There is something wrong with Dr. James Cantor

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I am aware that he contributes to Prostasia, however, he seem to be promoting a harmful lie about Transpeople.

Look here

Let me get this right: I wrote an essay in 2018, and you are faulting me for not including a study that did not exist until 2019? Moreover, my original statement is still true. That study (Turban, 2019) is not an outcomes study at all, nevermind an outcomes study of conversation therapy.

He refers to this study

Association Between Recalled Exposure to Gender Identity Conversion Efforts and Psychological Distress and Suicide Attempts Among Transgender Adults

…did he even bother reading it?

In a cross-sectional study of 27 715 US transgender adults, recalled exposure to gender identity conversion efforts was significantly associated with increased odds of severe psychological distress during the previous month and lifetime suicide attempts compared with transgender adults who had discussed gender identity with a professional but who were not exposed to conversion efforts. For transgender adults who recalled gender identity conversion efforts before age 10 years, exposure was significantly associated with an increase in the lifetime odds of suicide attempts

Now while these are recalled expiences, the fact there were 27,000+ transpeople saying the same thing is hard to ignore

Also

Regarding my other post, a fact doesn’t change because you call it a lie. I provided every citation and every calculation for anyone to check. Linking to an essay by someone who keeps repeating that they didn’t actually read the studies isn’t much of a help.

He means this

Which said:

With all due respect Dr. Cantor, I think you (along with the general public) are conflating a diagnosis of gender dysphoria with one of being transgender. In fact, only a subset of GD children are treated as if they are transgender.

Kristina Olson, Ph.D, the director of the TransYouth Project at the University of Washington, which both clinically treats GD kids and does research, makes this point in her review article “Prepubescent Transgender Children: What We Do and Do Not Know,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Volume 55 Number 3 March 2016. She describes “a transgender child” (for example, a natal male) as “a child who consistently, persistently, and insistently identifies as female despite, in this case, being a natal male.” It is these “binary transgender children” that are candidates for such treatments as social transitioning, not every child with a diagnosis of GD. (As the DSM-5 itself notes, a GD diagnosis casts a wider net: “Experienced gender may include alternative gender identities beyond binary stereotypes. Consequently, the distress is not limited to a desire to simply be of the other gender, but may include a desire to be of an alternative gender, provided that it differs from the individual’s assigned gender.”)

There is empiric evidence that such children, exhibiting consistent, persistent and insistent identity as the “opposite” sex, persist as transgender into adolescence and adulthood:

“[S]tudies have found that children showing the most “extreme” signs of GD —- the ones who show more gender nonconformity (e.g., more behavioral preferences, more insistence on the “other” identity) -— are the most likely to identify later as transgender.3 More specifically, Steensma et al.5 [Steensma TD, McGuire JK, Kreukels BP, Beekman AJ, Cohen-Kettenis P., Factors associated with desistence and persistence of childhood gender dysphoria: a quantitative follow-up study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2013;52:582-590]suggested that the distinction between children who believe themselves to be the other gender and those who wish they were a member of the “other” gender appears to be a key predictor of persistence. They reported that “explicitly asking children with GD with which sex they identify seems to be of great value in predicting a future outcome.”5 (p. 588). Thus, knowing whether a child consistently claims the “other” gender identity might be the best single predictor of later transgender identity.

He also ignored this…oh wait it was updated:

The first study cited by Cantor to support desistance is Lebovitz, P. S. (1972). Feminine behavior in boys: Aspects of its outcome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 128, 1283–1289. A study which classifies “effeminate behaviour” as “deviance” and attempts to use that behaviour as a method of predicting whether a child will identify as gay, trans or cis het. The paper argues that the earlier onset the “deviance” the more likely they will not be cis het. This at a time when the mean age for coming out as transgender was 40+. A number which is now much closer to 20 and lower due to social progress.

The entire point of this paper is gross, to be frank. Its general framing of this whole thing is very conversion therapy-esque, and heavily pathologises being gay or trans as bad things we must identify and avoid ie “deviant”. This study very clearly doesn’t live up to our modern standards at all, in which most of us have moved very far on from calling men gay or women for not being brooding masculine archetypes.

Not to mention it doesn’t at all answer any kind of questions regarding desistance. The study was about 16 boys who “exhibited feminine behaviour”, three were transsexual, one transvestite, two gay with the remaining 10 being cis hetero. If this study proves anything, it’s the aforementioned fact that doing things society has arbitrarily decided are “effeminate” as a man doesn’t make you defective, deviant, gay or a woman. Nothing of desistance at all, whatsoever.

Next study is Zuger, B. (1978). Effeminate behavior present in boys from childhood: Ten additional years of follow-up.Comprehensive Psychiatry, 19, 363–369 . Which from the name alone you can see runs into the exact same problems as the study beforehand. Oops.

And another: Zuger, B. (1984). Early effeminate behavior in boys: Outcome and significance for homosexuality.Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 172, 90–97.

and another: Davenport, C. W. (1986). A follow-up study of 10 feminine boys. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15, 511–517.

This final one in particular is worth mentioning as it shows the current medical perspectives beginning to take form. It states that presenting with dysphoria isn’t necessarily a good predictor of whether someone will continue to identify as transgender or not. Rather that the “strength, rigidity, and persistence of cross-gender behavior through latency may be a good predictor of transsexual outcome.”

In short, this means that you don’t need to have dysphoria to be trans, and if someone is strongly and rigidly insisting and persisting to identify as trans? They probably are, ie self identification. Studies like this are why the so called affirmative approach was put in place, because it gives kids the space to work out who they are for themselves without pressure or prejudice. It let’s them have the chance to persist and tell you who they are.

Next is Money, J., & Russo, A. J. (1979). Homosexual outcome of discordant gender identity/role: Longitudinal follow-up. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 4, 29–41. And yes, that is /that/ “Money, J”, long before he was outed as an extremely messed up individual who abused two children so badly they both ended their lives as adults. A fact worth mentioning as Money’s perspectives on gender identity, ie the idea that it is malleable and can be bent into shape via raising a child a certain way, informed his decision to experiment on the Reimer twins and likely wormed their way into his work elsewhere, including this study.

This study doesn’t refer to trans children and is once again about “effeminate” boys and how that’s bad for some reason. This study does actually refer to one singular trans child, who had to do what’s called the “Real life rest” or “Real life experience. In short this is where you socially transition without any medication at all, something which this child did in the 70s. So it might come as no surprise to anyone that this child later detransitioned, not least since almost every modern transition study and study into mental health and suicidality of transgender people shows that society’s hostility and rejection of us is the most common reason for detransition.

The study does not at all mention whether this child later went onto attempt to transition again later in life. Which is a far more common than you’d think, so many trans people I know personally, even now in 2020, are on round 2 or more of transition. It is and always has been punishing and expensive to be trans, sometimes it’s just not possible to be out and proud, sometimes we are forced back into the closet.

And yeah this is about a study Cantor himself made…

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We can’t just throw away people and their valuable research because of irelevant differences. From what I can tell, prostasia’s official position is that trans people are truly the gender of which they claim to be. James disagrees with that. If we want to win as a movement then we can’t be elitists, we want acceptance for No Maps. So Making enemies is counter productive.

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Forgive me if I don’t wish to play realpolitik.
His words can come off as harmful. At the very least, he seems blind to his own bias.
I mean he says:

As I’ve noted before, in the context of GD children, it simply makes no sense to refer to externally induced “conversion”: The majority of children “convert” to cisgender or “desist” from transgender regardless of any attempt to change them.

The word heterosexism comes to mind. Does he know why most detransition?

Of those who had detransitioned, 82.5% reported at least one external driving factor. Frequently endorsed external factors included pressure from family and societal stigma.

He agrees that conversion therapy for non-heterosexuals exist, yet not for those suffering from gender dysphoria? Who are clearly the victims of heterosexism themselves?

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You can sit on your ivory tower and exclude people for there political or religouse differances but don’t try to impose it on me. There are obviously limits I doubt prostasia would ever collaborate with a nazi no matter how much the fought for map rights. And I certainly wouldn’t.

I’m also not going to debate you on this, honestly I don’t know why you seems to think I oppose transgenderism.

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One I never said we exclude him.

Two why are you treating his objective falsehoods as “opinions”?

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Look, we all know he’s transphobic, and I know you aren’t thinking of excluding him.

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Though, let’s be honest. Words, like anything “-phobe”, are getting about as popular as the word, “terrorist”, had gotten after 9/11. A lot of us don’t care one way or another but are just annoyed when we have to use silly terms, like “pregnant people”, rather than “pregnant women”. As for my personal take, as with all things, I value the tangible over the intangible. Male or female is defined purely by what’s between the legs. To say otherwise would like like a condemned POW of a defeated army saying that he has the “soul” of a winner (due to fighting the good fight or whatever), when his head is clearly on the chopping block.

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Gender =/= sex
I suppose this is a semantic difference

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I don’t want to get bogged down in all this confusing rhetoric about trans issues. “Live, and let live” has always been my motto.

On the one hand, life would be so much easier if every other human being in the world was exactly like me in regard to their beliefs and habits etc. However, no doubt that would soon prove frustratingly boring.

What I’m really wondering is: are you suggesting that James Cantor’s association is fundamentally detrimental in any way, and therefore he should not be involved with Prostasia?

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No, doctors define that, and they can be wrong. What about the brain?

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Honestly, I think the man should admit he is wrong in this matter. Nothing else beyond that.

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Why should he admit he’s wrong if he doesn’t think he is wrong. He has a lot of experience arguing about this stuff. I don’t think he’s gonna be convinced by your post if he finds it.

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I’d be OK with that, but again, look at that comment section. I will react if my own interests are threatened or inconvenienced.

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Depends on whether you’re referring to psychology or neurology. From what I understand, only the latter deals with the tangible. I guess that’s the difference between the “mind” and the actual organ known as the brain.

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