The Weird Biology of the Transphobia’s Experts

A couple years ago, I took a upper division biology class as part of my gender studies degree. The class focused on the biology of women (and, by extension, biology of human sexual difference in general), and I chose to look at the biology of transphobia for my final project. It was wild: so much bad understanding cloaked in language that looks like it’s plausible to someone ignorant of any biology concepts introduced after middle school–but absolutely weird if you’ve studied almost any college-level biology of sexual difference.

A person injecting orange liquid into some sort of science-looking tray. Very stereotypically “real science” — Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com
(Because everyone knows biology has color if we’re going to show pictures of it, right?)

While I am not a biologist (ask me about computer networks, not how bees reproduce!), I did learn enough in this to question the credentials of transphobia’s experts. If an undergrad in gender studies can do this, I can only imagine how an actual biologist trained in human sex differentiation would respond!

Continue reading →

No, You Can’t Substitute Therapy for Hormones

I try to keep an eye on the world of transphobia, and, as an autistic person, I was particularly drawn to a Daily Wire (a right wing, transphobic website with dubious connections to truth created by Ben Shapiro) article on how autistic adolescents were helped with psychotherapy and no medical intervention, based on a recent study. Even writing this sentence, an astute reader will notice problems. But, I went beyond that and actually read the study.

Needless to say, I’ll be talking about transphobia and ableism. This is your content warning, if you’re not in a place where you want to deal with this stuff. You honestly don’t need to — there are enough of us who do, and your health is important.

Continue reading →

What Do You Mean It Isn’t About Sex?

A while ago, I mentioned to another trans person, in passing, that I did not medically transition for sexual reasons. As someone who was transitioning in large part to have sex in ways that matched her gender, she was kind of shocked: why would another woman go through all of this, if it wasn’t about sex?

Continue reading →

“Facts” Without Knowledge: How Many Trans Women Have HIV?

If you are active in trans advocacy, you’ve seen various estimates for HIV in trans women: 42% (CDC)! 14% (Also CDC)! 24–28% (Baral, et. al.)!

I suspect none of these are right, and I think all over-estimate HIV prevalence among trans women. I recognize that’s a minority position — advocacy groups who depend on public health funding like to tout high numbers, as do HIV outreach organizations trying to convince trans women of the risk they may have of contracting HIV, much like the oft-cited, but wrong, 35-year-old estimate for the average life expectancy of Black trans women).

Certainly, Black trans women are at too-high of risk for violence (anyone who attends a US-based Transgender Day of Remembrance event will be struck by the number of Black trans people who are murdered each year — far outnumbering the white faces), and it’s a real problem. But we can make this point without incorrect statistics that also serve to discourage Black trans women from transitioning and living as who they are.

Continue reading →

Researching Trans Bodies…Without Trans Bodies

Transgender people have never had a great relationship with medical care. Most trans people have stories about being mistreated while obtaining medical care — not just for trans-related healthcare, but also for general healthcare. It’s not unusual to be refused treatment by transphobic doctors, to be misgendered and dead-named by providers, to experience the biases the medical profession has against sex workers (whether or not we’re a sex worker), and to be subject to assumptions (without necessarily any evidence) about what gender we really are.

Sometimes the problem is intrinsic in the way medicine sees trans bodies and the research that enlightens the medical world.

Continue reading →

What Cancer Screenings do Trans People Need?

My doctor suggested a mammogram. That caused me to dig into the research.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

I admit I wasn’t looking forward to doing a mammogram, so I was probably really looking for excuses not to do it. I was concerned about how I would be treated. Would I be treated as a human in such a gendered space? Would my femininity be acknowledged, or would I be humiliated? So I was looking for my excuse.

That got me thinking: what screenings do we need? I already knew some basics (I’ve heard something about hormones and breast cancer), but my curiosity took me down this rabbit hole. I was curious not just about breast cancer, and not just trans women, but all trans people. Do trans men need mammograms? How do surgeries figure into it? Does cervical cancer risk go down for people on hormones? What about prostate cancer?

Continue reading →

What Does Transgender Research Really Say?

The UK news organization, Daily Mail, reported that seeing trans people on TV caused young people to seek out medical transition.

Except, no, the actual research didn’t.

First, let me link to what I’m talking about:

Science reporting is notoriously awful (ironically the linked paper also mentions the Daily Mail’s bad reporting of another science issue, the false link between the MMR and autism that destroyed public confidence in vaccines). There isn’t a simple reason for this, but it is worth looking at.

Continue reading →

The Sad Math of Transgender Hair Removal

I’ve always loved the verifiable, objective truth of math, and how math can help us understand our world. As a teenage girl, I particularly enjoyed statistics and game theory, at least at the level I could understand them (limited by my age!).

But I don’t like what that same math tells me now about transgender hair removal.

I wanted to know how long it would take for my facial hair to be removed. For a variety of reasons, I chose to do electrolysis and not laser, although I think most of this math also applies to laser removal.

Continue reading →