Here is a preview of posts for the next couple of weeks.
1. New research – Commenter Evan pointed out two new studies of interest, one a twin study and the other related to the the role of gender atypical behavior in adult mental distress. In additional to those two papers, there are two other studies on childhood gender nonconformity that I want to review as well.
2. Q&A with Michael Bailey – Dr. Bailey will comment on the new Finnish twin study. He will also speak about the mistakes those on the right and left make in interpreting these studies.
3. Rebuttal to the Pink Swastika – I will be providing a guest post, a difficult to locate response to arguments which form the basis for the Pink Swastika and primary sources which contradict Scott Lively’s view that the Nazism was animated by homosexuality.
I suspect those posts will lead to several follow ups that should keep us busy.
Tag: Michael Bailey
A conservative defense of sex research
During the Saddleback Civil Forum, if Rick Warren had asked the candidates about funding sex research, it might have gone like this.
Warren: What is your position on researching sex?
McCain: (with resolve and without hesitation) – Missionary!
Obama – Uh, well, it depends on how you define “sex” and “research.” Scientifically and politically, it is above my pay grade to determine what my position is in that arena.
Pure fiction, of course. I doubt sex research will come up in this year’s election. However, the topic has become a concern to some politicians. According to an ABC News report, “Sex, massages and taxpayer dollars,” some legislators are bothered by some NIH grants to universities to study sexuality. Some of Michael Bailey’s work aroused more than curiosity. To wit:
A few years ago, NIH gave a $147,000 grant to a Northwestern University psychology professor who was paying women to view pornography while a device measured their sexual responses.
That study didn’t go over too well in the halls of Congress.
Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake was among 20 Republicans to sign a letter to NIH’s director asking for an explanation for why taxpayer money was going for such a study. They called it “a bizarre spending decision.”
Today, Flake believes Congress has failed to properly oversee NIH and its spending.
“It’s Congress’ job to set guidelines for how NIH and other agencies spend taxpayer money and then exercise oversight to ensure that those guidelines are being followed. “However, over the last several years, Congress has neglected its oversight function,” Flake’s office told ABC News. “It’s difficult for Congress to criticize NIH for wasteful grants when Congress itself is earmarking billions of dollars every year on similarly wasteful pet projects.”
I have to disagree with Rep. Flake and his colleagues. As a social conservative, I am very interested in research which helps us better understand how sexuality works. Regarding sex research, I think Guggenheim Fellow Alice Dreger raises a valuable point when she argues:
What about the studies that look into things like which kind of pornography stimulates women versus men? Useless and prurient? I don’t think so. I know this sort of research horrifies conservatives, but they should really wake up to the fact that research into sexual stimulation can actually help promote family life by helping married couples understand how to have satisfying sex lives within the context of monogamy. (Is it better that a guy cheat on his wife with a prostitute, or better that he learn a vibrator and some massage might make his wife a lot more receptive? I vote for the latter.)
Of course, an unexciting sex life does not force anyone into seeking prostitutes, but I think Dr. Dreger’s argument should be taken seriously. Counselors know that otherwise solid couples, yes even very religious couples, are not exempt from sexual questions and concerns. Better that counselors are armed with good science on sexuality than the latest issue of Cosmo. Reading the Song of Solomon, while quite, uh, interesting, might not be enough to help overcome issues which would benefit from basic information. Lay people might be surprised that research is needed to better understand sex and attraction, but such science is important for reasons that might not seem apparent.
In my work, I have found the research coming out of the Bailey lab to be very helpful. His research informs my work with people on a regular basis. I often consult with heterosexually married, same-sex attracted men who wish to maintain their marriage. Bailey’s (and other researchers’) brain research, for instance, provides significant insight into how the brain responds to sexual cues. This is valuable information for those who seek insight into why they respond as they do. And many of them use this information to pursue their values and beliefs to avoid sex with men and enhance their marital adjustment with their wives.
I guess the bottom line for me is that funding sex research doesn’t mean advocating an anything-goes stance toward sex. Studies done solely for prurient interests should be questioned, but basic science of sexual attraction and arousal can have positive, and even conservative, applications.
Multiple factors involved in sexual orientation, part 2
I posted 2 weeks ago about this twin study but it is now making the media.
Here is the abstract of the article from Archives of Sexual Behavior:
There is still uncertainty about the relative importance of genes and environments on human sexual orientation. One reason is that previous studies employed selfselected, opportunistic, or small population-based samples. We used data from a truly population-based 2005–2006 survey of all adult twins (20–47 years) in Sweden to conduct the largest twin study of same-sex sexual behavior attempted so far. We performed biometric modeling with data on any and total number of lifetime same-sex sexual partners, respectively. The analyses were conducted separately by sex. Twin resemblance was moderate for the 3,826 studied monozygotic and dizygotic same-sex twin pairs. Biometric modeling revealed that, in men, genetic effects explained .34–.39 of the variance, the shared environment .00, and the individual specific environment .61–.66 of the variance. Corresponding estimates among women were .18–.19 for genetic factors, .16–.17 for shared environmental, and 64–.66 for unique environmental factors. Although wide confidence intervals suggest cautious interpretation, the results are consistent with moderate, primarily genetic, familial effects, and moderate to large effects of the nonshared environment (social and biological)
on same-sex sexual behavior.
Reactions are mixed but not really along any ideological grounds that I can see. For instance, from ScienceNOW:
J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who led earlier twin studies of sexual orientation, calls the new study “good, important, and one unlikely to be bettered in the near future.” But Jonathan Beckwith, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, says that the new work fails to overcome a number of problems faced by previous twin studies. He notes that the final sample included only 12% of the males in the Swedish registry, leaving open the possibility of recruitment bias. And Beckwith says that the failure to control for family environment could inflate estimates of genetic influence.
Co-author Qazi Rahman, was quoted by the Washington Post:
“This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ‘select out’ homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behavior is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors,” study co-author Dr. Qazi Rahman, a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said in a prepared statement.
I intend to devote at least one more post to this study as I agree with Michael Bailey that it is an important study. I think along with the other 2 population based studies (Bailey’s in 2000 and Kendler’s also in 2000), it provides a picture of modest genetic effects along with a major role for non-shared enviromental factors. Many roads lead to a similar result. Nothing in this study provides a clear picture of what those environmental factors are but a simple environmental explanation (e.g., poor parenting) or genetic source (single gene, or uniform action of several genes) is not supported here.
Rahman added in the Post article:
“Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 percent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared be twins) accounted for around 64 percent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway,” Rahman said.
Gender identity disorder research: Q & A with Kenneth Zucker
As a follow up to the recent broadcasts by NPR and several posts regarding gender identity, here is a Q & A involving J. Michael Bailey and Ken Zucker recently posted on the SEXNET email list. Dr. Zucker is the Head of the Gender Identity Service, Child, Youth, and Family Program and Psychologist-in-Chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Zucker is the chair of the newly appointed Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders working group for the 5th edition of American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V). Dr. Bailey is Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, prolific sexual orientation researcher and moderator of the SEXNET list. As the NPR article noted, Dr. Zucker has extensive clinical and research experience with persons who experience gender dysphoria. This interview was conducted by Dr. Michael Bailey via email and has been slightly edited for posting here. Both Drs. Bailey and Zucker have reviewed and approved it.
Bailey: Both NPR shows used the phrase “a girl trapped in men’s bodies.” How common is this concern over body image?
Zucker: I would say that, in general, there has not been a lot of good empirical research on body image issues in pre-pubertal children with GID. In adolescence, the Dutch group has reported clear evidence of body image dissatisfaction as one finds in adults. One of my PhD students has a dissertation that should be defended later this year in which we studied body image in boys with GID compared to clinical and community controls. We did detect significant body image differences among the three groups: body image in general and in relation to gender-specific anatomic dysphoria. The boys with GID had a poorer body image in general and, of course, with regard to gender-specific anatomic dysphoria. It is only a first pass at this issue and I will report on this down the road after the dissertation is defended.
Bailey: The case on the second NPR show is of a child (natal boy) who had extreme temper tantrums when not allowed to engage in feminine behaviors. Is this common in the kids you see, or is there something unusual about these kids?
Zucker: This is not uncommon. Some parents will report that if they try to limit cross-dressing that this can be very distressing for the boys. Some parents describe it as “he needs his fix.”
Bailey: You are more familiar than anyone else I know with the difference between the British and Dutch treatment centers that yielded the findings that only 20% of the British kids but 100% of the Dutch kids pursued sex reassignment eventually. Did the Dutch center focus on older children (who were less likely to change their minds)? To the extent that the samples were comparable, it is a shocking difference in outcome.
Zucker: I don’t think the British group has published their data yet. But, yes, the Dutch group data are on adolescents and I think that the British group is talking about clients first seen in childhood, not adolescents. The Dutch group now has a paper that is close to being “in press” on their first follow-up of GID children and then followed up later. The GID persistence rate for their boys was about 20% and the persistence rate for girls was 50%. Their persistence rate for boys appears to be similar to what I have summarized for the boys seen in my clinic (Zucker, 2005), but higher than the 12% rate for girls that we published earlier this year (Drummond et al., 2008). The Dutch group speculates that their girls were, at initial presentation, more extreme in their cross-gender behavior than the girls that we reported on, but that will require more careful analysis.
Bailey: The NPR show, and some people on it, kept implying that some of these kids are “really” transgender, and others are not. I suspect you don’t agree with this way of thinking about it, although you recognize that some kids are more likely to become transgender adolescents and adults than other kids are. Can you remind us which factors are associated with persistence of GID from childhood?
Zucker: I don’t think we know yet. Two possible candidates are age at initial evaluation (later age associated with greater persistence rates) and quantitative metrics of cross-gender behavior in childhood.
By persistence rate, Dr. Zucker is referring to the percentage of GID children who are still GID at a later assessment. In the Dutch group, as well as in Dr. Zucker’s research sample, most boys who want to be girls in childhood, end up as men who do not want to be women. For women in the Dutch sample, half remain GID. I think the assessments of low persistence of GID provide some helpful information to parents who wonder about puberty delay and behavioral interventions with their GID children.
Thanks to Drs. Bailey and Zucker for permission to post this conversation.
60 Minutes Science of Sexual Orientation mother of twins, part 2
At last, I am posting some follow up comments made by Danielle, mother of the twin boys featured in the 60 Minutes segment, Science of Sexual Orientation. Part one is here and should be read first.
Danielle said this in her initial email:
I often wonder “if” I had told Adam that “yes” he could be a girl when he became old enough would he have stayed on that track of thought? However, at the urging of his therapist I told him I understood he was a girl yet he was really a boy and couldn’t be a girl.
Wanting to be clear, she wrote to elaborate:
This was my response when he was three years old. We thought it would be confusing for that age of a child to hear he could be a girl but not until he was older. Later in his life I was up late watching a tv show about transgender surgery. Adam had awaken and was watching the show behind me – I didn’t know he was there. I heard a gasp. When I turned around there was my Adam staring intently at the tv. He asked me in a shocked whisper “Can I do that surgery and be a girl?” I told him “yes” he could but not until he was 18 years old. He became very excited. You have to understand the differences in his age. I believe the information I gave him at each step was based on age appropriate responses. He did stare at me for a bit and asked me if I would really let him do something like that if he wanted. I assured him I would if it would make him happy. He wanted to know why I would help him change his body. I informed him because I loved him and I didn’t want him to be sad or hurt. He asked me if I really loved him that much. My response was a very sound “yes!” that seemed to please him very much.
The last time Adam and I talked about him being able to change his body into a girls body Adam was indecisive. Again, I believe it’s the age/stage of his life and awareness of all around him. This conversation occurred after Tyra Banks had issued an invitation to be on her show. At that time Adam advised me he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He didn’t know if he should change his body so he could be a girl, stay with a boys body, if he was straight sexually or gay. Again, I believe his answer and confusion to be age appropriate. I declined the show offer because I didn’t want him to expose himself when he was so unclear about his future. I didn’t want to “lock” him into any particular role. That was when I decided to proceed with the hormone therapy to give him more time and maturity to decide what he wanted for himself. However he was already fully into developing so we decided not to go ahead with the treatments.
We are in the process of working on another television project. I am allowing Adam to participate because I believe the show will allow him to show his confusion and be himself as he is for a 12 year old. This lead us to another conversation about the issue. For all of his wise wisdom he informed me he still didn’t know what he wanted to do. “After all Mom, I’m only 12. I’m not suspose to know 100% for sure where my sexuality belongs. I’m suppose to be able to explore and decide later” And that’s where I have left it. For him to be a normal 12 year old child, maturing, developing and exploring the possibilities of his future. I’m here to guide him, support him, and show him all the possibilities of the future. I can love him, hold him, praise him and catch him if he falls. That’s my role as a parent.
I then wrote to her to clarify how these thoughts related to her parenting decisions, specifically with his name and school. She said:
The issue of what name to use during school was never really discussed. I wouldn’t have allowed him to use a girls name at school even if he had pushed me to do so. He was “Adam” and that was that.
During school hours he could wear what he wanted as long as it followed the school dress code. He only asked to wear a dress to school a few times. My response was always that his brother couldn’t wear his fireman clothing so he couldn’t wear his dresses to school however, he did wear them around the house. He did wear a girls black sweater with gold thread for two years. He wore girls tennis shoes all his life because of the color and sparkles and still wears them. He would wear girl shirts; however, in today’s fashion world, sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference except in color. In his younger years, he wore girl jeans with sparkles but only for about an year then he didn’t want to wear them anymore. But the really feminine clothing was only at home. My life was easier dealing with this issue because I had twins. His twin wanted to be a fireman. He had everything to do with a fireman just like Adam had everything to do with being a girl. My rule was that the girl clothing (dresses, heels, jewelry, skirts, femme blouses, makeup) and the fireman clothing stayed home when we went to the library, grocery store, grandma’s, church, school and so on. My main reason for my restrictions were due to my parents who are totally against Adam’s gender issues. However, his Nana didn’t care what he wore so he could take his dresses to her house and wear them over there. I did have an issue at school once where the principal asked me if I could get Adam a different book bag (his was pink) and buy him different shoes (his were white with a pink logo on them). I advised her that he wasn’t breaking any rules by his choices so I wouldn’t make him give them up. I told her I could give in to him and allow him to wear dresses to school if she really wanted to push me since there isn’t a dress code that says he can’t. She backed off after that. However, I wouldn’t have ever allowed him to wear a dress to school anyway. Yes, I had restrictions about what he wore and did in society but he did have a bit of freedom by his choice of shoes.
I again want to thank Danielle for her candid comments. I have received emails from parents and professionals who are glad for this glimpse into how one parent reasons through these difficult issues.