#i know a weird number of y'all think we run on vibes and liberal propaganda but i promise a ton of us are absolute DORKS

[keelanrosa]

started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

#cass review #lgbt #transgender #transphobia #science #'tldr': *writes three-page essay* 'but i don't have time for a three-page essay rn' #also: holy run-on sentences #but seriously this is not going to change the mind of a single person who would be influenced by reading scientific studies #the studies already existed and have BEEN being used by terfs who think ZUCKER of aLL PEOPLE #is a good gotcha against anyone saying 'reputable studies indicate detransitioning is pretty uncommon actually' #but the responses i find truly fascinating are the ones along the lines of #'ohohoho i bet all those people who criticized jkr will be reeeaal quiet now' w. why. #if past studies didn't convince them the Special Collector's Edition of past studies won't #y'all don't have a monopoly on Scientific Knowledge just because y'all think your Fisher-Price level Gender Definition is the best #sometimes. other scientific information exists. and trans people and allies can even read that scientific information. #i know a weird number of y'all think we run on vibes and liberal propaganda but i promise a ton of us are absolute DORKS