Four Reasons To Stop Saying “Gender Dysphoria”
(continued from https://fstdt.com/793452YBWLTF3 )
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There may be other ways to deal with the distress that comes from being at odds with sex role stereotypes. Despite personal anecdotes of overcoming this distress through learning about radical feminism, this is not pursued even by gender critical psychotherapists as a potential remedy or a way to channel this distress. None recommend feminist activism, or participation in radical lesbian communities.

Usually, the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic communities do not recognize psychotherapy’s unwanted side effects, as for instance its negative impact on the liberation and feminist awareness of women, as Celia Kitzinger and Rachel Perkins have warned us long ago.

Instead, those who refer to the psychiatric concept of “gender dysphoria” when discussing the problems of transgenderism demonstrate uncritical views of the whole system of psychotherapy and psychiatry itself, which includes the institution of psychiatric diagnoses.

As feminists, we have to criticize these systems and the concepts they use, work that feminists like Phyllis Chesler and Celia Kitzinger already started many years ago. This is especially true on issues related to sex and sex role stereotypes, which Sheila Jeffreys has spent decades documenting.

Upholding the label of “gender dysphoria” confirms the psychiatric notion that the body is the actual problem and used in feminist circles it suggests that mitigating suffering on an individual level should be feminists’ main focus of concern.

In addition, it seems that the diagnosis itself creates the symptoms that it tries to describe. Some women reported that the aversion against their body started only after others assigned the label “gender dysphoria” to them, which is an example of the strong constitutive nature of concepts and ideas. As Emily Köhler testified in her talk at Women’s Declaration International, relating to the concept of “gender dysphoria” taught her to dissociate from her body.

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