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 would argue that almost ALL girls experience unwanted sexual attention before they're ready and able to handle it. Certainly every woman I've spoken to and every woman in my family has had to deal with male predators FAR TOO YOUNG.
So, really, we should be asking WHY male humans seem inclined at any age to predate on prepubescent, adolescent girl? It's too simple to just chalk it up to patriarchy. Girls and women are being driven insane by a culture which values their bodies in the same way it values cows and chickens - as commodities - rather than full sovereign human beings with different needs than boys and men. Highly complex needs that are rarely ever fully addressed in this culture. It's too easy to demonize men because I think they're victims, too. It would seem that they have their humanity stripped from them as boys which prevents them from seeing girls as worthy of love and respect. They are taught to see girls and women as prey. That must be traumatic in itself.
The biologists who write on Colin Wrights site tend to take the position that a lot of male behavior, especially sexual and physically aggressive behaviors, are testosterone driven. I agree with this. There is, however, variation across cultures in how much aggressive behavior, including aggressive behaviors towards women, are encouraged in men.
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?
I think they're referring to the way anorexia was understood before the imposition of gender ideology because I have talked to young women in in-patient care for anorexia who had concurrent gender issues that were totally supported by staff.
I doubt that ARFID could be commonly mistaken for anorexia. People with ARFID aren't trying to lose weight. For people with anorexia, the focus is on making the body smaller; restricting food intake is simply the method for doing that.
And I’ll add, there was no questioning about what it could be at the intake appointments. No interest in thinking it might be something else other than body dismorphia and anorexia caused by hatred of body. And they told us our daughter would kill hirself if we didn’t start her on T right away, in front of our daughter. She even protested and said ‘but I don’t hate my body, I just don’t like certain foods’. The EC’s are completely captured.
That is exactly what happened to us. It took three registered dietitians to diagnose her ARFID. Even the third took some time to even understand what it was and then said it would be a good learning curve for her to help us. It worked out well in the end as now this dietitian realizes how captured the EC’s are.
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.
But do you think that sexism is worse now than it was, say, in the 1960's? If so, in what ways is it worse? In many ways, things are so much better for women now than during the 1970's. So why wouldn't we see a decrease rather than a recent dramatic increase in mental disorders involving body rejection among adolescent girls and young women?
It is almost never possible to determine the causes of mental disorders, even in groups, let alone in individuals, but could try to narrow down the potential factors that are contributing to recent increases in cases. Social media seems important but insufficient as an explanation.
I agree that in many ways women today have it better, especially because domestic violence and sexual harassment have become actionable transgressions through legal channels. Even the threat of a suit can get a creep to back down. But the backlash against feminism spawned a generation of handmaidens eagerly selling us out for headpats. Unless we can reach these dimwits and get them to understand they are dragging us backwards, we could lose our legal protections, or see them watered down far enough to be worthless.
As for mental disorders, there could be a number of factors. I think that our natural survival instinct plays a part when, as children, we know we are being exposed to things that aren't quite right and that makes us feel unsafe but we understand that everyone around us accepts it and there is no hope of avoiding it. Anorexic girls respond to tyrant fathers by starving themselves. It's the only way they can reject the father's control without directly antagonizing him with an overt act of defiance. Did the child have a mental disorder before she was traumatized? Many adults who have been diagnosed with mental disorders recall a specific incident in which they went from being a healthy individual to becoming disordered. Is all of this just some form of PTSD? I'm sure there are many derogatory disorders that were created just to describe women who are having a perfectly natural reaction to sexism or inappropriate sexualized behavior from men or from society in general. Are more people autistic or is it just an easy diagnosis given by doctors who have spent as much time as they are willing to spend with a patient, and people just accept it and move on? Can we trust mental health professionals to know what they're talking about? I would say probably not. I hope someone is doing some good faith research into these disorders, but I fear most of the researchers are seeking recognition and money instead of a real breakthrough.
oh oh oh sorry for butting into your conversation but lol as someone who was diagnosed as autistic as a kid in the 90s back when that meant "shows no interest in talking to other people" the changes in Autism as a label is one of my FAVORITE TOPICS and anyway the answer is yeah, it's broadened to an unhelpful degree for researchers and everyone with the diagnosis.
Here is an article from 2019 about how the differences between Autistic people and non-Autistic people have been decreasing dramatically:
Mottron, the researcher quoted, also co-wrote this Op-Ed about the broadening of Autism as a diagnostic category, which includes a criticism of the conflation of BPD with Autism and the ways in which "female" vs "male" Autism as a concept is unhelpful because lol lumping them under the same name makes it more difficult for people to get the type of support that will help them:
Most psychiatric disorders are just the extreme dysfunctional end of normal human behaviors, and research pretty clearly points to there being a degree of heritability--both prevalence within families and then immediate family members have a higher incidence of related traits without qualifying for a diagnosis. This is true across disorders. But neurodiversity advocates always present that research as implying that actually those relatives are Autistic or ADHD, too (so far they have not gotten around to arguing this case for most other disorders as far as I've seen.)
