World Health Organization still defines gender as socially constructed, both the short version I quoted earlier and it's newer longer version discussing the parts of gender and includes how being gender nonconforming affects health. Stonewall defines it as culturally constructed. I find it interesting that the Tavistock recommends the Stonewall definitions but also includes both detransitioned people which Stonewall has been pretty against discussing as well as discusses people who do not identify as cis or trans...nothing I'm seeing refers to gender as innate, just the view that some think biology should not privilege gender identity which I don't think is a medical consensus. The consensus I've heard of - that trans people exist, that gender dysphoria is real and distressing, that there may be a genetic or other reason that some more likely to be - I don't think those mean gender is innate, just that the brain, and the bodies that they are part of, are very complicated...medical consensus right now is that some people are genetically more likely to get PTSD or alcoholism, doesn't mean the trauma or alcohol is innate.
I agree that professionals should use evidence-based treatment, but I am concerned with how social pressure as well as the trend of self medication is affecting it. The path to diagnosis and getting cross sex hormones has changed drastically in some places from 'the last step after ensuring dysphoria is not caused by anything else that needs different treatment', which is when most of us ended up on talking therapies only, to 'assumed from the start' and that's for those who even bother with a professional. Synthetic hormones are powerful medications with a lot of risks and we have people buying them online with no medical oversight because they've been told "dysphoria is cissexist gatekeeping bullshit" and that the hormones will make them happy/their 'real' selves even. The evidence strongly shows that hormones and surgeries without other therapies has a far worse results and very much not enough while, due to funding and other issues, people who do go the professional route are getting less and less face time and those who don't obviously aren't getting any at all. I think disconnecting that has happened is making it harder for people to care they deserve. We know dysphoria/dysphoric-like symptoms have multiple roots, and while I can see the argument that dysphoria and being trans are not the same thing, I don't think an individual without professional care and guidance can tell that.
I mean, I'm so-called classic case - early signs, talking about a sex change in primary, watchful waiting and was persistent and such into high school and adulthood...still not suitable for transition and when I've tried to against medical advice I've ended up in horrible places. Shocker, doctors were right and what I was certain was right for me ended up really wrong. I worry it's going to happen to more with the disconnect that has happened between dysphoria and trans identity. I worry a lot about the self medicators because I know how appealing it is and how big the crash can be. I know people taking up to 5x the normal hormone dose for their dream results which are not likely and I worry it's going to kill them like any other type of self-medication. People deserve better than the system that's going on now which does seem more ideologically and even more I think financially led than evidence-based. I think there are professionals fighting for better, but I think system is making it harder. The push to demedicalize I think is hurting people and is more for financial gain than caring about people. If those in power really cared, they would put more and encourage more talking therapies as part of things, not what we have now with months between appointments.
I also wonder - there is a lot on people debating what's going on with kids and what's going on with middle age males, but young adults - say 18-30ish - I see a lot more of them who start thinking they might be trans at that age, a lot more of them self medicating in various ways and without much support other than each other, and I feel they're missing from the national conversation on this. I know way more people who started in their twenties than the image of kids like I was or middle age males portrayed in many places and I think there is a concern there that is getting ignored.
MissPiggysKarateChop I agree and I think it a big part of why trans men face more violence than trans women (according to multiple sources, particularly the Forge Forward a US abuse survivor charity for trans people alongside the US National Coalition of anti-violence and Injustice at Every Turn report by the US National Transgender Discrimination Survey which has the largest sample size for this kind of research. I'd prefer to use UK research but there isn't anything close to the size and detail yet that I've seen) and both they and masculine women still face sex-based violence. Both masculine women and feminine men are abused for not sticking to sex roles, it's social censure of being gender nonconforming and going against the status quo.
The culturally and socially applied traits of gender used to maintain a sex-based status quo are based on our bodies: women are meant to be more nurturing and caring and baby-crazy because female bodies get pregnant and can breastfeed, we're meant to be soft and delicate because female bodies are physically smaller, female smaller but denser brains have been used for centuries to dismiss women as less intelligent and unable to handle certain occupations. How many times have we heard that issue with women leaders connected to menstruation and hormones, even for older women past menopause, ignoring male hormonal fluctuations unless we want an excuse of why dudes are more violent? Our physical traits have always been used to explain the "naturalness" of sex roles and sex-based oppression. The innateness of our bodies has always been used to act like things applied to it are also innate.
Sadly, to me, we are not one of many species that evolved to have bigger females. We are on average smaller, weaker bones, less muscle mass and more difficulty in developing muscles, lower lung capacity, one of few species with such regular intensive menstruation and very invasive pregnancies, I don't see how it is hard to see that female bodies are more abusable than male bodies and the reasons why it would be more desireable to abuse and control female bodies as a means to control reproduction (reproductive abuse has a ton written on it). It's not like we're only the species where males are violent to females or that we can't see females being more violent to males in species where they have the physical advantage. We're should be trying to be better than that with our consciousness, I think, but we can see it in many species.
Much like how children's bodies are more abuseable, even in a society that loves to go on about how youth centric and how precious kids are, kids and teens are more likely to be abused than adults. Disabled people are more likely to be abused than able bodied (and disabled kids...the research on that is just horrific). In all of these, females are more likely than our male counterparts, however we identify and many before we can. Vulnerable groups are more likely to be abused and women are more vulnerable because of our bodies. I would love if there weren't physical difference that made us more abusable, would have made being on an otherwise all-male wrestling team a lot easier and would probably made me less dysphoric and maybe my daughters would have been able to get out of primary school without being sexually harassed and threatened by boys who might not have already learned how to use a girl's body against her if our bodies were more similar, but that's not how evolution has played out for humans so far and human society hasn't managed to really deal with that yet - too busy coming up with new ways to say our bodies don't matter while coming up with more reasons to hate them and more ways to hurt them and ignoring our brains are one of our parts.