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nothorses · 3 years

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Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

#transgender #transphobia #trans #transmisogyny #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #transandrophobia #terfs #tirfs #gender critical #nothorses #cult mention #long post

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oscar-mildes · 5 years

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elvira you know I always see what you're hiding in the tags,, I will always read it if you answer all of them abhsjdbs

nev you asked for this and im going to go thru with it bc im an oversharing idiot like oh you asked me how’s the weather i will tell you about all my trauma instead :D

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? i’m cis yo i’m she/her. i’m biromantic ace. thats the label i would put on it i guess. i really just refer to myself as gay bc i like pretty boys who look like girls and pretty girls and pretty nb and queer people and basically i just like pretty people ajsfbjf

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story? theres no story to it. no epiphany or realization. i just always was ok with thinking that girls were pretty and that gay people are cool and it wasnt until recent years that i was like oH SHIT AM I GAY

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it? no i guess bc i’m a girl and id as a girl and have a very obvious girl body

Who was the first person you told, how did they react? i guess my best friend. we’re both very ok with gay shit and we just always made comments about pretty girls and now we’re both pretty gay. i like my big tiddie anime girls and she likes her pretty kpop girl bands

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel? i’ve only “come out” to some of my friends. i would NEVER in my LIFE even imagine telling my mom i like girls. shes homophobic Like That

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react? uhh see above. my mom, stepdad, family members are all homophobic. hispanics in general are Like That rip. i think my dad would be the most ok with it but he lives in mexico and i dont talk to him often anyway. doesnt matter

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality? i hate when people ask me about the ace part. like they have a bigger problem about my not wanting to have sex over the liking girls part tbh. sometimes it’s difficult for me to even describe where i am on the ace spectrum. it’s honestly the more difficult part

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear. basic nerd. you know those fics like “she dressed in a black t-shirt, skinny jeans, and all star converse” yea that she is me

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships? ajkfj this is a good question and canon wise i love Ash and Eiji from Banana Fish, Uenoyama and Mafuyu from Given, Nezumi and Shion from No. 6, and Simon and Baz from Carry On. Not canon i love Kurama and Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho, Izuku and Todoroki from My Hero Academia, and Inosuke and Tanjiro from Demon Slayer. Note how most of them are anime i

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any? i dont really wear any bc im lazy. if you like it you do you but idrc for it? except for lipstick i LOVE lipstick i have all the colors. i wear it so it distracts people from the rest of my face

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you? ...no

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community? i live in the south so ive heard tons of shit talk about gay people. i dont really have any that stand out. my mom just likes to say that we’re going to hell :D so let’s give em a show ay

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community? i guess i like how we find solidarity in each other just bc we’re not straight. most of the lgbt+ folks i know are pretty chill about everything

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community? terfs but they dont count

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not? i live in a small town and i could never sneak out of my house for that bc i still live with my mom so no

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity? theres so many big celebrities now that id as lgbt+ but im going old school and loving my man, my tumblr url namesake mr Oscar Wilde. my man got put in jail for sodomy

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet? lmao never bc im mean, ugly, and terrible at talking to people irl. i had a bf in middle school? but bc i was 12 i dont count it

What is your favourite lgbt+ book? Carry On and the sequel Wayward Son. (very anxiously waiting for book 3 Anyway the Wind Blows come on Rainbow Rowell)

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened? for being gay? no. bc im not really out. ive faced discrimination for being a brown woman tho :)))

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show? yall i love gay anime: Given, Banana Fish, No. 6, Yuri on Ice yeee. i dont really watch tv with real people but i think that Brooklyn 99 does a very good job with Holt and Rosa yall im love Rosa

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers? theres bloggers??? um idk i love u nev so you count right @why-do-you-pick-flowers

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim? for a while everyone was mad as hell about “im gay for ___” and idk im gay for everything so thats a “slur” i use for myself

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it? ive never gone omg i’d probably be intimidated as hell like i have a lot of problems just existing so to be existing around very flamboyant and extravagant people like that makes me break into a nervous sweat

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you? ive always felt like a girl even tho my mom always said “oh you like boy things??? you should have been born a boy” but like, your likes and dislike dont determine your gender. i like “boy” things and “dress like a boy” but i dont FEEL like a boy. ive never had any desire to become a boy or id as a boy. gender is a social construct fuck society

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not? i have a very complicated relationship with children. babies are ugly and toddlers are annoying but i feel like if i had children i would love them obviously because theyre mine. this is gonna be a weird analogy but like i dislike cats. BUT i have cats. and i love the fuck outta them. so i feel like thatd be me with kids. but im ace so like.... who would even have kids with me. i could not. pregnancy seems like a hassle and adoption is... i have thoughts on that but thats for a different post. also i can see myself being married and not having children OR having kids without a spouse. theres just something complicated about having both??? maybe im just fucked in the head idk bro

What identity advice would you give your younger self? you dont hate girls you like them, dumbass

