Illuminating. People come into therapy all the time looking for "answers" to why they feel the way they feel or why they've been treated poorly. Believing that there's something "wrong" with us allows us to believe in a just world: "If I weren't so xyz, I'd feel better/people would treat me better". Some of the most heartbreaking examples of this are when people have been mistreated by their parents--the desire to believe "there's something wrong with me" gives one a sense of hope and control because "If I can just fix what's wrong with me, things will be better." But that's not how the world works. We live in a world that ranks people based on shit they can't control like their sex. Women are so thoroughly blamed and gaslit that it's much easier for some to believe "I'm not a woman" than it is to believe that you're a member of a group that's been systemically oppressed (and still is) for thousands of years for no other reason than being female.
the desire to believe "there's something wrong with me" gives one a sense of hope and control because "If I can just fix what's wrong with me, things will be better."
This is what people are doing to fill the God-shaped holes in their souls. As a secular non-believer, I would say that it's sad, but--sadly--it's just a human thing. Most people are very motivated by emotion and belonging.
It would be interesting for a scholar of evangelical Christianity to analyze these conversion narratives and compare them to contemporary--or even historical--Christian conversion narratives. I see a lot of connections here.
I think it's important to remember that there ARE people in the world who have genuine gender dysphoria, and maybe it is the right thing to guide those people into transitioning -- although such people should be informed right from the get-go about what is involved: hormones, multiple operations, being a life-long medical patient, etc. I do think, however, that a responsible therapist will first try to get the patient to accept herself as she is. My problem with transgenderism is that they are pushing people -- mainly children -- into transitioning who would otherwise grow out of whatever phase they are in. I think the focus of us anti-transgender activists should remain on saving children from harm (in addition to preserving women's single-sex spaces). Middle-aged people who have never been happy with themselves aren't the issue for me.
There are people who experience deep and lasting distress with their sexed bodies and/or sex-role expectations. For some of these people, transition may be worth the trade-offs. The benefits may outweigh the risks. But it seems, both for the sake of the individual and for the rest of society where healthcare resources are limited, that transition should be an absolute last resort and there should be no bollocks about it being a good/celebrated outcome for a person to be so unable to reconcile with their one and only body.
I agree with you. Transitioning should always be the last resort. But then, we can't dictate that to adults. Yes, we can dictate that where children are concerned (via well-written laws), but we can't tell adults what to believe, or therapists what to say. Our views aren't that far apart, if at all.
You'll recall I believe in reincarnation, so I expect people to make gross mistakes in some of their lives. It is all a learning experience.
No, we can't dictate to adults but ideally we'd be able to say: this isn't medicine, it's cosmetic surgery, we don't cover it, no one who provides it should claim it's medicine, etc.
Oh yes, I certainly agree with THAT! God knows, the rest of us should not be paying for these ill-conceived procedures.
Let me add that, in my view, the people who have true gender dysphoria may have made a mistake in choosing their gender before birth, and that's why this is such an issue with them.
I also believe in reincarnation, but I disagree with this.
I think we’re supposed to live in a society without a gender HIERARCHY. Men and women do generally have different strengths and weaknesses, so roles emerge, but it’s human nature that a huge minority of people are gender nonconforming—and that’s even with our monkey-see, monkey-do minds, which is incredible if you think about it. Despite all the pressures on everyone to conform to gendered expectations, no one is 100% gender conforming, and many people cannot conform, and are simply naturally more like the opposite sex in their tastes, behavior and personality.
We need to live in a world in which a man can be so effeminate he can be more effeminate than some women and we still recognize him as a man, and a woman can be so masculine she’s more masculine than some men and we still recognize her as a woman.
And we need to recognize that natural effeminacy or masculinity has nothing to do with the forced posing that goes on with men with autogynephilia.
I have a feeling that neither gender dysphoria nor autogynephilia would exist in a world in which we didn’t have this terrible hierarchy and treat women as second-class citizens. It wouldn’t be bad for a man to be like a woman, and we wouldn’t see women as sexual objects rather than as people, which may knock out both those problems.
It may not, though. Autogynephilia may remain. That’s just an erotic location error, and the boy/man should be discouraged from over-focusing on it or fantasizing about women. Instead, he could do any number of things to help the society which would occupy his time, and the more he engages in other things, the less he’ll think about that; in my opinion, distracting someone from their obsession and rechanneling their energy is positive; I think it really is just an error message some heterosexual men receive where they fantasize so much about women they want to be one. Too much fantasy/obsession over *anything* isn’t a good idea, so we see what’s happening in this particular instance.
In my view, we’re moving toward a more body-based, sustainable, enlightened future to humanity that has to be more female dominant, or at the very least egalitarian. This is a crucial point in history, as it marks whether we go towards a body-based, egalitarian, sustainable society that doesn’t have a gender or race hierarchy, or we continue on the destructive path that we’re on. People’s confusion over how best to deal with gender and race is the great struggle of the human species, and of course it all goes back to the class struggle of owning property—that’s undeniable; the idea of ownership begets hierarchy.
We have to find a new way to live. This is a very difficult process. The culture wars as we figure this out are particularly vicious. And the wrong side is the one with all the money and all the power.
You have said so much, I hardly know what to respond to. I am also worried that Eliza may be bothered by a discussion of religion on her article -- my guess is that she won't mind.
You say, "I think we’re supposed to live in a society without a gender HIERARCHY". The problem for me is that I don't believed in "supposed to". I see physical reality as a kind of boot camp for the spirit. The world is a chaotic place, and will always be a chaotic place. Yes, I think that mankind is evolving VERY SLOWLY, but there is no one directing our development -- humanity is working it out as we go. I believe in God, but God granted us freedom and self-determination during the Creation.
I just used a Christian word, but I am not a Christian. My views are based mostly on the Seth Material. Seth described an evolutionary moment of God which I call the "Creation", but Seth didn't use that word. What happened in that moment was that God found a way to externalize his dreams. In other words, all this existed within the young God's mind as dreams or day-dreams. After the Creation, God remained the central source of life energy in the universe (I think of God as the focal point of the universe), but the individuals and societies gained freedom and self-determination. the way I like to say it is that, during the Creation, God stopped thinking the universe, and the universe began to think itself.
God's gift to us is eternal life -- infinite new beginnings. After experiencing the "boot camp" of the Earth for perhaps a dozen lives, we move on to planes of existence where more advanced issues can be resolved than the ones we are dealing with here. Then after that, we move on again.
Seth did say that each reincarnating soul (on the Earth plane) must experience being a male, a female and a child -- those things can be accomplished in two lives. He talked once about effeminate men. He said that people [who believe in reincarnation] usually assume that effeminate men have been women in their previous lives and can't adjust to being a man. Seth said the opposite is true. An effeminate man is more likely to be a man who has avoided being a woman in past lives. He has reached a point where his spiritual development requires him to be a woman, but he once again he chooses to be a man. Being effeminate is a way for him to experience a LITTLE of what he thinks a woman is (although women don't actually act like effeminate men).
I have extrapolated the things Seth said about effeminate men and applied them to transgender people. A man who feels a strong need to be a woman may be a soul who has avoided female lives, and now needs to be a female for his spiritual development. Transitioning to being a trans woman gives him a small taste of what he needs -- the problem, though, is that being a trans woman doesn't give him the experience of REAL womanhood.
So let me get back to your original disagreement to what I said. The world is a chaotic place (although karma governs). It isn't supposed to be this or that; it is what it is. Life on the Earth will always be crude, uncomfortable and -- for many -- violent. As I said, this is boot camp. The vision that you have for humanity is an interesting one, but it is just your vision. Who knows what mankind will evolve into over time, or if he will even survive. I certainly do hope that in whatever world we create, women gain full equality to men, but who knows if that will happen? According to what I believe, not even God knows.
(I sometimes use language which makes it sound like I believe humanity is essentially male, and I apologize for that. I am 72 and I was taught to use what they called the "universal he" when speaking of mankind as a whole, or when speaking of individuals whose gender isn't known. I still have a tendency to do that. Always saying "he or she" or "he/she", etc., gets tedious.
Remarkable and scary! Why is it they ignore the scar damage to the chest in "top surgery" which interferes with the functioning of the vagus nerve? This is a different version of the film, Gaslight.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (universe, 2022)
All scarring in the torso affects the vagus nerve. It is one of the largest in the body, connecting all internal systems of the trunk to the brain. Scar tissue is inflexible, becomes drier with passing time, can restrict the action of inhaling and if near the heart, compresses the cardiac area.
Agree. Limitless self-obsession without any kind of constructive outlet. You wonder if maybe these people put this energy into rock climbing or landscaping or masonery or mountain biking...if they would discover that they were much more than just 'bodies with problems'.
Agree. They all need to get off the internet and start experiencing real life, to be constantly only discussing and thinking of themselves and then everyone in the group commiserating, it’s a recipe for unending misery.
Schools and the web had a script given to them (by larger funders, as Jennifer Bilek has noted) to indoctrinate tweens with body self-hate. There is no "body dysmorphia" or "gender dysmorphia". Because DSM conjures up a new diagnosis doesn't make it real. The psychiatry DSM is 100% check-list "diseases".
Every generation for 50K years made the leap from childhood to puberty. In every generation, girls successfully maneuvered their way into women's bodies (with all the same risks as today and worse).
Only difference today is an orchestrated project to take humans out of their bodies. There's no "gender/body dysmorphia". There's agenda-driven education and media trying to normalize transhumanism.
Sorry, haha! Thinking out loud. This is insane. Pathologizing it with fancy DSM disease names isn't helping. No "therapist" or pharma will ever help anyone caught up in this. Collapsing the propaganda will stop it.
You are correct. It is to take us out of the concrete world of things so that their meanings can be applied. They will not get far. As much as they want to believe in all the metaphysics:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." ― Philip K. Dick
The line about pronouns starting to hurt... I wonder how many of these children even felt "gender dysphoria" before they dove into the reddit/yt/tiktok groomosphere? It seems able to create it where it didn't exist before.
Illuminating. People come into therapy all the time looking for "answers" to why they feel the way they feel or why they've been treated poorly. Believing that there's something "wrong" with us allows us to believe in a just world: "If I weren't so xyz, I'd feel better/people would treat me better". Some of the most heartbreaking examples of this are when people have been mistreated by their parents--the desire to believe "there's something wrong with me" gives one a sense of hope and control because "If I can just fix what's wrong with me, things will be better." But that's not how the world works. We live in a world that ranks people based on shit they can't control like their sex. Women are so thoroughly blamed and gaslit that it's much easier for some to believe "I'm not a woman" than it is to believe that you're a member of a group that's been systemically oppressed (and still is) for thousands of years for no other reason than being female.
the desire to believe "there's something wrong with me" gives one a sense of hope and control because "If I can just fix what's wrong with me, things will be better."
Yes, well said.
This is what people are doing to fill the God-shaped holes in their souls. As a secular non-believer, I would say that it's sad, but--sadly--it's just a human thing. Most people are very motivated by emotion and belonging.
It would be interesting for a scholar of evangelical Christianity to analyze these conversion narratives and compare them to contemporary--or even historical--Christian conversion narratives. I see a lot of connections here.
Me too. Humans need belonging and meaning.
I think it's important to remember that there ARE people in the world who have genuine gender dysphoria, and maybe it is the right thing to guide those people into transitioning -- although such people should be informed right from the get-go about what is involved: hormones, multiple operations, being a life-long medical patient, etc. I do think, however, that a responsible therapist will first try to get the patient to accept herself as she is. My problem with transgenderism is that they are pushing people -- mainly children -- into transitioning who would otherwise grow out of whatever phase they are in. I think the focus of us anti-transgender activists should remain on saving children from harm (in addition to preserving women's single-sex spaces). Middle-aged people who have never been happy with themselves aren't the issue for me.
There are people who experience deep and lasting distress with their sexed bodies and/or sex-role expectations. For some of these people, transition may be worth the trade-offs. The benefits may outweigh the risks. But it seems, both for the sake of the individual and for the rest of society where healthcare resources are limited, that transition should be an absolute last resort and there should be no bollocks about it being a good/celebrated outcome for a person to be so unable to reconcile with their one and only body.
I agree with you. Transitioning should always be the last resort. But then, we can't dictate that to adults. Yes, we can dictate that where children are concerned (via well-written laws), but we can't tell adults what to believe, or therapists what to say. Our views aren't that far apart, if at all.
You'll recall I believe in reincarnation, so I expect people to make gross mistakes in some of their lives. It is all a learning experience.
No, we can't dictate to adults but ideally we'd be able to say: this isn't medicine, it's cosmetic surgery, we don't cover it, no one who provides it should claim it's medicine, etc.
Oh yes, I certainly agree with THAT! God knows, the rest of us should not be paying for these ill-conceived procedures.
Let me add that, in my view, the people who have true gender dysphoria may have made a mistake in choosing their gender before birth, and that's why this is such an issue with them.
I also believe in reincarnation, but I disagree with this.
I think we’re supposed to live in a society without a gender HIERARCHY. Men and women do generally have different strengths and weaknesses, so roles emerge, but it’s human nature that a huge minority of people are gender nonconforming—and that’s even with our monkey-see, monkey-do minds, which is incredible if you think about it. Despite all the pressures on everyone to conform to gendered expectations, no one is 100% gender conforming, and many people cannot conform, and are simply naturally more like the opposite sex in their tastes, behavior and personality.
We need to live in a world in which a man can be so effeminate he can be more effeminate than some women and we still recognize him as a man, and a woman can be so masculine she’s more masculine than some men and we still recognize her as a woman.
And we need to recognize that natural effeminacy or masculinity has nothing to do with the forced posing that goes on with men with autogynephilia.
I have a feeling that neither gender dysphoria nor autogynephilia would exist in a world in which we didn’t have this terrible hierarchy and treat women as second-class citizens. It wouldn’t be bad for a man to be like a woman, and we wouldn’t see women as sexual objects rather than as people, which may knock out both those problems.
It may not, though. Autogynephilia may remain. That’s just an erotic location error, and the boy/man should be discouraged from over-focusing on it or fantasizing about women. Instead, he could do any number of things to help the society which would occupy his time, and the more he engages in other things, the less he’ll think about that; in my opinion, distracting someone from their obsession and rechanneling their energy is positive; I think it really is just an error message some heterosexual men receive where they fantasize so much about women they want to be one. Too much fantasy/obsession over *anything* isn’t a good idea, so we see what’s happening in this particular instance.
In my view, we’re moving toward a more body-based, sustainable, enlightened future to humanity that has to be more female dominant, or at the very least egalitarian. This is a crucial point in history, as it marks whether we go towards a body-based, egalitarian, sustainable society that doesn’t have a gender or race hierarchy, or we continue on the destructive path that we’re on. People’s confusion over how best to deal with gender and race is the great struggle of the human species, and of course it all goes back to the class struggle of owning property—that’s undeniable; the idea of ownership begets hierarchy.
We have to find a new way to live. This is a very difficult process. The culture wars as we figure this out are particularly vicious. And the wrong side is the one with all the money and all the power.
You have said so much, I hardly know what to respond to. I am also worried that Eliza may be bothered by a discussion of religion on her article -- my guess is that she won't mind.
You say, "I think we’re supposed to live in a society without a gender HIERARCHY". The problem for me is that I don't believed in "supposed to". I see physical reality as a kind of boot camp for the spirit. The world is a chaotic place, and will always be a chaotic place. Yes, I think that mankind is evolving VERY SLOWLY, but there is no one directing our development -- humanity is working it out as we go. I believe in God, but God granted us freedom and self-determination during the Creation.
I just used a Christian word, but I am not a Christian. My views are based mostly on the Seth Material. Seth described an evolutionary moment of God which I call the "Creation", but Seth didn't use that word. What happened in that moment was that God found a way to externalize his dreams. In other words, all this existed within the young God's mind as dreams or day-dreams. After the Creation, God remained the central source of life energy in the universe (I think of God as the focal point of the universe), but the individuals and societies gained freedom and self-determination. the way I like to say it is that, during the Creation, God stopped thinking the universe, and the universe began to think itself.
God's gift to us is eternal life -- infinite new beginnings. After experiencing the "boot camp" of the Earth for perhaps a dozen lives, we move on to planes of existence where more advanced issues can be resolved than the ones we are dealing with here. Then after that, we move on again.
