itās a language game. itās actually brilliant in structure specifically because it is designed to exhaust anyone trying to make sense of it.
being trans is the urgent state of belief that ones healthy sexed body (or characteristics) is actually the wrong sex. this places it firmly in psychological distress/mental illness category by definition. however, socially speaking, mental illness comes with safety precautions and treatment standards that do not serve the dominant trans-centric social narrative. to be mentally ill means that, on a social safeguarding level, you cannot be fully trusted with your own bodily safety, autonomy, and depending on the level of clinically significant dysfunction, even your ability to make out reality from fiction, or consent to cosmetic procedures, financial management, treatment plans, and keeping your own med schedule/appointments. from a medical standpoint, this would make gender affirmative hormone replacement and surgical interventions ethically disastrous and high-risk for the patientās long term well being when compared to the significant risks of the treatments. enter: essence theory.
essence theory is a pseudoscientific/theoretical belief that claims that any noun (a person, place, or thing) has a distinct, distilled selfhood that transcends language and function in causing the noun to be what it is. put simply: āessenceā refers to a metaphysical ācoreā of oneself that goes further than language or description can accurately measure or label. using this framework, the dominant trans advocacy narrative uses the psychological distress at healthy body parts as evident āproofā that the dysphoric personās core āessenceā is most correspondent with that of the opposite biological sex.
this explanation (though making no sense and implying that the sexes have fundamentally different āessencesā, thus reinforcing rigid gender stereotypes) provides a strategic workaround for the trans advocacy narratives to avoid the clinical and ethical implications of treating a mental illness using invasive surgeries and high-risk hormonal therapies, while also providing a socially strong defense against anyone trying to make meaning of this very rough and incomprehensible personal and social narrative. by tying the psychological distress to innate personal āessenceā and core identity rather than taking the distress as a neurodevelopmental complication, it fundamentally ensures three things at once:
1. that any dysphoric person will see no other valid treatment of their distress other than invasive hormonal and surgical interventions ā which converts normal logical questioning from others into an existential denial of oneās true self, triggering the person to project their desperation, frustration, and psychological torment onto the questioning party
2. that the assertion of gender dysphoria and/or trans identity as a mechanistic mental disorder that should be treated on the level of error (the psychological level) rather than the physical level is taken as an expression of bigotry, rather than an attempt at finding a logical throughline
3. that anyone denying a trans identified person something they feel existentially owed will be instantly dehumanized, vilified, and face the wrath of an extremely volatile, untreated, unstable mentally ill crowd of people who believe their distress is the very essence of who they are
itās convenient. it gets to be a mental illness, a plane of existence, a transcendental soul-like concept, and a āget out of jail freeā card all at once. on a systemic level, itās one of the most elegant systems of dogmatic takeover iāve ever seen. on a societal level, it is arguably more disastrous than forced sterilization or even lobotomy.