Heya everybody!

Finally, before it’s back to work next week, I managed to do some housekeeping and summarised the articles I have added over the previous weeks. Here are the highlights:

• More evidence is collected that gender-dysphoric persons have undergone atypical sexual differentiation of the brain. Burke, Cohe-Kettenis, et al. (in “Frontiers in Endocrinology”, 2014) looked at the responses of the hypothalamus (a part of the brain) when patients were exposed to an odour which evokes sex differences in brain activation in adult heterosexual men and women. “We found that the sex difference in responsiveness to androstadienone was already present in pre-pubertal control children and thus likely developed during early perinatal development instead of during sexual maturation. Adolescent girls and boys with GD both responded remarkably like their experienced gender, thus sex-atypical.” Again, this means that the brain of transsexuals at least partly resembles the brain of their experienced gender, providing more proof that male-to-female transsexuals really are women and female-to-male transsexuals really are men.

• Holt, Skagerberg and Dunsford find (Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2014) that difficulties associated with gender dysphoria in children and young people are bullying, low mood/depression and self-harming. The difficulties increased with age.

• Bartolucci, Gómez-Gil, et al. report in the “Journal of Sexual Medicine” in 2014 that about half of transsexuals report their sex life as being poor or very poor before sex reassignment surgery. Hormone therapy is associated with a better sexual quality of life.

• Brown and Jones find in a very large American study (published in “Breast Cancer Research and Treatment”, 2014) of transgender veterans that hormone therapy does not increase risk of breast cancer. This finding is consistent with European studies.

• An Australian study by del pozo de Bolger, Jones, et al. finds that for trans men, “going through a masculinisation process and coming out reportedly led to improved mental health”. Published in the “Australian Psychologist”, 2014.

• A German study, published by “Deutsches Ärzteblatt International” in 2014 by Hess, Neto, et. al. looks at the long-term satisfaction with life after sex reassignment surgery. Satisfaction rates were very high at 90.2 %. However, the drop-out rate was also high, with less than 50 % of former patients returning the questionnaire.

• Baranyi, Piber and Rothenhäusler write in the “Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift” (2009) that their literature search of the last 22 years found a regret/doubt rate of up to 8 % after sex reassignment surgery.

• Selvaggi, Monstrey, et al. study the genital sensitivity after sex reassignment surgery (Annals of plastic surgery, 2007). They find that 100 % of female-to-male and 85 % male-to-female patients reported the ability to orgasm.

• “The Journal of Neuroscience”, 2014 published a study by Clarkson, Busby, et al. about the sexual differentiation of the brain of mice. They found a signaling mechanism that drives the male-specific surge of testosteron which masculinises the brain, and is therefor essential for male brain development.

• Amend, Seibold, et al. (in “European urology”, 2013) look at 24 patients having had male-to-female sex reassignment surgery and find no major complications: “gender reassignment can be performed with minimal complications”. “All patients reported satisfactory vaginal functionality.” “Neoclitoral sensation was good or excellent in 97% of patients”.

• Brunocilla, Soli, et al., having studied the pelvis of male-to-female transsexuals after surgery by magnetic resonance, report in 2012 in the “International Journal of Impotence Research” that „the anthropometric parameters measured in our patients were comparable with those of [cisgender] women”.

• In 2012, Furtado, Moraes, et al. studied the link between gender dysphoria and disorders of sex development (Nature Reviews Urology, 2012). They find that between 8.5 % to 20 % of individuals with disorders of sex development (DSD) also suffer from gender dysphoria with some types of DSD exhibiting up to 63 % patients with gender dysphoria. This strengthens my opinion that gender dysphoria should be classified as DSD.

• Bandini, Fisher, et al. publish in 2011 (International Journal of Impotence Research) that more than quarter of of male-to-female transsexuals reported childhood maltreatment. “Maltreated subjects reported a higher body dissatisfaction and display a worse lifetime mental health.”

• In 2014 in “LGBT Health” Blosnich, Brown, et. al. report that the suicide rate among transgender veterans “is higher than in the general population, and they may be dying by suicide at younger ages than their veteran peers”.

• In an article in the “Journal of Clinical Psychology”, 2014, Robles, Fresán, et al. report that a large share of clinicians wants to remove gender identity disorder from the medical classification as mental disorder.

• Meyenburg, Kröger and Neugebauer find in the “Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie”, 2015, that young transsexuals reported little psychopathology and that low-frequency supportive treatment appears sufficient. After hormonal/surgical treatment, most patients were satisfied with the results. All patients showed less psychopathology on follow-up, independent of role change or intensity of psychotherapy.

Phew – that was a lot!

I don’t know what people like Leelah Alcorn’s parents say to the huge body of evidence that exists on gender dysphoria. Perhaps something like they said on CNN: “we don’t support that, religiously” – with “that” meaning facts, evidence or reality?

Peace and light.

I have thought for a while about whether I should write an article about the suffering and death of Leelah Alcorn, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn. On New Year’s Day, Google news had 2.1 million hits on her name, today it’s 3.0 million hits. A lot of people have written much smarter and much more insightful things than I ever could. I had to wait for a few days anyway, because this tragedy made me too emotional – but from reading Leelah’s suicide note, I think it’s good if as many people as possible speak up.

I just want to add a couple of things.

From Leelah’s suicide note, it appears that her parents

– withheld necessary medical treatment from her and

– discriminated against her and severely psychologically abused her.

There are some facts that are vital to get across to everybody:

• Transsexualism exists. Transsexual people suffer, and have a very high risk of suicide. Medical treatment and social support can help.

• Transsexualism is a part of one’s identity. It is part of who we are. This part of the self is nothing that can be changed.

• If you don’t accept or respect a person for her transsexuality, you are discriminating against her. Shaming and punishing people for their identity is severe abuse.

Some of the cruel effects that often accompany gender dysphoria are low self-esteem or self-hate, social anxiety and depression. That’s why it’s so dangerous when friends or family stigmatise, punish and shame someone for her transsexuality. It creates a vicious circle, a negative feedback loop, making things worse.

Based on the above, I agree with Dan Savage (I love him for the advice he gives and his clear-sighted humane moral stance) who thinks that Leelah’s parents should be “charged with child abuse, neglect, reckless endangerment and manslaughter”.

Religion …

According to Leelah, her mother, Carla Wood Alcorn, stated that “god doesn’t make mistakes”. I can’t even get my head around what her mother might have meant by this declaration. I guess all victims of disasters and accidents, like people dying in tsunamis and plane crashes, were meant by god to die this way? Okay, fine, if you believe in a cruel god. But what does that mean when it comes to illness? Does every individual case of illness, every ailment happen with the approval of god? If so, why have medicine, doctors, nurses and hospitals? If you are born with a cleft palate, or if your hearing fails in old age, or if you have cancer, you get medical help. But god doesn’t make mistakes, does he? He clearly wants you to suffer. Well, I won’t expand on this issue here… but if you believe that god doesn’t make mistakes, what do you think about birth defects? Do you deny they exist, or do you really think god is consenting to this suffering? What kind of support are we supposed to or allowed by god to give to suffering people? And who decides?

I don’t understand where religious people get their morality from, how their moral framework functions. It’s so much simpler to base your morality on compassion, empathy and the aim for a better world.

Interacting with children/teenagers …

Just from that suicide note, Leelah Alcorn appears to be an intelligent, insightful, sensitive, rational and self-aware human being. She diagnosed herself, provided that diagnosis to her parents and was looking for help. She is to be commended for her brave, honest and sensible behaviour. I’m not sure parents can ask for more.

So, no smilies today. But let’s try to have a good year, a year in which we try to ‘fix society’ and try to live up to the wishes and hopes that Leelah expressed in her final letter.

The suicide note of 17-year old Leelah Alcorn, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn:

“If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.

Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in … because I’m transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally ‘boyish’ things to try to fit in.

When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.

My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.

When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.

I formed a sort of a ‘fuck you’ attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.

So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.

At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week.

After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say ‘it gets better’ but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.

That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100 % of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say ‘that’s fucked up’ and fix it. Fix society.
Please.

Goodbye,

(Leelah) Josh Alcorn”

What her mother, Carla Wood Alcorn, wrote:

“My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to heaven this morning. He was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck. Thank you for the messages and kindness and concern you have sent our way. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.”

Leelah Alcorn was born 15th November 1997 and died 28th December 2014.

Two quotes that express my thoughts.

“It takes one hell of a coward to bring a sword to a pen fight.”

“If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.”

In a blog post in November I mentioned a new study by the University of Vienna (Kranz, Hahn, Kaufmann, Küblböck, et al.) called “White Matter Microstructure in Transsexuals and Controls Investigated by Diffusion Tensor Imaging”.

I listed this study on my reference pages in sections 1.b (Brains of transsexuals show characteristics that are part-way between male and female controls) and 5.a (Hormone exposure, especially before and around birth, can influence the development and sexual differentiation of the brain, including gender identity/Human studies).

This study is now gaining some traction in the media: An Austrian article in “Der Standard” reports that neuronal correlates of the perception of identity were found in the network of the brain. The scientists in Rupert Lanzenberger’s group found significant differences in microstructure of the brain connections between males and females, with transgender people in-between both genders.

“ScienceDaily” adds in “Networks of the brain reflect the individual gender identity” that “these results suggest that the gender identity is reflected in the structure of brain networks which form under the modulating influence of sex hormones in the course of the development of the nervous system”.

Take care and have a good Sunday ✨

Heya everybody,

A friend of mine has pointed out an article in the “Federalist” called “Here’s What Parents Of Transgender Kids Need To Know”. The article is written by Walt Heyer, who maintains a website about sex change regret. I don’t know much about this person – he seems to have been falsely diagnosed with gender dysphoria, changed gender roles and had sex reassignment surgery only to be later reverting back to his old male gender role, being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. Well, the article has attracted 112 comments so far, so I thought it merits a response.

