Gender Incongruence: Not Born In the Wrong Body

All right, I’m going to introduce you to the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice, and then I’m going to give you an example of how we use research in advocacy. So we are a multidisciplinary organization that was formed in 2015 and registered as a charity in Great Britain in 2017.

It’s led by an executive board, a range of advisory councils and country representatives. My role is I’m on the general board. I’m on these research, scientific research and research council, and I’m the USA country representative. So we do training.

We train therapists to be able to provide this kind of change, allowing therapy. And I do use standard therapies. They’re non aversive. They’re based on methods that are well-established practices and evidence based kinds of therapy therapies therapists use around the world.

We also train pastoral care workers to provide ethical and effective support. And we train and advocates to defend the legal right to such therapy. So we’ve trained psychotherapist, physicians, priests and pastors, pastoral care workers, attorneys, lawmakers, LGBT identified people.

And for many nations, we have journalists at our conferences. So in effect, they’ve had some training too. And so we do all this training now. I want to give you an example of how we use research, how we used it in a an expert opinion that I wrote for the IFTCC, for the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria on

an issue that had to do with the meaning of gender in law. And so we addressed the ideology behind the wish to change the meaning of gender in law. OK, so first of all, if you terms, gender is a person’s perceived sex. Transgender used to mean that a person who identifies as the opposite sex of their biological

sex. But now it’s the opposite of it’s a different sex from their their biological sex. So transgender incongruent gender identity and non congruent gender identity are all umbrella terms for all. Those many gender identities that don’t match a person’s biological sex gender dysphoria is refers to the subjective feeling of distress.

The opposite of euphoria is dysphoria distress, so gender distress because one’s body does not match one’s perceived sex. So we addressed claims that transgender identity is inborn, that it’s normal, and that social affirmation and gender affirming medical treatments decrease suicides and mental disorders.

And we ask, Are these claims true? We’ll take the first one first as transgender identity and born at least 14 professional organizations agree transgender identity has social environmental causes. It is not just caused by genes, hormones, brain structures, maternal factors or other biological factors taken together, and this is accepted by the Endocrine Society and the six co-sponsoring

organizations for its guideline by a consensus statement of endocrine societies around the world by the American Psychological Association’s EPA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology, the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which every therapist has in their library, and the radical and rogue American Academy of Pediatrics.

Specifically, it’s not caused by having the brain of the opposite sex. The Global Consensus Disorders of Sexual Development Consortium Consensus Statement of Date of 2016, which is highly regarded, says there is no biological marker for transgender identity. That means there is no thing gender a thing biologically in the body that could be found by a brain scan, a blood test or any other biological test. They said there’s no consistent evidence that brain structures are different for gender congruent and gender incongruent people. And they said masculine and feminine aspects of the brain largely develop gradually. That means after birth.

In fact, that means that our sense of ourselves can develop lifelong and develops in anoraks and with psychological, social and cultural experiences in the environment and the endocrine societies around the world. The degree to this represent our European, Asian, Pacific, Japanese, Latino and Chinese.

OK, so the American Psychiatric Association says specifically, in contrast to certain social constructivist theories, biological factors are seen as contributing an interaction with social and psychological factors. And they said that evidence is insufficient to label gender dysphoria as a form of intersex of the brain.

So transgender identity is not inborn. Is it normal? These professional organizations say that gender dysphoria and congruence can be caused by trauma or psychiatric disorders. So even progressive organizations that are would not be in agreement with us and many things, even they acknowledge it is not.

It is not invariably normal. The standards of Care of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health says gender dysphoria may be secondary to and better accounted for by other diagnoses. The British Psychological Society’s desire to change sex may be symptomatic of a psychiatric condition, and the American Psychiatric Association Task Force said that gender dysphoria adolescents should be

easily screened for trauma as well as for any disorder. With that can produce gender confusion. Gender incongruence is associated with high rates of psychiatric disorders. This is not controversial, it’s widely accepted. We have a lot of research backing this up, including several studies in the U.S. and six European countries Canada, Australia and Iran.

