Lisa, I encourage you to go to SEGM if you want to engage with clinicians and researchers. I was in Berlin a few weeks ago and I’m sure you would have approved of the tone. Genspect is for parents. And if you are going into the parent space then you’d better be prepared for the rage. They are mostly former Democrats that have had their trust in mainstream institutions violated by gender ideology. The industrial scale gaslighting that these people have endured is hard to comprehend. I promise you that those parents are out of f’s to give about Trump.
There was a journalist from the New York Times there - I’m expecting that there will be a piece from there shortly. Several journalists were in attendance. I’m not sure where it will be next year but yes it is expensive to travel that far. Roberto D’Angelo’s opening statement from this year’s conference is available on X and I highly recommend listening to it.
Sorry I missed you at the conference, Lisa. Re, "re-psychopathologization" being a terrible message: I just said the same thing to my colleagues at DIAG. Any phrase that includes the term "psychopath" is going to scare, confuse, or anger 99% of people who hear it. And any slogan that has to be explained at length is a bad slogan. Plus, it's hard to say!
I don't think I say anywhere that I said it was a terrible message. I reported on what I heard. I think that the term isn't as pejorative as people are making it out to be, but there may be an easier-to-pronounce-and-understand term!
Yes, I'm worrying about this too! I understand what Mia Hughes is trying to say with it, but the phrase does sound demonizing--even if unintentionally!
Yes, it's too much psychobabble jargon to try to sound professional. Just "pathological condition" would be enough. Or maybe a better term could be found to denote a mistaken interpretation of bodily discomfort. The term B.I.D (body identity disorder) already exists, which was used to simply describe discomfort with one's own body; like parts didn't really belong to you. It was mostly applied people who wanted a leg or arm removed, rather than their penis, scrotum or breasts.
If we must use a psychological term, I think "maladaptive coping mechanism" is much better. It's neutral, accurate, and covers just about every type of trans ideation.
A mental illness shouldn't be any more shameful than a physical illness. It just affects the brain instead of another part of the body. But since it can't be seen like a tumor or wound and is often denied by the sufferer, it's much more confounding and scary.
I attended the conference. I am neutral on the phrase, "Extreme Overvalued Belief".
What is transgender? It is a word. It is whatever the adherent decides it is to him or her. or them?
Colin Wright and Christina Buttons spoke about bioessentialism, as did others. Jonni Skinner shared how his doctors told him he was born with a female brain. Jonni didn't have a mental illness, he was lied to by his doctors, by society.
"Gender medicine" is now on-demand as an extreme cosmetic body modification. The goal is whatever the patient wants, or is coerced into believing.
Transgender can be a lifestyle choice, a mental illness, a maladaptive coping strategy, it can be just about anything.
If adults want extreme body modification, they should be counseled, and then it would be self-pay as these are cosmetic procedures.
We need to make room in our society for naturally GNC individuals, as well as those who have medicalized.
Yes, there were Trump supporters and political Christians in attendance at Genspect.
I wish the left was taking the lead on battling gender ideology. They are not. Those who are liberals (or politically homeless Democrats) have been censored my MSM.
Well said. My niece is in a relationship with a young man (early 20s) who thinks he is a woman. My sister claims he is a "well rounded" person, which I personally think isn't quite possible if he is so dissociated from his body that he believes to be something he is not and wants to force everyone around him to affirm his fiction, but I can believe that he overall functions well in his life.
I haven't met him (they live in a different country), but from what I hear it seems that to him, being "trans" is a lifestyle choice that goes along with his veganism (of course he is vegan), and really is a political identity (I don't think he has medicalized, but I'm not sure). I don't think he is properly characterized as mentally ill, even if I think that his lifestyle choice is unhealthy and an imposition of his belief on those around him, but this kind of illiberalism is par for the course in current progressivism and seems perfectly legitimate to people of this mindset. I will be curious to see how long this relationship lasts, and if it lasts, if he will ever desist.
Thanks, Lisa, for saying what I see too—“many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump because of his promise to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country”—and also for talking to Mia about the re-psychopathologization campaign.
I read the FAQs document and I thought #7 is an interesting point (though I doubt it will change minds that are already made up): that redefining trans-identified people as mentally healthy implies that being mentally ill is something shameful, which stigmatizes mental illness itself, and that there is nothing dishonourable in acknowledging that someone is struggling with a psychiatric condition.
"... many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump... to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country."
No they're not. They chose not to collude in the destruction of women's rights by voting for the Democrats who were accomplishing that illiberal goal as well as promoting the ideology that destroys children's bodies and minds. I didn't vote for Trump but I'm absolutely thrilled that we have someone in office who the Left will fight. When Democrats give us perpetual war for profit, theft of middle and working class wealth to the rich, transgender ideology and racism along with breaking the border, the real issue isn't that powerful people are cheating us. It's that rank and file Democrats won't fight back when our own leaders screw us.
"They’re choosing the short-term band-aid of bans and executive orders over longer-term solutions..."
