Cont: Trans women are not women (IX)

[Rolfe]

On the one side, there's trans identity as a symptom of a mental disorder. On that side, it should be treated as a mental disorder, not as a human right that should be catered to.

On the other side, there's trans identity not as a symptom of a mental disorder. On that side, it's just cosplay, and still not a human right that should be catered to.

You know, that should be the end of the thread.

Sadly, it won't be.

 

[Elaedith]

Heh. I see Elaedith and I are attacking both sides of LJ's equivocation.

On the one side, there's trans identity as a symptom of a mental disorder. On that side, it should be treated as a mental disorder, not as a human right that should be catered to.

On the other side, there's trans identity not as a symptom of a mental disorder. On that side, it's just cosplay, and still not a human right that should be catered to.

Since an early incarnation of this thread, LJ has been pushing the narrative that the APA once considered that 'transgender identity' was a disorder, but then with advancements in understanding, the DSM-5 'declassified' it as a disorder, as they did with homosexuality.

This is a line pushed by activists for two reasons; to draw false parallels with gay rights and to attempt to discredit whole bodies of research based on the claim that it relied on an outdated version of the DSM.

This has already been debunked numerous times, but it appears that LJ will never abandon it so the only point in responding is to correct the misinformation that might mislead others.

This is the article outlining the evidence for the change from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in DSM-5, written by the working group (headed by Dr Zucker) who actually made the change. I've posted this a few times but I have to assume LJ has no intention of ever reading it; in other words, he has no interest in finding our what those who actually wrote the DSM-5 chapter actually say as opposed to the narrative he promotes.

Memo-Outlining-Evidence-for-Change-for-Gender-Identity-Disorder-in-the-DSM-5.pdf


Gender dysphoria is still a mental health diagnosis in the DSM-5 (although activists may succeed in getting it removed with the next revision). Dysphoria refers to clinically significant distress and functional impairment, rather than transgender identity per se. However, dysphoria as an essential requirement for diagnosis was added way back in DSM-III. This requirement for a condition to cause clinical distress and/or functional impairment to be regarded as a disorder was added to lots of diagnostic criteria following the removal of homosexuality as a disorder.

 

[theprestige]

NM

 

[d4m10n]

Many years ago when I still read/wrote blog posts, I read this one about someone who opted to have their testicles removed.

She is a persuasive writer, and I was forced into accepting the conclusion that either her brain couldn't deal with those bits, or there was something wrong with the bits themselves.

No doubt the DSM-5 makes it clear whether the problem here is in her mind or her balls, eh LJ?

Sent from my Sarcastigator 9k using Tapatalk

 

[shuttlt]

Many years ago when I still read/wrote blog posts, I read this one about someone who opted to have their testicles removed.

She is a persuasive writer, and I was forced into accepting the conclusion that either her brain couldn't deal with those bits, or there was something wrong with the bits themselves.

No doubt the DSM-5 makes it clear whether the problem here is in her mind or her balls, eh LJ?

Sent from my Sarcastigator 9k using Tapatalk

There are men who use a device rather like a pair of plyers, to self castrate themselves. I believe the preferred method is to crush the blood vessels that feed the testicles. Then there are people who become fixated with the idea of removing a leg or an arm. There are strange people in this world.

 

[d4m10n]

There are men who use a device rather like a pair of plyers, to self castrate themselves.

How dare you assume their gender?!

 

[Rolfe]

The word is burdizzo. Look it up.

 

[shuttlt]

The word is burdizzo. Look it up.

I forgot your background Rolfe, yes. I saw some documentary years ago and originally thought they worked like nut crackers. Have you used one? It looked like a lot of force was needed. The man in the documentary had tried it repeatedly on himself, but his testicles persistently kept functioning. He supposedly had some kind of aesthetic need to free himself from the temptations and urges of the flesh. After finding he'd made many attempts over quite a period of time I started to wonder if he isn't actually a masochists and there was a sexual element to it. The sort of person who might find the ladies changing room calling.

 

[Rolfe]

Klingsor exists, obviously.

They only work on species with suitable anatomy. They're usually just used on calves. There's legislation about age limits and the use of local anaesthetic, but basically using them on any beast past puberty is a mug's game. And yes, it takes a fair bit of wrist strength which I don't have.

Vets generally do open castrations with a knife, it's a hell of a lot neater. These things are more for farmers' use. Rubber rings are commoner though I think.

