Is it time to stop the pretence that people can transition?

[happydappy2]

I really feel gender ideology is a cult, that has totally warped some peoples minds. It brings so many problems to society I’m not sure it’s sustainable. It damages the health of young people, shortens their lives and often rips families apart. At what point do we say no, this is not healthy, it’s incredibly antisocial to expect everyone else to pretend you are the opposite sex when they can see you aren’t….for the good of society let’s stop this madness. Gender dysphoria exists yes but I don’t think we’re treating it in the best way. We don’t affirm that an anorexic patient is indeed too fat so why do we affirm people who think they are the opposite sex?

Sorry about going with the derailer.

Most definitely harming. Help coping with reality and the comorbidities would be much better.

You didn't pay attention to the detail.
The only brains that were slightly 'feminised' were gay male brains.
This is known (regardless of gender identity)

Your everyday MtF heterosexual has an everyday 'male' brain - in the very few areas where M and F brains differ slightly. We're mostly the same.

That's not what this^ paper was aiming to cover but there's literature showing differences between heterosexual and homosexual brains, in males and females.

It's the first thing you should check when someone says there's a scientific basis for 'trans brains' - are their controls the same sexuality?

Which is your interpretation, one which many posters have disputed.

Why are you cherry picking the worst interpretations of the worst posts on the thread and attempting to claim they are representative? I think you want people to be bigots because it allows you to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you without dealing with the content of their posts.

Also, the whole brain differences thing is a red herring. Not just because the brain differences are aligned to sexuality rather than gender, but because brains change physically to reflect how they are used as shown by the famous study of London cabbies' brains before and after their knowledge traning.

Also, even if special transbrains do exist, causing their owners to wish they were the opposite sex, we could agree to call them "people who wish they were the opposite sex", instead of pretending that their wish has come true.
In practice, almost zero people persisted with a desire to be the opposite sex until others stopped being honest with them, using a new idea of "gender" to blur meanings.
Allowing people to LARP as the opposite sex causes problems at a societal level, but is cruel to those individuals too. There is nothing kind about lies.

If there was a special 'trans brains' test, we could use it to determine who is truly trans and who isn't, saving detransitioners a lot of heartache and pain and physical, mental and psychological damage. Of course, the trans community would NEVER agree to such a test being used, because they're now at the stage where 'anyone can identify as trans whether they are or not', and a 'test' would show who the fakes are. Hence, trans will never, ever, ever agree to such a test ever being developed.

CosyTaupeShark · 25/04/2025 14:31

If you’re starting from the belief that trans women aren’t women, then of course you’ll reject their experiences.

Ah, I see your mistake. Transw are not women, that's a fact, not a belief. Saying and even believing that they are IS a belief, one entirely unbased on fact.

If there was a ‘trans brain test’, what it would show is that there is a developmental disorder that has resulted in an organ not developing typically.

The structure and function of the brain doesn’t play a part in how sex is determined/ identified. If it were discovered that there are males with female patterned brains, or brains that function in a female specific way, they would still be male. Sex will still be binary. It would provide a causal explanation for gender dysphoria, but it wouldn’t mean anything different in terms of the SC ruling, not the issues arising for single sex provision

The paper literally says some brain regions in MtFs show feminisation...

... But that they don't look like those of actual women; they are demasculinised. Not "they are unequivocally female."

I don't believe there are male and female brains. There are characteristics that tend to be more common in one or other, that's all.

Yes, that's my understanding, also that it's because (as discussed earlier) of brain plasticity.

Imagine citing WPATH as an authority. Good grief.

I'm trans (bio female) and waited until my 30s to transition because I was hopeful that I would grow out of it, I was also brought up with parents who always rooted me in the fact of my biological sex whilst allowing me to dress and play how I wanted. I still ended up transitioning, but there are no other options presented to gender dysphoric people. I would love to be normal, but the way I was feeling was totally unsustainable and so I had to seek medical help. The only pathway offered is medical intervention so I have gone along with the medical advice given by the doctors managing my care. I'm not delusional, I know I'm female and always will be, but medical transition did help. That being said, I would have loved to have been given the opportunity to not medically transition and feel better! I resent the trans lobby so much for pushing the idea that anything but medical transition is hateful, if there is other treatment that doesn't require medicalisation it is utterly shameful to not offer that as the first course of treatment for sure.

I'm trying to understand this from my very logical viewpoint. As you know you're female, then you know it isn't possible to actually trans into a man?
It's a journey with no route and no end point as everything was set at conception.
If there was a way to help with acceptance of the physical form you were born with, you would be able to be at peace with the truth?
(And this help would benefit others with dysphoria?)

Yes, I fully understand that I am and always will be female, it is impossible to change your sex. I would far rather have been given an option of some form of therapy etc. to help me with the distress my sex gave me as medicalisation is not a healthy way to deal with the issue, unfortunately there is no other option presented and I tried for years to come to terms with things on my own but I couldn't get rid of the dysphoria. That is the reason I waited until I was in my 30s to transition as I did not want to be trans, but I reached a point where I could no longer continue living in the distress I was in on a day to day basis so I ended up going to the GP. Has medical transition helped my gender dysphoria? Yes, I am not dysphoric now at all. Do I wish the medical field had actually looked at other non medicalised options for people with dysphoria so I could avoid surgery and hormones? Yes, absolutely. I may not be dysphoric now, but I wish I didn't have to be a lifelong patient of trans medicine if that makes sense?

