#pathologisation

You just want to pathologise what you don't like because you think if they are disorders then you can say "therefore they shouldn't have human rights or be allowed in society, we should kill them all or lock them up far away", which in turn is massively ableist, that's not the response you should produce to seeing disability.

Sexual inversion has usually been regarded as psycho-pathological, as a symptom of degeneration; and those who exhibit it have been considered as physically unfit. This view, however, is falling into disrepute, especially as Krafft-Ebing, its principal champion, abandoned it in the later editions of his work.

- Otto Weininger, Sex and Character. 1906

This clears up for me how his earlier statements square together with his later advocacy against antisodomy laws. 

In 1879, Ulrichs wrote in Critische Pfeile, the last part of his series of pamphlets on uranians:

My scientific opponents are mostly psychiatrists. They are, for example, Westphal, Krafft-Ebing, Stark. They made their observations on Urnings who were in institutions for the mentally ill. They appear not to have seen mentally healthy Urnings. The rest follow the published views of the psychiatrists.

Which is to say, he regarded Krafft-Ebing as an opponent. 

Hubert Kennedy, Ulrichs biographer, writes:

Ironically, the man who became the major proponent of the sickness model of homosexuality, Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902), became interested in studying the subject precisely as a result of reading Ulrichs’s writings, as he explicitly stated in a letter to Ulrichs of January 29, 1879 (Critische Pfeile, 92). Already in 1877, Krafft-Ebing had written that Ulrichs was “afflicted with this perverse drive” and that Ulrichs “still has not furnished proof that he, as an inborn phenomenon, is eo ipso a physiological and not perhaps a pathological one” (Krafft-Ebing 1877, 305–306). With only a slight change in the wording, this statement was included in his Psychopathia sexualis (1886, 58) and it remained in all later editions of this perennial bestseller. 

Although Krafft-Ebing became interested in the subject because of Ulrichs, his understanding of it was rather along the lines of the degeneration theory of Bénédict Auguste Morel (1809–1873), as presented by Morel in 1857. This is shown already in the title of Krafft-Ebing’s 1877 work, which may be translated: “On certain anomalies of the moral drive and the clinical-forensic evaluation of them as a probable functional sign of degeneration of the central nervous system.” Nevertheless, Giovanni Dall’Orto sees a positive influence of Ulrichs on Krafft-Ebing, in that Krafft-Ebing “softened, thanks to him, the original premise, which saw in the homosexual a serious degenerate, and a criminal for life” (Dall’Orto 1985, 66).

Seeing as this mentions Krafft-Ebing never editing out the part about homosexuality “likely being pathological rather than inborn” I’m not sure what edits, exactly, he did make. I suppose that even in thinking it a “biological error” -- as he did all sex not turned to procreation -- he may still have expressed himself less damningly on the subject. 

At any rate, historian Harry Oosterhuis writes about Krafft-Ebing:

Krafft-Ebing’s overall attitude became more and more lenient and humanitarian: from the early 1890s he opposed the penalisation of homosexual acts and he was among the first to sign Hirschfeld’s petition advocating the abolition of Section 175 of the German legal code, which made so-called ‘unnatural vice’ punishable. In his last article on homosexuality, published in Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen [Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types], Krafft-Ebing admitted that his earlier views on the immoral and pathological nature of homosexuality had been one-sided and that there was truth in the point of view of many of his homosexual correspondents who asked for sympathy and compassion

And even if there is a point, then I’ll be clearly be favoring the non-impairing kind of an exotic human event in media representation!

And even if the proportion of people faking(read: exploring themselves) the exotic human event in the non-pathological case is higher(arguable, as it’s more probable that the people impaired are more likely to resort to faking certain comorbidities to get a ‘diagnosis’ easier), then it’s good - you are likely to get passionate allies that way. 

I find it really stressful to see people from my “community” with the same diagnosis as me always reject and discredit some of my beliefs, as though I can’t be both mentally ill and believe in “weird” stuff (or rather stuff that’s not even too weird when neurotypicals believe in it). Just as it must be stressful and harmful to have a spiritual/religious interpretation of mental illness/neurodiversity pushed on you.

I’d just hope we could accept the fact that people believe in different things and that that’s ok and that their right to do so doesn’t stop as soon as mental illness/neurodivergency/something diagnosable is concerned!

oh, im the way down the twist and the bend

ive been divided in copses the lesser of choices

but oh if you follow me tread soft or hard

you don't have to be ware of edges that blend

weave from the chord through the trees out of sight

you can't always come back to the track that you left

this from the gp who also told me condescendingly to “try and get some sleep” and tried to explain that “a lot of trans, when they do the transition, prefer to go by their original pronoun” after she’d asked if it was okay for her to call me “she”

The entry form had asked for a name, phone number, and postal address. So it received all that, and next to a number, a note about not being reachable well by phone. Of course, the public real name was entered.

First, they asked for the wrongly designated given name to be added. A name which is read as misgendering, and regardless is plainly wrong. If they must. So it was added to the given name field, as in: Real name ("Wrong designated name"). All with parentheses and quote marks.

Next, during this terrible talk, the professional insisted on referring to the client as "transsexual" and to her "transsexuality" to mark her as not cis. Despite being asked not to use these words about her, and to rather call her trans or 'transgender'. No, that wouldn't do. Because "Transsexual. That's what we say here."

As the talk neared its end, another incident occurred. As Meta included in her recent collection, "professionals who are supposed to help": (Supposed by what? A questionable premise, given ableism.)

being asked for another way to be reachable as phoning isn’t so accessible, suggesting email: we don’t write emails.

This started with the professional remarking about the note next to the phone number. After dismissing e-mailing as an alternative way of notification, the professional declared that they'd use paper mail.

In well-honed anticipation, it was mentioned that they can use the correct name then. The professional held up a folder, pointing to the printed label reading the wrong name. "I'll use this name." After another statement that they can already use >Real name< for postal delivery, the matter remained inconclusive.

(As usual, apparently their system is either not usable or not used so as to store the file under the real name. In this model, the wrong name would only be stored as an additional, to be used only as needed.)

If all of this wasn't transmisogynistic and unwelcoming enough yet, note that this was in an outpatient wing that has one of its specialisations in counselling trans people. That doesn't set a good example for a clinic with a specialisation in treating trans people.

As in, it's not the worst of the worse, but it's still excessively bad. My GP is better about this. Even Meta's therapist she went to for depression and everyday life is better. It's easy, unless there's something they value above helping and briefly understanding you. Namely, insisting on their way of framing our womanhoods and of naming us. I happen to believe that this way is cisnormative, cissexist, sexualising, pathologising, and misogynistic.

Disgusting.