Yet more evidence that MtoF and FtoM are not mirror-images, and that while saying "Trans women have female brains" captures the essence, and is useful as an initial step towards understanding, the reality is more complex than that. For that matter, cis women don't have female brains as such, yet men and women have statistical differences in neuro anatomy that correlate well with statistical differences in behaviour - such as sense of smell.
There is strong evidence of sex differences in mental rotation tasks.
Transsexualism is an extreme gender identity disorder in which
individuals seek cross-gender treatment to change their sex. The aim of
our study was to investigate if male-to-female (MF) and female-to-male
(FM) transsexuals receiving cross-sex hormonal treatment have different
patterns of cortical activation during a three-dimensional (3D) mental
rotation task. An fMRI study was performed using a 3-T scan in a sample
of 18 MF and 19 FM under chronic cross-sex hormonal treatment.
Twenty-three males and 19 females served as controls. The general
pattern of cerebral activation seen while visualizing the rotated and
non-rotated figures was similar for all four groups showing strong
occipito-parieto-frontal brain activation. However, compared to control
males, the activation of MF transsexuals during the task was lower in
the superior parietal lobe. Compared to control females, MF transsexuals
showed higher activation in orbital and right dorsolateral prefrontal
regions and lower activation in the left prefrontal gyrus. FM
transsexuals did not differ from either the MF transsexual or control
groups. Regression analyses between cerebral activation and the number
of months of hormonal treatment showed a significant negative
correlation in parietal, occipital and temporal regions in the MF
transsexuals. No significant correlations with time were seen in the FM
transsexuals. In conclusion, although we did not find a specific pattern
of cerebral activation in the FM transsexuals, we have identified a
specific pattern of cerebral activation during a mental 3D rotation task
in MF transsexuals under cross-sex hormonal treatment that differed
from control males in the parietal region and from control females in
the orbital prefrontal region. The hypoactivation in MF transsexuals in
the parietal region could be due to the hormonal treatment or could
reflect a priori cerebral differences between MF transsexual and control
subjects.
I used to be a great believer in "trickle-down". Up until 1980, there was evidence that it always worked. This evidence couldn't be ignored.
However,
I did not foresee that there was a tipping-point in the concentration
of wealth where it made far more economic sense to buy the government than to invest in plant.
This
means that regulations which restrain monopolistic and anti-competitive
practices are repealed or not enforced, while ever more burdensome
regulations that strangle upstart competitors at birth are enacted. The
more of the latter there are, the more persuasive the argument to relax
regulations against the big boys. The more the big boys get away with
murder, the more persuasive the argument for regulations and yet more
regulations that only affect the small end of town in practice.
Trickle-down
cannot help but grow an economy in an absolute sense; but when the
distribution is too concentrated, most of the growth ends up in the
hands of a very few, while the median standard stays steady, growing
very slowly. In pathological cases, not just all the growth, but over
100% of it ends up in the hands of those who control the legislatures,
and the median standard actually falls, as in the USA today.
This
leads to a runaway effect, where 1% of the populace holds more national
wealth than the rest of the country put together. The US hasn't reached
that state yet, but it's 40% in 2013, and likely to hit over 50% soon,
with 60, 70, 80% to come. The trend is clear, the concentration
accelerating.
The
result ' "too big to fail, too big to jail" is already visible.
Disrupting the system by putting the brakes on would cause economic
chaos, hence the need for bailouts and ever increasing corporate
welfare. There are already commercial organisations essentially immune
from legal sanction. Examples of CEOs paying less tax in absolute terms
than their secretaries, and ridiculously less in relative terms,
abound.
For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking
power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs,
including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands
of murders just in the past 10 years – people so totally evil, jokes
former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys
on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations
linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped
countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in
between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided
countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.
"They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an
attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery
investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of
the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of
illegal and illicit business."
That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual
fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different
about this settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first
time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of
criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC
might undermine the world economy.
"Had the U.S. authorities decided to
press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at
a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost
certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the
institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system
would have been destabilized."
Remember what I said : The
result ' "too big to fail, too big to jail" is already visible.
Disrupting the system by putting the brakes on would cause economic
chaos, hence the need for bailouts and ever increasing corporate
welfare. There are already commercial organisations essentially immune
from legal sanction. When it comes to wealth distribution... from HuffPo
The United States has such an unequal distribution of wealth so that
it's in the league of corrupt underdeveloped countries, no longer in the
league of the developed nations, according to the latest edition of the
world's most thorough study of wealth-distribution.
The most authoritative source comparing wealth-concentration in the
various countries is the successor to the reports that used to be done
for the United Nations, now performed as the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. The latest (2013) edition of it
finds (p. 146) that in the U.S., 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the
richest 10% of the people.
The comparable figures for the other
developed countries are: Australia 50.3%, Canada 57.4%, Denmark 72.2%,
Finland 44.9%, France 51.8%, Germany 61.7%, Ireland 58.4%, Israel 68.9%,
Italy 49.8%, Japan 49.1%, Netherlands 54.6%, New Zealand 57.6%, Norway
65.9%, Singapore 61.1%, Spain 54.0%, Sweden 71.1%, Switzerland 71.5%,
and U.K. 53.3%.
Those are the top 20 developed nations, and the U.S. has
the most extreme wealth-concentration of them all. However, there are
some other countries that have wealth-concentrations that are about as
extreme as the U.S. For examples: Chile 72.5%, India 73.8%, Indonesia
75.0%, and South Africa 74.8%. The U.S. is in their league; not in the
league of developed economies. In the U.S., the bottom 90% of the
population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth, whereas in
most of the developed world, the bottom 90% own around 40%; so, the
degree of wealth-concentration in the U.S. is extraordinary (except for
underdeveloped countries).
