How Changeable Is Gender?

[stephaniec]

How Changeable Is Gender?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/richard-a-friedman-how-changeable-is-gender.html?_r=0

The New York Times/Richard A. Friedman   08/23/2015

"THANKS to Caitlyn Jenner, and the military's changing policies, transgender people are gaining acceptance — and living in a bigger, more understanding spotlight than at any previous time.

We're learning to be more accepting of transgender individuals. And we're learning more about gender identity, too."

[Tysilio]

Is it just me, or is he cherrypicking his data?

[stephaniec]

I'm a little concerned about his view on the pre puberty group. I started at 4 and I so wished I would of been able to get help. I understand its a problem but lets not deny  those in need.

[suzifrommd]

Three SERIOUS flaws in this article.

1. His speculation about how if society were more tolerant we wouldn't need to transition, is INFURIATING. I'm sick of hearing this from cisgender people who don't have a clue. We don't transition because we want to be like women/men. We transition because we ARE women/men.

2. The Johns Hopkins figure of 5/100,000 is not recent. Recent figures have it about ONE HUNDRED TIMES GREATER. Reporting that figure is irresponsible.

3. His conclusion that gender dysphoria is changeable is deeply flawed. It's like watching two baby penguins and one baby dove waddling around, noticing that only the doves manage to fly and deciding that the idea that birds can fly is a myth.

In an ideal world, there would be a transgender version of the NAACP or the Anti-Defamation league that would come down hard on the New York Times. But we're too busy arguing with each other to form such an organization so the world will believe there's some sort of question of whether children should be allowed to transition.

Grrrr.

[ChiGirl]

The worst thing about this article is that it starts out reasonable, but slowly but surely lays out its flawed opinion, with the old "I'm not saying, I'm just asking." 

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

[Everbrooke]

Three SERIOUS flaws in this article.

1. His speculation about how if society were more tolerant we wouldn't need to transition, is INFURIATING. I'm sick of hearing this from cisgender people who don't have a clue. We don't transition because we want to be like women/men. We transition because we ARE women/men.

2. The Johns Hopkins figure of 5/100,000 is not recent. Recent figures have it about ONE HUNDRED TIMES GREATER. Reporting that figure is irresponsible.

3. His conclusion that gender dysphoria is changeable is deeply flawed. It's like watching two baby penguins and one baby dove waddling around, noticing that only the doves manage to fly and deciding that the idea that birds can fly is a myth.

In an ideal world, there would be a transgender version of the NAACP or the Anti-Defamation league that would come down hard on the New York Times. But we're too busy arguing with each other to form such an organization so the world will believe there's some sort of question of whether children should be allowed to transition.

Grrrr.

I've been discussing the disorganization for a minute, both in my real life helping with PFLAG and TENT, but also on here.  I have come to the conclusion that it's only because any really public activism is pretty new.  We are getting around to it, and the amount of ignorance going around is astounding.  This is one to feel frustrated over for sure, but we are getting there, and I think it's important to keep the faith and keep trucking.

Time for a letter to the editor for me...

[Paige]

New York Times Op-Ed Encourages People To Be 'Skeptical' Of Trans Identities

BY Zack Ford Aug 24, 2015

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/08/24/3694486/transgender-kids-health-myths/

On Sunday, the New York Times published an op-ed from Richard A. Friedman, Weill Cornell Medical College professor of clinical psychiatry, who asks, "How changeable is gender?" Though Friedman sets up his piece by discussing the biological underpinnings of gender identity and the experience of being transgender, he ultimately explains his "skepticism" about assisting transgender people to change their bodies to match their identities. "After all," he concludes, "medical and psychological treatments should be driven by the best available scientific evidence — not political pressure or cherished beliefs."

To justify his skepticism, Friedman distorts some studies and ignores others to arrive at conclusions that support his apparent biases against transition. Under the guise of medical opinion, he mimics the flawed talking points used by some of the biggest opponents of transgender equality:
======================
Good response on Think Progress.

[suzifrommd]

Good response on Think Progress.

Yes, I agree.

This response from a while ago also applies:

https://www.susans.org/2015/05/26/freedom-require-scientific-proof/

[Tysilio]

It's too bad more people read the Times than Think Progress. That is a very good piece.

[stephaniec]

The catastrophically bad New York Times op-ed on transgender research, debunked

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9197789/new-york-times-transgender-research

VOX/Updated by German Lopez on August 24, 2015, 12:00 p.m. ET @germanrlopez

"What happens when the New York Times gets a professor of clinical psychiatry to look at the research on ->-bleeped-<- and gender identity? Well, apparently the professor gets every study he looked at wrong.

The op-ed by Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, was supposed to be a scientific dive into the empirical research on gender identity. So it's alarming that the article got all the research it cited wrong — at times misunderstanding basic definitions surrounding trans issues, and sometimes flatly misinterpreting the studies it cited. But what's even worse is how Friedman uses his misinterpretations to justify very harmful practices for trans kids."

[HughE]

I wasn't very impressed with the NYT article either. Here's a couple of quotes from it that I totally disagree with:

At the same time, we have to acknowledge that gender identity is a complex phenomenon, involving a mix of genes, hormones and social influence.

This is a really wishy washy statement that isn't borne out by what the science shows. We know for a fact from the experiences of people like David Reimer, that social factors have little if any influence on gender identity (if anything it's even less malleable than sexual orientation). As far as I've been able to determine, there's no clear evidence of a direct genetic influence on gender identity either, and the fact that CAIS women seem to be overwhelmingly happy living as women (despite being genetically male), argues that genes can't have much influence on gender identity (except indirectly by influencing hormone production). Basically, your gender identity later in life seems to depend largely or entirely on what hormones were present during the critical period when your brain underwent its sexually dimorphic development.

...in a group of 77 young people, ages 5 to 12, who all had gender dysphoria at the start of the study, 70 percent of the boys and 36 percent of the girls were no longer gender dysphoric after an average of 10 years' follow-up. THIS strongly suggests that gender dysphoria in young children is highly unstable and likely to change.

Or it could be that whoever did the initial assessment was wrongly classifying a lot of the children as gender dysphoric, when actually they weren't! That seems to be borne out by what's said in the Vox article StephanieC has linked to (that the studies in question lumped together children who had gender dysphoria with those with nonstandard gender expression).

Also, I read somewhere that reparative therapists often overdiagnose gender dysphoria, to make it look like they're successfully curing kids of being trans (when actually the "cures" were never trans in the first place). Maybe there's an element of that going on in some of these studies too.

[Everbrooke]

I just realized something...a study of 77 young people?  77?!  That isn't a scientifically viable control group!

[stephaniec]

The NY Times goes concern trolling

http://www.transadvocate.com/the-ny-times-goes-concern-trolling_n_15397.htm

Trans Advocate/Cristan Williams · Fact Checking · Opinion

"On August 22, 2015 the NY Times ran an article by Richard A. Friedman titled, "How Changeable Is Gender?" One might be excused for mistaking the piece as an earnest call to the medical community for better interventions for the trans community. Alarmingly, Friedman warns readers that science has found that post-operative transsexuals are at significant risk of suicide and moreover, maybe medical treatment isn't actually the right approach after all, especially for trans kids. Friedman gravely recounts a scientific study that proves that most trans kids grow out of being trans. If I weren't trans, I might walk away from Friedman's article very concerned about the seemingly backwards approach that more than a century of trans research has produced for those poor trans people ."