The Transgender Scientist The Transgender Scientist

Early in this century, neuroanatomists and neurophysiologists began to look for places and functions in the brain that were different in transgender people from non-transgender people. The results of their efforts indicate that there are several structures and mechanisms that are different, some of which can be interpreted.  Finding such differences supports the four factor theory of transgender causation, in that, the theory predicts that genetic gender behavior predispositions exist in the brain and can be detected in its structure and mechanisms. 

Transgender Transition: Breast Enhancement Surgery. This episode explains why transitioning transwomen go on hormone therapy and why breast enhancement surgery is often needed.  Transwomen want to look like other women and wear feminine clothing but this requires hormone therapy to reshape the body and, in particular the breasts.  When hormone therapy results for breast development is inadequate, about half of transitioning transwomen get breast implants for enhancement.  The episode also describes what it was like for your Transgender Scientist to get breast enhancement surgery. 

This episode provides a critical review of the recent by Lisa Littman of Brown University which claims that gender dysphoria originates in childhood trauma and can be triggered by information "contagion" from peers and the Internet in adolescence.  The episode also provides the historical and scientific on background on this claim which indicates that it constitutes a non-scientific attack on affirmative treatment for transgender children and adults.  The paper involved a survey, ostensibly from surprised and disgruntled parents which was used to claim based on flawed methodology that their children were not dysphoric in childhood but became dysphoric in adolescence. Littman cannot prove that the children were gender dysphoric because the parents were not asked about a critical criterion of debilitation and distress which is required for gender dysphoria and typically is used as a billing code for transgender transition. Two results were described which support hypotheses for more rigorous study: (1) because the transgender children had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression it is possible that this resulted from living in secrecy as being transgender from earlier childhood  (2) because parents of natal female children were surprised by the emergence of their children as being transgender but were not surprised by earlier declarations of lesbian, bi or sexual orientation, the children may have deliberately come out with declarations of alternative sexual orientations that were more socially correct to prepare their parents for transgender emergence. 

Transgender history to the 1980s.  This episode traces development of and advocacy for transgender demographic groups from the turn of the 20th Century to the 1980s.  Advocacy organizations were built for three demographic groups of transgender people (1) those who wanted to change their bodies, previously called transsexuals who were championed by the medical and mental health communities (2) non-transsexual transgender people who developed local peer-led support groups, spawning transgender conventions (3) transgender people forced to live on the street because their transgender behavior was rejected at home. These developments were independent but loosely connected through activities in San Francisco and by a transwoman named Louise Lawrence. 

This episode tells you what you need to know to have effective and productive conversations with transgender people.  As in conversations with other types of people, the intent is not to offend. But transgender people are different; so you need to know the difference.  There are words and terms that hurt transgender people as well as using the wrong pronouns.  Misgendering a transgender person creates a hostile work environment that has legal liability.  There are several questions that transgender people will frankly not answer and knowing the reasons why is important. 

It is revealed that the idelogy of Ryan Anderson and Paul McHugh is heterogenderism. Real science regarding some of the topics of Anderson's book When Harry Became Sally are presented.   Heterogenderism seeks to debase transgender people by saying that they are abnormal or mentally ill.  Anderson and McHugh seek to equate sex and gender which denies the existence of transgender people.  The combination of heterogenderism and populism results in public policy that discriminates against transgender people and gaslights them by constantly referring to them as inferior.