On That Reddit Debate

So a handful of people reading this may be aware that there was a small debate between me and a couple alt-right asshats on Reddit. I pretty much went idle for a couple months and, admittedly that's mostly just my laziness there. But I decided to check up on it today and, it was god awful as always.

See, the main gist is that I was responding to a post about race and crime. There was a response written by a couple blokes to my post and, while they're both poor (I'll elaborate on this momentarily), ultimately I won't be responding too anytime soon for reasons detailed.

For one, I made the post prematurely. It was a few months ago, and I didn't have a coherent plan for the different concepts that I'd be tackling - which is problematic. There's a lot needed to understand about this debate, both for concepts directly stated in the Reddit posts as well as things implied in discussions. It ultimately deals with intricate points about heritability, genetic theory, supposed fallacies, how statistical measures ought to be used, et cetera. To try to demonstrate all this on Reddit of all things is hilariously bad, because it leads to a very shitty understanding of what's being talked about, as is the case with 'BasementInhabitant' - who dismisses criticisms of say national crime statistics that point out their unreliability, especially for racial minorities, and blatant inaccuracies as simply 'minor' without elaboration on what'd exactly constitute a damning criticism to him, or maybe citing a 'variance inflation factor' as a rebuttal to a point I made even though it's a factor used for statistical model comparisons that's irrelevant towards the study at hand. Not to mention his little pal who made points about articles that were directly contradicted by said articles - such as how the bulk of one's points about the probability of racial encounters directly rebutted what he said, and instead he chose out of context points, especially for ones about other studies that, with proper context, reveal his own misunderstanding of my own points (such as why I cited Hispanic individuals even though that Hispanic folk weren't being discussed - primarily because I anticipated that as a separate counterpoint) among other things.

This probably all makes little sense out of context, and that's understandable - frankly I more wanted a bit of a space to vent about it, so why not use a paragraph and confuse the twenty or so people who'll read this.

I digress though, because ultimately, along with my failure to provide adequate context (and, an admitted poor explanation of my points at some parts), and with the clear ideological motivations behind alt-rightists not interested in debate, I ultimately decided to take a step back from it. It'll be going on in circles for far too long of a time, and a better overall point can be made if I stick to this blog format - which is what I'll do from now on, bad move on my part to try to cover multiple grounds. So, while I won't be covering the race and crime bits - or even education bits - immediately, anticipate it in the next couple months or so. For now, I want to establish some basics. Which leads me to what the next non-shitpost/filler/update post will be about - and, as is likely apparent from the prior one about the concept of race, it'll be all about the fixation index and it's relevance towards the whole 'race' debate. Following that, I'll likely cover expert opinion on it, then concepts of race, and then go over some important aspects about statistical measures and genetic theory. After all that, anticipation for some discussion about that sort of a topic can be found.

Father

"The prevalence of disease in the IRL and CHS dolphins from 2010 to 2015 is shown in Table 3. There was no significant difference between the prevalence of definite disease between the IRL and CHS for 2010 to 2015, although the data for CHS were based on a single capture year."

Polytypic My Ass

CONTENT WARNING: RACISM

Looking up at the sunny sky; so shinny and blue - there's a butterfly!

It's gonna be a fantastic day~

Oh wait, no it's not, because of this shitty, racist paper by Michael A Woodley - someone who basically constantly whines about a supported 'dysgenic' - a talking point amount eugenicists saying that 'genetic fitness' is decreasing - decline in 'intelligence' and always tries to frequently justify scientific racism, such as with this paper. Entitled "Is Homo sapiens polytypic? Human taxonomic diversity and its implications," it's published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, one distinctly known for publishing AIDS denialism and other ridiculous bits of pseudoscience you can find on its Wikipedia page.

What a great start we're off to!

The essential crux of the paper is trying to argue that, get this, there are human subspecies, or even different human species. I wish I was fucking joking, because good lord this is going to be god awful. But it's frequently cited by scientific racist types as evidence for their trash, and as far as I'm aware no comprehensive rebuttal to it exists yet, so someone's gotta clean up the trash.

Woodley starts off by claiming that the concept of 'race' is akin to subspecies by citing a paper by Alan R Templeton and an entire book by W.F. Bodmer and L.L. Cavalli-Sforza. As far as I'm aware this isn't a book about taxonomic classifications and, since no pages are cited, I'll just talk about the Templeton paper.

Alan Templeton is a well known geneticist who argues against the existence of race - and this paper is pretty much no exception to it, as the whole point of it acknowledges there being very little human genetic diversity and there being no good rationale for race or subspecies as concepts. Templeton further goes on to point out many scientists actually do differentiate between the two, and that both concepts are vague and subject to much debate. This is something that I'll get into in a bit. For now, let's go through some more of his claims.

Next is a citation to a paper by Jeffry C. Long and Rick A. Skittles. This is one that I'm personally a fan of, for reasons that'll be detailed later on in my next post. For now, Woodley essentially paraphrases various proposed definitions of race detailed there and, while the paraphrases are accurate, I'll nonetheless incorporate the initial table of the definitions for a later usage, since it's inevitably going to be important for this shit.

With that said, Woodley then ironically presents a great argument against 'races' existing by saying,

"The table would seem to suggest that there is no universally agreed upon definition of race or subspecies and that the use of any particular race concept in the apportionment of human biological diversity is to a degree arbitrary. This situation has not been helped by inconsistent historical usage in the anthropological literature, where the term would frequently be used in the description of human populations at a variety of scales ranging from sub-continental to global"

Essentially, the very fact that so many definitions exist show that it's not based on any natural categories or observations that people are trying to develop classifications but rather just ad hoc explanations that aren't based on any actual scientific data to justify social norms. It's all entirely arbitrary and unscientific. But of course, Woodley believes in races - so let's see how he handles this.

"The problem with social constructivism is that it attempts to engage racial classification on a normative rather than a scientific level. Using the idea that scientific race concepts stem from a desire to apportion people into ‘inferior’ vs. ‘superior’ categories as grounds for claiming that they are wrong is simply an appeal to motive and therefore is not a logical counter to scientific theories of race, which must be assessed purely on their merits. The notion of arbitrariness in the definition of race is a significant and legitimate scientific issue in need of redress however."

So, according to Woodley, ideas that aren't based on scientific merit but rather social categories don't matter - motive is just entirely irrelevant towards assessing the validation and reason for ideas! What an annoying, centrist take this is. I see it espoused a lot, and frankly it's incredibly naive - as I said, it ignores how the ideas lack any justification and are only ad hoc nonsense formed to try to validate a socially formed idea that has racist roots. But also, I've never once seen this claim before as an argument against race per se alone, that because ideas have racist roots they're wrong. I wouldn't necessarily disagree for reasons said, but it's not really the main crux used against racial categories. It's frequently noted to point out the unscientific nature of definitions and arbitrariness of them (which, to Woodley's credit he does note is a "significant and legitimate scientific issue," but of course since he's motivated to find race in the first place rather than to realize that it isn't a valid taxonomical category he instead aims to continue research on it), but it's hardly the main point. For instance, the American Anthropological Assocation's Website's Position on Race argues against it primarily with a statement about humans having continuous and not discrete variation as well as, overall, minimal variation. While these points are disputed among scientific racist types (which I'll handle in later posts), they're empirical claims used against it alongside the points about arbitrariness. 