The broadest mathematical measure of wealth-inequality is called "Gini," and the higher it is, the more extreme
the nation's wealth-inequality is. The Gini for the U.S. is 85.1. Other
extremely unequal countries are (pages 98-101 of this report) Chile
81.4, India 81.3, Indonesia 82.8, and South Africa 83.6. However, some
nations are even more-extreme than the U.S.: Kazakhstan 86.7, Russia
93.1, and Ukraine 90.0. But Honduras and Guatemala are such rabid
kleptocracies that their governments don't even provide sufficiently
reliable data for an estimate to be able to be made; and, so, some
countries might be even higher than nations like Russia.
At current rates, the Gini for the USA will be in the low 90's by 2020: the trend is accelerating, not tailing off.
NCD 140.3, Transsexual Surgery Docket No. A-13-47 NCD Ruling No. 2 December 2, 2013 BOARD RULING THAT NCD RECORD IS NOT COMPLETE AND ADEQUATE TO SUPPORT THE VALIDITY OF THE NCD
The aggrieved party also argues that the NCD when issued was invalid and unsupported by the NCD record. The aggrieved party argues that the 1981 NCHCT report acknowledged the effectiveness of transsexual surgery in stating that “eight of the nine studies” that “represent[ed] the major clinical reports thus far published” between 1969 and 1980 on the outcome of the surgery “reported that most transsexuals show improved adjustment on a variety of criteria after sex reassignment surgery.”7 NCD Record at 1718. The aggrieved party also argues that the ninth, unfavorable, study on which the NCHCT relied was “severely flawed and ideologically biased,” and criticizes two of the sources cited in the 1981 NCHT report as ideologically biased against transgender individuals, based on their published writings. AP Statement at 5. We need not and do not address these arguments since we need not decide here whether the NCD record was complete and adequate to support the NCD at the time the NCD record was developed. In any event, our determination that the NCD record fails to account for developments in the care and treatment of persons with GID during the more than 30 years that have passed since the NCHCT issued its report containing the findings that HCFA adopted in issuing the NCD is, without more, a sufficient basis for our determination that the NCD record is not complete and adequate to support the validity of NCD 140.3.
7 The NCHCT discounted these findings on the ground that the eight favorable studies did not meet “the ideal criteria of a valid scientific evaluation of a clinical procedure.” NCD Record at 18.
In summary:
Based on the current record in this proceeding initiated by an acceptable NCD complaint from an aggrieved party, the Departmental Appeals Board (Board) has determined that the NCD (National Coverage Determination) record in this case “is not complete and adequate to support the validity of the NCD” denying Medicare coverage for transsexual surgery “for sex reassignment of transsexuals.” 42 C.F.R. § 426.525(c)(3); NCD 140.3. The submissions of the aggrieved party and the amici curiae, to which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) elected not to respond to defend the NCD, demonstrate that the premises for the NCD, which was based on a 1981 review of medical and scientific sources published between 1966 and 1980, are not reasonable in light of subsequent developments. This proceeding will thus move on to discovery and taking of evidence as provided in 42 C.F.R. §§ 426.532 and 426.540. This ruling does not address the ultimate question of whether the NCD as written is valid under the reasonableness standard, but only whether the existing NCD record on which the NCD was based is complete and adequate to support its validity.
In other words... the recorded evidential basis for judging that treatment for Trans patients shouldn't be covered by Medicare is inadequate. There is considerable evidence that the conclusion was unjustified when it was made back in 1981, and the veritable mountain of evidence accumulated over the intervening third of a century has universally indicated that it was very wrong indeed. Certainly enough to overcome the burden of proof that the Aggrieved Party bears, and so great an amount that the CMS elected not to contest it.
The next step is to show that the ruling is not just unevidenced and unjustified, but that it is unreasonable and unjustifiable. The CMS may elect not to contest that proposition too, given the data.
This situation should have been reviewed decades ago, when there was possibly a shadow of doubt, rather than today when there's none. If this is treated in the same way as every other medical situation is treated, the result is a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, that's a big if.
While several private American companies are planning robotic
missions to the moon, China launched a man-sized robotic scout to the
moon on Monday. The country’s recent manned missions and efforts to
build a new space base suggest a future manned mission to the moon,
though why is an open question. Speculation has run from the desire to
build a military missile base -- a Death Star of sorts -- to national
pride to simple economics.
The answer may be far simpler: The moon is “easy” to get to.
“If you’re still trying to test out your space legs, it’s a great
place to do it,” said one NASA engineer familiar with the agency’s
plans.
One small step for Man at a time.... this isn't a one-time stunt, it's a slow and methodical long-term exploration and colonisation effort.
Dennis Wingo, a space entrepreneur and author of the book “MoonRush,”
thinks the Chinese mission is about supporting the world’s exploding
population.
“China is spending billions on resource acquisition in Africa, South
America and other places around the world,” he told FoxNews.com. “If you
look at the design of their system for this mission, it is very much a
mineral prospector as much as a science mission.”
Yet America will not return to the moon, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden makes clear.
“NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden said at an April panel in Washington.
China’s Chang’e 3 lander -- which should touch down on the moon in
mid-December -- will be the first controlled landing since the Soviet
Union’s Luna-24 mission in 1976.
China’s maiden moon landing probe successfully entered lunar orbit
on Friday, Dec. 6, following Sunday’s (Dec. 1) spectacular blastoff –
setting the stage for the historic touchdown attempt in mid December.
Engineer’s at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) commanded
the Chang’e 3 lunar probe to fire its braking thrusters for 361 seconds,
according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
The do or die orbital insertion maneuver proceeded precisely as planned at the conclusion of a four and a half day voyage to Earth’s nearest neighbor.
...
Chang’e 3 is due to make a powered descent to the Moon’s surface on
Dec. 14, firing the landing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for
a soft landing in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or
Sinus Iridum region.
...
Chang’e 3 marks the beginning of the second phase of China’s lunar robotic exploration program.
The lander follows a pair of highly successful lunar orbiters named Chang’e 1 and 2 which launched in 2007 and 2010.
The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps by 2020.
Previous posts on this blog have followed China's careful, methodical, and above all, successful space colonisation effort for many years. Starting in July 2003.
Meanwhile, space officials said China hoped to launch a space probe
capable of orbiting the moon by 2005 or 2006, which would be the
nation's first lunar mission and would eventually lead to an eventual
landing on the moon by an unmanned Chinese lunar space craft.
Yes, they've been methodical. This is not some flash-in-the-pan Space Spectacular for no more worthy a goal than National prestige. It's not a Space Race
as such - because a Race implies that they're competing against some
other entity. No, after consulting my Crystal Ball, taking the auguries,
and examining the entrails of a goat, I think they're in it for the
long term. I'm not talking about Scientific missions to Mars, or even
Exploratory missions to the Moon. I'm talking about setting up a permanent presence.
Not next year. Not next decade, nor the one after that. But certainly
within the next 50 years. I think that they have a plan. A flexible one,
that will adapt to changing circumstances and unforeseeable problems,
but a plan nonetheless.
There was no funding for lunar
projects in the ten-year space plan approved in 2001. By July 2001 a
Chinese aerospace magazine indicated that Chinese scientists had drafted
a much more modest four-phase long term plan.
Phase 1, by 2005: Lunar flyby or orbiting satellite missions, perhaps using the DFH-3 bus.
Phase 2, by 2010: unmanned soft-landing missions.
Phase 3, by 2020: Robotic exploration using surface rovers.
Phase 4, by 2030: Lunar sample return missions.
Only after 2030 would manned flights and construction of a lunar base begin.
The Shenzhou manned spacecraft provides the Chinese with the
required hardware to pursue a lunar program whenever they make the
decision to go.
It would surprise me if the schedule didn't
slip. But no matter, there's no hurry.
Looks like phase 2 and 3 have been collapsed into one, a bit later than 2010, but earlier than 2020.
This does not give me warm fuzzies about the corporate culture there now. In times not so long ago, something more like this was used by similar organisations. I know, I have the coffee mugs.
To quote Hoffnung, "I was born, through no fault of my own, at a very early age.". Or in my case, in 1958 in Earley, a small suburb of Reading, Berkshire, England. Or at least it was a suburb. Now its been swallowed up in Reading proper. Last time I was there (1986), the fields I used to watch the Foxhunters go through are now a high-density housing development ("Lower Earley", and you can't get much lower, I'm telling you...), and the stream I used to fish in is a concrete storm water drain.. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, and the song "Tar and Cement" comes to mind.
When I was 10 and at boarding school (a place called Bigshotte, which appears to have vanished with the snows of yesteryear), I got an unscheduled visit from my parents. Who informed me that in 2 weeks time we were emigrating to Australia. You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy, and it wasn't until 1988 that I finally decided to take out Australian Citizenship. I still retain dual nationality, though the England I came from no longer exists, but has been transformed into a diverse multi-ethnic European state. Overall, a great improvement, but not a place I can identify with very much.
Good Things, Bad Things
After attending Sydney Grammar School for 6 years, I entered Sydney University in 1976. My father was unemployed, my mother hospitalised. Not a good time. Things picked up, but then I had a number of life-threatening medical problems. Picked up a little brain damage from Encephalo-Meningitis (yes, I know, it shows...). Spent half my lectures zonked out from Painkillers. Operations etc. Nuff Said. For much of the time, I resided in International House (and this is a link well worth following up, the whole concept is a great idea).
Then I met Carmel for the second time, in 1980. Love at first sight. (The first time was when I was at Sydney Grammar, which is next to the Australian Museum. The one girl that I ever noticed as a schoolboy was a schoolgirl who I saw exactly once in the geological section. We both only realised we'd met there only a few years ago, as she remembered someone who looked exactly like me at the same time and place.)
Anyway, within 2 months of first meeting, we were engaged. Hey, she had her own copy of Panzerblitz! And a Model Railway! I figure I've blown about 10,000 years of Good Karma by meeting her, but it's been worth it and more.
A bit about my Brilliant Career*
* Career - To go downhill fast, without control
I graduated from Sydney University in 1981, with a BSc in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics. Since then, I've been CompSci-ing in various industries and businesses, but for the most part, doing what is euphemistically known as "defence work.". Some of the software I wrote early in my professional life performed according to specification in the Gulf War, on HMAS Brisbane.
I can remember joking that it would work with any Air Defence Doctrine, except possibly Saudi Arabia's, but what were the odds of that happening?
I've worked on software for a number of vessels in various Allied Navies. From analysis work on the 76mm gun system on the German Navy's new F-124, being Chief Designer for an Artificial Intelligence based Anti-Missile system for the Turkish Navy, to programming and design work on "very expensive machines that go PING" for submarines of the Israeli Defence Force, Hellenic Navy, Armada de Chile, Royal Swedish Navy, Italian Navy, and various others.
I've spent a ridiculous amount of my life peering into PPIs and Waterfall, DEMON and FRAZ displays, but also sunned myself on the Fantail of a Destroyer in the middle of the Pacific, relaxed watching a magnificent sunset in the Gulf of Thailand, and shared my personal space with half a tonne of high explosive sleeping on top of a Mk 48 Mod 3 torpedo.
In the course of my work, I've personally chiselled a hole through the Berlin Wall, inhaled Pad Thai (Thai Noodles) on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Bangkok, domiciled on the fabulously expensive Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, gotten nervous when the Air Raid sirens wailed in Seoul, Korea, and consumed with gusto Alaskan King Crab in Akron, Ohio.
It's been fun so far. (note from 2013: Now, talk about tempting Fate....this is what I wrote at the end.) Can't wait to see what happens next.
I put them last on the ballot, after the white supremacists and anti-science nutters.
"This morning, the Christian Democrats blocked a notice of motion acknowledging today as the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“It is very disappointing that the (NSW)Parliament will not pass a motion commemorating victims of homicide just because they are transgender."
The Transgender Day of Remembrance is not a day of protest. There is no political activity, nor fundraising.
It is, quite simply, a day where we read out the names of those slain for being Trans or Intersex, or killed for even appearing to be Trans or Intersex. Those whose names we know. 238 this year, with thousands whose names we don't know.
