Thursday 27 August 2015

Body identification and more

Heya everybody,

Sorry I haven’t been posting in a while, but I have been working in the background, adding new studies to my pages. I hope to make some major updates, but I really need to find the time first.

I have also been working on autogynephilia – an issue I thought went down the drain long ago together with many other unscientific made-up psychological stories … but a discussion on a blog showed me that people still keep flogging that dead horse, and worse … transphobes continue to base their hate[1] on the autogynephilia hypothesis. As you know from my website, I’m all about evidence-based medicine and treatments, and I have been looking some more into autogynephilia, and there just aren’t any supporting facts. I checked: Since Ray Blanchard’s original work in 1989 (which was refuted so authoritatively by Madeline Wyndzen), there was no significant clinical study supporting the hypothesis. The last major episode of the drama was of course triggered by J. Michael Bailey when he published a book about his musings about autogynephilia and his “research” in Chicago bars in 2003. One would have thought that he or his supporters would have been able to come up with some new evidence or facts since, but … nothing … nada … anyway, I’ll write more about it, and supply you with a list of references.

Anyway, in brief: Here is an interesting study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, August 2015, by Feusner, Dervisic, et al., including well-known gender dysphoria researchers Cecilia Dhejne and Ivanka Savic. They studied the body identification of female-to-male transsexuals and found a difference to cisgender individuals. Apparently transsexuals identify more with body images congruent with their gender identity.

Peace and Light ✨






[1] Actually, one of the commentators in that blog discussion advocated the killing of transsexuals, which shook me to the bone.