While walking the dogs this morning, I realized that an experience I'd had when I was about thirteen might be relevant to the debate over whether minors ought to be allowed to take "transition" drugs and have "transition" surgeries.
You see, I was having trouble coping--my parents' marriage was blowing up at the time--and thus they decided to take me to the local mental health group to see what they could do. So we went, and I got interviewed about life goals, and I had a lot of fun having "quarter staff" battles with another young man--we used vinyl covered foam, not sticks of oak or yew, by the way--and then one day, the counselor had a revelation that he shared with me and my parents.
My difficulty was obviously that I was feeling guilty about, ahem, "self-pleasuring", and once I overcame that guilt, my psychological problems would be greatly eased. Now the fun thing there was that not only was I not performing that particular act, but the counselor also used the technical term, which I didn't understand in the least. But I smiled and nodded and we went on with life.
It was a mistake on his part, and I to this day do not know whether he ever clued in that a real issue was simply that my parents weren't getting along, and probably also that, as an introvert, I probably show some signs of being on or adjacent to the autistic spectrum. It could be that he knew darned well what the real issues were, but social rules prevented him from saying that straight up, so he did the next best thing.
But that noted, in the early 1980s, "self-pleasuring guilt" was a very popular theme in mental health, and hence when a counselor couldn't figure out what else was wrong in talk therapy, that diagnosis was used a disproportionate amount of the time.
Fast forward to today, and the popular diagnosis is "gender dysphoria". So I contemplate the fact that as a somewhat socially maladroit teenager who might be placed "on the spectrum", the "diagnosis du jour" today could well have had some disastrous results.
This is the same kind of thing that I discussed back in 2015 with regards to the use of antidepressants, where a growing body of evidence was indicating that they were being over-prescribed, with, again, disastrous results. It's hard to see one's own weaknesses, but that's part of the gig when you're getting the big bucks in medicine, I think.
1 comment:
1) Hugs to your younger self
2) Yes, the autistic (or almost) girls are #1 on the list b/c they have the hardest time with the soft skills that are womanhood.
I like your thoughts in general, but I blame it on a list of factors:
1) It is historically true that some percentage of girls freaks out completely and wants to refuse to become women during puberty. Old fiction is rife with this as a trope. These girls usually grow up to be strong-minded women with families - not lesbians. They just didn't want the changes (and the responsibilities) that womanhood brings. So, that's normal.
2) But since we've defined womanhood as about as deep as lipstick and heels, now we think you can put it on or off like a shirt. It's a performance, not a reality.
3) Which rot got solidly set in when we decided that "male" was the way to be in society. When feminism said, "we don't want to be strong women with brains, we want to be men 'cause they get to go do fun stuff" we started on this road. And now feminism wants to be men in heels, so uh... we think women could really just be men in heels.
So now the poor girls get all the hormone rages but they're supposed to deal with that and be hypersexualized barbie-bots or ... something else and if they're unhappy with being hypersexualized barbie-bots and it feels wrong (or just strange and uncomfortable, which big changes often feel) then some idiot in a white coat says, "would you care for some testosterone"?
I'm sure the lovely ladies in your household are just as annoyed as I am that sensible femininity that grows in wisdom and skill is being erased. I keep having fantasies about organizing nurse-ins at these trans rallies (or in a park across the street) but that would only disturb the babies.
As for the boys who want to be girls... I can't speak to the difficulties (historical or practical) of becoming a man, but I expect there are a few? I can remember a cousin of mine who went rainbow largely IMO because he got harassed for loving aesthetics and being extremely meticulous in his craft projects as a child.
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