Stop conflating being transgender with being sick

Telling someone there is something wrong with them because they are trans, when their experience of gender is perfectly normal, will not support their mental health.

The only tension here is that even if we lived in a fully trans-accepting society, people with gender dysphoria (unlike being gay) would still requires medical treatment (much like any other endocrine disorder).

It's great to recognize trans folks as a part of the natural biodiversity of humans, but there are limits to that claim.

This article's main concern is how the RNZ article handled reporting trans issues, from OP's link:

The RNZ article is peppered with subtle and overt suggestions that being trans is a problem, reflecting an outdated treatment of trans people within Western medical science.

As far as I can tell the RNZ article does not directly depict being trans as a problem or pathology as much as they tell a story that indicates the teen's trans identity was not authentic or legitimate, quoting from the RNZ article:

Their only child was able to keep them at a distance on the grounds they did not accept the teen was transgender - an identity the parents say the teen later abandoned.
However, the couple allege that while attentive to their child's gender identity, various care professionals failed to adequately respond to the threat from a long-standing eating disorder.
...
At high school, she was also introduced to the concept of gender diversity and at some point in 2021 became non-binary.
Vanessa adopted a gender neutral name ("V") and pronouns, which were used by staff and students.
However, Catherine said immediately after a messy break-up with the boyfriend, Vanessa started identifying as a boy.
At home, the arguments were now about gender identity as well as food, with Vanessa/V accusing the parents of being transphobic.
"She tried to 'educate' us by sharing influencer videos. She said she must be right because all the health professionals and online articles agreed with her."
Some clinicians quickly affirmed V's boy identity.
However, Catherine said the teen's long-term psychiatrist was sceptical.
"The psychiatrist advised us that Vanessa was using the transgender identity as a mask for her continuing anorexia - that Vanessa was saying the reason she didn't want a curvy, female body was not because she was suffering from anorexia, but because she was really a boy.
"The psychiatrist recommended not affirming Vanessa's transgender identity."
...
However, her parents said subsequently, Vanessa phoned her father and then her mother to say she was "seriously questioning the 'gender identity thing'" and wanted them to know she was indeed their daughter.
...
Catherine said it appeared there was "wilful blindness" on the part of those professionals, who were so focused on affirming Vanessa's gender identity, but did not pay the same attention to the eating disorder which would kill her.

Mostly the article comes across as conveying the skepticism around the trans identity, highlighting that before V died they reversed their trans identity and reaffirmed their assigned gender.

I think the RNZ article does come across as dismissive, but not necessarily as pathologizing, unless I'm missing something. A charitable read is that they are highlighting the need for clinicians to better parse gender dysphoria from other psychological issues, and to take those seriously, but I tend to think articles like this are not being written about the way people are getting misdiagnosed one way or another and not given adequate psychological treatment - autism mistaken as OCD or ADHD and so on - so reading between the lines I see an attempt to write something that can be used to credibly stoke moral panic about and undermine trans identities with the public - using the death of a single individual and making the argument that this was caused by too much focus on gender identity allows audiences to easily draw their own transphobic conclusions.

1 comments

Telling someone there is something wrong with them because they are trans, when their experience of gender is perfectly normal, will not support their mental health.
The only tension here is that even if we lived in a fully trans-accepting society, people with gender dysphoria (unlike being gay) would still requires medical treatment (much like any other endocrine disorder).
It's great to recognize trans folks as a part of the natural biodiversity of humans, but there are limits to that claim.
This article's main concern is how the RNZ article handled reporting trans issues, from OP's link:
The RNZ article is peppered with subtle and overt suggestions that being trans is a problem, reflecting an outdated treatment of trans people within Western medical science.
As far as I can tell the RNZ article does not directly depict being trans as a problem or pathology as much as they tell a story that indicates the teen's trans identity was not authentic or legitimate, quoting from the RNZ article:
Their only child was able to keep them at a distance on the grounds they did not accept the teen was transgender - an identity the parents say the teen later abandoned.
However, the couple allege that while attentive to their child's gender identity, various care professionals failed to adequately respond to the threat from a long-standing eating disorder.
...
At high school, she was also introduced to the concept of gender diversity and at some point in 2021 became non-binary.
Vanessa adopted a gender neutral name ("V") and pronouns, which were used by staff and students.
However, Catherine said immediately after a messy break-up with the boyfriend, Vanessa started identifying as a boy.
At home, the arguments were now about gender identity as well as food, with Vanessa/V accusing the parents of being transphobic.
"She tried to 'educate' us by sharing influencer videos. She said she must be right because all the health professionals and online articles agreed with her."
Some clinicians quickly affirmed V's boy identity.
However, Catherine said the teen's long-term psychiatrist was sceptical.
"The psychiatrist advised us that Vanessa was using the transgender identity as a mask for her continuing anorexia - that Vanessa was saying the reason she didn't want a curvy, female body was not because she was suffering from anorexia, but because she was really a boy.
"The psychiatrist recommended not affirming Vanessa's transgender identity."
...
However, her parents said subsequently, Vanessa phoned her father and then her mother to say she was "seriously questioning the 'gender identity thing'" and wanted them to know she was indeed their daughter.
...
Catherine said it appeared there was "wilful blindness" on the part of those professionals, who were so focused on affirming Vanessa's gender identity, but did not pay the same attention to the eating disorder which would kill her.
Mostly the article comes across as conveying the skepticism around the trans identity, highlighting that before V died they reversed their trans identity and reaffirmed their assigned gender.
I think the RNZ article does come across as dismissive, but not necessarily as pathologizing, unless I'm missing something. A charitable read is that they are highlighting the need for clinicians to better parse gender dysphoria from other psychological issues, and to take those seriously, but I tend to think articles like this are not being written about the way people are getting misdiagnosed one way or another and not given adequate psychological treatment - autism mistaken as OCD or ADHD and so on - so reading between the lines I see an attempt to write something that can be used to credibly stoke moral panic about and undermine trans identities with the public - using the death of a single individual and making the argument that this was caused by too much focus on gender identity allows audiences to easily draw their own transphobic conclusions.