Managing the Growing Gender-Critical Counterrevolution

I had heard of body dysmorphia long before 'trans' was anything more than classic transvestism.

It was a story about someone who wanted to amputate their legs.

I don't doubt that is real (though extremely rare and extremely hard to understand). Equally, I'm sure it's possible to want rid of your sexed organs in the same way. Again, extremely rare. This is obviously a severe mental illness and should be treated as such.

But the vast, vast majority of those identifying as trans nowadays are not suffering from this (thankfully). They are either gender non conforming types or fetishistic types. Or in the case of some younger girls, just confused young people, struggling with the changes of puberty.

I'm not sure this is a huge problem actually. As soon as we stop giving trans identifying people privileges that belong to the opposite sex, the motivation to be 'trans' disappears for the vast majority.

Those with genuine, severe mental illness still need to be treated. But this is a minuscule number.

There may be no law, but it is clear that the response from people in the street or your work colleagues or customers if you were in a public facing role would be very different if you blacked up compared to came out as "trans".

Pretty sure if you asked for special accommodations at work (that gave no financial benefit) due to needing a wheelchair, then you boss found out you were completely healthy, there'd be consequences.

We can legislate whatever we wish. We legislate against all sorts of offensive behaviour and we should legislate against more.

I honestly believe that a huge part of what has gone wrong in the west over the last 50-60 years is the end of classical liberalism - the form of liberalism that recognizes that if those who believe in personal freedom do not act like authoritarians when faced with things which threaten liberalism, then liberalism will be destroyed by those threats. It will be destroyed directly (eg by tolerating radical islamism the west risks being destroyed by it long term) or indirectly (by tolerating harmful things like transgenderism we risk voters saying "you know what, I'd rather a literal fascist in charge than have my naked daughter perved over by a man before he beats her in her favourite sport."

My (legal and social) right to present as trans black or trans sikh or trans disabled or trans gay HAS to be no more or less enshrined in law or socially acceptable as my right to present as transgender.

As far as I know there is no law against presenting as trans black, trans Sikh, trans disabled, or trans gay.

For example, it is widely accepted that people can define themselves as disabled or not: all employment and similar forms ask if you consider yourself to be disabled. Although pretending to be blind, or sitting in a wheelchair when you have perfectly functioning legs, might be an offensive thing to do, there is no law against being offensive.
Likewise, anyone can say they are gay, anyone can claim black heritage, and anyone can claim to be of any religion.
However, if you then used such a pretence for material gain, that would be fraud, which is illegal.

We can't legislate against offensive behaviour (although there are laws about public indecency, disturbing the peace, etc.)

We have no grounds to stop men wearing women's clothing. But we don't have to go along with them claiming to be women: no forced use of incorrect pronouns, women's spaces protected by law and policed by social pressure, women's sports protected by medical tests, etc.

Transgender people cannot be allowed special privileges over and above other trans people.
Totally agree.

I think there is a fundamental difference between men who pretend to be women and men who wear clothing that is normally worn by women.

I think that we can normally tell which is which (but I accept that putting it in law would be very hard).

And I think there'd be the added bonus of offending the 50% plus of trans identifying men who would be insulted by being told that they are not breaking the law, because it is clear that whislt they are long haired and wearing dresses they do not "pass" as men pretending to be women!

Also, whilst telling men they can't wear dresses is regressive telling men that they can walk around as a hateful parody of women is as regressive and maybe much more so.

As much as anything I want logic. My (legal and social) right to present as trans black or trans sikh or trans disabled or trans gay HAS to be no more or less enshrined in law or socially acceptable as my right to present as transgender.

Transgender people cannot be allowed special privileges over and above other trans people.

If trans is regressive because it relies on sex-based stereotypes, then surely it is counter-productive to reinforce those very same stereotypes by saying men can't wear "women's" clothes.
We need to abolish the stereotypes, not prop them up. That includes ignoring the clothes of the 50 year old male office worker who turns up in a twinset, skirt, tights, and pearls. Even if you suspect he is getting aroused under the skirt.
I would say ignore the clothes, but don't call him female pronouns.
The time to step in with disciplinary action is when his behaviour, his interaction with other people, crosses the line.

What we can work towards as a society is making overtly sexualised clothing socially unacceptable, unless you are on the way to a night club.

I admit it is hard to put into legislation but IMHO a woman who wears a suit and tie is not cross-dessing so long as the suit is cut to fit her female body, and so long as she is not deliberately doing things to her face / hair to make herself appear male. (Short hair and no make up are not things that make women appear male).

I think most men who pretend to be women clearly look unwell and very badly passing, or (whether they are close to passing or not at all close) they look like they are deliberately trying to appear to be women. In contrast Kurt Cobain in a dress does not in any way look like a cross dresser.

The difference in how men in women's clothes look comapred to how women in masculine stereotypes clothes look does suggest to me that (to stereotype) women are trying to hide the fact they're women, whilst men are a mentally ill mess or doing it for sexual kicks.

I totally understand your reservations, but I think I am at the point that on balance I would rather cross dressing were illegal than the sorts of men who pretend to be women continue to go around in public, often playing out their paraphilias in the process.

Trans is regressive partly because it relies on sex based stereotypes, and partly because it makes progressive people like me re-think their old "wear what you want" position.

I would suggest that there is absolutely nothing wrong with "cross-dressing" in normal clothes and minding your own business. It is a very slippery slope indeed if we try to police what people of each sex should and should not wear.

But what can be outlawed (possibly?), or at least made completely socially unacceptable, is wearing overtly sexualised clothing, fetish gear, or "dressing like a BDSM sex-worker" in public in daylight.

I agree that we need to get back to men (and confident women) policing these social norms.

I believe that society has a duty to try to identify the mentally ill, in order to try to treat them. But the mentally ill (or at least the less serious ones) have a duty to seek and accept treatment.

I agree that the diagnosis is only a tool to aid decisions. In this context the assumption is perhaps something that could be called gender dysphoria, and the treatment should be 100% about ensuring that people can learn to love themselves as they were born and as they will die, and not aspire to be something that they cannot be. If an AGP or TF wants to pipe up and say "I'm not confused or unhappy, for me it is all about my paraphilias" then the treatment path can change to showing the the absolute unacceptability of palying out sexual fantasies (or any sexual activity) with people who have not consented, let alone those kids they might interact with who are too young to consent to being a part of it.

I would be 100% happy to see public displays of autogynephilia and transvestic fetishism criminalized.

Any man who is cross-dressing in public and who has previously admitted to their paraphilia is guilty by confession.

I would word the law so that other male cross-dressers could be assumed to be paraphiliacs in the eyes of the law unless they were seeking mental health support for their alleged gender dysphoria. And the first part of a gender dysphoria treatment should be "stop cross dressing, stop pretending, how can you learn to be happy in your body if you continue to pretend to be the opposite sex".

I suppose all of this relies on the law and / or judges and juries being able to distinguish gender non-conformity with wrong sex gender conformity aka cross-dressing. I think we can. And if we can't then surely we can be clear that a man with make up and long hair is not cross-dressing, nor does adopting a dress automatically proe cross-dressing. And if we can't then I think there is an argument that policing the gender expression of a tiny minority of men is less harmful to society than allowing the public display or paraphilia or mental illness.

This might seem harsh but I am a classical liberal. Do what you want unless what you are doing harms others.

I think modern liberalism has forgotten the "unless what you are doing harms others" bit, and where it remembers it massive overlooks certain harms (for example downplaying the negative on people's mental health of being unsure of the sex of people around you, or the offence that womanface in all its forms causes).

Men are the ones who need to police men. In the past the local villagers are the ones to enforce the law, and in bars and pubs it is men who need to ensure that men feel safer in the men's and totally unsdafe if seen entering or exiting the women's.

I think that there is a strong argument that (other than, for example, whilst riding a motorbike) the presumption should be that "hiding who you are" (ie your identity or your sex, age or race) should be a criminal offence and it doing so would be a good way of cracking down on furries and the oppression of muslim women as well as perverted and mentally ill men.

I think it is important to remember that all of these diagnoses come from the patient's self-expression. We have no hard evidence body dysmorphia exists

That could be said of most mental illnesses.
If an illness is not neurological, brain scans won't be of any use, so the only way to "diagnose" is by observing and classifying behaviour, and noting what the patient says about themselves.
It is important to keep in mind that the diagnosis is only a tool to aid decisions about treatment and support, not an end in itself.

That is not to say that mental illness doesn't exist, just that it is not evidenced in the same way as physical illness.

they only need MH support if they come forward.
Again, that applies to all mental illness, unless the person breaks the law or is a danger to themselves or others.
Of course, males in female-only spaces are both breaking the law and being a danger to others (in that they affect the emotions and wellbeing of the women who may be present).
It could be argued that men wearing fetishistic clothes merely walking down the street are a danger to others, because they are using unwilling bystanders in their sexual fantasy - but we already have laws about public decency and public nuisance. It is obviously not possible to police clothing and fashion choices, but if the person is also engaging in offensive behaviour then action can be taken.

This is all theory - the police, the NHS, and especially mental health services are stretched to breaking point so nothing will be done about fetishistic men.
At least if the law is clear, women will be empowered to stand up for themselves and confront the men, as a minimum spoiling their fun and re-establishing acceptable social norms, even if there is no hope of changing their long-term behaviour.

Well, I am not sure how helpful it was... it is my informed, but far from professional speculation.

I think the first think is to be clear that there is no such thing as "trans". There are people who make a meaningless gender-based claim in a sex-based world. These people are not "trans" they are people, whose sex was determined at conception, observed at birth and will remain with them for millenia post-death, who (make the meaningless) claim (that they) identify as "trans".

It only makes sense to lump all trans together if you are a male autogynephile who wants to use the myth of the trans child to justify their own boundary transgressions, and who is willing to see mentally ill children get sterilized and their other MH co-morbidities get left untreated in service of their own boundary transgressions.

I think it is important to remember that all of these diagnoses come from the patient's self-expression. We have no hard evidence body dysmorphia exists outside of a sexual element, and if it does we have no evidence where in the range of 0.001% to 99.999% the percentage of non-sexually motivated men lie.

Do autogynephiles (and transvestic fetishists) need their minds treated? I certainly support treatment if they want it, but I am open to the idea that they only need MH support if they come forward. If they don't come forward then shame, mockey and the criminal justice system should be used to force them to keep their deep sexual depravity to private places amongst competent, consenting adults.

As an aside, I am wondering the extent to which many of the young men aged 18-25 are autogynephiles or transvestic fetishists (I note that autogynephiles get off on seeing themselves as women, and the latter on dressing up as women, and according to Dr Az Hakeem there are four transvestic fetishists for every one autogynephiles. Transvestic fetishists are much less keen on surgery than autgynephiles, and autogynephiles who do go for surgery often miss that if their sole reason for surgery is because they enjoy getting hard pretending to be a woman, then the "getting hard" bit will be rather less accessible an option post castration and penile inversion).

However, I think if more people knew about the sexual / fetishistic aspect of many trans identified men's behaviour, they would have far, far less public sympathy.

We all used to know this though, didn't we? It only really changed when they started recruiting children to the trans cause. Because obviously those children aren't sexually motivated. This was deliberate on the part of those pushing the trans agenda. It was done to sanitise the trans movement and, as one of them put it, children "demystify it and take the sex right out of the trans experience".

This thread describes how things have changed in the last 20 years or so:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1816266309555884491

She describes how in 2007: "there was a clear understanding that crossdressing men in women’s spaces were often there for sexual reasons".

Now we're supposed to believe that they're the most vulnerable people ever and we should pander to them by taking our clothes off for them.

@JamieCannister
Thanks for your helpful post.

Yes, we need to dismantle the "trans umbrella" and treat each different subset of people according to their particular issues.
It has never made any sense to lump them all together, except for political activism.

IMHO there must be something like sexed-body-dysphoria or dysmorphia (which is a more helpful name than gender dysphoria/dysmorphia). It is clear that other types of body dysphoria/dysmorphia exist, so what case is there to suggest that the sex-of-your-body one doesn't exist?

Even if it turns out that all body dysphorias have a sexual element (word of the day: apotemnophiliac), it is irrelevant to the treatment, i.e. treating the mind, not changing on the body.

However, I think if more people knew about the sexual / fetishistic aspect of many trans identified men's behaviour, they would have far, far less public sympathy.

I have no professional insight, but categorizing the different types of people who claim to be trans is a major interest of mine, not least as - IMHO - once we categorize them successfully it is 100% clear that none of them should ever be affirmed. (TLDR - it is all mental illness or paraphilia or dishonest predators, and why should we punish the mentally ill by affirming, or elevate paraphiliacs and predators by affirming. I accept some people claiming to be trans are probably more than one of these things, and some are mentally ill, paraphilic predators.)

From a quick google...

Body Dysmorphia - a mental condition characterized by extreme preoccupation with self-perceived defects, flaws or imperfections in the appearance of the body; body dysmorphic disorder.

Gender Dysphoria - is a state of profound unease, unhappiness, or dissatisfaction, the opposite of euphoria. Term first used in 1973, term first used diagnostically in DSM-5 in 2013.

Body Dysmorphia does seem like a real thing... but then again how many women have it compared to men, and is it not possible that they are all apotemnophiliacs (the paraphilia where a person has a sexual interest in being an amputee)?

Either way, it is absolutely clear to me that body dysmorphic people should not have legs or arms amputated under any circumstances. If other mental health interventions fail then secure accommodation where they can be kept safe is the only compassionate option.

