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

So interesting. Thanks for posting Jayceedove

BarrackerBarmer
Great post. Seeing it put like that it's hard to see how anyone can be taken in by this.

I've noted this TIME AND AGAIN that glossaries from the main trans'gender' organisations fail to provide a definition of gender.

The Scottish consultation was the same. “Transgender” is defined as people who find that their gender does not fully correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth. Without defining gender.

I thought it was just poor document writing. But it must be deliberate, because they have realised that if they defined gender, just using a dictionary definition, but a consistent one, it's clear that the whole ideology is based on stereotypes or delusions.

The reason that no definition is ever given is that any truthful possible explanation of gender destroys completely the assertion that transgender is a genuine, verifiable state.

The reason that no definition is ever given is that nobody knows exactly what it is. Have a little a) humility and b) compassion. We do not know everything. You do not know everything. Doctors do not know everything. I'm not trans, and I was 33 before I found out that one of doctors' primary duties is to listen to patients rather than telling them that they're delusional. Most of the really heinous brutalities in medicine have come from doctors not really listening to and not believing their patients. Including the ones who think they're Napoleon.

Barraker I agree with everything you wrote.

spoonless of course humility and compassion are important. I want to see trans people treated with respect. That doesn't stop me worrying about the potential unintended consequences of legal changes based on the poorly defined concept gender which is frequently conflated with physical sex characteristics and that isn't what it means.

On the gender/sex conflation.

When I was diagnosed the medical term was transsexual and it was from this that the idea of a 'sex change' - still touted in the press from time to time - seemingly emerged.

Because they were not treating then those who were just effeminate boys or had a lifestyle expression that varied from the norm. Gender as such was not really then even much of a concept.

They were focusing on those with a clear sense of knowing who they were in reality but seeking to match their body as far as possible to align with it.

This is hard to describe but I got the feeling that if you were not clearly aware of what your biology actually was versus what you felt it should be then they left you to live as yourself and did not go through the then uncertainties of surgery.

They needed a degree of realism and understanding that you were not literally changing sex simply being helped to align your body as far as possible with that stated aim.

It was all orientated very physical and in that regard about the body, not the mind or the perception of identity, or clothes or hobbies. #

Those for whom that was the focus (what today we would call gender identity) were the ones they decided not to proceed towards hormones and surgery.

90% of cases were not taken forward at that time. Only 100 or so per year in the UK were dealt with medically and virtually all had surgery.

They did all sorts of tests to establish how aware you were of your reality and how far apart your sense of mind and sense of body were but they needed you not to believe this was a magic transformation that would change your biological sex.

My guess is that many of those who were not put through after such tests are today the equivalent large numbers identifying as trans but not even seeking physical transformation.

Because for them it was and is not about sex or the body but about mind and gender identity.

This is the basis of the sudden flood of cases that has turned a small trickle into a flood - many of the 90% who were turned away years ago from getting help when it was all about surgery because they did not have body dysmorphia as it was then understood. More a mind dysmorphia.

I am not arguing there are separate causes. Who knows?

But I think this division of sorts explains why those whose focus is 'wrong sex' have a realistic acceptance of the limitations of biology and change but do physically transition to achieve best fit. And then mostly just quietly blend in and get on with life relatively well. Rather than ask others to change to fit into them, which we never really did.

Whereas those whose focus is 'wrong gender' have no real need to transform physically smuch, as it is about expression of identity and self through clothes and interests and such like.

For them the 'I was always a woman' argument will be paramount because the body is not the key here, the mind is, and they likely think that is all they are doing - expressing what was always there. So biology is irrelevant .

When we had surgery back in the 70s they actually made you sign a waiver saying that you understood that you were NOT changing sex biologically. They would not do it otherwise.

This is where the confusion started as they renamed it Gender Reassignment Surgery for accuracy - because they were reconfiguring the genitals and other sex markers to reflect that and so the name made sense. And not conflicting with reality as in sex being changed.

Pretty obviously if you were not let through the gatekeeping without accepting that basic premise it shows why then those who were assisted had more realistic understanding of what was happening.

The number of surgeries seem to be more or less stable at a couple of hundred a year. The number of gender identifiers is escalating. So out there we see what looks like a transgender movement arguing for things that make no biological sense. And a few who know only too well the limitations of biology.

However, w

Sorry about the long post and last line. This is hard to explain and edit.

Have a little a) humility and b) compassion

When transactivists start showing the slightest hint they possess either of those qualities regarding women's rights, concerns and feelings, I'll have a rethink.

the poorly defined concept gender which is frequently conflated with physical sex characteristics and that isn't what it means

I get why people worry that gender swapping "simply reinforces gender roles". However I reckon that for the general public, transsexuals' sex reassignments did more to dislodge gender from biology than all the feminist dialectics and postgraduate gender studies in the world. Do you see any mileage in that view?

