Critical Analysis

https://xcancel.com/DrJessTaylor/status/2086045181128671418

I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!

Proof that in 2026, the same falsehoods are still being used - despite us all being told that psychiatrists never use the brain chemical imbalance myth.

In 2022, Moncrieff et al. published a major umbrella review finding no convincing evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin or a serotonin “chemical imbalance.” Psychiatrists actually responded defensively by saying ‘no one believed that anyway!!’

Courts should not be told that someone’s behaviour, violence or offending can be explained by a supposed serotonin imbalance as though this is established biological fact.

When outdated or unsupported psychiatric theories are presented as scientific explanations in criminal trials, they risk misleading judges and juries and turning complex human behaviour into a simplistic story about a broken brain.

A courtroom is no place for debunked neuroscience and psychiatric twaddle.

Secondly though - those of us who are critical of psychiatry are told that this theory was never pushed and people were never told that they have a brain chemical imbalance! I’ve even been told that I’m making this up, and patients have never been told this by psychiatrists.

So I’m posting this for proof in 2026 that this is still being used in a criminal trial. By a psychiatrist.

For those of you new to this information and didn’t know that the serotonin theory was ‘abandoned’ - this is because psychiatrists and psychiatric regulatory bodies never publicly corrected the information even once they knew it was wrong. Lots of doctors are still telling their patients that they have serotonin brain chemical imbalances every single day.

It is highly likely that our ‘mental health’ is not the result of some obscure brain chemical imbalance, but is instead a reaction to our circumstances - but maybe that’s not a sexy enough explanation.

https://xcancel.com/RebeccaSear/status/1271547090221572096

Do 'national IQ' datasets present accurate and unbiased data on average IQs in nation-states worldwide?

A thread 👇

(Spoiler alert: NO)

1/n

A recent paper, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which used such a dataset prompted me to examine the most recent version of the Lynn & Vanhanen 'national IQ' dataset, which purports to estimate average IQ for a large proportion of countries worldwide 2/n

In 2007 I co-authored a critique of a paper which used an earlier, 2002, version of this dataset, which involved examining the dataset in detail. Our conclusion: “The primary data are grossly inadequate...the sampling is sketchy at best and ludicrously insufficient at worst” 3/n

We looked particularly at the samples used to estimate the 'national IQs' of 3 countries which had exceptionally low estimates: Ethiopia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. What we found wasn't good 4/n https://rebeccasear.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/response.pdf

"The figure for Ethiopia is derived from a sample of 250, 15-year-old immigrants to Israel. The figure for Nigeria is from a sample of 86 adult men & one of 375, 6–13-year olds. The figure for Sierra Leone from a sample of 22, 23-year-old skilled workers & one of 60 adults" 5/n

There is now a newer version of these 'national IQ' estimates by Becker, available online, largely based on Lynn and Vanhanen's updated 2012 dataset. Surely this updated version will have fixed many of the sampling problems of earlier versions, right? 6/n

Nope

The 'national IQ' of Ethiopia - a population of 112 million - is now based on 6 samples, with a total sample size of 707, all are samples of children, and all of which are highly unrepresentative of the country 7/n

3 are samples of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel - not remotely representative;

2 samples are from the same survey conducted in food-insecure districts. Unrepresentative;

The last is from the Young Lives survey (promising, yes?) but uh-oh... 8/n

“Unfortunately in the Ethiopian version, administration of the test ran into difficulties relating to explanation of tasks & time constraints & only about a quarter of the sample—all urban children—have test scores available in the dataset.” Unrepresentative 9/n

Sierra Leone? This population of 7.8m is estimated from 2 samples from the same study in 1966, ages 10-40, one rural & one urban sample of the same ethnic group. Sample size? 119 participants (any demographer reading this has now had to stop & lie down in a darkened room) 10/n

Nigeria? 10 samples here, total sample size of 12,331 - this is better, right?

No. All but one are samples of children

The one adult sample has a sample size of 47 (35 men, 7 living abroad) but no other info on sampling strategy. Wildly unrepresentative 11/n

2 samples involve over-representation of twins (including largest sample of 11,164). Twins are kept in the sample despite having lower cognitive scores.

