GUEST POST: Transgenderism: a Pathogenic Meme by Paul McHugh, MD, Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School

from the public discourse.com:
"The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery."

"For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways."
...
"In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder."

"Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy."

"The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges."

--Paul McHugh, MD, is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.

Go to https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/?fbclid=IwAR3ficpx5MB6uMAi-FKYz5LHiksCieIiSEkfCBfq_QmyQmQ1OWR-nab7Gf8 to read the rest of this powerful view showing how transgenderism has no basis in fact but is an ideological illusion.

Are Humans what they deeply feel they are or what the facts of biology show?

HELP me out here, IF you are interested in controversial topics.

For a number of years, I have studied a particular controversy--that is HUGE these days.

ARE HUMANS WHAT THEY DEEPLY FEEL OR WHAT BIOLOGICAL FACTS SHOW?

Let's say that I deeply feel I am Native American, Navajo, even though my DNA test shows that I am not.
CAN IT STILL BE TRUE THAT I AM INDIGENOUS?

I have read both totally opposite sides of the controversy, and some in the middle, etc. Studied what medical doctors and biologists have to say about the facts, etc.

And I am frustrated that both opposite extremes--like so much of politics--exaggerates, distorts, lacks empathy, and misuses language (George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) changing the common definition of words into their opposite meanings.

I will try and be silent, and will LISTEN to what you think and have to say on this topic if you are willing to jump off the cliff with your hang-glider;-)
I am going to use the real situation of ancestry so as to avoid censorship issues.

TRUE STORY of MY YOUTH: For most of my teen years, for many reasons, I very deeply wanted to be a Native American. I suppose this fascination, almost
obsession began from studying Native Americans as a young Boy Scout and buying authentic moccasins on a trip when young, and from later studying American history.

Then recently came the huge controversy related to one politician stating she was of Native American heritage (because her family had told her so).
Many of the opposite political party claimed she was lying. ETC.
Later it was proven by DNA testing that she actually does have partial Native American ancestry. But that didn't solve the controversy because then it became a question of other things!

HOWEVER, what IF the DNA test has shownn that she doesn't have Native American ancestry?

Can she still be Native American?!

What IF I claim that I am really Indigenous, Navajo, because I deeply feel that I am Native American, even though DNA shows that I am actually Scottish and
Northwestern European?


In the Light,
Dan Wilcox

Reflections on the Transgender Conflict

The transgender conflict is currently breaking hearts and confusing minds,
another tragic case of how an important concern can be twisted by politicians
and the media until all that is left is smog, and no one is helped.

Suggestions:

#1 Keep politics, the media, non-medical people, and others out of the transgender subject. Leave this concern with the individual!

It would seem that if an individual's gender was wrongly assigned at birth, that this is a private matter, the business of no one but the individual.

If a person's gender doesn't match his/her body, and so she/he has transitioned, who is going to know when she/he visits the restroom stall of her/his gender identity?

No one!

#2 Inform ourselves on the topic by reading scholarly articles, books, and by talking with a transgender individual IF she/he brings up the concern.

I am gradually learning about the concern, despite the media, politicians, social rumor, propaganda, and so much popular drivel.

Get our learning from scholarship, not from popular leaders.

I've read one good scholarly book on sexuality related to gender, same sexuality, etc. That's not nearly enough I realize. So I continue to learn and to seek to understand.

Personally, I don't know anyone who is transgender, at least no one who has identified thus. Hopefully, I will be able to discuss this with such an individual soon.

#3 Live in empathy, compassion, social concern, equality, and justice for all humans.

And keep seeking for what is true, what is just, what is right,

and what is good in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox