Incomplete picture
Carol Tavris wrote a few weeks ago about the fad for transing and the failure of much of journalism to report on it fully.
An August 6, 2021 episode of WNYC’s “On the Media” illustrates the problem: the hosts focused on efforts “to block access to medical care for trans kids,” the “politics and propaganda behind the recent wave of anti-trans legislation,” and “what the science tells us about gender affirming care in adolescence.” But “On the Media” did not tell the full story. The usually thorough reporters did not invite a cultural historian to wonder why “gender affirming” clinics have proliferated, from only one in 2010 to more than 400 today, offering puberty blockers and hormones to facilitate the change, including helping teenage girls have “top surgery” to remove offending breasts; or why the sex ratio of transgender claims has changed so dramatically. “On the Media,” of all programs, did not even consider the role of the media in generating and perpetuating social contagion effects.
Maybe because they were doing it themselves.
In its most glaring omission, “On the Media” said not a word about the “desisters,” a term often used for those who make a social transition (changing their names and pronouns) but do not persist in having surgery and hormones or changing their gender identity, and often change back; or about the many (possibly thousands of) “detransitioners” who now regret that they had medical procedures. Many of them are bitter and angry that they have had irreversible voice and hair growth changes, underwent surgical procedures that cannot be corrected, and have become infertile. Elie Vendenbussche, in the Faculty of Society and Economics, Rhine- Waal University of Applied Sciences, Kleve, Germany, did an international on-line survey of 237 male and female detransitioners, who reported “a major lack of support” from the medical and mental-health systems and from the LGBT+ community.
The results were illuminating. Fully 45 percent of them said they had not been fully informed about the “health implications of the accessed treatments and interventions before undergoing them.” (An additional one-third felt “partly informed.”)
So only 22% felt fully informed. That’s not good.
They also suffered serious psychological problems — “gender dysphoria, comorbid conditions, feelings of regret and internalized homophobic and sexist prejudices.”1 “On the Media” did not contact any of the support and advocacy groups that have proliferated — Detrans Voices, Post Trans, and the Detransition Advocacy Network among them. (I had no idea how many of these groups now exist; our leading news media don’t report on them.) But the available research on the harms of premature life-long medical interventions is why Finland and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have stopped routine hormonal treatment of youth under age 18, and put psychological interventions and social support ahead of medical interventions, particularly for adolescents who have no childhood history of gender dysphoria.
The medical interventions should be called something else, really, because they’re medical in the sense of using medical skills and pharmaceuticals but not in the sense of curing or healing or repairing. They’re more like mutilation. FGM is not a medical procedure in the second sense even if it’s done in a brand new OR with all the best equipment.
The fundamental problem, a sure sign that we are in the midst of a social contagion based on pseudoscience and not the emergence of a science-driven medical advance, is that researchers and professionals who want to raise any questions or concerns have been silenced with vehement and often ugly accusations of transphobia and bigotry, their work shut down, some of them fired. Many gender professionals have marginalized, bullied, and tormented their colleagues who disagree. Politically organized “transactivists” protest that any research on, say, factors contributing to the rise of cases of gender transition, the potentially negative consequences of transitioning, or the importance of counseling and treatment before transitioning are indications of the unacceptable idea that gender transition is a pathological problem or disorder. Their second silencing tactic is to conflate psychological interventions with “conversion therapy,” a long-discredited effort to “cure” gay people and turn them straight. Conversion therapy for gay people is cruel and it doesn’t work, which is why it is illegal in many states. But providing psychological counseling before providing irreversible medical procedures for adolescents who are questioning their gender identity is not remotely comparable, especially when the vulnerable young person is also suffering from comorbid conditions, as the vast majority are, including depression, anxiety, and, evidence is now suggesting, autism.
That’s all heresy though.
I wonder how Aaron Rabinowitz will respond to this! More gish-galLOPping and denial, I suppose. If he dismisses Andy Lewis and Graham Linehan, I doubt he’ll steelman an argument from a mere woman (and feminist dinosaur at that) like Carol Tavris.
Makes me wonder about Harriet Hall and where she is these days. She really took a beating at SBM.
@Mikeb #2
She has an article in this very issue of Skeptic.