Wrong again. Democrats refusing to vote for Democratic politicians who cheat us are not in a short-term fight. We have long-term plans and solutions as anyone who reads or listens to women and children's advocates here on substack would know. We're lucky we've had this opportunity to take down half of the corrupt politicians in our country. I trust Trump and company will take down his own Party.
Something tells me that as soon as politicians like Gavin Newsom pretend to support women's rights again, desperate Democrats will act like abused spouses, sending the DMC money and berating those of us who can see through their lies to Vote Blue No Matter What They Do to us.
Sally, you say you “trust Trump and company will take down his own Party” but more than that is happening, and by seeming to ignore that, aren’t you illustrating Lisa’s point?
(You don’t see a problem with erosion of checks and balances, shuttering of science research, retreat from the fight against climate disruption?)
Yes, those are problems, but not as big as the ones Trump is working to solve: racism, transgenderism, illegal entry, problems the Democrats are 100% on the wrong side of (or, in the case of climate disruption, throwing money away on useless performative nonsense).
And as an academic scientist for 40 years and a registered Democrat for 50 years, I say that Trump is NOT "shuttering science research", Trump is restoring integrity to science research by ridding it of the ridiculous layers of DEI that were smothering it to death. I could not be happier about that.
Maybe the term repathologization isn’t the best. It’s hard to write, hard to spell, hard to say, and potentially confusing.
I don’t think it should be offensive any more than saying depression is a mental illness, but I get that some disagree. In any event, the sentiment is correct.
I might prefer to say that we need to admit that society made a mistake. The notion that some people are born with a special need to be lied to about their sex and to be chemically and surgically altered in drastic and unhealthy ways in order to appear the opposite sex and in order to have any semblance of happiness is false. Nobody is born in the wrong body.
Rather, some people have a real problem with being the sex they are, and may choose to appear the opposite sex as a maladaptive coping mechanism.
Some such individuals may have good lives despite the assault on their healthy bodies and the daily lies (to themselves and others).
However, as a general rule, it’s not a good idea to reject your healthy body, try to live as if you are the opposite sex, and make yourself less healthy through toxic chemicals and extreme cosmetic surgeries.
Telling children and vulnerable teens this is a good idea was a huge mistake on society’s part.
You are the writer here, so perhaps you can boil all of that down to a nice slogan. I cannot.
Just to add another layer to your comment, the damage done to the body is, in my view, the lesser form of injury. The idea that it is healthy to quarantine a hated aspect of the self and kill it off by adopting a new identity is nonsensical in psychological terms. A healthy person is integrated. These young people are being denied nothing less than the ability to self actualize. Anyone who has lived awhile and has managed to consolidate a mature identity must recognize what a profound loss that is.
I could not agree more. Just as a tiny example, the other day I said my daughter's name. She became upset (still, at age 19), and indicated that each and every time she hears her name, it upsets her. I reminded her that I gave her that name out of love, and that she happily wore it for 12.5 years before she had her "epiphany" that she's "really a boy." She is suffering from the loss/rejection of her childhood self, from the name her entire family, including beloved cousins, called her (and still does) for all of those happy years. She is rejecting parts of herself and that is causing her pain.
Thank you for these sensible words. I agree. I am one of those liberal Democrats who cannot join Republicans even though I think my party is dead wrong on gender issues. There is so much more to fear from Trump and his ilk.
This past weekend I saw a trans girl who is in a play with my daughter, the first time I've ever set eyes on a person who "passes." This is a child who was gender dysphoric from toddler age. She is now a freshman in high school and nobody at her new school suspects. But she still has a penis, and will need to explain that to people she becomes intimate with.
I understood for the first time what the puberty blocker crowd was going for - they want this ability to "pass" for all trans people. The problem, as I explained to my daughter, is that so many confused kids have gotten caught up in this hysteria and some of them will almost certainly make irreversible changes they'll regret.
On the other hand, back to this girl. If I were her parent, I don't know what I would do. She seems happy. She is beautiful and talented. But she will need medical intervention her whole life and will need partners who are comfortable with whatever anatomy she ends up having after very painful surgeries.
There is no easy answer to this. I think about it all the time.
“Happy,” “beautiful,” and “talented” won’t matter if he at some realizes that being sterilized as a child wasn’t a choice he was able to make in any rational sense. Having chronic health problems or maybe a stroke in his 20s or 30s might tip the scales a bit. The short-term thinking on this has caused some pretty horrific harm. I’ll never understand the approval for medically locking in a delusion so long as the immediate results are okay. As a parent, I consider my kid’s entire life, not just the next 5 or even 10 years. The doctors don’t, but of course, they won’t have to witness the fallout.
Inherent to the definition is a lean in towards violent reaction to one’s obsessive belief. In other words, being trans identified crosses over into the pathological when the individual responds aggressively to any challenges to his insistence that he has become a woman.
I am not sure there is a simple palatable way to say it but we need gatekeeping. We need to test an individual’s level of dysphoria and work on alternatives with goal of eliminating damaging chemical and surgical cosmetic changes to healthy bodies.
It is the path towards putting an end to the insistence that “trans women are women.”
No. It’s why the argument is flawed. Genuine trans individuals reacting to dysphoria (or past trauma, or autism, etc) need to be categorized as having a mental illness (there’s no shame in that, I have anxiety) and have that illness addressed. Transitioning has been labeled a wonder cure without any digging into causation. In addition, there are those with Cluster B personality disorders (they tend to be much more in the category of the post - here too, no shame but more difficult to deal with, I have issues with Borderline Personality Disorder myself). The need to rethink “trans” as a symptom of pathology is so the pathology can be dealt with.
I am not sure that arguing for that diagnosis (Extreme Overvalued Belief) gets to the real heart of the matter. The real diagnoses are autism, unresolved sexual trauma, body dysmorphia, anxiety, etc. EOB really only addresses the aggressive autogynophiles. Incidentally AGP is not a stand alone diagnosis…rather it is lumped in with assorted other philias.
We need to return to a place where two things happen…medical transition returns to a last resort method of treated extreme gender dysphoria (where say a man’s male body and cultural expectations of maleness cause genuine stress…this is NOT “born in the wrong body” nor is it inner femaleness) AND in the spirit of historic androgyny we allow individuals to present themselves as they wish and as adults any procedures are deemed cosmetic (not medically necessary) and in no way actually changes one’s biology.
I have likewise had my faith in mainstream institutions shattered. This has led to a domino effect of questioning so many lifelong beliefs. I feel politically homeless.
But after a lifetime of being told that right wing beliefs are entirely baseless and are based on bigotry and designed to oppress others, etc, today I am much more open to their arguments. Maybe structuring life with devotion to family and religion and morality isn't such a bad thing, given how left wing beliefs (liberation as libertinism, autonomy as anomie) seem to have led us into this terrible trap. Maybe capitalism is the best even if flawed way to create a rising tide that lifts all boats. Maybe the welfare state has undermined innovation. Maybe it's worth listening to people making those arguments.
Sure, devotion to family is great. Religion? Not for me but I'm fine with it for thee. Morality? Well, whose morals? The nuclear family is a very recent and modern iteration, formed by technology and capitalism and urban planning. It's not the natural way to be human. I'm all for replicating the clan as much as possible. But I've never been able to find my clan.
While I understand the concern about how “re-psychopathologization“ will be interpreted, continuing to focus on this as a war of words rather than substance is just more distraction. Anyone who will get tied up in analyzing the term would have found other reasons to see any attempt to end this stupid and absurd medical/social disaster as an attack on “trans rights” and “trans people” — neither of which is based on reality.
It does not matter what words are used. Do you honestly believe that the folks who railed about “genital inspections” as a reason to keep stomping on high school girls are just waiting for the perfect phrasing? Or that they were on the verge of supporting even the most minimal effort to rein in this moronic nightmare if not for a bit of iffy optics?
Parents who live this nightmare have front-row seats to the destruction this ideology leaves in its wake. Observing this from the outside is not in any way comparable. It’s just not. It’s a red line. Years of playing nice and mincing words have had relatively minimal impact on the media, the liberal public, or, glaringly, the Dems. Many do not see any reason to celebrate the “headway” made and see it as pathetic. “We can broach the subject in safe company without possibly losing our jobs! Maybe! But we’ll still be labeled bigots! And ostracized! And maybe lose our kids to CPS! Yay!”
You know when the Dems and the media will budge? When The Groups and the medical orgs allow it. Or after a decade or two in the political wastelands. Until then, there is no perfect or imperfect wording. Attempts to placate those who can’t or won’t see that this is a psychological disorder, and should be classified as such, are a waste of energy.
Trans identification has been diagnostically coded as a mental illness in the past and this was not seen as an outrage by anyone. Tens of thousands of people (at least) have been treated by mental health professionals for this condition, with or without medical insurance reimbursing for the psychiatric care. Gender dysphoria was depathologized as a result of political pressure by gender ideologues after the American Psychiatric Association and the WHO were taken over by ultra left activists. Yet, people claiming trans identities are still said to need intensive medical care, even though psychiatric care has essentially been jettisoned. So these people obviously endorse the idea that there is something gravely wrong with them, they just don't want to admit it is a psychiatric illness not a general medical one.
I do have a soft critique of the re-pathologizing campaign, which is that it is almost certainly doomed to fail. The APA and also now the WHO accept or reject diagnoses for various reasons including scientific data, clinical opinions, internal organizational politics, and external national politics that affect the organization. They often refuse to include new diagnoses proposed by highly regarded authorities in some psychiatric specialty, even though those professionals have carried out legitimate research with positive findings. I can't see a path to success for reactivating the older, more accurate clinical opinion on gender dysphoria. A path that is more likely to succeed is to shut down reimbursement for medical transitions by private medical insurers and public funding sources.
Another concern I have is that in the past when men desiring the surgery had to get a psychiatric diagnosis, they often were prepared with a script shared by other men. They knew which phrases and words to use so that they could get the diagnosis. Today, young women share the scripts to get Planned Parenthood to prescribe them testosterone.
In other words, "gatekeeping" via pathologizing might not work if patients learn how to game the system.
