Debra Soh Needs to Do Some Library Research

Dr. Debra Soh

In the wake of her recent appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO show, I have been asked by several transgender people to write a blogpost trashing Debra Soh. Debra has become the darling of YouTube and the Intellectual Dark Web as well as a media personality. I continue to refuse to trash her personally without further evidence. She may be a very nice person and, in general, says she supports transgender rights and science. But she has been misled by her mentors on a number of transgender science issues and seemingly has not taken the time to form her own positions. To be charitable, she is just out of school and seems like she is merely parroting back what she has learned but the people she learned from are some of the most notorious pathologizers of transgender people. They defend gender behavior change efforts (reparative therapy) and believe that being transgender is driven by sexual arousal. Their conclusions are not supported by the evidence. So (no pun intended), I refuse to trash her personally but I will readily trash the scientific positions she takes if needed.

When she strays from what she learned in school, her gaps in scientific evidence and her lack of originality are revealed. She portrays herself as a victim of the radical left and often resorts to conspiracy theories about intellectual suppression of scientific evidence, both without providing any evidence of conspiracy. She claims that she left academia because it was hostile and she now professes to be a “journalist.” I will continue to believe that these are rhetorical shiny objects she is forced to use to distract from gaps in her knowledge until I have more evidence.

What are the assumptions and arguments she makes, where did they come from and what is the relevant science?

First some academic genealogy.

Soh got her most recent degree from York University in Toronto. There, she studied with a researcher named James Cantor who is primarily interested in pedophilia and paraphilia—pathological categories of sexual arousal to children and sexual arousal to culturally rejected stimuli. Soh pursued research in these areas. That makes her the academic daughter of Cantor. But Cantor previously worked and published with the folks over at the nearby University of Toronto who were involved in the Canadian Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Gender Clinic. You will recall that the CAMH clinic was dissolved because its providers were performing gender change efforts on children, otherwise known as “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy.” (In fact, there is nothing therapeutic about these efforts). Cantor’s mentor and academic parents were none other than Ray Blanchard, Ken Zucker and Susan Bradley. Blanchard brought us autogynephilia which I have written about before as being pseudoscience and devolves into the idea that those transgender people who emerge later in life are driven to do so by sexual arousal. Cantor still keeps his hand in, and recently published a criticism of the affirmative guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics for trans kids. In turn, Zucker’s mentor and academic parent was Richard Green who performed sexual-orientation/gender change efforts on children. Zucker and Bradley continued these at CAMH and the University. Green also contrived the pathological category of “gender identity disorder” in time for the DSM III release in 1979.

To sum up, Debra is the academic daughter of James Cantor, and the academic granddaughter of Ray Blanchard, Ken Zucker and Susan Bradley, and the academic great-granddaughter of Richard Green. I will refer to them as a group as the “cabal.” I have written about the positions of all of the people in this cabal before. If you already know what the positions of these guys are, you are already afraid, very afraid.

And now to the science:

1. Long before the prominent emergence of transgender people in the past decade, the cabal became consumed by sex and treatments of sexual behavior with psychotherapy and other procedures. Specifically, they wanted to study and “cure” homosexuality, paraphilias (fetishisms) and other behaviors involving sex and sexual arousal which they classified as pathological so that they could study them. Such cures have never been realized. As early as 1972 the AMA concluded that psychotherapy was not a cure for being transgender. And in 1979, the cabal had the rug pulled out from them when the American Psychiatric Association decided to delete homosexuality as a pathological category from the DSM. The cabal countered by adding “gender identity disorder” and “gender identity disorder of childhood” to the DSM. Because many pre-homosexual children and some adult homosexuals crossdress, this allowed the cabal to continue their studies in the area of homosexuality. But the pushback against pathologization continued and the DSM was changed to only consider those “in distress” or “disabled” to be pathological. The realms of paraphilias, fetishism and eventually being transgender trended toward depathologization. In the case of being transgender this culminated with the creation of the intended non-pathological category of gender dysphoria in the DSM. This category remained so that insurance billing for medical transition procedures could continue but it remains the barrier to full depathologization of transgender people. This DSM code is about to be supplanted by ICD-11 codes would put the cabal out of business for trying “cures” involving psychotherapy and other useless procedures.

The cabal, Debra and others, still refer to being transgender as being pathological with the “gender dysphoria” code being used when it becomes a “medical condition.” The science says that being transgender is a part of natural diversity and not pathological. I have argued that transition procedures should be regarded like cosmetic treatments and not be subject to costly and useless mental health “gatekeeping.” Last year, WPATH changed the rules in this direction by changing their standards to allow any MD to start adult hormone therapy with an informed consent waiver document.

The damage to transgender rights can be seen in the continuing pathologizing of transgender behavior and the use of the “medical condition” argument to bar transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. Thank you, cabal and Debra.

2. Although they know better, the cabal and Debra continue to confound sex and gender. She keeps referring to gender behavior as “sex-type behavior” and “male type behavior” or “female type behavior.” In her YouTube interviews, Debra will occasionally acknowledge that sex and gender are different but uses the argument that there are “so few” people whose gender is not aligned with their sex that sex and gender are practically the same thing. The “so few” people are of course, us. But 1-2% of the population is still a lot of people. Erasing the difference between sex and gender, erases and smears transgender people. In passing, it should be remarked that Paul McHugh and Catholic anti-transgender/anti-homosexual theologians take this tack as well. Transgender people provide the most obvious evidence of the dissociation of sex and gender both because of their very existence and because if one identical twin is transgender, then the other one will only be about half the time, but both will have the same sex.

3. Because of her ancestry, Debra defends the use of sex and gender change efforts (reparative therapy or conversion therapy). Green tried to use operant conditioning to try to change gender behavior in trans kids and prehomosexual kids. Green’s academic progeny, Zucker/Bradley continued in this direction and used operant conditioning, toy deprivation and jawboning. Of course, there is no published evidence that any of these procedures actually worked. As the pressure against reparative therapy increased, Zucker and Bradley later fell back to the “live in your own skin approach,” jawboning children and parents that life would be really hard if they did not change their gender behavior. When it became obvious that these approaches were unacceptable and ineffective, Zucker/Bradley retreated to the “watchful waiting” approach, advocated by their associates in the Netherlands with no treatment or social transition allowed until puberty. But the retreat was not fast enough to save the CAMH gender clinic and it was shut down. Soh says that the “watchful waiting” approach is the norm but it has largely been supplanted, particularly in the U.S., by the “affirmative approach” which allows immediate social transition, hormone blocking drugs at initial signs of puberty (Tanner stage II) and a decision on transition at 16. Parents of trans kids are not just willing to do nothing while the danger that their trans kids will attempt suicide increases.

The science says that sexual orientation change efforts are ineffective and can be injurious, particularly for children. There are no such published studies on gender behavior change efforts, although the Toronto cabal pursued them for many years. Soh should not be advocating such change efforts without new scientific and safety evidence since Toronto studies never seemed to pan out and were never evaluated for safety. Debra should spend some time going back to look at the CAMH clinical data before she advocates.

4. Debra continues to articulate the Toronto cabal contention that most trans kids will stop being trans as they approach puberty. (This is contradictory to advocacy for the cabal change efforts; they cannot have it both ways, either trans kids spontaneously stop being transgender or their treatments arrested transgender behavior.) As I have previously indicated, there is no good data about trans kids adult outcomes. All of the studies cited by this group indicate that the vast majority of children under study were actually pre-homosexual kids. Prior to the initiation of legal bans on change efforts in many states and countries around 2011, the investigators readily admitted that they were treating prehomosexual children, using diagnostic criteria which seemed to be for trans. As we know from later emergences of transgender people, many go into secret as the social pressure increases in childhood and teenage years. Claiming ignorance of later emergence is failure to acknowledge scientific fact.

Debra also continues the pathologizing campaign by Zucker that trans kids are either “desisters” or “persisters” In terms of outcomes. Zucker impishly admits that he chose this terminology precisely because it was pathological in other contexts. Specifically, these terms are used in a pathological condition called “oppositional defiant disorder” which has nothing at all to do with being transgender. In a published paper, Zucker says that he selected these terms because “the terminology sounded pretty cool to me.” Another pejorative for these terms comes from sociology where they are used to describe criminal juvenile delinquents. Zucker should have been more circumspect in coining these terms for transgender outcomes and Debra should be more circumspect in using them. The connotations of these terms serve to pathologize and smear transgender people.

