Excellent read and breakdown of how transgenderism is a mental health disorder that has swelled to levels of Mass Hysteria
Too long to post the whole thing, but some excellent points made within.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/17/psyc...k-science/
The Contagion of Mass Delusion
Transgenderism would refute the natural laws of biology and transmute human nature. The movement’s philosophical foundation qualifies it as a popular delusion similar to the multiple-personality craze, and the widespread “satanic ritual abuse” and “recovered memory” hysterias of the 1980s and ‘90s. These last two involved bizarre accusations of child abuse and resulted in the prosecution and ruined lives of the falsely accused.
Such popular delusions are characterized by a false belief unsupported by any scientific or empirical evidence and have a contagious quality that overrides rational thinking and even common sense. This all-too-human tendency to suspend individual critical judgment and go along with the crowd is greatly facilitated by social media. Most important, however, the cause has received the imprimatur of “experts.” The very people who should know better have bought into the hysteria. Just as “mental health professionals” a generation ago supported the child abuse delusions, and even participated in prosecuting the unjustly accused, so too have they fueled the fire of the transgender delusion.
The transgender movement was greatly energized when The American Psychiatric Association (APA) in its 2013 revised edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders” (DSM-5) delisted “Gender Identity Disorder” as a psychiatric “disorder,” reclassifying it as “Gender Dysphoria.” However, rather than providing a scientific validation of the transgender agenda, the APA’s action was a remarkable abrogation of professional responsibility in the interest of political correctness.
Activist Science Plus Relativism Equals Insanity
However, the process works both ways. Psychiatric “disorders” both come and go in response to contemporary cultural fads and determined special interests. For the sexual liberation movement the political advantage lay in having offending disorders removed. In 1973 it succeeded in getting the APA to remove homosexuality from its lexicon of disorders simply by vote of the membership.
Such was the agenda that the APA bought into when it dropped “Gender Identity Disorder” from the DSM-5. However, rather than simply eliminating the concept of gender identity since officially it was no longer a disorder, it created a “new diagnostic class” called “gender dysphoria.” This carried the assault on common sense even further, since now psychiatrists, the purported experts on distinguishing between fantasy and reality, put their stamp of approval on the transgender hysteria.
Only prelogical children and psychotic adults believe in magical thinking, that “wishing can make it so.” Yet “gender dysphoria” is characterized as “gender incongruence:” a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s “assigned” (birth) gender, and a wish to be otherwise-gendered, makes one a different person. To reclaim one’s true (desired) gender identity may require sex-reassignment surgery, a treatment for the “new diagnostic class” of gender dysphoria sanctioned by the APA. The torturous vocabulary the DSM manufactured to label the possible gender spectrum variations would be laughable were it not so tragic.
Refusing to Diagnose Withholds Needed Treatment
The tragedy, of course, is that people suffering from identity issues do not receive the help they need. Anorexia nervosa is another disorder characterized by a distortion of body image. However, in contrast to the transgendered, who are aided in acting out a delusion with hormones and “sex-reassignment,” people with a morbid and unrealistic perception of themselves as being obese or too heavy are not put on weight-reducing diets. Rather, anorexia is diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder and treated appropriately with psychotherapy.
Anorexia and “gender dysphoria” are among the many manifestations of psychological conflict that may occur during the “identity crisis” of adolescence, an important developmental milestone in identity formation. It is a time of rapid physical changes and strong sexual urges. Gender confusion—the wish to be the opposite sex, or even to be no sex at all (non-gendered)—can simply be a young person’s temporary pause in resolving the conflict between the safety of secure parental attachments and the compelling but frightening urges of adult sexuality and autonomy.
Reinforcing Delusions Hurts People
More lamentable still is the use of these “treatments” in prepubescent children whose prelogical thinking blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Young parents with concerns about their children need to seek the counsel of people with knowledge about normal child development. Unfortunately, good advice is sometimes hard to come by. Afraid of being seen as “behind the times,” “ignorant,” or “bigoted,” people who should know better are unwilling to rely on their own common sense and the wisdom of generations.
