Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

Yes, all that, too.

What I'm trying to say is, it varies within gender as well as between them. Some women are aggressive and competitive. Some men are warm and nurturing. (Most humans have some mixture of the two.) You can say "it's testosterone" or you can say "it's cultural conditioning" but the important thing is that it varies and that variance is OK.

Hey Emily - Thank you. :)

gonna check in later because this will likely be a thread to learn from, just please do me a favour and explain/link any jargon ( "culturally essentialist" up there threw me, though to be fair it also took me three attempts at processing "climate change denier" before I realised it wasn't talking about sheerer stockings.)

Anyone who takes potshots at the surreal typing lysdexia caused by my iPhone is gonna get a crack on the head for asking. Just saying, like. My spelling is gonna be all over the shop.

Yes I am aware of the hilarity involved in an amateur Li ghost (that was linguist, iPhone - but I'm gonna leave that to show what this thing does to me) who cannot spell but chomski my Sapir-wharf hypothesARSE if u wanna rib me about it. ;-)

^^^^^ha ha this is all a clumsy joke but if you ever can't google something or want a clarification pls say "srs question" and I'll try to de-jargon-ify

It's not so much learning new jargon as learning a new language requires a new way of thinking coz replacing words w/o replacing the thought processes is not progress. It's trying to unlearn so many of the kierarchy's ideas which is often the hard part.

Right, why is why "can't google" isn't necessarily the problem - a lot of this is going to be "but what do you mean by that word / in this context?"

the funniest iphone autocorrect i've seen is changing "sexting" to "destiny" :/

Yeah but there's a difference between "who is Dale Spender" and "what do you mean by kierarchy in this context" - happy to discuss the latter. Not so much the former.

I dunno, "cultural essentialist" seemed to be the opposite/corollary of "biological essentialist" and didn't really need clarification? But I guess maybe we should touch on how there are two (opposing?) schools of thought saying gender difference is the result of nature or nurture. Obv almost all arguments of this kind are at their heart an and/both proposition not an either/or.

But the biggest difference is that the Cultural crew believe that this stuff is nurture - and therefore can be changed and the Biological crew think this is impossible (and maybe even "against nature") to try to strive for gender equality

(see if you can guess which side I'm on, huh?)

if anyone is going to continue to insist that gender is a ~biological~ thing, I'm going to treat them like a climate change denier, and just not engage with nonsense.

biological gender IS a thing, and anyone who continues to insist that it isn't is simply wrong, full stop. in an overall sense, we can measure the differences between men and women any number of ways, not just in terms of the gross architecture of the body, but also in terms of more subtle things like its chemistry and DNA. we don't fully understand what all of this means, of course, and individuals vary greatly, but this doesn't mean that we can't scientifically "perceive" biological gender. we can.

of course and like i very clearly said before, we can only perceive and understand the significance of biological gender at a remove, as filtered through the understandings of gender that we've inherited. that's what makes this subject interesting. we know that we are driven both by biology and by the cultural constructs that compose our understanding, and there's no way to clearly distinguish between the two.

to repeat another thing i said earlier, we can see the workings of gender in male violence as a phenomenon. male violence exists and is a problem in every culture in the world, and this has always been true throughout human history so far as we know. you suggested that if i were dropped into ancient sparta, i would be perceived as a wimp. of course i would. in case you missed it, that was the entire point of the paragraph you were responding to: that gender is, to a substantial extent, a cultural construct. but it's worth noting that ancient sparta was no less dominated by male violence than our world is today. this does not conclusively "prove" that male violence is a product of male biology, of course, but it does incline me to suspect that biology plays a role.

You're not *even* wrong.

You seem to inhabit this weird fantasy world where male power is not prized and rewarded at every turn, and female power is not demonised and punished at every turn. Where male violence is not *fetishised* and portrayed as noble and good and female violence is not denied in order to keep some wonderful "pure" vision of "femininity" as opposed to "masculinity."

This fantasy world where violent women from Boudiccea to Margaret Thatcher can just be handwaved away.

