Zinnia Jones. Writer, activist, trans stuff. Partner of @theheathermcnamara and @missrobo. May be NSFW. Support my new trans web series, Gender Analysis. Email [email protected] for inquiries. Always open to asks — anon is on. Looking for more? Don't forget the Gender Analysis blog archives!
Hey everyone. So we're really struggling to catch up financially lately and it's at a point where I need to reach out for some help. If there is anything you can do to help us get through this right now, it would be so appreciated. You've all been incredibly good to me and I want to keep bringing my best for you too. Thank you for everything <3
Today’s my tranniversary – 6 years since I started taking estrogen! Transitioning has been so helpful for my personal growth, and it’s changed my life for the better in countless ways. Here’s just some of what I’ve learned from my experiences in transition:
This has been the most amazing experience and it’s made me who I am today, and I’m so happy to get to share it with all of you. If you like my work, feel free to send a tranniversary gift!
How the WSJ handles the inconvenient facts of “rapid onset gender dysphoria”
Previously: Rapid onset gender dysphoria study misunderstands trans depersonalization; My letter to the Brown Daily Herald, and Lisa Littman’s response
I was recently consulted on an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the dispute over Lisa Littman’s study of a supposed new “rapid onset gender dysphoria” condition said to be contagiously spreading among youth. Jillian Kay Melchior describes my involvement in this controversy:
Ideologues try to suppress a study on the increasing prevalence of ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria.’ …
Dr. Littman’s detractors also accuse her of bigotry. Her work “negates the experience of many transgender youth,” according to Diane Ehrensaft, of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic at the University of California San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital.
Transgender activist Brynn Tannehill calls Dr. Littman’s research “a naked attempt to legitimize anti-transgender animus with a veneer of academic responsibility.” And Zinnia Jones, founder of the website Gender Analysis, called rapid-onset gender dysphoria a “hoax diagnosis” perpetuated by those who would deny transgender children “acceptance and affirmation.” The motto of Ms. Jones’s website: “The personal is empirical.”
The effort at suppression had an effect. …
… As for Dr. Littman’s critics, they equate caution with bias, even hatred, and encourage teens to go through hormone therapy or surgery—drastic interventions whose effects are irreversible.
For background, I spoke with Melchior a week before her op-ed was published. She asked me to confirm that the two sentences about me were accurate, and I agreed they were. However, I informed her that the problems with the study are much more substantial:
Thanks so much for getting in touch with me on this. Those two sentences are indeed accurate, although my issues with the study in question run a bit deeper than that. This is a problem with the paper’s analyses and hypotheses that has not received as much attention as other issues with the study, but it is a serious flaw.
Namely, the study’s author directly quoted one of my articles on symptoms of gender dysphoria, and misleadingly labeled this “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD” while attributing it to a Tumblr blog. Her description of these symptoms as “vague and nonspecific” is simply incorrect, as I was describing symptoms associated with depersonalization disorder, a known condition that occurs vastly more frequently among trans people and is often successfully treated by transitioning. Numerous published studies confirm this. The author either was not aware of this or chose not to acknowledge it, and as a result, she implicated my own work in supposedly contributing to her proposed mechanism whereby cisgender youth are being led to believe falsely that they are trans via reading lists of “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD”. Because these are not in fact vague or nonspecific symptoms, and do often occur in untreated gender dysphoria, her hypothesis is badly compromised.
I’ve summarized the relevant evidence here (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/08/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-study-misunderstands-trans-depersonalization-ends-up-blaming-zinnia-jones/), as this is a major oversight of both her paper and the peer review process that allowed it to be published. Needless to say, it’s concerning to me that I would be personally implicated in causing the spread of a new “disease” based on her own misreading and misunderstanding of my work.
“The personal is empirical” is an acknowledgment that the life experiences of trans people, and the scientific evidence regarding transness and gender, are not at all in conflict as is often portrayed – rather, these are frequently complementary and consistent. What trans people often observe in their everyday lives, which would otherwise be relegated to mere community folklore, is in reality often supported by scientific findings. One example would be the phenomenon where a trans woman is seen as a woman by one person, but “clocked” as trans by another, even on the same day – this turns out to involve known cognitive and perceptual biases and individual factors influencing a person’s categorization of others’ genders (see more here: https://genderanalysis.net/2016/07/the-social-paradox-of-passing-gender-analysis-23/). Another example would be my own work on depersonalization symptoms in gender dysphoria. Many trans people have reported exactly these symptoms for years, even decades, as well as their amelioration with transitioning, but the community did not always have a framework for understanding the nature of these symptoms or what they meant. As it turns out, there is a name for this condition, and what they were perceiving was indeed real; multiple studies have confirmed the presence of these symptoms in gender dysphoria. “The personal is empirical” means that trans people can draw on the findings of science to help understand their own lives, and that trans people’s experiences can also provide useful hints about where scientific investigation can productively direct its attention and learn more about us.
Additionally, if you are interested, I’ve summarized some of the other issues with the study and its findings, including the significant sampling bias inherent in recruiting respondents from communities that demonstrate overt anti-transgender prejudice (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/08/meet-the-unbiased-reliable-not-at-all-transphobic-parents-from-the-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-study/), its inaccurate presentation of certain transgender community strategies for navigating healthcare as being a new development when in fact these have been known and observed for decades (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/08/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-study-omits-historical-context-of-transgender-narratives-and-medical-gatekeeping/), and its wide net of supposed “alternative causes” of gender dysphoria that seem designed to enable labeling any given trans youth as having “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/08/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-study-an-impossibly-wide-net-of-alternative-etiologies/).
Again, thank you so much for the much-needed attention to these issues. If there is any other help I can provide, please let me know :)
So, a WSJ writer covering the controversy was made aware of all of these serious issues with the study a week in advance. I don’t see how I could have made it more clear that this is a matter of deeply flawed research and scientific criticism of that research – criticisms that would stand regardless of what any “ideologues” did or didn’t do at any point in time. Yet this engagement with the study’s substance – the very post-publication community review invited by PLOS One – is still reduced to an “effort at suppression” by “ideologues” against science.
Many people have rightly pointed out how the uselessly overbroad and practically meaningless theory of ROGD is based on egregiously biased sampling that selected for anti-trans respondents, as well as an ignorance of psychiatry and well-known transgender history. This theory is so bad, it implicates my articles on depersonalization in trans people – a condition already known to be real - as a causative factor in a (likely illusory) new “contagion”. I explained the many flaws of ROGD at length last month; my publication of that criticism can hardly be said to be an act of “suppression”.
Exactly how are we supposed to engage in critique of this study? We can do everything right - we can take the time to address the substance of the research, we can offer the relevant scientific review solicited by the journal, we can explain all of this quite succintly to those who invite our comment - and that still won’t keep the Wall Street Journal from reducing us to mere ideologues fighting to suppress science.
Since the study’s publication, several others have elected to cover this controversy using the same framing of suppressive ideologues versus scientific facts. Writing for Quillette, Jeffrey Flier, a former dean at Harvard Medical School, accuses the study’s critics of making spurious and ideologically motivated criticisms intended to suppress science:
Many papers face questions after they have been published, which is well and proper: the systematic assessment and scrutiny of published work is a core method by which the scientific community corrects errors, and builds upon imperfect preliminary observations. … But that is not what has happened in regard to Dr Littman, whose critics have not performed any systematic analysis of her findings, but seem principally motivated by ideological opposition to her conclusions. …
There is no evidence for claims of misconduct in Dr Littman’s case. Rather, unnamed individuals with strong personal interests in the area under study seem to have approached PLOS One with allegations that her methodology and conclusions were faulty. Facing these assertions, which predictably drew support from social media communities populated by lay activists, the journal responded rapidly and publicly with the announcement that it would undertake additional expert review.
In all my years in academia, I have never once seen a comparable reaction from a journal within days of publishing a paper that the journal already had subjected to peer review, accepted and published. One can only assume that the response was in large measure due to the intense lobbying the journal received, and the threat—whether stated or unstated—that more social-media backlash would rain down upon PLOS One if action were not taken.
To me, what’s most conspicuous in this article is what it leaves out. Flier offers this screenshot of a Twitter exchange between trans woman Hailey Heartless and PLOS One:
He just happened to omit my adjacent tweet that did offer scientific criticism of the study’s misinterpretation of depersonalization in gender dysphoria, and was also acknowledged by PLOS One:
Is this not the very “assessment and scrutiny of published work” that serves as a “core method by which the scientific community correct errors”? Is it not an effort to build upon an imperfect preliminary observation? These contributions were neither spurious nor censorious. But if you choose to ignore the evidence that's been placed right in front of you, then I'm sure it's quite easy to say that critics of the theory “have not performed any systematic analysis of her findings” and must therefore be “motivated by ideological opposition to her conclusions".
When I contacted Flier to let him know about the serious issues with the science of the study, he clarified that he was condemning the actions subsequently taken by PLOS One and Brown University, and was not taking a position on the quality of the study itself. He stated that while we may all have our opinions, this should never be used to influence a study’s publication.
This is an odd assertion. Peer review, corrections, and retractions are all practices that have their places in academic publishing, and these are all instances where certain arguments and opinions do hold influence over the publication status of a given paper. It is the application of human judgment of whether or not the paper in question meets required standards. When I wrote in to PLOS One expressing my concerns with this study’s misuse of my work, I described this as exactly what it should be: a correction. Correcting a scientific article to address its inaccuracies is quite the opposite of censorship – it is a step in the direction of improving the quality of research.
It is curious that someone would take a stance of supporting the study’s publication as well as its promotion by Littman’s university, while consciously withholding judgment of the study’s quality and overall soundness. When you decide to throw your support behind something, wouldn’t you want to be aware of just what it is you’re supporting, and whether that support is deserved? It is not at all outside the realm of possibility that a study can be so deeply flawed, it would in fact be appropriate for a journal to conduct additional review and a university to remove their press release promoting its findings. But when you choose to remain agnostic on the quality of the study, that possibility will not enter into your consideration – you wouldn’t be able to reach such a conclusion even in cases where a study is utterly abysmal and fully deserving of being withdrawn. While Flier accuses others of disregarding the science and acting as mere ideologues, his own choice to disregard the science is somehow above suspicion.
In his 1877 essay “The Ethics of Belief”, mathematician W. K. Clifford highlighted the issue of those who readily adopt a given belief on a subject while wholly dismissing the task of learning about it:
“But,” says one, “I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.”
Then he should have no time to believe.
Proponents of the ROGD study have certainly made time to believe it. It is less clear whether they intend to take the time to understand it. ■
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My letter to the Brown Daily Herald on “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, and Lisa Littman’s response
Previously: “Rapid onset gender dysphoria” study misunderstands trans depersonalization
This weekend, I wrote in to the Brown Daily Herald on the controversy over a recent study on “rapid onset gender dysphoria” by Brown assistant professor Lisa Littman:
I am writing in reference to a Herald article, “Gender dysphoria study criticism,” published Sept. 4. Much of the backlash following the removal of a press release on Assistant Professor of the Practice of Behavioral and Social Sciences Lisa Littman’s “rapid onset gender dysphoria” study has focused on questions of academic freedom and institutional support for faculty who conduct controversial research. In these discussions, the actual content and underlying soundness of this research have largely been considered an afterthought. For me, however, the content of the study could not be more relevant.
Littman’s study directly quotes an article I wrote in 2013 on my experiences of gender dysphoria as a transgender woman. She labels such experiences “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of (gender dysphoria)” and implicates my work in her theory that online forums allow transgender identities to spread among the youth like “social contagion.” This could not be further from the truth. The symptoms I described are those of depersonalization disorder, a known condition of ‘feelings of unreality’ that is disproportionately common among trans people and often remits following transitioning. It strains belief that Littman would be unaware of the research on this disorder in trans people.
As a result of this oversight, her study suggests that my own work and outreach to the trans community on this real condition is instead a causative factor in a supposedly new disease. This is more than a question of academic freedom. It is a matter of academic responsibility — and in her misrepresentation of my work, Littman has failed to exercise that responsibility.
As of yesterday, Littman appears to have addressed my specific criticisms for the first time, in a statement to the conservative Catholic outlet LifeSiteNews:
“There is an abundance of advice given to youth exploring gender on Tumblr and other social media sites, samples of which I excerpted in Table 1 of my study as background information. No specific source of advice was defined as a singular cause for all gender dysphoria nor was the sampling presented as a comprehensive list,” Littman responded in a statement to LifeSiteNews.
