GC: What are your arguments against "lesbians and trans men are men in women's bodies" and "gay men and trans women are women in men's bodies"?

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[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Totally not my area of expertise, but I think it could potentially be tied in with overanalyzation, in synchrony with other factors. Trauma, certainly -- that casts a long shadow. But I often wonder about other conditions and experiences, tho, like early-onset OCD, synesthesia, scrupulousness, high perceptual sensitivity, high empathy, precociousness, highly active imagination, hypnagogia -- how could all of these interact with the places where sensation and cognition meet, along with real-life experiences, during our key developmental stages?

This is a gross oversimplification (and in no way meant to be insulting), but -- as a ferinstance -- we know that some children have a more heightened sense of empathy than others, and those traits do track into adulthood. What would happen if a highly empathetic child began imagining (idly or actively) very early on what it was like to be the other sex, and was also an early-enough abstract thinker to notice some existential or physical discomfort with "being in a body," and through individual preference was drawn to modes of gendered expression and adornment sanctioned by the child's culture . . . even absent some trauma of rejection or abuse or homophobia, and with not-all-that-uncommon genetic "brain processing stuff" going on -- could we see the possibility of that child developing a transgender identification as a multifactorial adaptation to their uniquely inner and constraining outer circumstances? With adverse experiences, could that identification later develop into something that resembles GD?

In other words, I think it's far more complicated than we currently understand. As they say in the journals -- "more research needed."

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

If clinicians working with children diagnosed as having "gender dysphoria" (or in previous eras "gender identity disorder") had observed that an excess of empathy, or empathy at all, was a common factor in these children & might be involved in the etiology of their GD, then they've certainly kept it very quiet. Using the search terms "empathy in children with gender dysphoria" on Google Scholar & PubMed doesn't yield much. Virtually all the papers are about the need to show empathy for children with GD, not empathy within such children.

A couple of different researchers have tried to show that adult males with GD have higher empathy than other males, and/or their level of empathy matches the level often found in females (or assumed to be true of females), but AFAIK this hypothesis has not held up.

As for boys with GID, this is all I could find, which does not support the theory that an excess of empathy is at the root of their issues: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10578-007-0072-7

If anything, in children & adults diagnosed with GD, there seems to be much more of a tendency in the other direction - towards excessive self-involvement, self-preoccupation, vanity & attention-seeking as evinced in the need for external "validation" - as we discussed in our exchange about the meaning of the term "narcissist" on a different thread.

Also, my understanding of empathy is that key to it is the ability to listen to other people describe their experience - whether in words or in cries or whimpers - and to relate this to an emotional state one has experienced or is capable of experiencing. It's about emotionally connecting & relating, not (solely or largely) about imagining or abstract thinking.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

That does surprise me, the GD and NC boys registering about the same -- I would have guessed they'd register higher. So in GD-related "I feel like ___" assertions, this isn't showing up as a porous boundary kind of thing ("I can't tell the difference between where I end and x begins")? I'd like to know more about what is meant by feel and felt wrt gender identity and gender expression. From close interaction with an adult AGP (no GD, but definitely PD stuff going on) I can absolutely see the self-involvement in action; it's very clear, the patterns are very obvious. But what's happening with GD and assertions of "felt" identity?

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

But what's happening with GD and assertions of "felt" identity?

Presumptuousness? And projection and fantasy. My impression is, most of the people who claim to feel like the opposite sex - or not like their own sex - live largely (entirely?) in their own heads, and have not spent much - or any - time having deep, probing convos with other people about how they feel inside, experience their bodies & see the world. The root issue is not just narcissism, it's solipsism.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That may be. I also suspect over-self-diagnosis (which is not the same as saying "GD" as we know it isn't a real phenomenon).

I've also wondered how often typical neurological weirdness gets conflated with all this. Example: brief episodes of dysphoria, dissociation, and euphoria are pretty common in non-ASD children (confirmed for me by clinicians, I don't have data handy). I've experienced all three as a child, including some frightening non-febrile dissociative states (one instance from a cold swimming pool, another from strobe lights) that I later found out were dysautonomia symptoms very common to a genetic condition I have (iow no big deal, in my case they don't cause seizures and pass and reset on their own). But they're intensely disorienting, and if there's no "adult in the room" to reality-check these kinds of experiences -- do they automatically become aggregated into a larger sense of distress/dysphoria?

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But you're still operating on the premise that what persons who claim to "feel like" the opposite sex - or no sex - experience in childhood is highly unusual. When I don't think their experiences are that unusual - at all.

It's common for kids to go through all sorts of distressing, disorienting & discombobulating experiences growing up - and many kids experience major traumas. Moreover, kids have amazingly rich fantasy lives. I remember teaching USA kids circa age 9-11 a summer writing course more than 40 years ago, and all the kids in the class were writing about their "memories" of their "OBE"s - out of body experiences, not Order of the British Empire, LOL - coz belief in OBEs was popular amongst kids at the time. (Not coincidentally, methinks, the next decade brought a rash of accusations of satanic ritual abuse & CSA in daycare centers as well as the new phenomenon of recovered memory syndrome amongst mostly young adults.)

Until the era of mass vaccinations came to pass very recently in history, it's been the norm for nearly all children to go through bouts of serious childhood illness involving high fevers, fever dreams & hallucinations whilst awake. I recall several instances of hallucinating like that as a child when sick with measles, chicken pox & other once-common childhood illnesses. And before that, at age 3 I had a vision of the Virgin Mary coming into my bedroom one night, and was sure at age 4 that the spirit of my older brother who had recently died came to get me another night & took me flying high in the heavens so I could see the stars up close & the earth far away down below. My parents didn't shame me when I reported these experiences, but they didn't "affirm" that they'd actually happened, either. And they certainly didn't tell me that my claimed visions meant I was a really special little girl with mystical abilities who was destined to be a saint. Nor did they trot me down to the parish church to tell the priest & bishop so I could get put on the fast track to canonization.

IMO, what's unusual with those who say that since childhood they've always "felt like" the opposite sex (or now increasingly, neither sex) is the way they interpret what they've experienced, not necessarily what they actually experienced in & of itself. And I think a MAIN problem is that there IS or has been an "adult in the room" - or many adults in a number of different rooms - helping them make sense of their experience. Only instead of providing kids, adolescents & young adults with the "reality check" and the tools they need to correctly assess & healthily process & deal with their experiences, these screwed-up, regressively sexist, homophobic adults - be they, parents, gender therapists, "LGBTQ+" "educators," promulgators of QT, charities, political lobby groups, YouTubers, gamers, groomers and so on - have filled these kids' & young people's heads with a lot of harmful nonsense.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But you're still operating on the premise that what persons who claim to "feel like" the opposite sex - or no sex - experience in childhood is highly unusual.

Not at all. I'm arguing the opposite, that it isn't uncommon.

What I'm questioning are where assertions of "felt identities" come from, and why.

I do agree that many of those considered "adults in the room" are not remotely qualified to advise children, and now (worse) clinics are in part affirming disparate childhood weirdness (meaning common-but-unusual cognitive and sensory experiences) as indicators of "being trans."

(edited for clarity)