Study that proves that Transgenderism is real (Supposedly)

submitted by Kai_Decadence from self.GenderCritical

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[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Thank you for explaining. I've always been iffy on Dysphoria personally. Like I know that body dysphoria is a thing. Y'know seeing something in the mirror that really isn't there or developing image problems of your body and all that kind of stuff but "Gender Dysphoria" has always been one that perplexed me a bit but that's mostly because no one ever says what "Gender" even is at the time.

[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

According to the clinical criteria stated and used by bodies such as the IDC, DSM and NHS, "gender dysphoria" means a preference for the sex stereotyped clothing, activities, interests, mannerisms and roles associated with the opposite sex and a rejection of the sex stereotypes of their own sex, along with the patient's belief or insistence that their feelings or "inner experience" matches that of the opposite sex rather than their own sex. Of course, this is all based on having rigidly stereotypical views of what it "feels like" to be male and female, and also requires believing in the questionable idea that some people somehow "just know" what it "feels like" to be the opposite sex.

The diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" requires both people with the condition and all the psychotherapists and medical professionals diagnosing and treating them to believe in and embrace very rigid and regressive sex stereotypes - that idea males should look and act one way, females an entirely different way, and there is nor should there ever be any overlap between the two. Take sex stereotypes out of the equation, and the concept of "gender dysphoria" falls apart entirely.

No dislike of one's own sex organs or physical sex characteristics is required for a clinical diagnosis of "gender dysphoria." However, some people with "gender dysphoria" do have dislike for their sex organs and physical sex characteristics. But in many cases, dislike of one's sex characteristics seems to come after the preoccupation with rigid sex stereotypes that is characteristic of "gender dysphoria," and appears to be a response to being scolded and feeling shame for liking the "wrong" clothes and having the "wrong" interests, and from being fed a diet of "born in the wrong body" and "girl brain in boy body" type malarkey.

No dislike of one's appearance or physical body in other, more generalized ways or seeing one's body in distorted ways is required for a clinical diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" either - though many people with the condition have these issues. But it's important to point out that dislike of one's appearance and body-image issues are certainly not unique to people with "gender dysphoria." At all. It's actually quite common for people to feel dislike, dissatisfaction and even disgust over what we see in the mirror - and these feelings tend to be particularly widespread, acute - overwhelming in many cases - in adolescence and early adulthood.

Feeling that something is wrong with your body or your looks does not mean something is wrong with you - it seems to be a natural, normal human response to growing up and living in the image-saturated, looking-glass world that people have increasingly come to inhabit since the invention and spread of things like glass mirrors, full-length mirrors, photography, illustrated periodicals, advertising, electric lighting, central heating - and since dressing, grooming and bathing in solitude and privacy first became common, a very recent development in history.

Most people as they grow into adulthood come to terms with the aspects of their looks they dislike or loathe and learn to live the the discomfort of such feelings - coz learning to accept that no one is perfect, entirely self-satisfied or entirely comfortable all the time is part of what maturity entails. But that doesn't mean everyone outgrows their body image issues. In fact, I'd wager that if you polled adults in nations who grew up and live with access to large, well-lit mirrors in dwellings that allow for privacy and thus enable a lot of solitary mirror-gazing, you'd find that hardly any man or woman feels entirely happy with what he or she sees in the mirror.

In teenage girls and young women, body loathing and a degree of body dysmorphia - seeing one's own body or parts of it in a distorted way that doesn't jibe with objective reality - long has been the norm, not the exception. What seems to be happening to today is that body image issues that long have been rife amongst teen girls and young women are now becoming much more extreme and entrenched. Also, so many girls and young women seem convinced that having such feelings means they are "not like other girls," whereas in the past girls and young women took it for granted that body loathing was something most other girls felt too.

Moreover, body image issues seem to becoming far more widespread amongst teen boys and young men as well - much more than in the past. Boys used to be raised to know that going through puberty causes most boys to go through a stage when they feel and look awkward, ungainly and when they think their pimply faces, smelly pits and feet, and rapidly changing, ever-hairier bodies means they are ugly and gross - but that this was just part of growing up, and they'd soon grow out of it. But nowadays, both boys and girls are coming to believe that because puberty brings about disquieting aesthetic changes to how everyone looks, as well as a host of distressing feelings, puberty should be considered a catastrophe, a disease and "torture" - and therefore children should have the "human right" to take drugs to prevent puberty from occurring.

