Guest post: The body’s rightful tenant

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Actors who prioritized politics and ideology.

“…a then-new and experimental model of treating transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents…”

I wish they’d just used “dysphoric” as “transgender” is jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. It seems to concede that “gender identity” and “transness” actually exist, when I don’t think either does at all. Perhaps this was a step too far for the the lawyer writing this, and they don’t want to push too far, too fast, but this statement gives the “actors” in question too much benefit of the doubt and too much legitimacy, particularly since this woman is now detransitioning. It’s like suggesting a person really is possessed by demons, but the exorcism just didn’t take. This strongly suggests the “diagnosis” of trans was premature and uncalled for or, more likely, just plain wrong. If you can’t reliably tell if someone is trans or not with any degree of confidence, you’re setting yourself up for exactly this kind of result. It would be great if these “authorities” could prove the actual existence of a gender identity before making a diagnosis of “transness.”

Let’s take the exorcism analogy a bit farther, and stand it on its head to boot. While the exorcist is trying to drive the disturbed entity out of the sufferer, the practitioner offering “gender affirming care” is trying to make it comfortable. After all, it is primary and foundational, the body’s rightful tennant, not some unwanted intruder. The body itself is to be carved and drugged into submission and obedience, trained to accept the discomfort as a mismatch with its lawful owner, the gender identity, the “treatment” given for the benefit of this being, at the expense of the flesh, blood and bone that it supposedly inhabits.

Rather than the human body in front of them, the doctor’s real client is the gender identity. Everything is done for its benefit. Which must be rather embarrassing when the pesky material body turns around and decides to detransition. What happened to that gender identity that they were so keen to “affirm” when they began “treating” it? Did it suddenly leave? Did it change its mind? Was the gender identity itself “misgendered?” Was it never there to start with? None of these possible answers inspires confidence in “team affirmation’s” ability to correctly discern the presence and nature of the very thing it claims expertise in dealing with.

Yet another failure/tragedy/contadiction in “gender affirming care is how early “treatment” short circuits the possibility of desistance. Genderism’s self-serving medicalization of the distress, confusion and discomfort surrounding the perfectly natural process of puberty transforms a normal bodily process into a disorder or disease. There are real issues that arise as young adults learn what sort of society they’re becoming members of, their own place in it, as well as their newly discovered feelings and sexual desires. The varied and contradictory roles, demands, and expectations that bombard teens can include ones that are limiting, harmful and self destructive, particularly for young women. Genderism tells them they might have been born in the wrong body. It’s much easier (and more lucrative) to “fix” a body that’s wrong than it is to fix a culture that is wrong. Yet, ironically, trans activism spends an enormous amount of time and energy gaslighting, browbeating and bullying entire societies into accepting the idea that men can be or become women, and women can be or become men. If that same effort were put towards fixing the broken, toxic parts of our culture that drive some children to seek comfort in the false hope of the impossible dream of becoming the opposite sex that too many adults are far too eager to sell them, then more of them would grow up in healthier, intact bodies. The distress is real, but the putative cause that genderism posits is probably not. The supposed cure? A nightmare.

If simple human decency is beyond the modern Mengeles, let’s put the fear of lawyers into them. That should do it.

I’ve always thought that once this madness started to cost somebody real money, somone would stop and take a cold, hard look at what is really happening, stripped of blind, sugary, overconfident euphemisms and outright lies.

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