In our own words: Transgender experiences of depersonalization

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Zinnia Jones

Previously:

Introduction: Symptoms of depersonalization

Zinnia JonesDepersonalization is a cluster of mental and emotional symptoms generally described as feelings of unreality, with sensations that the world and one’s self are flat, lifeless, distanced, or emotionally dead (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Sufferers report experiences such as feeling that they “have no self”. They “don’t feel” their emotions; they often feel split into two parts, with one participating in the outside world and the other inside observing and commenting; they may ruminate constantly with a compulsive inner dialogue of self-scrutiny (Steinberg, Cicchetti, Buchanan, Hall, & Rounsaville, 1993). They experience a lack of agency in their own life, and can feel like a “robot” or “zombie”; they feel as if they are simply going through the motions or acting out a script. They may have obsessive thoughts over the nature of existence and reality (APA, 2013).

They may sense that they are almost physically separated from the world by a glass wall, veil, fog, bubble, or skin; their perception of the world becomes somehow colorless or like a picture with no depth; they experience the world as “unreal”. Their emotional numbness becomes a bodily sensation and they feel as if their head is filled with cotton. They may struggle to imagine people or places vividly (APA, 2013). They feel that they are disconnected from life; while they can still think clearly, some essential quality seems to have been lost from their experience of the world (Medford, 2012). Continue reading →

Posted in Awareness building, Depersonalization, Gender dysphoria, Psychology and psychiatry | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

When it’s not “just autism”: ASD does not rule out gender dysphoria

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Zinnia Jones

Zinnia JonesAs both transgender identities and autism have received increasing attention in recent years, a growing number of misconceptions have proliferated about the relation between these phenomena. News outlets run stories with questionably phrased headlines such as “Are autistic children more likely to believe they’re transgender?”, suggesting that trans people’s genders are simply a matter of a personal “belief” that could be either true or false. Other online publications claim trans people may be “suffering from a mental disorder which could have been treated in another way”, and that their apparent gender could instead be “an autistic obsession”. I’ve personally heard from several trans people whose progress in transitioning has been delayed or obstructed by therapists and doctors who believed it was possible that their gender was not genuine, but rather a result of being on the autism spectrum.

Such practices do not reflect what is currently known about individuals with both gender dysphoria and autism. The assumption that a trans person’s gender has emerged from aspects of their autism, rather than this straightforwardly being their gender as in allistic individuals, is largely unfounded. There is a kernel of fact at the center of this speculation: those with gender dysphoria have an elevated likelihood of being autistic or exhibiting autistic features, and autistic people are also more likely to be dysphoric or gender-variant (May, Pang, & Williams, 2017).

But the observation of “some of these people are on the autism spectrum” is distinctly different from the claim of “some of these people are on the autism spectrum and their autism is causing the false appearance of a transgender identity”. A significant proportion of trans people are autistic. This does not therefore mean they aren’t trans. Continue reading →

Posted in Autism, Gender dysphoria, Media, Psychology and psychiatry, Trans youth, Transgender medicine, Transphobia and prejudice | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

August 2017 State of the Gender Address: A politics post

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Zinnia Jones

Heather McNamaraBy Heather McNamara

Since life in the United States under this new reality show star regime has transformed our already pitifully short 48-hour news cycle into more of a 48-minute news cycle, I thought I would start a monthly roundup of news stories that affect transgender people and cis women.

To be clear, a lot happened in the world of race politics, flooding, nuclear war, and sundry types of doom but I’m going to focus this news roundup on gender and on the accomplishments of trans people and cis women. Continue reading →

Posted in News, Politics and law, Transphobia and prejudice | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The “Lesbophobia” Scam

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Zinnia Jones

Heather McNamaraBy Heather McNamara

Those of us who have been in the trans activism game for a while are familiar with the mental and linguistic gymnastics that TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) perform in order to justify transphobia while simultaneously pretending they’re not transphobic. One of their little terms, however, recently went relatively mainstream as blogger Claire from SisterOutrider leveled it at bestselling author (and one of my favorites), Roxane Gay. That term is “lesbophobia.” Continue reading →

Posted in Feminism, Sexuality, Transphobia and prejudice | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Do all trans youth on puberty blockers go on to transition?

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Zinnia Jones

Zinnia JonesPuberty blockers are used in the treatment of appropriately diagnosed transgender youth, who wish to avoid developing undesired secondary sex characteristics of their assigned sex but are not yet old enough to commit to the permanent changes of hormone therapy. These medications, which are now administered at hospitals and gender clinics across the United States with the support of several major medical organizations, give an adolescent time to consider whether they want to go on to transition. Crucially, puberty blockers are fully reversible: any youth who ultimately choose not to transition can discontinue blockers, and their original puberty will resume.

But in recent years, some anti-trans advocates have claimed that puberty blockers should not be considered reversible, alleging that all youth who take blockers will inevitably go on to transition. Others have speculated that these medications may in some way affect the natural development of a child’s gender identity, making it more likely that they will transition when they otherwise would not have done so. Michelle Cretella, president of the transphobic American College of Pediatricians activist group, has asserted that “There are no cases in the scientific literature of gender-dysphoric children discontinuing blockers”, and Paul McHugh coauthored an article in The New Atlantis making this developmental argument at length:

The lack of data on gender dysphoria patients who have withdrawn from puberty-suppressing regimens and resumed normal development raises again the very important question of whether these treatments contribute to the persistence of gender dysphoria in patients who might otherwise have resolved their feelings of being the opposite sex. As noted above, most children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria will eventually stop identifying as the opposite sex. The fact that cross-gender identification apparently persists for virtually all who undergo puberty suppression could indicate that these treatments increase the likelihood that the patients’ cross-gender identification will persist.

Such concerns are heavy on questions, but short on answers. As it turns out, these claims range from unsupported to outright false, and have already been extensively addressed in the literature on treatment of trans youth. Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, Gender dysphoria, Hoaxes, Outcomes of transition, Trans youth, Transgender medicine, Transphobia and prejudice | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments