On the Science of Changing Sex

Ruth Barrett, Or When An Old Friend Becomes An Enemy

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial by Kay Brown on June 16, 2021

When J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame came out as a major transphobe, many LGB & especially T people felt as though it was a personal betrayal. They had read her book, viewed her movies, responding to the tropes of love and inclusion triumphing over hatefulness… only to learn that Rowling was herself a Death Eater. I was one of those transsexuals who felt betrayed. I had taken my daughter to each of the movies as they came out. She was the same age as the child actors portraying the lead characters. She had all the books. Now, those memories are bitter ashes, tainted by the vile transphobia Rowling has vomited over them.

But there has been an even more bitter betrayal by one that I had admired and emulated, Ruth Barrett.

Ruth Barrett is a musician and Wiccan. She and her musical partner, Cyntia Smith, recorded songs and dulcimer instrumentals. Another Wiccan singer & dulcimer player I admired was Holly Tannen. I was in love with their music, bought all of their recordings.

Note the dulcimer on the wall

I purchased a dulcimer from Folk Roots, the same type that Ruth & Cyntia had learned to play and perform using, taking lessons from Holly. But I struggled to play it. I had studied Individual Voice and Small Group Harmony in high school, but had never learned to play an instrument. I was a klutz. My fingers just didn’t seem to know what to do.

Then, by chance, in the mid’ 80s, I was invited by Z Budapest, feminist author and Wiccan Sage, to help her set up and run the sound system for a conference and concert in Berkeley, as I had learned that skill helping with concerts at the Billy De Frank Gay and Lesbian Community Center in San Jose. It would have been quite churlish of me to have refused. One of the women to perform that day was Holly Tannen, another was Ruth Barrett. Thus, I met and got to know two of my musical idols on the same day.

I engaged Holly as an instructor. I still struggled. My fingers still didn’t seem to know what to do.

By luck, at a pagan event, I met Ruth and Cyntia. They both gave me quick lessons and pointers. Ruth gave me photocopies of her chord charts and tab sheets for several of their songs. Ruth and I talked about how to find one’s own singing and playing style, one’s own authentic voice. I was to see them at several other events over the next few years and was on very friendly terms with both of them. I met Cyntia’s husband, Dale, who was a master luthier, a maker of the finest classical guitars. As a means of courting Cyntia, he had copied the basic design of the Folk Roots dulcimer to make Ruth and Cyntia new dulcimers in the tradition of the finest guitars, with a sound and playability unmatched by any other in the world.

As my playing had vastly improved, thanks to Cyntia and Ruth’s tips, and that I had come into unexpected money from having been granted a patent, which was rewarded by my employer with a cash bonus, I commissioned Dale to make me a custom dulcimer in the same style as Ruth’s and Cyntia’s. As it happened, Cyntia and Ruth were scheduled to perform at the Billy De Frank Center, so it was natural that they stay at my place. Cyntia and I, in the comfort of my condo, spent our time discussing the custom inlay that she herself would design and carve for my dulcimer.

That dulcimer was a wonder. In just a few hours practice, my playing vastly improved. Having a fine instrument is worth everything, both to the performer and their audience. No wonder the greatest musicians pay thousands for them. I began to play the dulcimer, modern full chording/fingerpicking style, mostly British Isles folk tunes, at pagan events to the great appreciation of my audience.  You may listen or download free, should you be interested, to my indie produced cassette tape album of mostly folk music, but a couple Early Music, and even a few of my own composition, on dulcimer, guitar, and flute, I recorded back in ’89.  (Tap on “Side One” or “Side Two” to listen to the MP3 version.)  Please keep in mind, this is my hobby… I don’t pretend to be a professional.

On one of the occassions I was to see and converse with Ruth, at a Wiccan gathering / camping event, she strongly encouraged me to attend The Michigan Wymym’s Music Festival. The irony is not lost on me, as she was to rail loudly against allowing transwomen to attend in the years that followed. She has become a vociferous voice for TERF / GC / Transphobic propaganda, using Wicca / Goddess worship as her authority for her hatred. She edited a book entitled “Female Erasure” whose central theme was that transfolk are a serious threat to women’s existence. She has even led spiritual events for “detrans” female bodied people to “sever” their past “trans” experience.

If learning that the author of Harry Potter is transphobic feels like a betrayal, imagine how I feel about Ruth Barrett spewing the most vile transphobic propaganda after having been a personal musical mentor and friend, a guest in my house, a hero that I emulated.

Tagged with: ,

Comments Off on Ruth Barrett, Or When An Old Friend Becomes An Enemy

COVID-19 Deja Vu

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial by Kay Brown on March 13, 2020

Kay BrownI’m feeling a sense of deja vu these days.  It feels a tiny bit like the early ’80s as HIV/AIDS was spreading in the gay male (and androphilic only) trans communities.  Then, it was a mix of dread and denial.  For me, as it became clear who was most at risk and why, I was in deep dread that I might already have a ticking time bomb lurking in my body.  I had been sexually active with men as an obligate bottom during the ’70s and early ’80s before my SRS.

Until the HIV/AIDS epidemic, I had had completely unprotected sex.  I had never even seen a condom until I attended a “safe sex” education party held at one of my Stanford classmate’s house.  I mean, why should I have?  It wasn’t like there was ever any chance of pregnancy, right?  Seriously, that’s the only reason we knew for using a condom back then.  If one got an STD, one took a course of antibiotics, no muss, no fuss.  How wrong we were.

When testing became available, there was an option to have it done anonymously.  I didn’t want to do it even then, dreading the possible result.  But my friends, Joy Shaffer, M.D. (a gynephilic transwoman) and her lover, Patricia quite literally shanghaied me to take me to the clinic.  They also got tested, but c’mon… it was only done as a show of emotional support for me, so that it wouldn’t be so obvious that I was the only one who was actually at risk.  Fortunately, the test result was negative.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic grew and we learned about it being an STD and a nearly universal death sentence, some of us dramatically changed our behavior.  I know I certainly did.  I dramatically reduced my sexual activity and kept condoms with me at all times.  I had quite the “dry spell” for while, unwilling to risk even protected sex unless I knew that the man I was with was a very low risk.  (The fact that I dated almost exclusively straight men helped reduce that risk… but even then… better safe sex right?)

But some gay men and HSTS continued to contract HIV because of denial and ignorance.  And President Reagan refused to even acknowledge that we have a serious epidemic killing us.

So, here we are today, with a global pandemic illness and a President in denial, failing to respond appropriately, and some people in total denial as though it won’t affect them.  Deja vu.

Yes, it can.

So, please, stop going clubbing or to concerts.  Work from home if you can.  Wash your hands often.  Listen to health authorities and ignore bad advice on social media.


Comments Off on COVID-19 Deja Vu

Oppressive Rituals of Ceremoniously Announcing One’s Gender Pronouns

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial by Kay Brown on April 8, 2019

Kay BrownBefore I jump into the deeper topic of this essay, I need to share an anecdote in the hopes that reading it will help any non-trans person reading this to understand it.  (Note: I normally avoid the use of the term “cis” as it is deeply problematic, but that is an issue for another essay.)

About a decade ago, I accompanied a young protégé, a 20-something transwoman to Trinidad, Colorado so that she wouldn’t be all alone as she underwent SRS and the painful first days afterwards.  I stayed at a B&B owned by a lesbian.  It was billed as a very trans friendly place where transfolk and their families / friends could stay during and after their hospitalization.  Perfect, I thought.

Well… not so perfect as it turned out.  The first few days went well as I got along well with the relatives of the transfolk, who except for exactly one 17-year-old, were all classic “late transitioning” transwomen.  The non-transfolk, all female, staying at the B&B were clearly self-congratulating themselves for how supportive they were of their transgender relative.  The owner of the B&B was friendly, and tried to get me to partake in smoking grass and staying up late to get more than tipsy on hard liquor with her lesbian friends.  As I never drink more than a few sips of wine with dinner, never use pot, and am habitually an early to bed, early to rise type, she was very disappointed in me.

But, after being there several days, as my young protégé lay in the hospital bed recovering, there was some rather animated discussions among the family members of the transfolk at the B&B, it became clear to me that they all thought I was my young protégé’s mother.  Further, it became clear that even though all of these people had transfolk as relatives, spouses, or lovers, they didn’t really have a clue as to certain aspects of trans-life, history, or medical etiology.  I said something that could only be properly understood if one knew that I was trans… Oopsie!

The owner of the B&B suddenly turned to me and said, “But YOU aren’t transgender!”.

“Yes, I am.  I had SRS in this very same place twenty-eight years ago.”

“But you are so womanly!”

Yes, that is a verbatim quote, which tells volumes of her perception of and attitude toward the many transwomen that she had met over the years of operating her B&B.

It took several more minutes of question and answers before they actually believed me.

But this was a very bad move on my part, outing myself… even to this ostensibly trans friendly environment.  Where before I had been simply a woman to them… suddenly, I was no longer in that social category.  I was the “other”.

Oh, they never misgendered me or stupidly asked me to divulge my “real name”.  And they still used feminine pronouns.  But, it had a different accent, a different emphasis, when they used it.  One could hear the scare quotes: “she”.  Further, I wasn’t to be involved in the same conversations, or invited to the same activities.  I was the “other”.

I spoke with my husband on the phone every evening and told him how icky it all felt.  How I felt deeply unhappy, lonely, even weepy at times.  He spotted it.  He got it even before I did, “You are the &^%$#@! again!”

“Yes, that’s exactly it.  I’m the lowly &^%$#@! to them.”  I feel that same awful icky, sick to my stomach, sinking feeling that I had as a child and teenager before I socially transitioned and lived mostly stealth.  Back when even my own siblings derisively called me, “It”.

Non-transfolk, often without realizing it, have a condescending attitude toward transfolk.  We are “those people”… the “other”.  And even when they are socially liberal and think of themselves as oh so hip, so “woke” to use modern cant, transfolk are never normal people to them.  We are “those unfortunate people”… and of course as privileged “cis” folk, they must be nice to us by using the correct pronouns.

About Those Pronoun Reveal Rituals

apa_pronoun_stickersSo now I turn to the heart of this essay.  There has been growing for several years, a practice that when I first encountered it made me feel that same icky feeling.  I was in a room with other, mostly LGB and non-trans straight allies.  I was the only trans person in the room.  Because I was there as a representative of the transcommunity, everyone in the room KNEW that I was the only &^%$#@! trans person in the room.  Yet, as is often done, they went around the room in a circle to “check in”.  I’m very used to the traditional check-in, one introduces oneself and says how they are feeling or some other appropriate to the meeting statement.  Cool.  But this time, a very NOT cool addition had been made.  It was socially expected… you know how that works… expected that one would announce one’s ‘pronouns’.  When it got to me, I did the socially unexpected thing and after announcing my name, said “Pass.”  (As in the card game Bridge, one says “pass” instead of making a “bid”.)

I had hoped that they would get the hint.  No… because at a later meeting, they did the same thing.  Once again, I was very obviously the only trans person there.  Once again, I simply said, “Pass”.  After this… it seemed that they got the hint and this ritual stopped.

But, a year later, we have a new addition to the organization, a middle-aged, but recently transitioned, gay identified FTM transman.  And, we have a non-transwoman organization building professional consultant coming in to lead the group through a long and much-needed planning meeting.  She, knowing that there are transfolk in the group, does the now socially obligatory “check-in” with the same oppressive pronoun announcements.  Given that part of the check-in was to say how we are feeling, I spoke up and said how irritated, angry, sick to my stomach, and condescended to, that this ritual of having to announce our “pronouns” made me feel.  This was NOT a welcome statement as everyone but the other trans person got defensive, really defensive.

Here’s the thing.  Would any group of non-trans-folk be performing this ritual if they knew, KNEW, that there weren’t any transfolk in the room?  Then why the ^%$#@! are they doing it when they know that there is?  Why the &^%$#@! do it when they already KNOW what the gender presentation of that trans person means for their pronouns?

Here’s the other thing.  Having to tell everyone their pronouns is superfluous to non-transfolk, a ritual that they perform to virtue signal to each other and mistakenly believe that they are signaling “welcome” to those who are trans.

One of the rationales I’ve heard for this ritual, “But how are we to know what pronoun to use?”  To many transfolk that feels like, “If I have to tell you what my pronouns are, my transition has failed.  Please don’t make me feel like that.”

Another rationale I’ve heard is that it is helpful for those just starting transition, especially young people.  Interestingly, a young transwoman, S. Alejandra Velasquez, wrote about this very issue 15 years ago in her essay on recommendations regarding therapy for transkids,

“Transkids who have not transitioned socially are unlikely to put a great deal of importance on what pronoun you use for them or what name they’re called. This is not a sign of having ambivalence to their gender or feeling conflicted about which gender they want to be; given that their gender is already at issue they may simply not care how a health care provider addresses them. Showing ‘sensitivity’ by trying to respect their ‘gender identity’, or worse insisting that they declare their ‘gender identity’, will only make them feel embarrassed. Transkids are practical about identity issues so don’t make a bigger deal about it than they do.”


If someone wants you to use a pronoun that doesn’t match their appearance and obvious intended gender presentation, they can simply inform you of it privately.  No muss, no fuss.

Can we please just let transfolk be folk?  Can we please stop this shallow virtue signaling that makes non-transfolk feel that they are cool and welcoming while in truth, they are telling us that we are “the other”?  Don’t expect us to participate by wearing label stickers.  Don’t expect us to participate by putting / announcing pronouns on our social media pages.  And don’t post your own, it doesn’t help us, it hurts us.  It calls attention to transfolk as “the other”.  Get to know us as human beings instead.

Addendum 7/12/2019:

I recently saw a posting that was widely shared calling people who don’t need nor want to participate in this ritual of announcing one’s gender pronouns, or posting them on their social media, “transphobic”.  Given that a fair number of transsexuals have been refusing to participate, this is non-transgender people calling transsexuals, “transphobic”.

Further Reading:

The Silent Transsexual

Further External Reading:

Treatment Recommendations For HSTS Transkids by S. Alejandra Velasquez

Comments Off on Oppressive Rituals of Ceremoniously Announcing One’s Gender Pronouns

Folklore Gender Tests

Posted in Autobiographical, Transsexual Field Studies by Kay Brown on September 17, 2018

Kay BrownGender “tests” found in fiction and folklore… Or… Nailed It !!

When I was in middle school, one of my classmates, a friendly acquaintance and I were standing in an interminably long slow line for some reason I’ve long ago forgotten.  Bored and reaching for something to amuse herself she challenged me to a “gender test” to see if I was a “boy or a girl”.  It consisted of three items.

The first item was to light a match.  From a book of matches I pulled one out, turned it so that the wider edge aligned with the striker strip so that when I pushed it along away from me it wouldn’t bend in my fingers.  “Oops!” my friend says… I “failed”.  According to this test, women light their matches in this fashion while men pull the flat of the match head along the striker toward their body.  The theory is that women are more careful to keep the flame away from their fingers and body than men.

The second was to ask the testee to look at her/his shoe soles, the bottoms of their feet, while standing.  I no longer remember if I “passed” or “failed” this item of the test.  But I remember that men are supposed to turn their legs and ankle in front, looking straight down.  Women are supposed to bend their knee so that their foot rises up behind them and look over their shoulder.  It may be because of the difference in dress standards for men and women (boys and girls) in that age?  Men are wearing trousers while women are wearing skirts.  It may look unseemly for women wearing knee-length skirts to bend forward, but lifting their leg backward with such skirts is not?

Fashion does impose limits on movement or convenience.  In Huckleberry Finn, our hero runs away and hides by impersonating a girl.  An old woman tests and catches him out by tossing a ball of yarn while his hands are full holding a skein.  He instinctively pulls his knees together to form a larger catching surface.  Gotcha!  A girl, used to long full skirts fashionable in the mid-19th Century would have spread her legs instead to let the skirt catch the ball.  But, consider asking a woman in that era to look at the bottom of her feet encumbered by such a skirt.  She isn’t as likely to bend her leg up behind her, only to catch on her long skirt.  More likely, she would have lifted her skirt slightly and bent her leg, hidden behind the skirt (and much like a curtsy), and turned the ankle to look straight down.

The third and final item was to “look at your nails”.  I naturally held my hands out in front of me, my fingers straight.  “Oops!” my friend says, “you failed the test!  You do things like a girl.  You need to be more careful.”  She looked at me as though to tell me more but I cut her off, changing the subject.

When men look at their nails, they near universally bend their fingers toward their palms.  Women are far more likely to hold their fingers straight, bending their wrists slightly backwards.  Although this may be reinforced by the fashion of long nails, in fact, this “hyperflexion” as its called is very common in girls and feminine boys from an early age, even when not looking at their nails.

Later, in high school, as I was in the early process of coming out and socially transitioning, I sat having a friendly chat with one of my female friends who suddenly grabbed by hands exclaiming that she would teach me how to groom my nails.  She explained in a happy rush that boys didn’t groom their cuticles or trim their nails properly, etc.  “You need to learn how to gently push back your cuticles like this…” then stopped dead as she actually saw, really looked, at my nails for the first time… and saw that my cuticles were perfectly groomed.  “I groom them in the bath, push them back after they soften in the water.”  Up to that moment, I honestly had never given it much thought.  Of course I kept my nails clean, neat, and very slightly longer than most boys but not to the point where it would set my mother off on one of her ugly transphobic harangues.  I had been doing so for years.  My nails looked much like my friend’s!  My friend had made the erroneous assumption that I didn’t have a clue about feminine grooming skills.

Within weeks of that conversation, the narrative was flipped.  I was doing her make-up, as well as several others of my friends, anytime they had “big dates”.  There is a very telling inside joke told in the trans community about transwomen.  “How can you tell the difference between an early transitioner (HSTS) and a late transitioner (AGP)?”…   “An early transitioner is happy to do her female friend’s make up for them as she does it better… while a late transitioner needs her wife do her make-up for her.”

Speaking of nails and autogynephiles.  On a social media forum, I was corresponding with several women who were discussing transgender issues.  Some were welcoming my explanations of autogynephilic behavior and motivations and the obvious differences between HSTS and AGP transwomen while one clearly transphobic woman hatefully rejected the two type taxonomy declaring we were all “deluded perverts”… and deliberately tried to push me off the forum insultingly telling me to “Go do your nails!”.  Sigh…

I flashed back to the memory of my friend from high school… and several others.

It reminded me of an anecdote in Amy Bloom’s essay “Conservative Men In Conservative Dresses” in which a woman related how she was expected to clean up the dishes after dinner while her husband applied polish to his nails to allow him to express his “inner femininity”.  That image says volumes.

That in turn lead to another memory…

I’m on a blind date with a man who knew he would be meeting a post-op transwoman and was open to the experience.  I was told that he was a trust-fund baby, etc., so I had dressed nice to meet him at a trendy cafe.  One look told me that I had been lied to.  This man was clearly NOCD (“not our class, Dear”) as the saying goes.  He was slovenly dressed.  He was poorly educated and boorish.  His family may have left him some money but he clearly was an unemployed bum, an unemployable LOSER.  I tried to find a polite way of ducking out early but he seemed to be unable to take a hint.  Further, he was absolutely fascinated by me and kept asking questions.  I wanted to avoid making a scene so was being as polite and hushed voiced as I could.  I was trying to avoid making eye contact as a way of discouraging him so focused on his hands resting on the table as he leaned toward me.  There was something odd about his hands.  Not only were they not really clean, his nails were a tad bit too long, They were rough surfaced, the ridges clearly visible, the cuticles ragged, poorly groomed… but wait… was that clear nail polish on them?!  Oh My God!  This man was a secret cross-dresser, an autogynephile!  As this realization was sinking in…  suddenly something I had said in answering his questions about myself set him off.  He became quite excited, his voice raised a bit as he asked several more questions, which concerned me lest others overhear.  Then in answering a question about my childhood he burst out very loudly, “You’re a TRUE TRANSSEXUAL!”.  People at other tables clearly heard and turned to look at me.  I was mortified and no longer felt the need to be polite so looked him in the eye and told him to lower his voice and that I was leaving.  He tried to apologize but I ducked out.

Whew!  Good riddance… only it wasn’t.  He found out where I lived, what my number was… and stalked me for months, sending me gifts, notes, calling me.  My roommates had to shield me.  I finally told him that if he didn’t stop, I would turn to the law… and told him that he needed to get therapy to deal with his obsession.  I also made it very clear that I would never date a cross-dresser which finally got through to him that I would never be his girlfriend.

External Further Reading:

Amy Bloom, “Conservative Men In Conservative Dresses”

Comments Off on Folklore Gender Tests

Misplaced Moralizing

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial by Kay Brown on August 28, 2018

Kay BrownOr…  #MeToo & #WhyIDidntReport

The other day, a non-transwoman on a “gender critical” (which usually means “transgender belittle”) forum hatefully misinterpreted a passing remark in one of my essays about maintaining safety and privacy when dating as a teenaged MTF transkid.  She very nastily described stealth, passing, transwomen not telling their dates that they are trans as “rapey”.

No, “rapey” is…

a man inviting a 20-year-old transwoman who had just moved into the low rent flat a couple doors down to watch some TV during a quiet summer saturday afternoon.  In the middle of a program, without saying a word, he unzips his pants, pulls out his penis and proceeds to masturbate.  Without saying a word, she leaves the room to return to her own room and locks the door.

“Rapey” is…

a tall, above 6′, very strong-looking man in his early 30s following a 5’7″, 140lb, 19-year-old transwoman, in a mid-thigh length dress and light sweater, off the bus at night, on her way home from her job as a secretary, following her only a few paces behind her duplicating each turn down deserted streets toward her suburban apartment obviously looking for a dark corner.  That young transwoman, steeling her nerves, turns to confront the man hoping that a brave face will deter the attack she knows must be coming, saying “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Whose going to stop me?” he says haughtily, tilting his head up to show his disdain.  The transwoman, having confirmation that this man does indeed intend to rape her and seeing her opportunity for surprise, folds the fingers of her hand to form a sharp edge of her knuckles and strikes him in the throat, turns and flees as fast as she can for the final few yards for her apartment door, her hands shaking so badly that she drops her keys before finally getting the door open, slips into the apartment, slams, locks, and bolts the door!

“Rapey” is…

a coworker grabbing a 21 year old transwoman in the hallway at work as she comes out of the women’s room, dragging her kicking and screaming to the men’s room while repeating over and over “It will be alright,” in a sick twisted “calming” voice.  In the doorway to the men’s room he pulls up her calf-length skirt, pulls down her panties and grabs her… oops… pre-op genitalia which he hadn’t expected.  At that moment she shakes loose, bolts down the hallway, enters a room and locks the door behind her.  She waits for an hour before peeking out the door then runs full tilt for the parking lot and drives home still shaking.

Rape Culture…

is telling management about the attack, where upon, she is taken to a dimly lit room with only one chair to be interrogated by two men looming over her.  Her request that she speak to a woman is denied.  After scoffing at her account she is fired a few days later.

Rape is….

…having fallen asleep on the couch at a stranger’s apartment because your date doesn’t want to go home yet.  Rape is when the occupant of that apartment, now that she is alone there, her date leaving her still sleeping, wakes that 20 year old transwoman by forcefully ripping her clothes off, dragging & throwing her on his bed naked, and forcing his penis into her anus… all the while she is screaming at the top of her lungs for help which never comes as he keeps talking like he is making love to her.  She kicks and tries to bite him but he is far too big, strong, and holds her two wrists in one large and very strong hand.  She is sobbing when he is done… only he isn’t.  Still holding her wrists above her head, drags her to the shower where using soap washes her off, removing the ‘evidence’ of his crime.  He follows this by fondling and attempting to masturbate her pre-op genitalia with soap lathered hands.  She sobs, horrified and shamed all over again as he does so.  The soap gets onto her wrists which allows her to slip his grip and push away from him.  She runs to her clothes, dodging the man by jumping over his couch, and runs out the door in a state of mostly undress, and keeps running several blocks before stopping to dress herself.  She makes her way home on foot in the menacing dark, puts on her least attractive sleepwear, and stares unseeing at the wall huddled protectively to herself until dawn.

Rape Culture is…

knowing that she can’t go to the police to press charges because she knows what happens to women… how they get revictimized and retraumatized though the whole process… how their sexual history gets dragged out in court to make her look like a slut.  Take that public slut shaming defense tactic and imagine what the press coverage of the “alleged rape” of a 20 year old “boy” who looks and acts like an attractive girl would be like in 1977.

That’s “rapey”.

Rape is…

… a 21 year old transwoman feels the knife at her throat wielded by a stranger who forces her to perform oral sex on him… while hoping against hope that she will still be alive when he is finished… and hopes that he doesn’t find out that she is trans… ’cause that’s how transwomen end up as the headline reads “Man Found Dead In Dress”.

Yes, that’s definitely “rapey”.

That transwoman in each of these incidents was me!

So don’t you DARE presume to some higher moral ground to tell ME that accepting an invitation to share dinner, or go to the park, to bike riding, or to the beach… without outing oneself as trans to him is “rapey” !  Oh that poor man…he had a pleasant time with a woman he never knew was a transwoman.  How horrible!  He doesn’t know how very traumatized he isn’t!

Rape is immoral because it is traumatizing, degrading, and demeaning.  By conflating transwomen maintaining their privacy for either safety or self-esteem reasons until they are certain that they wish to share that medical history with a prospective romantic partner with rape they are not expressing valid moral reasoning but simple trans and homophobia.   It relies on the notion that for a straight man to be romantically involved with an androphilic transwoman, no matter how physically and behaviorially feminine, no matter how desirable a personality or moral character, he is demeaned by the experience.  He becomes less of a man, either homosexual, clueless, or both, a figure of ridicule, while the transwoman is to be despised as a liar and a cheat, as well as an effeminate (misogyny) homosexual (homophobia).  The meme disparages both parties, increasing the discrimination that androphilic tranwomen experience and the likelihood of being severely beaten and murdered by transphobic straight men who find themselves attracted to such transwomen (whether or not they knew beforehand).  This meme is deadly to androphilic transwomen (no hyperbole).

Further Reading:

Essay on how androphilic transwomen are at high risk of transphobic violence from straight men.

Essay on transphobic jokes and memes that falsely portray androphilic transwomen as sexual predators

Essay on gynandromorphophilic transsexual attempting to coerce androphilic transwomen to have sex, including this author.

Further External Reading:

What is ‘second rape’ and what can we do about it?

Comments Off on Misplaced Moralizing

Pose: A Look at Transgender Realities

Posted in Autobiographical, Film Review by Kay Brown on June 30, 2018

Kay BrownMy husband and I have been watching a great new drama show on FX, POSE.  I don’t normally watch shows with a transgender theme.  They usually either misrepresent us, make fun of us, or we are the designated tragic losers.  But Pose is different.  As Janet Mock, one of the writers for the show and an important voice in how the show was developed and what issues it covers, said, the show “centers transwomen of color”.  Yes, it does that, and a whole lot more.  It also, by the simple statistical reality that transwomen of color in the US are far more likely to be exclusively androphilic early transitioners, the show centers “homosexual transsexuals” (HSTS).  I love the mix of black, puerto rican, and white transwomen in the show.  This being set in New York, that fits the local demographics.  (Here on the west coast, our mix also includes meso-american hispanic, Filipino, and chinese.)

I haven’t seen a single “late transitioner” being portrayed.  Even better, they don’t make the oft mistake of conflating the two types.  No, we see only one type, as they really are.

This essay is less a review than an educational exposition.  Because the show focuses on HSTS in a realistic way, in a way that I have never seen a TV show actually do before, it offers me an opportunity to connect the science, sociology, psychology, history, to a show that you can watch and connect the dots.

Not all of those dots are flattering.  In the very first episode we see Electra Abundance, a house mother of a collection of trans & gay youth, lead her crew on a caper to steal 18th Century court dress from a museum just so that they could outshine their competition at a Ball.  At least one of the crew, Angel, is a sex worker on the street.  In a later episode, we see a bisexual young man, one of House of Evangelista is a street drug dealer.  Yes, it was like real life, but it still hurts to see stereotypes of street kids, gay and trans alike, as petty criminals.  Electra and Angel have sugar daddies that help get them off the street.  On the other hand, we see Blanca, the mother of the House of Evangelista working a real job at a nail salon.  This too is very realistic.  Very few transwomen who end up on the margins of society when young ever climb very far on their own.

Speaking of throwaways, the show opens with heart wrenching scene of a gay teen being thrown out of his family by homophobic parents.  Blanca and Angel both relate ugly stories of being rejected by their families as kids.  (Been there, done that!)  The show gives us a glimpse of how transwomen form houses and in essence are the social workers that provide group homes for throw away queer kids.  They have been doing this for a very long time.

As the show is set in the late ’80s, there is an ever-present pall hanging over the characters, “the plague”, HIV/AIDS.  At the time, being HIV+ was literally a death sentence.  There is a powerful reminder that though thousands of people were dying, then President Reagan couldn’t even bring himself to mention it.  Homophobes literally saw it as ‘God’s Punishment’ on queer folk.  In the opening scene of the first episode, we meet Blanca as she learns that she is HIV+.  She is a strong woman and decides that knowing that she may get sick and die soon, she is determined to make the world a better place by creating her own house built on love and encouragement for her charges.  She hides that she is HIV+, but works to educate others on safer sex practices.  In another episode, we see AIDS patients in the hospital being treated as pariahs; in one case hospital staff refused to enter the room to deliver their meal.  In another vignette an older gay man cajoles three younger men to get tested at a clinic.  We see three of them joyful that they tested negative, but the older man is first devastated, then puts on a brave face to lie about his own HIV+ status.

Allow me to switch to a few personal anecdotes.  I’m 61 years old now… I lived through all of this.  We first began to suspect something was wrong with the first hints were a rash of young men getting a rare cancer.  I vividly recall reading a cartoon in the gay press, must have been 1980 (?) that read, “I’m glad I’m middle-aged… too young to get old man’s Karposi’s carcinoma and too old to get young man’s Karposi’s.”  I remember standing in line to see a movie at the Castro Theatre and recognizing Karposi’s lesions on a man’s face.  Then, gay men and HSTS transwomen started dying of lots of illnesses that shouldn’t have been killing them.  I remember talking to one of my childhood friends trying to explain all of this, including the various theories, some of them incredibly homophobic such as the notion that gay men were dying because of too much partying, drugs, and of course, sex.  But then it became more obvious that this was an infectious agent that was sexually transmitted.  The fear was palpable.

My own sex life took a very steep nose-dive.  I was then recently post-op, but I had been having unprotected sex with men as an exclusive bottom for years before that.  I had never even seen a condom.  Why should I?  It wasn’t like I was going to get pregnant, more’s the pity.  Sure, there were STDs… but antibiotics could take care if it.  I learned about and how to use a condom at a safer sex house party hosted by members of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance at Stanford.  Like the men in the show, I was too afraid to learn my HIV status when testing became available; but my good friend and sister transactivist, Joy Shaffer, M.D. then a medical resident working with HIV/AIDS patients in the hospital when many others refused, insisted.  Joy and her girlfriend Patricia went with me to the clinic.  They were obviously not in a high risk group, but got tested alongside me to offer encouragement.  I was negative.  I felt relief… but the fear was still there.  My sex life remained much more restrained for a good many years later, until I got married.

Public Service Advertisement:

Practice Safer Sex!  Keep and use condoms.  EVERY TIME!!  Learn about and take PrEP medications to reduce your chances of becoming HIV+.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled show.

Because this show has writers that are themselves early transitioners, we see some intimate details that aren’t usually portrayed.  For instance, we see in one episode that not only are HSTS obligate bottoms, but that they are also “avoidant”.  That is, that they would prefer not to have their pre-op genitalia touched during sex.  Just to make sure the audience understands that this is universal, both Electra and Angel have discussions with their sugar daddy boyfriends about it.  As Electra’s boyfriend puts it, “What?! You didn’t think I noticed you grimace when I touch you there?”  This detail, of course, is almost never discussed or portrayed elsewhere because most of those shows wish to portray young transwomen as sex toys for “chasers”.  In this same show, we learn that Electra’s and Angel’s boyfriends are both chasers, gynandromorphophilic.  That is, they both prefer pre-op transwomen and want to touch their lover’s pre-op genitalia.  Electra is faced with the prospect of losing her man if she has SRS, but decides to go ahead, for her own sake.  Angel, upon learning that her man is a chaser, is repulsed and loudly orders him to leave.

The writers seem to know their history.  In one of the episodes, we see Blanca angered by the blatant transphobia from the ‘straight looking – straight acting’ gay male crowd at a local bar.  She attempts to use civil rights style counter sit-in tactics to force the bar to accept her presence and to serve her.  But that bar uses bouncers and even the police to enforce their ‘no queens’ policy, deliberately insulting and misgendering her.  The gay men at the bar cheer as Blanca is arrested for no real reason.  I see this as a metaphor for the way that much of the larger gay and lesbian community mistreated the transcommunity from the early ’70s through the late ’90s.

The show is singularly refreshing and I look forward to viewing the rest of the season.

Further Reading:

Essay on correlation between non-white ethnicity and HSTS

Essay on HSTS being ‘avoidant’

Essay on gynandromorphophilia

Essay on historic transphobia in the gay and lesbian communities

External Further Reading

‘We’re More Than Capable’: Pose Stars Push Back on Cis Actors Playing Trans Roles by Maiysha Kai

Pose Writer Janet Mock on Making History with Trans Story Telling by Janet Mock

“When Are Trans Actors Allowed to Act?” by Hannah Giorgis in the Atlantic
The FX drama Pose is the rare example of a show that actually gives trans actors top billing—an effort made all the more urgent by a recent controversy that saw Scarlett Johansson cast as a transgender man.


Comments Off on Pose: A Look at Transgender Realities

Detransitioners Are NOT The Enemy


Kay BrownTransgender folks should not fear or loath detransitioners.

















Further Reading:

Essay on Tranwoman as Sexual Predator

External Further Reading:

“I Wanted To Take My Body Off”: Detransitioned

New Thought Crime Blog

Detransition as Conversion Therapy

Ky’s Reclaiming Trans blog

Comments Off on Detransitioners Are NOT The Enemy

Shameful History of Reparitive Therapy of Transsexual and Gay Children & Youth

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial by Kay Brown on June 11, 2018


First, one must understand that historically, gender atypicality concerns were mostly focused on male children, ‘sissies’.  It was often assumed that ‘tomboys’ would outgrow it, but sissy boys would all too likely (and statistics bear this out) grow up to be homosexual or transsexual, both equally considered as disordered, criminal, and to be avoided at all costs.





The intervention designed to ‘fix’ the faulty family constellation is to introduce a “healthy” masculine heterosexual male role model to the boy and encourage identification and subsequent modeling upon that man.  Since it isn’t always practical to require a single mother to find a suitable husband willing to take on the task of ‘toughening up’ the sissy boy, the goal is to place the boy in therapy sessions with a suitable role modeling therapist.  For a pre-teen this would often mean “play therapy” with sex typed boys toys.  Ideally, there would also be family therapy where the boy’s father would be encouraged to take a greater role in the child’s upbringing and similar withdrawal of the mother’s involvement.  Playing with girl’s toys is to be actively denied and punished, taking away beloved toys and dolls, often lampooned as “Drop the Barby” therapy.  Another aspect would be to restrict the boy from having female friends and require them to participate in single sex activities such as scouting, etc. where they are often exposed to peer disapproval and even bullying, as a means of providing negative (aversive) “natural consequences” to their feminine demeanor.  It sounds almost gentle and acceptable (compared to electro-shock or emetic drugs then in use in adults)… but underneath, the message to the child is that they are not “ok”, that there is something deeply wrong with them, that they are not lovable as they are, leading to reduced self-esteem and increased loneliness.


