Did you hear the one about…

Or, Silly Objections

I’ve read and heard so many beyond silly objections to the Two Type Taxonomy of transsexual & transgender etiology that I thought I would start memorializing them. These are all actual objections I’ve heard from transwomen who are in denial of the science. This will be an ongoing post, with updates occurring as I feel like writing, so I won’t be dating the addenda as is my usual custom.  I will be adding more as I hear or remember more such silliness.  Of course, many of these objections have been thoroughly addressed and laid to rest here in my over one hundred essays to date.  Consider finding them on your own as an easter egg hunt by searching / reading all of my blog essays.

Or, better yet, randomly assign them to squares on a card then each time you see one of these objections voiced in the transgender community mark your card, and be sure to invite your friends to play Silly Objections Bingo!

If, as you read them you notice a pattern of contradictions, you are right.  This demonstrates that their objections are invalid.  The only thing that they agree on is their anger and denial about the easily observed two type taxonomy and of the role that autogynephilia plays in the development of one of them.

“My sarcastic decision tree graph lampooning the taxonomy proves it is bunk” (No it only proves you don’t understand it.)

“My forty minute youtube rant proves that autogynephilia is bunk!”

“Autogynephilia can’t be the reason late transitioners transition because HRT would reduce their libido and they would lose interest in transition.” (Interestingly, that does happen to a very small minority of them)

“Autogynephilia is just an effect of gender dysphoria.” (Reversing the arrow of causation)

“Autogynephilia is just an effect of being transgender and attracted to women while living in a male body.”

“Autogynephilia isn’t a thing.  Its just sexual expression on the wrong hormones.” (Yet, fully 50% of gynephilic transwomen report extensive autogynephilic arousal even years after HRT and SRS.)

“Autogynephilia isn’t a thing.  Its just a word with ‘-philia’ at the end coined to sound like a perversion.”

“That’s not autogynephilia, that’s GENDER EUPHORIA!  It’s natural to have erections when one is happy.”

“Yes, I get erections when I dress in women’s clothes, but they are just involuntary.” (Ahem… that’s the point.)

“Early transitioners don’t have autogynephilia because they got to transition before their gender dysphoria got so bad like mine did.”

“Early transitioners didn’t express autogynephilia because they started HRT (or puberty blockers) before they developed erections.” (–ahem… no!–)

“No one would turn their life upside down for a sexual fetish!”

“Autogynephilia only occurs in cross-dressers, not transsexuals.”

“There can’t be two kinds of transsexuals, because nobody uses the word ‘transsexual’ anymore.”

“Autogynephilia doesn’t exist; fetishistic cross-dressers are literally getting off on the clothes themselves.”

“Women are autogynephilic too! It’s just normal female sexuality.  They are just ‘female embodiment fantasies’ ” (ahem… women don’t get off just because they are female…)

“Of course late transitioners are more masculine than early transitioners, it’s because they are lesbian.” (The difference being that lesbians aren’t autogynephilic, see above)

“Autogynephilia is not a thing. Flat out. Period!”

“The Two Type Taxonomy is bunk… and you’re an AGP too because you’re smart!” (You can’t have it both ways.)

“Straight (androphilic) transwomen are autogynephilic too!”

“Pseudo-androphilia does not exist.”  (despite many AGP-TS describing it in themselves)

“There can’t be two types because sexual orientation and gender identity aren’t related.”

“Straight (androphilic) transwomen just transition earlier because they need to date men.”

“There’s a part of the brain that proves that (all) transsexuals have female brains.”

“Brain research shows that (all) transsexual brains are intersexed.” (No, the research only shows that ONE of the two taxons can be described as such.)

“The existence of intersex people proves that transsexuals are ‘real’.”

“I would have transitioned as a teenager too if I had known I could.”

“I would have transitioned early but society wouldn’t let me.”

“All transsexuals are the same.  Some just transition at different times.”

“I was feminine when I was young too but hid it from everyone.”

“I have known I was transgender since I was seven years old… so I can’t be autogynephilic.”

“This theory is wrong because my narrative doesn’t fit your description of either type.” (science isn’t interested in what you SAY, only in what you DO)

“Not ALL transwomen fit the two types!” (the data says otherwise)

“I’m 90% HSTS and only 10% AGP” (Its taxonic, one or the other, its like being pregnant, no one is 10% pregnant.)

“Blanchard, Bailey, Lawrence, and everybody else that support this are just transphobic.”

“Only cultist believe in AGP and HSTS because it “sounds right”. It’s a trap not much different from what cult leaders use.”

“The concept of autogynephilia was invented by transphobes to make us appear to not be real.”

“That’s just TERF propaganda.”

“That theory is sexist!”

“They (supporters of the two type taxonomy) are just confusing correlation with causation.” (ignoring that causation REQUIRES correlation)

“You can’t use Bradford Hill’s criteria, that’s only for epidemiology, not psychology”. (ignoring the existence of psychiatric epidemiology, including a book by that title)

“That theory is so out of date.” (Theories can be disproven but they don’t simply get old and die.)

“… forty year old crank theory…”  (See above)

“That article was written in 2017, long enough for it to be accepted as widely accepted as science, and yet…”  (–ahem… actually it has been, by actual scientists..  See above.)

“The researchers conducting all those studies weren’t objective” (Ignoring that data doesn’t care what the researchers think.)

“Autogynephilia? Blanchard just made that up.” (No, but he did NAME it.)

“Blanchard is over simplifying.”

“Blanchard is a sexual predator and a chaser” (No, Blanchard is gay and gay men are never chasers, and wouldn’t effect the validity of the science in any case.)

“Blanchard and Bailey are full of shit.” (without explaining how)

“Blanchard is a joke in scientific circles” (really?  A scientist whose papers have been cited by over 14,000 other papers?)

“Blanchard recanted and withdrew all support for the theory.”  (No, he did not.)

“No one in the psychology / psychiatry field supports that.  It’s not in the DSM.”  (-ahem- yes it is)

“There’s no proof.  It’s only a theory.  That data has never been replicated.” (ignoring the over half-dozen referenced peer reviewed papers with data from over a thousand subjects)

“That essay is just anecdotal.”  (see above)

“It’s just a theory mired in misogyny”  (misusing the word “theory” and misrepresenting it as well)

“I have a list of androphilic transwomen who were first born so the Fraternal Birth Order Effect is wrong!”  (Ahem, the FBOE is a population level effect, not an individual universal one)

“That data is fraudulent! (pointing to a peer reviewed paper published by well established clinicians that have helped hundreds of transfolk to transition)

“Psychoanalysis is fake.”  (Yes, that was not science… but the two type taxonomy has NOTHING to do w/ psychoanalysis.  Thus this is literally a strawman / red herring.)

“That theory is pseudo-science.”

“AGP is junk science.”

“That hypothesis is unfalsifiable so it is pseudo-scientific bullshit!” (ignoring the fact that autogynephilia and sexual orientation are directly observable behaviors)

“Oh, I get it!  You’re just like an anti-vaxxer into fringe theories.”

“You are a conspiracy theorist!”

“You guys are just a bunch of flat-earthers!”

“Wow, it’s like hacks can’t cite other hacks or something.  I bet flat earthers can cite each other as ‘credible sources’ “

“This is just bringing back phrenology!”

“Blanchard is calling older transitioners that don’t report arousal to cross-dressing lairs.  That’s unscientific!” (actually, lying to researchers about one’s intimate sexual life is well known)

“Blanchardianists claim that androphilic transwomen are just gay men who want sex with straight men… that’s transphobic!”  (No, that’s NOT what the theory says.  This is a strawman.)

“Blanchard says that androphilic transwomen are just confused homosexuals”  (No. See above.)

“That theory has been debunked by scientists.”  (without citation – and no it hasn’t)

“There’s no diagnostic clinical data” (ignoring multiple studies from gender clinics)

“But the Nuttbrock paper said…” (ignoring the actual Nuttbrock data which does not agree with their claim)

“Oh that stuff, that was so ’90s, but there was never any empirical evidence.” (ignoring copious studies w/ empirical evidence)

“That paper is fake, Dr. Meltzer is a friend of the community; he would never have given Lawrence access to his patients.” (unaware that Meltzer and Lawrence are friends)

“Well, I won’t accept it until there is research by someone other than… (fill in the blank, perhaps with Lawrence, Bailey, Cantor, Smith, Nuttbrock, or anybody else who has already done papers that show evidentiary support for the two type taxonomy)”

“Well, I won’t accept it until that paper is peer reviewed by someone other than… (fill in the blank, perhaps with Lawrence, Bailey, Cantor, or anybody else who has already done papers that show evidentiary support for the two type taxonomy)”

“She (me) didn’t cite any references in her FAQ. (ignoring the copious citations in the over 200 essays in this blog and the bibliography.)

“Well, I won’t accept it until I see… (impossibly difficult data to get).”

“It’s unethical for cisgender people to research us.  Only we should be allowed to do so.” (Science doesn’t work that way and also ignores that multiple transfolk have researched this and found evidence supporting the two type taxonomy.)

