The Return of Transexual

Billboard Chris recommends that we give up on the word "gender." I agree. At its worst, it is an invitation to engage in old and reprehensible stereotypes (because girls who like to play with trucks are 100% girls). At its best, it is a meaningless word. At one point it was a polite way to avoid saying "sex."

By returning to "transexual," we recognize that there are only two sexes and that a person of one sex is presenting as the other. It is not a pejorative. It is recognizing some basic fact. Everyone out there, including people with sexual dysphoria who present themselves as the opposite sex, deserve kindness, respect and full legal rights as a person. Therefore, using "transexual" is truly not an insult. The benefit of using "transexual" is that we are recognizing basic biology and avoiding massive confusion associated with gender ideology. What confusion, you might ask?  How about this chart published by (believe it or not) Scientific American.

Two years ago I was scolded and told it was impolite, but I now disagree. I'm imagining the conversation when I start using transexual again. It will probably come down to a discussion (probably an argument) about who has the final say over how we use words. I'll see how it goes.

Continue ReadingThe Return of Transexual

Three Reasons Why There are Two–and Only Two–Biological Sexes.

Zach Elliot is an author of two books on sex and gender and a producer of 20+ animated videos on sex differences. Here is the intro to his article: "What Are Sexes? There is much confusion in our current culture as to what sexes are and what they are not."

There is much confusion in our current culture as to what sexes are and what they are not. When biologists make a claim about the number of sexes in a species, they are not making a claim about chromosomes, body types, or personal identity; rather, they are making a claim about the number of distinct reproductive strategies in that species.

A reproductive strategy is an evolved system for propagating genes and forming a new individual. In sexually reproducing species, producing a new individual requires the combination of at least two distinct and complementary reproductive strategies. These strategies are fulfilled through the delivery of genetic material in sex cells called gametes, which have half the genetic material of the parent. When two gametes fuse, they form a genetically unique individual with a full set of chromosomes.

Some species reproduce through gametes of the same size (isogamy) and can have many unique reproductive strategies called mating types, which control what gametes can fuse with one another, but their differences do not go far beyond the molecular level. On the other hand, most species in the plant and animal kingdoms reproduce through gametes of differing size and form (anisogamy), where there is an asymmetry in size and behavior between the interacting gametes and often the individual organisms themselves.

When gamete sizes are differentiated (anisogamy), there are typically exactly two sexes, no more and no less. In such systems, the reproductive strategy that produces the smaller gametes is designated as male and the reproductive strategy that produces the larger gametes is designated as female. It is not the physical size of the gametes themselves that differentiates the male and female reproductive strategies, but rather what those size differences represent.

Continue ReadingThree Reasons Why There are Two–and Only Two–Biological Sexes.

Amazing Everyday Things

Some of the most amazing things are everyday things. Such as bee anatomy:

[Sorry, I can no longer find the link to Mishka's Tweet]

Equally amazing: We can insert things like bananas, corn bread and butchered chickens into that big hole on the front of our head and it gives us the energy to do things like read Shakespeare, clean out our garages and create new human animals. If this happened only once, it would be the most amazing things ever, but it happens all the time, which means that we take it for granted and we turn our attention to far less amazing things.

Continue ReadingAmazing Everyday Things

The Correct Treatment for Gender Dysphoria

On the issue of gender dysphoria, I have followed Jesse Singal closely. I admire his willingness to dig deeply into the numbers and to let the numbers speak louder than the many one-size-fits-all "experts" out there (on both sides of the political spectrum). An enormous problem facing therapists and health care professionals is that the data is not clear yet. There are a lot of studies that are highly suspect for methodological reasons. Yet families are demanding treatment now and they want certitude. What should a therapist do when the evidence is not clear? To put it another way, where should they set their default? I'm not a therapist or health care professional, but I would set the default here: Don't surgically and permanently cut off an adolescent girl's breasts and inject her with male hormones (which will almost certainly render her sterile) when there is a reasonable possibility that the gender dysphoria is a consequence of other psychological and health issues that can be treated (or a consequence of cultural pressures). Do no harm. Singal recently summed up his current position, which is well worth considering:

My understanding of social transition is that it is a psychological intervention that may itself have downsides, such as making it harder for the kid to grow out of his or her gender dysphoria (I don’t think this is established, but I do think you can make a circumstantial case that it’s sometimes true from the available evidence). So even that shouldn’t be approached lightly — you should be certain the kid’s gender dysphoria is durable, severe, and causing problems. Is it “many” kids who fit these criteria? I dunno. Same deal with medical treatments. They really, really shouldn’t be taken lightly. The evidence base sucks, regardless of what major liberal media figures keep saying. A kid should go on blockers or hormones only if they’ve been assessed very carefully.

