Dissidents Against the Gender Dysphoria Orthodoxy

Psychologists are usually a friendly bunch, even when they disagree. If you say you have a headache at a meeting, many will reach out and offer you a Panadol or a herbal remedy. They are part of a “helping” profession, after all. In recent years, however, things have taken a darker turn and there are matters which have caused deep division within the profession. There are now psychological dissidents who do not agree with the promulgation of certain recent diagnoses. These are not minor differences of opinion, but ultimately reflect a difference in understanding the human person, a fundamental cultural shift affecting the profession.

This was brought to prominence like never before when some psychologists and psychiatrists disagreed with the alteration of what was formerly known as Gender Identity Disorder in the most recent edition of the diagnostic manual, DSM 5 (published in 2013 and used the world over). Individuals wanting to change gender were no longer considered disordered but had Gender Dysphoria, that is, they felt “a marked incongruence between their experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender”.[1] This was a huge change. It meant that trans persons just didn’t feel well in their current identity as a man or woman.

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There were and are mental health professionals who consider this to be untrue—more than one might imagine, as many are unwilling to declare their opposition publicly. Despite the media, these dissidents believe Gender Identity Disorder does exist—and deserves compassionate treatment as a mental health problem. Of course, it must be acknowledged that our understanding of disorders can change over time. In the nineteenth century, many were diagnosed with “hysteria” but in time researchers and psychologists came to understand organic brain disorders better, as well as traumatic stress and the consequences of abuse. Some believed lobotomies would help people, but we now know that was wrong and they were stopped. The Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing questioned the very existence of disorders: he thought people could feel mental distress, but he was part of an anti-psychiatry view (with Thomas Szasz and David Cooper) which stated that the mentally ill were not ill at all. They were oppressed by family and institutions and were another example of a quasi “proletariat” who must be released from an “oppressive patriarchy”, that is, the psychiatrists.

While it is true that there were early treatments for psychosis that were inadequate, treatment improved significantly with time. Biochemical research and the development of medication for mental health disorders has constituted true scientific progress. But quasi-Marxist views imposed on psychology and sociology, largely fuelled by the French philosopher Michael Foucault, constitute an example of political coercion challenging evidence-based science. And it pervades education and the health professions to a remarkable degree.

To put matters into perspective, over a century ago, the German physician Magnus Hirschfield observed and categorised sixty-four possible types of sexual intermediary ranging from masculine heterosexual male to feminine homosexual male. His works caused some sensation but were not generally accepted by psychologists. But in the mid-twentieth century, Hirschfield’s advocacy of “rights” for all variations of gender found an eager voice in John Money who was born in New Zealand and became professor of paediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1951. Money co-founded the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1965, run by ten specialists including himself, and he was one of the first to use the terms “gender identity” and “gender role”. This sex reassignment project, which involved thousands of infants, some ending in tragic results, was discontinued in 1979.[2] But the idea that numbers of genders exist has continued and has reached its apotheosis in the 2013 edition of DSM 5.

No one has to swear allegiance to every detail of DSM 5, but psychologists and psychiatrists are expected to accept what it says, as a general “consensus” on what is a disorder or not. This works reasonably well with major disorders such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, where evidence-based research has helped our understanding enormously. But the recent removal of Gender Identity Disorder from the diagnostic manual has a social-political dimension to it, redefining and over-riding the given understanding of male and female in most of the world’s cultures. And many have disagreed from professional, social and scientific viewpoints. While some remain uneasy but reticent, others are forthright in their views.

One prominent dissident, Paul McHugh, has been very strident in his critique. Formerly chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, McHugh worked on the original sex-change project set up there in 1965—until he rethought it all. He came to see that “cultural” aspects of the transgender agenda had taken on “cult-like features” with “internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change”.[3] He alarmed professional peers and armchair opinionati by quoting results from long-term research on the consequences of sex-change:

Most shockingly, their [i.e., the transgenders’] suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population. This disturbing result has, as yet, no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.[4]

It was McHugh who shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins in 1979 (it re-opened in 2017), explaining at the time that most of the people who had undergone this type of surgery “had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled.”[5] Surgical treatment for transgender youth, he added, is like performing liposuction on an anorexic child. He described post-operative transgender women as “caricatures of women” because the surgery failed to change many of their male traits. He believed that the transgendered suffer a disorder of assumption.[6] He stated, after examining the evidence:

With these facts in hand, I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.[7]

