When it comes to the issue of transgenderism, or rather transsexualism my view is that there are a very tiny number of people who genuinely have some form of gender dysphoria that cannot be ameliorated by psychiatric or psychological treatment means in order to get them to accept the reality of the bodies they were born with. In addition, these are also individuals where the gender dysphoria is not a symptom of an underlying psychiatric condition and the gender dysphoria is not masking such a condition.

The numbers of those who are genuinely transsexual, that is those who go through with full surgical and medical gender reassignment is really really small. Even pro-LGBT legal groups such as the American Williams Institute School for Law at UCLA say that 0.3% of the US population identify as transgender and that number includes everyone from those transsexuals for whom transition is seen by them as the last chance saloon to make them happy, right through to the gender non-binary attention seekers.

Taking out the non-binary attention seekers, the people where gender dysphoria is masking other undiagnosed psychiatric conditions and the transvestites then you could probably halve this 0.3% to get a reasonable estimate number for those who are genuinely transsexual. Whilst accurate figures for transsexuals that are not tainted by being pushed by organisations dominated, controlled or influenced by trans activists are hard to find, what we can reasonably assume is that the number of people who are genuinely transsexual is very small indeed. It’s likely to be much much smaller than some of the numbers put out by pro-trans organisations and ‘trans community’ mouthpieces.

So what we have is a tiny number of people who are correctly diagnosed as transsexual and who are going down the route of medical and surgical treatment to create on themselves the outward appearance of being the opposite sex. Because we are dealing with a tiny number of people who have such a catastrophic mental illness that they want to get a sex change then it’s right that we ask questions about what sort of treatment that they are getting. It’s right that we ask whether the outcomes of such treatment work as they should and make the person concerned happier in themselves. Some say that they do but there are others who point out that they don’t.

Some people are still unhappy post transition and the medical and surgical procedures themselves can leave some of the people who undergo them with lifelong problems. Neo-vaginas for example do not always take and can be rejected by the body and need to be constantly and consistently artificially dilated in order to keep them functioning and not be seen by the body as a wound that needs to be healed. One problem I’ve discovered, from long experience of mixing with transsexuals is that too often transition doesn’t cure all the underlying problems that a person may have especially where the gender dysphoria might be masking some other condition. Also some people can be less than properly aware that transition doesn’t end with the surgery, there is a constant need for medical intervention that they may have to go through and this can include anti-rejection drugs similar to those given after organ transplants, lifelong hormone therapy (with all the negative side effects that this can cause) and possibly corrective surgery to combat post transition surgical issues.

Whilst some people can improve psychologically and psychosocially from sex reassignment a lot of people do not. There have been various studies undertaken by clinicians and others and which are quoted and referenced by a Canadian group critical of the gender ideology which can be found here. Many of these studies give cause for concern if we are trying to ascertain whether or not sex reassignment works the way it should. Some of the studies show that there was a jump in suicide ideation post transition and that problems set in for the patients after a two hear ‘honeymoon period’ following transition. Studying the efficacy and safety of sex reassignment is complicated by patients who drop out of follow up studies. This is something that should ring alarm bells as there is no way of knowing whether those who drop out of follow up are doing so because they are happy with their transition, have been hospitalised for psychiatric problems or have committed suicide. There are also not enough long term i.e. ten to twenty year plus studies of transsexuals who have sex reassignment to give a clear picture of what’s going on.

This is what an examination of various studies by the Woman Means Something group that is linked to above said:

A pattern begins to emerge as we survey some of the best and longest outcome studies on transition—the longer the studies and the better the methods, the more negative the results. A broad understanding of the literature helps us address the controversy surrounding Dhejne’s study mentioned earlier. Dhejne herself has argued that her study should not be used to question the efficacy of transition as a treatment. Some authors have read her results precisely that way, including those who would question an affirmation-only paradigm, such as Stephen Levine and Roberto D’Angelo, and others who would continue to champion transition. Dhejne has argued that because the more recent cohort in her study did not have elevated mortality or suicide attempts compared to controls (although psychiatric hospitalization remained highly elevated), it is likely that more advanced medical treatments and societal acceptance have resulted in better psychological outcomes over time. However, given that the results in the broader literature show that the immediate, and perhaps net positive, psychological effects of transition eventually deteriorate, it seems likely that this is an overly-optimistic, politically correct spin on the data. As D’Angelo 2018 states after interacting with Dhejne’s findings, “Most importantly in relation to suicide, none of the studies undertaken to date have yet established whether gender-reassignment actually lowers the risk of completed suicide as it is generally assumed to do.”

Some of the most recent findings of studies in the five-year follow-up range are also beginning to show cracks in the affirmation-only narrative. Van de Grift 2018 sorted his multi-center European sample into a satisfied and dissatisfied post-surgery group and found that even his “satisfied” group had “significantly more psychological symptoms and lower satisfaction with life” than control samples. Jellestad 2018 (Switzerland) found not only a lower mental quality of life for the surgically-transitioned group than the general population, but that neither hormone treatment nor surgery predicted positive quality of life. Auer 2013 (Germany) investigated a hormone treated clinical group, and in comparison with a control group found “significantly higher mean scores in all psychopathology subscales”, no matter which sex was used as comparison. They conclude, “sex reassignment surgery doesn’t seem to be a major contributor to psychosocial well-being in our transsexual sample. This is in accordance with a recent systematic review and meta-analysis which concluded that although many subjects benefit from sex reassignment, there is also evidence of higher psychiatric morbidity and suicide rates following the procedure.”

Whilst there are some individuals who might be helped in the long term by sex reassignment the real picture of transsexuals shown by the data in various studies is not the same as the rosy politically correct one painted by the trans activists. Sex reassignment has a lot of failures and a lot of problems with it. We can’t look at this procedure and say ‘it works’ as we can for example when we look at other complex medical treatments such as kidney and liver transplants. Those who get these organ transplants more often than not go on to live relatively normal and healthy lives. We can point to transplant surgery and say with a reasonable degree of confidence that this surgery works, sadly we cannot say the same when it comes to sex reassignment surgery. Even when we take into account the greater level of societal acceptance of transsexual people, the outcomes, especially mental health outcomes are not brilliant. For a lot of people sex reassignment is the treatment that fails. It fails to cure their internal psychological ills and may well even leave them worse off than they would have been had they not been sexually reassigned.

As sex reassignment has such a large degree of failure and is associated with people disappearing from studies, possibly because they’ve killed themselves or been hospitalised for a catastrophic mental condition, it’s probably right to ask ourselves where did the ‘science’ of transsexuality come from? The answer is from some pretty dark places and times and via some remarkably odd and twisted individuals ranging from ketamine addicts, grifters and unethical quacks, researchers with an unhealthy sexual obsession with dolphins and doctors who later went on to become Nazi war criminals.

All areas of medicine contains those in its history who we would view today as having unethical practises, for example Edward Jenner the father of modern vaccination for example experimented on his social inferiors, something that would be morally and ethically unacceptable today. But some areas of medical science are more morally and ethically questionable than others. The world of transgender science, or what trans activists claim to be science, seems to be stuffed full of really bad people with really bad ideas, to a much greater extent than other areas of medicine are.

This extremely questionable and unethical history of the shonky ‘science’ that underpins the equally shonky gender identity ideology is something that has been examined by Malcolm Clark who goes under the Twitter name of @TwistedFilm in a fantastic and well researched thread. Mr Clark’s research is particularly important for us in the United Kingdom as despite some Government departments making attempts to distance themselves from the troubling pro-trans group Stonewall, this group still has the ear of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson which as Joanna Williams points out in a Spiked article, makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s so called ‘war on woke’. Stonewall and other trans activist groups are still managing to push their views onto HMG even though the science on what these views and the trans ideology that is based upon it is little more than pseudoscience. I’m taking selections from Mr Clark’s article but I would strongly recommend that you read the entire thread which can be found via the link below.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1460054790717808646.html

Mr Clark opened by drawing attention to how the less than properly scientific basis for the views of aggressive trans activists are influencing government studies on what is alleged to be conversion therapy.

Mr Clark said:

1./ How BAD is the science employed by the trans lobby? Terrible, if we’re to judge by the UK govt’s recent study into Conversion Therapy which argues for an affirmation only model for “trans youth”. It’s only the latest in a tradition of awful, pseudo-science trans research.👇

2./ The tax-payer funded report makes huge claims but was based on interviews with a grand total of 30 people. Remember how much the trans lobby complained about that BBC article based on interviews with “just 80” lesbians? Maybe lesbian experiences count for less at Oink News?👇

This use of tiny often self selected and therefore biased groups of individuals for pro-trans surveys is par for the course with the trans activists. Also Pink ‘Oink’ News has long since ceased to be a publication that represents the views or opinions of mainstream Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals. It is a publication that is now completely in thrall to the trans activists and it shows.

Mr Clark added:

3./ The absurd thing is the UK govt is taking seriously a report that opines on “Gender Identity Conversion Therapy” which examined only 4 previous studies, none of which were conducted in the UK. Incredibly, the report interviewed only SIX trans or “non-binary” people. Six?👇

4./ And of those 6 people only 3 claimed their “Conversion Therapy” was an attempt to change their gender identity. So the UK govt is considering interfering in the practice of psychotherapy based on THREE interviews. You couldn’t make it up. But it gets even worse.

Mr Clark then went on to say that the interviewees in question were sourced via a pro-trans organisation that has made exaggerated claims as to the extent of and type of alleged conversion therapy that is going on. It’s clear to see that this report on conversion therapy is based on unreliable and biased sources with no clear and impartial scientific input.

Mr Clark added that there is ‘bizarrely bad research’ coming out of the trans activist community and some of those involved in pro-trans biased studies into things like puberty blockers have not been entirely honest about the results. In one case Mr Clark alleges that studies into puberty blockers failed to state that suicide ideation and suicide attempts had increased in the patients who had been prescribed puberty blockers although activists and transgender researchers have claimed otherwise.

But if the current ‘science’ that a lot of the claims that the trans movement make are based on is bad then things look even more bad when you look into the history of the gender identity movement and those who have operated within it or who have funded and promoted it. It’s really a case of Turtles, or rather twisted lunatics, all the way down.

Mr Clark continued:

9./ The trans lobby’s “science” began in the 1920s when medic Magnus Hirschfeld set up a clinic in Berlin. But err…Hirschfeld recommended crackpot testicle transplants to “cure” homosexuality and his clinic was mired in colonial racism.👇

10./ The LGBTQ+ movement celebrates the fact Hirschfeld’s clinic championed the first vaginoplasty. They don’t mention the surgeon, Gohrbrandt, became a leading figure in the Nazi sterilisation of the disabled; and commissioned disgusting and deadly experiments at Dachau.👇

As Mr Clark points out Gohrbrandt was said to be involved in experiments at Dachau that resulted in the deaths of 300 prisoners of that concentration camp. In an effort to discover how to better protect Luftwaffe pilots who were downed in freezing seas, Gohrbrandt had prisoners immersed in freezing water until they died. One of Gohrbrandt’s superiors, Sigmud Rascher, had, Mr Clark said, whilst at Dachau commissioned saddlebags made out of human skin.

We can see how both in the time of the German Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich there were unethical and sometimes murderous scientific quacks in operation such as those involved in the surgical ‘cures’ for homosexuality, the Dachau experiments, the Aktion T4 ‘euthanasia’ programme, the sterilisation of the ‘racially unfit’ and other horrors from other concentration and death camps. People like Hirschfeld should really not be celebrated by anyone but instead held up as a warning against quackery. It should tell us a lot that activists in the trans movement do celebrate Hirschfeld and those like him.

But trans quackery and pseudoscience is not confined to pre-WWII or Nazi era Germany. It continued, as Mr Clark said post war. Mr Clark added:

11./ In time, another Hirschfeld admirer, Harry Benjamin, tried to turn the dark world of backroom sex change surgery by Nazis into a respectable discipline by developing “protocols” that would become the basis of oft-quoted trans health body, @wpath .👇 wpath.org

13./ Erickson was a lesbian who in the 1950s decided “he” was a man, had surgery, kept a pet leopard called Henry, hoovered up ketamine and poured vast sums of money into “his” pet causes including the “science” of gender identity and “transsexualism”.

14./ As trans activist Morgan Page recently pointed out without Reed “we would not have trans health care period.” The vast sums of money Reed poured into founding gender dysphoria clinics in the US created the model that has now metastasised across the world.

Nazis and cranks are not a good basis to rest an ideology on but this is who the Trans movement look to when claiming that science is on their side. We have as Mr Clark said the ‘metastasising’ of sex change clinics across the world and much of this growth is down to people like Erickson. As an aside I can well understand why someone like Erickson might want to change from a woman to a man as the 1950’s were a period noted for strict gender roles and also was a time when it was difficult or impossible for a Lesbian to be fully socially accepted. It’s quite possible that Erickson thought that changing from a woman to a man would make their life easier. But it’s not just over the issue of gender that those like Reed Erickson should give cause for concern and maybe be less celebrated than they are. Erickson also according to Mr Clark, was involved in a whole lot of other pseudoscientific things such as dream telepathy and telekinesis.

Erickson also pumped money towards others with dubious ideas including a biologist who was also another Ketamine hoover to carry out research into dolphins. On this matter Mr Clark said:

16./ Reed also lavished funds on John Lilley, a biologist and fellow ketamine fiend, who claimed he’d learned to speak dolphin language. His experiments ended in scandal when his research assistant admitted she’d been having sex with one of the dolphins.👇

Reed also funded research into ‘latter day religious miracles’ including an author who claimed that every word of their book on the subject was ‘directly dictated to them by Jesus’. The trans movement likes to portray itself as being based on science but this is a lie. Instead what is found when the history of gender ‘science’ is examined is shady at best and unethical pseudoscience at worst. Those involved in it range from homophobic quacks like Hirschfeld through Nazi war criminals to ketamine addicts, dolphin shaggers and people who believe in unprovable things like telepathy and book dictation by deity. These are not people or ideas that any sane society should base either medical or political decisions upon and those organisations that promote ideas with such shaky and troubling foundations should not be influencing government.

Mr Clark concluded:

22./ The sad truth is the govt’s Conversion Therapy Study is a mess on gender identity because the whole subject has become a morass of ill-defined terms, unscientific assertions and misrepresentations by activists who fiercely protect them from normal scrutiny.

My view is that affirmation based policies regarding gender identity are dangerous, especially when children are involved. Preventing people whether they be the parents of gender non-confirming children or adults from legitimately exploring with a therapist their questions about gender or any distress they may have because of that is wrong. It interferes with the therapist / patient relationship and imposes on therapists the duty to affirm the delusions of their patients.

I’m horrified that because of the influence that trans activists have over the UK government we might soon be seeing a time when an adult who is distressed by gender identity issues will find the therapists hands tied by a combination of pseudoscientific trans activists and a government that has kow towed to them. In future anybody who approaches a therapist in order to stop the nightmarish feelings about their own gender identity that this issue may be inducing in them, will not be able to be cured of the feelings that are bothering them but told to embrace them. We don’t tell patients who have the deluded belief that their left foot is wrong for them and allow them to have it amputated. A decent therapist presented with such a patient would, in order to ‘do no harm’ would do their best to get the patient to accept that their left foot is not ‘wrong’.

Not allowing therapists to help people to come to terms with their birth sex but instead forcing them to promote treatments such as an affirmation only approach that may not be right for the individual, is going to create a world of tragedy and pain. It’s as if the psychiatric profession was forbidden to offer talking cures or mental illness medication for a person with depression and all they could offer was the failed treatment of lobotomy.

I’m against the idea of coercing people to be straight if they are gay or bisexual and vice versa or coercing people to repress feelings of their being the ’wrong’ sex but the promotion of an affirmation only approach to those presenting with gender identity issues is going to end really badly. It’s going to be bad maybe not for the therapists, but almost certainly for those patients who will be pushed into sex reassignment when what they really need is to be made comfortable by way of ethical and effective treatments, with who they really are.