Yes, that is a completely realistic concern. From the late 1990's through about 2015 I provided psychological services to adult male patients who presented "gender issues" as their primary concern. Most of these men had transvestic habits that they were conflicted or confused about, but they did not "identify as transgender." Men who had already decided to transition sought my services for the sole purpose of satisfying requirements of the Harry Benjamin standard of care. They were not interested in exploring their "gender" distress or the potential damage that medical transition would inflict on them and their families. After a couple of decades I decided to stop working with people who said they had "gender issues" because so many of them were wasting my time.
There's a lot of 'may's and 'perhaps's in this post. While I'm not an American, I do follow your politics. I'm perplexed by how you claim to like complexity, but then rail against 'the horrors that are happening". (What horrors are you referring to, exactly?)
No US president has been all good or all bad. They all make decisions you like and decisions you do not like. Trump's no different. When he does something 'horrific', call him on it. But until then, scaremongering with modal verbs expressing possibility is something that should be left to the clickbait media.
I generally agree with Mia Hughes, but I understand that we need to tread carefully on this. After 10+ years of telling young people that rejecting your physical body is a perfectly normal variation of human existence, we cannot suddenly declare them all mentally ill.
On the other hand, engaging in this dissociative, maladaptive coping strategy is certainly not healthy, and that needs to be made clear. But lots of people engage in various maladaptive coping strategies without being unable to function in their lives more broadly, and I don't doubt that there are some trans-identified people who are otherwise well-adjusted, just not to the reality of their own sex.
Many, however, are indeed suffering from various mental health conditions, and this is on average not a mentally healthy population. The problem is precisely that this already often unwell and confused population has been offered a solution that will not only make them physically unwell too, but that trans activists and well-meaning liberals have also instilled in them the expectation that society will indulge their subjective belief. When society increasingly says "NO" to affirming their fictional identity, it will lead to a feeling of existential persecution, which in turn will lead to further mental anguish, and also to potential violence, as in the Charlie Kirk murder. Wesley Young expressed this very well in his recent conversation with Andrew Sullivan, which I thought was a fantastic summary of what is happening (even if they unfortunately never got around to discussing the question of the etiologies of traditional male transsexualism, which might have answered Sullivan's question of whether there was a historically small number of people who were "truly trans").
I don't see an easy way out of our current quagmire, given how much of the younger generation has been captured (Young said it's about 725,000 of under-25 year olds who trans-identify). I certainly agree with Young that we need to "stop fucking lying to them", but we need to do it in a compassionate way that helps these kids to find peace and a place in society despite the harm that has been done to their bodies and identities.
I think Genspect's new declaration is needlessly inflammatory (I was at the conference too).
It's too late to re-psychopathologize gender. This will only serve to make trans people feel - not without reason - that they will be locked into mental hospitals. They've always claimed to be a poor, oppressed minority, and now they have some actual ammo. Bad idea.
If I were in charge of the world, I would focus our gender-critical efforts on two fronts:
1) Reverse the laws that allow people to change sex on legal documents.
(The only exception would be people with a DSD, in which they were literally "assigned the wrong sex at birth" due to having ambiguous genitalia. In these cases they'd need to share their medical record with a judge.)
2) Designate gender-affirming care as "cosmetic procedures" to be paid out of pocket.
The combination of these two things, which I'm sure most Americans would agree with, would solve so much of this dystopian gender nightmare we are currently living in. Even schools would have to explain to kids that "you can't change sex, but you can alter your body cosmetically".
I think Genspect has made a huge mistake with this and it's very disappointing. I get what Mia is saying and her justification. I even agree that this IS an extreme overvalued belief and that *something* needs to be done to correct this massive contradiction inherent to "gender affirming medicine" where we are being told the condition is not pathological and it is not abnormal but its treatments are medically necessary and lifesaving and all of society must change how it speaks and functions or else the suicide rate will be as high as 70% (according to the head of the AMA). But I feel strongly this is the wrong approach at the wrong time and this will backfire terribly. Genspect just made it harder for us to have conversations with the very people we need to reach. Professional orgs are going to dig in even deeper and people not in this fight will come out to declare that their friend or family member who is trans is not pathological.
I'm disappointed but not surprised because I've been watching the "gender critical" and "sex realist" side become more extreme and more about the fight than the solution over the year or so. I'm watching more and more of the people I was listening to as reasonable/compassionate/thoughtful voices on our side adopt the methods of trans activists and fighting the wrong fights. This would not have helped us when we were in the thick of it three years ago, and it's not helping us where we are now.
I am very much in agreement with your observation: “many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump because of his promise to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country. They’re choosing the short-term band-aid of bans and executive orders over longer-term solutions, and sacrificing political and legal norms in exchange.” This worries me a lot, too. I welcome with open arms anything more you may write about this.
Lisa, I encourage you to go to SEGM if you want to engage with clinicians and researchers. I was in Berlin a few weeks ago and I’m sure you would have approved of the tone. Genspect is for parents. And if you are going into the parent space then you’d better be prepared for the rage. They are mostly former Democrats that have had their trust in mainstream institutions violated by gender ideology. The industrial scale gaslighting that these people have endured is hard to comprehend. I promise you that those parents are out of f’s to give about Trump.
I'd like to, but once they didn't let me, and the other times it was too expensive to get to!
There was a journalist from the New York Times there - I’m expecting that there will be a piece from there shortly. Several journalists were in attendance. I’m not sure where it will be next year but yes it is expensive to travel that far. Roberto D’Angelo’s opening statement from this year’s conference is available on X and I highly recommend listening to it.
Sorry I missed you at the conference, Lisa. Re, "re-psychopathologization" being a terrible message: I just said the same thing to my colleagues at DIAG. Any phrase that includes the term "psychopath" is going to scare, confuse, or anger 99% of people who hear it. And any slogan that has to be explained at length is a bad slogan. Plus, it's hard to say!
you've expressed my reaction as well.
this is a very poorly conceived and written campaign that seems designed to alarm and alienate people who in fact we want to win over.
I don't think I say anywhere that I said it was a terrible message. I reported on what I heard. I think that the term isn't as pejorative as people are making it out to be, but there may be an easier-to-pronounce-and-understand term!
Yes, I'm worrying about this too! I understand what Mia Hughes is trying to say with it, but the phrase does sound demonizing--even if unintentionally!
Yes, it's too much psychobabble jargon to try to sound professional. Just "pathological condition" would be enough. Or maybe a better term could be found to denote a mistaken interpretation of bodily discomfort. The term B.I.D (body identity disorder) already exists, which was used to simply describe discomfort with one's own body; like parts didn't really belong to you. It was mostly applied people who wanted a leg or arm removed, rather than their penis, scrotum or breasts.
If we must use a psychological term, I think "maladaptive coping mechanism" is much better. It's neutral, accurate, and covers just about every type of trans ideation.
A mental illness shouldn't be any more shameful than a physical illness. It just affects the brain instead of another part of the body. But since it can't be seen like a tumor or wound and is often denied by the sufferer, it's much more confounding and scary.
I believe that's what Mia is trying to say.
I’m not sure yet what I think about it, but these are very good points. Thanks, Jocelyn.
I attended the conference. I am neutral on the phrase, "Extreme Overvalued Belief".
What is transgender? It is a word. It is whatever the adherent decides it is to him or her. or them?
Colin Wright and Christina Buttons spoke about bioessentialism, as did others. Jonni Skinner shared how his doctors told him he was born with a female brain. Jonni didn't have a mental illness, he was lied to by his doctors, by society.
"Gender medicine" is now on-demand as an extreme cosmetic body modification. The goal is whatever the patient wants, or is coerced into believing.
Transgender can be a lifestyle choice, a mental illness, a maladaptive coping strategy, it can be just about anything.
If adults want extreme body modification, they should be counseled, and then it would be self-pay as these are cosmetic procedures.
We need to make room in our society for naturally GNC individuals, as well as those who have medicalized.
Yes, there were Trump supporters and political Christians in attendance at Genspect.
I wish the left was taking the lead on battling gender ideology. They are not. Those who are liberals (or politically homeless Democrats) have been censored my MSM.
Well said. My niece is in a relationship with a young man (early 20s) who thinks he is a woman. My sister claims he is a "well rounded" person, which I personally think isn't quite possible if he is so dissociated from his body that he believes to be something he is not and wants to force everyone around him to affirm his fiction, but I can believe that he overall functions well in his life.
I haven't met him (they live in a different country), but from what I hear it seems that to him, being "trans" is a lifestyle choice that goes along with his veganism (of course he is vegan), and really is a political identity (I don't think he has medicalized, but I'm not sure). I don't think he is properly characterized as mentally ill, even if I think that his lifestyle choice is unhealthy and an imposition of his belief on those around him, but this kind of illiberalism is par for the course in current progressivism and seems perfectly legitimate to people of this mindset. I will be curious to see how long this relationship lasts, and if it lasts, if he will ever desist.
Many parents have observed that a politicized identity precedes the trans identity. It isn’t always about gender dysphoria.
Thanks, Lisa, for saying what I see too—“many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump because of his promise to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country”—and also for talking to Mia about the re-psychopathologization campaign.
I read the FAQs document and I thought #7 is an interesting point (though I doubt it will change minds that are already made up): that redefining trans-identified people as mentally healthy implies that being mentally ill is something shameful, which stigmatizes mental illness itself, and that there is nothing dishonourable in acknowledging that someone is struggling with a psychiatric condition.
"... many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump... to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country."
No they're not. They chose not to collude in the destruction of women's rights by voting for the Democrats who were accomplishing that illiberal goal as well as promoting the ideology that destroys children's bodies and minds. I didn't vote for Trump but I'm absolutely thrilled that we have someone in office who the Left will fight. When Democrats give us perpetual war for profit, theft of middle and working class wealth to the rich, transgender ideology and racism along with breaking the border, the real issue isn't that powerful people are cheating us. It's that rank and file Democrats won't fight back when our own leaders screw us.
"They’re choosing the short-term band-aid of bans and executive orders over longer-term solutions..."
