• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

Status
Not open for further replies.
Elaedith said:
No, there is no point in doing that when there is little research to go on.
Click to expand...
There is at least some good research on the co-occurence of ASD and GD, which is related to but distinguishable from the problem of misdiagnosis. See the list of references for further reading.

A fairly relevant pull quote:
However, in terms of treatment, it is unknown whether the effective medical gender reassignment treatment for GD in neurotypical individuals (de Vries et al. 2014) is suitable for individuals with co-occurring ASD.
Click to expand...
This strikes me as important, considering that the ASD rate in the GD patient population is two to four times that in the general population.
 
Last edited:
d4m10n said:
There is at least some good research on the co-occurence of ASD and GD, which is related to but distinguishable from the problem of misdiagnosis. See the list of references for further reading.

A fairly relevant pull quote:
This strikes me as important, considering that the ASD rate in the GD patient population is two to four times that in the general population.
Click to expand...

I think its difficult to define exactly what is meant by 'misdiagnosis' in this context. Children with ASD may indeed genuinely develop GD as well, but the question is why this happens and how it relates to affirmation and transition as treatment, as you stated.

It is possible that children with ASD are more likely to be gender atypical due to innate factors. I remember seeing some neuropsychological research a while back that I think claimed to find less sexual differentiation in areas of the brain that do show average sex differences, in association with autism. Unfortunately I didn't save the reference and can't locate it at the moment.

Being gender atypical doesn't automatically translate into trans identification or development of gender dysphoria. This likely occurs in some cases due to an interaction between the innate characteristics and the interpretation given to them, which depends on social context. Young children tend to go through a phase (as mentioned in your citation) where they are very rigid about gender stereotypes, and also believe that superficial things that tend to differentiate boys and girls within a culture actually make children boys or girls. Therefore children who develop cross-sex identification can become equally or even more rigid about only doing things the other sex does. This rigidity about gender conformity tends to reduce once they realise that being a boy or a girl is based on something else that remains constant regardless of clothing, toy preferences, behaviour etc. That's why it's somewhat bonkers to encourage children to persist in a belief that feelings or stereotypical characteristics are what make them a boy or girl (or something else), at least if you want to maximise the chance that they will end up happy with both their sex and their gender expression, without needing medicalisation.
 
Last edited:
Links Between Autistic Traits, Feelings of Gender Dysphoria, and Mentalising Ability: Replication and Extension of Previous Findings from the General Population

This paper claims to show through mediation analysis that the association between autistic traits and gender dysphoria occurs via deficits in mentalising. The cover the issue of development of gender constancy within the paper.

It's an interesting paper, but I have some issues with the idea of implying that statistical mediation demonstrates causation when the data are still correlational.

Furthermore, they provide a theoretical explanation for why autistic traits might be associated with gender non-conformity, but this is not the same as gender dysphoria or trans identity.
 
Last edited:
Interestingly, the Cass Review (p.60, section 5.19) argues that the clinical service development and refinement of diagnoses seen with autism should be a model for developing and refining diagnoses of gender dysphoria. Appendix 4 (p.98ff) uses autism as one of several examples of how clinical services are meant to develop.

The implication being, as the rest of the report discusses, that clinical services for gender dysphoria in the UK (especially the Tavistock GIDS centre) have not developed properly - which is why it's being broken up and reformed.

https://cass.independent-review.uk/...eview-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf

If I were a parent, I would trust clinicans (appropriately trained psychologists and doctors) to diagnose autism spectrum conditions accurately among children, but would not trust clinicians to make accurate predictions of whether a child or teenager would persist or desist, or indeed to diagnose gender dysphoria accurately (to determine the appropriate level of medical care and psychological support needed).

This should be blindingly obvious, as autism has been diagnosed more extensively for much longer, whereas gender dysphoria in its current form of expression and epidemiology is a product of the past 15 years only.
 
Again I have to point out, a link between autism and gender dysphoria is not, in itself a problem. If autistic folks are more prone to gender dysphoria then that is just a fact of life like certain races being more prone to lactose intolerance.

A poster earlier was suggesting some sort of problem that autism involves with respect to GD.

I would suggest none. Spectrum kids need no more and no less consideration than we owe to all kids
 
Nick Terry said:
If I were a parent, I would trust clinicans (appropriately trained psychologists and doctors) to diagnose autism spectrum conditions accurately among children, but would not trust clinicians to make accurate predictions of whether a child or teenager would persist or desist, or indeed to diagnose gender dysphoria accurately (to determine the appropriate level of medical care and psychological support needed).

This should be blindingly obvious, as autism has been diagnosed more extensively for much longer, whereas gender dysphoria in its current form of expression and epidemiology is a product of the past 15 years only.
Click to expand...

Same as my position really. I would trust clinicians to be able to tell that a symptom was part of the autism condition.and not confuse it with something else. I wouldn't necessarily trust them to make a diagnosis of GD.

But how does the current form of GD differ from my friends in the early eighties were experiencing which seems on the face of it, indistinguishable from what people I know now with GD are experiencing?
 
Robin said:
Again I have to point out, a link between autism and gender dysphoria is not, in itself a problem. If autistic folks are more prone to gender dysphoria then that is just a fact of life like certain races being more prone to lactose intolerance.
Click to expand...

That's only true if gender dysphoria is the actual problem they have. But the recent surge in cases suggests maybe it's not.

Spectrum kids need no more and no less consideration than we owe to all kids
Click to expand...

Nobody suggested otherwise. But merely affirming kids who claim a gender dysphoria diagnosis and then putting them on a path of irreversible medical intervention isn't giving them consideration. But in many cases that's what we are doing.
 
Ziggurat said:
That's only true if gender dysphoria is the actual problem they have. But the recent surge in cases suggests maybe it's not.
Click to expand...
Which is why I asked about some figures behind the surge in diagnoses. I'm getting different opinions, currently using CD .

Nobody suggested otherwise. .
Click to expand...
Oh come on. Do I really.need to go back and find where people have suggested that autistic kids have a special vulnerability in this area?
 
Ziggurat said:
Robin's attitude, that we shouldn't read journal articles ourselves but just trust experts
Click to expand...
In the first place you put a sneaky lie in there. I didn't trust experts, I went to a number of independent experts over 16 years. That's the very opposite of trusting experts. (Or is there a conspiracy?)

Your attitude that any layman can just read a scientific journal and understand it just as well as someone who has qualifications and experience in the field.

This leads to the absurd situation where someone links a paper and say "Here's a paper that says X" and thinks that means something.

So forget the tens of thousands of papers on autism alone many of which contradict each other.

Forget that when a mainstream psychologist uses the same experimental protocols and statistical techniques as is used in those mainstream papers they can end up demonstrating clearly wrong conclusions such as mental telepathy and precognition.

Forget the replication crisis, the number of papers that have to be retracted the fact that you have to be able to navigate those tens of thousands of papers and distil the ones that are a actually useful.

But, yeah, nah, let's forget all about that, any one is an expert with Google apparently.
 
Last edited:
Robin said:
Spectrum kids need no more and no less consideration than we owe to all kids.
Click to expand...
I'd argue that patients with ASD & GD deserve more consideration than neurotypical patients who only have GD, because they require two specialists instead of just one.
 
Ziggurat said:
You really don't get it.
Click to expand...
Because none of you are actually saying anything.

You don't understand that on a lot of topics, including this one, there IS no peer reviewed research.
Click to expand...
There is heaps of peer reviewed research on the symptoms of autism and ways of recognising them.

There is a lot of clinical practice showing the effectiveness of intervention methods

There is enough to conclude that errors per autism diagnoses must be on the decrease.

I know this because, over a period of 16 years, I have consulted a number of independent experts who have sorted out the wheat from the chaff in tens of thousands of papers and found the ones worth reading and then checked the replications (sadly rare in psychology) and interpreted them in light of their education and clinical experience.

