Nice illustration, but no! You do not need dysphoria to be transgender. Transgender is an umbrella term for gender variant people in general, and not all of them suffer from gender dysphoria.
Heck, according to the most recent edition of the American psychiatric manual, the DSM-5, you do not even have to suffer from gender dysphoria to be classified as transsexual (meaning someone who has transitioned or need to transition).
The same applies to the brand new WHO health manual, the ICD-11, which does not use the terms “transgender” or “gender dysphoria”. The term “gender incongruence” does not require dysphoria. It is even open to non-binary identities.
By all means, do be critical towards the health establishment, but do not think that you get to decide what transgender means, especially not when you try to exclude and marginalize other trans people. There is enough suffering in our community as it is. There is no need to help our enemies.
Besides castration or implants, doctors sometimes recommended “bladder washing” and “rectal massage” as other forms of treatment. Bladder washing involved the doctor inserting a catheter to flush out the bladder with nitrate or silver solution, while rectal massage involved a doctor inserting a small device into the rectum to massage the prostate. One doctor hypothesized that rectal massage could “kill the homosexual cells” in the prostate so that “heterosexual cells” could take their place. However, by 1913, some doctors began questioning the efficacy of these procedures.
You might think that these doctors were complete imbeciles, but this and similar procedure were actually quite common. They also tried to cure “hysteria” in women (often caused by sexual frustration) by massaging their genitals. The release this caused led them to believe they had helped the uterus find a proper place in their bodies. The female patients, for some reason, failed to cure them of this misconception.
Sigmund Freud didn’t think you could cure homosexuals, nor did he think it was necessary. His followers, however, were not that tolerant.
The American Psychiatric Association officially defined homosexuality as a mental disorder in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), published in 1952. By the late 1950s, conversion therapy entered what psychiatrist Jack Drescher called its “gilded age.” Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts such as Sandor Rado, Irving Bieber, Lionel Ovesey and Charles Socarides proffered new theories and possibilities for therapeutic cures, which in addition to talk therapy sometimes included electroshock therapy and transorbital lobotomies.
This research was a reflection of what was considered social and political “problems”:
The state puzzled over what to do as sexual and gender variations become more visible during the early part of the 20th century. By World War II, the state had begun to enact explicit regulatory measures that linked heterosexuality with claims to citizenship and the benefits that came with it: access to welfare, government loans, the ability to serve in the military and the right to assemble, all of which the state increasingly denied to LGBTQ people. At the same time, legislatures began passing what came to be known as sexual-psychopath laws that were often used to target LGBTQ people. If convicted, they were sent to prison or mental institutions.
And that, my friends, is why so many gay and transgender people till this day struggle with suppression, self-contempt and denial.
Raina Lipsitz decided to look into the similarities between the current anti-transgender “bathroom laws” being proposed in the US, and the former racist Jim Crow laws. She found a lot of similarities:
The bathroom laws targeting transgender people and African Americans have both been portraying the relevant groups as “sexual predators”.
In both cases, the supporters try to portray the victims as some kind of contamination (which was also Hitler’s tactic when portraying Jews):
Phoebe Godfrey, associate professor in residence in the sociology department at the University of Connecticut, tells me that when it comes to the anti-trans movement and the anti-segregation movement, “the parallels are direct and obvious.“ She explains: "White parents were hysterical about the integration of bathrooms from the point of view of protecting white women … The language is very similar. It’s all about uncleanliness, disease, intrusion, and a sense of personal space and privacy being violated by The Other.”
Many white people also feared that desegregation would encourage interracial marriage and thus lead to the eventual destruction of “whiteness” itself. The parallell to the TERF fear of transgender women undermining the concept of woman is clear.
During World War II there was resistance to hiring black women at production plants because they would have to share bathrooms with white women. They were considered to be diseased. The idea of having black soldiers also met fierce resistance, in the way Trump tries to ban transgender troops today.
The anti-trans propaganda insists that trans women (and to a lesser degree trans men) are mentally ill and emotionally unstable, and may “infect” others – especially kids – with their condition.
Lipsitz writes:
By now, we know that the desegregation of public bathrooms did not lead to the increased sexual victimization of — or a syphilis outbreak among — white women. Is there any credible evidence that allowing transgender people to use whichever bathroom they want will increase violence against women and children?
The answer is, of course, no.
In both cases the supporters of this kind of discrimination refer to traditions and “the way we do things” (which basically means upholding existing power structures and prejudices).
Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe professor of American economic history at Stanford University says to Lipsitz that in the 1960s, “establishments feared that desegregation of lunch counters and restrooms would drive white customers away. But after the fact, customers got used to it in a matter of days or weeks — maybe a year or two in smaller towns and rural areas.”
Prejudice is overcome when people see that “The Other” is very much like themselves. This is what happened when gay men and lesbian women become more visible too. They were clearly not the perverted, degenerate, predators portrayed by the bigots.
And that is also how the right wing extremists and their “radical feminist” allies will be defeated.
Woow! It takes a long stretch of imagination to make this argument sound even remotely rational.
The trans-exclusionary “radical” feminists are now actively using extreme right- wing arguments and propaganda to invalidate and marginalize transgender people. They are echoing the arguments of Trump, Putin, right wing extremists and and fascist, to the point of joining them in the fight against trans people.
I am glad to say that the great majority of feminists are supporting their transgender sisters. They understand that the marginalized and oppressed should support each other.
Being trans is NOT fun, having dysphoria is NOT fun! It’s freaking horrible and exhausting and I don’t understand why you would CHOOSE this particular life if YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR GENDER. You’re making this community into a joke. You’re making actual trans people into a joke and not being taken seriously. Think about this, and STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
It’s so embarrassing that being in the LGBT community, especially being trans, has become a ‘trend’. Dysphoria is a MENTAL DISORDER. More people really need to talk about this. All my respect to the youtuber Kalvin Garrah who actually spoke up about this and encourages more trans youtubers to do the same. THANK YOU (and also thanks to Sam Collins).
We’re just out here trying to live our lives and do what needs to be done to make ourselves more comfortable with ourselves and to be happy. Take your attention-seeking ass somewhere else and dye your hair or something instead, something that doesn’t affect other people in a negative way.
NO, YOU DO NOT NEED DYSPHORIA TO BE TRANS - SERIOUSLY!
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, WPATH, defines transgender as “a diverse group of individuals who cross or transcend culturally defined categories of gender. The gender identity of transgender people differs to varying degrees from the sex they were assigned at birth”
Stop repeating the toxic arguments of transphobic TERFs and extremist religious fanatics. Being transgender is not a trend, and it never has been.
Given the transphobia trans people face in our communities, and the bigotry and harassment that follow from breaking with the gender stereotypes, no one will chose to become transgender or non-binary. No one does.
The reason more transgender people come out than before, is simply that society have become more tolerant and that they have online arenas which accepts diversity and where they can discuss their feelings. They may not all suffer from gender dysphoria, but there is always something real that makes them question their own gender identity.
You should respect that. I find the very idea that you are embarrassed by other transgender people mind-boggling and extremely offensive.
The Daily Beast presents a video produced by the so-called American College of Pediatricians, a political front for transphobic American doctors.
The ACP has some 200 members, compared to American Academy of Pediatricians, which has 60 000 members. The American Academy of Pediatricians supports transgender people actively.
The video is full of factual errors, and Jay Michaelson of The Daily Beast gives a good summary here.
Here is one relevant quote from the article:
You might notice that the video doesn’t feature any trans people speaking about their experiences. That’s because if it did, those experiences would be very different from what Dr. Cretella says they are. She describes gender dysphoria as simply thinking or feeling oneself to be of the other gender, and then strolling into a doctor’s office to say so.
That is not what gender dysphoria is or how it is diagnosed. As described in the DSM-5, the diagnostic manual for mental health, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria requires a persistent gender identity (not some occasional whim), symptoms that last for at least six months, severe discomfort in one’s body, a pattern of behavior, and other factors.
Trans people and LGBTQA activists may want to bookmark this article and refer to it if people refer to the video.
As soon as people start talking about “normal”, you realize that they are not referring to the real world, but an imaginary world, the world as it should be, normally defined by a pretty narrow understanding of what their parents have told them, or their friends.
Normal is basically what your own tribe think is safe and predictable. It is a word people use to police and control others.
Transgender people have to be suppressed, because their very existence threaten the local tribe’s view of "normal”.
The fact is that there are no “normal people”, only people who believe they are normal. They are the dangerous ones.
So you think being XY make you a man? Religious fundamentalists and TERFs most certainly think so.
But think again. There are actually quite a few intersex women out there that can tick off having XY chromosomes and testis. They are still women, identify as women, feel like women and are recognized as such.
In the following video Emily Quinn talks about how being intersex means for her.
I know that there are those who say the existence of intersex people is of no relevance to the transgender debate.
I agree that it is not helpful to define transgender people in general as intersex (even if brain research indicate that trans people are in some ways “wired” as their target sex), but their very existence proves one very important thing: Chromosomes and genitals do not equal gender.
If Emily Quinn can be recognized as a woman in spite of having one Y chromosome as well as testis, we have to accept that chromosomes are not gender destiny.
This does not mean that gender has no biological basis. It probably has. But gender identity formation is clearly the end result of a mix of a lot of different factors – genes, chromosomes, hormones, epigenetic factors, the environment, psychology and culture.
In XY women, for instance, the body is unable to respond to the androgen in the body. They may not know that they have a Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, as they appear like other women both to themselves and others. In this case hormone insensitivity trumps chromosomes.
In a similar way hormones and other factors may create a brain that insists that it is a woman, even if the body is male. And you might get a wide variety of gender identities, nonbinary included, in the same way there are a wide variety of intersex people.