If a four-year-old girl, who, afraid of being displaced in her parents’ affection by a new baby brother, announces that she is a boy, wise parents do not begin treating her as a boy. They do not assume she is transgendered. Instead, they embrace her and assure her that she is their precious little girl whom they love. Parents who allow prepubescent children to choose whether they want to be male or female have relinquished their role as rational adults, and are themselves in need of psychiatric consultation.
Midlife is a challenging time for many people. Middle-aged men and women who feel dissatisfied with their lives may act out unrealistic romantic fantasies in an attempt to remake themselves. Often this leads to the tragedy of divorce and the destruction of families. The transgender movement has fostered the most unrealistic fantasy imaginable—that one can solve what is always a multidimensional dissatisfaction with one’s self by changing one’s sex.
The LBGT movement has achieved enormous success in exploiting the psychological vulnerabilities of people who lack a coherent sense of self, providing both activist leaders and a “noble” cause with which to identify. Flush with success following the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, the movement has taken on an aura of invincibility.
The success of the transgender rights crusade, based as it is on the cultural delusion of denying biologic difference between the sexes, would suggest there are no limits to the movement’s goal of reshaping American culture and its institutions. Attaching oneself to such a powerful force can be a heady experience for someone whose self-identity is largely defined by the people and causes with which he or she identifies.
Demonizing the Opposition
Who are the opposition? True to identity politics, they are cast as a mob of bigoted haters who would deny the transgendered their basic human rights. There can be no other explanation for why someone might believe that transgenderism defies both reason and the laws of biology.
The demonized, of course, are those of religious faith. Much of the Western world has become secularized and anti-religious, but a strain of strong religious belief still remains in the United States. These adherents to a code of sexual morality that differs from the LGBT sexual liberation agenda, albeit foundational to the Judeo-Christian value system for millennia, are seen as the last bastion of opposition. Consequently, expressions of sincerely held religious belief are attacked as hateful and bigoted. Believers are mocked as unsophisticated rubes and rednecks, desperately clinging to their guns and religion while resisting the inevitable triumph of rational modernity.
The liberal mainstream media is chief among the institutions in lock-step with the divisive tactics of identity politics. Glowing anecdotal accounts and individual testimonies of people who have had sex-change surgery regularly appear in fawning media reports that support and encourage the transgender craze. Transgendered celebrities in particular are commended, and the person’s preferred gender pronoun always dutifully applied.
Any religious or moral opposition to the movement is reflexively characterized as hateful and discriminatory. Nowhere to be seen are the accounts of disillusionment and depression by those who regret having had surgery. In neglecting compelling clinical evidence and research in support of the common-sense notion that surgery is not a treatment for a psychological disorder, the psychiatric profession is certainly most culpable (although one wonders what has become of responsible reporting and the honored tradition of investigative journalism).
The Long March Through Institutions
Along with the media, the political left has warmly embraced the LGBT movement’s apparent goal to reshape the social fabric and cultural traditions of American life and to reconstruct society to suit its demands. There appears to be no limit to efforts to silence dissenters. Religious believers are being demonized, and many fear even freedom of the pulpit is in jeopardy. There is no hesitation in using courts to impose the will of a tiny minority on the general public, even to the extent of changing the bathroom practices of the entire nation.
The effect the transgender delusion will have on our society and its institutions, including the military, remains to be seen. In contrast, the destructive influence of identity politics is immediate and very personal for the transgendered. As faceless members of a political special interest group, they are robbed not only of their distinctness as individuals but also of their chance for effective treatment.
Historically, contagious popular delusions that deny common sense and fly in the face of reality eventually run their course. This will likely be the fate of the transgender craze. But before it collapses under its own weight, many people will suffer irreparable harm.
