Transactivists deny Gender Dysphoria exists - The aim is to STOP kids having access to hormones and surgery.

[MoleSmokes]

This does not fit with "follow the money" explanations for transactivism but fits much better with "queering society" theories.

"Being Trans just means saying you are Trans" is the ultimate aim, going by one of the Keynote Speeches at Epath 2019:

Full text here:
epath.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dinah-Bons.pdf

My highlights bolded

Dinah Bons (strategic director TGEU)
“DEPATHOLOGISATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES”
(What does depath mean and how it affects trans people’s health)

" . . . the World Health Organisation finally removed trans identities from the mental health disorders chapter in its latest edition of the International Classification of Diseases and included them in a new chapter called “Conditions related to Sexual Health”.

Let’s not forget that this change includes a diagnosis for children, Gender Incongruence in Childhood, contributing to their pathologisation when no medical treatment is needed.

We urge you to join our fight for this category (Gender Incongruence in Childhood) to be removed as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, this long-awaited change lays the foundation for a new era in which the rights and lives of trans people are valued and respected, and trans people are seen as what they really are, part of human diversity. This will ultimately assist trans people in exercising their right to self-determination at all levels.

We will be able to have our legal gender recognized without any kind of medical requirement."

" . . . When we see trans people in the media, their stories won’t always be about how we feel about our bodies, how terrible it is to be trans and how we desperately need to physically transition.

"I want to make note of trans-led grassroots health services providers, in the UK and in the Netherlands, that mark an important development.

(There is nothing further said about the UK but I am guessing that this relates to the decision by NHS Specialist Commissioning to set up "Trans Health Services" across the UK, with the first to be piloted in Manchester this year:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3556114-Greater-Manchester-Trans-Health-Service )

EPATH Conference Programme (featuring some familiar UK names on their usual soap-boxes):
epath.eu/conference-2019/program-overview/

I came across that EPATH speech after some ferreting around for references to the "European Network for the Investigation of Gender Incongruence (ENIGI)".

This was because I was originally going to post here about a recent article in Nature about ENIGI (I will do a separate post).

However, one paragraph in the Nature article jumped out at me:

"Although transgender issues are becoming more mainstream, the topic remains politically charged. The European groups sometimes encounter transgender activists who oppose any medical intervention — T’Sjoen says he has had talks disrupted by people arguing that transgender people should not give in to social pressure. Although that could be true for some people, he says, for others, “even if they were living somewhere on a desert island, they would still want to change their body”.

(The "European Groups" are, I think, trans-led Gender Clinics in Holland, Belgium, Germany and Norway.)

This suggests that non-dysphoric trans people (the non-binaries and "gender queer") are definitely seeking to take over the trans movement at the expense of dysphoric transsexuals.

Going back to that EPATH speech:

1) CHILDREN DO NOT NEED HORMONES OR SURGERY TO BE TRANS

Where does the massive rise of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), especially among girls, fit in with this?

If it DOES fit in then the only explanation I can think of is horribly cynical.

How relieved would so many parents, public service funders and insurance companies be if . . . if the Trans lobby started advocating that childhood dysphoria does not exist and there is no need for hormones or surgery to be trans?

Cue: the end of ROGD as "Self-ID" is ushered in?

IF it is true that lots of kids are parroting pro-forma "right words" to get on the Trans Train to hormones and surgery then it is also true that they do not have dysphoria.

That is, that the massive rise, the clusters of kids in peer groups, etc. is due to "social contagion" . . . and the next "social contagion" to replace ROGD? The non-binary "no pain" path to "Gender Diversity"?

2) TRANS HEALTH SERVICES

Exactly what the Trans Lobby has persuaded the NHS to pilot this year.

Cue: redirect funds from Gender Identity Services to "Trans Health Services" - with some token funding left over for those annoying kids and adults, that tiny minority who have some vague, officially undiagnosable problem that some medics insist on referring to as "gender dysphoria" (the wrong-side-of-history transphobes!)?

3) NEW ERA - NON-MEDICALISED SELF-ID

Exactly what the Trans Lobby persuaded the Commons "Women and Equalities Committee" is the way to go?

Who would benefit from complete "depath" of Transgender Identities - soon to be renamed "Gender Diversity"?

It can't be the people profiting from sale of hormones and surgery because the argument is that they are not necessary . . . or is that just for children? The EPATH speech only argues for removing "Gender Incongruence in Childhood" as a Diagnostic Category.

If the idea is that in this "New Era" that Adults will still need access to a medical diagnosis and therefore a route to medical treatment . . . we know already who those adults are. They are men who want "feminising" hormones and surgery.

Is that still part of the Big Trans Plan??

I am having difficulty squaring the lack of any call to remove "ADULT Gender Incongruence" with statements about the "New Era" being one in which Trans people are happy with their bodies and do not need to physically transition, ie. transgender people deny gender dysphoria exists. (How very "dysphoriaphobic"!)

Apologies for the length of this post!

Anything that avoids unnecessary medicalisation is good. And I agree people should be free to identify however they want.

But the ability to change your legal sex|gender (?) based on a feeling? This will have impacts on others. Anyone who denies this is living in a privilege bubble.

@2BthatUnnoticed
"But the ability to change your legal sex|gender (?) based on a feeling? This will have impacts on others. Anyone who denies this is living in a privilege bubble."

It is already happening in Oregon, USA. Maybe elsewhere too. Nothing surprises me anymore about this lunacy.

womenarehuman.com/transgender-felon-applauds-name-sex-change-law-that-allowed-him-to-seal-his-record/

The Oregon form also lets people chose a new name and "seal the record" that they have changed name and legal sex. If they have criminal records or anything else nasty they would like to "put behind them" can hide their past by changing name and legal sex:

www.courts.oregon.gov/forms/Documents/Name%20and%20Sex%20Change%20Packet%20(Adult).pdf

This is where I think things have got horribly confused.

It is a perfectly reasonable argument that people of either sex can present however they like, including in the societally gendered presentation of the other sex. In fact, hallelujah, take down gender stereotypes.

There is no reason why a person who wishes to present in the societally gendered way of the other sex should have to take hormones or have surgery to try to be the other sex. Just be themselves and dress and present how they wish.

The problem is the concept of gender identity replacing sex as the defining and important characteristic for the organisation of society. And the idea that you can be a gender and somehow wearing a certain set of clothes or having a certain name makes you a gender, rather than a person of one sex assuming the characteristics normally associated by society with the other sex.

There is absolutely no need for

A) individuals to have to take hormones and medication if they want to present in a different way than normally associated with their sex

B) that some people present in a different way than normally associated with their sex to mean that sex based protections should be dismantled.

The queering society point is interesting because the end point of the argument seems to be that anyone who presents or lives outwith gender stereotypes is trans. At what point does that then just become the new normal? If the trans umbrella is so wide as to encompass the majority of people, how do you queer that? Does queering society have an endpoint? And what about the fact that some social boundaries are there for a reason and queering them up could cause harm? Where are the ethics and academic responsibility in queer theory? (Genuine question - surely academics have a moral responsibility to think through the consequences of their theories?)

There are so many instances in law, policy and practice where woman and children seem to just be collateral damage. Once your eyes are open to that, it is hard to unsee.

Interesting

I'm certainly in favour of NOT medicating and mutilating children.

I'm also very much in favour of presenting as you like and binning stereotypes.

I'm against removing sex as a protected class and allowing people to legally change sex.

I have concerns re querying society when it comes to safeguarding children from predators. Queer theory and trans ideology are certainly reminiscent of PIE.

In the 80s anyone could wear makeup, nail varnish, have colourful hair of any length but we didn't need the law changed! It is now perfectly acceptable to love and marry whom ever you please as long as both are consenting adults so this latest twist in TRA wants/demands seems a bit odd and therefore concerning. It really seems to only help the cross dressers and fetishists.

So these advocates are at the same time saying ‘don’t medicalise us’ and also saying ‘but we want to medicalise ourselves, other adults, and children’? (This would at taxpayer expense in the UK via self-run services paid for by the NHS?)

The entitlement is amazing but meanwhile most people do believe that society wants to employ only trained doctors to do safe, effective, cost effective, properly regulated, funded, researched and monitored health care. That’s why we have professional medical people to give healthcare and why we have the whole NHS system that helps them to work effectively in the UK via GP surgeries, hospitals, NHS labs etc.

@KataraJean , @GenderFreeLass and @ChattyLion

I am not at all sure that the "New Era - Non-medicalised Trans" is confined to presenting as what we usually think of as "gender non-conforming" or to Blanchard-typology "transgenderism" of Autogynephilia and Androphilia.

If I am understanding it correctly, Dinah Bons is claiming in the EPATH speech that dysphoria does not exist, at least as far as children are concerned, ie. there are no feelings of "discomfort" from any bodily manifestation of natal sex nor of stereotypical "gendered presentation" that need to be "relieved" by body modification or changes to "presentation".

"Passing" would be a thing of the past, ie. "the wrong side of history"!

