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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the ethics-committee dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Bath Spa University is conducting an internal inquiry into claims that it turned down an application for research on gender reassignment reversal because it was "potentially politically incorrect" and would attract criticism on social media.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specialises in working with transgender people, proposed the research about "detransitioning" to the university in south-west England, which, he said, initially approved the application.

When he went back with his preliminary findings that suggested growing numbers of young people, particularly women, were regretting gender reassignment, Bath Spa said his proposal would have to be resubmitted to the ethics committee, which rejected it.

Caspian, who enrolled on an MA course at the university, said he was "astonished" by the decision and had sought legal advice.

"The fundamental reason given was that it might cause criticism of the research on social media, and criticism of the research would be criticism of the university. They also added it's better not to offend people," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday.

I was going to add some snark here but they pretty well covered making a mockery of academia for me.

Source: The Guardian

Also at: The Times


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Tuesday October 10 2017, @11:46AM (7 children)

    by Kell (292) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @11:46AM (#579736)

    We do this because all the evidence points to it helping to resolve their mental illness and feelings of wrongness. Gosh darn it, against all expectations, it appears to work. Suffice it to say, if it didn't demonstrably help these people nobody would do it. But hey, forget that - let's keep dumping on them anyway because they make us feel uncomfortable.

    --
    Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:38PM (#579915)

    You say it "appears to work", but then there is that shocking 45% suicide rate. With 45% killing themselves, we can be pretty sure they all consider it. Sexually mutilated people are miserable.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:56PM (1 child)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:56PM (#579929) Homepage Journal

    "We do this because all the evidence points to it helping to resolve their mental illness and feelings of wrongness. Gosh darn it, against all expectations, it appears to work."

    Right. That would be why the suicide rate post-transition goes up.

    As this author writes: [lifesitenews.com]

    "I have personally experienced gender dysphoria, and I explored transition in my early 20s. I am aware of the emotional struggle, and I am sympathetic to the sense of frustration and hopelessness. But I am also aware of the empowering realization that I alone control how I perceive the world. Even if I would prefer to be female, I understand that my body is male, and therefore the most effective and healthiest plan of action is to align my sense of gender to that unchangeable state."

    When possible, this would seem to be a far better approach than screwing with your otherwise perfectly healthy body.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:26PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:26PM (#580023)

    What I don't get is the double-standard. As gay you're told to "accept yourself". As gender variant
    you're given hormones and surgery. Surely somebody must have tried the "accept that you're a
    woman in a man's body and learn to enjoy it" approach. If it worked, it'd be a game-changer because
    you're not medicating and cutting an otherwise healthy body. I'm open minded--if we really can effectively
    diagnose and treat this problem with hormones and surgery then fine. That opens a door that many
    people don't want to open though--that it might be acceptable to treat gays with drugs too.

    We don't really get answers to these questions without science. I think there's enough data
    to safely assume that drugging gays is bad. Is there enough to assume that drugging gender
    variants is good? Well now... social media might get triggered, so we don't know...

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday October 10 2017, @10:20PM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @10:20PM (#580115) Journal

      What a bunch of feminist drivel. Your concern trolling ought to be transparent, but I guess whoever modded you interesting hasn't been exposed to this kind of thing before.

      We don't really get answers to these questions without science.

      Yes, yes we do. I suppose I should at least give a link to LMGTFY, but I'm too lazy. Here's a link to a search engine [duckduckgo.com]. I can confirm that content that Alphabet/Google has disappeared from their search engine is still indexed there. Go forth and learn my ignorant friend!

      But, you won't. You'll just accuse me of being triggered or flaming you because I'm trying to repress you.

      Well, I'll drop by again later this evening. Maybe. Just in case you have a legitimate question.

      Where should we start? You seem to be unable to separate gender and sexuality in your mind. Is that where we should begin? Help me out here, because I'm such a nice person I want to help you out! Help me help you help us all!

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:22AM (1 child)

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:22AM (#580261) Homepage Journal

    No, "all the evidence" is exactly opposite of your claim. Or at best points it to nowhere. This is the problem with having feminists infiltrate academia and using powerless scientists for propaganda.

    The only people "it" helps are feminists aka female crooks get more funding.

    In fact, I would say that particularly women regret changing sex because then they get treated like men and men are treated like shit. But that doesn't suit the damsel-in-distress narrative.

    From this report [thenewatlantis.com]:

    One
    hypothesis, the social stress model — which posits that stigma, prejudice,
    and discrimination are the primary causes of higher rates of poor mental
    health outcomes for these subpopulations — is frequently cited as a way to
    explain this disparity. While non-heterosexual and transgender individu-
    als are often subject to social stressors and discrimination, science has not
    shown that these factors alone account for the entirety, or even a major-
    ity, of the health disparity between non-heterosexual and transgender
    subpopulations and the general population.

    ...
    Better research
    is needed, both to identify ways by which we can help to lower the rates of
    poor mental health outcomes and to make possible more informed discus-
    sion about some of the nuances present in this field.

    Yet despite the scientific uncertainty, drastic interventions are pre-
    scribed and delivered to patients identifying, or identified, as transgender.
    This is especially troubling when the patients receiving these interven-
    tions are children.

    ... we are deeply alarmed that these
    therapies, treatments, and surgeries seem disproportionate to the sever-
    ity of the distress being experienced by these young people, and are at
    any rate premature since the majority of children who identify as the
    gender opposite their biological sex will not continue to do so as adults.

    IF you read the full report it clearly shows that most "transgender" children are actually homosexuals struggling with their gender and close to 80% become openly gay by the time of attaining adulthood.

    Next thread about this exact same topic and I am expecting someone to still repeat the lie you just told and have it modded to +gazillion insightful. That is the fate of real science - it is deliberately kept outside of spotlight because it leaves no room for doing politics and gaining free power and funding for "changing the world".

    • (Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:05AM

      by Kell (292) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @11:05AM (#580389)

      I'm curious: How many trans people do you know personally? I've met a few, one male, three female and one intersex. I've asked most of them if the have regrets, and the only I heard was one of the girls who regretted getting her surgery done when she did because the technology got better a few years later and she had a less effective result. They do not appear to be the broken, mentally ill people everyone says they are. It's so strange. But clearly the evidence of your report from The New Atlantis trumps the evidence of my own eyes and the attestations of the very people we're talking about.

      --
      Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.