There is a really good essay from someone who got caught up in the transgender movement, but was able to detransition after finding support. She makes many good points throughout her lengthy essay to help us see the harmful elements of the transgender movment. Let me provide a few quotations where she is talking about how she was seduced into thinking she was transgender. Of course, it begins with someone who has issues finding a home on the internet:
Excerpt from By Any Other Name:
Between sharing photos, drawings, and fanfiction, these girls were posting about their lives and going into deep detail about their struggles. Many were social outcasts like me, also struggling with things like self-harm and eating disorders. Finding a community of such like minded people felt amazing, and I quickly began spending nearly every waking moment on Tumblr or messaging some friend I had met on there. If I had any remaining motivation to integrate myself into real life, I lost that here. At school, I would sit in the back of the class, scrolling Tumblr and talking to Tumblr friends without engaging in class. When I returned home, I would open Tumblr on my laptop or hop on Skype to voice call with girls halfway across the planet, ignoring homework and studying all the while.
A major aspect of Tumblr culture has always been social justice ideology. Things that are now being played out and witnessed by the general public on platforms like Twitter and TikTok, like dissociative identity disorder LARPers, demisexuals, neopronouns, otherkin, and everything you see on @LibsOfTikTok, have long existed in an uncannily identical form on tumblr.com. The oppression hierarchy of racial and gender identities now being written into law in many of our once serious nations was the state religion of the People’s Republic of Tumblr long before your political junkie uncle knew the term “CRT”. As cultish religions tend to operate, open devotion to the religion is mandatory. Perhaps the outsiders most likely to understand the way social dynamics worked on that website would be survivors of Scientology or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. On Tumblr, the situation was such that any claim to being “oppressed” would accumulate social credibility, while any unfortunate “privileged” status was justification for verbal abuse. As a “privileged” person, you were expected to constantly grovel and apologize, you had no right to speak on any issue involving the group you were “oppressing”, and you could not object in any way to any mistreatment hurled against you because of your race, gender, or sexuality.
I found myself in a bit of a double bind. On one hand, I had found what felt like the perfect group of friends who understood me on an intuitive level, who I was able to talk to openly about the things I liked and made me “weird” in real life, but on the other hand I was a “cishet white girl” in an environment where that was one of the worst things to be. Since Tumblr users are mostly biological females, the “cishet white girl” holds the position of most privileged and therefore most inherently bad group. In this climate, you are made to feel guilty and responsible for all the horrors and atrocities in the world. No hardship you could possibly go through could ever be as bad as the prejudice and genocide POC and LGBT people face every. Single. Day. Insert clap emoji. LGBT people and POC can’t even walk out of their houses without being murdered by cishet white people just like you!
Its understandable that any young person exposed to this kind of belief system would grow to deeply resent being white, “cis”, straight, or (biologically) male. The beauty of gender ideology is it provides a way to game this system, so that you can get some of those targets off your back and enjoy the camaraderie of like-minded youths. You can’t change your race, pretending to have a different sexuality would be very uncomfortable in practice, but you can absolutely change your gender, and it’s as easy as putting a “she/they” in your bio. Instantly you are transformed from an oppressing, entitled, evil, bigoted, selfish, disgusting cishet white scum into a valid trans person who deserves celebration and special coddling to make up for the marginalization and oppression you supposedly now face. Now not expected to do as much groveling and reaffirming to everyone how much you love checking your privilege, you can relax a little and talk about your life without wondering if you are distracting from the struggles of or speaking over marginalized groups, because you are marginalized too. With the new pronouns often comes a wave of positive affirmation from friends and followers, and the subconscious picks up quickly that there’s a way to make the deal of being on Tumblr even sweeter.
This is the incentive I felt to comb through my thoughts and memories for things that might be further evidence that deep down, I wasn’t really a girl. I hated my body; it must be because I don’t like that its female. Boys have never been interested in me like they are with other girls; well, maybe I would be attractive as a boy, and then I could be like all these cute “gay trans boys” I saw dating each other online. I didn’t have many friends, it must be because being a girl isn’t my “authentic self”, and that was getting in the way of my social life. Plus, people were nicer to me since I said I was trans so that must be an indication that being trans is the right thing to do to make friends. Female sexuality is hypersexualized and pornified, yet it’s supposed to be “empowering” for women to do porn, be prostitutes, or have dangerous, kinky, scary sounding sex with many different men. I heard that my discomfort with this made me “vanilla”, and a girl who is vanilla has no chance of really pleasing a man when competing with “empowered” women. I must not have really been meant to be a girl, because if I was, this wouldn’t all be so scary and confusing. I felt like my family didn’t care about me or pay attention to me, it must be because they subconsciously have always known I’m trans and they’re transphobic. I mean, they did make fun of Caitlyn Jenner that one time. They hate me! Just wait until I tell them I’m going to start testosterone; they’ll have to pay attention to me then.
