I like how you say intricate and "obvious" because the connection has always been that blatant to me and I've found it rather surprising that it's not brought up significantly more in the discussion.
In my first encounter with anorexics, what stood out most was the absolute conviction. How can you be so sure you're not thin enough, given so many eyes that look at you think the exact opposite? How is it that you can maintain such an obdurate subjectivity against the common subjectivity of the world which is the closest to objectivity we can attain on such issues?
That, for me, crystallized the understanding that a person could be 2000% sure about something and still be overwhelmingly wrong about it. I've heard several explanations proffered about anorexia. Recently, an evolutionary biologist offered the idea that it may have started in the ancient past as a mechanism by which women suspended reproductive activity in the face of perceived threats to successful reproductive endeavour or unavailability of resources—capital, human/communal, organic,etc—that should support reproduction. Essentially, the women stop eating and body fat falls below a certain level (I hear <11% is the critical point) in which case menstrual activity becomes irregular and stops altogether.
That idea made sense to me but I always wondered about its fittedness to the modern world in which we live. In our current iteration of anorexia, it seems to me that the rejection of the complications of navigating the female body is a better explanation. Just yesterday, I read this amazing piece by Ginevra Davis ( https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/02/how-feminism-ends/ ) that touched on exactly this—the demands the female body makes on its bearer that may have fueled the craze to escape it which found its manifestation in the Butlerian rejection of any biological contexts to grappling with the understanding of men and women.
This comment is getting too long. I just want to say I find your work very helpful, Eliza. You've been a consistent voice, a persistent researcher and I find no malice in my reading of your heart. We need you in this world. Please carry on.
As a retired clinical social worker and therapist - for some time now this basic analysis has been both my intellectual conclusion - and my "gut feeling" - about the interplay of dynamics behind the large number of adolescent girls suddenly emerging as - "trans" identified.
Thank you Eliza. As a former anorexic (it’s been 47 years almost since I was hospitalized) I have been observing the parallels between gender dysmorphia and anorexia for a while now. One thing you brought up that was really note worthy for me was that a girl may be seen as a sexual being before she feels this in herself (paraphrase.) This was definitely my experience. I went through puberty so early and so alone and it was excruciating. Having reached the other side, I love my femaleness now. I am a wife and mother and am so glad that in 1977 when I wanted to disappear and have my breast cut off this was not an option. I hope I have taught my daughters, by example to be happy in their female skin, but society sure can make it tough. I think culture is afraid of the beauty and power of womanhood, so it attacks it; sexuality’s it; and wants to, at the same time, masculate it.
I always wonder when our society is going to have the conversation about pornography and how that plays into the sexual abuse of the psyche of young girls and women in our society.
I look forward to reading the article cited. I’m guessing the eating clinics in Germany haven’t been captured by the trans ideology like they have here in the US, based on this quote: ‘They contrast the more sensitive psychodynamic approach to anorexia to the incurious affirmative approach that trans-identified girls meet with in many gender clinics.’ The eating clinic my daughter went insisted at the intake appointment that she needed Testosterone to treat her eating disorder. Before they even knew why she had disordered eating. We healed her ourselves at home but it was touch and go as she should have been hospitalized. One area I would love to see research done is on the number of girls in eating clinics who have autism, and the DE is caused by ARFID. Very few clinics in the U.S. seem to understand ARFID and autism in girls. Perhaps why there is a 30% failure rate. Are many of those girls just autistic with ARFID?
In a world in which many other kinds of discrimination have been addressed and prioritized, women have been left behind when it comes to mitigating the low hum of misogyny that runs like a current through our entire existence, even before we're born. It's a "death by a thousand cuts" that every one of us is subjected to every day, all day. Girls are already feeling the message that they are Less Than before adolescence confronts us with the ugly reality that sexism is still ubiquitous and accepted as a minor issue in nearly every context. We're told that men can't help it, so punishing them for it is wrong, and it's somehow our duty to educate them to be better people. When your mother tells you to clear the dishes and help her wash them after dinner while your brothers and father watch TV, you know you are unfairly doomed to a life of servitude. Fighting back means being alienated from your family. Those of us who've done that have had to deal with the lack of family support throughout our lives that most people take for granted. It's a massive sacrifice. It's no wonder so many girls internalize this battle and try to escape the bodies that made them 2nd class citizens in the first place.
