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floralovebot · 10 months

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on flora's whitewashing: is it possible that flora has been whitewashed in the show/movies with her artwork (illustrations) being fairly consistent with her skin tone, even prior to the reboots/nick era? like in season 1 and the movies iirc

examples: s1e3, and the movies like secret of the lost kingdom? i remember thinking she looked lighter in several scenes of lost kingdom and in that episode of season 1

i wonder if this is something that happened with flora in s1, with it not being or less a problem in s2 and 3, with the movie having a similar skintone to the reboot pictures. i swear that this has happened but i dont really see any discussions on rainbow lighting her skin other than in newer media (where it is more prevalent and more obvious) so if you have any thoughts? maybe also slightly on the merchandise/doll side of things if youre interested?

Rainbow whitewashing characters like Flora and Aisha has absolutely been an issue for a very long time. Unfortunately, a lot of white fans don't notice unless it's more of an extreme example (like Flora being stark white or Aisha looking like Bloom).

In the first three seasons, it's really not seen as a big issue because it's genuinely innocent on their part. Those seasons were hand drawn so every now and then you get a scene where the skin is too light or too dark and doesn't actually make sense with the lighting. Usually, it's an innocent mistake due to multiple artists, not understanding lighting, and things just slipping past them because they're looking at these scenes for hours and they get used to it.

Here are some examples from the first four seasons where their skin is too light even with the lighting happening around them.

And for reference, this is what their normal skin tone is (and what they look like in most scenes).

Again, people don't usually talk about these because it (most likely) wasn't racist or malicious intent from Rainbow. They just didn't understand lighting ajdhglad This actually happens with all of the winx! Just go through some episodes and you'll notice that even the white characters get lightened in ways that don't make sense.

As for the movies, Flora was 100% whitewashed in the first movie.

Flora got the brunt of it in sotlk - she's whitewashed for the entire movie, while Aisha is only whitewashed in certain scenes. There are scenes where both of them look normal and aren't whitewashed so maybe some fans just didn't realize, but if you watch the movie, you'll notice that Flora is whitewashed completely and only looks right when they're in super dark places which,, yikes ahdgalhg

The dolls were also a problem! The whitewashing in the doll lines heavily depended on the manufacturer though so it's very hit or miss.

A lot of the early dolls are perfect or almost perfect but some of them are whitewashed like in these examples. It's the later dolls that have the most whitewashing though so they tend to get more criticism (plus the early dolls are no longer being made).

Most of the other early (s1-s3) merchandising (like the magazines, bags, stickers, etc) didn't whitewash either of them.

I'd say almost all of the promotional art for the first three seasons was consistent and didn't whitewash any of the characters. It's hard to believe now of course but Iginio was initially really excited to make winx diverse (like he intentionally changed Flora to latina instead of white to make it more diverse). Rainbow intentionally whitewashing them really started with the first movie and then snowballed into what we have now. Unfortunately, I think so many white fans are so used to the whitewashing, that they've started to no longer even notice it unless it's super extreme. Like with the recent s9 promo art, most people weren't noticing Flora at all (and not ignoring her, specifically not noticing), and in a lot of fanart, they do not notice unless they're literally white.

Whitewashing has been a big issue in winx for years but I think there are a lot of fans who look at the early seasons with so much love and nostalgia that they don't want to admit it, or they don't understand how lighting affects skin, or their favorite character isn't Flora or Aisha so they just never pay attention to them (blorbo hyperbeam is very real). I'd still say that a lot of the early whitewashing was due to innocent mistakes regarding lighting and manufacturing, but the first movie was extremely on purpose (and so is everything after that).

