What to people think of the issue of shame in all this, and the alleviation of deep/repressed shame through normalising and minimising etc.
All this validation and non-othering stuff - it is mixing up, perverting even, our ability to recognise that things exist and that people who have these things have distress that is real and understandable in that context, with going on to say that the disorder, and the behaviour it generates is normal, healthy and OK.
WRT MH I have heard someone say that being schizophrenic was just another way of being neurodiverse and its no big deal - as if it doesn't make any difference that a person has it, and as if it does not have serious and unhappy consquences for the life of the sufferer. As if reframing it would make it all OK then.
Their aim was to remove stigma and avoid the victim blaming/ shunning mentality, and to stop the person feling ashamed of having the condition, which of course they shouldn't as it is not their fault, but I don't think it actually helps anyone to try to alleviate shame by 'simply' re-defining the disorder and saying that disorders are actually just normal variation as opposed to dysfunctional and distressing problems.
Guilt and shame may be totally undeserved and misplaced, and my understanding is that it will only properly heal when the person is able to understand the mechanisms and effects of abuse and by helping the person not to feel inappropriately responsible and ashamed where they were innocent, but to be responsible for things that they are actully responsible for such as their own behavioural responses now.
But if shame-avoidance driven, mentally gymnastic MH problems go undiagnosed and unrecognised then of course people are going to feel able to publically seek to further validate and normalise their dysfunctions.
That some people have a powerful need to do that at any cost is a clear danger and in some respects seems to be fuelled by doctors who have seen validation, transition or amputation as a satisfctory resolution to a problem rather than as a sort of delusion arrangement similar to the legal fiction that allows people with a GRC to change the sex on their birth certificate. An end rather than a means to an end.
Shame and sexual abuse and/or psychological abuse and humilation go hand in hand. Some abusers are very expert in humilation as an extra dimension to sexual abuse. So much goes unreported and psychologically abusive circumstances are sadly the norm for many people.
TRIGGER WARNING There was a horrible case of a man who abused young boys, involving them in degrading him (and his penis) sexually, replaying aspects of sexual abuse he himself had suffered as a child and also validating his disgust with himself and his body, that developed as a result of his own abuse. Abhorrent to think and write about. This predatory man now calls himself a transwoman.
I don't think this is coincidence, or evidence of in utero hormone washes, but severe psycholgical damage that has a high risk of perpetuating itself in some people/circumstances and especially if victims do not get the help they need.