Thread by @TwisterFilm

1./ The Trans Brain Myth Rides Again
What's the truth behind @michaeljswalker's claim on @GBNEWS that there is a difference between the brains of transwomen and men generally that means they should not be thought of as male? Here's how this myth got started and why it's fake.

https://twitter.com/Wommando/status/1734657380070388082

2./ In the late 80s a group of scientists headed by Louis Gooren claimed to have discovered the "volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminals" in transwomen's brains were more like those of females than males. So were they?
researchgate.net/publication/15…

3./ In science a lab discovery isn't the end of the discussion. It's only the start. If it can't be replicated by other labs there's a good chance it was a fluke, a mistake. Or worse. When Gooren describes his "discovery" he appears to have an agenda.👇

4./ When he says his find makes transsexuality "more socially acceptable" it suggests he might have been overinterpreting. Or worse. His "discovery" hasn't been replicated in almost 40 years despite innumerable attempts using ever more sophisticated scanning technology.

5./ Yet this research has proved hugely influential. It was one of the main arguments cited by academics in 1997 when they met at the Tavistock in London; embracing the Dutch Protocol and prescribing 'puberty blockers'. The conference papers were later published in this book.

6./ The book's foreword was written by John Money, who popularised the idea of gender identity but whose reputation was destroyed when he was revealed to have forced children to do 'sex play' in his lab which he photographed. He described puberty blockers as 'brave'. Wonder why?

7./ Gooren studied under Money and shared his belief that if trans identity had a biological explanation the answer must also be biological. It's this unevidenced belief that has led to the disaster of medicalising thousands of gender non conforming youth.

8./ Gooren's brain work is unreproducible so scientifically worthless, yet it is endlessly cited by trans lobbyists. When the Endocrine Society intervened to support puberty blockers in the Keira Bell case it cited Gooren's "discovery" despite the fact it turned out not to be one

9./ The Society's members make a fortune from puberty blockers and the man who led its intervention, Dr Joshua Safer, runs a gender identity clinic that prescribes blockers and surgically mutilates young people. His name should really be Janus. On Gooren's work he faces two ways.

10./ When he is talking to the public, Safer is happy to push the idea that Gooren's work is a proof of trans identity being biological. Listen to him here in a video posted by India Willoughby and you'd hardly know how flimsy Gooren's dusty old work is.

11./ Yet here is the same Dr Safer talking to an audience of medical students about the very same slides. He explains Gooren's work has never been reproduced and that's why he dismisses them as "the weakest data. But they're kinda pretty pictures."

12./ He goes on to explain the origins of the research was part of an attempt to find "a gay gene". The scientists began by studying homosexuality in "rats and mice". I kid you not! Then they suddenly had what these straight dudes thought was a startling revelation. Wait for it.

13./ Safer says "they realised they couldn't tell whether those mice were gay or whether they were trans." At least he admits they made "a lot of mistakes and faulty assumptions". What like thinking a mouse could be trans? 🤦‍♂️😵‍💫

14./ Their research was immersed in gender stereotypes and a whiff of homophobia. Here Gooren relates proudly how the transmen he studies always bring "very attractive women along". This seems to him to be proof the transmen couldn't just be... lesbians.

15./ So is there a Trans Brain? The truth is there are slides from the brains of dead transsexuals taken 40 years ago that once seemed suggestive that no one can reproduce. They arose out of a project studying gay rodents by scientists who thought rats could be trans. Convinced?

16./ The uncritical acceptance of this threadbare brain research is remarkable. Not least since there is almost no research into what's happening now to the brains of vulnerable adolescents prescribed Big Pharma's blockers. You'd think a left-wing radical might care about that.