Wrong again. Democrats refusing to vote for Democratic politicians who cheat us are not in a short-term fight. We have long-term plans and solutions as anyone who reads or listens to women and children's advocates here on substack would know. We're lucky we've had this opportunity to take down half of the corrupt politicians in our country. I trust Trump and company will take down his own Party.
Something tells me that as soon as politicians like Gavin Newsom pretend to support women's rights again, desperate Democrats will act like abused spouses, sending the DMC money and berating those of us who can see through their lies to Vote Blue No Matter What They Do to us.
Sally, you say you “trust Trump and company will take down his own Party” but more than that is happening, and by seeming to ignore that, aren’t you illustrating Lisa’s point?
(You don’t see a problem with erosion of checks and balances, shuttering of science research, retreat from the fight against climate disruption?)
Yes, those are problems, but not as big as the ones Trump is working to solve: racism, transgenderism, illegal entry, problems the Democrats are 100% on the wrong side of (or, in the case of climate disruption, throwing money away on useless performative nonsense).
And as an academic scientist for 40 years and a registered Democrat for 50 years, I say that Trump is NOT "shuttering science research", Trump is restoring integrity to science research by ridding it of the ridiculous layers of DEI that were smothering it to death. I could not be happier about that.
Link to the FAQs: https://genspect.substack.com/p/faqs-re-psychopathologization-of
Maybe the term repathologization isn’t the best. It’s hard to write, hard to spell, hard to say, and potentially confusing.
I don’t think it should be offensive any more than saying depression is a mental illness, but I get that some disagree. In any event, the sentiment is correct.
I might prefer to say that we need to admit that society made a mistake. The notion that some people are born with a special need to be lied to about their sex and to be chemically and surgically altered in drastic and unhealthy ways in order to appear the opposite sex and in order to have any semblance of happiness is false. Nobody is born in the wrong body.
Rather, some people have a real problem with being the sex they are, and may choose to appear the opposite sex as a maladaptive coping mechanism.
Some such individuals may have good lives despite the assault on their healthy bodies and the daily lies (to themselves and others).
However, as a general rule, it’s not a good idea to reject your healthy body, try to live as if you are the opposite sex, and make yourself less healthy through toxic chemicals and extreme cosmetic surgeries.
Telling children and vulnerable teens this is a good idea was a huge mistake on society’s part.
You are the writer here, so perhaps you can boil all of that down to a nice slogan. I cannot.
Just to add another layer to your comment, the damage done to the body is, in my view, the lesser form of injury. The idea that it is healthy to quarantine a hated aspect of the self and kill it off by adopting a new identity is nonsensical in psychological terms. A healthy person is integrated. These young people are being denied nothing less than the ability to self actualize. Anyone who has lived awhile and has managed to consolidate a mature identity must recognize what a profound loss that is.
I could not agree more. Just as a tiny example, the other day I said my daughter's name. She became upset (still, at age 19), and indicated that each and every time she hears her name, it upsets her. I reminded her that I gave her that name out of love, and that she happily wore it for 12.5 years before she had her "epiphany" that she's "really a boy." She is suffering from the loss/rejection of her childhood self, from the name her entire family, including beloved cousins, called her (and still does) for all of those happy years. She is rejecting parts of herself and that is causing her pain.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: thank you, Lisa, for being a much-needed voice of reason in an increasingly polarized world.
Thank you for these sensible words. I agree. I am one of those liberal Democrats who cannot join Republicans even though I think my party is dead wrong on gender issues. There is so much more to fear from Trump and his ilk.
This past weekend I saw a trans girl who is in a play with my daughter, the first time I've ever set eyes on a person who "passes." This is a child who was gender dysphoric from toddler age. She is now a freshman in high school and nobody at her new school suspects. But she still has a penis, and will need to explain that to people she becomes intimate with.
I understood for the first time what the puberty blocker crowd was going for - they want this ability to "pass" for all trans people. The problem, as I explained to my daughter, is that so many confused kids have gotten caught up in this hysteria and some of them will almost certainly make irreversible changes they'll regret.
On the other hand, back to this girl. If I were her parent, I don't know what I would do. She seems happy. She is beautiful and talented. But she will need medical intervention her whole life and will need partners who are comfortable with whatever anatomy she ends up having after very painful surgeries.
There is no easy answer to this. I think about it all the time.
“Happy,” “beautiful,” and “talented” won’t matter if he at some realizes that being sterilized as a child wasn’t a choice he was able to make in any rational sense. Having chronic health problems or maybe a stroke in his 20s or 30s might tip the scales a bit. The short-term thinking on this has caused some pretty horrific harm. I’ll never understand the approval for medically locking in a delusion so long as the immediate results are okay. As a parent, I consider my kid’s entire life, not just the next 5 or even 10 years. The doctors don’t, but of course, they won’t have to witness the fallout.
Inherent to the definition is a lean in towards violent reaction to one’s obsessive belief. In other words, being trans identified crosses over into the pathological when the individual responds aggressively to any challenges to his insistence that he has become a woman.
I am not sure there is a simple palatable way to say it but we need gatekeeping. We need to test an individual’s level of dysphoria and work on alternatives with goal of eliminating damaging chemical and surgical cosmetic changes to healthy bodies.
