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

Transsexual Teens In UK Gender Dysphora Treatment

In a spate of recent UK media there was a wild accusation that a “thousand” youths were suing the National Health Service for wrongly pushing them into transsexual medical treatments. But there is a serious problem with this statement. That number, a thousand, is roughly the TOTAL number of transsexual teens that have been treated in the UK from 2008 through 2021. Are ALL of them suing the NHS? No, the story is disinformation generated by a transphobic propagandists under the rubric of the “Big Lie” theory, that the bigger the lie, the more believable it is. In truth, very few teens would be unhappy with receiving treatment and most would be very grateful. (Though they may grumble about aspects of the hoops they had to clear to get it.)

I’m a US citizen living in California, so I have zero direct experience with the UK NHS and their gender dysphoria treatment system. But as I understand it, to get treatment, one must jump through multiple hoops, first convincing a (potentially transphobic) skeptical General Practitioner (GP) to provide a referral to the Gender Identity Service (GIDS). The GIDS does a psych and history evaluation and may or may not provide a referral to the Endocrine Service which may or may not then provide puberty blockers (PB) or cross-sex Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

If you were to believe the propaganda, you would be think that the NHS hands out HRT like candy on Halloween. They do not. Further, the real numbers from these clinics show that the number of teens treated is NOT indicative of an “epidemic” of gender dysphoria. Far from it.

We need to review some stats. The current population of the entire UK is a bit over 67 million people. The long time historical estimate of actual transsexuals, those who experience gender dysphoria, seek medical treatment, and live full time as the opposite sex is known to be less than one in ten thousand (<1:10,000). That includes those that seek treatment as adults. So, the maximum number of people we expect in the NHS system receiving HRT and later Sex Reassignment Surgery for gender dysphoria would be less than 7,000 people TOTAL. So, we expect, that the number of transsexual teens would be some lower number. And that is exactly what we see.

Consider the recent paper published in the British Medical Journals by Butler, et al. In it we learn that the NHS Gender Identity Services referred only 1,151 teens for evaluation between 2008 and 2021 inclusive. Of that only 1089 had known outcomes. Of those, 32 did NOT receive hormonal medical treatment, likely realizing that they weren’t actually gender dysphoric when confronted with the reality of what that really meant. (That is, they were likely falsely claiming to be “trans”, which has become a very popular fad among teens and young people such that there are likely over 500 people falsely claiming to be “trans” or “non-binary” for every actual transsexual.) Of the remaining 1,057 teens, 58 (5.5%) later elected to cease medical treatments leaving 999 that continued into adulthood.

Again, this is NOT indicative of a sudden epidemic of gender dysphoria among teens. In fact, it is perfectly in keeping with the number we expect from decades of clinical experience. Most especially, these numbers put the lie to the assertion that a thousand youths are planning to sue the NHS for medical malpractice. It also gives us an insight into the relative stability of gender dysphoria and of transsexual identities in teenagers, that so called “desistence” occurs before puberty onset.

Further Reading:

More Proof That Transsexual Teens Persist

How Many Transfolk Are There, Really?

Lost In The Crowd – The recent phenomena of young people falsely claiming to be “trans” or “non-binary”

Age Of Innocence – Clinical evidence that “desistence” occurs before puberty onset.

Reference:

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

Falsely Claiming To Be “Trans” Is “Cool” (NOT!)

Yet another paper making the mistake of interpreting teenagers ticking the box that says “I am trans” as actually being trans. When that happens, the rest of the data is nearly worthless, as in found in the just published paper by Turbin, et al. I’ve pointed out that this use of self-ID in online surveys, especially for teenagers is bogus. This shows only how popular it is, how “cool” it is, to say that one is “trans” or “non-binary”, NOT how many are actually gender atypical and gender dysphoric.

First, we know, from much more careful studies using better operational definitions such as getting a diagnoses as gender dysphoric, or from US Census and Social Security Administration records showing how many changed their name/sex so as to actually live as the opposite sex, that the incidence rate of gender dysphoria is on the order of ~6 per 100,000 people. That figure would also include “late onset” transsexuals who would not have shown up in studies of gender dysphoria in teenagers. Thus, if a study had been valid, we would expect that significantly fewer than six out of one hundred thousand surveyed would be clinically gender dysphoric.

But Turbin’s paper relies on surveys conducted in 2017 and 2019 with only ~92K and ~105K teens. Thus, we would only expect less than a single handful of clinically gender dysphoric teens. Such a broad community survey is not a good means to identify gender dysphoric teens in sufficient numbers to provide any useful insights.

But that didn’t deter Turbin. Since the survey has an inadequate (read: useless and silly) self-ID question, far more (false positives) were included as “trans”, etc. How badly off are numbers? They found 2.4% and 1.6% respectively. This is about one hundred times the number we expect to find. This is on the order of the incidence rate of exclusive homosexuality, NOT gender dysphoria. Could it be that these teens are conflating and confusing the two constructs? Superficially, this would make sense, given that homosexuality is highly correlated with mild gender atypicality. Or perhaps other issues are present?

One of the explanations for this large number of teenagers claiming to be trans or non-binary is a putative phenomena, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) in which large numbers of teens become gender dysphoric due to “social contagion”. However, there are a number of problems with this explanation. First, it has the poor evidentiary support. Second, for ROGD to exist as such, the teens would have to actually BE gender dysphoric. So far, that doesn’t hold up. While there has been an increase in the number of children and teens being referred to clinics, as those clinics have finally begun offering serviced that gender dysphoric teens actually need and want, those numbers are closer to the tiny handful that we would expect, not from a putative epidemic of ROGD. In other words, there is a disconnect between the number self-proclaiming to be “trans”/”non-binary” and the number seeking medical services for clinical gender dysphoria.

At this point, I would like to share personal experiences and observations that may shed light on this situation. I volunteered as a Court Appointed Special Advocate and had previously been a foster/adoptive mom. Since I am transsexual, I was paired with two “transgender” teens, one FTM, the other MTF. It was instantly obvious that the CASA program, his caseworkers, etc. had no clue and had mistaken a flamboyantly queenie gay boy who occasionally performed in drag as “trans”. He was not in the least bit gender dysphoric, and would actually become angry when misidentified as such. The other teenager was indeed a classic FTM transsexual, a typical transman. At 17, if you met him, you would instantly read him as a typical boy, into skateboarding and deeply in love with his straight girlfriend. In seeking resources for him, I recommended that he attend a drop-in group for LGBT kids. I had heard that it was very trans-friendly. He refused to return, but wouldn’t, or more accurately, couldn’t explain why wouldn’t go back. — Later, I had occasion to understand why from personal observation. Only one of the teens was actually an FTM transsexual. A large majority of the teens attending the meetings were not LGBT, but mostly feminine heterosexual girls who were very obviously falsely claiming to be “trans” or “non-binary”, demanding that everyone use “they/them” or even more odd made-up pronouns. There were a few gay boys also doing this, but they were clearly doing it to fit into the gang, to be cool. They made my CASA youth uncomfortable, uneasy, and feeling unwelcome. He was in truth what they were falsely claiming to be and the obvious contrast was disconcerting for all. Frankly, these teens made ME feel uneasy and unwelcome for the same reason. This was a novel experience after decades of working as an activist and community organizer in the transsexual community.

If the putative ROGD phenomena was actually comprised primarily of these girls, it would go a long ways explain it. This phenomena has existed in very small numbers for decades (I met one such in 1980) but exploded in numbers during the mid ’10s. Turbin in mistakenly according these large numbers of teens self-identifying as “trans” / “non-binary” as being so, tried to argue that these surveys proved that it was not a “social contagion”. I argue just the opposite, that it proves that such false self-identification IS a social contagion in the sense that it reinforced a latent desire by some teens, of both sexes, to do so to be “cool”. And if anything, if the numbers can be trusted, the drop over the two year period from 2017 to 2019 of 50% would indicate that the fad is fading.

Addendum 8/10/2022:

No sooner had I posted this essay up pops another news item talking about yet another study where the authors now claim that “trans” / “non-binary” / “gender diverse” teenagers are under counted. The number quoted? Seven percent! Worse, having found this new study, I learn that the primary author, Kidd, had an earlier study that said the number was ten percent! These numbers hark back to the earlier Wernick (2017) study had found nine percent. As I pointed out in previous essays, these numbers all come from the error of asking teens if they identify as “trans”, etc. without proper operational definitions and certainly never having validated these survey items to see if they mean anything more than the popularity of (falsely) claiming to be a perceived to be “cool” marginalized minority identity.

It’s long past time that researchers stop naively using unvalidated survey items and actually conduct in-depth interviews of these teens (and their friends and families) claiming these identities. I predict that these teens will not show ANY clinical gender dysphoria nor be very gender atypical when compared to control teens who are not claiming these identities, save for a few who will be homosexual. Far from being “gender diverse”, they will prove to be rather ‘gender ordinary’. Further, I predict that while sociologically and psychologically, these teens may be an interesting group, with some risk factors that correlate to their need to identify with a stigmatized and very RARE sexual minority, they are NOT the group that has any etiological or sociological connection to gender dysphoric youth. Also, if tested for implicit self-identification I predict that these teens will very clearly identify with their natal sex and not have a significant alienation from it.