Woodley tries to justify that this is argued by citing two books - "Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race" by Charles Mills and "Race: The Reality of Human Difference" by Vincent M. Sarich and Frank Miele - the latter of which is an explicitly racialist book, while the former recognizes the history of racism behind the concept. Since no page is cited in either, and the latter is likely extremely biased in its view, I'd say it's fair to dismiss this claim here in light of AAA statements.

Woodley then next summarizes the controversy called "Lewontin's Fallacy," which, while I won't elaborate on here since it's a beast of it's own, you can read about it here if interested. I'll be covering it specifically at a later date. For now, I will say that he does accurately summarize the controversy, though of course supports the problematic conclusions of A.W. F. Edwards as is expected from any racialist type.

He uses this to try to form his own definition of 'race,' being "populations expressing a composite number of traits whose distributions intercorrelate in such a way so as to give rise to a particular, distinct correlative structure." It's not at all clear what he means by a 'composite number of traits' nor what he means by a 'distinct correlative structure,' and there's extreme vagueness to it that's only supported by his attempts to say it's consistent with all four given definitions up above. From his brief elaborations though, he's essentially just repeating the 'Essentialist' definition but also positing that the traits are 'intercorrelated,' which would necessarily have to be the case if they're linked by different ancestral environments and differ by populations. But this is a pretty useless definition, because what exactly constitutes as a trait? What's the criterion for differentiation on it? Even by standards of random genetic variation, this would even be consistent with very minor differences in allele frequencies producing very minor differences in a given phenotype, which includes between say towns or villages, of which can be ancestrally differentiated. It's ultimately a vague and useless definition - both the initial Essentialist one and Woodley's - because it's not clear what's considered a different trait, or what the boundary should be, or how many traits are needed, etc. Just about any two separate groups, taking this to its extreme, can be considered different racial groups, no matter how minor. It's just silly and biologically useless. The fact that Woodley's definition can be aligned with four very different definitions too is further emphasis of how vague it is - it can essentially be shaped and fit to any definition, as it's vague enough to suit just about any desires behind it rather than serving to be an accurate classification. It's little more than racist pseudoscience.

But anyway, all of this is pretty irrelevant for the rest of the paper, hilariously enough, since now we're getting to the bulk of the claims.

After boasting about his 'demonstrations' done prior, he aims to deal with intraspecies diversity and arbitrariness by first claiming that

"An old morphological method for determining the appropriateness of a subspecies classification is the 75% rule, which holds that if 75% of the members of a given population can be grouped by eye then they constitute a subspecies."

Every time I read this I burst out laughing, because it's just so fucking incorrect it's hilarious. Woodley is referring to this classic paper by Dean Amadon, which aims to describe a criteria for subspecies. Amadon describes two interpretations of what the 75% rule is -  the first, being that, 75% of a population is grouped on a specific, measurable trait in an extreme manner such that 75% of the population is differentiated from 75% of a separate population on the trait. As Amadon put it,

"Rand had 70 specimens of the population of canadensis and 15 specimens of osgoodi which he distributed among nine color categories (shown by Roman numerals) as indicated. The brownest birds are in class III; they become progressively grayer through class IX. Seventy-five per cent of a sample of 70 is 52.5. Beginning at the left, classes III-VII, indicated by the upper bracket, will include 75 per cent of this sample (classes I and II were set up for other populations not considered here). Similarly for osgoodi 11.2 specimens are 75 per cent of a sample of 15. Beginning at the right, 75 per cent of this sample fall in the last three classes (lower bracket). Since these 75 per cent segments of canadensis and osgoodi do not overlap, the brownest 75 per cent of canadensis are browner than the grayest 75 per cent of osgoodi, at least in these samples. Rand concluded that osgoodi is subspecifically distinct from canadensis. (He has since told me that he now would prefer a separation of about 90 per cent from 90 per cent.)"

Amadon is talking about a paper by his colleague A.L. Rand, where he determined the coloration of two subspecies of spruce grouse - a North American bird. With this method, Rand was able to determine that 75% of each population is distinct from one another without overlap in traits of coloration - although he'd rather 90% separation. This serves as an example of at least one interpretation - though Amadon notes that there's an important problem with this interpretation, being that using this alone as a method, we won't know how the other 25% of each population overlaps. Because of this, we can't end up knowing whether a given individual from a population goes into one or the other immediately.

This leads Amadon to point out a second method that he and other ornithologists he's talked to find preferable - differentiating 75% of one population from over 99% of another one on a given - or multiple combined - traits. He points out this can be mathematically shown to be equivalent to 97% of each population being differentiated from one another, This is likely what Woodley was referring to, but it's clear he blatantly misrepresented it, because this measure isn't designed to group people differently 'by eye,' but rather by any given trait(s) for taxonomic classification. It's also especially important to note that this very paper points out subspecies can often be 100% differentiated from one another on a trait, which show that this method proposed is pretty liberal, albeit arbitrary. While trying to apply it to humans suffers from issues of arbitrariness for deciding what traits may be measured, it's nonetheless misrepresented by Woodley, making some his next points moot - although we'll investigate them anyway.

It's next claimed there's controversy over the 75% rule by citing a paper by Smith, Chiszar, and Montanucci. I wasn't able to find the original, but I was able to find a repost on... a white nationalist website.

Fuck me.

If we're to assume it's accurate at all towards the source, there's no mention of controversy over the 75% rule - however this isn't to say controversy doesn't exist in regards to it. James Rising wrote a paper where he, albeit briefly, criticized the rule for being arbitrary (which, as I pointed out, while true, isn't necessarily too accurate since it's useful for identifying what's a common trend), and, more effectively, not being sufficient enough alone as a criteria, instead requiring them to be genetically independent with "distinct gene pools that predict variation in traits not originally considered." There's also more in depth discussion about what a subspecies concept needs among other important caveats that are noted within this paper, of course. Specifically, it's four points needed for a subspecies concept (I'll be paraphrasing a bit):

1. To be informative about the population's migratory history as well as their isolation from other populations.

2. To be informative of the early stages of speciation in these populations.

3. To be predictive about potential differences that may arise from the geographic location of the population

4. For it to be helpful for potential research, including into the evolution of the populations.

It should be obvious that the sole 75% rule criteria satisfies absolutely none of these requirements, so it's an inherently invalid measure. While we could stop here, let's go even further in going all out against him.

Next it's yet another pageless book citation - "Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 4. Variability Within and Among Natural Populations" by Sewall Wright. This book is among a series that's considered somewhat classic to population genetics, especially since, as will be seen in later posts, Sewall Wright is pretty crucial to the whole race debate. With that said, it's baselessly claimed that humans are 'accurately' grouped by race more than 75% of the time, which, might I add, is only begging the question. It's next claimed that, via a nonscientific visual overview, there's difficulty identifying chimpanzee subspecies. This claim is cited with a paper by Anne Stone and colleagues which doesn't at all test what was claimed. However, I assume it came from a small paragraph noting technical limitations that prevented the authors from assessing subspecies status. It's not at all clear what relevance this has for the claim since this was specifically a genomic analysis, and it likewise they never noted that an indirect - i.e. visual - measure of subspecies status was difficult or impossible.

Next of course is another pageless citation to the Sarich and Miele book that the morphological differences among human populations are either equivalent to or greater than that between different species. What a fucking claim.