What do you think of gender roles in relationships? fuck gender roles. get pegged, bros. i also have a very specific dynamic if i ever got into a relationship (which you know. wont happen) but like if i dated a guy i feel like i’d be very top. a MAN telling ME what to do??? fuck that. but if i dated a pretty girl??? top me pls

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender? i think ive already said too much oh god someone is gonna look at this and be like what the FUCK but like lmao dont be afraid to ask me i apparently have no shame

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+? it’s scary at first because you think “im not normal” but like pray tell me what is normal. do what makes you happy. fuck society

Why are proud to be lgbt+? i’m comfortable with the people i like. i might not be very confident and i have depression, anxiety, self esteem issues, probs adhd or ocd idfk but at least i know if i see a pretty girl or smth im gonna be like wow that girl is pretty and have no bad thoughts about it. it’s just how it be. after a lot of dissecting my past behavior, ive always been this way. you cant change who you are. just accept it

#asks #nev you asked for this #oversharing??? me??? never #lgbt stuff #im gay yall

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time-will-soon-be-gone · 5 years

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Why I hate

“tucute”/mogai community: -mixing gender identity with expression and/or personality -neopronouns -"you are trans if you say you are, no other requirements", makes being trans sound like a choice -using the term truscum -pronouns ≠ gender (making pronouns seen as a choice, or a cool accessory) -calling everyone they disagree with terfs or cis boot lickers -thinking it's valid to comfortable present as your born sex yet claim to be the opposite sex and scream at those who misgender you by accident -never talking about detransition or questioning of NOT being trans (hmm kinda sus,, what y'all afraid of?) -blocking everyone, not wanting to have conversation -"you can try hormones, you don't need to be sure!" -you can be cishet aro or cishet ace and still lgbt!!! -not believing trenders exist, even tho ppl have said they did it for attention -lot of think you need to be pan to be attracted to binary trans ppl, or that only pan thinks “hearts, not parts” (excuse me,, what about cishet woman or gay man into trans man without bottom surgery? sounds like hearts not parts to me) -queerplatonic -says only trans people are allowed in discourse, which sounds good yeah but also kinda forces stealth trans people to come out to be heard -saying when you're non-binary/agender means every attraction is gay even tho it would make more sense to say straight(since they are gender other than you [unless they’re nb too] and not the same,,.) -have to label every single little feeling, "oh your gender dysphoria isnt that bad today? maybe youre gender fluid! or endogender!" "you think you're man but not a hella masculine toxic masculinity male? nb male! demiboi!" -just hates men. im a feminist but a lot of you just f-cking hate men and i feel like that's why y'all have a problem as IDing as trans man and go for nb male instead. not a fact or anything just based on what ive seen on past two-three years.

transmed/"truscum" community: -the ben shapiro type of ppl -most r right-wing -say fucking dumb ass shit. like expect everyone to have same dysphoria as you. (mostly about insisting you need to have bottom dysphoria like no bitch. i kinda have but also im, idk, neutral most of the time. also not understanding that some can be more comfortable with their close friends, knowing they will not misgender so no need to bind for example.) -have weird understanding of non-binary. like they think it means agender. (i lowkey get that why they think nonbinary male doesnt make sense but it's not that hard to see gender as a spectrum and see it mean they lean more towards male but not fully???) -they just come off hella arrogant a lot of times -not understanding demisexuality (((slut shaming, "any decent person would get to know other before going to bed"))) (doesnt matter if you dont think it's sexuality or not, the point is y'all dont get that not feeling sexual attraction before friendship/connection isn't the same as waiting to get to know someone before f-cking) -some do not understand difference with someone being uneducated of trans topic therefore coming of as trender (while not being one) and an actual trender

#personal #lgbt discourse

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nb-jesus · 6 years

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this post is in regards to this post. it isnt letting me reblog the post from OP so im either blocked or my computer is funky. so, ive made my own post. @nondysphoric-enby here is my response :D

1) what does my age have to do with anything?

2) youre making me out to be condescending when i never was.

3) *cracks knuckles* here we go

this is what i presume to be an editorial on the credibility of the DSM 5 and the ICD-10. it features both pros and cons. its own sources are listed on the bottom of the page.

this is an opinion piece on the credibility of the DSM 5. its written by a man with a doctorate. if you look at the right side of this page, you can see he was the chair of the DSM 4 task force and is a professor at Duke.

this is a scientific study on the credibility of ICD-10 diagnoses. as mentioned in the editorial i linked, the ICD-10 is not a mental health diagnostic manual in itself, but features a chapter for mental health disorders instead. its used by more professionals than just psychiatrists and therapists, so it has to be general with its wording so that other professionals can understand it and are able to use it to diagnose mental disorders, which the editorial also brings up is a thing that happens.

it is true that Lamba legal says not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria, but the rest of the questions on the FAQ concern gender dysphoria and transitioning. Lambda legal, as far as i can tell, is a nonprofit organization that provides legal counsel for LGBT individuals. this being so, they can only really provide legal counsel to dysphoric individuals seeking healthcare (such as HRT and surgeries) because nondysphoric transgender people probably wont transition. to be gender nondysphoric means to not experience distress because of ones sex, right? is a nondysphoric trans person transitions, what is the point? if them transitioning “makes them more comfortable” then i would think they probably had dysphoria, but just didnt know so. transitioning exists to make ones body reflect ones gender, right? but if a nondysphoric trans person transitions while still comfortable with their natal sex, does that not mean they would develop dysphoria over this? there are a lot of cases of detransitioners who thought they were trans, and tried to transition, but ended up having to stop because they ultimately developed gender dysphoria. if you look at some radfem blogs on here, you can see they do indeed exist. my point is, why is a legal firm credible if they only provide services (which i would assume means only legal counseling a.k.a lawyers) to dysphoric trans people? correct me if im wrong, but legal counseling means “ A counsel or a counsellor at law is a person who gives advice and deals with various issues, particularly in legal matters. It is a title often used interchangeably with the title of lawyer.” according to google. let me reiterate the point of the definition, “a person who gives advice and deals with various issues, particularly in legal matters.” if theyre a credible source, would they not provide services to all transgender people? that question leads back to the question of why would nondysphoric transgender people transition if they are not distressed by their sex. do you see my point?

this is a report on the APA’s involvement in CIA torture after 9/11. this is an article about five (5) APA psychologists and their involvement in forced feeding tube feedings on prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. this is the APA’s code of ethics. it says in the general principles that “ Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” there were revisions to this code in 2010 and 2016 as stated on the page itself. however, does this mean they did not believe this statement--and the others in the rest of the sections--before? to me, it appears not, because of the aforementioned links in this paragraph.

it is true transequality.org says that “ Not all transgender people have gender dysphoria. On its own, being transgender is not considered a medical condition. Many transgender people do not experience serious anxiety or stress associated with the difference between their gender identity and their gender of birth, and so may not have gender dysphoria.” i agree with the fact that transgenderism in itself isnt a medical condition. its gender dysphoria that is; more specifically, its a neurological condition. transgenderism is the symptom of gender dysphoria. that being said, my points in the paragraph about Lambda legal stand even more starkly.

it is also true the NHS gender clinics say “not all gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria”, but in the next paragraph, they list “androgynous” as a diverse identity they experience in their clinics. androgynous is a presentation descriptor label. cisgender people can be androgynous. they also list “gender neutral” as a diverse identity people experience in their clinics. gender neutral is very vague in meaning. do they mean agender people? androgynous people? cisgender people who just dont care what people call them? and so on and so forth. they use the Interim Gender Dysphoria Protocol and Service Guideline 2013/14 and the The Royal College of Psychiatry Good Practice Guidelines for the Assessment and Treatment of Adults with Gender Dysphoria 201 to help care for their patients. the Interim Gender Dysphoria protocol has a graphic early in the many pages that shows if someone does not get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, they are discharged or sent elsewhere for other treatment. it also shows that if a diagnosis couldnt be made, then more observation is done, and if no diagnosis is made, they are again discharged or sent elsewhere for other treatment (the graphic is on page 7). the Royal College of Psychiatry does indeed say not all “gender variant” people or gender-non-conforming people experience gender dysphoria (they say this on page 14). they never explicitly say transgender or transsexual in that paragraph, only stuff about diversity. “gender variant” doesnt make sense to me, personally, because transgender/transsexual are not dirty words. that is my personal opinion, so i dont know how others feel about it. in terms of counting gender-non-conforming people, that doesnt make sense either. cisgender people can be gender-non-conforming, and they dont need services from a gender identity clinic.

the WHO revised their definition of gender dysphoria and moved it from a mental health condition to a sexual health condition back in 2018, if i can recall correctly. i cant find the exact page where ive seen them say gender dysphoria isnt needed to be transgender, but i did find this. on that page, they say gender is the socially constructed characteristics of men and women. if gender is a social construct, which is what theyre saying but in simpler terms, then why is it so important for people to transition and alleviate gender dysphoria? if its to make them more comfortable in their bodies, why do the terms transgender/transsexual and gender dysphoria even exist, if gender is a social construct? would treatments for the discomfort transgender people experience with their bodies just be something else? or would there even be treatments at all? i know some of the questions ive asked in this whole thing can seem like reaches, but i really just want to stress the ideas that some people may think of if they hear of these things. to my knowledge, the WHO also listed gender-non-conforming people in their definition of transgender. though ive also heard they later say on that page that not all gender-non-conforming people are transgender, its weird they would even include it in the first place.

side note: terfs say gender is a social construct, too.

taking sources at face value (”why medical professionals shouldnt be trusted and how they dont actually mean what they said”) isnt really... the greatest thing to do. a common point yall tucutes make is that only you know your gender. if thats true, then why do yall take what medical professionals say about being transgender as 100% fact?

calling transmeds the “anti-vaxxers and flat earthers of the trans community” is gross. transmeds havent killed people because we havent gotten vaccinated.

if you respond, id appreciate it if you could be civil <3 thank you! i look forward to getting your response :D

#mine

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