Walt Heyer quotes two studies that didn’t find a link between a few specific gene sequences they researched and gender dysphoria. From this body of evidence he concludes – wait for it! – that “your child was not born in the wrong body”. Clearly, this person has malicious intent (I know – “never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence” – but surely nobody could be this stupid?).

Science is researching pathways that can lead to transsexualism, and certain specific gene sequences have been ruled out. That’s great – it narrows down possible causes. What it does not do is prove that there is no biological cause of transsexualism. The most likely explanation is hormonal influence in the womb. For some sound science, see my pages listing studies on the causes of transsexualism, listing 135 scientific articles.

On the question of whether transsexual people have been born into the wrong body or not, have a look at my “What is transsexualism” reference pages, listing 78 scientific articles, including 26 studies that find brain structures of transsexuals resembling those of their experienced gender. Here is just one example, showing that transsexual “children possess certain sex-atypical functional brain characteristics and may have undergone atypical sexual differentiation of the brain”.

PS: Have you heard of the web service called “donotlink”? It lets you link to websites without improving their search engine status, and can be used for sites containing scams, pseudoscience, misinformation, alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, racist or sexist blog posts, etc.

PPS: The studies mentioned in the article by Walt Heyer are listed on my other references pages – I try to collect and publish all scientific articles about transsexualism to allow readers to see what the scientific status is. Collecting and citing only articles that support a certain point of view is dishonest.

Heya everybody,

So much to write and so little time... I have tons of new studies to add, and hope to do that this weekend... my last weekends were so busy, I couldn’t really update things... so much to do and so little time. ☺

Just to get a few things out of my head:

The pope has returned to the normal intolerant, immoral positions that seem to come with the job. In Manila, he compared the fight against LGBT rights with the fight against colonialism. Also, gay marriage threatens the family, society is “tempted by confusing presentations of sexuality, marriage and the family”. Apparently, gay rights are “powerful forces which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation and betray the very values which have inspired and shaped all that is best in your culture”. (For examples, see here and here.)

Well, not much to say there, except for the standard answers: Gay marriage seems to me to strengthen the idea of family, not to weaken it; if the pope is confused about sexuality, marriage and the family, it’s only natural since he’s an unmarried virgin – but I’m sure if he was willing to look, he could find a kind person who explains it all to him; and as to god’s plan – I’m glad he seems to know it, but what I’d like to know is how same-sex orientation, and gender dysphoria fit into god’s plan – why did god create things only to condemn them? Seems a little weird to me.

Oh, and for good measure, the pope used the “wife-beater’s defence” to rationalise the terror attack on Charlie Hebdo: “One cannot provoke; one cannot insult other people’s faith; one cannot make fun of faith.” Apparently, “if [a good friend] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal.” Well, it certainly isn’t “normal” in my book – and I don’t think the comparison of a massacre of defenseless people to punching someone shows great moral aptitude.

Well, that’s the pope... and now for something completely different: One of the scariest things I have read recently was Sam Harris’ blog entry “Can We Avoid a Digital Apocalypse?”, a response to the 2015 question of the magazine “Edge”. Reading Sam Harris, I often feel this mix of awe about his insight and clarity and hope that what he says is not true or at least won’t come true.

Anyway, so much more to write... but I should do my homework first and add those scientific articles I’ve collected over the past weeks!

Heya everybody,

I managed to go through 19 studies today, and added them to my master files. I’ll upload them shortly, I promise! Again, there is quite a bit of additional evidence for a bioloigcal cause of transsexualism. Here’s a summary of the important points:

• Kang, Imperato-McGinley, et al. study the effects of 5a-reductase-2 deficiency (a disorder of sex development) and find that most persons affected by the disorder raised as females transition to a male gender role later on (in “Fertility and sterility”, 2014). This adds further weight to the hypothesis that gender identity is biological, and not merely formed by socialisation.

• In “The journal of sexual medicine”, 2015, Japanese researchers Nakachi, Iseki, et al. look at gene expression in female mice after being treated with testosterone shortly after birth. Following the hormonal administration, they found that 334 (!) genes were expressed differently. This suggests that “many gender-dysphoria-related genes are upregulated during female brain masculinization”. The massive number of differences found shows the large impact hormones have around birth in differentiating the two genders, and provides further clues to better understand gender dysphoria.

• Pasterski, Acerini, et al. find “evidence for neurobehavioral effects of the postnatal androgen surge in typically developing boys” (Hormones and Behavior, 2015). “[…] prenatal androgen exposure […] and early postnatal androgen exposure […] were significant predictors of increased masculine/decreased feminine behavior, with each accounting for unique variance”. So, again, sex hormone levels around birth are found to influence sex-typed behavior.

• Researchers Colizzi, Costa and Todarello are looking into the very important question of whether transsexuals people really do have more psychological problems than healthy controls (Psychiatry Research, 2015). They find that 29.6 % of their focus group had dissociative disorders (also, sadly, and underlining the misery many transsexuals experience, 45.8 % had a major depressive episode, 21.2 % had attempted suicide and 45.8 % experienced childhood trauma). Hormonal treatment was found yet again to lower dissociative symptoms and improve mental health. However, the question of whether the elevated occurrence of dissociative symptoms in gender-dysphoric individuals is real could not be answered, due to the inability to differentiate between symptoms of gender dysphoria and separate pathological dissocative experiences.

• The Dutch group of transsexual researchers (Hoekzema, Schagen, et. al., in “Psychoneuroendocrinology”, 2015) have measured brain volumes and volumetric distribution of grey matter in brains of gender-dysphoric individuals. Overall, brains of transsexuals resemble their birth sex, but in some regions of interest differences from birth sex controls were found. This further contributes to findings that transsexuals have undergone sex-atypical differentiation of the brain.

• Jacobs, Rachlin, et al. write in “LGBT Health”, 2014, that autism spectrum disorders should not disqualify from gender transition, since “individuals with high-functioning ASDs are capable of making informed decisions regarding their medical care and life choices”.

• The Belgian team of researchers of transsexualism report on the current prevalence of gender dysphoria in Flanders. Apparently, around 2 % of people are gender-ambivalent, with roughly 0.6 % being gender dysphoric (van Caenegem, Wierckx, et. al. in the “Archives of Sexual Behavior”, 2015).

• Birkett, Newcomb and Mustanski (in the “Journal of adolescent health”, 2015) have been testing whether Dan Savage’s “it gets better” claim can be supported scientifically. After studying 213 LGBT-adolescents, they found, indeed, that it does get better: “both psychological distress and victimization decreased across adolescence and into early adulthood”. Yay!

• Navarro, Larrañaga and Yubero sadly find that gender-variant children fall victim to bullying (in “Child indicators research”, 2015).

• Aitken, Steensma, et al. (in “The Journal of Sexual Medicine”, 2015) find that in samples taken from gender identity clinics in both Toronto and Amsterdam, the sex ratio has reversed in recent years. In the past, male-to-female transsexuals used to be in the majority, whereas female-to-male individuals now provide the larger share. Listed among the authors of the study is the dubious and discredited sexologist Ray Blanchard, who used to believe transsexualism is caused by a misdirected male sex drive. This finding further discredits his old theory. I wonder whether he’s changing his mind to match the facts in his old age, or whether he’ll come up with yet another unsupported just-so story to explain away his cognitive dissonance. 😏

So, that’s it for now… I’m exhausted ☺ Peace and light ✨

Heya everybody,

it is so easy to spread falsehoods and rumours – and so time-consuming to diligently set the facts straight. A friend of mine has pointed out an issue mentioned by Walt Heyer (see also my 2015-01-11 blog entry) in one of his YouTube videos. Just as a a reminder, Walt was apparently falsely diagnosed with gender dysphoria, changed gender roles and had sex reassignment surgery only to be later reverting back to his old male gender role, being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.^[1]

In his video, Walt talked about that infamously high suicide attempt rate of 41 % for transgender people continuing after transition. At the same time this was pointed out to me, I was also made aware of an article on the website “RenewAmerica”^[2], called “An appeal to Bruce Jenner”. In the article, author J. Matt Barber writes “There is a reason that after ’sex reassignment’ surgery, so-called ’transgender’ people commit suicide at a rate 20 times higher than normal, and, despite rationalizations to the contrary, imaginary ’transphobia’ is not that reason.”^[3] The 20-times-higher claim is linked to an article by Paul McHugh, already discussed in my 2014-06-25 and 2014-07-05 blog posts.

I believe the source for these claims is two statements from page 82 of the US national transgender discrimination survey from 2011^[4]:^[5]

• “When asked ‘have you ever attempted suicide?’ 41 % of respondents answered yes. According to government health estimates, five million, or 1.6 % of currently living Americans have attempted suicide in the course of their lives.”

• “However, there are a number of attributes that align with an increased rate of attempted suicide. High risk groups include visual non-conformers (44 %) and those who are generally out about their transgender status (44 %). Those who have medically transitioned (45 %) and surgically transitioned (43 %) have higher rates of attempted suicide than those who have not (34 % and 39 % respectively).”

On the face of it, it would appear that the transgender respondents of the study were at a risk of suicide attempts that’s a staggering 25-times higher than that of the general population. In addition, it seems that people who are accepting and open about their transgender status or transitoned medically or surgically have a higher suicide risk than closeted transgender persons before transition.

