I’m pretty much having the same conversation with two MTF transsexuals simultaneously across two threads (although the other person has denied that HSTS/AGP is a thing so I’m guessing they are AGP).
For clarification, the thing many of our daughters are currently facing is not the classic ‘transman’ presentation of GD (which is thought to mostly be the female version of HSTS, although it’s less two groups and more of a continuum in female people). Many of Webberley’s patients will be the kind of young woman described below. They should not be diagnosed via Skype and sent testosterone in the post.
I’m copying the following over for the attention of Stats
If you only read one thing on ROGD, make it this one, written by GIDs employees (I know it’s on WPUK, but despite the rumours, WPUK are actually very MTF transsexual friendly, it’s why some feminists criticise them - they get it from both sides, basically)
Extract:
Crucially, it is important to acknowledge, that girls and young women have long recruited their bodies as ways of expressing misery and self-hatred. Bodies become the site onto which they can project their perceived failure to live up to society’s expectations of them and also their internal, psychic pain. Psychic pain that arises out of the manifold implications of being a suffering human being: trauma, abuse, neglect, bullying, social ostracism, bereavement to name but a few. Also, for some, the fear of leaving childhood behind, the terror of female adulthood, is overwhelming.
It is not unreasonable to hypothesise that developing gender dysphoria, and alighting on a trans identity as the way of understanding, can, in some instances, be the solution (cure) to the ‘problem’ of being born female. It could be the ultimate act of self-harm. A form of self-harm hardly noticeable to many because it is so aligned with the disavowed but ever present attack on gender non-conforming women that exists throughout society.
We cannot ignore the role of the internet in this; whether cyber bullying, competitive instagram, exposure to pornography, sexualisation or the associated phenomenon of a sort of social and collective influencing. We know that there is a parallel world of on-line engagement where children and young people are engaging globally out of sight of any mediating influence or alternative explanation for their distress.
Whatever influencing factors, both exogenous / social and endogenous / psychological, there might be these are all happening within the wider context of the decimation of local child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) over the last decade. We are seeing a generation of young people emerge who have been poorly served by local specialist provision: a phenomenon recognised and documented here.
In the clinical setting we have become familiar with narratives, especially in younger children, resting almost entirely on the most superficial of signifiers: toys, activities, hair, clothes, a certain aesthetic upon which effectively the (self) diagnosis of trans is made, and a social role transition affected. Unfortunately these tropes are compounded and perpetuated by some “diversity” trainings delivered in schools.
womansplaceuk.org/2020/02/17/the-natal-female-question/