We remember and memorialise their names, because no-one else does, and no-one deserves to die un-noted and unmourned. We don't even protest their deaths, just record them.
This is unacceptable to the "Christian" Democrats. It's not enough for them for us to be killed, even the fact of our deaths must be erased.
Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico. The impact devastated Earth, generating huge tsunamis, massive wildfires and rapidly heating the atmosphere. It triggered earthquakes and volcanic activity and then cooled the world as smoke and dust blanketed the planet.
This impact changed the future of the Earth, triggering the sequence of events that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, the rise of mammals and ultimately the domination of humans.
Now Christopher House and pals at Penn State Astrobiology Research Center in University Park, say this event may have had an equally profound influence on other parts of the Solar System.
These guys have calculated the number of rocks ejected into space in this collision that would have been capable of carrying life and protecting it in space. They say that significant numbers of these rocks would have made the journey to Mars and Venus but also to Jupiter and Saturn. In particular, they say these rocks would probably have travelled to moons such as Europa, Callisto and Titan, where astrobiologists believe that conditions are ripe for life.
Ratings from the public rely on good faith. Professional liars like this guy break the model, making it useless for everyone. You also have to ask - what limits would such people observe? If they can be dishonest here, why not criminal elsewhere?
I've panned a few books - but never without reading them.
I can remember sitting on my Grandfather's knee, fascinated by the different anatomy he had on his right arm. The missing fingers, the muscles that weren't there. Souvenirs of Passchendaele.
The story he told about taking shots from a very long distance to knock out the Berlin-Istanbul telegraph line, miles behind the lines at Gallipoli. Every morning, at first light, a group of snipers would be tasked with infiltrating behind the Turkish lines, to take out the milk-bottle sized insulators from about a mile - as close as they could get. It took many shots, but they'd do it. And that night, the Turks would replace them again.
Then there was the Somme, after the evacuation... he didn't talk much about that.
And the time in 1917, when as a sniper out in no-man's land, a group of red-painted German fighters used him for target practice. I had an Airfix model of an Albatros D.V, and he recognised that as the general type. I've looked it up, and yes, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen's "Flying Circus" had rotated into that area at that time. He was only 19.
My father told me other stories, from the war after the War to end all wars. Recovering survivors from the 1-ton "land mines" the Luftwaffe dropped on Liverpool, which would level whole rows of houses. How later on, when he was working on a "Black" Project in SE England, you were safe if you heard the buzz of the "Doodlebug" V-1 cruise missiles. But if one passed overhead, started going away, and then cut out, you took cover. Because they'd dive back onto the place they'd just passed over. He was only 19 too.
I have no such stories to tell my son, and I am so, so grateful to all those who fought, and died, to make sure I don't.
OK, I caught a spent LMG bullet in my leg once, and have been under 122mm rocket fire, and there's some other stuff I can't talk about, but the Cold War was not in the same league, for me.
At 19, I wasn't watching the skies for Zeppelins, or Gothas, or Heinkels, or Junkers. Or Illyushins or Tupolevs, trying to drop bombs on those I love.
That lack of fear was their legacy to us, and to our children. Lest We Forget.
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the presence of psychiatric diseases/symptoms in transsexual patients and to compare psychiatric distress related to the hormonal intervention in a one year follow-up assessment. We investigated 118 patients before starting the hormonal therapy and after about 12 months. We used the SCID-I to determine major mental disorders and functional impairment. We used the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) for evaluating self-reported anxiety and depression. We used the Symptom Checklist 90-R (SCL-90-R) for assessing self-reported global psychological symptoms. Seventeen patients (14%) had a DSM-IV-TR axis I psychiatric comorbidity. At enrollment the mean SAS score was above the normal range. The mean SDS and SCL-90-R scores were on the normal range except for SCL-90-R anxiety subscale. When treated, patients reported lower SAS, SDS and SCL-90-R scores, with statistically significant differences. Psychiatric distress and functional impairment were present in a significantly higher percentage of patients before starting the hormonal treatment than after 12 months (50% vs. 17% for anxiety; 42% vs. 23% for depression; 24% vs. 11% for psychological symptoms; 23% vs. 10% for functional impairment). The results revealed that the majority of transsexual patients have no psychiatric comorbidity, suggesting that transsexualism is not necessarily associated with severe comorbid psychiatric findings. The condition, however, seemed to be associated with subthreshold anxiety/depression, psychological symptoms and functional impairment. Moreover, treated patients reported less psychiatric distress. Therefore, hormonal treatment seemed to have a positive effect on transsexual patients’ mental health.
Then there's the one the Religious Right lives on:
Do you ever feel like you’ve just landed on a different planet? I do when I learn about situations like the following. Several girls at a school in Colorado are finding out just exactly what is involved in transgender rights. An older boy has been entering the girls’ restroom at Florence High School in Florence, Colorado, claiming he’s a female and then he’s apparently been harassing some of the actual, biological girls. But when the girls’ families contacted the school, did this legitimate complaint receive respectful attention from officials? Not exactly. The school is defending this aggressive boy and his rights and the privacy rights of the girls are being waved away as not that important.
This statement was made over a week after the issue was revealed as a hoax - that the "harassment" was just this girl going to school like other girls.
On their planet, the picture above is of an "aggressive older boy harassing some actual biological girls".
The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly
different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author
advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis,
which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all,
psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses
support the gender similarities hypothesis. Gender differences can vary
substantially in magnitude at different ages and depend on the context
in which measurement occurs. Overinflated claims of gender differences
carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and
relationships.
It's a meta-meta analysis - a summary of summaries of experiments - and later work has shown rather more differences than the early metastudies would imply. About the only glaringly obvious ones visible here are those determined not by gender as such, but purely by testosterone levels.
Nonetheless, it supports two contentions that later work has shown to be well evidenced. First, that genuine innate (albeit statistical) differences exist. Second, that men and women are far more similar than different.
Historically, it's been the differences that have been overblown due to ideological belief, with no evidentiary basis. These days, it's the differences that have been minimised or even denied, again due to ideological belief, and against the evidence. Throughout, the statistical nature of the differences, that one can make no claims at all about individuals in any one area, have been completely ignored. Men and women differ from each other. Men differ from other men too, and women from other women. Both men and women as individuals can be more or less stereotypically masculine or feminine in different areas, gender is not a binary but a complex multivariant.
Conclusion
The amount of research that has been completed on the differences
between transsexual and cissexual brains is small, but suggestive. Some
areas of the brain appear to be sexually dimorphic irrespective of
genetics or hormones (e.g., BSTc), whereas others appear to be more
dependent upon sex hormones (e.g., brain volume). From the results of
these studies, one may infer that pre-transition transsexual women’s
brains are feminine in the BSTc and INAH3, partially feminine in their
white matter tracts, and masculine in total brain and hypothalamic
volume. Data in transsexual men is rarer because these studies are
conducted in the western world, where transsexual women outnumber
transsexual men (Gooren, 2006). However, studies of transsexual men
appear to imply that the reverse is true for them.
These studies have numerous limitations. First, they have yet to be
replicated. Replication is needed to ensure reliability and
generalizability of these results. Second, these studies (especially
those involving deceased brains) have small numbers of subjects,
especially for the transsexual subjects. Studies involving brains from
the Netherlands Brain Bank typically had fewer than 10 transsexual
brains to study, and the latter two (Kruijver et al, Chung et al) only
had a single transsexual male brain. Although fewer numbers of subjects
are generally more acceptable in biological research than in
psychological research, it is still a potential source of error.
Potentially the most glaring limitation in these studies is their
conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity. Berglund et al
(2008), for example, only compared heterosexual cissexual women and men
with gynephilic/homosexual transsexual women. While they could not
include androphilic/heterosexual transsexual women in their study
because of rarity, they failed to include homosexual cissexual men and
women as comparison groups. This introduces a potentially confounding
variable.
Despite these limitations, evidence so far is suggestive of a
biological influence in transsexuality. More research is needed to
confirm and expand these preliminary findings.
Some of these criticisms have been met - at least partially - since 2011. Others remain. As a summary of the state-of-the-art back then, I could only improve on it marginally.
The following organisations have endorsed the report:
British Association of Urological Surgeons
British Psychological Society
Gender Identity Research and Education Society
Gender Trust
Press for Change
Royal College of General Practitioners
Royal College of Nursing
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health*
Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
Royal College of Surgeons
UK Council for Psychotherapy
Factors that help to support successful outcomes are a consistent gender identity and psychological stability before and after surgery, adequate psychological preparation and transition at an early age (De Cuypere et al, 2006), including properly informed consent about benefits, risks and outcomes. A survey in the UK showed a high level of satisfaction (98%) following genital surgery (Schonfield, 2008). Two studies on outcomes in women and men showed that they function well on a physical, emotional, psychological and social level (Weyers et al, 2009; Wierckx et al, 2011). Overall, there are a number of studies that report extremely high transgender patient satisfaction with genital reconstructive surgery.
The next one... is bad. The report itself is very good, but looking at the events that caused it to be written... it's hard not to weep uncontrollably.
Mr Ansara explained that concern or trauma resulting from early medical experiences can have broader consequences:
What you see is that a lot of intersex people do not seek medical care even when emergency treatment is needed, because they are so afraid of further medical abuse. For myself, I had some medical treatments done to me nonconsensually that I, frankly, never talk about because it just is not safe, and there are many people who will avoid medical treatment on that basis.
Reading the raw testimony is heartbreaking. OK, I had nonconsensual surgery at age 20 - "just taking out the gallbladder" - leaving me with a livid scar from bikini line to breastbone, one that's caused shocked looks from medics since then. I don't even know what was taken out, the pathology reports on the "anomalous tissue" were... mislaid. As was the standard practice of the time. Meh. I would have consented if asked, based on what we knew then.
I did not suffer medical abuse by any reasonable definition of the term. Many, many others have. And do. This report might just put a stop to that, if the recommendations are implemented.
Let's take a moment to discern the Spirits.... Now the public schoolchildren are being told by a demonic spirit "You must open up your daughters' privacy to our perversion". And this demonic spirit inside of this boy is now violating, and for all intents and purposes, he's raping - at least visually - these teenage girls.
"Spectral evidence" is the only evidence they have, of course. Only they can see the true danger.
Everyone else in the town sees a girl using a restroom and engaging
in girltalk, as she's done for the past two years.. A girl who happens
to be Trans.
Oh yes - send money. The PJI needs it to alert the rest of the nation
to this imminent threat by demonic forces that only they can discern.
It's not only Moms in Colorado who are very, very angry. There's at least one in Canberra, Australia who is now best described as "incandescent" now we're sure of the facts.
I'll do everything I can to hasten that day. Today sounds good. And I'll be after far more of their anatomy than that.
"Reactionary" sites are doubling down. I'm not saying they're encouraging a lynching.. no, belay that, I am saying that. Too much evidence to say otherwise.
A comment at WND - longer than most, but otherwise typical to mild
Science (truth) is being
removed from America to create dumb kids/slaves of sexual desires by
sexualizing children through Marxist "Sex Ed"----through forcing Vice on
our children--forcing them to think sodomizing other is "Good" and a
"Right" when it is a vile, dysfunctional Vice. Totally insane and
removes Reason and Natural Laws/Christian Ethics (foundation of our
Constitutional Rights).
Homosexuality and sexual confusion is caused by Childhood
Trauma---and they are trying to normalize child abuse and corrupt and
warp Reason and Truth of ALL normal students. They are destroying
(erasing) Christian Ethics replacing them with Satanic/pagan religions
where sodomy is used in Rites of Worship of Ba'al. All muslim nations
prefer boys for sex and segregate/hate women. The schools hate these
normal "girls". We are trying to normalize muslim ethics because we
have them running the White House and our military and now Boy
Scouts---to normalize pagan/sodomy and force Pride in anal sex and
perversions (hate for women).