I seem to remember reading some weird story about someone in America who was running some sort of amateur castration service for this sort of mad fetishist and they were using a Burdizzo. I think they were lucky nobody died before they were stopped.

 

[Vixen]

You are mistaken. The APA has in fact included gender dysphoria in its diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.

More from the APA about this mental disorder, which it clearly recognizes as such:

https://psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

That APA webpage even references the DSMV.

Dysphoria is a quite specific disorder. It means having a distorted perception of yourself. For example, an anorexic person looking in the mirror and seeing someone hugely obese, or someone with a perfectly ordinary face believing their nose or jaw or whatever is exceedingly deformed and hideous.

 

[shuttlt]

I seem to remember reading some weird story about someone in America who was running some sort of amateur castration service for this sort of mad fetishist and they were using a Burdizzo. I think they were lucky nobody died before they were stopped.

I think we are remembering the same thing. Who knows? Someday, in the not so distant future, a cubicle door in the ladies toilets may swing open as you pass, and inside is a mad fetishist, drenched in sweat, trying to mechanically castrate himself. A glorious day of liberation will have dawned.

 

[Vixen]

There are no psychiatric disorders where identifying as a specific thing is diagnostic of disorder. Identifying as something *might* be a symptom of a disorder (such as schizophrenia) depending on the nature of the identification and the presence of other symptoms.

The APA has never considered that a biological female who identifies as the gender "man" is suffering from a psychiatric disorder.

The APA also lacks the required authority to decide that words such as 'woman' and 'man' should be re-defined to refer to 'gender' rather than sex.

This is arrant nonsense. Firstly, as above 'identifying as a gender' has never been considered a disorder, so the word 'now' is meaningless.

Secondly, 'valid lived condition' is meaningless dross. You can identify as a being occupied by a body thetan (scientology), a being with a soul that leaves the body and travels (astral projection) or a being with an aura or a chakra. None of these identifications are necessarily disorders or products of disorders. Nor does that mean that any of these things are literally true.

Plenty of people identifying as Napoleon or Jesus and they are generally labelled bipolar (used to be manic-depression or delusions of grandeur). I would argue that a belief in being assigned 'the wrong gender at birth' is quite different.

 

[Elaedith]

Dysphoria is a quite specific disorder. It means having a distorted perception of yourself. For example, an anorexic person looking in the mirror and seeing someone hugely obese, or someone with a perfectly ordinary face believing their nose or jaw or whatever is exceedingly deformed and hideous.

Actually 'dysphoria' just refers to a strong negative emotional state of unhappiness and frustration, which is common to multiple disorders.

'Gender dysphoria' can involve intense disgust at one's sexual characteristics, although 'anatomical dysphoria' is not a requirement for diagnosis (for example, for children six characteristics from a checklist of eight are required, and only two on the list refer to dissatisfaction with anatomy).

However, if people want to change characteristics of their sex, this is more appropriately described as sex dysphoria since it is their sex they are unhappy with, not their 'gender'. If somebody simply doesn't 'identify with their assigned gender', where gender is defined as a set of socially-constructed expectations, then this is just a fancy way of saying that somebody is gender non-conforming. Saying that somebody needs to change their sex characteristics as a result of being gender non-conforming makes no sense. Nor does describing attempts to help somebody feel more comfortable with their biological sex as 'conversion therapy' for gender identity make sense if sex and gender are separate.

Here is a description of experiencing 'gender dysphoria' from a detransitioner.

 

[Elaedith]

Plenty of people identifying as Napoleon or Jesus and they are generally labelled bipolar (used to be manic-depression or delusions of grandeur).

Delusions of grandeur are not a disorder but a possible symptom of disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or even narcissistic personality disorder. Nobody is appropriately diagnosed as having any disorder on the basis of a single symptom.

I would argue that a belief in being assigned 'the wrong gender at birth' is quite different.

I would argue that a belief in being 'assigned the wrong gender at birth' is incoherent nonsense. If you are arguing that gender is a social construct, then it cannot by definition be an innate property of a person. If you mean that there are certain expectations of traits and roles that are assigned to somebody on the basis of their sex, and some people have innate characteristics are are completely mismatched to these expectations, I agree. The appropriate response to that is to say that people can reject sex roles that don't suit them and choose whatever roles that do. This should not require any form of transition. To say that a female person who doesn't identify with the roles and traits typically assigned to women is not a woman is to reinforce gender stereotypes.

