IIRC, transitioning improves QOL for people who don’t fall into a number of exclusions that I’d suspect are very frequently comorbid with self-reports of transgender identity and/or gender dysphoria. On the same token, I reckon lots of people without gender dysphoria can benefit from transitioning, depending on their risk tolerance, undersanding of sexual strategy and such. But that’s not gonna be a useful spiel for many if anyone who will read this.
...
Yes, I would hear the opposite too predominately, before I started looking into it with a neutral frame. I’m not saying the evidence would stack that way again now, since I did my informal survey of the evidence for myself years ago. But, some reasons to be skeptical of the answer of ‘transition’ to the instances of gender dysphoria:
Bias
On the internet, there are some of the most blatant reporting biases. Particularly when there are communities to generate a particular kind of sentiment. Combined with significant political influence and ‘alliance’ with the other LGBI bla bla bla letters, you get yourself, well, a huge circle jerk.
If you’re looking for something with the slightest bias in your keywords, you’re likely to find it. Heck, Google’s AI could pick up on bias in your keywords 6 months ago in the search results it shows you.
The systematic review linked to is very good, actually. But it’s hosted by a trans collective. I’d be suspicious of bias naturally. That may just be an artifact of pay-walling that they’re kindly willing to flour though.
methodology
Their primary outcome of interset is suicide risk yet it looks like there are only 3 studies that report on it − 1 saying transtiioning increasing risk the others saying it decreases, then about 20 studies not reporting on it...doesn’t give me any confidence in the paper. My general impression from interaction with an (albeit, marginalised subpocket) of transexuals is that the sophistication of current psychological tools are insufficient to grasp the complexities of this issue. They aren’t an exception in this, I reckon the same could be said about a number of personality disorders (of which gender dysphoria is not one).
Importantly, the first thing that sets of alarm bells in the article is that they term transitioning as ‘treatment’. Standard literature would use the term intervention or an otherwise neutral term. It’s just a bit odd. I didn’t read through the bulk of the content below the table so I won’t comment, but it looks properly cited and I saw words like depression and anxiety.
Oh forgot, the other primary outcome of interest seems to be ‘overall impression of quality of life years’. I can’t take that seriously based on a number of things—e.g. non-apriori specification of what would constitute better quality of life, QUL measures are, as a class, shit psychometric tools (tell me about validity all you want).
Ok, I’ve got to the end of this little rant and I’m coming to suspect my frame of mind looking at the paper was to dispute what you said. Not to evaluate it objectively at all. Please frame what I’ve said in that way—I’ve been very biased myself here.
IIRC, transitioning improves QOL for people who don’t fall into a number of exclusions that I’d suspect are very frequently comorbid with self-reports of transgender identity and/or gender dysphoria. On the same token, I reckon lots of people without gender dysphoria can benefit from transitioning, depending on their risk tolerance, undersanding of sexual strategy and such. But that’s not gonna be a useful spiel for many if anyone who will read this.
...
Yes, I would hear the opposite too predominately, before I started looking into it with a neutral frame. I’m not saying the evidence would stack that way again now, since I did my informal survey of the evidence for myself years ago. But, some reasons to be skeptical of the answer of ‘transition’ to the instances of gender dysphoria:
Bias
On the internet, there are some of the most blatant reporting biases. Particularly when there are communities to generate a particular kind of sentiment. Combined with significant political influence and ‘alliance’ with the other LGBI bla bla bla letters, you get yourself, well, a huge circle jerk.
If you’re looking for something with the slightest bias in your keywords, you’re likely to find it. Heck, Google’s AI could pick up on bias in your keywords 6 months ago in the search results it shows you.
The systematic review linked to is very good, actually. But it’s hosted by a trans collective. I’d be suspicious of bias naturally. That may just be an artifact of pay-walling that they’re kindly willing to flour though.
methodology
Their primary outcome of interset is suicide risk yet it looks like there are only 3 studies that report on it − 1 saying transtiioning increasing risk the others saying it decreases, then about 20 studies not reporting on it...doesn’t give me any confidence in the paper. My general impression from interaction with an (albeit, marginalised subpocket) of transexuals is that the sophistication of current psychological tools are insufficient to grasp the complexities of this issue. They aren’t an exception in this, I reckon the same could be said about a number of personality disorders (of which gender dysphoria is not one).
Importantly, the first thing that sets of alarm bells in the article is that they term transitioning as ‘treatment’. Standard literature would use the term intervention or an otherwise neutral term. It’s just a bit odd. I didn’t read through the bulk of the content below the table so I won’t comment, but it looks properly cited and I saw words like depression and anxiety.
Oh forgot, the other primary outcome of interest seems to be ‘overall impression of quality of life years’. I can’t take that seriously based on a number of things—e.g. non-apriori specification of what would constitute better quality of life, QUL measures are, as a class, shit psychometric tools (tell me about validity all you want).
Ok, I’ve got to the end of this little rant and I’m coming to suspect my frame of mind looking at the paper was to dispute what you said. Not to evaluate it objectively at all. Please frame what I’ve said in that way—I’ve been very biased myself here.
Fuck you motivated reasoning.