‘Identifying as a woman’ is self-defeating, so instead this leads to...

[Shelefttheweb]

I saw a tweet the other days where a transwomen was miffed when another transwoman was in the ladies toilets as it ‘spoilt the point’. So thinking where this all ultimately leads to:

• All spaces mixed sex
• Sex-based terms and pronouns meaningless with children brought up on it not even realising it once had a sex based meaning
• Men’s sport and other men’s sports
• Health information referring to what? Euphemisms? Sex-based body part names are a no no
• Fetishes losing their allure as no element of being forbidden or crossing boundaries so what next?

what else?

I discovered by accident that I have an allergy to standard wheat (not spelt, weirdly), after having a chronic cough for years (GP - oh, asthma, take these steroids) that cleared up completely during a week off carbs, and roared back with the first mouthful of pasta.

I'm grateful for the existence of so much gluten free food these days, even though I'm not coeliac (afaik). My diagnosis was a self diagnosis, but it has transformed my life.

I still don't believe people can change sex, or that a person's sex should limit what they wear or what hairstyle they have.

Or that their hairstyle and clothes should provide an access ticket to spaces reserved for the other sex.

Apparently they get out of that conundrum by saying it's down to internalised transphobia which makes it impossible to have a relationship with another TW.

How convenient.

"Where are the trans girls (is.boys) then. Have they been put in with the girls?"

The school I'm talking about is a primary, so it's only groups of girls developing gender identities so far. This is the first year there have been multiple "boys," last year there were some NBs, but they just went in with the other girls.

@JarByTheDoor Amazing post, thank you. I have an adult ASD diagnoses and you've described my thoughts with far more eloquence and also kindness and understanding than I could manage.

JarByTheDoor not so trendy (probably because it is overdone) but another is OCD. There are even TV programmes of ‘how I use my OCD to clean other people’s houses’. OCD is not just liking cleaning. Those who need to clean due to ‘contamination’ are obsessed by thoughts that bad things will happen if they don’t. They don’t just pass the duster round either - they clean one spot for an hour then come back to do it again, and again. Some end up unable to leave their room as so afraid of contamination. If they manage to get free of it there is no way they would pander to it by cleaning other people’s houses. My niece has OCD, she can spend hours trying to get something right - like her hairbrush on the dressing table. And those hours are very much not fun for her! And no the rest of her room isn’t tidy. Tidy is not the point, it needs to be right.

So 'internalised transphobia' in transwomen is ok but I'm guessing 'internalised transphobia' in women who have been sexually abused and lesbians is not ok.

Right ok.

How come they don't have to 'reframe their trauma'?

Asking for a Scottish friend.

IcakethereforeIam · Yesterday 10:25
Yup, if they get what they say they want, they'll kill what they actually want.

🤩

Re fashionable diagnosis. DS is currently being assessed. His last school report reads exactly like his father's at the same age. There isn't anyone I know who, has met DH who thinks he is anything but ADHD. He had so many problems at school, including with the police, and only escaped expulsion because he was so clever and was at a school that desperately needed his marked to make them look better (the Head teacher said this to him as a teenager).

As it goes having read into ADHD as a result of DS, it would make perfect sense of my mental health problems and two breakdowns at work. I know there is almost certainly an undiagnosed history of either autism or ADHD on my Dad's side of the family. (My brother is trans, my uncle lives with his mum aged 47 and is obsessed with football scores, my grandfather was a recluse who we didn't see since I was a child and refused to see even my Dad at times in his later life - despite no falling out. He had a history of not being able to hold a job down because he kept falling out with people).

DH thinks I need to go through the process of getting a diagnosis, but after my previous dealings with mental health teams which have been completely useless (team "we can only do telephone assessments" DH "so how does that work, when she gets so worked up and terrified that she can't speak which is on her notes" team "oh well tough we only do telephone assessments), and a pathological fear of doctors I'm somewhat reluctant. What's putting me off even more is the fact it's now trendy. I don't feel I'll get taken seriously and will be dismissed as I have been previously. We've had a chat and said that we will see how the first stage of DSs assessment goes and whether he is going to be progressed - simply because I think it would help present a reputable case for me.

My point is that I think that the 'trendy diagnosis/ self diagnosis' thing risks putting people who perhaps need help off just as much as it might encourage people to come forward. Especially knowing the cost / length of waiting lists for it as a result of a whole new industry springing up.

I think in ten years time there's likely to be much more progress and the situation will have settled down but the whole trendy thing couldnt have come at a worse time for my family. I think it's a barrier rather than something helpful.

@RedToothBrush I think that's a very valid viewpoint. That people might be put off getting assessed because of 'bandwagon jumpers' is sad but understandable. All the best to you and your family.

There have been recent diagnoses of ASD and ADHD in the youngest generation on both sides of my family that have made me look at various older people (including myself) and think 'hmmm'. But mostly to think that being neurotypical, (whatever that is, who can really say?) is probably a weird minority condition in itself and that rather than banging square pegs into round holes via medicalisation, we need to find ways to make it easier for neurodiverse people to flourish as and where they are, and tolerate oddness.

True. You only have to look at the Hapsburg dynasty to see the consequences. And Philip II of Spain married his sororal niece (legal to do so with a dispensation) and had children with her.