Sexualizing children corrupts normal sexual identity formation which
requires innocence in Latency. it is like sexual rape of a child---only
Sex Ed is rape of their minds/worldview which destroys all normal
perceptions of the body with evil concepts where the body is used in
dysfunctional, Vile ways. Dehumanization.
They are forcing "Sex Ed" (developed by Cultural Marxists (Lukacs))
which normalizes perversions and sexual acts in children. It corrupts
children like in the vulgar Weimar Republic.
The insane boy is being used to force "Vice is Good" on others to
destroy "normal" and "moral in our children. He is a traumatized
kid--probably sexually molested like most homosexuals and Chastity
Bono--raped as a girl. Trying to make mental illness normal is
psychosexual politics of the Leftist to destroy autonomy and civil
society---to collapse culture. Igniting sexual passions in children is
what Sex Ed is designed to do before they have the ability to use Reason
to control base instincts---which takes maturity.
Sex Ed is to flip "Good and Evil"--make muslim ethics of sodomy
normal---like all our media/books/schools are designed to do---reduce
man to rutting animals so that Billy Ayers/Al Gores and zero Marxists
can make the masses into slaves and kill off all the useless eaters
through their death panels in obamacare as they party and have their
orgies like Sugar Keynes had at Harvard.
More succinct comments, including the usual threats of violence. Mostly it's just talk, Mostly. :
Some news outlets are reporting it straight,, even if they don't always get the details right. Most aren't touching the story.
More than 950 students go to Florence High School. Like any high school, there’s no shortage of gossip.
“The whole school is talking about it,” said Florence High School senior Kayli Conway.
It being a male student who claims he’s transgender and wants to use the girls’ restroom.
“They’re kind of making it a bigger deal than it should be,” said Conway.
Conway says the gossip began at the start of the school year.
“I know that they’re trying to tell her that she can’t use the
females restroom and I think that’s kind of wrong because she’s trying
to be a girl,” she said
...
This isn’t the first time a southern Colorado school has been at odds
with a transgender student’s request to use a girl’s restroom. In a
case that gained national attention, Eagleside Elementary School in
Fountain refused to let 6-year-old Coy Mathis use the girl’s restroom.
Mathis’ parents took the issue to the Colorado Civil Rights Division,
which ruled that any effort by Eagleside staff to bar Mathis’ access to
restrooms had to be classified as discrimination.
Actually, she hasn't been denied access. That's the point, and the PJI doesn't like that. Hence the PJI made stuff up - though they've since retracted. Sorta.
“First of all, it’s our position that a teenage boy’s presence into the
bathroom for teenage girls is inherently harassing,” said Matthew
McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute, who is
representing the families of the girls involved. “It’s inherently
violative of their privacy rights. It’s also intimidating when you have a
boy like this, who is not a freshman, going in there with younger
freshman girls. They feel violated. They feel intimidated, and that’s
been expressed to us.”
The girls further allege the boy has made sexually harassing comments in that setting.
“Details continue to emerge on this in terms of what what kind of
comments may have been made. We’ve heard some reports that he’s
commented on what girls are wearing or their figure while in the
bathroom. If you can imagine that scenario from the reference and
framework of a teenage girl, I think that’s pretty harassing,” said McReynolds, who reiterated that a boy simply being in the girls’ restroom is ample harassment in itself
So now they're alleging that a Trans girl used the girls' restroom. I think that's probably true.
And while there, behaved like any other girl. Maybe even remarked on hairstyle, asked for tips on makeup, complimented others on accessorising. As has been known to happen even with "girls" in their 50's.
I'll repeat this guy's words again:
"This is exactly the
kind of horror story we have been warning would accompany the push for
radical transgender rights in schools, and it is the type of situation
that LGBT activits (sic) have been insisting would not happen.”
Um.
OK, an eccentric (to put it mildly) political group doing a "beat up", just like they did when they said that teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun was "creating a hostile environment for those of faith".
But then it gets nasty.
From Transadvocate (a site I sometimes contribute to - I'm not an "objective third party" here)
Both PJI and Brennan seem content to pretend that this is about
something other than the life of a transgender child. ADULTS have made
reprehensible claims about this kid – directly inciting violent intent –
without evidence to back it up. After their smear campaign lead to public calls to hunt, beat and kill the trans youth, Brennan released the kid’s name.
Brennan became somewhat infamous after she outed a trans teen to his parents and school, attempted to intervene in the medical care of a transgender person she didn’t like and attempted to have the United Nations strip protections from the global trans community.
Radical Feminist Lesbian Lawyer Cathy Brennan is now acting as a member of the "Pacific Justice Institute's Ladies' Auxiliary", hosting fund-raising letters for them, and now even conveying this Trans girl's personal details to those who want to kill her.
And of course making personal attacks - including giving false information to their employers - on those she opposes. Like Cristan. Like me. Like pretty much every person, Trans, Intersex, Ally of fellow Feminist she finds herself in disagreement with. This goes well beyond Internet trolling, well beyond even the dirtiest politics. It goes into dangerous sociopathy and physical violence.
This time, and not for the first time, her victim-du-jour is a teenage girl.
Here's the story - a hoax, a malicious libel, deliberately designed to persecute one particular child.
A male student at Florence High School who claims to be a transgender has been harrassing girls in the bathroom......
No interviews. No sources, other than the Pacific Justice Institute. The same group that has lodged formal objections to teaching in science class that the Earth orbits the Sun as that contradicts Scripture, thereby "creating a hostile environment for those of faith".
create
a hostile learning environment for those of faith. - See more at:
http://www.pacificjustice.org/1/post/2013/09/atheistic-elementary-school-instruction-challenged.html#sthash.Wz1xhNEL.dpuf
"Drumming
Up Business" - when ambulance-chasing lawyers can't find crash victims,
what are they to do? Maybe a little insurance fraud, "manufacturing"
fake accidents.
