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How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

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Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#31

Post by Gibbon1 »

kbenson wrote: post #12
bruceb wrote: post #4

"In 2016, there’s fairly solid agreement about the proper course of treatment for otherwise healthy, stable young people who have persistent gender dysphoria, and who are either approaching puberty or older than that: You help them transition to their true gender. The process is different from person to person, but for an 11-year-old, it might include a round of puberty-blocking hormones to prevent the development of…

The current climate seems to force us into a "dammed of you do and damned if you don't" type of situation. Not doing reassignment is seen by some as forcing a gender upon someone, and doing it is seen by others as taking drastic action on youths which may be experiencing gender confusion but might not eventually settle on needing gender reassignment. Lose lose all around.

I get twitchy, the whole thing makes me twitchy. Partly because I know a few who eschew the whole hormones and surgery. Somewhat or not so somewhat defiantly. I'd really hate for those people to be pressured into something that not only do they not need, but results in a lower quality of life.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#32

Post by HarrietJones »

justinpombrio wrote: post #17
koralatov wrote: post #3

I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference betw…

Well - Yes and No.

My view on this is you have both gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is very important to people and (to a lesser degree, children), but it's (mostly) invisible. We even hide our most obvious sexual characteristics.

For this and possibly other reasons, gender identifiers are important. It's important that we (cis and trans both) can hold the magical tchotchke of womanhood and wave it about so that other people know what we are. If it wasn't important that people knew what we are we wouldn't spend a fortune on dresses and makeup.

How that gender identity is defined isn't important. What is important is that it is defined. I'd argue that as long as it doesn't impact on a persons life choices then we should have things for boys and things for girls. So - Javascript is for Boys is a bad implementation of Gender Identity. Pink is for Girls is actually a great expression of Gender Identity. (As it doesn't affect career, or ease of getting dressed or anything that may otherwise societally affect women).

Of course this whole conversation is full of mentalists shouting at each other, so we're never going to be able to work out the best way of allowing gender fluidity in children or for trans people to live in the world without being labelled as mentally ill.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#33

Post by [deleted] »

justinpombrio wrote: post #17
koralatov wrote: post #3

I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference betw…

[deleted]

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#34

Post by makomk »

SeanDav wrote: post #9

I can't help thinking that there really is a large element of adults applying adult values to children here. > "...research suggests that most gender-dysphoric kids will, in the long run, end up identifying as cisgender." If this really is true, then the approach offered by Dr Zucker makes far more sense to me - to allow the child to make up his/her own mind over time and provide an understanding and sympathetic envi…

Allowing the child to make up their own mind is almost exactly not the approach offered by Dr Zucker. His approach involved telling parents to prevent their kids from playing with toys of the "wrong" gender and making friends with other kids of the "wrong" gender in an attempt to make sure they grow up the right gender. That's why activists call it conversion therapy.

This is what the article means when it says that: "That’s because the authors believe that messages from family, peers, and society do a huge amount of the work of helping form, reinforce, and solidify gender identities, and that at young ages these identities tend to be quite malleable. There’s great potential for confusion. A young boy might notice his new baby sister getting more attention than he is, and start dressing like a girl in a bid to be noticed. His parents, not knowing what to do, might go along with this, inadvertently reinforcing the notion that he’s a girl — a notion which, according to the GIC model, probably doesn’t come from a deep-seated kernel of gender identity, but rather mostly from social reinforcement and family dynamics."

His position - what he told parents coming to his clinic for help - is that if parents don't do everything they can to dissuade young kids from acting in gender-inappropriate ways, to make sure they wear the right clothes and play with the right toys and socialise with the right gender of other kids, they'll turn their kids trans. This is the point of dispute, and he's way outside of the scientific consensus here. All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red herring - I've followed this issue, and literally the only place I've heard it mentioned is articles defending Zucker.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#35

Post by vidarh »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #20
jlebrech wrote: post #7

You can't give children counselling, you just have to give them the meds and convert them into the gender they want to be. There's no balance, in some cases it could be psychological and a hormone imbalance (of the childs current gender) In a few years they'll flip flop in the other direction, when children will be denied reassignment, and it'll start all over again. Also this could be dangerous to some in adult life…

There was a story on the BBC podcast Analysis, about a UK politician who while helping a transgendered teen, tried to get reassignment treatment funded through NHS. The LGBT group protested. Apparently according to their research the majority of children who feel they are transgender realise they are actually gay.

This sounds odd to me. The NHS has an extensive programme of treatments, including full reassignment:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Treatmen...

What they certainly would have refused would be to start reassignment if said teen was not yet 18 and/or had not yet undergone the full evaluation and started socially transitioning, and this is in part for medical reasons, in part because it certainly is true that many children with gender dysphoria eventually come to decide they don't want to transition, either because the gender dyphoria resolves or because they don't feel they need to change physically.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#36

Post by Fuxy »

SeanDav wrote: post #9

I can't help thinking that there really is a large element of adults applying adult values to children here. > "...research suggests that most gender-dysphoric kids will, in the long run, end up identifying as cisgender." If this really is true, then the approach offered by Dr Zucker makes far more sense to me - to allow the child to make up his/her own mind over time and provide an understanding and sympathetic envi…

From the limited psychology books and research I read as a hobby it is actually true and there's a very good example of that in Japanese society where it accepted for young children to be attracted or even in love with other children of the same sex.

It is considered as something they will grow out of even if sometimes they don't.

This leads me to believe that Dr. Zucker is right and he is yet another victim of uninformed activism.

The allegations in the report are he said, she said from what I an concerned. If you ever worked in a customer facing role you know if you do enough digging you will find someone that would say what you want them to say even if it's not true.

You would need a statistical report of how may people he has treated vs how many people had something bad to say about his treatment to actually see the real truth.

You can get some people to lie or they might have their own reason for lying but given a large enough sample that is meaningless.

That was not a proper investigation it was a witch hunt.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#37

Post by whitegrape »

justinpombrio wrote: post #17
koralatov wrote: post #3

I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference betw…

In the nicest possible way I'd say you're missing the point. To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO), the real question is just what is going on with gender dysphoria. Is it (and do we treat it as) a mental illness? (The DSM-V calls it a disorder.) What are the causes? Is it just attention-seeking? Or is it just an aspect of personality like preferring the color blue over red, only with much more important social implications? Is it changeable? Does it go away? Is the "gender-affirmative" approach the right one, where we apparently need to up-heave societal norms to make these people "comfortable", whatever that entails? Should such up-heaving be funded by the tax payer? Can we make them "comfortable" while not making other people "uncomfortable"? These and many others are the questions that matter. I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). I'd like to ignore the problem and let the scientists and doctors solve it. But when scientists and doctors are busy purging other scientists and doctors instead of doing science and medicine I guess I'd rather have a decree from the Supreme Court that settles things (at least temporarily) one way or another for society as a whole. If they pick wrong, the scientists that believe so better start coming up with good evidence, since apparently what's presently available is either not good enough to actually be convincing one way or another or it's possible to become a practitioner in the field without a firm grasp of the current state of evidence.

Most commenters here won't read the submitted article. I admit I only skimmed it, for it is long, but what I did read was also good. It addresses some of these questions and more. This sort of reporting on purges rarely happens.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#38

Post by xupybd »

personjerry wrote: post #26
xupybd wrote: post #10

There is a huge problem when activists care more about their cause than the truth.

I think this is true, and additionally I believe that we should promote understanding and acceptance rather than "pushing" for "one cause over another". Even worse, I worry about people who twist the community and goals to their own ends (some examples show up at times on reddit's TumblrInAction), but I understand that this is probably a minority. At the same time, I can't help but feel like there is a small, growing…

That aside a man who was an expert in his field appears to have been pushed out, because his medical and professional views were not tolerated. The medical industry is one very important part of society. We should do our best to ensure it is a meritocracy. Political agendas often miss the forest for the trees right or wrong this man's expert option should be subject to the test of science, not the wrath of zealots that often believe they cannot be in error. I suspect many believe their own experience is enough to prove them correct, however anecdotal evidence may not represent the truth for the entire population. Better to let medical research stand or fall on its own merits.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#39

Post by Cyph0n »

viraptor wrote: post #29
Cyph0n wrote: post #2

This is silly. Young children are essentially genderless. If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age.

The cause may be though that they just feel that way. I remember that since the beginning of the primary school there was a boy who pretty much perfectly integrated with girls. The clothes were the only difference from the outside. He explicitly identified himself as a girl. And that was from the age of 9 until 16 (if I count the years correctly...). He was very far from genderless. Actually now that I remember it, i…

Did he have any brothers? I also recall people I studied with behaving like that because they only had sisters to play with.

Re: How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

#40

Post by ZeroGravitas »

xupybd wrote: post #10

There is a huge problem when activists care more about their cause than the truth.

Yes, the hard part is figuring out which side are the "activists".

I know nothing of this particular field, but I do know I can go out on the internet and find well-meaning people writing a very similar story about a scientist commited to the truth being hounded by ill-informed activists on the topic of, for example, climate change. And, to my point, I can find that story written from both sides of the debate.

Who would have thought the temperature of the earth would become a political football? On the other hand, people have been freaking out for literally decades about the mildest of gender controversies, like men not cutting their hair short, or women wanting to wear trousers, so there's a whole backlog of drama that this current issue builds on.

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