Managing the Growing Gender-Critical Counterrevolution

[TheywontletmehavethenameIwant]

Oops I've just realized this is an old article, it's probably been linked to.

Here's a link to an interesting podcast - (40 mins long though)

Podcast #305: Managing the Growing Gender-Critical Counterrevolution

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay talks with Canadian Genspect director Mia Hughes about the emerging ‘gender glasnost’—and the best way to continue rolling back the excesses of trans activism.

"Hughes argues that the real problem came when WPATH decided to “de-psychopathologise” gender dysphoria about fifteen years ago—which is to say, WPATH decided that gender dysphoria wasn’t really an affliction at all, but rather a kind of gateway into a new form of human existence. As a result, Hughes argues, being trans became trendy; and troubled youth became convinced that transition represented the solution to problems that were actually rooted in trauma, depression, autism, and other co-morbid conditions.

Provocatively, Hughes told the crowd in Albuquerque that we need to re-psychopatholigise the urge to transition—a choice of words that I worry may go too far. As you’ll hear, I argue that we need to use language that allows the people who became swept up in gender ideology to return to a common-sense approach, and that the kind of harsh language she uses may not be useful for that project."

I have no inclination to watch the video at 40 mins long, but there surely is no question of whether gender dysphoria is a mental illness. It is in the name: "dysphoria", a medical word.

What is more debatable is how many trans people actually suffer from this, and how many don't.

What is the 'gender critical counter revolution'?

I'm assuming you're being rhetorical, because in fact it's highly contentious. Arguably, the reason it hasn't already been explicitly depathologized in the DSM/ICD-10 is that it would make it much more difficult for trans people to seek NHS/insurance coverage of gender medical treatment.

No I wasn't being rhetorical.

By definition, gender dysphoria is a mental illness. That is implicit in the meaning of the words. BUT that doesn't mean it necessarily exists. The history of psychiatry has many diagnoses and illnesses that were later abandoned as they didn't actually exist.

This is a semantic discussion - if an illness is "de-pathologised" surely that means it is no longer an illness, so the old words used to describe it are now obsolete.
Basically, either gender dysphoria exists and is an illness, or it doesn't exist and the term is obsolete.

But the more interesting question is how many trans people actually suffer from this thing called "gender dysphoria" (whether or not it is an illness), and how many don't, i.e. they have other motivations / causes.

Apologies for not watching the video, but please explain what is the 'gender critical counter revolution'?

No I wasn't being rhetorical.

By definition, gender dysphoria is a mental illness. That is implicit in the meaning of the words. BUT that doesn't mean it necessarily exists. The history of psychiatry has many diagnoses and illnesses that were later abandoned as they didn't actually exist.

Well, it is contentious. I agree it shouldn't be. Since this gets to the heart of gender ideology are won't try to reproduce the lengthy arguments for and against.

Apologies for not watching the video, but please explain what is the 'gender critical counter revolution'?

The counter revolution consists of two main parts 1) it's actually possible to speak frankly about transgender issues in main stream media and in social media, a couple of year ago the trans issues were highly censored, 2) there is now a general consensus that transwomen are not women in all respects (and transmen and men, respectively) and that is now increasingly reflected in law.

Oversimplifying - the question now is how can the concept of 'trans' be put on a firm, scientific gender critical basis that consolidates those gains (i.e. agp, social contagion, internalized homophobia), and the discipline of psychology be reformed to treat trans identification appropriately.

In the words of a clinician

Gender dysphoria is a lie

x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1808825717204922755

@TheywontletmehavethenameIwant @GallantKumquat

Thanks.
I was confused because it wasn't clear to me which side was being called the revolution and which side was the counter-revolution.
From some perspectives it could be argued that acceptance of 'transitioning' and gender identities is the 'normal' pre-revolutionary state, therefore the women's rights or gender critical movement is the revolution, and the current TRA backlash is the counter-revolution.

If 'trans' was the revolution and 'gender critical' the counter-revolution, that makes the TRA backlash the counter-counter-revolution.

I'm not sure talk of revolution and counter is a helpful framework.

It's not a video it's a podcast. myself I liked to listen to podcasts when I'm cooking or cleaning, but I listen on my phone not my PC.

Quillette is based in Tranada, it has been one of the few places that still has free speech, the interviewer on this one is Jonathan Kay, who tends to like the sound of his own voice, and does most of the talking and has turned into something of an apologises for the GI'ders since the tide turned.

People who disagree with the views have finally been aloud to speak, which is what he is calling the 'Gender Critical Revolution', the person he's interviewing (or scolding, depending on your view), Mia Hughes, doesn't.

I thought Mia won the argument, she knew what she was talking about, he didn't.

Mia discusses this in more detail with Stella in their beyond gender podcast from 10th October..
If the interviewer doesn't give her much chance to speak, this might be a better listen..

I wonder if revolution is the right word. Stealth was used to impose an ideology, which was then halted when GC adherents started to speak out and when heard, the idiocy of trans ideology was revealed and so the pushback began.

As to whether gender dysphoria exists, I would say yes, and as a medical condition. I would also say that there are many trans identified men who have autogynephilia, which is altogether different. Confusing the two does a disservice to GC women

That’s interesting about Kay - he (and Quillette) used to be one of the only voices in Canada that would share GC stories and information. Quillette was the place that published Alasdair Gunn’s amazing series of articles on ROGD boys, for instance (under the pseudonym Angus Fox). I haven’t listened/read much from them recently so I’ve missed that Kay has gone to the other side, as it were. Is it obvious why/how that happened?

Jonathan Kay these days is very much 'But Mia, you aren't saying that all trans women are men are you?'

Well that’s disappointing. Wonder how that came about.

Less a 'revolution' or 'movement' than the tipping point of Barnum's 'you can fool some people all of the time and all of the people some of the time'.

This was never going to survive daylight, scrutiny and the inevitable stacking up of sex offending, harassment offences and anti social behaviour. It's like saying there's a 'revolution' against leaving your door unlocked at night because you have lovely friends who don't steal and you're absolutely not a bigot who thinks all strangers are like that.

Re bodily dysphoria

Trigger warning, this is a bit gruesome.

I saw a TV documentary many years ago, about bodily dysphoria. A man had dysphoria about his legs. He honestly felt that his legs were not really part of him, that they were strange and alien appendages, and that they didn't belong on his body. He was begging a surgeon for a double amputation, which was refused. The surgeon and psychiatrist were concerned he would take matters into his own hands, such as laying on a railway track to get them amputated, but the conclusion at the end of the programme was that it was not the medical profession's role to amputate healthy legs, even if the patient was at risk of serious and life-threatening self-harm.

So there is no disagreement that bodily dysphoria is a very real condition, and there is no reason to believe that gender dysphoria (or perhaps it should be called sex dysphoria) does exist.
But I seriously doubt that most trans people have real dysphoria. I think it is likely to be quite rare. Trouble is, there is no way of telling exactly what is or is not going on in someone's head.
And as for the legs case, the solution is not to give in to the patient's dysphoria and go along with it. The solution is to continue treating the mental illness.

There very much is disagreement that Gender Dysphoria is a real condition.

I'd encourage people to read the link I posted earlier and also to go back down Dr P's Xtweets for the last month or so. Also to listen to/watch an interview with her.

x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1808825717204922755

I'm sorry but I really think there is disagreement about the existence of 'gender dysphoria', the case made against it is very persuasive and if gender is a 'social construct' I don't see how you can have gender dysphoria any way.

I have no professional insight, but categorizing the different types of people who claim to be trans is a major interest of mine, not least as - IMHO - once we categorize them successfully it is 100% clear that none of them should ever be affirmed. (TLDR - it is all mental illness or paraphilia or dishonest predators, and why should we punish the mentally ill by affirming, or elevate paraphiliacs and predators by affirming. I accept some people claiming to be trans are probably more than one of these things, and some are mentally ill, paraphilic predators.)

From a quick google...

Body Dysmorphia - a mental condition characterized by extreme preoccupation with self-perceived defects, flaws or imperfections in the appearance of the body; body dysmorphic disorder.

Gender Dysphoria - is a state of profound unease, unhappiness, or dissatisfaction, the opposite of euphoria. Term first used in 1973, term first used diagnostically in DSM-5 in 2013.

Body Dysmorphia does seem like a real thing... but then again how many women have it compared to men, and is it not possible that they are all apotemnophiliacs (the paraphilia where a person has a sexual interest in being an amputee)?

Either way, it is absolutely clear to me that body dysmorphic people should not have legs or arms amputated under any circumstances. If other mental health interventions fail then secure accommodation where they can be kept safe is the only compassionate option.

From what I can make out gender dysphoria is just the new name for gender identity disorder, which could equally be called "sex-specific body dysmorphia" (the defect being the wrong-sexed body) or "sex-stereotype dysphoria" or both dependent on whether the person is rejecting the body or the social role. I can imagine pubescent girls might often have both, with the sexual attention and harassment being as a result of girl's bodies and the female social role / place in society.

Sex-specific body dysmorphia is clearly a subset of body dysmorphia and requires MH support, never medical interventions.

"Sex-stereotype dysphoria" should surely be treated in no small part by telling girls that there is nothing wrong with playing football or climbing trees or getting muddy - that they do not live in 1950s USA suburbia and that they only have to look back to some of the icons of the 1970s and 1980s to realize that gender non-conformity is fine.

The whole thing is a massive bait and switch.

According to TRAs (if you actually go behind what they say) "this person does not have a form of body dysmorphia, what they have is dysphoria around regressive sex-based stereotypes". Instead of telling them they can be whoever they wish (ie as gender conforming or non-conforming as they wish) within their unchanging sex we will tell them that medical (hormonal and surgical) treatments, which would never be given for body dysmorphia, should be given. And they should be given because when performing wrong-sex sex-based stereotypes it is easier for the trans person if people pretend they are the opposite sex and if the trans persons body is medicalized to become a facsimile of the opposite sex.

I also have a lot of sympathy for the idea (Dr P?) that for some or many it is Trans Ideation Disorder - where a variety of MH issues such as depression, autism, sexual trauma come together to create someone whose answer is "I'm trans". I suppose in theory TID is the main thing with young trans people, but that sex-specific body dysmorphia and sex-stereotype dysphoria are also useful concepts that can feed into helping to fully understand a young person with TID.

The above is my best, amateur, analysis if we come at it from the position of "let's really try to look in detail and try to categorize all the different sub-sets". But from speaking to someone I know who is fairly senior in mental health in the NHS I am also increasingly coming to share his view. His view - if I understand it correctly - is that a MH diagnosis is not necessarily that helpful. It is not really that useful to label someone as autistic or gender dysphoric. What is useful is to understand precisely what they think and what their issues are, and to try to help them overcome their specific issues. And often the fundamental issue is the reality of their life. For example one can find someone deeply mentally ill, and have them in supported accommodation as part of their treatment. Their MH improves massively, and they are force to leave the supported accommodation, leaving them to move into a horrible house-share with a violent alcoholic at which point their MH spirals out of control again.

@JamieCannister
Thanks for your helpful post.

Yes, we need to dismantle the "trans umbrella" and treat each different subset of people according to their particular issues.
It has never made any sense to lump them all together, except for political activism.

IMHO there must be something like sexed-body-dysphoria or dysmorphia (which is a more helpful name than gender dysphoria/dysmorphia). It is clear that other types of body dysphoria/dysmorphia exist, so what case is there to suggest that the sex-of-your-body one doesn't exist?

Even if it turns out that all body dysphorias have a sexual element (word of the day: apotemnophiliac), it is irrelevant to the treatment, i.e. treating the mind, not changing on the body.

However, I think if more people knew about the sexual / fetishistic aspect of many trans identified men's behaviour, they would have far, far less public sympathy.

However, I think if more people knew about the sexual / fetishistic aspect of many trans identified men's behaviour, they would have far, far less public sympathy.