I was thinking the other day about the account of the 15 year old girl that I posted in a previous thread, and how important it would be, if she were willing, to spread the word about her experience. But then I realised that it would be pointless since every other 15 year old girl on her way to the hospital would say ‘that’s a shame it turned out so badly for her, but I’m different, I REALLY AM trans, and it will be an amazing positive life-affirming experience for me.’
I have finally come to the end of my patience with ‘Gender-A Wider Lens’–the most recent episode featured a couple of Dutch medical people who instituted puberty blockers, hormones and surgery for children just starting puberty. Stella asked at one point, ‘followups don’t seem to show that your patients got much psychological benefit out of their treatment; they still seem to be a mess many years on’ and one of the Dutch people said, very defensively, ‘if someone had diabetes and we treated them, would we expect their lives to be perfect afterward?’ and Stella conceded the point. If we treated someone for diabetes, we’d expect the alleviation of symptoms associated with diabetes–more stable blood sugar, I don’t know, I’m not a medical expert. If we are, in fact, treating someone for the specific symptom of dysphoric feelings, which are keeping that person from leading a full healthy life, and that specific treatment for those specific symptoms doesn’t actually alleviate those specific symptoms, then yes, I think it would be reasonable to consider the treatment a failure.
I stopped reading Science-based Medicine at the time of the disgraceful Harriet Hall incident, but I look at it occasionally when there is a reason to do so. At present Harriet Hall has a contribution in which she says
“No medical treatment is risk-free. Paul Offit’s new book covers the history of innovations that went awry and advises how to balance the risks of new medical innovations with the risk of not treating.”
That seems dangerously close to challenging the orthodoxy! Apparently she has been allowed to return, without, as far as I know, any apology or admission that they were intolerant or wrong.
guest #4
Ah, but you see, no matter how bad the pasient is doing now, they would be doing even worse if not for the treatment. Even if the pasient ended up killing themselves out of despair, the treatment deserves credit for the fact that the weight of their misery didn’t cause the planet to collapse to a black hole.
There’s always an excuse…
There are many awareness days related to trans issues, but today’s is very important. Detransition Awareness Day is vital because there are so many people in positions of power being led to believe that something so life-changing as gender identity is a fixed awareness that one is “born in a body that doesn’t match their identity.”
I know I often comment about my experiences here, but that’s how I build my internal empathy for people who’ve been mistreated by society. So, here goes:
I was at the Seattle Public Library Event sponsored by WoLF in Feb. 2020. After exiting, thanks to police guard we were safe from the frothing crowd who were chanting “No hate, no fear, all genders welcome here” with what I perceived as hatred for the women who spoke and attended.
I met up with a few women who told me that there was a small meeting of people who had been affected by children and teenagers being transitioned early. One of them was a young woman, early twenties, who was a desister. She hadn’t medically transitioned, but she was clawing her way back from believing since she was an early teen that she was a transman. So, at the meeting, there was pizza, and people shared their stories. Some were grandparents of children who were transed very young, and cut off from seeing them because they didn’t want their grandchildren pushed into a process that would alter them irreversibly. Others were parents who had been cut off by their children, their children rejecting them because the children believed they were trans and the parent wanted them to get counseling. Many were detransitioners or desisters who had been rushed into transitioning, with very little thought towards the reasons that they many believe they were transgender.
There’s so much of this “Believe the children, they know who they are.” This was among the stories that were told that night, and we really didn’t learn much from the Satanic Panic, did we? There we were admonished to believe the children, but children are spending so much of their pre-adolescence trying to figure out who they really are and can be easily misled.
When Aaron Rabinowitz talks about Moral Panic in the bathroom bills, he is performing a DARVO trick. There is a moral panic, that if we don’t rush our gender curious kids to trans medically now then they will try to kill themselves. And if the teachers think the parents won’t do this, they must take it on themselves to do the right thing and hide it from the parents.
Gender dysphoria is obviously a real thing. But latching onto the first perceived cure and denying any others (such as working with people to live in a gendered society while also working to break the gender expectations down,) is damaging to so many young people.
And when this moral panic subsides, those who have been medically damaged will not be able to be restored. Breasts can’t be regrown, nor can penises and testes.
Tavris’ article is important and needs to be shared far and wide, to overcome the BS that people like PZ are spreading as “skeptics.”
I typically call them irreversible cosmetic surgery.
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