Surely this list of behaviours that challenge social convention are not THE list used by medical professionals to diagnos gender dysphoria?

[stumbledin]

Diagnosis of gender dysphoria involves children demonstrating at least six of a series of behavioural traits as well as an “associated significant distress or impairment in function, lasting at least six months”.

Those patterns of behaviour include:

• A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender.

• A strong preference for wearing clothes typical of the other gender.

• A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play.

• A strong preference for toys, games or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender.

• A strong preference for playmates of the other gender.

• A strong rejection of toys, games and activities typical of one’s assigned gender.

• A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.

• A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender.
_

With the exception of the last two surely all are fairly common, and in previous generations would just have been accepted as a phase.

How is it possible that in fact people who are educated enough to be in medicine are so unaware of how societies change over time.

Men used to have long hair and wear much more colourful clothes. Its only since the Victorian era that they had such a rigid and limited dress code.

If challenging current attitudes is seen as a medical condition, how is it that others who challenge the imposed narrative aren't also seen as having a medical condition.

And how is it that parents are themselves so limited in their view of how the world should be are not only playing along with this, but in some cases actively encouraging it.

Just think Billie Elliot might never have learnt to dance but instead become a trans girl.

(By the way it was a Guardian article which implies this is what they think is a rational explanation of a medical condition.)

That's like a Buzzfeed list of how to tell if you grew up in a sexist family.

How anyone cannot see that this is all driven by sexism and homopshobia is beyond me.

Yep. That's DSM V, I think. www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

@StrippedFridge

That's like a Buzzfeed list of how to tell if you grew up in a sexist family.

How anyone cannot see that this is all driven by sexism and homopshobia is beyond me.

Yep.

Terrible. I met these six:
A strong preference for wearing clothes typical of the other gender.
A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play.
A strong preference for toys, games or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender.
A strong preference for playmates of the other gender.
A strong rejection of toys, games and activities typical of one’s assigned gender.
A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.

I still meet them as an adult.
But I’m not trans. I’m a gender nonconforming woman.

It's also interesting to note that the diagnostic criteria for adults are quite different:
A strong desire to be of a gender other than one's assigned gender
A strong desire to be treated as a gender other than one's assigned gender
A significant incongruence between one's experienced or expressed gender and one's sexual characteristics
A strong desire for the sexual characteristics of a gender other than one's assigned gender
A strong desire to be rid of one's sexual characteristics due to incongruence with one's experienced or expressed gender
A strong conviction that one has the typical reactions and feelings of a gender other than one's assigned gender
In addition, the condition must be associated with clinically significant distress or impairment.

A strong desire to be treated as a gender other than one's assigned gender

Doesn’t this describe every feminist? The desire to be treated as well as men are treated is part of becoming equal to men.

I met them all as a child and whilst I no longer do the first or last ( well , I'd be happy to lose the boobs but no desire for a penis ) , all the others are still true today

Ha bloody ha. Yet again they might have known something if they had bothered to ask women

It's very similar to the list the NHS used to have on their website. It was only changed earlier this year.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200502223745/www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/symptoms/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200502223745/www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/symptoms/

Gender dysphoria behaviours in children can include:

• insisting they're of the opposite sex
• disliking or refusing to wear clothes that are typically worn by their sex and wanting to wear clothes typically worn by the opposite sex
• disliking or refusing to take part in activities and games that are typically associated with their sex, and wanting to take part in activities and games typically associated with the opposite sex
• preferring to play with children of the opposite biological sex
• disliking or refusing to pass urine as other members of their biological sex usually do – for example, a boy may want to sit down to pass urine and a girl may want to stand up
• insisting or hoping their genitals will change – for example, a boy may say he wants to be rid of his penis, and a girl may want to grow a penis

• feeling extreme distress at the physical changes of puberty

I'd have thought the last two would be stronger indicators of either sexual abuse or sex-based oppression (not allowed out alone, forced marriage etc).

A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.

A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender

Astonished - again!

List for adults, presumably compiled by medical professionals talks about assigned gender at birth.

All this shows that this has nothing to do with medical practice, but people who have (for whatever reason) totally bought into a belief set. No one is a gender, either born or assigned.

It reminds me of a film I watched by accident (ie I wouldn't have chosen it) called Idiocracy. ie we are all getting dumber so that if you froze someone who was not thought particularly bright in the 2000s and transported them to the future, they would be a genius.

Some of it is so stupid you just want to laugh. But unfortunately it is so damaging you have to stop and engage your brain with this reverse thinking.

The NHS list is equally disturbing. The way it reads, being gender nonconforming has been medicalised to be a mental illness of gender dysphoria. The ‘distress’ is caused by society refusing to accept the diversity within each sex and how each sex has overlap in the things individual men or women prefer to do.

So if a child satisfies 6 of the above criteria they are considered to be damaged enough to need sterilising? I suppose if you weed out the undesirable specimens from the gene pool we’ll have a master race in a few generations. Good little women looking pretty and serving their men folk, and good strong manly men doing man things.

Can somebody remind me what fucking century we’re living in please?

I know I would have had 6 as a child. And I am not trans but I would surely have taken steps as a young teen if it was a available. And it would have been a mistake.....

I keep coming back to read both lists and I just cannot believe this is what is actually happening.

Believe it or not, although the alternative culture got a bad name (a lot of them were really grubby) this was what a lot of the talk was about. And believe it or not, when it seemed men just wouldn't change and somehow women were still doing the domestic work, while men ran the "revolution" is one of the reasons the Women's Liberation Movement happened in the 70s.

In some horrible way it is almost like the untimate punishment of women for daring to assume, and starting to achieve a break away from the stiffling conformity of stereotypical roles.

I just cannot understand how in the 21st century anybody would accept these as guidelines. It makes the 1950s look enlightened. Its almost victorian.

"A strong rejection of toys, games and activities typical of one’s assigned gender."

... but what on earth is 'typical' for one gender or another that isn't based on stereotyping?!

Just because capitalism benefits from heavily gendering kids' toys in ways that are laughable (pink Lego!)...

But also is a sign of how influential mass media is. And I mean by that, as someone who grew up in a family without a tv, same as most people, we know have what is basically a very small group of people pushing their ideas into people's homes via tv and radio. And then with the added reach of the internet this has become worse.

In the same way as knowing that Murdoch having poisoned newspapers in Australia and the UK, then went on to poisen tv in the US and is about to be given a license to poisen tv in the UK.

The ‘distress’ is caused by society refusing to accept the diversity within each sex and how each sex has overlap in the things individual men or women prefer to do

Yep. All of this insistence on how people conform to gender suggests gender roles/stereotypes are far more rigid and strict than they actually are. 'clothes that are typically worn by their sex' - I mean, ffs. The utter po-faced bollockery of it.

What is interesting about this diagnostic list is how much of it depends on us living in a particular kind of gendered society. If children all play with the same toys it’s nonsense to talk of “toys for the other gender.” If children all wear whatever clothes they like , then there will no gendered clothes. How much if gender dysphoria really is due to us living in such a rigidly gendered society?

Yes, Wee, but I feel that a lot of the narrative of gender ideology is actually doing a lot of work to create a more rigidly gendered society.

@StrippedFridge

That's like a Buzzfeed list of how to tell if you grew up in a sexist family.

How anyone cannot see that this is all driven by sexism and homopshobia is beyond me.

@WeeBisom

What is interesting about this diagnostic list is how much of it depends on us living in a particular kind of gendered society. If children all play with the same toys it’s nonsense to talk of “toys for the other gender.” If children all wear whatever clothes they like , then there will no gendered clothes. How much if gender dysphoria really is due to us living in such a rigidly gendered society?

Yes- take football and lacrosse for example. In the UK football is (mainly) boys and lacrosse is (mainly well off) girls... But in the United States soccer is more popular with girls and (I think) lacrosse with boys...

Yep, met all those pre-puberty. Spent a long time thinking I was going to grow a willy. Dressed as Robin Hood and made myself long bows for quite a long time (alternate fantasy character was a highwayman or a pirate-always male). Had a family boy nickname, preferred playing with boys.

I never wore dresses or played with dolls. When I met strangers told them I was a boy. I puked everywhere in shock when I first heard about periods and I think I would have very likely wanted to avoid them.

These were all normal when I was growing up. I had a good cohort of tomboy friends and I think they mostly grew up to be lesbians. Growing up today I do wonder if we'd have been a trans cluster.

Yep, had 6 of those. Had a "boy's" name too (my parents shortened my name to a name which is traditionally a boy's name). Didn't question it. Just knew that I was "me". I think that the idea of putting pronouns in my bio makes me uncomfortable as I think that if I had been told that this "you need to choose your gender" is truth, then I would probably be non-binary now. I just think that the bandwidth of what being a woman is wider than their boxes.

It's a bit like if someone asked "what age do you identify as". I don't identify as an age. But there will be some people who feel younger than what would stereotypically be their age, or older. Age really is a spectrum, and genetically we all age differently, mature at different rates. I wouldn't discriminate against anyone who changed their appearance to be younger, but I don't feel that I identify as my age anymore than I identify as my sex "assigned at birth". It just is.

@ArabellaScott

Yes, Wee, but I feel that a lot of the narrative of gender ideology is actually doing a lot of work to create a more rigidly gendered society.

Yes, me too. I view gender confirmation surgery as part of that. It’s not allowing a masculine woman or feminine man to exist. It’s a war on the gender nonconforming.

Having a conversation with a friend. My position is simple. If as a society we were less hung up on stereotypes and more accepting of people dressing and presenting how they desire without fear of abuse it would likely mean people were less inclined to think - I like this so I must be X. The real issue I think is social stereotyping and cultural expectations.
My friend's position was that my views are fantastical and given we will never get to a society like I describe we must persevere with hormone and surgical treatment. She didn't disagree with my assessment just that I was)am niave. I found that very difficult to counter other than to say if we don't challenge nothing will change.