A fantasy world where structural inequality does not codify "male" supremacy over "female" at every step because the rules were written to keep it that way. These ideas are not reinforced with cultural narrative over and again until ppl believe they are true bcuz other views just don't get presented, or are actively derided by those w the most to lose?

And then you want to turn around and talk about this highly contrived and exaggerated version of "masculinity" as being somehow inevitable, even biological?

And I just call: bullshit.

I've been looking for the past half hour to see if I can find any studies that strongly demonstrate even the simple premise that testosterone leads to increased aggression. Can't find anything. And conversely, if you google 'violent women' you get lots of hits about violence against women, a review of a book about Hollywood fetishisation of female violence, and a Daily Mail article about teenage girl gangs.

If the starting assumption for discourse is that men are perpetrators and women are victims, which it seems to be, it excludes from serious consideration the violence women do against men, the violence women do against each other, and the (sexual) violence men inflict on other men. I'll keep looking for biological underpinnings to the assumption, there may well be something, but I'm inclined to think it'll turn out to be by far the lesser factor.

I mean let's get this straight. I'm not denying that there's such a * thing* as male violence, or that male violence especially as used as a method of control against women (hello Chris Brown and domestic violence awareness) is not hugely problematic.

What I'm denying is this idea that violence is something automatically and essentially coded into masculinity from biological sex up - rather than something which is learned, reinforced and rewarded at every step of a man's life.

i think you're responding to an imaginary person in your head, cuz it sure as hell isn't me.

of course male power is prized and rewarded at every turn. or course female power is demonized and punished i don't wave any counter examples away. but the history of human violence, not just in western culture but in every culture ever known, is predominantly the history of male violence. to my mind, in conjunction with what little we do know about male and female biology, this makes it reasonable (not certain, just reasonable) to suppose that male biology plays a role in male violence.

would say the same of many other ostensibly gendered characteristics and behaviors, that biology probably does play some role. again though, it's impossible to clearly distinguish between the urgings of biology and cultural conditioning. but the fact that we can't know exactly what role biology plays does not mean that biology plays no role. in order to understand such things clearly, we have to accept huge amount of uncertainty. i.e., if you align yourself with either "crew", Cultural or Biological, you're missing the larger picture.

What I'm denying is this idea that violence is something automatically and essentially coded into masculinity from biological sex up - rather than something which is learned, reinforced and rewarded at every step of a man's life.

i suspect that both factors play a role, nature & nurture.

Zora there's evidence that testosterone is released by men who are victors *after* the aggression is over but little evidence that testosterone causes violence or aggression. It's complicated, as all hormonal things involving humans tend to be.

If the starting assumption for discourse is that men are perpetrators and women are victims, which it seems to be, it excludes from serious consideration...

i don't think you need a starting assumption. i think it's better to look at the available information and work up from there.

Contenderizer you keep repeating the same things over and over as if you haven't read what I've posted (and certainly none of the books I've referenced) so you are also having a conversation with someone who is not me.

Has anyone else read this? Should I go home and re-read it for this thread?

...and A Passing Spacecadet was right. We opened up a discussion of "women's issues" to well-meaning dudes and in less than 1 day it's become all about dudes and testosterone and male violence and we're not even talking about women at all.

Not even Myra Hindley.

there's evidence that testosterone is released by men who are victors *after* the aggression is over but little evidence that testosterone causes violence or aggression. It's complicated, as all hormonal things involving humans tend to be.

there's also evidence that testosterone inclines humans to competitiveness, and is produced as a "reward" for competing successfully. and violence can be an effective competitive strategy, at least in the sense that beating someone up causes your body to produce more testosterone. violent criminals tend to have elevated testosterone levels relative to the general population, and we can't say for certain that causation is a one-way street in that case.

That looks great, LaureL (ha! My iPhone just tried to change yr name, it's not me!) but I'm still reading Bitch which doesn't deny the possibility of female violence either.

Contenderizer you keep repeating the same things over and over as if you haven't read what I've posted (and certainly none of the books I've referenced) so you are also having a conversation with someone who is not me.

i've read all of your posts closely. i'm familiar with the concepts you're discussing. i repeat myself only because you repeatedly respond not to my arguments, but to a straw man that only tangentially connects with what i've said.