I also wonder whether it's worth distinguishing between people who are desperate to fit in vs people who are more interested in standing out.

I reckon that for the general public, transsexuals' sex reassignments did more to dislodge gender from biology than all the feminist dialectics and postgraduate gender studies in the world.
How can reinforcing gender roles help to remove the concept of gender from people's lived experience? Sex reassignment (I assume you mean surgery) simply reinforces the idea that if you want to appear/live in a certain way you need to have one particular type of body. That is the opposite of the feminist argument.

Worth checking out the comments on this BMJ article:

"Even the Royal College of Psychiatrists uses inaccurate terminology like ‘sex assigned at birth’ (last I checked, sex was observed, not arbitrarily assigned). We need to be more careful."

www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1312/rapid-responses

I agree, I think they are cracking ie starting to stand up to transgender pressure but in a hedgy, fudgy way which leaves them wiggle room on either side as the fad waxes or wanes.

Jaycee Thank you for giving us context & sharing.

Jaycee thank you very much for your post. It helped my understanding.

However I reckon that for the general public, transsexuals' sex reassignments did more to dislodge gender from biology than all the feminist dialectics and postgraduate gender studies in the world. Do you see any mileage in that view?

I sort of do

How can reinforcing gender roles help to remove the concept of gender from people's lived experience? Sex reassignment (I assume you mean surgery) simply reinforces the idea that if you want to appear/live in a certain way you need to have one particular type of body. That is the opposite of the feminist argument.

I see what you're saying about reinforcing stereotypes, but to someone who hasn't thought much about gender at all, hearing about or meeting someone transgender does make you think about what it means to be a man or a woman and how much that has to do with biology.

There is another thread on here at the moment (started as a response to Shon Faye) with pictures and clips of lots of celebrities who didn't/don't conform to gender stereotypes (e.g. Boy George, David Bowie), I guess they probably did more to help to question stereotypes, whereas transgender people make others think about what gender means.

I haven't figured out a clear opinion on what I think gender means myself yet. I don't have a strong inner feeling of gender - but then I'm not the most self aware person you're ever likely to meet. I am swayed by some of the evidence of phyiological brain differences, although as far as I'm aware the studies have all been in adults and it will be different to pick apart the innate from environmental influences. I'm thinking of the measurable changes in the physiology of the brains of London cabbies when they do 'the knowledge'...

Clearly there is strong evidence for the influence of socialization. That definitely has a major role, but I'm not convinced there is no physiological influence at all.

So, unless someone can provide a clear, non-circular definition of gender, I remain worried about legislating on the basis of people's feelings about it.

(disclaimer, I am very new to thinking very much about feminism. I would have always claimed to be a feminist, but confess to not having thought about it at all deeply until getting involved in this debate.)

Jaycee, thank you. I worked with someone in the 70s who was transsexual and was preparing for surgery. They were someone of physically very male appearance who had previously worked in an almost exclusively men's job. I'm sure they had many difficulties to contend with, but not among female coworkers who were most accepting and I think went over the top with advice about clothes and makeup...the customer facing part of the job could have been tricky but I can't recall any unpleasant instances. I lost touch with them, but often wonder what happened to my friend and hope they had a contented and settled life.

Sorry, missed out the bit about our understanding of the need for our coworker's surgery was to be able to fit more easily into a female role. Neither they nor we ever thought it involved "becoming a woman".

@spoonless I've thought recently that there is an interesting comparison here to people with ME/CFS. It was considered very important to believe people (in part because of the medical culture etc), and this did lead to a degree of 'self identification' being accepted amongst the community. However, there also ended up being a very small number of fairly extreme (self identified as having ME) activists. At one point, a scientist who ventured into ME/CFS research received death threats I think (when results didn't match with what the activists wanted). So it seems to me that there are parallels. However, at that point, the narratives diverge, because the extreme activists certainly didn't gain traction, and if anything, the whole of the ME community was blamed and negatively affected and lost credence. Because they don't have any power as a group. To wield the influence that they currently have, tras have to come from a group that holds power in society. Otherwise surely the narrative would look more like that of people with ME/CFS ?

"Have a little compassion/we just don't know what it is."

It doesn't exist.
Logic takes you there to this conclusion, even without factoring in the evidence that there is no 'woman identity'.

We're adults. Not the audience in a Peter Pan play clapping furiously 'I do believe in fairies' in case a fairy dies because we didn't believe hard enough.

Society shouldn't be changing laws, medicine shouldn't be medicating, surgeons shouldn't be operating if the best anyone can attempt to offer is 'its too hard to explain, so I won't'.

Even flat earthers will have a crack at trying to explain their beliefs and to demonstrate why they think nasa has it wrong.

The English language is rich enough that we can find words to explain concepts.

I've never in my life seen such a nonsense word used with such authority by so many supposedly learned people and with such enormous impact, yet with no ACTUAL MEANING.

If the question 'what do you mean' makes people defensive, avoidant and obstructive, it is certain that the true meaning is something they want to avoid stating, obstruct you from hearing, because they know it attacks and destroys their position.

What is gender?
How is it different from sex?
How does it manifest?
What are the characteristics?
How can it be a group category if it is completely subjective to each individual?
What is meant by 'identify as'?

These are not difficult questions. Everybody can reach the answers.

@Acorninspring. I agree the parallels are very extensive but I see it a bit differently. (Are you an observer or are you personally involved?)

The death threats and harassment are scare stories that have been exaggerated by ideologically-committed scientists to silence criticism whilst they pursue incompetent and misleading research that has caused huge damage. The treatments we oppose consist of a gaslighting process resembling conversion therapy that seeks to convince us the illness is an illusion; it doesn't work and it frequently makes people worse. Most of the "extreme activists" are actually well-reasoned and very courteous scientific critics.

The truth is gradually coming out now. This is an excellent summary:
www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/

As to the power, maybe trans activists just have more energy :D And an identity worth celebrating. We just have a horrible disease we desperately want to be rid of. It's never glamorous.

The whopping difference between the ME/CFS analogy and trans is that there is an objective definition of pain/fatigue/exhaustion/depression. How a person experiences those things is subjective, yes, and establishing proof of self reported pain is difficult. But we all have a mutual understanding of pain. No one says it doesn't exist, because we've all experienced it and we have a frame of reference. There's a definition of pain. If I experience the definition of pain, I call what i am feeling 'pain'.

'Feeling' male or female is nonsensical. There is no way to feel ovaries you have never had or chromosomes you don't possess. A biological existence is not a feeling.

What BarrackerBarmer said.

Barracker, how can it 'effect my position'? I don't have a position.

I don't know what caused me to be transsexual. Only that I felt it inside of me very young and by about 8 I understood what it was that I was feeling - that I was physically male but with some kind of inner instinct knew that was 'not right'.

It had nothing to do with those I played with (I played with both boys and girls) or games I liked to play (they were quite a mixture and I also played alone a lot but was fine with that as not many kids really 'got me') or toys (equally varied).

I never cross dressed before transition outside a few times as a very young child because it quickly felt like a pretence and just felt false. I was seeking a kind of unity. I have no idea what kind of unity. Or why. Just that is how it felt.

I had a good family upbringing, great parents who were really understanding for that era, no sisters. So there is no obvious social factors or pressure involved and for years doctors asked me about these things seeking one. And my parents were quizzed too a lot as I am sure the doctors were looking for anything in that direction.

So, again, as I have freely admitted, I don't know how it happened, maybe psychological - but if it was it has to have started in very early life - before about 3 so before any of my childhood memories as it was otherwise there from the get go - or physical - and again, if so, then exactly how or where as it is something not yet identified.

The research into brain state pattern differences - whilst not explaining what causes being this way - feels the most right as a way to a solution because if there is something wonky in the settings that attach some kind of gender identity to biological sex in parts of your brain then it might well feel like a kind of fuzzy awareness of that sense of mismatch. Which is how it was.

I have said that I do not believe you can or do change biological sex. I understand that reality and always have. But I do believe that what makes you who you are is a consequence of more than just biology. And that most often that is not realised because whatever else is involved in the process, and whatever you call it, tends to match up in most people and so never creates a dissonance.

One day I am absolutely sure someone will discover a cause and maybe even a fix for that cause.

For now all I know is that something was really there and it was powerful, burrowing inside your mind telling you to get this rectified. Hence the need to get medical help. It was always focused as a problem to be resolved and not a choice of any kind.

I can only report these things and if they are not good enough for some on here then I am not going to make things up for them. Because I am as much in the dark as you.

What I do know is that psychoanalysis failed , drugs failed, reinforcement therapy failed, and the only thing that worked was transition and physical body modification to close the gap between that body/mind divergence.

I am not telling anyone what to say or do anything about that. Only that this certainly - in some cases at least - is not a made up delusion or some design on conquering womanhood by men.

It is basically a rather insidious malfunction of the mind or body that in my case was only resolved with the professional help that I got.

