Life truths

‘Gender Dysphoria’ is classified by The American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder in its 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).  It was previously called Gender Identity Disorder, but was reclassified “to better align it with medical understanding of the condition and to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.”

The DSM-5 describes gender dysphoria as involving “a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.”  It further states that “people with gender dysphoria may often experience significant distress … associated with this conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves … and their physical or assigned gender.”

This conflict, it says, affects people in different ways: “Some people may cross-dress, some may want to socially transition, others may want to medically transition with sex-change surgery and/or hormone treatment.”

It explains that “socially transitioning primarily involves transitioning into the affirmed gender’s pronouns and bathrooms,” and that “people with gender dysphoria may allow themselves to express their true selves and may openly want to be affirmed in their gender identity.”

So there we have it. Give transgender people what they want, by order of the courts, if necessary and they will live “happily ever after”!

But is this really so?

In a Witherspoon Institute article reprinted in LifeSiteNews on August 3, 2017, Chad Felix Greene points out that, according to transgender advocates, in order to achieve a healthy and mentally stable state, individuals must have their perceived gender aligned as closely as possible to their sex.

Having himself experienced gender dysphoria, and considered undergoing sex reassignment surgery, he deems it more reasonable, and medically ethical and sound, to adapt one’s gender to match the already established sex, rather than the other way around.

An interesting phenomenon he mentions is the fact that many transgender “men” are choosing to keep their reproductive organs and become pregnant. His article provides a link to a report on a study published in November 2014 in Obstetrics and Gynecology about whether testosterone therapy prevented pregnancy, and what it felt like to be male and pregnant.

The study focused on 41 transgender “men” who were currently pregnant or had given birth, 25 of whom had received hormone therapy. Not surprisingly, respondents experienced, inter alia:

* a re-emergence of gender dysphoria

* being unhappy with not being able to pass as male

* a lowering of dysphoria, and a feeling of pleasure that “their bodies were doing something valuable that other male bodies couldn’t do.”

Greene also points out that many studies indicate high levels of suicide or attempted suicide after sex reassignment surgery, demonstrating that such surgery does not resolve the underlying causes of the dysphoria. 

However, transgender advocates actively seek to curtail such studies and to suppress the voices of those who choose natural alignment or who regret their transition and take steps to reverse their reassignment.

Promisingly, the numbers of those raising their voices and fighting back are steadily increasing. In a July 9, 2019 LifeSiteNews article, Doug Mainwaring talks about the Second Annual ‘Freedom March’ that took place in Washington, DC a few days before ‘Pride Month’ activities began, when ex-homosexuals and ex-transgender men and women proclaimed the freedom they found from abandoning homosexual and transgender practices.  While the march was largely ignored by mainstream media, the story was shared over one million times on Facebook.

A monthly column by the Emmanuel Community: 46 Rosalino Street, Woodbrook

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