I'm coming in at a tangent right now, because one of the things that's been upsetting me recently is male rape. I've heard reps from NGOs in Africa denying that there is a problem, denying that there is any need to include men in their considerations when setting up services to support victims or even when investigating war crimes. Yes, more women are probably victims. But the numbers of men who've been attacked isn't something anyone even cares to find out about.

This stuff: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men

I feel like this is a onsequence of stereotypes of both men and women but I accept that's not where this conversation is at right now. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

Contenderizer viz the quote you took out of my statement; your response is exactly the approach I think should be taken - to any subject - I was expressing my frustration that I couldn't find anyone doing that. Everyone writing about this stuff, including policy wonks at the UN, is trotting out the same lazy set of assumptions.

onsequence = consequence, obv

As for discussing testosterone and male violence &c &c, I don't see how these can be things people-identifying-as-women-with-or-without-biological-determinants should ignore.

We opened up a discussion of "women's issues" to well-meaning dudes and in less than 1 day it's become all about dudes and testosterone and male violence and we're not even talking about women at all.

in my OP, i talked about a number of things, not just male violence. when you argued with me (IN ALL CAPS), i narrowed things down to male violence in the hopes that it might provide a generally agreeable example of a gendered behavior with some relation to biology. maybe this is too "controversial" for this thread, i dunno.

anyway, the thread that this primarily expands out from, the feminist blogs & communities thread, was always open to guys, right?

You seem to inhabit this weird fantasy world where male power is not prized and rewarded at every turn, and female power is not demonised and punished at every turn.

This rhetoric may be emotionally accurate, but it is ott when compared to mundane reality. How so? Because it leaves no wiggle room for so much as one neutral male-female interaction at any time.

Let's say I invent a board game where men players take alternating turns with women players who compete for a share of power. To make this fair (though not realistic) at the start of the game both sides will have a million units of power. The rules will be your rules. At every turn men will be rewarded and women will be punished. We will do this by taking away one unit of women's power and giving it to the men.

After exactly a million turns the men will have two million units of power and the women will have zero.

But it wouldn't matter how many units were involved to start, or what tiny fraction of a unit changed hands at every turn, the end result would always be that the men become omnipotently all-powerful and the women will be utterly, completely, nakedly, and absolutely powerless. This may feel true to you, but this is not the world I live in.

Zora it's not that I think ppl should ignore it, it just can veer perilously into "but what about teh mens!!!!" territory.

You're right, that this enforcement of "men as perps, women as victims" is a narrative that is deeply dependent on patriarchal and harmful views of both women and men.

It is worth looking at, in that sexual violence (especially as war crimes) is an everyone problem, not just a woman problem.

But one of my problems is, so often when women gather to talk about their problems and the narratives of their own lives, so often that narrative gets hijacked by men who want to substitute their own narratives about women, and I'm deeply tired of that.

P.S. If the idea is to change how men act or think, then such ott venting is self-defeating, because we're not getting any recognition or reinforcement for right actions or right thinking. Whatever we do could not be enough, so why begin?

Being a tad too literal there Aimy, imho. "At every turn" may be hyperbole, but it's not hard to see that if you replace it with 'frequently' you get a world many of us would recognise.

i suspect that both factors play a role, nature & nurture.

i feel like you're talking in circles, perhaps. I think it's important to examine what's at stake in insisting on a distinction like Nature/Nurture.

in almost every case I'd argue it's about preserving access to "nature" as a privileged or objective point of view. The idea of the distinction itself is something culturally given. Which is to say that the distinction nature/nurture always takes place on the side of nurture.

it's not that "nature" or an "outside" to culture doesn't exist (how could culture exist otherwise?) but that we only have access to it, as I said above, as a kind of negative capability. we can't really climb out of the hole, only dig deeper.

Gendered behaviour with regards to biology is *not* "controversial." it's the absolute ur-narrative most cherished creation myth of all time!

What's deeply controversial is to actually say hey, maybe the similarities outweigh the differences, let's look at the science and numbers and find out how much of this is actual fact (not that much) and how much is narrative?

