The phrases “biological men” and “biological women” have recently sprung up in great profusion. A lot of it is in the often-toxic world of social media, but mainstream press sources and certain politicians use them also. It’s more than a matter of dignity or linguistic precision – they’re paving the way for serious mob violence.

These catchphrases usually represent two main claims: that transgender women in women’s bathrooms “violate women’s safe spaces,” and that their presence on athletic teams presents a grave physical danger. (Not to mention, of course, “cheating girls and women from their hard-won chances for championships”).

I’ve written a few posts about the rapidly accumulating evidence that trans women differ from cis men in identifiable physiological ways, including brain anatomy and genetic profiles. This one is going to dive headlong into the real depths of that science. The detail may be an instant turn-off for some readers, but it needs to be widely appreciated that this isn’t handwaving fluff that will be blown away by the next “study” that comes along. So: onward.

First, one has to recognize the state of scientific understanding of sex-connected behaviors in general. In the view of University of Massachusetts neuroscientist Geert J. de Vries, “...thousands of studies have documented sex differences in the brain in practically any parameter imaginable. ...Remarkably, in most cases we do not understand how, or even whether, these sex differences contribute to sex differences in behavior.” In other words, there’s no doubt that hormones, under the control of genes, cause observable behaviors. Some of them are different for males and females. But exactly how? We often haven’t a clue.

With that in mind, let’s look through the library for just a bit.

1) The androgen receptor, widely abbreviated AR, is a testosterone-binding protein with a very long list of functions and effects, only some of which are triggering the synthesis of muscle and enzymes. Among others, it’s a controller for many behavior-related functions. One allele (a version of a gene) has a section in which the DNA alphabet sequence cytosine, adenosine, and guanine (CAG) is repeated many times; this gives rise to a polyglutamine chain. In a 2009 study by V. Harley, et al. of 112 transgender women and 258 cis men (as controls), the length of this sequence was found to be significantly greater for the trans women than the men. Longer CAG sequences are known to lead to reduced AR binding efficacy.

2) J. G. Theisen’s research group at the Medical College of Georgia, which previously identified 441 unique genetic variants in a study cohort of 30 transgender women, more recently (2024) found another 37 rare variants in 21 genes from the protocadherin family, a frequency that was highly significant compared to the value for cisgender men. These (none of which are on the X or Y chromosomes) encode for cell surface adhesion proteins that are a key part of sexual differentiation in rodents, and are generally believed to have similar roles in humans.

3) Returning to repeat sequences, a 2019 study of 380 transgender women and 344 cis men in Australia and the US (again led by V. R. Harley) found significantly shorter repeat lengths of TA (thymine-adenine) in the estrogen receptor (ERα) gene. Several single-nucleotide polymorphisms (“mutations,” in lay language), alone and in combination with others, were also found to be different with similar statistical significance, all in genes that play a role in the metabolism of steroidal hormones.

4) Many of the same genes appear in the 2018 report from two Spanish universities (led by E. Pásaro and A. Guillamon) on 549 trans women and 728 cis male controls. The high-level summary is that “specific allele and genotype combinations of ERβ [remember that’s the estrogen receptor], ERα and AR [androgen receptor] are implicated in the genetic basis of transsexualism, and that MtF gender development requires AR, which must be accompanied by ERβ.” As elsewhere, genetic material was selectively amplified, focusing on regions that would contain polymorphisms known from previous work to be implicated in cerebral sex difference development in humans. (Again, recall that a polymorphism is just a difference in the “spelling” of the gene.)

That will be enough for today’s class. (Probably too much, I know...) There are some important takeaways that don’t require remembering a single nucleotide or hormone name. One is that the science is real. That phrase appears way too often in those social media swamps where people think that the presence of XX or XY chromosomes determines everything about sex and gender development. Science is indeed real – the real science, that is.

The second is that complexity is a feature, not a deficiency. The cited reports, and many others, suggest a messy and seemingly vague connection of cause and effect. But that’s the case, as I noted at the beginning, for all matters sexual. So what we’re seeing for transgender identity is the same as for cis. There are probably hundreds, if not more, of genes involved, and many may be important only for a short period of time in a critical stage of development. We have a lot more to learn. We have already learned that gender identity comes from biology: a trans woman is a biological woman as much as any other. So let us simply eliminate this phrase “biological man” (or woman) from the lexicon – unless it’s to distinguish humans from cyborgs. And stop the nonsense about “wait till you’re 18 to decide.” There is no deciding.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

(The hypothalamus, which is just below the thalamus in the drawing, is where sex-related behavior is regulated.)

A few months ago now-Senate candidate Ken Paxton, he of nine major charges of lawbreaking, charged a faculty member of the UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas) with the crime of providing professionally-approved healthcare to transgender youth. Another such exercise forced a Dallas pediatrician from the same medical center to leave the state. But these were mere opening salvos. Federal criminal subpoenas have now been issued, demanding the medical information of youths who might have received trans healthcare – including personal identification. Penalties for noncompliance are up to 20 years in prison.

This has all been widely reported, and covered admirably by Erin Reed on Substack. It is most likely just another early step in what the Lemkin Institute has identified as the beginning of genocide. That front has many sectors. My focus here is on just one of them: the science that the Trump regime denies as it seeks to deny healthcare to transgender children.

The lawsuits have called out “gender-affirming care,” but since surgeries are nearly nonexistent for anyone under 18 this means puberty blockers (which I’ll call “PBs” for brevity), Their chemistry has important policy implications, and warrants a capsule introduction.

Biochemically, puberty is simply the appearance of the “sex hormones” testosterone and estrogen. (They do much more than define and control sex, hence the quotes.) But one deceptively simple biochemical action requires many initiating and controlling steps. This one begins with nerve signals to the hypothalamus, which produces short pulses of a simple ten-unit peptide (a chain of amino acids) abbreviated “GnRH.” GnRH then binds to a receptor protein, and that complex triggers the release of intermediate hormones which in turn cause the release of those sex hormones.

Here’s the critical point: the receptor only responds if the GnRH comes in short pulses. PBs are simply peptides almost identical to the real thing, differing just enough to thwart the receptor. A single amino acid substitution suffices. Thus no foreign hormones are being put into the adolescent’s body. It’s effectively as if a key with one wrong nub is put into a lock and it jams – it’s still a key. In fact, mutations producing inactive GnRH are well known. This leads to deficiency of the adult hormones, resulting in delayed puberty and infertility. Decreased bone density and increased risk of type II diabetes are minor side effects, whose statistics are vigorous debated. Those effects come after many years, and it’s not even clear if they’re symptoms or causes. This isn’t meant to argue that PBs are harmless. They affect vital parts of physiology, and expert supervision is essential – just as it is for any drug. But it’s patently false to say that they’re medically unknown or poorly studied.

Those interested in the gory details of PB safety and side effects can find a copious set of journal references, succinctly organized with context, in this summary written by professors at the Yale University medical and law schools. The bottom line: when used with competent medical oversight, they are as safe as any other drug that has meaningful effects. As Lynn Gillam and colleagues in Australia succinctly put it (in an open access review): “Most physical risks associated with PBs and gender-affirming hormones can be managed. ...the effects of these treatments, which have now been used for over two decades in adolescents, are well documented.”

But side effects are only one part of the story. The justification for this intervention most widely cited by professionals is “improved mental health,” and specifically reduced risk of suicide. Clearly those are vital. Adolescence is a challenging time, with major risks even without gender identity issues. But what about the rest of life? One might conclude from the critics that if only there were some other way to get the child to the age of 18, then the alleged PB risks (even if small) are surely not worth it.

They are. And the reason lies specifically in the impact of what adolescence brings: body shape, voice, facial hair (or its absence). Altering them ranges from difficult (and expensive) to impossible, and their effects are always there, every moment, for the rest of our lives. People frequently dislike some body features that they can’t change. But that is not a reason to reject interventions that we can change, when those features are so debilitating.

PBs haven’t been available to trans adolescents long enough to provide adequate older adult cohorts for academic papers. Seen from five years out: they’re a treasure. For more, just take a look at any anti-troll-protected online forum in which trans adults expose the raw agony of what they’ve been through, and the measures of peace that come with those difficult and expensive, and still imperfect, damage-mitigating procedures.

Or you can read Hanna’s Ascent.

The mantra of anti-affirming snipers is: “If you can’t drive a car until you’re eighteen then you shouldn’t be making such life-changing decisions before then.” Of course trans kids are almost always making that decision with parents. But regardless: these children have in most cases known what they wanted for close to a decade when adolescence sets in. (I knew when I was five – with no one to even tell me what it meant.) With the guidance of professionals, they are absolutely ready to make that decision – one that is literally life-saving, not only from physical suicide, but from the social and mental destruction of the rest of their lives.

The image is the structure of the GnRH molecule. It’s really that simple - every atom and bonding is shown except the hydrogens.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Sixteen months and five days ago Donald Trump signed 26 executive orders, one of which was titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government..” These actions had no legal effect, but clairvoyance wasn’t needed to see where they would lead.

One might say they’ve now led.

A few weeks ago the White House released the “United States National Counterterrorism Strategy.” Documents with this title have been issued several times beginning in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11. They were focused entirely on those events, including when referring to “Domestic Counterterrorism.” Notably, the phrase “Violent Extremist Ideology” appears prominently in the “9/11 Five Years Later: Successes and Challenges” update.

The point is not a history lesson. It rather emphasizes that this is not a public relations stunt like the executive orders, for Trump to show off his signature. Those earlier memos gave specific guidance to federal agencies with law enforcement authority; for example: “We will use all legal means— both traditional and non-traditional—to identify, halt, and, where appropriate, prosecute terrorists in the United States. ...those who wish to do us harm.” But those documents refer specifically to foreigners and their domestic allies (“radicalized” citizens).

That is the backdrop for Trump’s proclamation, authored by Sebastian Gorka. National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism. One must assume that the words in it are correspondingly meaningful. So let’s look at them.

The Strategy has three targets: “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs, Legacy Islamist Terrorists, and Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” Each of these is given a paragraph of definition under the heading “Our CT Priorities.” Ignoring the patronizing disparagement of Biden’s policy, the first two are reasonably descriptive. The third reveals a quite different agenda. “In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

Every word in this sentence deserves to be analyzed. Remember: this is not idle press release propaganda. The past “Counterterrorism Strategies” drove serious actions (including arrests and lengthy prison terms).

One of the most important words is and. Nor “or.” The target is groups with all three of these properties. What about the rest?

First: “violent ...radically pro-transgender.” In the paragraph preceding that one, we have: “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

Thus any trans person is “violent ...radically pro-transgender”. Note that this is US Government Policy. And note how it is justified: by transferring the violent, “radical” properties of the alleged assassin to a transgender person simply through romantic involvement. We will see in a moment why this remarkable alogical magic was necessary.