“Regardless, teens who are experiencing concerning symptoms (including but not limited to symptoms of depersonalization) deserve to be evaluated by trained mental health professionals rather than relying on advice from Tumblr, online blogs or other social media sites,” she continued.
There is an admission implicit in this – is she acknowledging that my work on transgender depersonalization was indeed inaccurately portrayed as an example of “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD”? There may be an “abundance of advice given to youth exploring gender on Tumblr and other social media sites”, but even if there is, she still did not cite that abundance here. She cited one example of “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD” – my article – and that one example turned out not to be an example of this at all, but a description of a real condition commonly occurring in gender dysphoria.
To say that her sampling is not “comprehensive” would be an understatement: her sampling here is now absent, leaving the paper without any explanation or example of what is meant by “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD” that supposedly contribute to a contagious false belief of dysphoria.
While Littman quite correctly recognizes that gender-dysphoric and gender-questioning teens deserve a comprehensive evaluation that addresses any mental health needs, her paper inveighs against the very clinicians and specialists who would provide it. She relays that in instances where trans children had been evaluated for gender-related issues, 7 in 10 of these parent respondents felt that the clinician “did not explore issues of mental health, previous trauma, or any alternative causes of gender dysphoria.” (Only 36.2% of parents in the study reported that their child had received an evaluation.)
Littman goes so far as to suggest that a likely-disapproving parent’s perception of their child’s gender identity – “child” meaning potentially any trans person, AFAB or AMAB, aged 11-27 – is more significant and important in the diagnostic process than both the trans person’s awareness of their own gender and dysphoric symptoms, and gender specialists’ own expert evaluation of that trans person’s clinical presentation.
Furthermore, although parents may be the most knowledgeable informants on matters of their own child’s developmental, medical, social, behavioral, and mental health history- and quite possibly because they are the most knowledgeable- they are often excluded from the clinical discussion by the AYAs, themselves. …
Adolescents and young adults are not trained medical professionals. When AYAs diagnose their own symptoms based on what they read on the internet and hear from their friends, it is quite possible for them to reach incorrect conclusions. … The patient’s history being significantly different than their parents’ account of the child’s history should serve as a red flag that a more thorough evaluation is needed and that as much as possible about the patient’s history should be verified by other sources. … The reported behavior of clinicians refusing to communicate with their patients’ parents, primary care physicians, and psychiatrists betrays a resistance to triangulation of evidence which puts AYAs at considerable risk. …
However, maintaining confidentiality of the patient does not prevent the clinician from listening to the medical and social history of the patient provided by the parent. … One would expect that if a patient refuses the inclusion of information from parents and physicians (prior and current), that the clinician would explore this with the patient and encourage them to reconsider. At the very least, if a patient asks that all information from parents and medical sources be disregarded, it should raise the suspicion that what the patient is presenting may be less than forthcoming and the clinician should proceed with caution.
Evaluation of gender issues by trained professionals is crucial – except the vast majority of such clinicians are allegedly remiss in their duty to provide all necessary care to their patients, patients’ likely-unsupportive parents may instead be “the most knowledgeable” about their child’s gender, a patient who is contradicted by their parents should be considered to be unreliable in their self-reports, and any patient who suggests their parent is untrustworthy should be considered untrustworthy themselves.
There’s also the small matter of Littman’s study choosing not to conduct any expert clinical evaluation of the trans youth and adults who were described by their parents, before promptly claiming to have recognized these as occurrences of an entirely new “rapid onset gender dysphoria” condition. A diagnosis of gender dysphoria requires thorough evaluation of the patient by specialists, but a diagnosis of ROGD requires only the perspective of the patient’s unsupportive parent.
But suppose these gender-dysphoric or gender-questioning youth and adults do receive an evaluation by gender specialists, just as they should. How might these clinicians explore their feelings and symptoms surrounding their gender? We can look to the 2016 book “You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide to Discovery” by gender therapist Dara Hoffman-Fox, LPC. In describing symptoms of mental discomfort potentially associated with gender dysphoria, Dara cites the very same article as Littman – “That Was Dysphoria?” – as an example of such symptoms and their possible resolution with transitioning.
“Mental discomfort” has to do with the way your brain is “wired,” gender-wise. Conflict can arise when you experience a difference between your physical body and your “wiring,” as well the experience of being perceived by others as your assigned-sex-at-birth when your “wiring” is telling you otherwise.
“Mental discomfort” can be difficult for someone to pinpoint and describe. That’s because:
– It’s possible it has been there for so long that, to a certain extent, you have gotten used to it.
– You figure it must be the way you are supposed to be feeling and just need to live with it.
– You don’t know what else to attribute that feeling to.
In her article, “That Was Dysphoria? 8 Signs and Symptoms of Indirect Gender Dysphoria,” Zinnia Jones states (emphasis added by me):
“Some of us suffer the distress that stems from dysphoria, but without many clues that this is about gender. (Its) relation to our genders may be obvious only in retrospect.”
In other words, the actual frequency and intensity of your “mental discomfort” will more than likely be revealed after you begin to make changes that help to align your mind and body with your actual gender identity.
Here are ways some of my clients have described the experience of no longer experiencing “mental discomfort” after taking steps to be in harmony with their gender identity physically and socially:
– “I had no idea how much irritability/dissatisfaction/stress I was feeling on a regular basis until I…”
– “I didn’t know how depressed/anxious I actually was until I…”
– “‘I never knew how much I wasn’t ‘me’ until I…”
– “I never knew what ‘peace’ could feel like until I…”
– “I had no clue how cluttered my mind has been all of my life until I…”
– “Having to wear ‘guy clothes’ to work didn’t bother before (or at least I didn’t think it did) until I…”
– “Being addressed by my birth name used to be fine, but it definitely isn’t anymore now that I…”
– “I didn’t realize how disconnected I was from my body, myself, my life until I…”
Clinicians, already aware of these symptoms years before Littman proposed her new condition, may very well see what Littman calls “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD” and recognize this as actually being a specific presentation commonly associated with untreated gender dysphoria. While dismissing specialist knowledge as deficient and inadequate, Littman demonstrates her own unfamiliarity with that same clinical knowledge – and ends up calling a real disease a fake one, and a fake disease a real one.
