Dana Jennett Bevan holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a Bachelors degree from Dartmouth College both in experimental psychology. She is the author of The Transsexual Scientist which combines biology with autobiography as she came to learn about transgenderism throughout her life. Her second book The Psychobiology of Transsexualism and Transgenderism is a comprehensive analysis of TSTG research and was published in 2014 by Praeger under the pen name Thomas E. Bevan. Her third book Being Transgender was released by Praeger in November 2016. She can be reached at danabevan@earthlink.net.
Right now there are transgender hikers walking the Appalachian Trail. Armed with GoPro cameras and internet connections they are documenting their long, long hike. Dana Bevan would like to be out there on the trail as well but the results of a trail accident two years ago keeps her from taking off on the AT for New England. She does have advice for transgender hikers and shares it with you here.
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected our entire society but Dana Bevan focuses on the parts of the transgender community and how the pandemic has affected us. Things that provided relief to dysphoria, such as support group meetings, days long conferences, and simple things like hugs have all been suspended. Will those parts of our transgender culture come back after the pandemic?
Dana Bevan posted six of her 12 Suggested Rules for Transgender Flourishing in her last post. The rules are designed to help boost transgender visibility and promote the existence of trans people as just another part of our society. Today Dana posts the remaining six rules.
Today Dana Bevan presents six of her 12 Suggested Rules for Transgender Flourishing. They are designed to help boost transgender visibility and promote the existence of trans people as just another part of our society. See if you can live up to the challenge some of Dana’s first six suggested rules presents.
Dana Bevan began exploring asexuality in transgender people and it made her come out as a gyne-sapio-romantic asexual stone butch transgender lesbian. If you would like to know just what that strand of words means you will have to read her thoughts on the incidence of asexuality in the transgender community.
Dr. Dana Bevan had some time recently to sit down and read through the backlog of scientific papers she had accumulated. Among them she found three papers that dealt with genetic factors that may actually have direct implications for transgender folks and why we are who we are.
Dana Bevan has a friend who while supportive of the transgender community has trouble understanding what we know of why being transgender occurs to a segment of our population. Dana’s friend had a problem reading Dana’s writing on the subject because they were so detailed. So Dana decided to write about the transgender experience in a story. The story begins in the womb and follows the development of a child’s gender identity.
This is a short story about how we got here as free transgender people with political and economic rights. It is an overview of from a much longer, more detailed story. Although our pursuit of freedom and rights has not yet reached perfection, we have made great progress.
Back in 2014, Dana Bevan made some estimates of transgender population numbers based on observed population frequencies. Looking back at them and thinking about they are recently changing, she feels that they can help us understand some of the medical and social issues for transgender people, particularly non-transitioning transgender people.
YouTube talks show host Joe Rogan has gone too far. Several times he has had quests on his show who present skewed, or just plain made up “facts” about transgender people. These guests clearly have an axe to grind when it comes to the very existence of trans people. Dana Bevan has had it with Rogan’s promotion of false information and she is calling him out. How will the duel be fought? With science of course.
Today Dr. Dana Bevan explains why there is confusion over the difference between sex and gender. Conflating the two endangers the idea that transgender people exist. More attention needs to be paid to terminology and we demand that people define their terms and define them using objective criteria—things that can be observed, including behavior. We do not need vague notions about “identity” or “dysphoria”. Learn why sex and gender are not interchangeable terms and why they using the wrong terms creates confusion.
There is a tendency by some people to make assumptions about things they really no nothing about. Why some people are transgender is one of those things that many people supply motivations for but really have no clue about. Heck, even we don’t know why we are what we are. In opposition to proclamations of opinion condemning trans people as “freaks” or “prevs” we at TGForum believe answers will be found in science. That’s why we bring you Dana Bevan, she gives you the science.
TGForum’s Mr. Spock is our in-house scientist and fact-based life form, Dana J. Bevan. Today she applies science and logic to the manner in which transgender people are exploited by politicians. She does not recommend or endorse one party over another but presents factual information about where we are today and what should be done to achieve full rights for transgender people. Give her blog a read and use the comment area to weigh in with your opinion.
For the past eight months or so Dana Bevan has been intensely studying the literature on transgender personalities and pathological personality disorders because of experiences she described in a previous post on narcissism. Do pathological disorders of personality contribute to transgender causation and, if so, which ones?
Words. We use them everyday and generally we know what we mean. But too often people use words believing they mean one thing and others who hear those words interpret a completely different meaning. Words like gender identity, sexual identity, identity groups, identity disorders, gender identity development, social identity and more are examples of words that can mean one thing to one group of people and something else to another group. Today Dana Bevan takes you through the history and the different meanings of the word identity.
All humans are not alike. We are made up of a lot of parts and one size does not fit all. Human’s genetic makeup is mosaic, that is, we do not have the same DNA in each cell. So, human are not responsible for being born into a cisgender, binary, rigid culture but we can change the culture. Dana Bevan gives you the science.
Why are we the way we are? As Dana Bevan has pointed out in her TGForum blog there are plenty of scientific studies which show differences between transgender and non-transgender people in genetics, anatomy, brain scans and neuroanatomy, and seemingly unrelated behaviors such as handedness. What if the science is used to produce technologies that could be used in categorizing people as transgender or not? Should people like us be “cured”?
Dana Bevan talks about the effects caused by the burden of secrecy that many transgender people take on in an effort to keep others from learning about their true selves. That burden uses mental resources and the behavior that trans people engage in while trying to stay hidden has a cost. Dana writes about the benefits of being authentic. Even if it’s only part of the time expressing your true self will make you feel better.
Narcissists prey on other people using manipulative techniques to get praise for themselves and delight at causing their prey to suffer. Transgender people should be aware of these tactics because transgender people, like most people, look to others for understanding and empathy but transgender people are especially vulnerable since tolerance and understanding are not always easy to come by. Today Dr. Dana Bevan shares her research into narcissism and how to deal with them at all levels.
Dana Bevan has been at the US Professional Association for Transgender Health convention is Washington, D.C. and she has filed a report about what happened over the weekend. First she runs over some history about where transgender health advocacy began. Turns out it was at the kitchen table of trans activism pioneer Louise Lawrence. Learn some history and get the current news from USPATH’s convention from Dana.
Are transgender people the spandrels of humanity? A spandrel is a space created in architecture by the active elements of a structure that have on purpose on their own. Spandrels occur in the space between the upper corner of a rectangular arch and its oblique brace. Dr. Dana Bevan takes the spandrel concept and applies it to transgender people. Her blog today is speculation on this subject. Read her thoughts and see if you agree that transgender people may have no purpose in the evolution of our species. Or, they might.
Dr. Dana Bevan writes today about a trend that is a threat to transgender people around the world. It’s called intersectionalism and it is a tool used by the patriarchal male hierarchy to create oppression. Transgender people are all outcasts and outlaws from the larger culture, intersectionalism is just a new trap to be avoided. Trendy intersectionalism probably will not go away for a couple of decades, so we will have to learn how to deal with it. Dana explains what it is and how it is relevant to you.
On the 500th episode of Realtime with Bill Maher on HBO one of Maher’s guests was a woman named Debra Soh. Dr. Soh holds a Ph.D. and was on the program to talk about transgender issues. Her statements on the subject seemed to be based in right wing politics rather than in any actual scientific research and she led Maher to believe she was the victim of academic discrimination by academics who wished to promote their theories about transgender people. She said she was accused of being “politically incorrect.” Today Dana Bevan looks at Dr. Soh and her statement about transgender people. Dana finds that Dr. Soh is just the latest in a long line of people who want the world to see trans phenomena their way.
Transgender people have existed throughout history and are best helped with love and encouragement, not through oppression. Dana Bevan writes an open letter to the Catholic Church advising it to stop treating transgender people as if they were part of some fashion trend and to accept that they exist and they are not sinners. She calls for evidence based policies about transgender issues, not the adoption of the hardline rule that men are men and women are women, as is taught in Abrahamic religious doctrine.
Dana Bevan feels that the words we use to describe members of the transgender community are no longer adequate or proper. Many of the words, like transvestite, transsexual, and others, were coined by psychiatrists or academics and over the years have picked up bad connotations or been applied in error to people who were not in that category. Why should we let the psychiatric profession label us and dominate the words used to describe our behavior, and our demographic and social groups? Dana thinks it’s time we got some new words and she would like your help in coming up with some.
