Leaning way too hard into the King gimmick

Essentially just a vent blog for transandrophobia at this point. Very inactive.

[dumbass-transboy]

If you are not a trans man or in active community with trans men in real life, you cannot comment on the lived experiences of trans men. Full stop.

[luckyladylily]

So I have a point to make, but I think it is going to take a bit of a journey to get there. Lets start with a quote from Whipping Girl (Julia Serano).

When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny.

I think it is important to understand that for many trans women, Whipping Girl is formative. It is hard to overstate how important of a work it is to how trans femme people as a whole understand and view the world. With that in mind.

That quote is predicated on a false assumption. The best current data is that violence is directed across trans gender identities fairly equally. That is, trans men and non binary people suffer about as much violence as trans women. However, up until recently almost all studies of violence against trans people have been focused on trans women. Trans men and nonbinary people have been critically under represented and violence against them critically unreported. And yet many trans women continue to assume that trans women are the most targeted gender identity, largely because of an over reliance on a twenty year old manifesto that made a very strong claim based on bad data (which was the best data available at the time).

This is not a Julia Serano hit piece. I think Whipping Girl is fine. But I also think that Whipping Girl is not perfect. There are ideas and statements I personally disagree with. There are ideas and statements in there that are objectively wrong, like the above quote. And there is a least one statement I simply find indefensible.

While trans people on the female-to-male (FTM) spectrum face discrimination for breaking gender norms (i.e., oppositional sexism), their expressions of maleness or masculinity themselves are not targeted for ridicule—to do so would require one to question masculinity itself.

This statement does not line up with what I have observed. I have observed trans men's masculinity being ridiculed, though not in the same way as trans women's femininity is ridiculed. She is wrong. I think this is an ignorant statement made by a trans woman motivated to overlook discrimination because she was pushing a particular narrative and therefore failed to recognize discrimination as it is experienced by another group, assuming that because it is not like the discrimination she experiences it does not exist. I believe this statement is indefensible. It was ignorant then, it is ignorant now.

Again, this is not a hit piece. I don't think she is a bad person, I don't think we need to throw out all of Whipping Girl. Lots of people make mistakes like this, it is an occupational hazard of making these kind of strong theories and statements.

But how many trans women take this statement as gospel and build their understanding of trans masculinity around Julia Serano's dismissive, factually incorrect, and at times even ignorant statements?

And this is Julia Serano's Whipping Girl. One of the most respected trans feminine texts there is. If we should be able to trust any text, it is Whipping Girl.

And that's the point. It is dangerous to view these sorts of texts as objective sources of information. And it's not just trans women and whipping girl, I am just most familiar with texts relating to trans women because I am one.

The queer community has a problem where we view authority figures in the movement as sources of objectively correct information. And when you do this eventually some authority figure you respect is going to say something that's ignorant and wrong and you will adopt that incorrect idea.

You have to be critical of your sources. Especially sources that speak to you on an emotional level.

[yearst]

Do you know where someone could find the best current data about violence against trans people? Because every time I try to look, I find data that says trans women are significantly more at risk of violence than trans men.

I am not trying to kick the hornets nest here, but if you’re telling people to question their sources and then making a big claim without any links to data… people are going to question where you got that.

[luckyladylily]

So let's start with a critically flawed, if well meaning, source, to demonstrate why you have to be careful and the type of misinformation that is extremely easy to happen. The human rights campaign is one of the first sources people are going to come up against here. They also horribly mangle the data in ways that are, frankly, shocking. I'm pretty sure that they didn't have anyone qualified to do statistical analysis look over their claims. Maybe not even anyone with basic training.

So the hrc bases a lot of their claims on identified homicide numbers. Which, of course, introduces massive selective bias. Using a pool of 372 identified trans victims of homicide, the hrc claims that 83% of trans victims of homicide were women.

The problem being that identified victims are not the same as all victims. Especially when you are comparing a known highly visible demographic to demographics known for low visibility.

