Such an interesting article about the psychological burden of performing “gender”

There is no other mental health condition for which the purported treatment is to go along with the patients disordered thinking and follow behind their delusions. Hormones and surgery are not a valid treatment.

An irony of this performance anxiety, this "dramaturgical stress" as the article calls it is that, in my experience, women suffer from it more than men. The article gives the example of flight attendants, but actually all women are socialised into the "surface acting" that this profession is required to excel in - smiling, being nice/kind, putting people at their ease and so on.

Men, on the whole, are a bit imperceptive of all this. They are more likely to just be themselves, disregarding, or being oblivious to, the impression they create in others. So a man who wants to present as a woman is suddenly thrown into a set of stresses which are wholly new to him precisely because he isn't a woman. Not the dramaturgical stress of actually being a woman, of course (the need to perform kindness, attentiveness, pleasingness, etc), but the different dramaturgical stress of being trans.

The discussion seems to be going back about 18 months to when some people were still using the phrase 'wrong body' as though it made any sense at all. We are all born with a body, almost always a clearly defined sex, and it cannot be 'wrong'. It's all we've got, it's all we are.

It might have some things wrong with it - extreme short sightedness is less problematic than it once was, with corrective lenses and good artificial light, but it still triggers horrendous bullying and is very inconvenient. But the body itself is not wrong, and the best thing any of us can do is try to keep it healthy so that living in it is safe.

So no unnecessary surgery or drugs, for starters.

Which is why that is not done for people with eating disorders. Why are gender disorders different?

People with eating disorders have a mental illness. We do not endorse that by encouraging sufferers to think others share their beliefs about their bodies. We certainly don't enforce pretending to agree with their misconceptions about their physical reality.

Fascinating article and not something I’ve given much thought to previously. TRAs have long told us that passing is not the be-all and end-all; that trans people who do not pass are as valid as those who do. And yet, it is clearly a source of great anxiety and distress to many trans people. But they can never control or dictate everyone else’s perception of them. No matter how much treatment or surgery, there will ALWAYS be a risk that someone will clock you. Trying to live life with that constantly hanging over you must be exhausting.

I was interested in what Andrews said about reassurance and OCD. I’ve had the same experience with health anxiety: reassurance (a GP consultation/scan/blood test) might quell my anxiety for a brief time, but it soon resurfaces because ‘What if the Dr got it wrong?’ ‘What if there was a mix up at the blood testing facility?’ ‘What if cancer has now developed since the last scan?’ There’s no neat ending to it.

And I can see how a similar thought process for trans people would provoke distress and anxiety. ‘This person believes I am a woman, but what about that person over there?’ or ‘This person thinks I’m a woman now but they’ve only just met me, what if they get to know me better and see something that gives me away?’ or ‘This person seems to think I’m a woman but what if they are just pretending because they feel sorry for me?’

How can being one’s ’authentic self’ involve putting on a big pretence and attempting to deceive people? No wonder it’s exhausting and detrimental to mental health.

That’s an interesting comparison and sounds very plausible. Very difficult to be happy and to ever maintain that happiness. Must be ghastly - literally being an impostor - rather than doubting the skills one actually has (but doesnt have confidence in) as felt with imposter syndrome.

It was me that said the 'wrong body' thing, which is how I imagine it must feel to feel as if you're a woman but your body shows you otherwise (or vv.). This is what I took from reading the Telegraph articles some years ago by journalist David who transitioned to become Sophie (or whoever, can't remember the name). It can't feel the same as being short-sighted and getting that fixed. How do you think a man who wants to become a woman feels?

If someone is born blind they don’t think “oh it the wrong body” they think ( perhaps) “ wish wasn’t blind, wish I could see”

if someone things they are male when their body is female , they are still in the one and only body that they have and can ever have. The logical thought would be I wish was was male. Not I am male

a young child believing their parents are not their parents but in fact they are a princess who was abducted at birth - it’s a fantasy that feels very real to the child at the time but is still a fantasy that no one in their right mind would support. You might buy them a fancy dress and tiara but everyone knows they are not a princess. But they beleive it

wrt his body, he feels like a man, obviously, because he is a man and cannot feel like anything else. Whatever he imagines a woman might feel. It will be an imaginary fantasy, nothing to do with how a woman feels. Same for transmen. Our bodies really are us, our sexed bodies are real, we cannot exist outside them.

Just as a person who is short sighted will always be shaped by that, even if they get surgery. The way the interact with the world around them will always be shaped by what they could see of the world around them in their formative years.

If someone is born blind they don’t think “oh it the wrong body” they think ( perhaps) “ wish wasn’t blind, wish I could see”

No. of course they don't. I think recognising that is why genderists dropped the 'wrong body' concept some time ago, and I was surprised to see it resurfacing.

AgentPidge
How do you think a man who wants to become a woman feels?

Doomed to failure?

"Wrong Body" was dropped by Stonewall etc some years back, bit loads of "relatively new to this bullshit" people still say it.

It's a hard myth to dispel.

Anyone who believes their body is wrong has a mental health issues, because it's literally impossible. We are our bodies, our bodies are what mahe us ourselves. We may not like them, but there isn't an alternative.

Radical cosmetic surgery to make a body more resemble an internal perception is like putting an anorexic on a diet. It's dangerous, it's damaging and it doesn't fix the core problem. The article demonstrates that, because the trans identifying person has to face a lifetime performance; trying to convince the wider world they aren't who they seem to be.

Far healthier to address the internal disconnect.

I don't think that "impression management: the constant work of presenting a desired self to an audience" is special to trans people, anyway; I think that trying to present a desired self to an audience is simply the human condition, unless you are lucky enough not to give a damn what other people think of you.

As I have got older I have cared less and less about the opinions of others, but as an adolescent it mattered greatly to me that they should view me favourably. And an awful lot of the poor confused trans people are adolescents desperate for acceptance of their view of themselves. Or have yet to grow out of adolescence, I suppose, and I don't expect puberty blockers are in the slightest bit helpful in all this.

Deluded.

Some time ago there was a thread on Reddit TransUK by a trans identified man who claimed to pass and was stealth. He was absolutely terrified of anyone discovering that he wasn’t female. He was therefore considering moving abroad in order to go ‘deep stealth’ as he described it and was asking for opinions on the advisability of such a move.

His predicament was very sad. To live a lonely life deceiving others is bound to have negative consequences on one’s mental health. In all likelihood it would prevent the person from entering into meaningful relationships. The human condition is such that we abhor being lied to and/or deceived.

Kathleen Stock writes about the performance angle of being trans in her book ‘Material Girl’. For some trans people, particularly the passing/stealth ones there is no interval.

Like a man who wants to be a fantasy of a woman but has no idea what being in a woman’s body actually entails, and knows the boring nitty gritty of it will never apply to him anyway.

How do you think a man who wants to become a woman feels?

I don’t know, and I don’t think that all men who want to be women feel the same.

Some of them feel uncomfortable in their own bodies. Some of them feel attraction towards men but don’t want to be gay. Some of them feel that they are very feminine so think that they need a body that ‘matches’ femininity. Some of them feel sexy when they think of themselves as a woman.

Just some of the ways they might feel, IMO.

David 'turned into' Diana. I read all the articles and was appalled but in a rabbit caught in the headlights way. He can't feel like a woman. All he can feel like is a man thinking he feels like a woman. But when his father died he put David not Diana in the death notice.

long term exploratory therapy, which is probably considered conversion therapy. And many therapists are utterly captured too, unsurprisingly.

Controlling.

Other minorities, even some with very difficult lives, do not tend to have higher suicide rates; I don't really buy minority status as much of an explanation for why trans people might try to commit suicide. I can believe that the stress of trying to perform might be part of it - and perhaps a lot of them might be better off not bothering. Another big factor I expect is how much trans rights activism has normalised suicide as a response to a difficult life. You can't go about saying "this sort of thing makes trans people kill themselves" all the time without expecting that some trans people might take that as advice.

I do find it interesting to what extent they feel a need to "perform". You would think, if gendered behaviour reflected an inner gender identity, they would find much of it came naturally to them in their acquired gender, or at least that it would get easier with a few years of practice. That often doesn't seem to be the case.

This is what happens when a toddler is never told “No”.