Trans being a medical or lifestyle issue

[Goldenbuzzer]

In the GRA consultation there was suggestions of doing away with the medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. And trans advocates ( eg) stonewall were calling for this.

If this is the case, is being trans a lifestyle choice?

If so, why is nhs finding gender reassignment / cross’s sex hormones and surgery.

I Am just trying to get my head round some of the issues / make logical assumptions. - know that some of you more knowledgeable contributors might have some info on this. ( thanks if you do)

Funding not finding...

From what I gather it's transphobic to say that someone's gender identity is a lifestyle choice. It's also transphobic to say that a trans person should have medical intervention. It's also transphobic to say that trans people necessarily have gender dysphoria but it's also transphobic to say some transpeople are doing it for reasons other than dysphoria.
From what I understand someone's gender identity is completely and utterly inherent, to the point where brain scans can now "prove" the female or male inner brain makeup. But it's also flexible so someone can opt male or female on a switching basis if this is their identity. And it's transphobic to talk about it.

I have pondered this before, after Theresa May stating that being trans was not an illness at Pink News last year.

Is it meant to be more blurring of lines between who is included under the Stonewall Trans umbrella (just about everyone on the planet from memory) and who has genuine body dysmorphia / gender dysphoria - I am never sure which is the better term to use of those two.

Surely if it is not as illness, then any treatment, be that surgery, pharmaceuticals, councelling or whatever should be funded by the individual not the NHS. If it is a medical / psychological condition that the NHS needs to be involved in, then the diagnosis route needs to stay, surely? It would appear that the drivers of the current agenda want it both ways.

an illness

counselling fgs, should proof read!

Without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria then, yes, imo being trans becomes a lifestyle choice.

The GRA was brought in partly because allowing people to change gender is a big deal both for society and the individual and it was only appropriate if the applicant's MH was gravely affected.

Giving people cross sex hormones and even elective surgery can surely only be justified by a perceived medical need?

If a man presents as a woman but has no gender dysphoria and undergoes no medical transition, then surely he's just a transvestite? I can see no possible reason why others should be expected to perceive him as a woman.

Self ID represents a way for the state to save money. If gender dysphoria isn't important and it's no longer a MH issue then the NHS won't have to treat it. Any hormones or surgery will have to be funded privately. This is very bad news for the transsexuals the GRA was set up to help.

Of course, being transsexual always has been a medical problem. Involving both psychiatrists and endocrinologists for lengthy evaluation before any treatment occurs.

This is why many transsexuals are opposed to self ID as shown by the 14 who created a blog to say so. I know several, including myself, who submitted critical evaluations of the planned GRA changes to the consultation. I am sure there were plenty.

The government never consulted the 4910 transsexuals about what they thought of the GRA and if or how it needed changing.

Given that it is written about and around them and the ones with a GRC already are clearly going to be impacted by the plans to change things drastically then this00 is a very odd omission. They could have easily surveyed those 4910 before making plans. They had all their data to contact.

But - just like they did not talk to women until forced to do so, despite the obvious necessity, they consulted people like Stonewall who say cross dressers are now trans - vastly expanding the definition to be ridiculously inclusive - but not the ones whose medical condition was the purpose of creating the act.

There is little doubt it was only passed so easily in 2004 because of the medical assessment of need and the predicted 5000 numbers (which is exactly the level that has occurred consistently over 14 years despite the government basically telling what is really a lie that not enough are applying - only true if you massively shift the goalposts - which they never told the public once).

No wonder we ended up with this mess. If you only consult the people excluded from the GRA and they say it is too hard to get in and do not ask those who were included then you create the outcome that you have engineered by bias.

As the GRA presently requires medical and psychiatric assessment and eliminates cases with high risk mental issues such as a fetish or who are really just gay (see the Oxfords study that it does so) then these are the people who are going to tell them that these 'hurdles' need removing because trans is not a medical problem.

Doctors and psychiatrists are the reason those people had found the procedure 'too hard'.

So they have ended up crafting updates around all the ones excluded.

At no point seemingly asking whether being excluded might have been the appropriate thing to do.

The whole process of updating this law is a bit like looking at school attendance records and saying many children frequently do not show up and so going to school must be too hard so why not reduce the school week to one day long because that will make it easier for all the ones who do not want to come because it is five days long.

Am I being simple.

There is sex and sexuality. Some people have same sex attractraction, most are attracted to the opposite sex. A very small number of people are born intersex, which is a genetic thing. An equally small number of people are transexual and have diagnosed dysphoria.

There is gender. This is something about blue brains and pink brains and unicorns and Kardashians. Gender itself is partly a marketing construct. Those pages in the Argos brochure showing boy toys and girl toys. Most kids, if left alone, happily find their own balance between lego and dolls, and playing with boys and girls. Most women and men also find a balance, so some men will have a lot of female friends, and enjoy cooking and clothes, whilst some women are engineers or play rugby.

For me the important campaign is to encourage acceptance of gender diversity. So a boy wants to play with dolls. This absolutely does not mean that he is really a girl. It absolutely does not mean he is signposted to Mermaids and a lifetime of hormones and surgery. All this focus on gender identity is taking away from gender diversity.

Within sexuality there is a whole other world of sexual attractions which are not acceptable within society: children, animals etc.

The gender identity faith, orthodoxy and confusion seems to be endangering our children, both by forcing them towards medicalised solutions to address non stereotypical gender behaviour, and by removing safeguards that protect them from sexual perversions.

It was interesting to see Jane Fae going back to the medical arguments, apparently out of desperation, when debating the transage bloke on Victoria Derbyshire.

At no point seemingly asking whether being excluded might have been the appropriate thing to do.

