Brilliant article: Trans Is Something We Made Up

I recently discovered that my daughter won’t discuss this with me as well and I find it very difficult.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that her life includes so many people deep in this ideology (and I suspect medicated) that to admit, out loud, that she agrees with me (as she used to, to an extent) might make her cognitive dissonance too intense to deal with when faced with them. These are people she works with (and likes, I think) so she can’t just walk away. She is also in a relationship with someone who possibly buys into it more than she does.

It is horrible though and to allow her to indicate that she can’t talk to me about this (with the side implication that it’s because I’m bigoted) is painful. But the various other alternatives, which probably include her feeling forced to choose between me and her current life, are potentially worse.

It’s there though, between us, and I don’t know what to actively do. I just find myself hoping it’s something that societal change and understanding will eventually resolve. I’ve waited through other behaviorally difficult times for her to grow out of them. I kind of hope this will be another.

Placebo effect has links to religious belief, in terms of processes - can't for the life of me remember where I read or heard that.

I recall reading something along similar lines many years ago. Not religion, but culture - it was about how the form of placebo had different efficacy in different countries, e.g. Country X experienced greater relief when the placebo was a capsule rather than a pill, Country Y preferred injections, etc. It might have been one of Ben Goldacre's books.

I totally agree.

I heard Paul Vasey talking about the role of 3rd genders on other cultures on the Gender A Wider Lens podcast. He hasn’t found anything like the heterosexual transvestism or transgenderism / agp that we see in the West in those cultures.

I wonder where it comes from? There was clearly some about in the early 1900s in Germany as studied by Magnus Hirschfeld. I think the advent of using the sexualisation of women to sell in advertising in the 50s onwards and sexualisation in music videos and the rise in porn have some influence.

Porn is a big contributing factor now too with sissy porn.

Placebo effect has links to religious belief, in terms of processes - can't for the life of me remember where I read or heard that.

But clearly believing something can help you has the power to change perspective and improve wellbeing and even sometimes physical pain without physically affecting your body.

There's a common shoulder surgery that's been shown to be no better than a placebo.

A lot is talked about post surgery euphoria etc. and then follow ups drift off and don't capture the possible regret that can occur years later.

There are certainly 'acceptable diseases' in society and ones that aren't as 'cheered on.' Some have a stigma around them. Trans is a condition that is now very celebrated but has a wooly diagnosis (or none) so is 'open access.'

It's a magnet for other mental health conditions. The mental condition is now physically treated. Which has symbolism, you're physically being cared for and issued medicine. People care.

I just randomly remembered Morgellons - an offshoot of a known psychiatric diagnosis that was turned into something else for about 4 years by the sheer drive of one woman who refused to accept the accurate psychiatric diagnosis of her son, who repeatedly said 'bugs' about his itchy skin. She actually named the 'disease', and organised an Internet based letter writing campaign to get the US authorities to investigate. They did, and found it was an offshoot of a known psychiatric diagnosis.

People discount the power of culture, the power of the psyche. People will tell you they aren't affected by advertising, from a home stuffed with branded goods. It's like believing that an ethnicity is something other people have.

I kind of understand the thought that modern society is inclined to attempt to medicate away natural but sometimes difficult processes.
Once medical advances become such that a natural process can be in some way altered, if not eliminated, then society's feelings towards this process mutate.
The natural process is seen more as a choice, and the difficulties that go with it are almost viewed as self inflicted.
People are judged somewhat for not wishing to take medicine for a natural process, and therefore are not given the understanding from others.
It's not wrong to wish to improve lives, but we must understand the consequences of changing perspective on others whose rights to choose not to do something are equal to those that do.
It's not just medication. Often people push for a named diagnosis. Not always to necessarily receive medication or intervention but to access understanding from others they may not have received otherwise.

I recall reading it earlier and found it interesting. It may have been a different article which talked about schizophrenia and the hallucinations it creates in a cultural context. While the disease is the same on different continents, the hallucinations are affected by cultures so they differ.

So in a similar manner 'gender incongruence' is universal but is interpreted differently in different cultures. And when some trans activists say that trans people have always existed, they are really saying that gender incongruent people have always existed, but this is not the same as arguing that the only thing which defines being a woman or a man is wishing to be seen as one. That is new.

Replacing a hormone that's low and leaving you pretty physically disabled is necessary medical treatment, as with replacing thyroxine or insulin. (Not quite as bad as you don't die from lack of oestrogen, although obviously marriage breakdown and job loss can lead to extreme depression there are diseases for which hrt is protective.)

Touting menopause skin creams (boots) is making it an culturally trendy thing and yet another addition to the pink tax.