@FrostyFifi thank you! It's a really hard area to talk about while being fair and even-handed to everyone involved, because it's far more complex in some ways (though less politically fraught) than the sex/gender stuff. There are many more grey areas.

Self-diagnosis is an ordinary part of everyday life in some ways — we're all generally perfectly happy to diagnose and treat ourselves for a cold, athlete's foot, and many other minor illnesses, and are urged to do so by the NHS.

It's extremely common to have a disorder but not [yet] have the professional diagnosis.

It's common for even professionals to be unsure of diagnosis.

There are fuzzy areas of different-but-similar, like @DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry with her wheat reaction. (Tho Dean, I'm assuming you're already aware of this, but I feel the need to say in case no-one has mentioned it to you: please be careful because not all GF food is wheat free, and if you have wheat allergy you can still react to gluten-free wheat starch. Seems to turn up quite often in GF pizza bases for some reason. I have asthma too and know how frightening it can be, which is why I'm being over-cautious telling you something you probably already know.)

@Shelefttheweb oh definitely, OCD as a diagnosis really suffers from this problem — I only didn't include it because I don't have OCD myself. I have some very close family members with diagnosed OCD, and have stayed on psychiatric wards alongside OCD sufferers, and have seen what a horrendous impact it can have on people's lives. The misconceptions and trivialisations turn one of the most potentially destructive mental disorders into a joke illness.

@JarByTheDoor I did not know that (one of the perils of self-diagnosis is that you don't get as much info as you should (but don't always) get from a medical professional). So far I have survived the odd g-f pizza base, but had a nasty reaction to a bean-based wrap. I hardly ever put uneaten expensive food in the bin, but made an exception for that. Up until now I've been scrutinising the labels of everything except gluten-free food - seems I have to extend that!

btw, in spite of what the GP said, my asthma was mild - but going wheat free resolved other minor inflammatory reactions as well as the cough.

My point is that I think that the 'trendy diagnosis/ self diagnosis' thing risks putting people who perhaps need help off just as much as it might encourage people to come forward. Especially knowing the cost / length of waiting lists for it as a result of a whole new industry springing up.

Absolutely agree with this RedToothBrush. Nobody wants to feel like a bandwagon-jumping trend-follower, and as the owner of a few current and erstwhile trendy labels myself, I've been through that exact thought process when considering whether to request assessment, both for ASD and for ADHD.

I don't actually think of myself conceptually as "having ADHD" — my experiences and traits can fit the criteria, but it makes more sense to me to consider them as part of the ASD (which was diagnosed several years prior); many things I do or experience can occur in either disorder, or would be given one name under ASD, and another under ADHD. The drugs can work for certain issues whichever diagnosis you have, but in the NHS you need an ADHD diagnosis for stimulants, so I sought assessment, described my difficulties within the ADHD framework, and gained another initialism. Essentially, I swallowed my discomfort at potentially being seen as a mindless trend-following poser looking for excuses and a way to feel special, so I could get the drugs.

Of course there are so many adults who would meet criteria if assessed, but who are undiagnosed because of changes in our understanding of these conditions, that I'd imagine few of those seeking adult ND diagnoses are trend-following posers. But in a world where people titter, "Oh everyone's got ADHD these days! It's all these phones and TikToks and wanting an advantage on exams, and not enough Proust and hard manual labour," it's hard not to let that affect how you feel about seeking diagnosis.

I guess increased awareness and publicity about a disorder is always going to lead to parallel increases in undiagnosed people suspecting they have the condition and perhaps seeking diagnosis, and possibly unaffected people confidently self-diagnosing or self-IDing.

In that case I'm glad I mentioned it Dean — I wasn't sure whether to! It's quite a rare ingredient TBF (sometimes also referred to as codex wheat starch); shouldn't further limit your options too much, though the extra label-reading is an arse, sorry 😔

I've noticed certain kinds of accounts on Twitter more often recently, clearly owned by young people who in their profiles write down their gender and sexual identities and then the mental health conditions they believe they suffer from, or at least the ones which are defined as neurodiverse (autism, ADHD). Bipolar is also often listed but not various other mental disorders (not even depression or schizophrenia etc.)

It's not unheard of, to do something like this on Twitter, if you advocate for people who share a particular condition, but it used to be rare for people who use their account only to tweet about anime and music etc. to do so.

In some of those profiles the person states that the diagnoses are based on self-identifying, and this suggests that there is some kudos to be had from declaring those conditions, or, perhaps, that they can be used to defend rudeness in tweeting?

I am not sure, and I certainly don't want to pretend that I can distance-diagnose anyone. But this is a real change in social media, and worth understanding better.

And given that I have had a very long (and expensive) battle to recover from (medically diagnosed) PTSD (fairly successfully, thanks to the powers that might be), I feel ice-cold anger about the appropriation of the name and its facile use to refer to slight discomfort at something.

I'm currently on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment, having a period of calm in my life after being diagnosed with GAD, Depression, Alcohol Misuse Disorder, self diag PMDD and PTSD from a horrendous birth.

I have had the piss taken out of me by my family over it all, but I remind myself that although they see that I CAN function, they don't see the washing machine head. I'm on HRT which has been a massive revelation and I struggle with ensuring I take it properly (Mostly that's a yes)

It's hard and I'm a private person. I really empathize and agree with what's been written here.