One is of ‘aggressive’ boys & controls; ‘aggressive’ boys are kept in the sample despite having lower cognitive scores 12/n

2 samples are of private & public schools in same area

2 more samples, boys only, were from ‘modern’ & ‘traditional’ schools in same area

All are unrepresentative as samples were chosen to represent different sub-populations 13/n

One sample is of children attending an outpatient clinic at one hospital; final sample is from a single school grade, from one state, in 1981. Unrepresentative

Extrapolating 'national IQ' estimates from such unrepresentative samples will result in inaccurate, biased data 14/n

I'll throw in one more example, since it's so egregious: the 'national IQ' of Botswana - a population of 2.3m - is estimated from a sample of 140 17-20 year olds from the Batswana ethnic group, sampled from schools in the North West Province of South Africa 15/n

Here I've focused on the wholly inadequate samples which go into these 'national IQ' estimates, but many, many other criticisms can, and have been, made. It is very, very depressing that these data are still appearing in peer-reviewed journals 😢 /end

https://xcancel.com/cprazevedo/status/2090430070682738985

Nathan Cofnas is now attacking the rector of Ghent University.

Nathan Cofnas accurately referenced the documented case of Ghent University rector Petra De Sutter using ChatGPT for her inaugural speech, which included fabricated quotes. The university confirmed the AI errors and corrected them after media investigations.

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2026/01/08/ghent-university-rector-petra-de-sutter-uses-fabricated-quotes-i/

https://www.ugent.be/en/news-events/rectoral-opening-speech-2025-2026.htm

https://x.com/nathancofnas/status/2090417449325793531

https://xcancel.com/SwipeWright/status/2090215046039080969

The first-ever Peer Review has now been published in Theory and Society!

Kevin McCaffree and I launched this project to create a mechanism for holding influential papers in science and medicine accountable when the peer-review process that was designed to catch serious errors prior to publication fails to do so.

This inaugural Peer Review, by Peter DeScioli, critiques a 2026 paper in Royal Society Open Science claiming that exposure to a 7-minute clip from a lecture on evolutionary psychology caused people to blame r@pe victims.

But the paper's results don't support that conclusion.

Participants who watched the evo psych lecture did not significantly differ from the control group in victim blaming, and only one of six predicted comparisons was significant, and it had a very small effect that would not survive a proper statistical correction for multiple comparisons.

Even worse, the alternative video literally instructed participants not to blame the victim in a scenario closely matching the experiment, which contaminated the condition with what's called a "demand effect," which is where subtle cues or hints reveals the study's goal to the participants and influences their behavior. Reanalyzing the data with proper and more rigorous methods found no significant differences at all.

The review also documents serious theoretical problems and mischaracterizations of evolutionary psychology, such as the authors repeatedly portraying the field as claiming behavior is "hardwired," despite the cited evolutionary psychologists explicitly rejecting that framing.

Publication should not be the end of peer review, but the true start of it. When the ordinary review process fails to screen out poor methods and ideological nonsense, we need a second line of defense.

This is exactly why we created Peer Review at @Theory_Society!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-026-09742-7

https://xcancel.com/DonnaMaeGP/status/2053499128731062472

Something else that I want to emphasize about this exchange is how @WakeTheCisUp uses a reductive definition of AGP as an insult. It's useful to note because it reflects how TRAs and GCs have - wittingly or not - aligned their rhetoric on the subject of AGP.

TRAs have long denied being AGP. Many even deny that it exists at all, but still tacitly acknowledge that there are males who engage in cross-dressing behavior that falls short of full medical transition. But whether they acknowledge that AGP exists or not, they call themselves things like "true trans" or "transsexual separatists," in that they seek to persuade others that there is an innate difference between them and crossies, CDs, transvestites, etc.

A part of their strategy has been to disparage self-acknowledged AGPs as "fetishists" who fap in their sisters' panties. This is a deflection in the basest sense of the term. As I have previously written, the only real difference between an AGP who hasn't transitioned and a transsexual is in the decisions that one or the other makes about how to deal with their AGP. But it's nevertheless comforting rhetoric for TRAs in that it allows them to create a mental wall between themselves and those whom they regard as undeserving of being called "trans" or "transgender".

Simply put, their attitude is: "Don't look at me. I'm a woman. I'm not like that crossie who goes out in a miniskirt and a bad wig." But this deflection obtusely conflates behavior with AGP itself. AGP itself is not behavior but a state of mind, an abstraction. Behavior is downstream from AGP.

GCs fall into the same trap of defining AGP in the same reductive terms, but their reasoning is slightly different. GCs would prefer to think that AGP is something that adult men "catch" from watching porn and/or from objectifying women. Or they hold out AGPs as misguided gay boys who adopted a female identity out of internalized homophobia. They call it "transing the gay away."

By doing so, GCs frame AGP as a morality tale, as one of failed men caught in imitating a patriarchal, reductive version of womanhood because they've consumed too much porn and believe that womanhood can be reduced to clothing and body parts. And young males who transition must be gay because no adolescent boy can ever be AGP (gay being the new wholesome). They can't admit that there might be something going on with how an AGP's brain is wired as doing so would open the door to causes that don't fit within their moral framing.

As a consequence, like the TRAs who use AGPs as a foil to deflect from their own issues, GCs conflate AGP itself with behavior. Like the TRAs, they define AGPs as fetishistic perverts who fap in their sister's lingerie and who predate on women.

Of course, in reaching these conclusions, GCs rely on the word of everyone except self-aware AGPs and they disparage comments from the man who coined the term, @BlanchardPhD. They simply refuse to hear that they might be mistaken.

Many non-medicalized AGPs don't act on their feelings at all, or keep them private. Some present fully dressed and look perfectly fine. Some partially medicalize by taking estrogen but never have any surgeries and never fully transition to a new identity. But whether one acts on their feelings or not, it doesn't change the fact that they are AGP.

I've received comments on a similar post to the effect of, "We don't care what causes your fetish. Just stay out of women's spaces and jerk off in the privacy of your own home." But such comments presuppose the very reductive definition of what AGP is that I have been trying to address while again conflating AGP itself with behavior. It's an endless feedback loop in which no one really wants to have a reasoned discussion and everyone wants to get in his or her drive-by talking points.

I'm at the point of giving up.

https://xcancel.com/AlexXanthaki/status/2080612356619440566

In Comm OTH55/2026 published today, UN Special Procedures say loudly to the @ioc that the new blanket exclusion of intersex and female trans athletes from the Olympic and the invasive relevant tests are against current human rights standards; and ask about the process of adoption

The IOC’s policy is not a blanket exclusion. Every qualified athlete can participate – in the category of their sex: trans women (who are male, not ‘female trans’) and XY intersex in the male or open category.

https://www.olympics.com/ioc/athletes/medical-research/faq-ioc-policy-protection-female-category

https://xcancel.com/calliehburt/status/2090219101461356718

Stop citing the MA "bathroom safety" study as robust evidence that gender-identity-prioritizing policies pose no safety risk. The study does not and cannot support that conclusion. My new article in @Theory_Society explains why and explores how the study nonetheless became "settled science."

View it here: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s11186-026-09716-9

https://xcancel.com/SwipeWright/status/2089569032995283402

After reading this new essay in The Conversation (left), I am convinced these people are either stupid or consciously deceptive. There are no other explanations. Ignorance is no longer possible.

Their entire argument is: "The traits of males and females has some overlap."

And? Show me one person who has claimed otherwise.

Nobody ever engages with the actual arguments people like me are making when we claim "sex is binary." I've made my case countless times in excruciating detail in major news outlets, massive podcasts, and leading academic journals. So have others.

My scholarly article "Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes" (right) has now been viewed over 73K times. Anyone paying even a little bit of attention knows it exists and what it argues. It directly addresses and debunks the "multidimensional" model forwarded in the new essay.

Yet these activist scientists refuse to engage with any of the actual substance. They just keep arguing against strawmen.

They are of course free to write up a scholarly rebuttal in the same journal I published my paper. I'd even agree to a series of exchanges in a popular outlet. Or a live dialectic via Zoom or in person.

It's 2026 and we're winning the argument and shaping public policy. At some point (i.e., now) these people will need to engage with the substance of my arguments or slowly wither away to irrelevancy.

There are many avenues available to them if they actually want to engage. My DMs are open. Top journals and major news outlets are increasingly willing to publish the exchange. Many large podcasts will gladly host the debate.

Yet they invariably choose to write and speak only to audiences that already agree with them. It's pathetic.

