Do you think there's any utility in reframing transition as harm reduction?
Trans men are at a higher risk for suicide than any other gender demographic. These rates are reduced by medical transition.
I don't think I ever see radfems touch on this
In an ideal world, dysphoric females would be able to cope with dysphoria in less drastic ways (or not face dysphoria at all). But we are so so so far from an ideal world.
I'd agree that we need to challenge the current conversation around transition as *the* treatment and cure for dysphoria. But I can't stand fully against medical transition when it does provably reduce female suicide amongst specific individuals, in the world as it currently is.
There is so much work that needs to be done. Work that even our great great granddaughters may not see the fruits of.
Something that can reduce female suicide in the mean time shouldn't be written off entirely.
I'd be interested in your thoughts. I've found your blog insightful
(If this ask isn't anonymous then please disregard it)
Personally, no I don't think so.
Because I think transition will always do more harm than good in the long run. And because this way of thinking ignores the hundred other directions we could go with actually working to help these girls and women.
Arguing that transitioning women into men is in their best interest because the patriarchy sucks is very shortsighted. Because it assumes that:
1) Women will be able to pass as male and assimilate socially as male
2) It will have no negative effects on a woman's medical or mental health
3) That they won't regret it, and they'll just live out their lives happily as a man.
Transition isn't some magical band-aid fix for whatever problem a girl is having with being female, but that's how it's advertised, that's how the transition industry operates, and that's also how this argument comes across.
What else could we do for a girl or woman like this, rather than transition? Let's talk about actual harm-reduction strategies. These should be the first line of treatment, and yet they almost never are.
Getting her competent mental healthcare. Helping her process the trauma of things she's been through. Helping her escape abusive situations. Helping her understand how abuse, including sexual abuse, impacts her feelings about her body. Diagnosing possible neurodivergence and explaining how that can impact feelings about gender and belonging. Helping her work through internalized homophobia. Helping her deprogram from religion. Helping her find female community and/or wlw community so she has a social support system and women she can talk to in real life.
You know, all the things that trans people call "conversion therapy".
Because here's the thing - After girls transition, they still need all of that. They detransition, and they still need all of that. And no one in their whole lives ever thought for a second that maybe these things could be helpful - The "professionals" just sent them on their merry way to irreversible hormone and surgical treatment.
Transition is the modern-day lobotomy for sad and "difficult" women.
If it actually reduced the risk of suicide, then that might be a different story. But we don't have good data on this. And there's evidence that the suicide risk may become even higher for trans people who have surgeries.
And even if some women are Truly Trans, they don't even know how to differentiate which ones are which! Because the diagnostic criteria is completely braindead, misogynistic, and ignores every other possible reason that a woman could want to be a man.
The entire system is rotten to the core, and it always has been.
Speaking from my own experience - I thought I was suicidal before transitioning. It was nothing to how severe that became after I transitioned. I'd have been better off if I had kept self-harming rather than shooting myself up with unnaturally high amounts of testosterone that were wrecking my health.
That's not to say that's the experience of all women who transition, I know I'm only one person. But to claim transition reduces suicide risk when we don't actually have data confirming that over a long-term (I'm talking 10-20+ years) large-scale study is irresponsible. That's not something you should be basing your opinion on when the stakes are women's lives.
We're compounding the problems women face by transitioning them, not improving them.
