Royal College of Psychiatrists Statement

I agree, I think they are cracking ie starting to stand up to transgender pressure but in a hedgy, fudgy way which leaves them wiggle room on either side as the fad waxes or wanes.

Worth checking out the comments on this BMJ article:

"Even the Royal College of Psychiatrists uses inaccurate terminology like ‘sex assigned at birth’ (last I checked, sex was observed, not arbitrarily assigned). We need to be more careful."

www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1312/rapid-responses

I reckon that for the general public, transsexuals' sex reassignments did more to dislodge gender from biology than all the feminist dialectics and postgraduate gender studies in the world.
How can reinforcing gender roles help to remove the concept of gender from people's lived experience? Sex reassignment (I assume you mean surgery) simply reinforces the idea that if you want to appear/live in a certain way you need to have one particular type of body. That is the opposite of the feminist argument.

the poorly defined concept gender which is frequently conflated with physical sex characteristics and that isn't what it means

I get why people worry that gender swapping "simply reinforces gender roles". However I reckon that for the general public, transsexuals' sex reassignments did more to dislodge gender from biology than all the feminist dialectics and postgraduate gender studies in the world. Do you see any mileage in that view?

I also wonder whether it's worth distinguishing between people who are desperate to fit in vs people who are more interested in standing out.

Have a little a) humility and b) compassion

When transactivists start showing the slightest hint they possess either of those qualities regarding women's rights, concerns and feelings, I'll have a rethink.

Sorry about the long post and last line. This is hard to explain and edit.

On the gender/sex conflation.

When I was diagnosed the medical term was transsexual and it was from this that the idea of a 'sex change' - still touted in the press from time to time - seemingly emerged.

Because they were not treating then those who were just effeminate boys or had a lifestyle expression that varied from the norm. Gender as such was not really then even much of a concept.

They were focusing on those with a clear sense of knowing who they were in reality but seeking to match their body as far as possible to align with it.

This is hard to describe but I got the feeling that if you were not clearly aware of what your biology actually was versus what you felt it should be then they left you to live as yourself and did not go through the then uncertainties of surgery.

They needed a degree of realism and understanding that you were not literally changing sex simply being helped to align your body as far as possible with that stated aim.

It was all orientated very physical and in that regard about the body, not the mind or the perception of identity, or clothes or hobbies. #

Those for whom that was the focus (what today we would call gender identity) were the ones they decided not to proceed towards hormones and surgery.

90% of cases were not taken forward at that time. Only 100 or so per year in the UK were dealt with medically and virtually all had surgery.

They did all sorts of tests to establish how aware you were of your reality and how far apart your sense of mind and sense of body were but they needed you not to believe this was a magic transformation that would change your biological sex.

My guess is that many of those who were not put through after such tests are today the equivalent large numbers identifying as trans but not even seeking physical transformation.

Because for them it was and is not about sex or the body but about mind and gender identity.

This is the basis of the sudden flood of cases that has turned a small trickle into a flood - many of the 90% who were turned away years ago from getting help when it was all about surgery because they did not have body dysmorphia as it was then understood. More a mind dysmorphia.

I am not arguing there are separate causes. Who knows?

But I think this division of sorts explains why those whose focus is 'wrong sex' have a realistic acceptance of the limitations of biology and change but do physically transition to achieve best fit. And then mostly just quietly blend in and get on with life relatively well. Rather than ask others to change to fit into them, which we never really did.

Whereas those whose focus is 'wrong gender' have no real need to transform physically smuch, as it is about expression of identity and self through clothes and interests and such like.

For them the 'I was always a woman' argument will be paramount because the body is not the key here, the mind is, and they likely think that is all they are doing - expressing what was always there. So biology is irrelevant .

When we had surgery back in the 70s they actually made you sign a waiver saying that you understood that you were NOT changing sex biologically. They would not do it otherwise.

This is where the confusion started as they renamed it Gender Reassignment Surgery for accuracy - because they were reconfiguring the genitals and other sex markers to reflect that and so the name made sense. And not conflicting with reality as in sex being changed.

Pretty obviously if you were not let through the gatekeeping without accepting that basic premise it shows why then those who were assisted had more realistic understanding of what was happening.

The number of surgeries seem to be more or less stable at a couple of hundred a year. The number of gender identifiers is escalating. So out there we see what looks like a transgender movement arguing for things that make no biological sense. And a few who know only too well the limitations of biology.

However, w

Barraker I agree with everything you wrote.

spoonless of course humility and compassion are important. I want to see trans people treated with respect. That doesn't stop me worrying about the potential unintended consequences of legal changes based on the poorly defined concept gender which is frequently conflated with physical sex characteristics and that isn't what it means.

