14th October 'Nolan Investigates' podcast - Stonewall?

I think it’s so interesting how anti-therapy this whole ‘gender affirming’ shebang is: it’s as if they want to keep kids locked into fantasy/feelings of disembodiment/alienation etc, the very things good therapy or counselling can help with.

Yep. Here's Helen Joyce talking about it:

In any other culture and time, nobody would have said, "Ah, you're probably of the opposite sex inside". Because that's a crazy thing to say. But it's now such a powerful narrative, that you don't even need to go to the doctor to get it.

That's another thing, of course, it's not just that we all live online, it's that ideas are spread online. So a child who - as many, many children do at 12, 13, 14 - feels profoundly wrong about themselves: you go and you type out "Why do I feel so terrible? Why do i feel different from everybody else?"

Loads of people feel like that. It might just be ordinary teenage angst but, you know ,you might actually be on the autistic spectrum, you know, loads of things. You might have been abused as a child and this is why you've dissociated from your body. Loads of reasons. But anyway, the answer you will find is "you might be trans". And the advice you'll be given is to meditate on your gender, to think about it all the time, like ALL the time.

There's no better advice for making somebody mentally distressed than to get them to ruminate about what they're mentally distressed about. It's the opposite of CBT; it's the opposite of what's wise, I understand.

Also worth stating: the whole thought experiment about 'waking up in a different body' - it doesn't happen. It's science fiction. Fantasy.

The known human experience is a sudden shift in functionality of a familiar body - and it involves accepting and working with that change to be mentally healthy and functional. Whether it's that you've suddenly acquired big breasts as a young girl, you've lost a limb, you've had a stroke.

That's different to perceiving the reality of your body as different to your internal self perception, such as conviction that your body is fat when it's dangerously underweight, or a limb does not belong to you. These are mental health based challenges.

Humans don't wake up as a living soul inside a body they have never been in before. That assumes for a start that such a living 'self' exists separately of the body, which is a quasi religious belief. It's an episode of Star Trek, not reality.

It’s encouraging young people to live in their heads, ignoring the materiality of their lives.

In that sense, ‘gender identity’ is a fantasy project; if you’re a young girl, your changing body, periods, sexual harassment etc etc are real. But this advice keeps you in your head.

I think it’s so interesting how anti-therapy this whole ‘gender affirming’ shebang is: it’s as if they want to keep kids locked into fantasy/feelings of disembodiment/alienation etc, the very things good therapy or counselling can help with.

If anyone needs any further example of someone (also white, born male) that's non-binary listen to Fearne Cotton's podcast Happy Place with 'non binary Drag Queen' Bimini Bon Boulash. OMG. Fearne - if you're reading this, stop pandering to the "be kind" narrative and learn for yourself that 'gender fluidity' does not mean that there aren't males and females any more and that women don't need single sex spaces.

So if I woke up with a dick one day initially my brain would be like 'whoa! Fuck. How do I wee?' but after a while it would be like 'there's ma dick, doin' ma wee.'

Fascinating.

"If I woke up in a different body", is an interesting thought experiment that can help us feel empathy for other people.

But, if I woke up in another body, I'd be using the neurology of a differently wired brain that reflected the experiences of growing up in that body. In short, I'd be a different person.

Brains build an internal model of the body from biofeedback. If the body changes, it adapts. So if it stops getting sensory input from your right leg below the knee, it adapts to not having it. The neural networks that used to give you the sensation there will be colonised by other sensory input, which will make it feel as if your missing leg is being touched initially, but eventually your brain learns that that sensation is now coded to somewhere else.

Likewise if you have an artificial limb installed which gives biofeedback, your brain adds it into your mental model of the body. In fact, we do this with objects temporarily, like riding a bike.

The book "Livewired" dives deep into how the brain works and adapts. It was a really fascinating read.

So our brains (and therefore minds) are deeply integrated in with our body experience - not least because it is a part of the body, you can't divorce the two. But even if our bodies change dramatically such as losing a sense like sight or hearing, our brains adapt, other sensory inputs colonise that prime real estate of processing power to understand the world with what we have.

Sometimes we live so much in our thoughts we forget that our thoughts are products of our physical bodies.

The piece on the Today Programme got a lot in I felt, in a short space of time. It will have a huge audience too.

It's available on iplayer now - starts approx 20 minutes before the end
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010ncj

People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own gender.

So what's the reason again for pressuring thousands of children into irreversible surgery? Talk me through it.

Bodies don't have anything to do with who you are, but to truly be who you are, you should change your body?

People often suddenly find themselves in a different body. For example, my mum had a stroke, and became disabled overnight. At first, she would dream she was no longer disabled, and was horrified when she woke up to find the reality of her body. However, after a while, her mind accommodated her new body, because it was the reality.

People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own gender.