An eye opening perspective of the difficulties adolescent girls face adjusting to their changing bodies and how they see themselves in the world. Add societal,family, peer pressures and sadly the possibility of emotional,physical and sexual abuse. The mind is a large memory bank storing memories both good and with emphasis on the bad. Feelings of inadequacy,inferiority,and self hatred in the manifestation of Anorexia Nervosa, cutting,scarring and now the rapid rise in trans. The profoundness of gender transition introducing testosterone into a female's body brings rapid changes in voice, facial & hair etc. Add the quick decision to breast removal (top surgery) and often the instant result is regret. It's sad that some girls really want out.
"The authors also draw attention to the susceptibility of the medical profession to psychic contagions and raise concerns about the implications for assessment and treatment when a form of distress is reconceptualized as a human-rights movement—that is, the point at which medical providers lose the ability to see disorder as such. " Interesting point. In my all-consuming anger toward medical professionals I never considered that they are also susceptible to the contagion.
As far as I'm concerned, all the sexualization of girls and women, including the push to "free love," the gradual introduction of nudity into film and culture, and, certainly all forms of porn- these are all done solely for the gratification of men's desires, and all are done at the physical and psychological expense of our female population. Sure sex feels good, but sex outside a formal committed relationship (commonly known as marriage) is not good for men and downright horrible for women. I've watched over the past six decades as women have been culturally brainwashed into believing that traditional relationships in which women can be safe and secure is a bad thing. It's not- it's crucial to the individual physical and emotional security of women and to a stable society.
porn porn porn. my sons (30 and 24) and my two daughters (20 and 22) have
grown up in a world i can scarcely imagine when it comes to forming intimate
relationships. the script for their love lives is written
with sex equaling violence. the sexes are pitted against
one another with woman as victim. though both are the losers. porn teaches the death of love both of self and others. the impact on this generation of kids and those to follow is a rapidly unfolding horror show
I have seen vague references to eating disorders being more prevalent among girls in gender clinics, but not enough information given in the research articles I have read. I agree there are similarities between what goes on for girls with eating disorders and what goes on for adolescents in gender clinics. In both sets of disorders, the patients are intensely motivated to control their bodies, usually in self-destructive mind-over-flesh wars. In both clinical contexts, girls and young women not only attack their own bodies but also use these self-directed attacks to mobilize other people to try unsuccessfully to save them, leaving would be rescuers enraged and impotent, while the patients experience feelings of omnipotent control. The Jungian analyst James Hollis opined that (one of his female patients) "attacked herself because she was the only one she had permission to attack" (within her family system).
With respect to speculation about causation, it is worth mentioning that girls experienced a great deal more direct and overt sexist bullying in adolescence during the 1950's and 1960's than they do currently. I think there have always been a lot of class and neighborhood culture variables when it comes to boys initiating nonconsensual aggressive physical contact with girls, but the level of real physical intimidation is probably much less than it used to be in middle class or more affluent neighborhoods. I could be wrong, but I think that boys get into trouble more than they used to for bullying girls, and I would think this lessens the level of classroom and school campus harassment of girls and young women.
So I think that we should look for current conditions as more likely to be central factors in the recent increase in certain mental disorders in adolescent girls and young women. Many young women have said that they are horribly treated online, and that they are also self critical about how they look and are judged on the basis of perceived physical attractiveness in social media contexts. Jonathan Heidt's research is consistent with the working theory that social media is an important factor in the current dramatic increase in eating disorders, identity disorders, self harming, etc. among adolescent girls.
On the other hand, the kinds of symptoms the gender clinic patients report (according to the insufficient research on the subject) tend to be associated with mental disorders that originate in childhood or earlier (in the case of neurodevelopmental disorders). I have not seen any good research that focuses on rates of borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or dissociative disorders in gender clinic patients. What has been said about the kinds of psych symptoms gender clinic patients report is consistent with those diagnoses. The thinking about the "Cluster B personality disorders" have for some time been that they are caused by unknown combinations of constitutional factors and adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, and chaotic or narcissistic family dynamics. If these disorders are increasing in frequency it would be interesting to know why.
