Timothy Birdnow

We're moving from junk science to absolute trash farce; an article in the U.K. Daily Mail claims U.S. "researchers" have found "transgendered genes".

The unnamed researchers (and if they were credible as the story claims they would go on record) supposedly tested 14 female to male and 15 male to female trans people at "gender " (sic) realignment clinics" and found alleged evidence (again, no details) of a genetic component affect neural development and hormones.

From the article: "Presenting their research at the Society for Reproductive Investigation conference, the researchers said: ‘We identified genetic variants in 20 genes that may play a role in transgender identity.

‘The most promising of these include variants of genes involved in neurologic development and sex hormones.’

Dr Ricki Lewis, a geneticist, said: ‘These are highly reputable folks going about this exactly the right way, searching the genomes of transgender people to highlight which genes they have variants in. It lends legitimacy, if that needs to be added, that transgender is not a choice but a way of being.'"

End excerpt.

Notice they didn't quote anyo of the actual researchers bur researchers but rather this Ricki Lewis person. Who is Ricki Lewis? Let me give you a snipped of her biography on her own website:

"But since the presidential election, my blog topics are turning towards explaining the faults behind boneheaded moves by an administration ignorant of not only science and medicine, but of the very nature of truth and facts Here’s a sampling of DNA Science’s past few posts:

• Blinded by Stem Cells: Is Disarming FDA Smart?
• Saving GINA: Is Genetic Privacy Imperiled?
• Is Transgenic Identity Inherited?
• 12 Alternative Facts of Human Genetics"

End excerpt.

She also refers to herself as a "science Journalist" in addition to a geneticist.
nd
Now anyone who launches a diatribe against Donald Trump in their autobiography has a screw loose, and I rather suspect this is an axe grinding issue for her, an obvious liberal.

She also has written for Playgirl. Oh, and she apparently ignited a firestorm, likely by calling Trump and his supporters subhuman (which she denies, meaning she probably did it.) And then there is this:

""Health effects,” rather than "syndrome” or "disorder,” suggests that the angst many of us have been feeling since November 9 isn’t a medical condition, but is a strange new normal. Others use stronger terms. Sarah Jones in Politicususa attributes the rape nightmares plaguing many women to Trump Traumatic Stress Disorder (TTSD). John Markowitz’s recent editorial "Anxiety in the Age of Trump” in Comprehensive Psychiatry attributes the "floods of patients” and "national – if not global – rising anxiety” to "Post-Trump Stress Disorder.” I prefer Jones’ TTSD, because the distress began well before the shock of the election"

End excerpt.

She goes on to quote research done by THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER of all things. Goes to show where she is coming from.

What SHE lacks is common sense, like the sense to understand that there is no X chromosome in a female to male transsexual and there IS one in a Male who dresses in women's clothes. And she cannot possibly explain what evolutionary value there would be in transsexualism, as anyone so afflicted would not reproduce; it's an evolutionary blind alley.

Just as is homosexuality and yet the Left pushed the idea of a "gay gene" for decades. When nobody could find it they went to epigenetics, so they could say it's not a localized thing, but rather "unexpressed" mutations that remain hidden. Nobody ever wants to speak about the possibilities it is a psychological disorder.

Transvestism is clearly a psychological disorder, and a major one. But the Progressive Left wants to say we have no free will, that we are all slaves to our biological construction, so they are now trying to say cross dressing is genetic rather than psychological.

See, you can't treat genetic, and by THEIR reasoning you shouldn't.

Oh, and another problem with this study; male transvestites out vastly outnumber female trans, and yet the study used a seven to eight ratio. Almost every study has shown that the male to female transsexuals outnumber the female to male by at least a ratio of 2 to one and by as much as 4 to one, yet the study used near parity. Why? Bear in mind that there has always been much less social stigma to a woman wearing men's clothes than to a man wearing women's, and to cross THAT Rubicon requires a strangely powerful incentive. Tom Boy girls have always been around, and it is evolutionarily understandable, as men often die in wars on on hunting parties, leaving women to fend for themselves (in the upper Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies from which we were spawned) so a woman who took on a male role was needed. Not so much a guy who took on a female role. And the revolsion against such role assumption is clearly a biological imperative designed to maximize reproduction - and thus there is little reason for a man to try to be a woman.

That is bad methodology. I also wonder about the control group; nothing was mentioned about a control group. You NEED one to make sure you aren't somehow confusing genetic characteristics that have nothing to do with the trans issue with some sort of causal link.

Let me offer another point to ponder; what came first, the chicken or the egg? Our society places increased value on femaleness and increasingly condemns "toxic masculinity" . With society seeking to feminize boys, is it any wonder that many of them are "coming out" as transgendered? But, but, but, we see physical changes in them! Well, yes, that is what happens. "As a man thinketh, so shall he be" the Bible says, which is oldspeak for the concept of neuroplasticity. If you think yourself a woman long enough, fantasize about it, you will find your body changing to match your self conception. But it won't change completely, because you aren't a woman. You still have that pesky Y chromosome.

Here is a paper on Autogynephilia, one of the roots of transgenderism. Autogynophilia is a sexual arousal from imagining yourself as the opposite sex. Often the person changes from disinterest in someone of the same sex as they were born with to homosexual arousal because it validates their transsexualism.

From the paper:

Blanchard's realization of the conceptual link between transsexual subtypes based on sexual orientation and the phenomenon that he would later call autogynephilia derived from decades of earlier observations concerning transvestism or erotic cross-dressing, MtF transsexualism, and the relationship between them. By the early 1980s, many clinicians had recognized that there were at least two distinctly different types of MtF transsexualism, plausibly reflecting entirely different etiologies (for a review, see Lawrence, 2010a). No one MtF transsexual typology, however, was generally accepted. Although transvestism was generally regarded as a disorder of sexuality — a paraphilia — and MtF transsexualism as a disorder of gender identity, clinicians had observed many similarities and connections between the two conditions. Specifically:

* transvestism sometimes evolved into MtF transsexualism (Lukianowicz, 1959);

* the boundary separating transvestism and MtF transsexualism was not distinct (Benjamin, 1966);

* both transvestites and MtF transsexuals experienced types of cross-gender identities (Stoller, 1968);

* some MtF transsexuals were effeminate and androphilic, whereas others were primarily sexually attracted to women (gynephilic) and had a history of transvestic fetishism (Money & Gaskin, 1970/1971);

* the essential fantasy for transvestites, as well as for MtF transsexuals, was becoming a woman, not just dressing as one (Ovesey & Person, 1976);

* MtF transsexualism was nearly always associated with either (a) androphilia and childhood femininity or (b) gynephilia and erotic arousal in association with cross-dressing or cross-gender fantasy (Freund, Steiner, & Chan, 1982).

End excerpt.

Notice the roll fantasies and thought play in this. "As a man thinketh..."

As I say, the Left is desperate to remove all notions of free will from our existence, so tehy can excuse any and all behavior as biologically driven, and thus they can create the world they want where people can do whatever they wish (their idea of freedom) with an elite group maintaining guardrails to protect these benighted yahoos from injuring themselves or others. And sexuality is at the root of who you are as a person, so the more confused a person becomes about their sexuality the weaker they are to psychological and intellectual manipulation. This strikes at the root of so many things; marriage, family, friendship, all of the cornerstones of civilization. The Left knows this, which is why they are pushing it.

And of course anything that strikes at the masculine virtues is something they will support; they want to emasculate society, so nobody will have the wherewithall to resist them.

Promoting the idea that you are "born that way" is a political position, I might add, because most Americans would accept someone's genetic makeup rather than their psychological quirk.

Here is a good synopsis of why transsexualism is not genetic. From the paper by N.E.Whitehead, PhD,:

"There are far fewer studies of transsexuality in identical twins because the condition is far rarer. However of four studied monozygotic (identical) male twin pairs, of which one was transsexual, the other twin was transsexual in only one case, so researchers concluded that genetic factors were most unlikely to be important (Buhrich, Bailey & Martin, 1991). If genes compelled transsexuality all the co-twins would have been identical. Genes may produce a tendency but not a tyranny.

The argument should stop there, but doesn't. Biological determinism is frequently insinuated in language used about homosexuality or transsexuality, mainly by the media, in ways that have become practically dishonest. Typically, a scientific study is quoted which suggests a correlation or link between transsexuality and hormones or brain structure etc. (The actual strength of the link is almost never mentioned.) This link is taken to show that transsexuality has "a biological basis”, or "is biological”, or "is genetic”, or "is due to hormones”. The implication then taken from this equivocal use of language is that the condition is biologically determined, whereas in all cases the evidence shows nothing of the kind and most of those with physiological conditions described below do not become transsexual. Those conditions therefore are no more than minor influences. If they were major influences we would already understand unequivocally the origin of transsexuality in all cases. We don’t. More of these studies come out every year, get misreported, and the gap between what scientists really think and what the activist believes, becomes larger every year.

Thus there are studies on enzymic or hormonal abnormalities, physical dexterity, auditory phenomena, psychological profiles (Dörner,Poppe, Stahl, Kölzsch & Uebelhack, 1991;Bosinski, Peter, Bonatz,Arndt, Heidenreich, Siffell & Wille, 1997) The outstanding feature of these studies is poor reproducibility, no obvious single cause and only minor links.

Usually transsexuals (and homosexuals) argue that studies have shown their brain microstructure is more feminine (Gorman, 1995; Zhou, Hofman, Gooren & Swaab, 1995). Such studies are notoriously poorly replicable, and provide a very shaky foundation for such a view. The most unequivocal evidence is that brain microstructures are produced by long-continued behaviour, rather than long-established brain structures causing the behaviour. The brain changes physically in response to our behaviour - London taxi drivers have an enlarged part of the brain dealing with navigation, violinists a larger area dealing with movement of the fingers of the left hand. There is no evidence that people are born with brain microstructures unalterable ever after - but there is strong experimental evidence that experience changes that microstructure. Transsexual brain differences would be more likely the result of transsexual behaviour than its cause."

End excerpt.

So I think we can confidently conclude this is yet another piece of junk science, and particularly bad junk science at that.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1985 words, total size 14 kb.