Another American psychiatrist, Richard Fitzgibbon, reached similar conclusions, stating that reassignment surgery is a “category mistake”, for it offered a surgical solution for psychological problems.[8] He noted a large study of the long-term psychological state of post-SRS (Surgical Reassignment Surgery) persons which had analysed over 300 people who had undergone SRS in Sweden over the past thirty years.[9] This study concluded that after sex reassignment, there were higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour and psychiatric morbidity than in the general population. In his overview of the existing literature, Fitzgibbon noted that within certain subgroups, young people acquired more status by being transgender than being gay. He also noted that some researchers had suggested a connection between autism and transsexual thinking which needed further study. Such professional questions, however, are often shouted down by other studies that hastily fill the Google search pages.[10]

While the American Academy of Pediatrics has adopted a radically pro–transsexual agenda for children, the American College of Pediatricians has not. Michelle Cretella, as recent president of the latter organisation, warned that the current “treatment” proposed for young “transgenders” was positively dangerous:

Just a few short years ago, not many could have imagined a high-profile showdown over transgender men and women’s access to single-sex bathrooms in North Carolina. But transgender ideology is not just infecting our laws. It is intruding into the lives of the most innocent among us—children—and with the apparent growing support of the professional medical community.[11]

Cretella states that the claim that people are born in the “wrong body” with differently wired brains is false, for twin studies show that even if one twin is transgender, there is no significant finding that the other will be so. Identical twins should show 100 per cent concordance in this, and clearly do not.[12] She states that most pre-pubertal children who are at some stage puzzled by their gender, grow out of it. Furthermore, there have not been sufficient studies to observe the long-term consequences of strong endocrine medication:

in 2006 and 2007, the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology reported brain abnormalities in the area of memory and executive functioning among adult women who received blockers for gynecologic reasons. Similarly, many studies of men treated for prostate cancer with blockers also suggest the possibility of significant cognitive decline.[13]

If such dangerous effects can be observed in adults, Cretella asks why anyone could allow such medication to be used for children?

Another psychologist, William Kilpatrick, notes that delusional thinking has become a main feature of the modern mind, adding that professionals should know better. In his article, “The Normalisation of Delusional Thinking”, he states:

All of a sudden, a significant percentage of our social and intellectual elites have succumbed to the delusion that a girl can be a boy, and a boy can be a girl, or whatever he, she, ne, ze, zir currently desires to be. This is not merely a rebellion against social convention, it’s a rebellion against reality. [14]

If this rebellion were personal or localised, it could be contained, but as Kilpatrick (along with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson) notes, there is a more sinister aspect to this—a creeping totalitarianism ensnaring Western institutions and professions, seeking to punish those who fail to honour it. The punishment takes the form of legal charges, public denunciation (often on the ABC), social ostracism, being “uninvited” to functions, and threats of professional deregistration in some cases. However, the dissidents mentioned above have stood firm and have refused to acknowledge the delusions. One of them, Australian psychiatrist John Whitehall, professor at the University of Western Sydney stated in Quadrant:

While proponents argue for massive intervention, scientific studies prove that the vast majority of transgender children will grow out of it through puberty if parents do little more than gently watch and wait. Studies vary but from 70 to 97.8 per cent of gender-dysphoric male and 50 to 88 per cent of gender-dysphoric female children have been reported to “desist” prior to the onset of puberty.[15]

The high-flying dissident Jordan Peterson, formerly psychology professor at the University of Toronto, is a kind of new millennium Orwell (and perhaps Jeremiah). He has faced hostile crowds, the Canadian Parliament, and aggressive television interviewers, refusing to kowtow to ideologically defined “diversity” and “tolerance”. What particularly put Peterson in the spotlight was his refusal to accept the new DSM 5 view on the transgender issue, and his refusal (in the face of threats of hefty fines) to use new pronouns for transgender persons. He came across well, looked like a left-wing academic in cool garb, showing a wide contemporary understanding of politics and psychology. Nothing enrages radical progressives like an intelligent, smooth-talking opponent of their views, who is almost a “Foucault lookalike”, who attracts listeners and demolishes the new transgender agenda assumptions.

Peterson’s opposition to the proposed Canadian Bill C-16 (which was passed in June 2017) was immensely courageous in the face of denunciation. This Bill amended the Canadian Human Rights Act by adding “gender identity or expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination, to protect all genders from discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. It did not, however, clearly define what “discrimination” meant. Occasional mistaken use of wrong pronouns was not deemed to be discrimination, but persistent misuse—by Christians, clergy, psychologists, medical doctors, and others who thought differently—broke the law.