Where that leads is to the very thing that we have all been worrying about in terms of Self-ID, ie. that any man can claim legal status as female without the necessity for any changes to body, presentation or behaviour.

Maybe not even changing their names?

That would surely be an optional extra because everything is internalised? There would be no "transition" because, as we are already being told ad bloody infinitum "I was always a woman/man".

People like this would not be "sharing their transition" because they would not need to do anything more than change their legal status:
Pink News "Trans women share beautiful transition stories to inspire others" (see image attached)
archive.fo/Gt5BN

There are already people playing this game and we have been laughing at them as deluded or "chancers". We won't be laughing if the aim is to "queer" things to this extent, which is what the aim would seem to be as soon as you take dysphoria out of the equation.

Examples:

Jake A: obsessive, serial persecutor of women (image attached)

lolcow.wiki/wiki/Jake_Alley and
www.peaktrans.org/a-week-in-the-life-of/#ftoc-heading-1

JY: obsessive, serial persecutor of women (image attached)

archive.is/61UcI

(I think we can discount JY's current "woman face" piss-taking in order to enter a Beauty Contest.)

What is being presented in the EPATH speech is completely consistent with the messages being hammered home repeatedly by transactivists when they tell us they are women and men, not transwomen and transmen.

No wonder they want "Trans Health Services". They need medical science to bend to this mind-fuckery. Not in the sense of hormones and surgery to transition, but to deal with male and female sexed bodies identified by internalised "gender".

They have almost got all the terminology and concepts in place.

How long before before we see a single tick-box for "Cis Gender" replacing options for "Female" and "Male"? The sex distinction will be redundant when "Gender" becomes the primary concern and has already been stated.

The choice is:

Non-Medical: Surrender your spaces to male-bodied people.

Medical: Sterilise your kids.

It does look like medically transitioning children is being pushed to make the surrender-your-spaces option the lesser of two evils.

@AlwaysComingHome That's my reading of it - but I think it goes beyond access to women's spaces. That would be a consequence but I am not sure it is the aim. It seems bigger than that.

How long before before we see a single tick-box for "Cis Gender" replacing options for "Female" and "Male"? The sex distinction will be redundant when "Gender" becomes the primary concern and has already been stated.

Agreed.

There are loads of examples on FWR of companies and services already collecting ‘gender’ info (as if that had fuck all relevance to anything..).
Next they will stop collecting sex statistics at all and then society will have instantly solved all of these inconvenient things that need to be dealt with once you let women out of the home and into public spaces, including the workplace.

Honestly it is beyond sinister.

It certainly seems very sinister and very much in the interest of the least desirable.

Always - I think you have a good point, by "compromising" the medical using of minors - a contentious issue - they seem reasonable. However safeguarding becomes almost impossible with Self-ID and no requirement to appear or act feminine.

Definitely reminiscent of PIE and very sinister indeed 😕

Place marking.

right to self-determination at all levels.

Hmm, well how very ultra liberal. Lets all self determine everything, after all nihilism (which is surely in part the intellectualisation of MH symptoms - depression, depersonalisation, anhedonia, personality disorder etc) says nothing is real or has meaning, moral codes are abitrary... there is a long list of people that would benefit most from that attitude and most of them are nowhere near being soft lefty kind socially minded 'good' people the woke brigade envisage. Sociopaths are moving on from capitalism, they'd love a bit of woke anarchy too.

This is being driven by misogynists who can only conceive of women's single sex provisions as being some kind of privilege they don't have. This seems to make it clear that gaining access to those spaces has been the main aim all along.

By cleverly coopting the struggles of transexuals they've made it look as if women demand trans people must have surgery and hormones before letting them in. Which is kind of the reverse - the tiny number of people who felt they needed to drastically change their bodies to ease dysphoria were usually tolerated because people are on the whole kind.

Sure queer theory must be fascinating in the lecture hall but anybody with children or who's worked with vulnerable people can see it is dangerous in public policies and does not belong in the fucking UK Labour Party, you'd think.

AlwaysComingHome that's been my conclusion for a while now as well, force us between a rock and a hard place to choose between self-ID and medicating kids. Same with the sports issue. If the problem with men in women's sports is that they went through male puberty, the only "trans inclusive" solution is to transition kids as early as possible.

This has really been an unbelievable masterstroke of manipulation. The story of the few thousand people with dysphoria who needed the GRA, who then became hundreds of thousands. The broadening of the trans umbrella to include everyone from trans to cross-dresser to effeminate man. The move from transwoman, to trans woman, to just woman. The dropping of dysphoria completely. The regulatory capture. The queering of schools from primary age. And that it happened so quickly, everywhere in the world at the same time. It'd almost be a stunt worthy of admiration if it hadn't literally destroyed the foundation of human society.

