Gender & Gremlins: an alternative narrative to ‘born in the wrong body’
Gender dysphoria is talked about a lot in discussions around transgender politics, but we rarely speak about gender dysphoria as a condition like any other — one that deserves time, research, and care when it comes to determining the best course of treatment.
The current mainstream view is that those with gender dysphoria have a ‘mismatch’ between their sex and their inner sense of gender identity — often described as ‘born in the wrong body’.
This article raises counterpoints to the mainstream narrative of gender dysphoria, and suggests an alternative way to view the condition and the way we treat it.
Let’s start with something we can all agree on.
Gender dysphoria is unpleasant.
It is characterized by a horrible sense that you are inhabiting the wrong sexed body. It can be imagined a little bit like a gremlin — sitting on our shoulders, steering our decisions, shouting at us to please it in some way.
The gender dysphoria gremlin is often holding hands with an accumulation of other gremlins— self harm, depression, anorexia, sexual trauma, bullying, etc.
What the gender dysphoria gremlin does is over power other voices that determine one’s actions. Where a logical and kind inner voice might say ‘you look really smart today in that shirt’, the gender dysphoria gremlin sitting on your should might say ‘you look disgusting, you look like a girl, you need to bind your breasts tighter’. In this way, gender dysphoria is much like other conditions focused around the way we see our body.
However, where gender dysphoria is not like other conditions which affect the way in which one views one’s body is the way in which it is treated.
Gender dysphoria was once recognized as a mental health condition, alongside anorexia (characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of weight), body integrity disorder (characterized by feeling distressed with being able-bodied), and a host of other disorders involving distress around the perception of one’s body. However, to reduce the stigma around being trans, gender dysphoria is no longer referred to as a mental disorder, but a medical condition. (It’s also worth mentioning here, every gremlin says it isn’t a gremlin.)
Today, the loudest and most pervasive narrative at the moment is that if you have gender dysphoria you really are whatever that demon is telling you you are. That women just know they are women, and anyone is a woman if they feel like a woman.
But where does this actually leave people with gender dysphoria? Am I really not a woman because of the gender dysphoria gremlin?
If we’re listening to the voices of gremlins and taking them for gospel, should we treat anorexia by liposuctioning the areas that cause distress, and treat body integrity disorder with the amputation of the healthy limbs that cause distress?
Has someone with body integrity disorder really been born in the wrong body? The gremlin, and the person to whom it is attached, might feel that their legs don’t belong to their body, but should the treatment be affirming the belief of that gremlin?
Suddenly, seeing it the same as these other body focused disorders, the idea that we would treat gender dysphoria with hormones or surgery, seems absurd.
The reason we treat gender dysphoria the way we do comes from promoting the concept that the gender dysphoria gremlin is correct — that its angry little voice is a reflection that there is something wrong with a dysphoric person’s body — that there is a ‘mismatch’. The current mainstream view is that gender dysphoria is caused by the essence of female or male (or neither, or both) having got muddled up and somehow stuck into the wrong sexed body.
If we agree with the school of thought that it is possible to have a mismatch, (i.e the gender of a girl, but the body of a boy), it can only mean we are giving credence to the idea that there is such thing as a male or female ‘essence’. This belief would mean each sex must act, feels, and behaves a specific way, and if the wrong ‘essence’ is inside that body, then their bodies can be ‘corrected’ to fix it.
This essence is generally called ‘(innate) gender identity’, but the closer this concept is scrutinized, the more it falls apart as little more than gender stereotypes.
If the concept of a ‘mismatch’ isn’t enough to convince you the gender identity movement is based on stereotypes, sexism, and oppression of gender non conformity, take a look at the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) provides a diagnosis of gender dysphoria described as “a difference between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, and significant distress or problems functioning”.
Described on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) website, gender dysphoria is:
a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.
Further down the NHS website, it describes the effects of the shouting gender dysphoria gremlin.
[People with gender dysphoria] may feel so unhappy about conforming to societal expectations that they live according to their anatomical sex, rather than the gender they feel themselves to be.
Surely, the solution to feeling unhappy about conforming to societal expectations of gender isn’t to start a life time of hormone treatment and surgeries? Surely, the solution is to reject the societal expectations, not affirm that the gender dysphoria gremlin is correct.
When faced with the choice between changing the bodies of the gender non conforming to fit society, and changing society to fit the gender non conforming, we should be supporting the latter.
Gender dysphoria is distressing. If we can find ways to treat it and help people live lives that are do not involve sterility, loss of sexual function, major surgeries, and hormones, we should celebrate this treatment. If the desistance rate of trans children is around 2% — 85% (a wide estimate, because there are no studies that are good enough to determine the number for certain) we should be working to increase this.
The diagnostic criterias for gender dysphoria also talk a lot about this concept of gender identity.