Now, we're getting into the bulk of his argument, being a reference to different values of heterozygosity -  which is a measure of genetic variability, although more specifically it's two different alleles at a locus - for humans and different species. He points out that values for humans typically are higher than other animals with subspecies, and, while this is technically correct¹, is a demonstration of a really poor understanding of genetics. As detailed on pages 164 and 165 in the book Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture, Woodley completely failed to understand what these measures mean, as he was essentially believing that it measured the variation between different populations - which is patently false. As the authors of RGR point out,

"The problem with this analysis is that the process of speciation (by which geographic races would develop) does not proceed by overall heterozygosity, but rather by the differences between the heterozygosity of the subpopulations from the total heterozygosity of the species: FST = (HT - HS) / HT, where this FST is the average for multiple loci; HT is the average of the expected heterozygosity in the total population over loci, and HS is the average expected heterozygosity over subpopulations. Thus, geographic races form subpopulations and begin to diverge from each other in allele frequencies. A species might have high heterozygosity, but if it is evenly distributed across its populations, then it isn't undergoing genetic change that will form geographical races that might eventually form new species."

Essentially, he applied a measure of an entire species' genetic variability, or even variability within certain populations, and assumed that measured between population variability - which isn't the case. It's entirely possible to have high genetic variability but also have no populations arise from it, as population heterogeneity is irrelevant for the differences between them. Instead, a measure of FST, or Fixation Index² is preferable. He likewise implies the 75% rule applies here, but it's clear, given prior analyses, it doesn't.

The next claim we've ought to address is his claim of different 'major races' existing, utilizing incredibly racist terms that I'd frankly rather not say here - of course, to cite this, the incredibly racist work called "The Origin of Races" by Charleton S. Coon. If only I were joking here.

He next claims that this is outdated (what an understatement - it was never dated to begin with, it's fucking pseudoscience), and that "molecular data" reveals five "continental populations (major clades or races)," being, Sub-Saharan African folk, Caucasian individuals, Northeast Asian people, Southeast Asian folk AND Pacific Islander individuals, as well as Native American individuals - I paraphrased to remove the clear racism there. It's pretty great how he lumps entirely heterogeneous ethnic groups and cultures together into large 'races,' isn't it? Isn't it just fine and dandy how it magically just so happens to be almost identical to that of which was arbitrarily formed centuries in the past to justify racism? What a coincidence.

To justify this, he cites, in order, "Evolutionary Relationships of Human Populations on a Global Scale," a paper Masatoshi Nei and Arun K. Roychoudhury, which only deals with the evolutionary history of ethnic groups and does not try to form any sort of homogeneous 'races,' a pageless citation of two books by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza (the latter also being by Paolo Manozzi and Alberto Piazza), "Genes, Peoples, and Language" and "The History and Geography of Human Genes," and lastly a paper entitled "The Cladistic Race Concept: A Defense" by Robin O. Andreasen, which only contains evolutionary trees (which help detail the geneaology of different ethnic groups) and not any sort of indication of 'major races.' So he just pulled that out of his ass, didn't he?

He then claims that his vague ass 'correlation structure' explanation is supported by the cladistic race concept defended by Andreasen, and that the problem of arbitrariness is resolved by this paper.

Except, it isn't.

While the initial papers defends a pretty shite concept I'll detail in a much later post, essentially Andreasen argues that 'races' can be best conceptualized as a geneaological concept to detail the ancestral history confined to various population groups - he points out that concepts of genetic variation and phenotypes are irrelevant for it, as the latter, while it can be a proxy for ancestry, is not actually required and often will be an inaccurate proxy. He also only refers to aspects of say skin color there and notes that how we measure geneaology is going to essentially be irrelevant for phenotypic traits that Woodley is implying we refer to. While technically his proposal may be coherent with it, it'd be little more than a burden towards the definition than anything and is ultimately an unnecessary given modern genetic methods. Further, it doesn't at all absolve the issue of arbitrariness, and Andreasen's proposal is in of itself arbitrary - where do we define what's an acceptable different population? Taken to it's extreme, different towns or even neighborhoods may be considered separate 'races!' I'll be giving more of a critique of this at a later date, though, as I said.

Now, with the subspecies concept debunked, let's delve into an even worse thing - a claim of different human species.

It's important to understand what's being argued here. As Woodley correctly identifies it, one common conception is the biological species concept - being members of populations that can interbreed. While there's valid issues with it, it's sufficiently used quite a bit.

The other concept Woodley refers to - and it's the one for the crux of the shitty attempt at a point - is the phylogenic species concept. Now, Woodley cites "Phylogenetic patterns and the evolutionary process: Method and theory in comparative biology" by Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft in essentially saying that

 "Species are the result of clear divergence within a group of organisms sharing an ancestor whose lineage remains intact with respect to other lineages throughout time and space"

While not only is this is an inaccurate paraphrase, it's incredibly misleading towards what's actually stated about phylogenic species and how it's defined. For one, this is what's referred to as a monophyletic concept - but even then it's a misunderstanding of what it entails. See, the overall phylogenic species concepts are based on phylogenic analysis, which represents a sort of hierarchic relationship of descent. The results of this are often represented in a phylogenic tree, an example of which from that Long and Skittles paper can be seen below in humans.

This is as far as Woodley would have you believe the concept goes. This concept is nearly identical towards the 'cladistic race' concept noted before, and suffers from the fact that just about any distinct populations, regardless of phenotypic and genetic similarity, will be separate species! I don't believe I need to point out how this is ridiculous.

Fortunately, there's much more to the monophyletic concept than was let on - but to fully understand it, we'll first need the actual quote from the book:

"A diagnosable cluster of individuals within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent, beyond which there is not, and which exhibits a pattern of phylogenetic ancestry and descent among units of like kind." Quoted in (Wheeler, 1999)

What does this exactly mean, one might wonder? Fortunately, John Hawks, an anthropologist and popular paleoanthropology blogger explains it well for us on his post about species concepts. As he says,

"Key to the phylogenetic species concept is the idea that species must be "diagnosable." In other words, members of the species should share a combination of characteristics that other species lack."

Indeed, as noted by Jerrold I. Davis and Kevin C. Nixon in their 1992 paper, the phylogenic species concept requires all members of a species to have a given characteristic and none of the members of a separate one to have it - such as say, two arms in humans but none in cats for a bit of an elementary example to grasp the basic idea. As they point out, different populations within a species are entirely consistent with the idea that they're still a unified species provided they're defined by 'character(s),' or fixed traits in the population, that can be linked back to a common ancestor with said character(s). This spells a clear and obvious issue for Woodley, so it's clear why he omitted it - as far as I'm aware, there's no characteristic that universally is present in one human population that isn't present in another. Even folk taxonomic concepts such as skin color are, as Alan Templeton points out in a 2013 paper, incredibly variant both within and between populations and aren't clearly or reliably linked towards ancestry. From this margin it's clear that this concept fails.

Before continuing on and getting into some more problems with trying to apply human populations to the phylogenic species concept, I'd like to further point out that there are indeed other concepts - such as being defined by genetic clusters unique to that population that don't contain subgroups, being defined as exclusively monophyletic 'units,' and others detailed here and even more in its cited sources. While the exclusive monophyletic concept is proposed, it was only an example of potential  species concepts (and as a potential temporary placeholder concept called a 'metaspecies' while more research is done, though the criticisms still apply to it) in a paper by Kevin de Queiroz and Michael J Donoghue (which, incidentally, contains more concepts). So essentially, Woodley proposes a measure that isn't upheld by anyone and is completely inaccurate to the literature. In fact, his overview of species concepts so inaccurate that it neglects that there are more concepts of species beyond those listed - such as the cohesion concept, phenetic concept, and more that can be found here and in the other cited sources that I do recommend you check out if interested.

With that said, there's other objections to make with the very concept as a whole - such as Kevin Zelnoi pointing out that it ultimately results in a severe and potentially challenging inflation of the number of species or Amal Aldhebiani pointing out the difficulties in even constructing evolutionary pathways, but one of the biggest is that of gene flow - something that, as you'll see, is distinctly relevant to humans. As John Hawks points out, in populations like humans that are connected with a substantial degree of variation between populations such that we follow a clinal (more evidence in the 2013 Templeton paper above) - or gradual change, essentially a spectrum of variation - we won't be able to reliably identify populations from one another, and this can create problems for groups such as paleontologists who may note a lack of historical correspondence or even having to change their very understanding of evolution to accommodate it. Considering this important caveat, it's clear that it's hardly a good concept to even try to apply to humans in the first place.

Of course, Woodley does try to address this argument, which he claims by Norman I. Platnick and Quentin D. Wheeler in chapter 15 (A Defense of the Phylogenetic Species Concept) of "Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory: A Debate" by Quentin Wheeler and Rudolf Meier. While no page was cited, I was able to find what I believe Woodley was referring to, though more on that in a minute. Woodley demonstrates his inability to science even still by claiming that the crux of this concern is interbreeding between established populations and not gene flow itself (to his credit, the source does claim this (although it actually claims that we can expect there to be no more 'human species' in due time rather than it being gone now, as disgusting as that is that it's even something believed)). However, even if he were right, how he tries to rebut it is laughable - first a citationless claim about a lack of admixture -  in spite of rising interracial marriage rates - and then a citation towards noted racial pseudoscientist J. Phillipe Rushton's main paper on his flawed 'genetic similarity theory' (contra to Wikipedia's claims, there's no support for it - I'll detail it at a later date) and Frank Salter's book (it's two citations, but Woodley just cites the original 2003 version and the republished 2005 version) that basically are a pseudoscientific and pseudophilosophical view trying to justify white nationalism (I'll cover these at a later date as well. I'll likely cover both Rushton and Salter's "theories" since they're pretty similar, and the latter frequently cites the former). The main arguments in these are basically attempts to justify ethnic nationalism by saying it's 'natural' to associate with people of your 'racial group.' There's an abundance of criticisms you can find on the Wikipedia pages of them, and I'll do an in depth overview of both at a later date. For now though, it should be clear the type of 'quality' research to anticipate from them.

None of the citations at all handle the rate of racial admixture though - I should know, I've read through them.³

With that said and done, and after more pageless citations to Cavalli-Sforza claiming a quantity of different 'species' - an absurd number approaching 40 - and another pageless citation to the Sarich and Miele book about human differentiation, Woodley writes a rebuttal - and, mind you, he treats this source as a valid scientific work - to Richard D. Fuerle's incredibly, incredibly racist and psuedoscientific work that, of all things, tries to debunk the Out of Africa hypothesis, something widely accepted and only rejected by obscure racists. Beyond legitimatizing such a ridiculous source, his response isn't something I'll address - partly because it handles FST, something I'll talk about in a later post, and partly because I see no need to respond to it currently since no pages are cited in the initial book to try my hand at a better response than Woodley's, which frankly seems particularly sympathetic.

Finally we jump to the last bit of the paper - the discussion. After promoting himself for doing some sort of great scientific achievement (he hasn't), whining about the James Watson incident (how dare we not tolerate racist hogwash), and by claiming that we need race as a concept because there's different populations (which doesn't imply a need for taxonomic classifications).

Now, next we get to a couple more empirical claims - being that, survival of transplants in surgeries varies by race (this is evidenced by citing by a paper by Abiodun Omoloja, which indeed it does vary between black and white individuals) due to a lack of ethnic matching. This claim isn't backed up by any specific source Woodley gives, although this paper by Eric Spierings is cited as evidence. It's a study dealing with ethnic differences in the frequencies of "minor histocompatibility antigens" which affect whether a transplant will be compatible varying by racial group. The authors of it themselves note that the bulk of the variance is ultimately small and practically nonsignificant, and that much of the variation (though not all - some does vary geographically but they never seem to statistically assess these patterns) is random in them. Further they also note differential phenotypic expression in each ethnic group for the specific antigens. Nonetheless I'm skeptical of this paper due to the significant replicability issues in candidate gene studies, which in my eyes is due to an inadequate p value used - though that's, again, for another time, much like discussions of race and medicine is. All of this is beyond the scope of what this post is assessing.

Next is a citation to a small, two page paper by Constance Holden about supposed racial differences in responses to medical treatment. I can't actually view it, making this pretty irrelevant, but I should note why Woodley cites all this - as supposed evidence of substantial variation. Even if it all were true, that doesn't magically make race a valid taxonomical category. Bare in mind the point of these categories is essentially to help understand the evolutionary history of populations, and they're generally given to those that exhibit great genetic differentiation. This doesn't mean there isn't any - no geneticist would deny this. What's denied is what taxonomic significance or even relevance it actually has.

And finally we conclude our endeavor by witnessing Woodley cherry pick sources of people arguing against his views (by failing to actually rebut them in any form, might I add) in medical ethics - being a paper by Troy Duster and an actual survey (of a nonrepresentative sample of geneticists) by L.M. Hunt and M.S. Megyesi that, hilariously enough, goes against him as the geneticists still argue to use race, contrary to what he implies by people being sympathetic towards 'social constructivist' arguments - and in law - by citing a paper by Dorothy E Roberts and a separate one by Erik Lillquist and Charles A. Sullivan that both argue against using rate in legal affairs of medicine - to fearmonger among his racialist types about a mass, anti-scientific, PC Egalitarian SJW Cultural Marxist Post-Modernist agenda.

I may have paraphrased there at the last bit, just slightly. What can I say, shitposting is fun!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. He cites this page by John Goodrum - or it was, as evidenced by web archive (which does contain the original webpage he was likely referring to). Currently, however, it's, hilariously enough, a page arguing against the existence of race by a Bobby Crawford.

2. There's many problems with FST as a whole - I'd refer back to the Long and Skittles citation for an elaboration - but I'll save that for the next post, as it's irrelevant here since none of his arguments rely on FST.

3. Although granted, I only read most of the chapters in Salter's book. There were some I skipped over because they dealt with his things that I didn't care about - like his 'policy recommendations' that I've read through a debate he had with a reviewer over - or aspects that were handled in papers he wrote on this subject. 

A Long Overdue Sequel and Elaborations

CONTENT WARNING - TRANSPHOBIA, ABLEISM, SUICIDE

Ahhh shit. I procrastinated for a month, didn't I?

Well fuck. Better late than never.

 As I promised about a month ago, I'd be responding to "NotPoliticallyCorrect" further in a second part on a lengthy, lengthy transphobic post he linked to in a comment responding to, of all people, a popular trans pro-Blanchard blogger known as "Sillyolme." Her blog, unsurprisingly, consists of basically worshipping Anne Lawrence and everything she says. Before I do that, though, there's a couple smaller points he made that I believe need addressing. Firstly, he cites a book by Ronald Corner entitled "Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology" as saying on page 358 that trans women are "consumed by the need to be female." However, the book never says this as far as I know - page 358 is in regards to scizophrenia, and searching within the Google Books search box for the phrase pulls up nothing. Either he misrepresented the source, the quote is on a page not available and he just miscited the page, or it's in a different edition of the book. Considering that there aren't multiple editions of the book as far as I'm aware and that Google Books typically shows quotes even in unavailable sections, I'd ascribe this to the former. But even barring this fact, it's completely false - and I'll be speaking from my own anecdotal experiences as a trans girl, my conversations with other trans women, and from official clinical recognition of transgender folk. This should hopefully help contextualize to cisgender (for those who don't know, this term just means people who identify with the gender assigned at birth - it'd be inaccurate to say cis means 'not transgender' though as this doesn't account for people who simply identify as intersex, genderfluid people who don't identify as trans, and non-binary people who don't put themselves under the trans label) people what the experience actually is like. Julia Serano has plenty of works on this topic of well that I would recommend. I'd also like to use this as an opportunity to elaborate on some concepts in the former post.

As the APA standards of care guidelines note,

"Gender identity is defined as a person’s deeply felt, inherent sense of being a girl, woman, or female; a boy, a man, or male; a blend of male or female; or an alternative gender... For [transgender and gender non-conforming] people, gender identity differs from sex assigned at birth to varying degrees, and may be experienced and expressed outside of the gender binary."

While it's a bit incorrect in noting that gender non-conformity is synonymous with trans individuals (the very document later makes the important distinction with expression of one's gender identity, such as in say clothing or body alteration, and gender identity itself), and the issues with the very term 'sex' that I'll detail in a separate post at a later date, this nonetheless gives us a starting ground to explain what it means to be trans. To identify separately from a gender identity typically linked to "sex" (which typically, albeit inaccurately, is ascribed to chromosomes or genitalia) is to be transgender, provided one feels the label suits them (given the significant variance in how one may identify). What this means is that part of an internal sense of self is incongruent with that is socially ascribed to the individual - gender is, at least in my view, best emphasized as a part of an individual's identity and subjective experience the world. This is partially why trans people feel that the "x gender trapped in y's body" is inaccurate - because there isn't a necessary link between an identity and body, given that there's a broad range of identities that can be congruent with any body type, but rather that identities are socially ascribed to certain body types.

Of course, I should emphasize that not all trans individuals feel the same about what gender itself is. There's quite a bit of variance, from egoist interpretations to the woefully transphobic and scientifically inaccurate (not in the way you'd think) 'transmedicalist' view of it being a "brain sex."

However, this isn't to say being trans is a social phenomena - trans people exist across an abundance of cultural boundaries and have been documented for millenia. It is loosely related to social phenomena, such that a desire to express a say type of hairstyle with one's gender only is that way thanks to society associating certain say articles of clothing with said gender identity, but the experience is nonetheless pervasive and real.

With that said, this doesn't necessarily constitute a response to that phrase, you might be thinking - even provided what I said, it's still somewhat consistent with an 'obsession' and being 'consumed' by a view. My first response to this is to fuck off with that rhetoric, and my second is to point out that we've still got more ground to cover before delving into the experience of transition - that is, why trans people transition.

While it's impossible to ascribe a universal reason as for why, the APA document cited earlier does provide a good elaboration for the absolute most common reasons out there. The following quote goes into a good basis for elaboration.

"A person’s identification as TGNC can be healthy and self-affirming, and is not inherently pathological. However, people may experience distress associated with discordance between their gender identity and their body or sex assigned at birth, as well as societal stigma and discrimination."

Essentially, trans individuals largely transition (which means to do anything from change your social expression to taking hormones and under going genital reassignment surgery) because it affirms our identity, and because it helps to alleviate dysphoria - the explicit or implicit feeling of discomfort as a result of physical or social incongruence with our identified gender. It's a feeling that results from our identities being invalidated, whether it be due to being forced into gender roles¹ or having our own bodies feel incongruent with how our identity ought to be expressed. Of course, it's important to recognize that not all trans individuals may desire to transition, or even experience dysphoria² - some may simply experience gender euphoria, the happiness of the affirmation of one's internal identity (although some trans people argue gender euphoria is another form of dysphoria). The reasons trans people may not transition vary - as Planned Parenthood points out, it can be due to a lack of ability to afford medical costs, social issues with family, problems with health insurance, or they simply may not desire parts of surgery - although this may not be due to them not wanting the characteristics provided by surgery but rather concerns with the surgery itself, such as a general fear of the practice, or dissatisfaction with what the outcomes may be for a variety of medical reasons irrelevant to identity itself. However, many simply are content with certain characteristics, whether they be genital, social, or otherwise, and may desire to not transition whatsoever. Identity inherently varies, and there is no 'correct' way to transition or express oneself. It's a process inherently about the individual.

This sort of individualism inherent in being trans goes much further, as with these points made we can finally begin to address the initial quote about trans individuals being "consumed" by a desire to transition. As is said before, this is patently false - trans individuals don't transition out of a desire that encompasses our entire selves, but rather do so primarily thanks to a desire to want our gender identity - something that's only a part of us and not our whole - to be affirmed and/or to alleviate dysphoria, although many more specific reasons exist that don't entail this. There's much variation by individuals, which is a pretty easy way to discredit it by pointing out that there isn't one reason people transition or experience dysphoria. As the APA citation points out, it even conflicts with religious and traditional beliefs (p. 837). While indeed trans identity is of course highly prevalent in many of our lives, it's important to realize why the transgender community exists - to provide support for trans individuals. The APA Guidelines frequently discuss discrimination experienced by trans individuals, such as mental health issues as a result of intense dysphoria and discrimination (p. 845), social stigma (p. 841), institutional barriers (p. 840), a lack of knowledge by healthcare providers (p. 837), and social prejudice - even violence (p. 838 - 839). With the recent trans military ban by the Greatest President for LGBT Rights, it's pretty obvious at this point that, even in the supposedly progressive West, an abundance of problems face the community, so of course it's going to be prevalent in our lives as we have to undergo activism to even self express as we desire.

With that said, NPC continues in the same comment to claim that you can treat trans people! And what would be the ever so pervasive evidence for it? Because golly, it sure is marvelous to think that my entire identity can easily be invalidated by taking a random drug or by sitting 'like a man.'

The cited source is within the Cambridge Textbook of Effective Treatments in Psychiatry by Peter Tyrer and Kenneth R. Silk on page 711.

This textbook does indeed claim that, however it's misleading, as it's only in discussion of comorbidity with mental illness. As I noted in the former post, comorbidity of trans people with mental illnesses don't represent anything close to the bulk of cases - in fact, it's equivalent to that of the general population, suggesting a lack of any sort of relation. The very link even admits this in sections in the top left sections of the page, albeit having a disturbing flirtation with the idea that being trans is caused by mental illness.

I'd first like to discuss the claim that 'occasionally' those with psychosis, and that even some gay people, albeit rarely, choose to transition, which is attributed to a case report from 1979 by Thelma Shtasel. The claim about gay individuals is cited within that paper as supposedly coming from a clinical opinion from an almost entirely speculative, pretty transphobic, and clinical rant by Wardell Pomeroy without any actual citation given for the claim - in fact that paper contains almost no citations for any claims given, and of those given, they're irrelevant for any given claims. However, nowhere within that paper is the opinion given, making it all the more lacking of truth. The case report itself does describe this phenomena, however, but it only portrays the individual as seeking to transition and not actually succeeding in obtaining it - and considering the heavy gatekeeping of the time in conjunction with the case report actually existing, it's likely she never did. The reason she tried to transition isn't attributed towards identifying as a man, but rather to try to win her bisexual partner back. Nowhere in this case report is even a mention of psychosis.

Next are the actual claims about supposed treatments of trans individuals, being a set of four separate case reports of varying different mental illnesses and treatments for them.

