Gaming Transsexual Brain Sex Research

Another study done by Luders research group on MTF transsexual brains comparing them to control men and women shows a shift toward female brain phenotype. I’m sure this will be picked up by many transwomen and lauded as proof that they are “women inside”. Ummm… not quite so fast.

There are several issues to be addressed first. When I first learned of the study, I was dismayed that they had lumped the two types together. At this point in research history, this is inexcusable. In fact, the Luders group does know better, as they had cited Guillamon who specifically called out this mistake in past studies and recommended that they always be separated. Further, they didn’t look at sexual orientation in the control groups either.

This last may not have been that egregious, in that the control groups only included 24 subjects in each. The likelihood of including gay men and lesbians in such a small group is small and would not push or pull the results very far if there is a difference in brain phenotype from heterosexual subjects.

But lumping androphilic and non-androphilic transwomen together is not only a mistake, but given our current understanding based on previous brain sex research, which as Guillamon showed that only the androphilic type had female shifted phenotypes, guarantees that the whole will show a shift toward female phenotype for the whole subject group; which is likely the desired result of this current study, depending upon the ratio of androphilic to non-androphilic subjects, as the paper details,

Twenty-four transgender women (biological sex: male; perceived gender: female) were recruited through local community organizations and through professionals who offer services to the transgender community. To be included in this study, participants needed to self-identify as transgender women, report no history of hormone therapy, and declare the intention of undergoing estrogen replacement therapy. Moreover, participants were confirmed to be genetic males as defined by the presence of the SRY gene in their genome [53]. Six transgender women reported to be androphile (attracted to men) and 18 transgender women stated to be gynephile (attracted to women). The mean age of the transgender sample was 45.7 ± 13.8 years (range 23–72 years).

One might excuse this failure to examine the two types separately based upon the argument that the were already so few transsexual subjects and thus less likely to be statistically powered enough. But this is NOT a valid excuse. One could have done the analysis both ways. But I strongly suspect that would have defeated the ideological aim of the authors, as it would have demonstrated what those earlier studies also showed, that only the androphilic group had a female shifted phenotype. Instead, by lumping them together, one could give the false impression that MTF transsexuals as a whole show such a shift, if slight.

When I realized that they had lumped the two types together, I made a silent bet with myself, predicting that there would be a bimodal distribution, two “humps” in the data, indicative of two types, taxa, being lumped together. Sure enough, the violin plot of the transwomen shows exactly that!

Further Reading:

Essay on Guillamon Meta Analysis

References:

Kurth, F.; Gaser, C.; Sánchez, F.J.; Luders, E. “Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity” J. Clin. Med. 2022, 11, 1582. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11061582

Guillamon, A et al., “A Review of the Status of Brain Structure Research in Transsexualism” Arch Sex Behav (2016). doi:10.1007/s10508-016-0768-5

The Search For Groomers In All The Wrong Places

Child Sex Abuse (CSA) is wrong, no matter who does it or why.

Let me say that again.

Child Sex Abuse is wrong, no matter who does it or why.

Lately, homophobic and transphobic activists (lets call them who they really are) have been falsely claiming that LGBT people and allies who support transsexual children and teens are “grooming” such youth. This is a libel, a calumny, a slander, of the worst type.

Actual grooming is a practice of slowly gaining the trust (and sometimes fear) of a child so that one can perpetrate CSA with that child.

I know what actual grooming is and looks like. Please let me share a few anecdotes.

When I was nine years old, my father would take me to the bowling alley so that I might participate in a youth bowling league. Both of my parents also bowled in leagues. My father had worked at a bowling alley when he was in college, where he met my mother. The owner/managers of the lanes were neighbors and friends. Thus, I was well known at the bowling alley to all of the employees. It was one of my habits at the lanes to go to the little coffee shop in the building to buy a donut while my father practiced.

One day, as I sat at the counter eating my donut, a man sat down beside me and began to chat me up. He ordered a hot chocolate for me to go with the donut. I was very unsure about this man. On the one hand, his attentions rang alarm bells in ways that I had not the experience or knowledge to comprehend. I wanted him to leave me alone. On the other hand, I had been raised to be polite. Always.

Somebody must have seen and understood what was going on because suddenly my father was there. He was furious! He was yelling at the man to get lost. His anger frightened me. Usually when he was this angry, somebody was going to get ‘strapped’. (Recall this was the ’60s… and my father was from a working class, oil refinery town on the Gulf Coast, on the boarder of Texas and Louisiana, “Deep South” territory and mores. Corporal punishment was the norm.) The man beat a retreat. (I never saw him again.) My dad yelled at me to get in the car. He drove us home in angry silence. It would be years before I understood that he wasn’t angry with me. But at the time, I thought that he was. Further, I took it that it was me who had done something “bad”.