What is the essence of being a ‘woman’ or a ‘man’ that is described when people talk about gender dysphoria?
Ask proponents of the gender identity movement, and you will receive vague answers about just something we know (read: feel). We are moving away from using sex to determine our sex class as a man or a woman (which is a helpful descriptor when one sex class severely oppresses the other). Unfortunately, instead using the presence of the magical gender essence as a determination of this descriptor, we continue to prop up the gender binary.
Worryingly, by using an inner feeling to determine if we are women, we reinforce the idea that women have girly brains — that think in a girly way — and can be born in male bodies, or vice versa.
The concept of the ‘girly brain’ belongs in the last century, and it must stay there. Gender identity is not compatible with a progressive society because relies on the idea that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are different feelings that can be felt.
By propping up the ideas of gender by raising a generation to believe that there is an inner sense of being a man or a woman. In a world that is already heavily gendered, labeling our inner sense of self with a gender is the lastt thing we need.
We are giving credence and credit to outdated ideas. Either we are teaching children that boys and girls can be anything, that clothes are just clothes, and toys are just toys, and there is no right way to be a girl or a boy.. or we’re teaching children that if they reject gender stereotypes (and also may have a gremlin) then they aren’t really their sex, but born in the wrong body.
A good example that illustrates the sexism and stereotypes that defines the gender identity movement is the recent news that Sam Smith identifies as non-binary — i.e. he is neither female or male. When he speaks about this subject, he says that it is because he has sex in a ‘feminine’ way, he moves in a ‘feminine’ way, and he ‘thinks like a woman’ in his head sometimes.
Does Sam Smith feel like a woman sometimes because he’s experienced oppression as a woman sometimes, or when he says he ‘feels like a woman’, does he mean because he likes stuff traditionally associated with women? I doubt it is the former.
This is why the gender identity movement gives outdated, old fashioned, and harmful ideas a place in modern society. It reduces the biological reality of sex and the subsequent oppression to just a feeling that can exist in anyone’s head.
The above image is part of ‘gender diversity’ training given by Mermaids, and again, the obvious sexism is… well, obvious. The difference between GI Joe and Barbie is the difference between being a man and a woman. There is no place in models like this for gender non conformity. There is no place for children who might grow up ‘feeling like a boy’ because the world around them teaches GI Joe and the stuff he likes is boy stuff.
How much of gender dysphoria would be relieved if we actually stopped teaching regressive stereotypes in schools like this? If we let our children know that toys are just toys and clothes are just clothes, and Barbie and GI Joe are for everyone.
Which of these feels more progressive when we really look at the root of it.
“I am a woman because I have a deep feeling that I have the essence of the female gender, because I am emotional, nurturing, and caring, and enjoy wearing dresses and nail varnish.”
“I am a woman because my body was organized to produce ova (whether it does so or not). That’s all — it has no baring on my clothes, hobbies, or inner feelings.”
I would argue the latter is more progressive.
While some criticize this as ‘reducing’ womanhood to their bodies, surely it is more progressive to define us by biology than our personality? Ultimately, gender essence does not determine if we are oppressed or the oppressor. It doesn’t say anything about an individuals experience of life as the oppressed or the oppressor — the likelihood that they are being paid less than the other group, the likelihood that they will be sexually assaulted more than the other group.
Finally, returning to the subject of gender dysphoria as an under researched gremlin. Because we rarely talk about gender dysphoria being a condition that needs treatment, we rarely discuss gaps in the data when it comes to treatment.
One of the most prominent gaps is that there are no real studies comparing surgical vs non-surgical long term treatment problems. We also have no way to report detransition (which also means that trans suicide statistics are unable to identify detransitioners — could people be losing their lives because their dysphoria was not eased by medical transition?) This is a problem. It means we do not know how successful the current ways of treating dysphoria are at all.
We know there are many who surgical transition does not help. Because we are sold the idea that there is a mismatch between brain gender and body gender, it seems simple that changing the body will fix it. The rising voices of detransitioners suggests that maybe, there is no such thing as an innate magical gender essence (though we won’t know for certain, until there is more action in researching this topic).
A young woman speaking about her experience after doctors removed her breasts, uterus, and ovaries at 21 years old as treatment for her gender dysphoria, says;
“There are no words for me to express how horrifying it is to me that a medical professional agreed to remove organs from my body based on the delusional belief that I am ‘actually a man’ and should have never had them to begin with.”
Lastly, I would like to mention that none of this is to say that transition shouldn’t be an option for people suffering with gender dysphoria. Neither is it saying that transition is always the wrong treatment option.
However, in light of gender identity politics and the way this movement is growing, we seem to have lost sight that this is a condition.
Gender dysphoria is a gremlin.
We must fund research into various treatments for the long term — not just the medical pathway. But to do this we must abandon the idea that gender dysphoria is evidence that someone has been born in the wrong body.