Shadow To Light 
This will be an unpopular opinion, but when have I ever given a damn about that?
Many of the social trends destroying our civilization are natural outgrowths of feminism … and especially of giving women the franchise.
Even the mere fact that all these now-damaged children are widely given unfettered and unsupervised access to the “communities” which are destroying them is a direct result of feminism; for their *mothers* were reared to be indifferent, even to the point of smoldering hostility, to their own children.
I spotted this snippet in the article; it’s her — she’s back to the female gender now — her first day at college, her parents took her there, and they are meeting her new, similarly transman (natal female) room-mate:
Wow, what incredible violence. It’s a wonder she wasn’t hospitalised after such a brutal attack.
Or was she living in a fantasy world.
I suppose it adds a new twist to the old sneer about ‘Disney values.’
Hmmm, I know there’s prodigies about, but this article, purportedly by a 23 year old, looks like something from the hand of an accomplished and very experienced journalist or other professional writer. Which doesn’t seem to be the case:
Hmmm…
Here’s her twitter page:
The UK government was planning to host a three-day “Safe To Be Me” international LGBT+ conference this summer to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first ever London Pride marches. Not just a wonderful PR opportunity for the government, but also a wonderful PR opportunity for LGBT+ people and their advocate groups. Yet, as the BBC article headline puts it, “Conversion therapy ban: Over 100 groups quit government LGBT conference.” Now, there’s a possibility the Conference will be cancelled.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60988210
Those more than 100 groups (and those other groups still intending to attend, if it does go ahead) have just won a major victory: for years they have called for a ban on ‘conversion therapy’, and now the government has declared its intention to enact that ban. The reaon why – the sole reason why – the more than 100 LGBT groups are having tantrums and throwing their toys out of the pram is that (after a double-wobble) the government has excluded Trans-people from the ban.
In that article the BBC, the supposedly impartial, fair and balanced reporter of news, obscures the reasons for that exception:
And that’s the nub of it, not unintended consequences regarding adult trans-people – if gender-transitioning children were not also in view they would surely have their desired complete ban on all conversion therapy – but unintended consequences for children.
The next day’s article, “Government LGBT adviser resigns over conversion therapy row”, provides a bit more of the missing context (without which context the first was just publicity given to LGBT+ activists rants against the government):
And there you have it: the LGBT+ activists want legislation that would directly ban, else via woolly-phrased law intimidate and deter, child psychologists from giving treatments other than chemical conversion therapy to the sought-after gender.
Following court cases and judgments during this last year or so the UK government has set up a commission to assess existing child gender dysphoria treatments and to advise on standards of clinical treatment in the future; it has yet to report, but the commissioner has indicated interim that there’s far too little exploration of the childrens’ often multiple psychological and familial problems. It is no kindness to children, indeed it is contrary to the child protection principles central to the commision’s purposes, to ban or undermine key likely recommendations before they are made.
The government’s decision to delay – and delay is what it will be, pending further and fuller consideration of the details and nuances of the legal, ethical and child protection issues involved, the government continues to declare its commitment to banning conversion therapy for all LGBT people – that decision to delay the ban insofar as it relates to Transgender people is undoubtedly correct.
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Staring out at me from both articles is that the LGBT+ activists want what they want, they want it 100% and they want it right now, Now, NOW; they are not prepared to accept less than 100% or to concede even that details and nuances of the legal, ethical and child protection issues involved should be considered and discussed, or even that they exist and are valid reason for delay. That seems to me entirely unreasonable, hence my comment above about them having tantrums and throwing their toys out of the pram.
It’s behaviour that strongly reinforces the popular perception – the stereotype – of the Woke as emotional and irrational.
Unsurprisingly, the three-day “Safe To Be Me” international LGBT+ conference this summer has been cancelled, “there were several hours of crunch talks in an attempt to salvage the event, but ultimately organisers were unable to move forward after the majority of organisations involved pulled out.”
I observe that LGBT+ groups refusing to attend a conference put on for their benefit is akin to refusing an offered cream cake because there’s no cherry on top. Well, so be it, go sulk.
The BBC article announcing this included:
I note that said “explorative therapies or those that do not automatically affirm someone’s gender identity” were missing in the transgender transitioner/detransitioner person’s story linked in the OP. She relates she went onto transitioning drugs immediately, on demand, no explorative questions asked.
That’s the US. Hopefully the UK will step back from following down that path, but it won’t if the LGBT+ activists get the 100% ban on conversion therapy that they are demanding.
^ “I note that “explorative therapies or those that do not automatically affirm someone’s gender identity” were missing in the transgender transitioner/detransitioner person’s story linked in the OP. She relates she went onto transitioning drugs immediately, on demand, no explorative questions asked.”
According to the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine’s summary of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare’s latest policy recommendations, Sweden has switched tack:
These last-mentioned interventions will not be transgender conversion therapy as such:
But I strongly suspect that activists will accuse those providing this psychological and psychiatric care as engaging in transgender conversion therapy. Loudly.
“Sajid Javid to review gender treatment for children”, announces a 23 April 2022 BBC News article:
To clarify, the Cass Review has already made an interim report on its main recommendations…
https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
…and it is due to make its full report to the Health Secretary later this year. It recommends that the current unsatisfactory, much criticised, standalone and very centralised GIDS service with just two clinics should be replaced with regional services for children, more closely integrated into the NHS mainstream.
One major criticism by Dr Hilary Cass is the lack of evidence — more or less the lack of any evidence, let alone good evidence — with which to practice evidence based medicine. Nobody has yet tracked the outcomes for children who have progressed through GIDS, disappearing off of the GIDS radar on reaching legal adulthood, to see whether there is long-term nett benefit or nett harm from the existing approach and treatment.
What Javid was announcing that was new is that he intents to make an attempt to circumvent Britain’s strong data protection laws in order to contact and question former child patients to get that benefit/harm information. Realistically, it will yield results on the level of a patient satisfaction questionnaire or opinion poll rather than that of clinicians’ professional assessments; it will be rubbish evidence, but anything is better than nothing and at least Javid’s trying.
Along with being ascerbic about current services, that is.
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, which is in a large part aimed at protecting children from being harmed by what they encounter online, has been delayed in its progress through Parliament by the election of the next Tory Party leader. It was already highly controversial because of the different strongly held opinions on where the line should be drawn between protections and freedom of speech.
I would make it even more controversial, I would investigate how children can be protected online from trans-activists.
“Encouraging self-harm to be criminalised in Online Safety Bill”, says the BBC:
The context of this amendment to the Bill is a girl who committed suicide a few years ago, encouraged by sites and persons online; the Bill will be aimed at self-cutting and suicide; it might not be worded to criminalise the incitement or encouragement of self-harm by pharmacological means of changing secondary sexual characteristics (gender.)
‘There are lies, damned lies, and statistics’ says the well known quote. This is nicely illustrated by PZ Myers’ 23 March 2023 “Rising, so far”, in which he includes:
You’d have thought that Myers, a scientist, would be keenly aware of the danger of selection bias, that’s Statistics 101.
Not surveyed by the WP are formerly trans adults who found transitioning made them less satisfied with their lives. Detransitioners — whose detransitioning is surely a strong clue that they must have been dissatisfied with life as a trans adult — no longer count as trans adults, hence weren’t asked their experiences and satisfaction levels after transitioning.
Likewise those backing away after tentative early steps because, for whatever reason, transitioning just wasn’t working for them, those for whom backing away was the more satisfactory life-course.
For the purposes of trans-activist propaganda — possibly unwitting and unintentional propaganda, though you have to be really stupid to be that unwitting — detransitioners don’t count, they don’t even exist.
So the correct response to the headline, “Most trans adults say transitioning made them more satisfied with their lives”, is indeed Myers’ “Yeah, obviously.”
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It’s an interesting and informative article, within its obvious limitations and its intentional or unintentional bias:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/23/transgender-adults-transitioning-poll/