{Personal Note:  At the age of ten, during the ’67-’68 school year, I was sent to such “play therapy” with Dr. Peters (you can’t make this stuff up), a tall bearded man in a large room filled with toys.  I don’t remember seeing any girl’s toys in the room, ever.  According to my parents, separately, since they divorced when I was a teen, I trust that they were both being candid with me, it had been the school psychologist who had insisted that I be refered to Dr. Peters and only Dr. Peters.  This would also explain why my teachers interfered with my female friendships and forced me to interact with boys in class, and there was nothing subtle about it, why I was required to join the Scouts where I hated by the boys, harassed, bullied, brutally beaten, and eventually kicked out by the Scout Master, sneeringly, as “not Eagle Scout Material”.  My father was mortified!  —  What I find saddening about the episode is that in my case, the faulty family constellation theory is completely reversed.  My mother, though an amazingly capable and caring parent, was the one who became emotionally unavailable and rejecting.  It was my good fortune that my Dad was always a very warm, loving, caring, and devoted father to all four of his children… though, if we are all honest about it, I was likely his favorite.}





Special Note:

Greens bookOne of the most important and yet at the same time, distressing aspects of this shameful history is that these abusive interventions came out of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the late ’60s and ’70s.  It is important to understand that at the begining of this program, they believed that they were treating transsexual children and had not yet realized that many of these boys would grow up to be gay men.  At the very heart and center of this was Robert Stoller and Richard Green.  It was Dr. Green who gathered together these vulnerable gender atypical children to allow graduate students to conduct this shameful “research”.  Rekers, in his published paper on the “treatment” (read: torture) of Kirk Murphy (aka Kraig), thanks Dr. Green for providing him his victim.  Further, Dr. Green was personally involved in the research.  Knowing this has certainly lowered my esteem for Dr. Green who I had previously held in high regard.

Breaking News:

The Rekers paper is being flagged by the journal that originally published it as being of questionable value:

Journal flags — but does not retract — decades-old paper on “correcting” gender identity

External Reading:



What Are Little Boys Made Of?

A TransHistory of Conversion Therapy





Comments Off on Shameful History of Reparitive Therapy of Transsexual and Gay Children & Youth

Transphobic Propaganda Aimed at Parents of Transsexual Kids

Posted in Autobiographical, Editorial, Transgender Youth by Kay Brown on June 9, 2018

Kay Brown with her adopted daughter Liz




With popular celebrities like JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame now spreading much of these lies and disinformation, it is more important than ever to separate what is fact from what is fiction.

Everything I write here is not “my opinion” but facts based on peer reviewed science, often covered in other essays on this blog, with reference citations to the research.  For the sake of bevity and readability, I don’t cover the data and evidence here.  Interested readers may use the search function to find them, or may start by reading my FAQ, which has links to the most relevant essays.

If this essay seems overly long, blame the voluminous amount of such hateful propaganda that has been created and spread.

Quoting Transfolk Out of Context

This is so classic that it needs only to be mentioned in passing.

Bad History

One sure fire propaganda tool is to set out a revisionist history of the treatment of Gender Dysphoria.  Those who control the memory of the past, control understanding of the present.

One trick is to lie and say that the term ‘gender dysphoria’ is new and replaced the older (and presumably more accurate) Gender Identity Disorder for political reasons under pressure from “transgender rights activists”.  The real history is that “Gender Dysphoria”, a medical term coined by Dr. Norman Fisk at Stanford University in the early 1970s, was included in the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic name and was incorporated in the name of the professional organization, Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association formed in the late ’70s (more recently renamed World Professional Association for Transgender Health).

Greens bookAnother trick is to falsely claim that transsexuality / transgenderism was only about adult sexuality and that children were never part of the picture until very recently.  They sweep under the rug such books as Green’s 1974 Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults.  Children and teens, transkids, were being seen from the begining.  Teenagers were being seen and very quietly transitioning, either as run-aways, throw-aways, or for the lucky few, living at home with supportive family.  Sadly, its also true that some kids were treated abominably in futile efforts to “cure” them (more below).  Transkids, then called “primary” or “true” transsexuals, have always been with us, but they (we) were largely invisible, a despised underclass, criminalized by the law, pathologized by psychiatry, problematized by society, church, and family.

“Transgender Ideology”

The moment you read or hear someone use that term, the material that person is going to share is propaganda.  Those familiar with the culture war against gay rights and marriage equality will recognize its propaganda equivalent “Homosexual (or Gay) Agenda” .  Of course that agenda was social and legal equality.  “Transgender Ideology” is a search for social and legal recognition, and access to medical services, nothing more.  Any other claims are just disinformation.  Both of these terms are meant to invoke nebulous distrust of the motives and actions of the LGB & T communities.  For example, appending disparaging terms like “toxic”, ect.

We also see people making calumnious claims that transgender people are trying to “indoctrinate” kids into being transgender.  This is very much in keeping with the old anti-gay equivalent of “recruiting” young people into the “gay lifestyle”.  Sadly, such false claims are even being made by transphobic gays and lesbians (no group is too small or too oppressed that it can’t turn and do the same to an even smaller and weaker group).

When organizations support transsexual people, the propagandist claim that they have been “captured” by ‘transgender ideology’ a way of suggesting that they don’t have good reasons for their support.

However, when you read claims of “Transgender Ideology”, there is an ideology that may be at play… theirs!

Another loaded term in vogue is “industry”, as in “medical industry”, “transgender industry” or just “gender industry”.  The term falsely invokes the concept of a large and uncaring medical industrial complex out to make as much money out of poor hapless kids and their parents, destroying lives, rather than the deeply caring doctors and therapists that actually exist.

Another means of subtly invoking distrust of transfolk is to describe various elements of the quite disparate transgender communities as the “transgender lobby”, likening them to powerful business groups that gain disproportionate power through chummy relationships with lawmakers and regulators.  This is a classic trick whereby one falsely paints a marginalized group as secretly powerful.

In the same manner, every transperson who speaks out is labeled an ‘activist’ (often shortened to the acronym, “TRA”) with a smug undertone that ‘trans rights activist’ means a person with a not to be trusted self-serving “agenda”.

A very recent and subtle twist is to use the term “transgender movement”, as though the existence of transfolk itself was a “movement” or fad, rather than the correct term “transgender RIGHTS movement”.  Consider that the push for equality under the law for non-white people was not called the “Colored Movement”, but the “Civil Rights Movement”.

A popular term meant to subtly disempower transkids and transsexual adults is “gender confusion” to replace “gender dysphoria”.  It implies that transfolk are just “confused” and likely mentally challenged and should just “look in their pants!”.  When you see that term, you know that the speaker / author is no friend of transfolk.

The single most common term is to describe transfolk as being “mentally ill”, when in fact, gender dysphoria, though painful and real, in no way affects rational thought or decision making, at any age.

I recently saw a man post a whopper of a lie on a website telling parents that childhood gender dysphoria was an early sign of developing schizophrenia!

More recently, likely because of this very essay pointing out such disinformation and propaganda, some key anti-trans activists have been labeling efforts such as this blog as ” real propaganda”.  It’s a clever “Catch-22” style trap to silence transfolk.

One clever rhetorical trick is to create a false comparison by showing that their propaganda can’t be labeled “transphobic” because true / real ‘phobia is when people are physically abused, beaten, tortured, etc.  Transpeople aren’t being lynched or gay bashed (actually, we are…).  But they fail to acknowledge that dehumanizing language sets the stage for that treatment.  While working against one’s civil, legal, or human rights is just another tool of the bigot.  And in the case of transfolk, working to deny access to reasonable and affordable medical care is just as damaging and cruel.

Blaming the Internet and Other Transkids / Adult Transsexuals

A recent meme to question the validity of gender dysphoria in teenagers is the concept of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD) in which being trans is described as a “social contagion” and a “craze”.  Gee… that’s just saying this is a “fad”… and like the old “phase” claim that transkids were discredited with in the past.  Of course, there is the problem that it has become trendy to claim a “trans” or “non-binary” identity, but these kids and young adults are NOT gender dysphoric.  I’ve written an entire essay on this.

The existence of these non-gender dysphoric teenagers and young adults falsely claiming a “trans’ or “non-binary” identity is easily weaponized to discredit the existence and sincere social and medical needs of transkids, especially as these non-gender-dysphoric teens and young people drop their claim to being “trans” to claim a new identity as “detransitioners”.  Detransitioning does exist.  It is usually found in adult transitioning autogynephilic males who later regret having attempted transition when they find it doesn’t actually help them.  However, detransitioning is extremely rare in actual gender dysphoric teenaged transkids and former transkids (transsexual adults who were gender dysphoric as children).

A classic trope is to falsely claim that transsexuals (or people in general) are telling kids that aren’t trans in any fashion that they are in fact transgender.  They may also use emotionally loaded, sexualized language like “seduced” into being trans. (See classic trope of gay and lesbian people “recruiting”, above.)  One way of making it (falsely) seem especially evil is to claim that the kids being targeted have some special problem, a vulnerability that can be exploited (e.g. claim that the “victims” are autistic, have “untreated trauma”, or have Borderline Personality Disorder), implying that these teens don’t have self agency.  Please note, transsexuals are the LAST people who want other people to be living in a gender that doesn’t suit them.

One of the ugliest strawman I’ve seen cast about is deliberately misconstruing the known high rate of depression and distress found in transkids who live in unsupportive environments is claiming that transkids ‘blackmail’ or ‘manipulate’ others by falsely threatening to commit suicide if they don’t “get their way”.  The claim may be further amplified by stating that transkids (or transsexual adults) teach other transkids to use this threat.  By making this claim, they paint transkids / adult transsexuals as manipulative monsters.  Of course, this is actually an indication of their own lack of empathy and of their virulent hate.  Shocking and impossible as this may seem, this claim really does make the rounds of social media.

The most libelous of the most extreme propaganda aimed at transsexual adults (former transkids & others) is that they are supporting access to affimring medical care for teenagers is a form of “grooming” so that those kids can be sex trafficed, a la PizzaGate.

Creating False Testimonials

One of the easiest ways that anti-trans propagandists can create a false testimonial is to claim a bogus hypothetical harm, “If this transgender ideology had been around when I was a child, I would have been wrongly diagnosed as transgender.”  This is typically claimed by a mildly gender-atypical woman, a “butch lesbian”, but sometimes claimed by a typical heterosexual woman that liked to do a few “boy” things when young.  Given that perhaps a third of women were somewhat “tomboyish”, quite a few such transphobic women can make this false claim.

These false hypotheticals have the unique advantage that they can’t be tested, challenged, or proven right or wrong.  So they just exist, creating doubt, which is the goal.

This false testimonial feeds off the hyperbolic misrepresentation that people are claiming that any child who shows any gender atypical interests, is labeled “transgender” and forced into a medicalization.  The typical description goes something like, “a boy who likes dolls is labeled a girl”.  No, they are not.  While transkids are gender atypical, merely showing some mild interest in cross-gender activities does NOT get one labeled transsexual, nor is any child or teen “forced” into social or medical transition.

Blaming Parents

An ugly, malicious, trope that has been around for years, especially from transphobic gays and lesbians, is that parents push their gender atypical, gay or lesbian, child or teen into falsely believing that they are transsexuals so that they won’t be labeled gay or lesbian.  The logic is twisted, but relies on the false notion that parents are more likely to be far more homophobic than transphobic.  Ironically, many transkids actually experience the opposite, that transphobic parents, as they wrestle with their grief upon learning their child is transsexual, plead with their child to “just” be a CLOSETED gay or lesbian so that they, and their family, won’t have to experience public embarrassment.

There is also the nasty lie that parents are abusing their children by “modifying their bodies”.  I’ve seen the lie that parents and doctors are prescribing such medications and conducting surgeries on pre-teens as young as three years old!  No, that is NOT happening.  No pre-teen is being given any medication (save possibly puberty blockers if they present with precocious puberty, which can and should be treated regardless of gender dysphoria).

Blaming Gender Clinics and Therapists

It has become fashionable to target specialized clinics that see gender atypical youth, especially in the UK, with false accusations.  One also sees comments that call into question the membership, leadership, ethics, and Standards Of Care recommendations of WPATH, the leading professional society for those providing care for gender dysphoric individuals, just because some (but not a majority) of the members are transsexuals themselves.  This is rather like dismissing the American Lung Society because some of its members survived lung cancer.

As some of these clinics have attracted new clients (not all of whom will persist), there is the hand-wringing over how rapidly the “epidemic” of gender issues has grown.  Let’s be real, going from zero to any number of clients is an infinitely large growth.  Most clinics treating transkids are fairly new.  Almost none are over twenty years old and most are less than ten.  Even those who are only only provided medical services to those who were over age 16 until more recently.  For example, the GIDS under the UK NHS didn’t start providing puberty blockers to carefully screened candidates until 2011.  If they have seen a large increase in younger clients since say, 2009, of course there has been an increase!  They weren’t offering actual services to those under age 16 until then!

We expect that an under served market should respond with high growth when services become newly available.

If zero to something sounds too obvious, the propagandists pick another, but still early date to start, say 2009, before puberty blockers were available, with the same seemingly startling growth.  A common figure tossed about takes the form of 4400% which sounds really high… until one remembers that 100% = 2 times = double.  So, 4400% growth is going from some really small number, say ten kids, when just opening such clinics, to 45 times that low starting number to make it only 450 kids (out of hundreds of thousands of kids in their multi-city/regional service area).  But “4400%” sounds soooo much bigger and alarming!  (Or climbing to 2,500 kids for all of the United Kingdom !!!)

The other way to make it sound really bad is to talk about how many children are REFERED to a clinic.  But a referral does not mean that they were DIAGNOSED as being gender dysphoric… and it certainly doesn’t mean that they are being tracked toward unnecessary medical treatment.

Another gambit is to point to transphobic medical providers who leave a given large institution because they have recently begun to provide services to transkids, as though it proved anything nefarious.  But transphobic attitudes have always been found in the medical community, at about 50% (which is about the same number in the general public).  Thus one expects to find such transphobic medical providers to jump ship as they find other employment and for propagandists to publicize it.

A more subtle propaganda gambit by anti-trans individuals and organizations is to describe themselves as merely concerned with “over medicalization” of gender variant youth.  That sounds so reasonable, until one understands that ANY medical intervention is considered “over” medicalization by them.

A corollary false claim is that many teens are being prescribed hormones with no “medical oversight”.  That would constitute medical malpractice and as such is not likely to be common as doctors are as a group unlikely to risk that.

One of the lies put out is that therapists and clinics aren’t providing full disclosure or “objective” advice.  What they really mean is that the therapists aren’t telling these kids and their parents what the transphobic people want them to tell them, including disinformation I discuss here.  The simple truth is that the Standard of Care for all patients, gender dysphoric or not, is informed consent, giving full information, by both ethical and legal requirements.  Claiming that these kids and their parents aren’t being given this information is slander and libel.

A recent tactic is to claim that such clinics and therapists “never tell a kid that they are not trans” as though that was somehow nefarious, falsely implying that they are encouraging / pushing gender atypical youth to be transsexual and also falsely implying that they know which kids are ‘true’ transsexuals (or implying that no one is actually gender dysphoric) and who isn’t.  The real truth doesn’t matter to them.  There is no external test.  No blood work, no magic words spoken in therapy.  Only the individual, as they consider their own feelings and real life options, can make this determination and ultimately their life direction.  No clinic or therapist, can from the outside, determine and say to anyone that they don’t experience gender dysphoria.

Finally, there is the perennial threat to file lawsuits claiming malpractice for prescribing “unnecessary” medications or performing surgery on minors as a ploy to frighten caregivers away from serving the legitimate needs of transsexual youth.  Consider this – how many such lawsuits have occured?  I’ve never heard of even one such – have you?  Certainly none that were successful.  IF there had been, it would have made the news and would feature prominently in transphobic propaganda.

(Update:  There is now exactly one legal case in Australia being touted by the transphobic press in which a woman is suing because she claims it is illegal to prescribe HRT to a teenager.  Bets on when the case is thrown out as specious given that birth control is also HRT?)

(Update Oct. 2020:  There is now a case in the UK which is trying to use the same argument that teenagers can’t give consent, ignoring previous law granting those 16 years and over full consent rights and that no one is prescribing blockers to those under age 16 w/o parental consent:


Note the use of many of the bogus arguments I list here.

Also note actual data on the so called “epidemic” of gender dysphoria, quoting from the article,

“Hyam told the court that referrals to GIDS had gone through a “twentyfold increase”, from 97 in 2009 to 2,590 in 2018, and that the percentage of natal females had increased during that time and made up 76% of cases.”

So, going from when the clinic was barely started to today?  And less than three thousand referrals in a nation of over 65 million people?  That’s not an “epidemic”.)

Creating Bogus Medical Societies

Doctors are not immune to bias and bigotry.  Research has shown roughly half of doctors and psychologists are biased against LGBT people.  So it would come as no surprise that a hateful minority ignore their professional duties to invest their time in creating alternative organizations specifically to create and spread false or misleading information about gender dysphoria.  Some are part of older organizations, such as the tiny American College of Pediatricians, who historically attacked gay rights, pushed abusive ‘therapies’ to “cure” homosexuality and with it, transsexuality in children and teens.  However, there is one very small band who specifically have targeted transsexuals and transkids, falsely and ironically naming themselves the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine whose members are notorious for spreading much of the anti-trans propaganda I list in this essay.

Blaming Schools & Eductors

Schools are often the worst place for transkids, gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth and indeed anyone not in the majority in a given community.  Bullying, most often by classmates, but all too often even by adults is a serious concern.  That concern has been addressed by anti-bullying campaigns that may include empathy building by teaching youth in the school to be aware of and respect LGBT peers.  But that has met with opposition from homophobic and transphobic parents and others.  They decry that “Gender Ideology” is being taught in the schools.  They demand that like sex education, it should be left to families, which in practice provide tacit approval for the continued bullying.

Another area of contention is access to gender appropriate bathrooms and changing facilities.  Propagandists have seized this issue, looking to inflame the public with false stories or just insinuations that “boys will claim to be trans to molest girls in the locker room”.  Or worse, that MTF transkids ARE just boys who want to ogle girls in the locker room.

Just to be VERY clear.  Gender dysphoric youth do NOT want to be seen naked by others of either sex.  That’s one of the key presenting symptoms of gender dysphoria in children and teens, extreme dislike and embarrassment of their sexed body.  (This may or may not be true in adult / older transitioners, who have a very different form of ‘gender dysphoria’.  See FAQ for more information.)


EOFR3sFXkAEA8WW-2In the past, it was near universal for therapy of gender atypical children, most often male, to mean attempts to “fix” them so that they were no longer gender atypical, as that was seen as a disorder in and of itself.  It was also believed, falsely it turns out, that if they could get these boys to be gender typical in their behavior, they wouldn’t develop into transsexuals or gay men.  Therapies ranged from gentle “play” with a masculine role model to direct punishing and shaming children (up to and including corporal punishment; i.e. beatings) for atypicality on one hand and rewarding gender typicality on the other.  Both philosophies encouraged parents to remove any and all cross-gender toys and activities, to deny cross-gender friendships, and to shame children, especially boys, for such play.  Therapy for gender dysphoric teens was to “talk” them out of wanting to transition, usually by shaming them.  Today such therapy, along with therapy meant to “talk” gay & lesbians out of being homosexual, is recognized as being both ineffective and abusive.  Some states and countries have outlawed such practices.  Professional societies of therapists and physicians have declared them to be unethical.

{Personal note:  I was sent to play therapy as a ten-year old with Dr. Peters (you can’t make this stuff up) a tall bearded man as a role model.  While at home, my mother would jump down my throat if I so much as looked at a girl’s toy.  And at school, the teachers disrupted my friendships with girls and forced group activities with boys.  Of course, that didn’t work, so I was sent to talk therapy at 15/16, but knew enough not to talk about, nor answer his repeated questions about, neither my sexuality nor my gender behavior and identity so as to avoid any opportunity to shame me.  Thus, I know about these practices first hand.  Fortunately, in early 1975, at age 17, I was evaluated at the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Clinic which recommended social and medical transition.}

The new form of “therapy” advocated by transphobes is to try to find and treat the “root cause” of their gender atypicality and dysphoria, usually under the misguided pseudo-Freudian notion that there must be some unresolved sexual trauma.  If they just had therapy to find this “root cause”, they could cure it.  But most gender atypical and dysphoric people have never had such a trauma, and most people who have had such trauma do not become atypical nor dysphoric.  There simply is no correlation, much less a causative connection.



This new kinder and gentler approach to gender atypicality and gender dysphoria has led to disinformation put out by those who wish that they could continue to offer abusive  reparitive / conversion ‘services’, falsely claiming that such therapies do work.  Some propagandists point to case history notes of reparitive therapists claim that their therapy is responsible for the ‘resolution’ of pre-adolescent gender dysphoria when in fact, they are falsely claiming credit for what is a natural process that would have happened without such abusive therapies.  Transphobic parents and members of the public also lament this situation and put out the lie that “affirming” therapists are “forcing” gender atypical children and teens to become transsexual.




 Social Transition


Transkids after social transition




A more subtle and insidious bit of propaganda is to point out that in speaking of the likely hood of a child desisting or persisting that a pre-adolescent social transition “predicts” persistence.  The sneaky part is, while there is a correlation between such a pre-adolescent social transition and persistence, the way that the word “predicts” is interpreted is one of causation rather than merely being a successful test of the level of gender dysphora that already exists and the natural affinity / social comfort that a child experiences post social transition.  That is to say, attempting social transition is a great diagnostic test that persistors will take to like a duckling takes to water, while desistors are likely to find social transition does not help them.


After the age of twelve, social transition is, or at least should be, a no-brainer.  If a teen was gender atypical and dysphoric as a preteen, their desire and need for social transition is one that they should decide for themselves.  In fact, attempting to socially transition is a great “test” since if it doesn’t help them, it will be an obvious fact.



A common ploy is to point out that surgeons are paid to perform these procedures and are “getting rich”, insinuating that they are evil and greedy.  I do hope those that say this never need a life saving operation so that they won’t have to pay an evil and greedy surgeon.

A very common ploy is to paint medical interventions as “destroying healthy bodies”, totally disregarding the emotional pain of gender dysphoria as worthy of medical treatment.  The underlying message that they are trying to implant is that there was no medical necessity, and thus it was monstrous to treat it.  But consider that nearly no one bats an eye when women have breast augmentation, rhinoplasty (cosmetic nose surgery), or even that there is no medical reason for the vast majority of male circumcisions (genital surgery) that baby boys are subjected to years before they can give informed consent.





Another bugbear thrown around is the specter of post-operative regret.  I won’t lie in turn; this is a real phenomena.  However, what is not often discussed in the parental fora is that the vast majority of those who later regret SRS are “late onset”.  (If you are not familiar with this term and its implications, please see my FAQ.)  These are usually males who have successfully lived as adult men, very often married to women, fathering children, etc.  They previously had extensive sexual experience as men, enjoying their ‘original equipment’.  In female individuals, gender dysphoria that first present in adolescence has been associated with later detransitioning and regret, but in fewer individuals and certainly far fewer than in the public imagination.  (I’m referring to actual gender dysphoric individuals, not those girls who falsely claim a ‘trans’ or ‘non-binary’ identity.)  Post operative regret is nearly absent from “early onset” transsexuals.  And those few who were regretful weren’t regretting the loss of their ‘original equipment’ but complained of the rare complications that may occur with any surgery.


There has been a recent blitz of disinformation and propaganda about FtM transmen chest binding being “harmful” with little to no clinical evidence.  But consider that this binding provides no more flattening / compression, and indeed often far less compression of the ribcage and internal organs, than many feminine fashion undergarments in recent history such as corsets, girdles, etc.  I’ve even seen binding being described as ‘barbaric’ and likened to Female Genital Mutilation.  Except, no one is forcing transmen to bind.  Also, transmen are likely not concerned with any alleged harm to breasts that they revile and expect to surgically remove.  Finally, I have to point out that no on seems to be upset about pre-op transwomen “tucking”, which would seemingly come closer to the description of “genital mutilation”.  This is likely because the anti-chest-binding lobby is mostly lesbian whose natural, if misapplied, sympathy is for female bodied gynephilic people (which most transmen are) and have very little sympathy, and often great antipathy, for transwomen.

Puberty Blockers

CoreyOne egregious lie that I’ve seen bandied about, even by physicians, is that puberty blockers cause permanent sterility, often with the misleading term “chemical castration”.  They do not.  In fact, that was the whole point of puberty blockers, to reversibly delay the onset of puberty and its effects to allow young teens some time to emotionally mature before making more permanent changes in the course of their sexual maturation.  Without such blockers, their bodies will make the decision for them… and this may be very much against their wishes (it certainly was against mine!).  Cessation of the blockers allows the natal puberty to resume, with no loss of fertility, unless other medical intervention is begun (such as cross-sex hormones).

Some commenters falsely assert that puberty blocking is dangerous and experimental, often going so far as to profess that doctors who prescribe it and parents who allow it should be imprisoned.  They fail to note that puberty blocking has become a standard of care for precocious puberty and that the medications used are FDA approved for blocking puberty.  Thus this is NOT “experimental” nor any more dangerous than many other medically indicated prescriptions.

The next level of insidious misinformation is to claim that such medication hasn’t been specifically “approved” for gender dysphoric kids.  This is a fantastic Catch-22 because no matter how long its been standard practice, it will NEVER be so listed by the FDA because to do so, the drug company would have to spend huge amounts of money to conduct the study, which they have no need nor incentive to do; Gender dysphoric transkids are a tiny minority and not worth a drug company’s notice.

For instance, a cancer drug that was studied and approved in colon cancer that is later discovered to treat skin cancer would not need to be specifically ‘approved’ for that use.  Doctors would simply prescribe it “off label”, a well established and legal practice, as long as it meets established standards of care in the profession.

Use of puberty blockers is an established and recommended practice in this field.

Then, I read a whopper on social media that one can’t use the safety and efficacy data from precocious puberty studies with transkids.  Wow!  Who knew that transkids respond to medications differently than non-gender dysphoric children?  Are they a different species?  Seriously, one has to take much of this kind of propaganda with a sense of humor.

One misleading claim I’ve seen on social media is that puberty blockers interfere with brain development.  This has not been found.  But it certainly sounds scary, which is the real intent of making the claim.

Another outrageous lie that I’ve seen recently is the assertion that Lupron (puberty blocker) directly causes suicide.  I guess if one is going to lie, one may as well make it a whopper.  Depression is unfortunately common and people who are prescribed Lupron as adults are often under severe stress due to their underlying illness, typically terminal cancer, leading to reports of depression.

To be clear, there is NO reported direct association between puberty blockers and depression / suicidal ideation in transkids.  However, if a child who is extremely gender atypical and dysphoric experiences negative social and familial attitudes, that may be an independent source of stress leading to depression.

A very recent bit of wild lie is to say that “thousands have died on Lupron” insinuating that it was the cause of their deaths.  The truth is that these adults died of prostate or other cancers and were taking Lupron as treatment to slow (not stop) the cancer.


In a bid to create confusion and doubt, one recent meme I’ve seen, mixed in the the usual disinformation, is that taking puberty blockers will leave MTF transkids with a penis that is “too small” to form a proper ‘inversion’ neo-vagina.  This is of course an effort to convince parent to refuse blockers so that their child will suffer all the damaging effects of a masculinizing puberty and fail to pass successful later.  They don’t actually care if transgirls have big enough vaginas for comfortable sex as adults.  Just to be clear, decades of transkids who have had successful SRS surgeries, etc. after having been on HRT from a very early age put the lie to this absurd meme.  Not to be too indelicate, but the inverted skin is very easily stretched over time, from both dilation and from coitus (as I know very well from personal experience).  Another factor that this meme fails to take into account is that even if we could fabricate a blocker that allows genital growth while eliminating all other unwanted effects of a masculinizing puberty, the genital growth in and of itself will dramatically increase gender dysphoric trauma and should itself be avoided.



Moreover, I’ve seen a very clever bit of misdirection suggesting that MTF transkids, when they begin HRT bone density “fails to catch up” (oh dear!).  Fails to catch up with whom we should ask, but they don’t tell us that they don’t catch up with BOYS, who have larger bones.  These MTF transkids don’t want to “catch up” with boys, they want their bones to be female-like so that they can pass as typical girls, not big lumbering boys.

One of the most illogical arguments I’ve seen against the use of puberty blockers is twisting the statistics that most transkids who go on puberty blockers will persist and require HRT and perhaps surgery… as though being on puberty blockers caused them to persist (!).  This is a failure to note that desisters do so before puberty.  The fact that most persisters in puberty who go on blockers continue to be gender dysphoric is a non-causal correlation, in the same sense that taking antibiotics during infections does not mean that antibiotics caused the infection!  The fact is that persisters who are unable to obtain blockers or HRT at that age will also remain gender dysphoric and will seek out and obtain HRT at a later age (either on the street or legally when they reach majority as I did).  Refusing to provide blockers or HRT in puberty will not increase the rate of desistance but will increase the need for more medical / cosmetic interventions later on (e.g. mastectomy / electrolysis) and likely leave such an individual “funny looking” as an adult (e.g. wide hips on a transman, androgynous face and low pitched voice on a transwoman).

A recent lie I’ve seen is to talk about parents putting their children on puberty blockers as early as age eight (or even age six in one recent agit prop piece in the Federalist !!!) (age five in Breitbart – they keep pushing the age down)(Wow! Age three in another Breitbart piece).  Of course, this was a deliberate distortion of the truth that some children ARE placed on puberty blockers at age eight or nine.  But NOT because they are gender dysphoric, but because they have precocious puberty.  These children are on puberty blockers because entering a precocious puberty at age eight or nine is not good for their long term health, regardless of whether they are gender dysphoric or not, and most children placed on blockers at such a young age are NOT gender dysphoric.

One argument I’ve seen against the use of puberty blockers for MTF transkids is that they shouldn’t be started until she has stored sperm in a sperm bank for later use!  This one is a true head twister, as that would require a transgirl to undergo an unwanted, physically and emotionally devastating masculinizing puberty, by which time, blockers are metaphorically shutting the barn doors, too late to do their intended job.  The argument also completely misrepresents transgirls who will grow up to be transwomen.  Early onset MTF transkids are universally exclusively sexually and romantically attracted to straight men.  Storing sperm?  To what end?  So that they can use it to impregnate their future wives?!?!  That’s the definition of unclear on the concept.  Transgirls will grow up to marry men.  And if they and their husbands chose to build a family with the aid of a gestational surrogate, they will use their husband’s sperm.  (Can you imagine the damaging psychological issues raised by suggesting that one use a transwoman’s stored sperm, for both partners?)

Finally, I’ve seen comparisons of using puberty blockers by teens to NAZI medical experiments in concentration camps.  When such hyperbole is invoked, one knows it is propaganda.

Hormone Replacement Therapy

The most common bit of propaganda about hormones is that their use will be “life long” as though that was somehow an evil in its own right to be avoided at all costs (even including living a life of unhappy gender dysphoria and social awkwardness).




A number of individuals point to HRT as being inherently dangerous, increasing the risk of blot clots, etc.  These risks are no greater than girls taking birth control pills and if one is seriously worried about it, one can simultaneously take baby aspirin as a blood thinner.  A recent study showed that estradiol, today’s preferred protocol, had NO increased risk of blood clots.

Another bit of propaganda is to grossly exaggerate the risk of breast cancer from estrogen.  However, with decades of HRT use by transsexuals, we have only seen a small handful of cases which were certainly NOT indicative of increased risk compared to natal females.  In fact, the risk seemed to be at about 30% lower than natal females.  But is higher than natal males who were not transgendered.  (Yes, men get breast cancer too.)

Interestingly, the risk of some cancers is significantly reduced in transsexuals due to surgery and HRT.  For example, top surgery reduces the risk of breast cancer prophylactically.  Radical hysterectomy (as part of ‘bottom surgery’) eliminates the risk of ovarian cancer and endometriosis.  For MTF folk, SRS eliminates the risk of testicular cancer and reduces the risk of prostate cancer, as does HRT itself.


We’ve heard stories of young transmen being discouraged from taking testosterone because it “shortens” lives.  This is based on the statistical fact that men have lower life expectancies.  However, they fail to note that most of those deaths occur early in life, as male children are more likely to die than female.  Then, there is the increased death rate among young men due to violence and misadventure.  Finally, males carry only one X chromosome, so if there is a bad gene on it, they won’t have the extra copy to compensate.  Combined, all of these issues lead to men having a lower life expectancy, none of which are mediated by testosterone.

On the other hand, it is known that castrated males do live slightly longer.  So by this logic, all men should be medically castrated as teenagers!

Another gambit is to point to a couple studies that show that estrogen “causes cognitive deficits” in MTF transfolk, specifically reducing their mental rotational abilities, while also saying that testosterone reduces FTM transfolk’s verbal fluency.  The HORROR, HRT causes mental problems!  Actually, what they are measuring is the very tiny subtle differences already found in men and women in which men are very slightly better, on average, than women at mentally rotating three dimensional figures and women are very slightly better, on average, than men at verbal fluency.  These turn out to be influenced by hormones in the brain, so no surprise that they should influence transfolk on HRT.  But the effect is so small as to be almost impossible to detect in any one individual.




Further Reading:

Advice to Parents of Transkids

Shameful History of Reparative Therapy of Transgender and Gay Children & Youth

Further External Reading:

When Children Say That They Are Trans by Jessie Singal

Sacred Bodies: A rebuttal to Jessie Singal by Alex Burasch

“Young Trans Children Know Who They Are” by Ed Yong

Transphobic Parents Activists Target Journalists With MisInformation About Pediatritricans by Tara Haelle

Media’s ‘detransition’ narrative is fueling misconceptions, trans advocates say
They say the current narrative makes “transition regret” seem more common than it is and contributes to misconceptions about transgender people in general by Liam Knox

External Examples of Transphobic Propaganda:













Comments Off on Transphobic Propaganda Aimed at Parents of Transsexual Kids

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria

Posted in Autobiographical, Female-to-Male, Transgender Youth by Kay Brown on June 6, 2018

Kay BrownIs this a newly emerging etiology?






Consider that pre-adolescent tomboys have always been given greater latitude than sissy boys.  In today’s climate of empowering girls to pursue sports and allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts… just like boys, but over scheduled and constantly under parental supervision, with little time for personal choices and expression by privileged helicopter parents, the type that are active on social media, these girls may not have been acknowledged as being gender dysphoric… until the social pressures of adolescence to be heterosexual and feminine.

TransSupportConsider also that nearly half of these parents acknowledged that they knew that their daughter was attracted to girls BEFORE they had confided being gender dysphoric.  (Gynephilia is a key co-presenting factor in transmen.)  These parents also point to their children having other emotional problems, which for them mean that their gender dysphoria is just another symptom, failing to note that gender dysphoric youth living in transphobic households typically experience such problems.  One out of seven of these parents state homophobic attitudes while the rest say that they support LGBT people.  (Really?  Recall that support for same-sex marriage hovers at only 50%… yet 85% of these parents say that they support LGBT rights?  Anyone remember the 60’s cliche “We’re not racist… but our daughter will never marry a black man.” ?!?)


Deja Vu













“I could understand it if you were petite like your sister (at 12 years old, not yet fully grown she was 5’2″ – our mother was 5’5″ –  I’m 5’7″ – our brothers were closer to 6′).”










Kay Brown in college




Kay, Jeff, Liz, & Reese





Addendum 9/3/2018:  The past week and some has seen renewed publicity regarding this putative phenomena of ROGD since the Littman paper was published.  I have been following this issue for much longer.  I chalked it up to standard parental denialism which I have written about for a decade now.  But I became disturbed by it when champions of MTF transkids approached me urging me to in effect throw FtM “ROGD” transkids under the bus.  They had been bamboozled by these parents in denial and what I now see as growing anti-transkid propaganda. The Littman paper does NOT document a new phenomena of social contagion among teens… it documents parental denial and rationalizations.  If there is any new social contagion phenomena occuring it is that the internet allows transphobic parents a means to create memes that can be used to bolster their denial and obtain social approval among their “transgender critical” peers for obstructing their teens.

Further Reading:

ROGD As An Expression of Parental Greiving

ROGD Redux

Essay on TransTrenders & Tucutes

Essay on Androphilic Transmen being Autoandrophilic

Advice to Parents of Transkids

Essay on Transphobic Propaganda Aimed at Parents of Transkids


Lisa Littman, “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports” (2018)

External Further Reading:

Brown University Statement regarding the Littman study controversy


Comments Off on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria