Pique resilience was the first (extremely brave) group to speak out. They put faces and voices to what I believed was happening to my child. I will forever be thankful! But to be honest Lisa, I’m so so tired. I’ll be somewhat happy when and if this all turns around but so many people have failed my daughter (probably including me) for so long that I just don’t trust that these institutions are searching for what’s really best for our kids.
I don't know how old we'll be when our society catches up. Institutions are still failing my children today. I know they won't be children anymore - maybe their children won't be children anymore - by the time institutions stop silencing desisters. Medical organizations are searching for what's really best for our kids the same way colleges are seeking to produce alumni who think for themselves and act from sound principles.
All you have to do is look to the APA's past for your answer. Take the repressed/recovered memory/satanic ritual abuse scandal of the 80s and 90s and the millions of patient lives it destroyed by psychologists encouraging and even actively planting false memories of horrific abuse. These psychologists destroyed the mental health of vast numbers of patients and destroyed countless. People were even wrongly convicted and sent to jail. There was no science to back up the idea of repressed/recovered memories. Researchers were very vocally saying it was junk science and harmful practice. Many of the abuse claims went beyond the realm of things that could actually even happen. A few psychologists got sued and actually lost in court. Insurance companies changed their coverage because of it. It was a scandal and shame for the APA of massive proportions. Have they made any serious efforts to address this? No. Even after all this, almost 80% of clinical psychologists believe in recovered memories. They had no problems with all the lives they destroyed with this scandal they created. Why would they care or do anything different because of a few detransitioners or because they're being shown research that doesn't support what they're doing? That hasn't stopped them in the past. Past lawsuits they list didn't change their beliefs. They haven't done anything to address the harm they did to recovered memory patients and their families. We are deluding ourselves if we think they're going to own up to this scandal and change their practices.
Wouldn't it be interesting if certain 'recovered memory' therapists are now gender affirming therapists? The first transgender person I ever met would say things like "When I was a little girl..." I remember thinking, did you identify as a girl at the time, or is this a 'recovered memory' that emerged in therapy?
Actually, that's the case. Diane Ehrensaft is a big player in the trannie mutilation circles in CA. In the 1990s, she was a big player in the "satanic kindergarten" panic.
That's right, she was involved in the McMartin Preschool trial, one of the longest and most expensive trials in US history: 6 years, over $16 million, no convictions. Now she says that babies who pull off their barrettes and kick at the bottom of their onesies are trying to communicate something about their gender.
Have you listened to this podcast series about the recovered memory scandal? This is the future for the APA and the gender scandal - the victims forgotten and no accountability for the therapists.
You might want to try The Myth of Repressed Memory by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. It's not about repressed memories, but I highly recommend The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O'Sullivan. You will recognize so much about the social contagion of ROGD in there, but the chapter on Havana Syndrome shows how doctors will dig in, refuse to back down, and face no consequences. Another similar phenomenon to look into is the facilitated communication scandal (there's a Netflix documentary called Tell Them That You Love Me about one particular disturbing case). There are overlaps between the FC scandal and recovered memories where facilitators "discovered" hidden abuse using this completely bogus intervention. Even after FC was soundly discredited using well-controlled experiments, it keeps resurfacing in new forms under new names (rapid prompting, spelling to communicate). Under its new guise, controlled testing doesn't happen because it's now called "ableist" to question it
Also check out the podcast series Hysterical. It's so important for understanding this. You'll see there are no consequences to the people spreading that hysteria. Another example is the mass psychogenic illness of police officers believing they've been poisoned by touching fentanyl. Those myths still get spread without pushback even after mainstream media reported on the myth.
And don't forget about how AAP screwed up with peanuts, creating thousands of serious allergies by telling parents to avoid peanuts until age 3, w/o any scientific basis for this guess. Of course, they had good intentions, but they were WRONG.
The Pique Resilience was the first sane think I found in 2020 when my daughter went down the rabbit hole. I was so impressed with their honesty and candor, and it cemented for me the fact that my child had a mental health issue. I am forever grateful to those 4 courageous women. The record shows them to be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. These so called medical/mental health associations are nothing more than trade groups that seek to monetarily enrich their memberships. And so far, they've accomplished their goals and lined their pockets with membership dues. The lawsuits will be the only way to shut them up and shut them down.
For me it was 4th Way Now. I'll be forever grateful to all those early whistle-blowers. They stuck their necks out all alone when it wasn't fashionable.
