Transsexual Kids DO Know

Having real data trumps ideological assertions. The “ideology” I speak of is that of transphobic individuals who falsely insist that transkids are too young too “know” – to know who they are, to know their hearts, to know what social gender they best fit in as, to know their minds regarding what constitutes their best chances for future happiness and social success. These ideologist don’t actually say this in true sympathy or empathy with transkids. They say it because they don’t want transkids to grow up to be transsexual adults. They don’t want transkids to grow up to be those people. Data trumps this false assertion, this false empathy.

Over the past decades, data about transkids has been growing. One thing that former transkids (those individuals who had been “early onset”, both gender atypical and gender dysphoric before puberty and are now adult transsexuals, have been saying is that they took to social transition, at whatever age they were able, most as teens or early ’20s in the past, given parental and societal opposition, with great relief and ease. Indeed clinicians have long documented this phenomena. They have also pointed out that they would have benefited from social transition at a far younger age to avoid social difficulties growing up. They actively point out that such social transitions would also differentiate those who would be ‘persisters’ from ‘desisters’, that attempting to socially transition, even before their teens, works as a “Real Life Test”. Those that are likely to desist, are not likely to find social transition all that appealing nor will they remain socially transitioned, if they do. We now have the data to back that up.

Dr. Olson’s latest paper in Pediatrics, “Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition” followed a large cohort of transkids starting at age three to twelve as part of an ongoing longitudinal study. The paper is available online, NOT behind a paywall, so it is well worth reading for yourself if you wish to follow-up on my explication of it. But before we dive into the data, I need to deal with an unfortunate misuse of language that the authors have chosen to use.

In the transsexual community, the term “retransition” has a specific meaning that the authors of the paper have turned on its head to the opposite meaning in some cases and its proper meaning in others. Specifically, in the transsexual community, the term means one has once again began living as the opposite of their natal sex after having “detransitioned”, reverted back to living as their natal sex, for a period of time. But the authors of the study use the term “retransition” for BOTH situations. The authors made clear they know that they are making this confusing misuse of the established vernacular, but chose to do it anyway. I will not. So, when I am quoting them, I will substitute the proper term {detransition} for clarity by including it in curly brackets to show when they are misusing the term “retransition” in the original text.

Let’s take a look at the abstract by way of introduction of the study and the data,

“Abstract
Background and Objectives. Concerns about early childhood social transitions amongst
transgender youth include that these youth may later change their gender identification (i.e.,
retransition), a process that could be distressing. The present study aimed to provide the
first estimate of {detransitioning} and to report the current gender identities of youth an
average of 5 years after their initial social transitions.
Methods. The present study examined the rate of {detransition} and current gender identities
of 317 initially-transgender youth (208 transgender girls, 109 transgender boys; M=8.1
years at start of study) participating in a longitudinal study, the Trans Youth Project. Data
were reported by youth and their parents through in-person or online visits or via email or
phone correspondence.
Results. We found that an average of 5 years after their initial social transition, 7.3% of
youth had {detransitioned} at least once. At the end of this period, most youth identified as
binary transgender youth (94%), including 1.3% who {detransitioned} to another identity
before returning to their binary transgender identity. 2.5% of youth identified as cisgender
and 3.5% as nonbinary. Later cisgender identities were more common amongst youth
whose initial social transition occurred before age 6 years; the {detransition} often occurred
before age 10.
Conclusions. These results suggest that {detransitions} are infrequent. More commonly,
transgender youth who socially transitioned at early ages continued to identify that way.
Nonetheless, understanding {detransitions} is crucial for clinicians and families to help make
them as smooth as possible for youth.”

Note that that there are about twice as many MTF transsexual children (“transgender girls”) as FtM transsexuals in the study. This is in keeping with decades of demographic data that show that there are more MTFs than FtM transsexuals. As adults, there are usually so many more “late onset” MTFs than “early onset” such that the ratio is much higher. (Note that I am excluding the recent fad of large numbers of girls and young women falsely claiming a “trans” or “non-binary” identity.)

Note also that of those who detransitioned / desisted, they did so before age 10.

“All but one of the 8 cisgender youth had {detransitioned} by age 9 (the last {detransitioned} at 11)”

This is in keeping with earlier data that showed that desisters always did so before puberty and the age of seven to ten was critical in this process. While persisters reported that the ages of ten to thirteen saw that their gender dysphoria increased and cemented their transsexual (cross-sex) gender identity. Note that of this cohort who had attempted social transition, only 2.5% of them had truly desisted. That is to say, pre-pubertal social transition was overwhelmingly comprised of persisters. The “Real Life Test” works as was predicted years ago, as the study authors also suggest, in a typical “science speak” way,

“It is possible that some youth initially try socially transitioning and then change their minds quickly. Such youth would be unlikely to be enrolled in this study because their eligibility period would have been quite short and therefore the odds of finding the study and completing it would have been low. This means the children in our study may have been especially unlikely, compared to all children who transition, to {detransition} because they had already lived – and presumably been fairly content – with that initial transition for more than a year.”

Further Reading:

Desisting vs Persisting in Gender Atypical Children

Transkids Transition Because They ARE Transkids

Reference:

Olson, K., et al, “”Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition”, Pediatrics (2022), 10.1542/peds.2021-056082

A Voice of Their Own

Or, What Do Transkids Think About Puberty Suppression?