They're completely out of excuses.

https://xcancel.com/geraldposner/status/2089727557239292169

It's live on Just the Facts: Genocide for Dummies.

A plain-language primer on what the word actually requires under international law, what the recognized cases look like, and why the evidence from Gaza falls short of that standard.

I did not write it as an advocate. I have no brief to defend and no side to win. I wrote it as a primer — the kind of thing you should read before you enter this argument, so that when you do, you know what the word requires and what a competent court would apply.

At the end, I lay out the evidence that would change my mind. Not a rhetorical gesture. A falsifiable standard, in writing, under my name:

Show me an order or a plan to destroy Palestinians as such. Show me a pattern of conduct from which destruction is the only reasonable inference — one that survives contact with the alternative explanation, a brutal war against an enemy embedded in a civilian population. Show me a competent tribunal that has weighed adversarial evidence, with a defense in the room, and returned that verdict.

Bring me those and I will write the correction myself.

Paywall free link in the first reply. Read it before you call Gaza a genocide.

Someone I've known for twenty years lives a couple of blocks away. He is not a partisan, he does not post about the Middle East, and he is not the sort of person who chants anything.

Out of the blue, he asked me: "Do you think there's a genocide in Gaza?"

No, I told him. By every metric that matters — legal, historical, statistical — there is not.

He looked at me the way you look at someone who has just told you the earth is flat. Netanyahu wants to eliminate the Palestinian people, he said. Everybody knows that.

Not a study. Not a court ruling. Not a casualty figure. Just a thing everybody knows.

I have spent forty years as a reporter learning that "everybody knows" is where investigations begin, not where they end.

Tomorrow on Just the Facts: Genocide for Dummies: a plain-language piece on what the word actually means under international law, how Gaza compares on every relevant metric, and why even the strongest case for the genocide charge still doesn't clear the bar the word requires.

By the way, I know the title will bother some readers, and I address that directly in the piece. My argument is not that the subject is trivial — it is that the word is being used by people who cannot define it, at a threshold they have never examined, with a confidence that bears no relationship to the evidence.

https://www.justthefacts.media/p/genocide-for-dummies

https://xcancel.com/JuliaHB1/status/2088690097831248282

The only person responsible for Jason Arday's death is Jason Arday.

He was a liar and a fraud who was rightly exposed for what he really was by academics and journalists who were simply doing their job.

No one forced Arday to make up lie after lie about his life. He chose to do that. And he did it for financial gain and to bask in the applause it brought him.

He used those lies to deceive people into giving him a job he didn't merit, a lucrative book deal he didn't deserve, as well as fame and adulation he didn't earn.

And when he was found out, he called in the police and expensive lawyers to shut his accusers up, and his failed students who complained were branded as racist.

Cambridge University and Jesus College enabled this liar by lauding him as brilliant when he wasn't even mediocre. They should ask themselves why they put their DEI religion above the need for fairness in their appointments processes, above the needs of Arday's students and, most importantly, above the truth.

Arday's family and friends should ask themselves why they chose not to speak out to expose his lies which they must have known to be untrue.

The police should ask themselves why they thought it acceptable to investigate an academic and a journalist simply for asking questions about Arday's fraudulent CV.

The BBC and Arday's many other deluded cheerleaders should ask themselves why they were so desperate to believe Arday's outlandish claims in the face of all the evidence.

The thousands of the great and the good in academia, politics, media and law who signed the Good Law Project letter backing Arday should ask themselves why, without any justification, they outrageously branded Arday's critics as racists who just wanted to bring down a successful black man because of the colour of his skin.

All of these people made their own contributions to Jason Arday's life. And arguably all of them contributed in some way to his decision to take his own life when his fantastical claims were finally exposed for what they really were: lies.

The idea that those who exposed Arday as a lying fraudster are to blame for his death is as laughable as it is outrageous.

The idea that Arday was "hounded" to his death is absurd. He chose to tell every single lie himself and he even chose to continue those lies in his resignation letter from Cambridge. He is not the victim. He is the perpetrator.

The claim that Arday's downfall was only a front page story because he was black is also ridiculous. He chose to tell the lies that made him a front page story in the first place.

I feel sorry for those who loved him. It is very sad that he has chosen to take his own life rather than face the consequences of his own actions, which should have resulted in a criminal conviction for fraud.

But actions have consequences. This isn't about right and left. It's about right and wrong.

https://xcancel.com/MattWalshBlog/status/2089342278099759208

A lot of people aren't going to want to hear this but much of the "depression" that parents (and not just moms) suffer after child birth is due not so much to hormones but to the fact that children, especially babies, are demanding and difficult and require us to subordinate our own needs and desires for their sake. The more selfish you are, the more of an adjustment it's going to be.

Community note

Medical sources say postpartum depression is multifactorial. Rapid drops in estrogen and progesterone after birth are key biological factors, along with sleep loss and adjustment stress. It is not primarily attributed to selfishness.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9312-postpartum-depression

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/postpartum-depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20376617

https://xcancel.com/profjmb/status/2087173795031245302

Non-heterosexuals tend to have worse mental health compared to heterosexuals. Is this due to minority stress–stigma and discrimination? In a new study, we should that the answer is “mostly not.” Link to the article in the next post, followed by an explanatory thread. (1/n)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/how-much-is-sexual-minority-stress-confounded-with-familial-causes-a-systematic-multilevel-metaanalysis/A681A8ACF60DAEC2CFE9F652184F4CF4 (2/n)

The idea that non-heterosexual people have increased depression, anxiety, and suicidality because of mistreatment is plausible, and the theory–Sexual Minority Stress Theory (SMST)–has been the dominant explanation for 30 years. (3/n)

For example, a 2003 study by Meyer, the foremost SMST proponent, has been cited 20,000 times! NIH has funded SMST research, which has used it to explain even worse mental health among transgender youth. (4/n)

Virtually all empirical studies on SMST have been correlational. This is understandable, since one cannot do an RCT, and causally informative studies are difficult to conceive. (5/n)

Two facts raise concerns against SMST. First, despite the fact that Western tolerance of sexual minorities has grown considerably, mental health disparities remain as large as ever. (6/n)

Second, there are potential confounds that need to be excluded. From childhood, gay men are more neurotic, which can explain some of the disparity. There is a genetic correlation between non-heterosexual orientation and depression/anxiety in both males and females. (7/n)

In our new study, we use simple and compelling logic to estimate the degree to which minority stress accounts for the mental health disparities. The answer, again, is “not much.” The study is causally informative, providing “strong inference.” (8/n)

Here’s the logic: By SMST, non-heterosexuals should have worse mental health compared with their heterosexual family members, even MZ (identical) twins. Those heterosexual family members have not experienced any sexual minority stress. (9/n)

In fact, the discrepancy between non heterosexuals and their heterosexual family members should be as large as between the former and non relatives. (9.5/n)

This figure clearly shows the results. The bar for “Population” shows the effect size difference between non-heterosexuals and heterosexual non-relatives. The other two bars show the difference for family members. See how they rapidly drop off. (10/n)

(10/n)

This means that most of the mental health disparity between non-heterosexuals and heterosexuals is due to aspects shared in the same family. Probably especially genes. (11/n)

What are the implications of our study? First, researchers should stop conducting studies of minority stress that do not consider competing hypotheses. NIH should stop funding such studies. (12/n)

Second, this isn’t about blaming anyone, nor about encouraging bad behavior towards non-heterosexuals. We need to look elsewhere, other than minority stress, if we want to improve their mental health. (13/n)

We hope our method will be applied to study gender dysphoria and transgender. There are databases that have the requisite information. Chances are, they are highly restricted for political reasons. Lift these restrictions! (14/n)

Here are links to two articles I wrote on this topic:

rdcu.be/fzgcn

rdcu.be/fzgem (n/n)

https://xcancel.com/NeuroSGS/status/2087959408122700224

There’s a surprisingly common statistical mistake when researchers investigate sex differences in the brain and behaviour, and this new study (below) reveals just how bad this problem is.

Imagine hippocampal volume is significantly associated with memory performance in males (p<0.05), but NOT in females (p>0.05).

Does that mean the relationship differs by sex?

No.

“Significant in males” + “not significant in females” isn’t, by itself, a significant sex difference.

Instead, we need to test whether the association itself differs by sex. For example:

Memory ~ Hippocampal volume × Sex + covariates.

The Hippocampal volume × Sex interaction tests whether the relationship between hippocampal volume and memory differs between males & females.

Surprisingly, this statistical misunderstanding is surprisingly common in the literature.

A new PNAS (2026) study examined 200 papers whose titles claimed sex/gender-dependent effects in the behavioural and brain sciences.

Only 24% actually provided appropriate statistical evidence for the claim that was tested.

58% never statistically compared the effects between sexes (the interaction effect).

Unfortunately for me, in the neurosciences, only 18% of claims were appropriately supported statistically.

Overall, an effect being significant in one sex but not the other is NOT evidence of a sex difference.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2608703123

https://xcancel.com/PeterTatchell/status/2088179038804221963

New study: no significant differences between trans & non-trans sportswomen in upper-body strength, lower-body strength or aerobic fitness after hormone therapy

FACT: Trans women athletes do not have a physical fitness advantage compared to other women

https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/08/12/trans-athletes-womens-sports-advantage-scientific-study/

Community Note

This meta-analysis covers mostly non-athletes, rates evidence low/very low certainty, and omits sport-specific performance. It does not reverse retained male advantages post-puberty. World Rugby evidence review: https://www.world.rugby/the-game/player-welfare/guidelines/transgender

Few studies survey men who have remained undetected after engaging in acts of sexual aggression against women. Most survey women who were targets of sexual aggression or else survey men who consent to being identified. Using anonymous surveys of 2,689 U.S. and Canadian men (18–34 years), we aimed to assess rates of self-reported sexual aggression, reports of strategy effectiveness at forcing known reluctant women into sex, and men’s views of the circumstances, motivations, and positive and negative outcomes. Men reported occasions where they tried to get a woman to engage in sex that they knew she did not want and to which she had not consented. The women were individuals with whom the men shared no prior romantic or sexual history. Overall, 95.1% reported having recently used at least one of the strategies to get a woman to have sex who they knew did not want sex and had not consented. Most of these occasions (65%) resulted in successfully forcing the woman into sex. All of the 36 strategies generated from formative work were reported by at least some men; the average number ever used was 8.94. Consistent physical pressure and verbal coercion were common; overt force, including physical restraint and use of pain, was less common but not uncommon. Men who viewed themselves as better than same-aged male peers “at getting what they want sexually from women” used more forceful strategies. The men persisted for many reasons, most often because they were horny (38%) or because the opportunity arose (28%). They reported many positive outcomes from these interactions; most (70%) perceived no negative outcomes. Using anonymous survey methods provides a novel channel to capture men’s reports of the factors scaffolding their use of sexual aggression. Implications for prevention and making long overdue inroads into reducing rates are discussed.

https://xcancel.com/segm_ebm/status/2086998491876991070

🚨 WPATH has conceded in court that its "Standards of Care" is merely an opinion. WPATH says it represents one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by uncertainty — and physicains & orgs that rely on WPATH as the standard of care must bear "independent responsibility."/1

WPATH now agrees that pediatric transgender medicine is marked by "medical and scientific uncertainty." It represents its SOC-8 recommendations merely as an expression of WPATH's "free speech." Yet for years, WPATH presented its guidelines as an unquestionable medical standard of care. The social and scientific costs of questioning their recommendations were steep and could be career-ending. /2

WPATH now says there are two sides to the scientific debate over care for gender-dysphoric youth. On one, the gender-affirming model WPATH promotes. On the other, the Cass Review and Cass-aligned policies such as restrictions or bans on puberty blockers and hormones for minors./3

To defend itself against the FTC in the federal court, WPATH leans 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐲 on two Supreme Court rulings that under normal circumstances it decries. One is Skrmetti, which allowed states to ban transgender interventions for minors. The other is the pro-"conversion therapy" Chiles v. Salazar ruling. /4

Leaning on the pro-state-bans Skrmetti ruling, WPATH argues that the states have the right to regulate transgender interventions. While some states exercised their right to ban them—other states likewise have the right to promote transgender interventions for minors, using WPATH as the state-endorsed standard of care. /5

In what appears to be a desperate move, WPATH favorably quotes the SCOTUS ruling that cleared the path for administering talk therapy aimed at changing homosexual orientation and gender identity (Chiles v. Salazar). WPATH previously strongly objected to both as forms of conversion therapy.

