What is the difference between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia?

[ExtraPlinky]

Why does one get affirmed with surgery and hormones and the other one seen as a mental illness?

Very good question.

So for example, an anorexic who weighs 70 pounds looks in the mirror and sees herself as fat.
We would be generally seen as doing her a disservice if we AGREED with her she was a whale and needed to lose another 10 pounds, even though that was her firm and un-waivering internal belief.
Or a paranoid schizophrenic hears voices from the TV telling them to kill Boris Johnson. Would we give them a gun and directions to 10 Downing Street or would we recognise they had a problem?
Or a person with multiple personality disorder - do we confirm their assertion that they are actually Napolean and to ready their horses?

Why IS gender dysphoria so very different?

However I don't suspect this thread will last very long.
You have already mentioned the dreaded words.

Agree.
I also wonder how many people don’t feel some sort of body dysmorphia when puberty arrives? That is why it is so worrying for teens to get caught up in feeling they should try to change their bodies. Given time most will become more at ease with themselves.

Ideological belief.

Agreed.

Why are people pretending this is completely normal and in no way worrying instead of asking WHY teen girls are identifying out of being girls, and why middle aged men are identifying into being young women?

Really good point

i would guess its because dysmorphia doesn't go away when u make the change. an anorexic person stays feeling like that no matter how much weight they lose.
whereas the feeling of dysphoria is "cured" if you like as soon as the change has been made.

@Tellthemagain

i would guess its because dysmorphia doesn't go away when u make the change. an anorexic person stays feeling like that no matter how much weight they lose. whereas the feeling of dysphoria is "cured" if you like as soon as the change has been made.

I'm not really sure this is true though. It doesn't explain the de-transitioners. There are lots of people who make all the changes they think they need to make, realise they are still as unhappy as they were before and realise that they actually are not the opposite sex, that their dysphoria has been caused by many different things in their life. Then they detransition. Only now they are worse off because of irreversible and unwanted changed to their previously healthy bodies.

I'm not saying some people are not happier when they transition BTW, just that it doesn't hold true a lot of the time.

@Tellthemagain but I don’t think that’s the case. Some people detransition, others continue to suffer with poor mental health, and some have gone so far down the road yet end up regretting surgery.
It’s possible that some of the suicides are not because they weren’t affirmed enough over their transition, but because nobody said to them it’s normal for a teenage person to hate their body when they go through puberty and give them some support to come through it.

Would have to dig out some studies to see what the percentages are saying they are happy.
But then there is a pressure to say you are happy so you don't get rejected by the community.

@ExtraPlinky

Would have to dig out some studies to see what the percentages are saying they are happy. But then there is a pressure to say you are happy so you don't get rejected by the community.

Yes, quite. And then the accusations that they were "never really trans" in the first place.

Also in terms of young people, how many years of research do we have on long term satisfaction?

If someone wanted to lose weight from a size 12 to a size 8, wouldn't surgery make them happy? Why isn't that available on the NHS and if they said they were suicidal what would happen?

@ScrollingLeaves

Agree. I also wonder how many people don’t feel some sort of body dysmorphia when puberty arrives? That is why it is so worrying for teens to get caught up in feeling they should try to change their bodies. Given time most will become more at ease with themselves.

We all had weird feelings during puberty about our bodies - wanting to develop quicker or have bigger breasts, or wanting to shrink, wanting to hide, etc - a whole range of different emotions. Very individual even from the point of view of wanting straight and not curly hair for instance. Constant self scrutiny.

But we weren't indulged in it. No one said to us constantly to talk about ourselves.

Honestly I think the difference is how much the ideology serves the interest of the powerful (I.e. men). It doesn't serve them to have teenagers starve themselves but some of them get off or feel validated by getting into womens spaces. Plus ca change.

The issue is that the perfectly normal feelings of being uncomfortable about changing bodies during puberty are being treated as something that needs to be cured or medicated.

Totally agree OP.

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

Honestly I think the difference is how much the ideology serves the interest of the powerful (I.e. men). It doesn't serve them to have teenagers starve themselves but some of them get off or feel validated by getting into womens spaces. Plus ca change.

And they have managed to hijack the empathy reserves and gain the approval of so many women!

I've thought about this quite a lot. I'm not sure I'm any closer to a logical reason why the two would be treated so differently but the more gender ideology seems to take hold the more surgical innovations there seem to be.

The alterations many people with body dysmorphia want would rely on tried and tested surgical techniques and so there is little to learn from a surgical point of view by actually performing surgery on them.

I'm left thinking that once upon a time a doctor thought he could do a surgical experiment on a patient with gender dysphoria and to make a name for himself and then other doctors noticed you could do surgery on patients with GD that you wouldn't get away with otherwise and so we've ended up with a wild west surgical speciality with endocrinology jumping on the band wagon. Dr yeet the teet spoke with a sort of gleeful reverence about "Frankenstein" surgery she had witnessed which sparked her interest in the area.

I'm not convinced many of the doctors involved actually believe their methods are the most appropriate treatment for GD but what a way to get a cohort of patients to study who willingly consent to a combination of medication and surgery which have not been thoroughly researched. So many opportunities to make yourself rich and lauded for being a pioneer. Some will have a surgical technique named after them.

Obviously, I'm am very cynical.

In one case the feeling is more important than the fact.

In the other, the fact is more important than the feeling.

How the importance became attributed depended on which demographic originated the feeling.

The spread is the same, initial demographic, follow-up teenage social contagion then fashion statement in the adults.

@ExtraPlinky
“If someone wanted to lose weight from a size 12 to a size 8, wouldn't surgery make them happy? Why isn't that available on the NHS and if they said they were suicidal what would happen?“

I do think a lot of teenage girls especially fall into deep depression and suicidal thoughts over issues with weight and dieting.

I listened to the Nolan Investigates Stonewall - I loved episode 5- Dr David Bell who was a psychiatrist at GIDS/ Tavistock (now retired and was a whistle blower). He talks so rationally about body dysphoria- definitely worth a listen! He talks about the need for exploring underlying reasons and when asked if he has ever in his long career ever seen a patient who has only presented with gender dysphoria without any other underlying issues- his answer was no. He talks about gender dysphoria very much as a body dysphoria- a dysphoria with your sexual body. But don't take my word for it - have a listen. Link below

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p09yjmph

the fact its called dysmorphia in the first place shows its a mental condition and we dont treat any other mental condition with affirmation.

compare gender dysmorphia with racial dysmorphia and just look at the contrast in the way people are treated by the public for those two its like chalk and cheese, one is all "be kind" the other is rip you a new one.

I think the simple answer is the difference is stonewall campaigning.

@VelvetChairGirl it's not called dysmorphia / a mental health Condition though; that's the point.

I don't think it's just stonewall's campaigning which has led to this catastrophe. I think they were knocking on an open door of misogynists feeling threatened at women no longer being in their place enough though stonewall do also have a lot of blood on their hands.

@Tellthemagain

i would guess its because dysmorphia doesn't go away when u make the change. an anorexic person stays feeling like that no matter how much weight they lose. whereas the feeling of dysphoria is "cured" if you like as soon as the change has been made.

That is the narrative that get reported.

But when I listen to transitioners and detransitioners directly, I see a pattern in which the anxiety and distress persists, and the sufferer searches for a different bodypart that needs to be 'fixed' to blame their distress on. They tell themselves they will 'pass' as the opposite sex once they've had surgery for it and raise the funds for it. Then, they find another area that doesn't match up to how they want to look, and the cycle repeats.

We treat one like the delusional mental illness it is but the other we don't. If a body dysmorphic patient says their perfectly normal nose is disgusting we treat the delusion and recognise surgery is not the answer and yet with gender dysmorphia the medical establishment buys into the delusion? It doesn't make sense.