Wherein Colin Wright Takes A Victory Lap

Over in The Wall Street Journal, author Colin Wright takes a victory lap declaring that transgender youth are in fact the result of "social contagion".  

As you might expect, he's fallen all the way down the Gender Critical rabbit hole, making some of the most ridiculous claims possible, and citing material from the "Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine" (SEGM) - a notoriously anti-transgender group which is more a collection of cranks than practitioners of legitimate science.  

The dominant counterargument to the social-contagion theory, repeated endlessly by the media and activists, is that the sharp rise in transgender identification over the past decade simply reflects liberation: People today are more comfortable expressing their authentic selves. The favored analogy compares this rise to the historic increase in left-handedness once schools stopped discouraging it. As transgender activist and biologist Julia Serano put it in a 2017 article, “there wasn’t really a rise in left-handedness so much as there was a rise in left-handed acceptance” that allowed its true natural prevalence to emerge. John Oliver popularized this analogy on “Last Week Tonight” in 2022, insisting that the surge in trans identification was simply a sign that “people were free to be who they f— were.”

If transgender identity were an innate trait, like left-handedness, we would expect identification rates to rise at first when it became socially acceptable, then plateau and remain stable at a fixed level. If the phenomenon were instead driven by social contagion, we might expect a boom-and-bust pattern: a spike followed by a rapid decline once the social forces driving it weaken.

As both a transgender person and a left-handed person, I cannot tell you how completely misguided this really is.  In order for Wright's hypothesis to stand up, we have to turn a blind eye to the last 5 years or more of increasingly hate-filled anti-transgender _LEGISLATION_ and rhetoric coming from the political right, especially in the US and UK.  These laws are draconian, they are hurtful, and yes, they are profoundly damaging. 

If Mr. Wright thinks that transgender youth identities are "just social contagion", he is implying strongly that those youth are too stupid to understand the world around them - that they only follow the lead of others.  Reality is quite different.  Youth are in fact very sensitive to the social signals in their environment, and it would be hard for transgender youth not to be aware of the increasingly hostile legislative environment.  Nor can they ignore the hostility that they hear on a daily basis coming from religious leaders in church, or even their families.  

Mr. Wright has engaged in one of the most serious errors in research and analysis:  Correlation Fallacy.  He is assuming that the reduction being observed indicates a "reduction" in the number of transgender people.  This is, in my experience, likely false in the long run.  Transgender youth are clever - they know the signals they are receiving and will decide to transition later when they feel it's safer to do so.  That may mean getting out from the family home, or given current circumstances, may mean emigrating to another country where being transgender isn't being actively criminalized.  To claim as he does, without serious evidence, is sloppy at best.

Such as it is, the "evidence" for "social contagion" theory regarding gender identity is at best sparse, and most of it is so methodologically flawed as to qualify as junk science.  As an example, many "Gender Critical" arguments reference Littman's 2017 paper proposing "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria".  It was pure junk science.  Methodologically flawed, it proceeded to draw conclusions about transgender youth without even talking to a single transgender youth!  Learn to recognize junk science, people. 

Now, who the heck is Colin Wright?  The byline for him posted with his article reads:  "Mr. Wright is an evolutionary biologist and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute."

The Manhattan Institute? Oh - another conservative "think tank" - you'll pardon me while I ignore that - partisan think tanks are at best disinformation sources, and being affiliated with one doesn't help.  Being affiliated with SEGM is in my view another strike - SEGM is a key purveyor of junk science and misinformation about transgender people.

Doing a brief search on Google Scholar, I see no evidence that Mr. Wright has ever engaged in significant study of transgender people, either as a primary researcher, or as a contributor.  So, basically, we have another case of "I have a PhD, therefore, I can opine on any subject, regardless of whether I know anything about it".  This is sadly, an all too common state of affairs.  People with no actual background or study in the area manage to acquire an audience, and presto, they are "experts".  

There's a reason we don't go to a mechanic to diagnose medical issues, and we don't ask our physicians to repair our cars.  They are very different domains with different training and knowledge.  It would be nice if Mr. Wright had some actual expertise in the area of gender identity, but aside from writing opinion articles in newspapers, he has none.

