Just a question re transgender

Not convinced there is such a thing as a trans community. There seem to be two distinctly different trans populations: those escaping and those self-indulging.

I was not saying that autism is not highly representative, esp among young women - it very clearly is. I was just commenting that many of the older trans we hear from/about e.g. I. Willoughby, seem to be narcissists (and that thing we are not supposed to mention). I don't know any stats on it - I think it would be difficult to quantify, too.

OK so point us at some data to back that up. I mean quite a lot of trans activists are definitely narcs but I'm not sure how representative they are of the community as a whole, for all the airtime they get. The high preponderance of autism in the trans community however can be clearly shown.

I suspect that some forms of neurodiversity wouldn’t show up as much IYSWIM. Those who are extreme rule-followers could be quite at home in an environment where there are many rules and clear distinctions, for example. They might actually be seen as very good members of the religious community, rather than as people in search of something that fits them.

EDS is a terrible thing. Staggered that anyone would self diagnose with it. The only person I know with it has full forever PIP, he's only 30.
I wonder what these people do have?

Not entirely sure that's true. The trans community seems heavily to lean towards narcissism which is likely to want to produce 'symptoms' of illness so that they are always centred.

No, I was substituting the gender zeal for another religious zeal.

i.e is neurodiversity and/or mental disorders overrepresented among very zealous religious people?

Very zealous being defined as way beyond what is expected in their community, e.g bodily mortification, cloistering etc.

What I meant was that it would be interesting to know whether in some cultures extreme religious zeal is also one of these behaviors.

Do you mean among people who feel a deep need to be speshul, @ditalini?

I have had involvement with Abrahamic religious communities, and IME (which I admit is not extensive) people who feel extreme religious zeal tend to be hyper-conforming because their religion either specifies the behaviour expected from each sex, or because sexual stereotypes are embedded in their religion's way of life. I don't know enough to comment about Dharmic religions.

The Abrahamic religions all have the concept that human beings were created in God's image, and that souls are placed in bodies by God. Claiming that God placed a female soul in a male body is like saying that God made a mistake. Body modifications are like damaging God's image, or implying that what he made was not good enough. Members of progressive branches of these faiths might well feel differently about this, but I cannot imagine that faith members with extreme religious zeal could.

A person with both a trans identity and extreme religious zeal would be so phenomenally conflicted that it would be cognitive dissonance on steroids. Or selective thinking on steroids.

And of course there has been no bar whatever to women playing male characters and men playing female ones in role-playing games, at least during this century and I think for rather longer, though usually until quite recently it tended to be women playing males because the male characters had a more interesting variety of things available for them to do/be.

And nobody has ever thought that the bearded bespectacled bloke with a beer belly playing Princess Nadine, Super-Assassin, must be gay or trans, as far as I know.

Nerdy activities (D&D, amateur stand-up comedy, anything sci-fi related) seem to attract people on the autistic spectrum and there seems to be a lot of overlap with all things queer, non-binary and trans.

At least one of the puberty blocker drugs was developed for a quite different purpose and was deemed too dangerous to be prescribed to adults for more than six months, so it seems quite likely that the experimental animals children to whom they were prescribed for several years might have been damaged by them.

I wonder if there is (also?) a link between cross-sex hormones and some of the illnesses and conditions that seem to be associated with a transgender identity.

American Southern Baptists, perhaps? They seem to do their best to insist that everyone must believe what they do.

When they come up against the gay it ain't pretty, because the gay quite legitimately refuse to conform to the baptist norm. (And let's not think about the special hell-on-earth that is being a gay adolescent in a Southern Baptist family.)

That makes no sense, sorry. Obviously something that's no different is extremely similar 😳

What I meant was that it would be interesting to know whether in some cultures extreme religious zeal is also one of these behaviors.

Apart from a very few absolutely exeptional people in each generation, we all have to come to terms with not being exceptional. Most people eventually realise they are quite ordinary.

Having some sort of minor disability is no longer special enough to get anyone's attention, so you need to have fourteen or fifteen, or an amputation or two, to get any notoriety at all.

Not only is it no different, it's extremely similar to people with extreme religious zeal.

Look at me, I am special
writ in rainbows

I suppose my question and thoughts turned to "is any of this connected?!". Has any science/research properly investigated these links? Aibu to wonder if all these things are connected - in particular the medical aspects?

Undoubtedly these things are all connected. The patterns of behaviour are not healthy.

Fair enough, but it doesn't mean that they should expect the rest of the world to live according to their beliefs.

It's no different to a very religious person wanting to live according to their beliefs.

It's not easy to be trans and most trans people are just trying to get by in life (contrary go clickbait headlines.) A lot of them have been harassed in life, or had a tough time growing up (along with other conditions like autism, etc) so have faced higher levels of trauma or the general challenges of figuring out their identity. The world is shifting more right wing and has become more hostile to trans people, especially if you live somewhere like the states.

Medical condition? No. Mental health condition? Possibly, in some demographics , particularly younger ones, along the lines of eating disorders. Paraphilia? Highly likely, particularly in adult male demographics.

Transgenderism cannot be considered as one 'condition'. It is different in different demographics.

First responsibility lies with adults with a duty of care: parents, teachers, counsellors etc, to reinforce that

1. you are fine as you are
2. if it's normal to be discomforted by puberty
3. it is normal to feel discomfort between what you think and what you feel others expect of you
4. it is fine to break stereotypes
5. it is fine to behave according to the stereotypes of the other sex
6. it is fine to be lesbian/gay/bi/whatever
7. you are fine as you are.

And these adults must also accept that young people experiment, but that experimentation does not change reality and the young person must have both the freedom to experiment and the freedom to change their minds.

And at the other end, fetish and kink should get back where they belong: in the bedroom, between consenting adults only.

I agree that it's no coincidence but I disagree about the cause.
There is a strong correlation between autism and a whole host of autoimmune diseases, including ones that (if you are a skeptic) are not possible to fake eg crohns disease (diagnosed by structural changes to the gut seen via biopsy). You don't have to be autistic to suffer from these conditions of course, but they are far more prevalent amongst autistic people than neuro typical ones.

So if many trans people are autistic then it stands to reason that the incidence of these conditions will be far higher than normal within the trans community.

@drasticdonkey Yes, there is so much of it, all over various social media platforms. I understand some people feel offended by it being brought up, but it isn't intended to be personally hurtful to anyone. This is a very real phenomenon and I think it's perfectly legitimate to discuss it. Some of us have been watching this unfold (and seeing the damage it causes) for years now.

Social media has a lot to answer for.

Yup, no coincidence they're just all absolutely nuts and constantly attention seeking.