On my blog post Why I Think We Can Do Away With The Term 'Gender',
a reader followed up with the enquiry: “When people experience the thing that
people call “gender dysphoria” (wrongly, in your view), what is it that they’re
experiencing?”
This was my reply, which may be of interest:
Ok, admittedly it’s a socio-culturally sensitive one, but if gender isn’t a valid concept, then neither is gender dysphoria – just as if there is no such thing as an elf, then the concept of an elf headache isn’t a valid diagnosis. The best way to tackle matters like this is to tighten the circle – start with what we already know and work outwards. We know some people claim they experience ‘gender dysphoria’, and it’s clear that they are indeed experiencing something real and distressing. But if gender dysphoria isn’t a concept, then their distress does not stem from a mismatch between their non-existent ‘gender identity’ and their biological sex, because, as we’ve seen, ‘gender’ is an ill-defined and unnecessary concept, as per my:
1) Sex is a perfectly adequate category for defining males, females, and those in the tiny minority who fall into a category that can be defined as intersex.
2) Everything else that you can put forward as justification for the term gender is better defined under a broader category of maleness and femaleness.
Instead, what they are actually experiencing is a complex range of identity issues, discomfort or dissonance related to factors that are already part of the highly complex human experience of being male or female. They call it ‘gender dysphoria’ because it’s a term that has been incorrectly presented to them via memetic propagation and social contagion. Just as if the next generation became convinced that some of them were elves, then the term ‘elf headache’ might similarly become part of common idioms.
I’ve already said that there are occasional departures from the standard presentation of gametes, and that this represents a disability in formation. But that doesn’t give validity to the term gender. Within the complex range of male and female experiences, especially in instances of strong homosexual inclination (but not just that), individuals are going to experience discomfort with their body and psychology due to natural variation in personality, preferences, or behaviour (as I said in the articles, a male who feels more comfortable expressing emotions in ways that are culturally associated with females, masculinity/femininity, physical appearance, temperament, etc), complex psychological struggles with self-acceptance shaped by societal expectations about those aforementioned traits, and underlying issues such as anxiety, depression, or past trauma that are being processed through a lens of identity as well as mental well-being. But that does not mean inventing the term gender is a solution or helping them.
Imputing the term ‘gender’ is a misattribution for sex and other complex factors – in fact, ironically, this misattribution is impeding more fruitful exploration of the psychological, social, cultural, or biological factors at play here.
