It’s the complete opposite of a niggle. It calls into question your entire premise.
Ok, but why is that remarkable? If gender dysphoria != trans, then since trans people make up such a tiny minority of the population, you’d expect that most people with gender dysphoria would not be trans. It does appear, from the numbers you provided at least, that gender dysphoria is highly correlated with being trans - 18% is a hell of a lot more than less than 1%, so trans people are vastly overrepresented in the “dysphoria” sample than the “general” sample. But if we don’t expect a 1:1 correspondence, why is the fact that many people with dysphoria are not trans relevant or meaningful?
I consider someone “trans” if they identify as the gender that does not match the gender they were assigned at birth. That’s it.
So someone with gender dysphoria might do a bunch of introspection and realize they identify as the opposite gender and are trans. Or they might do a bunch of introspection and realize that they are gay, and because our society ties gender and sex so closely together that made them feel like they didn’t belong with their gender; but after taking a wider view of what their gender could be they realized they were cis after all. Or they might realize that no, they’re cis and straight, sometimes people just feel uncomfortable with the changes their body goes through.
All of these scenarios happen, and they’re all valid. In real life, the reason that doctors and therapists do a bunch of work before settling on a diagnosis and treatment plan is that they’re trying to figure out which of these scenarios is going on.
But when an article like the one you linked presents these numbers, it tries to twist the facts. The article implies that ALL of those kids with gender dysphoria are being pushed into becoming trans!
That’s simply not the case. That’s not how any of this plays out in the real world, outside the fever dreams of conservatives.
I worked at a tech company in Silicon Valley, and there was one guy who just wore a dress every day. I never met him, but was told he was stereotypically male other than that…wife, kids… I always found that interesting. For him it might have been as simple as “I just find dresses much more comfortable”.
I’ll answer, no, Person D is not trans. But I do agree with your suggestion that the other 3 people you mentioned are.
Also, I’ll mention that from what I’ve read, studies suggest that only between 1-5% of children who identify as trans early in life change their mind later. It’s very uncommon. Clearly not unheard of, so your Person D scenario is not far-fetched, it happens. But not very often. I just thought that was interesting to note, I don’t have any other general point or gotcha for that fact, but felt it was relevant to mention.
The definition of trans is pretty simple, to me at least. You identify as a gender other than what you were assigned at birth. That’s pretty much it.
I agree, it’s interesting in the sense that it goes against the usual cultural norms.
Absolutely. Or he liked the way he looked in a dress, or liked the way they felt, or was making a statement, or all of those things, or none of them. There was a time when people would ascribe all kind of meaning to a person who dressed in a manner not conforming to what society would consider to be “normal” for their gender, pretty much all of it negative. Now, slowly, that is changing, which is a good thing. Let people be who they want to be, they aren’t hurting anyone.
On the other hand, we can have a discussion about what it means to wear Crocs. My tolerance only goes so far.
Oh, come on already with your captiousness. Any of the trans people in the study was experiencing gender dysphoria. The former is a subset of the latter. I did not equate the two. Just chill a little. While I might not be as well versed in the subject as others, I’m trying to understand things better.
It’s not “captiousness” or capriciousness or wokeness or anything else. It’s that you are acting all surprised about something that absolutely shouldn’t surprise you.
You’re saying, “Look at this! Of all these people experiencing gender dysphoria, only a small fraction were trans! What could it possibly mean that so many people stopped being trans after puberty?”. But what you are missing, over and over, is that this is completely unremarkable, because nobody said that all of those people with gender dysphoria were trans.
The idea that trans women come from gay men, you claimed, is substantiated by this study, because many boys with gender dysphoria ended up being gay. But one does not follow from the other. Just because both gay men and trans women may have presented signs of gender dysphoria as kids does not mean that the trans women ARE the gay men; it means that they both do not fit with our society’s expectations of masculinity.
The fact that both men who like other men and trans women who were assigned male at birth struggle with our society’s rigid gender roles and thus both experience dysphoria is not surprising; it does not imply that trans women are just feminine gay men.
Yeah, that seems right to me. As they identified as male when assigned female at birth, they would be trans, then later they were not trans. And that sort of thing, while pretty rare, does happen.
NOTE: I am not putting myself out there as an authority. I am a cishet male. I have a few friends who are trans women, one of whom is a very close friend, but I don’t think I have any special insight. I’m just saying what I understand from my perspective.
Also, I grew up for the early part of my life not even knowing that there was such a thing as trans men and women, and then not understanding it at first when I did hear of it. Then I got it, and I also got to know trans people, and it made sense to me. I don’t have anything against anyone who is confused because I was at one time too. I do have something against anyone who wants and tries to be ignorant about it. (Which, in case you are wondering, I don’t think you are, you seem like you’re genuinely trying to understand and I very much respect that.)
If the definition of “trans person” is “person who identifies as a member of the sex they were not assigned at birth”, I’d think you could answer that question on your own.
As @Atamasama noted, people who fall into that category are extremely rare in the real world, but they do exist.
I’ll even hand you some more ammo: the more accepted trans people become, the more common this situation will be. If you have to worry about being murdered or ostracized when you come out as Trans, you’re less likely to do it; the weaker the social barriers become, the more likely it is that someone who isn’t completely sure will choose to identify as trans, realize it’s not for them, and identify as cis again. I doubt it would ever be anything approaching common, but I’m sure it will occassionally happen.
But… who cares? Let people identify however they want.
I never said such a thing. Please reread. The study simply says that of the biological boys in the study who were experiencing gender dysphoria and felt they might be trans, after they went through puberty, more than 63% of them no longer felt the gender dysphoria and identified as gay males.
I do. Try reading slower. After removing that colossal boulder off your shoulder.
The participants were 139 boys (“birth-assigned males”)7 who, in childhood, had been referred to and then assessed in the Gender Identity Service, Child, Youth, and Family Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario between 1975 and 2009 (Mean year of assessment, 1989.36)
and also notes that
In childhood, 88 (63.3%) of the boys met the DSM-III, III-R, or IV criteria for gender identity disorder; the remaining 51 (36.7%) boys were subthreshold for the criteria.
But all were included in the study.
I will also note that there is something weird going on with the data, in that based on the plot below, there was an overwhelming relationship between what they called persisters (those that maintained interest in being another gender Group 1 in the plot) and low Social economic class. I don’t have a good explanation for this, and neither really do the authors. They make a hypothesis that it might have to do with the lack of acceptance of homosexuality in lower classes leading to masking their homo sexuality with gender dysphoria, which seems pretty dubious to me. To me as a statistician such a strong finding suggests that there is something biased with their persistence assignment criteria.
I’d also point out that in addition to the authors one of the reviewers is pretty anti-trans, the other two have pretty limited exprience I can’t really tell, but I do note that all of them are from Canada. Given that in many journals authors can suggest reviewers, its possible that the authors picked reviewers who would be sympathetic to their agenda.
Of course there is also likely to be massive amount of selection bias in the site that you got this from. It may be that dozens of studies show that there is a high rate of persistence of gender dysphoria, and that this study is an outlier. Which is why the site owner highlighted it and rejected the others, which is why I trust the professionals in the field more than people who scrounge the internet for papers to to “do their won research”.
I could see this happening, for the reasons you share. But a few things might work against that:
Given the newness of this as a popular social issue, there’s a fad aspect to it. I have little doubt that when the newness wears off, fewer kids will identify as trans.
As the fad aspect wears off, the percent of parents who are quick—too quick—to embrace their child’s transness at a very young age will lessen.
The science is changing, and that is causing medical experts and lawmakers, to pump the brakes on the well-meaning, full-throttle acceptance of puberty blockers. For instance, England and Australia, who many considered ahead of the U.S. on this issue are changing the laws/medical guidelines in the opposite direction.
My guess is that there will be greater acceptance for trans adults, while we will become more careful how we respond to children. For me, it’s two different, but related issues. One is the acceptance of trans individuals in our society, the other is how we guide and counsel children as they deal with a very, very difficult issue.
It could be read as what the actual words say. I stand by what I wrote there. I don’t agree with the your poor rephrasing of my position. I’ll leave it to you to compare the two until you can glean the difference.
Why is it any of your business? Her name is Samantha, you don’t have a right to know anything else about her. It’s not your business what she was born as, what identity or gender issues she might have had as a young person, what drugs she is or isn’t taking, what genitalia she has, or anything else.
Samantha is a woman, that’s what you get to know. Everything else can be answered by go fuck yourself.