And that game gets played every day, Aimless. It doesn't end up with men: 2 million women: 0 but it does end up with men: £1 women: £0.70 that we've had to fight and march and claw to even get that high.

Being a tad too literal there Aimy...

It has always been my approach that people ought to be given enough respect to take them at their word, to start out by assuming they said what they meant to say. When this approach leads me to a conclusion that seems, shall we say, off kilter, then my approach is to point out where it veered off kilter, as best I can make out. Then that person has the option of either confirming that they said just what they intended to say, or else rephrase things nearer to their intended meaning.

I know this is weird, but it is the best way I know to get at what people are trying to tell me.

How about this: is the lack of female-on-male violence (or female-on-female violence), or the perceived lack thereof, purely the result of cultural constructs and received culture?

xxxxxpost

OK, Myra Hindley. I can only work up a perspective on violent women by starting with science and building forward, which is why I was looking at testosterone and aggression. I started off by looking for studies on causes of violence so that I could rule biological factors out or in before moving on to social factors. Testosterone is the easy target, being the main biological driver for aggression, according to received wisdom.

Ultimately I would like to understand why this dichotomy of men = x, women = y is what it is, accept I will probably never get there, but I really feel like it has to start off as a gender-blind investigation otherwise it gets too hard (for me) to separate science from conjecture, nature from nurture, and so forth.

Perhaps I need a new thread for Totally Neutral Exploration of Gender Issues.

I've just invoked the 70p rule so I lose bcuz we're back to Feminism 101 again.

The nature/nurture argument is important because it always comes back to "can these structures be changed?" and if you are someone who is getting some benefit from those structures, you see no reason to *have* to change. While if you are someone being oppressed by those structures, you HAVE to believe change is possible otherwise you'd put rocks in yr pockets and walk in a river.

it's not that "nature" or an "outside" to culture doesn't exist (how could culture exist otherwise?) but that we only have access to it, as I said above, as a kind of negative capability. we can't really climb out of the hole, only dig deeper.

― ryan, Monday, February 13, 2012 11:11 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but i've been saying exactly that all along, only inverted. just because we cannot directly perceive nature, can only see a construction from the constructed position of our own awareness, does not mean that nature is not perceptible, not real, not worth considering.

How about this: is the lack of female-on-male violence (or female-on-female violence), or the perceived lack thereof, purely the result of cultural constructs and received culture?

what counts as violence? can any aggressive or dominance seeking behavior count?

Yes, more women are probably victims. But the numbers of men who've been attacked isn't something anyone even cares to find out about.

why are you bringing this up in this thread though? are you suggesting because sexual violence(primarily towards women by men) has been discussed that we must also acknowledge that men have also been raped? why is this an equivalence that needs stating?

every single time there's a conversation about this topic in a space, this (or something similar) comes up. i used to be on another, much smaller forum, where every time there was a thread about rape or something, the few female participants ended up getting pushed out of the conversation by male participants, who outnumbered them (though that wasn't the determining factor) by a long shot. eventually we just stopped posting in those topics.

if you want male rape to be discussed, then yeah, there's a conversation to be had about that, especially wrt to your point about stereotyping and assumptions. i'm just saying, is this the right place for it?

What lack of female on female violence? Anyone who was ever 12 at an all girl school (I.e. me) will call this statement for the fantasy it is.

But one of my problems is, so often when women gather to talk about their problems and the narratives of their own lives, so often that narrative gets hijacked by men who want to substitute their own narratives about women, and I'm deeply tired of that.

this seems a bit unfair, at least as applied to this thread, which was specifically constructed to be open.

Gendered behaviour with regards to biology is *not* "controversial." it's the absolute ur-narrative most cherished creation myth of all time!

i meant controversial wr2 this thread

WCC, if the game doesn't end up men 2 million and women zero, then the rules are different than you expressed them. Also, if clawing, fighting and marching have yielded an improvement, then at some point somewhere men have ceded some amount of reward to women, as opposed to punishment at every turn.

Again, if men are to be denied any credit for ever taking any positive actions in regard to assisting women to overcome this state of power inequality, or for ever allying themselves with justice for women, or for being anything but right bastards who break women's bones to bake their bread, then... I think you're missing an essential trick in getting where I assume you want to go.