 

[Rolfe]

This link is to a transcript of a speech by the Attorney General delivered a couple of weeks ago. I only just saw it, however I went off on holiday the day the speech was made and the transcript seems only just to have been published.

It holes "Stonewall Law" below the waterline. It reiterates everything in the Equality Act that the trans activists have been attempting to have removed from the statute book and have been telling bodies paying for their advice was not in fact lawful.

In law, single sex services are intended for one sex only: that is the very thing permitted by schedule 3. It follows that it is not possible to admit a biological male to a single-sex service for women without destroying its intrinsic nature as such: once there are XY chromosome adults using it, however they define themselves personally, it becomes mixed-sex.

The existence of a Gender Recognition Certificate can create a legal position but cannot change biological reality. The operation of the Equality Act is such that the permission to discriminate on grounds of gender reassignment is permission to discriminate against someone who may be the ’right’ biological sex for a particular activity but has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

By way of example a ‘women-only’ rule for a women’s judo class excludes all men and will be lawful under paragraph 26 if a joint service would be less effective, and it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. It will no doubt put people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (e.g. trans-women, by that I mean a biological male who identifies as a female) at a disadvantage compared to those without that characteristic. But in my view if the benefit that it confers is sufficient to justify direct discrimination against the whole class of men, it will in almost all circumstances be sufficient to justify indirect discrimination against a much smaller class of trans-women.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, but there have been positive flocks of the things flying around recently. It's not going to happen overnight, but in my opinion as more push-back against Stonewall Law occurs, more and more people will be emboldened to speak out.

I notice that the Attorney General uses XX and XY to denote female and male. I do not think this is unreasonable. She is speaking about people in general and sees no need to qualify her statement in terms of rare DSD conditions. I do not imagine for one second that she intends CAIS or Swyer's women to be excluded from female single-sex services, or that she intends XX males to be included.

It might be prudent when drafting legislation to add a rider about DSD conditions, simply listing the various DSD diagnoses and stating whether these people are biologically male or female, or something like that. I saw a nice wee poem in one of the replies to someone tweeting out the transcript.

It’s not so complex
Biological sex,
Best described
By the phenotype organised
Around facilitating the function
Of a particular gamete in its sexual reproduction.
It’s neither transphobic, nor beyond the pale:
Large gametes female
Small gametes male.

 

[theprestige]

Plenty of people identifying as Napoleon or Jesus and they are generally labelled bipolar (used to be manic-depression or delusions of grandeur). I would argue that a belief in being assigned 'the wrong gender at birth' is quite different.

I would argue that it is in fact very similar.

Sex is observed at birth. Believing you've been observed to be male but you're really female is pretty delusional. I think the closest parallel to that is probably BIID.

On the other hand, gender nonconformity is probably not a disorder, as long as there's no distress.

 

[Elaedith]

I would argue that it is in fact very similar.

Sex is observed at birth. Believing you've been observed to be male but you're really female is pretty delusional. I think the closest parallel to that is probably BIID.

On the other hand, gender nonconformity is probably not a disorder, as long as there's no distress.

I think one of the problems is that there seem to be two rather different concepts of 'gender identity' that are currently dominant.

One defines gender identity as identification with a socially-constructed gender role. For example, the 'genderbread person' defines gender identity as 'Who you, in your head, know yourself to be, based on how much you align (or don’t align) with what you understand to be the options for gender'. Presumably 'options for gender' refers to the fact that societies have different numbers of 'genders' and you can only identify with one if you realise it to be an option.

This is basically defining a gender atypical or gender non-conforming person as being trans. It offers no explanation as to why people should be encouraged to 'identify with a gender' instead of just having a personality, identifying their personality traits and preferences, and choosing roles and forms of expression that suit them. It also offers no explanation as to why not aligning with the gender 'assigned on the basis of sex' means you should change your sex characteristics. But it risks cultivating feelings of sex dysphoria, especially in children and vulnerable adolescents, if they feel they identify with a gender other than the one 'assigned', but obviously notice that most people who are assumed to have that gender are the other sex. Even more so if they are encouraged to think that changing sex characteristics is 'gender affirming'. It also seems to imply that most people are gender conforming, since anybody who doesn't identify as trans is apparently supposed to be happy with the 'gender assigned to them'.

