To illustrate, yes, cisgendered people who go through a transgender “phase” are rare. But then, so are actual transgendered people. If 1% of the population is genuinely transgender, and 1% of the population are cisgendered people who go through a transgender phase, then of people going through a transgender phase, only half of them will be transgender for the long haul.
A similar problem arises with testing for many other medical conditions: Despite the high accuracy of AIDS tests, for instance, if a person with no risk factors tests positive for AIDS, it’s probably false.
Yes, exactly this. I wasn’t trying to make a comment on the specific issue, which I am not particularly knowledgable about, but simply about the use of data.
FWIW, since I live and work in the trans community every day, the subject of gender comes up quite a bit when people speak with me.
I’ve met several women who reported that when they were young, they either identified with, felt like, or believed they were a boy - but they grew out of it at puberty. Some admitted that part of the wanting was possibly due to having seen very early the benefits of male privilege.
I’ve never met IRL a genetic male who said they identified as female at an early age, who did not recognize themselves as transgender.
I talked with one man who had gender issues. I mean the whole want to be a woman, identifying himself as a woman and thinking of starting the chemical transition. He tested his hormone levels before starting and found he had low testosterone. He started testosterone replacement and now is not transgendered.
Just so you know, I related the story as he told it and I’m pretty sure that to anyone in the TG community there are obvious issues with his story like wanting to be a woman yet taking T and the idea that TG can be “cured” by taking hormones appropiate to your physical sex.
Well I’m not WhyNot, but maybe I have a thing or two to offer on this subject…maybe.
The subject of transkids is a HUGE controversy in my community right now. Not only are researchers back and forth and on the fence about it, parents and the kids are as well.
The youngest tend to express clear gender identity different than their apparent sex by age 4-5, and this can by age 7-8 be very traumatic if they are not allowed to socially interact as their mental gender. And it is true that some of the kids waver, but there’s normally a reason.
A trans daughter of a personal friend of mine will sometimes get upset when she is the victim of discrimination by either other girls, or boys, and will be so angry and upset she will tell her mom “I want to go back to being a boy!” Her own grandmother tears into her, and that also has a huge influence on her.
Yet in the end, after she calms down, she always comes back to one critical thing: “I’m a girl. I’ll pretend to be a boy if they stop picking on me, but I’m still a girl.” My friend is actually part of a growing movement of home schooled trans kids, because the kids have faced so much abuse and discrimination - often under the direct eye of a teacher or other parent - that they don’t feel like their children are safe in public schools. Networks of these home schooled transkids are growing, with message boards and forums and mailing lists to keep the parents together in a virtual community.
But yes it is still controversial, and this is why we have what are called “blocker babies” (even though their age puts them a decade or more beyond “baby” status) where puberty can be delayed while the child can come to a decision, along with parents, counselors, therapists, and medical professionals, as to what their gender identity really is.
It’s not often easy. Some people have a clear, unambiguous idea of their gender self from the start. Many however have uncertainty, due to the tremendous weight of society working so very much to force their mental gender to align with their sex. It’s the “easy way out,” after all.
The drive is incredible in the end. The history of my people is one of folks being subjected to abuse and medical misconduct which can only be described as torture, to try to force them to be something other than they were. The socialite April Ashley wrote about being forced into ECT so they could “shock the girl out of her.” Even Harry Benjamin tried giving psychotropic drugs to crossdressers and transgender persons to cure them (typically, the best he could manage was to get transgender persons to stop dressing up; they still reported their mental gender). People studied since the early 1900’s how to “cure” transgender folks, with about as much success as you can “cure” someone of being black.
And no one just waltzes into a doctors office and says “I’m a girl! Gimme hormones! Gimme boobs!” It’s a lengthy process with gatekeepers, checks, and records. I’ve even seen transwomen (my friend N.) who were already previously diagnosed and on hormones for years, but who stopped hormones, have to go through a complete re-diagnosis before another doctor would give them hormones. Sure, one can “doctor shop” for anything, and some gatekeepers are ready to open the gate at any notice, but generally speaking, it’s a long and difficult process.