“We shouldn’t do the science because it will hurt the community!” (Classic logical fallacy of ‘argument to consequences’)

“We shouldn’t talk about this openly until we have won all of our political goals. (See above.)

“This sh!t is just made up to divide the community.”

“Nobody who is transsexual accepts this theory.” (…ahem…)

“You only support that because you want people to think you are one of the ‘good kind’ of transsexual.” (Projecting their own autogynephilic value system that having been naturally gender atypical since birth is “better”, combined with anger & jealously because of it.  No, HSTS do NOT share that belief.)

“Straight (androphilic) transsexuals all think they are better than us!” (See above)

“She (me) is truscum!” (If you mean that I differentiate those with gender dysphoria from those that don’t, guilty as charged)

“You just dress up your low self-esteem as science!” (Yep, I’ve personally controlled all the science papers published in the last 100 years to make myself feel better.)

“That means that you are just a weak gay man who pretends to be woman to have sex with straight men?!?” (snarky strawmen won’t move me)

“You are just spouting patriarchal bull shit!”

“This is just ‘True Transsexual’ bull shit!”

“You just hate older transitioners!”

“You have an agenda!!” (yes, a search for knowledge)

“The tone of your essays…”

“I’m not reading anything on WordPress.”

“So what if you wrote a book?”

“What makes YOU such an expert?”

“Your statistical analysis wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman science class” (First, this blog is for a lay audience, 2nd, I cite actual data from peer reviewed science papers that include said statistics, third, if you want to evaluate the data yourself, you are welcome to do so.)

“This theory completely ignores the existence of transmen!” (No, they also show signs of having two types.)

“This massively ignores bi/pan folk.  How do you explain away them?” (No, it doesn’t.  They are ‘non-homosexual’ and the data shows that they are autogynephilic.)

“This theory doesn’t explain all of the other non-binary gender identities.” (ahem… actually it does – an “identity” is not an etiological taxon)

“There are hundreds of different types.” (failing to provide evidence of such as actual etiological taxons – see above)

Who Knows Best?

Video Review:  Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?

I just finished viewing BBC Two’s documentary on the contraversy about whether the “affirming” model is best for gender dysphoric, potential transkids.  It is well worth viewing.  It covers the full ground while (mostly) being sensitive to the transcommunity.

But sadly, it fails in several key respects.  One, it completely fails to mention that transkids are nothing like adult transitioners.  At times we catch B roll scenes of adult transsexuals, which one instantly recognizes as autogynephiles.  So this failure to distingish the two may lead naive viewers to mistakenly equate the two.

Also unhelpful, the documentary interviews one person who frankly had no idea what she was talking about regarding sexual dimorphism of the human brain. While correctly saying that one couldn’t simply look at a brain and say whether it came from a man or a woman, she fails to mention that we can see statistical trends.  But worse, she flat out states that brains only become ‘gendered’ by living in a gendered society, completely ignoring research that shows the correlation with sexual dimorphism of the brain and sexual orientation.

The areas that the documentary does cover well is the well known phenomena of desisting of gender dysphoria in most gender atypical young children by the time that they are twelve or so.  They interview a girl who had been extremely dysphoric as a younger child who desisted at puberty.  As I’ve discussed in a previous essay, 80% of such dysphoric children do desist.  The video also mentioned that most of the desisting boys will grow up to be conventional gay men and not transgender.  However, the video introduces a straw man, lumping all “transgender activists” together as saying that we all wish to sweep this inconvenient fact under the rug.  Fortunately, though it was not well show-cased, this was (partially) shown to be untrue as they interviewed an FtM transman / activist / gender therapist who acknowledged this in passing, though he also contradicted himself and made an outright lie in stating “If someone says that they are transgendered, than chances are that they are transgendered”.  We know that this is simply untrue for pre-pubescent children.

