Challenging gender "education": where do you even begin?

submitted by teacherterf from self.GenderCritical

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[–]teacherterf[S] 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

Thank you! As for "way more trans people", my takeaway from that one along with the next bullet point was "oh, so we're seeing a huge increase of a type of person that has a 41% chance of attempting suicide AND THIS IS A GOOD THING???"

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

The general idea is not that the actual raw number of transgender people has changed, just that the number of people who are feeling comfortable enough to be open / out and accepting treatment is increasing. If you had a group of 50 transgender people, and in hostile society 40 of them stayed in the closet, then this same hostile society became more accepting and suddenly only 10 are staying in the closet. You'd still have 50 transgender people in either circumstance. Just in a hostile society with 40 closeted people, those 40 people are in that high risk of suicide category, with only 10 open people properly receiving treatment. Meanwhile with the accepting society you only have 10 people in that high-risk of suicide category with 40 people openly receiving treatment. Overall in the more accepting society the suicide rate will go down.

[–]teacherterf[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

According to the presenter, the attempted suicide rate in our more accepting culture is 41%. What was it 10 years ago, when there were - conservative estimates - 1/10 as many out trans people as there are now? Even if it was 100%, that means that for every suicidal trans person in 2011, there are 4 suicidal trans people today. This is alarming.

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

On the one hand, you seem to be throwing numbers out at random hoping it sticks rather than doing actual math, but if you'd like to more carefully explain how you got a 4x ratio from that information, I'm happy to read your next attempt at statistics and respond to that rather than attempt to connect your dots for you.

One thing you don't seem to be comprehending very well is sampling bias. 10 years ago, if 1/10 as many transgender people were out, then that other 9/10 would not come forward and be known to be transgender or able to be factored in statistics.

On the other hand, our current culture is not very accepting at all, it is increasingly becoming more accepting, but still a long ways off. As acceptance increases the suicide attempt rate will likely decrease. This is because suicide risk for transgender patients falls to national baseline levels after starting to transition.

The 41% statistic is a "Have you attempted suicide at least once in your life if you are transgender?" statistic. For most transgender people, that attempt was prior to transitioning.

[–]teacherterf[S] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

LOL that a TRA is lecturing me on interpreting data, but, whatever:

If 10x as many trans people are out today than 10 years ago and there was a 100% attempted suicide rate back then, then for every 100 out trans people in 10 years ago, we'd have:

  • 100 attempted suicides among out trans people 10 years ago (100%)

  • 1000 out trans people today (10x as many)

  • 41% of whom have attempted suicide, making 41% of 1000 = 410 attempted suicides of out trans people today.

That's a ratio of 4.1, which I rounded down to 4 in my post. You're welcome to apologize to me for condescending to me when I was right, or I can block you. Your call!

As for "fewer people were out back then, so attempted suicides wouldn't be factored into statistics" - this is true. However, overall attempted suicide rates have increased, not decreased over the past decade. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it is standard practice in statistics to assume that attempted suicides among subsets of different populations, in this case trans people 10 years ago vs today, would follow similar trends as the general populations. The burden of proof is on you, not me, to show that trans people within a less-suicidal general population were in fact significantly more suicidal than trans people within a more suicidal general population. I'm open to reviewing data.

And your "suicide risk for transgender patients falls to national baseline levels after starting to transition" claim is also garbage: the most comprehensive data on this is from Sweden, which is among the more accepting countries for trans people. According to that study, for trans people who completed transition, the rate of completed suicide was found to be higher, by an estimated factor of twenty, than it was among the general population: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

I think that's everything.

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

The main problem with your premise is that with a 100% attempted suicide rate, a population of 1,000 out transgender people would result in 1,000 attempted suicides, using your own assumptions to compare similar population sizes a decade apart would support a claim of decreasing suicide risk.

Alternatively worded to be more clear:

Your assumption of 100% suicide attempts would be a 100 attempts per 100 people rate. The 41% statistic would then be 41 attempts per 100 people rate. As 41 is smaller than 100, this would be a decrease.

This would actually be a ratio of 0.41

If 1,000 is your favorite population size, then 1,000 to 410 attempts, respectively.

More bluntly 100% > 41%.

Should I continue? You've made it clear that anything but an apology would result in being blocked. If you're not going to read past this point, I don't know if it is worth the time typing out the rest of the flaws in your argument. Although, as it stands this reckless incompetence with statistical analysis is pretty jarring on its own merits.

[–]teacherterf[S] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

More bluntly, 100% > 41%

Yeeeeeah and we're done here. You are neither rational nor neutral. 41% of 1000 > 100% of 100. You need to compare the actual numbers of suicidal people. You're the one who needs to show that a decade ago, the raw number of closeted trans people who were attempting suicide was so large as to eclipse the number of trans people (both closeted and out) who are attempting suicide today. That's the only thing that would support your "there are fewer attempted suicides among trand people today than 10 years ago" claim.

But you're either not interested in doing that or not able to do that (probably both; your confidence in your analytical skills is completely unmoored from the reality), so, buh-bye.

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

  1. I do not believe I made a claim, I was trying to explain how to correctly understand basic statistical information.

  2. We are talking about suicide rates which is a number that scales with the size of the population that is why it is expressed as a percentage or a X per Y number of people thing. A suicide rate actually has useful meaning for describing the likelihood someone afflicted with some circumstance may actually attempt suicide. The reason for this is because it paints a picture of the probability of suicidal ideation independent of the population size of the group in question.

Using raw numbers, as you have, has no real use for characterizing the risk of suicide without transitioning explicitly because it is dependent on population size.

The whole point of constructing an argument is to try and remove unrelated information from an argument whereas you are constructing the entirety of your argument from unrelated information.

This would be like trying to argue that a farm treats its chickens well because it has 1000 chickens rather than actually looking at anything of substance to determine whether or not it treats its chickens well.

[–]YourSister 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Your posts are so obviously male.

[–]RationalNeutral 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No doubt, if you had spent as long as I have deprived of the freedom to express femininity you would come across that way too.