the report of Sabine made very clear, that it's again a thing for rich people to change sex. Do you think that people in poor countries really have time to think about their sexual identity, while trying to get food or medication to keep alive?
The unhappiness and distress isn't 'just a hype'. I myself have felt like maybe I ought to be a boy but that had a lot to do with stereotypes and expectations. It turned out I'm not a particularly feminine-presenting person and I wasn't a 'girly girl' as a child. I had no positive media role-models to show other ways of being in any case. It's not fair to dismiss children's claims of being transgender as outside influences.
Funny, just two weeks ago, I had a little conversation with a lady from UK in the YouTube comments. She was very angry about Sabine, because of the video about transgender in sports last year, demanding, Sabine should ask chatGPT what a woman is. I tried to explain her, what (and why) Sabine does here in my opinion, and that not every point of view can be reported in a twenty minutes video. Think I convinced her to be a bit more tolerant and to like Sabine again. But, it might sound dark and reactionary, I had some understanding for that conservative british lady, that was really afraid about the influence on her children in school and their psychic health in the british school-system. For me it's just another hype, as if there weren't bigger problems to solve. But that's perhaps a solution for the population growth problem? - Just a joke.
In many countries & districts the age of consent for sex is under 18, if people are arguably old enough to fuck and reproduce at ages 14+ they're old enough to make decisions about their lives and their bodies - yes they *can* give consent. Other treatments and surgeries to increase comfort and wellbeing on children and teenagers treatments that are not guaranteed to succeed and that often irreversibly alter their bodies are performed. Appendectomies, organ transplants, appendectomies, etc are all examples. There's not 'no data' for transitioning & gender affirming care.
Last comment for the time being: Jesse Singal is a noted transphobe; quoting him is a detriment to the otherwise even-handed approach to the topic in this video.
Thanks Sabine ! I wish this video was shown to every citizen in America (at least). There's nothing like comparing numbers across cultures and time to suggest that the topic isn't as simple as extremes believe. But then again, extremes tend to simplify. And that, across cultures and time. But it's probably by construction 🙂
PLUG TIME: My favourite transgender and non-binary creators on social media are Sophie Labelle who writes novels, speaks and makes comics for both adult audiences and children whose comics are shared on her Assigned Male Comics Facebook page, the visual artist Art By Veya on Facebook, and my friend Drew, a transgender woman who runs 'The Stud Wall Riot' on Facebook and Twitter: comics made using Lego that are quite well-done. Please go check these people out! 😺
I'm no expert, I'm definitely fallible and there are probably always going to be things I need to learn about regarding being transgender, however I myself have questioned my gender and experienced dysphoria and dissatisfaction with my body, but much of it was brought on by sexism, gender stereotypes, my own neurodivergence. I had no knowledge of transitioning as a child and transgender people were mocked, the butt and punchline in movies and television and in humour. I have sought to learn about and educate myself about transitioning and gender expression myself (not 'gender ideology', that's transphobic ideology's coinage) and have met and joined in discussions with transgender and non-binary people over the last several years. My conclusions are that transgender people are irrefutably who and how they say they are, gender may well change throughout life to some degree, the gender binary is woefully inadequate; I welcome new language to describe who and how we are, and that no we're not brainwashed into being trans/non-binary/homosexual/bi+pansexual etc.; the harm is that we're mostly brainwashed that the default is to be cisgender and heterosexual so that's how we're expected to relate to everything. That's done quite a fucking number on me until I started to unravel it in my 20's. (I've also shared information+opined extensively on gender and transitioning in Backreaction and on social media.) I consider myself to be cisgender but also somewhat androgenous; if I had known more fully about transgender, non-binary and gender-fluid as ways to define my gender as a child and teenager I would quite probably define myself as non-binary.
I think doctors need to take a hard look at their Hippocratic Oath, first, do no harm. Oncologists routinely do not prescribe potentially life saving oncology drugs to stage 4 cancer patients because the data isn't 100% there yet. Yet others perform irreversible surgery to minors based on no data? And can minors give informed consent, or even worse should parents who are themselves caught up in a medical fad provide informed consent?
My thanks and commendations to Sabine. This video does show something that isn't mentioned but I think is vital - that as far as I could tell all of these people leading this research and the people cited opining on it are cisgender. The way to find out what at least transgender adults have felt and experienced is via asking, talking with, (online or elsewhere) reading, watching, listening to what they've said, and what else has been shown that supports transgender people's feelings, experiences, understanding and knowledge. I don't mean to patronise anyone. Thanks to Sabine for inviting transgender people to share their experiences in the YouTube comments.
Thanks. Pretty hard ground to navigate.
Rad Antonov
This was really well done!