Curtsey and thanks to Christan Williams - who did the fact checking that neither the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Daily Mail, nor Fox News bothered with.
You'll search in vain for specifics though. Who supposedly is making the complaint. What the "harassment" consisted of. It's just a claim that a trans child attending school constitutes an invasion of privacy, and a violation of freedom of speech. Like teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun.
The PJL's letterhead states the chairman of their advisory board is one Edwin Meese Esq. - a name readers might be familiar with.
I am a girl at the school and a friend of the girl in question. I have to say that she is awesome!
There are a few problems that the principal isn't mentioning. I think they always like to cover things up?
She has been both physically and verbally threatened by some of the
boys. They can be pretty scary. And the girls can say some hateful
things. But it's much less than half.
More than anything she just wishes everyone would quit talking about her.
UPDATE:
The Daily Mail story has now been consigned to the bit bucket. Story, what story?
CharismaNews on the other hand is busy scrubbing all links to evidence that the story is bogus, in response to this request:
Moderator,
remove these links to this trash propaganda, there's no sense in having
a Christian magazine giving free advertising to junk science and
advocacy for perversion. These people have no sense of shame at all.
2:13 p.m., Tuesday Oct. 15
Partial transcript of testimony by the school superintendent:
"VENDETTI: "Nothing has actually been verified with us. This is one
parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the
media because they weren't getting the responses that they hoped they
would get from the district, from parents of students at the high
school, or from the board and myself. So I think it's just an attempt to
elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be
drawn to that in the hope of having a different outcome. But to our
knowledge and based on our investigation, none of those things have
actually happened. We do have a transgender student at the high school
and she has been using the women's restroom. There has not been a
situation."
UPDATE - a comment by the Examiner article's author, posted on the CBN website:
Having the proper
"Christian" attitude needs to be revisited by CBN and all of those
claiming to be a child of God. Even "Saul" thought he was doing God's
work when he persecuted Christians, had them arrested, thrown into
prison, and even approved of the killing of
Christians.
Does CBN want to have the same reputation
as Westboro Baptist Church? Unfortunately too much Pharisee has been the
make-up of many Christians concerning subjects as homosexuality and
transgenders. This story picked up by CBN was a disservice to the cause
of Christ, a slam against transgenders in general, and a grossly
exaggerated innuendo that impacted a transgender teen at Florence High
School in Colorado.
I am the Christian perspectives
writer for San Jose that picked up the story from CBN whom I was over
confident that the story was true, because after all, it was CBN. I set
aside fact checking because I put too much emphasis that CBN would have
credibility. I was dead wrong, and so was CBN. I posted a retraction
but the damage was already done as the story has taken on a life of its
own and according to one commentator that took me to task in the
comments section, international.
CBN needs to print a
retraction of its transgender story. It is not worth it to continue
legitimacy to a lie that could do harm to an innocent teen whose only
guilt is being born. Both CBN and myself were deceived and the next
task is to confess, ask for forgiveness, and seek redemption as 1 John
1:9 declares. God hates it when false testimony is given and according
to Proverbs 6:16-18 we better clean up our acts.
Florence-Penrose School District Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti said
the district was advised by lawyers not to comment about the specifics
of the case because it is under investigation by law enforcement.
However, she did release a comment Tuesday to the Daily Record.
"We are committed to providing a fair and equal education to all students at Florence High School," she said.
In view of one student's claim that the trans student has been a victim of cyberstalking -
"As a Christian girl who attends FHS, I'd just
like to say that I've never been harassed by this individual not have I
ever seen him harass anyone else. He's actually shy and a nice person.
Do I think he should be able to use the
girls bathroom? I'm torn. He either uses our bathroom and makes MAYBE
30% of the girls uncomfortable, or he uses the boy's restroom and gets
beat up. I don't feel uncomfortable by him. Also, there are a lot of
holes in this story. No parents initially complained. There was a mass
Facebook message that included 150+ students and parents, outing him
publicly. It was such a big deal, all electronic devises were
confiscated if seen that day. THEN it was a problem and parents
complained. This boy wasn't treated fairly. As a Christian, I had to put
the truth out there. He didn't hurt or harass anyone."
And another student's claim of the trans girl being a victim of physical violence -
I am a girl at the school and a friend of the girl in question. I have to say that she is awesome!
There are a few problems that the principal isn't mentioning. I think they always like to cover things up? She has been both physically and verbally threatened by some of the
boys. They can be pretty scary. And the girls can say some hateful
things. But it's much less than half.
More than anything she just wishes everyone would quit talking about her.
Today, PJI issued a statement to the TransAdvocate via their apparent mouthpiece, a TERF
activist. While the statement still offered no evidence to support the
claim that this trans kid is a predator, they finally revealed the
nature of the supposed “harassment” endured by the cisgender school
kids.
In a statement delivered to the TransAdvocate by attorney Cathy Brennan, the PJI claims that a trans person in the restroom is “inherently intimidating and harassing.” Brennan, vocal critic of trans equality measures, became somewhat infamous after she outed a trans teen to his parents and school, and recently attempted to intervene in the medical care of a transgender person.
After days of sidestepping any explicit statements about the exact
nature of the supposed “harassment,” PJI now asserts that the mere presence of a trans person constitutes harassment and intimidation to cisgender people.
UPDATE:
The PJI has now admitted in a press release that the only "harassment" was the Trans girl using the girls restroom.
They have said in the past that they are trying to corroborate
unspecified rumours of actual harassment. The latest press release
suggests they've now dropped that and are hurriedly backing down from
it. An independent investigation by the police into the truth of those
allegations is now underway, something they apparently didn't want.
Contrast this with their original claim
that not only did she use the restroom, but engaged in unspecified
sexual harassment rather than just using it:
"This is exactly the
kind of horror story we have been warning would accompany the push for
radical transgender rights in schools, and it is the type of situation
that LGBT activits (sic) have been insisting would not happen.”
