Thread by @NoSecretLessons

This is a very interesting spat!

Here’s my reading of it... 🧵

Firstly, I am very glad to see the incisive @bjportraits published in the Spectator. Her understanding of the gender/sexual identities industrial complex and her research into its power players and funding streams has been invaluable. She is absolutely correct that it is necessary to understand the marketing and technological/industrial aspects of it in order to oppose the harm it causes.
spectator.com/article/the-ge…

She gives particular attention to the way transexual fetish was entered into the US DSM, where it merged with ‘gender identity disorder of childhood’, to become a general ‘gender identity disorder’ - after which it shifted from a disorder into an identity category that could be promoted and catered for in the market, using human rights idealism as a spur.

@bjportraits Then she makes the following critique below about ‘gender critical’ organisations, naming Genspect, suggesting that they are (perhaps inadvertently) perpetuating the very industrial problem they purport to oppose:

@stellaomalley3 of Genspect and some of her supporters have reacted very negatively to this, I assume because of this specific wording by Bilek:

“…which only reinforces the corporate fiction that “gender identity” is a viable clinical category requiring medical treatment, instead of a corporate myth aimed at profiteering.”

I think O’Malley has taken this to mean that Bilek (and thus @spectator) are claiming that she herself advocates medical treatment, about which she is incensed because Genspect is currently campaigning against pharmaceutical and surgical treatment, as she describes here:

@_CryMiaRiver also chimes in with support - explaining that the ambition of Genspect’s “repsychopathologization campaign” is specifically to categorise the trans condition as an ‘overvalued belief’ in desiring medical treatment, in order to redirect patients away from medicine.

But I think O’Malley and Hughes have misunderstood Bilek’s point and are not seeing it in context. In the first place Bilek’s statement does not necessarily mean Genspect itself is “endorsing medical treatment”, as Hughes fears - her point is specifically that Genspect reinforces a “corporate fiction” laundered into the DSM that lists some kind of ‘gender identity disorder’ that encompasses ‘transexualism’ as still existing within children, which in turn reinforces the claim by others that it needs treating, or at least catering to in some way.

It’s perhaps somewhat unfortunate Bilek didn’t make her critique clearer, because it is true that Genspect is campaigning against treating children with pharmacology and surgery.
But if we interpret Bilek’s use of the word ‘medical’ to encompass DSM listed clinical conditions (which is fair enough) - and if we rightly understand the DSM itself as a captured institution built almost entirely on shoddy shrinkery that leads to over intervention (which it is!) - then Bilek is correct to include Genspect's "repathologization campaign" on the wrong side of this market led movement.

What I think Bilek is getting at is that Genspect itself is of course an exponent of the psychiatric and psychology industry which invented this nightmare in the first place, and so becomes a professional and economic beneficiary of treating their new ‘overvalued belief’ version of the alleged gender problem - even if it is only by offering a talking cure instead of hormones.

@bjportraits @stellaomalley3 @spectator @_CryMiaRiver In some ways, applying Bilek’s lens to it, you might say that Genspect is simply seeking to steal Big Pharma’s business for Big Psych’s business, on the promise that at least it does less material harm.

But either way, the presumption remains that the kids are apparently still ill with some kind of childhood version of what was once listed as an adult transexual fetishism - such as Genspect's prior acceptance of the theory of 'autogynephilia' (although they have not yet made clear how that fits with the 'overvalued belief' of medical transition theory).

I suspect O’Malley has perhaps been too blinded by her own fascination with gender, sexology, her interest to minister to other people’s children and her commitment to liberal human rights ideology - plus too secretive about her funding streams - to see or declare her own self interested, industrial positioning in this arena.

Because shrinks and psychs, charities and activists (whether pro trans or gender critical) all get paid to treat, study and publish on 'gender', whether they’re affirming it or not, and I think that is Bilek’s point - that it’s all just reinforcing the errant meta belief system that ends up with some kind of transaction based on an ever evolving ‘child gender disorder’ of your choice or invention.

So, I think O’Malley has over reacted to her own misunderstanding of the article. I don’t think she’s being misrepresented as pro medicine (although Bilek could have been clearer about that) - she is being suitably critiqued for being a part of the ‘gender disorder’ industry, even if it is in the form of offering psych services to try to clean up the mess the abusive mainstream medical industry has made. And no profession wants to put itself out of business.