Gender identity was “defined” by the Ontario Human Rights Commission as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”[16] Thus a person could be an “Omnigender”— a nonbinary gender identity that describes people who experience all or many gender identities; or “Novigender”—having a gender that can’t be described using existing language; or “Trigender”—having three gender identities, simultaneously or over time. If you think these difficult to grasp, what about “Vapogender” which is defined as “a gender that sort of feels like smoke; can be seen on a shallow level but once you go deeper, it disappears, and you are left with no gender and only tiny wisps of what you thought it was”? [17] And it is well and truly taking root in Australia. What about the recent proposal in Queensland, where the terms “mother and father would be optional, and people would be allowed to change their gender every 12 months”.[18]

In a 2016 Canadian television interview, Peterson debated a lecturer in Transgender Studies, Nicholas Matt, giving his objections to the Canadian law requiring him to address transgenders by legally enforced pronouns.[19] Matt accused the psychology professor of hate speech, abuse of transgenders, and transphobia. Peterson, unfazed, replied that being forced to use words was a constraint on free speech and that it was rather those who had accused him of hate speech who were guilty of the same. He said biological sex exists, there being ample scientific evidence for this. Peterson added that he respected transgenders as persons, but believed that they had mental health problems, needed compassion, and that he had counselled many of them. At the end of the interview, counselling hotlines were offered for all offended by his comments.

In January 2018, BBC journalist Cathy Newman took Peterson on, covering issues such as gender equality, freedom of speech and transgender rights. Newman particularly attacked Peterson’s refusal to use various transgender pronouns. Peterson, however, was psychologically prepared to meet her charge of “hate speech” by saying that to force him to use language he did not want to use was a form of Maoist coercion. This temporarily reduced Newman to confusion, then silence. For a cultural Marxist warrior like Newman to be accused of being “totalitarian” was a shock. Peterson then added fuel to the flame by complimenting her for exercising her right to free speech in critiquing him and even offending him, adding he had the right to disagree. Another jaw-dropping moment. The unthinkable had happened—a psychologist, and Canadian to boot, had neutralised the iron-fisted, postmodern narrative in public view. On YouTube, the interview got over 13 million hits and Peterson was never invited on BBC TV again. He has since increased his critique of the “trans affirmative” policies within the medical and psychological professions. In his talk “Doctors & Psychotherapists: Butchers & Liars”, he called sex-reassignment surgery “brutal” and “appalling”, saying it contradicts the Hippocratic oath by doing harm.[20]

Dramatic language has also come from non-psychological quarters. Pope Francis spoke out strongly on gender ideology, calling it a “demonic” attempt to reorder society. Moreover, many Polish bishops had long smelt an ideological rat, sensing the resurgence of Marxist ideas in “gender ideology”. A letter condemning such gender theory, signed by Catholic bishops of the nation, was read from all pulpits in 2014. Titled The Dangers Stemming from Gender Ideology, it gave an ideological context of this new form of social engineering, well understood by a country formerly under the Soviet yoke:

The gender ideology (movement) is the product of many decades of ideological and cultural changes that are deeply rooted in Marxism and neo-Marxism endorsed by some feminist movements and the sexual revolution. This ideology promotes principles that are totally contrary to reality and an integral understanding of human nature … The danger of gender ideology lies in its very destructive character both for men, people, contacts and social life as a whole. Humans unsure of their sexual identity are not capable of discovering and fulfilling tasks that they face in their marital, family, social and professional lives ...[21]

As well, there have been unsettling anti-trans regulations from the sporting world of late. SBS News (June 21, 2022) reported that rugby league’s governing body had banned trans women from women’s sports, citing “unnecessary welfare, legal and reputational risk” for its decision, calling for further research. The International Swimming Federation recently announced it will bar trans women who have gone through male puberty, or had procedures after the age of twelve, from competing in elite events, establishing an “open” category for swimmers whose gender differs from their birth sex.

Perhaps the most powerful recent voices are those who “have been there and come back”. “Transgender regret” has entered the lexicon, albeit with much resistance. American Walt Heyer is one such example. He became “Laura Jensen” and then reverted, saying in his book Paper Genders that it was damaging to engage in sex change:[22]

Gender surgeons today testify that gender change has a very high rate of success by failing to include the suicides, regret, medical problems, and those who return to their birth gender. Researchers and doctors will hide facts, twist the results, and hide failures from their peers and the public in order to protect their practice and prestige. Meanwhile, the lives of patients are irreparably damaged.[23]

It appears that not only psychologists, but also lawyers, will have to deal with the fallout of transgender regret, as recently noted even on BBC News:

A 23-year-old woman [Keira Bell] who is taking legal action against an NHS gender clinic says she should have been challenged more by medical staff over her decision to transition to a male as a teenager … Lawyers will argue children cannot give informed consent to treatment delaying puberty or helping them to transition.[24]

The Tavistock Clinic, which since 1989 has provided the UK’s only gender identity clinic for children and young people, has been shut down, and clinical negligence claims against it have been brought forward by some former patients.

Another powerful witness was Australian Patrick Mitchell, who appeared on 60 Minutes in 2017, testifying to withdrawal from his transgender process. He had had an identity problem, saying, “I didn’t know who the person staring back at me was.”[25] At the age of twelve he begged for help to transition. After being diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria he was given body-altering hormones for a year. He recalls waking up one day, however, and realising he did not need to change genders: “I realised I could be happy without completely changing who I am.”

Patrick Mitchell did us all a favour, psychologists in particular, in stating that just because you may feel you are a different gender, this does not mean you are. Feelings are not the arbiters of destiny. His story can give hope to the young, that there are other paths to follow when identity conflicts beset them, without needing to undergo body altering surgery.

Truth has a way of triumphing over noisy attempts to deny it. As Patrick Mitchell—along with those professionals who have risked denunciation by speaking out—well know.

Wanda Skowronska is a psychologist who lives in Sydney. Her most recent book is Paul Vitz: Psychological Mythbuster, just published by Austin Macauley Publishing. She wrote on Paul Vitz (“The Psychologist Who Resisted the Cultural Onslaught”) in the September issue.

Endnotes

[1] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition: DSM 5 ( Washington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013), 451.

[2] Laura Wexler, “Identity Crisis”, Baltimore Style, Jan-Feb 2007.

http://www.baltimorestyle.com/index.php/style/features_article/fe_sexchange_jf07 (Accessed 9/3/2014).

[3] Paul McHugh, 2015. Transgenderism: A pathogenic meme. Public Discourse. June 10. thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145.

[4] Paul McHugh, “Transgender surgery isn’t the solution”, The Wall Street Journal, 2014, June 12. wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120.

[5] Paul R. McHugh, “Surgical Sex: Why we Stopped Doing Sex Change Operations”, First Things, November 2004. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-sex

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Richard Fitzgibbons, “Transsexual attractions and Sexual reassignment surgery”, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Aug 29, 2016. http://www.hprweb.com/2016/08/transsexual-attractions-and-sexual-reassignment-surgery/#res-5

[9] Dhejne, Cecilia et al., “Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery: Cohort study in Sweden”, 2011, 6 (2): e16885. Online version: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

[10] Annelou de Varies, L. et al., “Autism spectrum disorders in gender dysphoric children and adolescents”, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2010, 40: 930–936. Online version: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-010-0935-9

[11] Michelle Cretella, “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse”, Daily Signal, July 3, 2017.

[12] Diamond, M. “Transsexuality Among Twins: identity concordance, transition, rearing, and orientation.” International Journal of Transgenderism, 14(1), 24–38.

[13] Cretella, op. cit.

[14] William Kilpatrick, “The Normalisation of Delusional Thinking”, Crisis, Sept 25, 2017. http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/normalization-delusional-thinking

[15] John Whitehall, “Gender Dysphoria and Surgical Abuse”, Quadrant, December 2016. https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2016/12/gender-dysphoria-child-surgical-abuse/

[16] See Ontario Human Rights Commission: Gender Identity and Gender Expression Brochure. https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/gender-identity-and-gender-expression-brochure

Also see the full text of Bill C16 is on which was passed in 2017: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8280564

[17] There are varying lists of different genders. This Health Line Website gives many commonly used ones: “68 Terms that Describe Gender Identity and Expression”.  https://www.healthline.com/health/different-genders

[18] Duncan Murray, “Huge Changes to Birth Certificate in Push for Better Representation”, June 30. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/huge-change-to-birth-certificates-in-push-for-better-representation/news-story/f5bb379f3845865ae0aa8a3905b3f4f7

[19] “Heated debate on gender pronouns and free speech in Toronto”, October 30, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiijS_9hPkM

[20] Jordan Peterson. “Doctors & Psychotherapists: Butchers & Liars’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayWyzvo9SNY

[21] Deacon Keith Fournier, “A word about the futility of politics in the West, on election Tuesday in America”, Catholic Online, Nov 2, 2016. http://www.catholic.org/news/national/story.php?id=54514

[22] Walt Heyer, Paper Genders: Pulling the Mask off the Transgender Phenomenon (USA: Make Waves publishing, 2011). See also: “ “This surgery is absolutely destructive” — sad message from former transgender to warn others”. http://www.massresistance.org/docs/govt11/tranny_bill/testimony/walt_heyer.html

[23] Walt Heyer, Paper Genders (Kindle Locations 1242-1246).

[24] Alison Holt, “NHS gender clinic “should have Challenged me more” over transition”, BBC News, March 1 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020

[25] “Debbie Schipp, “Patrick’s pain: “I didn’t know who the person staring back at me was”, News, Sept 11, 2017. http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/current-affairs/patricks-pain-i-didnt-know-who-the-person-staring-back-at-me-was/news-story/65ff86c8bfe269109f1b28cbeb93ab7a