Episode 7 - Laura Reynolds on Why We're Sort of Wrong

We mixed it up this week and brought a guest on. It’s none other than Laura Reynolds.
Our audience is probably already familiar with Laura and her story of AAP, transition, and detransition. If you aren’t, follow the links below to hear her story in detail. So rather than hashing out her autobiography again, we instead had Laura on to tell us what she thinks we’re wrong about. We were excited to have this conversation because Laura not only has a personal experience with AAP and a firm understanding of the sexology of gender dysphoria, but she was also in the ‘queer community’ in the late 90s and early 00s, which was when the butch to FtM floodgates had just begun to open.
We unfortunately didn’t have time to dig into each of Laura’s criticisms and we feel many warrant more discussion, so we plan to do a follow up episode to dig in in more detail. Tune in next week for that.
Laura on Transparency: • EP23 - Autoandrophilia...
Laura on Phil Illy: • A Long and Winding Aut...

[@akashicturtle1827]

Yay, Laura’s back! She is such a breath of fresh air. 47:40 thank you Laura for pointing out that the first trans males were agps, not hsts. It is usually it’s agps who have the most visceral hatred of their male organs. 53:50 great point Laura about how ppl who wrote about themselves were more likely to be narcissistic aap types than hsts types. I hadn’t considered that before. 55:20 Laura calls it out -- if female and male sexuality are so different, why assume aap is real? 1:05:20 females don’t lie as much as males? Hmm…idk about that one. 1:06:10 is aap a useful concept for non sexual cases? It’s a good question. 1:08:20 gaaaaaaaahh more “female sexuality is so fluid” stuff 👎🏻. Once again I go back to the question Laura asked: if female sexuality is *so much different* than male sexuality, doesn’t that undermine the case for aap to begin with? 1:16:00 Laura is 🔥 1:20:00 I’ve heard mixed things about the reliability of the research on lesbianism and Pcos. So it was nice to hear Laura’s speculation about what might be going on with conflicting research. 1:28:40 is seeing Buck angel enough for a phalloplasty? Maybe not phallo (which is rare anyway) but definitely t and mastectomies. At least I don’t have a hard time believing this.

[@_Laura_Reynolds]

I saw a study that said that, despite stereotypes to the contrary, men actually lie more than women. I don't know if it was a good study though. It seems plausible to me that my impression that males do lie more could just be due to men being worse at lying. PCOS is a fascinating subject, which I just recently began to research. Some of the studies I read, which I didn't get a chance to mention, indicate that there are at least two "types" of PCOS, an obese type, and a non-obese type, so it's not as simple as just that PCOS causes obesity (even though it can) but also that the non-obese type was more prevalent in developing countries, and that at least some of the increased prevalence of the obese type in the USA might be due to people developing PCOS secondarily to metabolic syndrome caused by obesity (and possibly also triggered by eating disorders and/or psychiatric medications around puberty). This seems pretty important, especially since the predisposition can apparently be passed down through three generations (in mouse models). Another study found that lesbians with PCOS had higher levels of androgens than straight women with PCOS. Unfortunately, I think we are unlikely to get any more high quality data on PCOS and sexual orientation. If an attempt were made now to study PCOS in lesbians, the lesbians who are now "trans men" would be missing from the sample, skewing it badly, I suspect, and obviously, any attempt to study PCOS among transmen or detrans women who were put on testosterone and/or puberty blockers before being diagnosed with PCOS is not going to tell you wether they would have had PCOS anyway either. I also want to say, in Buck Angel's defense, that he has always been openly critical of phalloplasty (which was part of his rationalization for his "man with a vagina" campaign back in the day), but I think that once someone develops Gender Dysphoria, regardless of what triggers it, it tends to take on a life of it's own. It would be absurd to claim that Buck is somehow directly responsible for what butch lesbians who might have "caught ROGD" from him went on to do to their bodies, as if he were some sort of cult guru or something.

[@akashicturtle1827]

@@_Laura_Reynolds thank you! Helpful response. I didn’t know all that about pcos research! And good point, that it may be too late to do research on pcos and sexual orientation due to the butch transition craze. I wish more studies done on lesbians in general controlled for gender expression (like butch and femme and in between), but that may be hard to do given how small of a sample size you are already dealing with. I tend to think men are less morally scrupulous than women on average, so I can see that making them more likely to lie. But, then again, I could see women being more likely to lie to fit into a group. Who knows?? Yes, you are right about Buck and phalloplasty. And yes, gender dysphoria is more complicated than just one person brainwashing ppl into it. I think buck did play a crucial role in popularizing transition as an option for butches, tho, and hence is responsible for that much.

[@DykeNukem]

Buck Angel didn't even get phalloplasty. I don't know why that was brought up. I'm also glad that someone called Aaron out on his bullshit.

[@miroirs-jumeaux]

I hope you don't change the name of this podcast anytime soon. _Whoever_ thought of that name -probably- *definitely* didn't realize how much it meant to them, and is feeling gratified that it means something to other people now, too.

[@miroirs-jumeaux]

nota bene: paraphrasis is phrasis 3:54 “Aaron's right about the lads, but -(s)(he)'s- SO WRONG about the lassies!” 😂 11:42 "got involved in the discourse" ≈ developed a social media addiction(?) 12:17 beware of expecting that you fully understand complex things about others' minds! 17:31 guest needs trusted friends and family to talk to; online friends aren't enough, nor are online strangers - build trust with real people offline and tell them these things so you're not bursting with them here in Discourse Land.

[@_Laura_Reynolds]

Actually, just because talking about this stuff to strangers online isn't great doesn't mean that it would be better to be sharing these kinds of thoughts with family members or real life friends. Most people don't want to hear about this kind of stuff, or would feel compelled to give feedback that I don't want. I have learned that it's important to have boundaries with people who I know in real life. I maintain that the most appropriate person to tell these kinds of things too would be a therapist, unfortunately I have not been able to find one that I could work with. If I had been able to find a therapist 5 years ago, maybe I would have never made a twitter or youtube, and for me personally, that would have probably been better, because then I wouldn't have shared a bunch of stuff online that should have stayed private and could be used against me later. It would be interesting to see what the current state of the detrans and autoandrophilia discourse would be in this alternative history.

[@akashicturtle1827]

@@_Laura_Reynolds yeah…plus over sharing with the “wrong” person could end up metastasizing to your larger social group. So instead of strengthening in person relationships, you end up destroying in person relationships .

[@pauleyj8]

@@_Laura_Reynolds I get what you are saying Laura. Its very problematic what we share etc. The other side of that coin is that I think you have made a fantastic contribution to the complex issue of what drives people to want to be, or present as the opposite sex. Best wishes to you.