From comments you've made already in this thread, I suspect your reaction will be that, just like a man, I am whining to be patted on the head and given credit for being a good boy, while I ought to be inflamed with anger at the INJUSTICE of it all, and if I'm not 100% with you, and can't do right without appreciation, then to hell with me.

The problem with that line of thinking is simple enough. If I must be 100% with you, and if that means I must necessarily think that all men are nasty, unfeeling, power-hungry dealers of injustice who stand on privilege at every turn, then... sorry. I'm a man and there is something unacceptable in that definition of me. Something of a catch-22 you might say.

But, hey, suit yourself.

Con, this whole "biology is destiny" thing is something that many (maybe most?) women experience, constricting the size and shape of our lives, on an almost daily basis.

It's this hydra-headed thing that no matter how many times you chop off one head, it sprouts another to bite you. So not wanting to engage with that, not wanting to argue it down yet again, is often due to sheer exhaustion rather than a lack of engagement.

Aimless I don't argue with ppl who put words in my mouth. Just carry on having your discussion by yourself coz I don't see where you need me in it, considering you've already decided what I'm gonna say.

What lack of female on female violence?

Well, the relative lack of women convicted of violent crimes would be the obvious reference point.

While if you are someone being oppressed by those structures, you HAVE to believe change is possible..

What's sad is the dialogue involving female-on-male violence in relationships has nearly completely been drowned out by so-called "men's rights" people with claims like "when a woman hits a man it's no big deal, but when a man hits a woman it's domestic violence!" I don't think yelling about where blame is placed is helping anyone.

nasty, unfeeling, power-hungry dealers of injustice who stand on privilege at every turn, then...

I think it's important to realize that men stand on privilege at every turn whether they are nasty, unfeeling, or power-hungry or not. Even ones who are allied with women, working to help women, etc. Like if you can't get that then you will always be having the wrong discussion.

It's a numbers game, mh, and it's difficult to say "yes this exists. But can we please not let the narrative of the one place where women are unfortunately in the majority and men in the minority be written exclusively by that minority?"

Exclusively being the operative word there.

Also let's not even open the can of worms that is male on male violence which doesn't even need to be inside a relationship. Intra-sex violence as a real thing in this world.

WCC, you are steering by your own compass and you are locked on to the course it has set for you. Good luck. Just realize that if you place a chunk of ferrous metal near a compass the needle is attracted to that instead of to magnetic north. If you don't notice this you can get pretty far off track.

Diplomacy.

i'm not at all well informed but i do see people expressing both 1 and 2 with apparent sincerity, which i suppose means that they're not too uncommon (if i could take notice of them).

both seem prima facie coherent as moral/political stances but liable to harbor all manner of confusions/distortions of the relevant moral and political concepts (which if interpreted charitably could mean challenging, radical revisions of them in the direction of justice, the good, etc.).

for instance on 1, a similar view about homophobia would probably be met with skepticism. yet it seems to be a consistent implication of a trans-positive ethic that if one accepts the gender self-identifications of others, for instance not at all denying trans women any status, role, etc. one assigns cis women, then one must accept them in sexual activity as well. even as a cis het man, for instance. if in response to the imputation of transphobia a cis het man who had some inclination to prefer cis women to trans women as sexual partners appealed to his desires as on some level a brute fact, or as something that falls under the exercise of his own autonomy (on a par with the self-identifications of others), the idea that our desires are educable, correctable, and often deeply in need of education and correction, would seem to undermine that appeal. but it seems like it would be a bit of a feat to appeal to autonomy and authenticity or legitimacy of desires on the one side and, out of a moral/political critique (what the use of the term 'transphobia' earmarks), to question or deny them on the other in the name of a more enlightened desire, without putting enormous pressure on all those concepts to change significantly. in effect, it's a critique that sees most contemporary behavior around gender and sex as thoroughly unradicalized, and validates itself by resting on a vision of a thoroughly transformed society.