Second: What is “anti-American?” In between the “Islamic Terrorist” and “transgender” paragraphs is one that directly and unequivocally connects the two. “...conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings” are “innocent Americans” who have borne the harm of those “real threats.” Ergo: if you disagree with ultraconservative parents at the school board, you are anti-American.

What about “anarchist?” The word appears only along with transgender and in the target definition along with “violent left-wing extremists”. If that isn’t enough, one might resort to a statement by Gorka to the press: “We see a threat, we will respond to it, and we will crush it, whether it is the cartels, the jihadists, or violent left-wing extremists like antifa and like the transgender killers, the non-binary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend Charlie Kirk.”

Finally, remember that “Violent Extremist Ideology” from Bush’s update? Compare to “Violent left-wing extremists” in Gorka’s view of transgender people. ISIS/al Qaeda threat = transgender threat. That threat is one of three targeted by this Strategy, alongside drug cartels and ISIS terrorists.

So what happens now? On CNN Gorka claimed that “in just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who are confused in their gender.” Why would he lie so blatantly? For the same reason that he had to perform that logical legerdemain with Kirk’s assassination suspect. Remember Trump’s goal: “if you hurt Americans, or are planning to hurt Americans, ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You’.”

One needs a powerful excuse to begin to “neutralize” the American transgender population.

Perhaps you think I’m alarmist. How about the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security? “The administration has moved from identifying transgender people as a threat to the family and to the nation’s military prowess to claiming that transgender people constitute a cosmic threat to the spiritual health of the nation and the greatest direct threat to U.S. national security in the world. Given these ideological developments, especially coupled with the increasingly hostile and draconian legislation against trans identities, the Lemkin Institute believes that the United States is squarely within the early to middle stages of a genocidal process against trans people, the goal of which is to completely erase transgender people not only from public life but also from existence in the U.S. and globally.”

I’m not alarmist; I’m realistic and rational. Yes, there absolutely is always hope, but often only if you fight for it, fiercely. I’ve written before about the solutions that are sensible today. It is, indeed, past midnight. Not only for trans people (“First they came for the...” etc.), but foremost for them.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

(Trigger warning: suicide is discussed.)

Although society’s support systems for people contemplating suicide have evolved substantially since Hamlet’s day, it remains a serious problem. The CDC estimates that 4 – 5% of adults do so annually, and 20% of high school students, with 10% actually attempting it. For transgender youth the rate may be four times that.

Suicide reduction is often cited in support of efforts to improve LGBTQ+ rights. But while that’s obviously laudable, I have long asked: Is that the best we can do? Couldn’t we aim just a little higher than “It’ll keep you from dying?” Why shouldn’t our goal be the very highest sense of fulfillment?

It should be. And it turns out that goal is fulfilled for all humans by a sense of belonging, which lies directly at the heart of gender identity. When someone says “Trans women are women,” they are speaking about a drive that comes from thousands of years of evolution.

And that’s science.

A couple of prominent researchers will have to represent the many in this limited space. Kelly-Ann Allen, one of Australia’s most-cited scholars, has described the sense of belonging as “a fundamental human need that almost all people seek to satisfy.” Far from being a touchy-feely triviality, it is “buried deep inside our biology, all the way down to the human genome.” She cites, among others, Roy Baumeister, whose 1995 “landmark” publication (among about 700 others) effectively gave rise to a new field with its postulate that “much of what human beings do is done in the service of belongingness.”

A little more detail from Allen: “Disparate lines of research suggest that the principal design of the human brain and immune system is to keep the body biologically and physically safe by motivating people to avoid social threats and seek out social safety, connection, and belonging. Indeed, a sense of belonging may be just as important as food, shelter, and physical safety for promoting health and survival in the long run.” Michalski and colleagues put some numbers on it: strong community belonging gave 3.2 times better general health (5.0 times for mental health) compared to those lacking it.

So what does this have to do with transgender athletes? We’re getting there. George Slavich at UCLA, among the pioneers of Human Social Genomics (a field in which he is the most-cited researcher), has described how external social conditions, especially our subjective perceptions of those conditions, can influence genetic expression. Hundreds of genes can be turned on and off at once by social-environmental conditions, such as social isolation, rejection, loneliness, or a perception of hostility. What is more: some of those changes can be passed on via epigenetics.

This system appears to have evolved to help protect individuals during times of physical threat. And it’s the perception of threat, not the threat itself, that causes the changes. But what seemed like a good thing when the major threat was sabre-toothed tigers isn’t so well adapted for modern society. The consequences of these defenses includes a long list of maladies – immune, cardiac, neurological; even cancer. All of this just for not feeling that sense of belonging.

TERFs and transmisiacs (aka transphobes) relish telling trans people that “you can still play sports – no problem; just get on the right team” (meaning, of course, the one their chromosomes align with). But that is not physically possible, because that is not where they’re safe. They don’t simply feel unsafe; their entire physical bodies are fearing for their lives.

Belonging, not an Olympic podium, is what’s important to the vast majority of high school students. More than 55% participate in some school-sponsored sport, yet only about seven percent will play in college, and two percent will ever get a scholarship. And of those, fewer than two percent will play professionally. Education professionals agree that “[For] the vast majority of high school student-athletes... the No. 1 reason is simply to have fun and to be a part of a team. Many students who join a high school team and become successful in a sport gain a new sense of confidence that changes their lives.”

The supporting academic reports are far too numerous to do more than nod at here. Alexandra Martín-Rodríguez and her many international collaborators recently reviewed the relationship of physical activity, neurochemistry, and improved mental states. Our topic is at its heart: “Ultimately, embracing a diverse and inclusive perspective on gender in sport psychology contributes to the overall growth and well-being of athletes and enhances the richness of our sporting experiences.”

And there it is all together. To be clear: gender identity is not only belonging. Identity is just that: “I feel, therefore I am.” But belonging is a pervasive and profoundly vital part of it. I wrote this perception into more than a dozen scenes in Hanna’s Ascent, long before I even knew of those papers. It’s a reward I have personally felt in literally thousands of interactions with women in professional conferences and networking (>99% of whom were cisgender).

Objections may be raised that cisgender groups don’t always provide that safety. But the toxic exclusionary noisemaking today comes only from a few, who are in fact harming their own interests. Most women are solidly supportive, both in athletics and more generally. I’ll dig deeper into this data next time. For now, what’s important to take away is that trans women’s athletic participation alongside their cisgender sisters is far from a frivolous fancy, and denying it is a serious physical as well as psychological injury.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

(The image is a painting of Ophelia drowning, by John Everett Millais. From Wikipedia)

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“I’d rather have children be treated for mental illnesses.”

That was one of the less calumnious comments on the transmisic (aka transphobic) side of a randomly chosen Facebook post about the violent assault of a transgender woman. I mention it not to engage with it, but simply as an illustration of a viewpoint that, according to a YouGov poll from a few years ago, is shared by about 20% of the US population.

Science, if one can personify an abstract practice, begs to differ.

Unlike Humpty Dumpty, we cannot progress if we don’t agree on what the words mean, and the word “dysphoria” is at the heart of this genuinely fake dispute. Here’s the trans-dismissive side: mental illness is defined by psychiatrists, whose flagship professional organization (American Psychiatric Association) publishes a ponderous document called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short) which catalogues said illnesses. Since transgender identity is there – as Gender Dysphoria, it must be a mental illness: QED.

If the fallacy had no practical consequences, we might be tempted to ignore it and move on. “Mentally ill” is just one of many real or would-be pejoratives in today’s mudslinging communications culture, and sensible people simply dismiss them. But it does have consequences, and they aren’t benign. To many people, the bearer of this label requires psychological (not medical) treatment. Procedures such as drugs or surgery for transgender people are thereby excluded, and forced “conversion therapy” – a grievously misnamed legalized torture – enters the legislative agenda.

The implied deduction itself is erroneous. For example, few would argue that bipolar disorder is a mental illness, yet drugs are an essential part of treatment. The implied bias in the premise is also erroneous: “mentally ill” shouldn’t be a pejorative, and treatment may range from optional to essential. But the misunderstandings don’t stop there.

Let’s dig into that word “dysphoria.” It has never been a self-standing “illness.” Vladan Starcevic, a professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Sydney, begins his 2007 review of the use of the term in psychiatry by saying “Dysphoria is a term that is both unclear and in vogue at the same.” The DSM-IV-TR defines “dysphoric mood” as “an unpleasant mood, such as sadness, anxiety, or irritability.” (DSM-V isn’t much different: “...intense feelings of depression, discontent, and in some cases indifference to the world around them.”) It is never more than one aspect of a diagnosis except for “premenstrual dysphoric disorder.” Even there it’s still an adjective. Only with gender, in DSM-V, does it become a thing unto itself. And Starevic devotes one paragraph of his five-page paper to the latter:

“Gender dysphoria is defined as discontent with one’s own gender. Beyond discontent, there is little that gender dysphoria has in common with dysphoria. For the sake of clarity, the term gender dysphoria should be avoided, and terms like ‘gender discontent’ or ‘gender aversion’ used instead.”

We agree.

So why it even there at all? Rank prejudice against transgender people was once pervasive in the medical community, of course. You can avoid the paywall for that JAMA article from 1966 by reading the excerpts in my previous post. The profession has come a long way since then. For example, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (the progeny of Dr. Harry Benjamin) generally approved the DSM-V position, with the clarification that “dysphoria” was strictly an individual condition, which might or might not accompany identity variance as such.

Starevic is by no means a lone voice; he represents the consensus. The main reason psychiatrists still stick with a “diagnosis” is to facilitate payment approval through the insurance bureaucracy. Furthermore, while their clients don’t start with a mental illness, society’s treatment of them is often effective at creating one. And that brings me to the second half of this post.

The mental illness resides in those who deny the reality of gender incongruence, not the other way around. And that is not name-calling.

The mental diagnosis know as “collective narcissism” has been known for many years though it has come to prominence only during the last fifteen years or so, substantially through the work of Agnieszka Golec de Zavala and colleagues. It is a variant of narcissistic personality disorder which is a long-standing inhabitant of the DSM (characteristics including: entrenched belief in one’s own fantasies; interpersonally exploitative; lacking empathy). And it stands at the root of transmisia.

Golec de Zavala’s studies of several thousand subjects confirm earlier ones that “collective narcissism is associated with endorsement of conspiracy theories that forfeit facts or logic to fulfill psychological needs.” The connection of a psychological malfunction, science denial, and transmisia could hardly be more trenchantly stated. Particularly striking is the role of conspiratorial thinking: populist denunciations of transgender identity are permeated by the claim that it is a conspiracy (the word “pedophile” is not infrequently invoked) to capture the minds of impressionable children.

Some of those studies strongly implicated vulnerable narcissistic personality (another type of the more general disorder). Both grandiose narcissism and psychopathy are strongly correlated with homonegativity and transnegativity. (Psychopathy is called “Antisocial Personality Disorder” in the DSM-V.) This is not a matter of carelessly tossing medical/psychological terminology around in support of an opinion: Kay and Dimakis are psychologists who have underpinned their own studies of nearly a thousand subjects with references to others. Their conclusions are stark: “both Machiavellianism and psychopathy had strong positive associations with traditional homonegativity, modern homonegativity, general genderism/transnegativity, and gender-bashing. Narcissism had a moderate positive association with modern homonegativity, general genderism/transnegativity, and gender-bashing.”

These issues deserve (and will soon get) an entire post to themselves. Clarifying the scientific reality that gender identity discordance is not a mental illness is an important first step toward a healthy perspective on sex and gender. But it must also be understood that transmisia/transphobia is a mental illness. It is protected hateful speech in the US, but it has nothing in common with science.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

The author of Herman’s Hermit’s iconic song from 1964 was quite frank about his ignorance of biology. But he didn’t weigh in on transgender identity, either. As it happens, understanding the latter requires the former. For those who care about both, this series aims to translate sometimes abstruse – and impactful – science into readable form.

My last post showcased a a sex-differention-connected nucleus in the brain that was statistically identical in size for transgender and cisgender women, with no overlap of the men’s distribution. I just presented the data, with no attempt to account for the causes, because that is a much bigger task.

To get from gene to encoded protein (never mind complex structures like that nucleus) involves at least eight classes of activity: genetic variation, chromosome topology, DNA methylation, mRNA transport, mRNA modification, mRNA degradation, ubiquitylation (a doubtlessly obscure-sounding but vital – and “ubiquitous” – activity modifier), and protein degradation. Each of these presents a plethora of opportunities for complex interactions, environmental influence, and error. It’s exceedingly rare for there to be “a gene for trait X.” Even though the disease phenylketonuria comes from a single gene, more than 2600 modifications of it are known. Or consider that a single DNA transcription activator (the androgen receptor) has 32,518 potential binding sites in the muscle cell genome.

Research into genetics and sexual differences has long included gender identity, with the same problem: how to separate the “direct genetic” effects from hormonal effects, which obviously depend ultimately on genes but in a more distant way that may be nearly impossible to trace to a specific gene or set of genes. Ngun et al.’s review (chief author Eric Vilain, director of the University of California Irvine’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science) gives a good sense of the complexity. Even in animal studies, where experiments are far less constrained than in humans and sex-related behaviors far more explicit, it’s not easy. The view from one prominent researcher: “...thousands of studies have documented sex differences in the brain in practically any parameter imaginable. ...Remarkably, in most cases we do not understand how, or even whether, these sex differences contribute to sex differences in behavior.”

With those difficulties in mind, is it possible to say anything in a Substack-length post about genetics and gender identity? It is. One simply has to focus on clear-cut differences, and not ask for complete explanations. Unambiguous genetic differences prove that gender is biological, regardless of whether we know how. Nothing more (or less) is the goal here.

The research group of J. Graham Theisen (together with colleagues from several universities) have done this. They searched the entire genome of 30 transgender subjects for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP: the technical term in genetics for what many readers know as “mutations”) that were unique to them. In other words, those variants did not occur anywhere else in the population, but every transgender subject had one. Many of those genes had been shown in previous work to be involved in sex-related brain development through the estrogen receptor.

That is the “bottom line” of this post. To understand how meaningful it is, a short excursion into the underlying science and technology is needed. Of the roughly 3.2 billion nucleotides (the molecules that are the letters of the DNA “alphabet”) in our 23 chromosome pairs, only 1% encode information to make proteins. That part, called the “exome,” can be sequenced for ~$1000 in less than a week, and is increasingly the method of choice for finding genetic causes of diseases. For most individuals the same letter is found at the same position in a gene. Differences may be benign, deleterious, or beneficial.

How does one interpret this data? With help from very large databases. Arising from the Human Genome Project, the dbSNP, hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, has accumulated more than 900 million variants from 400,000 subjects. This provides the “normal” sequences for each gene, plus the variants and their frequency.

Theisen removed all variants which did not appear in the dbSNP, and at <1% frequency in several others. Out of 120,582 variants (again: this means different letters), 441 were left. Thus with extremely high probability this genetic information is truly unique to transgender people. 21 of those variants are in pathways of sexually dimorphic brain development in rodents. It very likely contains important causative factors, but we needn’t understand them to establish the premise of genetic uniqueness.

The single biggest objection raised against biological studies of gender identity is sample size and significance. Physiology is inherently variable, and it is usual to require sophisticated statistical analysis. There are only 30 subjects in this study, but remember that every one had at least one of the variants. It’s hard to argue with 100%. Only two-thirds had one of the 21 critical ones (defined by animal sexual development background). But there’s no reason to assume that the others are irrelevant.

As always in this realm, it’s important to examine the definition of “transgender.” The subjects were drawn from the Equality Clinic of Augusta or from the Augusta University Reproductive Endocrinology, Infertility, and Genetics Clinic, had been diagnosed by a physician with gender dysphoria based on DSM-V criteria, and self-identified as transgender.

In genes as in anatomy, we find unambiguous physical differences between transgender and cisgender people. Once again from the top: transgender women are biological women (and mutatis mutandi for men). The number of X and Y chromosomes is far from the end of the story.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

(The DNA image is from Wikipedia.)

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Inigo Montoya’s assessment of Vizzini’s intellectual shortcomings can be aptly applied in other realms as well. Science is based on observation, and accurate description of observation requires precise language. Everyday communication usually isn’t expected to meet those standards, but when life, liberty, and the pursuit of survival is at stake, it’s needed.

The coinage “biological men” (or women) has become especially widespread since the spate of “executive orders” unleashed by D.J. Trump at the beginning of his current term; the UK Supreme Court’s transgender-erasing decision is packed with it.

And yet it has no scientific meaning.

There is not one formulation that can unambiguously define “woman” or “man” without excluding (and thereby denigrating) some people while still remaining general enough to be practical. X and Y chromosomes and reproductive organs are useful, but they are not definitive. The number of exceptions is small, but those exceptions are human beings, due respect and dignity.

This is the first in a series of Substack posts that will dig into some aspects of transgender biology in detail. We’re not lacking for literature – there are literally thousands of relevant academic reports. But too often the public sees a cherry-picked few, with insufficient criticism (exhibit A: Cass Report). A single paper will be trumpeted as “proving” the advocate’s point when, on closer inspection, it does no such thing. Occasionally, however, one can be definitive.

The hypothalamus is located just above the brainstem. Slightly smaller than a cube of sugar, it is crucial for basic life functions: energy supply and control, fluid and heat regulation, and sleep. But it also controls the hormones that govern the reproductive system, and hence sex-related behavior. It connects those functions and the cortex (the “thinking” part).

One of those definitive papers appeared more than thirty years ago, when neuroscience was still dominated by traditional tedious dissection processes. Dick Swaab, professor of Neurobiology in the Netherlands, and colleagues showed that a part of the hypothalamus called the “bed nucleus of the stria terminalis” (BST for short) is roughly twice as large in men as women. That wasn’t new. What was new was the discovery that it was (statistically) the same in cis- and transgender women; actually slightly smaller for the latter (not statistically significant). The data are so striking that the graph is well worth reproducing.

From left to right in this figure are heterosexual men, homosexual men, heterosexual women, and transgender women (both sexual orientations). Gender identity classification came from the Gender Team of the Free University of Amsterdam (this was in DSM-IV days). The horizontal lines show the standard error limits, which come nowhere close to overlapping between men and either cis or trans women. (For those unfamiliar with statistics lingo: the standard deviation sigma describes the scatter in a typical “bell curve” distribution, formally called Gaussian. Standard error, or SE, is sigma divided by the square root of the number of data points; as the number increases, the estimate becomes sharper.) The photos at the top show another view of this data.

Two of the cis women were post-menopausal (M1, M2), and S1 had male-level testosterone for one year prior to death due to a tumor; thus adult hormone levels are unlikely to be responsible. The trans women had various hormone regimens (all including estrogen). The deaths were from many different causes, at different ages, and extremely unlikely to be connected to the hypothalamus or anything sexual.

Having to wait for one’s experimental subjects to die tends to seriously restrict cohort size (and this still can’t be done by MRI). A follow-on paper in 2008 added some new individuals for a total of 14 men, 11 cis women, and 10 trans women. The anatomical focus was the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus 3 (or a more wieldy “INAH3”), which is part of the uncinate nucleus and near the BST. In this case neurons were counted as well as measured, and three different stains were used. Some of the results are shown in this table. Lines 1 and 4: averages ± SE; lines 2 and 5: the volume or number at the lower SE level for men and upper SE level for women; lines 3 and 6: [lower SE(M) – upper SE(W)]/average(M) (i.e., the gap as a percentage of men’s average).

As with the BST, men and women don’t even come close to overlapping, while cis and trans women are nearly indistinguishable. It is noteworthy that in four cis and four trans women the INAH3 nucleus is actually not observable at all, while this was true of only one man.

Some questions have been raised in and around these papers and others from Swaab’s group about whether adult hormone treatments affected the numbers. The similarity of pre- and post-menopausal women argue against that, along with the definite placement in male ranges of the only transgender man as well as five men castrated because of prostate cancer. None of these debates contradict the central conclusion: an area of the brain that is intimately connected to sexual development and maintenance in general is very different in both size and content between men and women, and effectively the same in cis and trans women.

The fundamental neurobiology remains to be elucidated, but in this critical physical respect: transgender women are biological women (and mutatis mutandi for men). The X and Y chromosomes aren’t everything after all.

(The figure at the top shows representative immunocytochemical staining of the somatostatin neurons and fibers in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. From left to right: cisgender man, cisgender woman, homosexual man, and transgender woman. From I. Savic et al.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Last month was LGBTQ+ History Month. The concept seems so simple: remember the courageous battles against the encroachment of toxic prejudice. In fact, the concept of “history” is far from simple; it pervades almost everything we do.

In this post, I want to illuminate that complexity from a novel angle that I hope points to effective action. Each of us can use our unique and very diverse voices in more powerful ways than the usual political debate, but it takes some work.

The historian Yosef Chaim Yerushalmi made this distinction between “history” and “memory:” “Whereas history is written in the third person and claims to be factual; memory can only be told in the first person,... thereby calling us to action.” Consequently, one may “remember but still forget,” if the memory doesn’t lead to action. Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Awards speech for “The Zone of Interest” had a different embodiment but similar theme: “Not to say ‘look what they did then’ – rather, ‘look what we do now.’ It shaped all of our past and present.”

Glazer’s film portrayed exclusively “then.” But remembrance is not simply a matter of “learning lessons from history.” The entire context and prior history of that history bears critically on its value for the future, and how we make use of it (if indeed we do). And it must permeate our emotions, or it will go nowhere.

Landmark events like Stonewall and Compton’s Cafeteria are important to focus our attention on the day-to-day difficulties of living with unremitting hostile prejudice, but recounting them won’t convey the experience. A “flesh and blood” human story is more likely to move the uncommitted to active supporters than either academic arguments or captivating slogans. It’s still history, but embedded in the present – and the possibility of action.

I have commented on this before, and even cited scientific evidence in support of it. The unanswered question is how to get these stories in front of readers. There are certainly many books available with transgender (and other LGBTQ+) themes. But a brief survey of Amazon’s “Best Sellers in Transgender Fiction” finds mostly romance (Regency Romance at that) and a few in sci-fi and fantasy genres. Clearly there is nothing wrong with these genres, but they’re unlikely venues to convey the harsh reality of life for an ordinary transgender person seeking a fulfilling life like everyone else.

A highly acclaimed literary agent teaching an online writing course asked for a brief description of the essential crisis or conflict of the protagonist, which I said was how to successfully pass as a woman despite being six feet two inches tall, while living in a time and place (1950s rural Colorado) where not passing gave many observers a dilemma: do I just off the dude directly or have a little fun first? The agent’s response: “Hey, in the 1970s Renée Richards did it!”

For those too young to know Richards’ story, she was indeed a pioneer, and one who battled a hostile system. But she came out openly in an urban setting, as an adult with a solid professional position, and the financial resources to pursue legal actions. It takes away nothing from her courage or character to say that we need many more success stories of transgender characters with fewer starting advantages. And we need the evocative power of fiction to make them come to life. But that aspect of transgender life won’t be found in the soap-opera style of Detransition, Baby, let alone regency romances.

Good examples exist. A standout is Small Beauty, a cutting yet tender story that doesn’t shy away from real-life travails, and does it with literary expressiveness. Like Hanna’s Ascent, it crosses generations to bring the emotional experience of the past into the present. But we need a lot more of this genre if we are not to “remember but still forget.”

Unfortunately, new books are easily lost amongst the millions of new releases in today’s self-publishing-driven market. More effective ways than social media posts are needed to reach new audiences. Book clubs (both local and global) are useful, but there is no better time to reach impressionable, growing, inquisitive minds than in school (either high school or college). This fall, as part of a Pride Center event, my alma mater’s English Department invited me to connect with their students (including guest-teaching one upper-division creative writing class session) and the Queer Memory Project of Northern Colorado, led by faculty from the Communications Department. The intensity of the student engagement confirmed the premise. The writing professor said the class hadn’t been so responsive for the entire year.

I don’t mean this as advertising. Rather it’s a call to get meaningful transgender-centric literature into the educational stream, and catch the world on a creative fire. Many readers have this in them; but it’s so much easier to schmooze (or rant) on social media than to painstakingly craft prose that has the power to change people.

I close with an example that resonated in those university exchanges: emotionally evocative, lyrical, and subtly symbolic yet entirely practical in the narrative that it supports – intertwining past, present, and future without debating anything.

***

Gisela saw something different: Hanna picking her way gingerly across an avalanche-swept slope near Trail Ridge Road strewn with broken boulders and twisted, stunted trees that were the only survivors at timberline, passing brilliant blue and white columbines half-concealed behind the rocks.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

At the funeral for Charlie Kirk, the president of the U.S. said: “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”

So who are his “opponents, and what does he want?” One needn’t be a Sherlock Holmes clone to find out; he told us – before the election. Who? Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and those surrounding his opponent Kamala Harris. Also anyone contributing to “open-border policies (and) record-setting inflation.”

Then, following the Kirk assassination: those who “want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.” That list was equated with political violence, “vicious and horrible,” and the cause of crime.

What should happen to them? Again, during the campaign: jail them, execute them, – or simply shoot them. And the military was envisioned: “... the people from within ...should be very easily handled by – if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” The recent threats are not news.

There are people who solemnly swear that he can’t do this, even though he has already done it (law notwithstanding) and is doing it again now. I urge those needing more convincing to heed Tom Nichols (former professor at the Naval Academy). (Free version, donations welcomed, here.) And it isn’t just unhinged, probably demented, Trump. Paul Krugman’s er, icy perspective highlighted Stephen Miller’s role, one which the latter has recently become quite open about. They can do what they want, and who’s going to stop them? The Supreme Court has overruled lower courts 17:1 so far, and even they don’t command an army.

The brown-shirt army called ICE has been the open-militarization flagship, because bashing “illegal immigrants” is an easy sell in this xenophobic nation. It would be reckless indeed, however, not to see the implications of associating “open borders,” Trump’s political revenge targets, and transgender people.

To Laura Loomer they’re “a terrorist organization.” To Donald Trump, Jr. they comprise “the most violent movement anywhere in the world.” These are mere advisors, but FBI Director Patel is hosting internal discussions classifying “transgender suspects” as “Nihilistic Violent Extremists.” I.e., terrorists and criminals. The people the military is supposed to go after.

After people with brownish skin and a few courageous high-profile leaders, that community is the next target.

What, then, is one to do? Since January I’ve passed from hopes for swaying independents toward positive commitment, through moving the courts to faster action, to clandestine appeals to the military to obey the Constitution and not the renegade civilian command. As always, in no way do I wish to discourage any conventional political methods (e.g. congressional action, elections, street demonstrations), but the dictator clan is not listening.

My last post was about resistance in a dictatorship, not facing one. We’re not yet like the Germany in which Claus von Stauffenberg or Sophie Scholl carried out their fatal efforts, but we are increasingly like the one that Willie Brandt fled from (to better fight another day), and Oskar Schindler undermined in secret. In an era with many technological differences but the same human nature, what actions even make sense?

We think we don’t have factories employing political prisoners, but when effectively every darker-skinned person is at risk of arbitrary detainment, how is a typical farm really different? Those farm owners could adopt Schindler’s perspective and provide meaningful protection to their at-risk workers (and yes, it would be “illegal” – if defying immoral laws can be considered illegal). The notion of church sanctuaries is already well known; why not go further?

The drones and instant intelligence keeping Ukraine alive and fighting can be used here as well: ICE can be tracked and information systematically disseminated. Again, the concept is not unknown; it needs organization and scaling. Instead of the mimeographed leaflets of the White Rose, we can have sophisticated white-hat hackers penetrating the enemy’s cybersystems (and disrupting them). And yes, I’m calling them the enemy; they’ve declared war on me so I’m just being honest.

Harbingers of a resistance-in-exile are already emerging, as prominent academics seek places to remain visible without fear as well as simply be free to work. We should all be grateful for the many contrarians determined to stay and speak out, but there may come that time, as there did for Brandt, who only left when his life was directly threatened. Whatever choice each of us makes (and when), those who leave can (and must) be part of the resistance wherever they are.

I return to the beginning. I love the bravery of people like Gov. Pritzker. But when guns are in the hands of disciplined troops, they are hard to resist. The orders to troops (whether National Guard or regular) to act domestically against local wishes are not constitutional: they are therefore illegal, and can be rejected. But the military can resist only when united. I can’t recommend Tom Nichol’s words too highly: “the rest of us, whether we’re elected officials or ordinary citizens, should do everything we can to let our fellow Americans in uniform know that if they risk their careers and even their freedom to protect the Constitution, we will stand with them.”

Maybe demonstrations and voter drives will save us, and maybe (most likely) not. If not, we’d better have this Resistance ready. The lives of a great many seriously threatened people (not only transgender) depend on it.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It’s also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

The title phrase was made famous in Star Trek: The Next Generation, by the Borgs, who seem a lot like what Elon Musk and his pal Peter Thiel would like to be. The Borgs incessantly repeated that “resistance is futile” – and The Federation clearly showed that it was not.

But there was a cost.

That is what we face. Instead of Borgs we have Kristi Noem and Kash Patel. Borgs v.0.3. To court losses and fiery denunciations in Congress the Evil Empire's response is accelerating abductions at gunpoint and building more concentration camps.

John Roberts, it turns out, really doesn't value his job after all; we cannot look to the courts. Ironic as it is, that leaves only the military. That's where it stands today. All of us hope for a real election in 2026, but counting on that with no Plan B is akin to getting weather forecasts from Punxsutawney Phil. The people behind the alleged shenanigans of 2024, on the other hand, very definitely have a Plan B.

We are now in an authoritarian state, and Resistance must now be the kind that people practice to defeat one, not the kind needed to prevent one. Others have discussed many examples; here I'll focus tightly on one country's experience. It may not be the best model for the U.S. today, but it isn't a bad one either, and it's familiar. I'll consider four people: Claus von Stauffenberg, Oskar Schindler, Sophie Scholl, and Willy Brandt. Each exemplifies an important perspective.

The “Soldiers' Revolt” led by Colonel von Stauffenberg in 1944 is the subject of a “history imagined” novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst. Though little known in the U.S., it gives an inside feeling for the human experience, which wasn't just one disgruntled officer on a suicide mission. A least 147 and probably more than 200 participating officers were executed (a few of those committed suicide to avoid execution), along with about five thousand implicated associates. And had a briefcase not been randomly repositioned under a table it would have succeeded, the implacable Gestapo notwithstanding.

Military officers needn't be the bad guys for democracy (as in the typical “junta”). In their rebellion these Germans acted for the country they'd sworn to serve, and ours can do the same. As it is commanded to enter more pervasively into our country, they must become aware of this. Much extremely secret coordination is required.

Oskar Schindler's story is well known thanks to the movie, but his post-war difficulties less so. While some of that very likely arose from his own character, it seems clear that he paid dearly for his service personally. Another lesson.

Both of those people were “insiders” with power who initially supported the Nazi Party. Sophie Scholl was far from an insider. A student who just wanted to grow up (rather like Anne Frank on the other side), she moved quickly from supporter to fierce resister. I call her out among the several White Rose members because she was the only woman. In 2003 she was selected by viewers of ZDF (major German TV network) as one of the top ten “best Germans” of all time (again, the only woman), directly under Karl Marx and ahead of Goethe, Gutenberg and Einstein.

These young people shared with von Stauffenberg the honor of having been sentenced to death by the infamous Roland Freiser. Their effort lasted barely nine months. But anyone who believes their sacrifice was in vain should consult the work of Jud Newborn. Here is one concentration camp survivor:

“When we heard about what was happening in Munich, we embraced each other and applauded. There were, after all, still human beings in Germany.”

The Scholls' leaflets reached every major city in Germany before the war's end, and were broadcast on the radio by Thomas Mann. If that isn't convincing enough, perhaps the legacy of hundreds of schools named after them might help.

Finally, we come to Willy Brandt, who opposed Hitler from the beginning. As a young politician in 1933 he used a similar tactic to the Scholls (leaflets stuffed in mailboxes), but soon had to flee in a fishing boat to Norway. Only after that country's defeat (he was then in Sweden) and seven years of Nazi close calls and deportation threats did he obtain Norwegian citizenship.