This has really been an unbelievable masterstroke of manipulation.

And the other masterstroke was to make governments and reasonable people believe that all those things you mention are progressive and good and that the women who are fighting them are hate-filled bigots.

It strikes me that there could be multiple agendas behind the activism. Up to now, they have aligned. But maybe they feel they are so close to achieving their early goals they are now pushing different paths for the next stage

• misogynists that want to destroy women's rights
• big pharma that wants to make money with lifelong patients (how they must hate that ASD isn't something requiring medication)
• those wanting to tear down society
• those wanting safeguarding removed so they have access to vulnerable people

I can't work out if this suggests there are increasing number of factions within the trans umbrella or if the same powers pulling most of the strings keep moving the goal posts, and if all this is part of some long-game and has been pre-planned from the start it feels chillingly clever.
It also sometimes feels like a creature that has taken on a life of its own, constantly evolving, being fed by the internet's ability to share the 'latest' thinking on anything at lightning speed, leaving those so inclined ever hungry for another new morsel, just a tad more 'whatever they savour' than the last.

(regular lurker and occasional poster name-changed)

@ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving
"This has really been an unbelievable masterstroke of manipulation. The story of the few thousand people with dysphoria who needed the GRA, who then became hundreds of thousands. The broadening of the trans umbrella to include everyone from trans to cross-dresser to effeminate man. The move from transwoman, to trans woman, to just woman. The dropping of dysphoria completely. The regulatory capture. The queering of schools from primary age. And that it happened so quickly, everywhere in the world at the same time"

I have come across something that seems very relevant to the "top-down" ,"behind the scenes", "regulatory capture" aspects and might explain how these things "happened so quickly, everywhere in the world at the same time".

I think it needs its own thread so I am going to post a new thread (about "Diffusion of Innovations" and "Entertainment-Education") then come back this thread to add in a link in a comment.
-------
Back now to the other issues in this thread . . . I have been doing more reading, going back in time, paying more attention than I have previously to the "you don't have to have Gender Dysphoria to be Trans" narrative.

I am reading "GENDER HURTS: A feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism" by Sheila Jeffreys (there is a link to a free copy somewhere here on MN) and I want to do some more exploring - but thought I could and should add something more here in the meantime to reply to your really helpful comments.

-------

The "multiple agendas" theory sounds right:

• There are bound to be multiple agendas and some of them are bound to conflict when there are so many people with different "labels" corralled under the "transgender umbrella".

("Labels" does not seem like the right word but I am trying to avoid using any term that is loaded in favour of a particular explanation or would misrepresent some populations. Maybe "populations" is a better "non-loaded" word?)

There is a MN thread started after this one about the flack Buck Angel (transsexual) got on Twitter from a bunch of "Gender Radicals" (?) (ideologues) and his fight-back, which seems to illustrate two of the camps very well.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3573210-Buck-Angel-hits-peak-trans?

There is a post in that thread (currently the last one) drawing attention another FtM de-transitioner (Yoonie) "coming out" as "de-trans" and, as usual, being criticised by other trans people for:

• using up hormones that someone "really trans" could have had
• giving ammo to "the TERFs" (she didn't even know what "TERFs" were)
• "doing trans wrong", ie. being an ignorant "Trans Medicalist TruScum" who doesn't realise that "you don't need dysphoria to be trans" and "how it actually works after thousands of years of cross cultural observation. Being trans isn’t a medical condition, it’s a social condition".

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3573210-Buck-Angel-hits-peak-trans?msgid=86819162

Her Twitter thread, where she explains her de-transition and deals politely with her accusers:
twitter.com/yooniefucks/status/1123572333267030016

The decision to post that thread arises from conversations on "Curious Cat" and these are worth reading too:
curiouscat.me/yoonielucks

As always, I am so impressed by how philosophical de-transitioners are about their situation. Yoonie is just glad that her dysphoria has "gone away", pointing out that surgery and hormones gave her some relief but was not a "cure". I have seen other de-transitioners say that they regard transitioning as a necessary step to get to where they feel "right" and comfortable. So far, I think in every case I have seen of FtM de-trans they have mentioned either that the "happy place" they have reached is as a lesbian (sexuality) or as non-binary (gender).

(Another "theme" that seems to crop up a lot in de-trans stories from the girls and young women is contact with or involvement in a "queer sex" scene as a part of their "trans phase". Similarly with adult male de-transitioners.)