A final thought. If so many youth are “Gender Diverse”, why aren’t there more such adults? Also, as adults looking back at our own high school days, we can recall knowing kids that would later come out as gay or lesbian, maybe a couple straight transvestites, but not 7-10% “gender diverse” kids. Could it be because most adults aren’t into following silly fads that make them feel “cool” or “special” and instead just be who and what they really are, gender typical?

As a transsexual, someone who was actually “gender different”, who began transition in high school in the early 1970s, I can assure you I was the only one at either of the two large suburban schools I attended, and suffered because of it.

Further Reading:

How Many Trans Folk Are There, Really?

Lost In The Crowd

ROGD Redux

Where Are All These “Detransitioners” Coming From?

References:

Turbin, et al., “Sex Assigned at Birth Ratio Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adolescents In The United States”, Pediatrics (2022), https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-056567

Kidd, K. et al., “The Prevalence of Gender-Diverse Youth in a Rural Appalachian Region”, JAMA Pediatrics (2022), DOI:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.2768

Wernick, et al., “Gender Identity Disparities in Bathroom Safety and Wellbeing in High School Students”, Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2017), DOI: 10.1007/s10964-017-0652-1

No. Iran Does NOT “Force” Gay Men & Lesbians To Be Transsexuals

For several decades now, I’ve seen the same claim made, usually from transphobic elements in the Gay & Lesbian communities, but increasingly in right wing heterosexual circles, that gay men and women, especially gay men, are “forced” to have sex reassignment surgery in Iran. They rarely have any actual data to back up their claims, only nebulous references to anecdotes that they heard from somewhere else. Occasionally this story shows up on a newspaper or magazine, usually of the tabloid / yellow “journalism” type.

It’s long past time to carefully examine these stories, where they come from, why they persist, and what the real facts are.

First, one must know that the idea of gays and lesbians being “forced”, or in modern transphobic parlance, “transed” is many decades old. The story is usually told that a “gender non-conforming” (read: gender atypical) gay boy or tomboyish girl / lesbian, is pushed to be transsexual by their homophobic parents. This is itself a strange notion, that homophobic parents wouldn’t be just as transphobic. It also stretches credulity in that it pre-supposes that transsexuals will successfully avoid public scrutiny when they transition such that homophobic parents can, as though by magic, suddenly introduce their “straight” daughter or son that their other relatives, neighbors, and co-workers, had never heard of before… and my oh my… don’t they remind everyone about their obviously gay / lesbian child that they had met before?

This also goes against the actual experience of both homosexuals and transsexuals, in that such ‘phobic parents would MUCH rather have a CLOSETED homosexual child than an out transsexual child. Many transsexuals with such ‘phobic parents have experienced entreaties from parents that “couldn’t they just be closeted homosexual instead?”

So why does the idea that transsexuals are pushed into being transsexuals occur at all? Because it is the corollary of that other false narrative popular within the transphobic elements of the gay and lesbian community that transsexuals are homophobic themselves and having internalized this homophobia, seek to live as heterosexuals by changing their sex. Never mind that such Homosexual Transsexuals (HSTS) were nearly all extremely gender dysphoric as young children and had long desired, indeed, made up their minds, that they would grow up to be the opposite sex, long before coming to understand what their sexual orientation might be. Only as they matured, did they realize it would take medical interventions for this to occur. They (we) do not hold homophobic views, internalized or not.

Back to the Iran myth. What is true is that Iran, like many other nations, both Islamic and Christian, have a history of social and legal persecution of homosexual people. Slowly very slowly, some Christian nations changed their laws in fits and starts, sometimes becoming better for gays and lesbians, sometimes becoming better for transsexuals. Did you know that transsexuals are still being legally harassed by police in the United States? We call it “trans while walking”. Look it up. Today, half of the US States are working to pass bills that specifically target transsexuals, our families, and access to medical services. There are similar issues occurring in other Western, mostly Christian, nations. But in Iran, an odd thing occurred after the Islamic Revolution. While homosexuality, or rather it’s direct practice, remained criminalized as it had been earlier, in 1987, a transsexual, a pre-op transwoman who had been able to obtain HRT, reached their top cleric and reminded him that in the Hadith (stories of the Prophet Mohammed’s life and sayings that were not included in the Quran) included details of Mohammed’s friendships and acceptance of what would clearly be recognized today as “homosexual transsexuals”. She begged him to explore this history. The result was a fatwa that specifically sanctioned the existence and medical treatment of transsexuals in Islam.