Transkids after transition

In the media and especially in social media, we see lots of discussion regarding what is the appropriate standard of care for transkids.  Many adults seem to be horrified by the idea that kids should be treated at all.  Of course, anyone that thinks about it clearly will see that without puberty suppression, one is already making a decision to treat them with hormones, the ones that the body starts to make at puberty.  Thus, the justification for puberty suppression, under the notion that delaying it isn’t really making a hard and fast decision.

But what of transkids themselves?  What do they think about it all?  How about asking them?  Well, a recent paper does just that, as the paper describes them,

“They were between 13 and 18 years of age, with an average age of 16 years and 11 months, and a median age of 17 years and 4 months. All adolescents, except for one, were treated with puberty suppression. The mean age at which the adolescents started treatment with puberty suppression was 15 years and 10 months. The adolescent who was not treated with puberty suppression immediately started treatment with cross-sex hormones because she was above the age of 18 when treatment was indicated, which is in line with the Dutch protocol. Five adolescents were trans girls (natal boys with a female gender identity) and eight were trans boys (natal girls with a male gender identity).”

Note that puberty suppression was their only option until age 18, a state of affairs that I have argued, and will continue to argue, it both unnecessary and cruel, but better than nothing.  This protocol privileges desisters and indeed all non-gender-dysphoric teens in that an active or implicit decision to deliberately use endogenous hormones to masculinize or feminize (as the case may be) their bodies is socially sanctioned, actively encouraged even, but an active decision on the part of gender dysphoric teens is considered suspect and their ability to make such a decision is deemed problematic.  {Can nobody else see the double-standard?  Why, if this is all about not trusting teens to make this decision, are ALL teens not put on puberty blockers until they are adults?}  All evidence points to the age of 14 being an appropriate age to end, not begin, puberty suppression, to be replaced with conventional Hormone Replacement Therapy.  But concerns about transphobic public resistance prevents this evidence based medicine approach.

{On a personal note, I first learned about HRT at age 15, but my pediatrician recommended my mother send me to psychotherapy to “cure” me instead. I began actively requesting feminizing HRT from the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic at age 17 in 1974.  I was denied this.  I had to wait until I was legally of age and began HRT very soon after my 18th birthday in the summer of ’75.  In those days, puberty suppression was not available.  I deeply regret what that delay did to my singing voice.}

So what did these modern teens have to say?  Here’s a typical comment,

“I think it is hard to set an age requirement. On the one hand I think 12 years is a good age minimum, on the other hand I think that a transgender whose puberty started earlier should have the possibility to start treatment with puberty suppression before the age of 12.” (trans girl; age: 13)

You may wish to read the rest of what they had to say at the actual paper at the link below, as it is not behind a paywall, thankfully.

Further Reading:

Essay on evidence for best age to end puberty suppression based on age of desisting gender dysphoria

Essay by Alejandra Velasquez at the transkids.us website on treatment recommendations for MTF transkids. {Note:  Ms. Velasquez was ~20 when she wrote the essay in 2004}

Essay on Advice to Parents of Transkids

References:

Vrouenraets, L. et al. “Perceptions of Sex, Gender, and Puberty Suppression: A Qualitative Analysis of Transgender Youth”
Archives of Sexual Behavior (2016). doi:10.1007/s10508-016-0764-9

 

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Fun Reading:

Sincerity Espinoza didn’t go looking for trouble, it found her. All she wants out of life is the chance to go to the stars but she is caught in a web of misunderstandings, political & legal maneuvering, and the growing threat of terrorist plots by religious fanatics. She has a secret that if found out too soon could mean not only her own death but the ruin of the hope for humanity ever going to the stars. But even amidst momentous events, life is still about the small moments of love, laughter, and sadness.   Available as an ebook at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Raising Children is a Sacred Trust…

Parental Attitudes Towards Transgender Children

Every now and then, I check the stats on this site.  I am gratified by the growing number of readers over the past six years.  I also check the search strings that are used to find this site.  I am happy that parents of transkids find my site and this much needed information.  But I am usually saddened by the search strings.  These are the most common, in order of frequency:

“How to cope with transgender children”

“How to deal with a transgender child”

“How to manage a transgender kid”

“My child is transgender”

Do you see the problem?  The terms ‘cope’, ‘deal’, and ‘manage’ indicate that these parents see their child as a dissappointent, a burden, a problem.  One ‘copes’ with emotional loss and dissappointment.  One ‘deals’ with a burden.  One ‘manages’ a problem.

I’ve known dozens of other transkids (and former transkids / adults who were transkids).  Nearly every one of them spoke of how their parents had been dissappointed by them.  Even those whose parents eventually came to support them went through a period where their parents tried to deny that they were transkids.  Many were disowned by their parents.

But every now and then, but not nearly as often as I would like, I see this search string:

“How to help a transgender child”

Today, among several like the first three, I saw this gem:

“How to protect a transgender child”

Several years ago, my husband and I hosted a lovely young couple and their two children.  Their children were around three years old, fraternal twins.  One was ‘all boy’.  He wore his favorite T-shirt sporting an image of a bulldozer that read, “I like dirt”.  The other child was a sweet natured, feminine girl wearing a yellow flowered sundress.  She gave us an impromptu ballet recital in our front parlor.  Can you see where this is going?  That sweet mannered girl is male.

This young couple loved and celebrated their children.  Both of them.  They told me that they didn’t like attending support groups for parents of gender atypical / transgender children because the other parents saw their children as dissappointments, problem children, burdens.  The other parents would spend most of the time trying to convince everyone, including themselves, that they had done everything they could to cope, deal, and manage their children.  They were apologetic about their child’s behavior and even of their own eventual acceptance of their child’s atypicality, having done everything they could to prevent it.

