Quick query about gender dysphoria

[LostSight]

Does anyone have a link to some evidence that some trans people are claiming that those who are trans do not necessarily suffer from gender dysphoria please? Currently having a discussion on twitter and the trans campaigner in question has just stated that trans people have it and therefore it is a medical condition.

No worries if nobody does. I’ve just seen it mentioned before and tried to search for evidence, but couldn’t come up with anything.

Oh, I see. I think I was partly talking to myself. I find it easy to get cross about the worst of the transactivists behaviour and forget there are plenty of lovely transwomen who are speaking up at personal cost to themselves.

I feel very angry a lot of the time about all of the crazy going on. But I'm not sure that's always the most helpful mindset. And it also plays into some of the stereotypes people spin for people just starting to visit/read about it.

So that's why really.

Trans Activism and TRA ideology is the issue, not transgender people. That's the line of separation. Most posts specifically talk about TRA.

If anyone tries NATRAALT I may blow a fuse.

Personally, I think a transgender person without gender dysphoria is someone making a lifestyle choice.

This 100%

Some people don't feel they fit gender stereotypes really strongly. Change the stereotypes, don't cut up your body

This.

In my opinion, it's far more likely that the bulk of transwomen are now made up of fetishists who thoroughly enjoy their penis.

This. Very difficult to play with your breasts and stroke your cock through lacy silk knickers if you've had it cut off.

Trans Activism and TRA ideology is the issue, not transgender people

And this.

I don't think for a second that a single one of them genuinely believes transwomen are women. In fact, I think the only people that even come close to that are, ridiculously, their female "cis-allies" who will just lap up whatever the 'poor men' say.

Men only take the TWaW line because it serves to undermine and dismantle women.

I’m a bit  about the APS figures, as I know several transmen who got bottom surgery in 2016, at least one of them in the States.

I know one person who is seriously considering it, having gone through all the other physical and social transitioning. Most people won't know any transpeople, let alone those doing complete physical transition. But doesn't that reflect our communities, and thus skew our perceptions?

I think that there are a subset of gender dysphoric people for whom taking the hormones of the opposite sex relieves their dysphoria

I thought I read that oestrogen was a mood enhancer? Plus just the routine and feeling that you're doing something (ie. placebo) would presumably have a huge effect.

Given the difference testosterone injections made to the mood and mental outlook of a male member of my family who was discovered to be very low testosterone, I would think that testosterone would do a fair bit for transmen too.

And that's all aside from it doing what they're taking it to do.

TransHobbit

As you can probably tell, I disagree profoundly with the trans-ideology, for all the reasons I've stated.

But it makes me no less empathetic towards someone in your position.

I can't imagine how it feels to want to surgically alter your genitalia to that extent.

I can easily imagine wanting to change your body in other, less severe ways. (Whether or not I think that's a feminist choice, given all the numerous threads about it, I can understand it.)

But to be contemplating such a significant decision, must be incredibly difficult.

I really don't want to sound patronising or fake in any way, and this is entirely genuine, but I really wish I could help.

That's not meant to sound like an offer, I wouldn't be so presumptuous!

I just feel very conflicted about the turmoil that gender dysphoria produces. Which triggers empathy in me and, at exactly the same time, rage at the basis for the concept.

Thank you for your candour, though. It can't be easy.

If your dysphoria is that bad then you need therapy and mood stabilising medication before you can even begin to think about transitioning.

Well put.

If I had to try and quantify what I felt about myself, then dissonance is a better word. There’s a subtle wrongness, a nagging disconnect between self and actuality. It doesn’t cause me any great distress. I just know I’d be happier with a phenotypically male body.

That's quite interesting Hobbit and I do think a number of women perhaps feel similar in some ways.

I don't particularly like having breasts, I find them rather cumbersome and uncomfortable and permanently wear a sturdy bra except for bathing.

On some level wouldn't mind having a masculine chest. It's not really a dysphoria more of a this is the reality of having largish breasts thing but I recognise they are part of who I am and have nourished several children so I'm not about to have surgery unless it was for medical reasons.

In a way, that is no different to any other permanent body-modification - whether it be tattoos, tooth-filing, nipple-piercing or cosmetic surgery. All things that only adults can consent to, and that we would be appalled if parents 'did' them to their children.

Very new to all these debates but pretty worried for women's rights. A couple of thoughts/questions:

• why do we refer to gender assigned at birth? (eg. Stonewall's glossary). Isn't the sex of a child not just based on genitalia but also on our DNA - ie if you ignored the presence/development of breast, womb, penis, scrotum, eggs and sperm, facial hair, adams apple and simply took a DNA sample you would genetically determine the gender - XX is female XY male. These are not social norms, they are scientifically proven facts irrespective of whether you remove/re-model physical features or take hormone supplements? No one is actually saying you can influence the at fertilisation determination of your XY chromosomes are they? And no one is being a fascist by saying you can't.
• Why is CIS gender used as a term of abuse directed towards women? It seems to simply be a new form of bigotry and misogyny directed towards women based upon biological fact - our DNA, our identity and experience.
• the research posted earlier is interesting defining 3 distinct groups of trans people - those male or female who have experienced dysmorphia since birth who may or may not have homosexual, bi-sexual or heterosexual impulses; those (Male) people who experience at adolescence a sexual desire to see themselves in festichised female clothing - who may or may not feel the need to pursue gender re-assignment;/be hetero/bi or homosexual and those (female) teenagers who identify at adolescence with being trans as part of seeking a new identity, sometimes as a cure for mental health or other typical teenager feelings of alienation.

I've only read it briefly but it does imply that these are distinct experiences that are deserving of respect and support but they are not either male or female experiences. To go through that experience and say therefore I am a woman is not true - (no women have had that experience), their's is distinct and true to them but not the same as (CIS) women's or men's. We should support people's right to be whoever they want to be, to dress as they please and give them counselling and time before deciding to take any irreversible medical steps. But to say we then must force trans people into binary definitions of gender is logically inconsistent and confusing to future generations. I neither want my (CIS) male and female teens to be disparaged for their identity or sexual preferences as I would for transpeople's own experience. Can anyone explain these things to me further?

TransHobbit

Thanks for replying. It's not often we get a transman on here and the chance to ask questions. But I realise it might feel incredibly intrusive.

Could I ask another question?

Do you have that sense of disconnect for any other aspect that society considers feminine, rather than just an anatomical issue?

I've worked with people with dysphoria/dysmorphia and it is a real thing. Their minds are telling them that a part of their body doesn't belong to them/is diseased/possessed/something similar and they need it gone. There is work you can do to help people with these conditions to better integrate reality, but for some the only solution is surgery.

The really sad thing is that, even if they have surgery, a solid proportion of them then kill themselves around 10 years post-surgery.

Your mental map of your body, no matter how sorted you are, is rarely indicative of reality anyway, and in cases where that mental map is so distorted that surgery was deemed to be the best answer, the chances of the surgery being a good simulacrum of that person's mental map of themselves is pretty low.

I'm not suggesting that this happens to everyone with dysphoria/dysmorphia of course, but for significantly high percentages it is the case. We have to be able to do better, and doing better often means that we have to be able to work to help people to feel more comfortable in the skin they're in, we're not allowed to do that though.

That's really interesting Xenophile.

Did you form an opinion about what causes it?

I realise it's probably not one thing. But I wondered if it had given you any insight?

@Bouledeneige

Please do not use 'cis'. It is unnecessary and demeaning. 'Woman' and 'man' are complete and clear descriptors.

The people I worked with had long histories of trauma and/or abuse. But I am very aware that this is only one explanation and that the kinds of dysphoria that the people I worked with had were extreme.

My DS also has ASD, and I've noticed that a sizeable number of kids in his "ASD ghetto" (their phrase, not mine) experience enormous difficulty squaring how they experience their bodies and sexualities with how society dictates they should experience them.

What jellyslice said.

JellySlice - sorry if I wasn't clear - I was asking why people use it as an abusive misogynistic term. The Stonewall site explains it as if it is an objective term without pejorative connotations which I've always seen it to have:

Cisgender or Cis – someone whose gender identity is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Non-trans is also used by some people.

Bouledeneige

Cis is a term being pushed by transactivists (including Stonewall).

It's loaded, and nowhere near as neutral as they imply. There is a definite agenda with it.

This thread explains everything.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3163424-the-case-against-cis

Thanks. I'm getting the drift. I know transactivistis use it but was disappointed about Stonewall not acknowledging how its used. There is no need for it to exist at all. If you read my whole post you'll see where my sentiments lie - I am asking the question why our DNA should be held against us as women.

'Woman' says nothing about gender identity. Woman = adult female human. It needs no qualifiers. Take 100 different women from 100 different cultures and societies, and the only thing you will find common to all 100 is their sex.

Male-bodied people come along and say "I am a woman" (ie 'transwomen are women') "therefore YOU need something to define you as different to me". No. TIMs need the linguistic modifier, not women.

'Cis' diminishes women to a subset of people who are not, by any rational definition, women.

Bouledeneige

Ah, ok. I missed that.