Most of these studies, however, do not tell us which came first. Psychiatric disorders or gender incongruence. But two of them do, and this needs to be known as well as born that way. And no gay gene needs for sexual orientation needs to be known.

This needs to become sidewalk knowledge to every citizen. OK, so here is one of those studies and uses exemplary methods so psychiatric conditions can be causes because we know the psychiatric conditions come first. In a U.S. multistate health maintenance organization study, they looked at the electronic medical records kept in real time on all 8.8 million members at its

sites in Northern California, Southern California and Georgia over eight years. And here’s what they found. The prevalence of psychiatric conditions for children ages three to nine adolescents ages ten to 17 in their lifetime before gender non congruent was far higher than for gender congruent peers.

For children, 34% of boys, 32% of girls, it’s about a third of the children had psychiatric disorders beforehand and compared to 3% of boys and 6% of girls who identified with their sex. For the adolescents who were gender and congruent, they usually experienced psychiatric disorders before gender incongruence, 71% for boys, 75% for girls, compared to 3% for

boys and four 4% for boys who identify with their sex. These were the psychiatric conditions that they looked at in the three underlined are the highest rated were the highest in prevalence anxiety, attention deficit disorders, depression disorders. And they also looked at these are for the adolescents they used.

Fewer went for the children, which was appropriate. Autism spectrum disorders, bipolar conduct and disruptive eating. Sarkozy’s personality disorders, schizophrenia spectrum, self-inflicted injuries, substance use disorders and suicidal ideation. Also before gender incongruence, the second study was in Finland. Since there are two studies, this is international research demonstrating psychiatric disorders came before gender incongruence.

They found that 75% of all adolescent applicants for sex reassignment services over two years had been, or were currently undergoing child or adolescent psychiatric treatment for reasons other than gender dysphoria. And the researchers said severe psychopathology preceding onset of gender dysphoria was common.

They also found that bullying with mental disorders came before gender incongruence for adolescents applying for sex reassignment services. 57% The majority had been significantly bullied at school. 92% of these were bullied before gender incongruence. 73% were bullied for reasons unrelated to gender, 49%.

Nearly half of all of these adolescents have been persistently bullied before gender incongruence, and this bullying was associated with peer isolation, anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal preoccupation, if not attempts. These adolescents had very high hopes that changing their bodies would solve all their problems in social, academic and occupational domains.

Nationally, representative studies have found two studies in Sweden, one found that cross sex hormones and surgeries do not decrease medical services for depression or anxiety or hospitalizations following suicide attempts. And over 30 years of social and medical affirmation, psychiatric hospitalizations for reasons other than gender persisted at three times higher rate than the general population and completed suicides

were 19 times higher. That’s from two studies in the Netherlands. Nearly half a century, 45 years of cultural affirmation and gender affirming treatments have made little to no change in rates. The higher suicidal rates people completed suicide at every stage of gender affirmation treatment.

Countries with extensive medical affirmation experience are increasingly restricting gender affirming treatment for minors. This is in the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland, and a growing number of organizations are opposing doing these things to minors. So social affirmation and gender affirming medical treatments do not decrease suicides and mental disorders body.

There is so, so support for psychotherapy to dissolve gender distress. It is mainly right now in the form of case studies because it’s in its infancy. It’s early and a chart of these studies is available at the American College of Pediatricians.

I have a link and gender dysphoria can change through life through the lifespan, according to the British Psychological Society guideline. And these medical and mental health organizations have supported the legal right to therapy, and if you know an organization we can add to the list, please let me know it’s very important.

The other side uses their list of organizations as probably their primary argument. And there’s my conclusion. Thank you very much. All right.

Dr. Laura Haynes of International Federation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice discusses what therapists can do in the face of increasing censorship.