James Cantor
James Cantor
19.5K posts
James Cantor
@JamesCantorPhD
Neuroscientist and sex researcher, with news and commentary from the fascinating science of sex.
James Cantor’s posts
I rarely tweet personal things, but it's been 32 years today.
When we met, we didn't get to hear that from many gay couples.
Being on puberty blockers for 3 years means 3 years not developing in brain or body---falling farther and farther behind friends and classmates.
How is that reversible?
For girls, feeling anxious about becoming a woman is not evidence of being a boy.
Open letter of resignation:
My 27-year association with Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality must come to an end. In the present culture war between science and popular appeal, the SSSS Board of Directors selected the latter.
sexologytoday.org/2020/08/open-l
When a girl says she doesn't feel like a girl, it often means, "I don't feel like the exaggerated images of femininity circulating online.
"Psychotherapy instead of meds" for kids with gender dysphoria is not "denying health care."
Medically transitioning adolescent girls for being insecure about their femininity is like recommending cardiac transplants for broken hearts.
Decisions are being based on metaphor, not science.
Never in my life would I have guessed I'd be disagreeing so strongly with . Yet, Stewart's interview with Leslie Rutledge on the science of trans- issues missed and misrepresented a great deal of the research. These were the major gaps...
sexologytoday.org/2022/10/what-i
“What are your pronouns?” doesn’t mean they want to know your pronouns. It means they’re dying to tell you theirs.
So, if your sex only got assigned at birth, what were you during the prior nine months? Schrodinger's gender?
Does this count as conversion therapy?:
A guy says he's not sexually attracted to transpeople, and a transperson suggests that he must overcome his issues so that he is?
I cannot help but compare: When I was young, gays were dying by the thousands. Today, the news is "trouble accessing haircuts."
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CBC Toronto
@CBCToronto
Hair is key to affirming transgender and gender nonconforming people’s identity, but they often have trouble accessing haircuts that help them look the way they feel.
A photographer has documented some of these experiences. bit.ly/3pxMQxF
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Being offended has become so fashionable, I can only show my rebelliousness now by being at peace.
How can one consent to orgasm-blocking treatments if one doesn't know what orgasms are?
Specifically, how can a prepubescent child weigh the risks of sacrificing what they cannot know?
Despite claims that blocking puberty gives time for decision-making, no one can answer the obvious:
How is it possible for a child to discover "This isn't as bad as I feared" when they are blocked from experiencing it?
Fears are resolved by confronting them, not avoiding them.
For very many teen girls, "trans" doesn't mean "I feel like a man." It means "I don't feel like a perfect woman and want out of the race." That's why "non-binary" etm. are so popular.
Hard to shake the observation that the explosion in cases parallels the advent of social media.
Once a healthcare provider (mis)represents the science as saying their child would be at substantial risk of death by suicide if not permitted to transition, it is hard to think of parents' subsequent decisions as "informed consent."
No. Sex evolved approximately 2 billion years ago. The idea that natural phenomena come to exist only when humans label them is human chauvinism. Sex was here before us, and (if we leave anything living behind) will be here after.
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Prof. Stephen Whittle OBE, PhD, DLaws, FAcSS,
@stephenwhittle
Binary sex is a (man) invented modern (late 18th century) taxanomic convention. The dividing line is if it’s time. We know that people have many ‘Sex’ variations & not just those called intersex. Enough variation that we cannot say that each human will be on side 1 or 2. So… x.com/HildegardP/sta…
"‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’
"My country, and others, found there is no solid evidence supporting the medical transitioning of young people.
"Why aren’t American clinicians paying attention?"
Whenever someone says "Words are violence," all I hear is, "I am so emotionally dysregulated that I cannot scale my reactions appropriately to different situations." #ClusterB
Gender affirmative therapy is for affirming the therapist, not the client.
It takes no talent, training, or skill to tell people what they want to hear. Helping youth process what they need but DON'T want to hear does.
If need-for-affirmation is all you see, the need is yours.
Lived experience is what the scientific method was designed to exclude. We seek universal truths, not vindication of our preconceptions.
Rainbows are no longer pride symbols.
They are virtue signals.
It no longer takes guts to show a pride flag.
It takes guts to question anything done it its name.
It is perfectly legitimate to debate the fairness of MtF transfolk competing on female sports teams.
Shaming #autogynephilia, however, is unfair. AGP appears to be simply another atypical sexuality that people do not ask for and cannot change.
If you were only assigned your sex at birth, what where you during the 20-week sonogram?
When does “lived experience” produce insight, and when does it produce bias?
You can’t have intellectual diversity by blocking everyone who disagrees with you.
Best interview question ever:
"What's something you believed, but changed your mind about, once evidence emerged?"
How can one distinguish "I'm a boy" from "I'm afraid of being a girl?"
How can one distinguish "I don't want to grow up to be a man" from "I don't want to grow up"?
How can one distinguish "I don't want to have children" from "Yet"?
Saying puberty-blockers don't sterilize is not telling the whole truth. Putting back the missing parts:
(1) It's cross-sex hormones contacting undeveloped ovaries/testicles that sterilize.
(2) Once using puberty-blockers, the great majority of kids continue on to take cross-sex
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Dr. Kristopher Wells
@KristopherWells
Replying to @KristopherWells
All medical professionals know that puberty blockers are safe, effective and proven treatments for both cisgender and transgender youth. They DONOT sterilize children. That is a bold face lie used to support harmful and unethical government policies.
mayoclinic.org/diseases-condi
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I'm old enough to remember when objective evidence was more important than one's subjective experiences.
I'm having trouble reconciling these:
"I approached this analysis as a non-binary researcher, as a parent of a trans child, and with experience as a parent-service user"
Studies of gender dysphoric kids all show that most turn out gay/lesbian, not trans.
People claim puberty-blockers give kids "time to choose," but not discussed is the obvious: Blocking puberty blocks onset of sex drive, so blocks the chance for them to compare at all.
We have studies saying mental health doesn't improve from transition.
We have studies saying mental health does improve, but can't tell if from psychotherapy or medical transition.
We have 0 studies showing meds superior to therapy.
And: Psychotherapy does not cause sterility.
In American gender clinics, it is hard to distinguish "the child knows best" from "the customer is always right."
"It’s Binding or Suicide"
It's quite plausible that headlines like these would *increase* suicidality.
The number of follow-up studies for nonbinary bottom surgeries is...zero.
How can prepubescent youth give consent---INFORMED consent---to forgoing all orgasm for all their lives?
How can a prepubescent mind appreciate the experience sufficiently for the consent to represent *informed* consent?
Calling it "scientifically supported" doesn't make it scientifically supported.
Calling it "life-saving" doesn't make it life-saving.
Calling it "medically necessary" doesn't make it medically necessary.
Calling it "well established" doesn't make it well established.
It's impossible to ban conversion therapy for sex orientation AND gender identity.
Transition IS conversion therapy:
Transition is the difference between a gay son and a straight daughter.
Banning therapy to become comfortable as gay IS the pressure to live as straight.