Hi Lisa, thanks for this article. By 'competent' they meant 'compliant'. There's a dissonance between 'psychological science', in the limited sense that is possible, and affirming individual belief.
The phrase "society attacks them for just trying to be themselves" is interesting, because most people don't have to try at being themselves. It might be more accurate to say "society is sceptical about them trying to be what they are not".
Have you looked into the Victorian movement of 'Christian Science' for any parallels with 'gender affirming care'? As I understand it, this sect believes that reality is an illusion and that illness can be cured with the power of prayer, which is a kind of affirmation. The comparison might help explain why the United States appears particularly susceptible to gender quackery.
You're welcome, I hope it proves a fruitful line of enquiry. While on the surface gender affirmation is a secular movement, concepts such as 'gendered soul' or 'two spirit' are clearly outside of the remit of science, psychological or otherwise. I can anticipate some gender practitioners claiming religious exemption from medical regulation, if they are ever stopped.
I recently posted a review of The Well of Loneliness on my Substack. Radclyffe Hall was a heretical Catholic who was satirised in her time as having a Jesus complex. My working hypothesis is that liberation theology from Latin America has combined with other religious traditions including radical Protestantism to create the first religion of the Internet. In that faith, transgender people are specially selected by the Almighty (born in the wrong body) for suffering and sacrifice, which makes them holy martyrs. To gain status in the faith, an act of self-harm is required. Detransitioners are the apostates. I guess you know who the witches are in this analogy!
So according to this hypothesis, when we argue that girls should not have elective mastectomies to resolve transient identity issues, for example, we are interfering with religious practice, which is why the response from so-called 'allies' is irrational. If the witches are allowed any influence, their arguments might prevent those girls from becoming their 'authentic selves', i.e. confirmed in the religion, with potential to join the 'elect'.
I accept that there are political and economic motivations for the gender industry, which others have written about, but I don't think they fill out the whole picture.
I agree that gender ideology functions as a religion, as many have pointed out. I'm not an expert in religion, but as Helen Joyce points out early in her important book Trans, the root of this delusion is dualism, which is far older than Christian Scientists. They are simply one fringe expression of it. Dualism is the notion that we have a body and a soul (or spirit, or essence) and that they are two different things. Dualism is inherent in Christianity and many other religious beliefs/cults. Dualism feels intuitively true to most people--and maybe, destructive as it can be, there is some way it IS true or useful for being in the world. I'm not sure about that. The notion is ubiquitous and persistent in cultures across the globe. I know it is deeply baked into our culture, into my own psyche and pretty much everyone I know, even if we don't think of ourselves as religious. So the relatively new religion or cult of trans was easy for people to absorb, because they already believed in dualism, that their bodies are a different thing than some essential but ineffable part of themselves "inside."
Quite right, it's a much older issue. My interest in 'Christian Science' is that it's relatively new, it seems to have grown worldwide from a very small base, it's heretical and quackish, and yet it has carved out legal protections for itself. I am glad to have been raised in a community which allowed antibiotics.
You are right--the American Psychological Association (and the other APA--the American Psychiatric Association) have known for much longer than five years that "trans" is a lie and a fraud.
I wrote an article about the “Report of the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance,” published in 2008 before the change to "gender dysphoria" in the DSM.
They flat out admitted they couldn't even use "sex" and "gender" consistently or correctly.
It didn't stop them though! Only lawsuits will do that. This is worse than lobotomies.
“They flat out admitted they couldn't even use "sex" and "gender" consistently or correctly.” This seems to be an ongoing, and increasing, problem, including in media reporting in many spheres.
The headline and subhead read: “The gender gap in heart disease research, treatment leaves women behind/Women are more likely to die after a first heart attack or stroke than men.”
The first sentence is this: “A simple difference in the genetic code — two X chromosomes vs. one X chromosome and one Y chromosome — can lead to major differences in heart disease.”
It appears to me that the term “gender” no longer has a coherent meaning. Do you have a thought about how it should be defined?
It's a linguistics term that applies to words only. John Money knew that, and he knew he would cause confusion by applying it to humans.
It has no application to humans at all. The best thing to do is simply stop using it and use the correct term (one always exists). The problem can be solved basically instantly when that occurs.
