Open Letter to Dr Hilary Cass

Concealing the fact that you're male from a female with whom you want a friendship is absolutely the height of deception!

Someone with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) who wants a leg removed because they want to be disabled doesn't have a perceived flaw that isn't there. They know there's nothing wrong with their limbs, they just want them gone.

How is BIID different from gender dysphoria other than that the body part(s) focused on are different?

The Atlantic piece that I linked to earlier mentioned the similarity between the two conditions.

They are genuine through shared interests and values. Do you share your full medical history with all your friends? Does someone who is gay not have a genuine friendship or commit a deception if they don’t tell a friend?

And they are accurately perceiving their body when they say it is male. Someone with dysmorphia has a perceived flaw that isn’t there. That is what makes dysphoria different. I will admit they are similar on a surface level, but so are a lot of conditions. It doesn’t mean we treat all conditions with similarities the same.

Here are the archive links to those articles:
Times

It is all body dysmorphia. Men who want to be women (and who are not paraphiliacs) see their body as flawed because it is male not female.

I was specifically talking about my experience with dysphoria at an age where it seemed like boys and only be friend with boys and girls can only be friends girls. As I got older that changed and I had good friendships with women, but feeling that my body developed the wrong way never went away

Do you think you are any more able to develop deeper friendships with women now? I presume you don’t tell them you are a woman as such a huge deception is not conducive to friendship?
It has been easier post-transition. I have a few good friends that I’m very close with now. I’ve spoke to some friends about my history and it’s not come up for others. It’s not the same for everyone, but being trans isn’t a huge part of my identity. I see it more as how I got to who I am now.

And @ByCraftyMaker if, as reported, you form these friendships while concealing a significant aspect about yourself like your sex, how are these friendships remotely genuine or ‘deep’?

What age was that?

I don’t remember any age when it wasn’t perfectly acceptable to have opposite sex friendships.

I also have never experienced a desire to target friendships in any particular group - I just meet people, and if we get on and have things in common we become friends.

What were you seeking when you specifically wanted deeper friendships with women?

So your 'gender dysphoria' is wholly about a dislike of your body?

How is it different to BIID, which is also about dislike of certain parts of the body?

I never said it was. I was specifically talking about my experience with dysphoria at an age where it seemed like boys and only be friend with boys and girls can only be friends girls. As I got older that changed and I had good friendships with women, but feeling that my body developed the wrong way never went away.

I suspect that for some women developing a friendship with a gay man or with. a man who identifies as a woman is somehow easier or preferable to developing a friendship with a straight heterosexual man.It is felt that gay men or trans identified men are somehow more attuned with female interests and sensitivities than other men.

Yes, it is more about developing a relationship with their own perceived 'feminine' self.

Yes, women are very much being 'othered'...whether that is by gay men or by heterosexual cross dressers.

I've mentioned a number of times now a Netflix documentary called 'Regretters' about two older men who transitioned a long tome ago and were now detransitioning. One was clearly of the AGP variety and expressed his desire to transition arose because he found that the women he wanted to be in relationship with didn't seem to want him...so he decided to become a woman himself.

Trying to make a relationship with the 'feminine' is what seems to motivate AGPS, whereas for gay men it is more the fear and social dissaproval of homosexuality. Assuming/adopting a feminine role/identity is seen as preferable to simply being an effeminate man.

Neither really understands or has empathy for actual women.

I'd like to acknowledge the fact that ByCraftyMaker has responded thoughtfully to questions and challenges.

Seconded 👍

I'd like to acknowledge the fact that ByCraftyMaker has responded thoughtfully to questions and challenges.

The definition of gender as
Gender is the social category (man or woman) that people are recognised as. Gender identity is a person’s internal sense of which of those categories fits them.
is unsatisfactory - the social categories 'man' and 'woman' are identified by the biological fact of sex, not the social construct of gender.
This was re-affirmed by the UKSC - 'sex' is the biological sex into which a person is born, regardless of how they feel about that fact.

In other words, a person’s internal sense of which of those categories fits them is a personal matter - 'a person’s internal sense' does not change the reality of whether they are a man or a woman.

How that is dealt with has been at the centre of some drastic social changes - a whole legal, medical, linguistic, educational etc structure has been set up which sidelines biological fact and favours bolstering the 'internal sense' of a very, very small number of people who believe they can 'transition' away from the sex they were born into.

This is something that will fascinate future students of society - how did the immaterial 'internal sense' of so few affect the material lives of so many?

Let's track down the 9000 ex-GIDS patients and get data on their cognitive functioning and bone health now, being clear to separate out which ones had PBs and/or cross-sex hormones and which did not. Let's compare that data to the average population at the same current age. On the assumption that most who had PBs likely also had cross-sex hormones, let's also compare the data to adults who received PBs for less time as a child, for precocious puberty, stopping at the age when puberty should be expected to start.

Yes this is the key point. These experiments have already been carried out on children. They know who they are. Why are they not being followed up?* - they would be a goldmine of useful data.

*don’t worry I know the answer to this.

I’m not convinced that there is a mental issue which is about rejecting your sexed body for which the best/only treatment is transition - while recognising ByCraftyMaker‘s experience.

However, even if this were clearly demonstrated, at the moment we have no way of telling which children reporting gender dysphoria would go on to this experience, and which would naturally desist through puberty. The number desisting is reported to be very high (>80%?) and the negative physical impacts of medical transition are significant. Added to this, prepubescent children are clearly not able to give informed consent to things like future infertility and lack of sexual function.

So, even if transgender children do exist, it is only possible to identify them in hindsight…..

"Wanting to have deeper friendships with women" seems like a bit of an odd goal.

Women are all different. Friendships with women (and men) are all different.

"Wanting to have deeper friendships with women" sounds like it's based on a fantasy (i.e. an imaginary idea) of what friendships with women are like.

The goal should be to make the individual truly question their feelings to determine whether medical intervention will help or harm. The subject should have to be confronted with the realities that irrespective of however extreme the medical/surgical intervention that they will never be able to change sex and will have no expectations of being treated as the opposite sex. Subjects need to know that irrespective of their own internal self image they cannot control how others see them. We need to move away from the unreasonable and unrealistic expectations that thousands of young people have who end up filming TikTok clips in their cars bawling their eyes out because they have been correctly sexed.

Doctors must be convinced that the subject understands the realities before clearing anyone for irreversible treatment.

I want to have deep friendships with women, based on the fact that I will deceive them about my sex, violate their boundaries, and take all their stuff! (And still fondly imagining that I'm even inhabiting the stereotype of a woman!)

If only it was friendships they wanted, and not for women to provide a service.

Uncomplaining, compelled if necessary. Sometimes preferably.

I, as a born female, wish to announce that I have had many many close deep friendships with men who did not wear dresses whilst having a close deep friendship with me.

Wanting to have close deep friendships with women is not a signifier of having a 'female gender'.

Honestly, are we back to the 'I can't open a jam jar' nonsense again?

Gender is the social category (man or woman) that people are recognised as.

So when we don’t recognise a man as a woman, even if he really wants it, he’s still a man?

Social recognition that is entirely subjective is a pretty rubbish definition tbf.

It's just weird. Women are individuals. Some selfish, or cruel, or boring, others are happy, interesting, lighthearted.

You're quite right, they're just seen as a big blob of stereotypes.

Which, pound to a penny, will involve things like support human, nurturing, good listener...

Hmmm I am quite sute I am going to get slammed for this but what does being born female mean to you ? For most of us natal females what defines us is the ability to gestate, give birth and lactate. I cannot understand how you can know what that might feel like not having a uterus.