Published on WPUK:
'The Natal Female Question'
(extract)
"We write this as experienced clinicians who have worked in the sole NHS clinic for children and adolescents presenting with distress around their gender identity and their sexed bodies. We have chosen to publish here, rather than a peer reviewed journal, to ensure greater reach than those journals achieve. Also, we publish here in solidarity with WPUK who are currently in the receipt of defamatory accusations of transphobia – accusations also levelled at us.
The exponential rise in adolescent natal females (teenage girls) presenting at gender identity services over the last few years has been well documented. (continues)
We posit that there are multiple, interweaving factors bearing down on girls and young women that have collided at this particular time causing a distress seemingly related to gender and their sex. These factors comprise both the external world (i.e. the social, political and cultural sphere) and the internal (i.e. the emotional, psychological and subjective). The external and internal interact and feed each other [1].
It is notable that even speaking about these observable, and clinically relevant, factors are seen by some as evidence of a form of anti-trans rhetoric. This deeply disturbs the clinicians whose professional lives are dedicated to understanding the source and meaning of human distress. It is from this place that we speak.
In spite of apparent social gains for minority groups, our present-day culture obsesses in highly gendered ways over the signifiers of what it means to be a boy and a girl, a man and a woman. Girls are under ever more pressure to capitulate to the ‘pinkification’ and ‘pornification’ of girlhood. Girls who eschew these signifiers, who are uncomfortable or dissent from this demand, can often be lonely and isolated in their apparent idiosyncrasy. Sexual feelings awaken amidst sexual harassment and press reports of misogynist hate crimes. Dawning same-sex attraction can occur against a backdrop of homophobia; as well as a dearth of everyday, run-of-the-mill lesbian visibility. This is particularly relevant for girls drawn to an aesthetic which is viewed as ‘masculine’ (and therefore wrongly ascribed as ‘male’), but could be understood and owned as a butch lesbian identity if only these girls had access to it. Linked to this is the absence of critical feminist thought of the most elementary nature in the school curriculum. Failing that, even basic sex parity in the classroom would impact early on the sorts of messages both girls and boys internalise about their capacities and the expectations others have on them.
Changes to the body during puberty can bring about much more turmoil than is readily acknowledged. It is particularly disconcerting and shame-inducing for girls who begin menarche early, and have to navigate the whole mess and embarrassment of sanitary protection in primary school toilet provision often ill-equipped for this. There is embarrassment inherent in growing breasts, of these being noticed and pejoratively commented on and, worse, groped.
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." (continues)
womansplaceuk.org/2020/02/17/the-natal-female-question/