-------

I wonder if we have to go back further than "The story of the few thousand people with dysphoria who needed the GRA"?

That story only exists in that form because medics started operating on people and prescribing hormones. (The "Follow the money" story spirals off that because - capitalism.)

The de-transitioners tell us personal "before and after" stories about Gender Dysphoria and/or Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).

The term "Sex Dysphoria" was and still is used and preferred by some transsexuals, wanting to emphasise that they experience and perceive their dysphoria as a mental health condition, with BDD of the sexed-body being diagnostic and arguing against the WHO re-classification of their experience as "Gender Incongruence".

This made me wonder: What about before surgery and hormones were available? And anaesthesia!

I am coming around to wondering if the ideologically-driven, blanket objection by GC Feminists to "transing the dead" might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, just as the Gender Radicals posthumously "transing" every GNC and gay individual in history is over-egging the baby pudding

I have no issue with anyone dressing how they choose to, so self identify on gender as much as you like as it does not affect anyone else. I do have issue with self identification on sex. In sport there are only two classifications based upon sex, male and female and it is unfair for a male who has testosterone much higher than a female which enables them to train harder, run faster and become stronger to complete against females who do not have the same levels of testosterone. Post operation a male who has had penis removed should be treated as female if they wish this. Before operation their sex is male and they should not be put in female exclusive zones such as prisons or changing rooms with no cubicles.

Post operation a male who has had penis removed should be treated as female if they wish this. Before operation their sex is male and they should not be put in female exclusive zones such as prisons or changing rooms with no cubicles.

I disagree. If we say men who have had SRS can access female only spaces how are we supposed to differentiate between them and any random man? We're not going to inspect their genitals, are we?

I met my first transwomen 40 years ago. Back then they were transsexualis and all had surgery. They were a tiny, very vulnerable minority and very grateful for being allowed to use the Ladies. You never heard of a TW trying to access other spaces, like changing rooms. But times have changed. Dramatically.

I now hold the position that no male born person should be in woman only spaces. Because in effect if you allow any you're allowing all.

Place-marking.

Post operation a male who has had penis removed should be treated as female if they wish this.

Why?
Being a girl and a woman is not about the absence of a penis.

A male whose genitals are injured /removed /modified does not become a female.

I have seen other de-transitioners say that they regard transitioning as a necessary step to get to where they feel "right" and comfortable. So far, I think in every case I have seen of FtM de-trans they have mentioned either that the "happy place" they have reached is as a lesbian (sexuality) or as non-binary (gender).

The first FtM detransitioner I heard of was in the programme Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best. The young detransitioner talking near the end of the programme (about 50 mins in) doesn't seem happy at all.

So far, I think in every case I have seen of FtM de-trans they have mentioned either that the "happy place" they have reached is as a lesbian (sexuality) or as non-binary (gender).

I have seen women discussing their 'detransition' who have described themselves as heterosexual/bisexual
They have also alluded to/described trauma/abuse being significant.

@OldCrone
"The first FtM detransitioner I heard of was in the programme Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best. The young detransitioner talking near the end of the programme (about 50 mins in) doesn't seem happy at all."

Thank you! I either haven't seen that one or overlooked that part! I'll check it out.

It also makes me wonder, when de-transitioners say that they do not regret the path that they took because it was part of a journey to "a better place", whether they would have got to that "better place" with counselling or by some other means if it had been available?

The words that come to me when I read their accounts are typically "stoic", "survivor" and "strong". Their TRA detractors meanwhile are screeching their victimhood at them and, again so far as I have read, the de-transitioners say that is how they would have behaved and that they would have had that mindset too.

I know this is all very impressionistic and based on chance exposure to the accounts of those de-transitioners who have "gone public". There must also be people who have chosen to "fade out" of being trans quietly and privately without telling their stories.

@R0wantrees
"I have seen women discussing their 'detransition' who have described themselves as heterosexual/bisexual"

I wonder if it would ever be possible to know whether transitioning has an impact on sexuality long term? So much must be in a state of flux. There are so many girls and young women going through the system now, it would be the perfect opportunity for a longitudinal study of desisters, transmen and de-transitioners if they would be happy to be involved. Not just looking at sexuality.

"They have also alluded to/described trauma/abuse being significant."
That does seem to be quite a strong theme as an explanation or contributory factor to transitioning in the first place.

I found the comments on this article very interesting, particularly MaryCGreen who describes herself as "detransitioned and reidentified" (comments 15 and 21):
www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent/comments