Thanks for those interesting and important points, and the links. We keep hearing there's been an enormous increase in such things as autism recently, but I'm inclined to think much of that must be due to the expansion of the diagnosis and the fashion for self-diagnosing and claiming neurodiversity as a means of ego-massage or self-promotion as someone deserving special treatment.
Oh wow, labeling quiet kids "autistic" is such an anti-intellectual position. All the quiet kids I knew in elementary school loved reading and were generally more mature than their classmates. I wouldn't have survived today's mental health examinations. Thanks for the interesting links! I hope you didn't endure a great deal of misery as a diagnosed kid. My parents always speculated about my brother, convinced he was "hyperactive", and my mother believed I had Asperger's. Fortunately, they didn't act on their impulses and we were spared the attentions of some shady headshrinker. Sounds like you are doing just fine. :)
LOL I was more than just quiet. As far as suffering due to the diagnosis, I wasn't in special ed so none of my peers knew. They just mocked me for being a loner with no friends. But I already knew I was a loner with no friends and was comfortable with that, so it didn't bother me. As an adult, I did have some difficulty in some social spaces and now all the people who gave me a hard time about it are self-diagnosed and am I bitter about that? yes. yes, I am.
On the other hand, when my husband and I first began dating I told him my diagnosis and he RESEARCHED so he would be able to understand what to expect in our relationship, and he said that if he hadn't known that it would have been more difficult for him. And he's always been really great and supportive in a way that often feels really outside the norm when I hear other women talk about their marriages. But if I'd had a better framework for talking about my weaknesses I wouldn't have needed the label, you know?
But yeah, I think I'm doing okay! I worked hard on the my weak areas and I improved some of them to the point I now have people tell me I'm better than average at those skills. Still suck at others. So, normal human stuff.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Jennifer. I haven't recently reviewed the current research on BPD and I don't know much about autism. A lot of research in psychology is untrustworthy now, with the level of corruption increasing in areas of special interest to woke ideologues, e.g., "gender identity," black people, and homelessness.
ADHD is another diagnosis that is increasing again (whether or not the actual disorder is increasing). It's hard to tell what symptoms adolescent girls actually have versus how many they are faking. A lot of them seem to want to be diagnosed with autism, Tourette's and/or ADHD, and there are no objective tests for a lot of these disorders, so kids can fake them.
Many of the parents whose kids end up in gender clinics appear to be caring and non-abusive, although there are others who think it is cool to have a "trans kid," which is definitely not an indication of good parenting. The most prevalent parenting problem I am seeing is the abdication of responsibility for providing leadership, guidance regarding how to be normal, and clear boundaries regarding aggressive behaviors towards others. The schools and universities are the same.
You've made many excellent points here with regard to the abdication of leadership and the social trend of children self-diagnosing (faking) their disorders. It's an exciting power trip for the otherwise healthy kids who started out seeking attention and discovered trans identity could be wielded as a weapon to manipulate parents, teachers, doctors, and anyone they perceived as an enemy. It's terrifying to see a real life case in which a child used CPS and trans identity to have the government remove them from their home in the US and relocate them to a foster family in Canada!
Parents and doctors are both guilty of bowing down to a trend without proper due diligence, and there is also the fear of being fired or vilified by their peers for "transphobia". And now the word "normal" is offensive and off-limits. Even the idea that we should provide support to help a disordered child become "healthy and well-adjusted" is perceived as an attack by those who insist that the child should be accommodated to be comfortable with the disorder, and the world should be restructured to accept and celebrate what is essentially a mental illness.
College professors seem to be in a perpetual state of midlife crisis, desperate to be viewed as cool and cutting edge by their students. They are churning out a generation brainwashed to be suspicious of anyone older than themselves, much like the social revolutions of the 60's. Only this time, instead of searching for ideological freedom and fighting for civil liberties, they are trapped in a hivemind bent on dismantling hardwon safeguarding for children and women's rights. Instead of using critical thinking and open debate to examine the issue, they use threats of social and economic sabotage, and even physical violence against anyone who disagrees or even simply wants to discuss the issue rationally.
The media should be calling them out for this, but their stockholders and sponsors care only about profits, so their agenda is to please and appease the mob. They steadfastly paint all who object to this insanity as conservative, and rarely allow feminists and progressives a chance to explain our reasons for rejecting trans ideology. I'm seriously fed up with being accused of being conservative, when trans ideology is so thoroughly backwards. How is it possible to pass laws banning conversion therapy without including gender transition? The perceptual disconnect is breathtaking.