The first is a case report by Marks and Mataix-Cols in 1997 (The book miscites it as 1988). The authors claim that the patient, after behavioral therapy treatment for OCD, suddenly went from identifying as a straight trans woman to a straight cisgender man - however ended up, after moving out of his deceased parent's house and developing depression, identifying again as a straight trans woman, denying previously denying herself. I approach this with skepticism, for the reason that the authors seem to be pretty keen on insisting that trans people can 'remit,' suggesting that they may interpret this with bias. It seems more plausible to me that, rather than suddenly changing identities after treatment for OCD only for the same methods to fail to work after developing oppression, she went into denial - maybe due to her father, who the psychiatrists of the study were in contact with. Either way, since she continued to identify as trans, this only goes against claims of remission and just demonstrates the need for long term followups in these studies.

There's other good reason to suspect this isn't the case too. There's been two recent case reports by Uvais & Sreeraj and Debra Safer & Colleagues that both show individuals with OCD developing persistent and intrusive thoughts of identifying as female or being transgender - they both recognize that they don't identify as that, and report experiencing no euphoria at the thought nor dysphoria as identifying as male, but instead actively try to fight against it and find the thoughts scary even. While one could argue that trans individuals in denial would likely exhibit similar behavior, and they would be correct, they wouldn't be correct in ascribing this towards the same thing. The individual in the Uvais case report, for instance, only had these thoughts after mistakenly grabbing clothing from his wife's wardrobe and with the thoughts fleeting after he began to have intrusive thoughts in the nude - the thoughts he received of being trans occurred in a distinct and recognizable pattern, with him never having doubts until that incident. None of this at all strongly mirrors and case report of a trans individual that I'm aware of, and it should be clear that it's not OCD resulting in an identity shift but rather simply intrusive thoughts The Safer case report is even more suggestive that the Marks case report isn't causal, as the individual there only briefly had intrusive thoughts after seeing a video of Caitlin Jenner, and then proceeding to forget about it until the interview. It was little more than a fleeting thought and not suggestive of causality. Further, the Safer case report points out that individuals with OCD may end up questioning their sexuality and becoming obsessive with validating their own - again, not suggestive of any different identification due to this. As far as I'm aware though, there's no data on the subject.

The next case report is one by Singh Puri in 1996. While I could spend a lengthy amount of time debunking this, all of my issues were addressed in this article over at Gender Analysis by Zimmia Jones. She pretty nicely debunks the case report's incorrect usage and citation - except for one thing I'd like to note, being that they never include any validated quantitative measures of the patient's symptoms. It may seem like a small criticism, but it's important because, as I said in the prior post, it's the best way we can understand the patient's experiences and know how truthful the authors are being, what with the measures being validated.

The next one is a case report by Cary Caldwell and Matcheri Keshavan in 1991. It describes a trans woman with scizophrenia who supposedly gradually lessened in 'symptoms' of being trans after taking various medications. This case report is somewhat confusing but it's likely the individual in it was never trans. On one hand, by the end of it, she still preferred to see herself as a woman, but on the other hormone therapy was very unpleasant for her as the authors note she 'functioned very poorly' during the first nine months of it, and had believed themselves to be a 'secret agent from the government who was trying to be silenced by being given hormone shots and being hospitalized.' It's likely that her identification as a woman is, in actuality, just a result of scizophrenia as evidenced by the fact that hormone therapy appeared to worsen her psychological functioning. However, an important limitation is that they don't point out any quantitative measures of her functioning or measures of say dysphoria or euphoria. This one's pretty ambiguous but certainly goes against claims that it's evidence that trans individuals can be 'treated.'

The final one is a case report by Martin Commander and Christine Dean of an individual believing their penis to actually be a vagina, seeming to insist they were a cisgender lesbian in spite of being assigned male at birth. After being treated with medication, it's reported that they believed themselves to be a cisgender man afterwards. This case study is pretty clearly not reporting a trans individual but rather someone experiencing hallucinations as a result of scizophrenia. These authors also report that other psychiatrists pointed out case reports of individuals successfully and happily transitioning without success from treatment, which is pretty clear evidence that the original authors of the Cambridge book cherry picked aspects of the literature to support them. This is further supported by two studies authored by N. L. Gittleson and colleagues (1966, 1967) of individuals with scizophrenia who openly admit that perceptions of genital hallucinations and perceptions of themselves identifying differently as hallucinations and 'delusions.' This pretty strongly indicates that it's incredibly rare for individuals with scizophrenia to see themselves as transgender as a result of say hallucinations, with the only evidence of this being in a few scattered case reports, most of which are of a questionable nature.

A final thing not mentioned that I anticipate being mentioned is trans individuals supposedly being a result of psychosis. There's absolutely no evidence for this, and in fact, very little case reports on the matter - to total it, there's about 22 (Meijer et al 2017, Summers and Onate, 2014, McConaghy, 2018). Meijer and colleagues summarizes the literature, effectively concluding - along with four case examples of their own - that a significant portion of the examples - at least 11, counting their own - that psychosis didn't cause the individual to be trans, with some cases even noting transition reducing symptoms of psychosis. This is seen in the Summers and Onate case report and in the McConaghy case report. It occurred in the Summers and Onate in a unique way, with a trans individual developing psychosis after taken off hormone therapy. Meijer also note that some of the individuals in previous case reports were concluded to not be transgender only due to having gender based delusions without actual conclusion of causality. Considering most of the case reports were in the 90s or early 2000s, with some in the 70s and some in the 2010s, it's likely that the bulk are either fallaciously represented or cherry picked with bias by clinicians, as it's reported within the Meijer study that in one of clinicians in the early 2000s, a significant portion believed that trans individuals were trans due to psychosis (though this study was noted to be flawed, it still indicates that there are many clinicians who do have this view in spite of no evidence. The proportion is likely much smaller though). Further, in some of the case reports, such as the Schwarz and colleagues one, the 'remission' was entirely subjectively rather than clinically described. A final bit of evidence against this is that, in a sample of people at risk for psychosis, there was a prevalence of trans individuals (presumably self-identified) about at the upper bounds for current estimates of the general population rate, being at about 1.7% to 2%.

As for the main claim I initially wanted to address, it's a citation of NPC to an explicitly transphobic website advocating a book by a non-professional that claims being trans (or "autogynephilia" as they try to argue) is a behavioral addiction. Barring the obvious bias and thus large potential to misrepresent studies, the article itself is pretty lackluster, having no actual citations and instead just consisting of baseless rambling and assertions without any real claim. What I'm more interested in responding to is this one, which attempts to justify trans individuals having a 'behavioral addiction.'

It justifies this claim with this study that's an overview of the behavioral addiction literature - while it does indeed have the diagnostic criteria claimed, it by no means suggests this be used to clinically diagnose a group - it's just a broad guideline for future researchers. A more appropriate measure would be, say, this. The author also cites no empirical literature to justify her claims, making all of this anecdotal. Nonetheless, let's go through each point to address its flaws. I'll be comparing this to heterosexual relationships and attraction to exhibit how flawed this sort of rhetoric is. I'd also like to note the author never even cites what "trans behavior" exactly is. I'll be formatting this by putting the supposed 'diagnostic criteria' as a headline, and the author's arguments and my rebuttal below it.

"The behavior is exhibited over a long period of time (at least 12 months) in an excessive, aberrant form, deviating from the norm or extravagant (e.g., regarding its frequency and intensity)"

The author claims this diagnostic criteria applies to trans individuals because, supposedly, "feelings towards gender transition increases as time progresses," without a citation (while it's true some trans individuals report greater dysphoria, as said before this is much more complicated than the author says). Further, just because a trait is stable doesn't mean that it's 'aberrant, deviating from the norm in its frequency.' That's essentially what the author seems to imply, although they also claim that "transsexualism was barely on the radar prior to the onset of their cross-gender variant behavior," which I'm not sure what that means. If they mean there were no 'signs' people were trans before that, then it's plenty wrong as plenty of trans individuals point out some more implicit signs such as identifying with characters of a different gender than assigned in TV shows as a bit of an example. Given no evidence cited for this, and the fact it's clearly long as demonstrated before, this does not meet the diagnostic criteria.

We could make similar arguments about heterosexual behavior and attraction - it's exhibited over a long period of time and clearly deviates from the intensity of other sexualities by being the dominant one. See the absurdity here? We can spin anything we'd like to fit this vague, non-clinical and non-diagnostic criteria.

"Loss of control over the excessive behavior (duration, frequency, intensity, risk) when the behavior started"

This one is cited as an example because "Transsexuals, who begin a gender transition, have difficulty turning off their intense feeling toward  gender transition," which is essentially implying that inherent feelings of dissatisfaction should be controlled - I guess individuals who feel any emotion not at will ought to have a behavioral addiction too. The author then claims that "personal gender transition emerges in virtually all aspects of their life," with this again being vague and unclear - trans individuals exhibit a wide array of interests, being artists, politicians, programmers, you name it. That's hardly indicative of it consuming trans people's lives. And again, I elaborated beforehand on why it's so prevalent for trans folk. The author next claims that trans individuals "fail to consider the risk," which ignores that's a large reason why trans people fail to transition. But nonetheless, I think it need not be an unknown claim that full on social and hormonal transition is considered safe by clinicians - as evidenced by the APA report and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines. The author then claims that, by not weighing risk of workforce discrimination, trans individuals are not 'weighing risks.' This is something trans individuals completely fear! There's a known stigma that, as addressed before, is a large worry among trans individuals! This doesn't mean that trans individuals shouldn't fight for our rights though, to sit back and allow ourselves to be discriminated against. None of this supports trans people being diagnosed with a behavioral addiction.

A heterosexual individual has difficulty turning off their attraction to another gender, with their attraction emerging in virtually all aspects of their lives - they fail to appreciate the risk of unprotected sex and do not weigh the issues surrounding potential pregnancy. 

"Reward effect (the excessive behavior is instantly considered to be rewarding)"

The author tries to justify this by saying that, because trans individuals feel 'rewarded' as they go through the process of transition, and by seeing it as good, it's a behavioral addiction. The author further tries to justify this by saying that trans individuals have to "act out in ever creasing degrees to feel the same satisfaction." This makes little sense, as the process of transition isn't just immediate repetitive behaviors but heterogeneous ones dealing with a social transition, a great deal of therapy, potentially hormone therapy and even surgery - it's a lengthy and spaced out process that isn't just one set of things. If the author means simply dressing as trans individuals identify, not only does this ignore the significant variance, but is patently wrong by assuming that trans individuals feel a progressive desire for more - there is no evidence of this. Instead, trans individuals are simply satisfied dressing how we please. Further, transitioning isn't so much a 'reward' for trans people as it is fulfilling the desired identity and receiving validation from it. If undergoing a process for one's well being is a 'behavioral addiction,' then you may as well consider any mental health treatment that.

The heterosexual individual takes steps in order to receive a long-term partner, each one seems to be the correct one, regarding each step as well founded, experiencing reward. Overtime, however, the individual needs a greater deal of such actions in order to feel the same satisfaction.

"Development of tolerance (the behavior is conducted longer, more often and more intensively in order to achieve the desired effect; in unvaried form, intensity and frequency the desired effect fails to appear)"

The author seems to believe that because trans people go through later steps in transition, this means that being trans is a behavioral addiction. For one, this ignores the significant variance in how people transition I mentioned earlier. For another, this ignores how trans people aim to do this beforehand - it's all explicitly planned, and surgery isn't a repetitive action but a one time thing. Somehow, it's indicated that, because there's multiple procedures, the "satisfaction diminishes in intensity," as if it can't be cumulative. Why the fuck am I even trying to respond to this, it's so absolutely terrible that anyone can easily dismiss it with a glance. God damn.

Because people advance heterosexual relationships in a process, it's a behavioral addiction.

"The behavior that was initially perceived as pleasant, positive, and rewarding is considered to be unpleasant in the course of addiction"

This one is easily proven false - trans people exhibit essentially no regret due to transitioning (Lawrence, 2003; Tanehill, 2016). Most estimates are at most around 2% regret rates, with this largely being due to say social stigma and poor surgery outcomes, something that's inevitable in a field with growing research. It has nothing to do with being trans itself. This, however, is a topic I'll go into more detail on at a later date; for now, it's important to recognize what the rates of regret actually are.

Anyway, the author claims that 'the thought of periodic cross-dressing is abhorrent,' with claims that cross-dressing is 'fun and exciting' beforehand, and therefore behavioral addiction. This is again without any citation, but it can be inferred that to a trans individual, cross-dressing means dressing as the gender assigned at birth, at least after transitioning - something inherently going to be 'abhorrent.' I guess according to the author's view, trans individuals both crave more to transition but also crave less? I smell a contradiction, and it smells of nasty bigotry.

A heterosexual couple who eventually loses interest one another demonstrates the very phenomena described, therefore behavioral addiction.

"Irresistible urge/craving to execute the behavior."

According to the author, who believes in Blanchard's debunked autogynephilia hypothesis, the drivers of trans individuals are "psychological and sexual," and since "sexual urges are irrepressible," therefore behavioral addiction. Does this author mean to say that we can't resist sexual urges? Even barring the fact that AGP is false, the author seems to believe that one can't not act on a sexual impulse. I'm pretty sure it's clear how that's absurd, and by the author's own logic I don't even have to demonstrate heterosexuality as a behavioral addiction in a cheeky manner - it's done for me!

"Function (the behavior is primarily employed as a way to regulate emotions/mood)"

The author now claims that since trans individuals can't "emotionally function if precluded from acting out cross-gender behavior due to one circumstance or another," therefore behavioral addiction. First, by saying "most" and not "all" the author inherently agrees that being trans isn't an inherent charcateristic for this - meaning it can't be a behavioral addiction! Barring the obvious fact that not all trans people experience emotional distress, it's pretty easy to note how this is misrepresenting the quote, considering it's right there - being trans isn't used as a way to regulate emotions or mood, so it can't be considered one. EVEN IF we are to accept the author's terms, just because trans individuals experience psychological distress from being prohibited from an action doesn't make it a behavioral addiction - by this merit, people who say develop depression because they can't accomplish a certain task have a behavioral addiction. It's just absurd to use vague and non-clinical explanations like this - because bare in mind the original document was meant to give a general overview of characteristics of behavioral addiction and not a full on diagnosis!

Heterosexual people experience emotional function if deprived of their romantic partners for extended periods of time, therefore behavioral addiction.

"Expectancy of effect (expectancy of pleasant positive effects by carrying out the excessive behavior)"

The author claims that because trans individuals expect transition to be beneficial, and it indeed is, that it's a behavioral addiction. By this logic, anyone who undergoes any surgery has a symptom of a behavioral addiction! This is seriously so fucking ridiculous that it just hurts. Why the hell would anyone believe this, jesus fuck. At this point I'm legitimately laughing as I'm typing this from how just ridiculous it is.

Because heterosexual people expect a relationship to be positive, they have a behavioral addiction.

(Note: The next two are grouped together)

"Limited pattern of behavior (also applies to buildup and follow-up activities); Cognitive occupation with the build-up, execution and followup activities of the excessive behavior and possibly the anticipated effects of the excessively executed behavior."

Jesus Christ this is gold. Apparently, because trans people are 'excited' at transitioning, trans people have a behavioral addiction! So getting excited about ANY process is a symptom of a behavioral addiction! Not only is this a gross misapplication of what was actually said - that a restricted set of behaviors as well as an entire obsession with the process and results of the behaviors are traits of a behavioral addiction - but it's just so laughable that anything can be called that. But anyway, I don't think I need to describe why trans people would be excited to transition, which is clearly not for any of the above reasons.

Because heterosexual people are excited about getting into a relationship, therefore behavioral addiction.

"Irrational, contorted perception of different aspects of the excessive behavior."

The author claims that, because the "masturbation thoughts [of trans people] are not indigenous to those of a member of the opposite sex," and because "transsexuals have no real construct of what it means to be a member of the opposite sex," therefore behavioral addiction. Ignoring the fact that the former statement is actually debunked by Charles Moser and Julia Serano in the papers I linked in the latter post, since when is masturbation a necessary trait for a behavioral addiction? Do gamblers just jack it in an irrational way to gambling machines? Not to mention the latter argument being laughably bad, that "trans people have no construct of what it means to be the opposite sex." For one, 'sex' isn't defined here. For another, neither do people who are supposedly part of the 'opposite' gender identity - gender identity is inherently a subjective phenomena that we only arbitrarily ascribe to a group because of shared characteristics. No one has any idea what it's like to be another individual - being trans is inherently an individual phenomena, one about identifying with what's most comfortable and trans individuals feel best represent us. If that's a gender identity that's different from what was assigned to us, so be it - it's no more invalid than someone it was assigned to.

Because heterosexual people are incapable of realizing that not everyone is straight and wants to fuck them, therefore behavioral addiction.

"Withdrawal symptoms (psychological and physical)"

This is where it gets insanely absurd. The author argues because trans individuals experience dysphoria and distress when suppressed when forced into gender roles that don't apply to our identities, and because we 'have no difficulty living as members of the assigned gender prior to consideration of transitioning," therefore behavioral addiction. This is pretty clearly false, as anyone who would think for a minute would realize that trans individuals, as I said prior, may transition due to dysphoria - it isn't by any means the only cause, but a main one. It's dysphoria that leads people to even consider transitioning! That's why trans individuals are known to have higher suicide rates and lower psychological functioning pre-transition. Of course, unless the author somehow wants to argue that just considering oneself transgender may magically invite these feelings without any explanation beyond trying to invalidate identities, it's clear what the actual explanation is, and that the author's just pulling shit out of their ass. It also should be obvious why trans individuals report discomfort given what I wrote earlier.

Because heterosexual people experience discomfort by being forced into homosexual acts instead of heterosexual ones, behavioral addiction clearly.

Three more shitty ass points on this bullshit article to go.

"Continued execution of the excessive behavior despite negative consequences (health related, occupational, social"

The author argues that because trans individuals don't 'revert to living as a member of assigned gender role' due to discrimination, in spite of, as the author claims, it being in our 'best interest,' therefore behavioral disorder. Not only is this false as one can see by the transgender regret studies and reviews I linked to before, but also, I guess any group that stood up to discrimination - be it women, racial minorities, homosexual individuals - all have a behavioral addiction just because they didn't tolerate discrimination. Seriously though, this ignores how transitioning may overall be better for the trans individual in spite of the bigotry, and basically is telling trans people not to fight for our rights.

Because heterosexual people have children at a young age in spite of the negative consequences, therefore behavioral addiction.

"Conditioned/learned reactions (resulting from the confrontation with internal and external stimuli associated with the excessive behavior as well as from cognitive occupation with the excessive behavior)"

According to this, because trans people believe themselves to (possibly) experience gender dysphoria and be trans and (possibly) undergo hormone replacement and genital reassignment therapy, as well as not listening to people trying to talk them out of it, and since by the author's view all the aforementioned concepts are flawed, therefore behavioral addiction. There's no argument for why they're flawed - that's what anyone making a valid point would do! Instead let's argue that the very existence of a clinical diagnosis is indicative of a behavioral addiction, and because trans people don't listen to transphobic rhetoric from family members (which is inherently assumed to be the 'rational' and 'correct' person here in spite of the benefits of transitioning and the fact that trans people would inherently be the ones to know and understand their own identities), that means trans people have a behavioral addiction!

Because heterosexuality exists, and because they can't be convinced to be gay, behavioral addiction. I am very intelligent.

The last fucking one, here we go.

Suffering (desire to alleviate perceived suffering)

The argument here is that because trans people may essentially experience dysphoria and see themselves as suffering, and that prevention of treatment is considered harmful, and that because trans people commit suicide without treatment (it's baselessly claimed that more trans people commit suicide after transitioning - even if true, stigma would be a likely explanation, something the author claims, again baselessly, had no relation), therefore behavioral addiction. I guess somehow that the author considers it possible too that the suffering is nonexistent? Which is entirely unfalsifiable, arguing that trans people are lying, and only serves to invalidate the experiences of trans people, but whatever. Anyway if you couldn't tell this is equally as fucking dumb, since anyone who experiences any harm from being prevented from any treatment has one. I'm honestly just so annoyed at how terrible this is that I no longer really care, I'm tired as hell and want to finish writing this shit, was at this all god damn day, Jesus.

Heterosexual people experience suffering if not allowed to be heterosexual, therefore behavioral addiction.

Annnd there's that taken care of, a shitty article that didn't consider anything from the interplay of the symptoms to using any actual diagnostic criteria. It was a complete waste to try to tackle it, but here I did it and feel like I wasted a decent lot of my time. The article's gotten to a ridiculous length now and I'll have to postpone my other posts till tomorrow but heyy, this series is done at least.

Yay fucking me.


EDIT: So in a private correspondence with NPC on Twitter, he pointed out to me I was citing the incorrect edition of Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology - he was using the 7th one, and I wasn't. The quote was indeed in there, but it was specifically referencing autogynephilia and not trans folk as a whole - something he admitted was his mistake.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. It's often used as transphobic rhetoric by TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) types that non-conformity with gender roles and discomfort with them doesn't mean that someone is trans. While this is true, it's also misleading as it's describing two different types of discomfort - one is due to being constrained from acting how one desires and fulfilling certain roles out of a simple affinity or like for them, and the other is due to an invalidation of one's identity by forcing roles that don't apply to said identity onto them. Trans individuals can experience both types of these, however they're generally felt in a very different way, which will be elaborated on in the following discussion of what dysphoria is - cisgender individuals only experience the former.

2. A brief explanation of what dysphoria specifically is ought to feel like. It's best described, at least in my own experience, as a 'deep' and ever present feeling of sadness and intense discomfort that slowly causes my mental health to decline, being prevalent even when it's not on the explicit subject of my mind, with distractions failing to work. The feeling itself, as said prior, is 'deep' and intense, being 'layered' differently than other feelings of discomfort, which can be described as 'lighter' and more situational. Of course, feelings of dysphoria vary by individual, and there is no 'true' way to feel it.