Falsification of GID prevalence results by the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance |
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The American Psychology Association Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance recently released a report that perpetuates a number of problematic misconceptions about trans people. As the analysis of this report is underway, Professor Lynn Conway has released a report about a key problem with the APA’s refusal to acknowledge recent data on prevalence. She notes:
The APA’s “Report of the Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance” has already come under fire for perpetuating “gender identity disorder (GID)” as a label for gender-variant people, and for failing to distance the APA from the DSM’s representation of gender transitioners as “mentally-ill”. The APA is also criticized for including a gender-reparatist (Zucker) on the Task Force, lending credibility to his inhumane clinical methods.
I want to alert you to another serious problem:
The APA report also grossly underreports the prevalence of “gender identity disorder” by a factor on the order of 10 to 20, as discussed in the following document (attached)“Falsification of GID prevalence results by the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance”.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/APA/Falsification_of_GID_prevalence_results_by_the_APA_Task_Force.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/APA/Falsification_of_GID_prevalence_results_by_the_APA_Task_Force.pdf
The APA’s underreporting of GID prevalence is the result of a knowing misuse of clinical definitions and a failure to mention known calculation errors in cited sources. The unreasonably low GID prevalence values are also given to three significant figures in the report as if they were precisely accurate - while failing to mention well-known sources of estimation error. The Task Force openly dismisses work by Olyslager and Conway that has exposed large errors in earlier studies, calling it a “minority position” - further dismissing it by insinuating that citations by “transgender activists” reduces its validity. The Task Force also fails to mention recent scientific studies reporting far higher-levels of GID prevalence than they do.Who might be responsible for this falsification?
It appears that the APA Task Force relied on Ken Zucker and Anne Lawrence for the section on prevalence. Zucker and Lawrence are considered WPATH’s ‘experts’ on prevalence, having been assigned responsibility for the revision of that section in the 7th Edition of the SOC. Furthermore, Zucker presented the exact same numbers for GID prevalence at the WPATH 2007 Symposium as presented in the APA report.
Why do the prevalence numbers matter?
Factors of 20 are important. By maintaining the old misimpression that fewer than 1 in 10,000 people experience gender dysphoria, the APA creates an illusion that it is an extremely rare “disorder”. If people were aware that gender dysphoria is experienced by at least 1 in 500 people, transgenderism would increasingly be seen for what it is - a natural variation in gendering. Furthermore, by maintaining the illusion that gender dysphoria is incredibly rare, gender-repartists such as Zucker can assure parents that it’s extremely unlikely their gender-variant child will become “transsexual” and suggest that all the child needs is some minor gender-repairs.
What to do?
Who’s to say whether the APA’s falsification of prevalence values was intentiional, or whether it was due to careless ignorance and group-think about old, oft-cited numbers. It would be interesting to ask Zucker and Lawrence and see what they have to say about it.
Meanwhile, what really matters is that the APA’s numbers must be challenged and corrected.