His efforts clearly didn't eliminate Hitler; whether it even slowed him down can be debated. Yet that perilous path led to the chancellorship of Germany and leader of East-West detente. For both his native country and the state of democracy in the entire world, it was invaluable, and it could not have happened had he remained in Germany – or a German citizen. And that makes it supremely important as an illustration of what some of us might have to face.

To summarize those lessons:

1) The allegiance of the military will probably determine our future. Help them.

2) Resistance will become increasingly dangerous, often mortally so. Plan ahead.

3) The decision to stay or leave the country will depend on where one can do the most good. Analyze your capabilities and willlingness to adapt and sacrifice.

I certainly wouldn't discourage any conventional – or unconventional – political protest processes, and I'll continue to support the lawsuit-filing organizations of my choice as long as I can. But Plan B is very likely to become plan A, and final disaster awaits if we're not well prepared.

*****

(The image at the top is just modern - truly micro - microelectronics, but some have objected to it on the grounds that it represented a precursor to Borg-like developments. Alien Technologies actually used the “Resistance is futile” tagline in advertising!)

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Dear Rep. Seth Moulton,

I'm really glad that you are “a strong supporter of the civil rights of all Americans, including transgender rights,” and that you will “fight ...for the rights and safety of all citizens.” [emphasis added]

And yet the right of transgender women to play sports as women isn't included, and those who reject that are “shouting from the extreme left corners of social media”?

With all due respect, I think you're a bit confused. Are the civil rights of all Americans part of the extremities of our national discourse? Is it okay to disagree about the civil rights of Black people, or Jews?

These groups have at least this in common with transgender people: they did not choose their status. And they all deserve – and demand – equality.

Sincerely,

A woman who has always been a woman, no matter what any bureaucracy said.

Elsewhere Moulton said: “I’m not talking about kids — obviously they play on co-ed teams now, as everyone did, myself included...” In his position he should know better. As of 2023, twenty states included elementary schools in their transgender athlete bans. A more recent count lists twenty-four. Proposed federal law, of course, would extend it nationwide.

I really don't wish to disparage Mr. Moulton, who no doubt has his heart (more or less) in the right place, and who tried valiantly to backpedal the worst effects of his ill-conceived words. But the damage cannot be easily undone, as illustrated so cogently by the rabbinical tale about escaped feathers. His remarks (along with other similar ones) were quickly picked up and trumpeted loudly by conservative outlets.

Three barnacle-encrusted weapons appear pervasively in this battle.

1) Genetics: A transgender woman athlete is "a male or formerly male athlete” (Rep. Seth Moulton, MA). Never mind what genes actually do.

2) Fairness: “This isn't about exclusion ...It's about ...a level playing field ” (State Sen. Loren Lippincott, NE). In other words: if I didn't win, it wasn't fair!

3) Strength: “I do not think that ...we ought to allow a situation to where ...we end up with a superior athlete that could just knock our girls right out of the competition.” (Gov. Jim Justice, WV). Needless to say, girls can't be superior athletes!

Though I've written about these before, I think each requires a separate post (coming soon!). Here I want to leave the political context absolutely clear. I really want Seth Moulton to be an ally. As it stands, he's not.

If it were really true that having transgender girls and women with their gender cohort were unfair (which it is not), or if it were really true that they “could just knock ...girls right out of the competition” (which they cannot), or if they were really “male ...athletes” (which they are not), then the consequences would still have to be equal civil rights for all. Denying them access does not constitute equal rights for all.

Why were different drinking fountains, offering water from the same source, not considered equal rights for white and “colored people” (the word used then, not mine)? Why was a seat in the back of the bus (same cushion, same legroom) not considered equal rights?

Because they weren't. And denying transgender people equal access to all aspects of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is also not equal. “Separate but equal” wasn't equal in 1896, and it isn't now.

If Seth Moulton, Rubén Gallego, Tom Suozzi, Ezra Klein, and many other alleged allies truly believed that transgender people deserve equal rights, they would insist on those rights. Even the rock-bottom minimum of “separate but equal,” the indubitably inadequate condition of racial civil rights through the first half of the twentieth century, would require every formally recognized athletic competition, right up to World Championships and the Olympics, to have transgender categories (both male and female), on par with the others: i.e., with the same podiums and equally prestigious award ceremonies at the same time.

Yet none of them will propose that, I'm quite sure, because that would be, ah, “impractical.”

In other words, transgender rights are impractical.

If the opponents of trans athletes really cared about fairness, they would also demand separate events for cisgender competitors of different sizes and genetic capabilities. But they don't, because their motivation is fundamentally prejudice and not reason.

To any objections that my comparison of transgender rights to racial civil rights is unfair because trans people weren't flogged or lynched in history, I say: check again. I didn't write sadistic violence into Hanna's Ascent because I thought it was good for sales. (Another view of that incident is here, and many others here.) This isn't a competition: all such abuse is equally abhorrent. And while exclusion from sports for being how one is born isn't torture or death, it is a powerful message to young people: “You're an unwelcome fake.” “Biological men” is another way to dehumanize. One of the first steps the Nazis took toward gas ovens was to declare Jews not fully human.

This leaves two, and only two, morally acceptable possibilities: Either trans athletes are accepted as the gender they've found themselves to have, or multiple competition categories are established that include differences in cisgender physiques, based on the same statistically valid evidence that separate transgender categories rest on. Like it or not, anything else is toxic prejudice – ultimately deadly to all that it touches.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Pride Month 2025 is like no other in the fifty-five years of this tradition. We've lived with many literal as well as figurative attacks, but rarely, if ever, have they come directly from the highest levels of the federal government. They do now.

In a life-and-death battle, one needs a strategy, and it helps to know where one came from. The battle didn't begin in 1970, as important as the Stonewall Riots were. Most people know by now that the modern era of transgender rights began with Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, around 1900 (emphasis on the word “modern”).

But pride emerged very slowly from those shadows, because – it was a life-and-death battle. As the great computer technology pioneer Lynn Conway put it, a year before Stonewall: “Even then, any 'outing' could have led to media exposure, and I'd have become unemployable, out on the streets for good. The resulting fear channeled my life into 'stealth-mode.' I covered my past for over 30 years, always looking over my shoulder, as if a foreign spy in my own country.” That, keep in mind, was sixteen years after the world became aware of Christine Jorgensen.

Today we're proud that trans women can get elected to high public offices, unabashedly owning their identity. Then, if you didn't have Jorgensen's talent for entertainment (and even that wouldn't go very far), you'd better have been able to pass. Conway tells of working with Harry Benjamin soon after her gender confirmation surgery, and meeting eight of his current patients. “Most were either entertainers (female impersonators in San Francisco clubs) or "working girls" in the sex trade in the City.” Two of them took their lives during that period: one had been gang raped by the police after they arrested her for prostitution.

A very prominent literary agent and author said to me in 2022 (as part of an online course) that dealing with society's opprobrium against transgender people in the 1970s was nothing unusual (“Hey, Renée Richards did it!”). Conway, with an MS in electrical engineering who had already in her mid-20s invented one of the most important techniques of computing as of the 1960s, was summarily fired by the company to which the income from that invention would flow. She was approved for job after job with Fortune 500 (and 50) companies until she told them of her gender identity history; then the offers evaporated. At RCA they commissioned a psychiatric evaluation, which she later learned had been effusively positive. RCA simply ignored it and lied. Soon after, social workers forbade her from ever seeing her two young children, who were told absolutely nothing of their other parent till they were fifteen.

Though the absolute situation of transgender people in the U.S. is certainly better now than then, the direction and rate of change (the derivative, for the mathematically aware) are negative and large. But the point of this essay is not to moan about the trials of transgender people; we know them well enough. The point is to guide the future.

That blissfully insulated literary agent has, ironically, offered us the key. He wasn't an evil person. He was an ignorant person. And there's a cure for ignorance.

Many media of all kinds address that ignorance, and yet the onslaught continues. I believe a closer look at the past would help, because people still don't know what it was like. Amidst innumerable polls revealing opinions about trans issues, it's nearly impossible to learn what those responders actually understand. And while real transmisics are beyond hope, there are many whose ignorance is fed by the shallow and often distorted mainstream media coverage (looking at you, New York Times...).

When the random Main Street passerby asked about transgender identity thinks of people like Lynn Conway, and when they know the pain that she described as she faced the social darkness of the late 1960s, then we will see more people like Judge Phyllis Frye, Dr. Joan Roughgarden, and Adm. Rachel Levine (some of the all-too-few prominent professionals who had to fight their way through those days).

This is the age of social media (so my publisher keeps telling me); let's use it to educate. But not the posts themselves, which may be achingly sincere but are just opinions in an opinion sea. What's effective is to use our “platforms,” large or small, to get others to read powerful books that will introduce them to the real life of a transgender human being. And there is nothing more powerful than those stories from the past when being known as transgender would routinely get one fired if not killed.

We are talking about Pride here, and I will close with an excerpt from a book that can serve that purpose.

She remembered the taunts, the insults, the fear of being discovered. The quashing of her soul’s yearning over and over again, the denial of her self day after day. The menace that lurked behind friendly facades, forbidding her from ever going where she felt she belonged.

And through it all: the silent, secret nurturing of a seed of something better.

Today we need not, and must not, be silent. But we have something better than those days. Let's tell the world, using words they can understand. Focus the message: from old history we can create a new trans story.

***

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Today will be a departure from science and athletics, because political lightning-bolts are striking the country in a storm with heightened vigor, and we need to know what to do – now. There is no dearth of reporting, but competent and dispassionate analysis is in short supply. For that I have something to offer. As a former member of the national intelligence community, I have seen it done (even if only as a backoffice secretary).

Just over two months ago, the Trump regime had recently kidnaped a documented US resident off the streets, and then claimed a series of breathtaking lies for justification. Prior to that, there had been many plainly unconstitutional executive actions, but none that rose to the level of brass-knuckled street crime.

In the past week, we've seen the next step: the precursors to actual military dictatorship. Links to the reporting seem rather superfluous: everyone reading this knows that Trump ordered the California National Guard and the Marine Corp into action against the law. This was accompanied by Kristi Noem's threat (promise?) to take over complete political control of California.

I wrote previously that our best hope was in the courts, even the conservative-packed Supreme Court, with the proviso that we could not tell if court orders would be obeyed. While most of the many constitutional conflicts are still in litigation, we now see that the answer in at least some cases will be a definite “no.”

Prominent people have been warning of this for years: Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and many others. However, the past week places us differently on the timeline. Snyder's Twenty Lessons are designed to help us avoid a coup, not to retake the country afterward (or even in the middle of it). But though we're on the verge of a coup, we won't wake up one morning, like the citizens of Chile did on 11 September 1973, to a fait accompli. Although there are multiple reasons, the most important is that the military high command did this in Chile, not an elected president. For us, like the Germans in 1933, there is a transition zone. It is when the military has united behind it that it becomes irreversible.

Snyder, among others, has underscored the fact that dictators have power only because the people allow it. But the “people's power” is what physicists call a collective property, and it cannot change from one state to another without cooperative interaction between many members (think how much humidity must be in the air before it rains). Even those many may not be enough if they are kept far enough apart.

Theoretically, courts can use US Marshals to enforce their orders. But such actions could be thwarted by the very Executive Department they would be targeting. More importantly, they are not strong enough to oppose troop deployments. Only those troops themselves can do that, which brings us to the critical issue of military command.

While members of the military probably trend toward politically conservative, a solid majority is unhappy with what Trump is doing. Yet if given orders, we must expect them to obey, because that is how the military collective property works. If you had been a soldier in Lt. William Calley's unit in Vietnam and he gave the order to “waste 'em,” that's what you would have done. Calley followed the same order from Capt. Ernest Medina. And it seems very likely that he was following the orders (or what he took to be orders) of his superior, Lt. Col. Frank Barker. This behavior is, indeed, not unexpected in view of prevailing law.

Yes, the military code also specifies that orders may be unlawful; and those should not, and indeed must not, be obeyed. However: it may not be evident in the heat of the moment whether an order is lawful or not, and the consequences of disobeying, if wrong, are potentially serious. Most troops, even officers, will act with caution – which means obedience. If the military is not to become the enforcer of political repression, the decision has to be made at the top, and not by only one person.

Military coups are not common in robust democracies, and we've been fortunate to see only one serious attempt. Military-led efforts to remove a dictator are even more rare, though one happened in Nazi Germany, no less. Of course neither the social nor political circumstances can be compared directly to ours, but it further illustrates the difficulty of bringing senior military officers together to disobey their commander-in-chief.

Much as I hope otherwise, as an analyst I'd peg the likelihood that we need that at greater than 50%. We've seen Trump's cabinet berated eloquently and vigorously in Congress – often. They aren't changing course; Noem made that clear enough. The several million protestors last Saturday were wonderful, but dictators don't need popular support. Nor should his increasingly unhinged mind matter. Others are ready to step in.

So, is there anything we can do?

There is. Without that top-brass support, the dictator can't dictate. And in the U.S., they've been steeped in a centuries-old culture of support for the Constitution. Remember the six-degrees-of-separation principle; it's probably fewer now. Whatever you can do to make your support known to the people who are going to matter most – do it. The army doesn't need to go to battle for us; it just has to not go to battle against us.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent.

The transmisia (or transphobia, if you insist) outrage machine has kicked into overdrive with the recent first-place victories of AB Hernandez. Despite Hernandez’ second in the long jump and eighth in the high jump prelims only three weeks previously, a school district president asserted her “biggest goal” for 2026 was to elect more members across the state to ban transgender athletes. “We’re asking for President Trump to pull the funding. We have to have the funding pulled so girls can win.”

In a district where roughly half the students test below proficient level for both reading and math, one might think school boards had other issues to worry about. I guess one would be wrong.

Why are the actual numbers so studiously ignored? Statistics are often impugned. On the other hand we have Lord Kelvin (of the eponymous temperature scale): “When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” Perhaps we can make our knowledge on this topic a bit less meagre.

Based on the frequency of press reports, the 100- and 200-meter sprint victories of Andraya Yearwood at Cromwell (Connecticut) High School in April, 2017, along with teammate Terry Miller, started a spirited competition for the most unreasonable objections to trans athletes. A set of cisgender complainants soon led that race with a lawsuit seeking to win what they could not on the field, even though one of them (Chelsea Mitchell) beat one of those unbeatable trans competitors immediately after the filing.

No doubt the doubters don't find it difficult to dismiss a single race. So let's do the numbers.

This figure summarizes the season results for the three competitors (CM = Mitchell; AY = Yearwood, and TM = Miller; times are in seconds). What stands out immediately is 1) the absence of a consistent trend, and 2) the large overlap for all three. For example, in 2019 Mitchell's times lie well behind Miller's for the 55 m event, while in 2020 they are mostly ahead, and in the 300 m event by a large margin. In 2019's 100 m race, Mitchell (the cisgender athlete, remember) has the fastest time and Miller the slowest, although the average for both is identical to within the accuracy of measurement (12.30 s). Yearwood led the 55 m field during 2020, but posted the next-slowest time in 2019. While she bested Mitchell's shortest 2020 55 m time twice, she was also far behind her slowest one, and achieved an average only 0.05 s below Mitchell.

Computing season-average times may strike the dedicated “eyes on the prize” sports fan as improper, but it is precisely the right approach for assessing relative strength. In the two examples shown below, one can see no correlation between any two successive races; i.e., any later one could be faster or slower than the preceding one, and by potentially widely different margins. An athlete might become a little stronger over the entire season, but not over a few weeks.

In only three of Chelsea Mitchell's fourteen events from 2017 through 2020 did she achieve her season best in the final race. On any given day, any time within that athlete's overall distribution may easily be the one that she posts. The season-average standard deviations for these races range from 1 to 5%, and even 2% can exceed the typical winning margin. For example, consider the 2019 100 m CIAC Combined Class S Championship. Miller took first with 11.93 s; Mitchell second with 12.02 s. The standard deviations for the season were 0.53 and 0.35 s respectively: far beyond the 0.09 s race difference.

The notion that trans girls are inherently stronger is not even a mirage.

Now, since the critics want us to believe that transgender girls are as strong as cisgender boys, let's look at those numbers (from the same website as the others).

The blue squares show the fastest as well as the slowest boy in each of four typical races, along with the prelim time that is just below the fastest girl. (In one race there were no prelims listed.)

To those who claim that trans girls are athletically boys, I suggest: do the numbers. Your knowledge will be less meagre.

This is only a sample of the total data for these three athletes. We can do the same for others, with the same conclusion. For example: Lia Thomas attracted controversy (and lawsuits) by winning first place in the 500 yard freestyle, 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Championship as well as three other first-place finishes in Ivy League championships leading up to it.

And yet she placed sixth in total points. She set no records, while three other swimmers set a total of seventeen (not counting nine others set in relays); and didn't place in the top three in any other event (while the three record-setters placed in the top three eight times; sixteen counting relays). Brooke Ford placed fourth behind Thomas, yet she placed second and first in other events (400 IM and 800 free relay respectively).

The bottom line is simple, and the evidence unambiguous: transgender women are statistically equivalent to cisgender women in athletic performance. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose – on the same field. Excellent athletes all.

The End.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent.

(Fluorescent marker images for calcium ion release by testosterone in a rat myotube)

From California to the New York Island, few aspects of transgender rights seem to elicit more misgivings (not to say hysteria) than participation in organized athletics. To a great many people, it simply isn't “fair.” As an earnest Long Island parent put it: ““It’s wrong. It’s not about hate, it’s about fairness. Imagine you practice, practice, practice, and then this kid comes along who is biologically a boy and dominates because he has a physical advantage. It’s not fair.”

Critics of transgender athletes love to appeal to science. To paraphrase an eloquent lawyer: science matters. So (not even a paraphrase): “Just the facts, ma'am.” Consider a few of them.

1) Men (or boys) have little if any physical advantage over women. Some men have such an advantage.

“Physical advantage” has to be defined. Physiologists often measure “strength” in an arrangement where the subject can push consistently against the force of a spring. (A typical setup is illustrated in the linked paper.) Then that force is divided by the total muscle fiber area. This may be obtained using computed tomography (effectively the gold standard for accuracy).

The result may be called “specific strength,” in newtons per square meter or equivalent. In the experiments just cited, the difference between untrained men and women was not statistically significant: the average for men is 6% greater than for women, but the standard deviation is 21% (women) to 24% (men).

In other words, the variation among individuals of one sex is three to four times greater than the difference between the two. Furthermore, the expected random variation of muscle diameter measurement is close to the 6% variation of specific strength. As the authors state explicitly: “The variation between subjects is such that strength is not a useful predictive index of muscle cross-sectional area.” (And of course vice versa.)

(Strength vs. leg muscle cross-sectional area for men and women (25 each). Not corrected for total body mass; when this is done, the vertical axes are almost identical. From R. Maughan, et al., J. Physiol. 338, 37-49 (1983)

These data relate to slow-motion exertions. What about fast ones? Maximum running speed is determined mostly by weight, height, and the force (called “ground support force”) that the legs apply during each step, which in turn is a function of the total muscle strength. These treadmill measurements show that at the highest speed for each, the men exert only slightly more force (~3%) relative to their body mass.

A great deal of the athletic “gender gap” of roughly 10% certainly comes from different body sizes, but not from intrinsic strength. If “fairness” is the goal, segregation would have to be based on body size, not sex or gender.

2) Higher testosterone does provide a chemical advantage (though not in the way that's popularly believed).

Everyone “knows” about testosterone and its anabolic (muscle-building) effect. It's at the heart of doping, and hence, presumably, of athletic advantage; at least this is the story often told. Because fat-free mass (mostly muscle) in trans athletes typically doesn't decay completely to cisgender female averages, it is often asserted that this testosterone suppression is not “leveling the playing field” between trans- and cisgender women.

Testosterone actually is essential for all people, however, and has many functions. One of them is to control the release of calcium ions. Each of the millions of molecular cross-bridges along each muscle fiber requires one. No calcium: no contraction. Testosterone in male-average physiological concentrations increases calcium levels in proximity to those cross-bridge receptors by several-fold. This happens as fast as a microscope can detect the fluorescent indicator change, in both striated and heart muscle, and it goes away when the hormone goes away.

Fluorescence signal (a marker for released calcium ions) after injection of testosterone in rat myotubules. From M. Estrada, et al., Endocrinology 144, 3586–3597 (2003),

Direct extrapolation from these lab animal observations to humans in active competition is not easy, and technology won't be available to do it soon. However, the expected effect on the known biochemical reactions in muscle cells is consistent with those few percent sex differences that were just described, both for slow and fast exertions. Testosterone affects muscle power, not just mass.

3) Cross-species evidence further underscores how testosterone acts directly (nothing to do with muscle mass).

Why can cheetahs run so much faster than humans? Most studies have focused on physics: muscle fiber type. But chemistry rules again. Unlike humans, it turns out that female cheetahs run faster than males, by about 45% on average (67% for the fastest of each – 100 vs 60 mph). Yet this is not due to muscle mass, because (like humans) they're smaller than males: in one population, 36 ± 5 vs. 43 ± 6 kg.

Measuring hormone concentrations in cheetahs is harder than in athletes. It's done by correlating fecal measurements with blood values under controlled conditions. The result is that female testosterone values are within less than 10% of the males. This number is only for captive animals, but since the speed comparison is also for captives, oranges are being compared to oranges. Since fiber types differ little between sexes, we're left with a very difficult-to-escape conclusion that testosterone concentrations have a profound effect on “athletic ability” of the cheetah, and very likely also the human.