So, jump back to the West and know that some transphobic elements in the gay and lesbian communities saw this as being unfair. Why should non-gender-dysphoric gays and lesbians continue to be legally and socially discriminated against (and indeed, why should they?) in Iran while transsexuals have a free pass, a “get out of jail free card”? This anger, combined with the earlier angry myths of parents forcing their homosexual children to be transsexuals and the myth that transsexuals are just self-hating homosexuals transitioning to escape homophobic (and in the case of transmen, sexist) discrimination, naturally lead to the false narrative that Iran is “forcing” gays and lesbians to have sex reassignment surgery. They don’t actually need evidence, certainly not of the kind that involves data, to prove it’s happening. Just the horror at the thought of being forced to “change sex” vs. being jailed for being gay is enough to let others who hear the myth believe it unskeptically.

But, we do require such evidence! Because the data, the numbers, just didn’t fit that narrative.

But let us say for the moment that it’s true, that Iran is rounding up homosexuals and forcing them to have sex changes. What would the data look like? What it should look like is that there would be far more people having sex reassignment surgeries in Iran, per capita, especially per homosexual population, than in the West. But is this true?

Consider that it is now well known that homosexuality is universal, occurring in all societies, throughout history, and at about the same rates. It’s public expression may vary, due to repressive legal and social circumstances, but the actual sexual orientation and desire remain constant at about three percent (give or take depending upon definitions, etc.).

Now compare that the number of actual transsexuals in the United States at around ~6/100,000 people. So, 3% G&L = 3,000/100,000 against 6. Thus, in the United State, one of the most transsexual and homosexual friendly nations in the world (not the best, but near the top) the ratio of homosexuals to transsexuals seeking social and medical transition is 500 to 1.

Back to Iran. How many transsexuals are seeking medical transition? It is only 1.46/100,000. So, in Iran that ratio of homosexuals to transsexuals is a whopping 2055 to 1.

Let’s turn our attention to the data on who is getting medical transition services. Here we see something interesting in that multiple separate papers both show that the average age for SRS for both natal sexes is around 25 years old. Further, the data for MTF transsexuals shows that 90% report being “early onset”. This is what we would expect given Iran’s culture and the correlation between a given culture’s level of individualism vs. the number of “late onset” transwomen transitioning. The numbers add up with what we would expect for those receiving transition services to be naturally occurring gender dysphoric people, freely choosing it.

The numbers do NOT support the allegation that gays and lesbians are being “forced” to undergo an unwanted “sex change”, the data would in fact, suggest the opposite, that transsexuals in Iran are exactly the people we expect to find. Neither the government, “society”, nor transsexuals’ families are “forcing” transsexuality upon unwilling gays and lesbians.

Instead of spreading the myth of unwanted, forced, “sex changes”, the LGBT community should be decrying the recent vicious propaganda against transsexual people in Iran (and elsewhere).

Further Reading:

Transphobic Propaganda Aimed at Parents of Transsexual Kids

Stolen History: False Narratives of Transsexuals Transitioning Because of Homophobia & Sexism

Data On Transsexual SubTypes In Iran

References:

Talaei, et al, “The Epidemiology of Gender Dysphoria In Iran: The First Nation Wide Study”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02250-y

Ahmadzad-asl, et al., “The Epidemiology of Transsexualism In Iran”, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health (2010), https://doi.org/10.1080/19359705.2011.530580

Sadr, M., Khorashad, B.S., Talaei, A. et al. “2D:4D Suggests a Role of Prenatal Testosterone in Gender Dysphoria” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01630-0

Transsexuals Misrepresenting Their Sexual Orientation

I continue to see transwomen vehemently denying that pseudo-androphilia exist, demanding that since there are exclusively androphilic transwomen that report autogynephilic sexual arousal to wearing women’s clothing, etc. means that the Two Type Taxonomy is wrong. But those of us who care about evaluating the evidence carefully and completely see a different pattern. First, many of us have seen first hand, in personal relationships, examples of such pseudo-androphilia in older transitioners, transwomen who claim to be exclusively androphilic, but we know have a history of sexual conduct that focused primarily on women, NOT men. so we KNOW it exists and can’t ignore the evidence of our own eyes. But the plural of anecdote is not data.

Yesterday, I had a dialog, argument really, with a denialist. (She attempted to paint herself as a reasonable “skeptic” and me as the obsessive pseudo-science zealot, but gave herself away when she used the term “Blanchardian”, which is code in the autogynephilic community similar to that used by religious “Creation Science” / “Intelligent Design” advocates, evolution science denialists, of calling biological scientists, “Darwinists”.) She insisted that although recent evidence proved that natal female women are NOT autogynephilic, as so many transwomen were claiming, some of them were. She based this on a claim that what is in fact “noise” (false positives) in the data was REAL evidence that SOME natal female women were just as autogynephilic as non-exclusively androphilic transwomen. After a while, it became clear that she self-identified as “androphilic” and was insisting that since “some” natal female were autogynephilic, it was “normal” for women to be autogynephilic and that true androphilic transwomen could be and “some” were also autogynephilic. But I countered, these transwomen claiming to be exclusively androphilic were misrepresenting / misreporting their actual sexual orientation. She never came out and said that she was autogynephilic, but her demand that the two type taxonomy was wrong and that it was normal for “some” natal female women to be autogynephilic strongly supports that conclusion.

I then realized that I did have lots of proof of that many transwomen were misrepresenting their sexual orientation in my essays, but that they were scattered all about. Thus, my motivation for writing a new essay to pull together the data, the evidence. Evidence, not vehemence; data, not denial.

First, a bit of history. Multiple studies have shown that the vast majority of non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen admit to various autogynephilic experiences and behavior while exclusively-androphilic transwomen do not. I recommend a quick review of what constitutes and how autogynephilia presents in my essay (listed below). We have data that strongly supports the assertion that ALL such non-exclusively-androphilic transwomen are in fact autogynephilic and in the same taxon, while exclusively androphilic transwomen are not autogynephilic and are in a separate taxon. See my FAQ for an introduction and links to essays that lay out this evidence. However, because of transwomen misrepresenting their sexual orientation, there is a great deal of noise in the data, though we can still see the evidence that there are two (and only two) separate taxons, one autogynephilic and non-exclusively-androphilic and one that is exclusively androphilic and NOT autogynephilic.

This issue of misrepresentation was addressed by Lawrence when she considered the sexual history of subjects in a Netherlands study. She saw that many of the subjects who claimed to be exclusively androphilic had in fact been married to women! She then found that if she considered them to not be exclusively androphilic, the signal strength for sexual orientation vs. autogynephilia went up. Most notably the number of putatively exclusively androphilic transwomen reporting autogynephilic arousal went down:

Sort:       Old                New

AGP     18 (31%)        5 (15%)
Not      40 (69%)       29 (85%)

Sorting, filtering out those who claimed to be exclusively androphilic but had a clear history of marriage to women is useful, but not perfect, since not every transwoman who may be falsely reporting their sexual orientation would have such a solid legally traceable history of their true sexual history and orientation. Note that Lawrence demonstrated that at least 24 of the original 58 (41%) putatively exclusively androphilic subjects had misrepresented their sexual orientation.

The folks at the Netherlands clinic, in a later study, compared self-identification with clinician evaluations of their patients’ sexual orientation (presumably using sexual history, marriage records, family interviews, and personal interviews). The also categorized on “early” vs. “late onset” of their gender dysphoria.

Type:                                                            EOT               LOT
N=                                                                35                    44
Women (self)                                            15 (43%)         8 (18%)
Women (clinician)                                   14 (41%)        17 (39%)
Men (self)                                                   13 (37%)        23 (52%)
Men (clinician)                                         14 (41%)          4 (9%)
Bisexual (self)                                             2 (6%)          10 (23%)
Bisexual (clinician)                                   5 (15%)         22 (50%)
Asexual (clinician)                                     1 (3%)             4 (9%)

Note that in the above study that one of the early onset transwomen failed to represent herself as exclusively androphilic who the clinicians believed should have. But that of the late onset (most often “older transitioners”) 19 of the 24 (79%) who claimed to be exclusively androphilic were misrepresenting their sexual orientation. If this study had looked at autogynephilia and used self-report, the non-exclusively androphilic group would have at least one who shouldn’t have been, likely pulling down the autogynephilic score, and the exclusively androphilic group would have had at least nineteen (out of 36 = 52%) that should not have been, likely pulling up the autogynephilia score.

These studies led to the realization that asking transwomen to report their “current” self-identification was insufficient. Later studies began asking not only their current orientation, but their prior orientation. This gives the subjects an opportunity to be a bit more honest about their sexual orientation via their sexual history, by allowing them to claim to have had a “change of sexual orientation”.

Lawrence used such a technique in one of her later studies.

Attraction before SRS/Attraction after SRS:	F/M	F/F	M/M
Participant characteristic	(n = 30)	(n = 50)	(n = 17)
Mean age at SRS (SD)	45 (8.4)	44 (9.1)	34 (9.2)
Mean age at living full-time in female role (SD)	42 (11.3)	42 (9.6)	28 (8.8)
Very or somewhat feminine as a child, in own opinion	41%	45%	76%
Very or somewhat feminine as a child, in others’ probable opinion	21%	24%	76%
Autogynephilic arousal hundred of times or more before SRS	52%	58%	18%

Note that had she not done that, it is likely that 30 out of 97 subjects may have been falsely categorized as exclusively androphilic. Or put another way, 30 out of 47 putatively androphilic transwomen would not have been correctly binned in that category. But… and here is the sad, but telling part. Although Lawrence did NOT recategorize on known legal history of marriage, she did report,

“six participants classified as homosexual based on their pattern of sexual partnering before SRS reported experiencing autogynephilic arousal before SRS. Two of these participants, both of whom reported “hundreds of episodes or more” of autogynephilic arousal before SRS, had been married to women and had been biologic parents before SRS, suggesting that their reports of no female sexual partners before SRS were inaccurate. Two other homosexual participants, both of whom also reported “hundreds of episodes or more” of autogynephilic arousal, had not been married and had not been biologic parents; one, age 33 at time of SRS, reported only one male partner before SRS; the other, age 44 at time of SRS, reported multiple male partners before SRS. The remaining 2 homosexual participants, both ages 38, reported autogynephilic arousal only “once or twice” before SRS; both reported multiple male partners before SRS and one also reported MtF transgendered partners.  Seven other participants who were classified as homosexual based on their self-reported pattern of sexual attraction before SRS but not on the basis of their pattern of sexual partnering before SRS also reported autogynephilic sexual arousal before SRS. Four of these 7 participants had been married, and 2 of these 4 had been biologic parents; only 1 reported any male sexual partners before SRS. Of the remaining 3 participants, 2 reported no sexual partners before SRS, and 1 reported multiple male, female, and MtF transgendered partners before SRS.”

Some of these self-identified androphilic individuals who were clearly having sex with female partners before SRS, are just as clearly STILL having sex with female partners after SRS.  Someone is not being honest here.  So, even with the opportunity to admit that that were non-exclusively androphilic in their past, some of them still chose to misrepresent their sexual orientation, both in the past, and currently.

In a more recent study in Europe, they looked at this phenomena of “changing sexual orientation” during transition, comparing their self-reported sexual identity at their intake interviews/survey and later. The same shifts occurred with another interesting bit of data, that six of eighteen of those who had originally reported to be androphilic later confessed to have not been.

So what’s really going on? As Auer, et al explains it,

“Self-reported sexual orientation studies have further been reported to be interfered by the fact that some persons do not answer the question truthfully. Some transsexual people for example may want to present themselves as particular feminine (MtF) or masculine (FtM) and thus ‘‘classical’’ transsexual persons.  Participants in the present study might have biased their reports on purpose or unwittingly towards a more gender-typical presentation.“

This misrepresentation is sufficient to explain the number of “androphilic” transwomen who report autogynephilic arousal.

Getting back to my interlocutor of yesterday. In arguing against the idea of pseudo-androphilia, she was ignoring the evidence of the reported shifts in sexual orientation with transition. Why would this occur? As Auer, et al explain,

“Autogynephilic MtF transsexual persons often report the fantasy of sexual intercourse as a woman with a man, that was repeatedly described as faceless and abstract. Yet this pseudoandrophilia has to be distinguished from genuine androphilia or homosexuality in MtF, or as Blanchard points it: ‘‘the effective erotic stimulus, however, is not the male physique per se, as it is in true homosexual attraction, but rather the thought of being a female, which is symbolized in the fantasy of being penetrated by a male. For these persons, the imagined – occasionally real – male sexual partner serves the same function as women’s apparel or makeup, namely, to aid and intensify the fantasy of being a woman’’. Similarly, one of our participants that formally reported a change of sexual orientation from gynephilia towards androphilia stressed that ‘‘I always wanted to experience sexual intercourse as a woman but I did not know what to do with my male body before the hormone treatment. I hated male bodies in general before’’. In this case a reported change in sexual orientation from gynephilic to androphilic can be attributed to autogynephilic fantasies.”

Before I cut off the dialog, which which was becoming vituperative, with false claims that I was being derisive (attempted tone policing), she doubled down on the “female embodiment fantasy” meme by mischaracterizing reports of sexual fantasies of “early transitioners” as evidence that such were autogynephilic. This is when I realized that she was misrepresenting her sexuality, because no actual exclusively androphilic transwoman would have made that mistake. Androphilic transwomen KNOW that their attraction is to masculine men, not to autogynephilic fantasy.

This latest science denialism is complete bunk.

Further Reading (w/ citations):

Autogynephilia

No. Women Are NOT Autogynephilic!

Lawrence Recategorized Data

Netherlands Study Comparing Self vs. Clinician Evaluation of Sexual Orientation

Lawrence Orientation Shift Study

European Study Of Change of Self Identity of Sexual Orientation

Essay on Invalidity of “Female Embodiment Fantasy” Meme

Autistic Sunset

As noted before, gynephilic transmen are not only “butch” but somewhat “hypermasculine” in some respects. This shows up in being more likely to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. We now have another study that confirms this observation and some other observations regarding transwomen as I will explore in this essay.

