Cause

Self-image as a cornerstone

 

If we are to be able to say anything meaningful about gender dysphoria, we must look for what lies at the root of it. The difficulty with the aetiology is that no single factor has been found to determine gender dysphoria. Instead, gender dysphoria is generally regarded as a multifactorial disorder involving both psychological and biological aspects.

To get a handle on it, one can divide it into three different types of gender dysphoria, distinguishing between the differences in the age of onset (childhood, adolescence or adulthood), the speed of onset (gradual or sudden) and the corresponding sexual orientation.

Type 1 – Childhood gender dysphoria
This type, which starts in childhood, affects both boys and girls. Most of them will be attracted to homosexual relationships in adolescence and adulthood. Risk factors that persist with this type of gender dysphoria are socioeconomic status and autistic traits (obsessional thinking).

Type 2 – Autogynephilic gender dysphoria
Occurs almost exclusively in men. It is associated with the tendency to become sexually aroused by the thought or image of oneself as a woman. This type of gender dysphoria begins in adolescence or adulthood, and the onset is usually gradual.
Meer info: Autogynephilia Explained. Also read this extremely nuanced and insightful article by Joseph Burgo, PH.D: Sympathy for the Devil: Autogynephilia as Psychic Retreat

Type 3 – Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)
This is a recent phenomenon responsible for the current epidemic of gender dysphoric young people. It is striking that they had no sign of gender dysphoria as young children. The vast majority of them are adolescent and young adult women. Before the onset of their ROGD, they do not see themselves as heterosexual. Social contamination is very real, leading them to believe that they are transgender and that this was the hidden cause of their problems. In addition, a large comorbidity of certain psychiatric problems, especially aspects related to borderline personality disorder (e.g. non-suicidal self-harm) and mild forms of autism, were found to be present. Extensive information can be found in the published studies of Lisa Littman. See also the Genspect video: What is ROGD?

Of course, this is only a division to make it more understandable, which means that types are never rigidly defined. For example, where a person of type 1, ‘childhood gender dysphoria’, overcame this previously in adolescence, they do not remain immune to the current social contagion and social acceptance, so they persist. If the challenge fades, why should it change its mind?

The list below represents the most common causes:

• Neurodiversity, the consequences of concrete thought processes that are characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (e.g., I don’t like dresses, therefore I must be a boy)
• Internalized homophobia
• Protective mechanism to prevent repeated sexual trauma
• Due to stress from simply not fitting into society’s stereotypical expectations of gender roles
• Vitim of bullying
• Autogynephilia (a heterosexual man who becomes sexually aroused at the thought of himself as a woman)

The above division and enumeration of possible causes does not necessarily make it more insightful. One soon gets lost in the multitude of listings and lacks a well-founded explanation. Also, the temptation arises to assign people to one or the other category, which does them an injustice, and creates an illusion of real and false trans people.

Therefore, it is interesting to point out a common ground, that gender dysphoria is rather a signal, indicating that an underlying problem needs to be addressed and that resilience and self-acceptance need to be built up. The lack of self-acceptance is the basis of gender dysphoria, and this is correlated with our self-image. The thoughts we form about ourselves make up how we experience life. However, self-image has nothing to do with gender identity. Gender identity is propagated by the trans lobby as an immutable characteristic that matters more than biological sex. This is fiction, and cannot be scientifically justified in any way. Spreading this idea is reprehensible, because it pushes people towards transition and causes irreparable damage.

Mainly, the development of our self-image takes place unconsciously, and is determined by fitting in with our sensitivities, predispositions and limitations in the environment in which we end up. Our self-image is never a representation of reality, or how others see us. We look, as it were, through a coloured lens. Perhaps we can best understand this as the field of tension between our inner experience and the outside world. When we become too aware of our self-image, or in other words, identify with this self-image, it becomes a source of conflict and self-criticism. It isolates us, and makes us inaccessible to impulses from the unconscious and the environment. This hyper-reflection, or fixed identity, is a universal fact that forms the basis of much human suffering. Hyper-reflection opens the way to delusions, i.e. the projection of the imaginary world onto the real world, and this is the very essence of gender dysphoria! People tend to believe what they think is right, regardless. The useful is good, the desired is right, the desired is real. That mantra is at the root of every delusion, which makes it so difficult to recognize.

Interesting is the definition of delusion described by Huub Mous

The delusion is a transformation of reality into a form of indulgence whose function is to remove obstacles that structurally stand in the way of a goal that is considered necessary. It is therefore an erroneous, but not infrequently efficient ‘out-of-the-box solution’ for a problem deemed insoluble, which has created a structural sense of unease.

Back to Reality – Letting Go as Salvation
We can get stuck in our thinking and feeling, so that reality is no longer perceived objectively. Recovery should focus on the way back, in relation to ourselves and reality. Liberation lies in self-acceptance. This is coming home to ourselves and knowing ourselves connected.

The philosopher Ype de Boer has illustrated this beautifully from the stories of the Japanese writer Murakami. With a video of less than three minutes long, ‘What the writer Murakami teaches you about life’, the essence is presented in a nutshell.

What does Murakami tell us about life? If you would summarise it in one sentence, it would be that we have to form our own identity, or find an authentic self, that we have to become who we are, that we have to let that go.
If we look at the main characters at the beginning of his stories, we get the idea that these people do know who they are. That they have built a stable image of themselves, and have created a life in which they have an overview.
But as constant as that starting position is the problematisation of it. It is precisely these people who have arranged their lives in this way, in comfort, routine, self-protection, that something happens to them which creates a gap between the old life, who they thought they were, and the person they are now, or what life offers them now.

How do they deal with this? How do they deal with the experience of being split?
There are 3 options, all of which occur:

 

1. Denial: Either they cling even more to the old self. Or they try to deny the crisis, go back to the way it was.

 

2. Rebirth: Or they experience that moment as a crisis, a phase they have to go through, in order to become a new person, just as stable as before, but just a little bit different.

 

3. Acceptance: Or, and this is the final option, which emerges with Murakami – they learn to embrace that split. They learn to let go of the whole idea that you have to be someone, that stability is so important. Because only when we don’t try to match the image that we have made of ourselves, or that someone else may have made of us, only then is there room for difference, for desires that go beyond your status quo, is there room for love, for someone else to influence your life, instead of that other person who only has a function in reinforcing that image and that life you already had. If we learn to keep the right distance from that idea, and of course those images continue to play a role in our lives, only then will there be enough space to actually allow new things to happen.

It is clear that only in the third option do we become free, become human in the full sense of the word. If gender care really is care, then it must be clear that these people need to be guided towards self-acceptance, and not into denying reality and confirming a problematic self-image.