At 4000 z, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we broadcast. We pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging of the turbul and jagger people. We acknowledge that their sovereignty over this land was never ceded and we stand.

In solidarity with them.

You're listening to transmission mission on four z, amplifying the trans and gender non conforming voices of Brisbane and beyond.

Good morning, everyone. My name is bet and you're listening to four Zzzzz, 102.1 FM. This is transmission the trans show. I'm on my own for the first time ever in here, so please forgive me if there's a little rustiness going on. I have been called in here at the last minute. Es is sick. The brief was just play some music and that's what I was going to do. But then I thought about it a little and I thought, well, you know, I've got all this research that I've done. Anyone who's heard me on here before knows that I'm a little bit of a science head around gender affirming care for kids. And so we are going to dive into that yet again today because, yes, it just goes on to. But before that, I don't have any community announcements this week. We weren't that organised. But I do have one of my own announcements and I guess it's a community announcement, really, it's just not listed as such here. Me and some friends or colleagues are going to be doing a meet up at New Farm Library this evening at 06:30 p.m. we are starting a local chapter of the transjustice project, which is a national organisation. If you search out transjustice Magengine meengine on Facebook, you'll probably find our page and you might find the event listed. You can RSVP there. Otherwise you can just turn up. 06:30 p.m. new farm library. Also, there's a petition going around at the moment to stop the odious Kelly J. Keen, aka Posey Parker, from entering Australia again. You might remember her. She was the unhinged nutjob who was accompanied by Nazis on the steps of Melbourne parliament and they were bearing a sign accusing all trans women of being paedophiles. She is dangerous, make no mistake. She has publicly called for american men to turn up at public toilets and guard them against trans women with guns. So does anyone out there fancy being strip searched by an unhinged redneck with a gun? I didn't think so. Section 501 of the Migration Act, 1958. That's the Australian Migration act says that people may not be allowed into Australia if there is a risk that they may vilify a segment of the australian community. I can't imagine that anyone fits that description better than Kelly J. Keene. So please. I have a link for that petition and it will be in the show notes for the podcast episode. I don't know where to direct you though. If you're listening now on the radio transjustice project, put me onto it. But they don't seem to have a link on their site. But watch out for it. Hey, we can't let people like that come and spread their hate in this country anymore. Okay? So with that out of the way, what I am going to talk about today is the 80% desistence myth. And I use that word desistance in quote marks as always. It's a word that comes from criminology. When you use it to describe a trans kid deciding that they are not trans anymore, that kind of implies that being trans was a crime or it was transgressive, or there was something wrong with it. So I don't use that word without scare quotes. But I'm gonna have to use it today because that is what all these studies are focused on, the 80% desistence myth. And make no mistake about it, it is a myth. But I just want to make it clear why? Because I feel like this is probably the central piece of disinformation being weaponized against trans kids at the moment. There's a good chance that one of your relatives or friends or workmates is going to bring this up to you at some point because there are anti trans organisations promoting it left, right and centre. So I want to arm you with some defences against that because they will say, oh, but science. 80% desistance myth. I want you to be able to say, oh, but science. It's a myth.

Go Mel. Mel's a legend who's now in their fourth consecutive year of subscribing their band to four triple Z. If you've got a band, you can subscribe yours and get heaps of perks like free live reads and heaps of discounts. Cheque out four zzzzz.org dot au for more details. Thanks for subscribing, Mel.

Worth mentioning, the monthly subscriber prize for September is a dollar 500 prize pack from berserk local clothes company. I wouldn't mind that myself. Okay, so let's get back to the heavy stuff, people. We're talking about the 80% desistence myth, and I use that word desistance in quote marks always. It's not a nice word. The 80% desistance myth pertaining to trans kids. So what is this myth? What is the theory? Well, the theory is that over 80% of transgender children will come to identify as cisgender once they reach adolescence or early adulthood. Now, this is being used to ban the gender affirming medical care for kids across the western world, especially in the southern states of America and in the UK, which frankly, is just as bad as the southern states of America these days. What is the myth based on? What is the theory based on? Basically on a handful of studies done in gender clinics between the 1950s. I want to say that again, the 1950s. So you can imagine how up to date those studies are in their attitudes towards trans people and the 2010s. Now, before I start with the main bulk of this info dump, I have a couple of sources for today's episode, a couple of main sources, as well as a lot of reading on the subject. There is a critical commentary which I'll link it to in the show notes of the podcast episode on follow up studies and desistance theories about transgender and gender non conforming children, as they were called at the time. That's from 2018. And there's an infamous literature review called gender dysphoria in childhood by ristorian Steensmer from 2016. Now, this is the one that is most often weaponised. This is used by Hilary Cass in the Cass review. It's used by the government of Florida in banning gender affirming care there. And it is the one that is most problematic, that refers back to studies as early as the 1950s. Now, I'll mostly be focusing on a response to that study by an academic whose name is doctor, Doctor Cal Horton. They are a non binary parent of a trans child from the UK, and they are horrified with what's been going on around gender affirming medical care for kids. So I'm going to try and fit a lot of info into the next talking bracket. Sorry if I ear bash you people, but this is what I love to do. There's some methodological concerns with these studies. Now, mostly I'm focusing on four studies done in or around 2010. They were reviewed in the critical commentary I mentioned. So this information I'm about to read out now comes from that critical commentary. So, methodological concerns with those studies, number one, a very broad inclusion criteria. This is probably the most obvious and one of the worst problems with these studies. Inclusion in these studies was based on something they called gender non conformity in other words, it wasn't based, for the most part on any actual diagnosis. It was just based on whether parents thought that their kids had a quote unquote problem around gender, whether they problematised their gender, and whether they brought them into these gender clinics. When studies did use a diagnosis, it was a now outdated diagnosis for something they used to call gender identity disorder in childhood, which has a different list of criterion from our contemporary diagnosis of gender dysphoria in childhood. And one of the main differences is that a child doesn't need to be feeling any distress around their gender in order to have this gender identity disorder. So they don't actually need to be feeling any dysphoria, they only need to be quote unquote, gender non conforming. So that's the first big problem. The second problem, the scope of these studies. It's hard to generalise from the results. What does gender non conforming mean anyway? Conducted at a time when parents generally brought kids to gender clinics to be quote unquote cured. So that means that children of parents who actually affirmed their gender, who actually supported them, were not likely to be included in these studies because those parents were not about to subject their kids to these kind of studies, or take them into these clinics where the main aim was to quote unquote, cure the kids of gender nonconformity, not to affirm their genders. Another methodological concern, very early follow ups in these studies, the mean age at follow up was 16 to 23 and included kids as young as 14. So many trans folks, as we all know, might go in the closet for years. I mean, look at me, I went in the closet for more decades than I care to say, even though I'm pretty sure that I knew something major was up with my gender by the age of eleven and possibly as early as six. There's also an assumption that those not diagnosed with gender identity disorder by late adolescence could be categorised as cisgender for the rest of their lives. So in other words, if they hadn't had their gender problematised by adolescents, then they could be categorised as cisgender for the rest of their lives. Actually, that's not quite right. If they hadn't actually fulfilled that criterion. Gender identity disorder. Okay, next problem. Misclassification of participants who did not participate in follow up. This is a big one. In one of the studies, 32% of kids were lost