A sub for "scientific skepticism." Scientific Skepticism is about combining knowledge of science, philosophy, and critical thinking with careful analysis to help identify flawed reasoning and deception.
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
Transphobes talk about regret as if it's unique to gender affirming care. All surgery carries risk of regret. I've heard that as many as one in five patients regret having a knee replacement surgery. I don't hear anyone clamoring to ban knee replacements.
"do you care about regret rates for surgeries, or just regret rates for surgeries when trans people are involved" is a common response i use if i encounter this talking point.
I care about incorrect comparisons being done in a subreddit about skepticism.
You can't compare methodology for regret A in which lack of reporting follow-up is categorized as no regret with model B in which only actual follow-up included & follow-up was included in the medical process.
You want to go do this anti-skeptical behaviour on the rest of the internet fine, but here no you need to actually critical thinking.
I care about this community getting taken over by anti-skeptical zealots.
Trans or not, you can't just bulldozer over methodical & logical flaws while still being a skeptic.
My favorite example always is when my state legislature banned gender affirming care for minors, they had more than 10 people show up to speak out against banning care for minors to the committee hearings while the only person they could find to come for banning care was flown in from out of state. The only person they could find was someone who basically goes around the country to speak out against gender affirming care for minors. I know it’s somewhat anecdotal, but this is the case in many of the states who have done this.
Hey, same state!
The bill in question is going up for debate sometime next week, so it's a good time to bother your senator if you haven't recently.
Nope, not the same state..sorry…this bill passed over a year ago.
😶 well. If I had a nickel...
Remember, it's cool and fun and good to cyberbully your local representative!
It was either Chloe Brockman or Charlie Mosely. It's always one of those two.
Chloe Brockman…that’s who it was…just a grifter.
She's not as bad as Mosely, but it's always one of the two of them.
I’ve had numerous surgeries including two knee surgeries, one hip surgery, and two laparoscopies. Plus my top surgery. Literally all surgeries come with pros and cons.
I can absolutely think of some cons from my top surgery - I had to deal with a seroma while healing, I lost sensation in my armpit, I have a keloid scar in that same armpit, and I think if I did it again I would do it without grafts. But the pros of the surgery massively outweigh those cons. I have a literal weight off my chest.
I also recently had a meniscectomy on my knee. I have some chronic tightness in the IT band there now and it’s limited my squatting and running a bit. But the pros massively outweigh the cons because the torn meniscus would flare up and make me unable to walk if I rolled over in bed the wrong way.
All medical procedures have their pluses and minuses but because it’s GeNdEr for some reason it’s suddenly bad and scary.
People are more likely to regret getting a heart transplant than gender affirming surgery
People are more likely to regret wisdom tooth removal than gender affirming surgery
People are more likely to regret going to college than gender affirming surgery.
I have no regerts
People are more likely to regret getting married than gender affirming surgery
Is this a joke or are there published studies? If it’s a joke it really should be studied.
What is the rate of regret of not getting wisdom teeth removed?
What’s the rate of regret for not getting the heart surgery?
Curiousity: source?
Also important to note: trans people may regret their surgery because… shitty people bully and harass them for being trans and/or getting gender affirming care, aka bigotry. Thats not really applicable to most other surgeries.
The regret rate is ~0.5%, and iirc about 75% of those who regret it do so due to harassment and bigotry.
Compare that to cases of regretting breast reconstruction following cancer. It's 21%. Truly cosmetic procedures can have rates as high as 50%.
Exactly. The double standard is incredibly blatant.
1 in 5 regret rate for joint affirming care.
My nuts regretted my vasectomy for like 2 weeks while I recovered.
My nuts regretted even less time when they were ganked for a gender affirming procedure.
I feel like it's as simple as who am I or anyone else to come between a doctor and their patient? If they can do that what stops them from doing it to literally anyone? "Oh the Lord says the gangrene is actually healing the leg. They may regret not having a leg if they survive... " Madness.
I regret downloading Reddit, yet here I am.
Ugh. This.
I’ve been trying to tell people we need to ban knee replacements for like 30 years now! Not hip replacements though, I’ll probably need those in a few years.
^^^ This ^^^
Sums it up perfectly!
actually the data in this study is crap because they only got responses from a small percentage of people who had gender surgery. The vast majority were not followed up with. It also only looked at regret shortly after surgery, As is the case with many of the questions around this issue, there is not good thorough data.. No one can claim there is.
Do you think most studies include everyone who has ever had a surgery? I've never been asked about regret for my joint surgeries, does that mean we don't gave good data on regret rates for them?
What matters is that the studies inclusion criteria is similar if you are comparing surgeries.
In this case, they aren't.
The GAS regret methodology includes no response as no regret. None of the other studies it's being compared against do this.
It's either a mistake or borderline fraud.
Were you part of a study when you had the surgery?
Well in one example your knee is fixed and in the other example your penis is gone. I think that's a different kind of regret
Got into an argument with a guy who brought up the "high" rate of de-transitioning and I pointed out the actual data which says it's low to which he quickly adjusted to say, "One is too many."
And you'll find them in this thread patting each other on the back for giving zero fucks about the facts while telling each other it is we who are leaning on "faith" to "believe" the scientific data they don't like because their bigotry is more important than actual reality.
This just shows that their issue is trans people, not the care they receive. Yes, regret is unfortunate, and we should do everything we can to minimize it, but to say that 99% of people should be denied a treatment because of the 1% who will regret it is the most bat-shit insane reasoning ever.
Not to mention that most people who detransition do so for reasons unrelated to their gender identity; including: [Boslaugh 2018, pp. 43-44]
Pressure from family or community
Difficulty due to e.g., financial reasons or discrimination
Health-related reasons
Additionally, many detransitioners do not regret the transition, and even go on to transition again.
It might be worth mentioning here that studies for nearly all surgical procedures are far higher than the 1-2% regret rate for transgender treatment.
Conclusion: Self-reported decisional regret was present in about 1 in 7 surgical patients. Factors associated with regret were both patient- and procedure related.
Love that "one is too many" thing. One death on a rollercoaster is too many. We don't ban rollercoasters just because sometimes external factors cause people to die on them.
I did ask him if the 99% didn't matter. He just reiterated that 1 is too many and refused to answer the question.
I really want to ask him his thoughts on school shootings.
Wait, "one is too many?" I recently heard that from a conservative about their racist thoughts on immigration and they said that.
Is that a new goalpost being pushed?
Only if you ever made the mistake of believing them prior. Otherwise it was always pretty clearly their goalpost.
Just look at the r/MapPorn thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ce0udo/where_genderaffirming_care_for_minors_is_being/) and the prevailing comments and votes. It's just sad how succesful anti-trans lobby groups have become...
Also here's my comment mentioning exactly that in bigger detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ce0udo/comment/l1h7tb1/
It's not just sad it's scary. These are the same people who squawk about "individual freedoms" but they have no problem controlling other people's bodies or making decisions for other people's children. Right now I wouldn't be able to discuss trans affirming care with my son's pediatrician (my son is now 19 so let's pretend he is still a minor) of any type, can't even have his cycle suppressed which is something cisgender women have been doing for decades so they can go on vacation without dealing with a period. We know it's safe to do this and it's perfectly normal for a woman with PCOS to get medication to help with that. My son has PCOS and when he was diagnosed at age 11 after a full year long period of constantly bleeding. His doctor suggested puberty suppressing meds, and I was told they were safe and lots of children with precocious periods are helped by puberty blockers. And yet if I'd taken him to the doctor and said I wanted the same meds for him because he was transgender, that's illegal.
The truth is they just hate trans people. No amount of faux concern is tricking trans people or the loved ones of trans people. They're just tricking the same people who are already against trans people just like they are against gay people and immigrants and diversity initiatives and black history lessons.
Says deleted
Didn't get a message about it, found it again, link is now different, maybe I linked the parent:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/Y3VwxTmcaO
If their base argument is "wubba wubba Jesus", facts are irrelevant.
It should be an absolute slam dunk end of argument that regret for gender affirming surgery is well below that of the general medical surgery regret rate.
yeah but the other side of the argument think 13 year olds are just able to walk in and get a sex change operation. they are blissfully misinformed and refuse to accept facts or educate themselves because it wouldnt align with their stance on the subject
Hahaha. Literally the other reply to my comment said this.
Note that THIS systemic review (as opposed to the Cass report taken as a whole) was actually peer reviewed and published in an actual journal. That alone makes this review infinitely more important than Cass.
Edit: I should note that some of the studies the Cass report cites were peer reviewed.
Won't stop some of our regulars of twisting themselves into pretzels to continue spewing transphobia though.
Yup, Mstrgrieves is at it already. I think he must have a Google Alert set up for mentions of the Cass Review.
He's actually one of the users who's engaged at least once in brigading and was caught, where he was discussing a specific article in the BlockedAndReported (or whatever that podcast is called) subreddit. They were talking about this subreddit and he posted a link to a post. Was removed or edited after it was reported for brigading though.
We need to remember these things when folks like him try to claim they are debating in good faith.
100% he ain’t here in good faith.
That subreddit is mind melting to read. They talk like Principal skinner at the YMCA or whatever. Everyone else is crazy but them. They really really hate trans people and pitbulls.
Looks like at least some of them came here from that sub. There’s a post on the Cass FAQ that mentions this sub and people are talking about it.
Oh, yeah. He’s biiiig into this hate parade
I was about to say
They think “my Facebook friends looked it over” counts as peer review.
They think "the English language was blessed by God himself to only give names to 2 sexes and no climate scientist is going to tell me otherwise"
The real systematic reviews are the ones that come to conclusions I agree with!
The meta-studies that made up the Cass Review were all peer reviewed. Why do you people continue to peddle lies about this? If you really think that they weren't peer reviewed then provide evidence for your claims.
Because I was mistaken. My apologies.
Hold up. You were mistaken, yet you received over 80 upvotes, and you're just gonna leave it where it is. That is so disingenuous it brings this whole sub into question. I am extremely skeptical about this place.
I didn’t edit because I was intending to say that the Cass review itself wasn’t peer reviewed. And it wasn’t. Some of the sub studies were peer reviewed. But that doesn’t mean the Cass report itself was peer reviewed. I’ll edit for clarity.
Transphobes: "N-NOO THAT STUDY ISNT VALID WE NEED 20000 YEARS OF DOUBLE BLIND STUDIES WITH A SAMPLE SIZE OF 12 MILLION ITS JUST TOO RISKY TO TRUST MEDICAL SCIENCE anyways I have a chiropractor appointment to go to"
I can't wait for mister grieves to explain why this review isn't valid.
Explain is a rather strong word I think
Murdered by words.
He briefly popped in to post a link to a letter that was referring to a different study.
The Keystone Cop of skepticism
Pixies would be ashamed to have one of their lyrics in that guy’s name.
You see I have the flu and I've heard ruminations of paying $$$$$ for a doctor (of chiropractic) performing potentially paralytic cracks of my neck in the right spot can clear up the flu.
While toking on vape, bitching about having to wear a seatbelt, and refusing to wear a mask during pandemics.
Far more people regret having kids than transitioning
I bet more people regret having sex with my ex than transitioning.
I know I regret having sex with your ex.
I don't