Seth did say that each reincarnating soul (on the Earth plane) must experience being a male, a female and a child -- those things can be accomplished in two lives. He talked once about effeminate men. He said that people [who believe in reincarnation] usually assume that effeminate men have been women in their previous lives and can't adjust to being a man. Seth said the opposite is true. An effeminate man is more likely to be a man who has avoided being a woman in past lives. He has reached a point where his spiritual development requires him to be a woman, but he once again he chooses to be a man. Being effeminate is a way for him to experience a LITTLE of what he thinks a woman is (although women don't actually act like effeminate men).
I have extrapolated the things Seth said about effeminate men and applied them to transgender people. A man who feels a strong need to be a woman may be a soul who has avoided female lives, and now needs to be a female for his spiritual development. Transitioning to being a trans woman gives him a small taste of what he needs -- the problem, though, is that being a trans woman doesn't give him the experience of REAL womanhood.
So let me get back to your original disagreement to what I said. The world is a chaotic place (although karma governs). It isn't supposed to be this or that; it is what it is. Life on the Earth will always be crude, uncomfortable and -- for many -- violent. As I said, this is boot camp. The vision that you have for humanity is an interesting one, but it is just your vision. Who knows what mankind will evolve into over time, or if he will even survive. I certainly do hope that in whatever world we create, women gain full equality to men, but who knows if that will happen? According to what I believe, not even God knows.
(I sometimes use language which makes it sound like I believe humanity is essentially male, and I apologize for that. I am 72 and I was taught to use what they called the "universal he" when speaking of mankind as a whole, or when speaking of individuals whose gender isn't known. I still have a tendency to do that. Always saying "he or she" or "he/she", etc., gets tedious.
Remarkable and scary! Why is it they ignore the scar damage to the chest in "top surgery" which interferes with the functioning of the vagus nerve? This is a different version of the film, Gaslight.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (universe, 2022)
uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
Where/when/how did you discover that mastectomy scarring interferes with the vagus nerve? That's very important, if true.
All scarring in the torso affects the vagus nerve. It is one of the largest in the body, connecting all internal systems of the trunk to the brain. Scar tissue is inflexible, becomes drier with passing time, can restrict the action of inhaling and if near the heart, compresses the cardiac area.
Thank you!
You are welcome. A series of posts from a few weeks ago presents mind/body moves to calm and reconnect vagus nerve and emotional stability.
uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
You have a lovely site. I didn't see that post.
Thanks! Feel free to subscribe. Ute
These hurt to read
Yeah, they do.
So Much Naval Gazing!!!
Agree. Limitless self-obsession without any kind of constructive outlet. You wonder if maybe these people put this energy into rock climbing or landscaping or masonery or mountain biking...if they would discover that they were much more than just 'bodies with problems'.
Agree. They all need to get off the internet and start experiencing real life, to be constantly only discussing and thinking of themselves and then everyone in the group commiserating, it’s a recipe for unending misery.
Schools and the web had a script given to them (by larger funders, as Jennifer Bilek has noted) to indoctrinate tweens with body self-hate. There is no "body dysmorphia" or "gender dysmorphia". Because DSM conjures up a new diagnosis doesn't make it real. The psychiatry DSM is 100% check-list "diseases".
Every generation for 50K years made the leap from childhood to puberty. In every generation, girls successfully maneuvered their way into women's bodies (with all the same risks as today and worse).
Only difference today is an orchestrated project to take humans out of their bodies. There's no "gender/body dysmorphia". There's agenda-driven education and media trying to normalize transhumanism.
Sorry, haha! Thinking out loud. This is insane. Pathologizing it with fancy DSM disease names isn't helping. No "therapist" or pharma will ever help anyone caught up in this. Collapsing the propaganda will stop it.
You are correct. It is to take us out of the concrete world of things so that their meanings can be applied. They will not get far. As much as they want to believe in all the metaphysics:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." ― Philip K. Dick
Exactly. Agree. They won't get far. (But it's not fun for the 99% of us while it unravels for the billionaires!)
The line about pronouns starting to hurt... I wonder how many of these children even felt "gender dysphoria" before they dove into the reddit/yt/tiktok groomosphere? It seems able to create it where it didn't exist before.
Would be curious if there's more you want to say!