Some Events of the year 2011. Part 5: Doctors, Medicine, Genetics.

Some events of 2010.  Some events of 2009.  Some Events of 2008.

Part 1:  Organizations, Legislation, litigation.
Part 2:  Persons.
Part 3:  Spouses and Family, Trans Kids, Political, Celebrities, Sports.
Part 4:  Nemeses, Internet.
Part 5:  Doctors, Medicine, Genetics.
Part 6:  Deaths
Part 7:  Art, Fashion, Music
Part 8:  Theatre & Cinema
Part 9:  News Media, Journals
Part 10:  Books.

Doctors & Sexologists

The conference, Transgender: Time to Change was cancelled after complaints that it was giving a platform to Julie Bindel and Az Hakeem and excluding the opinions of trans people themselves.

Seminar at Chennai University: “Transgender – the Forgotten Gender”. March 2011.

WPATH: September 2011: 7th Version of Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People. Definitely less pathologizing for trans persons: Treatment aimed at persuading congruence with birth sex now regarded as unethical. States that being trans is diversity, not pathology; Psychotherapy is not a requirement; Removal of required 3 months RLE before hormones. However pathologizes intersex persons by using DSD terminology, and requiring counselling for intersex persons who reject birth assignments. No intersex input was solicited.

Another reaction to the WPATH SOC.

APA May 2011: Released 2nd Proposal to Replace GID in the DSM-5. GID replaced by Gender Dysphoria. Identities and expressions still described as mental illness and sexual deviance.

The British Psychological Society. Responds to the DSM-5 and finds it based on unsound methods.

A disgruntled double transplant patient shot dead the top surgeon who saved his life because he believed his operation was about to fail and wanted revenge. No sex change patient has been that unreasonable. Ever.

Robert Spitzer, DSM III and Bipolar kids.

Medicine & Genetics

A manufacturing delay that has created a shortage of the injectable testosterone drug Delatestryl has inconvenienced many trans men.


National University of Distance Education in Madrid, brain-scanned in four regions, 18 trans men before treatment and found a male distribution of white matter. 18 trans women had white matter half-way between male and female. Volume 45, Issue 2 of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

US NIMH’s study of boy and girl brain development.

Neuroscientists discussed sex brain differences, reality of, and innate vs social at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
1) Fear of sexism has produced a bias against conceding sex differences, which gets in the way of frank discussion and investigation.
2) Hormones matter, but so does socialization.
3) The effects of sex difference on behavior and performance vary.
4) Women perform worse at mental rotation (compared with other women) when they’re told that men are better at it. The greater danger is that single-sex education, by preaching and practicing segregated socialization, may exacerbate the differences.
5) Sex differences don’t show up as separate clusters. They show up as “overlapping distributions”.
6) Not that boys are better than girls at math on average, but that boys are more spread out, with lots of boys scoring very high or very low compared with girls, who tend to cluster more in the middle.
7) The hard part is figuring out what these differences mean. Yes, the brains of male fetuses and boys get bathed in testosterone. But does this really affect their math skills or their ability to communicate and process emotions, as some theorists assert? Yes, men have more gray matter, and women have more white matter. The fishy part of neuroscience isn’t the data. It’s the spin we put on the data in the guise of explanation.
8) Today’s differences may not have existed yesterday and may not exist tomorrow. So while scans may show differences between men’s and women’s brains, that doesn’t prove the differences are innate.
9) “most of our behavioral sex differences are quite a bit smaller than [sex differences in] height” obscures the curious fact, that boys and girls differ more in toy preference than in height.
10) Boys scored “an itty-bitty bit better” than girls in math in the United States, Taiwan, and Japan, but she pointed out that the bigger difference is between the three countries, with Taiwanese and Japanese girls outscoring American boys. Summary in Slate, Nov 17, 2011.

Cambridge University/Medical Research Council: trans men have a higher than average number of autistic traits. "If such girls do believe they have a boy's mind in a girl's body, their higher than average number of autistic traits may also mean they hold their beliefs very strongly, and pursue them to the logical conclusion: opting for sex reassignment surgery in adulthood."

Angelique Chrisafis. “France's faulty breast implants scandal: More than 30,000 women have had breast implants filled with industrial silicone instead of medical-grade fillers” Guardian, 14 Dec 2011.

Statistical correlation between the percentage of women using the pill, intrauterine devices, condoms and vaginal barrier contraceptives in 87 countries, then examined the incidence and deaths from prostate cancer. Globe & Mail, Nov 14, 2011. But maybe 1. Pill use is correlated with the industrialization level. 2. Industrial chemicals are responsible for prostate cancer.

What is genius? Is it learned? How the game is stacked against women? The case of Judit Polgar who reached the quarter finals of men’s chess in Khanty-Mansiysk.

Sexual orientation and handedness are both natural variants, but etiology likewise unknown. Slate, Oct 29, 2011, taken from Rik Smits. The puzzle of Left-Handedness. London : Reaktion Books, 2011.

Amaegarite. “Born this way?” The Functional Form, 08/20/2011. The speculations re gay causality are almost the same as those re trans causality. “If Ray Blanchard’s completely un-based theory were true, then we could stop mothers from birthing gay boys. And we’d implicitly place all blame and responsibility on her. In this way, “Born This Way” intensifies misogynistic social currents that are ever-present. Is THIS a happy ending to GaGa’s Madonna-stolen melody? That Mom f’d up?”.

A new definition of addiction by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) makes it a) neurological b) not a choice. How long before someone applies this to trans persons.

Did your pheromones change with your sex? This article says: “No scientific study has ever proven conclusively that mammals have pheromones”.

An article about thousands of pregnancies aborted for 'abnormalities' including cleft palates and Down's syndrome. If a biological marker for transsexuality could be established, we could be included.