#fans are naturally going to bring up the later things more since its happening Right Now #like the s9 promo art. the entirety of fate. s8. etcetc are all more relevant than a random doll thats not being made anymore yknow?#its still important of course but we can't change what happened unfortunately #but we can influence them now!#s9 is actually a really good example of how fans have pressured them to stop whitewashing! just look at aisha!!#she looks absolutely gorgeous and they even took the time to give her a real black hairstyle #(obviously not saying that her og hair isnt natural but you get what i mean. her having vaguely curly hair is not the same thing)#especially since they often give her Super Straight hair like in the movies #unfortunately flora still looks too light but if fans actually notice and make noise about it we Can make a change #even if that change is s10 instead ajdhgal #also holy shit s10... god its been so long i feel old now what the fuck #adhgladhglj #age crisis aside the whitewashing has been around for a while now #i didnt even touch on world of winx adhglhadg #answered #long post

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turtleblogatlast · 6 months

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I unironically love how blatantly late 80’s early 90’s all the brothers’ styles are in “The Clothes Don’t Make the Turtle” because like…of course those are their styles! The majority of the media they grew up adoring is heavily influenced by that time period, so it makes perfect sense that they all took inspiration from it. It’s honestly super cute to see, they’re such kids I swear.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #the clothes don't make the turtle #rise of the tmnt #they’re soooo influenced by media #which makes sense as it was the place of bonding with their father for the most part #but yeah a lot of themselves can be directly harkened back to what media they consume #I mean just look at Donnie’s eyebrows and compare them to Lou Jitsu #Raph’s idea of police and justice is very 80s action movie too #Mikey’s all about bright colors and stuff which is much more common in that time period #(as opposed to now where neutrals are more common)#and we all know Leo basically made himself into an expy of Lou Jitsu

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katyspersonal · 23 days

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who do you think fucked up worse…gehrman or maria?

This is an interesting question, and I kind of didn't think of it before! Time to take a closer look at their crimes I guess. Some of these will be held on the possibilities and 'safe assumptions' though and addressed for the full picture!

1) Both were involved in Fishing Hamlet massacre!

With Maria, we can conclude as much because she discarded her weapons in the well at the place specifically. Her version in the Nightmare realm, a Hunter again, is supposed to be what punishes her, and she is focused on keeping Kos/OoK away from rummaging through. Considering the nature of the Nightmare, as well as the Doll who has spiritual connection with her, it should come from her guilt and regrets rather than.. I dunno, discarding the hunt over natural 'character development' and just picking a cool place to forsaken her past!

Gehrman sleeps better according to the dialogue Doll has after you kill OoK and free it's soul, so if it tortured him so, I think it is safe to say he had to be personally involved too rather than stay back while his students did the job:

They both were involved with Byrgenwerth, following their quest for obtaining the eyes of the dwellers from their skulls, and I suppose cord of OoK?

The thing about this point is that the description is written as though it was Gehrman's curiosity which ruined Maria's "idealisation" of him, or WOULD ruin it had she learned of it! This makes me wonder whether she was really involved in Byrgenwerth all that much, or whether she was aware of the real purpose of Fishing Hamlet massacre beforehand? Her goal, within the Nightmare, is stated to mercy-kill us so we don't allow that curiousity corrupt us to the point of "rummaging through corpse" and similar things, further supported by her visceral attack being an embrace if it is lethal!

I am just saying that here the balance might slightly shift towards making Gehrman 'worse' than her. Maybe she was not aware that it all was not just killing "monsters" but also a pregnant mother with her divine baby, but "well you didn't ask :/". Maybe Gehrman deceived her to use her aid. Maybe he didn't think it would be a big deal for her seeing that Maria was also interested in evolution through talking with Great Ones, and assumed she'd be just as callous about which means to accomplish the goals with?

2) Both were grave-robbing, or at least okay with that!

This one is a little less obvious, but Tomb Prospectors were not the first to go to the Chalice Dungeons! ...It were actually Willem, Dores and Gatekeeper lol:

BUT ALSO it were Old Hunters! We can see the remnants of it by Old Hunter Vitus being one the summons in Chalice Dungeons, hear Gehrman encourage us to go into the Chalice Dungeons to become stronger as via "tradition" of the Old Hunters,

and the fact that one of the things that torture Maria (again, remember that Nightmare Realm is Hell that punishes) is a Chalice:

(A video ( x ) for a better look at the Chalice from a figure)

I'd say that it is not very nice to disturb the undead Pthumerians just struggling in remains of their civilisation! Interesting thing: we can conclude they are even staying there to protect the Great Ones or their remains!