After this short excursion into what many readers may consider arcane and abstruse science, where are we? There is plenty of research yet to come; we're far from knowing all that we'd like about the effects of gender-affirming hormones. And as Erin Reed's recent post underscores, there are many other aspects to consider. But these three observations are definitive: in athletics, transgender women resemble cis women far more than men. I hope they can allay some of the misgivings that trouble those skeptical but sincere bystanders.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent.

A short time ago the UK's Supreme Court issued a decision asserting that transgender women are not women. Though they tried valiantly to say they really hadn't said that (“This does not entail any practical disadvantage”), it didn't take long for the government to begin applying the judgment to its real purpose: vigorously squashing civil rights. Transgender people are now breaking the law if they enter the biologically correct single-sex space in sports clubs, hospital wards and prisons or any publicly accessible toilet, and may not even use public transport without putting themselves in danger of groping by law enforcement.

The publicity highlights ad nauseum the plaintiffs' celebrations as though they represented all women. But counterdemonstrations have also been numerous. No one knows the extent of actual public support. What we do know is the amount of money J.K. Rowling spent on her “plan”: £70,000. For Scotland Women's finances are not public, but they've claimed to have crowdfunded approximately £200,000. Perhaps Rowling wasn't out for vengeance on those who've criticized her transmisia. Perhaps she just had £70,000 lying around in spare change after buying her $150M yacht and thought: what the hell, why not make life miserable for a few hundred thousand people? After all, didn't I create the Death Eater theme?

Rowling is a buffoon (how else could one describe that photo with the cigar?), but the court decision is deadly serious. It dwells repetitiously on the ramifications of discrepant terms such as “biological man,” “acquired gender,” “gender reassignment,” and so on, under a strict presumption of “sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.” (According to which transgender men are women, something the bathroom police have not quite cottoned onto.)

One can very easily become very dispirited or enraged (or both), but neither reaction moves us forward. Transmisic women are not even close to a majority, but neither are we. In between there is a rather large cohort who have little comprehension of what transgender identity is about. Consider the lead comment on this article in Die Zeit analyzing the court's edict:

“I have no idea about this topic – none. I don't know any transgender people or what the problem is. And I don't care. I only know that it doesn't hurt me when they have the same rights as I, and live their lives. ...Let us all live our lives as we want.”

There is good and bad news here. Friendly and accepting, yes, but with a shallow depth of understanding that is potentially easily swayed, and based on the concept of choice, not necessity. And this is a very widespread perspective.

If we are to stem the tide of “eradication” then a large fraction of these lukewarm people must move into the ally camp. Two misconceptions comprise by far the biggest obstacles to this. One is the notion that gender identity is a choice, without which the UK decision collapses completely.

I have covered this topic clearly before. Besides the three review-like papers referenced there, I have assembled twenty-one other high-quality research reports of biological differences between transgender and cisgender people, and this set is far from exhaustive. These studies barely scratch the surface of understanding, and taking practical actions on their basis requires caution. But science is real, to paraphrase someone else.

More convincing still, and free of this qualification, is the observation of self-identified identity discordance at an age before social influence is possible (e.g., at three or earlier). Note that the parents either had virtually no idea of the existence of a transgender condition, or were firmly opposed to its development. There is no “grooming.”

Gender identity is biological. Not understanding it doesn't make it not so.

The British court is equally confused about sex. It is not binary. And we will not have equal rights for all people if we do not recognize equal rights for transgender and intersex people. Human rights include the right to be recognized for whom one is, whoever one is.

Rowling claims to be motivated by fear of being assaulted in a public restroom. The actual facts are well-known here also. For instance: the Police Foundation found 0 instances of sexual assaults by cross-dressed men or transgender women in women’s bathrooms (nationwide) over a four-year period. Gender identity-inclusive public accommodations nondiscrimination ordinances actually decrease the incidence of crime in such places. (There's very little of it altogether, while violence against women in other places is rampant.)

What is one to do in the face of science denial (as the insistence on this phantom danger clearly is)?

Many factors may be relevant, including both individual psychological malfunctions and social identity. Thus science denial, anger, and aggressive intentions may result when symbolic threats endanger the ingroup worldview. Misinformation (ranging from distortions to lies) is a prominent part of it. Ultraright-wing and conspiracy-oriented thinking are common themes.

However, clinically defined mental disturbances likely play a role in many cases. Collective narcissism (“an irrational belief in the greatness of one’s own group, accompanied by a contempt for other groups”), along with vulnerable narcissistic personality, is strongly correlated with a variety of science denial instances.

Deniers of gender reality are the ones driven by a mental illness, not transgender people. We have to effectively communicate this science to those weakly committed skeptics in the middle.

*****

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent.html#/.

A recent article in Haaretz catalyzed some thoughts on this topic. The link should be free, but for those in a hurry: “'what if the antonym of forgetting isn't remembering, but justice?' ...The opposite of forgetting isn't knowing the past, but remaining committed to the duty it requires of us.”

Let's look at that past for transgender people.

Some readers may recognize the name of Harry Benjamin: a seemingly prehistoric figure who used medical terminology to describe “transsexual” people. Indeed, his 1966 book appears rather primitive by modern standards; the blanket misgendering (i.e. transgender women are called “transsexual men,” and vice versa) stands out immediately. But without his sympathetic and non-disparaging analysis, the emergence of today's gender-affirming care would have taken a lot longer; WPATH grew from it.

In the same year, a survey was published in the American Medical Association's psychiatry journal concerning “attitudes toward sex transformation, procedures, transvestism, homosexuality, etc.” 399 replies (a 25 – 40% response rate) came from psychiatrists, urologists, gynecologists and general practitioners. The results: 9% of psychiatrists, 6% of GPs, and 3% of surgeons would have approved gender-confirmation surgery. Such patients were considered “severely neurotic” by over 80% (86% of surgeons). Other characterizations from surgeons: “morally depraved” (14%); “a threat to society” (19%); “needing institutionalization” (11%).

I'll take Dr. Benjamin's outdated language over that.

But that was the environment then. Before Benjamin there was Alfred Kinsey, whose books on sexual behavior were highly popular. What might a person aspiring to understand an inchoate and yet-unnamed sense of gender discordance find there?

“In a letter to Harry Benjamin, ...in some cases, he said, transvestism originated in 'childhood attractions' or 'childhood games,' sometimes encouraged by the mother. In other cases, he related it to 'the individual's physical weakness or weak personality which makes them woo boys as companions and learn the arts of seducing as a female when they are young.' ...Kinsey, despite his sympathy and tolerance, thought that some transsexuals, in particular, were 'neurotic.'”

Well, at least not morally depraved...

But a reader combing libraries in the 1960s for clues to that gender identity malaise would probably not have found even that, because Kinsey published little on the subject. They would most likely have found Havelock Ellis's Psychology of Sex or citations from it, such as:

“Eonism: ...in which the subject more or less identifies himself or herself with the opposite sex, not merely in dress, but in general tastes, in ways of acting, and in emotional disposition. ...It is normal for a man to identify himself with the woman he loves. The Eonist carries that identification too far...” [p. 210]

And so on. I know what they would've found, by the way, because that's just what I did (beginning in 1967, in an army library in Fort Gordon, Georgia). I gave my character in Hanna's Ascent access to Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. But that wasn't even published until 1968, too late for the 1960s seeker.

All this means much more than simply warning of what transmisiacs want to return us to. As Omri Boehm wrote (in the Haaretz article): “Whereas history is written in the third person and claims to be factual; memory can only be told in the first person, singular or plural, thereby calling us to action.”

Facts and exposition (essential though they are) will not get us justice: we need the memory of lived experience. Boehm was talking about the Holocaust, but every denigrated or oppressed group has its own trauma whose memory serves a structurally similar function. The danger we're in today is palpable, and we can combat it far more effectively with palpable experience. But how can people who weren't even alive in the 1960s (let alone before) have it?

By reading. In my Substack-sized essay (“What a Novel can Teach us”) I've explained why the novel, more than memoir and far more than disquisition, can take the reader deeply into the emotions that let them vicariously “be there.” It was written before the catastrophic election; another that came after is here. Stories are remembered far better than lists of facts, and this marketing exhortation has plenty of facts behind it.

Still, can it really help in the five-alarm fire of today's politics? (See last week's post!) Cheerleading exhortations to “keep fighting” are fine, but we need targeted calls to action.

I continue to believe that there is a small but vital middle slice in our political spectrum which can be moved. People there may simply not have had the opportunity to know a transgender person. The impact of indirectly living such a life could be life-changing. And Hanna's Ascent is not an epic – the audio version is a mere ten hours. More than a Substack post, yes. But literature offers other benefits – such as the pleasure of reading. Of course there are other powerful and equally important stories which shouldn't be neglected. This one uniquely encompasses that timeframe that we must remember – and commit to the duty it requires of us.

I doubt that any of my present subscribers are in that middle slice. But you may know someone like that, or someone who knows someone like that. You may know a book club, or a teacher (never mind that it would be banned in half the states today – banned books still get read).

It won't change the world, but it's a step. And we know what the journey of a thousand miles begins with.

(The photo is of the author at ten.)

***

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent!

Two months ago I forswore more personal Substack posts, and not only because they're a microdime a dozen. My goal, ordinarily, is to follow my scientist habits and offer substantive original content here. But these times are not ordinary.

At least 75,017,613 people are wondering what to do right now. Many of them spoke of leaving the U.S. if the dictator-in-waiting was elected. Many of them realized, somewhere along the line, that this is easier said than done.

As a transgender woman, I am only one step below the top of the ladder in Trump's wet dreams of inflicting sadistic pain (immigrants, except perhaps from Norway, are of course at the top, close to Black people to whom he generously extends full inclusion with his hatred of anything DEI). So the existential (carefully chosen word alert) question is: how serious is he, and what is the timeline?

Though only one “Day 1” executive order directly addressed transgender issues, it had far-reaching implications. Besides defining “only two sexes, male and female,” and asserting that gender identity is “false,” “internally inconsistent,” and “disconnected from biological reality,” it formally invalidates all passports of transgender people, disallows their access to public restrooms, and requires federal prisons to incarcerate trans women in men's prisons.

Executive branch actions followed which buttressed this massive PR stunt in more depth, including, for example, invalidation of passports and denial of biologically correct new passports. Court challenges were quickly made, but have not yet been resolved. And despite injunctions, some women are still being held in men's prisons as of a month ago.

The existing legislature will offer no relief, and hopes for meaningful change in 2026 are most likely flights of fancy. The crucial question is whether the courts will be obeyed. For this, it is instructive to look at the number one issue on the Trump agenda: immigration.

Hundreds of people who appeared to be immigrants with tattoos (something gang members have, like a great many young adults today), were recently deported without any legal process to a prison “black hole” in El Salvador. Now, despite compelling evidence that many of them were certainly not gang members, the regime says it can do nothing – it lacks jurisdiction over El Salvador.

