Is being trans a 'disease'/mental health issue?

[SolveMyPrombles]

I'm asking on this board for deliberate considered responses so please do share your thoughts.

A lady on a local group has described being trans as a mental illness that should be treated with compassion not pandered to because it's a disease.

Looking into it more deeply I believe she's wrong and there is no current diagnostic manual that agrees with her take.

What do you think?

For males this means broad shoulders, wide necks, adams apple, large hands, narrower carrying angle and a male way of walking
The assumes that every male person has those very strong male characteristics. But look at any decent same size of people and you will see a large variation in those individual features. A woman can have broad shoulders and large hands, and a man can have narrow shoulders and small hands. The idea that every single person conforms 100% of features types for sex doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

You have it wrong though.

It doesn’t matter if a female person does or doesn’t correctly identify a male person every single time that encounter one.

All it takes is for one female person at one specific moment to correctly identify your sex to completely disprove your claim. And the likelihood is that it your correct sex is identitied regularly by different female person that you encounter and they will not let on that they have done so.

Yet you confidently claim that female people have not correctly recognised your sex because you said “Yes. I’m sure I’m not causing anyone alarm.”

I would suggest that it is very clear by now that you don’t give a fuck about the needs of female people, just your own and you are very content to use female people to ensure your personal comfort. And you know very little about being ‘female’ despite claiming female language and wanting to be seen as a woman. This is that sexism that posters have pointed out and you keep confirming it post after post after post.

You're refusing to acknowledge women's own experience.

You clearly believe your own feelings are much more important than the women you are seeking to dominate on this very thread. You won't even acknowledge they might have a point - they're just wrong.

And you can't even see youre doing it.

The male privilege couldn't scream any louder.

You couldn't be less female if you tried.

Again, you either misunderstand or are deliberately being obtuse to avoid acknowledging reality.

A male person doesn’t need to have all those features to be correctly identified as male.

And FFS, a female’s ’large hands’ are quite different in size and shape to a male person’s hands. Same with shoulders.

A person doesn’t have to have 100% of those features mentioned. They might be distinguishable from just one or two of those or other male body cues.

Q angles and hips will impact gait and movement, arm physiology too, skull shape, facial structure, all these are not changed with treatment. Voice is another.

Just in the face there is lip shape, including philtrum, jaw shape, brow ridges, eye shape and spacing, forehead slope, hair line, nose shape, cheek shape, ear position .. the list is long and this is a sample. And very rarely are all those reconstructed in surgery, or changed with hormones.

But apparently, we are to be gaslighted that we cannot correctly identify a male person in real life. And it seems it is because if one of us doesn’t correctly identify 100% of male people as male people, then no female can correctly identify a male person at any given time.

In comparison to females.. Men have 145% stronger upper body strength compared to women. Therefore there are irreversable skeletal changes that are required to support that extra strength.

You are only looking at it from a male perspective i.e. as long as I don't look like a man it must mean I am look like a woman. Rather than a female perspective i.e. anyone who doesn't have a combination of female skeletal characteristics must be male.

I understand you have to have some strong cognitive dissocence to sex and gender to live as a transwoman, but most people do not live with the dissonence you do.

I will repeat... women can tell, its essential for our survival.

can any one answer that its not natural to be trans because without science then you would not have the equipment or chemicals needed for the alterations ?

if it was a natural process then a human would be able to change their body at will ?

so why then does society allow the butchering of the human body ?

This is that sexism that posters have pointed out and you keep confirming it post after post after post.

I find this point utterly fascinating every time I see a poster doing it.

It's tone deaf and happens with a certain consistency.

I think, contained within this, is also the assumption that given only 2%of the population are trans we cannot possibly have enough exposure to trans persons to accurately state that we always can identify them.

However I live partly in London and partly in a town with an university that has a large arts component and several 6th form colleges within close proximity. I genuinely see dozens of trans persons, of both sexes everyday. Several live within a few doors of my home. I sit in my car on the school run or dogwalk run and see them arrive on the buses and trains, usually travelling in pairs at a minimum, but often in bigger groups, because they seek each other out for solidarity [and there is that social contagion that we are not allowed to mention because that’s terfy and bigoted].

I absolutely can clock them instantly. If I am correctly identifying multiple trans persons daily, why should it matter that I may miss the odd one? My lived experience evidences that they are instantly identifiable - their sex-ed based gait and physical proportions are immediately incongruent with the ‘gender’ they are presenting, they all dress identically, according to those genders. The trans women are in fact not all tall hairy men but usually very tall, rather underweight/gaunt young men with very long thin hair, male hair lines, and pretty feminine dresses I haven’t worn since the heyday of laura ashley in the 1980s; the TM are largely all a bit - well - overweight, short [coloured] hair, checked shirts, chunky boots. All that distinguishes many from ‘butch’ lesbians is the receding hair, acne and stubble, but they are very very clearly females. Even the one’s who have had top surgery.