I don’t think there’s any evidence that treating gender dysphoria qua gender dysphoria with “therapy and medication” will do much good in most cases. I do think that in some subset of instances in which a kid tells a therapist they have gender questions, or definitely feel they are some “other” gender than their biological sex, basic exploration of other factors will reveal some other issue. Sometimes it might be recent trauma, sometimes it could be anxiety or depression, and sometimes it could be other issues involving, say, the onset of puberty. I think those issues probably can be treated with therapy and drugs, at least in a lot of cases, and that doing so may cause the gender issues to abate, because they weren’t the root issues in the first place.

There’s a lot of disagreement among clinicians over whether the causal chain (1) is always gender dysphoria → other psychological issues, or (2) whether it can sometimes go in the other direction. This is a pretty high-stakes question, because it obviously will affect the direction of therapy. If a kid has gender questions, anxiety, and depression, then a therapist operating under (1) will assume that ameliorating the GD will in turn ameliorate the other issues (so no need to pay them much mind at first), while a therapist operating under (2) will have more of a winding road to traverse.. ..

Anyway, all of this is to say that no, I haven’t been swayed from the idea that on balance, these treatments are probably good for kids who would otherwise suffer from severe, unremitting gender dysphoria. But even in these instances, no one should act like they know exactly what they’re doing. Sometimes even severe, prolonged cases of GD go away!

I am concerned that much of what passes as dysphoria is cultural dissing of women, passed by contagion. The following Tweet thread was well articulated.

Much of this resonates with me. Society has, in many ways, belittled women. If you think this is overstatement, go turn on your TV. Our culture continues to do this in thousands of ways. If I were about to be born and you could choose your sex and you would be growing up in the United States, what is the likelihood that you would choose to be a girl in our current cultural stew?

Continue ReadingThe Correct Treatment for Gender Dysphoria

Colin Wright Offers a Front Row Seat to a Seminar Featuring Gender Ideology

Colin Wright is a biologist who has followed transgender issues for years and who is not afraid to ask obvious questions. He recently attended an online workshop directed to parents, facilitated by two purported experts in transgender issues. The name of May 26, 2022 workshop was “Supporting Your Trans/Non-Binary Youth: A Starter Guide for Parents and Caregivers." Wright's article sets forth the content of the the seminar along with his criticisms and concerns. You can read Wright's entire article here: "EXPOSED: Gender Workshop for Parents Supporting Trans/Non-Binary Youth Gender “experts” say that children are the real experts." These were experts who could not even tell Colin the difference between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl.

Here is Wright's summary:

This workshop represents the standard introduction into transgender issues. It is not an outlier in terms of content and ideology. The only thing that makes this workshop somewhat unique is the fact that I was there asking the questions that your standard believer never does in order to force the presenters to grapple with fundamental issues with gender ideology.

Are gender identities based on stereotypes? How are “man” and “woman” defined? How can we expect children to understand concepts that people with masters degrees claim is beyond their capacity to understand? These questions should not be viewed as aggressive or out of bounds. These are fundamental questions that any gender “expert” should be able to easily answer, but they can’t. Yet they somehow remain so sure of the truth of what they believe that they’re willing to shuttle children down the path to irreversible hormone and surgical treatments to conform to identities they readily admit are “arbitrary words to describe experiences.”

Children are not the paragons of wisdom and self-knowing that gender “experts” claim they are. Children lack the life experience and perspective to make radical permanent decisions about extreme body modification. It is the duty of parents to apply their real life experience and perspective in order to ensure their children make it through childhood with healthy bodies and minds.

Gender ideology indoctrination does the exact opposite.

Continue ReadingColin Wright Offers a Front Row Seat to a Seminar Featuring Gender Ideology