How convenient.

Space here doesn't permit discussing this in the detail it deserves. One has to jump to the chase: it means that the Trump regime does not consider itself bound by the laws of the U.S., and will not hesitate to “shoot first and answer questions later.” [In “breaking news,” the courts overseeing this case remain firm in their demand for return. But regime compliance remains in doubt.]

The assault on gender-related rights is broad, deep, and increasingly far-reaching. But the most life-critical issues can be put into a fairly short list:

1) Can we get the healthcare we need (and have legal rights to)?

2) If we find ourselves detained (those “bathroom bills” are not limited to students, and police are remarkably easy to displease at demonstrations), will it be in a physically safe space?

3) If these two conditions are not met, and leaving the country is the only way to attain that safety, will we be allowed to?

Predicting the unpredictable Mr. Trump is, of course, difficult. The presently lower position of transgender rights on his agenda could change quickly. What the immigration story shows is that he and his minions consider legal underpinnings superfluous. For example, they can simply void every passport that they believe doesn't correspond to birth records. They have no need of actual proof, any more than they felt obliged to identify gang tattoos on the immigrants (or even whether they were immigrants). The same applies to potential denial of hormone treatments, or simply our free existence.

One should not conflate probability with possibility. The former is murky, but the latter is no longer in doubt; the trans community in the U.S. is now living with something akin to the doomsday clock. To be sure, the latter pertains to more portentous consequences. But Goldfinger notwithstanding, we only live once, and that life is seriously threatened.

So: what to do? Most will, either by preference or necessity, face the beast here, in solidarity with supportive colleagues, despite the forbidding difficulties these threats impose. Resources severely constrain emigration (even from red state to blue).

Some who are able, however, may see value in following the example of Willy Brandt from the Nazi era and moving to a safer place from which to fight more effectively. In 1944, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg discouraged a junior colleague from joining his plot to assassinate Hitler, arguing that a sacrifice of one's life was justified only if it had a high likelihood of achieving something important. Whether we agree with this moral reasoning or not, it is the sort of decision that we are being forced to confront in the U.S. today.

What recent events have made clear is that we will probably have no warning of the regime's policy changes, and no practical recourse against its manifestly unconstitutional actions. There is simply no denying that ticking clock. Our decisions won't change history for the planet, but they will change our own. Each of us has to make the choice that is right for ourselves.

This Substack is free (though tips are welcome!) because I want the information to get out, and I want people to buy my novel, which is relevant and needed as never before. It's also good literature and a good read! Please check it out at https://www.bedazzledink.com/hannas-ascent.

The intensity of the ongoing assault on transgender people seems to leave little time for thoughts about fundamentals. When the bullets are flying, dodging them is all that matters, right?

Wrong. If we're not fighting the right battle, we're wasting effort at best; at worst – well, worse.

Several of the transmisiac-in-chief's infamous executive orders, along with proposed laws and a blizzard of political invective, contain the seemingly obligatory phrase “biological men” as a synonym for transgender woman. Diehard haters aren't going to be convinced by any scientific arguments, and I have no intention of trying. I do, however, see value in clarifying some ambiguities in the language we use ourselves, because they seriously weaken our position.

Without the slightest ambiguity: transgender identity is a biological state. Its origins needn't be fully elucidated nor completely specified to know without controversy that some children have reported their perception of transgender identity at an age when social influence or parental “pushing” could not possibly have affected it (or was strongly opposed). That's enough to prove (yes, prove) the point. Perhaps there are two different origins, but that one definitely exists: QED.

The hypothesis of a second origin, lacking even suggestive evidence, faces a formidable criterion of scientific practice: a revolutionary theory is rejected unless there are serious anomalies that the standard one cannot explain. The two citations just given are but an illustration of what the vast majority of transgender people report as adults, even when social opprobrium makes accepting their feelings into a lifelong struggle. The anomalies simply can't be found.

We must clearly apprehend the crucial distinction between identity and perception of identity. Anecdotes of “detransitioning,” implying that the “transition” was a false understanding (and further implying that gender identity can be “decided”) are well known. Coles is not the first; the courageous pioneer Lynn Conway chronicled some already in the previous century. Inadequate self-examination is nearly always to be found. In more than a third of the cases examined in one recent study, the reversal was due to social disparagement, while among the very small fraction of “true” detransitioners, the difficulty of reconciling social expectations with self-understanding is prominent. It's not easy to “know thyself” when your society screams at you that you're an abomination.

Some aspects of one's sense of identity do, indeed, evolve. When I was seven, I had above-average mathematical skills and enjoyed using them. Then in college I rejected all connection with math and identified as a student of language and literature. A few years later I was taking graduate mathematical physics at Stanford. Now I'm writing novels. So am I verbal or mathematical? The answer is both and neither; the genetic foundation interacts with social demand and influence.

Many people who don't understand gender seemingly believe it is similar. Here's a news flash from someone who's been through both struggles: it's not.

A psychological quantity that is genetically or epigenetically grounded with some environmentally-driven variation in expression will have a consistency that is not to be found in one with low deterministic content. Opponents of transgender reality fixate on a few individual cases of “regret” or “detransition” (which are not the same thing), and then ignore the presence and effect of external factors outside the individual's control. Contrast that with changes over time of self-concepts such as religious identity, for example. There is no comparable consistency in different cases, and changes are driven almost entirely by internal deliberation.

The word “transitioning,” so ubiquitous as a description of what should be called “coming out” (in very close analogy to the experience of lesbians and gays), is not only misleading but causes serious harm. We do not transition our gender! Our external appearance and behavior typically undergoes transition (differing greatly from one person to another) when we come out, because we find old practices no longer match the identity we finally came to terms with (or, for the fortunate children, recognized quickly). Certainly our thoughts change; call that a transition if you must. But conflating these two processes (discovering one's identity and giving it a comfortable expression) provides transmisiacs ammunition to call it a choice, which is then labeled “non-biological” (and subject to prohibition by law).

So once again from the top: Being transgender is a biological condition, and gender identity is every bit as “biological” as sex. Attempts to define it out of existence have the same meaning as defining the number pi to equal 3. The papers cited above are only a sample of the accumulating physical evidence, although we won't soon see Western blots or MRI scans defining gender, because the correlate of those physical observations is purely psychological.

How psychology relates to physiology brings us to another linguistic misuse: mental health. But that's a topic for another post. What's important here is to reclaim the language of science that transmisiacs have attempted to steal. Neither our existence nor our biological reality are allowable topics for debate. And every journalist who writes about the political storm should be as clear about that as they are about whether Sharpies can change the course of hurricanes.

The featured image shows the Inferior Frontal Occipital Fasciculus in sagittal (a) and transverse (b) orientation, using a type of MRI known as diffusion tensor imaging. Such images can be analyzed to show differences in brain composition between transgender and cisgender people. From J. H. Heesewijk et al., https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0033291721005547.

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There was a bit of something more than sour levity in Donald's inane blooper last Tuesday in his “State of the Failing Feeble Genius” speech before Congress. That he wouldn't know a transgenic mouse from a transimpedance amplifier is not news, but it is news (to me) that he either had no speechwriter participation or that the latter people are equally ignorant. More probable still is that they were there, knew damn well what they wrote, and gleefully perceived that their audience would not. Which, I will argue, places them in an ethically scarier place than Dr. Mengele, who was at least open about his evil intentions.

There is nevertheless some value in a closer look at this transcendentally absurd display of linguistic gaslighting. We can understand their behavior much better with that charming word “transmogrified,” which stood out from the thousands of other potential “trans” options. Its first appearance in English literature seems to be in “The Amorous Prince,” by Mrs. Aphra Behn (London, 1671).

“GUILLIAM Why, forsooth, what do you intend to pass for: a girl, or a boy?

CLORIS Why, what I seem to be. Will it not do?

GUILLIAM Yes, yes, it may do, but I know not what. I wish love would transmogrify me to a girl now.”

We've descended a long ways indeed since that precious piece; today it means, according to Webster's, “to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect.” That seems an apt description of what the Mump has done, and not only to life-saving science.

During the last several weeks the lives of transgender people have been marked mainly by a struggle for survival, which is not becoming more optimistic. Comments associated with such gloom frequently embody a simple refrain: Why? Whence comes this hate?

Logic isn't going to tell us, and a meaningful psychological analysis would take a book. Yet it can be distilled, and has been – by a German comedian:

“Why does Alice Schwarzer [a prominent anti-trans journalist] stand with TERFs, AfD-fascists and Nazis with respect to trans people? Because, ladies and gentlemen, trans people through their very existence fracture their tiny world. Because trans people have to follow their own rules in order to find their place in society, and these rules are quite different and individual, and this simply won't fit into the thought processes of TERFs and Nazis, because they have it easy and can simply believe in anything – in Alice Schwarzer or in God or in Germany or in anything else. Only when trans people are false can the von Storchs and Schwarzers be right.” [Jan Böhmermann, Dec 2022 - you can get an English transcript from the CC mode]

Only when trans people are false can the fascists be right – it has never been said better.

An extended note about attitudes in Germany is timely given the recent report of a consortium of scientific medical societies there regarding gender-affirming healthcare. This report didn't spring from the clear blue sky; a preliminary version was on the web a year ago, and was described as a “seven year effort,” achieving a >95% consensus among 27 faculties. After noting that puberty blockers are forbidden in the greater European area only in Russia, they note that the USA is moving in that direction, aligned only with the AfD in Germany. Some company to share...

The seismic political rift between the U.S. and nearly all of the EU has ignited a discussion of “who now is leader of the free world?” The latter body has neither the unity nor the currently-organized resources to fill this role, but its larger members are already coalescing into a new structure whose weight may be up to the task. Whether any of us leaves this country during the Mump storm for their own safety or not, we are well-advised to be aware that it has lost its leading position, and will not regain it during the lifetime of any adult alive today. That has profound implications for what we should be discussing, yet it's hard to see past just modestly slowing the burglary going on downstairs.

Last weekend I attended a semi-annual gathering of scholars and alumnae of the Boettcher Foundation, which gives all-expenses scholarships to fifty (forty in my day) students with both outstanding academic records and stellar indications of citizenship and public service potential. Speaker after speaker related stirring stories of what they had done with those ideals; some of them were still in college! As the next-oldest alumna there, all I could do was sit in awe and applaud. More signs of hope.

My advice: read that article in Die Zeit (your browser will translate it for you, and if I did it right, it won't have a paywall). Those who don't regularly see the world outside our borders may be enlightened, and a bit better prepared for what's coming. And experience a bit more of that old definition of transmogrification and less of the new one.

(Note about the featured image: this mouse embryo was given the genetic code for expression of a red fluorescent protein, useful for understanding muscle myogenesis. Such transgenic techniques are widely applied to the study of dementia - a fact Trump might want to consider. From Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol 2012;4:a008342.