Guest post: This is so not a leap forward
Originally a comment by Artymorty on The evidence behind this surge in treatment.
It could be that there was a huge underserved population of adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria and getting no help, or it could be that a huge population of unhappy adolescents has latched on to “gender dysphoria” as the source and meaning of their unhappiness. It could also be a mix of both.
I find it frustrating how the entire medical profession has to tip-toe around the subject of gender distress, holding back from saying things that are obvious. It’s patently obvious that this is the first generation of adolescents experiencing anything like this, in terms of the number of adolescents affected, and the degree to which they seem to be experiencing distress over sex and gender.
This is the only area of medicine I can think of that believes “an overabundance of caution” means caution about offending activists instead of caution about the health of vulnerable patients. It was out of an overabundance of caution over fears of being perceived as transphobic that they rushed to greenlight experimental treatments on vulnerable adolescents before they had any good data to back them up, and in the face of overwhelming data that shows none of this treatment is entirely necessary, plus a growing body of data that shows most of it may in fact be harmful.
“Gender dysphoria” is being defined ever more broadly, and treated more aggressively at the same time. Fifteen years ago it was “gender identity disorder” —a full-blown debilitating mental disorder. Now it’s just a feeling of distress. And plans are already underway to redefine it again, this time as “gender incongruence” — nothing more than a preference to be one sex over the other. But these softer thresholds aren’t being matched with softer treatments. It’s full-on sex changes for everyone; the more the better. So there it is, the underlying ideal, a bizarre new “human right”: sex is a choice.
A lot of people have drifted into the position that sex is a choice without properly examining it. It’s bad on multiple levels. At the lowest level, it’s not true: sex is not a choice; it’s something we’re all born with. Next level up: so-called “sex change” treatment doesn’t literally change anyone’s sex, because that’s impossible. This is all just cosmetics with sterility and other major medical problems as inconvenient side effects. And up on the social level, simply giving in to everyone’s desire to change their sex ignores the social factors that are influencing people to feel this way in the first place: namely, sexism and homophobia.
Because if men and women, gays and straights, were truly equal, and were truly free to live our lives the way we see fit, then why would anyone feel such an urgent need to switch their body from one sex to the other? Especially when they aren’t even really switching sexes; they’re just paying a massive medical price to undertake a lifelong pretence of switching?
This is so not a leap forward for humanity; it’s such an obvious lurch in the wrong direction.
I have a (perhaps naive) question:
Given that the phenomenon of “trans-ness,” or gender dysphoria, or whatever, is so rare–and even acknowledged as such–what has gotten so many non-trans people so exercised over it? I have never seen/ heard of any of the cruelties and injustices repeated on the web–indeed, I’ve only ever met three trans people in my life–so the noise around this issue seems disproportionate. Even about a third of my department at school have taken to festooning their bios with pronouns.
I would offer a, not-completely, tongue-in-cheek answer to that question, Mike B – positing that it might be a result of the decline in organised religion. In the old days people expressed their moral identity by insisting that communion bread either was, or was not, literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Once we had emerged from the 17th Century, and such disagreements were no longer a mandate for killing each other, they began to serve as a valuable safety value for relatively harmless tribal expressions of moral identity. Now that organised religion has declined, people are forming the same emotional attachment to moralised beliefs that, unfortunately, have greater real-world consequences.
It’s so much easier to apply drugs and scalpels to individuals and create the fantasy that you are sticking it to the patriarchy than it is to try to make a even a dent in changing how patriarchy affects our selves, and our freedom to express ourselves. These medical procedures affirm the patriarchy, because it says to gender NC people that “if you don’t fit your roles, we’ll mold you into someone whose roles you will fit.”
Then there is no need to break the roles down so we can just be ourselves. And isn’t that the ironic, evil-genius laugh of it all? BWA HA HA! Max von Sydow’s character has all these victims lining up to join his project, no squirming except to check their gofundme account to see if they’ve got enough to pay him the fee for a lifetime of torture.
I do think that the majority of adult males are expressing an unresolved AGP, and it has nothing to do with gender dysphoria, that kids are struggling to understand gender roles and the adults they are supposed to trust just want to slap a quick label of “trans” on them so they can buy them opposite-sex toys and clothes without having to worry if their child might be gay, and that girls are just being told again that the female body is wrong and must be fucked with by yeeting.
It’s easy answers all around, isn’t it? Alex Drummond claims to expand the meaning of the word woman with his beardy girl look, while it would be so much more liberating if he would expand the meaning of the word man.
Alan–that like to “transubstantiation” is one I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ll be writing an article about tolerance/intolerance that will feature that. Still debating whether to allow it to be published.
P. S. Is your name your name, or is it a reference to the mighty M. King Hubbert?
I am ~95% sure that if teenage me had been given the opportunity to become a boy, I would have jumped at the chance. I disliked wearing girls’ clothes, was not at all interested in fashion or makeup, and was excessively interested in STEM. I was unpopular with the cool kids (actively shunned by the girls, and ignored by the boys), but was well accepted hanging around with the (nerdy) guys. as a member of the computer club and AV club. I also had significant dysmenorhea, so the idea of having no periods (or even no uterus) would have been quite attractive – I was somewhere between negative and ambivalent about having children, so loss of fertility would likely not have been an issue at the time. To this day (in my 60s), I would never say that I “identify” as a woman, though that is what I label myself if asked. (Though I do object in principle to being asked in situations where either sex or gender is (or ought to be) irrelevant.)
I also wonder if my (now 30-something) sensitive, bright, socially awkward sons were teens today they would be led to question their gender identity when they faced the challenges of adolescence. And I have a lot of sympathy for people who are trying to be good parents and grandparents to children and teens today.