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Anorexia is not comparable to gender dysphoria
And other banal questions designed to trip trans inclusive discussions up. It is always interesting when people attempt to use concepts such as race and other mental health issues to rail against gender identity and gender incongruence. Its as if they cannot accept that gender identity is its own unique concept, separate from sexed bodies, gender expression, race, and every other conception of self we may label. Indeed, while constructions of gender may cross all of those, gender as a concept is discrete. Thus, when someone compares gender identity to say anorexia or race, the polite answer is to say yes there are similarities, but they are not comparable or the same. The short answer is to tell them to wind their neck in and stop being deliberately obtuse.
Now, this does not stop someone picking up DSM V or ICD 11 and reading the diagnosis for anorexia, flipping to gender incongruence and attempting to make equivalencies. Semantically there are overlaps, but the mental mechanisms behind anorexia are build over a period of time, compounded by lived trauma, while gender dysphoria and gender identity are rooted in conceptions of self devoid of trauma and any discrete mechanism. Trans folk should not have to justify their existence based on the arbitrary assumptions of armchair psychiatrists who have no formal training. Each time an armchair shrink tries to project…