The new study is out of the UK, which will be an important point, so keep in mind given that we know that the UK, like the US, has a very “individualist” culture and that in such cultures, autogynephilic transwomen significantly out number homosexual transwomen. Thus, this data for transwomen is very, very likely ONLY from autogynephilic transwomen. I point this out because the data clearly shows that transwomen in the study are nearly identical to control men and very different than control women; that autogynephilic transwomen has been shown before by Jones, et al. as the data documents.

Group:               Men                  Women       FTM                 Non-Androphilic           Androphilic
.                                                                                                     MTF  N=129                   MTF N=69

Score (SD):       17.8 (6.8)        15.4 (5.7)     23.2 (9.1)         17.4 (7.4)                         15.0 (5.6)

In this new study, the trend that transmen have high Autistic Quotient scores compared to everyone else remains, and thus can be considered to have been replicated.

	n	AQ	SD	n	EQ	SD	n	SQ	SD
Control women	21	19.43	9.93	19	21.05	10.82	19	13.74	9.68
Transmen	32	25.88	10.25	30	16.87	10.03	29	22.66	9.28
Control men	18	18.11	7.61	18	20.83	10.00	18	18.94	6.82
Transwomen (AGP)	18	20.17	9.06	18	22.06	9.01	17	21.24	9.54

The table shows the data for the mean Autism Quotient (AQ), the Emotional Quotient (EQ), and the Systematizing Quotient (SQ) scores and their standard deviations from the new Hendriks, et al. study.

As well the AQ scores being substantially different, the EQ and SQ scores for transmen are different than control women, but only slightly higher than for both the control men and notably, the transwomen. At this point, it might be well to ask, “how different” by calculating Cohen’s d for some of these population differences. The difference between control men and the transmen for AQ is d = 0.86, a fairly large, but not super large difference. It certainly does show that transmen are as a population, likely to be “on the spectrum”. But more importantly, it shows that the brains of exclusively gynephilic (as all these subjects were) are masculinized, even hypermasculinized, as one would expect them to be.

The other interesting point is how different the control women and transwomen are in their Systematizing Quotient with d = 0.77, reasonably large effect size indicating that women and (likely to be autogynephilic) transwomen are very different in this regard. How different are they from control men? First note that their score for transwomen is even more “masculine” than control men with d = 0.28, small but detectable. Again, as with the Jones study, this shows that autogynephilic transwomen are NOT very different than control men in these important, sexually dimorphic phenomena, and thus NOT feminized, nor even hypomasculine.

Further Reading:

Autistic Sky

References:

Jones, et al, “Female-To-Male Transsexual People and Autistic Traits”, J. Autism Dev. Discord. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-011-1227-8

Hendriks, et al, “Autist Traits, Empathizing-Systematizing, and Gender Diversity”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02251-x

No, Women Are NOT Autogynephilic!

For at least two decades, transwomen have been attempting to confuse the issue of the role of autogynephilia in the etiology of non-exclusively-androphilic transsexuality / gender dysphoria. Some have simply stated that it doesn’t exist. Other try to say that it only exists in transvestites, never in transsexuals. Yet other’s don’t deny it exists, but insist that it is not a unique paraphilia, but actually part and parcel with being women. That being autogynephilic proves that they are just like natal females because natal females are normally autogynephilic. A popular means of invoking this confusion is to deliberately misdescribe the phenomena as “female embodiment fantasy” insisting that women also experience such, as in their erotic imaginings they correctly relate that of course, being natally female, they see themselves as female.

This has been shown to be a clever semantic trick, invoking a classic cognitive error, in which one confuses the map for the territory. The words may be similar, but the concepts behind them are not. Autogynephiles deliberately imagine themselves as female because that is sexually arousing in and of itself. Natal women see themselves as female because they are only incidentally female. Natal women do not become sexually aroused to imagining, or contemplating their own femaleness.

Still, pointing this out has not been enough. The confusion sown by this silly insistence that natal women are also autogynephilic persists. Some have even tried to create “proof” that this is so by creating / editing instruments that bear only a passing resemblance to instruments developed to actually measure autogynephilia, questionnaires that have been carefully crafted to create positives that their crafters falsely declare is proof that natal women are also autogynephilic, and thus, non-androphilic transwomen are just like natal female women in their sexuality.

But now we have a study that is NOT gamed. Instead of creating such bogus instruments, Bailey and Hsu used Blanchard’s original. (The instrument is comprised of eight statements that one either agrees with or not and the score is found by simple counting those which received an agreement. That is to say, all items are equally weighted. Thus, the score may vary between zero and eight.) Further, in the study they validated that it can differentiate autogynephilic males from non-autogynephilic males, at the population level, an important step in showing that it can be used to determine if natal female woman look more like one group or the other, on a population level.

