I'm really interested to see what response this thread will get

[WallaceinAnderland]

It's just been posted on Reddit and I'm interested to see the views of posters on that forum:

Hi everyone, an older XY woman here (I'm approaching 40). Back in February I heard a voice in my head, it was a little girl's voice and it promised happiness and 'real feeling'. Once I realised that it was my 'feeling voice' there was an explosion of emotion which came with symptoms of CPTSD (or masked autism?) eg light/music/taste sensitivity etc. I was also able to see people in an emotional light without the need for alcohol, which I now have no need for as I used it primarily to feel emotions. As part of the dialogue with this voice, I thought I had sorted out my identity as the voice readily said that I was 'a boy'. (The symptoms have settled down, now.)
Recently, after 3 months of therapy and prompted by my therapist asking after the gender of my 'inner parent', I asked my feeling voice what I meant by 'boy' and I said 'not mum'. I asked it what I looked like, and was shocked to find that I looked like a woman. I don't physically look like my mum, being an XY woman, but my emotional body is that of her gender. With the techniques from therapy, combined with a heady dose of my own, my emotions are now settled and I can eat and sleep and function again... so I'm preparing to meet the practical challenges of being an XY woman.
So, firstly, hey! I guess you're my folk, now :) The only stuff I know about trans people is what I learned during suppression, so I don't know much at all, really, and I have no trans friends or any friends I'm really close enough to to talk about trans stuff in detail, readily. Oh, also, I tend towards the term XY-woman. Is that okay?
Secondly, I have seen some posts about suppressed emotion on here pre-realisation and about emotional release. Given what happened to me, I would be very interested to hear about any similar instances of suppressed emotion and emotional release. Thanks for reading.

I would be reporting the therapist.

Aye. UK born & bred with your cook stove.

Look if you want to spend your time exploring your innate gender wang, crack on. But don't kid yourself you're in any way representative of an average British woman and don't use your patronising insults on me thanks.

Its neither a silly nor batshit opinion.

It is genuinely sad that therapy is so captured. This man obviously needs help, but as soon as gender is mentioned therapists seem to lose all professionalism.

I would suggest to this op.

A, Get a real, normal job where you have to interact with humans occasionally.

B, go outside everyday ideally to do some light exercise somewhere where you can see nature with your eyes, not on a screen.

C. Get a pet (or more sensibly a pot plant as I'd fear for an animal) to take care of.

D. Get a wholesome hobby outside the home. I recommend group needle felting/book club or similar.

E. Get of the internet.

F. If symptoms persist, seek professional help via a doctor.

You're intelligent enough to do the work yourself.

This thread has clearly been set up for the purpose of ridiculing a trans person. Let’s not tit about trying to pretend otherwise.

i expect it will disappear soon. There’s no transphobia on mumsnet

I haven’t seen this sort of post before either and I’m wondering how best to respond to it.
I don’t have much sympathy for some men who say they are transwomen because it for at least some of them it’s a sexual fetish, and for those I wonder whether that is all there is to it, i.e. they don”t really see themselves as actual women, rather they know it’s just all about sexual pleasure, autogynephilia. They get aroused seeing themselves as a woman. Like many people, I have little or no interest in someone else’s fetish.
I don’t necessarily disbelieve men who feel or have felt they are women throughout their lives but I wonder if they are in the minority, that is to say, are autogynephiles far more common?
Also I’m a heterosexual woman and can’t say I have ever really felt an innate sense of gender as I can’t really differentiate this from my upbringing and being socialised as female from childhood.

On second thoughts I think I should have stopped at the phrase ‘XY woman’ too. Because it's bollocks. (So to speak).

Sorry i think it's best to consult with other men pretending to be women. I haven't the foggiest what that's like. I can tell you what it's like being a tomboy though.

I think I'd be inclined to view this in the same light as people who claim to have seen ghosts, been visited by God, or met an alien. As in, one of three possibilities:
It's not remotely true. They know its not true. They have knowingly made it up for attention in a place they feel it will be well recieved.
OR:
They have dreamed or imagined something, left the radio on, heard the neighbours talking or some other prosaic explanation, but are a bit woo ways inclined, and a bit dramatic, have decided its a meaningful experience, and are sharing it in a place they feel it will be well recieved.
OR:
They genuinely believe that what they say is exactly what happened, and are suffering from a mental illness.
Impossible to know from such limited knowledge of a person as one post on a forum, especially as a lay person. So I'd think it was good they were having therapy and hope they had some real life sensible folks around them in case it was 3.

Yes, I don't know what it's like to 'feel' a gender. I had thought there may have been more posts identifying with that poster as it being something from within but it's not getting much response so guess I'll never know.

I think that Reddit post was quite illuminating, and I certainly don't feel any desire to mock.

The "voices" that people "hear" are not real in an objective coming-from-outside-you sense, but they're not random and say something about what's going on in that person's psychology.

The things that jumped out at me were that his (relationship with his) mother is tangled up in there; and the mention of a not-mother identity (boy is not boy in his own right, but still centring his mother by defining himself in opposition to her) ; and the positive, confident feminine voice who is not just feminine but a "little girl" - what does she represent?

I'm not any kind of psychologist, and so can't make much sense of all this in terms of child identity development etc, but it suggests that there is a lot going on there that deserves attention and exploration, rather than gung-ho affirmation and a fast track to surgery.

I hope he gets the thoughtful, informed, compassionate support he needs, to understand and disentangle what is going in inside him.

Given it looks like a generally active community, the fact this post didn't get anything except two carefully worded responses basically saying "WTF" is probably your answer.

I'm not sure why you're equating having a feeling to hearing voices, either, to be quite honest.

err.. the man in the post literally says he’s hearing voices…..

I didn't say anything at all about wanting to explore "gender wang". I was objecting to the previous commenter's silly comment that women don't have any leisure time to naval gaze even if they wanted to, especially not working class women, because it seemed rooted in outdated and negative stereotypes about working class women working long menial jobs then coming home to their too-many children while their husband is either absent or useless. It was especially silly to stereotype middle aged women in this way, because middle aged women tend to be more financially secure and to have kids who are older and so less demanding (if they have any kids at all) and therefore more time to pursue their own interests. The point is not whether they do use that time to naval gaze about their gender, the point is they have time to do that if they wish.

Your claim that yourself and the women you know do not have that time is easily falsified by the fact you clearly do have time to spend reading and posting on mumsnet.

I'm surprised a feminist board finds it so objectionable when someone objects to stereotyping women, to be quite honest.

Yes, I know, that's why I referenced it. I was questioning why OP thought hearing voices is something that might be fundamentally relatable to people who feel they are transgender.

I'm not sure that his 'voices' are necessary psychotic hallucinations. They might be an artefact of clumsy therapy, in which he has been encouraged to give some sort of 'personhood' to aspects of himself as a means of self-exploration.

I agree he seems to be being guided by a therapist to work with a Parent-Adult-Child framework which could be conceptualised as different inner voices, but it seems this individual has gone beyond that and believes it's possible that these voices can reveal a truth to him that even he didn't know about himself, or that it's somehow meaningful about his own identity that he pictures his inner parent as a female when parent = mother is going to be a pretty common association (that is assuming this post is genuine and is not an individual trying to troll or goad a particular response, both of which remain possible).

If anyone is actually interested, the OP has now deleted his post and left a rather scolding comment about people questioning his identity.

And what brings you here?

who was recently was referred for talking therapy on the NHS and got an appointment within a month.
Bloody hell where do you live? My DD is on an 18 month waiting list for pnd therapy, referred by her health visitor as urgent 😮

Same thing brings anyone else here, I'm interested in discussion about these issues.

What brings you here?

East Midlands. I imagine it's highly variable (also not sure if PND would get referred to a specialist service rather than a general one?) but yeah, I self-referred to "Notts Talk" via a horrid AI thing on their website, got a telephone assessment about a month after, in person appointment a few weeks after that.

We are E. Mids too, and the self referral came back as 18 months waiting. The more specialist therapy for pnd specifically was non existent as she wasn't hallencinating or self harming at that time. I highly recommend you stay in/near Notts if that's the service you get!

Sorry OP for side tracking. Was there any response to the XY woman wording apart from it's not the usual phrase to use? I've never come across that before.

Womens rights.

I'm really sorry to hear that, I hope your daughter get seen soon. Might be worth seeing if you're in the catchment area for Notts Talk? I don't know how far they offer the service.

Re the reddit post, there were two responses that I saw. I just went to try and c/p them but because I'd closed the tab, and the post has now been deleted, I can't get back to it.

But one basically said the use of the phrase XY woman was "suspicious" (implying they thought OP was a troll?) and that usually the phrase wasn't used, and then something like "It's good that you're in therapy" which read like a super-polite way to say "You sound insane".

Then the other said that what OP was describing didn't sound typical of a trans story, it was worded with lots of corollaries as they were trying to be kind, but basically boiled down to you're not necessarily trans just because a voice in your head told you are, please stay in therapy.

The OP did respond to both but to be honest I didn't read in detail as they were long responses full of therapy speak, but didn't seem offended by either comment. Then they deleted their OP and all their comments except one saying they shouldn't have posted and people shouldn't question their identity. I'm not sure if that might have been triggered by another comment that was deleted before I saw it as it feels like a very abrupt change in tone.