draft SEXNET post on "Cut From the Same Cloth?"

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+Title: sampling methodology concerns about Hsu, Morandini, and Rudd 2025
+Date: 2025-02-22
+Category: other
+Tags: linkpost, autogynephilia, two-type taxonomy
+Status: draft
+
+In ["Cut from the Same Cloth? Comparing the Sexuality of Male Cross-Dressers and Transfeminine Individuals Through the Conceptual Framework of Autogynephilia"](https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10508-024-03053-7?sharing_token=qnp7xL0HHlhvkqKB6OUhi_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4BhGXO8Y51YGeawGcGp9Alk2BmTV4ajlOf7u7qbGEyRkocONdb3jy5Ek5DTNAux2cjIFqOHEtRbTkogOsOsfVNtS24nYJr6PhzOmzrqwFIC93wyovreNEQnNdQ4MLLQHI%3D), Kevin Hsu, James Morandini, and S. Rudd study the sexuality of male crossdressers and transfeminine people (and control males and females).
+
+When I saw the paper the other month, this line stuck out to me: "Because we placed advertisements in a large number and wide range of online sources, we do not report them individually here." This rationale for witholding information from readers of the paper doesn't make sense to me: the method of recruitment is relevant for assessing the generalizability of the results, and it's hard to imagine that a list of a few dozen subreddits and Discord servers would take up prohibitively many column-inches somewhere in the paper (or an online supplement if it came to that).
+
+I don't think this is merely a theoretical concern. In [a critique of the paper](https://surveyanon.wordpress.com/2025/01/24/hsu-and-morandinis-fraudulent-autogynephilia-study/), (former SEXNET subscriber) Carl "Tailcalled" Dybahl links to [Hsu's Reddit profile](https://www.reddit.com/user/kevinjhsu/submitted/), consisting of submissions of the survey to /r/Crossdressing_support (20K subscribers), /r/CrossDressRealism (28K subscribers), /r/Crossdress_Expression (55K subscribers), /r/girlschool (37K subscribers), /r/asiansissification (184K subscribers), /r/SissificationProject (215K subscribers), /r/genderotica (52K subscribers), /r/sissydressing (226K subscribers), /r/SissyHeaven (143K subscribets), /r/gendertransformation (73K subscribers), /r/ForcedFeminization (476K subscribers), /r/Feminization (409K subscribers), /r/Sissies (970K subscribers), /r/Sissy (260K subsctibers), /r/sissyplace (286K subscribers), /r/sissyhypno (464K subscribers), /r/sissyology (133K subscribers), /r/TGandSissyRecovery (16K subscribers), /r/askAGP (5K subsctibers), /r/Transmedical (10K subscribers), and /r/truscum (32K subscribers).
+
+That is, by my categorization, it looks like the Reddit advertisements were targeted at 3.8 million members of specifically sissy/forcefem communities, 103K crossdressers, 130K other autogynephiles (/r/genderotica, /r/gendertransformation, and /r/askAGP), and 42K transmedicalists.
+
+Strikingly absent from this list are "mainstream" trans subreddits like /r/MtF (310K subscribers) and /r/transgender/ (170K subscribers). (I would imagine the authors likely tried posting there, but it got deleted by moderators idelogically opposed to the study of AGP?)
+
+This seems like a big problem! If the goal is to study male-ID'd crossdressers and transfeminine people to see whether they're "cut from the same cloth", but your recruitment channels focus heavily on groups _for sharing AGP erotica_ (and to a large extent the "sissy" subtype specifically), how do you know you're getting a representative sample of transfeminine people? You're probably not, right? If there _were_ a secret "third type" of MtF transsexual, or just [other causal factors besides AGP that influence the decision to transition (even if some amount of AGP is a necessary factor)](http://unremediatedgender.space/2022/Jul/the-two-type-taxonomy-is-a-useful-approximation-for-a-more-detailed-causal-model/), this recruitment strategy would miss them: people like that might hang out on /r/MtF, but not /r/Sissies.
+
+This issue seems like it could severely limit the generalizability of the results, but the discussion of it in the paper seems inadequate. The "Limitations and Future Directions" section says (emphasis mine):
+
+> Because we wanted to maximize our sample sizes of male cross-dressers and transfeminine individuals as much as possible, our recruitment strategy involved indiscriminately posting advertisements to a wide range of Facebook groups, Reddit communities, Discord servers, and other websites or forums where they could be found and _where we also had access and permission to recruit_. Considering that this recruitment strategy was not likely to produce representative samples of male cross-dressers and transfeminine individuals, we acknowledge the possibility that any differences found between those two groups and control samples might be confounded by differences in recruitment strategy. _Those who visit online communities through Facebook, Reddit, and Discord might differ from those who complete studies on Prolific_ in ways that are unrelated to whether they are male cross-dressers, transfeminine, or cisgender.
+
+But the issue isn't just that people who use Facebook/Reddit/Discord might differ from people who use Prolific; the issue is that people in the _specific_ Facebook/Reddit/Discord groups "where [the authors] also had access and permission to recruit" (which the paper doesn't disclose!) might differ from people in other Facebook/Reddit/Discord groups.
+
+To be fair, if it was difficult to recruit from "mainstream" trans groups (because people who are loyal to the trans-activist subculture consider the study of AGP to be a threat and refuse to take or share a survey administered by Michael Bailey's student), then that's not the authors' fault ... but whether the result generalizes beyond the surveyed population doesn't depend on whose fault it is! If MtFs as a group are _making themselves harder to study_ for political reasons, I think that's something that the paper needs to dicuss explicitly rather than ignoring, even if it's not usual for psychology papers as a genre.
+
+I might want to write a blog post about this, but I thought I'd check with the authors and SEXNET first. Kevin, James, anyone—thoughts?