A year later, I was sent every Friday afternoon to “play” with Dr. Peters, a tall bearded man, in a room filled with toys… but only boy’s toys. Again, it would be years before I understood that this “play” was actually “conversion therapy” to stop me from being gender atypical / gender dysphoric. Dr. Peters must have felt that I just wasn’t connecting, trusting, him so one day, instead of trying to get me to “play” with the toys (which being boy’s toys, I had no interest), he took me for a walk down the street to an ice cream shop. He offered to buy my an ice cream cone. Can you imagine my reaction? Here was another man I didn’t trust trying to ply me with a treat?

Kay Brown with her adopted daughter Liz

Let’s fast forward a few decades. I have taken in my second foster child, only seven years old. She had “behavioral challenges” due to early abuse and neglect. No need to detail them. She attended a special school. No need to got into details there either. So, every day, a special bus would pick her up at my house and drop her off afterwards. One day, she mentioned that since she was the last child on the route, the nice bus driver would stop at a store nearby and buy her a treat before dropping her off at my house.

ALARM BELLS !!!

I contacted our Social Worker who went into action!

Whether or not the bus driver was attempting to groom my new foster daughter (later my adopted daughter) for sexual purposes, at the very least, he was deemed to be inappropriately setting her up to be so groomed by someone else! Whether it was a bus driver or a licensed therapist, such actions should not take place.

Now, on the other hand. Politically and socially supporting access to needed Gender Affirming Care in no way involves the above types of behavior. Parents, therapists, and physicians providing such care are not either. Calling LGBT people, our allies, and youth care providers “groomers” causes harm in two ways. One, it distracts from what grooming actually is and what actions are likely to indicate it, thus putting children into potential harm’s way. Two, it harms those who are falsely accused of being groomers.

To those who are calling any LGB and especially T folk “groomers”, I cordially invite you to perform an anatomically implausible act upon yourself.

More Proof That Transsexual Teens Persist

We have another paper looking at the number of transsexual teens that began puberty blockers and/or HRT who continue to take them into adulthood. That is to say, that they ‘persisted’. This is important because transphobic activists keep pushing a propaganda lie that most gender dysphoric youth ‘desist’ being such and detransition, to become “detrans”.

From the study,

“720 people were included, of whom 220 (31%) were assigned male at birth and 500 (69%) were assigned female at birth. At the start of GnRHa treatment, the median age was 14·1 (IQR 13·0–16·3) years for people assigned male at birth and 16·0 (14·1–16·9) years for people assigned female at birth. Median age at end of data collection was 20·2 (17·9–24·8) years for people assigned male at birth and 19·2 (17·8–22·0) years for those assigned female at birth. 704 (98%) people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up. Age at first visit, year of first visit, age and puberty stage at start of GnRHa treatment, age at start of gender-affirming hormone treatment, year of start of gender-affirming hormone treatment, and gonadectomy were not associated with discontinuing gender-affirming hormones.”

The latest paper adds another 720 subjects from the Netherlands to the 1,057 in the UK [Butler] study earlier this year for a total of 1,777 teens who began medical transition treatment. In the UK study showed that 94.5% of the teens persisted into adulthood while the Netherland study showed that 98% did so. Combined, the number is 95.8%. Round it off to 96%.

In this study, age at beginning treatment did not correlate with ‘desistance’, which is not the case with the UK study which showed that those that did desist, had been on the younger side. This is in keeping with earlier studies from the Netherlands and Canada that showed that those that desisted, did so BEFORE puberty, and thus never began medical treatment.

Once again, we have solid, reproducible evidence that transsexual teens are unlikely to detransition, to stop medical transition. Any who say otherwise are either misinformed or are willfully lying.

Further Reading:

Transsexual Teens In UK Gender Dysphoria Treatment

Age of Innocence (Desistence)

References:

van der Loos, M. et al., “Continuation of gender affirming hormones in transgender people starting puberty suppression in adolescence: a cohort study in the Netherlands”, Lancet (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00254-1

Butler G, Adu-Gyamfi K, Clarkson K, et al., “Discharge outcome analysis of 1089 transgender young people referred to paediatric endocrine clinics in England 2008–2021” Archives of Disease in Childhood (2022) doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2022-324302