Can you give me any reason at all that I should believe that symptoms of autism are being mistaken for symptoms of G

Can you give an example of this happening?
 
d4m10n said:
I'd argue that patients with ASD & GD deserve more consideration than neurotypical patients who only have GD, because they require two specialists instead of just one.
Click to expand...
Not really, because you can't assume someone is neurotypical. Someone without a diagnosis might well need more attentio n.

For any kid with a diagnosis of autism they probably already have a specialist.
 
It would be more interesting to find some research into the mechanism behind gender conformism in the general population.

Why do people invent and enforce arbitrary social ruled around biogical sex?

And why are people like me who think that there is no need to follow these social rules if we don't want to still considered the problem?
 
Last edited:
Robin said:
Not really, because you can't assume someone is neurotypical.
Click to expand...
No one said anything about using assumptions rather than screening tools (such as the CSBQ). My point was that people with two complex diagnoses require more specialists than those with only one.

Sent from my Imponte Phoenix using Tapatalk
 
Robin said:
There is heaps of peer reviewed research on the symptoms of autism and ways of recognising them.
Click to expand...

You still don't get it. In terms of missing research, I'm not talking about recognizing autism. That's not the issue. I'm talking about recognizing gender dysphoria in any manner beyond self-diagnosis, and separating out people whose dysphoria will be persistent and those whose dysphoria won't be persistent. There's basically no research on that.

But research aside, even though people know in principle how to diagnose autism, autistic girls in particular is underdiagnosed. There is peer research on that, we know girls are under-diagnosed.

Can you give me any reason at all that I should believe that symptoms of autism are being mistaken for symptoms of G

Can you give an example of this happening?
Click to expand...

I already told you. Listen to the testimony of detransitioners. It happens. Here's an example of a girl who was on the spectrum, not diagnosed as on the spectrum but she was, didn't fit in, thought she was transgender, pushed down the road of medical transition to include both hormone treatment and mastectomy, and then realized that it was a mistake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3MzPeomqs
These stories are heartbreaking. And they are often completely preventable, if only one of the experts had taken the time and effort to try to really discover what was wrong before pushing medical treatments that have permanent effects on children.
 
Robin said:
Not really, because you can't assume someone is neurotypical. Someone without a diagnosis might well need more attentio n.
Click to expand...

Quite so. Which is why it's unconscionable that they so often don't get that attention. Many gender transition providers claim to follow the "Dutch protocol" for gender transition in children, but one of the requirements for actually following the protocol as written is that the patient should not have any co-morbitities. In other words, it wasn't intended for children with autism. But those screening criteria often aren't actually used. Nor is the protocol itself actually justified by hard evidence. In other words, we have no idea if medical transition for children actually works.
 
Ziggurat said:
h] .
I already told you. Listen to the testimony of detransitioners. It happens. Here's an example of a girl who was on the spectrum, not diagnosed as on the spectrum but she was, didn't fit in, thought she was transgender, pushed down the road of medical transition to include both hormone treatment and mastectomy, and then realized that it was a mistake.
Click to expand...
You want me to go through two hours of video rather than just type a few words to give me the information I want?

Specifically - give me the symptom or symptoms of autism which were mistaken for a symptom of GD.
 
Robin said:
You want me to go through two hours of video rather than just type a few words to give me the information I want?
Click to expand...

I'd like you to watch the video because it's informative, and it contains a lot of stuff that you're obviously not aware of.

Specifically - give me the symptom or symptoms of autism which were mistaken for a symptom of GD.
Click to expand...

The symptoms aren't specific to autism. But symptoms that kids can have which can be mistaken for being part of gender dysphoria include difficulty socializing with kids of the same sex, sexually atypical interests, and sometimes homosexual attraction. Only the first of those is directly connected to autism, but autistic kids can still have sexually atypical interests and experience homosexual attraction.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom