Uh-oh. Bill Maher just spoke up on the trans kids debate.

Has it ever occured to you that perhaps some of the people previously identified as gay/lesbian might be actually trans? Do you think Elliot Page is actually a lesbian, but has decided to identify as nonbinary because of.... I don't know. Is it easier for Page, either personally or professionally, to be trans than being lesbian?

"Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults,"published in the The Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy on March 17, 2022, cites and links to a lot of up-to-date research. Lead author Stephen B. Levine, MD, a psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve who has specialized in treating and studying children and adolescents with gender identity issues for 50 years. He was previously head of the WPATH committee that established the standards of care for the treatment of youth distressed over sex and gender identity issues.

Some excerpts:

...two key areas of uncertainty must be emphasized. The first one is the uncertain permanence of a child’s or an adolescent’s gender identity (Littman, 2021; Ristori & Steensma, 2016; Singh, Bradley, & Zucker, 2021; Vandenbussche, 2021; Zucker, 2017).

The second is the uncertain long-term physical and psychological health outcomes of gender transition (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence, 2020a; 2020b). Unfortunately, gender specialists are frequently unfamiliar with, or discount the significance of, the research in support of these two concepts. As a result, the informed consent process rarely adequately discloses this information to patients and their families.

There have been eleven research studies to date indicating a high rate of resolution of gender incongruence in children by late adolescence or young adulthood without medical interventions (Cantor, 2020; Ristori & Steensma, 2016; Singh et al., 2021).

An attempt has been made to discount the applicability of this research, suggesting that the studies were based on merely gender non-conforming, rather than truly gender-dysphoric, children (Temple Newhook et al., 2018). However, a reanalysis of the data prompted by this critique confirmed the initial finding: Among children meeting the diagnostic criteria for “Gender Identity Disorder” in DSM-IV (currently “Gender Dysphoria in DSM-5), 67% were no longer gender-dysphoric as adults; the rate of natural resolution for gender dysphoria was 93% for children whose gender dysphoria was significant but subthreshold for the DSM diagnosis (Zucker, et al., 2018).

It should be noted that high resolution of childhood-onset gender dysphoria had been recorded before the practice of social transition of young children was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Rafferty et al., 2018). It is possible that social transition will predispose a young person to persistence of transgender identity long-term (Zucker, 2020).

Families should be made aware that a period of strong cross-sex identification in childhood is commonly associated with future homosexuality (Korte et al., 2008). Research in desistance confirms that the majority of youth whose gender dysphoria resolves naturally do indeed grow up to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual adults (Cantor, 2020, Appendix; Singh et al., 2021).

Clinicians should also disclose to patients and parents that there is no test which can accurately predict who will persist in their transgender identification upon reaching mature adulthood (Ristori & Steensma, 2016).

tandfonline.com

Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults

In less than a decade, the western world has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the numbers of children and adolescents seeking gender transition. Despite the precedent of years of gender-affirmati...

Open link

This thread is sickening. People like Maher love making digs at the trans community because it's self-serving. It generates publicity & clicks. But the community he's targeting has no power & can't fight back. So he can take swings at them & that somehow gets perceived as brave/going against cancel culture by the right.

It's actually pretty disgusting. Try to at least see through some of that.

That idea shouldn't be fine for you, because it's unequivocally wrong. Your gender identity is always tied to your biology, it just won't always match with your body's secondary sex characteristics. I've said this many times on this forum, but the scourge of Queer Theory pseudoscience has become so deeply ingrained in the culture that it bears repeating. ACTUAL gender dysphoria is a developmental issue where one's body develops as one sex and one's brain (which is what governs your "gender identity") develops as another. Yes, there are distinct differences between male and female brains, despite what Queer Theorist pseudoscientists would have you believe. If you don't have this brain/body mismatch, then I'm sorry but you're not actually transgender. This is why we shouldn't rely on a child's self report alone as a means of diagnosis, there's too many social influences to identify as transgender to accurately diagnose without doing actual brain scans.

Even the word "gender" needs to go, it has no basis in reality, the idea of "gender" was disproven 50 years ago and it is just used to perpetuate psuedoscience.

The horny chicks were still horny for men

Or maybe there was a family abuse history from the grandmother through the mothers....how can you tell cause/effect...just saying

See RunRagged's post, which has links to more recent studies. The only other thing I'll say here is that dismissing a study because it's from 14 years ago shows that you take a dogmatic rather than critical thinking approach to evaluating research. Do doctors tell overweight patients to lose weight only if the most up-to-date studies say that they should do so? No, they base recommendations on lots and lots of studies accumulated over time. If research suddenly reported that obesity was inconsequential or healthy (this actually is happening in fat studies scholarship), critical thinkers would rightly be skeptical. Research on gender identity issues is similar. It's the body of research as a whole, not a single study or the most recent study, that demonstrates high rates of desistance.

Last but not least, if you don't know that some of the most prominent, groundbreaking researchers on trans issues have been subject to activist smear campaigns, you really aren't familiar with what is happening in the field. The researchers targeted aren't bigots and political partisans; many of them have been working to help people with gender dysphoria since the 1970s and 80s. They were humane when others weren't. You can read about one smear campaign against J. Michael Bailey here:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age

In 2003, psychology professor and sex researcher J. Michael Bailey published a book entitled The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. The book’s portrayal of male-to-female (MTF) transsexu...

Open link

Disgust indicates moral outrage. Try to set that aside and look at the evidence. As a previous poster noted, there has been a 4000% increase in trans identification since 2006 and a complete reversal in the demographics of this population. This points to a social phenomenon, not a sudden liberation of already trans people who would have been closeted if not for affirmative care. Additionally, affirmative care is a euphemism for prescribing experimental drugs to children. Some of these children are proto gay, lesbian, and bisexual. Some have experienced trauma. Others are trying to escape adult sexual development. These children need comprehensive mental and physical healthcare, not immediate access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery.

Also, Bill Maher is a comedian, and comedy is sometimes serious business. One role of comedians is to speak taboo truths.

Their trauma has caused them to reject who they are in order to become something/anything different.

If this is the case, the solution is straightforward, isn't it? Require brain scans before administering puberty blockers and cross hormones. You should be able to tell which case of gender dysphoria is real and which case is imagine.

But is it really that simple? The article RunRagged posted has this:

Clinicians should also disclose to patients and parents that there is no test which can accurately predict who will persist in their transgender identification upon reaching mature adulthood (Ristori & Steensma, 2016).

This quoted article (Ristori & Steensma) is behind the paywall, but here is the abstract.

tandfonline.com

Gender dysphoria in childhood

Gender dysphoria (GD) in childhood is a complex phenomenon characterized by clinically significant distress due to the incongruence between assigned gender at birth and experienced gender. The clin...

Open link

This article is six years old, and so it's not clear whether we are still at the same stage as to predicting whose gender dysphoria will persist.

BTW, TERF ideologues seem to agree with Queer Theory pseudoscientists. Both reject the idea that gender dysphoria is a medical condition that originates from brain development.

This analogy is off. If the most up-to-date medical research suggests some diet and exercise previously recommended for weight loss are not as effective as alternative diet and exercise, which one would you recommend?

I have lost weight and lowered cholesterol with diet and exercise, but does that mean I should advise against other people taking medicine for their high cholesterol? Yeah, it's great if you didn't have to use them, but does that mean Lipitor is evil?

You seem to be exclusively preoccupied with the potential side effects of cholesterol meds, and not pay any attention to the patients who cannot lower their cholesterol with diet and exercise alone. Do you think there is absolutely zero harm if no single transgender youth is given puberty blocker, or even allowed to socially transition?

Finally, trans activists do not have real power. Rightwing politicians do.

No. I don't have any better idea. And I didn't say it wasn't based on brain development. On the contrary, I think brain development is the most likely cause.

My point is asking why doctors don't scan the brains of transgender youths before administering puberty blockers. And my guess is that it will be opposed by both trans activists and transphobes. The former will insist every self report should be accepted without exception, and the latter will insist no minor should be given "experimental drugs." They are both more interested in winning purity contest than actually helping minors who are suffering from serious conditions.

This article explains where the opposition to brain scan comes from. They come from both ends.

archive.thinkprogress.org

Research on transgender brains may not be as helpful as you think

https://facebook.com/zackford

Transgender health care has a troubled history of gatekeeping.

Open link

Lol it’s like he forgot what thread he was posting on.

What are you talking about? My point has to do with understanding scientific literature as a whole and not relying on just the most recent study. I said nothing about weight loss techniques, much less cholesterol medications. With trans kids, nobody is talking about using drugs and surgery to interrupt bodily pathologies; they're saying we should use them to interrupt normal developmental processes in healthy bodies. The risk/benefit ratio is much different, in part because cholesterol drugs were actually studied for the treatment of high cholesterol before being prescribed by doctors. Even so, most doctors recommend non-pharmological interventions first because most drugs have potential side effects. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have not been studied in the same way, nor has social transition. Somehow the usual treatement dictum to avoid pharmaceuticals or surgery until other less invasive strategies have been tried is abandoned in the name of suicide prevention, even though transition does not seem to reduce the chance of suicide in people with gender dysphoria.

I have said repeatedly that trans is a cultural, not an objective or scientific category for understanding gender issues. Additionally, there is a difference between rejecting trans as an innate condition and denying that gender dysphoria may have biological correlates. I've stated over and over in this thread that the biological findings attributed to trans (eg. the argument that transwomen have female-typical brains) might actually be due to homosexuality. Not only that, but early pioneers of transsexuality research argued that homosexuality drives trans identification for some males. See Ray Blanchard's work.

As far as childhood transition is concerned, the evidence base is really poor. Expert reviews in the UK, Sweden, and Finland have all reached this same conclusion albeit with slighly different recommendations for how to treat gender dysphoric kids under 16-18 years old. You can listen to Riittakerttu Kaltiala from Finland talk about her experience working in a pediatric gender clinic as the demographics of the population seeking treatment changed, and as they failed to see the same improvements documented in the Dutch literature (The Dutch Protocol; puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones):

gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm

62 - Pioneers Series: Adolescent Identity with Riittakerttu Kaltiala - Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast

Riittakerttu Kaltiala, M.D., Ph.D., BSc, is a professor of adolescent psychiatry in Tampere University and chief psychiatrist in the Department of Adole...

Open link

Dr. Kaltiala focuses a lot on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), which she was seeing in her clinic, and which Lisa Littman described in the United States (she was hounded out of an academic appointment after publishing her research, btw). ROGD is a recent phenomenon thought to be "socially contagious." Mass psychogenic illness has long been documented in psychological and neurological literature. You can read about it in Suzanne O'Sullivan's book, The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness. Mass psychogenic illness is more common in females than males, and some think it describes a subset of females with gender dysphoria today.

I don't know if any kids will suffer harm if affirmative care is banned. I do know that affirmative care is experimental and that most recipients of this care have healthy bodies. Most people are calling for caution and calling bull on the quasi-religious beliefs that are motivating approaches to care. There's something deeply troubling happening with the sudden rise in trans identification and the rush to medicate.

If you think objections or trepidation about affirmative care is a rightwing phenomenon, you are mistaken.

It is not a surprise you "don't know" if denying transitioning does any harm to trans kids. If they go into depression and withdraw from society, at least they won't enter girls' bathrooms and locker rooms. So there is no problem as far as you are concerned. Any suffering they experience is better than talking "experimental drugs" right? I remember people who refused covid vaccines because they were "experimental." For them, suffering from covid was better than taking experimental vaccine.

As I wrote above, why not scan the brains of trans kids before approving puberty blockers? But that will deny the belief held by people like yourself that there is no medical basis for gender dysphoria. It must be all cultural.

There is growing evidence that gender dysphoria originates in brain development. It is quite amusing that you think trans people are actually gay, but also believe that trans women will assault cis women in restrooms and locker rooms. So which is it? Are trans women actually gay men? Do they assault cis women even though they are gay?

It is not long time ago that many people believed sexual orientation was a lifestyle choice. They believed in conversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality. Do you also believe in conversion therapy for trans people?

But you do believe 29% of school kids in Cali consider themselves LBGT?

It's unnecessary to say "going forward" right there. In fact, it's almost always unnecessary to say "going forward."

Good point. I'm going to stop using that phrase going forward.