There has been some sort of civil war between ancient great-ones-respecting Pthumerians and who late became Cainhurst nobles! Maria, ironically, fell onto the side of "entitled guys" descendants! But yes, I could see why bullying zombie guys to get more history and archeology relics from them might not seem like much for her at start. Experience in the Fishing Hamlet likely retroactively ruined this period of her life for her: delving into Chalice Dungeons was likewise 'not leaving the corpse alone'. The remaining Pthumerians were right having some honour and dignity. So, that came to haunt her in the form of Pthumeru Chalice. Gehrman is.. well he's here too I guess dfshfdhs

3) Both knew a little too much about Laurence's shady business and did nothing?

Old Hunters used to be friends with Healing Church's Hunters and even had their workshops located close to one another! Gehrman was friends with Laurence and Ludwig, who are both quite strongly involved with Moon Presence (Ludwig's sword and guidance, Laurence's affiliation being known since Byrgenwerth times), as well as the key figure in creation of Hunter's Dream:

This was most likely a bait-and-switch, seeing how the cord itself is still in the real Workshop, and not in the grasp of Moon Presence (unlike, say, Wet Nurse taking Mergo's cord)! I think the purpose of creation of the Hunter's Dream was to "buy time" for the research conceived by the scientists! Remember: Gehrman was known to have "madness of curiosity" that Maria resented, or at least would resent had she known! He might have been fully aware of what Laurence wanted to do and support it! My point here, that with such proximity, he must have known of all Laurence's crimes and agreed with them!

Maria was at least overseer of the Clocktower's Research Hall, which, again, was just beta!Choir.

This last line IS a bit confusing, because it makes it sound as though the nerds looking for the Eyes Inside and the Blood Ministers got split. Laurence and Ludwig make it weird, as Moon Presence is also an Eldrich creature and Ludwig is for sure full of eyes! What also makes it strange is that Choir, and then School of Mensis, are both upper echelons of the Healing Church, but Laurence is supposed to be above both of them.

I think this can be worked with! Let's say what if Choir formed after Laurence's death, which also happened after Maria's death, and Vicars after him were somewhat "powerless" and walked over by Choir and Mensis, only leaders in the name! But that still leaves the bit that the mentioned "division" happened after Choir was formed! Maria and Adeline, however, are locked to the existence of the Research Hall, so, the timeframe when doctors and blood ministers were 100% working together! We find the Eye Pendant that opens the access to the Research Hall in Laurence's hand, and human Skull of Laurence on the platform that hides the secret elevator to that Research Hall. Again, by the Nightmare Logic, they must be connected with Laurence's sins: he started this research, or sponsored it, or was overseeing it, and so on.

This point is not an absolute thing though, because one or both of them might be freed from guilt here. Maybe Gehrman was not as informed and agreeable as we could assume and Laurence did lead him around? Maybe Maria wanted but could not do anything being caught in the web of complicated connections, blackmail and risks for the people she cared about?

4) Both are willingly involved in questionable practices (Maria with research, Gehrman with the cycle of Dream and Hunt)

This point I feel like transcends the morality a little bit, as it touches the matter of 'it is bad if you do it, but it is also bad if you DON'T do it'. I really love Soulsborne universes for having guts to say "you can't win, just pick your poison", but I think it is still worth addressing!

It is up to interpretation in which quantity Maria is involved with the Research Hall! Nothing states whether she founded it, joined in the research later, stepped in and turned the tides (ba dum tss) of the research, or simply was a caretaker/nurse/etc of the broken mess while Research Hall was getting ready for a bit of rebranding. She can be very guilty, or she can be barely guilty but in either case if that was her "redemption arc" that was a pretty bad way to go about it. ...or was it?