Which is why I believe anyone who might have this needs proper medical assessment first and not just to fill in a form and become someone else. If that is what they want to do in the end then I would not want to stop them live their lives. But if they have what I had then I cannot imagine they would not seek medical help as soon as possible and want to find out what was wrong and what could be done about it.

But it really makes little difference to me now what causes this to happen. I

I was nodding along to your post until this:

if there is something wonky in the settings that attach some kind of gender identity to biological sex in parts of your brain then it might well feel like a kind of fuzzy awareness of that sense of mismatch. Which is how it was.

I wish I could get you to engage and not avoid this absolutely critical question

What do you imagine you mean when you say
Gender?
And what do you mean by
Identity?

This is critical to every claim made by anyone who believes transgender is an actual thing in its own right, more than being a rejection of one's own body.

You don't stop short at the claim of "I rejected the reality of my own body"
I accept this is a psychological experience with a potential cause.

You take it one step further.
You claim some knowledge or experience or feeling of the opposite sex. You call it gender and you claim commonality with females/girls/women.

It's this that has to be refuted. Your idea that feeling a rejection of who YOU are means that you are IN ANY WAY similar to what I AM.

As I say to my children: Use your words. Explain it.

@spoonless yes personally involved unfortunately..... Maybe I didn't explain well - I totally agree with what you wrote above. I'm thinking of maybe 2/3 self diagnosed 'extreme activists' from quite a while ago (not related to the PACE trial, much before that). I guess I was just trying to say, that having such a different reception from those in power, points to the power that Tims in particular hold. Still not sure I've explained what I was trying to get at! Maybe another eloquent poster will manage better. Or maybe I need to rethink.

Tbh @Acorninspring I avoided the community like the plague until recently because I what's refusing to admits I was stuck with this disease, so I'm only really familiar with Phoenix Rising at its most awesome.

@Jayceedove So can you say, did you feel female or just not-male?

Barracker - it is simply because there are no words to describe what is a kind of ineffable inner state that you have felt since you were old enough to think that the problems you see as problems exist. I don't see them as problems of reality just of trying to explain what I doubt anyone who has not experienced it can grasp.

So if I use terms that you take to mean something more, like gender identity, it is just because if I call it a sense of something inside saying 'this is wrong' you call it not being explained.

I have no more idea WHAT it was than you do, only that it was. But you are placing your own meaning onto gender identity when I am only using it to describe some sense of mismatch.

In previous threads I have tried to say something like it is a feeling you have deep within that is like an itch you cannot scratch or when you just know something is not quite right with your body but you cannot figure out why. It starts out like a sense of something off inside and you ignore it but it does not go away, Then it starts to be a but more insistent and you think, something is not right here, but what is it? Then you can work out whether it is your back or tummy or whatever that does not feel quite right.

By now you know it is in some sense physical and you cannot keep it to yourself and you talk to someone and when this nagging inside increases you go to see a doctor and the quest to find out what it is begins.

Between about 3 and 8 I was in that position of it developing like that and it was never concrete enough to say what it was.

Though possibly had I not been so free to do as I wished and not be pigeon holed into doing things then I might have realised earlier it was in some way sex or gender related (I am not using those terms as I understand a difference just trying to avoid saying sex as I know the literal reality of biology but it DOES feel like your biology is wrong and so you look for some other word that's all).

It was my primary school teacher being aware that I liked writing and had created stories and was keen to foster that who first noticed (I hadn't) that they were written from a female perspective. He realised this was odd and, as my mum worked on school dinners, told her about this and asked her to keep an eye on me.

I did not find this out till I was about 14. But it was a sign of how gradually you became apparent what was the heart of the problem. And it always felt physical and was a drive to adapt the body to 'cure' this problem. Hence all the times you hear stuff like 'born in the wrong body' or 'twin spirit' or 'changing sex'.

They are clichés and medically wrong but they are clichés because they match well what is being experienced. I have consciously tried to avoid using them because I know they offend. And most transsexuals know they are just descriptions and not actual reality as we are only too acutely aware of the limitations of physical transition.

However, you want a better description, but finding one that is not too 'fuzzy' or offensively inaccurate is not easy.

You see it in terms of a soft mind based expression of personality sense. And I do agree that in many cases of self identification and no interest in changing physically it may well be.

But those who are transsexual, fewer in number it seems, based on my own experience and the few others I have talked to over the years, regard it more as a physical thing that seeks resolution through biology and not psychology.

Which again I stress is not to say we are claiming sex change happens in literal reality. We know it doesn't. But to us it is sex change we need to resolve the dysphoria as expressing gender or self differently without physical change is not going to remove the cause.

Sorry this really is like trying to describe the indescribable.

Probably