The documentary interviews both Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker.  I felt Dr. Blanchard was well spoken and articulate.  But frankly, and this truly surprised me, I came away feeling far less sympathy for Dr. Zucker than before.  Perhaps the editors are partly responsible, in that they used some odd frame editing at times, perhaps they chose the quotes where Zucker was the least sympathetic?  But Dr. Zucker seemed to lack all empathy for these kids and never once affirmed that transition was a viable option that should be considered for persistors.  Further, one got the opinion that Dr. Zucker was taking credit for his treatment having lead to desisting outcomes, that from his attitude while speaking, he would consider a better one than persisting.  (As a persister myself, having been “treated” with just the type of play therapy and later direct talk therapy that he outlines, I find that attitude offensive.  For the record, I firmly hold that neither outcome is better than the other.)  He even insinuated that parents who are ‘affirming’, who helped their children transition, are homophobic, refering to a remark, that may likely be apochraphal, supposedly a quote from a parent, “Well… at least they’re not gay.”  (Most parents who are homophobic are even more virulently transphobic; like my father who begged me not transition, promissing that he would look the other way when I had boyfriends over – just like he did with his gay brother.)  What really was disturbing was his strong attempts to pathologize all gender atypical and dysphoric children as suffering from a wide range of mental illnesses, which was echoed by one of his former colleagues, specifically arguing against the oft noted concerns regarding reaction to stigma (that is, Zucker and his former colleage questioned the conventional wisdom that transkids are depressed and anxious because they are teased, bullied, and considered a dissappointment and embarrassment to family and peers).  Frankly, I was dismayed.

The real heros of the documentary are the transkids who were interviewed.  One’s heartstrings were tugged, as one would expect, but these kids also told their stories with brutal effect.

All in all… a must see.

If you are in the UK, you may watch the video here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088kxbw

Further Reading:

Essay on Desisting and Persisting Gender Dysphoria in Gender Atypical Children

Advice to Parents of Transkids

When in the Course of Human Events…

Or, Why The Two Types of MTF Transsexuals Should Be Recognized and Treated Separately.

These past few years has been an interesting one from the standpoint that we are seeing more papers supporting the Fruend / Blanchard Two Type Taxonomy in that Blanchard’s prediction that the two types would have differential neural correlates (brain differences).  But this past year, we saw two very important papers from Hsu et al. {See previous essay} when combined with previous papers by Blanchard and Veale, lend powerful support to what a number of ‘early onset’ MTF transwomen have been saying more sotto voiced, as Velasques did,

“Teen hsts should not be required to attend support groups for older transsexuals. The two groups have nothing in common and many of us have had upsetting experiences being forced to attend meetings with people who have had a transvestic etiology as opposed to a homosexual one.”

Quite simply, autogynephilic transwomen are sexually attracted to, sexually objectify, and inappropriately romantisize ‘early onset’ transwomen and our lives.  Further, they are given licence to make pruriently inappropriate comments and questions regarding such youngsters appearance, attractiveness, genital surgical status, and sexual experiences under the guise that “we are all just girls here”, comments and questions that would not occur in groups of only transkids, and certainly not from women.  As I put it in my 2009 essay on the Transkids website,

“In transsexual support groups, homosexual transsexuals are in a minority position from the beginning. It is human nature to seek out those like themselves, so occasionally an HSTS finds a support group, but soon feels out-of-place and uncomfortable, unable to relate to AGPs and the issues that AGPs most want to discuss. Unless the support group is moderated by an experienced therapist, the naturally more masculine and dominant AGPs, accustomed to male privilege, will tend to monopolize the conversations. Further, since a portion of the AGP population is strongly attracted to other transsexuals, especially to those who are physically and behaviorally more feminine, the HSTS minority may be subject to unwanted sexual advances from the AGP majority. Naturally, finding no real support for, or mirroring of, her own concerns, and made uncomfortable by sexual objectification, the lone HSTS will quickly drift away, leaving the support group to the AGPs.”

Both of these quotes actually understate the problems when ‘early onset’ transwomen are required to attend therapy with autogynephilic transwomen.  We now have laboratory and survey evidence that all autogynephiles, not just a “portion”, are strongly, in fact preferentially, attracted to gynandromorphs, that is, pre-operative, young, physically and behaviorially feminine ‘early onset’ transkids.

I can just hear my reader’s thoughts, “So what?  Lots of people find themselves the subject of attraction.  They deal with it just fine.”  Yes, but consider for a moment that we are talking about young, naive, teenagers and young adults who first attend such therapy sessions with the nearly explicit assumption that they will be in a group of transwomen “that are just like them”.  If your only model of who and what ‘transsexuals’ are is yourself, and perhaps the popular culture’s ever-present mantra of “a woman trapped in a man’s body”… then one will enter that room with no adequate defences to both the sexual objectification and to the mind fuck of trying to square the rather odd differences between one’s self and one’s experiences as an obviously gender atypical and androphilic person and the presentation and experiences (not to mention implausible histories) of the autogynephilic majority in the group.  In effect, that youngster begins to ask, “If these are transwomen… then WTF am I?”  I know I certainly had this rather dizzying experience the first time I met “transsexuals”,

“During my second semester in college, I met other transsexuals for the first time, at the [Stanford] clinic. What I found surprised and confused me. They did not seem to be unaffectedly feminine, without effort, but more like men who desired to be feminine and were working desperately to appear so. I was acutely embarrassed for them. Most were much older than me. Many of them had been, or still were, happily and sexually satisfactorily married to women for years. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to live as women.  If I was surprised and confused by them, they were just as surprised and confused by me. I was asked how it was possible that I had been dating, and sexually active with, men, especially as I was pre-op. I had dated four straight boys who had been high school classmates, besides the young men that I met when I left home for college. None of the others at the Clinic had ever dated a man.”