The LGBTQ+ lobby has become too powerful to challenge, and it's been hijacked by male fetishists and pedophiles. Occasionally I hear gay men complain (quietly) that the morons wearing the assless chaps and bondage dog costumes to pride events have served to affirm society's worst impression of the gay community. It's true. It's time the silent majority spoke up about it because it's their movement that spawned this nightmare. Per usual, the men are waiting for the women to clean up their mess.
Excellent post! You capture so well the nature of the opposition to helping children and women who are being adversely affected by gender ideology, persistent misogyny and exploitation. I especially appreciate your comments regarding feminism, which indicate to me that you actually know what it is. I find this to be rare in comment sections on Substack sites that critique the gender cult. I am a Second Wave Feminist, and I was very active in the movement during the 1970's. I have taken a lot of crap off both women and men on Substack sites when I "come out as a feminist." I feel less free to speak than I did in the 1970's. There is an added theme now, which is that "feminists are the source of the woke ideologies and the cause of all our problems." In the Seventies we hadn't been around long enough to be blamed for that much. LOL! The Adam and Eve bullshit appears to be a permanent fixture in the patriarchal consciousness.
My heart lives and beats for 2nd Wave Feminists! Thank you for all your activism, Sandra! Every freedom I have as a woman I owe to your generation of feminists. You're my shero. <3
OH ALSO I forgot. this child psychologist I admire has talked before about how he's given kids and adolescents autism diagnoses despite not believing they were autistic because he DID think they needed support, but he couldn't convince the school system his patients were in to give them the support they needed without specifically an autism diagnosis. so there's perverse incentive there to misdiagnose people so they'll get necessary support.
On one hand, it sounds like he was genuinely trying to help, but on the other, I have to think he must have scarred those kids for life. I hope the kids eventually met with a doctor who told them the diagnosis was incorrect.
It's been awhile since I watched the lecture where he talked about that, but I came away with the impression he told her parents the diagnosis was specifically because the school wouldn't accommodate her otherwise. He's pretty outspokenly against diagnostic labels overall; his point with sharing the anecdote was that the system often prevents professionals from getting kids necessary support unless they label them.
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.
But as something of a sexist comment -- though "sexy isn't sexist" as Substacker and evolutionary biologist Paula Wright put it -- it reminds me of a quip that women are like pianos: if they're not upright they're grand ... 🙂
"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.
I think you're misdiagnosing the problem. There is nothing whatever wrong with "sex outside a formal committed relationship" or "free love." The problem is the imbalance in power between males and females. Partly this is due to our history of patriarchy, instilling in all of us unconscious biases in that direction - expectations that men will take more power, and are somehow due more of it because they take it - and, unfortunately, because that patriarchy is based in physical characteristics of strength, psychology and endocrinology. You seem to suggest that women ought to get married in order to "be safe and secure," but this seems simply a reaffirmation of women's inferior status and indeed possession by men (it is hard to avoid the condition of being a protector of someone weaker as indicating some level of ownership of them). We need more powerful women and more humble men.
I think casual sex *can* harm interpersonal relationships, but it can also grow them. The harm seems to be due to an imbalance of power (usually, but not always male-dominant). Plenty of youngsters these days grow up having casual sexual relationships with multiple friends, with mutual respect and care, before gradually finding a longer-term partner.
This difference in our views also applies to the "gradual introduction of nudity into film and culture." There is nothing intrinsically wrong with nudity or the portrayal of sex - there is nothing wrong with sex! - the problem is again that men have the majority of power in the film industry and most areas of culture, which is why it is women who have been increasingly degraded into sex objects. Surely this is the main reason why porn is so toxic, because it is produced by men. It also tends to be very physical, often violent, with no subtly or intimacy, no expression of vulnerability, no failure or learning or yearning - things that happen in real sexual encounters - which is probably due partly to the psychological bias of males and partly to the addictive personality of those attracted to making pornography and/or the addictive nature of sexual pleasure.
This view of mine put me in a quandry in relation to protecting women's spaces on the grounds that women are vulnerable and need to be protected from intrusion by men (including trans-identified men), but there is a difference: women's spaces are where women exclude men (and I'm fine with men excluding women too); they are not places where women are chaperoned; they are places that women own. They don't just exclude men to feel safer, they also do it as an expression of power.
