Coy versus the Big Shrink
Recently Coy Mathis, a 6-year old transgirl, won her case which allowed her to use the elementary school restroom that is compatible with her gender predisposition. The case was decided by the Colorado Division of Civil Rights. After letting Coy use the girls’ room for her kindergarten year, her local elementary school reversed field and said that she could only use the restrooms in the teachers’ lounge or the nurses’ office. Coy’s parents rightly held that she would be subject to stigmatization and bullying if she had to leave her class to do her business in these restrooms which were remote from her class. The victory of Coy was a triumph for all transgendered people, especially transgendered children in Colorado.
But a character that we will call the Big Shrink could not let this little girl’s triumph alone and instead published an op-ed in the New York Times [Editor’s Note: The item in the NYT is a letter to the editor, not an op-ed] that attempted to rain on Coy’s parade and in passing to provide legitimacy for reparative therapy for TG children.
Who is this Big Shrink? It is none other than Dr. Jack Dresher whose somewhat immodest website states is:
….a leader in his profession. He is President of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and served as a Consultant to APA’s Committee on Public Affairs. Dr. Drescher served as a member of APA’s DSM-5 Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders. Since 2011, he has served as a member of the World Health Organization’s Working Group on the Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health…. Dr. Drescher has edited and co-edited more than a score of books dealing with gender, sexuality and the health and mental health of LGBT communities, most recently The LGBT Casebook (2012, American Psychiatric Publishing) and Treating Transgender Children and Adolescents (2013, Routledge)….
Do TG Children Grow Up to be Gay?
In his op-ed, Dr. Dresher said:
Actually, no one knows whether Coy will continue to feel that she is a girl when her body develops further, since most children like her grow up to be gay, not transgender.
So Coy’s struggle was unnecessary according to the Big Shrink. Although Dr. Drescher may very well be a good GLB psychiatrist, he does not seem know much about TSTG or TSTG science. This would be forgivable for lay members of the public but it is unforgivable for a self-professed expert on TSTG as well as GLB. I believe that it is a result of cursory reading and analysis of scientific papers. I have read numerous scientific papers which conclude with the obligatory conclusion that children who violate cultural gender norms will grow up to be homosexual, not TSTG. The conclusions of these papers customarily must acknowledge this meme but the scientific evidence, if critically viewed, leads in a different direction. Acceptance of the idea that childhood transgenderism leads to homosexuality is still pervasive in the psychiatric community so the Big Shrink is going with the flow.
I remember taking a seminar with a psychology professor at Dartmouth College, Dr. Lawry Gulick, who tried to get us students to be critical of scientific papers rather than just drink beer. (Yes, I was in the Animal House.) He encouraged us to ignore the conclusions of a research paper and to examine the method and results critically:
“Read what the scientist did and the resulting evidence and make up your own d**n mind about the conclusions. Base your understanding on the evidence, not on what the author says about it.”
He told us that conclusions are often driven by non-scientific factors such as the Zeitgeist, the prevailing culture and ideas of the time.
Case in point is the most recent research report on whether TG children grow up to be homosexual by Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis (2008) which concludes:
With regard to sexual orientation, the most likely outcome of childhood GID [TG} is homosexuality or bisexuality.
This statement is compatible with the prevailing idea about TG children becoming homosexual and not TSTG in later life and with the Big Shrink’s statement about Coy but look what happens when we use Professor Gulick’s analysis procedure?
The background of the Wallien (2008) study was that it was a longitudinal study, meaning that they observed TG children at 10 years old and reassessed them in early adulthood at about 21 years. As is often the case with longitudinal studies, the authors started with 77 subjects and 10 years later could only find 44 of the original group. Longitudinal studies are always subject to sampling bias because of this. About half of the 44 subjects (23) reported that they were no longer TG. Undoubtedly some who did not respond or professed to no longer be TG had actually gone in the closet, but we do not know for sure. The remainder, totaling 21 young adults, reported that their TG behavior continued (12 MTF and 9 FTM). Half of the males (6 of 12) reported being bisexual or homosexual but they were still transgender. (It should come as no surprise to most of us that there are transgender people who are also homosexual.)
So the conclusions from this paper should have been that (A) the most likely outcomes of childhood TG are professed absence of TG (23 of 44) or continued transgendered behavior (21 of 44), and (B) most children with TG become heterosexual as adults (>15 of 21) but some are homosexual/bisexual (6 of 21) as well as TG.
The conclusions of the authors and the Big Shrink’s statement just do not stand up to scientific scrutiny and should not be believed. The ultimate resolution of this issue obviously requires a longitudinal study with more participants but funding and commitment for such a study is limited. The U.S. and other countries are in a position to sponsor such studies but they reject them because they are not “politically correct.” Note that the Wallien study was funded and carried out in the Netherlands.
So it is not a waste of Coy’s time to behave according to her innate gender predisposition as a child. There is little or no penalty if she finds that this no longer suits her. It is not up to the Big Shrink as an armchair TSTG therapist to make this decision.
Consider Reparative Therapy
After the statement that Coy would likely grow up homosexual, the Big Shrink spent the balance of his op-ed giving legitimacy to reparative therapy for TG children. The biggest furor in the TSTG and therapist communities came from his neutral position on whether children should be allowed to express their gender predisposition as Coy is attempting to do or whether parents and therapists should discourage that behavior (presumably through reparative therapy).
Reparative therapy usually involves operant conditioning in which children are punished for TG behavior and rewarded for cis-gender behavior (given tokens with trade-in value to the child for “appropriate” behavior and taking them away for “inappropriate” behavior.) They might also undergo talk therapy in which they are browbeaten into believing that they should behave in the gender behavior category consistent with their assigned sex. Sometimes more severe methods are used. Reparative therapy does not work and as been shown to create emotional and physical damage to patients. It is now considered unethical by many prominent organizations, like the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association and WPATH. It is illegal in many US states.
However as far as TG children are concerned, reparative therapy is alive and well and advocated by the infamous Centre for Addiction and Health (the people that also gave us autogynephilia) in Canada. It is no wonder that Canadian reparative therapists, fight to be on the APA committee for revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. They do it in order to continue to make sure that diagnostic loopholes are included that allow for reparative therapy in children. Remember that Drescher was also on this committee. Could Drescher have been trying to please his reparative therapy buddies on the committee or did they convert him? Does Drescher only care about reparative therapy for homosexuals because he is one and not care about TSTG? Or is it just a business decision because he needs therapist contributors to TG child therapy books that he edits?
Drescher is takes a neutral position on whether to let children express their gender predisposition or to pursue discouragement, sometimes involving reparative therapy. He urges parents to investigate both options. This position is totally irresponsible and unethical.
We are all Coy Mathis, whether TG or not. We cannot allow Big Shrinks or similar pundits to take harmful positions on critical issues that affect us by making misleading illusions to science. We need to learn about the real scientific results, or at least pay attention to scientific debate and not automatically accept research conclusions.
We need to “make up our own d**n minds.”
Hope to see you all at Southern Comfort Conference. I will be giving a workshop on Thursday and holding a book signing on Friday.
Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion