Open Letter to Dr Hilary Cass

Yes — why can’t a man develop “deeper friendships with women”?

It sounds very much here as if women aren’t actual people, but some kind of skittish animal tribe that have to be captured by dressing up like a wildlife photographer with a bunch of feathers on his head, trying to get closer to this elusive beast who might scarper if it smells the wrong scent.

As opposed to having a normal friendship with another person based on shared interests or outlook or ideas.

I am a woman because I have a female body and I’m an adult: no further definition required

💯

The part where I am genuinely shocked, is that no one ever seems to nail down what bloody gender means, and therefore what gender incongruence means, the actual thing they're being studied for.

We ask that question on here all the time, and the answers are always exactly the same. It's basically woman envy based on stereotypes. And/or a fetish.

Wanting to fit in the social category of women (stereotypes), and wanting deeper friendships with women?

All based on compelled speech and deception?

Four of them are, but one every child must have this one: A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.
I had that, persistently, from when I was very young until it was finally resolved, after a lot of therapy, in my early 20s. I was convinced I’d grow up to have a hairy chest, beard, deep voice, and broad shoulders like my Dad, and I was utterly distraught when I discovered this wasn’t the case. I dressed like a boy throughout my teens and early 20s, hid my body, desperately wanted to have my breasts removed because they marked me as female and I hated them so much, and I was convinced something must have gone wrong somewhere because I just didn’t ‘fit’ with other girls, but I seemed to get on easily with the boys. Luckily, I grew up during a time when being transgender wasn’t presented to me as a possible explanation for feeling like this.

I would have been an excellent candidate for a puberty blocker trial, with my distress around gender starting so young and persisting for so long. That would have been a terrible mistake though, wouldn’t it? Affirmation would have prolonged my distress and harmed my mental health because - despite meeting all of these dangerously woolly criteria - I wasn’t actually a trans kid. I’d be fucking furious if I hadn’t been able to have my children because poorly-informed medical professionals had taken the self-assessment of a child as gospel, then gambled with my fertility by offering a totally inappropriate ‘treatment’.

Through therapy that addressed the underlying issues causing my distress, I was able to get on board with the body I’ve got, decide that “gender identity” was a load of oppressive bollocks that didn’t need to affect me in any way, opt out of outdated stereotypes, and live my life without ever having to agonise over what it means to be a woman ever again - I am a woman because I have a female body and I’m an adult: no further definition required. You decided to demand that the world perceive you as if you have the body you wished you were born with, requiring external validation to affirm that the perception of others matches your perception of yourself. You’re spending time attempting to explain - to women - what “feeling like a woman” means, and trying (but failing) to do this without resorting to sexist stereotypes. You seem to be aware that your explanations don’t resonate with most biological women, which must be hideously invalidating for you. My way of dealing with these issues appears to have been easier, healthier, and far more effective than yours.

Social categories, stereotypes, wanting to get closer to women.

Shocked.🙄

Not forgetting that apparently it's innate, and little kids feel the same

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?

Given some comments on a thread yesterday I can't see how Crafty can develop deeper friendships as it appears Crafty doesn't tell them. A friendship built on lies is not a true friendship. And how can you develop a deeper friendship when you are concealing such a massive part of who you are.

When you talk about someone wanting to remove a limb you’re talking about Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Again something different to gender dysphoria. BIID is about a desire to have a limb amputated and become disabled. They both involve distress, but the causes and treatments are different.

They aren't always treated differently. There was a surgeon in Scotland who amputated the limbs of a few people with BIID. He claimed that they were much happier after the surgery.

And it's not clear that the causes of gender dysphoria and BIID are different. Some people, like Chloe (Clive) Jennings White, claim to have both conditions.

https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/spinal-column-no-truck-with-transableists-r3qrr3glx73

https://anonw.com/2012/04/22/eat-your-heart-out-chloe-jennings-white/

This article also explores the similarity between the two conditions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

Out of interest, why did you gave a particular desire to develop deeper friendships with women? That seems like quite an odd target.

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?

What is it about being ‘trans’ make it easier for you to make friendships with women? I do know that some women like to ‘rescue’ people they perceive to be ‘less’ than them.

Well, there is the existence of detransitioners, the findings of the Tavistock staff that existing m/h conditions were ignored as soon as ‘trans’ was mentioned, the mental health stats that show a worsening after medical ‘transition’ and general observation of the state of mind of many ‘transgender’ people that we see around. Many do not come across as happy or well adjusted people.

In children, waiting for puberty/brain maturity resolves 80% + of cases so that is pretty effective to start. Therapy/counselling/autism diagnosis/dealing with internalised homophobia will help many others that are known to have underlying m/h conditions leaving a tiny core of adults who can make an adult decision to present as the opposite sex when they are ready.

If you are the exception then I am delighted for you.

A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender

Loads of teenagers have strong desires, and insistences, but we don't just let them stop their puberty and end their growing up normally on their say so. Growing up IS part of living. We shouldn't be able to put a stop to it for any kids, for any reason. Just because activists have infiltrated the establishment doesn't make the made up bullshit any less nonsensical.

Thank you Stella O'Malley for an excellent letter.

Thank you ByCraftyMaker for saying that you believe it's only possible to "be" transgender if you have gender dysphoria. Even though I don't believe in gender identity myself (i.e. I don't believe anyone has one), I do agree that it's a reasonable requirement. Otherwise all the AGPs and fetishists get to tag along too.

And thank you PPs for clearly articulating why a belief in gender identity can only be upheld by internalising sex-based stereotypes.

In this country, we're inconsistent when it comes to how we manage beliefs and their impact on children's bodies and lives. We ban (most) childhood FGM, yet allow circumcision. Why? Yes, circumcision is less harmful than FGM but it's still removing a part of the body in accordance with a belief, often backed up by unproven reasoning that it's apparently healthier. We allow some FGM: 16 year old females can take testosterone (if they believe they are boys), leading the clitoris to grow outside the body and most likely be permanently painful.

We should not be allowing a belief in gender identity to lead to further medical experimentation on children. We've already done enough of this.

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.

What's next, an experiment to give Catholic children transubstantiated wine as blood transfusions, as long as we track the results?

Four of them are, but one every child must have this one: A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.

Which according to you, is a strong desire to be the socially determined category of man or woman. So stereotypes.

Wouldn’t a trans child want to take part in the activities associated with their gender identify?

What ARE activities for children that are associated with particular “genders”? What makes an activity “gendered”? Again, stereotypes.

The diagnostic criteria does not say that any child that takes part in stereotypical dress or play of the opposite gender is automatically trans

No, but a diagnosing clinician has to to one of two things. Either:

a) apply stereotypical behaviours to the child in order to meet the diagnostic criteria or
b) believe that only the body distress matters, stereotypes don’t matter, and fail to meet the diagnostic criteria.

Either way the process is flawed. Either the diagnostic criteria is regressive, or it’s not fit to describe the problem properly.

So which is it?

And again, back to the thread: if we are still determining what is going on with children and struggling to accurately describing the problem, why are children being given irreversible treatments, either inside or outside of a trail?

Four of them are, but one every child must have this one: A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.

Wouldn’t a trans child want to take part in the activities associated with their gender identify? I don’t think stereotypes are right and believe children should be free to express themselves however they want, but in reality activities and clothes are still gendered.

The diagnostic criteria does not say that any child that takes part in stereotypical dress or play of the opposite gender is automatically trans

You didn't transition. No one can.

Yes and 4 of them are stereotype based. So a child can’t meet criteria if you don’t believe in stereotypes.

So how can a child have GD without stereotypes? Even your definition of gender is social, meaning stereotype based.

Why shouldn’t we regard them as on a spectrum or essentially very similar apart from the object of the condition?

Plenty of psychiatric conditions go in and out of the DSM all the time. Some end up breaking apart into different diagnoses; some come back together. Psychiatry is not like physical medicine: many of its diagnoses are heavily culturally inflected by the way we think about the self and culture at any one time (just look at the different ways autistic spectrum conditions have changed in formulation over the last thirty years). Unless you believe that somehow the current version of the DSM is the last word ever on psychiatry, it’s very likely to look different again in ten or twenty years’ time.

The diagnostic criteria also includes:

• A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy
• A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender

There are 8 criteria listed of which a child must have 6 of them and experience significant distress or impairment for at least six months

But they do have official definitions and criteria in diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5. It may be more messy in practice, but that doesn’t mean gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia are the same thing even if they seem similar on a surface level

So to summarise, you think children can be trans, based on a diagnosis derived from their deeply held belief in which social category they believe they fit, and as such they should be allowed to be recruited into a trial that will permanently alter their bodies.

Ok.

And course there is psycho babble. Because the DSM5 states that the social category children determine suits them is based on stereotypes. They’re are right there, in the book.

This entire idea simply didn’t exist before the last few decades, and it made no sense at all before surgical and hormonal treatments, as there was simply nothing that could alter even the outward presentation of one’s “birth sex” until very recently (apart from cross-dressing, which very much was understood as a compulsive behaviour, fetish or sexual neurosis).

Actual definitions and traits of these disorders is psychobabble to you?

Yes, because people who actually research or work in psychiatry or clinical psychology do not tend to treat psychiatric conditions in practice as having fixed definitions and traits. Most psychiatric conditions are messy things that overlap with others, and don’t always present in typical forms.

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

And gender is defined as…?

It’s a person’s internal and deeply held sense of their gender, and may or may not correspond to their birth sex.

“Gender identity” is an extremely recent idea that wouldn’t have made sense before the mid-twentieth century, and only really acquired its contemporary meaning from the 1990s onwards. “Gender” was understood to mean the social performance of what used to be called “sex roles”, and not something that was an ineffable part of one’s internal selfhood. Like all these psychiatric diagnoses, including BID and so on, what they are made up of and what their “symptoms” are supposed to be shifts over time. They aren’t fixed categories, and they tend to be comorbid with other psychiatric conditions, too. Rigid definitions of them simply aren’t borne out in practice.

I guess I didn’t get the memo mumsnet is a single sex space 🙄

Actual definitions and traits of these disorders is psychobabble to you?