Fauxsefka turns people into Celestial Emissaries so they physically can't become beasts instead, and is even stated to be a hero / heroic researcher by Miyazaki:

First, I don't do Death of the Author (in terms of interpreting media I mean, not in terms of a style of writing)! Like, nope. Never. It is just not for me. Creator's word is the final for me; Fauxsefka is the good guy in the story, apparently, and it makes sense considering the fundamentally broken place characters are in! Maria has similarities with Fauxsefka: not only both of them have Cainhurst roots, but also both of them seem to favour 'Stars' line of evolution for humans!

Whereas other patients are afraid of the horrors of the Deep Sea, a concept Miyazaki could not get over well into DS3, Adeline desires them! Other patients seems to have gotten it right, and you can see one of them also clings to Maria mentally to "not drown"; Adeline "didn't understand"! The balcony that Maria wants Adeline to go to so she can forsaken the Deep Sea and seek something "happier" holds unique kind of patients who can shoot cosmic arcane spells:

Herself, Maria is associated with these lumenflowers: their petals are all over her boss arena, and the way to her lays through a much bigger batch of flowers, where Living Failures, other 'Stars' Kin are, whose song lyrics also feature lines 'ave stellar' and 'ave Maria'!

So, how this is different from what Fauxsefka is doing, who is stated to be as much of a good person as possible within this context and with the burden of her knowledge? Fauxsefka was doing more or less rinse-and-repeat practice, with maybe a few patients not surviving the procedure but we don't know what happened: maybe that person was already at the brink of death and she tried to make them live like this.

^ This guy I mean. Maria, on the other hand, is in the time period where the doctors and scientists were only testing the waters (BA DUM TSSS) (ok I will stop) and it was not SO certain what was at the stake, what were the alternatives, what was awaiting the humanity. It is even possible that the beasts problem was not yet bad to the point of "you'll either become a beast, be eaten by a beast or become a Kin, humanity is DONE for!" ! This was an unethical research at the cost of real people! The weight of Maria's sin here really depends on the interpretation, though

As for the cycle of Dream and Hunt, this is complicated and lingers on one's interpretation of what the purpose of the Dream even IS! Its existence provides two things: 1) a hunter who is immortal for the night, thus can sustain the beasts with efficiency like no other, but also effect the continuity of the night ( x ) and 2) supposed sustenance to the Great One Flora of the Moon, who holds the hunt as a concept!

I used to be a bit more set on the idea that if beasts are not sustained and hunted, they will simply overpower those who are yet humans and eat them! It is a self-feeding cycle of people needing to self-defend from beasts, thus having to consume the blood as urgent means of healing and power-up since beasts are too strong, thus risking to become beasts themselves because the blood they consumed during that hunt corrupts them. So, the Hunter's Dream would be a good thing, as it'd help to 'buy time' during nights of the hunt in which not only beasts are more active but Great Ones too! While the Dreaming Hunter holds everything together, the greatest minds of the Healing Church can efficiently study the ways to end beasthood, or ANY problem of humanity, once and for all! It is just better to throw the hunting resources on the Dream, so the scientists don't worry about the beasts and can focus on research. However, I almost forgot that:

This implies that had there not been Mensis Ritual ongoing, people WOULD have the chance to simply 'wait away' the beasthood problem. That, since Rom is not stopping Mensis Ritual but just conceals it, what really makes the inner beast within everyone who consumed the blood inevitably come out is Mergo's cry that draws the Bloodmoon close!

So yeah, the point about Hunter's Dream being helpful for the research of evolution still stands, especially under assumption that the deal with Moon Presence helped to bring more Eldrich Arcane close for "feeding" her. The point about how if the beasts are not hunted they'll simply eat everyone, though, is vague. It is safer to assume that the Hunter's Dream and Research Hall both are both example of hubris of man even if approached differently. Attempts to draw in something dangerous and horrifying, but it is "justified risk" because if you manage to 'tame' arcane/blood, sure, humanity will prosper!

