I've had a long phone conversation with N tonight. Alongside our discussions about the forthcoming weekend - the three of us are off on holiday, I asked her about the controversy about the Djeune et al report. I wanted to check my memory of those events. She has no doubts that the report is misread. She has no doubts that some 'academics' have been willfully misreading the report, and disgracefully willfully disregarding the efforts of Djeune to explain why they are wrong.
N made the following point, but wishes to underline her point that she is speaking from memory on the hoof on a document she has not read for some time. Also Swedish law is not a speciality for her. I scribbled the following notes:-
1) It's important to understand the selection of Djeune's chosen date range for the study 1973 to 2003 with it's necessary break point in 1989. Sweden had a mass sterilisation programme from 1941 of people in certain categories. In 1972, the programme was extended to trans people who were then considered mentally ill, a category of people already subject to sterilisation. Trans people could only seek legal recognition and protection by following the path of sterilisation and genital reassignment surgery.
2) In 1989 Swedish law changed. Those included in the mass sterilisation programme no longer included the category 'feeble-minded'.
3) In 2003 the sterilisation laws were repealed. Although considered mentally ill, trans people had been otherwise unsupported for mental health. 2003 also happened to be the year the European Court of Human Rights decided the Godwyn case which led to the UK government forced to act upon their directive which led to the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
4) It's also important to note that this study was a follow up study of trans people after reassignment surgery. The total cohort number was 324. The report was not only concerned with criminality but mortality and suicide rates.
5) When it came to the rates of reoffending, the study looked at the criminality of those of the 324 using court records. Obviously not all 324 people had prior court records for criminality. In fact 10 were identified and used in the study. Of these some were trans women and others were trans men. Of those 10 trans men and trans women there was further sub-division into a pre-1989 group and a post-1989 group.
6) N admits that from memory she is unclear on one point without referring back to the study. She is unclear if all 10 were taking replacement hormones.
7) Gender critical academics have been presenting the study as if it was a wide-ranging study. It was a study over a wide date range, however the criminality aspect was very narrow due to the small sample size.
8) The big failures in the GC considerations of the study:
a) Failure to note that this was a follow up study of 324 individuals compared with randomised control groups.
b) Failure to note that due to the nature of sex reassignment, the standard protocol of double blind is impossible, so much less reliable.
c) Failure to note that the sample size of trans women is a subset of a cohort of just 10 individuals, not the whole 324 cohort.
d) Failure to note the follow study examined the offending rate of 10 before and after surgery in the same individuals.
N's conclusion.
The gender critical claim is entirely false. Djeune was correct to explain that it was the case. The biggest takeaway to note comes from reading the purpose of the report, which was to measure the effects of sex reassignment surgery on the lives of trans individuals.
The measurement that states that there was no difference in the offending rates of the trans women cohort of the study (remember this cohort that is a subset of a cohort of 10) was a confirmation that sex reassignment surgery did not affect their own offending rates. It was not a measure of the offending rates of 324 trans women against the male population of Sweden. The number of trans men in the study is therefore also a subset of a cohort of 10, and likely to be number close to just 2 or 3. In their cases, their offending rates went up.
My scribbles from the conversation with N end there. So this is now back to blousy bird me.
I accordingly went back to the Djeune study, and sure enough, just as N had said, the pieces fell into place.
Objective
To estimate mortality, morbidity, and criminal rate after surgical sex reassignment of transsexual persons.
Crime rate
Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (
Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989.
My conclusion.
Gender critical people like Stock et al have mischaracterised this report willfully for their own ends. This is very unprofessional conduct for an academic.
The report does not say that all trans women are in a cohort that have offending rates similar to the general population of men.
What it does say is that in the 1973 to 1989 group of trans people in Sweden ( a subset of a subset of a total cohort of 10) who underwent compulsory sterilisation and sex reassignment surgery to obtain state recognition, those treatments did not alter their criminality.
So that's another of Aurora's bullshit stories debunked, just like the prison numbers bullshit.