Okay, that’s two quotes in isolation. Now to the context:

First of all, the study asked “if respondents had ever attempted suicide”. This is vital for the interpretation of the data. Immediately, this poses a problem of comparing numbers, as is stated in the report directly on page 82: “most federal studies refer to suicide attempts within the last year; accordingly it is difficult to compare our numbers with other studies.” So, all we know is that 41 % of transgender people have attempted suicide at some point in their lifes prior to responding in the study. This figure is “shockingly high”, of course, but it’s hard to quantify the difference to the average population.

I think three main points are relevant when interpreting the data:

• A full 25 % of people in the study are not transsexual; these 25 % are gender-queer or crossdressers (some used non-standard terms for self-description such as “princess” or “bender”). People of the transgender spectrum who do not meet the definition of transsexualism are typically not going for transition or for medical treatment. If this group of people is less prone to suicide than full transsexuals, the figures showing suicidal tendencies for pre-transition individuals would be skewed, i.e. too low. The study is not comparing apples with apples here. One group (post-transition) has only full transsexuals in it, the other group (pre-transition) is a mix of full transsexuals, crossdressers and gender-queer people – it’s fair to assume these people suffer less psychological strain.

• The study doesn’t mention the average ages of the pre- and the post-transition groups. My guess is that the post-transition group is older. This is relevant, because if you ask the question ‘have you ever attempted suicide’, you will get, all other things being the same, more yes answers in the older group.

• People forced to take the drastic step of medical transition probably suffer, on average, from more severe gender dysphoria. Often, the biography of transsexuals includes a tipping point when the gender dysphoria becomes so unbearable that help must be sought. If having experienced high psychological strain correlates positively with transition, we would naturally expect this group also to have the most ‘yes’ answer when asked whether have ever attempted suicide.

This is what the authors of the study say themselves:

• “Our questionnaire did not ask at what age the respondents made suicide attempts and therefore it is difficult to draw conclusions about the risk of suicide over their life spans.”

• “In terms of age group risk, the highest rates of suicide attempts in this study were reported among those in the 18–24 age group (45 %) and 25–44 age group (45 %), with only 16 % of those over 65 reporting a suicide attempt. These rates are inverse to the general population, which shows a higher incidence of attempts among older Americans than youth.”

The authors state themselves, right there on page 82 of the report, that no conclusion can be drawn from their data about the risk of suicide attempts over the course of the life of the respondents. As a result, one cannot draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions during the lifetimes of the participants. If anything, medical intervention seems to help, since the risk of suicide attempts is actually decreasing with age, in contrast to suicide attempts among the general public (assuming that the post-transition group had a higher average age than the pre-transition group).

I believe that any other interpretation of the data presented in the study is either poorly understood or dishonest.

It is notoriously difficult to measure suicide rates. Maybe I’ll do a blog post on that issue in the future. Simple assessments of well-being, quality of life, living standards and mental health are probably magnitudes more reliable. For the “What helps?” section of my website I have collected 141 studies that use varying measures to analyse the effectiveness of medical intervention for transsexualism. Have a read and you can see for yourself why the scientific consensus agrees on the benefits of medical treatment.

To give just one example of a study that looks at suicide in particular, have a read of the British study by Bailey, Ellis and McNeil (2014)^[6], using a large sample of 889 transgender individuals:

“The study revealed high rates of suicidal ideation (84 % lifetime prevalence) and attempted suicide (48 % lifetime prevalence) within this sample. A supportive environment for social transition and timely access to gender reassignment, for those who required it, emerged as key protective factors. Subsequently, gender dysphoria, confusion/denial about gender, fears around transitioning, gender reassignment treatment delays and refusals, and social stigma increased suicide risk within this sample.” “The study found that trans people are most at risk prior to social and/or medical transition and that trans people who require access to hormones and surgery can be left, in many cases, unsupported for dangerously long periods of time. The article highlights the devastating impact that delaying or denying gender reassignment treatment can have and urges commissioners and practitioners to prioritise timely intervention and support.”^[7]

Peace and light ✨

---

[1] This post isn’t the place to discuss this, but it should be common knowledge that medical interventions are typically not 100 % effective, and medical diagnoses can not be absolutely error-free. If sex reassignment surgery has, for example, a success rate of 97.8 % (see Dhejne, Öberg, et al., 2014), we still have two people in a hundred whose lifes were not improved by the measure.

[2] The “about” section of the website says: “RenewAmerica is a grassroots organization that supports the self-evident truths found in the Declaration of Independence, and their faithful application through upholding the U.S. Constitution, as written. Its purpose is to thoughtfully and courageously advance the cause of our nation's Founders.” However, the articles seem highly partisan christian to me, in apparent contradiction of the secular values of the US constitution and its founding fathers?

[3] There is so much wrong with this sentence – I won’t have time today to discuss all of it. Just a few points: The word transgender is in scare quotes (I don’t think its meant to be a citation) – I guess this means Mr. Barber doesn’t approve of the word as a description of people who believe they straddle conventional gender divides? What word would he suggest for this phenomenon? Another term in scare quotes is sex reassignment – again, what word would be better or more descriptive for a process that changes the appearance and function of the external genitalia? And finally, transphobia is also in quotes. Again, I’m unsure as to why … does he see an issue with the word or with the concept? To give just one example, the US national transgender discrimination survey from 2011 reports that 51 % of transgender people were harassed/bullied in school, or were the victim of physical assault (61 %) or sexual assault (64 %).

[4] There is another study that Paul McHugh referenced in his original article; I might write about that in a future blog post.

[5] Study listed on the “Other references/Reference list of scientific articles and studies (2013 and older)” section of this website.

[6] Study listed on the “What helps?/Sex reassignment surgery helps” section of this website.

[7] Emphasis mine.

Heya everybody,

In continuing to teach myself a little about web design, I have been looking at the functions provided by some blog platforms. So I tried out Google Blogger, and found it relatively easy to use and to integrate into my website.

Soo … I’m proud to introduce the Cakeworld Blog! It will take the current job of the “What’s new?” pages, and provide a better layout and more functions to both myself and readers and commenters. The Cakeworld Blog is located on a subdomain of Cakeworld, http://blog.cakeworld.info/.

If you have subscribed to the news feed of the “What’s new?” section, please excuse the inconvenience and subscribe again to the feed provided by the new blog page.

I’m unsure what to do with the “What’s new?” section, I might migrate all posts on the new blog (keeping the original dates and order, of course) and use this section as a list of changes I make to the Cakeworld website. But that would require a high degree of self-organisation, so I’m not sure I want to commit to that. ☺

So, that’s me for now … oh, and I have put a couple of new posts on the new blog in the past few weeks! Have a read, if you like!

Heya everybody,

In an incredibly stupid and insensitive move, the British newspaper “The Observer” has published an open letter, signed by 129 people, against the “intimidation and silencing of individuals whose views are deemed ‘transphobic’ or ‘whorephobic’”.

Naturally, freedom of speech is necessary for democracy, one of the most basic human rights and also essential to prohibit the mistreatment of minorities. Few sane people would argue against that. Transgender people need free speech to be heard, and it would be hypocritical to deny this right to others. However, asking organisations and institutions to not give a platform to haters is part of the marketplace of ideas. Free speech comes with responsibilities and consequences, and if what you say is stupid or bad, you have to live with people calling you out on it. This is how free speech works.

Apparently, asking that people like Germaine Greer^[1] or Julie Bindel^[2] are not being given public platforms to spout their hateful, ignorant and inane views is “censorship”.

The power imbalance ignored by the signers of the letters could hardly be more breathtakingly large. Here we have Prof. Dr. Greer, along with columnist and political commentator Bindel, both white cisgender women, and the 129 signers of the letter, who apparently have no problems of getting published, and one of the most discriminated-against, weakest and powerless groups on earth. The difference is literally that transgender kill themselves (and not in small numbers!) over being bullied and discriminated against, while the poor letter supporters are being made to cry at night over the mean harassment they experience at the hands of those cruel transgender advocates.

Pff … okay – in order not to be misunderstood: Harassment, threats, trolling and especially threats of violence are completely and utterly wrong and can’t be defended. This has to stop. I feel sorry for all victims.

However, I believe the facts do prove that views against medical treatment for transsexuals as held by Julie Bindel cause despair and suicide. Consider this: if the former is correct, then people attempting to limit the public exposure Julie Bindel gets are actually trying to save lives.

Couldn’t the people writing the letter have been at least so sensitive to acknowledge the dire situation our society places transgender people in?

Okay, I won’t spend more time on this… smarter people than me have written on this issue: See here and here for some pro-transgender views and here and here for some views of the people who signed the letter.

Aaaand … to continue with free speech: Have a listen to Sam Harris’s podcast about the sad Chapel Hill murders in the US, exposing the dishonesty of Reza Aslan and Glenn Greenwald. The podcast also contains an audio recording of the Copenhagen shootings, where a gunmen opened fire during an event talking about freedom of expression. It sent a shiver down my spine! This is the kind of “silencing of individuals” we have to fight against.

Aaand … I’ve come to expect a lot of nonsense and immoral statements by the pope, but this one definitely topped my imagination: “Pope Francis says trans people destroy creation and compares them to nuclear weapons” (or here). What the pope doesn’t seem to understand (probably wilfully) is that with his position comes moral responsibility. This would include informing himself first about topics he expresses an opinion on. What the pope doesn’t realise is that transsexual people claim their brain, their mentality, is of one gender, while their body is of the other. This claim is supported by persuasive evidence. Transsexual individuals are not saying they are fully one gender, and wish to change themselves into the other gender. We only want to live the way we have been made! If the pope takes a subset of gender indicators and proclaims these to be the absolute, unchanging definition of gender, he at least has to provide some arguments.

So anyway, if I feel helpless and small again, I’ll try to remember that I’m apparently comparable to a nuclear bomb. ☺

Okay, and finally … I watched a video by Robert M. Spencer talking about Islam. I think his speech unfortunately includes a number of tendential political and religious opinions, which I don’t agree with, but I assume the facts he gives are straight. In the video, he talks about the crusades, which he calls a late and small-scale response to 450 years of the Muslim conquest and subjugation of a large part of the Christian world (including North Africa, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Palestine). The crusades ultimately failed, but they stopped the Islamic expansion to Europe for 200 years, thus possibly enabling the development of modern civilisation including enlightenment and humanism. I thought that was common knowledge, but learned this was not so when an acquaintance of mine countered me expressing disgust at Muslims killing people after a particular (probably accidental) burning of the Koran by saying that my ancestors participated in the crusades. Even if ancestors of mine were involved in a crime a thousand years ago, what possible bearing could this have on my views of morality today? Question upon question …

I wrote the above rather quickly, and I have a stupid cold (which is probably to blame for the rather opinionated nature of this post ☺), so I apologise for any mistakes or if anything was incoherent. Take care, and make sure you give yourself enough time to relax and enjoy yourself!

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[1] The same Germaine Greer who has stated that trans women are not truly women because they don’t know what it is “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina” (see here). I mean, this stuff is so childish and bizarre and stupid that it angers me that this apparently passes for public discourse. Oh, and it’s repudiated by Weyers, Verstraelen, et al. in “Microflora of the penile skin-lined neovagina of transsexual women”.

[2] The same Julie Bindel who states, against all evidence that “the diagnosis of GD needs to be questioned and challenged” and “sex-change surgery is unnecessary mutilation”, thus contributing to more suffering and pain of the transgendered community. There is so much evidence on the table that views such as hers lead to suicides. How many more Leelah Alcorn cases do we need? I’m sorry, I think it is fair to say that Julie Bindel does have indirectly have blood on her hands.

Heya everybody,

Even though I’m still struggling with my cold, I managed to add thirteen new studies today, some of them highly relevant! Here is a summary of the most important points:

• Ulrike Ruppin and Friedemann Pfäfflin (the doyen of gender dysphoria research in Germany) have published a new study in the “Archives of Sexual Behavior”, 2015. Called “Long-Term Follow-Up of Adults with Gender Identity Disorder”, it is one of the follow-up studies with the longest period covered. 71 participants were assessed an average of 13.8 years (10 to 24 years) after gender change. Because of the significance of this study, I quote from the abstract at length (emphasis mine): “Participants reported high degrees of well-being and a good social integration. Very few participants were unemployed, most of them had a steady relationship, and they were also satisfied with their relationships with family and friends. Their overall evaluation of the treatment process for sex reassignment and its effectiveness in reducing gender dysphoria was positive. Regarding the results of the standardized questionnaires, participants showed significantly fewer psychological problems and interpersonal difficulties as well as a strongly increased life satisfaction at follow-up than at the time of the initial consultation.”
  These findings are naturally very important when it comes to assessing the current medical treatment for transsexuals, but it also helps counter one of the current arguments used by transphobes (or more politely, people sceptical of the current scientific consensus). Since the overwhelming evidence points to gender role transition, hormone treatment and surgery having beneficial effects on the quality of life of transsexual individuals, people with an anti-transgender agenda have criticised the relatively short periods covered by high-quality follow-up studies, and hypothesised that any benefits of conventional treatment might be short-term only. Ruppin’s and Pfäfflin’s study certainly provides evidence to the contrary.

• Turan, Poyraz, et al. find (in the “Journal of affective disorders”, 2015) that female-to-male transsexuals differ significantly in temperament from female cisgender controls. This probably adds more evidence to transsexualism having a biological basis.

• Deutsch, Bhakri and Kubicek publish a study in “Obstetrics & Gynecology”, 2015, which finds that hormone therapy for transsexual women lowers blood pressure, and hormone therapy for transsexual men increases weight (I’m glad I’m a transsexual woman! 😏).

• In the “Journal of psychosomatic research”, 2015, Colizzi, Costa, et al. find that hormone therapy is linked to a small increase in metabolic syndrome. This study somewhat contradicts the 2015 study by Deutsch, Bhakri and Kubicek, finding similar weight gain and also blood pressure increase in male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals (naturally the results can only be compared if adjusted for age, psychological situation, etc.)

• Jennifer M. Birnkrant researches the “Psychological functioning in families of gender variant youth” in her master thesis (Case Western Reserve University, 2015) and seems to find the families are doing okay.

• Only just now (nine years later!) I came across an Internet survey about the “Attitudes Towards Transsexual and Intersexed People” by Rachel Heath (Technical Report, University of Newcastle, Australia, 2006). She finds that 61 % of her 413 respondents considered transsexualism to have a biological cause (initially I thought, yay – I can stop the work on this website; but then I realised the 61 % are of course heavily affected by sample bias: the study includes only people who know and care enough about transsexuality to take part in an online survey). Interestingly, “a social origin for transsexualism was supported by religious people who were regular churchgoers” which clearly shows that these people stick to prejudice rather than facts – after all, none of the revealed religions says anything about gender dysphoria in their holy books.

• Wang I. Wong (I love that name) and prolific researcher Melissa Hines have published a new study on toy and colour preferences by gender (Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2015). It seems that toy preferences by gender are innate (as has been shown before), but colour preferences are more social, possibly influenced by the different colouring of gendered toys.

• More from the innate gender differences front: Sharova, Shendyapina, et al. find (in “Human Physiology”, 2015) that magnetic resonance imaging showed differences in brain responses of healthy, cisgender male and female subjects.

So, that’s all for now… I still have a ton of exciting stuff to write about, but probably I won’t be able to do that today. Peace and Light ✨

Heya everybody,

This week I came across an article on the news website “Ozy”, called “A Case Against Sex-Change Surgeries”. The article was announced as “Immodest proposal” and sub-titled “Why You Should Care: Sex-change surgery might offer only a physical fix for complex psychological problems.”

I don’t think “Ozy” has a large impact, but it seems partnered with some serious news media outlets that had linked to this article. The article itself is poorly mixed-together old news, starting with transphobe Walt Heyer and continuing with a selective, out-of-context citation of a Swedish study, and then linking to a 2004 (!) article by Paul McHugh, full of sexism, autogynephilia and outdated views. Most of the issues have been discussed already at my news blog, and it’s not particularly interesting to me to rehash them again.

The article annoyed me, of course. Initially, it was also sub-titled as a “provocative” view, but this claim seems to have been deleted. After all, it’s not really provocative to dig out conservative, sexist, patriarchal, transphobic stuff that was mainstream 50 years ago, and to use it to attack one of the most discriminated-against minorities on the planet. What amazed me, though, were the comments. Pretty much every comment was knowledgeable, quoting evidence, tolerant and empathic. Author Melissa Pandika got a well-deserved bashing. This really gives me hope! Go and read the comments, if you have the time. Here’s one example pointing out the problem:

“Dear ‘journalists’ like Ms. Pandika: stop. Just stop. Stop spewing nonsense about topics you know absolutely nothing about, backing up the conclusions you've already come to with half an hour of googling. […] Your tone, Ms. Pandika, sounds so reasonable. But articles like this are dangerous. Opinions like yours directly contribute to violence against, to the suicide of, and to the discrimination against trans people. So please, please, please do further research. Please talk to some actual trans people. Real journalists have real sources, after all.”

While doing my usual round of collecting new studies about the topics I cover on Cakeworld, I came across an article discussing gender from a Catholic viewpoint, called “Image and imago: a rational defense of a theological anthropology of gender”, by Prof. Dr. Christopher P. Klofft. Normally, I don’t read through studies about cultural, sociological or legal issues related to transsexualism, since I concentrate on certain medical/psychological issues only. However, for some reason I read the article – I am curious as to why religions feel they should express an opinion on conditions such as transsexualism. Okay, so here we go:

The author is right off to a bad start by citing from an interview with Kirsten Dunst where she makes some unnecessary and gendered generalisations from her personal preferences: “And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armor. […]. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s how relationships work.” From this inconsequential statement, Klofft manages to construe a false dichotomy: “depending on one’s perspective, this is either a thoroughly commonsensical statement or else a betrayal of the struggle of being a woman in the 21st century”, and is led to proclaim that figuring out which one of those two contrasting views is correct is “at the heart of issues of gender identity, gender meaning, and gender confusion today”. Oy… where to begin…

After this assertion, he continues by claiming that “confusions run rampant throughout discussions on subjects as practical as marriage and as theoretical as questions of human meaning and purpose” because “Modern and Post-Modern discourse espouses an increasingly plastic or subjective understanding on gender”. His next assertion is that “Catholic theology provides a response to this problem with a consistent account of gender that is also compatible with the best evidence available in support of a purely rational approach”. This statement naturally got me interested, as that’s my cup of tea. An evidence-based, purely rational approach – yay! And apparently, if we understand “the true meaning and purpose of gender”, this “will lead to a better understanding of ourselves and all of our relationships, and ultimately to the betterment of culture as a whole.” That’s pretty good, isn’t it?

I mean, I know what gender is – gender encompasses the mental characteristics developed by evolution that go along with the two biological sexes which formed with sexual reproduction, and the associated cultural and social traits. So I should be well placed to understand myself and all my relationships better, which in turns improves society, right? But Christopher Klofft had a different “meaning” of gender in mind, as I soon found out.

In his next paragraph he says somehow incoherently that feminism “is not necessarily the same thing as the contemporary crisis regarding gender”, then continues on to define feminism as striving “for the best realization of the unique gifts that women bring to culture”. The patronising tone of this statement is just incredible, I find (is it just me?). There is a proper culture, male and built by males (that goes without saying), but hey, look, women have gifts, unique to them (of course!), and in our generosity we should permit them to bring their little gifts, and we should nod and smile and humour them like we would a child of less-than-average intelligence. Well, in my book feminism is about equality – equal rights, equal opportunities and equal value.

