Won’t comment on the TERF posts here, they’re just trash. The screenshot up there that started this, however… as a trans woman myself, I have thoughts.
Ah… transmedicalism. The ideology of trans pain, with the aim of building a wall around “true” trans people. A bit like TERFery, except it’s an ideology for us and by us, rather than by others against us.
As usual with transmedicalists, here we have the claim that if someone else declares themselves as trans, but without having gone through the same pain and struggles as we did, it’s somehow a slight against us and belittles our identity and the difficulties we face. After all, it’s always about ME and MY UNBEARABLE PAIN!!1!
And then, the claim that we are only legitimately trans if someone else, some outside authority confirms it. It’s the classic transmedicalist view that gatekeeping is without a doubt good and necessary, and that if anything we need more of it rather than less. Because if we don’t strictly gatekeep who gets to call themselves transgender transsexual* or be accepted as such, we will somehow lose all the rights we have gotten.
* Transmedicalists tend to be VERY insistent on calling themselves ‘transsexuals’ rather than ‘transgender’ to disassociate themselves from those they sometimes call "transtrenders", the crazy queer kids who are supposedly appropriating the label because they find it cool, and to emphasize the rootedness of their identity in biology rather than “woke brain-worms”.
Before I continue, consider the following: Does what I described so far remind you of anything? Hint: see the website this was posted to, and consider how the TERFs gatekeep their identity and the stated reasons why they do so.
So, of course, we “true transfolk” should deride and denounce all those ‘weirdos’ who don’t meet our arbitrary criterion of who is “truly” trans, in the hope of convincing cis people that we’re not like those other crazy people and cis people shouldn’t associate us with them.
Which is ironic, by the way, given that a typical transmedicalist view is that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and that we are mentally ill (yes, many of these people have referred to themselves as mentally ill).
The rationale being that unless gender dysphoria is recognized as a full-on medical disorder, it will be seen as unserious, as something trans people are just making up, and all our health care will be taken away.
Which, of course, is not true, other than perhaps in the very specific context of the current guidelines of coverage in certain medical or insurance systems, but that is a matter of consensus or law that can be changed. In other words, it’s local bureaucracy rather than some cosmic truth.
I’d also ask this trans woman a few questions, like: Who gets to decide whether you’re “true trans”? Doctors?
But there are many different medical professionals who do this.
For instance, in my country, when I was starting my transition there were two psychiatrists — only two! — who were licensed to work with us and to allow us to access trans medical care and give their permission for us to change our sex marker in documents.
One of them, the one working in the public sector, insisted on a minimum of 12 months of monitoring before he would consider authorizing anything.
The other guy, the private sector psychiatrist… let’s just say he had nothing even REMOTELY close to that as a prerequisite.
A third one, who by that time no longer worked with trans patients, had required that patients undergo an invasive questioning before a full panel of practitioners from his faculty. And if an experience I’ve read about what it’s like from someone who went through that is true, that interrogation could get very humiliating, complete with mocking laughter from the assembled staff.
These three people all worked in the same system, under the same laws governing official transition. Yet their methods were very different.
I had actually initially tried to go to the first psychiatrist, the one who required a long period of oversight before he’d let me through to hormones or sex marker change.
Unfortunately, when I called him, he apologetically said that he’s leaving transgender health care… because of the smear campaign undertaken against him in those days by the far right tabloid media.
So, I was left with the guy who’d let me through quite quickly.
And that’s just different doctors, all with their own ideas on who is “legitimately” trans, how much gatekeeping should be done, and in what manner. Which of them is right? Whose “certificate of true transness” is correct? Who gets to decide?
But then we have different countries or even states within a federation, which have different laws about these things. Which one’s laws are correct? Denmark? Hungary? Ireland? The UK? Malta? Russia? Iran? China? California? Texas? Florida?
For instance, a former member of this site was a trans woman from Poland — who, incidentally, ended up becoming a transmedicalist and then decided to ragequit.
She described quite a horror of an official transition process in that country: having to go before a panel of hyper-conservative doctors whose views on gender norms were straight out of the 1950s; having to answer a set of questions by them EXACTLY as prescribed, since any departure would mean instant disqualification; and finally, having to sue her own parents in order to change her name and sex marker, even though her parents were 100% aboard with her transition, because the absurd Polish law allows such a change only under the premise that your sex was mistakenly assigned at birth… and it’s somehow your parents’ “fault”.
So, you must sue your parents, EVEN IF YOU’RE WELL OVER THE AGE OF MAJORITY, and if they disagree with your transition, they can just fight you in court and block you from transitioning.
Is that the ‘verification system’ you’d want to live under?
Well… it does sure keep out the “transtrenders” whom you so loathe!
But… would you want to go through that? Is it humane? Don’t you deserve better?
And that’s without even going into the matter that this system fails and keeps out trans people who are very much dysphoric and need gender-affirming care. All because they answered a question or two “wrongly”, and were judged to be insufficiently gender-conforming for their ‘target gender’ — and thus not “truly trans”.
Or maybe you’d prefer the United Kingdom, where the NHS waiting lists are so long that you may very well die before you even see a psychologist for the first time? (and it’s obligatory in order to transition in any way!)
Unless, of course, you’ve got money, in which case your options are much better. Truly the British way, long live the class system!
Or maybe Russia and Hungary, where… oops! ERROR: Term ‘TRANSGENDER’ not found. Did you mean ‘SICK PERVERT’? See also: ‘WESTERN PROPAGANDA’ and ‘WHY DO YOU HATE OUR TRADITIONAL VALUES?’
Yeah, they banned transitioning altogether, so good luck! And no, it wasn’t due to the enbies and the woke kids. Putin and Orbán really, really don’t care about any of that; to them, all of us ‘degenerates’ are the same, and we’re just convenient punching bags for them to build up their image of “family values champions”.
Yes, even you very special ‘transsexuals’; in the conservative gender ideology, you are considered no less sick than purple-haired Xaiden over there who goes by ‘fae/faer’ pronouns and identifies as metagender.
Transmedicalists throw others under the bus hoping to protect themselves, but in the end, they just find themselves more alone when the conservatives come for them and their rights, just as they would have come no matter how the transmeds identified and whom they associated themselves with.
The ones taking aim at you don’t care about your protests and your claims that you’re the “real ones”, as opposed to the ones you call “transtrenders”. To the hard conservatives, the fascists and the TERFs, all of us are just the same degeneracy which needs to be done away with, one way or another.
