Cont: Transwomen are not women - part XI

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Robin said:
But that would imply that we should now be seeing fewer gender dysphoria diagnoses since autism is now better understood and being diagnosed more frequently and earlier.

Also any stigma about being on the spectrum is quickly evaporating.

Since there doesn't appear to have been any dramatic decrease of diagnoses of gender dysphoria then it seems highly unlikely that there was ever any significant misdiagnosis of autism as GD.
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Has someone suggested that autism is being misdiagnosed as GD?
 
Robin said:
Since there doesn't appear to have been any dramatic decrease of diagnoses of gender dysphoria then it seems highly unlikely that there was ever any significant misdiagnosis of autism as GD.
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This doesn't seem to be what has been happening. The original Dutch protocol effectively screened out children with any other mental health condition or diagnoses of neurodivergence, so the number advancing to puberty blockers and hormones was much smaller.

The health service reviews in England/Wales (Cass review), Norway, Sweden and Finland have all found very high percentages, highly disproportionate to the general prevalence, of autism on the one hand, and mental health conditions on the other, among the children referred to gender identity clinics.

The Tavistock Centre as well as US and Canadian gender identity clinics then proceeded *not* to apply the original Dutch protocol, shortening the times from first appointment to being prescribed puberty blockers (or in North America other medical interventions: puberty blockers were a requirement in Tavistock's GIDS before progressing).

Comorbidities of autism or mental health conditions alongside gender dysphoria require clinicians to work out whether those experiencing childhood and teenage gender dysphoria are seizing on gender identity as an apparent solution to other conditions, and what to treat first.

Since one symptom of neurodivergence is a tendency towards rigid thinking, there is an above-average chance that a kid who seizes on the notion that they are born in the wrong body is misleading themselves. This is confirmed in the accounts of many detransitioners, who realise years later that they were railroaded down gender dysphoria as an explanation and indeed, panacea for their comorbidities, which should have been explored first.

Undoubtedly, some kids who are referred to gender clinics might have undiagnosed neurodivergent conditions; again some detransitioners have reported that they later received diagnoses of neurodivergence.

So sure, there's a minority who might be 'misdiagnosed' with gender dysphoria, but it seems as if quite a high proportion of child and teenage cases of gender dysphoria have preexisting diagnoses of autism.

The problem, as Hannah Barnes shows in Time to Think, is that the massive upsurge in referrals and cases of gender dysphoria has not been properly documented, researched or monitored, so we cannot answer with absolute certainty many of the questions we'd like to know.

But it's also clear that denying a relationship between presenting with gender dysphoria and neurodivergence or other mental health conditions is the height of irresponsibility. One cannot simply affirm the gender dysphoria of children and teenagers without a significant number experiencing serious regret later in their development to adulthood; there are currently no good tools for determining who will and who won't regret transitioning, and many more *do* detransition, contrary to gender-affirmationist propaganda.


Here's one detransitioner, Elle Palmer, summing up the conundrum:

Even if all the right steps are taken in a timely manner for a child with gender dysphoria, a gender transition is not always the answer. The child might not be struggling with being born in the wrong body, but rather dealing with sexual identity, abuse, an eating disorder, or a plethora of other things that should be explored and addressed long before puberty blockers are considered. In fact, the right decision might not be to administer puberty blockers to any child, instead letting them make the decision for themselves when they reach adulthood and have more time to explore their place in the world before committing to a big medical intervention that will change their body forever.

The physical and psychological ramifications of undergoing a gender transition are enormous and stressful, and real children are being spoken about in this paper. But with all the possible complications, and the risks that are yet to be discovered, I believe it is irresponsible to allow children to make a lifelong decision at such a young age when the effects are still largely unknown. As one study pointed out, “asking a child or adolescent to make a decision on whether they wish to put at risk their fertility, their genital development, their capacity for full sexual function and their brain development, in a context of an expressed need to resolve their immediate distress is… ethically problematic” (Pilgrim and Entwistle).

So, what’s worse? Dysphoric youth who identify as transgender into adulthood wishing they had transitioned sooner, or adolescents that were given puberty blockers growing older and living with regret over medical decisions that were made for them?
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https://ellepalmer.substack.com/p/p...ect&r=1nhkeb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The northwest European answer - reflected in the guidelines for the national health services of England/Wales, Finland and Sweden, and the advice of the Norwegian health service, as well as admissions in the Netherlands that their original 'Dutch protocol' is not being applied correctly elsewhere - is to err on the side of caution.
 
Nick Terry said:
This doesn't seem to be what has been happening.
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Well that's the point. If condition A is being misdiagnosed as condition B and there is a dramatic increase inthe understanding of and detection of condition A them.you should see a drop in the diagnoses of condition B.

Since autism is being understood and recognised more than ever and we are not seeing a drop in diagnoses of GD then it is extremely unlikely there was ever any significant misdiagnosis of autism as GD.
 
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Robin said:
Well that's the point. If condition A is being misdiagnosed as condition B and there is a dramatic increase inthe understanding of and detection of condition A them.you should see a drop in the diagnoses of condition B.

Since autism is being understood and recognised more than ever and we are not seeing a drop in diagnoses of GD then it is extremely unlikely there was ever any significant misdiagnosis of autism as GD.
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I don't think the claim was that autism was being misdiagnosed as GD so much that autistic traits were contributing to children and adolescents to think they were trans. If we didn't know they had autistic traits we wouldn't be able to report the association.
But in any case, what you said doesn't follow. There are many other reasons that diagnosis of GD in children and adolescents can be increasing, including promotion of the idea that being a boy or girl is based on feelings or stereotypes.
 
Elaedith said:
I don't think the claim was that autism was being misdiagnosed as GD so much that autistic traits were contributing to children and adolescents to think they were trans.
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If that's what they meant, then they need to be more clear.

If we didn't know they had autistic traits we wouldn't be able to report the association.
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In which case what I said applies to your claim too even if you don't see it yet.

These days the average public school teacher can pick up on the symptoms for autism and recommend for parents to seek aa professional opinion.

So it would follow that it would be more likely now for a professional to pick up on the autism and much more likely for someone on the spectrum to report this fact.
 
The big problem is that neurotyps do their social processing mostly at an unconscious level and are mostly unaware that this is what is happening.

On the spectrum we do our social processing largely at the conscious level yet, became neurotyps are the majority, have to navigate a social landscape created by the unconscious processes of neurotyps a landscape which most neurotyps themselves don't understand.
 
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Robin said:
The big problem is that neurotyps do their social processing mostly at an unconscious level and are mostly unaware that this is what is happening.

On the spectrum we do our social processing largely at the conscious level yet, became neurotyps are the majority, have to navigate a social landscape created by the unconscious processes of neurotyps a landscape which most neurotyps themselves don't understand.
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Gibberish
 
d4m10n said:
It was "labels are silly," but the contradiction remains.
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Might be easier if people didn't arbitrarily change.'silly" into "evil" don't you think?
Either you think labels are silly or you think misgendering and deadnaming are sinful.
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It's not obvious to me why you should think so. Can you walk me through the inference?
 
theprestige said:
Gibberish
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You didn't understand what I said there?

Before you answer consider - if you understood what I.sakd then by definition it can't have been gibberish.

If you didn't understand what I said then we can go through step by step. Do you understand that a neurotypical person does most of their social processing at an unconscious level and that autism is largely the lack of the ability to do this?
 
Robin said:
Can you walk me through the inference?
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If someone is upset about deadnaming or misgendering, they are upset about a verbal act of mislabeling. Thus, they lack a casual attitude regarding labels. While they might well say "labels are silly," they are not living it.
 
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