One of the serious issues is the "sunk cost" notion. Once you have your dick cut off, whatever you do, that dick is not coming back. If you show regret, you are basically saying "I really am a complete moron". So there is a lot of "brave-facing" going on. These persons are not going to admit that they screwed up their entire life.
It's long been my thought that this general idea is behind a lot of the trans issue. When you are trans/have GD, you have gone thru a mental acrobatic phase where you convince yourself that "black is white" or other such impossible thing is true. Then you convince others. You convince your parents, your siblings, your friends that you are a chimera, a unicorn. When the frenzy departs, and you are looking at the cold reality, you must then say to others "I was completely wrong, and am a complete fool". This is very hard for most to do. There is such a huge investment in this fallacious notion that changing it means loss of personal face at a massive level. Unwillingness to admit to complete idiocy is a strong part of the trans persistence.
I don’t think they “tell themselves” they are female per se, they develop a compulsion to mimic the opposite sex. Once the compulsion is fully developed, part of the mimicry is to believe they are the opposite sex, since if they don’t, they will signal to themselves and to others that it’s entirely an act.
Mimicry is a common biological phenomenon (the Cuckoo lays an egg, the viceroy butterfly mimics the poisonous Monarch). Sex mimicry is less common but widespread. These men use sexual mimicry to evade male competition, as do all male animals who use sexual mimicry.
One of the original lines of research that led to "cognitive dissonance theory" looked at peoples' valuation of certain purchases as a function of how much they had invested. Results showed that valuation of the service or product purchased tended to go up with the amount invested. This was/is no surprise to people who sell high priced country club memberships or expensive cars.
I am glad you have highlighted that piece (the study). I do wonder if there ought to be a once a year coordinated effort amongst various influencers, commenters, activists, to highlight that piece (the study, and maybe highlight other studies in the same week) until they get retracted. Almost like an annual convention online. Today could be the start. At the start of every June, going forward, you could highlight this piece again, and if others in the community of caring about this issued joined you next year and further, it could rise in public awareness
Thanks for your continued efforts to share the truth. I pray that this eventually results in a reversal of the insane medical interventions that continue to occur.
Thanks for this. I have some personal experience that makes this particularly relevant. I know a trans woman we'll call Jan. Jan transitioned two years ago, and spends a lot of social media time proclaiming how happy she is, it's great to be living her authentic self, all of that. Since this transition, though, Jan has left her marriage, has had her parental rights curtailed, lost her job, got suspended from an athletic organization she loved, and had to forgo a career opportunity because she was named in a sexual harassment suit. Yet she says she's happy!
I don't care how happy Jan says she is; transition has not improved her life and I think that fact needs to be part of the discussion about regret.
There is an editing error, a factual error, and a strategic framing error in this article. Two can be fixed, one requires a strategically different approach to refuting the surveys
1. Paragraph 2 repeats in paragraph 3.
2. Social media existed as far back as 1980. Usenet was a public discussion forum structured like Reddit, and contained conversation threads on a wide variety of subjects. Soc.motss (equivalent to a Reddit “/r/membersofrhesamesex” had discussions of trans back to at least 1984. I recall infrequent convenience sample requests sent to the Soc.motss group on a a variety of subjects 40 years ago.
AOL as a widely available social media service started 1991 “You’ve got mail” made it to the movies by 1998. It had AIM chat 1:1, buddy lists, and group chat.
3. Aside from the sampling problems which are ridiculous of course, the conceptualisation of the survey is faulty, you are trapped in a trans framing instead of a compulsion framing.
The surgery is not to make the patient happy, it is to support creating a more plausible imitation of the opposite sex. It’s plastic surgery.
You are probably aware of my hypothesis that all “trans” behavior is simply the emergence of ordinary biological sexual mimicry, it explains 100% of all direct and emergent behaviors. It can become compulsive, and like many compulsions is hidden from the afflicted. What they desire is to imitate female to themselves first, and then to others. “Desistence” is giving up on the perpetual imitation., not necessarily the changing the need to imitate.
Consider the question “are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the surgery” or “happy / unhappy” about the surgery.
Play this back to an irrational compulsive. They may hear something quite different than we hear depending on the depth of the compulsion.
They will hear “are you satisfied that the surgery makes you appear more feminine”, and the only real answer will almost always be yes, because the only purpose of the surgery realistically is as plastic surgery. They can never be objective about their feelings within the compulsion framework, only the compulsion speaks.
It’s hard to say emasculation surgery or breast augmentation doesn’t make you appear more feminine. It can’t make you appear less feminine.
That’s where the “desistence” concept becomes moot. A compulsive person can never say no to the compulsion, the classic Catch-22. If you are aware enough of the compulsion to stop it, then you don’t have a compulsion.
One you speak of desistence, satisfaction, complications, and so on you are discussing the phenomenon from within the compulsion conceptual framework.
Imagine asking an anorexic after having had liposuction if they feel satisfied. It will temporarily.
Unfortunately, you have strongly criticized a statement that may be true. Though not the central thesis of your piece, it think it is an error to claim that their use of the phrase social media shows a lack of due diligence. Social media existed before the products you named. The point remains that it was not statistically relevant.
Even if social media existed in 1998 (I don't know what you're referring to), the paper didn't use social media, it used newspapers/magazines and word-of-mouth.
There was AOL and related products that had forums, chat rooms and email. A lot of people used it just for email. Your point still stands, however. The reviewers did not accurately report what the original investigators said about how they recruited their subjects.
I see. I think I misunderstood what you were conveying. What I had first interpreted your paragraphs to mean was that the original study listed several forms of recruitment including newspapers and social media as another form of recruitment. I thought you were claiming that the original study must be 'lying' about using social media, and that the meta study authors should have vetted it better. However, I now understand that you are saying that the original study was misrepresented by the meta study. That being said, if I analyze the wording of social media, I am not so sure that it should be regarded as false. Newspaper is undoubtedly media. Is it social media? An argument could certainly be made that personal sections of newspapers were, in some cases, a form of social media before the internet became widespread. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that what they wrote ('social media') is incorrect, if their explanation is that they thought they were using the term 'social media' correctly, that would be a weak issue to criticize them on so heavily, when it is not really what your main criticism is of them. Though perhaps today's piece criticizing their use of the phrase social media is something that would be generally welcomed by this substack's readership.
One of the serious issues is the "sunk cost" notion. Once you have your dick cut off, whatever you do, that dick is not coming back. If you show regret, you are basically saying "I really am a complete moron". So there is a lot of "brave-facing" going on. These persons are not going to admit that they screwed up their entire life.
It's long been my thought that this general idea is behind a lot of the trans issue. When you are trans/have GD, you have gone thru a mental acrobatic phase where you convince yourself that "black is white" or other such impossible thing is true. Then you convince others. You convince your parents, your siblings, your friends that you are a chimera, a unicorn. When the frenzy departs, and you are looking at the cold reality, you must then say to others "I was completely wrong, and am a complete fool". This is very hard for most to do. There is such a huge investment in this fallacious notion that changing it means loss of personal face at a massive level. Unwillingness to admit to complete idiocy is a strong part of the trans persistence.
I don’t think they “tell themselves” they are female per se, they develop a compulsion to mimic the opposite sex. Once the compulsion is fully developed, part of the mimicry is to believe they are the opposite sex, since if they don’t, they will signal to themselves and to others that it’s entirely an act.
Mimicry is a common biological phenomenon (the Cuckoo lays an egg, the viceroy butterfly mimics the poisonous Monarch). Sex mimicry is less common but widespread. These men use sexual mimicry to evade male competition, as do all male animals who use sexual mimicry.
One of the original lines of research that led to "cognitive dissonance theory" looked at peoples' valuation of certain purchases as a function of how much they had invested. Results showed that valuation of the service or product purchased tended to go up with the amount invested. This was/is no surprise to people who sell high priced country club memberships or expensive cars.
I am glad you have highlighted that piece (the study). I do wonder if there ought to be a once a year coordinated effort amongst various influencers, commenters, activists, to highlight that piece (the study, and maybe highlight other studies in the same week) until they get retracted. Almost like an annual convention online. Today could be the start. At the start of every June, going forward, you could highlight this piece again, and if others in the community of caring about this issued joined you next year and further, it could rise in public awareness
Thanks for your continued efforts to share the truth. I pray that this eventually results in a reversal of the insane medical interventions that continue to occur.
It does seem like the journal ought to retract the study, given the example you gave.
Thanks for this. I have some personal experience that makes this particularly relevant. I know a trans woman we'll call Jan. Jan transitioned two years ago, and spends a lot of social media time proclaiming how happy she is, it's great to be living her authentic self, all of that. Since this transition, though, Jan has left her marriage, has had her parental rights curtailed, lost her job, got suspended from an athletic organization she loved, and had to forgo a career opportunity because she was named in a sexual harassment suit. Yet she says she's happy!
I don't care how happy Jan says she is; transition has not improved her life and I think that fact needs to be part of the discussion about regret.
There is an editing error, a factual error, and a strategic framing error in this article. Two can be fixed, one requires a strategically different approach to refuting the surveys
1. Paragraph 2 repeats in paragraph 3.
2. Social media existed as far back as 1980. Usenet was a public discussion forum structured like Reddit, and contained conversation threads on a wide variety of subjects. Soc.motss (equivalent to a Reddit “/r/membersofrhesamesex” had discussions of trans back to at least 1984. I recall infrequent convenience sample requests sent to the Soc.motss group on a a variety of subjects 40 years ago.
Newsgroup Name Founding Year
alt.transgendered 1992
soc.support.transgendered 1994
alt.support.crossdressing 1996
alt.fashion.crossdressing 1996
alt.support.srs 1997
uk.support.crossdressing 1999
AOL as a widely available social media service started 1991 “You’ve got mail” made it to the movies by 1998. It had AIM chat 1:1, buddy lists, and group chat.
3. Aside from the sampling problems which are ridiculous of course, the conceptualisation of the survey is faulty, you are trapped in a trans framing instead of a compulsion framing.
The surgery is not to make the patient happy, it is to support creating a more plausible imitation of the opposite sex. It’s plastic surgery.
You are probably aware of my hypothesis that all “trans” behavior is simply the emergence of ordinary biological sexual mimicry, it explains 100% of all direct and emergent behaviors. It can become compulsive, and like many compulsions is hidden from the afflicted. What they desire is to imitate female to themselves first, and then to others. “Desistence” is giving up on the perpetual imitation., not necessarily the changing the need to imitate.
Consider the question “are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the surgery” or “happy / unhappy” about the surgery.
Play this back to an irrational compulsive. They may hear something quite different than we hear depending on the depth of the compulsion.
They will hear “are you satisfied that the surgery makes you appear more feminine”, and the only real answer will almost always be yes, because the only purpose of the surgery realistically is as plastic surgery. They can never be objective about their feelings within the compulsion framework, only the compulsion speaks.
It’s hard to say emasculation surgery or breast augmentation doesn’t make you appear more feminine. It can’t make you appear less feminine.
That’s where the “desistence” concept becomes moot. A compulsive person can never say no to the compulsion, the classic Catch-22. If you are aware enough of the compulsion to stop it, then you don’t have a compulsion.
One you speak of desistence, satisfaction, complications, and so on you are discussing the phenomenon from within the compulsion conceptual framework.
Imagine asking an anorexic after having had liposuction if they feel satisfied. It will temporarily.
It can’t make them look heavier…
Unfortunately, you have strongly criticized a statement that may be true. Though not the central thesis of your piece, it think it is an error to claim that their use of the phrase social media shows a lack of due diligence. Social media existed before the products you named. The point remains that it was not statistically relevant.
Even if social media existed in 1998 (I don't know what you're referring to), the paper didn't use social media, it used newspapers/magazines and word-of-mouth.
There was AOL and related products that had forums, chat rooms and email. A lot of people used it just for email. Your point still stands, however. The reviewers did not accurately report what the original investigators said about how they recruited their subjects.
I see. I think I misunderstood what you were conveying. What I had first interpreted your paragraphs to mean was that the original study listed several forms of recruitment including newspapers and social media as another form of recruitment. I thought you were claiming that the original study must be 'lying' about using social media, and that the meta study authors should have vetted it better. However, I now understand that you are saying that the original study was misrepresented by the meta study. That being said, if I analyze the wording of social media, I am not so sure that it should be regarded as false. Newspaper is undoubtedly media. Is it social media? An argument could certainly be made that personal sections of newspapers were, in some cases, a form of social media before the internet became widespread. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that what they wrote ('social media') is incorrect, if their explanation is that they thought they were using the term 'social media' correctly, that would be a weak issue to criticize them on so heavily, when it is not really what your main criticism is of them. Though perhaps today's piece criticizing their use of the phrase social media is something that would be generally welcomed by this substack's readership.