Saw a comment on YouTube somewhere, I forget what video but a short animatic of episode 47 I think, that basically said they headcanon Michael as literally never respecting personal space, that he seems to basically feed on confusion-fear and the “is he flirting? Is he threatening me? Is he just a creep? What is happening” of it all would be a good snack for him
And like yeah. Spot on. Headcanon accepted
That (occasionally) man(-shaped being) does not know what personal space is. He walks by you and puts his hand on your shoulder or head for no reason. You look away for one second and when you look back his face is like four inches away from you. He paces in a circle around you while you’re having a conversation and occasionally stops while standing right behind you just to lean uncomfortably close over your shoulder for no discernible purpose
A single paper on the notion that gender dysphoria can spread among young people helped galvanize an anti-trans movement.
Understanding the theory’s ascent from fringe forums to scientific journals to the halls of Congress helps clarify some of the moral panic and pernicious logic employed to restrict the autonomy and rights of trans people today. It also serves as a vivid example of how questionable science can be weaponized to achieve political goals.
A number of studies on trans youth have taken on “misinformational afterlives,” says TJ Billard, an assistant professor of communications at Northwestern University and executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Among them are four papers published between 2008 and 2013 that have together been used to claim that most children “grow out” of gender dysphoria and opt not to transition. All have been shown to have numerous shortcomings. In some, nearly 40% of young people surveyed did not meet the criteria for the official gender dysphoria diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders edition used at the time. In two, researchers classified some subjects as having detransitioned—or reversed their transition—purely on the basis of whether a parent or third party said it happened. A 2018 study found that three of the papers labeled those who had stopped responding to researchers as detransitioners; and in one, a subject who identified as nonbinary was classified as detransitioning.
“There’s a wealth of bad science that is out there, and this science doesn’t stay in journals,” Billard says. Parents unfamiliar with trans issues, who don’t understand gender-affirming health care and don’t have the expertise to read the studies themselves, often fall under its sway.
... When Littman took up the question, she decided to survey parents, who she felt would be easier to reach than trans youths themselves. In her Methods section, she writes that “to maximize the chances of finding cases meeting eligibility criteria”—meaning youths who suddenly became gender dysphoric, according to their parents—she turned to three websites: 4thwavenow.com, a “community of people who question the medicalization of gender-atypical youth”; transgendertrend.com, which says it’s concerned about “the unprecedented number of teenage girls suddenly self-identifying as ‘trans’”; and youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org, a now-private website that was “concerned about the current trend to quickly diagnose and affirm young people as transgender.”
The results were in line with what one might expect given those sources: 76.5% of parents surveyed “believed their child was incorrect in their belief of being transgender.” More than 85% said their child had increased their internet use and/or had trans friends before identifying as trans. The youths themselves had no say in the study, and there’s no telling if they had simply kept their parents in the dark for months or years before coming out. (Littman acknowledges that “parent-child conflict may also explain some of the findings.”)
Arjee Restar, now an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, didn’t mince words in her 2020 methodological critique of the paper. Restar noted that Littman chose to describe the “social and peer contagion” hypothesis in the consent document she shared with parents, opening the door for biases in who chose to respond to the survey and how they did so. She also highlighted that Littman asked parents to offer “diagnoses” of their child’s gender dysphoria, which they were unqualified to do without professional training. It’s even possible that Littman’s data could contain multiple responses from the same parent .... But politics is blind to nuances in methodology. And the paper was quickly seized by those who were already pushing back against increasing acceptance of trans people.
... Many people who are citing Littman’s work probably haven’t even read the study or seen the correction, Billard says: “People are citing a Reddit post in which somebody invoked the idea of Littman and her research.” Littman agrees with this characterization. “It boggles my mind how people are comfortable holding forth on topics that they haven’t actually read papers [about],” she says.
... Lawmakers in more than 25 states have introduced anti-trans bills during 2022 legislative sessions. Politicians writing such legislation have plenty of questionable studies, partisan doctors, and associations that lobby against transgender rights to draw on. Littman’s ROGD study is often a go-to. The Coalition for the Advancement & Application of Psychological Science wrote in 2021 that many of the “over 100 bills under consideration in legislative bodies across the country that seek to limit the rights of transgender adolescents” are “predicated on the unsupported claims advanced by ROGD.”
I've been telling me to send me the articles she reads to make her understand that she is mostly reading desinformation.
Yet she persists in being scared for my life if i transition, but like, chill it's not that deep, yeah getting a surgery is dangerous, but girl you used to smoke remember. and people left you alone, i'm sure most even smoked with you. so i'll pick my dangers just like you did.