Feel free to add any examples of trans-mania, and any other scientific evidence refuting the madness.
Too long to post the whole thing, but some excellent points made within.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/17/psyc...k-science/
The Contagion of Mass Delusion
Transgenderism would refute the natural laws of biology and transmute human nature. The movement’s philosophical foundation qualifies it as a popular delusion similar to the multiple-personality craze, and the widespread “satanic ritual abuse” and “recovered memory” hysterias of the 1980s and ‘90s. These last two involved bizarre accusations of child abuse and resulted in the prosecution and ruined lives of the falsely accused.
Such popular delusions are characterized by a false belief unsupported by any scientific or empirical evidence and have a contagious quality that overrides rational thinking and even common sense. This all-too-human tendency to suspend individual critical judgment and go along with the crowd is greatly facilitated by social media. Most important, however, the cause has received the imprimatur of “experts.” The very people who should know better have bought into the hysteria. Just as “mental health professionals” a generation ago supported the child abuse delusions, and even participated in prosecuting the unjustly accused, so too have they fueled the fire of the transgender delusion.
The transgender movement was greatly energized when The American Psychiatric Association (APA) in its 2013 revised edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders” (DSM-5) delisted “Gender Identity Disorder” as a psychiatric “disorder,” reclassifying it as “Gender Dysphoria.” However, rather than providing a scientific validation of the transgender agenda, the APA’s action was a remarkable abrogation of professional responsibility in the interest of political correctness.
Activist Science Plus Relativism Equals Insanity
However, the process works both ways. Psychiatric “disorders” both come and go in response to contemporary cultural fads and determined special interests. For the sexual liberation movement the political advantage lay in having offending disorders removed. In 1973 it succeeded in getting the APA to remove homosexuality from its lexicon of disorders simply by vote of the membership.
Such was the agenda that the APA bought into when it dropped “Gender Identity Disorder” from the DSM-5. However, rather than simply eliminating the concept of gender identity since officially it was no longer a disorder, it created a “new diagnostic class” called “gender dysphoria.” This carried the assault on common sense even further, since now psychiatrists, the purported experts on distinguishing between fantasy and reality, put their stamp of approval on the transgender hysteria.
Only prelogical children and psychotic adults believe in magical thinking, that “wishing can make it so.” Yet “gender dysphoria” is characterized as “gender incongruence:” a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s “assigned” (birth) gender, and a wish to be otherwise-gendered, makes one a different person. To reclaim one’s true (desired) gender identity may require sex-reassignment surgery, a treatment for the “new diagnostic class” of gender dysphoria sanctioned by the APA. The torturous vocabulary the DSM manufactured to label the possible gender spectrum variations would be laughable were it not so tragic.
Refusing to Diagnose Withholds Needed Treatment
The tragedy, of course, is that people suffering from identity issues do not receive the help they need. Anorexia nervosa is another disorder characterized by a distortion of body image. However, in contrast to the transgendered, who are aided in acting out a delusion with hormones and “sex-reassignment,” people with a morbid and unrealistic perception of themselves as being obese or too heavy are not put on weight-reducing diets. Rather, anorexia is diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder and treated appropriately with psychotherapy.
Anorexia and “gender dysphoria” are among the many manifestations of psychological conflict that may occur during the “identity crisis” of adolescence, an important developmental milestone in identity formation. It is a time of rapid physical changes and strong sexual urges. Gender confusion—the wish to be the opposite sex, or even to be no sex at all (non-gendered)—can simply be a young person’s temporary pause in resolving the conflict between the safety of secure parental attachments and the compelling but frightening urges of adult sexuality and autonomy.
Reinforcing Delusions Hurts People
More lamentable still is the use of these “treatments” in prepubescent children whose prelogical thinking blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Young parents with concerns about their children need to seek the counsel of people with knowledge about normal child development. Unfortunately, good advice is sometimes hard to come by. Afraid of being seen as “behind the times,” “ignorant,” or “bigoted,” people who should know better are unwilling to rely on their own common sense and the wisdom of generations.