I agree that the proper use of “gender” should be solely linguistic—and for that reason, in my own writing and speaking, I avoid using the term to the fullest extent possible. Unfortunately for all of us, the term “gender” long ago escaped its proper bounds and is used in a wide, and often bewildering, variety of ways. Sometimes, it is used as a “polite” synonym for sex; other times it is used to describe sex-role stereotypes, the list goes on and on. While I personally share your view that clarity would be best served by dispensing with use of the term “gender” altogether, I do not at present see how we can get back to that, even among those of us who are sex-realist. Perhaps Lisa can shed some light on this. I would certainly find that most welcome.
Imagine someone in 1951 saying "Well, all doctors just do lobotomies, I don't see how we can stop it!" or in 1947 "Doctors advertise cigarettes, I guess it's impossible to stop it!" or in 2001 "All doctors prescribe Oxycontin for everything, I guess we can't stop it!'
This is how things change. This is largely a language battle.
You, as a person, just stop using it. Tell other people about it. Once it spreads, everyone will see how stupid this is, and that's the end of that.
If you mean sex, say it. If you mean stereotypes, say it. Ask other people what they mean. Do it in your own writing.
Hey, Kat, you are preaching to the converted about use of the term. But not everyone is on board with this, and I would like to know more about the thinking, particularly Lisa’s, as she has thought about this long and hard. That’s all I am trying to say here.
Psychiatrist here. We know. I mean, the majority of us, over the age of 40, with at least 10 years of experience post-residency. Everyone I talk to about this privately knows that that trans is a mental illness and not just benign natural variant. The price of speaking out is very high and no one wants to have their career ruined.
I am a therapist, an older therapist. Never would it be therapeutic for me to allow the maladaptive behaviors of a client to mold my approach. I use evidenced based practices because they are best practice and because it is my ethical duty. Gender Affirmitive Care is not evidenced based practice, it is often unethical, and in many situations it is a permanent "solution" to a very temporary problem. I know many of my peers wont' like this but in many cases Gender Affirmative Care is the pyramid scheme of modern therapy, "many recruited new members..." Big business with scant evidence. Notice please, I said "many" and "often." I am not transphobic, just very cautious around this therapeutic intervention that is more progessive than therapeutically sound.
I'll be forever grateful to all those early alarm-bell ringers, Pique Resilience, 4th Way Now, and the early journalists. They stuck their necks out seemingly all alone when it was really, really hard.
"Gender affirming care" and "wrong body since birth" are concepts completely contrary to long-accepted stages of child development from Jean Piaget, still up on an NIH webpage. Retroactive continuity, "ret-con" is the operative thought process in "gender therapy" from the moment a confused teen walks into the session. The child, or adult, for that matter, is asked to think back to earliest memory, to imbue those impressionistic visual images with language that does not exist at the earliest stages of development. Outrageously, WPATH, ACLU, HRC and other advocacy groups busy themselves with suing state penal systems to move convicted rapists and murderers who claim female identity into life in prison and 25 to life "as a woman." Further, we find that the ret-con myth does not hold up, exactly proven by Pique Resistance and the long list of detransitioners. Ray Blanchard and James Cantor, supposed "giants in the field" made conjecture decades ago, that there might be a genetic link from father to son in the "transsexual" diagnosis, using Sam Kaye and his father as their case study. At that time, 25 years ago, Sam was calling himself Maya. He's now completely detransitioned, regretting the choice, the damage to his body and the pain he caused his mother, who divorced his crossdressing father. More on Sam of Call Me Sam channel:
"How long until we get to the point where these mental health and medical advocacy groups actually listen?" Based on these results and others, I don't think their mandate is or ever will be to "listen" to actual people being harmed. These are business groups, not patient-centered groups, and there is money to be made from continuing "gender affirming care" at all costs to young people. Their members want to continue to do this, and that is who leadership listens to. They can only be forced to change through arduous lawsuits or negative public perception. I do not think they will ever apologize, even if and when changes happen. Sadly, it seems likely that there will only ever be partial wins to protect children and young people. My bet: 5-6 more long years before these changes begin to manifest.
Just the opinion of one rando whose only qualifications come from his time spent down the rabbit hole on this for the past six months. Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of preference falsification around these issues among the members of these organizations (Dr. Julia Mason's interviews around her experience trying to get the AAP to do a systematic review are a good example of this), meaning there are many, many AAP members who are opposed to medicalizing youth with gender dysphoria and keep there opinions to themselves out of fear, while the ones in support are free to speak as freely as they like. Ideologies that are propped up by preference falsification have a tendency to collapse suddenly and unexpectedly. My best guess is that some combination of lawsuits and/or release of damning information will eventually cause a critical mass of people to feel comfortable speaking out, enabling more and more people to speak out and so on until everyone opposed to these practices feels free to say so. That's when the house of cards that his gender affirming care for minors finally collapses. I've been telling myself 3-5 years until this happens, but honestly, it could happen in six months too, maybe even sooner. But my best guess is that when it does we will be surprised at how quickly it happened. Just seems to be the way these things go.
That sounds like a reasonable prediction! Good point that many AAP members are actually opposed but feel they can't say anything, so they are not actually representing a large share of their members. I sure hope it's more like 6 months, or way less than my guess. Just feeling a bit pessimistic because (especially since Cass) it seems like there's enough for it all to collapse right now, but that hasn't happened.
For context, Cass (and especially how it was ignored by mainstream US media) was how I "peaked" and tumbled down the rabbit hole, and now I'm out here strategically dropping hints with my normie lefty friends that all is not well with this as we've been led to believe. A few of them might look further and find out what we've learned.
In other words, even these disclosures don't appear to change anything, I'm confident that each one is silently chipping away at the foundation of support holding all this up, and that this is a big part of how it will eventually collapse.
There's a moderate non-MAGA conservative outlet called The Dispatch (highly recommended) I started following a few years ago to broaden viewpoint diversity in my media diet. They covered the release of the final report when it came out in April and that's when I first heard of it. If I weren't following them I may well still be in the dark about all of this.
Not a question you asked, but another point I think you may appreciate: learning about Cass finally showed me how much the legacy left-leaning media (NPR in particular) has lied/gaslit/censored information on this and other culture issues for the last several years, and the sense of anger and betrayal I feel about this is very real and very strong. Your writing about feeling let down by the left really resonates with me.
NPR is shameless in the complete lies it pushes about tranniemadness. Other issues that it continues to lie, over and over, about include immigration, crime by black actors, BLM, the "peacefulness" of marches about Floyd. Nothing escapes the Woke slant. Many of the reporters on the illegals beat are illegals, and they are pushing the line to continue support for illegals in the stupid left.
Yes, I agree with you. Every bit makes a difference. And all the private conversations perhaps make the biggest difference. For those of us who "peaked" 4 or 5 years ago, the road to what must change just can feel very, very slow!
SOOO much of this is a "consensus delusion", like the "new clothes" of the Emperor. So long as everyone cooperated in maintaining the fiction, the magical invisible suit was believed to be there. But now voices are being raised, more and more, to call out questions. The balloon is punctured.
My guess is that back then the Peak Resilience people were seen by the APA as not "true trans" and assumed to be outliers rather than as representative of a large cohort. Today we know that cohort is much larger now than it was then.
The page linked to for an explanation of gender constancy dismisses the theory as outdated (it is also full of typos):
"It is important to note that when the theory of fender constancy was developed, it was a different time in history. The theory does not reflect current social norms surrounding gender far. For example, the theory does not account for individuals who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or gender fluid."
I don't totally understand the theory, but it seems to say that when children reach gender constancy they have learned to perform the roles expected of their sex. It doesn't say they've learned that sex is about bodies, but rather that they've learned that their gender roles are fixed. Such a theory doesn't seem to support the beliefs of either the trans ideologues or gender skeptics.
“those seeking care related to gender nonconformity”
You'd think I'd be immune to it all by now, but the fact that anyone - much less the leading mental health professionals - thinks gender nonconformity needs "care." FFS!!!
Pique resilience was the first (extremely brave) group to speak out. They put faces and voices to what I believed was happening to my child. I will forever be thankful! But to be honest Lisa, I’m so so tired. I’ll be somewhat happy when and if this all turns around but so many people have failed my daughter (probably including me) for so long that I just don’t trust that these institutions are searching for what’s really best for our kids.
I don't know how old we'll be when our society catches up. Institutions are still failing my children today. I know they won't be children anymore - maybe their children won't be children anymore - by the time institutions stop silencing desisters. Medical organizations are searching for what's really best for our kids the same way colleges are seeking to produce alumni who think for themselves and act from sound principles.
