# The Right Wing Paranoids Are Right Again **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 13, 2016, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667 "2016-05-13T12:49:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/261 "2016-05-20T15:38:22Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > There comes a point in treatment of gender identity issues where you are calcifying that boy’s feeling when in the natural course of things, more than 80% of those boys decide that they don’t actually feel like girls after they go through puberty. When you say “more than 80% of **those** boys,” which boys are you referring to? Boys who have been through the protocol that **Una** presented? Boys who tried on a dress at one point in their life? Can you point me toward the research that gives this statistic of more than 80%? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/262 "2016-05-20T15:40:08Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > When you say “more than 80% of **those** boys,” which boys are you referring to? Boys who have been through the protocol that **Una** presented? Boys who tried on a dress at one point in their life? > > Can you point me toward the research that gives this statistic of more than 80%? Be sure to put on gloves before handling it. You know where it’s been. ---
**Author:** ![Cyros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Cyros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyros)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/263 "2016-05-20T15:54:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I think there is a difference between girls acting like girls in a world that expects them to act like girls and treating a tomboy like a boy for all purposes including which bathroom they use. This sounds to me to be the equivalent of acknowledging a strong gender identity when it fits your expectations but denying it when it doesn’t. I think if a child that was identified at birth as a girl can feel so strongly about being a girl then I don’t think that there is anything preventing a child identified as a boy at birth feeling strongly that they are a girl or a girl feeling strongly that they are a boy. ISTM that the main difference is that one fits comfortably within the norm and the other doesn’t. I especially think your comment regarding treating a tomboy like a boy shows a lack of understanding. Tomboys, to my knowledge, are girls that like to do activities traditionally marked as being for boys but they still gender identify as girls. This is completely different from a girl that is reporting their gender as “boy” as **Una** said, “Persistently, consistently, and insistently.” ---
**Author:** ![Sterling\_Archer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Sterling\_Archer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterling_Archer)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/264 "2016-05-20T17:00:31Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > My objection is to the growing trend I am seeing of treating these children (sometimes very young children) like the opposite gender to the point of having them use the bathroom to which they currently identify. If your boy likes wearing dresses, then let them wear a dress, if your girl like playing ball then let them. None of this is new behavior among children but treating that boy like a girl and treating that girl like a boy including bathroom use is what I object to. > > Once you are post pubescent, the incidence of recidivism seems pretty low. Agree 100%. Even considering gender reassignment before a child has gone through puberty seems insane to me. The kid is going to be flooded with hormones during puberty from their bio-gender. Certainly some transgender people will be forced to suffer through the adolescent years as the “wrong” gender, but trying to label kids as trans before they have gone through puberty will cause many more kids to struggle through adolescence, as their therapy and their hormones are in constant conflict. Transgenderism is for adults, I don’t care if a kid consistently claims to be a girl. My friend when I was a toddler always said he wanted to grow up to be a mommy. My son often claims to be a puppy, or a dragon. You gotta let kids grow up first. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/265 "2016-05-20T17:08:32Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > No. I am suggesting that we don’t really need to send 6-12 year old boys into the girls bathroom because they feel more like girls. Good thing no one is suggesting sending 6-12 year old boys into the girls bathroom because they feel like girls. We’re talking about transgender girls, not boys. I explained to you in detail how the process normally works. Where’s your citation for “more than 80%” of clinically diagnosed transgender children becoming non-transgender? What studies did you review? What is your professional experience? Because my professional experience, as a staff counselor and mentor to transgender children, teens, and adults, is the rate is actually about 5% who may change their gender back, and about 20% who become genderfluid or gender non-binary. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/266 "2016-05-20T17:11:01Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Oh, this is your question. > > I’ve posted in detail about this before but cannot find it. I’ll summarize - transgender children do not just come up one day to mom and dad and say “guess what, today I’m a boy/girl/neither/opossum.” We KNOW that young children can be confused about gender, or can be “trying a gender on for size” for a certain time. So the standard practice for pre-pubescent children is the following: > > - If the child continues to identify as a gender different than their birth sex _consistently_, _persistently_, and _insistently_ (the three qualifiers), parents normally seek help from a psychologist or gender therapist. > > - The child will go through counseling over time where a determination is made as to how strong the gender identity is, if it’s influenced by external factors (parents, siblings, a desire to escape bullying, etc.), or if the child has a mental illness which is coincident with the gender dysphoria. This takes from 2-12 months, depending upon the situation and the history involved. > > - If the child continues with the three qualifiers, a decision is made to allow the child to live socially as their gender identity. Note that this does NOT mean hormones are given, nor is a legal name or gender change even discussed, nor is there any hint of surgery. > > - As years go by, if the child continues in their gender identity with the three qualifiers, when puberty approaches the decision MAY be made to put them on puberty blockers. This is done to prevent the body from proceeding down a path of femininzation or masculinization temporarily, in order to allow the child, parents, and counselors more time to decide what to do. In some cases, such as a child who has happily and consistently lived in their new gender role, a decision MAY be made to allow hormone therapy. > > - As time goes on the child on blockers is either taken off them and normal puberty allowed to proceed (happens a small fraction of the time), or they start hormone therapy. > > - At or after age 16, a legal name and gender change is recommended such that the child can enter college or the workforce under their new name and gender marker, and thus try to have a better chance at a normal life. > > - At or after age 18, THEN surgery can be considered. In the UK and some other countries, the age for this can be as low as 16. > > There are outliers where parents were able to “doctor shop” and get surgery younger (just as you can read about 13-year-olds with breast augmentation or nose jobs). You can find just about anything if you Google. It’s not the practice of reputable doctors and psychologists, it’s not WPATH standards, it’s not AMA standards, etc. This all seems very reasonable. What is the theory behind puberty blocking? Doesn’t puberty affect gender identity or is it just a physical change that does nothing to inform a person’s gender identity? If it does nothing then why do we see so much more fluidity of gender identity before puberty then after puberty? How early can the decision be made to let a child live socially as their gender identity? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/267 "2016-05-20T17:12:57Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > **Una Persson** , I am in awe of the way you respond to antagonistic questions on a personal topic with answers that are respectful, informative, and always aim to teach rather than berate. You inspire me to be a better person. > > Well, _try_ to be a better person. Antagonistic?:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/268 "2016-05-20T17:13:33Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > Agree 100%. Even considering gender reassignment before a child has gone through puberty seems insane to me. The kid is going to be flooded with hormones during puberty from their bio-gender. Certainly some transgender people will be forced to suffer through the adolescent years as the “wrong” gender, but trying to label kids as trans before they have gone through puberty will cause many more kids to struggle through adolescence, as their therapy and their hormones are in constant conflict. Factually incorrect. With the blockers their “therapy” and “hormones” are not in “constant conflict.” This was discussed previously. > [@](#): > > Transgenderism is for adults, …and I guess hell is for transgender children. You have neither a clue nor empathy apparently of what it’s like to be a transgender child. This “suffering” you handwave at includes suicide, self-harm, clinical depression, and a wasted unhappy youth. I **was one of those transgender children** , and I work with them professionally. Good grief. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/269 "2016-05-20T17:22:04Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > Keep on teachin’ the controversy, **Damuri**. You’re doing a heckuva job. I realize that this is the pit and you can say whatever the fuck you want but unless we are shifting from “this site trends liberal because that is where the truth frequently lies” to “fuck you if you don’t subscribe to my liberal views without questions” this is still in fact a controversy without very many clear answers. I don’t have a strong opinion on the transgender issue but I am definitely developing an opinion about you. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/270 "2016-05-20T17:24:05Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > This all seems very reasonable. What is the theory behind puberty blocking? Doesn’t puberty affect gender identity or is it just a physical change that does nothing to inform a person’s gender identity? If it does nothing then why do we see so much more fluidity of gender identity before puberty then after puberty? > > How early can the decision be made to let a child live socially as their gender identity? As children turn to young adults their social roles change. Boys and girls start to go down separate social and interpersonal paths. Because there is the possibility that social pressures may be part of the gender dysphoria, the thought is that to be safe we let the child fit into their gender role as an adolescent before deciding the step of hormones. So we block puberty, which basically just temporarily suppresses testosterone in genetic boys and estrogen in genetic girls, and give them more time. Children as young as 4-5 have been allowed into their new gender roles. This is an area of controversy even among transgender researchers, and in the transgender community. Most agree that by age 7-8 gender identity is actually fairly set - the vast majority of transgender persons who are studied claim that their “awakening” came about that age - but 4-5 is new territory. And like I said one can doctor shop, and find people claiming a strong gender identity in their child at age 2-3. I can’t unambiguously defend age 4-5 social transition because I’m not sure the science is sufficient, but I can say of the dozen or so kids I’ve worked with who started their transition at that age, none have regretted it, nor have they had any problems. That’s not a study or a cite, that’s anecdote. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/271 "2016-05-20T17:26:54Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > When you say “more than 80% of **those** boys,” which boys are you referring to? Boys who have been through the protocol that **Una** presented? Boys who tried on a dress at one point in their life? > > Can you point me toward the research that gives this statistic of more than 80%? It was in the article interviewing the two psychologists. I don’t know what population they were referring to. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/272 "2016-05-20T17:32:47Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The best thing I can say about this post is that it correctly uses a question mark. The answer to your question is, are you drunk? Of course that’s incorrect. My post had everything to do with what it was responding to. Of course trans issues have been around a long time. > > THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING AS BEING NEXT ON SOME IMAGINARY AGENDA AS SOON AS SSM IS TAKEN CARE OF, YOU HALFWIT. So maybe you aren’t guilty of making irrelevant posts, perhaps you are simply unable to understand what you are reading well enough to make a relevant post. In the context of this thread when I say the right was concerned about things like polygamy and trans rights when we were talking about gay marriage and they were dismissed as being paranoid. HOW THE FUCK DOES THE FACT THAT LIBERALS HAVE LONG BEEN CONCERNED ABOUT TRANS RIGHTS (as evidenced by the “T” in LGBT) HAVE ANY BEARING ON THE DISMISSIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS ABOUT TRANS RIGHTS? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/273 "2016-05-20T17:34:18Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > Agree 100%. Even considering gender reassignment before a child has gone through puberty seems insane to me. The kid is going to be flooded with hormones during puberty from their bio-gender. Certainly some transgender people will be forced to suffer through the adolescent years as the “wrong” gender, but trying to label kids as trans before they have gone through puberty will cause many more kids to struggle through adolescence, as their therapy and their hormones are in constant conflict. 😕 WTF? I am genuinely baffled by this position. Even I, emphatically not a doctor or a neurobiology researcher, know that that’s not how puberty works. Puberty hormones don’t make you “feel like” a boy or a girl. They make you **look** more like a boy or a girl than you did in your prepubescent state, and they make you **feel** all sorts of things that frequently drive you (and your parents) crazy, but **they don’t alter your personal gender identification**. So no, AFAICT there is absolutely no reason to think that letting trans kids identify as trans or engage in some kind of gender identity therapy with put them “in constant conflict” with their “hormones”. Transgender kids are **already** experiencing constant conflict between the gender they instinctively identify with and the gender of their anatomy and/or chromosomes. It seems gratuitously cruel to condemn them to suffer that alone and unassisted by refusing even to acknowledge their transgender identity (which you call “labeling them as trans”, but it isn’t: transgender children label **themselves** as transgender, which is how other people realize that they **are** transgender) until they’ve made it through puberty. Notice that I’m **not** advocating any kind of actual gender **reassignment** treatment for prepubescent children, which as **Una** has explained is contrary to all responsible medical ethics anyway. But I think refusing to even allow kids to claim a transgender **identity** until after puberty is pointless and mean. > [@Sterling Archer](#): > > I don’t care if a kid consistently claims to be a girl. My friend when I was a toddler always said he wanted to grow up to be a mommy. Which is not the same thing as (cons/pers/ins)istently identifying with a gender different from one’s birth-assigned gender. Not all very young children distinguish clearly between “being male” and “being a mommy”, and some [call both mothers and fathers “mommy”](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/23650/my-toddler-calls-me-mommy-but-im-his-father). > [@Sterling Archer](#): > > My son often claims to be a puppy, or a dragon. :rolleyes: Oh for _shit_sake. No, playing make-believe **is not the same thing as (cons/pers/ins)istently identifying with a gender different from one’s birth-assigned gender**. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/274 "2016-05-20T17:44:50Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > It was in the article interviewing the two psychologists. I don’t know what population they were referring to. If you’re talking about the link I saw earlier, the psychologist who was claiming this high false positive rate was the now-discredited Ken Zucker, who practiced transgender “conversion therapy,” in the same manner that anti-gay conversion therapy was done. > **[Kenneth Zucker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Zucker)** > > Kenneth J. Zucker (/ˈkɛnɪθ ˈdʒeɪ ˈzʊkər/; born 1950) is an American-Canadian psychologist and sexologist. He was named editor-in-chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001. He was psychologist-in-chief at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and head of its Gender Identity Service until December 2015. Zucker is a professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Toronto. > Zucker collaborated with Susan Bradley, collecting clinical and research d... > **[Discredited treatment of trans kids at CAMH shouldn’t shock us](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/discredited-treatment-of-trans-kids-at-camh-shouldnt-shock-us/article_9f57d26c-638f-5f41-a467-70ed53881596.html)** > > Drawing lessons from the long-overdue shuttering of CAMH’s controversial gender identity clinic [http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/12/16/3732840/ex-trans-reparative-therapy-clinic-closing/](http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/12/16/3732840/ex-trans-reparative-therapy-clinic-closing/) Conservatives have fired back, claiming Zucker was fired as part of a witch hunt and smear campaign, “political correctness gone wild.” Whatever the case with Zucker himself, conversion therapy is highly controversial and I never read any peer-reviewed article with Zucker as an author which didn’t strike me as problematic, because part of the problem is definitions. Zucker tended to use statistics from children who had not already gone through the transgender counseling regimen to rule out false positives, which inflates the numbers significantly. Ironically, the standard counseling regimen backs up Zucker’s point, which is you don’t just take prima facie claims of gender identity in children without some significant counseling and study. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/275 "2016-05-20T17:49:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > […] THE DISMISSIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS ABOUT TRANS RIGHTS? ? It might help if you produced some **actual contemporary examples** of what you’re claiming were “dismissive attitudes towards slippery slope arguments about trans rights” back in the day. Personally, I think slippery-slope arguments claiming that gay rights somehow “lead to” trans rights are indeed nonsense. Sexual orientation and gender identity are different concepts, and it’s only our gradually dissipating ignorance that led us to conflate the two in the first place. But I doubt that’s the same sort of “dismissive attitude” you’re referring to. The only reason that transgender rights are now replacing gay rights as the controversy _du jour_ in the public consciousness is because **social conservatives realized that they had lost majority support on vilifying gay people and needed a new group of people to vilify**. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/276 "2016-05-20T17:56:38Z")
[quote=“Cyros, post:263, topic:754667”] This sounds to me to be the equivalent of acknowledging a strong gender identity when it fits your expectations but denying it when it doesn’t. I think if a child that was identified at birth as a girl can feel so strongly about being a girl then I don’t think that there is anything preventing a child identified as a boy at birth feeling strongly that they are a girl or a girl feeling strongly that they are a boy. ISTM that the main difference is that one fits comfortably within the norm and the other doesn’t.{/quote] YES!!! And if you want to modify things away from that norm, you have to make a fairly convincing argument that society needs to change and adapt to the transgendered rather than the other way around. Like I said before I think ADA type undue burden analysis is appropriate here. > [@](#): > > I especially think your comment regarding treating a tomboy like a boy shows a lack of understanding. Tomboys, to my knowledge, are girls that like to do activities traditionally marked as being for boys but they still gender identify as girls. This is completely different from a girl that is reporting their gender as “boy” as **Una** said, “Persistently, consistently, and insistently.” I readily admit, I don’t know very much about the issue. I don’t know as much about transgender issues as I do about gay and lesbian issues mostly because of differences in my exposure. They are a small population and they must make a case for why society ought to accommodate them, its not simply theirs for the asking because they are a small minority. For a long time people associated homosexuality with pedophilia (otherwise why let women be scout leaders but not homosexual men?) and it seems to me that people are associating transgendered with peeping toms or rapists or something. There is clearly a lack of understanding on the part of the general population (including me). Can I suggest that we didn’t get people to realize that homosexual men were not sexual predators and pedophiles by screaming at anyone that disagreed with us and I don’t think you are going to successfully combat this brand of homophobia by shouting it out of existence. And if you can’t have a conversation with someone who who thinks that the North Carolina law is discriminatory like me, then you aren’t going to convince many people who aren’t already part of your choir and ultimately that’s what you going have to do. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/277 "2016-05-20T18:04:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Puberty hormones don’t make you “feel like” a boy or a girl. They make you **look** more like a boy or a girl than you did in your prepubescent state, and they make you **feel** all sorts of things that frequently drive you (and your parents) crazy, but **they don’t alter your personal gender identification**. While some of us will claim that we “feel more like a girl” from taking estrogen (or “more like a boy” from taking testosterone), the problem here is descriptors. If you sit down and interview a transgender person who says this “exactly what do you mean,” (something I have the privilege of doing almost on a daily basis), the answer normally is “I feel like I’m moving forward on my journey,” rather than “suddenly I feel like a woman/man.” Hormones made me feel two things - first, like I was finally moving forward in my journey, and second they made me feel good. They cured in 5 days clinical depression I suffered from for about 35 **years,** which was completely resistant to (traditional) counseling, anti-depressants, and all other treatments. They gave me a sense of peace and balance which allowed me to very quickly move away from a suicide attempt and to thrive. After 6 months the effects were more muted as my body was used to the “new normal”, but still I never felt more “like a woman” from the hormones. My surgeries last year made me feel more “like a woman” simply because they radically changed my body shape. But they didn’t create an inherent “womanness” in me, I still have about what I always had. I had the best doctors and counseling prior to transition. I had gold-plated health coverage. I was treated in every way possible other than transition to cure my depression. It didn’t work, and my doctors knew why. To hear some on here post, they would rather that I died from my own hand, or was locked into a cell for the rest of my life, than allow me the most simple and straightforward method to a “cure” - transition. This is the same thing researchers already knew as far back as the 1960’s, and conservatives are digging their heels in still nearly 60 years later, trying like King Cnut to order the sea to obey them in the same way they ordered gays to “pray the gay away.” They’re standing in the school house door with a bible they never really read in one hand, to try to keep us ostracized, afraid, denying us public services, denying us jobs, even throwing some of us physically out of their churches. And what’s more, they’re actually _proud_ of what they’re doing to my community. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/278 "2016-05-20T18:16:26Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > As children turn to young adults their social roles change. Boys and girls start to go down separate social and interpersonal paths. Because there is the possibility that social pressures may be part of the gender dysphoria, the thought is that to be safe we let the child fit into their gender role as an adolescent before deciding the step of hormones. So we block puberty, which basically just temporarily suppresses testosterone in genetic boys and estrogen in genetic girls, and give them more time. > > Children as young as 4-5 have been allowed into their new gender roles. This is an area of controversy even among transgender researchers, and in the transgender community. Most agree that by age 7-8 gender identity is actually fairly set - the vast majority of transgender persons who are studied claim that their “awakening” came about that age - but 4-5 is new territory. And like I said one can doctor shop, and find people claiming a strong gender identity in their child at age 2-3. > > I can’t unambiguously defend age 4-5 social transition because I’m not sure the science is sufficient, but I can say of the dozen or so kids I’ve worked with who started their transition at that age, none have regretted it, nor have they had any problems. That’s not a study or a cite, that’s anecdote. My understanding of what it means to be transgender has improved but its probably still very flawed. I used to think of transgendered as an extreme form of homosexuality. Then I found out that some men who transition into women are attracted to women and some are not particularly attracted to anyone in particular. So is the idea that adding the hormones just confuses things by adding sexual attraction to the equation of sexual identity? If a boy identifies as a girl but then puberty makes him cruise straight porn on the internet, what harm does that do? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/279 "2016-05-20T18:34:00Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > If you’re talking about the link I saw earlier, the psychologist who was claiming this high false positive rate was the now-discredited Ken Zucker, who practiced transgender “conversion therapy,” in the same manner that anti-gay conversion therapy was done. > > [Kenneth Zucker - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Zucker) > [Discredited treatment of trans kids at CAMH shouldn’t shock us](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/12/17/discredited-treatment-of-trans-kids-at-camh-shouldnt-shock-us.html) > [http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/12/16/3732840/ex-trans-reparative-therapy-clinic-closing/](http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/12/16/3732840/ex-trans-reparative-therapy-clinic-closing/) > > Conservatives have fired back, claiming Zucker was fired as part of a witch hunt and smear campaign, “political correctness gone wild.” Whatever the case with Zucker himself, conversion therapy is highly controversial and I never read any peer-reviewed article with Zucker as an author which didn’t strike me as problematic, because part of the problem is definitions. Zucker tended to use statistics from children who had not already gone through the transgender counseling regimen to rule out false positives, which inflates the numbers significantly. > > Ironically, the standard counseling regimen backs up Zucker’s point, which is you don’t just take prima facie claims of gender identity in children without some significant counseling and study. Yes, that is who I was talking about. If he is overcounting the false positives by including any time a boy goes through a dress wearing phase then fine but what are the statistics in this area? How frequently does a pre-pubescent child revert to their birth gender after puberty? Do we even have enough data to be able to reach conclusions? I don’t now if your cites qualify as discrediting but I see that the consensus view is that you don’t try to steer kids in one direction or the other, it seems to be to let nature take its course but if puberty is part of the natural course of things then how do you justify tampering with that? Would there be more, less or the same amount of recidivism if we let puberty occur without interference? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667/280 "2016-05-20T18:34:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > […] it seems to me that people are associating transgendered with peeping toms or rapists or something. It would be more accurate to say that the conservative movement is presently engaged in a **concerted effort** to associate transgender in the public mind “with peeping toms or rapists or something”. Up to at most a few years ago, popular attitudes to transgender women were typically dismissive and mocking (“shemales”, “ladyboys”, “trannies”, “chicks with dicks”), etc., but they weren’t perceived as scary or dangerous to women and children. At worst, heterosexual cisgender men might be worried that they would somehow be “tricked” into sexual activity with a “tranny” who would then deserve to be beaten up or otherwise punished for “his” duplicity. But nothing in these stereotypes suggested that (cis) **women** or children were under any sort of sexual threat from transwomen, who were commonly thought of as “gay men masquerading as women” in order to ensnare heterosexual men. (Cf. all the arguments about the 1992 film _The Crying Game_ nearly a quarter-century ago.) Trans **men** weren’t even on the radar of popular consciousness back then (with an occasional blip such as the 1999 film _Boys Don’t Cry_, about the 1994 murder of transman Brandon Teena). They certainly weren’t perceived as posing any kind of realistic threat to anybody, because they were “just women pretending to be men”, and consequently the natural **victims** of sexual violence rather than perpetrators of it. As [the investigating sheriff remarked to Brandon Teena after he was assaulted by the men who later murdered him:](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0016.004;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg) > [@](#): > > **Sheriff Laux:** Huh. I can’t believe that he pulled your pants down and you are a female that he didn’t stick his hand in you or his finger in you. > **Brandon:** Well he didn’t. > **Sheriff Laux:** Can’t believe he didn’t. And now, desperate for issues to stoke popular outrage, the conservative movement is trying to repurpose these derogatory “weird pathetic freak” stereotypes as objects of fear, with the specific purpose of drawing popular attention to transgender people and fostering the notion that the public needs to be protected from them (by whom? by conservatives, of course). Never mind that the best they’ve managed to come up with in terms of actual “protective” policies is to insist that transwomen (who, remember, are traditionally stereotyped as “gay men masquerading as women to seduce men”) belong in the men’s restroom, and transmen (beards, big muscles, and all) belong in the women’s room. This isn’t about “protecting” anybody, this is specifically about **frightening** people by putting transgender people in situations where their transgender identity will be apparent and will make transphobic people feel uncomfortable and insecure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-right-wing-paranoids-are-right-again/754667.md?page=15)