Interesting Links for 15-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. A former detransitioner talks about their experiences and mindset

(tags:LGBT transgender )

2. This is an amazing optical illusion

(tags:illusion brain video )

3. Revealed: The future of unpleasantly sexual lighting!

(tags:sex lighting )

4. Why incel ideas and misogyny spread faster in tough economic times

(tags:misogyny inequality psychology )

5. Russia and Ukraine: The Culture War and the Actual War

(tags:LGBT transgender society Russia Ukraine )

6. Time lapse of the super moon rising over Edinburgh

(tags:timelapse video moon edinburgh viaPatrickHadfield )

7. A Night at the Garden - a 7 minute documentary about a 20,000 strong Nazi rally in 1939 New York. Chilling

(tags:documentary nazis usa video history )

8. Right to free period products becomes law in Scotland

(tags:Scotland menstruation )

Comments

[cmcmck]

1. The only person I ever knew closely who detransitioned was got at by a cult Christianist group.

I tried to keep the friendship going because I was pretty sure what the outcome was going to be and she eventually retransitioned, the cult meanwhile having persuaded her to ruin her GC surgery.

Thankfully, she now has a successful university career and a long term boyfriend.

It's so hard for me to explain what I'd like to do to those people- the one who damaged her so badly was a detransitioner of the sort described in the piece- one who chose nut religion as the answer to all the world's woes.

[danieldwilliam]

I misread "sex lighting" as "sex lightning" and was going to ask what pleasant sex lightning might be.

[cmcmck]

Now isn't that odd!

I misread it exactly the same way! :o)

What does that say about us, I wonder?

[ninetydegrees]

8. \o/

[nancylebov]

1. I've listened to some of Benjamin Boyce's interviews with detransitioners, and he can be a gentle and careful interviewer.

As far as I can tell, there are some people who detransition because transition doesn't work for them. They find that their gender dysphoria had other causes (depression, an eating disorder, possibly some other reasons I don't remember), but there were friends and/or family and/or therapists and/or social environment which took any hint of gender dysphoria as evidence that transition would make them happy.

These detransistioners don't describe their situation as having been in a cult.

There are people who find (sometimes after initial euphoria) that they are less comfortable in their bodies after transition. That the hormones aren't making their lives better. Some of those who've had operations are bitter about losing their fertility.

I'm not denying that there are people who detransition (and sometimes retransition) because of resistance from the people around them.

It's just that we live in Murphy's world-- why wouldn't there be some cases where people get things wrong? I suspect that endocrine disruptors might make it harder to get the hormones right, too.

My impression is that there are enough people who think transition is needed to prevent suicide-- and sometimes it is-- that they can push transition too hard. I'm told that doctors and therapists are careful about only providing transition for people where it makes sense, but it's also plausible to me that some practitioners *aren't* careful, whether for money or ideology or just not bothering.

5. And I believe that too-- it's horrifyingly plausible.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, there will definitely be people who just get it wrong. Particularly when it happens young. Thankfully, the rates are staggeringly low. But I still feel bad for the people who go through it.

[calimac]

Yes, wrongful transition happens, but as Andrew says it's very rare. I read an anti-trans book that described six such cases, and as far as I could tell after some research, that's all the cases that the author could find. (I also discovered that, despite his claimed empathy, the author had never contacted any of his six cases, some of whom were quite annoyed at the way they were described in his book.)

But some have argued that because these cases exist, we should ban trans surgery. That doesn't follow. Useful statistic I read: a much larger percentage, about 20%, of people who have knee replacement are dissatisfied with that surgery. (I believe that: my cousin was one of them, and she was very bitter about it.) But we don't ban knee replacement.

[nancylebov]

I would never recommend banning trans surgery. It's obviously good for a lot of people. I didn't realize that was on the table.

I think I would recommend that people considering transitioning find out about these detransitioners, since it's possible that transition is an effort to solve a problem which isn't gender dysphoria.

I don't know for sure what the proportion of detransitioners are-- not everyone wants to discuss something that's very contested but personal. I could bet on fairly low but not tiny.

Boyce is a problem-- he's anti-trans, has some trans friends (he's interviewed them, I'm don't remember what the points of agreement are), and he's done those good interviews.

That's very interesting about knee replacement surgery-- where did you get that statistic? I've been getting good results for my knees with qi gong-- not perfectly safe, but I think it's better odds than that.

[danieldwilliam]

Nothing good I'm sure.

[cmcmck]

We do need to remember that the rate of detransition is something under 1% while the rate of post operative satisfaction is over 95%- most surgeons would kill for a 95% success rate.

The difference is due to a small number of people unhappy with the quality of surgery rather than their transition.