Skeptic.com: The Contradiction at the Heart of Gender Debates

Over at Skeptic.com(*), we find an article titled "The Contradiction at the Heart of Gender Debates".   This is one of those cases of the author writing something which is so far out of their expertise that they completely mischaracterize things.  To be fair to the author, their bio states that they are a PhD Geologist - that's nothing to sneeze at.  But, it doesn't exactly make them overly qualified to opine on the issues around gender dysphoria and its treatment. 

*Skeptic.com wants you to be a paid subscriber to comment.  

Recognizing Bias and Deceptive Journalism

The Telegraph published this piece of drivel decrying the number of "biological males" who undergo gender reassignment surgery (GRS) in the UK.  It's trash journalism at its worst, but it is a good example of what to look for in detecting bias because it's loaded with all kinds of "weighted wording", dubious narratives, and sources that are not in the least bit authoritative on the subject. 

Structure and Wording

The structure of the article is itself an interesting example to consider.  It starts off with a review of some statistical information drawn from the UK's NHS.  From there it dives into arguments about de-transition, the claimed lack of evidence that GRS helps with Gender Dysphoria, and winds up with talking to the founder of a known anti-transgender organization.  

Note that in the entire article, there is absolutely no effort whatsoever to describe the scope of what transition means and the role of GRS in that much bigger picture. 

Just for fun, the article is full of scare wording designed to portray GRS in the worst possible light:  "penis cut off" is one such phrase (which is a crude and inaccurate description of the most common surgical technique used).  Add to that a focus on the surgery being "irreversible" (most surgeries are like that), and "causes infertility" (well - duh - although I do need to point out that by the time most transgender women have surgery, they've been on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) long enough that they aren't producing sperm anymore, and won't if they stop HRT either).  

Bogus Arguments

The article then leaps into a series of utterly bogus arguments.  The first is, of course the "what about regret / detransition" trope.  Yes, some people attempt transition, and discover that it's not for them.  That's been true for a very long time.  However, the portrayal of things is troubling - as it implies that the person was "railroaded" into having surgery, and I know that isn't how things work.  The NHS is particularly notorious for delays and extended waiting periods that render any accusation of "I didn't have a chance to back out" utter nonsense. 

They then claim that "there was never an opportunity to deal with other mental health issues".  Okay - but that raises the very clinical question - did those issues come up in discussion during assessment?  Clinicians aren't telepaths - if there is no indication of other mental issues, why would they assume that those issues exist? 

Then they go on to talk to someone who asserts that "there's no evidence that those surgeries do anything to alleviate gender dysphoria".  Of course that claim is false on its face.  The regret rate for people who pursue transition and do undergo GRS is low - much lower than that for most other kinds of surgery. 

Lastly, they talk to a founder of TransgenderTrend, a known anti-transgender lobby organization who makes a number of misleading statements.  

Missing

What is missing from this article?  Credible, unbiased sources.  It's riddled with anecdotes cast in a particular light, and utterly devoid of any attempt whatsoever to engage with sources with actual expertise in the matter. 

Did they portray transition journeys accurately? No.  Did they portray GRS accurately? No.  Did they even go so far as to cite a standard of care document?  No.  

This is an article that should be dismissed for being utterly inaccurate.

Letting Your Biases Get In Front Of You

Yesterday, I ran across this essay on X(itter), and it annoyed me because the author makes all kinds of errors of both fact and reason.  Since things on X have a nasty habit of disappearing at random, I will start with a bunch of screen captures of the essay itself.  Then I will delve into the problems with the arguments being made. 

Let’s Go Back To The DSM III !

Apparently there is a belief held among certain members of the trans community that we should go back in time … back to the days of the DSM III in particular - at least for what is now referred to as Gender Dysphoria.  (If you wish to read the DSM III section on Transsexualism, it’s Diagnostic Code 302.50 - in the chapter on Sexual Disorders, I think).

I have opinions.  

First, let me post the thread that I just read before I go off and explain just how incredibly wrong these people have it. 

There are a few things to bring out here.  First is a gross misunderstanding of the role / purpose of the DSM and its development.  Then we need to get into a discussion of just what treatment for transsexuals looked like back then, because wow - it wasn’t pretty.