I am starting this blog as a way to offer my support to anyone who is considering or reconsidering gender transition. In the current climate, voices critiquing transgenderism are often intimidated into silence. I want to create a safe forum for those who have journeyed down, any distance, the path of transgenderism and now have doubts.
I also want to welcome health care professionals who are questioning the current medical construct of transgenderism.
In 2015, I wrote an essay, My Disservice to My Transgender Patients, which received some attention, almost all positive. Clearly, there is desire for conversation about transgenderism.
I am a medical doctor, but I will not offer advice beyond
my general opinions. A blog is not an adequate means to practice
medicine.
My opinion is that transgenderism is not a problem with being born in the wrong body; transgenderism is an expression of anxiety. To treat it somatically, with hormones and surgery in an erroneous attempt to change one's physicality, is not only ineffective but wrong. Transgenderism must be treated as an anxiety disorder, an expression of dis-ease with our society's entrenched and maladaptive gender roles. As a culture, we will one day look back and see the current enthusiasm for transgenderism as dark days, when we willing misdirected people into wrong ideas and bad choices, sacrificing their health to serve the gender model.
While I advocate for the complete dismantlement of transgenderism, I am especially concerned about women who are opting for a male identity. Transgenderism is about the erasure of women, both the movement of women towards a male identity, and the infiltration into women's space by men who adopt a female identity. Transgenderism does not provide freedom from gender roles; it exaggerates women's inferior position in patriarchy.
There is a lot of useful information easily available, and I will not attempt to be a definitive resource. My questioning of the medical construct started with Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys and radical feminism and Women's Liberation Front. The response to my essay introduced me to an online community of like-minded trans questioners, blogs such as GenderTrender, 4thWaveNow, and The Dirt, and a valued network of allies.
To treat transgenderism, the place to begin is to question the construct; what follows is to stop all the physical interventions and begin to analyze and manage the anxiety. We may not be able to overturn patriarchy with one blog, but we can try to save individual lives, one at a time.
Great to see this
ReplyDeleteHi Just A Dad! I would like to hear more about your experience and interest. Kathy
DeleteYou have an important role to play in exposing the harm that transgenderism does to so many. Thank you for bravely speaking out and using your experiences and skills to do so. I plan on following you and sharing your writing with others.
ReplyDeleteThank-you. Would you care to elabourate on your experience?
DeleteThank you for asking for my story. I was invited to guest post on Youth Trans Critical Professionals recently. Here's a link:https://youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org/2016/08/20/gender-activism-in-schools/
DeleteYTCP is a fantastic resource for parents, as is 4th Wave Now. The more we all work together to expose this epidemic, the sooner it will end. Thanks again.
Thank you for starting this blog. There is so much wrong with transgenderism, yet critics are being silenced. This cannot be tolerated because so many lives are negatively impacted.
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to describe your experience.
DeleteI have added a link to your blog here: https://gendercriticalresources.com/doku.php?id=resources:detransition I hope this is ok if not let me know (contact@gendercriticalresources.com)and I will remove it
ReplyDeleteOkay!
DeleteHello! I'm a detransitioned male. Thank you for writing this piece - I totally agree with what you write about anxiety and transition. As I've grown and healed I've found myself becoming less anxious, and more recently I got to the point where I can acknowledge that I'm a man and always have been. Yes I'm swishy, and yes I'm homosexual, and yes I've struggled with these things most of my life, but clearly orchiectomy and 8 years of cross sex hormone replacement 'therapy' wasn't the most holistic way of dealing with these issues. My medical intervention was profoundly harmful and I was very unwell when I sought it out. Further more, I believe that there is a very cult like aspect to trans culture, and the more I read about cults, the more detransitioning appears similar to leaving a cult.
ReplyDeleteThis is all heartbreaking to me; a generation of gender non conforming folks is being sterilized and mutilated. Personally I have deep regret and sadness that I choose such harmful path that didn't even address my underlying issues. I've written about some of my experiences here: http://notesondetransition.blogspot.com/2017/04/introduction.html
Perhaps the worst reason to transition is that you see characteristics of the opposite sex when you look at your body. I see this a lot. One of my transgender friends is a 5'6" tall male and had all the surgeries and is totally neurotic and anxious. Takes all kinds of psych meds. In contrast I am a 6' tall non-passable TG that is perfectly happy with myself.
ReplyDeleteHi I am a 53 year transman 20 since transition from female to male thinking of detransicion need some advice
ReplyDeleteI would be glad to correspond with you, as, I am sure, would others.
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