4. Debra continues to claim that causation of various phenomena, including being transgender and homosexuality, involves levels of prenatal testosterone but measuring such levels in the fetus is beyond the state of the art. The validity of surrogate measurements such as finger length measurements is questionable given clear evidence that this measurement is heavily influenced by genetics and that we have identified which genes are responsible. The science record is out there (and is written in my books), if Debra chooses to do some research.

5. The cabal assumes, and Debra repeats, that if biology is involved in gender then gender cannot be a social construct. This is not supported by science. We know that gender categories are create by culture because of anthropological science evidence they vary from culture to culture and over time. Gender categories are social constructs but genetic gender predispositions are not social constructs but instead biological phenomena. As I have postulated in my Four Factor theory both biological and learning about social constructs is involved in transgender causation. Although the idea of gender behavior predisposition was originated in the Four Factor theory, proof of genetic predispositions is commonplace. The idea is that genetics sets the stage for later learning. Debra should know better, but continues to argue against feminists who rightfully claim that gender categories are social constructed. She picks a fight where there is no need.

6. Debra has stated that providers for trans kids seek to “blackmail” their parents into entering them into social transition, puberty blockers and sex transition, but offers no evidence of this. In addition, she accuses providers of attacking parents for being transphobic and bigoted. Again, no evidence for this is given. Blanchard has been openly guilty of trashing transgender advocates, so she may have learned that from her academic grandfather. She says that the threat of suicide is overrated and mentions only one study in which the authors pointed out the limitations in their study. Such a section in a research report is now an obligatory reporting convention and does not necessarily, invalidate the results. There are actually several suicide studies, not just one, with results ranging from 35% to 41% of transgender people attempting suicide. There is also a paper showing a 30% suicide rate for trans kids, which is not out of line with population results indicating that suicide among young people is more frequent. Debra needs to hit the library and not rely on what she learned in school from her masters.

Debra expresses concerns over following affirmative procedures with trans kids and since they are relatively new they have not been thoroughly evaluated for side effects. Caution is in order here. But to say that affirmative procedures should not be pursued, leaves parents and trans kids without recourse to head off the unwanted effects of puberty, making suicide attempts more likely. There are serious studies underway to evaluate these procedures but Debra expresses doubt that they will be carried out objectively. This is a challenge to the integrity of the investigators, which without evidence is unprofessional.

7. Debra seems prone to exaggeration when she postulates that a consensus or the number of papers on a particular issue has been reached or on the number of studies in a particular area (e.g. prenatal testosterone levels). If she only knows what the cabal has concluded, she may feel the need to scramble in interviews. She may be nervous on camera or stuck for an answer and feel the need to exaggerate but such unfounded statements are unprofessional.

8. Soh expresses the opinion in line with her academic cabal that treating transgender kids with the affirmative approach would interfere with treating them for such conditions as autism, suicide and depression and the effects of trauma. The cabal has sought to retain their hold on transgender and prehomosexual children for research by attempting to show that such conditions frequently co-occur and therefore trans children are likely to be pathological and should be in clinics. Some results from ongoing studies of depression suggest that being transgender should be treated first, reducing social rejection which causes reactive depression. For people who are both transgender and on the autism spectrum, treatment procedures have already been developed to treat both conditions simultaneously. These providers observe synergism between such treatments in that improvements in verbalization deficits caused by autism also improve verbalization about being transgender. Childhood trauma, is a staple of psychodynamics but is often only imagined after long psychotherapy as false memories. Again, I think she is just following the cabal party line without looking at the evidence and making up her own mind. She seems to have no clinical experience in these areas.

Conclusion

Finally, I think that by parroting back cabal positions, Debra does not realize the damage she causes. She is so caught up in trying wrap herself in the flag of “science” on TV and vlogs that she does not actually question what she has learned. But the scientific method features continual questioning of theory and evidence. Realizing that will help avoid harm to transgender people make her a better science journalist.

Debra, please go to the library and we can then compare notes.

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Tags: autogynephilia, Dr. Debra Soh, featured, History, Identity, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul