One of the things that peaked me was seeing a magazine article about Ellen/Elliott Page, complete with photos of her scarred chest. She complained about having had to dress up for red carpet events. She complained about having been sexually assaulted. She complained about hiding her lesbianism. To me it seemed obvious she was trying to escape being a woman.
The photos were so sad: she doesn’t look like a man even though she has a flat chest and short hair. She doesn’t look less vulnerable. She doesn’t pass as a man and I don’t imagine she actually wants to join masculine spaces because it’s the gross forms of masculinity that she’s repelled by.
The women quoted here also seem to be caught up in a similar situation. Rejecting their female bodies without actually thinking through what being male entails. It’s like they’re all desperately trying to escape a trap—but isn’t the trap they’re fighting a trap made by this ideology?
what a stunningly revealing quote for a title: temples aren't houses, you're not supposed to feel at home there - unless, of course, you think you're a god...
Great point! I never thought of that before. People say the body is a temple…but you’re making me think that that doesn’t mean you are necessarily supposed to feel at home in/with your body (who does, completely?). Just that you should respect it/honor it.
OMG, what have we come to? A good and proper therapist should be able to say (and ought to know this of their female clients), "In my view, you are not and can never be male," without fear of reprisal and knowing that this is probably (weirdly) a challenging, but potentially enlightening, question. A longer expression might involve something along the lines of, "There are other therapists who will imagine people are born in the wrong body or can change 'gender' [air quotes might be a little over the top], but I won't pretend I believe something different to what I actually believe, and I'll always be honest with you about it. I also don't mind at all if we have different views, and it's up to you to decide what to do, what to believe, and who to see for therapy."
The idea that the therapist should be "reported" for asking a question demonstrates the depth of the sense of entitlement spreading everywhere these days - along with the self-censorship of challenge to others, since we must "be kind" and they must get what they want in this new utopia.
The disconnect between the "trans" and "TERF" / GC views is stunning. It's like the whole community is getting upset because someone was asked, "Why do you go around with your hand stuck in the jacket front of your naval uniform?" and railing that they just don't understand, "I'm not PRETENDING to be Napoleon!"
But I suppose if you've never felt like an ordinary deckhand or a landlubber...
'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters' from an etching by Goya between 1797-1799. Can it be that the bizarre reflections you record are a mingling of insanity with the spirit of the age - something emerging whose form is not yet clear. Goya was himself a man caught between the values of the enlightenment and Romanticism. His genius lay in the way he valued reason while acknowledging the role of 'monsters' in his creativity. I find transgenderism and the idea of a sex spectrum odd and ugly - especially in its pharmacological poisonings and surgical mutilations. So what is it that I cannot see in this cult? What does it presage? To his picture Goya added “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.”
Great article. It points out several important points. The vast majority of therapists are poorly trained. My quality training went over Gender Identity Disorder in detail and one of the interviewed stated that most therapists don’t get this training, it all depends on where you received your training. Most of the comments appeared to attempt to normalize pathology with politically charged word games. This article was one of the best to show how the cult of trans refuse to accept disturbed thinking and needs to normalize it.
There seems to be an idea that therapy is not about having someone ask questions, challenge ideas or perceptions, or learn coping strategies and new skills. These girls are all talking about therapy as if it should be a spa experience, an enjoyable centering of attention on them where the therapist does all the work to make them feel better, almost like a boutique or luxury experience, not a work and learning experience. Any part of therapy that requires anything of them is seen as bad therapy and "transphobia." And this isn't just with gender therapy. It seems like for many that the expectations and practices of therapy have changed from working on yourself and developing coping strategies and insights into motivations you weren't aware of to a luxury service-provider comfort experience in the same category as having your nails done or getting a massage.
Another thing I see girls frequently say is, "I don't necessarily hate my body but I just don't like how female pronouns sound." I have seen that more than once: it just comes down to I don't like the way those pronouns sound when applied to me. Shouldn't it raise some massive red flags that these girls are getting irreversible and risky medical interventions and the limited resources of the medical system just because they don't like the way three words sound when applied to them? My son just had physical therapy denied after orthopedic surgery because he didn't report his pain at higher than a seven but not liking the sound of some words can get medical intervention covered by insurance?
I'm not a therapist. Perhaps the question is an example of poor practice. However, my first response to the OP was "what did you say to the therapist that inspired that response?" If the OP made a general negative statement about being a woman, this might have motivated the question. The therapist may have been wanting OP to clarify specifically what they hate about being a woman. Also, we are hearing the OP's interpretation of what their therapist said. What seems important here is the lack of willingness to address deeply the nature of their discomfort, whereever that may lead. The responses she received encourged a lack of introspection.
To be fair, I am not sure that asking a trans-identified woman "what's so bad about a woman?" can ever be helpful in therapy. I am not saying the therapist should affirm of course, but perhaps a better strategy would be to gently probe how the client came to this conclusion that she is not a woman , to tell more about what she believes makes one a man or a woman. (But I realize that treating these patients is very difficult because they don't want to change).
No one addresses the medical risks. It’s like putting on new clothes. Why not just do that? Dress like a butch lesbian! That should give you all the armor against society’s objectification of women you desire. In 20 years the casualties of this fad are going to pile up and it’s tragic.
It's baffling, isn't it? They spell out the awful social inequalities, the misogny, the abuse, the fear, the patriarchy, and instead of womanning up and joining the feminist movement, they want to be a nice sensitive guy (not one of the toxic ones), and start neutering themselves.
“Also hey, even cis women are allowed to get rid of the periods and the boobs if they don't do well with them.”
GAHHHH!
I have to say “do well with” is such an unusual and telling turn of phrase. A bit of a linguistic Freudian slip.
“There isn’t really anything specific about being a man, a woman, or anything in between. It’s all just a set of traits and things we associate with other things to communicate and describe our genders.”
"[T]aking HRT immediately fulfilled the sense of emptiness I felt from dysphoria that simply changing up my presentation didn't do . . ."
Doesn't testosterone generally have a mood-enhancing effect on women who take it when they are transitioning? Might that be why "T" reduced her sense of emptiness?
Switching gears, let's consider this person:
"Being aroace (aromantic and asexual) has definitely had an impact on how I've had to work through this idea because so many definitions for gender are described using sex, marriage, domesticity, and child-bearing as the framework in the United States, which isn't something I can participate in. How can I define what it means for me to be a man if I don't match any of the roles assigned to it on a fundamental level?"
Her self-image almost gives me a sense of dread because she has excluded herself quite methodically and madly, in my view, from so many elements of what it means to be human. I can't put my finger on it, but I sense she is quite mentally ill.
One of the things that peaked me was seeing a magazine article about Ellen/Elliott Page, complete with photos of her scarred chest. She complained about having had to dress up for red carpet events. She complained about having been sexually assaulted. She complained about hiding her lesbianism. To me it seemed obvious she was trying to escape being a woman.
The photos were so sad: she doesn’t look like a man even though she has a flat chest and short hair. She doesn’t look less vulnerable. She doesn’t pass as a man and I don’t imagine she actually wants to join masculine spaces because it’s the gross forms of masculinity that she’s repelled by.
The women quoted here also seem to be caught up in a similar situation. Rejecting their female bodies without actually thinking through what being male entails. It’s like they’re all desperately trying to escape a trap—but isn’t the trap they’re fighting a trap made by this ideology?
In every post-transition picture I've seen of her, she looks totally depressed.
what a stunningly revealing quote for a title: temples aren't houses, you're not supposed to feel at home there - unless, of course, you think you're a god...
Great point! I never thought of that before. People say the body is a temple…but you’re making me think that that doesn’t mean you are necessarily supposed to feel at home in/with your body (who does, completely?). Just that you should respect it/honor it.
OMG, what have we come to? A good and proper therapist should be able to say (and ought to know this of their female clients), "In my view, you are not and can never be male," without fear of reprisal and knowing that this is probably (weirdly) a challenging, but potentially enlightening, question. A longer expression might involve something along the lines of, "There are other therapists who will imagine people are born in the wrong body or can change 'gender' [air quotes might be a little over the top], but I won't pretend I believe something different to what I actually believe, and I'll always be honest with you about it. I also don't mind at all if we have different views, and it's up to you to decide what to do, what to believe, and who to see for therapy."
The idea that the therapist should be "reported" for asking a question demonstrates the depth of the sense of entitlement spreading everywhere these days - along with the self-censorship of challenge to others, since we must "be kind" and they must get what they want in this new utopia.
The disconnect between the "trans" and "TERF" / GC views is stunning. It's like the whole community is getting upset because someone was asked, "Why do you go around with your hand stuck in the jacket front of your naval uniform?" and railing that they just don't understand, "I'm not PRETENDING to be Napoleon!"
But I suppose if you've never felt like an ordinary deckhand or a landlubber...
'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters' from an etching by Goya between 1797-1799. Can it be that the bizarre reflections you record are a mingling of insanity with the spirit of the age - something emerging whose form is not yet clear. Goya was himself a man caught between the values of the enlightenment and Romanticism. His genius lay in the way he valued reason while acknowledging the role of 'monsters' in his creativity. I find transgenderism and the idea of a sex spectrum odd and ugly - especially in its pharmacological poisonings and surgical mutilations. So what is it that I cannot see in this cult? What does it presage? To his picture Goya added “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders.”
Great article. It points out several important points. The vast majority of therapists are poorly trained. My quality training went over Gender Identity Disorder in detail and one of the interviewed stated that most therapists don’t get this training, it all depends on where you received your training. Most of the comments appeared to attempt to normalize pathology with politically charged word games. This article was one of the best to show how the cult of trans refuse to accept disturbed thinking and needs to normalize it.
There seems to be an idea that therapy is not about having someone ask questions, challenge ideas or perceptions, or learn coping strategies and new skills. These girls are all talking about therapy as if it should be a spa experience, an enjoyable centering of attention on them where the therapist does all the work to make them feel better, almost like a boutique or luxury experience, not a work and learning experience. Any part of therapy that requires anything of them is seen as bad therapy and "transphobia." And this isn't just with gender therapy. It seems like for many that the expectations and practices of therapy have changed from working on yourself and developing coping strategies and insights into motivations you weren't aware of to a luxury service-provider comfort experience in the same category as having your nails done or getting a massage.
Another thing I see girls frequently say is, "I don't necessarily hate my body but I just don't like how female pronouns sound." I have seen that more than once: it just comes down to I don't like the way those pronouns sound when applied to me. Shouldn't it raise some massive red flags that these girls are getting irreversible and risky medical interventions and the limited resources of the medical system just because they don't like the way three words sound when applied to them? My son just had physical therapy denied after orthopedic surgery because he didn't report his pain at higher than a seven but not liking the sound of some words can get medical intervention covered by insurance?
I'm not a therapist. Perhaps the question is an example of poor practice. However, my first response to the OP was "what did you say to the therapist that inspired that response?" If the OP made a general negative statement about being a woman, this might have motivated the question. The therapist may have been wanting OP to clarify specifically what they hate about being a woman. Also, we are hearing the OP's interpretation of what their therapist said. What seems important here is the lack of willingness to address deeply the nature of their discomfort, whereever that may lead. The responses she received encourged a lack of introspection.
To be fair, I am not sure that asking a trans-identified woman "what's so bad about a woman?" can ever be helpful in therapy. I am not saying the therapist should affirm of course, but perhaps a better strategy would be to gently probe how the client came to this conclusion that she is not a woman , to tell more about what she believes makes one a man or a woman. (But I realize that treating these patients is very difficult because they don't want to change).
No one addresses the medical risks. It’s like putting on new clothes. Why not just do that? Dress like a butch lesbian! That should give you all the armor against society’s objectification of women you desire. In 20 years the casualties of this fad are going to pile up and it’s tragic.
It's baffling, isn't it? They spell out the awful social inequalities, the misogny, the abuse, the fear, the patriarchy, and instead of womanning up and joining the feminist movement, they want to be a nice sensitive guy (not one of the toxic ones), and start neutering themselves.
“Also hey, even cis women are allowed to get rid of the periods and the boobs if they don't do well with them.”
GAHHHH!
I have to say “do well with” is such an unusual and telling turn of phrase. A bit of a linguistic Freudian slip.
“There isn’t really anything specific about being a man, a woman, or anything in between. It’s all just a set of traits and things we associate with other things to communicate and describe our genders.”
Aristotle would HATE this!
"[T]aking HRT immediately fulfilled the sense of emptiness I felt from dysphoria that simply changing up my presentation didn't do . . ."
Doesn't testosterone generally have a mood-enhancing effect on women who take it when they are transitioning? Might that be why "T" reduced her sense of emptiness?
Switching gears, let's consider this person:
"Being aroace (aromantic and asexual) has definitely had an impact on how I've had to work through this idea because so many definitions for gender are described using sex, marriage, domesticity, and child-bearing as the framework in the United States, which isn't something I can participate in. How can I define what it means for me to be a man if I don't match any of the roles assigned to it on a fundamental level?"
Her self-image almost gives me a sense of dread because she has excluded herself quite methodically and madly, in my view, from so many elements of what it means to be human. I can't put my finger on it, but I sense she is quite mentally ill.
Link to the thread on masculinity for those who are curious to read more: https://www.reddit.com/r/ftm/comments/1hbjp1c/what_does_masculinity_and_being_a_man_means_to/