If a four-year-old girl, who, afraid of being displaced in her parents’ affection by a new baby brother, announces that she is a boy, wise parents do not begin treating her as a boy. They do not assume she is transgendered. Instead, they embrace her and assure her that she is their precious little girl whom they love. Parents who allow prepubescent children to choose whether they want to be male or female have relinquished their role as rational adults, and are themselves in need of psychiatric consultation.
Midlife is a challenging time for many people. Middle-aged men and women who feel dissatisfied with their lives may act out unrealistic romantic fantasies in an attempt to remake themselves. Often this leads to the tragedy of divorce and the destruction of families. The transgender movement has fostered the most unrealistic fantasy imaginable—that one can solve what is always a multidimensional dissatisfaction with one’s self by changing one’s sex.
The LBGT movement has achieved enormous success in exploiting the psychological vulnerabilities of people who lack a coherent sense of self, providing both activist leaders and a “noble” cause with which to identify. Flush with success following the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, the movement has taken on an aura of invincibility.
The success of the transgender rights crusade, based as it is on the cultural delusion of denying biologic difference between the sexes, would suggest there are no limits to the movement’s goal of reshaping American culture and its institutions. Attaching oneself to such a powerful force can be a heady experience for someone whose self-identity is largely defined by the people and causes with which he or she identifies.
Demonizing the Opposition
Who are the opposition? True to identity politics, they are cast as a mob of bigoted haters who would deny the transgendered their basic human rights. There can be no other explanation for why someone might believe that transgenderism defies both reason and the laws of biology.
The demonized, of course, are those of religious faith. Much of the Western world has become secularized and anti-religious, but a strain of strong religious belief still remains in the United States. These adherents to a code of sexual morality that differs from the LGBT sexual liberation agenda, albeit foundational to the Judeo-Christian value system for millennia, are seen as the last bastion of opposition. Consequently, expressions of sincerely held religious belief are attacked as hateful and bigoted. Believers are mocked as unsophisticated rubes and rednecks, desperately clinging to their guns and religion while resisting the inevitable triumph of rational modernity.
The liberal mainstream media is chief among the institutions in lock-step with the divisive tactics of identity politics. Glowing anecdotal accounts and individual testimonies of people who have had sex-change surgery regularly appear in fawning media reports that support and encourage the transgender craze. Transgendered celebrities in particular are commended, and the person’s preferred gender pronoun always dutifully applied.
Any religious or moral opposition to the movement is reflexively characterized as hateful and discriminatory. Nowhere to be seen are the accounts of disillusionment and depression by those who regret having had surgery. In neglecting compelling clinical evidence and research in support of the common-sense notion that surgery is not a treatment for a psychological disorder, the psychiatric profession is certainly most culpable (although one wonders what has become of responsible reporting and the honored tradition of investigative journalism).
The Long March Through Institutions
Along with the media, the political left has warmly embraced the LGBT movement’s apparent goal to reshape the social fabric and cultural traditions of American life and to reconstruct society to suit its demands. There appears to be no limit to efforts to silence dissenters. Religious believers are being demonized, and many fear even freedom of the pulpit is in jeopardy. There is no hesitation in using courts to impose the will of a tiny minority on the general public, even to the extent of changing the bathroom practices of the entire nation.
The effect the transgender delusion will have on our society and its institutions, including the military, remains to be seen. In contrast, the destructive influence of identity politics is immediate and very personal for the transgendered. As faceless members of a political special interest group, they are robbed not only of their distinctness as individuals but also of their chance for effective treatment.
Historically, contagious popular delusions that deny common sense and fly in the face of reality eventually run their course. This will likely be the fate of the transgender craze. But before it collapses under its own weight, many people will suffer irreparable harm.
Feel free to add any examples of trans-mania, and any other scientific evidence refuting the madness.