That's a really really good point. From what I have seen of the people who claim to have been denied a GRC it is absolutely right that they were denied.

There isn't really actually any good reason to change things is there? (Other than perhaps to tighten things up a bit)

The process to change legal status should be difficult. Not easy.

Making that change should be a necessity not a lifestyle choice.

It should be a last resort after other ways to treat the problems have all failed. Not the quick way out.

There are very important reasons why both medical and psychiatric evaluation is needed to gatekeep out those for whom this is not appropriate.

Just look at the way in which kids who transition often desist when they grow old enough. But those who go on blockers hardly ever do.

The lesson here is huge. Not just - though it is horrifying in its own right - the damage this is doing to a whole generation that we will wake up to and see as a scandal in a decade or so. But also the general message that transition itself can push the wrong people into doing things on impulse that later they will regret.

The safeguarding protects society from inappropriate transitioners and inappropriate transitoners from their own impulses.

If a man presents as a woman but has no gender dysphoria and undergoes no medical transition, then surely he's just a transvestite? I can see no possible reason why others should be expected to perceive him as a woman.

Hits nail firmly on head..... they are not transexuals just cross dressers who want unlimited access to women's spaces

I honestly think both are true and the 'transgender' umbrella has expanded so far as to include both and all types. I don't doubt a tiny minority otherwise known as the old school transsexuals will benefit from full gender reassignment surgery where half measures would not help their genuine feelings and even at the expense of reproduction and needing lifelong medical care. The MRAs in a frock can jack off.

That is what Stonewall have basically decided for the rest of us. Yes. Which is why there is a loud chorus of no. Quite rightly.

To be fair, though, it also creates a climate of distrust between women in particular and all of trans people. Quite understandably. The backlash is totally reasonable.

But the delay whilst nothing is happening after the consultation creates an opportunity for a discussion to try to define ways in which feminists and transsexuals might be able to agree some common ground and rules.

If we could do that and present them to government whilst they are deliberating whether or not to widen access to the GRA to almost anyone then it might at least be a start.

I suspect that if or when they do enfranchise the many self identifiers then consensus between them and transsexuals let alone them and women will be all but impossible to find.

It will not be easy even with transsexuals because attitudes have focused on many areas of the GRA and Equality Act that perhaps women never looked at closely before, but we do have a window of opportunity to try whilst at the moment we are only talking 5000 people covered by the GRA and not half a million.

There may not be unanimity of opinion on these things but in my experience there is more of a basis for agreement than the government are finding with Brexit.

Floating round, there's a remarkable Letter to the Telegraph (2002?) from a number of psychiatrists from relevant institutions stating that gender dysphoria is a mental health fiction as a discrete entity but is a manifestation of a mental health disorder (just not the one in the ostensible presentation).

Does anyone know the letter I mean? One of the signatories was Dr Az Hakeem (author of the textbook). This is an extract:

In 2002 in response to the European Court ruling in the case of Christine Goodwin v. the UK that she had, among other rights, the right to marry a male person, Hakeem and 5 others wrote to The Daily Telegraph that such a ruling was: [following is the embedded quotation from the letter]

a victory for fantasy over reality and that our concerns were that the problems and conflicts within the trans-sexually conflicted individual may not be wholly solved by either surgical or legal manoeuvres.

zagria.blogspot.com/2011/04/az-hakeem-19-psychiatrist-psychoanalyst.html#.W-gsz62cbEo

Self evidently the mismatch between body and perception is a problem of some sort. I doubt many transsexuals argue otherwise. I certainly don't.

Equally clearly the cause is as yet unknown (there are several theories but limited research).

This is because modern transgender activists seem scared of what it might find - very telling in of itself as most transsexuals I know strongly support research as to cause so as to give better options to future generations of children. As we know what it is like to have this mismatch through childhood and it is very debilitating. If that pain can be diminished by research we would welcome it.

But transgender often transition later in life and may not have had dysphoria at all and clearly not severe if they lived well into adulthood suppressing it. If it is to them more about validation not resolving a medical issue of physiological or psychological origin (it could be either imo) then you can understand why they try to stop research because they want this to be accepted as part of the mantra not as a potentially resolvable medical problem.

Hence self ID want to get trans as a none medical issue with no psychiatrists or doctors involved and make it 'just one of those things'.

And transsexuals know it is to them a medical problem and want proper assessment and treatment options to make a valid judgement on what way to take their life to escape the trauma.

This is where I find the linked article above hard to connect with. Because it refers to gender dysphoria and defines transsexual as someone who knows they are the opposite sex - when really that describes transgender.

Transsexuals quite commonly are well aware of biological reality and are the ones not insisting trans women are women.

I've wondered for a while if part of the government incentive for self id is so they can stop funding transition on the NHS. You can guarantee that self id would never have even been considered if women still had a lower pension age to men.

Does anyone know the letter I mean?
Az Hakeem letter in Telegraph from 2002
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3579186/The-psychiatry-of-transsexuality.html

Is it even possible now to make a meaningful diagnosis of GD, when there’s no objective test and we hear that there’s a lot of online peer-to-peer ‘coaching’ that goes on?

lassupthebrew,
I think you've articulated and clarified some of the questions in my mind. I was taken aback at the jump in potential numbers from around 5,000 to half a million, by Stonewall's definitions (most of which baffled me except for the cross dressers). Even if the numbers doubled I could buy it, but hundredfold??

A need for gatekeeping, for the sake of both transexuals and women.

More research particularly around the current increase in children and teenagers saying that they are trans.

Otherwise the logic of self id leads you to the situation that we already have in prisons.

I've wondered for a while if part of the government incentive for self id is so they can stop funding transition on the NHS.

A bit like the expansion of higher education (to draw unrelated parallels.... )