38 Comments
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Celeste's avatar

Even if the data were correct they are drawing the wrong conclusion from it. That isn't evidence that it's made up. If it were true then that would be evidence that the current hate campaign is pushing people back on the closet. They might still be trans but now unwilling to pursue it. Taking their data at face value paints them as cruel

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Larry Erickson's avatar

GMTA. :-)

I had the same thought. If true, it would have revealed oppression, not change.

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." John,Viscount Morley

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Tanooki girl's avatar

great point

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Tony D's avatar

Bingo

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Brynn Craffey's avatar

Yep, like others here, that was my first thought, too!

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Kathy R's avatar

Came here to say this as well!

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Stuart Rue's avatar

Thank you for doing this work!

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William Flug's avatar

Insidious and evil, but what did we expect?

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Don Jackson's avatar

Centre for Heterodox Social Science?? Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression??

I think I hear George Orwell laughing...

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Joan the Dork's avatar

I think that might be crying.

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Tommy Lamont's avatar

Thanks, Erin, for helping trans people who like me identify as either male or female have the information necessary to rebut the absurd claims of this so-called survey.

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David Feuer's avatar

As she explained, though, nonbinary identity is also actually on the rise.

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Nia Chiaramonte's avatar

But my conservative family will eat this up without fact checking or an understanding of science. So sad.

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Roisin Aoife Brennan's avatar

Fabrication of facts is simply yet another tool in the propagandist's kit.

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ILoveKitties's avatar

Let Matty, etc think that the number of trans people are on the decline. Maybe they will leave us TF alone.

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Glen's avatar

They should go back to counting their money and leave the rest of us alone

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Michelle Paquette's avatar

Once one recognizes that the weighting wasn’t applied, and Kaufman’s results merely measure the distributions among respondents rather than the studied population, a darker message appears. Non-binary identities responded less often than in prior years, self-selecting out of the respondent study pool.

One has to wonder what could be going on in recent years to make non-binary folks less likely to respond. Oh, I have a pretty good idea…

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Sarah F's avatar

Our population is now 1.3 trans now? That's 4.511 million Americans, which any decent Republican would round up to an even 5 mil. Five million is getting more electorally significant. I like that.

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Tanooki girl's avatar

More in “conservatives are lying POS news”…

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

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Joan the Dork's avatar

Lies, damned lies, and Republican statistics.

Republican statistics are like normal statistics, except your audience will believe the numbers say whatever you tell them even if you're showing them a blank page.

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LLF's avatar

Even if these numbers were "true", I would think it would be because more trans people would be afraid to identify as such.

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Sarah F's avatar

Or like me, they've left the country. Going into exile didn't mean I ceased to exist. ;-)

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Sarah F's avatar

Sorry, Erin, it´s the professor in me. Please note the corrections:

"But as the data HAVE now been reviewed by independent researchers"

And later:

"Data ARE powerful, but only as reliable as the person interpreting THEM."

Datum = singular.

Data = plural.

Common error.

Otherwise, wonderful article! There's no excuse for sloppy science and lazy statistical analyses. It makes me wonder whether this guy has any training in statistics. (Actually, I needn't wonder. I read his article. He drew conclusions without any sort of probabilistic statistical analysis - perhaps just a simple Chi-Squared analysis. I wouldn't accept that even from an undergrad student. Heck, they're even teaching probability and statistics in high school now.)

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Larry Erickson's avatar

Back atcha on professorial tendencies: In informal contexts such as this post, which is not a statistical analysis but a report on work done by others, "data" is commonly regarded as a group noun (e.g., "team") and so is singular. In formal contexts like a scientific paper, it's regarded as plural.

The challenge is unsuccessful and the call on the floor ("the data has") stands.

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Sarah F's avatar

Yeah, but we're literally talking about scientific data and their statistical analysis! LOL Perhaps this is one of those gray areas. However, I have to say that hearing "data is" is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

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Mad Girl Disease's avatar

The term "gender non-conforming" needs to be carefully defined. It obviously doesn't cleanly equate to "trans" or "non-binary." If gender non-conformity means not conforming to heteronormative expectations for one's gender and/or sex, then it could be seen that every cis gay person is gender non-conforming simply for being gay. That's a rhetorically slippery slope — but perhaps a useful one...?

To those who would eliminate us, "gender non-conformity" is the bottom line "crime" committed by all those who identify as LGBTQ+, as well as anyone who identifies as "feminist," easily seen as another mode of "gender dysphoria," understood as dissatisfaction and unhappiness with one's sexed and gendered social position. "Gender traitors" all, as the Republic of Gilead would have us.

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Talia Perkins's avatar

"the survey actually shows more people have come out, not fewer."

Go figure that!

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