It is the path towards putting an end to the insistence that “trans women are women.”
But does that pave the way to mark every person with this belief as violent? What do you think?
No. It’s why the argument is flawed. Genuine trans individuals reacting to dysphoria (or past trauma, or autism, etc) need to be categorized as having a mental illness (there’s no shame in that, I have anxiety) and have that illness addressed. Transitioning has been labeled a wonder cure without any digging into causation. In addition, there are those with Cluster B personality disorders (they tend to be much more in the category of the post - here too, no shame but more difficult to deal with, I have issues with Borderline Personality Disorder myself). The need to rethink “trans” as a symptom of pathology is so the pathology can be dealt with.
I am not sure that arguing for that diagnosis (Extreme Overvalued Belief) gets to the real heart of the matter. The real diagnoses are autism, unresolved sexual trauma, body dysmorphia, anxiety, etc. EOB really only addresses the aggressive autogynophiles. Incidentally AGP is not a stand alone diagnosis…rather it is lumped in with assorted other philias.
We need to return to a place where two things happen…medical transition returns to a last resort method of treated extreme gender dysphoria (where say a man’s male body and cultural expectations of maleness cause genuine stress…this is NOT “born in the wrong body” nor is it inner femaleness) AND in the spirit of historic androgyny we allow individuals to present themselves as they wish and as adults any procedures are deemed cosmetic (not medically necessary) and in no way actually changes one’s biology.
I have likewise had my faith in mainstream institutions shattered. This has led to a domino effect of questioning so many lifelong beliefs. I feel politically homeless.
But after a lifetime of being told that right wing beliefs are entirely baseless and are based on bigotry and designed to oppress others, etc, today I am much more open to their arguments. Maybe structuring life with devotion to family and religion and morality isn't such a bad thing, given how left wing beliefs (liberation as libertinism, autonomy as anomie) seem to have led us into this terrible trap. Maybe capitalism is the best even if flawed way to create a rising tide that lifts all boats. Maybe the welfare state has undermined innovation. Maybe it's worth listening to people making those arguments.
Sure, devotion to family is great. Religion? Not for me but I'm fine with it for thee. Morality? Well, whose morals? The nuclear family is a very recent and modern iteration, formed by technology and capitalism and urban planning. It's not the natural way to be human. I'm all for replicating the clan as much as possible. But I've never been able to find my clan.
While I understand the concern about how “re-psychopathologization“ will be interpreted, continuing to focus on this as a war of words rather than substance is just more distraction. Anyone who will get tied up in analyzing the term would have found other reasons to see any attempt to end this stupid and absurd medical/social disaster as an attack on “trans rights” and “trans people” — neither of which is based on reality.
It does not matter what words are used. Do you honestly believe that the folks who railed about “genital inspections” as a reason to keep stomping on high school girls are just waiting for the perfect phrasing? Or that they were on the verge of supporting even the most minimal effort to rein in this moronic nightmare if not for a bit of iffy optics?
Parents who live this nightmare have front-row seats to the destruction this ideology leaves in its wake. Observing this from the outside is not in any way comparable. It’s just not. It’s a red line. Years of playing nice and mincing words have had relatively minimal impact on the media, the liberal public, or, glaringly, the Dems. Many do not see any reason to celebrate the “headway” made and see it as pathetic. “We can broach the subject in safe company without possibly losing our jobs! Maybe! But we’ll still be labeled bigots! And ostracized! And maybe lose our kids to CPS! Yay!”
You know when the Dems and the media will budge? When The Groups and the medical orgs allow it. Or after a decade or two in the political wastelands. Until then, there is no perfect or imperfect wording. Attempts to placate those who can’t or won’t see that this is a psychological disorder, and should be classified as such, are a waste of energy.
Trans identification has been diagnostically coded as a mental illness in the past and this was not seen as an outrage by anyone. Tens of thousands of people (at least) have been treated by mental health professionals for this condition, with or without medical insurance reimbursing for the psychiatric care. Gender dysphoria was depathologized as a result of political pressure by gender ideologues after the American Psychiatric Association and the WHO were taken over by ultra left activists. Yet, people claiming trans identities are still said to need intensive medical care, even though psychiatric care has essentially been jettisoned. So these people obviously endorse the idea that there is something gravely wrong with them, they just don't want to admit it is a psychiatric illness not a general medical one.
I do have a soft critique of the re-pathologizing campaign, which is that it is almost certainly doomed to fail. The APA and also now the WHO accept or reject diagnoses for various reasons including scientific data, clinical opinions, internal organizational politics, and external national politics that affect the organization. They often refuse to include new diagnoses proposed by highly regarded authorities in some psychiatric specialty, even though those professionals have carried out legitimate research with positive findings. I can't see a path to success for reactivating the older, more accurate clinical opinion on gender dysphoria. A path that is more likely to succeed is to shut down reimbursement for medical transitions by private medical insurers and public funding sources.
Another concern I have is that in the past when men desiring the surgery had to get a psychiatric diagnosis, they often were prepared with a script shared by other men. They knew which phrases and words to use so that they could get the diagnosis. Today, young women share the scripts to get Planned Parenthood to prescribe them testosterone.
In other words, "gatekeeping" via pathologizing might not work if patients learn how to game the system.
Yes, that is a completely realistic concern. From the late 1990's through about 2015 I provided psychological services to adult male patients who presented "gender issues" as their primary concern. Most of these men had transvestic habits that they were conflicted or confused about, but they did not "identify as transgender." Men who had already decided to transition sought my services for the sole purpose of satisfying requirements of the Harry Benjamin standard of care. They were not interested in exploring their "gender" distress or the potential damage that medical transition would inflict on them and their families. After a couple of decades I decided to stop working with people who said they had "gender issues" because so many of them were wasting my time.
There's a lot of 'may's and 'perhaps's in this post. While I'm not an American, I do follow your politics. I'm perplexed by how you claim to like complexity, but then rail against 'the horrors that are happening". (What horrors are you referring to, exactly?)
No US president has been all good or all bad. They all make decisions you like and decisions you do not like. Trump's no different. When he does something 'horrific', call him on it. But until then, scaremongering with modal verbs expressing possibility is something that should be left to the clickbait media.
I generally agree with Mia Hughes, but I understand that we need to tread carefully on this. After 10+ years of telling young people that rejecting your physical body is a perfectly normal variation of human existence, we cannot suddenly declare them all mentally ill.
On the other hand, engaging in this dissociative, maladaptive coping strategy is certainly not healthy, and that needs to be made clear. But lots of people engage in various maladaptive coping strategies without being unable to function in their lives more broadly, and I don't doubt that there are some trans-identified people who are otherwise well-adjusted, just not to the reality of their own sex.
Many, however, are indeed suffering from various mental health conditions, and this is on average not a mentally healthy population. The problem is precisely that this already often unwell and confused population has been offered a solution that will not only make them physically unwell too, but that trans activists and well-meaning liberals have also instilled in them the expectation that society will indulge their subjective belief. When society increasingly says "NO" to affirming their fictional identity, it will lead to a feeling of existential persecution, which in turn will lead to further mental anguish, and also to potential violence, as in the Charlie Kirk murder. Wesley Young expressed this very well in his recent conversation with Andrew Sullivan, which I thought was a fantastic summary of what is happening (even if they unfortunately never got around to discussing the question of the etiologies of traditional male transsexualism, which might have answered Sullivan's question of whether there was a historically small number of people who were "truly trans").
I don't see an easy way out of our current quagmire, given how much of the younger generation has been captured (Young said it's about 725,000 of under-25 year olds who trans-identify). I certainly agree with Young that we need to "stop fucking lying to them", but we need to do it in a compassionate way that helps these kids to find peace and a place in society despite the harm that has been done to their bodies and identities.
I think Genspect's new declaration is needlessly inflammatory (I was at the conference too).
It's too late to re-psychopathologize gender. This will only serve to make trans people feel - not without reason - that they will be locked into mental hospitals. They've always claimed to be a poor, oppressed minority, and now they have some actual ammo. Bad idea.
If I were in charge of the world, I would focus our gender-critical efforts on two fronts:
1) Reverse the laws that allow people to change sex on legal documents.
(The only exception would be people with a DSD, in which they were literally "assigned the wrong sex at birth" due to having ambiguous genitalia. In these cases they'd need to share their medical record with a judge.)
2) Designate gender-affirming care as "cosmetic procedures" to be paid out of pocket.
The combination of these two things, which I'm sure most Americans would agree with, would solve so much of this dystopian gender nightmare we are currently living in. Even schools would have to explain to kids that "you can't change sex, but you can alter your body cosmetically".
I think Genspect has made a huge mistake with this and it's very disappointing. I get what Mia is saying and her justification. I even agree that this IS an extreme overvalued belief and that *something* needs to be done to correct this massive contradiction inherent to "gender affirming medicine" where we are being told the condition is not pathological and it is not abnormal but its treatments are medically necessary and lifesaving and all of society must change how it speaks and functions or else the suicide rate will be as high as 70% (according to the head of the AMA). But I feel strongly this is the wrong approach at the wrong time and this will backfire terribly. Genspect just made it harder for us to have conversations with the very people we need to reach. Professional orgs are going to dig in even deeper and people not in this fight will come out to declare that their friend or family member who is trans is not pathological.
I'm disappointed but not surprised because I've been watching the "gender critical" and "sex realist" side become more extreme and more about the fight than the solution over the year or so. I'm watching more and more of the people I was listening to as reasonable/compassionate/thoughtful voices on our side adopt the methods of trans activists and fighting the wrong fights. This would not have helped us when we were in the thick of it three years ago, and it's not helping us where we are now.
I am very much in agreement with your observation: “many who abandoned the Democrats for Trump because of his promise to crack down on gender identity are blinding themselves to the horrors of what else is happening in our country. They’re choosing the short-term band-aid of bans and executive orders over longer-term solutions, and sacrificing political and legal norms in exchange.” This worries me a lot, too. I welcome with open arms anything more you may write about this.