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."

Someone: It would be really great if more schools emphasized critical thinking applied to the online world, as well as how to spot and avoid bad faith rage bait.

Guy who exclusively posts under the tag “#blackpilledthoughts”, crossing their arms: heh, it’s called “English Class,” maybe you should’ve paid attention 😏

hot take but taking every hearsay or rumor or book in a fictional universe for fact is bad understanding of the world as the story presents it, actually

Biting my own fingers to keep from going off on too much scientific bullshit in this next chapter of Smoke and Mirrors because Nobody Needs All That and it breaks the pacing but also MAYBE I NEED TO EXPLAIN THAT GENESIS COPIES ARE JUST MEN WITH A DISEASE WHO WENT ALONG WILLINGLY—

I watched Mad God, the 30-years-in-the-making stop motion animated horror film, and while I enjoyed it very much it also made me intensely nostalgic for the one (sort of) film course I took in college---so much so that I dug up the syllabus and took a trip down memory lane.

I forgot how much fun that class was. It was technically about film and science---film as science, film as a scientific tool, film as a way of communicating science and teaching science...but really it was an excuse to sit in a small dark room with one of my favorite professors and a bunch of other philosophy majors, watching stuff you wouldn’t see otherwise.

i love hermitcraft but especially old hermitcraft just bc all the random shit that was made "canon" (aka everyones probably forgotten about it but it was real then and therefore you could argue it may still be true)

taking an online class on the history of mapmaking. I love it so much actually... look at this quote from yesterday's reading: "Yet she felt regret that a map can be 'a cold thing... born of calipers and a draughtsman's board.' A coastline there 'speaks of no mariner, blundering full sail in wakeless seas, to bequeath, on sheepskin or a slab of wood, a priceless scribble to posterity.' What of this mountain or valley or desert, what price in toil and life was paid to put each of them on the map? 'Here is a river,' she thought, 'that some curious and courageous soul, a pencil in the hand of God, first traced with bleeding feet.' A map may only be paper and ink, Markham concluded, 'but if you think a little, if you pause a moment, you will see that these two things have seldom joined to make a document so modest and yet so full with histories of hope or sagas of conquest.'" Sigh.

"lilith sternin is cold as ice and exudes a dark malevolent spirit wherever she goes" ok 1) that sounds sick as hell 😳😶 2) you just hate her cos her pussy pops severely and her autistic girl swag. literally none of you deserve her. I would worship at her feet tbqh !

It's Over: They Finally Caught Them...

c!dream be like *has a massive notebook in tiny chicken scratch about experiments and hypothesises* *half of them are horrifically unethical and half of them are about c!tommy. there is significant overlap.*

"fiction doesn't affect reality!" or "apparently ive never been emotionally affected by a film or book ever"

On Vegetarianism, veganism, and omnivorous diets

So, I recently saw a study on vegan diets vs omnivorous diets that showed that-- assuming both are well balanced and paired with proper exercise-- veganism is significantly healthier.

But--- this study also pointed out that dairy specifically has a lot of unhealthy qualities, which really begs the question "are vegan diets actually healthier than dairy-free diets?"

I want to see a variation on this study that focuses on a diet that allows dairy vs a dairy-free diet, because I have a feeling that the vegan diet and the dairy-free omnivore diet would show quite a bit less of a significant difference

Y'all, I'm confused.

I just got a mobile notification for this article, which says

Quite concerning, no? So I looked it up to see if it was true, and the first result I got was from another online article that said

So basically both sources, each based on scientific research, are saying two different things... which one is telling the truth?

Actually just found out that the one saying HRT can lead to heart disease is from the New York Post, which "is an American conservative daily tabloid newspaper," according to Wikipedia.

sigh Despite the fact that we shouldn't trust conservative bullshit... they cite a supposed study from the European Journal of Endocrinology as their source for HRT leading to cardiovascular problems.

Is this just the NYP trying to masquerade their right-wing propaganda as science?