Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones

and words can persuade me to permanently mutilate myself

According to one dictionary source, the meaning of the word “dysphoria” is “a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied”.   Dysphoria Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster The same source lists the antonym (opposite) of dysphoria as “euphoria”, which it defines as “a feeling of well-being or elation”.

Dysphoria was first used circa 1842 in the meaning cited above, it had nothing to do with another word, “gender” with which it would appear to be inextricably linked in today’s discourse.

The term gender dates back to the 15th century where its use was a synonym for “sex” as an indicator of the dimorphic nature of all mammalian species. Sex has largely maintained its original meaning of describing the states of maleness and femaleness or referring to intercourse, but the meaning of gender has been malleable.

In the 20th century, gender changed its meaning to include a more a behavioural aspect. Cultural or psychological traits typically associated with either sex were ascribed to gender. “Gender roles” were noted and used to describe both people and the tasks they performed. Doctors (men) and nurses (women) were fulfilling their prescribed gender roles that were determined by their sex.

Although there remains much confusion about the differing uses of sex and gender, to those who study this the definitions are fairly straightforward. Put simply, sex refers to biology and gender refers to feelings. This is how you get grown biological men claiming that they are women and teenage girls claiming that they are really boys.  

Unfortunately, this remaining confusion is very useful for those who believe in an ideology that posits that gender “identity” is something that is socially constructed and can be actively chosen by anyone who wants to do so. Which to a certain extent is true; men can be nurses and women can be doctors. But when a chosen identity deliberately conflates and confuses the roles of gender and sex, well that’s a starting point for a whole host of problems.

Because your sex is immutable and unchangeable and is in no way socially constructed. Those male nurses and female doctors are just that and no amount of opposite sex hormones, surgeries or any other body modifications can change the XX or XY chromosomes that over 99% of the population carry in every single cell of their bodies. Disorders of Sexual Development: Current Status and Progress in the Diagnostic Approach - PMC (nih.gov)

Those who suffer from gender dysphoria, which can be defined as a belief that you are the opposite sex from that which was observed at your birth, are clearly operating out of a delusion. Thanks to the billions of dollars that are behind the trans lobby The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement | Jennifer Bilek | First Things, major institutions such as the WHO (World Health Organization) and many psychiatric groups have removed gender dysphoria from their lists of mental health disorders.

Now that we are all supposed to pretend that people can change their sex, it might pay to look back in history at some other things that were considered necessary and proper treatments in their time. Who wants a lobotomy now and what about those wandering wombs that so troubled natal women for centuries? Hysteria, Witches, and The Wandering Uterus: A Brief History ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

And what about other forms of body dysphoria. Are all these iterations treated the same?

I’m not sure why believing that you can change your sex is not considered a mental health issue, considering other disorders of the mind remain in the category of ‘needs treatment’. For example, if a skeletal looking teenage girl presents to a doctor’s office complaining that she can’t eat because she is so fat, the response will not be diet advice and a gym membership. Girls in the grip of anorexia also have body dysphoria issues, but these are in no way catered to by the medical establishment.

Cancer patients too can suffer from body dysphoria, but these are vested in visible facts, not in misconceptions or faulty beliefs. Cancer treatments may involve disfiguring surgeries that can mean that people attract unwelcome attention when out in public and most patients who undergo chemotherapy lose their hair, which is particularly challenging for women because of the gender expectation that only men are bald.

And what about pregnancy? How a woman’s body changes during pregnancy is dramatic and highly visible to everyone. It is out of her control and unavoidable. It is not ‘fixed’ by birthing the baby, because pregnancy changes women’s bodies permanently. Here is a paragraph that addresses this:

After each of my births, there is a moment when I am able to hobble to the toilet on my own, a massive pad pressed between my legs to catch the gush of blood that comes when I stand upright. I have to shuffle past a mirror to get there, and I can’t help but look at the stranger I see, as if she is a monstrous Gorgon and I am trapped by her gaze. I see a body that doesn’t look like me, that never matches how I appear in dreams or my own mental image. She has a dazed, half-crazed look, like she’s just crawled out from the underworld; her breasts hang down, already beginning to harden with milk; her womb protrudes, emptied now but swollen nonetheless, as it will continue to be, for months. She fills me with disgust, that postpartum Medusa. She is grotesque and excessive, bleeding and leaking and saddled with flesh. I try to forget her, but she is there in every mirror, staring back at me when I expect to see myself. Our Bodies, Our Selves: Gender Dysphoria and the Longing for Wholeness - Public Discourse (thepublicdiscourse.com)

What would happen if she was affirmed in her belief that she is indeed a “monster”? How would this help her to get through the difficult months following each of her births? How would affirming her as she saw herself be ethical?  

This leads me to yet another word that is still recognised as a mental health condition: dysmorphia. Body dysmorphic disorder is a condition where people, “can't stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can't be seen by others.” “You may seek out numerous cosmetic procedures to try to "fix" your perceived flaw. Afterward, you may feel temporary satisfaction or a reduction in your distress, but often the anxiety returns and you may resume searching for other ways to fix your perceived flaw.”  Body dysmorphic disorder - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic 

And this is the place where language really shows its power. Because if you are identifying as trans and claiming to be dysphoric, you can get medical help to get yourself “fixed”, when the real problem is that you are dysmorphic, which means that you aren’t going to get those hormones and surgery because you will be considered to be suffering from a mental health condition.  

Earlier this year, I lost a dear friend to suicide. Why did Alice (not her real name) decide that her life was not worth living? Actually, she didn’t; she was just following the instructions that only she could hear. She had been suffering from puerperal psychosis for 13 months since the birth of her third child. Alice had no previous psychiatric history and had everything going for her. Her identity was as a mother; this was her greatest purpose in life. Supported by her soul mate of a husband, her wider family and legions of health professionals, if anyone was going to emerge from the cloud of delusional thinking it was Alice. But the voices in her head won out in the end.

The voices started within two days of giving birth and were very clear: Alice had a demon in her head and if she didn’t kill herself, the demon was going to kill her three babies, one at a time. About a month before her last and successful attempt to end her life she wrote, “I believed with all my being that this was true reality”. To be consistent, those who believe in gender ideology need to believe that rather than 13 months of her family and many health professionals keeping her alive after her numerous suicide attempts, they should have let her succeed since her beliefs were sincere and real to her.  

To reclassify a mental health illness as ‘not a problem’ is wrong. These things are not positive and celebrating them as such means that rather than real healing taking place, those who are suffering are doomed to never achieving the homeostasis that all bodies desire. Confirming a delusion blocks any progress towards self-awareness and leaves people in a state that promotes confusion and prevents the ability to find harmony in what you were born to be.

According to the trans lobby, the stigma of society is to blame for the suicide of every trans person who makes the choice to end their own life. But the data does not back up their claim. Suicide Facts and Myths - Transgender Trend The question remains because the highest rate of suicide is years after transitioning (and hormone and surgical treatments). But what if what is happening is the realisation that however much ‘treatment’ you get, it will never be enough, and you are tired of fooling yourself?

Deconstructing, dismantling, subverting and otherwise “queering” language is not benign when it is done by those with an agenda to harm or erase. Those who have joined the queer theory cult know how powerful language can be, but they don’t care about the real-world damage they cause. Rather than cashing in on those with dysphoria and/or dysmorphia how about they work to ensure that everyone can experience body and gender euphoria, whatever that body happens to be.