Like... yeah, sure, there IS dangerous and undesireable nature of man that ruins everything and might or might not still linger in humanoids' genes after Loran. But did humanity ASK any of you guys to keep trying to fix it with so many victims and sacrifices? Like, was it WORTH it?

This point is closely tied to 'knowing Laurence's bad antics and doing nothing', yeah. Maria didn't seem to like blood ministration very much, as she disapproved of Adeline becoming a Blood Saint, but she also didn't even approve of blood antics of her own clan! I am not sure what would be her opinion on the Hunter's Dream had she lived to the point when it was created, just that she herself is not willing to ever hunt, so I am leaving this point aside. Is this just blood ministration that she opposes but proximity with a Great One Moon Presence would be something she can see the potential of? Or would she and Gehrman have a pointless cat fight about whose methods are better when they are both hubris of man? In both versions they are 'guilty'! Besides:

In the end none of THIS matters either and everyone was fooled ( x ). The blood offering is a blood offering in any way; whether it is through spilling blood violently during the hunt, or offering the blood's 'red' with how celestial Kin all bleed red. Moon doesn't care what paints it red, in the end.

___________________________________

My conclusion is: both of these characters fucked up almost equally! I think the balance shifts just a little bit and Maria is slightly better than Gehrman since she had some limitations set on how far she was willing to go. Her motivation was not in "curiosity" but strictly in helping humanity, even if in unfair ways, which is apparently not the case for Gehrman?

I'll say this though, NOW I am hooked on the idea of Maria and Gehrman being petty "rivals" ideologically (for as long as they could before Maria's own demons caught up with her). Especially since neither approach is better than the other and they are both cringe loosers! Again, lost comedy gold over Fromsoft making Gehrman's tender and warm feelings for her before and after her death plain. What is not lost, however, is the fact that the two should just kick Laurence and go home :pensive:

#bloodborne #lady maria of the astral clocktower #gehrman the first hunter #again: blaming laurence is a solid strategy #honorable mention: even more of maria's blame might be lifted depending on how strong gehrman's influence was on her #we don't know when he started training her. maybe it was since very young age? so a lot of her actions as a hunter were unwise #again it depends because as of now she is a grown thinking woman and could have processed it BEFORE pregnant mother got killed-#-and her child stolen!#so I am on 'maria's agency' side here!#I think it is more like gehrman FEELS as though he 'ruined' her with the hunt #like you know how sometimes when we feel guilty we become illusioned about how much impact we had on another person's actions and feelings #we need to be TOLD that it was that person's choices in the end because we might feel like we 'controlled' them #and of course his guilt would be amplified and impossible to reason with considering she took her own life!#(as far as we can assume)#ask replies #bloodborne observation #bloodborne headcanons #analysis

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seeleybooth · 11 months

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4.06 iStart a Fan War | 3.04 iGo Public

"I just really want to protect you. I don't know if you know this, but the Internet can be kind of mean. You don't have to protect me, okay? I can take whatever they throw at us. Or we can keep it a secret forever."

#icarly #icarlyedit #creddieedit #icarly revival #creddie #carly x creddie #tvedit #otpsource #cinemapix #cinematv #trueloveistreacherous #annasparkle #useradie #tuserlauren #we can upload 30 images now??#i made sure i cropped it to see the views because i think its always so important because that's how carly makes her money this is her job #she's an influencer and the creddie shippers have always followed them #icarlygif #mygifs

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ducktracy · 22 days

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reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

