Royal College of Psychiatrists Statement

[dorade]

What hope is there when respected scientific organisations uncritically adopt phrases like "sex assigned at birth" and use "two spirit" people as evidence for the need to mutilated bodies to a facsimile of the other sex?

Report here

No Rat it doesn't make it any clearer. Someone's feelings are not evidence. Did you read what I said about the lizards? How is that different? Do some people have a special "lizard detector" that enables them to determine whether a person is in fact a lizard? Because they really do believe it. Perhaps there is a lizard factor in some people's brains, and we shouldn't try to dissuade people from their belief in lizard humans.

I appreciate that for some trans people (transsexuals) they have a profound discomfort between their sex and their 'gender' and that is very distressing for them, and they may need psychiatric support and perhaps surgery in some cases. It still isn't evidence of the existence of an internal gender though.

But their business is in diagnosing issues with how the brain works. They can’t deny biology on the basis of what people say they feel.

Sex, we know, is defined chromosomally. How and where is gender defined - for those that have it?

Just wanted to go back to these thinking about the difference between psychiatry and neurology; these people aren't looking for biological things - as in physical things - but the things they're looking for and talking about are no less real for being within the human mind, surely? The mind can only come from the physical body, after all.

So for example is "ego" a biological reality? Or sense of self, or "id"? There are probably loads more psychiatric phenomena, but it's not my area. They're obviously different to physical things like sex, but they're the terms describe equally observable phenomena.

But it's not gender, is it? Gender is a social system imposing behaviour on individuals whether or not it fits their personality

I think one of the big problems with this whole debate is that we seem to use the same word to refer to both things :( people who think gender is or might be an innate sense don't think it isn't a social construct, they think it isn't just a social construct. There might be much less confusion if there were more than one word.

Someone's feelings are not evidence.

I think in the case of psychiatry they're basically the only evidence aren't they?

I suppose the lizard thing is different because psychiatrists, having examined the phenomenon of "gender" in numerous patients have come to the conclusion that it isn't simply a "belief", but something rather more fundamental.

they have a profound discomfort between their sex and their 'gender'

It still isn't evidence of the existence of an internal gender though.

Well it's certainly evidence that there is discomfort been their sex and something inside them, isn't it. And they call that thing a person's "gender"...

to quote Diane in the Good Fight, Orwell wouldn't know where to start today.

If sex was "assigned" at birth, then people would just ask the doctor "can this be a girl please".

I am so flabbergasted I don't know where to put myself!!

Interesting the difference in how quickly they've bought into this and validated it, and comparing how people with ME/chronic fatigue have been treated by this group over the years - that's easily thousands of people in every country each year. What is biological reality for them hasn't been nearly so swiftly or easily or uncritically accepted and sensitively handled.

Wonder what the difference is?

Ah hang on, it's all fine!

they do define sex.

by reference to wikipedia!!!!

by reference to wikipedia!!!!

Whaaaaaa?? I missed that!

I think one of the big problems with this whole debate is that we seem to use the same word to refer to both things sad people who think gender is or might be an innate sense don't think it isn't a social construct, they think it isn't just a social construct. There might be much less confusion if there were more than one word.

Sex - biological reproductive class
Gender - social system assigning behaviour to different sexes
Dysphoria - body integrity disorder
Gender identity - the religious belief that humans have gendered souls

There you go. The problem is not the conflation of two senses of gender. The problem is the misleading conflations of both sex and gender and dysphoria and gender identity.

Anyone is free to take a religious belief on this. What they are not free to do is impose that belief on the rest of us. And the RCP is taking this view - largely because this view keeps many members of the RCP in business.

And the RCP is taking this view - largely because this view keeps many members of the RCP in business.

I'm all up for cynicism so totally open to seeing some truth in this.

I think so rat.

can you please check this isn't just me going mad? I clicked the link in their report I think.

Rat you're right, feelings are a mainstay of psychiatry. But feelings of gender 'wrongness' aren't necessarily evidence of an innate gender. They could be evidence of a mental illness around gender wrong/rightness. They could be evidence of an individual's reactions to a heavily gendered society. It hasn't been sufficiently explored. But in this document it is taken as being a truth.

Yes, I just looked again.

they define sex by reference to wikipedia.

Just imagine if someone was to go and edit the wikipedia articles.....

I might buy them a dictionary and post it to them.

They could be evidence of a mental illness around gender wrong/rightness.

Well yes, they could. But I inside they've thought of that.

They could be evidence of an individual's reactions to a heavily gendered society. It hasn't been sufficiently explored. But in this document it is taken as being a truth.

Again yes, they could, but we don't know what exploration of this they have in fact done. I assume quite a lot as it is rather their jobs. I can only assume too that they present it as fact because at this time it is what they reasonably believe to be fact.

Sort of like the Big Bang, evolution and string theory.

They may later be disproved, but I guess right now they think there's enough evidence for them and they make enough sense to be considered fact.

Inside = imagine

I imagine they've thought of that.

Worth remembering that psychiatry hasn't historically been that friendly to women. Hysteria, lobotomy, institutionalisation, for 'bad' behaviour that basically amounted to not fulfilling gender stereotypes (e.g. not being submissive, being lesbians..). Even now there's the issue of over diagnosing of women with ptsd or autism as having personality disorders because of sex role stereotyping. I have had to deal with multiple NHS psychiatrists in the past fifteen years who have refused to allow me to be assessed for adhd, forcing me to fight for that, because I'm an adult who wasnt diagnosed as a child - although this was rarely assessed for when I was a kid and adhd in girls was definitely not understood and was even denied, as was aspergers, both were thought to be specific to boys. I have had male NHS psychiatrists in the past three years who have said awful things to me, many related specifically to being female - like suggesting that my toddler had something wrong 'up there' (tapping his head!) because I was breastfeeding past 12 months. Part of this issue is that these guys have often been from different cultures and have pretty conservative ideas about women, to say the least, which is very evident when you're a woman in front of them and relying on their support - which raises more issues for female patients as tbh raising an issue about cultural prejudices in psychiatrists raised and trained elsewhere than the UK feels pretty much impossible for fear of being accused of prejudice myself. But the reality remains that there are many many psychiatrists who do not have even a basic understanding of feminism and the specific issues women may have in a patriarchal society, and that unthinkingly judge women according to their compliance or not with 'appropriate' sex roles. It doesn't surprise me at all that this would affect their approach to transgender, or that they would be accepting to 'self identification' as the opposite sex when they absolutely do not accept self diagnosis of other types of mental health issues.

Rosenburg thank you for that, I have read similar about psychiatry before but didn't really know enough about it to be able to comment.

Interesting the difference in how quickly they've bought into this and validated it, and comparing how people with ME/chronic fatigue have been treated by this group over the years - that's easily thousands of people in every country each year. What is biological reality for them hasn't been nearly so swiftly or easily or uncritically accepted and sensitively handled.

Thank you, yes, this!! Psychiatry is an art more than it is a science. I have no doubt some individual psychiatrists do a lot of good but as a type of medicine it's surprisingly flimsy. As this document shows!

The idea that sex is assigned at birth is ridiculous and they're embarrassing themselves giving credence to it as a theory.

Interestingly, my friend is one of the world's leading experts on the philosophy of the DSM.

She goes to conferences where she has her own papers explained to her all the time.....

Hmmm...
I have a doctorate in genetics and worked as an academic medical genetics researcher for over a decade. So, I think I can claim to know a bit about biology, although sex/gender wasn't my field.

I 'peak-transed' a couple of days ago thanks to you guys alerting me to the fact that the meaning of the word 'woman' is being usurped, and the potential unintended/intended consequences of that.

Sex is (mostly, barring the occasional rare genetic anomaly) straightforward in humans i.e. XX = female, XY = male

Gender is less so. Like many of you, I feel that gender can be a social construct which is frequently detrimental to women, kicked against being a girl as a child and have no strong sense of my own gender now. But someone posted a link to an article in Nature on that thread in AIBU about the Daily Mail article yesterday, which does provide some evidence of a physiological basis for transgenderism nature.

Importantly though, while there were brain differnces between men, transgender women (born men), and women. The brains of transgender women were very similar to those of men, which were clearly distinguishable from those of women.

So, based on that, I am coming to the idea that transgender people are a comparable to those with high functioning autism in some ways - i.e. clealy different to those without the condition, but not necessarily in a pathological way.

It also reinforced the idea that transwomen =/= women.

I haven't read the report from the BCP yet.

RCP

&I suppose the lizard thing is different because psychiatrists, having examined the phenomenon of "gender" in numerous patients have come to the conclusion that it isn't simply a "belief", but something rather more fundamental.&

I'm trying to parse this sentence.

Strongly held beliefs which lack physical evidence are quite common. As a rule, we don't take these strongly held beliefs as evidence that the object of the belief is real. That would be circular reasoning. Try this for size. Lots of people believe God is exists ergo God exists because lot's of people believe it. If you put these believers in the psychiatrists chair, the psychiatrist would arrive at the conclusion that many of them are absolutely 100% convinced of the existence of God and will have had quite profound spiritual experiences. Many of them will have modified their lives considerably to accommodate the existence of God. Our minds can convince us of the reality of things for which there is no physical evidence.

If psychiatrists have discovered the feminine essence, this metaphysical property that I and approximately 3.5 billion people on the planet share then I'm sure we would have heard about it. The newspapers love that sort of thing. This hasn't happened because there is no evidence. Beliefs are only evidence of internal mental conditions, not evidence of external physical realities.

I messed up the quote. My computer has randomly switched the key for & with the key for ". Bloody hate this machine.

First sentence is from @rat

OK, I've read the report.

My first impression is that it's a thoughtful document about how best psychiatrists can support transgender people. If I were transgender, I'd probably be pleased with it.

However, it doesn't consider the effects of the changes on other groups. Particularly women/girls.