A comment here is needed. No instrument that asks people to be honest about such a sensitive topic as their innermost sexual longings has ever been devised that is 100% perfect at diagnosing individuals. People misinterpret the items. The items don’t perfectly match their experiences (even if they are similar and experience the underlying construct being measured). And because of Social Desirability Bias, some don’t answer fully honestly. And some just never answer honestly no matter what the question. But in research like this, we are able to use statistics looking at population responses to tease out the underlying truth. (Don’t try to quibble on this matter, we all know this is true.)

So, turning to Bailey and Hsu’s recent study, from the abstract,

“We compared four samples of autogynephilic natal males (N = 1549), four samples of non-autogynephilic natal males (N = 1339), and two samples of natal females (N = 500), using Blanchard’s original measure: the Core Autogynephilia Scale. The autogynephilic samples had much higher mean scores compared with non-autogynephilic natal males and natal females, who were similar. Our findings refute the contention that autogynephilia is common among natal females.”

Looking at a graph of the data, we can visually see just how different that the known autogynephilic sample groups scored than both the known non-autogynephilic males and natal female women. And how similar such women are to known non-autogynephilic men.

As well as looking at the graphs, we can also perform statistical analysis such as the Effect Size, a key measure of the difference between two populations: Cohen’s d. I chose Sample 4 to compare against Sample 9, a large known autogynephilic sample to a natal female sample and calculated that Cohen’s d = 2.8, a HUGE effect size (anything over 1.0 is considered large, and with such ample sample subjects, statistically very trustworthy). Conversely, comparing Sample 7, known non-autogynephilic males to Sample 9; d = 0.04, almost zero, essentially no statistical difference!

There can be absolutely no honest denial of the data and the natural conclusion. Natal female women are simply NOT autogynephilic.

Further Reading:

Autogynephilia Explained

Disingenuous Attempt To “Prove” Natal Female Women are Autogynephilic

Why “Female Embodiment Fantasy” Is Bogus

Reference:

Bailey, J.M., Hsu, K.J., “How Autogynephilic Are Natal Females”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02359-8

Bailey, J.M., Hsu, K.J., “Autogynephilia and Science: A Response to Moser and and Serano, and Veale”, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02482-6

Lack of In Utero & Perinatal Testosterone Exposure Leads to Childhood Gender Atypicality in Males

In a sad “experiment of nature” in which phenotypically normal appearing males are unable to produce gonadotropin, essentially naturally duplicating the effect of puberty blockers, but experiencing this lack since the beginning of the second trimester in the womb. Most importantly, these males do not experience the so called, “mini-puberty” that occurs perinatally, the time just before birth and the first three months after birth.

Given that we have already seen data from a proxy measure of the level of testosterone production and exposure during this developmentally critical period correlates with later childhood gender typicality / atypicality, (Pasterski 2015) we would predict that these individuals would also report having been more gender atypical than control men. That is exactly what we see in the recently published study by Shirazi, et al. This was especially true of those who had cryptochordia (undescended testicle) at birth, indicating even lower T production in utero. Thus, indicating that T exposure before the birth is also important for brain masculinization.

Demographic Statistics Variable Control (n = 463) IGD-clinical (n = 30) IGD-Web (n = 35)
Mean childhood gender atypicality –0.04 (0.33) 0.24 (0.44) 0.34 (0.59)

Mean sexual orientation (Kinsey 0-6) 0.25 (0.94) 0.31 (0.71) 0.94 (1.48)

Interestingly, the effect sizes were not as large as one might expect. To me, this suggests that fetal gonadotropin levels alone may not truly indicate just how much T is being produced given that the fetal adrenal glands are unaffected. Alternatively, it may be that there are Y chromosome canalization effects that we haven’t discovered and accounted for.

It is odd that given that the earlier Pasterski study concerns the same exact subject, and comes to the same conclusion, it wasn’t referenced by Shirazi.

Further Reading:

Essay on Effect of Mini-Puberty on Childhood Gendered Behavior in Boys

References:

Shirazi, et al., “Low Perinatal Androgens Predict Recalled Childhood Gender Non-Conformity in Men”, Psychological Science (2022) https://doi.org/10.1177%2F09567976211036075

Pasterski, V., et al., “Postnatal penile growth concurrent with mini-puberty predicts later sex-typed play behavior: Evidence for neurobehavioral effects of the postnatal androgen surge in typically developing boys”, Hormones and Behavior (2015)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X15000033#f0005