No I don’t say anything to this cohort to point out that I know who - or what - they are. I definitely have The Fear. But as this group is largely comprised of younger, likely ND [art students], and vulnerable people I don’t actually feel it is compassionate to make a big deal of it. Instead I avoid the toilets unless I can see a single use/free disabled loo that I can pop into [I have bladder issues and actively take medication to reduce the likelihood of needing public facilities when out], I no longer use the showering/changing facilities at the gym, waiting until I get home. I don’t try clothes on in stores but take them home and return them if needed. Ie., I have changed my lifestyle choices to avoid confrontation, social disapprobation, and the risk that one of these clearly unwell people MIGHT actually pose a physical threat if I expressly acknowledge my concern that they are in my space or impliedly do so by being spotted changing my mind about entering a space they are using and they clock it. And they do clock it if you falter for a second and I am alone. Outnumbered. And yet I know I am am not alone as I see other women avoiding those spaces too. Every day.

This is just a reminder of the reaction on this very thread that we saw from a person who wished to control how another person communicated on a publicly accessed forum. Particularly, when the poster being censured, theunchosenone, had not reacted in a way that was considered acceptable.

Yet apparently, we are to believe that dumbfounded makes no demands on others, while at the same time is not being correctly identified due to the reactions he witnesses from female people.

Generally, If a male person has conditioned the female people around him by removing communication if they react outside his acceptable parameters which are tighter than the moderation policy on this board, what are the chances that he has been doing this from early in transition? Combine this micro environment with the macro environment of media, organisational policy, and government guidance all telling female people how to react to male people’s demands to be treated as if their subjective belief that they are female is material, and you have a general environment of censuring girls and women into outwardly perceptible compliant behaviour.

Which then gets used to further demand compliance or to leverage compliance from those who have been or have become non-compliant.

How often do we see this same claim that somehow a male person doesn’t get correctly identified as male, while that male person is displaying on threads just how they react when people are not performing in a parameters the poster finds acceptable?

Maybe some male people simply do not see the way they seek to control how female people around them react to their presence. At the time, this post struck me as being incongruent to what the poster was then saying about not making demands on others. Even though it was, at first glance, tone policing rather than strictly policing the content, I think it could be said to be indicative in any case. However, it is a pattern that I have seen and I remember from previous threads that others have noted it too.

It makes sense though when you consider that to remain comfortable within a subjective reality that is not based on material reality, a person needs to control how material reality interacts with that subjective reality. And of course, a male person who has stated that he is a female (using any female language for himself) has already shown that his perception is not credible on the topic of human sex categories.

Yes. Apparently refusing to believe men can be women makes me unpleasant. Although @DumbfoundedAndUnhappy has in fact on this thread says he knows males with a trans identity are in fact not women. So I am unpleasant for saying this, but a male saying it is not.

It's a clear example of the enforcement of The Fear. It's a smear to discredit and to try and silence a woman from speaking about her lived experience.

It's just one of the posts that represent my point.

Hes providing examples of Rules 2 and 3.

The male skeletal structure and gait (which you cannot change because your male pelvic bone and q angles dictate it and you'd have to have an entire operation on your pelvis) gives it away. The square male jawbone gives it away. And your voice (due to male vocal cords being placed/located differently to womens) will definitely give it away.

Look; I know you think putting on a dress, some lippy (which only draws attention to the male jawline, btw) and taking oestrogen (which really does nothing at all other than make you grow breasts and your skin softer) means you will fool women, but you males seem to have absolutely no idea that the male tells are numerous, fixed, and most of those tells you cannot physically alter at all.

Now, it's possible boys who transition before puberty, take PBs etc and straight onto cross-sex hormones will be harder to detect. However, since most transwomen tend to be midlife crisis types with a womens clothing fetish, or in their 20s, they've already gone through male puberty and cannot eradicate the effects of going through male puberty.

Lipstick on a male person only enhances the line of the lip which is dictated by a male spaced philtrum and highlights the wider spacing between nose and top lip. Which also then highlights the nose shape. And so on.

Just like those male people who thought it was a great idea to go topless and show naked breasts in protest didn’t think it through. It showed that very few male people can disguise a male proportioned chest area. Naked breasts highlight that female breast placement has differences.

Male people making dismissive generalisations about how some female people have x therefore no person can reliably distinguish a person’s sex category really do show how ill informed they are. I suspect it does come down to ‘but I have breasts’ for some of them.

Remember we have had a poster for months telling us that his slight build and short statue means he is indistinguishable from women. The thing is though that reality is that as these male people age their bodies age according to their genetics. And a male person, even with decades of estrogen, will age along his male genetic path. Noses grow, hairline changes as just the start.

I know one activist who has been very clear he was on puberty blockers and then estrogen who has taken to wearing a hat lately. I suspect it is because he has realised that for all his crowing about ‘passing’ he has realised if you see his brow region and receding hairline, he is easily identified as a male person.

I am sure there will be a few male people who will be rarely identified as a male person, maybe in their youth. I seriously doubt that not one female person will be able to correctly identify that male person’s sex category though. There might be days when they are not correctly identified.

As time goes by and the person ages those days may be less and less likely too.

I’m perfectly capable of recognising how people react to me.

I've already told you about the research that suggests you are unlikely to be right about that. You were born male, you were brought up as a boy. You have neither the genetic influence not the early cultural influence that make women superior to men at first noticing, then reading, people's micro expressions.

I do agree with you, where many women would not, that it is possible that you are one of a tiny proportion of female identified trans people where people who do not know your history are unaware that you are male.

It really is like these blokes just see women as 'not men'.

They think they are 'not men' therefore they are women too.

We're not just defective men , ffs!

I don't think it matters if the general public can correctly identify a man who identifies as trans 100% of the time or not.

The man who identifies as trans knows what his actual sex is (male) 100% of the time, even if he wishes that he were female. Therefore, the man who identifies as trans should not force himself on unconcenting women and girls.

Be a decent person, use the facilities for your actual sex (male) or unisex ones.

Also, don't lie to yourself about how well you pass and consider that women may not say anything negative to you precisely because they know you are actually male.

Twenty to twenty five per cent of women, particularly the taller ones, share an android pelvis shape with men. I have one. It's a good job that the social media fashion for a gap at the top of the thighs that's been around for a while now didn't exist when I was young, because it's physically impossible for me to achieve it without starving.

With such a wide variety of body shapes there's overlap everywhere, it's just factually incorrect to say that every clothed male is distinguishable from every clothed female on physical shape.

And surely we've all heard women who speak like men and know older women who are going bald?

The poster after this one describes lip shape and philtrum size which almost made me laugh. My top lip shape is thin, my philtrum is really long just like my neck. None of these average measurements of features are set in stone for every man and every women.

I honestly believe that the insistence on being able to tell every man apart physically from every women very much devalues the argument that women are trying to put forward against trans ideology.

Yes, I kind of feel as though a sort of equivalency is that we all know that we can shoplift without being stopped nowadays - that staff will not intervene, that they will not call the police. It’s still illegal, but it is no longer policed, so we could all, in theory, just decide to do our weekly shop and leave now, couldn’t we? But we don’t, because a) we know that it is morally right to go to the check out and pay and b) we recognise that the impact of those who do not pay ultimately impacts every other shopper in terms of higher prices and increasingly cumbersome security checks on high value items that impact everyone.

So we do the right thing. Not in case someone will see, notice, care or challenge, but because the nature of the social contract that we all uphold - ie the need to work together to follow the law for the good of all people in society, not a privileged/marginalised few.

Asking men to willingly use male or gender neutral facilities regardless of how they identify should even be necessary if they have any civic responsibility.

However, like shoplifters, the point is that they don’t care about ‘others’. They only care about their own personal wants and needs. And this is why the fabric of society is gradually disintegrating - because need people to care more about the community they live in than they do for themselves.

How often do you get misgendered and, if and when that happens, how do you reassure people that you are a woman?

Yes. There will be exceptions to many of the body cues.

What are the chances that one person has all their skeletal measurements being outside of the range for their sex category?

Sure, you have a thin lip. So have many other female people. The point being made is not disproved because some female are outside the average grouping.

This is the type of dismissal that these male people use. They focus on one or a few features to try to disprove the overall. I have huge hands, broad shoulders and I am sure many other features that fall outside the average. It also doesn’t mean that when seen together, people assume I am male.

It is like the constant framing that when we say that there will be one female person who will at some time correctly identify that male person as being male, that we are somehow saying that every female person can correctly identify every male person 100 % of the time. This is not what we are saying.

However, it is absurd to think that not one female person will correctly identify a male person’s sex category with interaction even with surgery and hormones.

I have an android pelvis - it’s probably why I was a successful sprinter when I was young. However you would never mistake me for a man because all my other bodily proportions, and my facial features (if not conventionally pretty), are noticeably female.

The fact that 20-25% of women have android type pelvises means that it is relatively common among females and not indicative of anything much at all, no more than having large feet. You see it particularly among elite athletes, such as runners and gymnasts.

@Imdunfer I think the thing is that we process all the visual data simultaneously in a way that AI and computer coding still hasn’t managed to replicate. If we notice one anomaly amongst hundreds of congruent data points, we don’t think - oh, could that be a man? People here have highlighted the obvious visual cues, but there are hundreds of subtle nuances ones that we process. The human brain, its cognitive and perceptual ability to assess within nanoseconds and calculate risks is extraordinary.

I want there to be a shift onto the man (however he identifies or dresses) in obeying the law.

All the rest is obfuscation. He knows what sex he is. He knows what the law is. It doesn't matter if he has a mental health issue or not. It doesn't matter if he has gender dysphoria or not. It doesn't matter if he has AGP or not. It doesn't matter what he is wearing.

If he is a decent person, he will obey the EA2010.

DumbF also seems unable to understand that because he can't distinguish male and female bodies almost instantly, nobody else can and we are making it up. Or he is simply denying it because it doesn't fit his narrative that he passes.

Edited for clarity