All you have to do is look to the APA's past for your answer. Take the repressed/recovered memory/satanic ritual abuse scandal of the 80s and 90s and the millions of patient lives it destroyed by psychologists encouraging and even actively planting false memories of horrific abuse. These psychologists destroyed the mental health of vast numbers of patients and destroyed countless. People were even wrongly convicted and sent to jail. There was no science to back up the idea of repressed/recovered memories. Researchers were very vocally saying it was junk science and harmful practice. Many of the abuse claims went beyond the realm of things that could actually even happen. A few psychologists got sued and actually lost in court. Insurance companies changed their coverage because of it. It was a scandal and shame for the APA of massive proportions. Have they made any serious efforts to address this? No. Even after all this, almost 80% of clinical psychologists believe in recovered memories. They had no problems with all the lives they destroyed with this scandal they created. Why would they care or do anything different because of a few detransitioners or because they're being shown research that doesn't support what they're doing? That hasn't stopped them in the past. Past lawsuits they list didn't change their beliefs. They haven't done anything to address the harm they did to recovered memory patients and their families. We are deluding ourselves if we think they're going to own up to this scandal and change their practices.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2024.2305870#abstract
Wouldn't it be interesting if certain 'recovered memory' therapists are now gender affirming therapists? The first transgender person I ever met would say things like "When I was a little girl..." I remember thinking, did you identify as a girl at the time, or is this a 'recovered memory' that emerged in therapy?
Actually, that's the case. Diane Ehrensaft is a big player in the trannie mutilation circles in CA. In the 1990s, she was a big player in the "satanic kindergarten" panic.
That's right, she was involved in the McMartin Preschool trial, one of the longest and most expensive trials in US history: 6 years, over $16 million, no convictions. Now she says that babies who pull off their barrettes and kick at the bottom of their onesies are trying to communicate something about their gender.
Have you listened to this podcast series about the recovered memory scandal? This is the future for the APA and the gender scandal - the victims forgotten and no accountability for the therapists.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-memory-hole-podcast/id1707697886
I haven't listened to this podcast yet, Puzzle Therapy.
I still see people believing in recovered memories, therapists still practicing this warping of reality.
Is there a good book out there on this scandal?
You might want to try The Myth of Repressed Memory by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. It's not about repressed memories, but I highly recommend The Sleeping Beauties by Suzanne O'Sullivan. You will recognize so much about the social contagion of ROGD in there, but the chapter on Havana Syndrome shows how doctors will dig in, refuse to back down, and face no consequences. Another similar phenomenon to look into is the facilitated communication scandal (there's a Netflix documentary called Tell Them That You Love Me about one particular disturbing case). There are overlaps between the FC scandal and recovered memories where facilitators "discovered" hidden abuse using this completely bogus intervention. Even after FC was soundly discredited using well-controlled experiments, it keeps resurfacing in new forms under new names (rapid prompting, spelling to communicate). Under its new guise, controlled testing doesn't happen because it's now called "ableist" to question it
Yes, I did read The Sleeping Beauties.
It's excellent. I will check out the book by Elizabeth Loftus.
I also found Rachel Aviv's book relevant to the ROGD contagion:
"Strangers to Ourselves--Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us."
Thank you!
Also check out the podcast series Hysterical. It's so important for understanding this. You'll see there are no consequences to the people spreading that hysteria. Another example is the mass psychogenic illness of police officers believing they've been poisoned by touching fentanyl. Those myths still get spread without pushback even after mainstream media reported on the myth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/magazine/police-fentanyl-exposure-videos.html
And don't forget about how AAP screwed up with peanuts, creating thousands of serious allergies by telling parents to avoid peanuts until age 3, w/o any scientific basis for this guess. Of course, they had good intentions, but they were WRONG.
The Pique Resilience was the first sane think I found in 2020 when my daughter went down the rabbit hole. I was so impressed with their honesty and candor, and it cemented for me the fact that my child had a mental health issue. I am forever grateful to those 4 courageous women. The record shows them to be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. These so called medical/mental health associations are nothing more than trade groups that seek to monetarily enrich their memberships. And so far, they've accomplished their goals and lined their pockets with membership dues. The lawsuits will be the only way to shut them up and shut them down.
For me it was 4th Way Now. I'll be forever grateful to all those early whistle-blowers. They stuck their necks out all alone when it wasn't fashionable.
Wave
First sane THING I meant......Although they did make me think!
Hi Lisa, thanks for this article. By 'competent' they meant 'compliant'. There's a dissonance between 'psychological science', in the limited sense that is possible, and affirming individual belief.
The phrase "society attacks them for just trying to be themselves" is interesting, because most people don't have to try at being themselves. It might be more accurate to say "society is sceptical about them trying to be what they are not".
Have you looked into the Victorian movement of 'Christian Science' for any parallels with 'gender affirming care'? As I understand it, this sect believes that reality is an illusion and that illness can be cured with the power of prayer, which is a kind of affirmation. The comparison might help explain why the United States appears particularly susceptible to gender quackery.
I haven’t considered those parallels. Very interesting! I’ll look into that. Thank you!
You're welcome, I hope it proves a fruitful line of enquiry. While on the surface gender affirmation is a secular movement, concepts such as 'gendered soul' or 'two spirit' are clearly outside of the remit of science, psychological or otherwise. I can anticipate some gender practitioners claiming religious exemption from medical regulation, if they are ever stopped.
I recently posted a review of The Well of Loneliness on my Substack. Radclyffe Hall was a heretical Catholic who was satirised in her time as having a Jesus complex. My working hypothesis is that liberation theology from Latin America has combined with other religious traditions including radical Protestantism to create the first religion of the Internet. In that faith, transgender people are specially selected by the Almighty (born in the wrong body) for suffering and sacrifice, which makes them holy martyrs. To gain status in the faith, an act of self-harm is required. Detransitioners are the apostates. I guess you know who the witches are in this analogy!
So according to this hypothesis, when we argue that girls should not have elective mastectomies to resolve transient identity issues, for example, we are interfering with religious practice, which is why the response from so-called 'allies' is irrational. If the witches are allowed any influence, their arguments might prevent those girls from becoming their 'authentic selves', i.e. confirmed in the religion, with potential to join the 'elect'.
I accept that there are political and economic motivations for the gender industry, which others have written about, but I don't think they fill out the whole picture.
I agree that gender ideology functions as a religion, as many have pointed out. I'm not an expert in religion, but as Helen Joyce points out early in her important book Trans, the root of this delusion is dualism, which is far older than Christian Scientists. They are simply one fringe expression of it. Dualism is the notion that we have a body and a soul (or spirit, or essence) and that they are two different things. Dualism is inherent in Christianity and many other religious beliefs/cults. Dualism feels intuitively true to most people--and maybe, destructive as it can be, there is some way it IS true or useful for being in the world. I'm not sure about that. The notion is ubiquitous and persistent in cultures across the globe. I know it is deeply baked into our culture, into my own psyche and pretty much everyone I know, even if we don't think of ourselves as religious. So the relatively new religion or cult of trans was easy for people to absorb, because they already believed in dualism, that their bodies are a different thing than some essential but ineffable part of themselves "inside."
Quite right, it's a much older issue. My interest in 'Christian Science' is that it's relatively new, it seems to have grown worldwide from a very small base, it's heretical and quackish, and yet it has carved out legal protections for itself. I am glad to have been raised in a community which allowed antibiotics.
You are right--the American Psychological Association (and the other APA--the American Psychiatric Association) have known for much longer than five years that "trans" is a lie and a fraud.
I wrote an article about the “Report of the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance,” published in 2008 before the change to "gender dysphoria" in the DSM.
They flat out admitted they couldn't even use "sex" and "gender" consistently or correctly.
It didn't stop them though! Only lawsuits will do that. This is worse than lobotomies.
https://kathighsmith.substack.com/p/trans-is-a-fraudand-it-always-has
“They flat out admitted they couldn't even use "sex" and "gender" consistently or correctly.” This seems to be an ongoing, and increasing, problem, including in media reporting in many spheres.
Here’s a recent article in WaPo to illustrate the problem: https://wapo.st/4dQtwRD
The headline and subhead read: “The gender gap in heart disease research, treatment leaves women behind/Women are more likely to die after a first heart attack or stroke than men.”
The first sentence is this: “A simple difference in the genetic code — two X chromosomes vs. one X chromosome and one Y chromosome — can lead to major differences in heart disease.”
It appears to me that the term “gender” no longer has a coherent meaning. Do you have a thought about how it should be defined?
It's a linguistics term that applies to words only. John Money knew that, and he knew he would cause confusion by applying it to humans.
It has no application to humans at all. The best thing to do is simply stop using it and use the correct term (one always exists). The problem can be solved basically instantly when that occurs.