UPDATE : KOAA 5 Colorado Springs has a report dated 2 weeks ago (Oct 3):
UPDATE
After due consideration, playing my own "Devil's Advocate" here:
There's still much we don't know.
Is the student Transsexual (as I've assumed) or Transgender/Gender Fluid? Or even Intersex?
What age are they? They've been going to the school for some years, so over 12, but that's about all we do know.
Have they been transitioning under the standards of care (again, an assumption on my part that could be wrong)?
The police are involved now - investigating the allegations about what this student has done, or investigating the threats alleged to have been made against them as well? What about the alleged FB message blast?
We have comments on websites, allegedly from other students. But are they genuine?
Yes, we've shown the PJL's letters "gilded the lilly" at the very least, or were a pack of lies at most - but I know I should be careful not to substitute my own assumptions as fact too. Otherwise how do I differ from the PJL?
Important points:
1. Differences are both biological and social (I'd put it as 20% biological, 80% socially constructed myself - but you can't ignore that 20%. It's real.)
2. Differences are statistical. It makes just as little sense to say "we can't employ a woman to do X because women aren't good at it" as to refuse to employ a woman who's 6' 4" tall because "women are too short". Even though most women are shorter than most men.
3. Saying all this is unpopular. Those who are biological essentialists deny the overwhelming effect of socialisation; those who are fanatic feminists deny the small but real statistical biological differences. Both dogmatic and extreme positions are ideological, not fact-based, and both groups will metaphorically or in the case of some of the more extreme religious groups, literally burn you at the stake for saying so. Your words will be twisted and position misrepresented by both parties.
4. Historically, it's the biological essentialist position that has been used to oppress women worldwide, and still is in many places today. So it's the greater evil. But there's a seed of truth in there that shouldn't be ignored, just because it's been grossly exaggerated, small differences magnified, and applied universally rather than statistically.
'
5. However.. it's the fanatic feminist position that has in recent times - the past 40 years - been used as an excuse to persecute and denigrate Trans and Intersex women, and to a lesser extent men. That's not happening in the uncivilised and illiterate NW Frontier, but on the pages of the Observer and Grauniad. People have died as the result. It should cease.
...
Please don't try to force individuals into stereotyped boxes, just because they happen to belong to a certain group with genuine but statistical biologically-based personality traits. Some will fit, others not, and you should neither critique them for "conforming to an oppressive gender binary" on one hand, nor "going against God's Natural Law" on the other.
Objective To assess the prognosis of individuals with gender identity disorder (GID) receiving hormonal therapy as a part of sex reassignment in terms of quality of life and other self-reported psychosocial outcomes.
Methods We searched electronic databases, bibliography of included studies and expert files. All study designs were included with no language restrictions. Reviewers working independently and in pairs selected studies using predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted outcome and quality data. We used a random-effects meta-analysis to pool proportions and estimate the 95% confidence intervals (CIs). We estimated the proportion of between-study heterogeneity not attributable to chance using the I2 statistic.
Results We identified 28 eligible studies. These studies enrolled 1833 participants with GID (1093 male-to-female, 801 female-to-male) who underwent sex reassignment that included hormonal therapies. All the studies were observational and most lacked controls. Pooling across studies shows that after sex reassignment, 80% of individuals with GID reported significant improvement in gender dysphoria (95% CI = 68–89%; 8 studies; I2 = 82%); 78% reported significant improvement in psychological symptoms (95% CI = 56–94%; 7 studies; I2 = 86%); 80% reported significant improvement in quality of life (95% CI = 72–88%; 16 studies; I2 = 78%); and 72% reported significant improvement in sexual function (95% CI = 60–81%; 15 studies; I2 = 78%).
Conclusions Very low quality evidence suggests that sex reassignment that includes hormonal interventions in individuals with GID likely improves gender dysphoria, psychological functioning and comorbidities, sexual function and overall quality of life.
Individuals with gender identity disorder (GID), who are commonly referred to as transsexuals (TXs), are afflicted by negative psychosocial stressors. Central to the psychological complex of TXs is the conviction of belonging to the opposite sex. Neuroanatomical and functional brain imaging studies have demonstrated that the GID is associated with brain alterations. In this study, we found that TXs identify, when viewing male-female couples in erotic or non-erotic (“neutral”) interactions, with the couple member of the desired gender in both situations. By means of functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that the TXs, as opposed to controls (CONs), displayed an increased functional connectivity between the ventral tegmental area, which is associated with dimorphic genital representation, and anterior cingulate cortex subregions, which play a key role in social exclusion, conflict monitoring and punishment adjustment. The neural connectivity pattern suggests a brain signature of the psychosocial distress for the gender-sex incongruity of TXs.
Actually, I am a Rocket Scientist.
Also hormonally odd (my blood has 46xy chromosomes anyway) and for most of my life, I looked male, and lived as one, trying to be the best Man a Gal could be. Anyway, in May 2005 that started changing naturally for reasons still unclear, and I'm now Zoe, not Alan : happier and more relaxed not to have to pretend any more.
UPDATE - reason now identified as the 3BHSD form of CAH.
This blog, written by a rocket scientist, is a fascinating collection of information, both personal and scientific, regarding intersex, transsexualism and related psychosocial and psychosexual issues. ... It is erudite and heartfelt. Just read the posts about the passport issue. You won't know whether to laugh, weep or crawl into a ball and rock gently in a corner - an amazing person. - David --- The reason I so appreciate bright, perceptive people - as opposed to ideologues whose intelligence does little to illuminate - is that they manage to both instruct and learn with a certain grace. Among such rarities in the transblogosphere is Zoe, whose direct speech and clear humanity always make her worth reading, even if one doesn’t always agree with her every conclusion. - Val --- The following is a request for permission to archive your A.E.Brain blog site which we have wanted to do for several years... The Library has traditionally collected items in print, but it is also committed to preserving electronic publications of lasting cultural value.... Since (1996) we have been identifying online publications and archiving those that we consider have national significance.... We would like to include A.E.Brain blog site in the PANDORA Archive... -Australian National Library