Klofft then goes on to claim that “Modern and Post-Modern thought on gender has reduced it from an element of being human that is readily recognizable and acknowledged as a given to a yet another characteristic of the person subject to radical self-definition”. Following on, he takes issue with differentiating the concepts of bodily sex characteristics, gender identity and sexual orientation (which he describes as one’s predilections in regard to sexual pleasure – these Catholics, always thinking about sexual pleasure first, instead of love or romantic attraction). Apparently, distinguishing between the concepts of sex, gender and sexual orientation is “very confusing to cisgendered men and women”. Um, what? It’s clarifying, it’s enlightening, and it has explanatory power. Why should it be confusing? Our world is always complex and detailed when looking more closely at one particular issue, but the things we learn help us to understand nature better. I can’t even imagine what the alternative would be – should we simply say there are men (who are automatically and always cisgender and heterosexual) and there are women (who are automatically and always cisgender and heterosexual) and nothing else? Do we then deny that homosexuality exists in humans and animals? Disbelieve people who claim they are homosexual and transsexual? Sure, I can simply pretend things don’t exist – but the concepts of sex, gender and sexual orientation help us in understanding ourselves, our relationships and nature as whole better, and are grounded in the best evidence supporting a rational approach. Why abandon them?

Well, Klofft gives the answer. Apparently, “ignoring the binary distinctions of man and woman, male and female, creates challenges for anyone in any way responsible for helping others to understand the value and meaning of being human. This includes parents, educators, health care professionals, and law makers, to name just a few.” Read that again, slowly. He asserts that acknowledging that there is more than black and white when it comes to issues relating to sex, makes it difficult to understand “the value and meaning of being human”. What? Every human life has the same value – what’s so difficult to comprehend here? Why does the fact that biological sex has nuances place obstacles especially for people responsible for helping others? Are parents, educators, health care professionals and law makers more stupid or more bigoted than other people? I have no idea what he’s on about? Are there other facts about nature we need to shield these special snowflakes from, lest they are mean to people entrusted to their care?

He then quotes some studies, correctly, that 95 % to 99.7 % identify with their biological sex, only to use this as basis for his complaint that “yet a disproportionate amount of energy is placed on changing cultural perspectives”. Umm okay, let’s say, just for example, if, say, 1 500 people per year commit suicide because of gender dysphoria, what is the correct amount of energy that should be placed on trying to help them, according to Prof. Klofft? In addition, he sighs, additional challenges are placed on the mental health community because it now has to figure out whether transsexuals suffer because of discrimination or because gender dysphoria is related to mental disorder. I can’t fathom his mind at all. Naturally, it is the job of the “health community” to find out the causes of illness, since knowing the cause often helps with the cure. Is he of the opinion we should not study the causes of depression and other mental issues? What the heck should we do instead? Stop helping people? I thought he was in favour of evidence and a rational approach? Surely this means we have to look for evidence?

Okay, continuing, he asserts that “overall, we have great confusion about questions of gender in the west”. He then goes on to talk about essentialist and constructionist definitions of gender. Essentialist definitions of gender are described by Klofft as based on the physiology and neurochemistry of the body, constructionist gender definitions are solely defined by one’s self, with “as many genders as there persons”, “classifying vocabulary merely being used as a convenient shorthand for generalization”. The latter is completely false, he asserts, because it is. End of story. So much for a rational approach!

Unsurprisingly, with his definitions for essentialist and constructionist definitions of gender he builds up a completely false dichotomy. Why is it either or? Naturally, two genders/sexes exist, nobody disputes that. But nature likes variety, and things are often normally distributed, on a spectrum. This includes sexual characteristics, sexual dimorphisms in the brain, neurochemistry, etc. His essentialist definition doesn’t have a binary as its only or logical outcome, and his constructionist approach doesn’t have to deny that there are two main categories for gender or sex. Well, to disprove his binary approach to gender, which he equates falsely with the essentialist definition, let me point to disorders of sexual development, which affect up to 2 % of humans (that’s how a rational approach works, quoting evidence, not simply asserting something is false).

He then goes into knowing oneself and talks about the difference between understanding oneself and defining oneself. In a patronising style (I can imagine him reading this passage with a raised index finger) he then declares: “Gender, however, is a characteristic that does go to the core of what it means to be a human person. As such, can it be something that is defined by one’s own perceptions and subsequently thrust upon those with whom one is in relationship? Are one’s personal perceptions automatically to be taken as accurate for that person because they come from within? Or rather, is it possible that this aspect of one’s image, one’s gender, is something that can only be discovered rather than defined by oneself?” I mean, this made me alternate between wanting to laugh and wanting to cry. This statement, probably intended by him to be great moral warning, and a profound truth he has discovered, is exactly the mantra of us transsexuals. It is what we have been saying all along. If he had bothered to talk to one single gender-dysphoric person, he would have heard exactly the same statement. Gender is innate, we have been saying. Long and hard self-studying has led to us to the conclusion that we are of the other gender than the one assigned at birth. We tried so hard to conform to the gender we were assigned at, but it didn’t work. Nature made us the way we are, we tried to fight against out nature, against who we are, against our very own identity… and ultimately failed. We succumbed to our true and only identity, to the core of who we are. Is this claim so hard to understand? Does he really think there is even a single transsexual child who says to her parents that she has chosen to be a girl, like one chooses to go horse riding or one chooses one’s hairstyle? Every transsexuals child tells the story how he or she is the gender he or she is, how she knows that’s her, down to the core of her identity. How can Klofft have so little knowledge about the people he likes to lecture? How dare he know so little about the subject he pontificates on? How can he be so blatantly ignorant about the claims made by the people he passes judgment on? And the claims we make are supported by evidence, as dozens and dozens of neurological and psychological studies show. What about his “best evidence available in support of a purely rational approach”?

To raise my ire further, he then says “there is a benefit to acknowledging and accepting one’s gender based on one’s biology. It is easier and convenient. It simplifies relationships with others, especially people who we may not know as well. It promotes good physical health. It leads to psychological wholeness and easier spiritual growth.” Well, there you have it, you idiot! (Sorry!) That’s exactly what the problem is behind gender dysphoria. Transsexuals who have not been able to transition yet, live in conflict with their biology. This gender dysphoria causes poor psychological health. That’s what have been saying, what we are saying, and what the evidence says. All we want is to live, to live as ourselves, to live as who we are, to be true to ourselves and our identity. Has Klofft never heard this argument or never considered it? How can one person be so ignorant? I mean, this is a subject he writes about length, so it’s fair to assume he is interested in it. Is it wilful ignorance?

All these tortured arguments that essentialism is somehow linked to a black-and-white view of gender and that constructionism is apparently patently false, and so on, are just smokescreens. What Klofft says is that there is male and female, and nothing in between, and gender identity doesn’t exist separate from the anatomical sex of the genitals. Period. And he provides no evidence for this view. None at all.

Well, on his last few pages he talks about the concepts of male and female in the bible. Okay, maybe it’s historically interesting what concepts iron-age sheep herders had of the biological sexes and gender roles. Well, okay, I understand Klofft believes the bible is god’s word or at least inspired by god. But the bible is not a book that includes all there is in the universe and rules on everything. There are other planets, there is diabetes, there are dinosaurs. Should we conclude these things don’t exist because they are not mentioned in the bible? Should we conclude that if a topic is mentioned in the bible, however superficial, there is nothing more to learn about it? Why then study astronomy or medicine? We know the sun revolves around the earth and sickness is caused by demons, so why learn more?

In his last paragraph, Klofft says: “The work ahead of us is daunting, but the end result is sure. For the immediate future, there will continue to be curious laws, broken relationships, dangerous misunderstandings of human sexuality, depression, suicide, and one or more generations of children growing up confused about what it means to be a human person. The Catholic tradition offers an alternative to this, one which is founded in God’s revelation, but because of that, it is also accessible to human reason and common sense.” This is twisting the truth beyond recognition. It is religious bullying that leads to depression and suicide. In contrast, human reason and science are trying to learn and to understand human sexuality. The last sentence in the quotation above is incoherent to me. Why is something accessible to human reason and common sense because it’s based on revelation? I thought god worked in mysterious ways? If we can take human reason and common sense to revelation, then the only things that remain of revelation are reasonable and evidence-based, making revelation unnecessary.

Oh, and one more quote: “The simple truth remains this: human persons all share happiness as their final end and nothing can ultimately satisfy that longing except for relationship with the Creator in Whose image we are made.” I’d like to see some evidence on that, please. If this assertion is true, Christians or at least Catholics should surely be happier than other people?

Well, I’m not sure how reliable Klofft is in his theology, either. I thought the Catholic Church accepted evolution, but he says: “The revelation of God about the meaning of the human person as taught by the Catholic Church reveals that we are creatures, lovingly fashioned by a Craftsman Who is Himself personal and relationship.” Surely one can’t describe the cruel and wasteful process of evolution as lovingly fashioning creatures?

All this waffle, no evidence, no substance and not much logic in this long article by Christopher P. Klofft. What’s the point? To me, it appears like an exercise in creating an intellectual smokescreen with the aim to cover up how out-of-touch, anti-scientific and inhumane Catholic teachings on sex and gender are.