to follow up, they were simply removed from the study. That creates biassed results. When you just take a chunk of people out of the study, halfway through with the other three studies, it was even worse. All missing participants, all kids lost to follow up, were classified as so called desisters. That is insane. Problems with that approach. Not all trans folks wish to medically transition. So not all of them are going to come back to the clinic after being subjected to a whole bunch of invasive questionnaires, socioeconomic, cultural factors. They might not have the money to transition, they might not come back to the clinic for that reason. Possible negative perceptions of the initial clinical experience. They might have hated being prodded and probed around their gender and they just don't want to come back. There are some possibilities. Maybe these kids left the country, maybe they were institutionalised for mental health and God forbid, maybe some of them are not actually alive by the time of follow up. We know that suicide is a problem for kids whose gender is not affirmed, and patients may have repressed their gender identities due to the big one minority stress. In other words, they might have realised that they were going to have a difficult life if they kept on this path and they decided not to go there just yet because it's hard enough being a teenager without being a visibly trans teenager. There's some theoretical concerns with these studies too. The division of children into quote unquote persisters and desistors. This posits cisgender and transgender as immutable, discrete categories. That's Julia Serrano talking there. Cisgender is seen as the healthy opposite of to problematic transness. Assertion of a cis identity at any point in life is presumed to be valid and invalidates any previous assertion of a trans identity. Yet a trans identity is only seen as valid if it is static and unwavering throughout life. That's a big one. I asserted as this identity for many years. Does that mean I'm not valid as a trans person? I don't think so. Binary understanding of gender in these studies too, it erases non binary identities. For example, in one of these studies, Steensmer the researcher, described an 18 year old quote unquote boy who still desired to be a woman with breasts and the possibility of giving birth. However, he considered himself 50% male and 50% female. I'm quoting there. That's not the way I would talk. So they defined this person. This person who considered themselves desired to be a woman, wanted breasts and the possibility of giving birth, but considered themselves 50% male and 50% female. They define that person as a desister and cisgender. Another theoretical concern, the presumption that a stable gender identity is a positive outcome in other words, a complete denial of gender fluidity. There are also some serious ethical concerns. Firstly, research itself is an intervention. Children were put through a lot of testing. Critiques of these practises began to appear in the 1990s, arguing that healthy children might have their self esteem damaged and their trust in therapy eroded by these kind of clinical practises. I think we can all imagine that. How would you like to be taken into a clinic age twelve or something like that, and have your gender rigorously dissected and not taken seriously by a bunch of guys in white coats? I know I wouldn't like that very much. Second ethical concern, this is a huge one, and I've mentioned this tonnes of times, so I won't harp on it. But one of these studies comes from Kenneth Zucker's infamous gender clinic in Toronto. Kenneth Zucker is still a prominent campaigner against rights for trans kids, and he used to run a clinic for trans kids. In his clinic, as he said, treatment was recommended to reduce the likelihood of gender identity disorder persistence. So what he means by that is he's trying to cure kids of their trans identities. The dutch clinic where the other three studies being examined here took place didn't seek to cure kids. That's good. But it did discourage them from social transition prior to puberty. And that in itself is an intervention, so that actually affects the outcome. Last ethical concern, lack of consideration of children's autonomy. And excuse me if I tear up a little here. Children's views of their own gender identities were rarely sought or listened to. No information was given in any of the four studies as to whether children were allowed to decline involvement in the research and still receive treatment. I'm going to quote from the analysis here. In interpreting the results of these studies, it is important to ask questions about limitations in the validity of self report when the research is conducted under conditions that might compromise authentic responses. For example, within a clinic where transgender identity is defined as less desirable than cisgender identity. I'm reading from my notes here, as you can probably tell, and down the bottom, I've got a big asterisk and it says, prioritise respect for children's autonomy, please. Let's do that. People, this is bat. My pronouns are she, they. You're listening to transmission. The trans show four zzz, 102.1 fm.