The reason that no definition is ever given is that any truthful possible explanation of gender destroys completely the assertion that transgender is a genuine, verifiable state.

The reason that no definition is ever given is that nobody knows exactly what it is. Have a little a) humility and b) compassion. We do not know everything. You do not know everything. Doctors do not know everything. I'm not trans, and I was 33 before I found out that one of doctors' primary duties is to listen to patients rather than telling them that they're delusional. Most of the really heinous brutalities in medicine have come from doctors not really listening to and not believing their patients. Including the ones who think they're Napoleon.

BarrackerBarmer
Great post. Seeing it put like that it's hard to see how anyone can be taken in by this.

I've noted this TIME AND AGAIN that glossaries from the main trans'gender' organisations fail to provide a definition of gender.

The Scottish consultation was the same. “Transgender” is defined as people who find that their gender does not fully correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth. Without defining gender.

I thought it was just poor document writing. But it must be deliberate, because they have realised that if they defined gender, just using a dictionary definition, but a consistent one, it's clear that the whole ideology is based on stereotypes or delusions.

So interesting. Thanks for posting Jayceedove

They don't define gender.
Take a moment to think about why this is.
They define sex.
They use the phrase "gender identity" without explaining what they mean by 'identify as' or what gender is, and how it relates to sex.

Gender is not sex.
But it is used like a magician's decoy: here it is, gender, we mean sex here, and here it is again, meaning something different from sex, and now once more we're back to conflating it with sex.

I've noted this TIME AND AGAIN that glossaries from the main trans'gender' organisations fail to provide a definition of gender.
They skip straight to 'gender identity', never quite explaining what gender means, if it isn't sex.

There is a reason that all of these organisations employ sleight of hand with this term. They need to switch between two opposing meanings without people noticing.

If gender means sex, then to fail to accept one's immutable reality is unquestionably a delusion. This means it is a psychological disorder that needs treating as such.

If gender means social stereotypes, then it is unrelated to sex and should never be confused with terms like male or female, nor should it require medical treatment.

If it means an internal psychological sense of ones reproductive sex, then the onus is upon science to prove its existence in each sex and quantify how it manifests. And, it still precludes a person with testes from being validated that they have a sense of their phantom ovaries without resorting back to being a medical disorder.

The reason that no definition is ever given is that any truthful possible explanation of gender destroys completely the assertion that transgender is a genuine, verifiable state.

A whole medical industry and social movement built upon a word 'gender' that IS NOT DEFINED by its proponents.

It's like watching a magic act when you can see how the trick works.

We should try to help any child that presents with gender dysphoria in any way possible. And I think that seeing a doctor, being psychologically assessed and exploring other options first is very much the right approach.

I saw enough people during those years when I was being assessed who had all sorts of problems. These might have been causes or consequences of their dysphoria. I doubt there was one cause or one consequence then and in a quite different cultural climate today there are quite likely more things going on still.

Some patients were not ready to transition and were wisely deterred.

I was told that only about one in ten patients presenting then were then so forwarded.

Nobody should be rushing into anything, but all should be assessed and helped in the way that best suits them.

It seemed to work well back then as the success rate of transition was high and there were few regrets.

But I suspect more caution was applied because transition meant in pretty much every case irreversible hormone treatment and surgery. Which seems much less true today.

Jayceedove - absolutely - what you went through sounds horrible and clearly ineffective. The trouble is that now there is a whole cohort of teenagers and young adults who have adopted a trans identity very rapidly. It is highly likely that many of these are using the trans identity to cope with other stresses in their lives - autism, anxiety, not wanting to grow up, fear of sex, personality disorders. The fear is that by banning conversion therapy, all the professionals coming into contact with these young people will not try and deal with the underlying causes, thereby leading to misdiagnosis with gender dysphoria and inappropriate treatment.

I can only comment directly from the period I was under assessment by psychiatrists and psychologists for being trans - about 2 years or so prior to being sent to transition via the then only Gender Identity Clinic. This was 45 years ago so it may be quite different now.

For the first extensive period (which even preceded the two years as I started seeing doctors when at school having known I was trans at primary school in the 1950s) the entire basis of what was done WAS to try and reinforce your sense of who you were as being aligned with your biological sex and not out of alignment.

Many methods were used - from trying to treat the symptoms of dysphoria as a depression with medication. To public shaming in front of others to make you feel horrified at what you were saying you were. To pushing you down traditional gender stereotype behaviour paths that you had not followed.

These I guess are what would now be called 'conversion' therapies.

Having been deeply trans for years when these were done I tried to go along with them, but they were always doomed as they were trying to force me in a direction that I just 'knew' innately was wrong.

I actually enjoyed some of them, in that I became good at one in particular. They wanted me to play football. I didn't but compromised on training to be a referee and became good at that. But enjoying it never made me feel any different. Other than a little happier that I had succeeded. The sense of gender dysphoria never changed in any way.