Which brings me back to the search string that I never see, but would dearly love to:

“How to celebrate my transgender child”

(Addendum 2/4/2016:  Banner Day!  Today someone used this search string, “loving your transgender child”)

(3/26/2016:  UGLY DAY!  Today someone used this search string, “things to say to comfort parents of a transgender”, as though having a trans-child were a terrible tragedy.

 

Child’s Play

For years, critics of transkids’ identities have made claims that transkids are either “confused”, “delayed”, or “pretending”.  Many papers describing feminine boys from the 1960’s would describe them as being “talented mimics”, explicitly taking the position that men and women, boys and girls, do in fact have in-born differences in behavior, mannerisms, and motor-movements, but that these feminine boys were NOT exhibiting natural behavior, but were consciously, or “subconsciously”, observing girls and women, and learning to “mimic” these behaviors.  Of course, those of us who were such and grew up to transition, have long begged to differ!

Today, we have a published paper that demolishes these notions.  At the core of the paper is the ability to determine implicit associations between concepts.  If you are not familiar with this tool, it may be useful to review the Wiki page on Implicit Association Testing .  One of it strengths is that it cannot be “faked”.  It is impervious to Social Desirability Bias or other impression management distortions.  It is also impossible for someone to be “pretending”, as the cognitive load to evaluate the test set-up, determine the “right” answer, etc. would create an obvious delay in the test.  Further, if a child were “confused” as to the meaning of sex and gender, there would be an obvious anomalous signature in the test results.

The study involved 32 transkids, ages 5-12, 12 FtM, 20 MTF, who have already transitioned full time, with the full support of their families.  This would obviously include “early onset” transkids.  However, and this is critical, we know, or at least suspect, that some of these kids will “desist” being gender dysphoric before puberty, if they follow the trend already seen in other studies, most especially the Steensma study from the Netherlands.  Yet, for all of that, the results of the study show that these kids are completely consistent in their implicit gender identity and preferences as their opposite sex, non-trans, controls and siblings.  They are NOT pretending, nor confused.

The folks who conducted this recent study are continuing their work, looking at these kids as they grow up.  They are looking for additional transkids to join the study.

Study on Gender Nonconformity in Children

Hi from the TransYouth Project at the University of Washington! We are researchers interested in gender development in children and have a new research project we are currently recruiting families for. The project aims to better understand gender development in gender nonconforming and transgender children.  Our new study takes 30-60 minutes and includes children ages 3-12. We are running the study all over the U.S. and Canada so please let us know if you are interested and we can let you know when we’ll be in your area. We are hoping to recruit gender nonconforming children as well as their siblings (where applicable). All data collected as part of this study are confidential. Payment is $10 per parent and $10 plus a small toy per child. There is an optional longitudinal component that we can tell you more about as well if you are interested. To sign up for the study, please visit: http://www.transyouthproject.org. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, Dr. Kristina Olson, via email (krolson@uw.edu) or phone (206-616-1371). Thanks for considering being a part of this research or telling someone who might be!

Reference:

Kristina R. Olson, Aidan C. Key, Nicholas R. Eaton, “Gender Cognition in Transgender Children“, Psychological Science

Thomas D. Steensma, Roeline Biemond, Fijgie de Boer and Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, “Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study”
http://ccp.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/06/1359104510378303

 

Are Your Ears Burning?

It has long been hypothesized that prenatal or perinatal hormone levels influence sexually dimorphic behavior in humans.  The evidence from studies of people with Disorders of Sexual Development and in numerous animals studies lends strong evidence that this is true.  So it would seem natural that we should ask if sexual orientation and gendered behavior in otherwise phenotypically normal individuals could also have been affected by hormones.  The ultimate study would be one that longitudinally follows a large cohort of individuals from conception to adulthood, taking extensive hormonal assays while evaluating gendered behavior and sexual orientation.  The problems of doing such a study for transsexuality is obvious… the cohort would have to be in the hundreds of thousands to ensure statistically significant numbers of transsexual individuals were included.

Thus, researchers are interested in finding sexually dimorphic markers that record historical hormone environments.  That is to say, something that is an organizational and not an activational effect, preferably one that becomes fixed at the same period in prenatal development as organizational effects in the brain.  It must be something that is observable at birth and remains stable long enough to allow us to use it to retrospectively determine ones hormonal environment after we have found our gender atypical population of interest.

I’ve already blogged about one such putative measure, the 2D:4D ratio, which is mildly sexually dimorphic, and in at least some population has a recognizably large enough effect size that we can hope that we can use it.  Sadly, the results have been contradictory so far.  But despair not, another such sexually dimorphic marker is available, though it requires specialized equipment to measure.

In individuals with normal, unimpaired hearing, a curious effect is found in which our inner ears respond to external sounds with sounds of their own, which is known to be mildly sexually dimorphic, as described in the abstract from a recent paper out of Europe, the first known to explore this effect as a potential probe of the role of androgens in gender dysphoria,

“Click-evoked otoacoustic emissions (CEOAEs) are echo-like sounds that are produced by the inner ear in response to click-stimuli. CEOAEs generally have a higher amplitude in women compared to men and neonates already show a similar sex difference in CEOAEs. Weaker responses in males are proposed to originate from elevated levels of testosterone during perinatal sexual differentiation.  Therefore, CEOAEs may be used as a retrospective indicator of someone’s perinatal androgen environment.”

