The costs of trans visibility
Yesterday, Dylan Mulvaney broke her silence: https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/vi....
For context, this is a trans influencer who built a 10 million strong following on TikTok. She took a brand deal with budweiser to post an ad on an instagram, and the anti-trans right went absolutely ballistic, calling for a boycott, condemning the company, and to some perhaps unknowable degree it influenced that Budweiser sales dropped by a 1/4 and
. Dylan speaks more personally about the effect of the hatred on her.What strikes me about this story is that it is just about visibility. This isn't inclusion in sports or gender-affirming care for minors, it was just that a trans person was visible. This wasn't even visibility in a TV commerical that a poor right-winger is forced to see, it was an ad on her own instagram page. We're all in our own social media algorithm influenced bubbles, but from my vantage point it really has seemed that in the last year or so things have just gotten worse for trans people and the backlash to even minor visibility is growing.
We need to do better.
6827 Replies
You forgot to present the evidence
That's a ridiculous misuse of the standard meaning of "grooming" children. It's obviously meant to imply that an adult is trying to prepare a child to be taken advantage of sexually.
If you think the children will commit suicide if not given puberty blockers, I believe that does imply there is a mental health issue involved.
Grunching, but the term isn't "gaslighting" when you are dealing with a frothing-at-the-mouth crazy person.
It is called "good clean fun."
As an ex-clinical psychologist, you can trust me on that.
I had a patient. Well, they say I’m a fake doctor so I guess it was a fake patient anyhow, his “girlfriend” was a post-op. He was asking me for advice because his “girlfriend” wanted to go on birth control since they weren’t using condoms. That’s right. A biological man was afraid of getting knocked up. Not a mental illness, though, dude.
How is a (as yet untouched by by puberty blockers, etc) transgender youth significantly different from a young person who, 15 years ago, would have been diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria?
I'm 54, and I still don't feel that I have a gender identity. How did you know what yours was as a child or as an adult?
I guess you had good news for him? No pregnancy worries for him.
This example sounds more like genuine confusion / ignorance than mental illness though.
He is more of an expert than I am as I am no longer in the industry, but people with unpleasant lives who aren't mentally ill oftentimes are at higher risk of suicide.
People of Korean ancestry in Japan commit suicide at higher rates than ethnically Japanese people do there. Iirc, being Korean is not a mental illness under current standards of diagnosis.
If your point is that people whose gender is different from their genitals would lead to, on average, less pleasant lives due to a bunch of life-issues, I apologize for the grunching.
Perhaps you believe that cancer is a mental illness. People with cancer have very high rates of suicide. Perhaps we should treat them for their mental health issues instead of treating their cancer.
guess those koreans are experiencing racial dysphoria
Being Korean is not a mental illness, but someone who is Korean living in Japan and is often acting unhappy about that fact would likely benefit from mental health treatment.
A well adjusted, happy Korean person living in Japan is not likely to randomly decide to kill himself.
People who are depressed because they have cancer now are suffering from two diseases and, if possible should be treated for both.
In general, people who are depressed / suicidal because of very legitimate causes still benefit from psychiatry.
100%
chillrob wins yet another thread
I don't feel like I am white. Or a man. Or American. Or fat.
That is because I am the default character. I'd certainly "feel it" if I were not the default character.
Pm me the next time anything about psychometrics comes up.
Also, go ****ing enjoy your New Year's Eve. Stupid people will still be stupid when you get back and you being here will not stop stupid people from being stupid.
I agree.
That is why we (not me anymore) oftentimes recommend that people with real-life non-mental-illness problems get psychological treatment.
We do not generally recommend that you get 12 talking therapy sessions in lieu of chemotherapy. It is just an add-on that might provide some comfort.
I'm the same as you, except I definitely feel fat. Although that may be because I wasn't always fat.
I'm not sure if you mean the 'default character' is whatever you happen to be, or that you happen to have the standard characteristics of the stereotypical human.
Either way though, you can't possibly know that you would feel differently if you were different.
I have no idea what it feels like to be a man, I only know what it feels like to be me. The possibility of anyone 'feeling like a man' seems completely illogical to me, because others also cannot know what it feels like to be a man, they only know what it feels like to be themselves. The way others feel is not something that can be objectively determined, or even described.
I guess it depends on your definition, but I would say that those people you would recommend for psychological treatment are, by definition, suffering from a negative mental health condition, or what most would call a mental illness.
Hey what if we stopped mocking and demeaning those people who are at an elevated risk for suicide?
fatty dysphoria in the thread
What if we stopped being sanctimonious online?
Who was doing that? Certainly not me. I have stated many times that I have suffered from depression, and that I think there should be no stigma attached to suffering from mental illnesses.
I can pay close attention and listen to other people.
I can look at their faces and (without effort) know (for a fact) exactly how they are feeling.
You feel that?
Correct, so that individual seems to be misinformed or confused. Possibly could also be suffering from mental illness, but I can't know based on that.
If a cishet teenager told me he was worried about getting pregnant, I would think it was more likely he was ignorant than insane.
Not often. But I am likely on the autism spectrum.
I definitely cannot look at someone's expression and know whether or not they feel like a man.