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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

#51

Post by rntz »

makomk wrote: post #34
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:…

> 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.

The article brings up many more flaws with the external review than the use of that anecdote. For example, the misreporting of statistics (70% vs 30% of patients meeting the criteria for gender dysphoria); the low number of interviews with actual patients of the GIC (9 or 11), of whom even so only 2 had complaints; misreporting the nature of the use of play therapy (for assessment vs treatment); and so forth.

If the GIC is to be condemned (as perhaps it should) for conversion therapy, it should at least be done on the basis of a thorough, fact-checked independent review; the article's thesis is that the external review conducted by Zinck and Pignatiello does not suffice. It's not just one anecdote they take issue with.

> His approach involved telling parents to prevent their kids from playing with toys of the "wrong" gender [...] > His position - what he told parents coming to his clinic for help [...] > I've followed this issue, [...]

Do you have any links you think are particularly informative about the practices of the GIC in this regard?

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

#52

Post by whitegrape »

toothbrush wrote: post #45
whitegrape wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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) I don't actually think this is true. Disclaimer: a close friend of mine studies this academically, so i'm probably incorrectly passing along a vague version of what i've been told, plus i have a certain level of personal investment in the issue. Anyhow, there's r…

I figured that sentence might be an issue, but I left it in anyway as an honest relay of my thinking. It may be dubious, and may one day be as dubious as the similar sentence applied to black people, but I think it's an entirely natural reaction (just as girls avoiding the boy with terrible acne in school) given our evolutionary history and unlikely to vanish due to social pressure -- it will just become better hidden (few admit to being a racist), but still in plain sight by way of revealed preferences ("white flight"). Being natural doesn't make it good, but it does mean policies and expectations should be realistic. Singapore has achieved racial integration by very authoritarian measures like deciding where you can live and who your neighbors are, which was and is a realistic policy given the alternative outcome of just about everywhere else of racial groups bunching together against the outer culture which ends up causing various problems for the local government. In the absence of negative reinforcement like demonizing people who don't at least appear welcoming to transpeople in the same way racists are demonized (this is the way I predict things going, sadly), and in the absence of well-enforced top-down measures, expectations should be for a long slog towards grudging acceptance of the state of the world.

I dream of a more grand future where I can just rewrite my personality(ies) to feel differently about various things, even to rewrite my brain and form a new body to experience what it's truly like to be female, or Hutu. The natural way of things is evil, but it must be considered and dealt with honestly.

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

#53

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

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…

Er, if you don't block them, 11-year-old trans kids will get the wrong ones. That's what puberty does. At a certain age, your body starts producing high amounts of sex hormones. Blocking them means that these kids won't immediately develop permanent secondary sex characteristics which don't match their gender and would cause then suffering.

Surely it is better to block hormones at 11 and then go on the right ones at 16, rather than otherwise needing a mastectomy, facial surgery, vocal surgery, hair removal etc. in later life?

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

#54

Post by threatofrain »

I have difficulty seeing why gender is such a solid and psychologically important concept, as opposed to sex. Gender is the social layer of meaning attached to sex, while sex is a biological construct.

Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles.

Why not just create your own personal identity that involves being female and doing male-typical activities, or vice versa? Hollywood plays with gender expectations all the time, and while there are certainly still gender norms, the lines aren't so clear anymore, and society has adopted the appetite to continually challenge gender norms.

And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Most men and women don't travel much because of money. Because of your racial identity, you can't easily penetrate any social circle you wish; it's hard to be an anthropological spy.

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

#55

Post by interpol_p »

makomk wrote: post #34
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:…

> All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red herring

Seems pretty definitive that he did not mock that person:

> But Adam is now sure that it wasn’t Zucker who made the offensive remark to him, and said he was planning on sending CAMH a note letting them know he had erred, though he didn’t respond to a follow-up email asking him if he had.

(The author got in touch with the person who made the claim, and from details provided, such as full names of the receptionist and other worker, determined he misremembered the clinic where he was mocked. Author provided that person with a photo of the clinician from where she suspected the abuse happened and received a very strong confirmation.)

That said, this whole article and ambiguity about the right approach for handling gender dysphoria is scary to read as a parent. I just try to tell my children that whatever they want to do is appropriate for their gender. E.g., If they are a boy and want to wear dresses, then boys wear dresses and that's OK.

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

#56

Post by xupybd »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #48

Zucker is not the victim of misguided activism. He was fired because, simply, he wasn't doing his job, which is to provide (evidence-based) medical treatment for trans people, not peddle pseudo-scientific conversion therapy. If he'd done to adults what he did to kids, maybe he'd have been gone sooner.

From that article it did not seem to be the case? Is there any evidence that he was not practicing evidence-based medical treatments?

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

#58

Post by makomk »

xupybd wrote: post #38
personjerry wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Oh, there's definitely politicisation going on here, but I don't think it's on the side you're claiming it is. For example, this article says that "Some trans activists have howled at this claim — they believe that desistance is a transphobic myth entirely", linking to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the...

Now let's have a look at that article:

"For starters, the most cited study (Steensma) which alleges a 84 percent desistance rate, did not actually differentiate between children with consistent, persistent and insistent gender dysphoria, kids who socially transitioned, and kids who just acted more masculine or feminine than their birth sex and culture allowed for. In other words, it treated gender non-conformance the same as gender dysphoria. Worse, the study could not locate 45.3 percent of the children for follow up, and made the assumption that all of them were desisters. Indeed, other studies used to support this also suffered from similar methodological flaws."

Yowch. That's some seriously dodgy science there - almost half the subjects lost to follow-up, assigning a particular outcome to the drop-outs, questionable selection criteria... And the NY Mag completely ignores the actual methodological issues, instead dismissing them as ideological complaining from trans activists.

This is pretty sleazy too: "they just haven’t come up with scientifically convincing explanations for why the studies would all be wrong, and all in the same way". The studies in question took a group of people who met some definition of gender variance and looked at how many transitioned. The more strict the definition they used, the higher the proportion that transitioned - and the NY Mag are arguing that the studies showing the highest proportion of non-transitioners are right and indisputable because all the studies showed some positive proportion of non-transitioners, which is the only thing they could show.

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

#59

Post by mcv »

xupybd wrote: post #56
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #48

Zucker is not the victim of misguided activism. He was fired because, simply, he wasn't doing his job, which is to provide (evidence-based) medical treatment for trans people, not peddle pseudo-scientific conversion therapy. If he'd done to adults what he did to kids, maybe he'd have been gone sooner.

From that article it did not seem to be the case? Is there any evidence that he was not practicing evidence-based medical treatments?

That's certainly my impression too. The article sounded like he had evidence on his side, and the activists distorted some of the events. Then again, this is only one article. Maybe the article itself is biased. There's really no good way for us to be sure. Though to me, the story sounds reasonable, and the actions of everybody involved sound understandable from their viewpoint (even when it is misguided).

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

#60

Post by toothbrush »

whitegrape wrote: post #52
toothbrush wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) I don't actually think this is true. Disclaimer: a close friend of mine studies this academically, so i'm probably incorrectly passing along a vague version of what i've been told, plus i have a certain level of personal investment in the issue. Anyhow, there's r…

I figured that sentence might be an issue, but I left it in anyway as an honest relay of my thinking. It may be dubious, and may one day be as dubious as the similar sentence applied to black people, but I think it's an entirely natural reaction (just as girls avoiding the boy with terrible acne in school) given our evolutionary history and unlikely to vanish due to social pressure -- it will just become better hidde…

Fair enough! I don't have much to add to the discussion, but wanted to say that i understand the thinking behind what you said, and appreciate the painful honesty. You're probably right that for a majority of people the best one can hope for is grudging acceptance. I appreciate that at least you admit your internal biases (of which i also have quite a number, as is natural) -- that's indeed all anyone can ask for, as a first step towards a more accepting society. Thanks :)
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