We all used to know this though, didn't we? It only really changed when they started recruiting children to the trans cause. Because obviously those children aren't sexually motivated. This was deliberate on the part of those pushing the trans agenda. It was done to sanitise the trans movement and, as one of them put it, children "demystify it and take the sex right out of the trans experience".

This thread describes how things have changed in the last 20 years or so:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1816266309555884491

She describes how in 2007: "there was a clear understanding that crossdressing men in women’s spaces were often there for sexual reasons".

Now we're supposed to believe that they're the most vulnerable people ever and we should pander to them by taking our clothes off for them.

Well, I am not sure how helpful it was... it is my informed, but far from professional speculation.

I think the first think is to be clear that there is no such thing as "trans". There are people who make a meaningless gender-based claim in a sex-based world. These people are not "trans" they are people, whose sex was determined at conception, observed at birth and will remain with them for millenia post-death, who (make the meaningless) claim (that they) identify as "trans".

It only makes sense to lump all trans together if you are a male autogynephile who wants to use the myth of the trans child to justify their own boundary transgressions, and who is willing to see mentally ill children get sterilized and their other MH co-morbidities get left untreated in service of their own boundary transgressions.

I think it is important to remember that all of these diagnoses come from the patient's self-expression. We have no hard evidence body dysmorphia exists outside of a sexual element, and if it does we have no evidence where in the range of 0.001% to 99.999% the percentage of non-sexually motivated men lie.

Do autogynephiles (and transvestic fetishists) need their minds treated? I certainly support treatment if they want it, but I am open to the idea that they only need MH support if they come forward. If they don't come forward then shame, mockey and the criminal justice system should be used to force them to keep their deep sexual depravity to private places amongst competent, consenting adults.

As an aside, I am wondering the extent to which many of the young men aged 18-25 are autogynephiles or transvestic fetishists (I note that autogynephiles get off on seeing themselves as women, and the latter on dressing up as women, and according to Dr Az Hakeem there are four transvestic fetishists for every one autogynephiles. Transvestic fetishists are much less keen on surgery than autgynephiles, and autogynephiles who do go for surgery often miss that if their sole reason for surgery is because they enjoy getting hard pretending to be a woman, then the "getting hard" bit will be rather less accessible an option post castration and penile inversion).

I think it is important to remember that all of these diagnoses come from the patient's self-expression. We have no hard evidence body dysmorphia exists

That could be said of most mental illnesses.
If an illness is not neurological, brain scans won't be of any use, so the only way to "diagnose" is by observing and classifying behaviour, and noting what the patient says about themselves.
It is important to keep in mind that the diagnosis is only a tool to aid decisions about treatment and support, not an end in itself.

That is not to say that mental illness doesn't exist, just that it is not evidenced in the same way as physical illness.

they only need MH support if they come forward.
Again, that applies to all mental illness, unless the person breaks the law or is a danger to themselves or others.
Of course, males in female-only spaces are both breaking the law and being a danger to others (in that they affect the emotions and wellbeing of the women who may be present).
It could be argued that men wearing fetishistic clothes merely walking down the street are a danger to others, because they are using unwilling bystanders in their sexual fantasy - but we already have laws about public decency and public nuisance. It is obviously not possible to police clothing and fashion choices, but if the person is also engaging in offensive behaviour then action can be taken.

This is all theory - the police, the NHS, and especially mental health services are stretched to breaking point so nothing will be done about fetishistic men.
At least if the law is clear, women will be empowered to stand up for themselves and confront the men, as a minimum spoiling their fun and re-establishing acceptable social norms, even if there is no hope of changing their long-term behaviour.

I believe that society has a duty to try to identify the mentally ill, in order to try to treat them. But the mentally ill (or at least the less serious ones) have a duty to seek and accept treatment.

I agree that the diagnosis is only a tool to aid decisions. In this context the assumption is perhaps something that could be called gender dysphoria, and the treatment should be 100% about ensuring that people can learn to love themselves as they were born and as they will die, and not aspire to be something that they cannot be. If an AGP or TF wants to pipe up and say "I'm not confused or unhappy, for me it is all about my paraphilias" then the treatment path can change to showing the the absolute unacceptability of palying out sexual fantasies (or any sexual activity) with people who have not consented, let alone those kids they might interact with who are too young to consent to being a part of it.

