This is utterly compelling reading. Anyone who has observed their own untamed inner dialogue can see what is going on here. Your mind goes where habit and obsession take it. Wondering about gender is the ruminative subject par excellence. Reading about this made me consider that introspective and compusive observation actually pushed all other thinking and planning in third and fourth place. Questions such as: What did they mean? Was I boring? How can I get a job? Am I really enjoying this course? What will I do at the weekend? are all subservient to the performance of identity. There is also a serious stifling passivity about tending to a gender identity. Being different in other ways - a lesbian perhaps, having a minority ethnicity, a minority first language or a different skillset than peers calls for activating positive coping strategies and reaching out for understanding and connection. Waiting on the effects of hormones and surgery in contrast, assessing whether you pass and looking to others - everyone in fact - to guarantee your emotional safety by endorsing your self-assessment is to hand your well-being to others. A sure sign of disappointment.
The compassionate advice provided to the first OP is excellent and should be the first-line of defense offered by all therapists for most anxiety problems, including gender dysphoria. It should also feature prominently in all parenting books as the way they should be guiding their children through puberty.
I’m struck by Ian Hackings looping effect and Laurence Kirmayer’s creating categories playing out in this cult. And it is a cult. There is nothing more mind-bending than the trans category.
I’m struck by the “OCD” and high IQ. When I was involved in Davidson’s forums, we all talked about how our kids go down these rabbit holes; they fixate on something until they can solve or something else leads them away. It overlaps with profoundly gifted kids; no my son is not an aspie despite the internet telling him so. My son would wake me up in the middle of the night with his solving things - at seven yrs old, it was trying to develop a car that was powered by not only wind, but solar. We purchased small solar cells and other things to make a prototype out of a toy car. Trans became an obsession fueled by algorithms and TRAs on the internet. We’ve been estranged 3 yrs.
> "Me rational: If you're cis that must mean you're male.; Me irrational: NOOOOO NOT MALE maybe non-binary?"
Barking mad, the lot of them. Though society has to take some responsibility for that. But largely because they clearly haven't a clue what it takes to qualify as male and female -- as sexes -- in the first place.
You might try asking them whether they "think" that their surgeries and hormones will lead to the replacement of one type of gonad -- the ones they were born with -- with the other type. You might try quoting the standard definitions for the sexes to them if they're unclear on what it takes to qualify as males and females:
OED: "male, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
OED: "female, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
It was enlightening and upsetting to read the person's inner dialogue. It sounds so much like cliché trans rights protesters, which makes sense, but it proves how much we can absorb of the opinions of those around us.
Breathtaking self focus. I want to say...get outside yourself, do something for someone else. This sounds like drowning in an overwhelming whirlpool of anxiety.
This is utterly compelling reading. Anyone who has observed their own untamed inner dialogue can see what is going on here. Your mind goes where habit and obsession take it. Wondering about gender is the ruminative subject par excellence. Reading about this made me consider that introspective and compusive observation actually pushed all other thinking and planning in third and fourth place. Questions such as: What did they mean? Was I boring? How can I get a job? Am I really enjoying this course? What will I do at the weekend? are all subservient to the performance of identity. There is also a serious stifling passivity about tending to a gender identity. Being different in other ways - a lesbian perhaps, having a minority ethnicity, a minority first language or a different skillset than peers calls for activating positive coping strategies and reaching out for understanding and connection. Waiting on the effects of hormones and surgery in contrast, assessing whether you pass and looking to others - everyone in fact - to guarantee your emotional safety by endorsing your self-assessment is to hand your well-being to others. A sure sign of disappointment.
The compassionate advice provided to the first OP is excellent and should be the first-line of defense offered by all therapists for most anxiety problems, including gender dysphoria. It should also feature prominently in all parenting books as the way they should be guiding their children through puberty.
I’m struck by Ian Hackings looping effect and Laurence Kirmayer’s creating categories playing out in this cult. And it is a cult. There is nothing more mind-bending than the trans category.
I’m struck by the “OCD” and high IQ. When I was involved in Davidson’s forums, we all talked about how our kids go down these rabbit holes; they fixate on something until they can solve or something else leads them away. It overlaps with profoundly gifted kids; no my son is not an aspie despite the internet telling him so. My son would wake me up in the middle of the night with his solving things - at seven yrs old, it was trying to develop a car that was powered by not only wind, but solar. We purchased small solar cells and other things to make a prototype out of a toy car. Trans became an obsession fueled by algorithms and TRAs on the internet. We’ve been estranged 3 yrs.
> "Me rational: If you're cis that must mean you're male.; Me irrational: NOOOOO NOT MALE maybe non-binary?"
Barking mad, the lot of them. Though society has to take some responsibility for that. But largely because they clearly haven't a clue what it takes to qualify as male and female -- as sexes -- in the first place.
You might try asking them whether they "think" that their surgeries and hormones will lead to the replacement of one type of gonad -- the ones they were born with -- with the other type. You might try quoting the standard definitions for the sexes to them if they're unclear on what it takes to qualify as males and females:
OED: "male, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
OED: "female, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https:/en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
This is …. Horrifying. Thank you for writing.
It was enlightening and upsetting to read the person's inner dialogue. It sounds so much like cliché trans rights protesters, which makes sense, but it proves how much we can absorb of the opinions of those around us.
Breathtaking self focus. I want to say...get outside yourself, do something for someone else. This sounds like drowning in an overwhelming whirlpool of anxiety.