The Transableism of Transgenderism
Depathologizing mental illness such as gender dysphoria does not help anyone, least of all those who are suffering from it.
A commentary on “From transgendered to ‘transabled’: Now people are ‘choosing’ to identify as handicapped” (published on Yahoo! News on April 29, 2023)
Around 2000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal coined an expression that is still commonly known and used today: Mens sana in corpore sano. A sound mind in a sound body. The ancient Romans already understood that mind and body are inseparable, like two sides of the same coin, and form a single unit: A healthy mind is a prerequisite for a functioning body and vice versa.
When the mind is not well, when mens sana becomes mens aegra, inevitably the body will be negatively affected by that as well. Bodily ailments – corpore aegro – can be psychosomatic side effects as in the case of depressive episodes, anxiety disorders or sleep disorders, when the body does not function well anymore because of mental problems. However, a mental disorder can also cause a person to see their own body as their own worst enemy as in the case of eating disorders1 (bulimia, anorexia nervosa, binge eating), self-harm (cutting, burning, etc.), body dysmorphic disorders and gender identity disorders.
While, interestingly, body dysmorphic disorders are still recognized as a mental disorder – Hollywood actress Megan Fox for instance recently made public that she suffered from it – the societal attitude towards gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria2 in Newspeak, has drastically changed. Nowadays, it is considered either “transphobic” or “a human rights violation” or “hate speech” if one calls gender dysphoria a pathological condition.
However, up till now I have not heard a conclusive argument for why a woman who wants to cut off her breasts because she believes she should be a man is any less pathological than a woman who stops eating because she believes she is too fat despite being underweight – or than a woman who pours drain cleaner into her eyes because she believes she should be blind.
The latter case is neither a bad joke nor an exaggeration. It is the true story of Amber Shuping, called Jewel, who garnered international attention a couple of years ago for an appearance on Dr. Phil, a popular US talk show. In an episode from November 2015, Jewel publicly announced that she had taken her own vision by putting drain cleaner into her eyes, explaining that she had felt like she should have been blind ever since she was six years old. But it was only as a young adult, after finding a group of like-minded people on the internet that were living as blind people without actually being blind, that she made contact with a psychologist who encouraged her to make her wish of being blind a reality: “[The psychologist] told me to do the research to show that I was serious and then he would help me,” said Jewel. At the age of 23, she finally put her plan into action and took her own eyesight – a moment she had waited for “all her life”.
Jewel has been diagnosed with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), also called Body Integrity Dysmorphia (BID). This disorder describes the pathological desire to be physically disabled, e.g. to be blind, paraplegic or have a limb amputated. This disorder is sometimes also called transableism in more general terms, and people who suffer from it are described as transabled, although this term is also used for people who “identify” as disabled without actually having a disability.3
The reactions towards Jewel’s decision, both from Dr. Phil and from his colleague Dr. Jennifer Ashton, are quite telling, especially in retrospect. The former tried to defend Jewel’s position in the discussion, interestingly by drawing parallels between BIID and gender dysphoria, seeing as both disorders imply a vehement rejection of a physical characteristic or body part. Dr. Ashton, however, was clearly emotionally shaken and bluntly said: “I am having a really hard time. With all due respect to Jewel […] my heart is beating out of my chest, I can’t even make sense of the emotions I’m feeling because to hear someone say ‘I always felt I should be blind’, well, I’ve always felt I should be the Queen of England, but I’m not going out to become the Queen of England!”
Even Dr. Phil had to admit that in the case of a patient’s desire to be physically disabled, he would recommend “extended counselling” and that the person should be living “a couple of years […] that way to see that in fact that is truly what they want”. He added: “There are so many things that I would want to see resolved before choosing this option [of self-mutilation] to make sure that this is really what is driving you. Co-morbidity is a reality, there are a lot of things that are existing in parallel here.”
A woman who takes her own vision because she has always felt like a blind person on the inside: Even today, in the era of the postmodern removal of any kind of taboo and the total acceptance of any kind of lifestyle and life choice, most people will agree that this is the case of a mentally ill person who needs psychological help and support.
Now, the uncomfortable question arises: What exactly is the difference between this person and a woman who wants to amputate her breasts because she has always felt like a man inside? Or a man who wants to amputate his genitalia because he has always felt like a woman inside?
The connection between BIID and gender dysphoria is easily made – Dr. Phil himself draws parallels between the two disorders on his show: “They just have this strong sense that something about their body just doesn’t belong”, he says. “And they analogize this to gender identity disorder. Those people who grow up feeling like they’re a woman in a man’s body or a man in a woman’s body and they seek sexual reassignment surgery. That for a long time was considered to be extremely bizarre and now it is not looked at in that way […] But here, instead of a sexual reassignment, Jewel is saying ‘I want a sight reassignment.’ Or someone feels that an arm or a leg, some body part, they just had this sense that this is foreign. It doesn’t belong to their body.”
Indeed, I dare say that the similarities between Jewel’s story and the stories of many transgender people (especially trans-identifying youth) cannot be denied. Mental suffering due to great discomfort with their own bodily identity, often accompanied by psychological co-morbidities?4 Check. Finding like-minded peers in the online world who will affirm and reinforce the desired identity? Check. The critical intervention of a “medical professional” who recommends drastic body alteration to fit the desired identity? Check. Presenting these radical medical procedures as the best way to resolve their mental suffering? Check.
The crucial difference is that back in 2015 – before the cultural pandemic of the #WokeMindVirus – you could at least openly state that gender dysphoria, much like BIID, is a mental disorder and that it should be treated as such, which is therapeutically and not surgically. However, the vehement push for its depathologization in the name of destigmatization, which started as early as 2013 when the term “gender identity disorder” was changed to “gender dysphoria” (and later to “gender incongruence”) in the DSM-55, led to its normalization and finally to what it is now: a celebrated ideal. Outing yourself as transgender is now seen as the rainbow-colored salvation from mental misery, sometimes even for little children. If you search for top surgery on TikTok, you will find a long and depressing list of videos in which young girls and women are proudly showing off their mutilated torsos in front of the camera. Gender dysphoria is reinterpreted as gender euphoria, but only after having done irreparable damage to one’s body.
But those who euphorically celebrate self-mutilation surgeries such as mastectomies, penectomies and bottom surgeries must, consequently, also celebrate people like Jewel who put drain cleaner into her eyes in order to be her true and authentic self as a blind woman. There is no logical or argumentative difference between removing one’s breasts or one’s penis in the name of gender dysphoria and removing one’s vision in the name of BIID. Even Dr. Phil has to admit that.
Jewel’s bizarre and tragic story forces us to reflect on whether limitless acceptance truly benefits people suffering from dysphoria and whether celebrating every kind of destructive life choice truly benefits society as a whole. The woke Left wants to instil the idea that limits are mechanisms of oppression and an instrument of patriarchal power. But limits are oftentimes necessary for our own good. Protecting a person’s physical integrity through societal rules and legislation does just that because self-mutilation is not a right. It is a gruesome kind of self-hatred that people – and especially children – must be protected from for their own good.
To restore the meaning of what it means to be accepting there must be limits to what we accept – otherwise acceptance is meaningless. As a consequence, we must also restore a certain idea of normativity which allows us to name mental illnesses as such. This is not to stigmatize the mentally ill, but rather to help them. Depathologizing mental illness such as gender dysphoria, and even celebrating it in the name of an allegedly brave journey towards self-realization as a person from the other sex, means paving the way for relativizing and finally normalizing it. A mental disorder, a mental suffering – because people with real gender dysphoria suffer immensely – is thereby made a social norm and so is its medical “solution” in the form of hormone therapies and surgeries, which can lead to a lifelong dependency on drugs, grave post-surgical complications and sicknesses, and decreased life expectancy. Is this truly for the patient’s own good?
It cannot be our goal to normalize self-harm and depathologize pathological conditions. A society that fails to help the mentally ill out of misguided acceptance is deeply inhumane and nihilistic, since it does not provide the patient with real help, but rather tears him down into a downward spiral of mental and physical suffering. Mens aegra in corpore aegro – an unsound mind in an unsound body – is the antithesis of what Juvenal once described and of everything that a sound society should strive for.
“You should pray for a sound mind in a sound body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil…”
– Juvenal, Satire X
About the author: Born 1987, with roots in Germany and the Philippines, living in Spain. Constantly curious and eager to learn new things. Freedom > safety. Your own opinion > groupthink. Coffee > tea. Currently reading: “Conversations on Love” by Natasha Lunn.
Die deutsche Version des Artikels findet sich hier:
Wie Geschlechtsdysphorie salonfähig gemacht wird
Die Entpathologisierung psychischer Störungen wie Geschlechtsdysphorie hilft niemandem, vor allem nicht denen, die darunter leiden.
Lionel Shriver has written an excellent article for UnHerd about the parallels between anorexia and gender dysphoria: “Is trans the new anorexia?”
People suffering from gender dysphoria cannot reconcile the biological sex of their bodies with their felt gender identity, i.e. they feel like they should be of the other sex.
You might want to have a look at the case of Jørund Viktoria Alme who is a healthy man that identifies as a paraplegic “transwoman”.
This sentence was edited in retrospect after readers have quite rightly pointed out that the original sentence (“Years of suffering due to great discomfort with their own bodily identity, often accompanied by psychological co-morbidities?”) does not differentiate well enough between the current wave of teens mostly suffering from Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD describes the phenomenon of children and teens who very suddenly develop gender dysphoria) and the “older generation” of gender dysphoric people who have struggled with it long before it “exploded into the mainstream”.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the most important manual for diagnosing psychiatric illnesses in the US. Its fifth edition (DSM-5) was published in 2015.
Love this article and the connections you make here. My only disagreement is with this statement-- “...the similarities between Jewel’s story and the stories of many transgender people (especially trans-identifying youth) cannot be denied. Years of suffering due to great discomfort with their own bodily identity...Check...” What I’m seeing at my daughter’s progressive suburban high school is that the very many, mostly girls, who identify as trans did not suffer with gender dysphoria for years or even at all. At the very least Jewel, crazy as she is, felt this way since age six. Trans is a social contagion. Straight kids are living closeted lives the same way gay kids did years ago. Trans is their ticket to the glorified oppressed minority. From the looks of it after reading your article, trans ableism could very well be the next big thing that crushes the souls of so many parents. Imagining my daughter with a beard and no breasts is devastating enough. Imagining her needing (desiring) a cane or wheelchair is too much to bear. Munchausens syndrome run amok for the parents who bring their babies to gender clinics. Okay enough rambling. Thank you!
Very well written article, and I agree with the other commenter who wrote that the trans epidemic is largely affecting teens whose suffering has little to do with gender and everything to do with loneliness, anxiety, and too much time spent online. But transition is the special of the day, every day, the cure for whatever ails them. We grow into adults slowly, with much pain and awkwardness. Imagine what a trip it must be to think you can be a new person almost overnight by taking hormones and getting surgery, and grown ups will even help you do it! I wish this article didn’t contain the terms Woke Left and WokeMindVirus. The people who need to be convinced that there’s something rotten going on are my fellow lefties, but the inclusion of those terms means I can’t share this article with them. Thank you for writing it.