BTW, an obvious way to ameliorate a lot of these negative feelings about our bodies would be to stop spending so much time looking in mirrors - and stop spending so much time taking, altering, poring over and publicly posting selfies too as well as looking at the filtered, photoshopped selfies and images of other people too. But it seems that's not an option most people want to undertake, or even consider. Instead, many people would prefer to focus a huge amount of time, energy and money on trying to change their appearance by using such tools as makeup, exercise, dieting, Botox, fillers, cosmetic surgeries, clothing meant to changes one's shape (push-up bras, Spanx, breast binders, etc) and prostheses (padded bras, breast forms, falsies, penis packers, gaffs, vulva panties designed to give male cross-dressers the appearance of a having pronounced "camel toes.")

At the same time, many of people who say they have "gender dysphoria" or are "trans" put an inordinate amount of energy into using filters, photoshop, special lighting, CGI-manipulation, fake mannerisms, phony voices etc to give the impression online that they look and sound very different to how they actually appear and come off IRL. The more they invest in projecting an artifice-based self-image to the world, the worse they feel about how they really look and who they really are - which encourages them to embrace and hide behind the charade of their fake personas/avatars even more, and to go to great lengths to never let anyone see or know how/who they really are.

Seems to me "gender dysphoria" could be ameliorated in similar ways. To me, the best way to help people get over this condition would be to to encourage them to critically examine the rigid sex stereotypes they cleave to, to understand why they became and are so hyper-focused on rigid sex stereotypes, and to assist them in letting go of their beliefs in rigid sex stereotypes. And to disabuse them of the notion that it's possible for anyone of one sex to "just know" what it "feels like" to be the opposite sex.

But those with "gender dysphoria" and those who diagnose and treat them seem to want to go the other way. The entire concept of "trans" and all of "gender identity" ideology requires that regressive sex stereotypes be reinforced, made more rigid and held onto ever more tightly. What's more, the trans and "gender identity" movement further demands that everyone else in the world hew to rigid, regressive sex stereotypes just as strongly as the genderists do.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Once again you made a very well written and thought-provoking post and yeah you're right that if you take away the gender stereotypes, the ideology will fall apart and perhaps even the concept of "Gender identity" because people wouldn't have to feel the need to be tied to rigid gender stereotypes. You're also right about how a good way to combat body dysphoria is to stop looking at certain images that have been manipulated to unrealistic proportions or to understand that people who do actually achieve extremes did so from unnatural means from hardcore dieting to plastic surgery. I actually see this with a few of my women coworkers who lament sometimes about how they don't feel all that attractive (I work in a gym) and they are younger than me and I always try to tell them not to hyper focus and obsess about Instagram. I even showed one of them how one of the models they were coveting was actually heavily edited in photoshop and it opened her eyes a bit.

I can only imagine how this would be for the younger generations engulfed in the gender stuff which seems to be more abundant than ever.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thanks, Kai. I appreciate your kind words. And am glad to know that ideas I share are of value to others. It's in the hopes that they will be of use that I bother to post. My views are considered too "TERFy" for me to get published in the press any more as I once was, but here I hope they will reach at least a few people like you who might share them with others down the line in turn.

It's interesting that you work in a gym. Does it have big mirrors all over the place so that gym users and staff are constantly confronted with their own reflections?

In case you're interested, it used to be that gyms didn't have any mirrors. Only dance studios did. If you do a google image search of "gyms in the 1950s" and "gyms in the 1960s" you can see the environments people customarily used to work out in are very different to today. So it's no wonder that anxiety over appearance and not feeling attractive is on the rise even amongst young people who are physically fit and probably quite attractive in actuality.

On personal note, I was fortunate enough to be quite attractive in my youth, and to have been raised to believe my brains and other attributes were more important than my looks, but even so as a teen girl and young woman I still often felt ugly and gross, worried that I was too fat, and basically wasted a huge amount of time and energy in my youth obsessing over my appearance and thinking that if only I could lose 10 pounds or fix this or that about my appearance, then my life would be so much better and I would be really happy, finally. Magical thinking. Most every teen girl and young woman I knew did the same thing. It's such a waste of female psychic energy and potential. Even though so many of us outgrow our preoccupation with our looks as well as a lot our dissatisfaction in time, many find it never entirely goes away - shadows linger and sometimes dormant issues crop up again.