I would be 100% happy to see public displays of autogynephilia and transvestic fetishism criminalized.

Any man who is cross-dressing in public and who has previously admitted to their paraphilia is guilty by confession.

I would word the law so that other male cross-dressers could be assumed to be paraphiliacs in the eyes of the law unless they were seeking mental health support for their alleged gender dysphoria. And the first part of a gender dysphoria treatment should be "stop cross dressing, stop pretending, how can you learn to be happy in your body if you continue to pretend to be the opposite sex".

I suppose all of this relies on the law and / or judges and juries being able to distinguish gender non-conformity with wrong sex gender conformity aka cross-dressing. I think we can. And if we can't then surely we can be clear that a man with make up and long hair is not cross-dressing, nor does adopting a dress automatically proe cross-dressing. And if we can't then I think there is an argument that policing the gender expression of a tiny minority of men is less harmful to society than allowing the public display or paraphilia or mental illness.

This might seem harsh but I am a classical liberal. Do what you want unless what you are doing harms others.

I think modern liberalism has forgotten the "unless what you are doing harms others" bit, and where it remembers it massive overlooks certain harms (for example downplaying the negative on people's mental health of being unsure of the sex of people around you, or the offence that womanface in all its forms causes).

Men are the ones who need to police men. In the past the local villagers are the ones to enforce the law, and in bars and pubs it is men who need to ensure that men feel safer in the men's and totally unsdafe if seen entering or exiting the women's.

I think that there is a strong argument that (other than, for example, whilst riding a motorbike) the presumption should be that "hiding who you are" (ie your identity or your sex, age or race) should be a criminal offence and it doing so would be a good way of cracking down on furries and the oppression of muslim women as well as perverted and mentally ill men.

I would suggest that there is absolutely nothing wrong with "cross-dressing" in normal clothes and minding your own business. It is a very slippery slope indeed if we try to police what people of each sex should and should not wear.

But what can be outlawed (possibly?), or at least made completely socially unacceptable, is wearing overtly sexualised clothing, fetish gear, or "dressing like a BDSM sex-worker" in public in daylight.

I agree that we need to get back to men (and confident women) policing these social norms.

I admit it is hard to put into legislation but IMHO a woman who wears a suit and tie is not cross-dessing so long as the suit is cut to fit her female body, and so long as she is not deliberately doing things to her face / hair to make herself appear male. (Short hair and no make up are not things that make women appear male).

I think most men who pretend to be women clearly look unwell and very badly passing, or (whether they are close to passing or not at all close) they look like they are deliberately trying to appear to be women. In contrast Kurt Cobain in a dress does not in any way look like a cross dresser.

The difference in how men in women's clothes look comapred to how women in masculine stereotypes clothes look does suggest to me that (to stereotype) women are trying to hide the fact they're women, whilst men are a mentally ill mess or doing it for sexual kicks.

I totally understand your reservations, but I think I am at the point that on balance I would rather cross dressing were illegal than the sorts of men who pretend to be women continue to go around in public, often playing out their paraphilias in the process.

Trans is regressive partly because it relies on sex based stereotypes, and partly because it makes progressive people like me re-think their old "wear what you want" position.

If trans is regressive because it relies on sex-based stereotypes, then surely it is counter-productive to reinforce those very same stereotypes by saying men can't wear "women's" clothes.
We need to abolish the stereotypes, not prop them up. That includes ignoring the clothes of the 50 year old male office worker who turns up in a twinset, skirt, tights, and pearls. Even if you suspect he is getting aroused under the skirt.
I would say ignore the clothes, but don't call him female pronouns.
The time to step in with disciplinary action is when his behaviour, his interaction with other people, crosses the line.

What we can work towards as a society is making overtly sexualised clothing socially unacceptable, unless you are on the way to a night club.