Heya everybody,

I have been quite busy recently, both in private life and at work … and am so enjoying the holidays now! ☺ I hope I manage to relax, get up to speed on all my other things and be social … we’ll see. 😏

But first of all, happy holidays to everybody who is reading this. I quite like Christmas, the festival of warmth, love and light in the midst of Winter. If we didn’t have it, we’d definitely have to invent something like it, but probably all cultures living in Northern latitudes have similar festivities anyway. The short days, the darkness, the cold and the weather can get to you, and it’s a great thing to light candles 🕯, to have some decorations and customs to mark the turn of the seasons. I’m a cultural protestant christian, and I do like the mix of traditions that is celebrated in so many lovely ways (christmas trees 🎄, christmas markets!). One tradition that made a big impression on me was the festival of Saint Lucy or Santa Lucia in Sweden. It’s so awesome and touching to hear the singing of a Santa Lucia procession, slowly walking out of the dark. In my home town, it is still tradition to hold a solstice celebration with a traditional torchlight procession and a bonfire, which I also find moving.

And now for something completely different – In August I wrote a short critique on a report criticising studies on the efficacy of sex reassignment surgery for not meeting the gold standard of evidence-based medicine, double-blind trials. Last week’s XKCD web comic summed up the problems with double-blind trials beautifully:

Any educated, rational person does support evidence-based medicine – after all, the aim of medicine is to help people, to improve people’s lives, and in order to make sure that’s happening, we need to check whether that’s happening (it seems so simple, why do so many people don’t get that?). This is of course also the objective of this website, collecting evidence regarding the nature of gender dysphoria and the treatments that help. But naturally, not all levels of evidence can be applied to all treatments.

Oh, and I added eight new studies today … summary to follow!

Peace and light ✨

Heya, a happy St. Nicholas day to everyone!

After eating too many sweets ☺, I added twelve studies to this website today. Right now, I’m still in the process of uploading – I’ll do a summary later.

I just quickly wanted to point out a new study called “Neural Activation During Mental Rotation in Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome: the Influence of Sex Hormones and Sex Chromosomes” by van Hemmen, Veltman, Hoekzema et al. (Cerebral Cortex, 2014). This study looked at brain activation during mental rotation and compared control groups of men and women against people with male (XY) sex chromosomes and and the CAIS disorder of sex development. CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome) means that male sex hormones are not being processed by the body, so that testosterone has no effect on people with CAIS.

The findings were: “Previously reported sex differences in neural activation during mental rotation were replicated in the control groups, with control men showing more activation in the inferior parietal lobe than control women. Individuals with CAIS showed a female-like neural activation pattern in the parietal lobe, indicating feminization of the brain in CAIS. Furthermore, this first neuroimaging study in individuals with CAIS provides evidence that sex differences in regional brain function during mental rotation are most likely not directly driven by genetic sex, but rather reflect gonadal hormone exposure.”

This study adds to the body of evidence that some sex differences in the brain are controlled by sex hormones, not by chromosomes. The effects of sex hormones on the brain around birth are the most likely candidate for the main cause of transsexualism.

I have come across a small number of web articles (here, here, and here) that provide a push-back against the standard treatment of transsexualism, consisting of hormone therapy and surgery. They re-chew the old discredited arguments by Paul McHugh, and some use statements of people who regret their gender change surgery. Apparently, the fact that some people are unhappy with their surgery is something that transgender activists are trying to hide. The writers style themselves as investigative journalists who are exposing some kind of dirty cover-up.

I guess there is some huge conspiracy underway that tries to… um, tries to… um, I guess to trick non-transsexual people into having sex change surgery or something like that??? And why are transsexual activists doing that… because, um, hm, because… well, I haven’t figured this one out yet.

Anyway, I meant to write a rebuttal, but Brynn Tannehill did so already in the Huffington Post , using material from my website. I just want to add a couple of additional points:

For example, a recent study (Dhejne, Öberg et al., 2014) with 681 transsexuals found a surgery regret rate of 2.2 %. That figure clearly means that you can find one person who regrets the measure for every 49 who benefitted from it. For the entire study, 15 people expressing regret were found versus 666 who were satisfied. This illustrates why individual anecdotes, why personal experience, cannot replace science. Most things in real life do not have a 100 % success or approval rate, which is why we need to study pros and cons carefully, and work on improving success rates. Also, correctly diagnosing transsexualism is obviously very important. In addition, there is the question of personal responsibility and liberty. Some people do harm themselves with things that are normally beneficial – what restrictions should be placed on responsible people in order to protect the irresponsible?

Even if I’m repeating myself: On transgender children – the standards of care by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health state clearly that childhood gender dysphoria or gender-queer behaviour might disappear in adolescence (most children with gender dysphoria develop into cisgender homosexuals). Gender-dysphoric children do not require medical treatment. Later in life, reversible puberty blockers can be indicated, followed by irreversible procedures only when the diagnosis is stable and unlikely to change. That is what transgender activists want. Transgender activists are against genital surgery on children, advocating that any irreversible surgery should be made only later in life. It was the medical establishment of old that was in favour of such procedures on small children.

There simply is no transgender conspiracy. Transsexuals are in fact the only people who know from first-hand experience how awful it is to live in a body that doesn’t correspond with one’s psychological gender. Surgery is a lifesaver, but only to those genuinely suffering from gender dysphoria.

Heya everybody,

I added a few new studies today that are very relevant. I remember when the first sex difference in the human brain related to transsexualism was found in 1995 (Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, Swaab), it was quite a revolution, and it caused a push-back – some people favouring a psychopathological explanation of transsexualism argued against the findings. I wonder what these people are thinking today, when practically every month gives us a new study on brain differences found in transsexuals. Today, the evidence for a biological cause that is connected to the formative phase of the brain before and after birth is persuasive.

• Kranz, Hahn et al. (The Journal of Neuroscience, 2014) looked at the brains of female-to-male and male-to-female transsexuals and compared them to healthy male and female controls. They found differences in the white matter structure between the four groups, with the brains of male-to-female transsexuals shifted from the male mean towards the female. For female-to-male transsexuals, it was the other way around: Their white matter structure was shifted from the female mean towards the male. The conclusion: “Our data harmonize with the hypothesis that fiber tract development is influenced by the hormonal environment during late prenatal and early postnatal brain development.”

• In a highly interesting study published in “Hormones and behaviour” in 2014 by Hamann, Stevens et al., brain responses from women with XY chromosomes and the CAIS disorder of sex development are measured via neuroimaging and compared to healthy men and women. CAIS stands for “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome”. The affected women have male sex chromosomes (XY), testes and produce male-typical levels of androgens – but they lack functional androgen receptors preventing responding to their male sex hormones. “Thus, they develop a female physical phenotype, are reared as girls, and develop into women.” When studying their brain responses to vieweing sexual images, it was found that “that men showed greater amygdala activation to sexual images than did either typical women or women with CAIS. Typical women and women with CAIS had highly similar patterns of brain activation, indicating that a Y chromosome is insufficient for male-typical human brain responses.” This is remarkable, as it shows that hormones are responsible for this particular gender difference, not sex chromosomes. Sex chromosomes are just one factor among others that influence gender. This study is summarised in an article in PsyPost from November 2014.

• Barrett, Redmon et al. find (Neurotoxicology, 2014) that exposure to prenatal stress is associated with masculinised play behaviour in girls and suggest that prenatal stress may have androgenic effects on female foetuses (and anti-androgenic effects on male foetuses).

• A study by Shumer, Roberts et al. in the “Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders” in 2014 finds that autism in mothers is linked to gender queer behaviour in children.

• Auer, Fuss et al. write in “PLOS One” (2014) that change of sexual orientation after transitioning is frequent.

• Kahlenberg and Wrangham (Current Biology, 2010) find that “sex differences in chimpanzees' use of sticks as play objects resemble those of children”.

• Escudero, Robbins and Johnson publish a study saying that “sex-related preferences for toy real stimuli” may not be innate, but are caused by “maturational and social development that continues into adulthood”.

• Joel writes in “Biology of sex differences” in 2012 that human sex differences do not come in two isolated extremes, but are spread out in a continuum. The many observed sex differences are not consistent, i.e. male or female characteristics are arranged in a mosaic-like pattern in humans.

• VanderLaan, Blanchard (yes, that Blanchard, I’m afraid) et al. find (Developmental Psychobiology, 2014) that low birth weight seems to be linked to sexual orientation and possibly cross-gender behaviour and identity.

Phew, that’s it for now. More to come later! Peace and light ☺

Heya everybody,

I managed to add another 25 studies, some of them quite interesting and relevant! The evidence for a biological basis of transsexualism keeps just piling on. What also keeps piling on is my stack of articles I still need to work through for publishing on this website … ☹ I’ll hope I’ll get it all done before the Christmas holidays… we’ll see ☺

• A highly interesting German study from the University of Göttingen by Junger, Habel, Bröhr et al. (PLOS One, 2014) looks at the brain processes for listening and recognising voice. With magnetic resonance imaging technology, they discovered that male-to-female transsexuals showed differences in their neural networks compared to cisgender men and women in the control groups. “With increased voice morphing men recruited more prefrontal areas compared to women and MtFs, while MtFs revealed a pattern more similar to women. On a behavioral and neuronal level, our results support the feeling of MtFs reporting they cannot identify with their assigned sex.”

• A new Turkish study by Bozkurt, Bozkurt and Sonmez, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2014, looks at the birth order and sibling sex ratio for male-to-female transsexuals. Just like studies in Western countries, a sample higher number of older brothers was found in the Turkish sample – “which suggests a common underlying biological causal mechanism”.

• A new British study published in the Mental Health Review Journal, 2014, by Bailey (no, not that Bailey), Ellis and McNeil finds extremely high suicide indicators in transsexuals (84 % lifetime prevalence for suicidal ideation and 48 % lifetime prevalence for attempted suicide). The highest risk is prior to social transition, hormone therapy or surgery. “The article highlights the devastating impact that delaying or denying gender reassignment treatment can have and urges commissioners and practitioners to prioritise timely intervention and support.” This adds to the body of evidence that medical intervention is literally a lifesaver for transsexuals.

• In another British study, Ellis, Bailey (no, not that Bailey), and McNeil look at the experiences transsexual people have with mental health and gender identity services (Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 2014). Key findings are “that untreated gender dysphoria (due to delays or refusals of treatment), unnecessary and intrusive questioning/tests, prejudicial attitudes by service providers, and restrictive treatment pathways, all contribute to minority stress which is detrimental to the mental health and wellbeing of trans people”.

• A Thai study by Yadegarfard, Meinhold-Bergmann and Ho (Journal of LGBT Youth, 2014) finds that depression and suicidal thinking in transsexuals is caused by family rejection, lower social support and higher loneliness.

• Olvera-Hernández and Fernández-Guasti find (Advances in Neurobiology: Perinatal Programming of Neurodevelopment, 2014) that interrupting oestrogen synthesis in male rats leads to behaviour corresponding to human male homosexual behaviour, reinforcing “the hypothesis that human sexual orientation is underlied by changes in the endocrine milieu during early development”.

• An older study by Servin, Nordenström, Larsson and Bohlin (Developmental psychology, 2003) looks at girls with the disorder of sexual development CAH. CAH-affected girls are more likely to display boylike behaviour. The researchers looked at links between the degrees of boylike behaviour, the severity of the disease and parental influence: “A relation was found between disease severity and behavior indicating that more severely affected CAH girls were more interested in masculine toys and careers. No parental influence could be demonstrated on play behavior, nor did the comparison of parents' ratings of wished for behavior versus perceived behavior in their daughters indicate an effect of parental expectations. The results are interpreted as supporting a biological contribution to differences in play behavior between girls with and without CAH.”

• Hines, Brook and Conway found similiar links in 2004 (Journal of sex research). Women with CAH recall more male-typical play in childhood and have a reduced satisfaction with the female gender, while gender-typical play behaviour and gender identity is unaffected in men with CAH. This adds further evidence to the theory that gender-typical play behaviour and gender identity is influenced by the actions of sex hormones before birth.

• A 2012 study by Alexander and Saenz (Hormones and behaviour) finds “more male-typical digit ratios in early infancy predicted higher activity counts during toy play and less female-typical toy preferences in girls”; meaning that girls who were under the influence of higher androgen levels before birth exhibit more boylike behaviour.

I have more to add later … I’ll see how the weekend is going ☺ Take care!

Heya everybody,

I’ve been busy and hope to add new studies to the website this weekend. In addition, I’m working on an overview article about gender differences. But first, two other things that caught my attention:

If you are in tune with the web, you will have come across the “Hollaback!” street harrassment video. The video shows a 24-year-old woman walking through New York City, being harassed by men. Apparently, there are ten hours of footage, during which there were over one hundred instances of verbal harassment!!!! Um, wow, I don’t know what to make of this, but it certainly is shocking. ☹

Interestingly, the experiment has been repeated by the German newspaper “Die Welt“ in the Neukölln district of Berlin. Neukölln is known for its high unemployment and high share of immigrants. They had a young female journalist walking through the streets for five hours – without any harassment at all. Nothing, zero.

I have no idea what this means … can it really be that everyday culture in two Western, wealthy countries is so very different? 😕

… aaaanndd … perfect for Halloween: Ghosts (👻)!

A recent study from Switzerland by Blanke, Pozeg, Hara et al., published in the journal “Current Biology”, reports that perceptions of the presence of ghosts can be easily induced in humans. In an experiment, they had a robot arm stroking the back of participants, triggered by their hand movements in front of their bodies. When the robot arm was made to stroke in the opposite direction, or with a time delay, many participants felt a presence of something, or had a ghost-like feeling. For some people, this was so spooky, they asked the researchers to stop the experiment. “This is the first time that a study has succeeded in reproducing the sensation of actually feeling an unknown, unseen, presence.” This apparently adds evidence to the hypothesis that hallucinations are produced by a failure of the brain “to integrate bodily signals properly.” (See here and here.)

Isn’t that cool? The things science can tell us are amazing … even ghosts seem to have a natural explanation (not surprising, since everything we learned to understand in the history of mankind has a natural explanation). ☺

Heya everybody,

If I counted correctly, I now have 626 scientific articles on this website! It keeps growing! And for the first time in weeks, I feel like I’m getting on top of things again… we’ll see. ☺ Many of the recently added studies have to do with gender differences, personality-wise or as seen in the brain. Some do touch on issues relevant to transsexualism, many of those can be found on the ““What causes transsexualism?” reference pages, the other articles are on the “Other references” pages.

I don’t plan to go any deeper into gender differences than I now have, my interest in the issue came about due to an interesting e-mail discussion I have been having… more on that in a later post. First, a brief overview about some of the most interesting newly added studies:

• A new study by Pasterski, Zucker, Hindmarsh et al. (Springer, 2014) on girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia finds evidence “that girls exposed to high concentrations of androgens prenatally are more likely to show cross-gender identification than girls without CAH or boys with and without CAH. Our findings suggest that prenatal androgen exposure could play a role in gender identity development in healthy children […]”.

• Another brand new study by Hahn, Kranz, Küblböck et al. (Cerebral Cortex, 2014) finds more evidence that brains of transsexuals have unique features, making a biological cause of gender dysphoria even more plausible: “Specifically, our data suggest that network parameters may reflect unique characteristics of transgender patients […]”.

• Bouman, Richards, Addinall et al. (Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 2014) discuss whether the practice of requiring two referrals for sex reassignment surgery is ethical when compared with other non-reversible surgeries that are being carried out without such hurdles.

• In 2011 (The Journal of Neuroscience), Morgan and Bale show that prenatal stress can cause dysmasculinisation in second-generation children via epigenetics (!).

• In a similar vein, McCarthy, Auger, Bale et al. found in 2009 (The Journal of Neuroscience) that “many steroid-induced epigenetic changes are opportunistic and restricted to a single lifespan, but new evidence suggests endocrine-disrupting compounds can exert multigenerational effects”.

• Schwerdtfeger, Heims and Heer published in 2010 (Accident; analysis and prevention) that prenatal androgen exposure is linked to traffic violations for frequent car drivers (!).

That’s it for now… sorry that this overview lists only six studies… I added at least 80 or so. I wish there was more time! Take care ☺

Heya everybody,

I have done quite a bit of work on my website this weekend, adding about 45 articles, mainly about the issue of the development of sexual dimorphisms in the brain.

Doing so, I came across a brand-new study from a Swedish research group (Madison, Aasa, Wallert, Woodley) from Umeå University titled “Feminist activist women are masculinized in terms of digit-ratio and social dominance: a possible explanation for the feminist paradox”, published in the journal “Frontiers in psychology”. The article is available for free at full length.

The Swedish scientists studied the finger ratios and the social dominance of 25 female participants of a feminist conference. This data was compared to a female control group, and highly significant effect sizes were found.

Finger length ratios have been shown to be a marker for the exposure to sex hormones before birth. The size of the difference found in the studied group “corresponds approximately to a 30 % difference in prenatal testosterone/estradiol ratio”, meaning that the study participants experienced a higher masculinising effect in the womb compared to average women.” “It is notable that the feminist activist sample 2D:4D was also more masculinized than those of the male comparison samples, except for the left hand in the aggregate sample.”

On social dominance (measured by the Ray Directiveness scale), a similar effect was found. Dominance ratings were higher than in the control samples representative of women in general. “Directiveness self-ratings also exhibit a large and highly significant difference in the predicted direction.” “These effect sizes are quite large as psychological dimensions go, and sex differences in personality, for comparison, tend to be 0.1–0.4 (Feingold, 1994). The high levels of statistical significance obtained is of course a product of large mean differences as well as a small variance within each group.”

Please read the article for yourself – it discusses relevant questions, such as the size of the sample, the significance of the effects found, the representativeness of the control group, etc.

I’m fully aware that this is only one study, and it needs replication before conclusions can be drawn… but in the light of the recent discussion about TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and sex differences in the brain … I can’t resist the thought that some cisgendered female feminists may have more masculine traits than the average male-to-female transsexual… wouldn’t that have some explanatory power? And wouldn’t that turn the world on its head for some, and perhaps finally result in accepting and tolerating all gender behaviour and expression as equal?

PS: I find this theory quite plausible. All you have to grant is that personality differences between people exist, and that personality has an impact on choices people make. Voila – these two assumptions mean that the average personality profile of people in certain interest groups, clubs, etc. is likely to be different from the average of the general population. Don’t kill the messenger – the aim of my website is to collect scientific articles, and I intend to report the facts as they are scientifically observed.

Heya everybody, this is my third and last article for today... I need to do some running or cycling, I think, or the day will pass without any exercise at all.

I read an interesting article in “The Transadvocate” about Janice Raymond, a radical feminist acitivist, who is infamous for her writings against transsexualism and the transgender community. For such people, the description “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) has been coined. The author of the article, Cristan Williams, makes a good point about how Raymond’s actions and publications in the 1970s and 1980s had the effect to delay or to prevent medical treatment for transsexuals. At the current time, we have many studies that provide evidence for both the suffering of untreated transsexuals and how medical treatment can help. With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that opinions such as Raymond’s caused unneccessary death and suffering. It would be nice if Janice Raymond and others had the honesty to admit this. I don’t know enough of the scientific evidence available in the 1970s and 1980s to judge whether Raymond’s view of opposing treatment for transsexuals was a moral failing at the time – it might have been a simple error in judgement. However, “to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character”.

Oh, and I recently discovered the website of the TranScience project, and read two papers they have published (on brains and hormones). I do like their summaries. They seem to try to collect scientific articles about transsexualism, I would hope that my catalogues of such articles can help with their work.