#i've made this disclaimer on another post but will again since i've seen a lot more of the movies now #the movies are VERY good and very enjoyable but unfortunately the first handful are bogged down by transphobic/homophobic/okama stereotypes #they kind of vary in their severity. Movie 5 i think is the biggest catalyst because it features the stereotyped characters the most #prominently. Movie 3 doesnt really have caricatures per se but saves a very backhanded reveal for the end #Movies 1 and 4 are a bit more tolerable if my memory is correct. Movie 2 i think is kind of comparable to Movie 5 with its caricatures #in that the characters have similar roles in both movies #i admittedly can't remember what caricatures there were in Movie 6 or 7. 7 i think barely had anything #RAMBLE RAMBLE BASICALLY: these jokes are within the first 7 movies or so 5 being the zenith then reducing down and down. by movie 8 it's sa #e #i give these disclaimers because these movies are all very enjoyable and i would not recommend them if i didnt think there wasnt any merit #o them. they are all very much worth watching. Movie 5 still has a lot of very enjoyable stuff in it (there's a showdown in a supermarket!!#but i just want to make sure that is clear and established since transparency is good to have and i dont want anyone's viewing experience t #be ruined because they weren't given the proper warning #if it's any consolation it's my understanding that even the directors hated doing the jokes #iirc Keiichi Hara really didn't like doing the jokes and i think had a talk with the mangaka Yoshito Usui and was like 'uh dude this is #gonna age horribly can we maybe not'#ironically Hara's first film is Movie 5. which is again the biggest offender #BUT! that is my spiel. my understanding is that it's contained to those 6 or 7 first movies and i think is strictly just a movie thing #so please do give these films a watch but just be mindful at the same time #if anyone needs recommendations my favorites have been movies 4 and 9 but i genuinely really enjoyed every one that i have seen #i've seen the first 11 and a half movies (need to finish 12) and movie 22. the worst i've felt about one is 'oh that was pretty good!'#each film has its own merit and is very very very much worth watching #22 was the first Shin-chan anything i watched and all my Shin-chan expert friends say 4 is a good introductory piece #in case that influences anything/makes it easier to break in #so. thus concludes my spiel #csc #vid

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likeabxrdinflight · 15 days

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tired of early 20-somethings acting like harry potter was never good or had no value in its day like shut the fuck up half of you weren't even there when it peaked

#sit with the cognitive dissonance like the rest of us or shut up honestly #was it a product of its time yes #was it's author a very basic neoliberal white lady from a country with a long and unchecked imperialist history yes #was the story influenced by said neoliberal worldviews and unexamined biases obviously #does any of that make it a bad story or an unimaginative world no #you can pick apart any fantasy world if you try hard enough #harry potter was a good telling of the hero's journey written in the format of seven mystery novels set against a fantasy backdrop #we can certainly talk about its flaws or how the author's biases leaked onto the page #but stop acting like it was never good and there was never a reason those books resonated with people #it's condescending for one thing and again- if you're younger than like...24-25 you didn't actually experience the heyday of the books #if you're 25 now you'd have been like 8 or 9 when the last book came out and probably weren't reading them yet #you might remember the latter half of the movie era but you have no idea how much it was the BOOKS that drove its popularity #never before and never since has any book series had the fanfare that harry potter did and that didn't happen for no reason #so find a way to make peace with that instead of acting intellectually superior because you grew up with percy jackson instead #this 'well MY generation's preferred childhood book series is morally superior to YOURS so I'm better than you' shit drives me up a wall #like get over yourself honestly #...sorry had to get that off my chest there was this youtube video and it was irritating me

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keelanrosa · 1 month

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started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

#cass review #lgbt #transgender #transphobia #science #'tldr': *writes three-page essay* 'but i don't have time for a three-page essay rn'#also: holy run-on sentences #but seriously this is not going to change the mind of a single person who would be influenced by reading scientific studies #the studies already existed and have BEEN being used by terfs who think ZUCKER of aLL PEOPLE #is a good gotcha against anyone saying 'reputable studies indicate detransitioning is pretty uncommon actually'#but the responses i find truly fascinating are the ones along the lines of #'ohohoho i bet all those people who criticized jkr will be reeeaal quiet now' w. why.#if past studies didn't convince them the Special Collector's Edition of past studies won't #y'all don't have a monopoly on Scientific Knowledge just because y'all think your Fisher-Price level Gender Definition is the best #sometimes. other scientific information exists. and trans people and allies can even read that scientific information.#i know a weird number of y'all think we run on vibes and liberal propaganda but i promise a ton of us are absolute DORKS

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