BTW, mirrors in gyms only started to become widespread in the 1970s and especially the 80s, when a lot of dance-inspired ways of working out became common, such as jazzercize and aerobics. Places that specialized in those sorts of workouts borrowed their decor from dance studios, not from the old-school gymnasiums at YMCAs, rec centers or schools. Also, it was in the 70s that the technology for making large plate glass mirrors really improved so that sheets of mirror glass became relatively cheap - and thus after the 1970s, mirror glass began to proliferate everywhere, including on the faces of large buildings.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well your topic contributions are vastly appreciated. To answer your question, yeah the gym I work at does have a lot mirrors and that was interesting to learn about how gyms were set up back then.

[–]kwallio 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What you said about gyms was kind of interesting, I thought that the purpose of mirrors in gyms was to check your form. My gym is currently closed due to covid, but it only has a mirror on half of the mat area, the other have is just plain wall so I usually stick to that side.

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

I thought that the purpose of mirrors in gyms was to check your form.

Used to be, people relied on spotters, instructors, coaches and workout partners to check their form. The way it's still done in old-style boxing gyms.

Similar thing used to be the case when it came to dressing, grooming and bathing. In the old days, people relied on servants such a valets or ladies maids or family members to assist them with these tasks and tell them they looked good, and they often groomed and bathed in social settings - as in communal baths and the tradition of the "reception toilet," similar to going to a beauty salon or barber shop today only it was done in people's homes.

Even after glass mirrors were invented in the Renaissance, for centuries they remained precious, extremely costly and tiny - only big enough to show the face/head, or part of it; and coz indoor lighting was dim, people mainly relied on other people to serve as their mirrors. Also, a lot of clothing - especially the clothing worn by well-off women - customarily required help getting into and lacing or buttoning up the back, so dressing alone like we often do today wasn't an option.

[–]censorshipment 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I'd call it sex dysphoria since we either want body parts removed or altered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I'd call it sex dysphoria since we either want body parts removed or altered.

I think calling it "distress over natal sex" would be a better name coz "gender dysphoria" is intentionally vague. Still, it should be noted that wanting to have body parts removed or altered isn't required for a diagnosis of clinical "gender dysphoria." Nearly all the clinical criteria for the condition is about preferring the sex stereotypes of the opposite sex and believing or insisting that one "feels like" or has the inner experience of the opposite sex.

Also, the majority of people with "gender dysphoria" and who call themselves trans today do not get any surgeries or other medical intervention such as hormonal treatments to remove or alter body parts. This is especially true of males. What's more, when people with "gender dysphoria" do get body modifications, they are least likely to get primary sex characteristics removed or altered.

The most common "sex change procedures" today are double mastectomies on females and above-the waist alterations on males such as facial hair removal, facial feminization surgeries, tracheal shaves and chest implants.

Today, 95% of males who say they are trans keep their penis and testicles intact. No males today nor in the past have ever had any surgeries to remove or alter their prostates or other male internal sex organs.

By contrast, a much larger contingent of women who claim they are trans today are having their ovaries, Fallopian tubes and uteri removed - though the majority will leave their external genitals intact.

Only in females with "gender dysphoria" is removal of the defining sex organs - the gonads - common. Males with "gender dysphoria" almost always keep their gonads.

For males who take cross-sex hormones and/or testosterone blockers, most of the impact on their bodies is reversible. For females who take testosterone, most of the impact on their bodies is permanent.

Also, for the record, lots of people

either want body parts removed or altered.

In fact, if cosmetic procedures were risk- and cost-free and didn't get botched so often, I bet the majority of the population would go get parts of their bodies removed or altered. Liposuction, nose job, eye lift, hair transplant, face lift, butt lift, breast reduction or augmentation, body sculpting, brand new "chicklet" teeth - there's at least one procedure most of us would probably happily get. Coz pretty much everyone has "dysphoria" - a fancy $50 word for dissatisfaction and unease - about the way parts of our bodies look (and often function too). But only those whose unhappiness gets the label "gender dysphoria" are seen as special and put in an exalted category coz their dissatisfaction and discomfort with their bodies is seen as more important and harder to bear than anyone else's. Only those with "gender dysphoria" get their cosmetic procedures prioritized and paid for by insurance and government health care programs like the NHS. And only those with "gender dysphoria" expect and demand that in order for themselves to feel better about themselves, the entire rest of the population must now be forced to change their language, deny reality and science, erode their own boundaries, give up their own rights, and sacrifice their own personal safety, privacy, dignity and mental wellbeing - and that of their children.