How many genders are there?

I don't know, I just got here.

Amplifying the voices of the trans and gender non conforming community of Myanjin, Brisbane and beyond. Transmission on four triple z brings you the latest in trans community news, music and events every Tuesday from 09:00 a.m. till 10:00 a.m. join our team of hosts for an hour of celebrating the unique perspectives of the trans community transmission Tuesday mornings from 09:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on four. Zzzzzz.

Hello everyone, my name is bet, my pronouns are she, they and you are listening to transmission, the trans show here on four triple Z. As usual, I've talked a lot and I'm in danger of going over time. We are going to end with Doctor Karl Horton's response to the 80% desistence myth around trans kids, which says that over 80% of trans kids will quote unquote desist in their trans identities by the time of adolescence. So this is Doctor Cal Horton commenting on the 2016 literature review, the infamous literature review by ristorian Steensmer, where they look at a bunch of studies going back to the 1950s. Cal says this literature looks at gender clinic studies from 1950s to the early two thousands. It includes studies like the 1968 article deviant gender role behaviour in children relation to homosexuality, the 1984 article early effeminate behaviour in boys outcome and significance for homosexuality, and the 1987 article the Sissy Boy Syndrome and the development of homosexuality. You can't make this up, everyone, I'm sorry, I have to read this. In the 1940s, being gay was criminalised and penalised across a majority of the world. Literal torture and imprisonment, however, did not stop gay people from existing. Eventually, the medical and psychiatric establishment recognised that they couldn't stop gay adults from existing. But could they stop gay adults from coming into existence? Was there something that they could do in the childhoods of these people who grew up to be gay? To stop this? The primary focus of gender clinics at that time was almost exclusively on preventing boys from growing up to be gay. Theorists of the 1950s and sixties didn't properly understand or care about the distinction between gay and Transdez. In fact, being trans was seen as a more extreme case of the same disorder which went from being proto gay or a bit gay at one end through to very gay and through to trans at the other end. It was hoped that if you intervened in childhood at the point of being proto gay, you could stop the progression through to very gay, or even worse, to trans gender. Clinics of the 1950s to 1980s were not filled with trans children as they are today. They were filled with the kids, almost all boys whose parents parents feared they might grow up gay. They were the kids deemed unacceptable for having strong emotions. I'm one of them, obviously. For being friends with girls? Yes. That's me. For being gentle? Yes. Guilty is accused, your honour. Or for being close with their mothers. A vast majority of these children, problematised for their nonconformity, did not grow up to be trans women. But they were also not trans children. They were a substantially different cohort. In the gender clinics of the 1950s and 1960s, the treatment goal was overtly to prevent homosexuality. In the 1970s and 1980s, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and increased movements for gay rights pushed gender clinics to be less overt in their aims. They no longer explicitly spoke of preventing homosexuality, but the same proto gay risk factors were instead rebranded as gender identity disorder. Being trans was not part of the diagnosis used by gender clinics until after 2013. That is, after all of this literature that the terfs keep quoting, trying to ban gender affirming medical care for kids. The fact that a large majority of the children being studied and probed for gender nonconformity in the 1950s to 1980s ended up as cisgender adults is completely irrelevant to the question of how best to support trans children. In 2024, a handful of studies from the 1990s and early two thousands looked at a more mixed cohort, with more trans children being researched and probed. As more families grew in acceptance of the idea that a child could be gay, the cohort of children whose families took them to have their behaviour analysed or fixed at a gender clinic grew to include more trans girls. At that time, trans boys and gender non conforming cis girls were more rare in gender clinics. If you read these studies closely, the authors do have some clear insights. Steensmer, for example, writes that there is a significant difference among the cohort being seen in gender clinics at that time. He writes that there is a portion of children who are distressed at the idea of puberty and express a desire to socially transition. This portion, the portion who is distressed by puberty and wants to transition, we might presume are trans. Another portion of the children in their clinic are not distressed at the idea of puberty and do not wish to transition. This portion, we might presume, are not trans. How these children actually identified, we will never know. The study's authors did not bother to ask them. The researchers focus was not on identity, but on problematising childhood gender nonconformity and trying to work out which kids would end up gay or trans into adulthood. It's worth noting that the one useful bit of information that we got from that study was that the more dysphoria a child experiences, the more likely they are to grow up to be trans. Oh, wow. What a revelation. Peter Sterling, the only man in the world who's given birth to a child. Someone might say you're a bit of a queer, and they'd be right. Time for me to say goodbye. Please do come along to new farm library tonight at 06:30 p.m. if you're a trans person, or even an ally who wants to help stop the spread of disinformation. It's more like a tidal wave of disinformation at this point. And it's especially focused on trans children. They are on the front lines. They need as much help as they can get. And I. We're all going to help them, aren't we, people? I'm bet this is transmission. I'm going to say goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening to transmission. See you next Tuesday night to 10:00 a.m. on four triple z.