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“Rapid onset gender dysphoria” study misunderstands trans depersonalization, ends up blaming Zinnia Jones
Previously:
Fresh trans myths of 2017: “rapid onset gender dysphoria”
“Rapid onset gender dysphoria”: What a hoax diagnosis looks like
Depersonalization in gender dysphoria: widespread and widely unrecognized
Lisa Littman’s long-awaited “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) study was finally published in full on August 16 in PLOS One (Littman, 2018), and its findings have turned out to be just as underwhelming and tenuous as suggested by her 2017 poster abstract (Littman, 2017). The paper has offered new insight into the full scope of incompetence, logical leaps, and sheer guesswork tying this hypothesis together. Its methodological issues alone – using anti-trans groups to recruit parents who don’t believe their kids are trans, and then accepting this as evidence that these kids aren’t trans – have already been widely criticized, to the point that her employer, Brown University, withdrew their press release about the study. The staff of PLOS One have also left a note on her paper indicating that they are aware of these serious issues, and that they will be seeking further expert review.
Methodology aside, there’s still much, much more to find fault with in this gum-and-paperclips study, and I’m already in the process of assisting PLOS One with their review of its findings. Why? Because the study misrepresents my work, and directly implicates me in the contagious spread of a new “disease”.
This is going to take some explaining.
How does “rapid onset gender dysphoria” work?
In the full study, Littman finally explains what “ROGD” is actually supposed to be, and how it is allegedly acquired and, yes, even spread to others. She proposes that ROGD is essentially a false belief of dysphoria occurring in cisgender youth, and that they come to this belief via the following process:
It is unlikely that friends and the internet can make people transgender. However, it is plausible that the following can be initiated, magnified, spread, and maintained via the mechanisms of social and peer contagion: (1) the belief that non-specific symptoms (including the symptoms associated with trauma, symptoms of psychiatric problems, and symptoms that are part of normal puberty) should be perceived as gender dysphoria and their presence as proof of being transgender; 2) the belief that the only path to happiness is transition; and 3) the belief that anyone who disagrees with the self-assessment of being transgender or the plan for transition is transphobic, abusive, and should be cut out of one’s life. The spread of these beliefs could allow vulnerable AYAs to misinterpret their emotions, incorrectly believe themselves to be transgender and in need of transition, and then inappropriately reject all information that is contrary to these beliefs. In other words, “gender dysphoria” may be used as a catch-all explanation for any kind of distress, psychological pain, and discomfort that an AYA is feeling while transition is being promoted as a cure-all solution.
She further claims that this false-belief dysphoria can be spread in online communities through certain specific means:
There are many examples on popular sites such as Reddit (www.reddit.com with subreddit ask/r/transgender) and Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) where online advice promotes the idea that nonspecific symptoms should be considered to be gender dysphoria, conveys an urgency to transition, and instructs individuals how to deceive parents, doctors, and therapists to obtain hormones quickly.
So, what “nonspecific symptoms” are being misconstrued as gender dysphoria? Littman provides only one example in figure 1, under “Vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD”:
“Signs of indirect gender dysphoria: 1. Continual difficulty with simply getting through the day. 2. A sense of misalignment, disconnect, or estrangement from your own emotions. 3. A feeling of just going through the motions in everyday life, as if you're always reading from a script. 4. A seeming pointlessness to your life, and no sense of any real meaning or ultimate purpose. 5. Knowing you're somehow different from everyone else, and wishing you could be normal like them.”
This is attributed to a Tumblr blog, transgenderteensurvivalguide.tumblr.com. But my regular readers may recognize this as my own work. This excerpt is taken from my September 2013 post, “’That was dysphoria?’ 8 signs and symptoms of indirect gender dysphoria”. But despite the Tumblr post in question linking to a copy of my article, Littman chose to quote only a bullet-point summary rather than the full version with far more detailed and lengthy descriptions.
She also calls these “vague and nonspecific symptoms” while cutting off her excerpt right before I explained their connection to gender dysphoria. Littman quotes five summarized sections, yet leaves out sections 6 (“A notable escalation in the severity of these symptoms during puberty”) and 8 (“Substantial resolution of these symptoms in a very obvious way upon transitioning, particularly upon initiating HRT”). Despite the rather obvious associations between gender dysphoria, adolescent onset, and resolution of dysphoric symptoms after transitioning, Littman chose to omit these sections of my article and then label it as “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD”.
Her description of these symptoms as vague and unrelated to gender dysphoria is simply inaccurate. The original article is the most-read post I’ve ever made and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and I’ve personally heard from hundreds of trans people who felt that these descriptions helped them understand and recognize their own gender dysphoria. The experiences I’ve written about have resonated deeply with many trans people, and the original article is so frequently passed around trans support communities that it’s often considered basic reading on gender dysphoria and questions of gender identity. Why? Because, rather than being “vague and nonspecific”, it describes a real and consistent symptom profile that is known to be often associated with untreated gender dysphoria.
That was dysphoria – and depersonalization
More: Depersonalization in gender dysphoria: widespread and widely unrecognized
Although “That was dysphoria?” is a personal account written from a lay perspective, much of what I described reflects the symptoms of a little-known condition called depersonalization. Depersonalization disorder, also known as depersonalization/derealization syndrome or chronic depersonalization, is a syndrome characterized by feelings of “unreality” or “no self”. This is not a delusional or psychotic condition – perception of reality is intact and accurate, but their conscious experience takes on an unsettling and unpleasant texture. This cluster of symptoms is also distinct from both depression and anxiety (Michal et al., 2011). Sufferers feel separated or estranged from their own thoughts and feelings, often perceiving themselves as split into a detached observer of both their inner and outer life, and can frequently experience this as an ongoing and compulsive rumination. They frequently feel emotionally numbed – “I know I have feelings but I don’t feel them” – and may even feel physically numbed, describing sensations such as having a “head full of cotton”.
They sense that some essential quality is lacking in how they experience the world, and may feel “robotic”, “dead”, or like a “zombie”, going through the motions of life as if simply reading from a script. They may lose any sense of personal agency in their life. Reality itself feels “unreal” to them, and is often felt to be flat, dreamlike, colorless, lifeless, or like a picture with no depth. They may feel separated from the world as if by a veil or a glass window. These symptoms, typically experienced as chronic and unremitting throughout one’s life, produce an overall sense of disconnectedness from life and disinvolvement with the world (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Sierra, 2009). Chronic depersonalization also appears most frequently during adolescence (Medford, 2012). Although the syndrome is highly emotionally distressing, many sufferers may not be aware that this is an actual condition, and may believe that this is simply what “normal” feels like (Steinberg et al., 1993).
Compare this to the descriptions of my experiences in “That was dysphoria?” which Littman omitted from her excerpt:
“I would feel like crying, I would know on some level that I should be crying, but I just couldn’t make it happen.”
“… I would be smothered in this horrible feeling of emotional deadness. It felt like my head was full of concrete…”
“Everything always seemed like it was somehow less real than it ought to be.”
“I didn’t feel like I was my own person – I had no sense of myself as someone who could make my own choices and decisions as I wished.”
“I felt like an actor, being handed my lines by someone else, and I didn’t know how to be anything other than that.”
“It felt like my mind was constantly talking to itself without any interruption, and it was overanalyzing everything around me. Some second, parallel existence seemed to be running alongside my direct experience of consciousness: an inner monologue of sorts, but a very toxic one.”
“There always seemed to be some invisible skin separating me from the rest of reality – I could move around in the real world, interact with it, but never actually touch it or feel it.”
“For a few years, my emotions weren’t just blunted or dysfunctional – they went missing almost entirely. I felt nothing, day in and day out.”
“When you don’t know what this is, or that it’s even an actual condition, it’s easy to mistake it for who you naturally are. … I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me.”
These are certainly not “vague and nonspecific symptoms” as Littman labels them – they are part of a real, known condition. But why would myself and the wider trans community call them “signs of gender dysphoria”? Are we just making easily-influenced kids think they’re trans when they’re really experiencing something else entirely?
No. As it turns out, chronic depersonalization is vastly more common in trans people compared to the general population, and transitioning is associated with a significant reduction in depersonalization symptoms. Not only is it inaccurate to call these “vague signs and symptoms” – it’s also inaccurate to imply that these are wholly unrelated to gender dysphoria.
Clinical research on transgender depersonalization
More: Elevated rates of depersonalization in gender dysphoria
An estimated 1% of the general population suffers from chronic depersonalization (Michal et al., 2016). However, studies of transgender subjects have found a prevalence of clinically significant depersonalization/derealization symptoms ranging from 10.2% (Kersting et al., 2003) to 14.6% (Colizzi et al., 2015). Given estimates that 0.6% of the population is transgender (Flores et al., 2016), this would indicate that while 6 per 1,000 people in the general population are trans, up to 81 per 1,000 people with chronic depersonalization could be trans. Far from being vague, nonspecific, and not connected to gender dysphoria, this is a genuine syndrome widely experienced by trans people.
Medical transition treatment is also known to be linked to reduction in depersonalization symptoms. Colizzi et al. (2015) found that depersonalization symptoms in trans people declined significantly after treatment with hormone therapy was initiated. Consistent with these observations, Walling et al. (1998) found that depersonalization symptoms were much lower in trans people who had reassignment surgery compared to those who had not, and Wolfradt & Neumann (2001) reported that trans women who’d undergone SRS had levels of depersonalization symptoms similar to cisgender controls. Colizzi et al. (2015) raise the possibility that dissociative symptoms such as depersonalization and derealization could be seen not as a separate or unrelated pathology, but “as a genuine feature of the GD”.
The observation of a connection between depersonalization and transition status which Littman chose to omit – “Substantial resolution of these symptoms in a very obvious way upon transitioning, particularly upon initiating HRT” – is not groundless or speculative. It has been confirmed by a consistent body of research on depersonalization in trans people.
Trans community experiences of depersonalization
More: Themes of depersonalization in transgender autobiographies
Depersonalization in the context of gender dysphoria is far from a recent phenomenon. Historical descriptions of depersonalization in trans people are not difficult to come by – accounts of these symptoms can be found in the memoirs of pioneering transgender public figures. Travel writer Jan Morris (1974) describes a range of experiences which align closely with depersonalization symptoms, such as feeling that she sees the “grand constants of the human cycle … only from a distance, or through glass.” She notes that “a person who stands all on his own, utterly detached from his fellows, may come to feel that reality itself is an illusion”, and compares herself to silenced and isolated prisoners who “sometimes lost all grasp of their own existences, and became non-persons even to themselves.” Morris further describes herself as experiencing “a detachment so involuntary that I often felt I really wasn’t there, but was viewing it all from some silent chamber of my own”, which she also refers to as a “remote and eerie capsule”.
After transitioning, she observes herself emerging from a “rough hide” that “deadens the sensations of the body”: “I had no armour: I seemed to feel not only the heat and the cold more, but also the stimulants of the world about me.” She compares life as a man compared to life as a woman as being “like stepping from cheap theatre into reality”. Finally, Morris notes that she no longer feels “isolated and unreal”, and now has a greater grasp of emotional experience: “Not only can I imagine more vividly now how other people feel: released at last from those old bridles and blinkers, I am beginning to know how I feel myself.”
Christine Jorgensen (1967), one of the first trans women to come out and publicly transition, highlights similar experiences in her autobiography. During treatment with estrogen, she notes that she no longer experienced “listlessness and fatigue”, and that she “became alive” and felt “better than ever before”. Jorgensen further observed that while she “never did fit into life before”, “I have never been such a real person as I am today”.
Experiences such as these have been echoed by contemporary trans writers: Imogen Binnie (2014), author of Nevada, describes discontinuing HRT for fertility reasons as having her “emotional body” revert “to what it was when I was twenty-two, in the closet, emotionally numb and going through the motions of being a human being without any real investment.” Additionally, I’ve collected numerous personal reports of depersonalization-like symptoms among trans people, including dozens shared on trans support forums like Reddit’s /r/asktransgender.
Contrary to any characterization of this as a random assortment of vague symptoms indicating nothing, these specific depersonalization-associated symptoms appear consistently in many trans people from the first trans public figures of decades ago to modern-day trans writers and community members.
Rapid onset gender dysphoria is an unnecessary and unsupported “Typhoid Zinnia” hypothesis
So: Littman has selectively quoted my own work on depersonalization symptoms in gender dysphoria as her solitary example of “vague and nonspecific symptoms called signs of GD”, when these symptoms are in fact specific to a known condition that is disproportionately associated with gender dysphoria. She has attributed this to “Tumblr” and apparently neglected to locate its original source, my own article which was updated with further clinical evidence of transgender depersonalization symptoms more than a year before her paper was published. And in tying this in to her proposal that a false-belief dysphoria called “rapid onset gender dysphoria” can be acquired by “the belief that non-specific symptoms … should be perceived as gender dysphoria and their presence as proof of being transgender”, she has undermined that very hypothesis with her own apparent unawareness of depersonalization as a real syndrome and its known connection to gender dysphoria.
This is not entirely surprising. Chronic depersonalization is not a widely known condition, and “a dramatic neglect of DP in clinical routine” has been described (Michal et al., 2011); sufferers typically experience these symptoms for 7 to 12 years before receiving a diagnosis of depersonalization, and may have lived with this for half of their lifetime (Hunter et al., 2017). But it is quite a different matter when a researcher fails to recognize this syndrome, mislabels these symptoms as “vague and nonspecific”, proposes that this specific list of symptoms plays a key role in the spread of a new kind of “false gender dysphoria” condition, and then somehow slips this through peer review into a major journal. Thanks to this mixture of ignorance and neglect, my work has not only been entirely misrepresented, but blamed for spreading a contagious “disease” – a supposed condition whose theoretical basis is itself deeply compromised by this misrepresentation of my work.
Littman does not seem to have realized that what she is describing as a false belief of dysphoria, in the context of my work and its influence, is actually a genuine transgender reality. She has proposed, without adequate evidence, that exposure to this content is leading likely-cisgender youth and even adults to conclude falsely that they have gender dysphoria. Such a “Typhoid Zinnia” hypothesis is not only unsupported, but unnecessary: what she is observing can already be sufficiently explained and accounted for by known phenomena surrounding gender dysphoria.
Depersonalization is an unfamiliar concept to many, and depersonalization in gender dysphoria even moreso – the term itself hardly ever appeared in transgender communities for most of history, even though descriptions of the characteristic symptoms often did. It is entirely possible that my own publications delineating these symptoms, recognizing this as a discrete phenomenon tied to gender dysphoria and giving it a name, have had significant influence in raising awareness of depersonalization’s connection to gender dysphoria where this awareness did not previously exist. What this means in practical terms is that there may have been many trans people who had not yet come to realize their own transness, and experienced their untreated gender dysphoria in the form of prominent and distinct symptoms of depersonalization – but did not know that these symptoms could be tied to gender dysphoria. Upon coming into contact with material explaining exactly that connection, they may then come to understand this in the context of their own gender questioning and more general gender-dysphoric feelings, and may recognize themselves as trans and potentially come out and transition.
Again, hundreds of trans people have reported this happening in their lives specifically due to reading my articles on this topic. We know that this happens. We don’t know that “rapid onset gender dysphoria” does. And in the absence of this material – in the absence of this awareness of depersonalization in gender dysphoria – we would not be left with a successfully contained outbreak of false-belief dysphoria among cis people. We would be left with more trans people who do not have the resources available to understand a very real condition, recognize their authentic selves, or take steps that are known to improve these symptoms.
More: Psychosocial impact of depersonalization
This is not a trivial or disposable aspect of the transgender experience – it is a matter of moral urgency. Untreated depersonalization is known to be associated with highly elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality (Michal et al., 2016; Michal et al., 2011, Michal et al., 2010). Given the transgender community’s high rates of exactly these conditions, recognizing depersonalization symptoms in trans people and providing treatment that’s known to ameliorate these symptoms – gender-affirming care – is essential.
Littman’s other examples of “online advice” potentially contributing to the acquisition of a false-belief dysphoria are just as flimsy. Her cited “instructions on lying” to healthcare providers in order to obtain transition treatment are not a new phenomenon; trans people have shared advice with one another on navigating the potential gatekeeping of clinicians since at least the 1960s. And “urgency to transition” during puberty is not fearmongering, but fact: studies of trans adolescents who were given puberty blockers prior to transition have found that these youth are effectively no longer gender dysphoric at all (Cohen-Kettenis & van Goozen, 1997; de Vries et al., 2014).
Other significant issues exist throughout the paper as well, which I plan to address in further detail – depersonalization disorder in gender dysphoria is simply the area in which I have the most experience. PLOS One describes its peer-review process as concentrating “on technical rather than subjective concerns”, with publications “made available for community-based open peer review involving online annotation, discussion, and rating.” I now offer that peer review.
Want more debunking of bad science, poor media coverage, and anti-trans myths? Supporting Gender Analysis on Patreon helps us bring that to you.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. [Excerpt]
Binnie, I. (2014, February 9). The Banal and the Profane. Lambda Literary. Retrieved from https://www.lambdaliterary.org/
Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., & van Goozen, S. H. (1997). Sex reassignment of adolescent transsexuals: a follow-up study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36(2), 263–271. [Abstract]
Colizzi, M., Costa, R., & Todarello, O. (2015). Dissociative symptoms in individuals with gender dysphoria: is the elevated prevalence real? Psychiatry Research, 226(1), 173–180. [Abstract]
de Vries, A. L. C., McGuire, J. K., Steensma, T. D., Wagenaar, E. C. F., Doreleijers, T. A. H., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2014). Young adult psychological outcome after puberty suppression and gender reassignment. Pediatrics, 134(4), 696–704. [Abstract]
Flores, A. R., Herman, J. L., Gates, G. J., & Brown, T. N. T. (2016). How many adults identify as transgender in the United States? Los Angeles, CA: The Williams Institute, UCLA. [Full text]
Hunter, E. C. M., Charlton, J., & David, A. S. (2017). Depersonalisation and derealisation: assessment and management. BMJ, 356, j745. [Abstract]
Jorgensen, C. (1967). Christine Jorgensen: A personal autobiography. New York, NY: Paul S. Eriksson.
Kersting, A., Reutemann, M., Gast, U., Ohrmann, P., Suslow, T., Michael, N., & Arolt, V. (2003). Dissociative disorders and traumatic childhood experiences in transsexuals. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 191(3), 182–189. [Abstract]
Littman, L. L. (2017). Rapid onset of gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: a descriptive study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 60(2), S95-S96. [Poster abstract]
Littman, L. L. (2018). Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: a study of parental reports. PLOS ONE, 13(8), e0202330. [Full text]
Medford, N. (2012). Emotion and the unreal self: depersonalization disorder and de-affectualization. Emotion Review, 4(2), 139–144. [Abstract]
Michal, M., Adler, J., Wiltink, J. Reiner, I., Tschan, R., Wölfling, K., . . . Zwerenz, R. (2016). A case series of 223 patients with depersonalization-derealization syndrome. BMC Psychiatry, 16, 203. [Full text]
Michal, M., Glaesmer, H., Zwerenz, R., Knebel, A., Wiltink, J., Brähler, E., & Beutel, M. E. (2011). Base rates for depersonalization according to the 2-item version of the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS-2) and its associations with depression/anxiety in the general population. Journal of Affective Disorders, 128(1–2), 106–111. [Abstract]
Michal, M., Wiltink, J., Till, Y., Wild, P. S., Münzel, T., Blankenberg, S., & Beutel, M. E. (2010). Type-D personality and depersonalization are associated with suicidal ideation in the German general population aged 35-74: results from the Gutenberg Heart Study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 125(1–3), 227–233. [Abstract]
Morris, J. (1974). Conundrum. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sierra, M. (2009). Depersonalization: A new look at a neglected syndrome. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, M., Cicchetti, D., Buchanan, J., Hall, P., & Rounsaville, B. (1993). Clinical assessment of dissociative symptoms and disorders: the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders (SCID-D). Dissociation, 6(1), 3–15. [Full text]
Walling, D. P., Goodwin, J. M., & Cole, C. M. (1998). Dissociation in a transsexual population. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 23(2), 121–123. [Abstract]
Wolfradt, U., & Neumann, K. (2001). Depersonalization, self-esteem, and body image in male-to-female transsexuals compared to male and female controls. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30(3), 301–310. [Abstract]
So I’m going to be bitter and old here for a minute.
The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.
This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.
It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.
Like, fuck off?
Fuck off.
I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.
And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like
Fucking, why would I ever.
Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?
I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.
I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.
The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.
So yeah.
Queer as in fuck you people in particular.
And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.
I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.
My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.
Every time someone says “queer is a slur, you shouldn’t use it” I feel like they’re trying to fucking gaslight me. Like, I was there when it got reclaimed. I read “Queer Science”, I saw the “Queer Studies Departments” in college and the majors in Queer Theory. Kids do not get to invalidate my life out of ignorance. And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with, because how would the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about know to invalidate that word?
You go. Reclaim that reclamation. I’ll probably use LGBT+ and queer interchangeably, like I always have, and if some kid tries to lecture my 47-year-old ass on the matter I’m just going to have to look at them over my imaginary librarian glasses and tell them “no. you’re wrong. Go back to school, kid, you need to remember you’re sharing the world with adults and there is a consensual reality you have entered into. You don’t get to make it up from scratch any more than I did.”
And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with
Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs.
That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question:
what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines?
and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?
The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride.
So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles).
If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.
I’d laugh and clap at the ingeniousness of it all, if it didn’t involve obliterating decades of community history, solidarity and reclamation efforts.
#oh ABSOLUTELY#queer things#the SUDDEN BACKLASH against queer again is 100% from terfs#even back in like 2014 people were using queer on here without anybody batting an eyelash#and then one day all of a sudden in 2015 if you called yourself queer#suddenly you were getting a fucking 15 year old calling you ‘violently lgbtphobic’ like. lol what the fuck#(real thing that happened)#and yeah 100% on the ‘I feel like I’m being gaslit’#I TOOK QUEER THEORY COURSES IN COLLEGE#THEY DON’T FUCKING PUT SLURS IN THE NAMES OF COLLEGE COURSES#THEY PUT ACCEPTABLE COMMUNITY TERMS IN THE NAMES OF COLLEGE COURSES#like#oh my god#the rise of ‘q slur’ is honestly gaslighting that originated in the terf/radfem corners and spread until people thought it was the norm#it’s not
Please note this. Regardless of how you personally feel about the word, this backlash against it happened much more recently than many people seem to think. And it’s worth pointing out who benefits from the backlash, and it sure as hell isn’t the people who gave decades of their lives to make the word a sign of inclusivity and acceptance.
Reblogging again to add this:
The same vehemently, violently transphobic website that published this vile, reductive, evil trash [TW: misogynistic violence, transmisogyny; also note: this is an archive link, to avoid giving them web traffic], Feminist Current, also published this trash: “Today’s Shameless Lesbians Won’t Be Queered” [archive link; the whole article is full of biphobic and transphobic trash, like most of that vile website].
I quote:
Queers hurl “lesbian” sneeringly at assigned-female-at-birth homosexual women, recharacterizing females as “cis” women, which in the twisted logic of queer is equated to “privileged women.” In the superwoke queer community, privilege is finally, inexorably, another way of saying “you need to shut up, take up less space, and admit that it’s an unearned honour to have had your life shoved into a tiny pink box.” This cannot come as a surprise, as the term lesbian has always been weaponized to silence and deride women.
It’s right there, it’s text: they hate “queer” because the term “queer” is built on inclusion, on commonality, and what they want is a whole mess of gatekeeping that keeps icky tr*nnies like me out of their spaces alongside my bisexual and pansexual and queer as fuck siblings.
So fuck them, and fuck anyone else who fights back against “queer” as a term for us. I am a queer gay homosexual female tranny dyke and you can have have my reclaimed slurs approximately fucking never.
So I’m going to be bitter and old here for a minute.
The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.
This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.
It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.
Like, fuck off?
Fuck off.
I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.
And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like
Fucking, why would I ever.
Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?
I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.
I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.
The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.
So yeah.
Queer as in fuck you people in particular.
And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.
I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.
My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.
Every time someone says “queer is a slur, you shouldn’t use it” I feel like they’re trying to fucking gaslight me. Like, I was there when it got reclaimed. I read “Queer Science”, I saw the “Queer Studies Departments” in college and the majors in Queer Theory. Kids do not get to invalidate my life out of ignorance. And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with, because how would the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about know to invalidate that word?
You go. Reclaim that reclamation. I’ll probably use LGBT+ and queer interchangeably, like I always have, and if some kid tries to lecture my 47-year-old ass on the matter I’m just going to have to look at them over my imaginary librarian glasses and tell them “no. you’re wrong. Go back to school, kid, you need to remember you’re sharing the world with adults and there is a consensual reality you have entered into. You don’t get to make it up from scratch any more than I did.”
And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with
Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs.
That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question:
what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines?
and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?
The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride.
So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles).
If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.
I’d laugh and clap at the ingeniousness of it all, if it didn’t involve obliterating decades of community history, solidarity and reclamation efforts.
#oh ABSOLUTELY#queer things#the SUDDEN BACKLASH against queer again is 100% from terfs#even back in like 2014 people were using queer on here without anybody batting an eyelash#and then one day all of a sudden in 2015 if you called yourself queer#suddenly you were getting a fucking 15 year old calling you ‘violently lgbtphobic’ like. lol what the fuck#(real thing that happened)#and yeah 100% on the ‘I feel like I’m being gaslit’#I TOOK QUEER THEORY COURSES IN COLLEGE#THEY DON’T FUCKING PUT SLURS IN THE NAMES OF COLLEGE COURSES#THEY PUT ACCEPTABLE COMMUNITY TERMS IN THE NAMES OF COLLEGE COURSES#like#oh my god#the rise of ‘q slur’ is honestly gaslighting that originated in the terf/radfem corners and spread until people thought it was the norm#it’s not
Please note this. Regardless of how you personally feel about the word, this backlash against it happened much more recently than many people seem to think. And it’s worth pointing out who benefits from the backlash, and it sure as hell isn’t the people who gave decades of their lives to make the word a sign of inclusivity and acceptance.
Reblogging again to add this:
The same vehemently, violently transphobic website that published this vile, reductive, evil trash [TW: misogynistic violence, transmisogyny; also note: this is an archive link, to avoid giving them web traffic], Feminist Current, also published this trash: “Today’s Shameless Lesbians Won’t Be Queered” [archive link; the whole article is full of biphobic and transphobic trash, like most of that vile website].
I quote:
Queers hurl “lesbian” sneeringly at assigned-female-at-birth homosexual women, recharacterizing females as “cis” women, which in the twisted logic of queer is equated to “privileged women.” In the superwoke queer community, privilege is finally, inexorably, another way of saying “you need to shut up, take up less space, and admit that it’s an unearned honour to have had your life shoved into a tiny pink box.” This cannot come as a surprise, as the term lesbian has always been weaponized to silence and deride women.
It’s right there, it’s text: they hate “queer” because the term “queer” is built on inclusion, on commonality, and what they want is a whole mess of gatekeeping that keeps icky tr*nnies like me out of their spaces alongside my bisexual and pansexual and queer as fuck siblings.
So fuck them, and fuck anyone else who fights back against “queer” as a term for us. I am a queer gay homosexual female tranny dyke and you can have have my reclaimed slurs approximately fucking never.
Hey friends. So here's the situation: Patreon decided to switch to an overseas bank without telling anyone and this resulted in a massive amount of unexpected declined charges - which ended up fucking me out of $600. On top of that, Heather was unceremoniously fired from her new job after just two weeks. We're really struggling to make rent. It's bad. Literally anything you can throw our way would be very appreciated :( https://www.paypal.me/zinniajones https://cash.me/$ZinniaJones.
Using a separate model, Future of Religion and Secular Transitions (forest), the team found that people tend to secularize when four factors are present: existential security (you have enough money and food), personal freedom (you’re free to choose whether to believe or not), pluralism (you have a welcoming attitude to diversity), and education (you’ve got some training in the sciences and humanities). If even one of these factors is absent, the whole secularization process slows down. This, they believe, is why the U.S. is secularizing at a slower rate than Western and Northern Europe.
“The U.S. has found ways to limit the effects of education by keeping it local, and in private schools, anything can happen,” said Shults’s collaborator, Wesley Wildman, a professor of philosophy and ethics at Boston University. “Lately, there’s been encouragement from the highest levels of government to take a less than welcoming cultural attitude to pluralism. These are forms of resistance to secularization.”
From Follow-up of Females with Gender Identity Disorders by Elizabeth McCauley, PhD and Anke Ehrhardt, PhD.
The above is a description of therapy for gender dysphoric female people preformed at a gender clinic during the seventies. I’m not a fan of language like “gender confusion” but a lot of what they describe sounds like things I’ve heard detransitioned women say would’ve been helpful. In particular working out if their dysphoria was related to internalized homophobia or other sexuality issues and having their whole life situation addressed, not just their gender issues.
These quotes come from a follow-up study of 15 people interested in transitioning female to male who were evaluated at the above-mentioned gender clinic. The clinic saw 60 people total, 19 of whom were FtM. Four of those 19 never completed the evaluation process. The remaining fifteen were the subjects of the study. At the time of follow-up, four of the original applicants were living as lesbians. One of the lesbians had lived as a man, took testosterone for two years, got a mastectomy and later detransitioned. Nine were living as men and had medically transitioned to some extent and two were still interested in transitioning and presented as men in some aspects of their life and as women in other parts.
I have all kinds of feelings about this article. It’s intense just to read about other lesbians in the past who dealt with gender dysphoria and to find out that it used to be more common for clinicians to try to work out if gender dysphoria was connected to internalized homophobia. This is not the only article I’ve read that talks about homophobia contributing to dysphoria. “Self-stigmatizing homosexuals” used to be something you looked out for if you were a therapist specializing in gender dysphoria. Finding out that clinicians have been writing about women like me since at least the seventies has been both reassuring and infuriating. Some clinicians had already come up with therapy that could’ve helped some detransitioned women if they’d had access to it. At least some of our suffering could’ve been avoided. If things had gone differently, there could already be more resources for women with gender dysphoria. Instead, we’ve just started building them in the last few years and we have to fight to get our needs taken seriously. So I’m glad to learn about my history but I’m also pissed off because now I can see more clearly that our suffering was not inevitable.
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