May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
As an online gamer, this is very true. The online gamers who have stable lives and families are also inherently more stable and happy in the game. These games are big social outlets and the most stable ones cause the least amount of friction online. There are a LOT of trans people in those spaces and they conflict enormously with the more stable personalities. At the very least, that has been my personal experience.
The prevalence of online trans people is definitely partially due to the escapism and avatar-ism it allows. The difference is that if you're stable and happy IRL, you'll be stable and happy in the game regardless. With the reality denying crowd, it becomes a lot more complicated and their happiness and stability hinges on factors that are almost entirely out of their control, such as others' enabling them or affirming them.
Obviously this is anecdotal but I've been a part of a LOT of MMOs and online games for the past 20 years and it is as true now as it was in 2003. My life has changed (I have a daughter now and a wife) but the online community is basically the same.
A fascinating read with valuable insights into the disembodied, fantastic inner reality of "gender-dysphoric" youth. I recognized the similarities with disordered personalities -- especially around obscuring language and an inability to countenance painful emotions -- from having dated a person with borderline personality disorder. I can say from that experience that you are doing difficult work, which I'm sure often feels futile. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise. I am linking to this from my blog, with full credit to RLS and the author.
May 10, 2023Liked by Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., Colin Wright
A great article. As pointed out before you can’t reason somebody out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. And the conclusion is sadly true. It’s about reason versus power and sadly the loudest voices are with the latter.
"How are we to heal a disordered society such as ours?"
You crack down hard. You do it through strong laws against the lie that is “transgenderism” in all its forms. No “affirmative care.” No puberty blockers. No wrong sex hormones. No double mastectomies, phalloplasties, or vaginoplaties. No tracheal shaves or shoulder reductions. No drag queen story hours or drag shows. No men in woman’s sports teams, locker rooms, spas, bathrooms, shelters, jails, or prisons. No “queer/nonbinary” clubs or books in schools. You kick the Democrats out of office and vote for only those candidates who sign a pledge to oppose “gender” nonsense.
May 10, 2023Liked by Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., Colin Wright
This is disconcerting. There are many of us in the "gender"critical" world who happily accept an adult's right to bodily autonomy. Many of us accept the notion of gender dysphoria as a real condition that can be helped with a variety of medical interventions by consenting adults. We are happy to use "preferred pronouns" with adults. We also have concerns about social contagion, medicalization of children, and fairness in sports, and some sex segregated spaces. Name calling and vilifying trans identified adults does not support that cause.
Thomas Sowell doesn't have it right. It's actually the Enlightenment Liberal (as in "Liberal Democracy", not the political stance) position, held by both many conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats. Most scientists are, as has been noted, Liberal. A few have gone Progressive and compromised their credibility and published pseudoscientific articles on the "Sex Spectrum", but most recognize postmodern views of the world as contradictory to a scientific worldview. The problem is, thatzmany liberals have been sucked in by the claims of Gender Theory that what they are about represents a more socially just version of the world. My mission at the moment is to explain what Gender Theory is and where it comes from -- that is, from the minds of academic philosophers who have no investment in facts whatsoever. And to encourage people to speak up! People are afraid of losing their jobs, and their indoctrinated friends. Please don't say that you represent the "conservative viewpoint". If we're going to fight this, we need to do it together. This isn't a political issue. It's about the fundamental nature of truth, and why it matters that it not defined by fiat by Judith Butler, who thinks she knows better than science, reason, and God, the nature of reality.
May 11, 2023·edited May 11, 2023Liked by Colin Wright
The article is wonderful, and I was excited to see an article by a psychologist! I also am a psychologist, and have been wanting to talk with colleagues about what diagnostic concepts apply to transgender clients, across the age range. My clinical experience with transgender clients has been with adults, mostly male.
I also work with adolescents, but haven't positioned myself as a gender therapist for adolescents. Even so, I see an increasing number of young women who at some point suddenly tell me that they have changed their gender identities and frequently also their names. It appears to be normal now, at least in my city, for female high school and college students to announce that they are "non-binary." It hasn't been normal for long, and I don't believe that it is the same phenomenon as whatever was going on with transgender people before the social media craze started up. Prior to the trans epidemic, however, we had the eating disorder epidemic, and those patients were from the same demographic: young white women from affluent families. Social media didn't exist then, but the clients generally were similarly focused on "ideal" images of girls and women presented in magazines and movies. Many clinicians who specialized in treating people with eating disorders thought that the clients were responding primarily to social pressure on women to be thin, which definitely was the message being sent by the magazines.
Many of the women with bulimia and anorexia nervosa did, however, turn out to have significant psychiatric problems, including dissociation from their bodies as a primary problem. They are also often described as presenting narcissistic, borderline and obsessive-compulsive patterns of behavior. The families of these clients in my experience also presented obvious and serious family dysfunction and oddities, such as marked emotional detachment from each other. In my opinion, all of these behaviors tend to get established initially in the family, and to be multigenerational in duration.
Is it possible that a high percentage of the current "trans fad" clients, as opposed to the historic trans clients (whatever they were like), have similar psychiatric problems to the 1980's eating disorder clients as well as coming from the same demographic? I have been perplexed, because it seems like there are a great many more of the trans fad clients than there were of the eating disorder clients, (and that was major)!
Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have made a strong empirical case that increased self-reported depression and anxiety in young women is related to the amount of time they spend on social media. This does suggest that the epidemic of distress plus performative identity fluidity is situational. Christopher Rufo has suggested, based on his observations of colleges in Florida and elsewhere, that the woke culture on these campuses reinforces the behaviors associated with borderline personality disorder. This perspective is consistent with the theory that the current mental health crisis among young women is a reaction to pressure from their social milieu.
I wonder, however, if the narcissistic nature of social media experience is separate from the pre-existing personalities of the young people who create much of their own culture there. Is it possible that the woke movement is not so much a pre-planned Marxist movement as it is a dramatic increase in the rate of pathological narcissism in U.S. culture? Either of these options is clearly terrible, but I would prefer the Marxism explanation, given a choice.
It was great to read an article that addressed these issues! I would love to see more from Dr. Burgo and others!
I propose that quality psychotherapy together with movement such as in Alexander body work and Feldenkrais physical therapy would help "identity-confused" patients, whether teens or adults. When my former husband "transitioned" I witnessed his increasingly vacant focus, lack of emotion (outside of rage, which became more frequent) and growing distance from his physicality. We trans widows often observe our former spouses detach from their sexed, physical self. I've designed movement for stress relief, and will always question the "sexologists" in their cult of inauthenticity.
It has only been in the last year that I have taken a deep interest and a concerted reading dive into this topic area. As a retired 71 year old clinical social worker who was primarily working as a therapist prior to retirement - I find your observations and your analysis to be the most insightful and the most plausible I have yet encountered in helping explain what is taking place for these young people. The generation nature (primarily Gen-Z) - linked to this phenomenon suggest a direct connection to the mass use of smart phones and social media in that generation beginning around 2012 - which is also when large scale meta-data show mental health began to seriously go off the rails for those young people, with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation and self-harm dramatically increasing in subsequent years. Those sorts of mental health issues are alarming enough, but a future society in which large numbers of people fit mental and behavioral criteria for narcissism and borderline personality traits sounds completely disastrous when contemplated at a larger societal level.
Please make sure your comments are civil. Any comments hurling insults or using unnecessarily inflammatory language will be removed. Thank you!
What a brilliant essay. So thoughtful and incisive.
Enough of us believe in reality and we must be determined to ensure it prevails.
As an online gamer, this is very true. The online gamers who have stable lives and families are also inherently more stable and happy in the game. These games are big social outlets and the most stable ones cause the least amount of friction online. There are a LOT of trans people in those spaces and they conflict enormously with the more stable personalities. At the very least, that has been my personal experience.
The prevalence of online trans people is definitely partially due to the escapism and avatar-ism it allows. The difference is that if you're stable and happy IRL, you'll be stable and happy in the game regardless. With the reality denying crowd, it becomes a lot more complicated and their happiness and stability hinges on factors that are almost entirely out of their control, such as others' enabling them or affirming them.
Obviously this is anecdotal but I've been a part of a LOT of MMOs and online games for the past 20 years and it is as true now as it was in 2003. My life has changed (I have a daughter now and a wife) but the online community is basically the same.
I wonder if compulsory PE might help such people.
A fascinating read with valuable insights into the disembodied, fantastic inner reality of "gender-dysphoric" youth. I recognized the similarities with disordered personalities -- especially around obscuring language and an inability to countenance painful emotions -- from having dated a person with borderline personality disorder. I can say from that experience that you are doing difficult work, which I'm sure often feels futile. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise. I am linking to this from my blog, with full credit to RLS and the author.
A great article. As pointed out before you can’t reason somebody out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. And the conclusion is sadly true. It’s about reason versus power and sadly the loudest voices are with the latter.
"How are we to heal a disordered society such as ours?"
You crack down hard. You do it through strong laws against the lie that is “transgenderism” in all its forms. No “affirmative care.” No puberty blockers. No wrong sex hormones. No double mastectomies, phalloplasties, or vaginoplaties. No tracheal shaves or shoulder reductions. No drag queen story hours or drag shows. No men in woman’s sports teams, locker rooms, spas, bathrooms, shelters, jails, or prisons. No “queer/nonbinary” clubs or books in schools. You kick the Democrats out of office and vote for only those candidates who sign a pledge to oppose “gender” nonsense.
This is disconcerting. There are many of us in the "gender"critical" world who happily accept an adult's right to bodily autonomy. Many of us accept the notion of gender dysphoria as a real condition that can be helped with a variety of medical interventions by consenting adults. We are happy to use "preferred pronouns" with adults. We also have concerns about social contagion, medicalization of children, and fairness in sports, and some sex segregated spaces. Name calling and vilifying trans identified adults does not support that cause.
A toure de force, expertly synthesizes scattered thoughts I have had around trans and language games and cluster b personality traits, thank you.