Before we get too excited about this marker, we need to look at the effect size, with is quite small at only d=0.30 in the left ear and was better in the right ear at d=0.60.  You may recall that this is of the same order as the 2D:4D finger length ratios at d=0.63.  This is large enough to be useful, but only if enough subjects are available to achieve significant statistical power.  Sadly, this lack of enough subjects seems to be the case in this study.  Too bad, because there is a hint at some exciting results in that looking at a group of gender atypical and gender dysphoric children and teens, the natal males seem to show a shift in the female-like direction, but oddly, the natal females do NOT,

“In the present study, we retrospectively investigated possible organizational effects of prenatal androgens on CEOAEs in relation to gender identity. We found that boyswith GID had sex-atypical (hypomasculinized) emissions. Their mean response amplitudes, though, were not significantly different from either the male or female controls. Thus, boys with GID had an intermediate position between the sexes in terms of CEOAE response amplitudes. By contrast, girls with GID showed emissions in the same range as female controls.  Consistent with several earlier studies, sex differences in emission strengths were observed in the control group, with girls having significantly stronger emission amplitudes than boys. Our finding that boys with GID showed stronger, more female-typical emissions compared to control boys suggests that boys with GID might have been exposed to relatively lower amounts of androgens during early development. The effect sizes for the comparison boys with GID versus control boys were similar to those for control girls versus control boys, supporting the notion of a hypomasculinized early sexual differentiation in boys with GID.  However, considering the lack of statistically significant differences between the control boys and the boys with GID and the relatively small sample size of subjects with GID, this conclusion may still be premature and our results therefore need to be interpreted with caution. Furthermore, our findings did not support the hypothesis of an increased exposure to androgens in girls with GID during prenatal development. Though speculative, this might reflect that GID in girls does not develop under the influence of prenatal androgens or at least not during the same critical time window as when androgens exert influences over OAEs.”

This result is surprising, in that previous studies involving gay men and women, researchers saw the opposite pattern, in that gay men showed no shift from control men, but lesbians showed a shift from the female to the male response.  The most exciting times in science are when you hear, “That’s strange!”  This is one of those times.  Several possibilities exist.  This result could just be spurious, with not enough subjects to have seen the real signal.  It could be that there is an additional activational effect that occurs as children mature, that causes a shift for both gay men and gay women toward the masculine response.  We may be seeing the effect of heterosexual “tomboys” swamping out the FtM signal.  Or, we could be witnessing the first hint that there is a difference between transkids, both MTF and FtM, and conventionally gay men and lesbian women.  Time and additional studies will tell.

References:

Sarah M. Burke, Willeke M. Menks, Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, Daniel T. Klink, Julie Bakker, “Click-Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions in Children and Adolescents with Gender Identity Disorder”  Archives of Sexual Behavior, DOI 10.1007/s10508-014-0278-2

Dennis McFadden, Edward G. Pasanen, “Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions in heterosexuals, homosexuals, and bisexuals” Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.426845

 

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Fun Reading:

Sincerity Espinoza didn’t go looking for trouble, it found her. All she wants out of life is the chance to go to the stars but she is caught in a web of misunderstandings, political & legal maneuvering, and the growing threat of terrorist plots by religious fanatics. She has a secret that if found out too soon could mean not only her own death but the ruin of the hope for humanity ever going to the stars. But even amidst momentous events, life is still about the small moments of love, laughter, and sadness.   Available as an ebook at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

I Know What Boys Like…

♫♫I know what guys want…
They want to touch me,
But I won’t let them.♫♫
-The Waitresses

A while back, I explored one of the very few studies that tested Stoller’s observation that “true” MTF transsexuals, which we now recognize as exclusively androphilic MTF transkids, are “avoidant”.  That is, that though they have intimate relations with their boyfriends before SRS, they refuse to use or allow contact with their pre-operative genitalia.  Stoller (and others) held that non-exclusive androphilic transwomen would not be “avoidant”, but would find pleasure in the use of their male genitals prior to SRS.  Now a new study explores this behavior.  But sadly, since it comes out of Europe, where they believe that age of onset of gender dysphoria, early or late, is the most important typology, the study failed to explicitly report avoidant behavior by sexual orientation.  However, I hypothesize that Stoller is correct, and that even though we don’t have explicit data in this new study, we will see a direct correlation with the percentage of exclusively androphilic transwomen in the two onset age categories and avoidant behavior.  Data is reported in the number of transwomen for each category except for that reported as percentage:

Sexual Orientation vs. Age of Onset
Onset                                                 Early         Late
Androphilic      N=                             54               20
Non-exclusively Androphilic         53               78
Percentage Androphilic:                51%            20%

Avoidant vs. Age of Onset
Onset                                                Early           Late
Avoidant           N=                            38                15
Pleasure                                             34                47
Percentage Avoidant:                     53%             24%

Note the essentially identical percentages of exclusively androphilic transwomen in each onset category and the percentages of avoidant behavior?  Thus the data supports the hypothesis perfectly.  This of course is not definitive, since we would really like to have seen the direct comparason, but if the numbers had been wildly different between them, it would have supported the null hypothesis.  The null hypothesis still cannot be ruled out… but seriously?  Seriously?

It has been my personal observation, from talking to MTFs, during my entire lifetime, that “avoidant” behavior is near universal in transkids, but very rare in “late transitioning” transwomen.  Such late transitioning transwomen have very often been sexually active with women, married to women, and have had children.  Obviously, the easiest way to have sired children is to have had vaginal intercourse (penile penetration).

Reference:

S. Cerwenka, et al., “Sexual Behavior of Gender Dysphoric Individuals Before Gender-Confirming Interventions: A European Multicenter Study” (2014)

 

Researching Parental Experiences of Transkids

Here is an opportunity for the parents of transkids to give feedback to a researcher looking into their experiences,

“Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are currently conducting an online study of the experiences of families of gender variant, transgender, or otherwise non-cisgender kids ages 10-17. The study involves completing questionnaires online about your experiences with the process of your child disclosing their gender identity to you and/or the process of your child’s transition, as well as questions regarding your emotions, attitudes, and preferences for potential psychotherapy interventions for families of gender variant children. Your child will also complete several brief questionnaires about their emotions and experiences with disclosing their gender identity. To participate, you must be the parent or primary caregiver of a child or teen ages 10-17 who identifies as gender variant, transgender, or otherwise non-cisgender and you yourself must be at least 18 years of age. You will have the option of including your contact information in order to receive a $10 gift card, although providing your contact information is not necessary to participate in the study. The information gathered from this study may help us to better understand the needs of families of gender variant children and ultimately help us to design therapies to help families better cope with the changes associated with their child’s transition.”

Please participate if you qualify, as we need as many voices and as broad range of experiences as possible:

http://psychology.case.edu/research/fear_lab/lgbtq_participation.html

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One in Twelve

One in twelve transsexuals is murdered.  That was the ‘back of the envelope’ estimate that I made back about 15 years ago for my transhistory class that I taught at the Harvey Milk Institute.  As I had posted some of my notes and power point slides on a website for that purpose, it was picked up by many in the LGBT community, much to my amazement, to become one of those unquestioned internet memes, but it had morphed to one in twelve “transgendered”.

One in twelve “profoundly transsexual” MTF (NOT “transgendered” people — It’s important to know that only 90,000 Americans have transitioned – yet over a million people are assumed to be “transgendered” by the press.) was my estimate of how many of us were murdered in our (shortened) lifetimes.   That math was based on two numbers available to me at that time.  First that the estimate of how many “profoundly transsexual” transwomen there were was one in 11,200 male births, from a study in the Netherlands; second that at the time I made the estimate, that approximately one “early / transitioning” transwoman was murdered a month in the United States.  Either number may have been wrong, or subject to change over time.  However, with those numbers I estimated that of the 260 million US residents in the late ‘90s, 11,600 would be such “profoundly transsexual”.

I defined “profoundly transsexual” as those born males living full time, or nearly so, as women socially since an early age.  This by definition excluded private cross-dressers and part-time transfolk, who would not be exposed to transphobic violence in their daily activities, and those who transitioned later in life, that is to say, that it excluded the majority of so called “transgendered” people.  If one “young transitioner” is murdered per month, and one can normally expect to have had a life-expectancy of 80 years, then the lifetime risk of being murdered is approximately one in twelve.  An actuarian may take issue with my simplistic treatment, but the math is basically sound.

But, as I have been at pains to explain here on this blog, there are two types of transwomen, Autogynephilic (AGP / “non-homosexual”) and transkids (exclusively androphilic transsexuals), which do not have the same risk profile.  As I shall explain further, it is transkids, (i.e. exclusively androphilic) transsexual women who bear the significantly greater risk.

(If you are not familiar with the two types, please read this FAQ and this essay describing the two very different populations:  A Clinical View)

Further, this issue is not an academic one for me.  In keeping with the feminist credo that “the personal is political”, I share with my reader that my own life has been touched with transphobic violence.  When I was a teenager, I suffered a number of attacks and beatings, directly due to my gender atypicality, perceived (correctly) sexual orientation toward men, and my transgender status.  One of the worse beatings I suffered was when I was 14 years old, when two older boys, who layed in wait along my path through a dark orchard just a block from my home, first taunted me, then beat, knocked me to the ground, and proceeded to kick me viciously, all the while yelling homophobic slurs.  Their exact words included,

“FAGGOT!”

“PANSY!”

“PANTYWAIST!”

“YOU THINK YOU’RE A GIRL?”

“YOU MAKE ME SICK!”.

Kay Brown in college

Fast forward about five years, when I was 19, a good friend of mine, Tere, invited me to go with her to a beach party her crowd was throwing.  Tere was also my brother’s girlfriend, someone I had known for a number of years from high school.  Mind you, I had been out as both trans and into guys in high school, so a number of the kids at this party knew who and what I was.  Somehow, I stupidly didn’t think this might be a problem.  A couple hours into the party, after having had a good time talking with, and gently flirting with a number of cute young men, I was lured some distance from the party, where perhaps seven or eight young men surrounded me and started taunting me and laughing among themselves, “Are you a boy or a girl?”  “Hey, let’s pants it and see”…  At that point, I was terrified, knowing full well that after they had torn off my clothes to reveal my pre-op body, that I would be beaten and kicked by four times as many, older and stronger, young men than when I was 14.  To my everlasting relief Tere jumped into the middle of the boys at that point and yelled, “You leave her alone!”  In the sudden confusion of her interruption, Tere grabbed my arm and escorted me at a very fast walk to my car.  I have no doubt that had Tere not intervened, I would have been hospitalized, at best, or killed at worst.

In the news, only this past month, was the beating death of 21 year old Islan Nettles on a street of New York City, the beating death of 16 year old Duane Johnson and the severe beating and attempted rape of her roommate, Kiki, in a slum of Jamaica, and the video recorded beating of a young transwoman in a park in Russia.  The “one in twelve” number may not be exactly correct… but it certainly seems to me to be close.  The website, “Remembering our Dead” has long memorialized these murders, but it fails to note that most of these deaths are of transkids, not their older and far more numerous AGP “sisters”.  Note that most of these murders are perpetrated by younger men… and their victims are mostly young transwomen.

Perhaps a couple more random examples that have stuck in my mind, to illustrate my point? In 1978, the transkid community in Los Angeles was saddened and horrified to learn of the death and mutilation of a young transwoman whose body was found in a dumpster with her (silicone enhanced) breasts slashed.  It was understood that she was to be seeing a new beau that evening.  About a decade ago, a young transwomen was murdered at a party in the San Francisco East Bay Area by a group of young men, several of whom it was later learned, had had erotic encounters with her before they had learned of her pre-op status.

I used to be confused by the motives of the young men who perpetrated these horrible crimes.  But one late night drive in my car, I chanced to tune in a talk radio show in which the topic was transsexuals. Led by a ‘phobic shock jock, his callers revealed their anger and hatred of young transwomen, especially pre-op transkids, who had “fooled” them into dating them.  Listening carefully, I learned that their reactions were driven by a very special form of “homosexual panic”.  The classic “homosexual panic” is created in insecure straight men when a gay man shows romantic or erotic interest in them.  The thought that then goes through their mind is, “oh my god… a gay man thought I might be gay too!”  But, though the anger and hatred may be great, it isn’t nearly the threat to an insecure man that the certain knowledge that, in the case of a cute transwomen, they had without any doubt been romantically and erotically attracted to a male bodied person, “oh my god, I’m turned on by a guy!”  The violence that that realization evokes is explosive and unreasoning.  Add to it young men in groups, men who need to prove to themselves and their buddies that they aren’t “fags”… perhaps add some alcohol or other mild intoxicant, the result is one or more beaten and dead young transwoman.

Of course, none of the above has been corroborated by careful study.  So, to any researchers who may find my blog, I suggest the following protocol to test my hypothesis.  Present to two groups of young heterosexual men a photo of a very attractive young woman.  Ask them to write an essay on what a perfect first date with this woman might entail.  Half of the men you then inform that that the woman was “actually a boy who is hoping to “get a sex change” but is still pre-op”, the other half do nothing.  Then test both groups for implicit anger and animosity to transwomen and gay men, as well as their feelings about their own sexuality.  I’m betting that the group who is told that their “dream date” woman is a transsexual will exhibit a great deal more anger, transphobia, homophobia, and sexual orientation anxiety.

If I’m right, we can contrast this experience with transphobic discrimination experienced by older AGP transwomen.  Not to put too much of a fine point on it… ummm… lets be honest, fewer of them inspire as much erotic interest in younger men, the men most likely to perpetrate these crimes.  Fewer of them will date any man without that man knowing their full medical history, given the statistically known fact that few of them live “deep stealth” or successfully pass well enough.  All of this on top of the fact that most AGP transsexual women will have no interest in flirting with and dating any men.

Thus, although it is still a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation, when we subtract the number of older AGP transwomen, we can infer that one in twelve MTF transkids really is murdered, and their greatest risk exposure is when they are fairly young.  Given that more transkids are people of color than AGP, this risk is also falling disproportionately upon transwomen of color, as noted by Shelby Chestnut in Matthew Fleischer’s story on Islan Nettles,

“If nothing else, Chestnut hopes Nettles’ death will bring to light the tremendous violence faced by transgender women—particularly transgender women of color.  Seventy-two percent of anti-LGBT murders in America affected people of color and 53 percent of those were transgender women”, Chestnut said.  “The only way to end anti-LGBT violence is to keep talking about it and let the public know that incidents like the one that left Nettles dead are hardly uncommon, Chestnut said. Victims of hate violence also need to have the courage to come forward and tell their stories.  Reporting violence helps end violence,” says Chestnut. “Unless we know where violence is occurring, we can’t do outreach in the area. We can’t reach out to the general public know that anti-LGBT violence shouldn’t be tolerated.”

I would add that it’s time that the larger LGBT community recognize that there are two types of transwomen, and that our lives, as transkids, including our risks of transphobic violence, are quite different from the far larger autogynephilic “transgender” community.  We need to do several things to fix this continuing violence.  One, pass anti-discrimination laws so that young transwomen can work in decent jobs.  Two, pass higher minimum wage laws so that working people can support themselves.  Three, pass laws ending the use of the so called “gay panic” defense (as California already has).  Four, add transgender / gender expression to anti-hate crime laws.  Five, help educate law enforcement about who is really at risk and why (and stop pretending it is “all transgender people”.

(Addendum 10/4/2015:  In the past year, the number of MTF transkids being murdered reported in the media has increased.  But a disturbing new meme has also been circulating to the effect that these transkids are all “just prostitutes” and it has nothing to do with being “transgendered”.  This is disturbing on two fronts:  First is the obvious dehumanization and victim blaming; the second is the failure to understand that though some, but not all, of these victims had resorted to ‘survival sex’, the need to exchange sex for food and shelter is a direct consequence of being a transkid, disowned by one’s family at a young age, forced to live on the street with no skills or social capital.  Transkids are by no means the only young people to be so disadvantaged in this manner, but the percentage of transkids that find themselves is this situation is very high.)

(Addendum 2/3/2018:  I continue to see the disturbing meme that transkids being murdered were all “just prostitutes”, even though careful review of the actual lives of the victims shows that is not universal nor was it the immediate cause of the “homosexual panic” rage that lead to their deaths.  Sigh… But I also see an incredible effort being made by a very transphobic minority of women who wrap themselves in the feminist flag to “debunk” the ‘one-in-twelve’ meme.  Sadly, they continue to misunderstand that it is NOT about the larger autogynephilic transgender community.  Though of course, that would be largely because the larger autogynephilic community has also misapplied the phenomena to themselves.  The combination is that two different groups are arguing about something that simply never applied.  So, of course the numbers don’t tally!)

(Special Note: If you were refered to this page from Quora, please note that this individual is not an expert as claimed.  And their “just so story” of a friend who hides in their house because of this “one in twelve” statistic is likely not at all true, but if that person exists, is far more likely to be suffering from agoraphobia, a serious mental illness that is not related to being transgender.)

Further Reading:

Demographic data on the number of transsexuals in the United States.  You may have read that there are almost one and a half million “transgender” people in the U.S.  This is only the number who “identify” with transgender people, the vast majority being heterosexual men who cross-dress in private.  The actual number who have transitioned is only 90,000, and even then, most are “late transitioning” / autogynephiles.

Essay on the large number of teenagers and young adults who falsely claim to be “transgender”

Clinical differences between MTF transkids and AGP MTF transgendered.

External Reading:

“Lil Duval Jokes He’d Kill a Sexual Partner If He Found Out She Was Transgender: ‘I Don’t Care, She’s Dying'” by Titiana Cirisano

“Trans Women and Femmes Are Shouting #MeToo — But Are You Listening?”

References:

http://news.yahoo.com/transgender-woman-dies-beating-front-nypd-precinct-201642369.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/11/jamaica-transgender-teen-murdered-by-mob/2639995/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/russian-transgender-woman-beaten_n_3779723.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/evidence-contradicts-police-account-of-possible-anti-transge#.odGmvNbPp6

 

Going to the Chapel… ♫♫

♫♫… and We’re Going to Get Married…♫♫

Dr. Richard Green in his 1974 book on transsexuals, “Gender Identity Conflict in Children and Adults” wrote,

“The men who fall in love with and perhaps marry women who are themselves former males, by and large, have known their partners only as women.  Their prior sexual experiences have been only with females.  They consider themselves heterosexual and their relationships heterosexual.  To varying degrees they are consciously and unconsciously aware of the biologic status of their partners, but it would be simplistic and would furthermore blur generally accepted definitions to call these men homosexual.  Rather they are men who respond to the considerable femininity of male-to-female transsexuals, ignoring the dissonant cues of masculinity.”

Those very words, read when I was 17 years old, gave me hope that my dearest wish, to find and marry a straight man, hopefully to also adopt children, just might be possible, in spite of my own mother’s words of encouragement that “No man will ever love you, you know.”  Fortunately, Dr. Green was right, and my mother quite wrong.  Although there are few references, and almost no serious studies, that specifically look at the men who marry transwomen, either “early onset” or “late onset”, I believe from my own observations that most MTF transkids who marry, do find husbands who are straight and narrow (but not narrow minded), because gay men just aren’t interested in transkids. As by negative proof, Green describes a married couple in his book, a pre-op transwoman and a putatively, self-described, straight man.  In quoting this man, he describes the day he met his ladylove,

“The first time I ever remember was she was walking across the street, and one of the fellows I work with said, “Hey, that looks like a guy wearing capris.”

Thus, this man knew she was a transwoman from the very start, as she was just barely beginning to transition.  From the description given both by Dr. Green and by this man, it is clear that this transwoman was a classic transkid.  This transwoman, in the same section, lamented that she very much wanted SRS, but was getting serious resistance from her husband,

“My marriage is not doing so good.  It’s not good because my husband more and more has turned to — now he’s turned to more and more to homosexuality.  It’s something I’ve found very difficult to live with.  I could understand his turning to another woman, because of my position, but not another man.  It really tears me up.”

Thus, we see that this transwoman has married a gay man who used her as a stepping stone in coming out.  It seemed clear reading the book that this marriage would soon end, because when asked if she thought her husband was possibly against her transitioning she replied,

“Yes, I do, because were were closer before I started dressing as a woman regularly.  The point was when I got my breast  operation.  It was one thing I didn’t understand.  It meant so much for me to get this operation, and when I did get it, he was very cold for about two months afterwards.  He was very nasty to me. and he told me that as time goes by I’m getting more womanly and more adjusted and this is bugging him.”

