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many of us are detransitioners or desisters, many of us spent years and years in some local "queer" communities. maybe that's just my bias and a pure coincidence, but when i hear horror stories from those times, trans men are literally never the perpetrators or aggressors in them.

we know how it feels to be so overwhelmed with society standards, misogyny and stereotypes that we would even reach for a rusty blade if it offered to take us out of this whirlpool of despair and hopelessness.

Well as a bi woman, I trust lesbians to know who they are. They say they’re female people only capable of being attracted to other female people.

She died of an amniotic fluid embolism, which is rare but very deadly.

This post gives another example of a surrogate dying and includes this disturbing information:

Meanwhile you can find men saying the most disgusting things about women and girls and not a single man stands up to them to say the tiniest "maybe that's too far" to them.

And the difference, of course, between women saying mean things about men, and men saying what they do about women is that women are only venting. Yes, even those who say they aren't. We know this because it's not thousands of men being murdered by their female intimate partners every year, and many more hospitalized. It's not male babies being murdered just for being male. It's not men in any country of the world, now or ever, being locked in their homes, unallowed to speak to one another or even look out the windows. It's not female police coercing male rape victims to say they lied and then blasting them all over the news as false accusers. It's not an entire industry built on primarily men and boy's sexual exploitation for the pleasure of women.

Then of course there are the things women couldn't do to men even if we wanted to, but men certainly do it to us: forcible impregnation, and forcing women to bring unwanted pregnancies to term, even if it kills her.

I can forgive a murder under the right circumstances. Sometimes murder is legitimately the only option left

There is never any circumstances where rape is an option at all— let alone the only one

Rape is torture. Rape is a life sentence of trauma. Many people never recover from being raped to the point they wished they were murdered or even kill themselves

Rape is the most inhumane crime

Misogynist CLOCKED in Parismwenda's comment section. Satisfying.

rather than addressing/treating what motivated body dysmorphia, the aim is to sell marketable identities via cosmetic surgery

I’d like to outline a few concepts that may help you understand the problems with the science that has been conducted on the subject of trans people. I am not a scientist, so I’d much appreciate any feedback or corrections.

1. Begging the question

Here are some of the studies being held up as proof that trans people are “valid”:

A study of the brains of trans women, trans men, cis women and cis men, and the potential for gender-based differences: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150107082133.htm

A study on the brains of some trans men, and some cis men and cis women, claiming to show that the brains of the trans men had more similarities to the cis male brains, relative the cis female brains: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395610001585

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Are you ready to learn why these studies were giant wastes of time? And no, it’s not even because of the obvious problem right off the bat (How did they know there were no closted trans people in the “cis” groups? How could they be sure there were no future detransitioners in the trans groups?).

It’s because, if you want to do science, you cannot start by assuming what you are trying to prove. This is known as the fallacy of “begging the question.” They relied on the self-reports of trans people to sort them in a group apart from cis people. In attempting to prove the biological basis for the category “trans”, they assumed the category “trans” had a biological basis. This is what pseudoscientists do.

This fallacy comes up a lot in arguments with the devoutly religious: “The human eye is too complex to have evolved, it must have been designed. Therefore, God exists.” Sir, no…. you cannot assume that the eye is too complex to have evolved that way. You must prove that to me.

What they should have done, right from the start, is study the brains of self-identified trans people, and from there predict the future detransitioners. Or they could have studied the brains of self-identified non-trans people, and predicted which ones were closted trans people. That would have been real science.

“I am not convinced. After all, they found something that looks “female” in the brains of the trans women! Maybe their methods are flawed but they must have found something!”

Not necessarily. I think what may be going on is known as:

2. P-hacking

When I was a young child, I saw a History Channel Special that claimed to prove that the Bible predicted the JFK assassination. I think the letters of a certain translation were arranged in grid form, and certain words related to the JFK assassination were grouped in close proximity. Stupid, right?

But I was just a kid, so I told my dad “Dad! Did you know the bible predicted the JFK assassination?” And my father recognized that as an excellent opportunity to teach me about p-hacking.

“No,” he said, “those are just coincidences.”

“Dad, are you blind? What are the odds that those exact words would be found together like that?”

“Not very high. But don’t forget… they weren’t looking for evidence that the bible predicted the JFK assassination. They were looking for evidence that the Bible predicted anything, in the history of ever. It’s actually quite unlikely, using their methods, that you’d find NO uncanny predictions of anything that’s ever happened in human history. And you’d probably find a few uncanny predictions in the Harry Potter books, using this method.”

These researchers in the second study cited did not set out to find whether trans men had similar fractional anistropy levels in posterior part of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus to cis men. They were looking at whether the white matter patterns of trans men had any similarity to cis men (of course, in doing so they flagrantly beg the question, but I digress).

The brain is highly complex. When you conduct an MRI scan, you generate mountains of data. And if you set out to prove that a similarity exists somewhere in this mile-deep well of data you have generated for these individuals, you are going to find something that appears statistically significant. It’s actually unlikely that you will find no similarities between any two groups of people who have their brains scanned. And, if you are engaged in anti-scientific motivated reasoning, you will take this and claim to have found evidence for a biological basis for trans identification.

“Perhaps there is faulty science going on but you can’t argue with the results! Transition saves lives! Studies have shown that it makes people feel so much better!”

Well, there’s a problem with that, too.

3. The placebo effect

The neurological basis of the placebo effect has been extensively studied. We know, for example, that it can be augmented or dampened by certain drugs. We know that it exists even when you know you are being given a placebo. And we know that the more elaborate a placebo is, the more effective it is: so a surgery will be more effective than an injection, which will be better than a pill.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Have you ever heard of a more elaborate treatment than gender transition: surgery, hormones, clothing, hair, name, pronouns, every aspect of your life can change.

But transition has not been proven to be any more effective at treating gender dysphoria than some kind of equally elaborate placebo. That’s the piece that’s missing, that would usually be accounted for when studying any sort of medical treatment.

“But there are a lot of health benefits to placebos. If they help people, then they help people.”

This is true. There’s a problem, though. Transition is not tumeric pills or reiki or like… journaling frequently. In fact, it comes with risks of absolutely nightmarish consequences. Trans women are walking around, right now, with colostomy bags because of botched vaginoplasties. Trans men are stuck with chronic kidney infections from phalloplasties, as well as the risk of gangrene and lifelong weakness in their donor sites, as well as phantom pain and progressive tightening and sclerosing from their mastectomies. Puberty blockers disrupt brain development and put a child at risk of osteoporosis, sterility, and sexual dysfunction. Hormones cause powerful and systemic changes that have not been fully studied, but consider this: what happens when the cartilagenous valves on a male-sized heart become thinner and more flexbile under the influence of estrogen? What happens when the cartilage structures in a female sized brain become larger and tougher in response to testosterone? Do you know?

You don’t, because nobody knows. We aren’t studying these treatments. We are experimenting on human beings, just like they did in the Nazi camps, and for what: treatments that have not been proven to be better than a placebo, that are based on faulty science, and that don’t even hold up to common sense. Why would you amputate a healthy young woman’s breasts? Because she begged you to? Is that how medicine works?

“But why does the trans rights movement need to lean on junk science? Why don’t they do real science instead?”

Because it is a religion. That’s it, that’s the only explanation left. They believe that they have gender identities, that are at odds with their physical bodies. Theses gender identities have not been demonstrated to exist. These gender identities seem to want things of trans people, and they seem to be placated with certain rites (going to the beach after top surgery, standing to pee after phalloplasty) and certain prayers (compelled pronoun usage). Gender identities act similarly to the members of any polytheistic pantheon.

I have no problem with anyone’s religion. But it is time the scientific establishment, and the government, understand that in “affirming” trans people, while defacing the scientific method, logic and common sense, they are in fact respecting an establishment of religion. They do this to the ultimate detriment of trans people, who have come to them for help, for answers, and are made a mockery.

“Why do you care so much about trans people?”

So women made their own chess teams where they could compete together but also didn’t have to worry about sexism from other male coaches and male players.

In fact, we find that gender bias inhibits women chess players; when women are told they are playing against men in online games, for example, they consistently play les aggressively, because we all still live in a sexist society and yes that even affects how we play chess. When women think they’re playing against other women they revert back to aggressive play. (And let’s not ignore the historic dismissal of female chess players by male chess players. Bobby Fischer’s “women are not so smart” quote for example)

So yes. We still allow women to have separate chess competitions, because at it turns out sometimes “equal opportunity” doesn’t actually lead to equality, even in a game like chess.

The mind turns from a focus on seeking success (being bold and creative) to a focus on avoiding failure, which involves being cautious, careful and conservative. A mind that is struggling with negative stereotypes and anxious thoughts is not in a psychologically optimal state for doing taxing intellectual tasks.

Stereotype effects have been seen in women who: record their sex at the beginning of a quantitative test (which is standard practice for many tests); are in the minority as they take the test; have instructors or peers who hold sexist attitudes or have just watched women acting in air-headed ways in commercials."

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

Add to that the pressure of having to represent all women: indeed, every time a woman fails against a man it is held as proof of the unfitness and inferiority of our entire sex. I also remember a study that showed men try harder when facing a woman, they really make it a point to destroy her, because it's not just a game to them it's about maintaining their dominance. Worth noting that male chess players have been sexually harassing and threatening female chess players since the begining. You make a piss poor political commentator if you refuse to take any of this into account (or are simply ignorant of those facts) as you complain about women not wanting to compete in a male environment.

Honestly, these people just keep outing themselves. It's like they're negging women or something.

Men are KNOWN to sexually harass women, we KNOW women perform worse among men because of rampant and internalized misogyny (see the points above). So women want their own spaces to get away from that.

The fact that these people are incapable of understanding that women don't want to deal with misogynistic bullshit from men, and instead default to "if you don't put up with men sexually harassing you in chess, you admitting that you're weaker than them. You're lesser? Are you dumber than men, is that it? You're just a stupid woman? That's why you don't want to compete with men who statistically put you in danger? You're inferior?"

women: we'll just go over here and play chess amongst ourselves then

trans activist: so you agree....you think you're inferior and unintelligent?