WHO Abstains From “Transgender” Guidelines For Minors
This is a quick update about WHO’s plan for creating a “transgender” health guidelines. It was announced in late December and the consultations were supposed to begin on February. We outlined some major problems about the plan in an editorial early January. We thank all of our readers who took action either by signing petitions or by sending emails to WHO highlighting those problems.
As a result of actions from people across the world, WHO published a FAQ regarding the “transgender” health guideline. WHO has now announced that the guideline is only for adults who suffer from gender dysphoria. They have completely excluded children and adolescents because of a lack of research findings of the effect of gender affirmative care on children and adolescents. You can find the full document here.
While exclusion of children and adolescents from the guidelines is definitely progress, it was by far not the only problem with WHO’s stance on the issue. In this article, we’ll highlight how the WHO has attempted to change its conceptualization of gender dysphoria from a mental illness to a condition that is not so serious to be classified as a mental disorder, yet serious enough to absolutely require a specialized form of treatment: gender affirmative care, lack of which would be terribly hurtful to them. This piece is a short critique of this step. This article does not deal with many other problems on this proposition, which we have already discussed in our original editorial.
ICD Classification
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) is an official taxonomy of disorders published by the WHO. It consists of a list of physical and mental disorders along with systemized sets of criteria for classification into any of the disorders. ICD is widely used by physicians across the world for diagnosis. One chapter of ICD is dedicated for mental disorders, and serves as the primary system of classification outside US (which uses DSM system prepared by American Psychiatric Organizaiton).
The WHO periodically updates ICD to keep up to date with the latest research findings. The ICD is currently in its 11th edition, which was recently published in 2022. In the 10th edition, the “transgender” behavior was categorized as “transsexualism” and “gender identity disorder of children”. They have now been replaced by “gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood” and “gender incongruence of childhood” respectively. They have also been moved from “Mental and behavioral disorders” into the new “Conditions related to sexual health” category. In other words, it has been removed from the chapter that deals with mental disorders, indicating that WHO does not believe gender incongruence to be a mental illness.
There are some obvious flaws in this reasoning. The obvious one being that if gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, why place it in ICD at all? Why not remove it altogether just like homosexuality was completely removed? Other “conditions” that fall under the same heading include sexual dysfunctions, sexual pain disorders, changes in female/male genital anatomy, paraphilic disorders, adrenogenital disorders and predominantly sexually transmitted infections. With an exception of paraphilic disorders, all other disorders are primarily physical in nature. Even if they are psychogenic (i.e. have psychological causes), the physical symptoms are way more intense than psychological ones. The same cannot be said for gender “incongruence” or paraphilia. A discussion of why paraphilia is listed under the same heading would be out of scope of this article.
Gender dysphoria has primarily psychological manifestations with little or no physical symptoms. The psychological distress a dysphoric suffers from is not merely rooted in stigma and lack of acceptance of their condition by the society, as the WHO FAQ document would have you believe. Their distress is rooted in their own personal dissatisfaction with their bodies. That is something that no amount of gender affirmative services can cure. High rates of comorbidity with other mental disorders (e.g. childhood trauma, depression, autism spectrum disorder, personality disorders) and high suicide rates even after sex reassignment surgeries further strengthens this point.
Another interesting point is that all of the other disorders listed in the category of “conditions related to sexual health” are related to sexual behavior. “Transgender”, on the other hand, is not related to sexual behavior at all. Even by the definition put forward in ICD;
[g]ender incongruence is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex.
It is merely a dissatisfaction one feels with one’s biological sex, or the gender roles assigned with one’s sex. It does not have anything to do with sexual behavior at all. So, why was it included in this particular chapter at all?
Why is WHO pushing for a reconceptualization and gender affirming care?
The renaming and shifting of categories begs the questions of why WHO, despite no reliable empirical support, is so inclined to recreate the entire concept of “transgenderism”: and a contradictory concept at that. According to WHO, “transgenderism” is not a serious issue, therefore it was removed from the list of “Mental and behavioral disorders.” Yet, it is so serious that it should still be included in ICD, albeit in a category that does not make sense at all. Also, it should be dealt with a very specialized form of treatment, lacking which the person suffers with all sort of consequences: stigma, inability to access health care, etc.
The FAQ document makes it perfectly clear that WHO is pushing only for gender-affirming care (with no substantial evidence and flawed logic). They have made this clear before the actual consultations. Consultations are supposed to guide conclusions. Yet, it seems that WHO already has its conclusion ready. All they had to do was to direct the consultations accordingly. Now, it seems less confusing why the panel was filled with people who have been vocally pushing for gender-affirming care.
Editor’s Note: Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in US educational institutions receiving federal aid. The US Department of Education has proposed to amend the Title IX in relation to sex-related eligibility criteria for male and female athletic teams. If passed, this would mean that athletes would be allowed to compete based on their gender identity, rather than their sex. Sports has long been categorized on the basis of sex for a reason. There are some fundamental differences in the ways that male and female bodies develop, specifically in adolescence. Male sex hormones, especially testosterone, are responsible for increased muscle mass and bone density. Sex hormones account for the sudden height and weight increases in boys after puberty. These effects are long lasting, and cannot be curbed by taking cross-sex hormones. Recently, the debate has been ignited by the win of the trans-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas in the women’s category.
This is a press release from GASBR, Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights. It is also a call for action. Today is the last day for commenting on the issue.
GASBR Urges Opposition to DoE Title IX Rule Changes
Green Alliance Files its Opposition to Proposed DoE Title IX Rule Revisions
Deadline looms to join effort to protect women’s sports from men’s participation
On Tuesday, May 9th, the membership of the Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights approved comments which were that evening submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. In their comments, GASBR members participating in that evening’s call were unanimously agreed that:
We strongly oppose DOE’s proposed amendments, as they are utterly contrary to the statutory purpose of Title IX, which was enacted as a measure to help address the historic and systemic oppression and unequal treatment of women and girls in our educational institutions. The proposed amendments do so by conflating “gender identity” with “sex,” and accepting as a premise that recipients [of federal education funding] must accept trans-identifying males as being de facto females and must make accommodations that allow them to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
The position statement adopted by GASBR can be reviewed in its entirety on the website of the Green Alliance. Its comments to the Department of Education are now a matter of public record and should be accessible on their website.
The Green Alliance urges others to join GASBR in opposing the Biden Administration’s efforts to destroy sports programs built for women and girls in tax-payer funded educational settings. The deadline for filing comments is Monday, May 15th, 2023. The proposed rule revisions may be reviewed at this link. Comments may be submitted at this link.
In this article, Robert Jensen shares a straight-forward view of Cancel Culture and how critique of a political position is not necessarily directed to mock the people who hold it but rather an invitation to become accountable to one’s obligation to participate in democratic dialogue.
In the current squabble on the liberal/progressive/left side of the fence over so-called “cancel culture,” in which one open letter in favor of freedom of expression led to a rebuttal open letter in favor of a different approach to freedom of expression, I can offer a report on the experience of being canceled.
Several times over the past few years I’ve been asked to speak by university or community groups, only to see those events canceled by organizers after someone complained that I am “transphobic.” At a couple of events that drew complaints but were not canceled, including one in a church, critics tried to disrupt my talk. None of the events was actually a talk on transgender issues. The complaint was that I should not be allowed to speak in progressive settings — about other feminist issues, the ecological crises, or anything else — because what I’ve written about the ideology of the transgender movement is said to be bigoted. A local radical bookstore that denounced me publicly went so far as to no longer carry my books, which I had given them free copies of for years.
If I were, in fact, a bigot, these cancellations would be easy to understand. I have never invited a bigot to speak in a class I taught or at an event I helped organize. I have invited people to speak who held some political views with which I did not agree (after all, if I only invited people who agreed with me on everything, I would be bored and lonely), but I have no interest in giving bigots a public platform.
The curious thing about these canceled/disrupted events is that no one ever pointed to anything I have written or said in public that is, in fact, bigoted. If transphobia is the fear or hatred of people who identify as transgender, nothing I have written or said is transphobic. Most of my critics simply assert that because I support the radical feminist critique of transgender ideology, I am by definition a bigot and transphobe.
For the Sake of Clarity
Let me be clear: I’m not whining or asking for sympathy. I am a white man and a retired university professor with a stable income and a network of friends and comrades who offer support. I continue to do political and intellectual work I find rewarding and can find places to publish my work. While I don’t enjoy being insulted, these verbal attacks don’t have much effect on my life. I’m not concerned about myself but about the progressive community’s capacity for critical thinking and respectful debate.
In that spirit, here is my contribution to that debate on transgenderism and the value of open discussion:
One of the basic points that feminists — along with many other writers — have made is that biological sex categories are real and exist outside of any particular cultural understanding of those categories. The terms “male” and “female” refer to those biological sex categories, while social norms about “masculinity” and “femininity” reflect how any particular society expects males and females to behave. That may seem obvious to many readers, but in some progressive and feminist circles it’s routine for people to say that those sex categories themselves are a “social construction.” I have been told that because I assert that biological sex categories are immutable, I am transphobic.
Is that claim defensible? Are sex categories a social construction?
About Reproduction & Respiration
Let’s think about reproduction. Some creatures reproduce asexually, through such processes as fission and budding, and some animals lay eggs. Most mammals, including all humans, reproduce sexually through the combination of a sperm and an egg (the two types of gamete cells) that leads to live birth.
Now, let’s think about respiration. Most aquatic creatures (whales and dolphins, which are mammals, are an exception) take in oxygen through gills. Mammals, including all humans, get oxygen by taking air into our lungs.
These descriptions of creatures’ reproduction and respiration are the result of a social process we call science, but they are not social constructions. We describe the world with human language, but what we describe doesn’t change just because we might change the language we use.
The term “social construction” implies that a reality can change through social processes. An example is marriage. What is a marriage? That depends on how a particular society constructs the concept. Change the definition — to include same-sex couples, for example — and the reality of who can get married changes.
Cannot Be Changed by Human Action
But again, at the risk of seeming simplistic, these descriptions of reproduction and respiration systems cannot be changed by human action. We cannot socially construct ourselves into reproducing asexually or by laying eggs instead of reproducing sexually through fertilization of egg by sperm, any more than we could socially construct ourselves into breathing through gills instead of lungs.
When it comes to respiration, no one suggests that “lung-based respiration is a social construction.” If someone made such a claim most of us would say, “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense to me.” Yet when it comes to reproduction, some people argue that “biological sex is a social construction,” which makes no more sense than claiming respiration is a social construction.
To be clear: Humans do create cultural meaning about sex differences. Humans who have a genetic makeup to produce sperm (males) and humans who have a genetic makeup to produce eggs (females) are treated differently in a variety of ways that go beyond roles in reproduction. [Note: A small percentage of the human population is born “intersex,” a term to mark those who do not fit clearly into male/female categories in terms of reproductive systems, secondary sexual characteristics, and chromosomal structure. But the existence of intersex people does not change the realities of sexual reproduction, and they are not a third sex.]
The Radical Change
In the struggle for women’s liberation, feminists in the 1970s began to use the term “gender” to describe the social construction of meaning around the differences in biological sex. When men would say, “Women are just not suited for political leadership,” for example, feminists would point out that this was not a biological fact to be accepted but a cultural norm to be resisted.
To state the obvious: Biological sex categories exist outside of human action. Social gender categories are a product of human action.
This observation leads to reasonable questions, which are not bigoted or transphobic: When those in the transgender movement assert that “trans women are women,” what do they mean? If they mean that a male human can somehow transform into a female human, the claim is incoherent because humans cannot change biological sex categories. If they mean that a male human can feel uncomfortable in the social gender category of “man” and prefer to live in a society’s gender category of “woman,” that is easy to understand. But it begs a question: Is the problem that one is assigned to the wrong category? Or is the problem that society has imposed gender categories that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary on everyone? And if the problem is in society’s gender categories, then is not the solution to analyze the system of patriarchy — institutionalized male dominance — that generates those rigid categories? Should we not seek to dismantle that system? Radical feminists argue for such a radical change in society.
These are the kinds of questions I have asked and the kinds of arguments I have made in writing and speaking. If I am wrong, then critics should point out mistakes and inaccuracies in my work. But if this radical feminist analysis is a strong one, then how can an accurate description of biological realities be evidence of bigotry or transphobia?
An Approach, Not An Attack
When I challenge the ideology of the transgender movement from a radical feminist perspective, which is sometimes referred to as “gender-critical” (critical of the way our culture socially constructs gender norms), I am not attacking people who identify as transgender. Instead, I am offering an alternative approach — one rooted in a collective struggle against patriarchal ideologies, institutions, and practices, rather than a medicalized approach rooted in liberal individualism.
That’s why the label “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) is inaccurate. Radical feminists don’t exclude people who identify as transgender but rather offer what we believe is a more productive way to deal with the distress that people feel about gender norms that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary. That is not bigotry, but politics. Our arguments are relevant to the ongoing debate about public policies, such as who is granted access to female-only spaces or who can compete in girls’ and women’s sports. They are relevant to concerns about the safety of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions. And radical feminism is grounded in compassion for those who experience gender dysphoria — instead of turning away from reality, we are suggesting ways to cope that we believe to be more productive for everyone.
Now, a final prediction. I expect that some people in the transgender movement will suggest that my reproduction/respiration analogy mocks people who identify as transgender by suggesting that they are ignorant. Let me state clearly: I do not think that. The analogy is offered to point out that an argument relevant to public policy doesn’t hold up. To critique a political position in good faith is not to mock the people who hold it but rather to take seriously one’s obligation to participate in democratic dialogue.
In a cancel culture, people who disagree with me may find it easy to ignore the argument and simply label me a bigot, on the reasoning that because I think the ideology of the transgender movement is open to critique, I obviously am transphobic.
But I want to make one final plea that people not do that, with two questions: If my argument is cogent — and there certainly are good reasons to reach that conclusion — why is it in the interests of anyone — including people who identify as transgender — to ignore such an argument? And how can people determine whether my argument is cogent if it is not part of the public conversation?
This interview with radical lesbian feminist, activist, and writer Julia Beck includes her insights on being politically homeless, girl gangs, the resilience of women (particularly women who have de transitioned), and our need for mutual respect and solidarity and support. Our skill share for this episode is a reading of DGR’s Solidarity Guidelines. Music is by Ali Bee, radical feminist singer and songwriter, and by Thistle Pettersen, radical feminist, activist and musician. We invite our listeners to explore the diversity within the radical feminist community and to challenge ourselves at every level, personally, politically and socially, in the fight to end patriarchy.
In this episode of The Green Flame podcast, we focus on radical feminism. We speak with Saba Malik and Lierre Keith, with Aimee and Kara in the UK, and with Renee Gerlich in Aotearoa (New Zealand). This episode features music from Beth Quist and poetry by Dominique Christina. Special thanks to Beth Quist and Elizabeth R. for help with this episode.
Radical feminism is a branch of feminism that emphasizes the historical and contemporary importance of patriarchy as a system of oppression, and works to dismantle it by advocating for reproductive rights, fighting pornography and prostitution, opposing male violence, fighting back against the oppressive system of gender, and more. Radical feminism also ties together analysis of economic class, race, and other hierarchies within society.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Bios
Lierre Keith is an American writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist. Lierre is the author of the novels Conditions of War and Skyler Gabriel. Her non-fiction works include the highly acclaimed The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. She is coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet (Seven Stories Press, 2011) and she’s the editor of The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution (Seven Stories Press, 2012). She’s also been arrested six times. She lives in northern California.
Saba Malik is a longtime radical feminist, environmentalist, and anti-racist organizer. She studies herbal medicine and loves to spend time in the forest with her children.
Renee Gerlich is a feminist writer and activist based in the Wellington region, in New Zealand.
Dominique Christina is an award-winning writer, performer, educator, and activist. She holds five national poetry slam titles in the three years she competed, including the 2014 & 2012 Women of the World Slam Champion and 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion. She is presently the only person to have won two Women of the World Poetry Championships. She is the author of 5 books.
Aimee and Kara are organizers and radical feminists based in the UK.
![Call for Comments on Women’s Sex-Based Rights in Sports [Press Release]](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2023/05/that-s-her-business-8KHPeh9mNvs-unsplash-1080x675.jpg)