Thus, he showed that MTF transkids’ husbands are by and large heterosexual, because gay men lose interest as we transition. Green interviews a number of other men who are either married or engaged to MTF transkids, who were all clearly straight.  Green was mostly right… but in some respects he missed a few nuances.  Back in the early 70’s he failed to differentiate between transkids and autogynephilic transwomen, and the nature of the men who married AGP transwomen.  But we still find hints.  In his book he writes about a candidate for surgery who detransitions when he falls in love with a post-op transsexual.  This individual is in fact gynephilic, and as a man who detransitioned, would be described as heterosexual, but he is also autogynephilic and gynandromorphophilic. While it is obvious why MTF transkids, who are, after all, genuinely androphilic would wish to find and marry heterosexual men.  It has always puzzled me as to why obviously autogynephilic, and just as obviously, truly gynephilic, transwomen would chose instead to marry men.  Further, just what motivates such men to marry these autogynephilic transwomen?  Lawrence, in her 2013 book speculates,

“… some of them go to great lengths to maintain a facade of “heterosexual normality.”  One can observe this phenomenon on a few internet web sites belonging to MtF transsexuals who fit the autogynephilic demographic (formerly married to women, male-typical occupational history, etc.) and have found men willing to marry them.  On their web sites, these transsexuals clearly convey their pride in their status as married women; sometimes they even display their wedding photographs…”

I can almost see this… but it doesn’t explain the men involved, nor why these transwomen are able to maintain such relationships.  Perhaps we saw a hint of who these men are, and what dynamic maintains the relationship in Green’s book, mutual gynandromorphophilia and autogynephilia?  Consider that Green’s detransitioned transgendered individual likely still experiences autogynephilic arousal to cross-dressing?  Could it be that such men who AGP transsexuals marry are themselves autogynephilic and gynandromorphophilic?

About twenty years ago, a young transwoman in her mid-20’s called me up because she wanted me to meet her new boyfriend.  This news very much surprised me because I had never gotten the impression that she was terribly interested in men.  She had, after all, been in the Navy, on board submarines, for months at a time, and never felt any desire toward her shipmates (me?  I would have gone nuts trying to keep my hands off of them!).   We discussed our conflicting schedules and finally agreed that the best time would also coincide with her support group meeting time.  So off I trudged to an AGP transgender support group meeting.  When I finally met my friend’s new boyfriend, all was made clear… her “boyfriend” was also her “girlfriend”… as he was a classic and typical cross-dresser, fully dressed in women’s clothes for this CD/TG/TS support group meeting. To the outside world, they were a heterosexual couple.  To TG ‘insiders’ it was known that they were a pre-op TS woman and a semi-closeted cross-dresser.

Some time ago, when I was still single, I was introduced to a man who sounded like a potential mate.  He took me to classical music concerts, romantic drives in the country in his sports car, cooked a fine meal… seemed ideal… yet I wasn’t attracted to him, though he was to me, strongly.  He broached the idea of marriage.  It couldn’t have been described as a proposal, likely because he “knew” I would turn him down,   because included in his reasons for why the match was perfect was the idea that we could share the same wardrobe, as we wore the same size 12 dresses.  Although this was personally repugnant, we know for a fact that many autogynephilic transwomen would find this to be ideal.

In the Daskalos paper purportedly about changes in sexual orientation after transition, we see two more examples of exactly such relationships.  In combination with autogynephilic pseudo-androphilia, this makes a potent brew of mutual sexual attraction.  Exactly how many AGP transwomen have found such a mutually agreeable relationship with a cross-dressing man is uncertain.  That such relationships exist is beyond doubt.  This would make for a very interesting research paper.

You may wish to read more from Green’s book here.

Further Reading:

Essay on men who are interested in pre-op transwomen

Essay on autogynephiles being sexually interested in pre-op transwomen

References:

Richard Green, M.D., 1974, “Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults“, Basic Books

Anne Lawrence, 2013, “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies“, Springer

Daskalos CT., “Changes in the sexual orientation of six heterosexual male-to-female transsexuals.” http://www.springerlink.com/content/pu44808u15q78k21/

Anne Lawrence, “Letter to the Editor” (in response to Daskalos) http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1018725518592

 

Transkids.us Update

Now that I have taken on the responsibility of maintaining the Transkids.us website (with my husband’s dutiful help, as I’m not all that good with web stuff, it not being my field, but was his before he retired) we’ve moved the site to a new host and begun to clean-up typos and other issues, including dead links.  We’re not done yet, but it is improving.

In cleaning up some of the typos and silly grammatical errors (it’s amazing what a misplaced comma does to a sentence), I’m once again marveling at the insight of the original authors, especially “Alex Parkinson” (not her real name) in her essay on how GID as a theory obscures the real nature of transsexuality.  If you have never read it, you really should take the time to do so now.  Read it very slowly, as though the words were being spoken aloud by an erudite lecturer.  The essay is amazing for such a young author.

Although the original authors have moved on… which is as it should be for young people to do, I have been wondering where this should go next.  I have come to the conclusion that additional voices, additional essays, would be welcome.  If you are a transkid (transgender youth), who is clearly such, and have insights into the issues being explored at the transkids.us website and/or here on my blog, I would welcome a dialog.  Its been ten years since the original authors took note of the controversy surrounding the publication of Prof. Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, and it is time for a new perspective.

You may reach me at formertranskid@gmail.com

Addendum 3/6/2013:

The edits are pretty much complete.  If you find dead links or serious typos, please let me know?

I’ve been rereading the posts as I edit them.  I was once again struck by how well many of the issues were addressed.  I would strongly recommend that any and all gender therapists and physicians read the recommendations regarding treatment of MTF transkids.  I find it difficult to add much to them, save perhaps to amplify by example.  IF you are a health care provider working with transgendered children or teens, and would care to discuss more explicit and detailed recommendations with me, I would be very interested in working with you.  There are things that I would not wish to discuss in an open forum.

Addendum 4/2/2013:

You may wish to read my earlier comment on why I have inherited the transkids.us website: