"People who menstruate"... I understand why JK Rowling felt hurt by this: describing women by a physiological process is an undeniable act of dehumanization. To do it allegedly in order not to hurt people who don't menstruate but feel as women is to think that the right of somebody to be identified as they feel is more important than the dignity of half of the Earth's population dignity.
She later had to explain herself:
She later had to explain herself:
What JK Rowling maybe didn't expect is for things to get scary. And I don't use the word scary in vain. The backlash that this tweet generated forced JK Rowling to write "bout Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues". I really advise reading this 3670-word piece.
There is a very revealing piece about a scientist who dared publish a paper about a worrying trend she had documented:
"The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018, American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:
‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’
Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’
Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it."
"On the same day that PLOS One announced its review, Brown University took down a press release they had earlier posted about the paper.[4][19] Responding to critics, Brown University President Christina Paxson and Provost Richard Locke said they had not infringed on academic freedom and stated that Brown's commitment to only "publicize research that unassailably meets the highest standards of excellence" required Brown to retract the press release after PLOS One opened an investigation on the paper in question." [Wikipedia]
To understand how unusual is all this, we will quote a former Harvard Medical School Dean:
"The fact that Brown University deleted its initial promotional reference to Dr Littman’s work from the university’s website—then replaced it with a note explaining how Dr Littman’s work might harm members of the transgender community—presents a cautionary tale.
Increasingly, research on politically charged topics is subject to indiscriminate attack on social media, which in turn can pressure school administrators to subvert established norms regarding the protection of free academic inquiry.
There is a real problem with a lack of reproducibility of published science in many academic fields. (...) But that is not what has happened in regard to Dr Littman, whose critics have not performed any systematic analysis of her findings, but seem principally motivated by ideological opposition to her conclusions.
There is no evidence for claims of misconduct in Dr Littman’s case. Rather, unnamed individuals with strong personal interests in the area under study seem to have approached PLOS One with allegations that her methodology and conclusions were faulty. Facing these assertions, which predictably drew support from social media communities populated by lay activists, the journal responded rapidly and publicly with the announcement that it would undertake additional expert review.
In all my years in academia, I have never once seen a comparable reaction from a journal within days of publishing a paper that the journal already had subjected to peer review, accepted and published. One can only assume that the response was in large measure due to the intense lobbying the journal received, and the threat—whether stated or unstated—that more social-media backlash would rain down upon PLOS One if action were not taken.
In her letter, Dean Marcus cites fears that “conclusions of the study could be used to discredit the efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate perspectives of members of the transgender community” (my italics). Why the concerns of these unidentified individuals should be accorded weight in the evaluation of an academic work is left unexplained.
The idea that unnamed parties might apply conclusions from a study such as to cause some vaguely defined harm to other third parties is a spurious basis for the university’s actions. Virtually any research finding related to human health may be used for unrelated and inappropriate purposes by independent actors. Indeed, this happens frequently in medical science, as when nutrition research is used to promote diets far beyond the validity of the underlying data. When this occurs, responsibility lies with those committing these acts, not the paper or its author." [Quillete]
Trans activists do not act only like the Spanish Inquisition regarding scientific research, they also do not like the media talking about detransitioning (reversal of a transgender identification or gender transition, whether by social, legal, or medical means), and they attack any program on this topic as "transphobic". Here you have an example after the BBC dared dedicate 57 minutes to detransitioners.
It is fascinating to read how they argue that the program should not have aired, like a conspiracy theory joining Christian groups, alt-right, lesbians, feminists.... But the most ironic is the one regarding the figures of "patients [who] expressed transition-related regret or detransitioned" being between 0.47 and 2.2 (assuming there are not studies with higher figures, and that the selected studies are reliable -what was the period of the study?-, and that, as we have already seen, it is difficult to conduct scientific research that doesn't match the believes of the trans community). It is ironic that transgenders don't consider detransitioners significant enough over the transgender population, when the number of transgenders over the total population are similar to the ones they attributed to detransitioners over the total transgender population...
What we see here is that a small minority (non-representative if we would follow the same standards they apply to detransitioners) attacking and limiting free speech, free scientific research and free press...
There is a very revealing piece about a scientist who dared publish a paper about a worrying trend she had documented:
"The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018, American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:
‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’
Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’
Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it."
"On the same day that PLOS One announced its review, Brown University took down a press release they had earlier posted about the paper.[4][19] Responding to critics, Brown University President Christina Paxson and Provost Richard Locke said they had not infringed on academic freedom and stated that Brown's commitment to only "publicize research that unassailably meets the highest standards of excellence" required Brown to retract the press release after PLOS One opened an investigation on the paper in question." [Wikipedia]
To understand how unusual is all this, we will quote a former Harvard Medical School Dean:
"The fact that Brown University deleted its initial promotional reference to Dr Littman’s work from the university’s website—then replaced it with a note explaining how Dr Littman’s work might harm members of the transgender community—presents a cautionary tale.
Increasingly, research on politically charged topics is subject to indiscriminate attack on social media, which in turn can pressure school administrators to subvert established norms regarding the protection of free academic inquiry.
There is a real problem with a lack of reproducibility of published science in many academic fields. (...) But that is not what has happened in regard to Dr Littman, whose critics have not performed any systematic analysis of her findings, but seem principally motivated by ideological opposition to her conclusions.
There is no evidence for claims of misconduct in Dr Littman’s case. Rather, unnamed individuals with strong personal interests in the area under study seem to have approached PLOS One with allegations that her methodology and conclusions were faulty. Facing these assertions, which predictably drew support from social media communities populated by lay activists, the journal responded rapidly and publicly with the announcement that it would undertake additional expert review.
In all my years in academia, I have never once seen a comparable reaction from a journal within days of publishing a paper that the journal already had subjected to peer review, accepted and published. One can only assume that the response was in large measure due to the intense lobbying the journal received, and the threat—whether stated or unstated—that more social-media backlash would rain down upon PLOS One if action were not taken.
In her letter, Dean Marcus cites fears that “conclusions of the study could be used to discredit the efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate perspectives of members of the transgender community” (my italics). Why the concerns of these unidentified individuals should be accorded weight in the evaluation of an academic work is left unexplained.
The idea that unnamed parties might apply conclusions from a study such as to cause some vaguely defined harm to other third parties is a spurious basis for the university’s actions. Virtually any research finding related to human health may be used for unrelated and inappropriate purposes by independent actors. Indeed, this happens frequently in medical science, as when nutrition research is used to promote diets far beyond the validity of the underlying data. When this occurs, responsibility lies with those committing these acts, not the paper or its author." [Quillete]
Trans activists do not act only like the Spanish Inquisition regarding scientific research, they also do not like the media talking about detransitioning (reversal of a transgender identification or gender transition, whether by social, legal, or medical means), and they attack any program on this topic as "transphobic". Here you have an example after the BBC dared dedicate 57 minutes to detransitioners.
It is fascinating to read how they argue that the program should not have aired, like a conspiracy theory joining Christian groups, alt-right, lesbians, feminists.... But the most ironic is the one regarding the figures of "patients [who] expressed transition-related regret or detransitioned" being between 0.47 and 2.2 (assuming there are not studies with higher figures, and that the selected studies are reliable -what was the period of the study?-, and that, as we have already seen, it is difficult to conduct scientific research that doesn't match the believes of the trans community). It is ironic that transgenders don't consider detransitioners significant enough over the transgender population, when the number of transgenders over the total population are similar to the ones they attributed to detransitioners over the total transgender population...
What we see here is that a small minority (non-representative if we would follow the same standards they apply to detransitioners) attacking and limiting free speech, free scientific research and free press...
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