Just commenting on this quote from Proud Trust which is complete propaganda. How can you ask a question aimed at children and then immediately answer it. How is this misinformation allowed to be targeted at children?

I think it is quite clear that you may well feel different if you wake up in a different body and that the experience of detransitioners bears this out.

The more I've read about gender the more it's clear no-one can say exactly what it is, or they don't want to because they realise it doesn't stand up to scrutiny if they want it to become a legal category.
Either it's:

• a sense of being male or female - when male or female is purely your biological sex, does this mean people "see" or "feel" (hallucinate or phantom limb type sensation) different genitals on themselves?

• a sense of being masculine or feminine - in which case being eg masculine and being male are mutually exclusive categories and it's wrong to think being one necessitates being the other.

• A sense of being deeply unhappy with your body because it doesn't look/ work like you'd like it to - in which case this seems like body dysmorphia or anyone else who wants to change their appearance according to what society dictates is acceptable.

None of those should be dismissed, but none of them explain why a feeling of gender means you actually are one sex or another or neither.

Nolan and Thompson were just interviewed on the Today programme. They got a fair amount of headwind from Mishal Husain and struggled to convey their message in terms of the facts in such a short segment. She didn't seem that interested in the issues of partiality. I couldn't figure out whether she was doing Devil's Advocate or if she views Stonewall simply as part of the furniture at the BBC.

The response on twitter was "bigots" and "Irish bigots" in the main.

It makes no sense to me.
People build senses of identity based on lots of things about themselves. And many of those, unlike sex, do actually change. It feels strange to start with but our brains catch up.

For example you build an identity based on being well off - but then lose your job. Or you build an identity based on being married - but then your spouse runs off. Life changes like losing a dear one, a medical diagnosis. Getting old! Happens to us all.

We're always still the same person inside, but we do need to make adjustments and we are perceived differently by the outside world. And some people hang more of their sense of identity on particular things and struggle more if those things change. People don't generally think it healthy to keep hanging on to feelings of identity based on something that is no longer true. How much less to hang your feelings of identity on something that was never true in the first place?

So in that thought experiment, yeah, if I woke up male I'd be a man. It wouldn't change a lot tbh. Not half as identity rearranging as when I became a parent or changed careers.

The person I am inside is just me.

I'm remember waking up in a different body, I was thirteen year walking to school and for the first time every fourth or so car would beep at me. Suddenly I no longer looked like a little girl. Its called adolescence and the issue is not gender dysmorphia but a society that treats women as sexual objects

I’m pretty sure if anyone woke up in a different body it would be strange and unsettling.

Even Sam Beckett found it weird and he did it every week.

Mind blown. Scientists now understand this stuff so much more than since when I went to school. Thank you for educating me!

This is a charity project supported by the NHS. They do a ton of outreach work in schools, funded by local councils etc. Stonewall is but one organisation promoting this ‘vague feeling in your head’ stuff. At the very least, all such ‘affirming’ material should also share time/resources with a science based information programme re same sex attraction, eating disorders and exploring general mental health in teenagers etc

But does your height match your age? One is variable and fluid, one is based on a fixed material fact.
Your height can either match, or be different from, the date of birth you were assigned at birth.

Your height is not determined by your body parts. People come in many different shapes and sizes. Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside? No! You would be the same person you were before, with the same sense of your own height.

Pretty heady stuff for any child with identity issues (doesn't that describe all teenagers?!)

AFAIK: What that originally meant, in the days when words had meanings, is that most children could correctly identify their sex by that age and knew whether they were a boy or girl that way

They know by 3/4 but simultaneously need blockers to buy extra time to figure it out at 11/12/13

Which is it

We usually become aware of our gender around the age of three or four years old.

AFAIK: What that originally meant, in the days when words had meanings, is that most children could correctly identify their sex by that age and knew whether they were a boy or girl that way.

Imagine you woke up one day in a different body. Would anything change on the inside?

I honestly think it should be illegal for publicly funded bodies to promote ideas like this to children.

I don’t know if anyone has ever researched the mental health consequences of believing in mind/body dualism but based on my own experiences recovering from anxiety and chronic dissociation, internalising a dualistic view of the world was bad for me, and presented a barrier to recovery. What if the “different body” you woke up in had a faster heartbeat and different patterns of muscle tension? Wouldn’t that change anything “inside?”

I could rant for hours about this honestly. I know teachers of young kids understand the mind/body connection a lot better than they used to, are there no guidelines about helping children themselves understand it? Or at least not actively confusing them?

Some more

“ You’re never too young to be yourself. We usually become aware of our gender around the age of three or four years old. Remember, if you think you are trans, there is no checklist of things that you must do. You might want to do simple things like change the clothes you wear or ask people to use different pronouns such as he, she or they. There is no age limit for doing these things.”