The validity of his gender idenniny
First, spoiler: the GMC has declined to investigate Az Hakeem.
Now the story of the former patient who tried to get him investigated:
A high-profile Harley Street psychiatrist who calls transgender rights campaigners “trans terrorists” has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) after a patient claims he was “attempting to practice transgender conversion therapy”, i can reveal.
Dr Az Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calls himself “gender critical” and “the only psychiatrist” to specialise in “exploratory psychotherapy to persons suffering from gender dysphoria”. He has denied being anti-trans, said his service is “neutral”, and denied offering conversion therapy.
But an 18-year-old former patient, a trans man, has accused Dr Hakeem of deploying “coercive strategies” in an attempt to “make me cis[gender]”.
Or in an attempt to persuade her not to wreck her body in pursuit of an impossibility. It all depends on the framing.
Lyle’s complaint to the GMC relates to an assessment he had with Dr Hakeem last year when he was 17. It alleges the psychiatrist used a range of tactics denying the validity of his gender identity – and that of trans people generally.
He felt that the psychiatrist “invalidated my opinions, then imposed his view of gender,” the complaint reads. “He made it clear from the very start that he was sceptical of my gender and expressed doubt that it could differ to [my] sex.”
Lyle accuses Dr Hakeem of disbelieving that his gender identity is male and of trying to encourage Lyle to unpick it in order that he could live as a woman.
Suppose Lyle had told Dr Hakeem her identity is giraffe, or eggplant, or stop sign, or Mongolia, or Donald Trump? Would it have been his medical duty to accept all those claims, one at a time or in a bunch?
There surely has to be some limit to this kind of bullshit in a medical setting. Medical professionals surely can’t – and shouldn’t and mustn’t – be expected to treat all reality-denying claims of patients as true and unquestionable? Especially not psychiatrists? Delusion is a real thing, and not automatically healthy or a guide to happier living.
“He suggested that there was little difference between my gender, and his teen Goth identity, implying that it might fade equally fast. He also likened gender-affirming surgeries to race-imitation surgeries,” wrote Lyle in the complaint. “He asked me ‘why’ I believed I had gender dysphoria, and would not accept that it’s because I’m trans.”
As he should. More of his colleagues should do the same.
When I started therapy, my doctor refused to validate my beliefs that I was (1) fat; (2) ugly; (3) worthless; and (4) scum. Little did I know I should have him investigated for insisting on “conversion” therapy. If I identify as scum, I am scum!
One day he did ask me if I felt I wanted to be male. I said no, I just wanted to be allowed to be female on my terms. He was good with that, and my therapy went in that direction.
Ah, the good old days.
People can have mistaken, harmful beliefs about themselves. Who knew?!
What a weird “argument.”
“Why do you think you have gender dysphoria?”
“Because I’m trans.”
That’s backwards.
“Why do you think you’re trans?”
“Because I have gender dysphoria.”
Doesn’t make transness true, though. I know all about “gender dysphoria,” because I was born female, and I’ve recognized since I was three years old that being female is disfavored in my society. Of COURSE I hated being female: being excluded from a lot of things boys were allowed to have, to do, or to be, but girls weren’t. Even as a three-year-old, I knew that the clothes girls were forced to wear were uncomfortable, and made me vulnerable to attack. Flipping up girls’ skirts was a favorite “boys will be boys” prank. Degrading and shaming girls was just fun and games for boys, and grown-ups did nothing about it. So it’s entirely unsurprising that girls hate their sex. I would have loved to escape that, and I often wished that I was a boy instead.
If I had been a child with those feelings today, I’d probably be hustled into the gender cult, and plied with false hope that I could change sex. Changing a person’s sex is not actually a thing that’s on offer with gender “treatment.” It’s false advertising. It’s fraud.
The therapist was fully correct to point out that “gender identity” is mere wish-thinking.
Can these people even string two coherent thoughts together? “Male” is a word for sex, and is not a “gender identity.” Time to fling back one of the TAs’ favorite jeers: “Stop conflating sex with gender! Learn the difference!”
And, no matter what “Lyle” does to herself, she is and will always be female. ANY life she lives — the ONLY life she lives — will be “lived as a woman.” There’s no other option available.
maddog:
I am living proof that this approach can have really good results. I don’t want to be a man, I want society to accept women as fully functional human adults (female adults!). After working through therapy, I have been able to actually do things to help that happen, rather than hiding from the world because it hurt me so much. How much better would the world be if all these TAs were working to remove gender stereotypes rather than reinforce them? All that energy…turned to doing really useful stuff.
And I hear you about what it was like to be a girl. Yep. Patent leather shoes, while my brothers wore sneakers. Skirts, while my brothers wore jeans. And when I got to high school, high heels while the boys wore comfortable shoes, comfortable clothes, and no one went ballistic if they got them dirty.
Why do we persist with doctors who want to practice medicine? Surely we have had enough of being told what to do by now? All this clever book learning is just a smoke screen for those who would coerce us to treat the causes when all I have is symptoms.
YNNB: it is terrifying that there are people who “support” anorexia.
Gawds but this Lyle reminds me of my worst students to deal with, entitled narcissists who think they are the bee’s knees and that everyone else just can’t possibly understand their deeeeep thoughts about what’s Real and Best and Right. (Thankfully my admin dismisses out of hand their complaints that I “try to make students teach themselves” and “require that they remember information” *GASP* (yes, really))
Good on Hakeem. Good on the GMC. We can’t make our reality what we want it to be if we can’t recognize what reality IS.
If person A who has a penis wants to do ‘feminine’ things, or person B who has a vagina wants to do ‘masculine’ things, and person C gives either one of them a hard time for that:
Person A is still a man
person B is still a woman and
person C is still an asshole
Good for your administration! Can I trade administrations?
Yeah, I thought it was bad when I was anorexic and going through therapy to try to fix that. Women (never men) who were at best slightly overweight would say “I wish I had your problem!” Hell, no, you don’t. If you want to lose weight, fine, but frankly, a woman your size shouldn’t worry about it. You’re fine. But no, everyone thought it was a good idea to quit eating.
Now to have people actively encouraging that rather than just dismissing the harm? I encountered someone on WHTM who insisted I could not consider myself to have had a problem or been too skinny when I was anorexic because I was “body shaming”. And being 100 pounds at 5’10” is just fine if that’s who you are. Don’t sweat it. I was shocked to be yelled at…but now I get it. They were swimming in woke bullshit.