From what I can make out gender dysphoria is just the new name for gender identity disorder, which could equally be called "sex-specific body dysmorphia" (the defect being the wrong-sexed body) or "sex-stereotype dysphoria" or both dependent on whether the person is rejecting the body or the social role. I can imagine pubescent girls might often have both, with the sexual attention and harassment being as a result of girl's bodies and the female social role / place in society.

Sex-specific body dysmorphia is clearly a subset of body dysmorphia and requires MH support, never medical interventions.

"Sex-stereotype dysphoria" should surely be treated in no small part by telling girls that there is nothing wrong with playing football or climbing trees or getting muddy - that they do not live in 1950s USA suburbia and that they only have to look back to some of the icons of the 1970s and 1980s to realize that gender non-conformity is fine.

The whole thing is a massive bait and switch.

According to TRAs (if you actually go behind what they say) "this person does not have a form of body dysmorphia, what they have is dysphoria around regressive sex-based stereotypes". Instead of telling them they can be whoever they wish (ie as gender conforming or non-conforming as they wish) within their unchanging sex we will tell them that medical (hormonal and surgical) treatments, which would never be given for body dysmorphia, should be given. And they should be given because when performing wrong-sex sex-based stereotypes it is easier for the trans person if people pretend they are the opposite sex and if the trans persons body is medicalized to become a facsimile of the opposite sex.

I also have a lot of sympathy for the idea (Dr P?) that for some or many it is Trans Ideation Disorder - where a variety of MH issues such as depression, autism, sexual trauma come together to create someone whose answer is "I'm trans". I suppose in theory TID is the main thing with young trans people, but that sex-specific body dysmorphia and sex-stereotype dysphoria are also useful concepts that can feed into helping to fully understand a young person with TID.

The above is my best, amateur, analysis if we come at it from the position of "let's really try to look in detail and try to categorize all the different sub-sets". But from speaking to someone I know who is fairly senior in mental health in the NHS I am also increasingly coming to share his view. His view - if I understand it correctly - is that a MH diagnosis is not necessarily that helpful. It is not really that useful to label someone as autistic or gender dysphoric. What is useful is to understand precisely what they think and what their issues are, and to try to help them overcome their specific issues. And often the fundamental issue is the reality of their life. For example one can find someone deeply mentally ill, and have them in supported accommodation as part of their treatment. Their MH improves massively, and they are force to leave the supported accommodation, leaving them to move into a horrible house-share with a violent alcoholic at which point their MH spirals out of control again.

There very much is disagreement that Gender Dysphoria is a real condition.

I'd encourage people to read the link I posted earlier and also to go back down Dr P's Xtweets for the last month or so. Also to listen to/watch an interview with her.

x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1808825717204922755

Re bodily dysphoria

Trigger warning, this is a bit gruesome.

I saw a TV documentary many years ago, about bodily dysphoria. A man had dysphoria about his legs. He honestly felt that his legs were not really part of him, that they were strange and alien appendages, and that they didn't belong on his body. He was begging a surgeon for a double amputation, which was refused. The surgeon and psychiatrist were concerned he would take matters into his own hands, such as laying on a railway track to get them amputated, but the conclusion at the end of the programme was that it was not the medical profession's role to amputate healthy legs, even if the patient was at risk of serious and life-threatening self-harm.

So there is no disagreement that bodily dysphoria is a very real condition, and there is no reason to believe that gender dysphoria (or perhaps it should be called sex dysphoria) does exist.
But I seriously doubt that most trans people have real dysphoria. I think it is likely to be quite rare. Trouble is, there is no way of telling exactly what is or is not going on in someone's head.
And as for the legs case, the solution is not to give in to the patient's dysphoria and go along with it. The solution is to continue treating the mental illness.

Well that’s disappointing. Wonder how that came about.

Jonathan Kay these days is very much 'But Mia, you aren't saying that all trans women are men are you?'

That’s interesting about Kay - he (and Quillette) used to be one of the only voices in Canada that would share GC stories and information. Quillette was the place that published Alasdair Gunn’s amazing series of articles on ROGD boys, for instance (under the pseudonym Angus Fox). I haven’t listened/read much from them recently so I’ve missed that Kay has gone to the other side, as it were. Is it obvious why/how that happened?

I wonder if revolution is the right word. Stealth was used to impose an ideology, which was then halted when GC adherents started to speak out and when heard, the idiocy of trans ideology was revealed and so the pushback began.

As to whether gender dysphoria exists, I would say yes, and as a medical condition. I would also say that there are many trans identified men who have autogynephilia, which is altogether different. Confusing the two does a disservice to GC women

Mia discusses this in more detail with Stella in their beyond gender podcast from 10th October..
If the interviewer doesn't give her much chance to speak, this might be a better listen..