For many of us, the discovery we are trans is not a moment of blinding revelation, in which it becomes apparent we've been born in the wrong body and are destined to walk the path of gender affirming medical care (GAMC) to salvation. For some, GAMC works like that, but it's only necessary to read a handful of biographies in the introductions here to realise many take decades to accept they are trans, only to become confused because they don't fit within any of the definitions they can read on Susan's.
One of the dangers definitions and diagnoses pose must be faced when we are searching for a solution to account for our situation. It's too tempting to fit our situation to a diagnosis instead of working the other way around. Diagnosis and definitions can offer false assurance and this post explains why.
Back in 1949 a psychologist called Forer did a classic experiment is which he asked 39 psychology students to complete a personality evaluation before he fed back the interpretations to them.
With few exceptions each of the students accepted the interpretation as a good description of their own personality, until they were told they had all been given the
same interpretation regardless of how they had answered the questions in their 'personal' tests. When Forer let them into the secret, the whole class burst into laughter.
Ever after, this tendency to comply with descriptions when they may only partly describe us has been known as the '
Forer effect' and sometimes as the 'Barnum effect' after the circus impresario famed for his illusions. It is very, very powerful because it often works in combination with what is called 'confirmation bias'.
Confirmation bias (CB) describes how most people react when we are given a piece of information which reinforces something we're inclined to believe. We are much more likely to lend weight to something which helps to confirm our beliefs and justify our actions than we are to take account of evidence which points the other way. CB has such a powerful effect that even powerful statistical evaluations are routinely turned down by people who are under its spell.
CB can be a serious issue amongst scientists and medics, let alone members of the public. There are doctors who've become strongly committed to a particular line of treatment on the basis of a handful of low grade evidence research papers - very often ones where they were involved in the research. Not only is this a negligent way to practice medicine, it is flat out deprecated by the scientific community at large, but a few doctors still do it and sometimes their patients become influencers on their behalf. This has led to some life changingly serious mistakes being made by people downstream of the influencers, who are rarely to be found when things have gone wrong and responsibility has to be taken.
What happens when the Forer effect and CB combine to affect people seeking to understand their lives? There's no shortage of others encouraging us to fit into definitions and when those people are themselves subject to the Forer effect and CB it can lead us down steep sided, slippery rabbit holes that can prove almost impossible to escape.
This happened when transsexualism was accepted theory and led directly to non-binary people being offered inappropriate sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) which later was reversed. CB and the Forer effect were also factors when gender incongruent children were offered conversion therapy by psychologists in the 1960s and 1970s,
which you can read about here.
My personal experience of being gender incongruent (GI) has varied enormously over the years. In my twenties, I was being told the solution was to have SRS. After long deliberation and much angst didn't go down that route because when I analysed what my own feelings were, changing sex didn't solve more than a handful of issues I faced. Non-binary wasn't a widely accepted idea then although I had an inkling that's where I lay. Then in the 1990s, the idea of transgender surfaced, but strong overtones of 'change sex and you'll be fine' remained. My CB tempted me, but I resisted, because analysis had taught me by then SRS was not a solution for me. It was only when the concept of non-binary became explicit that I realised how close I got to taking the wrong route and opting for SRS.
Gender Affirming Medical Care (GAMC) retains strong overtones of the SRS route and the interplay between the Forer effect and CB is still feeding people into a funnel which drains into a pot marked SRS. Yet there are many people here, including every non-binary person, for whom SRS is not a solution. For them it would be much better to avoid every label below the all embracing one of gender incongruence (GI) and achieve their own peace with that first, because GI is broad enough to welcome us all while we get our heads straight.
Why am I so strong on the concept of GI? Because it isn't a diagnosis, or a definition which homogenises people the way terms like transgender does and transsexualism did. Once we have learned to accept we are GI, then we can move on and work out what
flavour of GI we are, should we wish to do so. Achieving a steady state where we can be happy and confident will still take therapy and time, but that can be done under circumstances where the Forer effect and CB are least likely to be able to push us down any rabbit holes, leaving us trapped.
Where to after that? Once you are happy you've made a decision about your GI that hasn't been warped by either the Forer effect or CB, then you can go down the GAMC route should it be appropriate. For many people reading this, GAMC will be a liberating experience, but for others it will not, so the best advice I have is to understand all the influences that may be acting on your perceptions of who you are before you act.
That way you'll have no regrets and can look forward to the best possible future. Moreover, it will not be a future crafted by others into which you will have to fit, it will be a future which is right for you which doesn't need any adjustments to feel comfortable.
