d shul
3 min readMar 11, 2019

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Thank you for your response, and I’m sorry that this upset you. There are a few points I’d like to make in response:

  1. This essay is a term paper that I wrote in a graduate-level clinical psychology seminar (I was deeply disturbed by this class, by the way), and so the intended audience is for cis people who are not familiar with transsexuality or its relation to clinical diagnoses. My aim in this paper was to provide a general overview of how transsexuality has been treated by psychological institutions, and my overall claim is that it has been treated unfairly and unjustly, and that transgender care should be taken out of the jurisdiction of psychologists. In fact, I explicitly state that I “resent the paternalistic gatekeeping role” psychologists adopt when treating trans populations, and argue that it is inherently unjust to require a diagnosis of GD before being able to access HRT or SRS. Please be sure to read all of what someone else has written before assuming their position, as I suspect that you did not read all of this piece and instead reacted to what you think I believe. Attacking a misinterpretation of someone else’s argument is called a straw person argument, which is not an effective or appropriate way to rhetorically engage with others.
  2. Ad hominem attacks (i.e., attacks to a person themselves instead of what they are saying) are psychologically understandable when one is upset but are ultimately not productive for affecting positive change or engaging in debate because they are based in defensiveness. I, too, think Zucker and Drescher are awful people, but I drew from their work in this piece because Zucker is a powerful person whose name will get the attention of those who support him, and Drescher’s research is very helpful when trying to understand histories of psychological histories and treatments of gender-sexual minorities. If you look closely at this essay you will see that I make fun of Zucker for using the phrase “backdoor maneuver” to deny an accusation of homosexuality, and that I also make fun of the APA in general by claiming that SOD (the disorder that replaced homosexuality) sounds like someone about to shout “SODOMY!” This is satire, but the point is that I am against these men and do not agree with or support their views. I would have gotten an F on this paper if I were to have written a polemic about how awful these two people are, however, which is why I instead used their research to engage with their points and develop my own argument against their views.
  3. I consider ally to be a verb, which means it is something that is done instead of something that someone is (or is not). I also don’t believe that allies get to determine their own allyship, and that it is up to the communities for whom one attempt to ally to determine allyship. This said: I accept your criticisms and want to know how I can improve to be a better ally, but if this would involve engaging in ad hominem attacks or posturing, then I am not interested in doing allyship this way.
  4. I am a non-binary trans person, and have been on HRT for the last half year or so. I feel so much better not being colonized by testosterone anymore, and locate my aversion to testosterone in the context of having learned to believe that homosexuality was wrong before my sex drive activated (i.e., before puberty), and so when puberty happened I associated the experience of testosterone in its sexual awakenings with trauma — which is why estrogen feels so much better, and why I am pursuing HRT. I am not aiming to look like a woman or a man because I believe gender is a scam (check out my essay on here by the same title in case you’re interested in learning more about my position), which is why I don’t care about having chest hair with lipstick. I don’t want to be sorted into gender binaries, but I know I always am, and I thus locate dysphoria in the context of being gendered in general. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, however, and do not believe my experience represents all others. I want to learn from differences of thought and experience, and appreciate you sharing yours. It seems to me that there is a lot of pain you’re experiencing, and that you have been thoroughly mistreated by this institution. I send you compassionate respect, and while I hope you are able to see that I am trying to affect positive changes from within the ivory tower itself, I accept if you do not see or believe this.

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d shul
d shul

Written by d shul

queer theorist and affect alien

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