Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Ray Blanchard's latest tweet

Ray Blanchard yesterday on X:

Ray Blanchard on X, January 9, 2024: When I worked at a Gender Identity Clinic (1980-1995), clinicians considered transition an option only for patients with severe gender dysphoria. Our clinicians believed that patients with mild or fluctuating degrees of gender dysphoria would probably maximize their overall quality of life by remaining in their original gender role and working to lessen their dysphoria rather than by transitioning. Having been out of this area for a long time, I don’t know whether modern, “affirmation-only” gender clinicians ever give patients such advice, or whether they even acknowledge that gender dysphoria occurs with varying degrees of severity and constancy. I also don’t know whether any of them would candidly explain to patients that their realistic choice may be one of “least-worst” options. If this approach still occurs sometimes, one doesn’t see much evidence of it online. One is more likely to find stories, however accurate, of patients being prescribed hormones after a single visit. Some of my Twitter/X followers seem to believe that gender identity clinics today are a simple continuation of clinics from the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. That is not quite the case. The emergence of a trans right movement as a part of the progressive movement and the concomitant reframing of transsexualism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem have radically changed the way many people think about transsexualism.

What's bad about this? My attention draws itself to his presumption that trans people are confronted only with bad options; hence, that a trans person's goal ought to be to identify "one of [the] 'least-worst' options" which, in utilitarian terms, will "probably maximize" our "overall quality of life"; furthermore, that the support we truly need is "advice" from "gender clinicians" who can steer us away from the worst-worst options we're likely to choose if we don't hear their opinion, so that we may make the "realistic choice," whatever that's supposed to mean.

Note that he explicitly calls trans identity a "clinical problem," one that moreover doesn't ever need to be addressed in terms of what political "right[s]" trans people have, as if those two characterizations were mutually exclusive. Even if you believe that some people's feelings or identities are psychologically abnormal and need treatment, you don't need to believe that those same people never need to worry about their rights. Dr. Blanchard speaks this way though.

This isn't what wise, benevolent concern looks like. Blanchard is just an ordinary paternalist. He thinks that trans people have inherently miserable lives and are doomed to choose between bad options, a choice for which we'd somehow benefit from his input, even though, as he acknowledges in the first sentence of this tweet, it's been three decades since he's worked at a clinic helping people transition.

These days (and for at least five years now, which is when it happened to me), his hobby is blocking trans people on X because they said something to him while being identifiably trans and not-identifiably shit-eating.

Here are some of his "greatest hits" on X. Remember that he blocks all critics.

His view: Being trans is a mental disorder.

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Jan 2, 2020 My view: Transsexuals have a mental disorder whose discomfort is ameliorated when society and individuals indulge them with reasonable compromises. This is a traditional psychiatric view although it is rarely stated that bluntly.

In 2020, he expressed his opinion that being trans is a "problem," and one that's "clinical" rather than "political." (I don't suppose he'd care to reframe "people [being] fired for their opinions" as people having a clinical rather than a political problem?)

In 2019, he assumed it's his prerogative to give his "position on transgender people," though he himself is not trans, and trans people don't require him to give his position on us.

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Jan 3, 2020 In my view, trans activism changed in character when it affiliated with the social justice movement, re-framed transsexualism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem, and adopted SJW tactics such as no-platforming and getting people fired for their opinions. Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD May 11, 2019 Earlier today I wrote this thread in response to a follower who asked me, “What is your actual position on transgender people?” It looks like my reply has not been delivered to a single person besides the original inquirer, so I am reposting it here.

Pretty blunt here. He says: Being trans is a disorder, and if you support any and all trans people's genders, you're supporting their disorder. A clinician only supports a trans person, he says, when they try to decide if that person is and isn't validly trans. (Of course, every cis person likes to imagine themselves a clinician, so this is politicized to all cis people getting to decide all the time if every trans person is valid.)

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Feb 9, 2021 Clinicians who describe themselves as “allies” of trans and who support transition in every case are actually allies of the disorder and not allies of the patient.

Actually, facts and identity are not mutually exclusive. People construct our identities based on facts.

I now understand that the locution, “Robin *identifies as* [gay, Jewish, aboriginal]” instead of “Robin *is* [gay, Jewish, aboriginal]” is not merely an affected, pretentious way of speaking. It’s about denying the possibility of objective, stable, external reality.

Saying that trans people's sex is a "legal fiction" and not recognizing that cis people's sex is equivalently a legal fiction because law is a construct.

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Dec 20, 2019 Biological sex is immutable, but hormones and surgery can help simulate the opposite-sex phenotype, and this usually alleviates intractable gender dysphoria. Postoperative sex is essentially a legal fiction, which most people will accept in some but not all situations.

He claims there's such a thing as "excesses of trans activism" and "extremist activism". What's that? Does he mean trans people whom he just doesn't understand or who make observations and hold opinions contrary to his?

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Oct 12, 2021 I hope that more and more ordinary trans people will speak out against the worst excesses of trans activism as more and more trans people realize that extremist activism is increasing resentment and decreasing acceptance of trans people.

He says, as far as I can tell, that pronouns are bad when trans people and trans-inclusive people use them but not when cis people use them. When trans people appear, pronouns are suddenly political.

Ray Blanchard @BlanchardPhD Aug 10, 2020 Pronouns used to tell you a person’s sex. Now they tell you a person’s politics.
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