I'm heading off to a party in a moment, so I can't get deep into discourse, but I would say (speaking as a queer trans woman in a relationship with another trans woman):

Regarding 1), genital preferences are not necessarily transphobic, but the people who feel the need to publicly articulate their sexuality in terms of attraction to specific kinds of genitals are usually also making a whole lot of cissexist assumptions about trans people and their bodies. Patterns of attraction are conditioned by systems of power, but that doesn't mean they can be reshaped at will; at the same time, though, statements about who one can find desirable can often serve as a way of policing the boundaries to a given community (think of what "No fats, no fems, no Asians" implies as part of an online dating profile).

Regarding 2), this seems mostly like a hyperbolic way to express frustration with transphobia, and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Xp

yes, op made it sound like these ideas were axiomatic in this leftist group when it sounds much more likely that these things were said in exasperation or to blow off steam... either way i don't understand the point of struggling with the ideas and/or self-flagellating for not being a proper ally unless you've completely lost the ability to evaluate things for yourself tbh?

there are certain ideas that are more useful in an academic rather than practical sense and these (partic #1) are good examples

j, well put

also appreciate and find agreeable OWS’s perspective

yeah same, great posts j. and one way street

genital preferences are not necessarily transphobic, but the people who feel the need to publicly articulate their sexuality in terms of attraction to specific kinds of genitals are usually also making a whole lot of cissexist assumptions about trans people and their bodies

Shortly after I posted here, another trans comrade reponded to the original post and made this distinction

op made it sound like these ideas were axiomatic in this leftist group when it sounds much more likely that these things were said in exasperation or to blow off steam

Somewhere in between.

great posts j. and one way street

Co-sign, thanks y'all's

apologies in advance if this is addressed upthread

i don't recall growing up having any conflicts about my gender identity, but for the last several months, i have had recurring bouts of dysphoria where ive fixated on wanting to have a feminine body/be a woman. ive mostly put these notions to the side, but theyve grown in intensity the last couple of days and im starting to think there's *something* and im really struggling with it. like i dont know what to do with these feelings. i dont feel like "a woman trapped in a man's body" per se although ive never really cared for how my body looks at any size (my weight has fluctuated over the last 15 years). i think the fact that im married and have a child is whats making me the most terrified. what if i go down this path and wreck what i have? will my child understand? will my wife? will she still want to be with me? are there any trans/NB folks or anyone else here who can speak to this? i am in my early 30s and i havent so much as given 2nd thought to this until the last few months, is this weird?

Good luck to you, m bison. What you're dealing with isn't weird or wrong. I don't think it's uncommon for trans and NB people to come to an understanding of theirselves gradually or at irregular intervals, or to be aware of dysphoria before they know exactly what it means in terms of their identity.

In my own case: I'm a trans woman in my mid-thirties, and while I was intensely aware of my dysphoria as a teenager, I spent most of my twenties trying not to think about my gender or how alienated I felt by my body, until I kind of realized at thirty that trying to ignore it was becoming unbearable. My partner, who transitioned in her later thirties, had a similar trajectory, and neither of us have ever thought of ourselves as "women trapped in men's bodies": that's a nineteenth-century soundbite formulated to explain male homosexuality that has stuck around mostly because it flatters straight, cisnormative assumptions.

I would just try to be lucid about these feelings and find a space (whether it's the practice of a therapist who works with queer and trans clients, a trans support group, a queer community space that isn't primarily focused on hooking up, or wherever) where you feel safe to work out these feelings and how you want to deal with them. Your concerns are definitely reasonable: a lot of relationships don't survive one partner transitioning, although some do. All you can really do is try to be honest with yourself and your partner and explore your options patiently, whatever you choose to do.

m bison, this is going to appear like it goes against everything I've espoused recently, because I am a big believer in "people's experiences are real; people are who they say they are".

Over the past few years, I've been doing a lot of talking to non-binary and trans people, trying to compare experiences, and a lot of reading on the subject.

One thing that strikes me in common, with most of the non-binary and trans people I've encountered is how deep-seated these feelings are, and how early they first appear, and how long *something* has been going on. It's a sensation that usually occurs first in childhood, or adolescence at the latest, a sensation of being "different" or not-fitting or something being *off*, which may not initially even be recognised as *gender* being the thing that is off. Now, for people like myself, who did 'pop out' in middle-age, it was a question of 'not having a word for it', or 'being told it was impossible' and suppressing and repressing and squishing those feelings down and overcompensating for them. But it's a lifelong thing. Mine was a thing that came up in childhood. It came up in adolescence. My friends used to *joke* about it when I was in my 20s. It was something I did not have a proper *name* for until I was in my 40s, but the thoughts were always there.

Now, forgive me if this sounds disrespectful, or if it sounds like I am invalidating your experiences and feelings - your feelings are real, and powerful. It's worth addressing them and working out what they are, and how to cope with them.

But I want to ask. Do you have, either in yourself, or in your family, any history of OCD or anxiety disorders? Because something that *does* come on suddenly and abruptly (within the 'couple of months' timeframe you describe) is a variant of OCD called Pure-OCD or P-OCD. It comes on *fast*. It tends to take the form of really overpowering and overwhelming intrusive thoughts, which often snowball and accelerate in intensity. These thoughts often take the form of intense doubts about one's identity, one's sexuality, one's orientation (for example a straight woman, who had always been straight and knew she was straight experienced P-OCD episodes where she could not stop having intrusive thoughts of pornographic imagery which developed into an OCD pattern that took the form of obsessive, incessant, unstoppable thoughts of questioning whether she might be a lesbian - even though she had never previously experienced any desire that way). Like many other forms of OCD, it involves an irresistible hook of how *harm* might come, to the self, or more usually, one's loved ones.

It often comes on a little like 'medical students' disease' where, if you are studying something or investigating something, the OCD will latch onto the thing you've been researching. It can also result in response to intense periods of stress which aren't connected to the OCD pattern itself.

It's so hard to tell, because it's an OCD loop that hijacks a real thing, over which it is totally normal to have doubt and uncertainty and self-interrogation over. However, it doesn't ever *resolve* to an answer, a "phew, I'm actually x", it just goes round and round in an unfinished loop of fear and anxiety.

It's entirely possible you may have had thoughts and desires and feelings in childhood that you have forgotten, or more likely repressed? In which case, if you have trusted people who have known you since childhood, it's worth asking "did my behaviour ever make you wonder?" Or if you have old diaries, or even childhood schoolwork type stuff? Something which puts you back in that mindset and reminds you who you were then. Maybe it was there, and you've squished it down. I wouldn't say it's weird, but it i's atypical for this stuff to appear so suddenly, out of nowhere, having never wondered about it pre- or around adolescence.

But if it really wasn't there, and this is a sudden thing that has "come out of nowhere"? Especially if it takes the form of incessant rumination and intrusive thoughts and *worry* about how it will damage people you love? And especially if you have any history of OCD or anxiety disorders. Do some reading on P-OCD, even if just to discount the possibility.

Honestly, I'm not discounting your *feelings*. Your feelings are real, and *need* to be addressed and looked at and dealt with and maybe acted upon. Talk it over with a professional, find out what the options are. Investigate your own history. Conduct it like an experiment of "what would I do, if this were the case" and see if that makes things better, worse, no change.

To add to the above post, it might be worth searching articles about gender confusion OCD or sexual orientation OCD, because even if the fears you're reading about aren't the specific fears you have, you might recognise some of the same patterns and habits. Search a few different terms that might describe what you're afraid of and add "pure OCD".

branwell that is extraordinarily helpful and I am grateful for you taking the time and care to share that. I have had a history of anxiety. and I am a sponsor for an lgbt club at my school and I interact with trans and nb kids every day.

the intrusive and obsessive worrying feels very much in line with what I've been experiencing the last couple of days which is evident in the panic from my initial post. thank you again.

I feel really touchy and difficult discussing this kind of stuff, because one of the biggest Trans Issues is how difficult it often is for trans and non-binary and questioning people to get others to *believe* them. This kind of "Are you sure it's not... (other psychological issue)?!" is a huge derailing and time-wasting and de-legitimising technique.

I am, however, someone who is both non-binary (and has gone through all the questioning that entailed) but ALSO has had episodes of near-crippling OCD.

Both things involve the experience of 'recurring thoughts and feelings' and it's quite difficult, unless you've had both, to describe the ways in which they are both similar and different.

Trans-ness, or gender dysphoria, or (preferred term?) is a long-term, persistent sense of *mismatch* between one's body, and/or others' sets of expectations about what one's body should *mean*; and one's own sense of self, sense of internal compass reports that one's self and one's body *ought* to be. I don't want to use the phrase "wrongness" because wrong implies a moral judgement. It's just this repeated feeling of "this doesn't fit"; "this doesn't feel right"; "something's not working here". Now this, obviously, involves recurring thoughts, because every time that mismatch becomes apparent or becomes highlighted it's going to generate a twinge. Like every step you take in ill-fitting shoes rubs or pinches somewhere.

It can become *acutely* intense, at times where the mismatch is continually and painfully highlighted. I generally thought I had reached a level of peace with my identity and my dysphoria - until a couple of weeks ago, I had to go and do a 24/7 on-site training course, involving 5 brogrammers and me, and it was just unrelenting. There was the expected fury and strangled exasperation of dealing with 7 days of relentless casual sexism and exclusion. Like, this stuff is unjust for anyone to deal with. I'm used to dealing with sexism and even hostile work environments. But what I was not prepared for, was the *wave* of dysphoria that followed closely on its heels. The sense of "no one deserves sexism because misogyny is unjust" followed by "you assholes have completely misread and misunderstood who *I* am. I'm not uninterested in your toxic masculinity stew of 'cars, sport, the military' because I am 'feminine'; it's because this is not the *kind* of 'masculine' I am." (If the environment had been 'music, real ale, trains' I could have performed *that* kind of masculinity just fine.)

But in this environment, the level of dysphoria reached such a crescendo that it become unavoidable, intrusive, dominating my thoughts, leaving me unable to function. But it was the stress of that environment that pushed it to that level of intrusiveness. Something that was normally traffic noise, suddenly became a jet engine. But it *can* become that intrusive, do you understand what I'm saying? It can become *like* the intensity of OCD, but it's an exaggeration of a thing which has recurred persistently for a long time.

OCD, on the other hand, is like... I've always called them Thoughtworms. "It comes on like a thought, and stays just like a disease." Something intrudes upon your mind, and you believe it's an urgent, important thought, so you just start thinking it. Except it is not an actual thought, it's a recurring, looping computer-virus-like thing, which starts taking over all the other circuits of your brain and just shuts other processes down, so that the only thought you are able to think is the Thoughtworm. It's not an environmental response, like dysphoria feels like a pinch or an ache from an ill-fitting shoe. (Except the shoe is your body, and you can't take it off.) It's a virus that quite quickly takes control of your entire brain. THIS IS THE ONLY THOUGHT THAT WE CAN THINK NOW.

And these thoughtworms are... you know, they are brainweasels. They are worries, fears, the things you care *most* about, your worst impulses, things that feel really really *urgent*. They would not be able to cannibalise your mind with intrusive and obsessive worrying if they weren't things that meant something to you in the first place. Pure OCD is *agony*. It starts with urgency and escalates into panic, and if unchecked, leads to feeling like you are losing your mind.

Does that make more sense, the way that they are both recurring, they can both be *intrusive*, but that the way these feelings recur, and the way that the thoughts intrude are different? I just really hope that that helps you to tease apart what you are experiencing right now, and how to proceed with it. Because it doesn't sound much fun, where you are right now.

If you're working with trans and nonbinary kids, it's entirely possible that you are recognising something of yourself in them, and them in yourself. That's empathy, and that's good. And it's also possible that you do have curiosity and questioning raised by this empathy, which is perfectly natural and normal. OR it could be, because you are so engaged with these kids, and you start to care for and worry about them, that's exactly the kind of anxiety that OCD will latch onto. It could be either. It could also be both! I wish you peace, and clarity and greater self understanding.

Thank you again. And yes, that makes total sense to me.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/13/18079458/menstrual-tracking-surveillance-glow-clue-apple-health

I don't really have anything useful to say about this as I'm too full of rage

Woman reported her ex to the police five times in the six months before he murdered her. They fined her for wasting police time.