Thomas Sowell doesn't have it right. It's actually the Enlightenment Liberal (as in "Liberal Democracy", not the political stance) position, held by both many conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats. Most scientists are, as has been noted, Liberal. A few have gone Progressive and compromised their credibility and published pseudoscientific articles on the "Sex Spectrum", but most recognize postmodern views of the world as contradictory to a scientific worldview. The problem is, thatzmany liberals have been sucked in by the claims of Gender Theory that what they are about represents a more socially just version of the world. My mission at the moment is to explain what Gender Theory is and where it comes from -- that is, from the minds of academic philosophers who have no investment in facts whatsoever. And to encourage people to speak up! People are afraid of losing their jobs, and their indoctrinated friends. Please don't say that you represent the "conservative viewpoint". If we're going to fight this, we need to do it together. This isn't a political issue. It's about the fundamental nature of truth, and why it matters that it not defined by fiat by Judith Butler, who thinks she knows better than science, reason, and God, the nature of reality.
The article is wonderful, and I was excited to see an article by a psychologist! I also am a psychologist, and have been wanting to talk with colleagues about what diagnostic concepts apply to transgender clients, across the age range. My clinical experience with transgender clients has been with adults, mostly male.
I also work with adolescents, but haven't positioned myself as a gender therapist for adolescents. Even so, I see an increasing number of young women who at some point suddenly tell me that they have changed their gender identities and frequently also their names. It appears to be normal now, at least in my city, for female high school and college students to announce that they are "non-binary." It hasn't been normal for long, and I don't believe that it is the same phenomenon as whatever was going on with transgender people before the social media craze started up. Prior to the trans epidemic, however, we had the eating disorder epidemic, and those patients were from the same demographic: young white women from affluent families. Social media didn't exist then, but the clients generally were similarly focused on "ideal" images of girls and women presented in magazines and movies. Many clinicians who specialized in treating people with eating disorders thought that the clients were responding primarily to social pressure on women to be thin, which definitely was the message being sent by the magazines.
Many of the women with bulimia and anorexia nervosa did, however, turn out to have significant psychiatric problems, including dissociation from their bodies as a primary problem. They are also often described as presenting narcissistic, borderline and obsessive-compulsive patterns of behavior. The families of these clients in my experience also presented obvious and serious family dysfunction and oddities, such as marked emotional detachment from each other. In my opinion, all of these behaviors tend to get established initially in the family, and to be multigenerational in duration.
Is it possible that a high percentage of the current "trans fad" clients, as opposed to the historic trans clients (whatever they were like), have similar psychiatric problems to the 1980's eating disorder clients as well as coming from the same demographic? I have been perplexed, because it seems like there are a great many more of the trans fad clients than there were of the eating disorder clients, (and that was major)!
Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have made a strong empirical case that increased self-reported depression and anxiety in young women is related to the amount of time they spend on social media. This does suggest that the epidemic of distress plus performative identity fluidity is situational. Christopher Rufo has suggested, based on his observations of colleges in Florida and elsewhere, that the woke culture on these campuses reinforces the behaviors associated with borderline personality disorder. This perspective is consistent with the theory that the current mental health crisis among young women is a reaction to pressure from their social milieu.
I wonder, however, if the narcissistic nature of social media experience is separate from the pre-existing personalities of the young people who create much of their own culture there. Is it possible that the woke movement is not so much a pre-planned Marxist movement as it is a dramatic increase in the rate of pathological narcissism in U.S. culture? Either of these options is clearly terrible, but I would prefer the Marxism explanation, given a choice.
It was great to read an article that addressed these issues! I would love to see more from Dr. Burgo and others!
I propose that quality psychotherapy together with movement such as in Alexander body work and Feldenkrais physical therapy would help "identity-confused" patients, whether teens or adults. When my former husband "transitioned" I witnessed his increasingly vacant focus, lack of emotion (outside of rage, which became more frequent) and growing distance from his physicality. We trans widows often observe our former spouses detach from their sexed, physical self. I've designed movement for stress relief, and will always question the "sexologists" in their cult of inauthenticity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1SvNi3O1Sc&list=PLOFlPPQm71Ii-l-xoAlBZc5Iy9xZyfbUY
Great article, thank you.
Great essay, thank you
This was an amazing article! It made me really reflect.
It has only been in the last year that I have taken a deep interest and a concerted reading dive into this topic area. As a retired 71 year old clinical social worker who was primarily working as a therapist prior to retirement - I find your observations and your analysis to be the most insightful and the most plausible I have yet encountered in helping explain what is taking place for these young people. The generation nature (primarily Gen-Z) - linked to this phenomenon suggest a direct connection to the mass use of smart phones and social media in that generation beginning around 2012 - which is also when large scale meta-data show mental health began to seriously go off the rails for those young people, with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation and self-harm dramatically increasing in subsequent years. Those sorts of mental health issues are alarming enough, but a future society in which large numbers of people fit mental and behavioral criteria for narcissism and borderline personality traits sounds completely disastrous when contemplated at a larger societal level.