Thanks for the reply. Fundamentally, we're in agreement. I'm arguing for more power for women. But my assertion is that the cultural move toward sexualization has been instigated by men to erode the existing power that women did hold. But, I'm not talking political power- that's largely a money dynamic- most men have no political power. But all women have what all men want- men enjoy looking at skantily-clad women and having sex with women- perhaps that's an annoying reality, but it's the truth. If a woman wants to persuade or coerce a man to meet her needs, she must deny him what he wants until he agrees to meet those needs. Again, it may be annoying that a woman's power derives from access to her body, but from a man's perspective, that is an objective truth. Regarding nudity in film, every time I see it in film, I think there is some dirty old man director or producer who simply wants to get his jollies , while at the same time drastically changing a scene from a romantic encounter with the woman in control, to a sexual encounter with the man in control. Call me old-fashioned, that's OK. But, a man who truly loves a woman will not insist on access to her body prior to a commitment. Sorry if I wandered a bit- I'm traveling so I'm writing on my phone. But, again, I appreciate your response.
Yes, I appreciate your response too, and I do think we're mostly in agreement. I find myself resisting the idea that men want access to women's bodies and women use that to get their needs met, because it sounds like a demeaning and accusative trope about women's sexual power over men and their manipulativeness, and also emphasizes inequality. However, I have heard that point being made by women themselves, that they (generalising here, of course, and ignoring same-sex attracted women) reach a certain age and realise they have this incredible power over men. I guess it's the converse of suffering unwanted attention.
We're clearly not in agreement on the issue of "commitment" before "access to her body", but I think we understand each other.
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.
There has been a spike in recent years in the UK of sexual assault and harassment amoung young students. Hard core porn on phones accessed at 10-11 years old probably an influence, if not cause.
There was a guest on Wider Lens (maybe it was Susan Bradley? not sure) who touched on the idea that over time she became more convinced that BPD was not a personality disorder, but more of an autism spectrum issue. I wish she had expanded on it, and hope to see more study on the idea, but it's something that has not left my mind.
I have wondered if the cognitive problems that are prevalent in people with BPD are an indication of a neurodevelopmental disorder. Some of these same problems are more prevalent than I previously observed among the population in general. J. Haidt listed some of them in "The Coddling of the American Mind," e.g., all or nothing thinking, emotional "reasoning," overgeneralizing from parts to wholes. (If someone owned slaves in 1730, then nothing else he said or did has value). There is also a ton of projection and finger pointing going on. It appears to me that the level of thinking in the overall American population has degenerated into patterns that resemble psychopathologies, especially Cluster B personality disorders. It's getting difficult to identify who is more confused, the patients or the people who are supposed to be treating them.
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.
Even though sex is not on the list of protected characteristics, I hope that every woman in Scotland will call the police every time she is catcalled, harassed, insulted, or in any way treated rudely for being a woman. Let the police drown under the weight of men's mistreatment of women. We have it way worse than the dimwits who impersonate us.
I kind of lean the other way. As one MP put it, "there's no right not to be offended." I think the whole concept of particular "hate" crimes is nonsensical, and encourages victim mentality and the impression that the state should save us from all upset, even in online spaces we've chosen to go and in posts we've chosen to read. A crime should depend on the establishment of actual physical harm or threat to safety, as it used to be, not feeling hurt by someone else's words, which puts the definition in the subjective realm and the power of the purported victim (the same problem as making the need for gender treatment at the behest of the supposed trans person). In addition, categorizing particular identity groups is silly and potentially never-ending. Where's the protection for "gingers", tall/short people, those with a monobrow, dog-owners, non-dog-owners? In specific circumstances, an offence against one person might be worse due to their disability, ethnicity, sex, etc., but to make it a general rule that offending certain groups is worse than others is divisive and discriminatory *by definition*!
The Scottish Government's response to the criticism that sex isn't on the list is that it is currently working on a bill to deal with misogyny, and I'm afraid this illustrates the problem perfectly. Men can be victims of abuse by females (and, of course, by males, and more often), and some women are much stronger and more violent than many men - so it seems wrong to me to make it a greater offence, carrying a stiffer sentence, to harm a woman than a man. How many people know the opposite term to "misogyny" without looking it up? It feels unfair to know that hatred of me for my sex doesn't even feature in people's Overton window.
If the Scottish Government comes to its senses and realises that both sexes need protecting from offence, well, there's no other category (actually, that's expecting too much, there are hundreds of genders!).
I agree with you. I was not suggesting that every slight we endure as women is a "hate crime". My goal is to show police and the community in general that women experience more abuse than men, and trans need to shut the fuck up about their perceived "microaggressions" when their very claims to be women are a legitimate affront to us.
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.
I would argue that almost ALL girls experience unwanted sexual attention before they're ready and able to handle it. Certainly every woman I've spoken to and every woman in my family has had to deal with male predators FAR TOO YOUNG.
So, really, we should be asking WHY male humans seem inclined at any age to predate on prepubescent, adolescent girl? It's too simple to just chalk it up to patriarchy. Girls and women are being driven insane by a culture which values their bodies in the same way it values cows and chickens - as commodities - rather than full sovereign human beings with different needs than boys and men. Highly complex needs that are rarely ever fully addressed in this culture. It's too easy to demonize men because I think they're victims, too. It would seem that they have their humanity stripped from them as boys which prevents them from seeing girls as worthy of love and respect. They are taught to see girls and women as prey. That must be traumatic in itself.
The biologists who write on Colin Wrights site tend to take the position that a lot of male behavior, especially sexual and physically aggressive behaviors, are testosterone driven. I agree with this. There is, however, variation across cultures in how much aggressive behavior, including aggressive behaviors towards women, are encouraged in men.
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?
I think they're referring to the way anorexia was understood before the imposition of gender ideology because I have talked to young women in in-patient care for anorexia who had concurrent gender issues that were totally supported by staff.
I doubt that ARFID could be commonly mistaken for anorexia. People with ARFID aren't trying to lose weight. For people with anorexia, the focus is on making the body smaller; restricting food intake is simply the method for doing that.
And I’ll add, there was no questioning about what it could be at the intake appointments. No interest in thinking it might be something else other than body dismorphia and anorexia caused by hatred of body. And they told us our daughter would kill hirself if we didn’t start her on T right away, in front of our daughter. She even protested and said ‘but I don’t hate my body, I just don’t like certain foods’. The EC’s are completely captured.
That is exactly what happened to us. It took three registered dietitians to diagnose her ARFID. Even the third took some time to even understand what it was and then said it would be a good learning curve for her to help us. It worked out well in the end as now this dietitian realizes how captured the EC’s are.
For the benefit of those who do not follow this subject closely, "ARFD" is Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. For more information: National Eating Disorders Association https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/avoidant-restrictive-food-intake-disorder-arfid/
Thank you for sharing. Also, this resource was incredibly helpful for us. There is a book published as well. https://www.peacepathway.org
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.
But do you think that sexism is worse now than it was, say, in the 1960's? If so, in what ways is it worse? In many ways, things are so much better for women now than during the 1970's. So why wouldn't we see a decrease rather than a recent dramatic increase in mental disorders involving body rejection among adolescent girls and young women?
It is almost never possible to determine the causes of mental disorders, even in groups, let alone in individuals, but could try to narrow down the potential factors that are contributing to recent increases in cases. Social media seems important but insufficient as an explanation.
I agree that in many ways women today have it better, especially because domestic violence and sexual harassment have become actionable transgressions through legal channels. Even the threat of a suit can get a creep to back down. But the backlash against feminism spawned a generation of handmaidens eagerly selling us out for headpats. Unless we can reach these dimwits and get them to understand they are dragging us backwards, we could lose our legal protections, or see them watered down far enough to be worthless.
As for mental disorders, there could be a number of factors. I think that our natural survival instinct plays a part when, as children, we know we are being exposed to things that aren't quite right and that makes us feel unsafe but we understand that everyone around us accepts it and there is no hope of avoiding it. Anorexic girls respond to tyrant fathers by starving themselves. It's the only way they can reject the father's control without directly antagonizing him with an overt act of defiance. Did the child have a mental disorder before she was traumatized? Many adults who have been diagnosed with mental disorders recall a specific incident in which they went from being a healthy individual to becoming disordered. Is all of this just some form of PTSD? I'm sure there are many derogatory disorders that were created just to describe women who are having a perfectly natural reaction to sexism or inappropriate sexualized behavior from men or from society in general. Are more people autistic or is it just an easy diagnosis given by doctors who have spent as much time as they are willing to spend with a patient, and people just accept it and move on? Can we trust mental health professionals to know what they're talking about? I would say probably not. I hope someone is doing some good faith research into these disorders, but I fear most of the researchers are seeking recognition and money instead of a real breakthrough.
oh oh oh sorry for butting into your conversation but lol as someone who was diagnosed as autistic as a kid in the 90s back when that meant "shows no interest in talking to other people" the changes in Autism as a label is one of my FAVORITE TOPICS and anyway the answer is yeah, it's broadened to an unhelpful degree for researchers and everyone with the diagnosis.
Here is an article from 2019 about how the differences between Autistic people and non-Autistic people have been decreasing dramatically:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/26/autism-neurodiversity-severe
Mottron, the researcher quoted, also co-wrote this Op-Ed about the broadening of Autism as a diagnostic category, which includes a criticism of the conflation of BPD with Autism and the ways in which "female" vs "male" Autism as a concept is unhelpful because lol lumping them under the same name makes it more difficult for people to get the type of support that will help them:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01343-3
Most psychiatric disorders are just the extreme dysfunctional end of normal human behaviors, and research pretty clearly points to there being a degree of heritability--both prevalence within families and then immediate family members have a higher incidence of related traits without qualifying for a diagnosis. This is true across disorders. But neurodiversity advocates always present that research as implying that actually those relatives are Autistic or ADHD, too (so far they have not gotten around to arguing this case for most other disorders as far as I've seen.)
Thanks for those interesting and important points, and the links. We keep hearing there's been an enormous increase in such things as autism recently, but I'm inclined to think much of that must be due to the expansion of the diagnosis and the fashion for self-diagnosing and claiming neurodiversity as a means of ego-massage or self-promotion as someone deserving special treatment.
Oh wow, labeling quiet kids "autistic" is such an anti-intellectual position. All the quiet kids I knew in elementary school loved reading and were generally more mature than their classmates. I wouldn't have survived today's mental health examinations. Thanks for the interesting links! I hope you didn't endure a great deal of misery as a diagnosed kid. My parents always speculated about my brother, convinced he was "hyperactive", and my mother believed I had Asperger's. Fortunately, they didn't act on their impulses and we were spared the attentions of some shady headshrinker. Sounds like you are doing just fine. :)
LOL I was more than just quiet. As far as suffering due to the diagnosis, I wasn't in special ed so none of my peers knew. They just mocked me for being a loner with no friends. But I already knew I was a loner with no friends and was comfortable with that, so it didn't bother me. As an adult, I did have some difficulty in some social spaces and now all the people who gave me a hard time about it are self-diagnosed and am I bitter about that? yes. yes, I am.
On the other hand, when my husband and I first began dating I told him my diagnosis and he RESEARCHED so he would be able to understand what to expect in our relationship, and he said that if he hadn't known that it would have been more difficult for him. And he's always been really great and supportive in a way that often feels really outside the norm when I hear other women talk about their marriages. But if I'd had a better framework for talking about my weaknesses I wouldn't have needed the label, you know?
But yeah, I think I'm doing okay! I worked hard on the my weak areas and I improved some of them to the point I now have people tell me I'm better than average at those skills. Still suck at others. So, normal human stuff.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Jennifer. I haven't recently reviewed the current research on BPD and I don't know much about autism. A lot of research in psychology is untrustworthy now, with the level of corruption increasing in areas of special interest to woke ideologues, e.g., "gender identity," black people, and homelessness.
ADHD is another diagnosis that is increasing again (whether or not the actual disorder is increasing). It's hard to tell what symptoms adolescent girls actually have versus how many they are faking. A lot of them seem to want to be diagnosed with autism, Tourette's and/or ADHD, and there are no objective tests for a lot of these disorders, so kids can fake them.
Many of the parents whose kids end up in gender clinics appear to be caring and non-abusive, although there are others who think it is cool to have a "trans kid," which is definitely not an indication of good parenting. The most prevalent parenting problem I am seeing is the abdication of responsibility for providing leadership, guidance regarding how to be normal, and clear boundaries regarding aggressive behaviors towards others. The schools and universities are the same.
You've made many excellent points here with regard to the abdication of leadership and the social trend of children self-diagnosing (faking) their disorders. It's an exciting power trip for the otherwise healthy kids who started out seeking attention and discovered trans identity could be wielded as a weapon to manipulate parents, teachers, doctors, and anyone they perceived as an enemy. It's terrifying to see a real life case in which a child used CPS and trans identity to have the government remove them from their home in the US and relocate them to a foster family in Canada!
Parents and doctors are both guilty of bowing down to a trend without proper due diligence, and there is also the fear of being fired or vilified by their peers for "transphobia". And now the word "normal" is offensive and off-limits. Even the idea that we should provide support to help a disordered child become "healthy and well-adjusted" is perceived as an attack by those who insist that the child should be accommodated to be comfortable with the disorder, and the world should be restructured to accept and celebrate what is essentially a mental illness.
College professors seem to be in a perpetual state of midlife crisis, desperate to be viewed as cool and cutting edge by their students. They are churning out a generation brainwashed to be suspicious of anyone older than themselves, much like the social revolutions of the 60's. Only this time, instead of searching for ideological freedom and fighting for civil liberties, they are trapped in a hivemind bent on dismantling hardwon safeguarding for children and women's rights. Instead of using critical thinking and open debate to examine the issue, they use threats of social and economic sabotage, and even physical violence against anyone who disagrees or even simply wants to discuss the issue rationally.
The media should be calling them out for this, but their stockholders and sponsors care only about profits, so their agenda is to please and appease the mob. They steadfastly paint all who object to this insanity as conservative, and rarely allow feminists and progressives a chance to explain our reasons for rejecting trans ideology. I'm seriously fed up with being accused of being conservative, when trans ideology is so thoroughly backwards. How is it possible to pass laws banning conversion therapy without including gender transition? The perceptual disconnect is breathtaking.
The LGBTQ+ lobby has become too powerful to challenge, and it's been hijacked by male fetishists and pedophiles. Occasionally I hear gay men complain (quietly) that the morons wearing the assless chaps and bondage dog costumes to pride events have served to affirm society's worst impression of the gay community. It's true. It's time the silent majority spoke up about it because it's their movement that spawned this nightmare. Per usual, the men are waiting for the women to clean up their mess.
Excellent post! You capture so well the nature of the opposition to helping children and women who are being adversely affected by gender ideology, persistent misogyny and exploitation. I especially appreciate your comments regarding feminism, which indicate to me that you actually know what it is. I find this to be rare in comment sections on Substack sites that critique the gender cult. I am a Second Wave Feminist, and I was very active in the movement during the 1970's. I have taken a lot of crap off both women and men on Substack sites when I "come out as a feminist." I feel less free to speak than I did in the 1970's. There is an added theme now, which is that "feminists are the source of the woke ideologies and the cause of all our problems." In the Seventies we hadn't been around long enough to be blamed for that much. LOL! The Adam and Eve bullshit appears to be a permanent fixture in the patriarchal consciousness.
My heart lives and beats for 2nd Wave Feminists! Thank you for all your activism, Sandra! Every freedom I have as a woman I owe to your generation of feminists. You're my shero. <3
OH ALSO I forgot. this child psychologist I admire has talked before about how he's given kids and adolescents autism diagnoses despite not believing they were autistic because he DID think they needed support, but he couldn't convince the school system his patients were in to give them the support they needed without specifically an autism diagnosis. so there's perverse incentive there to misdiagnose people so they'll get necessary support.
On one hand, it sounds like he was genuinely trying to help, but on the other, I have to think he must have scarred those kids for life. I hope the kids eventually met with a doctor who told them the diagnosis was incorrect.
It's been awhile since I watched the lecture where he talked about that, but I came away with the impression he told her parents the diagnosis was specifically because the school wouldn't accommodate her otherwise. He's pretty outspokenly against diagnostic labels overall; his point with sharing the anecdote was that the system often prevents professionals from getting kids necessary support unless they label them.
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 ... 😉🙂
Thanks for the Like. 🙂
But as something of a sexist comment -- though "sexy isn't sexist" as Substacker and evolutionary biologist Paula Wright put it -- it reminds me of a quip that women are like pianos: if they're not upright they're grand ... 🙂
"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.
I think you're misdiagnosing the problem. There is nothing whatever wrong with "sex outside a formal committed relationship" or "free love." The problem is the imbalance in power between males and females. Partly this is due to our history of patriarchy, instilling in all of us unconscious biases in that direction - expectations that men will take more power, and are somehow due more of it because they take it - and, unfortunately, because that patriarchy is based in physical characteristics of strength, psychology and endocrinology. You seem to suggest that women ought to get married in order to "be safe and secure," but this seems simply a reaffirmation of women's inferior status and indeed possession by men (it is hard to avoid the condition of being a protector of someone weaker as indicating some level of ownership of them). We need more powerful women and more humble men.
I think casual sex *can* harm interpersonal relationships, but it can also grow them. The harm seems to be due to an imbalance of power (usually, but not always male-dominant). Plenty of youngsters these days grow up having casual sexual relationships with multiple friends, with mutual respect and care, before gradually finding a longer-term partner.
This difference in our views also applies to the "gradual introduction of nudity into film and culture." There is nothing intrinsically wrong with nudity or the portrayal of sex - there is nothing wrong with sex! - the problem is again that men have the majority of power in the film industry and most areas of culture, which is why it is women who have been increasingly degraded into sex objects. Surely this is the main reason why porn is so toxic, because it is produced by men. It also tends to be very physical, often violent, with no subtly or intimacy, no expression of vulnerability, no failure or learning or yearning - things that happen in real sexual encounters - which is probably due partly to the psychological bias of males and partly to the addictive personality of those attracted to making pornography and/or the addictive nature of sexual pleasure.
This view of mine put me in a quandry in relation to protecting women's spaces on the grounds that women are vulnerable and need to be protected from intrusion by men (including trans-identified men), but there is a difference: women's spaces are where women exclude men (and I'm fine with men excluding women too); they are not places where women are chaperoned; they are places that women own. They don't just exclude men to feel safer, they also do it as an expression of power.
Thanks for the reply. Fundamentally, we're in agreement. I'm arguing for more power for women. But my assertion is that the cultural move toward sexualization has been instigated by men to erode the existing power that women did hold. But, I'm not talking political power- that's largely a money dynamic- most men have no political power. But all women have what all men want- men enjoy looking at skantily-clad women and having sex with women- perhaps that's an annoying reality, but it's the truth. If a woman wants to persuade or coerce a man to meet her needs, she must deny him what he wants until he agrees to meet those needs. Again, it may be annoying that a woman's power derives from access to her body, but from a man's perspective, that is an objective truth. Regarding nudity in film, every time I see it in film, I think there is some dirty old man director or producer who simply wants to get his jollies , while at the same time drastically changing a scene from a romantic encounter with the woman in control, to a sexual encounter with the man in control. Call me old-fashioned, that's OK. But, a man who truly loves a woman will not insist on access to her body prior to a commitment. Sorry if I wandered a bit- I'm traveling so I'm writing on my phone. But, again, I appreciate your response.
Yes, I appreciate your response too, and I do think we're mostly in agreement. I find myself resisting the idea that men want access to women's bodies and women use that to get their needs met, because it sounds like a demeaning and accusative trope about women's sexual power over men and their manipulativeness, and also emphasizes inequality. However, I have heard that point being made by women themselves, that they (generalising here, of course, and ignoring same-sex attracted women) reach a certain age and realise they have this incredible power over men. I guess it's the converse of suffering unwanted attention.
We're clearly not in agreement on the issue of "commitment" before "access to her body", but I think we understand each other.
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.
There has been a spike in recent years in the UK of sexual assault and harassment amoung young students. Hard core porn on phones accessed at 10-11 years old probably an influence, if not cause.
There was a guest on Wider Lens (maybe it was Susan Bradley? not sure) who touched on the idea that over time she became more convinced that BPD was not a personality disorder, but more of an autism spectrum issue. I wish she had expanded on it, and hope to see more study on the idea, but it's something that has not left my mind.
I have wondered if the cognitive problems that are prevalent in people with BPD are an indication of a neurodevelopmental disorder. Some of these same problems are more prevalent than I previously observed among the population in general. J. Haidt listed some of them in "The Coddling of the American Mind," e.g., all or nothing thinking, emotional "reasoning," overgeneralizing from parts to wholes. (If someone owned slaves in 1730, then nothing else he said or did has value). There is also a ton of projection and finger pointing going on. It appears to me that the level of thinking in the overall American population has degenerated into patterns that resemble psychopathologies, especially Cluster B personality disorders. It's getting difficult to identify who is more confused, the patients or the people who are supposed to be treating them.
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.
Even though sex is not on the list of protected characteristics, I hope that every woman in Scotland will call the police every time she is catcalled, harassed, insulted, or in any way treated rudely for being a woman. Let the police drown under the weight of men's mistreatment of women. We have it way worse than the dimwits who impersonate us.
I kind of lean the other way. As one MP put it, "there's no right not to be offended." I think the whole concept of particular "hate" crimes is nonsensical, and encourages victim mentality and the impression that the state should save us from all upset, even in online spaces we've chosen to go and in posts we've chosen to read. A crime should depend on the establishment of actual physical harm or threat to safety, as it used to be, not feeling hurt by someone else's words, which puts the definition in the subjective realm and the power of the purported victim (the same problem as making the need for gender treatment at the behest of the supposed trans person). In addition, categorizing particular identity groups is silly and potentially never-ending. Where's the protection for "gingers", tall/short people, those with a monobrow, dog-owners, non-dog-owners? In specific circumstances, an offence against one person might be worse due to their disability, ethnicity, sex, etc., but to make it a general rule that offending certain groups is worse than others is divisive and discriminatory *by definition*!
The Scottish Government's response to the criticism that sex isn't on the list is that it is currently working on a bill to deal with misogyny, and I'm afraid this illustrates the problem perfectly. Men can be victims of abuse by females (and, of course, by males, and more often), and some women are much stronger and more violent than many men - so it seems wrong to me to make it a greater offence, carrying a stiffer sentence, to harm a woman than a man. How many people know the opposite term to "misogyny" without looking it up? It feels unfair to know that hatred of me for my sex doesn't even feature in people's Overton window.
If the Scottish Government comes to its senses and realises that both sexes need protecting from offence, well, there's no other category (actually, that's expecting too much, there are hundreds of genders!).
I agree with you. I was not suggesting that every slight we endure as women is a "hate crime". My goal is to show police and the community in general that women experience more abuse than men, and trans need to shut the fuck up about their perceived "microaggressions" when their very claims to be women are a legitimate affront to us.
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.