Take care and enjoy the weekend ☺

Heya everybody,

It’s Fall, it’s warm and the sun is shining... nice! ☺ I did add about 45 articles the other week, but I still have to write an overview of the most important studies... maybe I’ll manage this weekend.

The British Humanist Association has launched a new ad campaign answering the big question about life, the universe, and everything... here are some examples:

– “The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.” Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

– “The meaning of your life is what you make of it.” Anthony Clifford Grayling

– “Wear a smile and make friends; wear a scowl and make wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?” George Eliot (1819–1880)

– “My notion is to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of themselves.” Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

I quite like the quotes... let’s try to live accordingly!

A magazine called “Townhall” has picked up and re-run the old lies by Paul McHugh about transsexualism being a psychopathological illness and medical treatment not helping transsexuals. It suggests looking to the bible (which is odd, since it doesn’t mention gender dysphoria), builds strawmen arguments, and shows a general lack of knowledge. As an example, it implies that transgender advocates try to hide the “news” that transgender feelings in childhood often go away. There are plenty of studies showing that the vast majority of gender-atypical and gender dysphoric children grow up to be homosexual, with only a small number developing into transsexual adolescents. (The World Professional Association for Transgender Health notes in their latest Standards of Care that gender dysphoria in childhood does not inevitably continue into adulthood: only 6–23 % of boys and 12–27 % of girls showed persistence of their gender dysphoria into adulthood. Further, most of the boys’ gender dysphoria desisted, and in adulthood, they identified as gay rather than as transgender.) I’ve not heard anyone make claims to the contrary. This scientific evidence is the reason why many transgender advocates are for removing the category “gender incongruence in childhood” from the ICD list of diseases - gender dysphoric children usually don’t require medical treatment. Treatment should start only in adolescence if the gender dysphoria persists, first with puberty blockers (a reversible procedure), and only later with hormone treatments and surgery, when the person has reached sufficient maturity. Simple and common-sensical... why do people keep distorting the facts?

If you want to read more about that Paul McHugh “controversy”, please look here and here and here.

That’s me for now... for a smile, try a Google image search on “rainbow cake”.

Take care and be well ☺🐾

Heya, I just added 14 new articles to the reference pages. Many are authored or co-authored by Gerianne M. Alexander and are about how perinatal hormones can influence gender expression. This was prompted by a nice article in the “Huffington Post”, which doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being scientifically accurate, but nevertheless provides good information at times. This article is about toy preferences in monkeys, which resemble the toy preferences of human babies.

I’m always suprised when I see the old nature-versus-nurture debate come up, I would have thought it has been long laid to rest through scientific evidence. If significant differences in behaviour by gender can be measured in baby animals growing up in controlled environments, and if this behaviour can be tracked back to hormone exposure, than it should be crystal clear that biological factors do play a part in gender roles, gender behaviour and gender expression.

One extreme end of the nature-versus-nurture debate is the “blank slate theory”, the idea that women and men are psychologically absolutely identical at birth – all differences are created socially, by society raising and treating the genders differently. As an example, for how this very outdated viewpoint is still being held and used to support certain political, sociological and feminist views, have a look at a discussion in the comments of a Guardian article about a transsexual boxing promoter. The discussion I’m talking about is started by commenter “ChloeBlack” on 2014-08-12.

In this thread, commenter “floydrose2811r” says “Having said that the idea of there being a ‘female brain’ is something I have been raging against most of my adult life. And as a staunch feminist I do wonder if there is any way to reconcile feminist and trans theories. Let's be honest, the idea of there being a female brain/essence has been used to justify some pretty crappy stuff.” I fear this commenter ignores reality or is trying to construct her own reality, because she doesn’t like the implications as she sees them. She also equates feminist and trans theories (I wonder what is meant by “trans theories”?) as if both are social constructs that can not possibly be tied to reality or supported by evidence. Have a look at my reference pages about early brain development, hormones and gender expression and gender roles and you’ll find tons of studies providing evidence that there is a biologically-caused significant psychological difference between the genders. And this evidence is objective, it is what we see when we look at nature – that’s quite a different level of truth than sociological discussions and implications. Even if I repeat myself: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

And anyway, the fact that measurable, significant differences exist between the averages of the genders doesn’t say anything about individual people, and equally importantly, it does not include an inherent value attached to these differences. Whether you find typically masculine or typically feminine traits “better” or “worse” is entirely up to yourself... and probably says a lot more about yourself than it does about the “worth” of male and female behaviour. If you are “raging” against the existence of biologically-caused psychological differences, doesn’t that mean that you’ve swallowed the patriarchal mindset hook, line and sinker? Isn’t this line of thinking caused by the belief that women have to be identical to men, otherwise they have less value?

Women are different to men... but why should this be a problem? Differences do not automatically imply something is better or worse.

Heya everybody,

I still have to get my brain in gear and work through the 29 links and articles I’ve collected over the past few weeks, but I did want to give a quick update on a couple of very relevant studies.

The well-known Dutch research team (this study was done by Annelou L.C. de Vries, Jenifer K. McGuire, Thomas D. Steensma, Eva C.F. Wagenaar, Theo A.H. Doreleijers and Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis) has just published an article in the journal “Pediatrics”.
Their study assessed 55 transsexuals at various stages during adolescence. The first assessment was made at a mean age of 13.6 years, the last one at 20.7 years, covering more than seven years on average. During this time, patients received puberty blockers, hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery.

And the result was … “gender dysphoria was alleviated and psychological functioning had steadily improved. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population. Improvements in psychological functioning were positively correlated with postsurgical subjective well-being.”

The website “2 minute medicine” has a nice write-up about this study, including an interview with Annelou de Vries.

This is the first long-term study evaluating the so-called “Dutch protocol” (i. e. treatment of adolescent youth with puberty blockers at the onset of puberty, followed by hormone treatment and surgery when the diagnosis is stable and the patient is sufficiently mature). It puts the standard medical treatment of transsexuals on an even more soundly scientific footing which is important to ensure that treatments are evidence-based and thus actually work.

Since the scientific evidence has become better and better, some opponents of treatments for transsexuals have withdrawn themselves to the position that surgery might show positive results in the short term, but provides no benefits long-term. Even this position is based on a biased an interpretation of data apparently cherry-picked for the purpose (see my blog entries from 17th August 2014, 5th July 2014 and 25th of June 2014). Some, like Paul McHugh, still believe against all evidence that gender dysphoria is a symptom of a mental illness that can not be improved by the standard treatments of hormones and surgery.

Naturally, for all human conditions that reduce quality of life, it is important to collect evidence on what measures lead to improvement. It’s a moral obligation to study benefits and downsides for all medical treatments, to make sure both the patient and society profits. However, to study the best treatment for transsexuals is of even bigger importance, since a large part of the suffering that transsexuals experience comes from discrimination by others. Public debate and awareness is necessary to educate society about gender dysphoria and to increase the level of tolerance and acceptance. That’s why studies on how to treat transsexualism are doubly beneficial: they ensure effective treatment and can help in the public debate.

Note that the study mentioned above finds that well-being of treated transsexuals was similar to or better than the control group. This adds further evidence that gender dysphoria is caused by the mismatch between gender identity, physical gender and gender role (gender role including acceptance and recognition by society). Since the transsexuals of the study were treated at a young age, they didn’t have the awful experience of going through a puberty changing their body to the wrong gender, and didn’t have to suffer society’s reaction to their misaligned physical gender and gender role. This gives hope that in the future, transsexualism will not be a problem anymore at adult age – just like crossed eyes, cleft lips, flat feet and other conditions, it will be cured in childhood or adolescence.

If you like to read more on the treatment of gender dysphoric adolescents, Kristin Guy has published a master thesis at the California Statue University (2014), which evaluates the experience of parents and their treansgender youth. Its key findings are that social support, acceptance from friends and family and transition are beneficial and increase well-being.

So, that’s me for today … I’ll add the above mentioned articles to the website tomorrow. In other news, Google Chrome does now display fonts better... yay... but I still haven’t solved my fonts problem on Apple’s Safari browser... booo....
Take care and be well!

Oh, maybe one more thought on the people arguing against treatment for transsexuals … decent people have known since Socrates (and probably before) that it is a sign of intelligence to know the extent and limits of one’s knowledge. It’s really easy … if you don’t know much about a subject, don’t make judgements on the matter and don’t hold strong opinions … and do not discriminate and malign people you don’t understand. Remember, in the age of information, ignorance is a choice. If you are unfamiliar with something, that’s fine, but do not let your ignorance harm anything or anybody other than yourself.

Heya everybody,

I did some work and added 19 articles and studies to my reference pages, some of them quite interesting and relevant. I’ll write a short summary later.

In my blog post from 2014-09-13, I linked to a new, high-quality, long-term Dutch study by de Vries et al. about the benefits of puberty suppression for transsexual adolescents. I want to add a link to a nice article called “This is what happens to transgender kids who delay puberty” on the ThinkProgress website.

The article also mentions backlash by some groups and media against treatment for transsexual youth. I have now read well over one thousand scientific studies and articles on transsexualism, and I do not recall a single study with a sufficiently high number of participants that showed negative outcomes of treatment. If there are some, I’d like to hear about it. If I find any, I’ll publish them here, of course.

As more and more data is collected, the case for medical treatment for transsexuals becomes better and better. The volume and quality of evidence that shows hormone treatment helps, being out helps, and sex reassignment surgery helps is persuasive. I’d like to see evidence from the people who argue against this treatment, and then I’d also like to see evidence that other treatments (e.g. psychotherapy) can help transsexuals. This sort of evidence simply doesn’t exist, and that’s what justifies me in calling people opposing transsexual treatment as haters. Remember: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

Considering the sort of suffering transsexuals go through and the extremely high suicide rates amongst transgender people, the haters literally have blood on their hands.