'Arm the Dolls'

[WrongKindOfFeminist]

Pictured is Natacha Kennedy of Goldsmiths.

T shirt says 'Arm the Dolls'

Body dismorphia is an established medical condition. However this is not the same as being 'trans'.

Body dismorphia can take different forms. Sometimes it is distress about one's sex organs, but it can also be distress around limbs such as legs. However, being 'transabled' is not recognised as a legitimate 'identity' either.

So, that's not answering the question put to you, now is it?

You have a way with words, @Pingponghavoc !

There are lots of people distressed about their age. Going through menopause can be depressing, so can becoming old. Few of us want to be living in 96 year old bodies.

If we told our doctors we are depressed about getting older, they would be sympathetic but what could they do?

The medical profession has observed that some people present as the opposite sex. Thats all.

The medical profession has developed surgery and drugs that can alter a person's external appearance. Thats all.

Governments have allowed people to falsify official documents, that's all.

There is no test that can determine who is and who isnt trans. If there was and you failed it, would you cease to present as a woman? I know i wouldnt pretend to be a man if I passed such a test.

The research is just observing peoples behaviour.

The argument that distress along doesn’t create an identity has validity. That is exactly why medicine looks beyond the distress to the nature of the condition.

Medicine treats being transgender as a legitimate identity because it involves a non-distorted mismatch with a universal social category, and transitioning leads to high functioning and improved quality of life. It treats dysmorphia and limb-rejection as psychiatric or neurological conditions because they represent perceptual distortions, mapping errors, or requests that fundamentally impair a person's physical rather than helping them function within society.

People presented to doctors with distress about their sex. That doesn’t happen for age or race.

That is very much not true at all. Millions, possibly billions, of people spend unimaginable amounts of money on cosmetics and surgeries to combat aging or modify their racial appearance. The market is absolutely enormous. Trans people are barely a drop in the ocean by comparison.

Do I detect the presence of AI in this answer?

However even with your AI help, you miss the point that 'transitioning' is not a treatment for anything. Transitioning is a non sequitur. What do you transition from or to?

In all kinds of body dismorphia, removal of the limb/organ in question has been considered as a treatment. The benefit of this approach is highly contested in all types of body dismorphia.

Bringing 'identity' into it is just gibberish to justify men's fetishes. A gender 'identity' is not a verifiable thing. No man has a legitimate 'female identity'.

There are lots of people distressed about their age. Going through menopause can be depressing, so can becoming old. Few of us want to be living in 96 year old bodies.
That’s not quite the same thing though. Distress from natural aging is different to distress caused by identifying with a different age. People identifying as a different age or race just doesn’t exist in clinical data.

On being unable to test for it I disagree. In medicine, it is classified based on persistent subjective distress and behaviour, much like depression, anxiety, or ADHD. None of them have a physical "test" either, yet are treated as real clinical phenomena

Except that gender dysphoria also represents "a perceptual distortion, mapping error, or request that fundamentally impair a person's physical [what?] rather than helping them function within society."

Transitioning is exactly the same as dysmorphia and limb-rejection, since it involves creating health problems through administration of cross-sex hormones, and cutting up healthy body parts.

My aunt refused to reference her age or mark her birthday and got extremely upset when anyone else did, after the age of 50.

I doubt she ever brought that up with her doctor, but until the last decade the majority of 'trans identifying men' wouldn't have done so either. Our historical awareness of cross dressing men comes mostly from the social clubs they created, not medicine.

That’s still not the same thing. Your aunt not liking getting older is not the same as her having distress because she thinks she is a different age.

If she was so distressed she couldn’t refer to her age or celebrate she probably should’ve got some help.

Well that's interesting ...

If she was so distressed she couldn’t refer to her age or celebrate she probably should’ve got some help.

Totally agree. But to paraphrase ...

If he was so distressed he couldn’t acknowledge his sex he probably should get some help.

Exactly the same principle.

Yes exactly. And the help for that situation is medical transition.

There's plenty of evidence of people identifying out of their race. White people identifying as Native Americans reached the point of causing serious offence; it was quite a fashion at one time; and then there are people like Rachel Dolezal who identify as Black.
The only reason they don't appear in medical records is that discomfort with one's race and identification with another one has not - yet - been framed as something you can go to a doctor to fix.

If anyone had suggested to my aunt that her 'identity' was that of someone younger I think she would have seen that as a totally accurate summary of how she felt.

There's no such thing as 'transition'.

No one can change sex, just as no one can change age.

What do trans people do if they don’t transition in some way?

They take synthetic hormones / have cosmetic surgery.

Body modification within one's sex. Transition implies escaping one's sex to some degree, which is impossible. The changes are purely cosmetic; the basis (the sexed body) doesn't change.

When you put it like that, it's pretty much the same as having a facelift or whatever. Cosmetic changes can be made via surgery/medicine. However they do not change the reality of age/sex.

Whatever you want to call it, medical treatment is indicated for people presenting with gender dysphoria.

Still doesn't make anyone any more than a poor facsimile of the thing they are not.

Makes me kinda sad how the various trans and TRA people who come around here never seem to show any curiosity about the causes of trans, the types of trans, or whether we can hope to find a better treatment one day than just fundamentally messing with our bodies and cutting them up 😔As Bailey would say: just because this is how things are now, doesn't mean it is how things ought to be!

So? Cosmetic surgery is a common enough practice. It doesn't indicate a medical condition

Gender dysphoria is the medical condition, and hormones and surgery is the treatment

You know most of us really dont care how consenting adults choose to live.

So long as men stay the fuck out of women's spaces. And kids dont get told they can change sex. And people aren't compelled to pretend that changing sex is possible, or to use the wrong words or mouth absurdities.

'Arm the dolls' indeed.