The discrepancy in those claims is subtle to those who are not trained in data analysis, but it is such a basic and major error as to call into question the ability of the HRC to do effective data analysis at all. It's classic survivorship bias, I'm sure you've seen the story of the WW2 planes with bullet holes, it's that sort of thing.

And it is true that all sources agree that trans women (especially black trans women) are far more often identified. We have more names of murdered trans women than other demographics. You might be forgiven thinking this means trans women suffer the most violence.

But competent data analysis paints a different picture.

Lets look at "Global Burden of Violence Against Transgender and Gender-Diverse Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis".

The first thing you will notice is that this source spends a huge amount of time going into exact methodology, what data was used, the source, what data was not used and why, and how and why it was analyzed in the way it was. This is what competent data analysis looks like. Lets pull some critical quotes from the source:

"Disproportionate violence burdens are experienced by transgender and gender-diverse people who are multiply marginalized.13 For example, transphobia, racism, and classism intersect to compound violence exposure for transgender women of color.14,15 According to the Trans Murder Monitoring project, 94% of the 321 identified transgender and gender-diverse people who were murdered in 2023 were transgender women or transgender feminine people, and the majority were Black, women of color, and engaged in sex work.16 Such disparities suggest the importance of considering intersecting identities in violence research and intervention strategies.13"

You will notice they acknowledge the data on identified victims is almost entirely trans women. What they do not do is suggest that this means trans women are the primary victims of anti trans violence, instead drawing the conclusion that intersecting identities are a key factor. This is important because of the results of the actual data of properly conducted data gathering. Here is their conclusion about violence across trans gender identities: "Our meta-analyses did not show significantly different levels of violence globally among transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary adults."

"While we would have included homicide, we identified no studies that reported its prevalence." The first part is pretty plain. There is not a statistically significant difference in violence levels between trans identities, according to the data that was collected in a scientific manner.

However, homicide data has been completely neglected to be collected in a scientific manner (likely due to the difficulty of doing so). Instead reports are anecdotal - that is, we identify trans homicide victims after the fact, which means it is entirely based on demographic visibility. The source does suggest that it seems likely that black trans women in particular are disproportional victims of homicide, but no real conclusion can be drawn without further studies.

Given that general violence against trans people seems fairly flat across identity, and that intersectional factors seem to play a critical part in violence against trans people, I would suggest that anecdotally gathered evidence is the source of the discrepancy. Between a demographic known for hyper visibility (trans women), and demographics known for being practically invisible (other trans identities), it draws a very obvious picture of why the anecdotal evidence looks the way it does.

As a side note and purely my own opinion, I think there is a tendency for white trans women to claim the violence experienced by trans women of color, especially black trans women, and report it as general violence against trans women. But the data suggests that race (and class, which are often intertwined) play such a massive role in violence against trans women that I feel it is honestly kind of racist how the trans women community so often glosses over it, if it is even discussed at all. The simple fact is that a white trans woman like myself is much, much less likely to experience violence than a black trans woman, and that is a key part of the discussion.

Getting back to data, there is one more important piece I want to highlight. Specifically, how data has been gathered, and on who.

"Of the 94 studies, nearly all (90 studies [96%]) included transgender women, whereas 49% (46 studies) included transgender men, and 37% (35 studies) included nonbinary adults"

This is a massive discrepancy in visibility. It seems almost laughable that a study would include trans women specifically but not bother with trans men, a staggering display of systematic bias against trans men, and yet it appears that half of available studies that passed the minimum bar of quality to be included in the meta analysis did just that. And nonbinary people have it even worse. It is no wonder that violence against trans demographics other than trans women is less well understood and under reported in anecdotal analysis. Even the people actively looking for violence against trans people are heavily biasing their studies towards discovering violence against trans women.

I could go on for a long, long time breaking down this one meta analysis, but I think you get the point, and in particular how important proper data analysis is. The simple fact of the matter is many "reputable" sources are clearly not conducting proper data analysis when breaking down anti trans violence by demographic and making wildly incorrect claims because of it.

I have one more source I will be brief with. "Gender Identity Disparities in Criminal Victimization: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017–2018". The critical quote for our purpose:

"Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1000 persons, respectively) than did cisgender women (23.7 per 1000 persons; OR = 3.88; 90% CI = 0, 8.55) and cisgender men (19.8 per 1000 persons; OR = 5.98, 90% CI = 2.09, 9.87), but there were no differences between transgender men and women (Δ = 21.4; SE = 68.7; P = .76)."

You will note that the raw data shows higher violence against trans men, but with proper data analysis it is revealed to not be statistically significant. This is something you have to be careful of, there are tools experts use for data analysis that reveal that obvious conclusions from raw numbers are not always correct.

There are more sources out there, but I am not going to bother tracking them down. It was not hard to find these sources, these two major sources I found through simple internet searches on the first page (duck duck go, in my case). I don't know why you had problems, for me it was as simple as searching for something like "trans violence by gender identity" and looking for actual studies that talk about methodology.

This is a skill people really need to develop, but its not something I know how to teach. I personally think the queer community on tumblr is very over reliant on being spoon fed sources, and on top of that is really terrible at evaluating sources. I think it is genuinely quite likely that most trans people go straight to the HRC page, see their big bold graphics proclaiming that 83% of trans homicide victims are trans women, and don't even consider that it could be bad information.

[transandroblog]

I've given a run down on what a p-value is multiple times by now because of how important it is to interpreting data and doesn't require you to critically think about the methods used to draw that value (which is a lot more complicated and varied)

So uh

P-Value, Confidence Interval, & Sample Size General Understanding

Tldr:

The p value shows how likely your difference in data is up to chance or not.

The confidence interval is what p falls outside of. A confidence interval of 95% will have a p of .05

The sample size matters because a larger one allows for more variance and human weirdness than a smaller one. Usually the minimum for a sample size has to be 30 participants or samples for each compared group.

Within scientific research and peer reviewed studies a p value is significant if it less than or equal to .05, .01, or .001.

Meaning it falls outside of what's expected to happen 95%, 99%, or 99.9% of the time.

While in grad school I was taught that a lot of p =.05 probably means some of the results are still likely up to chance. We're really meant to be strict with this stuff.

The expected result is the one the group is being compared to. So if we take ops cited comparison of violence towards trans people compared to cis people, we are seeing how far off trans people are from the cis normal.

You'll also see that the p value isn't considered significant by typical standards but is still called significant in the review. The rational thing to do here is to see if there's better data available. What a researcher would do is take that as a hint for future exploration, being the better data you're looking for.

A significant statistical finding only gives evidence to a claim, it doesn't prove one.

Same with finding a statistically insignificant finding. It doesn't disprove the claim, it just isn't evidence for it. Evidence may still be found in the future.

Long Version Under the Cut

The p in p-value stands for probability. The probability for the result found to be up to chance based on how far it is from what would be expected to happen. I'm including confidence interval because that's the thing p needs to fall out of to be significant.

Usually whats expected is the two conpared groups are the same. Best practice is generally to have a two sided calculation rather than one sided because its a higher bar to clear. One sided also only checks if a number is beyond the normal as a negative difference or positive difference, not both at the same time. So not only is it harder to clear but it's including more possibilities to fall outside the confidence range/interval.

Example time:

You flip a coin 100 times and record how much it lands on heads or tails. You expect that it will be 50/50 based on prior rigorous coin flip data.

After wasting your time flipping a coin 100 times you end up with it landing on heads 54 times and on tails 46 times.

You wouldn't use that as evidence to say the coin is lopsided because it's normal for a 50/50 shot to variate. If we were going to run it through a simple test (the kind of test is outside the scope of this lesson) we'd likely get a non significant p value along with a pretty limited confidence interval.

If we were to actually dig into it, most of the time when you flip a coin 100 times, it'll come up heads 40-60 times. Meaning we can't assume anything is up with the specific coin. The confidence interval would be 68% and the p-value would be .32. If you know how percentages work you'll notice that p, the probability of this happening, is 100-68=32 percentage wise and 1.0-.68 = .32 decimal wise. P is what falls outside the confidence interval.

We would have a lot more questions if the coin landed on heads 82 times and tails 18 times. We'd think something is up with that coin, the way we flipped it, or where we flipped it.

Statistically that amount of heads in 100 flips falls outside a 99% confidence interval and would have a p of less than or equal to .01. We can be pretty fucking sure something is going on outside of the normal coin flip.

We could assume that the coin is heavier on the tails side, we could assume the one who did the flipping did it in a way that altered the outcome, we can get crazy and assume the laws of physics are breaking down. The result doesn't prove any of those things. It only provides evidence of them.

This is why, outside of making tenure, researchers do the same study a little differently multiple times. It strengthens the evidence.

Its why op points out the deliberate wording, coming to a sweeping conclusion for what your data means is unscientific. There can be plenty of other reasons why the result was gotten. This also goes for statistically insignificant findings not disproving the claim, the claim may be supported in the future.

Lastly, notice how I used 100 instead of 10 but somehow was able to remember the p and CI at the top of my head? Well, I wasn't, I was lazy and pulled up the distribution of a coin flipped ten times.

10 vs 100 coin flips would be the sample size. 100 coin flips allow for more oddities than only ten. 52/48 you reach the limit with 1 off flip with 10 and get a statistically significant finding of p = .05 with 7 heads and 3 tails.

Now imagine that kind of shit with humans who we have multiple fields of study to figure us out because of how complex we are. The more coin flips the better. Its why the US National Transgender Survey is so important and tries to get as many responses as possible.

I don't know why I wrote all of that when I could've just linked something. That took hours. Oh well!

[dumbass-transboy]

This isnt like, an attack just clarifying something

What do you by if you don't know trans men in real life? Like how do you define real life?

I mean in person, people that you see in meatspace at least semi-regularly. The internet, especially social media, distorts what are actually real problems and what issues people materially face in their day to day lives, so if you don't interact with trans men in your day to day without the barrier of social media distorting your perceptions, you shouldn't be talking as an authority on what trans men experience in real life because you don't know and you have not seen.

My transmasc friends I make on the internet? I love them, they're incredibly important to me and I wouldn't be where I am without them, but I cannot comment on the material conditions that they face in real life because I fundamentally cannot know the extent of it. My transgender roommates, who are transmasc, transfem, and transneutral? I know intimately the hardships they face in everyday life because I'm often there or I know the people/systems involved personally. That's the difference.

[dumbass-transboy]

I think we need to put white people cosplaying anime characters up on a shelf for a little bit. Until white people can treat Asian people like actual full human beings I think we need to actually crack down on white people cosplaying Asian characters and fetishizing Asian aesthetics. Until white cosplayers can stop killing Black cosplayers and sexually harassing Asian cosplayers they shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt. This includes the fucking DROVES of white trans people who choose anime character names, it is racist and I’m TIREDDDD of pretending it’s not

[dumbass-transboy]

It honestly amazes me how much of medicine, especially trans medicine in the U.S., we owe to transgender men.

Dr. James Barry, of course, was one of the handful of doctors who pioneered handwashing in the medical field, especially in surgery.

Reed Erickson inherited his father’s fortune in the 60s and used it to almost single-handedly fund early trans healthcare and advocacy in the U.S.

Michael Dillon, navy surgeon turned Buddhist monk, was the first person to receive gender affirming bottom surgery (phalloplasty) AND performed the first gender affirming bottom surgery for a transgender woman (orchiectomy).

[elierlick]

A quiet trans man, Robert Allen (1914-1997) was never the type to make headlines. However, his 1957 marriage was front-page news. He transitioned in 1943 and was among the first in the UK allowed to legally change sex.

Allen published his autobiography in 1954, “But for the Grace: The True Story of a Dual Existence.” There is contradictory reporting on Robert – if he was intersex or simply found a sympathetic doctor. Regardless, he lived a long, happy life and shouldn’t be forgotten. I restored and colorized these photos to celebrate his life.

[dumbass-transboy]

incel

lmao

[dumbass-transboy]

Check your settings that could be the reason is not going up in searches

I tried, I couldn't find any setting in there that would have taken me off searches 😭 It's whatever though I've been using Tumblr much less lately

[ganondorf]

i think this captures the defining pathology of the collective social media psyche right now. we are in the thrall of people who are wantonly cruel but who also demand to be coddled at all times in every way

[64mpg]

anon who seems to be under the impression that you have had extensive PR training because you have a post with more than 10k notes would like to ask you a bad faith question about the current state of the world

[dumbass-transboy]

Say it with me now: your theoretical view of the world does not negate material reality

[dumbass-transboy]

Anyone can be a misogynist whether or not they grew up as a woman and whether or not they are a woman now. Trans men and trans women both experience misogyny on top of transphobia, transmisogyny, and transandrophobia. This has to be a baseline understanding we all have.

[dumbass-transboy]

@ascendantoatmeal Trans women and transfeminists have made it abundantly clear that they do not want transgender men using transmisogyny to describe our experiences. We’re respecting their wishes.

[dumbass-transboy]

Why can trans men never talk amongst ourselves in our own spaces about our problems without other groups dogpiling us saying that we’re stealing space from people who need it and should make our own posts? Why can we not talk about trans men without trans women’s issues being used as a cudgel against us without any actual care for the trans women that are being talked about? It’s just disheartening.

[papercranesandpride]

I remember years ago, long enough ago that I was still using either Tiktok or Instagram regularly, because that's where I saw this, long enough ago that unfortunately I do not remember the username, I saw an older trans woman responding to a comment asking "how come we see trans women from your generation, but never trans men?" And her response was simple. "Unfortunately, it's because most of them are dead." Between lack of safe and legal abortions (which, hey, look what's an issue again), the HIV/AIDs crisis (which still is lacking in approved treatments for trans men, and they're still likely to be denied PrEP/PEP even when they should be eligible as sexually active queer men), and how many of them chose to take their own lives after being forced into marriages and other women's roles, a lot of the trans men that should be elderly right now did not make it.

And now, when I find myself making the mistake of going on Instagram, I get to see trans men themselves talking about how historically, trans men didn't do anything for the community, and so we need to step up now. Which, first of all, that isn't true, but second of all, if trans men's contributions are lesser, that makes a lot of sense if we listen to that trans woman talking about the trans men she was in community with back in the day. It's very hard to advance the trans cause if you're not alive.

Anyway. It's a really chilling answer. "Where are all the elderly trans men?" "They're dead." And I just wish more people saw that tiktok and listened to it and really took it to heart, now that we're in the age of "well obviously trans men have it so much easier."

[dumbass-transboy]

I feel like a lot of conversations about the porn industry and how it abuses trans people generally neglects to mention trans men, which isn’t surprising but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

I feel like it’s worth talking about how the vast majority of transmasc porn is detrans kink and how trans men are forced to market themselves as “fakebois” or “pussyboys” and do mostly detrans kink content. Please include trans men in these conversations.

[dumbass-transboy]

You’re in the right place, I have several posts about how the omegaverse is transphobic to transgender men

[riv3rboychaos]

"if you're a birthday boy it's a slur for trans men, if you're a 'normal person' it's a slur for a specific type of trans masc"

same people will argue on and on about how terms like "birthday boy" or "theyfab" "arent slurs theyre just derogatory terms" ... so by your own fucking definition they are slurs

[transfemme-shelterdog]

Hey so you know how people always talk about transmasc erasure? Coming across that paper on Tumblr discourse on transandrophobia reminded me of something.

When I was doing my criminology degree, I went to several professors with several thesis ideas, and all of them were denied. These were all ideas based on transmasculine crime and victimology stats. Every professor shot down every thesis I had on ideas related to transmasc victims of various crimes.

Their reasoning? There's no need for this. This is useless. Nobody is interested in reading about trans men and transmascs being victims of crimes. They wouldn't even let me do my thesis on estimating more accurate stats on transmasculine victims of homicide. Which is an INCREDIBLY important thing!

So yeah. Next time someone talks about how trans men and transmascs aren't victims as much, remember this. Researchers don't want to research this. They won't allow people who want to do so, to do so. I couldn't get anyone to advise me on these papers.