[–]our_team_is_winning 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Coz pretty much everyone has "dysphoria" - a fancy $50 word for dissatisfaction and unease - about the way parts of our bodies look

Millions of us, surely, would feel more confident with a nose job or other cosmetic surgery, but we simply can't afford it. If "rhino dysphoria" were recognized, maybe health insurance would pay for it instead of deeming it cosmetic and saying you can pay the full price yourself. And a nose job or neck lift or such doesn't force others to deny reality, just like you said.

It's so wrong that insurance, including taxpayer's money, covers the outrageous claim that a man needs his jawline shaved down because he likes cute anime princesses, but a woman with a large nose, for example, who feels too insecure to assert herself in life because of it, is told that isn't covered.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Also, the NHS in the UK does not provide, nor does any private or government insurance in the US cover, breast reduction surgery in "ordinary" girls and women if it's done for appearance only. Patients must have proven, otherwise untreatable physical, functional health damage from having very large, heavy breasts to get a breast reduction paid for by the NHS and US insurance - and it usually takes years - sometimes decades - of pleading and trying various other therapies and jumping through hoops to get approved finally.

But girls and women with "gender dysphoria" who claim to be "trans" - or now increasingly "non-binary" or "masc" -can get their breasts entirely removed courtesy of the NHS and US private and government health plans. In the UK, a patient has to be 18 for double mastectomy for "gender dysphoria," but in the USA "gender dysphoric" girls as young as 13, 14 and 15 are now having their breasts removed entirely - all paid for by insurance plans. Yet as we know, girls and women with "gender dysphoria" want to get rid of their breasts so they no longer look demonstrably female - it's all about improving/changing their appearance in their own eyes and the eyes of others.

The NHS's page on treatments for gender dysphoria says:

Some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.

Surgery for trans men

Common chest procedures for trans men (trans-masculine people) include:

removal of both breasts (bilateral mastectomy) and associated chest reconstruction nipple repositioning dermal implant and tattoo

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

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

No doctor should be cutting off healthy body parts. Mutilation isn't healing. I had a friend as a teen who had to have breast reduction surgery. The back pain was killing her all the time. I'd say she was covered by her parents' insurance at the time (I didn't ask), but during Europe's insane "witch" hunts they would cut off women's breasts sometimes. All about humilliating and torturing women. Painful to see women with such internalized misogyny and doctors willing to induldge it.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

during Europe's insane "witch" hunts they would cut off women's breasts sometimes.

Sadly, this didn't just happen in Europe during the period when so-called witches were hunted and persecuted. Women's breasts have also been cut off by men during various genocides and the mass-rapes committed by invading, conquering soldiers during wartime many places on earth. What the Japanese imperial soldiers did in Nanjing China in 1937 is a well-known example.

Note how the following excerpt - from Newsweek in 1997, when Newsweek was still a print magazine and a legit news source - says this is an example of humankind's cruelty when in this case it would have been far more accurate to say it's an example of men's cruelty:

The chronicle of humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the rape of Nanking during World War II.

The broad details of the rape are, except among the Japanese, not in dispute. In November 1937, after their successful invasion of Shanghai, the Japanese launched a massive attack on the newly established capital of the Republic of China (Nanking back then in Anglo parlance, now Nanjing).

When the city fell on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever matched in world history. Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. By the end of the massacre an estimated 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese had been killed.

Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were raped --and many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls.

So brutal were the Japanese in Nanking that even the Nazis in the city were shocked. John Rabe, a German businessman who led the local Nazi party, joined other foreigners in working tirelessly to save the innocent from slaughter by creating a safety zone where some 250,000 civilians found shelter.

https://www.newsweek.com/exposing-rape-nanking-170890

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

Japan is still paying reparation money to Korea for what they have done with korean women during WW2.

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

Oh okay.