Is being trans a 'disease'/mental health issue?

[SolveMyPrombles]

I'm asking on this board for deliberate considered responses so please do share your thoughts.

A lady on a local group has described being trans as a mental illness that should be treated with compassion not pandered to because it's a disease.

Looking into it more deeply I believe she's wrong and there is no current diagnostic manual that agrees with her take.

What do you think?

In actual fact I adhere to the definition of gender:

"Gender refers to the socially constructed norms, behaviours, roles, and identity associated with being a woman, man, or a gender-diverse person."

In other words typical/common associations to woman/man/ gender diverse/

I’m confused, if men is a socially constructed gender, and anyone following a list of stereotypes is a man, what percentage of those stereotypes does someone need to follow to be classed as a man? Is just liking rugby and beer ok?

the great news is, sex and gender are different so people can all use the gender neutral single sex spaces relevant to their sex can’t they?

So the only way someone can know if they are a woman or a man is if they follow a list of sexist, offensive, outdated stereotypes according to you? How about no.

But when it comes to relating/identifying/associating more to one group than the other it's an individual on balance determination that's based on personal beliefs & values. Just like for political party affiliations, not all individuals are identical in the policies that appeal to them but they determine on balance which party is more aligned with their beliefs.

When I go into the polling booth I can vote for only one party.

When I go on holiday next week I will be dressing and acting very much like a man typically does a lot of the time. Except for the two official "dress up" evenings where I will be wearing a lot of sparkly silver, lace, heels, with a full face of make up for the only two nights this year that will happen. In between those times I will vary between typically male and typically female.

I do not have to choose a "gender identity", no I am not "gender fluid", and am 100% a woman who refuses to accept the gender stereotypes that trans activism is so regressively trying to push people back into.

Sex cannot be defined by reference to gender. Being a woman is to be of the female sex.

Are we back in September again having to go through the exact same misinterpreted quotes that you believe somehow detract from what Germaine Greer has said? Are you about to diagnose her as having dementia again?

“If you want to play the stereotype game, beware because GC ideology does too:”

"The Female Eunuch author then said it “wasn’t fair” that “a man who has lived for 40 years as a man and had children with a woman and enjoyed the services – the unpaid services of a wife, which most women will never know ... then decides that the whole time he’s been a woman.”

-Germaine Greer

Would you like to explain where she is wrong in this statement that she made specifically about Jenner? Would you like to point to where how Jenner was the primary carer for his children and step-children during his marriages?

If you disagree with her generalisation about family care dynamics, please provide the statistics that show that male people in the USA during the period from the 1970s to the 2010s were the majority sex of the people taking time off from employment to look after their children? Or who were the primary carers of their children in the family?

She quite specifically points out “most” in the statement ‘– the unpaid services of a wife, which most women will never know’. She also clearly didn’t make an absolute statement that said ‘all’ women experience the same thing.

@Baileyonice 's position is just that: a random position, based on nothing at all.

Bailey posits that gender is "the socially constructed norms, behaviours, roles, and identity associated with being a woman, man, or a gender-diverse/non binary person." - but is famously utterly unable to name so much as one of those norms, behaviours, roles or identities.

Bailey posits that everyone sees that gender construct - but is utterly unable to help others see it when they don't see it on their own.

Bailey posits that everyone compares their own internal sense of self to those gender constructs and chooses which one to align with - which is by definition an invisible process, so he cannot know whether or how people do it.

In other words: Bailey posits a whole lot of things he either cannot know, and/or cannot explain even when they are supposed to be super-obvious and visible.

A whole lot of hot air and nothing more.

Also: I identify as Tutti Frutti indeed.

You haven't noticed genderfluid or two-spirit?

Are they any less socially constructed? Why would non-binary be a valid gender to you but not the others? What's your threshold?

Non binary without bisexuality is just a made up name for a thing most of us live with. The name is not necessary until you start insisting that gender defines sex. Non binary with bisexuality is ... bisexuality.

I'm non binary in gender if you exclude my preference for male bodies as sexual partners. The majority of western people, in terms of their behaviour against gender stereotypes, are "non binary", especially in our more enlightened times these days where men are allowed to cry.

And I see we are back to trying to prove the relevance of the ‘Big five domains’ again.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3149680/

"Big Five Domains-

The most widely adopted model of personality is the Five Factor Model (FFM), whose five domains are known as the Big Five:

neuroticism (negative emotionality and emotional instability),

agreeableness (altruism and cooperation),

conscientiousness (self-control,

self-discipline, and organization),
extraversion (sociability,

assertiveness, and positive emotionality),

and openness (imagination, intellectual curiosity, and aesthetic appreciation). "

How many posts have you dedicated to attempting to convince anyone but yourself that personality traits are in anyway meaningful in categorising human sex classes?

Wasn’t there a discussion where numerous posters also pointed out that self determining questionnaires about personality traits were also not reliable due to the respondents answers being open to influence of presenting themselves how they aspired to be rather than how others who knew them very well would observe their personalities?

oh wait ….

Here is at least one thread where this paper was discussed….

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404764-teenage-girls-and-middle-aged-men?reply=146950865&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

This part is still relevant :

“It was a self selected survey. That people were offered financial gain to specifically fill out.”

“At least it partially acknowledges one of its major failings.”

”Further, the personality scores used in our investigation were obtained via self-report. Our findings could therefore indicate gender differences in how men and women perceive and report on themselves, which do not necessarily reflect how they are perceived by others or their actual behavioral tendencies.”

“What this research team didn’t note was that personality surveys also have a significant bias because they also will be influenced by how a respondent wants to be perceived. Meaning they will reply to questions how they aspire to be perceived by others.”

“There is also a bias that I was taught in university where there was direct payment specific to a survey that respondents will also answer how they think the team behind the survey want them to answer.”

“If this is all you have and the papers linked, then I think you have a low threshold for evidence in trying to leverage male people into the definition of the female sex class.”

So, to repeat for the xth time. Personality, is not a reliable criteria for categorising human sex classes. The continued effort of trying to make such research fit that purpose continues to fail and can be interpreted as desperation to wheedle some male people into female single sex provisions.

"We both have stripes," the Tiger said,
"So clearly we're the same.
A Zebra is a stripey beast,
So I deserve the name."

"Your teeth and claws are like a Lion's,"
Said Zebra, " and what's more,
You both eat meat. So sorry, mate -
You are a carnivore."

"Who says a Zebra can't eat meat?"
Said Tiger. "Don't be mean.
I'm stripey! And my teeth and claws
Are very seldom seen."

"We know they're there," said Zebra.
So Tiger made a face.
He growled and snarled. The Zebra said,
"Just so. I rest my case."

Well done, you’re almost there! The relevance of Greer's comment is not to say it was wrong but to show how much her implication that typical experiences enable group qualification is aligned with typical gendered inclinations/behaviours enabling group qualification. That is, ITS NOT STEREOTYPING to suggest average commonalities enable group membership that don't apply to every individual.

It's as stupid as saying a class crime category is 'stereotyping' because not all poor people commit crime.

I see where you've gone wrong there bailey. What you are looking at there is a dictionary definition that started as a typical feminist description of gender (socially constructed norms, behaviours, roles etc) then the dictionary makers added identity to reflect the word's use in gender identity ideology. And you're trying to make them both work at once to give us a worst of both worlds view of not even pretending gender identity isn't based on a best fit bucket of stereotypes AND using it to decide who's a man and who's a woman.

Far from defining who is a woman in relation to such gender roles, feminism says they're often oppressive. Women, your assigned role is to stay home, look after the babies and make sure dinner is on the table (not that I see very many TW identifying with that gender role at all!). Women, your assigned role is to spend hours on hair and makeup and look decorative.

It is true that more women stay home and look after babies than men, and that may well never go away as we are the ones who can breastfeed: that does not mean that a woman who doesn't want to do that isn't a woman. Even though most women in our particular culture probably wear makeup at least sometimes, and far fewer men do, the fact I never do doesn't change the fact I'm a woman one bit.

Distributions have spread, even outliers. We don't say a woman who is 6' tall is a man, we don't say a career oriented woman engineer who has short hair, never wears makeup and isn't interested in having kids is a man either. (And see how naff and stereotyped it appears to even type out this stuff? This is what your gendered roles and norms are.)

You do keep repeating that 'gender' is a social construct. The whole premise of trans identity rests on the concept of this innate 'gender identity'. Even though Judith Butler herself said that 'gender' was not innate, it was performative.

If a male person has nurturing feelings ( coded 'feminine' socially) that is not down to him having female biology. It is down to the fact that personality characteristics manifest in both males and females. Personality is not a direct biological feature or manifestation. It is a human feature - some of which may well, though, be shaped by one's biological parents and the inheritance from them. We can certainly seem to inherit personality traits from both of our biological parents ( even when we have never met them).

So you are agreeing on my third point. That the most important thing for someone, in terms of their mental health and well being, is being secure in themselves - and not being overly dependent on social validation or affirmation. which is of course an important point when it comes to an identity rooted in ideas and speculations about 'gender', and which has an expectation or need for others to validate that self identity.

It is far easier to find acceptance and validation when one's self concept is rooted in observable or demonstable realities - that are obvious to most people.
So, for example, regardless of me having short hair and liking to photograph construction sites, I am still recognisably female/a woman.And being female is just a fact of my being on the planet - and not an identity that I have to keep asserting to others.

Personally, i'd have thought it far more 'progressive' to understand and accept that we all can share in a wide range of personal characteristics and personality - regardless of whether we are male or female; men or women.

Isn't transgenderism simply a branch of transhumanism - which seeks to rise above or beyond our earthly human nature ( a nature that is literally rooted in the body and in the bioological/physical instincts and drives)? That sees the body as just a 'meat suit' with a disembodied soul wafting around trying to find a place called home.. Human beings have always struggled with the confines and restrictions of life in a body on Planet Earth ( the human condition).

Two spirit is a obscure specific term to north American indigenous culture rather than cross culturally & gender fluid just means feminine or masculine so either of these don't really apply in terms of differing reference points.

I see, so "cross-culturally" is important to you for a gender to be valid.

Is 'non-binary' accepted cross-culturally?

Those cultures tend to be ones in which social roles are heavily prescribed, and these 'identities' have tended to be a holding category for those that are same sex attracted - which is usually taboo in such cultures. They are considered a sort of 'third sex' and have a specific place and role in that society. Most often they are male - since homosexuality or effeminacy is considered far more of a taboo in men. The women are far more likely forcibly married off.

Ho hum & yet another unqualified GC graces us with their 'expert' opinion on completely uncontroversial broadly accepted psychological frameworks & for the rest of us …the biological bleedin' obvious.

How quickly they forget that GC ideology dictates gendered behavioural differences like 'men are a danger to women' when convenient.

You are really quite desperate. But please, do extrapolate more about what you intended with posting that statement of hers.

Please explain clearly, what exactly is the 'typical' experiences you refer to and please also be clear as to why that commonality exists in the group of people experiencing those 'typical' experiences ?

There is no 'correct term'. Mosaics is probably the term coined by whoever wrote that book or thesis.

There is no compulsion to have to identify with any one social group or category. There have always been 'outsiders' and those that lean towards rejecting group identities. Sex, though, is not an identity - even if one can lean into gender roles.

Maybe go read my comments again & concentrate this time.

No one is suggesting gender identification is prescriptivist, rather its descriptivist of the reality of common behaviours.

How quickly they forget that GC ideology dictates gendered behavioural differences

Quite the contrary. GC ideology fights against the imposition of gendered behavioural differences on the basis of sex.

like 'men are a danger to women' when convenient.

Nothing to do with a dictated gendered behavioural difference. Everything to do with a statistical fact.

'Gender diverse' people are still either men or women, male or female. We are all gender diverse; though in some societies sex based roles are heavily prescribed.

Men are male, women are female....and millennia of human society and experienece has revealed that females, because of their biology and physicality, are more vulnerable in certain types of situation; and that the sex drives of males and females operate differently and with different consequence. we know males tend to be far more promiscuous generally; that fetishes are far more common in object focused males, as but two examples.

Males also are generally bigger and stronger and can over-power females; and they tend to be far more predatory when opportunity strikes. This doesn't mean females are weak- but it does mean that we now have separate sporting categories so that female excellence can be measured and rewarded.

We also have some spaces set aside for the dignity and privacy of female people when they are pre-occupied with their body or with their biological function when in public spaces. Being male or female is about the body - not about the personality.

Men pose a danger to women because of the biological differences between the sexes. Nothing to do with gender.

Please could you explain how knowing that there are two sexes and that one cannot change sex is 'ideology'?

What is and what isn’t a mental health disorder is currently a bit of a mess to be honest. When my DD has to go to the doctor and I need to talk about issues relating to her autism and/ or ADHD I have to select “mental health”. At some stage after the Rapture, we might reach the top of the waiting list for CAHMS. But she’s not mentally ill. She’s autistic. She’s not going to “get better” from being autistic and she didn’t “go down with it”.

So I’d argue the line between mental illness and neurotypes is so muddied as to be useless.

On gender dysphoria, I think there’s a good chance the many girls presenting who are also autistic are exhibiting a mental health disorder brought on by social starvation. Essentially, they are utterly socially rejected and told they are “wrong” and “weird” just for existing. They internalise it and then after a 99 genders talk they start to research online and - that’s the result. Cass made this point. I really hope the social media ban brings the level of referrals down.