Autogynephilia, explanation or bigotry?

[RobynP]

You're right, some of us may have personal history and tendencies that can be explained with a phenomenon called autogynephilia. However, that theory is totally uncapable to explain the situation of majority of trans people. Especially in case of TS it's totally bullshit and it may even cause serious damages to them if it's used as a basis of the diagnosis.

There can be serious damage done to anyone who is misdiagnosed with anything in DSM-IV, not just autogynephilia. I don't think we are the only ones that have been harmed by medical incompetence.

Few if any objected to his including sexuality as a factor for analysis of correlation or even causation.

But the criticism is that his work is based on an untested premise of causation. That he assumes that sexuality is a primary differnce and rather than seeing if that is so with proper scientific methodology he is building his further explanations for conflicting data upon that assumption. Making the facts fir the theory rather than making the theory fitting the facts!

Which if that criticism is apt it'd mean his theory is as scientific as Intelligent Design. And his assumption being based not on science but a personal bias would then indeed be bigotry.

First, every scientist brings their personal biases to their research whether they know it or not. This explains why research is published so that other scientists can attempt to duplicate the research to validate or refute the findings. There have been many scientists in all fields that have published their research only to see it being invalidated...

Not being a psychologist or a research scientist, I have not examined Blanchard's data, research, or evaluation methodology and am not qualified to determine if what he says is BS. However, there are a number of anecdotal statements by enough people to make his theory plausible. But, like you said, he may have things backwards.

Second, I'm not sure how this is an example of bigotry and not just poor research... Does he propose in his research findings criminalizing people with gender issues and putting them in jail?

Robyn P.