QT: Who is trans “inclusive” language really for?

submitted by BiologyIsReal from (self.GCdebatesQT)

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[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No one is saying that the distress of people who call themselves trans or "gender dysphoric" is not real, that it's consciously chosen, or that it's "slight" or insignificant.

Except for all the gender criticals here downplaying and trivializing the issue. Like making statement along the lines of calling transgender women "men who believe that preferring their legs shaved and enjoying cosmetics makes them women"

We are simply saying that distress over one's body, including one's sex anatomy and processes, is not unique to people who are trans or "gender dysphoric" - nor is the suffering that trans and "GD" people feel coz of their distress over their sexed bodies necessarily more extreme, painful or disabling than the distress many other people who are NOT trans and do NOT have "GD" feel over their bodies and sex characteristics too.

I'm not saying that people can't feel distress over their bodies (sexed anatomy included) that isn't gender dysphoria, or that it is necessary more painfull/disabling/distressing. I am just saying that gender dysphoria is a serious condition, that deserves treatment, empathy and acceptance, instead of villification, hatred and stigmatization.

Fact is, many people of all sorts have had strange, extremely disturbing dissociative episodes in which they've seen and experienced their bodies as monstrous, utterly alien, out to get them, diseased, distorted, hideous, non-human, huge, tiny, crawling with bugs, being on fire, part horse, part dog, with wings or fins, and so on.

Sometimes people have hallucinatory experiences - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and/or gustatory - as the result of mental illnesses (lots of people with "garden variety" major depression, for example, experience episodes of psychosis and disassociation from their bodies during MDD); due to physical states brought on by disease (brain tumors, Co2 narcosis, meningitis, shock after a traumatic labor and birth, for example); or because of drugs (THC, opioids, the drugs they used to routinely to drug to pregnant women in labor and birth, some drugs used in labor and childbirth today, infused immune drugs like IVIG, and hallucinogens like LSD, mescaline, peyote and ketamine, for example).

https://www.healthline.com/health/hallucinations#causes

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/nonpsychotropic-medicationinduced-psychosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727751/

This is not to diminish the scariness and horrible nature of what your friend went through. I'm just trying to make it clear that such experiences are part of human experience and therefore they are not unique to trans and gender dysphoric people the way you and others seem to think.

Some information about the horrible experiences featuring very scary hallucinations that have been part of childbirth for women past and present that you might find eye-opening:

https://timeline.com/restraints-hallucinations-and-forgotten-pain-were-the-norm-on-midcentury-maternity-wards-46909123c4f7

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjg8em/i-thought-my-baby-was-a-horse-what-its-like-to-trip-on-your-post-birth-drugsv

https://www.rxlist.com/pitocin-side-effects-drug-center.htm

Except that you are still fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. The issue wasn't, that he was perceiving his body in a way it wasn't. The problem was, that he was perceiving his body exactly the way it was and that to him having such a body was as deeply disturbing as actually having some monsterous, inhuman body.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Except that you are still fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. The issue wasn't, that he was perceiving his body in a way it wasn't. The problem was, that he was perceiving his body exactly the way it was and that to him having such a body was as deeply disturbing as actually having some monsterous, inhuman body.

If he was experiencing his body as monstrous when by objective standards and the observation of others, his body is not in fact monstrous, he was NOT

perceiving his body exactly the way it was

At all. He was disassociating and hallucinating, and thus not perceiving the reality of how his body actually is or was at that moment.

There's nothing wrong with having hallucinatory or disassociative episodes - lots of people (including me) have taken drugs for the express purpose of hallucinating and experiencing other ways of perceiving the world and our own bodies through all our various senses. Many of us have found this extremely beneficial. There's an entire literature written about it, from Huxley's classic The Doors of Perception from 1954 to recent works about people micro-dosing with LSD or using IV ketamine as treatments for and ways to prevent depression. Lots of rock 'n' roll is about these kinds of experiences, and The Doors are named after them.

Having experienced hallucinations can very much deepen one's understanding of reality, but hallucinations are not reality. People who mistake their hallucinations for reality are suffering from a delusion.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If he was experiencing his body as monstrous when by objective standards and the observation of others, his body is not in fact monstrous, he was NOT

perceiving his body exactly the way it was

At all. He was disassociating and hallucinating, and thus not perceiving the reality of how his body actually is or was at that moment.

There's nothing wrong with having hallucinatory or disassociative episodes - lots of people (including me) have taken drugs for the express purpose of hallucinating and experiencing other ways of perceiving the world and our own bodies through all our various senses. Many of us have found this extremely beneficial. There's an entire literature written about it, from Huxley's classic The Doors of Perception from 1954 to recent works about people micro-dosing with LSD or using IV ketamine as treatments for and ways to prevent depression. Lots of rock 'n' roll is about these kinds of experiences, and The Doors are named after them.

Having experienced hallucinations can very much deepen one's understanding of reality, but hallucinations are not reality. People who mistake their hallucinations for reality are suffering from a delusion.

Again. He wasn't hallucinating. That wasn't the problem. The problem is, that to him having a body of his birth sex is deeply and fundamentally disturbing to him, even if from a purely physical point there was nothing wrong with the body. It just isn't the kind of body that feels right to him.