The other definition seems to be that gender identity is 'a feeling of being male or female' and dysphoria arises from being male and feeling female or vice versa, or possibly feeling neither male nor female. This definition tends to be more associated with attempts to find neurological explanations for gender identity and gender dysphoria. A feeling of being male or female (when it doesn't match sex) should really be termed sex dysphoria. The most recent move seems to be the idea being pushed on SBM, that gender identity is a part of your sex, and if it doesn't align with other sex characteristics you essentially have a type of intersex condition. However, the most recent neurological studies suggest that the neurological features of GD are more similar to other conditions involving disturbances in self or body perception.

 

[Vixen]

Actually 'dysphoria' just refers to a strong negative emotional state of unhappiness and frustration, which is common to multiple disorders.

'Gender dysphoria' can involve intense disgust at one's sexual characteristics, although 'anatomical dysphoria' is not a requirement for diagnosis (for example, for children six characteristics from a checklist of eight are required, and only two on the list refer to dissatisfaction with anatomy).

However, if people want to change characteristics of their sex, this is more appropriately described as sex dysphoria since it is their sex they are unhappy with, not their 'gender'. If somebody simply doesn't 'identify with their assigned gender', where gender is defined as a set of socially-constructed expectations, then this is just a fancy way of saying that somebody is gender non-conforming. Saying that somebody needs to change their sex characteristics as a result of being gender non-conforming makes no sense. Nor does describing attempts to help somebody feel more comfortable with their biological sex as 'conversion therapy' for gender identity make sense if sex and gender are separate.

Here is a description of experiencing 'gender dysphoria' from a detransitioner.

Yes, that makes sense.

 

[IsThisTheLife]

A lot of these trans-identifying men seem to be vulnerable and often somewhere on the autism spectrum - and I don't mean the "high-functioning" part as this poor soul fondly believes he is. To me it looks like an attempt at a coping mechanism to fit into a world where they're conscious that they don't fit. I don't know whether it's the "stunning and brave" egoboo they're looking for, or whether it's easier to act a part consciously than to try to act being themselves, or if it's just a way to get into lesbians' knickers. (He has a husband but he's looking to date women.)

https://twitter.com/hshLauraJ/status/1562836374289391617

I don't want to mock because I think it's sad, but is the present "affirm everyone, stunning and brave!" approach really helping such people?

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, 'trans-people' and 'progressives' are by-and-large not the most formidable specimens, and yet we're supposed to believe this motley coalition has risen up and gained control of governing bodies and the media, in fact governments across the west.

Seriously?

Most of them couldn't organise a circle-jerk in a brothel, but they're being ever more protected and emboldened by authority.

What we're seeing is the result of top-down social engineering by very powerful interests, NOT bottom-up, "grassroots activism"- endlessly trying to debunk the bizarre "rationalising" by '[insert as applicable] rights activists' might be fun for some people but it's ultimately futile. Know your enemy.

 

[Vixen]

Delusions of grandeur are not a disorder but a possible symptom of disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or even narcissistic personality disorder. Nobody is appropriately diagnosed as having any disorder on the basis of a single symptom.



I would argue that a belief in being 'assigned the wrong gender at birth' is incoherent nonsense. If you are arguing that gender is a social construct, then it cannot by definition be an innate property of a person. If you mean that there are certain expectations of traits and roles that are assigned to somebody on the basis of their sex, and some people have innate characteristics are are completely mismatched to these expectations, I agree. The appropriate response to that is to say that people can reject sex roles that don't suit them and choose whatever roles that do. This should not require any form of transition. To say that a female person who doesn't identify with the roles and traits typically assigned to women is not a woman is to reinforce gender stereotypes.

I think first of all, something is only 'mental illness' if it causes distress to the person suffering. So if it is a simple case of living the gender role of your choice then there wouldn't be any talk of gender dysphoria or need to seek a mental health solution.

The problem comes when society dictates that one is either male or female, and this is when people object or try to find solutions to the apparent unwanted identity being foisted on them. As an example, in a report at work, I referred to a client as 'Ms.'. My boss took a strong objection to this and made the secretary retype the whol thing, this time substitutu=ing 'Mrs.' for 'Ms.'

Some women are proud to take on their husband's name and call themself, 'Mrs John Smith', others don't care and yet others reason, 'Why do you need to know whether I am married or single?'. Yet others, violent object to the neutral, 'Ms.'


Multiple this type of resistance manifold in the case of a man identifying as female or vice versa. "Sorry, Madam you might claim to be female but you will not be allowed to use the women's changing room to try on that garment."

So you can see why some people are objecting to something that in their eyes is not rational and being forced on them against their will.