Once I was put into a psych unit for deeper study things got more serious in what they tried. Testosterone injections. I was set for electro therapy to try to 'blast' me out of it, when a gender specialist arrived and took control of my case and stopped it following a week of testing and observation.

I think the psychiatrists gave up trying to persuade me to 'be who I should be' at that stage as I got forwarded to Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic and transition began.

Where all the other treatments failed, that worked very quickly indeed.

I don't know how or why to explain this. Just that this is how it felt and how it was dealt with then. They certainly did not just 'accept a delusion'. Far from it. They were dragged to transition kicking and screaming pretty much as a last resort.

A male child who likes kicking a ball is currently gender conforming in Brazil, the UK or Germany. If he spends time in other less-football-centric societies, e.g. the USA, he is at risk of being assessed there as gender non-conforming, because different gender stereotypes prevail in those societies. Nowadays, he is at risk of his behaviour in less-football-centric societies being used to diagnose him as transgender, at least for the duration of his visit. If he then returns to his home country, he is suddenly gender conforming again. At home, is he still transgender or is he not transgender again, or is he something else? How will scientists control their experiments to cover such scenarios? Supporters of gender identity expect brain studies to explain this gender conformity and non-conformity as "nature" not "nurture".

This is nonsense, because trans identity is not something that's bestowed by a third party. It requires the individual to volunteer with a subjective experience, of which most of us have no experience and yet feel entitled to expound upon with as much confidence as if they were declaring that a person is not a lizard. Which I assure you is a lot clearer cut a determination to make.

Okay, well I don't think the document does say that, because of the phrase that I highlighted in my 14:47 post. But the very fact we're discussing it shows they could have been clearer!

No, if a treatment involves persuading a transperson to accept their birth sex then it is a "conversion" treatment.
Which is the statement that I said was problematical, particularly in respect of children and young people who are confused about gender issues. If you can't try and persuade a young person to accept their body as it is, and just go with affirmation leading to a lifetime of medication, that is letting those young people down.

Simply persuading someone to accept their birth sex isn't any sort of treatment at all, let alone a conversion treatment.
You have contradicted your first sentence here. I agree that this is not a conversion treatment, but the document says it is.

No, if a treatment involves persuading a transperson to accept their birth sex then it is a "conversion" treatment.

Simply persuading someone to accept their birth sex isn't any sort of treatment at all, let alone a conversion treatment.

But yes, their language is less than helpful.

RatRolyPoly
So conversion treatment includes persuading trans people to accept their sex assigned at birth.

Their grammar is appalling, but apart from that, I'm at a loss to see how it can be interpreted any other way.

Conversion treatment
These include any approach that aims to: ... persuade or pressurise trans people to accept (or align their gender identity with) their sex assigned at birth

I've highlighted the phrase from the quote. Any approach. The word "approach" refers to a therapy or treatment, the type of which is then defined.

So if it couldn't be called a therapy it can't be called a conversion therapy.

To be fair they haven't spelled it out, although the clue is in the name.

RatRolyPoly
That quote was taken from the document advising psychiatrists how to handle treatment of "transgender and gender-diverse people".
What do you think I have misunderstood?

trying to convince a child to accept their body as it is, rather than affirm their trans identity is seen as conversion therapy

No it isn't, I think you misunderstand.

If I try and convince someone a trans person to accept their birth sex I'm not administering conversion therapy.

I'm not administering any therapy.

Although I may be trying to convert them.

For it to be "conversion therapy" it first has to qualify as treatment or therapy. If it were illegal you wouldn't be guilty of a crime for trying to talk someone out of being trans, but a psychiatrist doing so in their appointments I assume would be.

Bloody hell. 'Accepting that you are your birth sex' is conversion therapy?

Why not 'accept that you are your birth sex, would strongly prefer not to be, and therefore intend to appear more like the [stereotypes of the] other sex'?

Why the dishonesty?

Somethingweird
it objects to conversion therapy but is careful to single out certain aspects of conversion therapy as being abhorrent

The comments about conversion therapy with regard to transgender people include the statement:
Conversion therapies ... may include barriers to gender-affirming medical and psychological treatments.

and in the glossary it gives this definition of conversion therapy:
Conversion treatment
These include any approach that aims to: ... persuade or pressurise trans people to accept (or align their gender identity with) their sex assigned at birth

This is the problem that others in your position have mentioned, that trying to convince a child to accept their body as it is, rather than affirm their trans identity is seen as conversion therapy. They also say that the use of conversion therapy (as they define it) may be an act of discrimination under the Equality Act (2010). So this document is unhelpful in terms of getting therapy for a child who is confused about their gender.