Even this quote from my 2009 essay understates the negative consequences that occured within weeks of that first introduction to autogynephilic transsexuals in that because of it, and the fact that I was experiencing severe housing and food insecurity due to having been effectively disowned by my family, one of these autogynephilic transwomen ‘kindly’ offered to take me in… only to later demand sexual favors in return when the alternative was homelessness.  Had I known the nature of autogynephilic sexuality and mendacity… or had I not been thus improperly included in this session in which Stanford had tacitly vetted the others, this “upsetting experience” would not have occured.

Just as it is inappropriate for ‘early onset’ transwomen to be required or encouraged to attend such mixed group therapy, it is even more inappropriate to place MTF transkids in the same hospital room with an autogynephilic transsexual, as I wrote in my parental advice essay,

“Insist that your child have either a room to themselves, or with another transkid of the same social gender and sexual orientation.  Under no circumstance allow your MTF child to share a room with an adult MTF transitioner.  The hospital administration usually has no real clue about the realities of transsexuality and transsexuals, and think that we are all the same.  No one would think of asking a young lady to share a hospital room with an older straight man… but that is in effect what is happening in hospitals on a regular basis.  Autogynephilic MTF transsexuals are sexually attracted to women, and often, even especially, to young MTF transkids.  Further, a fair number of autogynephilic individuals sexualize the very act, the process of changing sex, both in themselves and in others.  Due to a lifetime of socialization as men, and only limited experience in their new gender role, these individuals often do not recognize appropriate boundaries.  Do not allow your child to be so exposed when they are at their most physically and emotionally vulnerable point in their young lives!  (I myself had a very upsetting incident when I had SRS.  A few years ago, I accompanied a transkid to that very same hospital, who had a similar experience, 28 years after my own. )”

While I do not wish to share the nature of my “upsetting incident” in the hospital, I don’t believe that these experiences are unique to me.  In point of fact, it is not hard, by scanning the web, to find accounts of others describing “upsetting” experiences either in group therapy or while at a hospital for SRS.  In one case I recall, a youngster described the older transistioning members of her group, “pervy”, while another used “skeevy”, when addressing the unwanted and inappropriate sexual attention they received.

I feel strongly, especially now that we have such strong evidence to support both the Two Type Taxonomy AND the now well documented sexual preference for ‘early onset’ MTF transkids, that including them in the same support groups, group therapy sessions, and hospital settings, borders, if not crosses into, malpractice.  MTF transkids should not have to put up with unwanted and very inappropriate sexual attention / harassment just to get past the “gate-keepers”.

It is past time that WPATH recognize the two type taxonomy and that differential diagnostic criteria be included in the APA Diagnostic and Statical Manual.

Further Reading:

Information for Health Care Providers

S. Alejandra Velasquez, “Treatment Recommendations for HSTS Transkids”
http://www.transkids.us/recommend.html

Kay Brown, “The Invisble Transsexual”
http://www.transkids.us/invisible.html

Essay on Autogynephiles and Gynandromorphophilia

Essay on “upsetting” experiences with an AGP transwoman

Advice to Parents of Transkids

References:

K. J. Hsu, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey, “Sexual Arousal Patterns of Autogynephilic Cross-dressing Men”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308036975_Sexual_Arousal_Patterns_of_Autogynephilic_Male_Cross-Dressers

K. J. Hsu, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey, “Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women”
http://d-miller.github.io/assets/HsuEtAl2015.pdf

Jaimie F. Veale, Dave E. Clarke and Terri C. Lomax, “Sexuality of Male-to-Female Transsexuals”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bp2235t8261q23u3/

Anne A. Lawrence and J. Michael Bailey
Transsexual Groups in Veale et al. (2008) are “Autogynephilic” and “Even More Autogynephilic”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u473w370g11vx758/

Jaimie F. Veale, David E. Clarke and Terri C. Lomax
Reply to Lawrence and Bailey (2008)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/cm2531l3m3148377/

Blanchard R, Collins PI., “Men with sexual interest in transvestites, transsexuals, and she-males”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8245926

Blanchard R., “The she-male phenomenon and the concept of partial autogynephilia”
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a789560133