Fair enough @Abra1t , I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one then :)

I don’t think it’s at all like helping women deal with very real symptoms so they can carry on working and having an acceptable life at menopause.

Superb article - thanks for sharing

It's getting harder though as the numbers of children with ehcps are increasing hugely. Our cohort is changing quickly . And we've many more children than we used to have.

The bbc report said there are many more children surviving severe birth trauma or prematurity or other illnesses when young who need specialist school provision. But this has had a knock on effect to the whole system as there's been no increase in school spaces.

The pupils who'd be described as "MLD" for whom we are supposed to teach in a send school are being increasingly taught in mainstream with support - but that's not actually always appropriate and staff training and understanding is a huge issue. Our cohorts' needs are moving more towards what would be expected in a school for severe learning difficulties. Again, we don't really have the curriculum and set up for them (though obviously are rapidly having to change this.)

Completely agree @youmustbemad.

A number of the pupils I teach are severely disabled by autism but others it's been more that they just don't fit the status quo in school life, and also have difficulty with emotional regulation.

Academically able but need very different settings (and fewer people, expectations) to maintain a manageable level of regulation and mental/ visual processing

I liked this a lot, might share it with a few people.
Re the neurodiversity thing, as the mother of an autistic child with ADHD, for those people who are not severely affected (,i.e. obviously, if you're non-verbal, or have literally no sense of danger, or can't eat most foods, that's really difficult and I can't comment on that) I definitely feel it's a socially created problem, not a disorder. The way we do education and structure our society is the problem, not how my son is/what he can cope with. Same with dyslexia, it's only a 'disorder' if society is structured such that everyone is expected to be able to read fluently and easily. If you're a hunter-gatherer, you don't need reading or the ability to cope with crowded streets, or public transport or supermarkets, or to sit at a desk, or to wear uncomfortable school uniform etc I think a lot of people with neurodivergent kids or who are neurodivergent themselves feel like that, it's not offensive to say that for many people how they are is only pathologised because of the society we live in. Quite the opposite!

It occurs to me that The Righteous would dismiss this article out-of-hand as inherently transphobic, particularly the conclusion:

Just as there are no tall people trapped in short bodies, no Asian people trapped in white bodies, no hazel-eyed people trapped in blue-eyed bodies, there are no people trapped in wrong-sex bodies.

The 'reasoning' being something along the lines of transgender-identified people say they feel that they are trapped in the wrong bodies ergo Good People must accept this as truth; anybody who says they don't believe in wrong bodies is ipso facto a Bad Person.

I've just written and deleted a long but erratic bit about neurodiversity as a medicalised cultural concept. I wonder what kind of cancelling I might get for that.

I think the growing numbers of diagnoses of neurodiversity fit the cultural model of illness very well. Eg, autism was initially recognised as the Rainman, very male condition. As other people with very different presentations have been diagnosed they simply change the definition of what autism is! This makes zero sense. Autism now exists as something totally different to autism in the 1970s. It’s surely a cultural creation rather than an actual diagnosis.

Medicating your way out of a natural process, which is difficult at times.

I think culturally we are now seeing this more and more with the menopause as well - again because some people have spotted it's a way to make money.

Excellent article:

Just as there are no tall people trapped in short bodies, no Asian people trapped in white bodies, no hazel-eyed people trapped in blue-eyed bodies, there are no people trapped in wrong-sex bodies. That’s something we made up. Our bodies, our personalities, our hobbies, our ways of adorning ourselves just are what they are.

It says pretty much what I feel about the whole trans thing but in a much more eloquent way I than I could ever say it.

I've long suspected that trans is something we made up because some people can make a lot of money from people who feel vulnerable.

Very interesting and I've always thought this too

I was talking to my older teen about puberty and how difficult it was for him and most teens.. i think this idea of not feeling normal and all the changes has somehow forced the idea that they are 'trapped' in the wrong body? And then fixate on being trans. Medicating your way out of a natural process, which is difficult at times.

Excellent article.

Personally I think a lot of it has been internet / media / click or watch bait driven.

Interesting article. I think she's right - trans is something we made up - but the pertinent question is why. And particularly, why now. I think a lot of us have come to the conclusion that autogynephilia is common amongst adult men, and whereas before it was manifested as transvestism, now we call it transgender. But the huge, sudden onset of trans identities amongst teenage girls and young women in particular feels like an expression of distress with the body, very akin to anorexia, and fuelled by social media. I strongly suspect that the idea of the "trans child" is being pushed and promoted by the kind of man who has a vested interest in encouraging people to believe that trans-ness is a universal condition - and not something peculiar to middle-aged men getting turned on by the idea of themselves as women.