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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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"Well, actually, have you considered you might not be trans? Let's work on some of your other mental health issues and then revisit this."

One of the most sensible things that Jordan Peterson said recently was pointing out that body dysmorphia is normal among women with mental health issues. So, if society links body dysmorphia closely to transgenderism and doctors put zero inquiry into whether the dysmorphia is symptomatic of the woman's other mental health problems, then overdiagnosis of transgenderism among women will result.

Anecdotally, detransitioning does seem to be more common among ex-transmen than ex-transwomen, but I don't have stats. The common pattern seems to be "Autistic or otherwise unusual woman develops depression/social anxiety/socialising issues as an adolescent, starts transitioning, maybe develops dysmorphia AGAIN (now wanting to be a woman) and detransitions, often with permanent or long-lasting damage to her body." Both before and after she started transitioning, the real problem was her socialisation and mental health challenges, not that she was in the wrong body. You can't solve such issues with surgery, but that is the impression that many such women are getting.

Anecdotally, detransitioning does seem to be more common among ex-transmen than ex-transwomen

Completely spurious reasoning but I feel like a lot of this would be down to transmen having more to lose by opting to be a male and thereby losing out on 'the sisterhood'/social connections versus low-status men essentially going from nobody giving a fuck to a built-in social network when they opt to transition. I also feel like men are more likely to actually achieve something approaching what they want out of the transition, whilst in my own experience of Transmen there's a lot of very garbled logic about essentially wanting to be a top 1% guy to experience those perceived advantages without realizing they're renouncing female privilege and moving onto... petite feminine male non-privilege.

petite feminine male non-privilege.

Especially not good if they are interested in men, especially long-term relationships. AFAIK, it's hard enough for gay men to find committed partners, and even worse if you're playing in a crowded field (feminine gay men).

The rather brutally honest evaluation of this I've seen is that they don't realise before transitioning that being a short guy with wide hips and no muscles is not going to do them much good.

It's like the geographic cure for dealing with problems - "if I just start afresh someplace nobody knows me, it will all work out better". For some people, be it FTM or MTF, transitioning will fix their problems. For others, swapping genders is not going to fix their depression or loneliness or other problems.

detransitioning does seem to be more common among ex-transmen than ex-transwomen, but I don't have stats

According to this article, the number of subscribers to /r/detrans has risen from a few hundred to 44,000 in the space of five years. Allowing that not every subscriber is a detransitioner themselves, it's still a striking increase.

Absolute numbers aren’t exactly the best here, given that pro-trans awareness has also skyrocketed in that time. It’s also compatible with boring subreddit life cycles. Or even dramatic ones, like a flood of activists looking for rage bait.

It also…doesn’t address the gender ratio question at all.

given that pro-trans awareness has also skyrocketed in that time.

Are trans people really substantially more visible now than they were in February 2018? Back then we already had Caitlyn Jenner, Jazz Jennings, Laverne Cox, Sophie, the Wachowskis. The Danish Girl came out in 2014.

It also…doesn’t address the gender ratio question at all.

Yeah I know, I just happened to have encountered a statistic pertaining to detransitioning this week so I thought I'd mention it.