all 10 comments

[–]Aloudmeow 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So wait, this article is asserting that pretty boys and ugly girls are transgender!? Are they listening to themselves? I can’t believe this is in a magazine with the word scientific in it!

[–]MarkTwainiac 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Interesting that Scientific American published this just a day or two after an earlier much-publicized trans-propaganda paper by the author, Jack Turban, was thoroughly taken apart by other professionals in the field in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01844-2

[–]Femaleisnthateful 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This needs to be higher. Jack Turban is the Andrew Wakefield of puberty blockers.

[–]CleverNickName 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Jesus christ, the description of conversion therapy to force children "from transgender to cisgender" is just gay conversion without the gay. Still the same old assertion that "cisgender" boys don't - can't; mustn't - play with dolls.

I mean, thanks I guess, for proving once more that "cisgender" just means "horrible straight man stereotype". It doesn't even occur to them for a goddamn second that "cisgender" people could possibly just ... like different stuff, without their fairy godperson instantly transforming them into "a girl" or "not a girl anymore".

[–]grixit 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Couldn't get past the first through paragraphs. This is not the Scientific American i used to devour. I wonder what Martin Gardner would think about it.

[–]IridescentAnaconda 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I took one for the team and read the whole article. It's basically trying to argue away all research findings critical of the transgender phenomenon by raising the issue of confounding. This is always a real problem lurking underneath any cross-sectional study, so on its surface I agree with the criticism. However, gender cowboys routinely dismiss the potential for confounding whenever it complicates their message: Muh brain is female I was born in the wrong body. Young brains are very neuroplastic, maybe your identity has caused these changes SHUT UP TERF!

Also, I assume everything is propaganda and always look for the poison tablet that is hidden in the meaty pill-pocket. Listen to this:

In 1993 a group of researchers at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto set out to test his hypothesis that beauty and what was then called “gender identity disorder” were linked. They recruited 17 birth-assigned boys with the diagnosis and 17 birth-assigned boys without it, all around the age of eight. [Emphasis mine.]

Yeah, an eight-year-old can be unambiguously diagnosed as transgender. Sure.

[–]Chunkeeguy[S] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I expect them to take up the Fallist position on science as being western colonialism next.

[–]OrangeFireflyReturns 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's an appalling example of 'scientific' writing.

The writer uses phrases such as 'cis gender' and 'assigned at birth' - terms that have no place in scientific writing. The concepts of 'gender identity' and 'cis' have never been proven or explained.

It's disheartening to see how once-respected publications such as Scientific American are printing this utter drivel.

[–]Femaleisnthateful 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"A physician at Brown University recently conducted an anonymous survey of respondents recruited via Web sites for parents who believe peer pressure and online influences have made their children transgender. The survey essentially asked the parents if they thought the Internet made their children trans, and the parents, not surprisingly, given that they were visiting Web sites about this idea, answered yes. Conservative media latched onto the study, suggesting that transgender children are really just confused kids tricked into being transgender after reading something on Reddit."

Andrew Wakefield Jack Turban is referring to Lisa Littman here, obviously, whose research into the very real phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria was unjustly stifled by transactivists. Funny how it's OK for Jack Turban to study gender identity, but any other researcher whose work comes to a different conclusion must be acting in bad faith.

And yeah, countless detransitioners have attested to the influence of social media, and anyone who spends any time on Reddit and Tumblr can understand why.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wokeness being passed off as "science" yet again this time by a "physician-scientist."

What good science shows us is that when we accept transgender people, they thrive.

The article links to a NYT Opinion piece written by the same author. "Jack Turban is a research fellow at Yale School of Medicine, where he lectures on the treatment of transgender and gender-nonconforming youth."

Critics point to flawed studies that suggest that roughly 80 percent of prepubescent children ultimately change their minds about being transgender. Even if this were true, would it have been worth forcing Hannah to live as a boy, putting her at risk for depression and perhaps suicide? Though going back to a boy’s name and boys’ clothes would probably be hard, even a small risk of suicide is scarier.

At this point, data on the benefits of early social transition is scarce. But this year researchers at the University of Washington published a study based on 63 transgender youth who were allowed to socially transition. They found that their levels of anxiety and depression were just about indistinguishable from their non-transgender peers.