Premium: Why Are Therapists Transing Away the Gay?
Gender: A Wider Lens
Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley
4.6 • 961 Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2024
⏱️ 4 minutes
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Summary
The relationship between homophobia and gender medicine is deeply intertwined, with historical and contemporary practices shedding light on troubling patterns. Historically, gender-nonconforming individuals were often pathologized and subjected to medical interventions under the guise of correcting deviance. Today, these practices persist, albeit under new narratives that often frame gender nonconformity as a medical issue requiring intervention, such as transitioning.
Emerging trends reveal the influence of social contagion, with cultural narratives and social media amplifying gender identity struggles among vulnerable populations, particularly youth. This surge raises critical questions about the lack of scientific rigor in therapeutic practices, the ethics of irreversible medical procedures, and the neglect of alternative psychological or social supports. These patterns reflect a broader societal discomfort with nonconformity and a tendency to medicalize identities rather than embrace diversity.
In this bonus episode for premium subscribers, Glenna Goldis argues that modern gender medicine perpetuates homophobia by medicalizing gender nonconformity, effectively pathologizing same-sex attraction in a way that parallels past efforts to suppress homosexuality. She references the 2015 APA guidelines, which shifted the framework for addressing gender dysphoria, emphasizing affirmation and, often, medical intervention, suggesting that these guidelines reframe homosexuality as something to be corrected if it appears intertwined with gender nonconformity. She advocates for a more critical examination of these practices, urging evidence-based approaches that prioritize genuine understanding and acceptance over medicalization.
To deepen your understanding of Glenna's perspective, we encourage you to explore her Substack, particularly the two pieces linked below (referenced during the conversation). Both provide valuable insight into her critique of current gender medicine practices and their broader social implications.
Why Therapists Trans Away the Gay
Watch our full length episode with Glenna Goldis: https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/episode-196
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, widerlens podcast listener. What you're about to hear is a preview of one of our bonus episodes for premium subscribers. |
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| 0:20.0 | Now here's the preview of this week's exclusive content. |
| 0:24.6 | Yeah, certainly homophobia is right at the root of this and it carries through all through history up until today. |
| 0:30.6 | And so, you know, one piece I wrote was about, I focused on the therapist and I asked, |
| 0:35.6 | why are therapists transing away the gay? Like, |
| 0:38.1 | to me, it looks really obvious that they're just transing gay people much of the time and that |
| 0:42.9 | these gay people need something else besides steroids. You know, they need some kind of therapy or, |
| 0:48.1 | you know. And so what I found, I was expecting to see more of a like theory, maybe like an evil |
| 0:53.8 | theory that they were all |
| 0:55.0 | adopting that was making them mistreat gay people. And what I found was even worse, it was that like, |
| 1:00.1 | there's no theory. They just go on vibes. There's kind of different categories of bad ideas that they |
| 1:03.9 | have. But I don't even know if they're like, and you guys are no better than I do, but like, |
| 1:06.9 | are they even learning anything about gay people and therapist school? Are they just like I I mean I get the sense that it's you know today the last 20 years |
| 1:15.7 | therapists have just been calling themselves LGBT experts really knowing nothing about gay people |
| 1:20.2 | feeling like they're experts because they have a gay friend or because they're like not |
| 1:23.5 | homophobic so they're really proud of themselves for that but they actually know nothing |
| 1:26.9 | and so they're following their instincts and their their instincts tell them, like, that woman will |
| 1:30.6 | look better as a man. |
| 1:31.9 | Like, she's not that pretty. |
| 1:33.3 | Let's give her a beard. |
... |
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