Guest post: Horrible nonsense behind a respectable veneer
Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on The pressure continues.
By “gender-affirming healthcare” he means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and amputation of breasts or genitals. It’s at least debatable whether those items are healthcare at all.
TRA language games hide horrible nonsense behind a respectable veneer. There’s a difference between affirmative care and gender-affirmative “care”. The former is when the therapist affirms that the client/patient is, in fact, experiencing something. The latter is when the therapist affirms that the experience is veridical or that beliefs based on that experience are correct. Denying the patient’s phenomenological experience is unhelpful, while accepting it can build the trust required for progress.
Affirming the patient’s disordered belief structure, however, is not just unhelpful, it is bizarre and obviously so. In response to what other psychological condition can you imagine the suggested reaction would be affirmation? Pick a disorder at random and say, “Yes, …” Patient presenting with anorexia? Yes, you are a fat fatty. Grandiose delusional identity? Yes, you are the King of Spain. Agoraphobia? Yes, something terrible will happen if you go outside. Social anxiety? Yes, they’re all going to laugh at you. Depression? Yes, everything is terrible and terrible and will never get better, and so are you. Schizophrenia? Yes, the voices are real and you should do whatever they tell you. And so on and so forth.
Gender-affirmative healthcare is not healthcare at all. It solves nothing and instead feeds the disorder, perpetuates the illness, exacerbates the pain. In short, it is the opposite and antithesis of healthcare.
Yes.
Another language game is the media saying the Trump administration erased Obama-era “trans healthcare protections”, as if a trans person would break their leg and a hospital would tell them, “We don’t serve your kind here.”
That vague phrase “trans healthcare protections” keeps things one more step removed from what is really going on.
And the media calling it “LGBTQ+ healthcare protections” adds another layer of obscurantism.
Yes and yes. It’s all Magic With Words.
Very Humpty Dumpty. Words mean just what TRAs say they mean, no more and no less…and they’ll mean something different tomorrow or next week when it’s convenient to pretend they never meant that at all.
Helen Joyce said in an interview that just because we don’t use the “affirmation method” for anorexics doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t use it for gender-dysphorics, and that it’s theoretically possible that for some subset of gender-dysphorics it might give a little relief to fuck up their body with surgeries and hormones… I suppose that could be a kind of care, albeit a very sad one, with horrible side-effects, to be used as a last resort and certainly not celebrated. (And, of course, as long as studies are not done, it’s impossible to know if such a subset even exist.)
This sounds a lot like the argument that just because trans-racial isn’t really a thing doesn’t mean we should assume transgender is the same way. Transgender is different, always different from anything else it’s similar to, at least until they need the similarity to say “we do this, why can’t we do that?”
Well I, for one, am glad that Nullius has finally accepted that I am the King of Spain.
GW – are you sure you mean Helen Joyce? Do you have the source?
It’s at 13:45 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kmzWtl2_oY
GW: The point Helen makes is a raw point of logic. “I wouldn’t straight away say, as I’ve seen some people do, you know, we wouldn’t affirm anorexics, so we shouldn’t affirm gender dysphorics.” That is, p is not-s does-not-imply q is not-s. Likewise, that the sun rose this morning, and the morning before that, and the morning before that, and the morning before that, and … ad nauseam does not imply that the sun will rise tomorrow. She is 100% correct here.
The key bit is the beginning of the sentence: “It is interesting to look at the difference between those two things and ask yourself why, but I wouldn’t straight away say …” It is certainly not logically impossible that affirmation of the false belief is appropriate, but the point is that we must we have an existing pattern, and deviation from that pattern must be justified. Why does gender dysphoria warrant a form of treatment opposite that which is appropriate for other conditions? It’s really no different from how one responds to any other example of special pleading. So everything in motion was set in motion by the movement of something else. Gotcha. Oh, but God is an unmoved mover? Right, that’s going to need some explanation, my son.
She goes on to say: “I think there is probably a tiny number of people who are happier — moderately happier, that’s all we’re talking about here, but that’s not nothing — if they go through a change of body. There’s people who are really quite obsessed about the fact that their body is wrong. And you know, if they’re adults, and they’ve thought about this a long time, you know, I’m a liberal, I’m not going to say it’s never the case that someone could be happier.”
Schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder when it intersects with religious or spiritual beliefs. In a culture in which ghosts, visions, prophesies, psychic powers, and hearing the Right voice or voices at the Right times, people who are actually mentally ill (and not just primed to have certain experiences) can not only meet with encouragement, but receive respect and honor (at least till they become too erratic.)
I knew a young woman who developed schizophrenia when she was a teen and fell in with a New Age group that affirmed the hell out of everything she went through, interpreting it all as sensitivity to the Spiritual Realm. It caused her secret anguish, since she both felt something was horribly wrong AND felt she was horribly wrong to feel something was horribly wrong. Eventually she deteriorated enough to land into professional care — and when I met her she was a staunch skeptic and atheist.
Some of the accounts I’ve read from desisters and detrans people bring up that same sense of tension: “my doubts are getting dismissed by others in order for them to believe me.”
GW @ 12 – Pretty carefully hedged. I’m not sure what I think about it myself. I think it should be last resort, think carefully and then think again, etc. Beyond that…I don’t know. I’m glad it’s not a decision I have to make.
I don’t disagree with you. Also, if such treatment is to be used — affirmation by, say, the staff at a mental institution where such people may be housed (cf. this) — there’s no reason this should obligate the rest of society to, say, refer to such patients as “she” rather than “he”.
Oh yes that’s a whole different question.
@GW: As Ophelia said, that is a rather carefully hedged statement. It acknowledges the statistical certainty that some number of people are happier after “a change of body.” Nota bene, she says neither that they would be happier only after a change of body nor that they would be happiest after a change of body. She does not even say that they would be happier by having their delusion affirmed. She definitely doesn’t say that they’d be healthier or better off. Merely happier.
Is mere bliss the thing, even if fabricated by a Cartesian evil demon? I’d most likely be happier if constantly intoxicated by berries from the isle of the lotus eaters. Washing away my anxiety and depression in a stream of opium dreams seems as though it would render me happier than I am. Nonetheless, no Soma for me, thanks.
Nullius, I have a young friend who feels euphoric when he is “treated like a woman” (which seems to mean someone calls him her, not someone talks down to, condescends to, asks for a sandwich from, ignores, exploits, pays less, or otherwise treats him how women are treated).
I have never regarded euphoria as a healthy state of being. Contentment, sure, if there’s no reason to not be content (and there usually is such a reason). Happy, okay, same conditions. But euphoria seems to me to signal a state of mental illness, especially since it is so often followed by depression.
And feeling euphoria when someone treats you “as a woman” demonstrates you are not feeling like a woman. That is not how women feel to be “treated like a woman”. I know, I know, the answer is that’s because we are used to it, and have had the privilege of being accepted as a woman all along. That is just plain BS. We don’t feel euphoria, because we really don’t like being treated like a second class citizen.
All correct, but there may be some people that are just so, so messed up that they’re never going to be able to live a functional life, never going to be healthy, never going to feel actually happy or content, and the stupid euphoria that they get from affirmation of their delusions or from harmful chemicals might give them so temporary relief from their overwhelming pain. Again, this is a far cry from claims such as “IT IS AS NORMAL TO BE TRANS AS TO BE CIS” or whatever the TRAs are claiming; there’s no such thing as “being” trans, and it’s not normal at all to live a life of self-delusion and bodily harm; but for a small number of people in mental institutions, who are beyond being able to function or be content, humoring their delusions might be the best way to give them some relief. (And no, I do not mean that delusional male patients in such institutions should be allowed to bathe with female patients or be bathed by female staff!)
“As normal to be trans”
I have to disagree about euphoria. It’s a mistake to think it can be a permanent state, but I think occasional euphoria is good and desirable. Don’t you want to feel euphoric while gazing at a stunning view or listening to music or laughing yourself breathless with friends etc etc etc?