I wrote an article on this as well: https://kathighsmith.substack.com/p/gender-has-no-application-to-humans
I agree that the proper use of “gender” should be solely linguistic—and for that reason, in my own writing and speaking, I avoid using the term to the fullest extent possible. Unfortunately for all of us, the term “gender” long ago escaped its proper bounds and is used in a wide, and often bewildering, variety of ways. Sometimes, it is used as a “polite” synonym for sex; other times it is used to describe sex-role stereotypes, the list goes on and on. While I personally share your view that clarity would be best served by dispensing with use of the term “gender” altogether, I do not at present see how we can get back to that, even among those of us who are sex-realist. Perhaps Lisa can shed some light on this. I would certainly find that most welcome.
That type of attitude won't change anything.
Imagine someone in 1951 saying "Well, all doctors just do lobotomies, I don't see how we can stop it!" or in 1947 "Doctors advertise cigarettes, I guess it's impossible to stop it!" or in 2001 "All doctors prescribe Oxycontin for everything, I guess we can't stop it!'
This is how things change. This is largely a language battle.
You, as a person, just stop using it. Tell other people about it. Once it spreads, everyone will see how stupid this is, and that's the end of that.
If you mean sex, say it. If you mean stereotypes, say it. Ask other people what they mean. Do it in your own writing.
That's it right there. This isn't rocket science.
Hey, Kat, you are preaching to the converted about use of the term. But not everyone is on board with this, and I would like to know more about the thinking, particularly Lisa’s, as she has thought about this long and hard. That’s all I am trying to say here.
The word gender has a long and complicated history. I don’t like kat’s attitude and I’m not gonna engage.
Psychiatrist here. We know. I mean, the majority of us, over the age of 40, with at least 10 years of experience post-residency. Everyone I talk to about this privately knows that that trans is a mental illness and not just benign natural variant. The price of speaking out is very high and no one wants to have their career ruined.
The lawsuits will lead the way.
I am a therapist, an older therapist. Never would it be therapeutic for me to allow the maladaptive behaviors of a client to mold my approach. I use evidenced based practices because they are best practice and because it is my ethical duty. Gender Affirmitive Care is not evidenced based practice, it is often unethical, and in many situations it is a permanent "solution" to a very temporary problem. I know many of my peers wont' like this but in many cases Gender Affirmative Care is the pyramid scheme of modern therapy, "many recruited new members..." Big business with scant evidence. Notice please, I said "many" and "often." I am not transphobic, just very cautious around this therapeutic intervention that is more progessive than therapeutically sound.
I'll be forever grateful to all those early alarm-bell ringers, Pique Resilience, 4th Way Now, and the early journalists. They stuck their necks out seemingly all alone when it was really, really hard.
Would the APA have listened to men detransitioners? Probably not, because they of course are “the smartest people in the room”.
"Gender affirming care" and "wrong body since birth" are concepts completely contrary to long-accepted stages of child development from Jean Piaget, still up on an NIH webpage. Retroactive continuity, "ret-con" is the operative thought process in "gender therapy" from the moment a confused teen walks into the session. The child, or adult, for that matter, is asked to think back to earliest memory, to imbue those impressionistic visual images with language that does not exist at the earliest stages of development. Outrageously, WPATH, ACLU, HRC and other advocacy groups busy themselves with suing state penal systems to move convicted rapists and murderers who claim female identity into life in prison and 25 to life "as a woman." Further, we find that the ret-con myth does not hold up, exactly proven by Pique Resistance and the long list of detransitioners. Ray Blanchard and James Cantor, supposed "giants in the field" made conjecture decades ago, that there might be a genetic link from father to son in the "transsexual" diagnosis, using Sam Kaye and his father as their case study. At that time, 25 years ago, Sam was calling himself Maya. He's now completely detransitioned, regretting the choice, the damage to his body and the pain he caused his mother, who divorced his crossdressing father. More on Sam of Call Me Sam channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwe5JkhZBEY&t=36s
"How long until we get to the point where these mental health and medical advocacy groups actually listen?" Based on these results and others, I don't think their mandate is or ever will be to "listen" to actual people being harmed. These are business groups, not patient-centered groups, and there is money to be made from continuing "gender affirming care" at all costs to young people. Their members want to continue to do this, and that is who leadership listens to. They can only be forced to change through arduous lawsuits or negative public perception. I do not think they will ever apologize, even if and when changes happen. Sadly, it seems likely that there will only ever be partial wins to protect children and young people. My bet: 5-6 more long years before these changes begin to manifest.
Just the opinion of one rando whose only qualifications come from his time spent down the rabbit hole on this for the past six months. Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of preference falsification around these issues among the members of these organizations (Dr. Julia Mason's interviews around her experience trying to get the AAP to do a systematic review are a good example of this), meaning there are many, many AAP members who are opposed to medicalizing youth with gender dysphoria and keep there opinions to themselves out of fear, while the ones in support are free to speak as freely as they like. Ideologies that are propped up by preference falsification have a tendency to collapse suddenly and unexpectedly. My best guess is that some combination of lawsuits and/or release of damning information will eventually cause a critical mass of people to feel comfortable speaking out, enabling more and more people to speak out and so on until everyone opposed to these practices feels free to say so. That's when the house of cards that his gender affirming care for minors finally collapses. I've been telling myself 3-5 years until this happens, but honestly, it could happen in six months too, maybe even sooner. But my best guess is that when it does we will be surprised at how quickly it happened. Just seems to be the way these things go.
That sounds like a reasonable prediction! Good point that many AAP members are actually opposed but feel they can't say anything, so they are not actually representing a large share of their members. I sure hope it's more like 6 months, or way less than my guess. Just feeling a bit pessimistic because (especially since Cass) it seems like there's enough for it all to collapse right now, but that hasn't happened.
For context, Cass (and especially how it was ignored by mainstream US media) was how I "peaked" and tumbled down the rabbit hole, and now I'm out here strategically dropping hints with my normie lefty friends that all is not well with this as we've been led to believe. A few of them might look further and find out what we've learned.
In other words, even these disclosures don't appear to change anything, I'm confident that each one is silently chipping away at the foundation of support holding all this up, and that this is a big part of how it will eventually collapse.
How did you hear about Cass?
There's a moderate non-MAGA conservative outlet called The Dispatch (highly recommended) I started following a few years ago to broaden viewpoint diversity in my media diet. They covered the release of the final report when it came out in April and that's when I first heard of it. If I weren't following them I may well still be in the dark about all of this.
Not a question you asked, but another point I think you may appreciate: learning about Cass finally showed me how much the legacy left-leaning media (NPR in particular) has lied/gaslit/censored information on this and other culture issues for the last several years, and the sense of anger and betrayal I feel about this is very real and very strong. Your writing about feeling let down by the left really resonates with me.
NPR is shameless in the complete lies it pushes about tranniemadness. Other issues that it continues to lie, over and over, about include immigration, crime by black actors, BLM, the "peacefulness" of marches about Floyd. Nothing escapes the Woke slant. Many of the reporters on the illegals beat are illegals, and they are pushing the line to continue support for illegals in the stupid left.
Yes, I agree with you. Every bit makes a difference. And all the private conversations perhaps make the biggest difference. For those of us who "peaked" 4 or 5 years ago, the road to what must change just can feel very, very slow!
SOOO much of this is a "consensus delusion", like the "new clothes" of the Emperor. So long as everyone cooperated in maintaining the fiction, the magical invisible suit was believed to be there. But now voices are being raised, more and more, to call out questions. The balloon is punctured.
Yes, the medical POLICY groups (AAP, etc) are not research-oriented, but promote the business interests of physicians.
My guess is that back then the Peak Resilience people were seen by the APA as not "true trans" and assumed to be outliers rather than as representative of a large cohort. Today we know that cohort is much larger now than it was then.
The page linked to for an explanation of gender constancy dismisses the theory as outdated (it is also full of typos):
"It is important to note that when the theory of fender constancy was developed, it was a different time in history. The theory does not reflect current social norms surrounding gender far. For example, the theory does not account for individuals who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or gender fluid."
I don't totally understand the theory, but it seems to say that when children reach gender constancy they have learned to perform the roles expected of their sex. It doesn't say they've learned that sex is about bodies, but rather that they've learned that their gender roles are fixed. Such a theory doesn't seem to support the beliefs of either the trans ideologues or gender skeptics.
Thanks. Will find better one!
This puzzled me, also.
Everyone’s codependent
“those seeking care related to gender nonconformity”
You'd think I'd be immune to it all by now, but the fact that anyone - much less the leading mental health professionals - thinks gender nonconformity needs "care." FFS!!!