Makes total sense to me.

I cannot see the logic in this.
If there is no end point, as it cannot be reached, how have you transed/changed?
In every cell the original DNA code is the same?

I'm sorry, I can't grasp what you can't understand if I'm honest.

Of course my DNA is the same, I am still female. Most of my secondary sexual characteristics are now male presenting (not male - just presenting) so I look physically very different to how I did before medical intervention.

I have not transed or changed anything on a biological DNA level, but outwardly I look very different - that is what has alleviated the gender dysphoria. I am not interested in changing anything biologically about me, I am female, I am fine with the fact that I am female. You seem to be implying that I think I have changed something that is unchangeable, I do not and I have not, nor do I have any interest in doing so.

I hesitate to speak for another poster but I think when htdef2 talks about "transing" she means having medical/surgical procedures. Not that she thinks she has literally become a man.

I understand the point to be analogous to having an amputation to relieve chronic, unbearable pain, being happy that the amputation was effective in relieving pain, but also regretting that you weren't offered the choice of a safe, existing drug which would been more or less as effective.

ETA: Whoops, sorry to cross post, htdef2! And I see from your post you haven't gone the surgical route, so my analogy is a bit misleading in that an amputation is irreversible and you haven't done anything like that.

I think I get what you're saying htdef2. I'm sorry you didn't get the help and support you needed at an earlier stage, and that you felt that you had to take some pretty drastic steps to feel OK about yourself.

If I had been offered puberty blockers, surgery etc when I was younger, I'd have jumped at it, and I had a tough time working out how to live as a girl and grow up to be a woman. Like you, I didn't get any support to do that, but fortunately unlike you there was no such thing as transitioning around at that time so I did manage to grow up to be a woman, on my own gender-non-conforming lesbian terms.

I acknowledge that you know that you are still 100% female, you understand that the biological sex you were born into is 'encoded' in every cell of your body, you are still a woman, so all you can do is change your outward appearance.
You seem to think it was worth going through it all to arrive at the place you are now in, and that's good for you.

You explain it all with quiet clarity and self-awareness.
You sound like a thoughtful , interesting and intelligent woman.
I like thoughtful, interesting and intelligent women.
Less so men.
But a thoughtful, interesting and intelligent woman who choses to present fully as a man? As opposed to just accepting her sex but rejecting gender stereotypes and presenting as a different kind of woman? Big question mark.

My opinion is of course entirely subjective. It is coloured by the fact that as a lesbian, I am attracted to female bodies, not male ones, and certainly not to female bodies that have been drastically altered to produce, with varying degrees of success, some of the appearance and features of a male body.

But that's just my opinion about female to male transitioning in general, and I'm not suggesting that the opinion of a random poster should be of any significance or importance for you as an individual, htdef2

I think it would help if I understand your definition of trans?
I can see it's not TMAM or TWAW.

htdef2's way of being trans makes sense to me. To an extent, it is no different to what most of us do: find a way of presenting ourselves to the world, and to ourselves, that feels comfortable and makes sense to us. How often do women feel unable to leave their homes - present themselves to the world - without a full face of makeup? How often do women walk past a shop windows and check their reflections to be sure they are still presenting the look they want? How often do women look in the mirror and get a shock because the reality of their body doesn't match their self image? Does the camera really put 10lb on you, or do you actually feel slimmer than you really are? What are bodybuilding, brazilian buttlift, tattoos, piercings about?

The difference is that this discrepancy distressed htdef2 enough to eventually do something extreme about it. I'm glad you tried to address it in different ways first, and waited until mature adulthood - just not legal adulthood - to make irreversible changes. I'm sorry that you didn't find a way to make peace with yourself and learn to love your body as it is.

The difference between your attitude and TRA attitudes is that you appear to recognise that these are your choices about how you feel and how you perceive yourself. They are nothing to do with us. You do not appear to expect others to validate your beliefs about yourself.

Do you consider your dysmorphia to be a mental health condition?

Dysmorphia must be a disorder rather than variance, as it can pass?

The huge difference between you @htdef2 and the TRA MtF stance is you acknowledge you are still biologically female, and just look/present male now (I’m not clear if you’ve had surgery and/or hormones) The MtF TRA lobby claims they are women, that their feelings and thoughts are female, so this makes them female. I have noticed a clear difference between most FtM and MtF, FtM folk are more likely to acknowledge that they are still biologically female, where are MtF seem to get very loud and shouty and demand we all believe they are a real girl now, because they say so.

I think it’s harmful. Your analogy of eating disorders is one I’ve used in the past. We don’t agree with anorexics that they are fat and give them a gastric bypass, so why do we let ‘trans’ folk declare they are in the wrong body and chop bits off and take hormones? The treatment for delusional/identity disorders should be psychiatric, not surgical.

Plus, we also need to stop using gender stereotypes. And self-ID has been an absolute disaster.