Gender Dysphoria

"Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I'm capping greenhouse gases.  Coal power plants, natural gas, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money onto consumers."--Obama

Mom has really had a remarkable summer.

Mrs. McGraw has not seen ortho yet.

Brian had a big presentation that went well.

China, far and away the world’s biggest auto market with some 28 million vehicles sold annually, is aiming for more than 1 million Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles in service by 2030. That compares with just 1,500 or so now, most of which are buses.

40% of reffugees to the U.S. claiming persecution never fill out the paperwork and vanish. Another 40% fill out the paperwork but do not show up for the hearing and vanish.

Chinese electric vehicle maker NIO is losing money on every car it sells and will soon need to raise more cash. (wsj)

On this day in 1789, The first Congress of the United States approved 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.

Influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Bill of Rights was also drawn from Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in 1776.

                                                    Gender Dysphoria

There are approximately 40-million children in the United States between the ages of four and fourteen. The distribution curve above would suggest that roughly four-million of them have personality profiles that are “sex atypical,” but which are still part of the natural distribution of personalities within each sex.

The broad, but normal distribution of personality traits also explains studies showing a 28% concordance of transgender identity in twins. Twins have identical chromosomes, and so likely will have similar sex-related behaviors, as well as experience similar environmental influences in regard to those behaviors. Using twin adolescent males as an example: If their behaviors are at the “feminine” end of the male-typical distribution, they could both become confused as to what their behaviors and preferences mean about their sex.

In most cases, the thing that is now called “gender identity” likely is simply an individual’s perception of how their own sex-related and environmentally influenced personality compares to same and opposite sexed people. Put another way, it’s a self-assessment of one’s stereotypical degree of “masculinity” or “femininity,” and it’s wrongly being conflated with biological sex. This conflation stems from a cultural failure to understand the broad distribution of personalities and preferences within sexes and the overlap between sexes.

When a girl reports that she “feels like a boy” or “is a boy,” that sentiment may reflect her perception of how her personality and preferences compare to the rest of her peers. If the girl has an autism spectrum condition, she may even perceive “sex-atypical” behavior that does not actually exist, and thereby falsely self-diagnose as male even without experiencing any actual male personality traits.

Historical data suggests that about 0.5% of children develop gender dysphoria—distress caused by a perceived incongruence between one’s biological sex and gender presentation. Reinforcing studies in the medical literature show that, as children get older, childhood-onset gender dysphoria resolves (i.e. ends) in most cases. As two authors put it in a 2016 International Review of Psychiatry article, “the conclusion from these studies is that childhood GD [gender dysphoria] is strongly associated with a lesbian, gay or bisexual outcome and that for the majority of the children (85.2%; 270 out of 317 [studied individuals]) the gender dysphoric feelings remitted around or after puberty.”

The growing population of transgender-identifying high school students now is estimated to comprise about 2% of all students—a three-fold increase over the baseline 0.5% figure cited above. Many adolescents now are presenting to gender clinics, with some clinics seeing a 10-fold increase in new cases. Many of these adolescents have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Higher rates of autism-spectrum conditions have been described in many of these adolescents, and the controversial “affirmation model” is being applied to this unstudied cohort as well. Not surprisingly, reports of transition regret, and de-transition, are growing in number.

To summarize, a lack of understanding regarding the distribution of sex-related personality and behavioral differences has led to confusion that impacts children who fall at the extreme tail-ends of the distribution, and who would be statistically more likely to grow up to be gay, lesbian or bisexual adults if allowed to experience uninterrupted puberty. Additionally, telling a child that he or she was born in the wrong body pathologizes “gender non-conforming” behavior and makes gender dysphoria less likely to resolve.

The fact is, no child is actually born in the wrong body. Adults should expand their understanding of what normal male and female behavior and preferences look like—which would lead them to appreciate that being male or female comes with a wider range of personalities preferences, and possibilities than old stereotypes would have us believe.

(from an article by William J. Malone, Colin M. Wright, and Julia D. Robertson)