It's a relief to me to see the intelligence and knowledge expressed here - in the post and the comments - so lacking in mainstream media. Maybe slightly off-topic, but I've just seen the flagship of BBC news - Newsnight - reporting on the staggering waiting lists for "gender care" in the UK, with clinics averaging over ten years from referral to first appointment, this state of affairs being connected to a number of suicides.
This, of course, is awful. Tens of thousands of people have no access to NHS assessment or treatment, whatever that might entail, and will be suffering badly.
But the only kinds of solution the BBC or any of its interviewees discussed were at the fire-fighting end of things. Nobody seemed to understand, or weren't interested in, the arsonists setting fires (the powerful, idiotic, reprehensible trans radical activists pushing their ideology to vulnerable minds). And so they all fanned the flames by omission.
All of them presented as fact a certain category of human, "trans people," who needed more urgent treatment. More training of gender specialists is needed, more clinics, faster administering of "gender care" for people presumably trapped in the wrong body.
A moment earlier, they reported on the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act (to come into effect on April Fool's Day), which extends the definition of a "hate crime", with concommitant heavier sentences, for offences against the protected characteristics of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics (intersex), these being added to the current "race" category. The police are going to be run ragged with complaints of misgendering, every one of which they've promised to investigate. "Sex" isn't on the list of protected characteristics.
So much of the bodily confusion is fed by the media and schools. At 70, we had rare occurrences of this happening when I was in school. Children thru age 18 need to be protected from such aggressive messaging and preditory behavior. No iPhone, only one for call/text. No personal computer. Ideally, no TV blathering nonsense 24/7. Most of all teaching children
what God thinks of them, what their purpose is, and most of all, how much God loves them.
They need to be filled with love, virtue, and purpose, direction, etc.
I Corinthians 6:20 9, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body." Being bought, meaning, Christ's sacrificial redemptive love. I know of no
love so profound. The gospel message has the power to break the power of faulty self loathing and elevate the worth of each person.
I like how you say intricate and "obvious" because the connection has always been that blatant to me and I've found it rather surprising that it's not brought up significantly more in the discussion.
In my first encounter with anorexics, what stood out most was the absolute conviction. How can you be so sure you're not thin enough, given so many eyes that look at you think the exact opposite? How is it that you can maintain such an obdurate subjectivity against the common subjectivity of the world which is the closest to objectivity we can attain on such issues?
That, for me, crystallized the understanding that a person could be 2000% sure about something and still be overwhelmingly wrong about it. I've heard several explanations proffered about anorexia. Recently, an evolutionary biologist offered the idea that it may have started in the ancient past as a mechanism by which women suspended reproductive activity in the face of perceived threats to successful reproductive endeavour or unavailability of resources—capital, human/communal, organic,etc—that should support reproduction. Essentially, the women stop eating and body fat falls below a certain level (I hear <11% is the critical point) in which case menstrual activity becomes irregular and stops altogether.
That idea made sense to me but I always wondered about its fittedness to the modern world in which we live. In our current iteration of anorexia, it seems to me that the rejection of the complications of navigating the female body is a better explanation. Just yesterday, I read this amazing piece by Ginevra Davis ( https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/02/how-feminism-ends/ ) that touched on exactly this—the demands the female body makes on its bearer that may have fueled the craze to escape it which found its manifestation in the Butlerian rejection of any biological contexts to grappling with the understanding of men and women.
This comment is getting too long. I just want to say I find your work very helpful, Eliza. You've been a consistent voice, a persistent researcher and I find no malice in my reading of your heart. We need you in this world. Please carry on.
As a retired clinical social worker and therapist - for some time now this basic analysis has been both my intellectual conclusion - and my "gut feeling" - about the interplay of dynamics behind the large number of adolescent girls suddenly emerging as - "trans" identified.
Thank you Eliza. As a former anorexic (it’s been 47 years almost since I was hospitalized) I have been observing the parallels between gender dysmorphia and anorexia for a while now. One thing you brought up that was really note worthy for me was that a girl may be seen as a sexual being before she feels this in herself (paraphrase.) This was definitely my experience. I went through puberty so early and so alone and it was excruciating. Having reached the other side, I love my femaleness now. I am a wife and mother and am so glad that in 1977 when I wanted to disappear and have my breast cut off this was not an option. I hope I have taught my daughters, by example to be happy in their female skin, but society sure can make it tough. I think culture is afraid of the beauty and power of womanhood, so it attacks it; sexuality’s it; and wants to, at the same time, masculate it.
Fantastic! Boy, Mantel was such a good writer.
I always wonder when our society is going to have the conversation about pornography and how that plays into the sexual abuse of the psyche of young girls and women in our society.
I look forward to reading the article cited. I’m guessing the eating clinics in Germany haven’t been captured by the trans ideology like they have here in the US, based on this quote: ‘They contrast the more sensitive psychodynamic approach to anorexia to the incurious affirmative approach that trans-identified girls meet with in many gender clinics.’ The eating clinic my daughter went insisted at the intake appointment that she needed Testosterone to treat her eating disorder. Before they even knew why she had disordered eating. We healed her ourselves at home but it was touch and go as she should have been hospitalized. One area I would love to see research done is on the number of girls in eating clinics who have autism, and the DE is caused by ARFID. Very few clinics in the U.S. seem to understand ARFID and autism in girls. Perhaps why there is a 30% failure rate. Are many of those girls just autistic with ARFID?
This is a lovely, perceptive article Eliza, and I look forward to reading the research piece you’re describing
In a world in which many other kinds of discrimination have been addressed and prioritized, women have been left behind when it comes to mitigating the low hum of misogyny that runs like a current through our entire existence, even before we're born. It's a "death by a thousand cuts" that every one of us is subjected to every day, all day. Girls are already feeling the message that they are Less Than before adolescence confronts us with the ugly reality that sexism is still ubiquitous and accepted as a minor issue in nearly every context. We're told that men can't help it, so punishing them for it is wrong, and it's somehow our duty to educate them to be better people. When your mother tells you to clear the dishes and help her wash them after dinner while your brothers and father watch TV, you know you are unfairly doomed to a life of servitude. Fighting back means being alienated from your family. Those of us who've done that have had to deal with the lack of family support throughout our lives that most people take for granted. It's a massive sacrifice. It's no wonder so many girls internalize this battle and try to escape the bodies that made them 2nd class citizens in the first place.
You understand this cohort of girls, Eliza.
Bravo to Korte and Gille for their research.
So many things can go awry during adolescence--especially when an identity is being forged via the Internet.
It's not just one thing--even when the girls appear similar.
Some off these girls are opting in to an oppressed identity.
An eye opening perspective of the difficulties adolescent girls face adjusting to their changing bodies and how they see themselves in the world. Add societal,family, peer pressures and sadly the possibility of emotional,physical and sexual abuse. The mind is a large memory bank storing memories both good and with emphasis on the bad. Feelings of inadequacy,inferiority,and self hatred in the manifestation of Anorexia Nervosa, cutting,scarring and now the rapid rise in trans. The profoundness of gender transition introducing testosterone into a female's body brings rapid changes in voice, facial & hair etc. Add the quick decision to breast removal (top surgery) and often the instant result is regret. It's sad that some girls really want out.
Rather insightful essay; bookmarked, may have some relevance to my niece and her daughters.
Though, somewhat en passant, you seem to have fallen over -- hope you manage to "right" yourself ... 😉🙂
"The authors also draw attention to the susceptibility of the medical profession to psychic contagions and raise concerns about the implications for assessment and treatment when a form of distress is reconceptualized as a human-rights movement—that is, the point at which medical providers lose the ability to see disorder as such. " Interesting point. In my all-consuming anger toward medical professionals I never considered that they are also susceptible to the contagion.
As far as I'm concerned, all the sexualization of girls and women, including the push to "free love," the gradual introduction of nudity into film and culture, and, certainly all forms of porn- these are all done solely for the gratification of men's desires, and all are done at the physical and psychological expense of our female population. Sure sex feels good, but sex outside a formal committed relationship (commonly known as marriage) is not good for men and downright horrible for women. I've watched over the past six decades as women have been culturally brainwashed into believing that traditional relationships in which women can be safe and secure is a bad thing. It's not- it's crucial to the individual physical and emotional security of women and to a stable society.
porn porn porn. my sons (30 and 24) and my two daughters (20 and 22) have
grown up in a world i can scarcely imagine when it comes to forming intimate
relationships. the script for their love lives is written
with sex equaling violence. the sexes are pitted against
one another with woman as victim. though both are the losers. porn teaches the death of love both of self and others. the impact on this generation of kids and those to follow is a rapidly unfolding horror show
I have seen vague references to eating disorders being more prevalent among girls in gender clinics, but not enough information given in the research articles I have read. I agree there are similarities between what goes on for girls with eating disorders and what goes on for adolescents in gender clinics. In both sets of disorders, the patients are intensely motivated to control their bodies, usually in self-destructive mind-over-flesh wars. In both clinical contexts, girls and young women not only attack their own bodies but also use these self-directed attacks to mobilize other people to try unsuccessfully to save them, leaving would be rescuers enraged and impotent, while the patients experience feelings of omnipotent control. The Jungian analyst James Hollis opined that (one of his female patients) "attacked herself because she was the only one she had permission to attack" (within her family system).
With respect to speculation about causation, it is worth mentioning that girls experienced a great deal more direct and overt sexist bullying in adolescence during the 1950's and 1960's than they do currently. I think there have always been a lot of class and neighborhood culture variables when it comes to boys initiating nonconsensual aggressive physical contact with girls, but the level of real physical intimidation is probably much less than it used to be in middle class or more affluent neighborhoods. I could be wrong, but I think that boys get into trouble more than they used to for bullying girls, and I would think this lessens the level of classroom and school campus harassment of girls and young women.
So I think that we should look for current conditions as more likely to be central factors in the recent increase in certain mental disorders in adolescent girls and young women. Many young women have said that they are horribly treated online, and that they are also self critical about how they look and are judged on the basis of perceived physical attractiveness in social media contexts. Jonathan Heidt's research is consistent with the working theory that social media is an important factor in the current dramatic increase in eating disorders, identity disorders, self harming, etc. among adolescent girls.
On the other hand, the kinds of symptoms the gender clinic patients report (according to the insufficient research on the subject) tend to be associated with mental disorders that originate in childhood or earlier (in the case of neurodevelopmental disorders). I have not seen any good research that focuses on rates of borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or dissociative disorders in gender clinic patients. What has been said about the kinds of psych symptoms gender clinic patients report is consistent with those diagnoses. The thinking about the "Cluster B personality disorders" have for some time been that they are caused by unknown combinations of constitutional factors and adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, and chaotic or narcissistic family dynamics. If these disorders are increasing in frequency it would be interesting to know why.
It's a relief to me to see the intelligence and knowledge expressed here - in the post and the comments - so lacking in mainstream media. Maybe slightly off-topic, but I've just seen the flagship of BBC news - Newsnight - reporting on the staggering waiting lists for "gender care" in the UK, with clinics averaging over ten years from referral to first appointment, this state of affairs being connected to a number of suicides.
This, of course, is awful. Tens of thousands of people have no access to NHS assessment or treatment, whatever that might entail, and will be suffering badly.
But the only kinds of solution the BBC or any of its interviewees discussed were at the fire-fighting end of things. Nobody seemed to understand, or weren't interested in, the arsonists setting fires (the powerful, idiotic, reprehensible trans radical activists pushing their ideology to vulnerable minds). And so they all fanned the flames by omission.
All of them presented as fact a certain category of human, "trans people," who needed more urgent treatment. More training of gender specialists is needed, more clinics, faster administering of "gender care" for people presumably trapped in the wrong body.
A moment earlier, they reported on the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act (to come into effect on April Fool's Day), which extends the definition of a "hate crime", with concommitant heavier sentences, for offences against the protected characteristics of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics (intersex), these being added to the current "race" category. The police are going to be run ragged with complaints of misgendering, every one of which they've promised to investigate. "Sex" isn't on the list of protected characteristics.
So much of the bodily confusion is fed by the media and schools. At 70, we had rare occurrences of this happening when I was in school. Children thru age 18 need to be protected from such aggressive messaging and preditory behavior. No iPhone, only one for call/text. No personal computer. Ideally, no TV blathering nonsense 24/7. Most of all teaching children
what God thinks of them, what their purpose is, and most of all, how much God loves them.
They need to be filled with love, virtue, and purpose, direction, etc.
I Corinthians 6:20 9, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body." Being bought, meaning, Christ's sacrificial redemptive love. I know of no
love so profound. The gospel message has the power to break the power of faulty self loathing and elevate the worth of each person.