Now, WPATH argues that although conversion therapy may be "substandard care," the Court rightly protected it as free speech. They argue that, likewise, WPATH's own SOC-8 guidelines should also be protected as "free speech"—even if the care they advocate for is judged as "substandard." /6

SEGM is not a policy-making group. Rather, we communicate with the clinical community, and often have to explain why we do not consider the WPATH Standards of Care to be evidence-based.

Our reading of the latest WPATH filing: WPATH's message is that its "Standards of Care" are merely an opinion and an expression of free speech. Clinicians who rely on the SOC-8 document—and organizations that refer to it as the implied standard of care for gender-dysphoric youth—are, in fact, taking on independent responsibility for the premise that the document represents trustworthy clinical guidance.

In turn, patients who trust the clinicians following the WPATH Standards of Care should know they are in a "buyer beware" situation. They are being treated based on what WPATH asserts to be merely an expression of "free speech"—representing only one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by "medical and scientific uncertainty." /7

This most recent WPATH court filing is here and deserves to be read in full:

https://segm.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/WPATH%20Motion%20to%20dismiss_Aug%202026.pdf

Note: AI was used in the production of the screenshots for this thread, in order to stitch text across page breaks & suppress hanging sentence fragments. The wording is verbatim and unaltered./8

https://xcancel.com/Glinner/status/2083850250746540352

The IDF is the only force in this world preventing terrorists from fulfilling their Nazi dream of genociding the last surviving Jewish community in the Middle East.

That is exactly why antisemites hate the IDF with such obsession. That’s why they devote endless effort to vilifying it, delegitimizing it, and spreading vile blood libels about it.

Because they seek to remove the only barrier standing between them and their Judenfrei aspirations by any means necessary. Because they know one thing with absolute certainty: as long as the IDF exists, “Never Again” is not a slogan. It’s reality.

And for that, we owe the Israel Defense Forces our deepest gratitude. To the heroes who have sacrificed everything to protect millions of Jews and Israelis, time and time again, thank you.

Thank you for carrying an impossible burden and confronting extraordinary challenges at just 18 years old, while never allowing them to steal your youth, your humanity, or your joy. Despite everything you endure, you continue to laugh, to care, to look after one another, and to remain astonishingly resilient.

Thank you, IDF, for ensuring that the Jewish people will never again stand defenseless.

Thank you, IDF — for existing.✊🏽🇮🇱

100%. God bless the IDF for putting themselves between savagery and civilisation

After careful consideration and reviewing the current eligibility guidelines, I’m officially declaring myself a @WNBA prospect.

If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA.

My team and I have carefully examined the WNBA’s eligibility criteria and governing framework surrounding self-identification and inclusion. Based on the current guidelines, I can and am officially declaring my eligibility for the upcoming WNBA draft in April 2027.

I know my presence on the court will stir up strong opinions.

I am definitely not here to mock, make fun of, or disrespect any community or personal choices.

I’m simply asking that the current rules be applied equally to everyone — the rules that represent the very values many WNBA players and coaches have publicly advocated for. My team and I are prepared to ensure these guidelines are applied equally, consistently, and without exception, and I look forward to the #WNBA honoring its stated principles.

See you at training camp.

enesfreedom.com

Blanchard proposed that autogynephilia is a natal male’s paraphilic sexual arousal in response to the thought or fantasy of being a woman. Furthermore, based on evidence collected from natal males with gender dysphoria, Blanchard argued that autogynephilia is the fundamental motivation among nonhomosexual males (i.e., those not exclusively attracted to men) who pursue sex reassignment surgery or live as transgender women. These ideas have been challenged by several writers who have asserted, or offered evidence, that autogynephilia is common among women. However, their evidence was weakened by problematic measures and limited comparison groups. We compared four samples of autogynephilic natal males (N = 1549), four samples of non-autogynephilic natal males (N = 1339), and two samples of natal females (N = 500), using Blanchard’s original measure: the Core Autogynephilia Scale. The autogynephilic samples had much higher mean scores compared with non-autogynephilic natal males and natal females, who were similar. Our findings refute the contention that autogynephilia is common among natal females

Followup to previous essay

https://lemmy.today/post/57887811