Reddit mentions of Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People

hiya, I'm a trans woman philosophy student who's primarily interested in current goings on in materialist philosophy, mostly continental. I'm in love with Hegel, Marx, and Lacan. I really don't like Judith Butler, and I really don't like Kate Bornstein.

aaaaanyway, you might be interested in reading Catherine Malabou's Changing Difference. there are only a handful of very brief references to being trans, but it does explore the idea of gender in a way that attempts to go beyond either essentialism or constructionism, something that seems very worthwhile. usually when I notice any reference to trans-related issues in anything I read, though, it's a quick dismissal based on the association of transgenderism -- not entirely unfairly, in my opinion at least -- with the sort of post-structuralist/postmodern constructionist thought to which the authors are generally directly opposed. also, here is a pretty cool blog post that looks at some of the seemingly reactionary stuff Badiou and Žižek have said about trans peeps, altho idk how interesting you'll find that if you're not already familiar with those two. that blog has giant assholes tiled as the background, tho, so it's a bit NSFW.

some other neato trans-related books I like, although some of these have some stuff that would generally be considered offensive and negative by most trans folks:

-Horsexe: Essay on Transsexuality by Catherine Millot

-Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality by Gayle Salamon

-Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism by Patricia Gherovici

-Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People by Viviane Namaste

The Clarke/CAMH are an obsolete holdover before the emerging contemporary era of medicine by informed consent.

Its gender programme is still headed by two men (originally with a third person who is now retired) who have argued vociferously that some trans people can be "cured" into just being cis gay people. They subject people to become "candidates" who wait to see if they're "meriting" enough for treatment under their oversight. These two men advocate for keeping trans people classified as "mentally ill" on basis of being trans people per the next edition of the desk reference for mental health, the DSM-V (both sit on the committee overseeing that section of the guide).

Anecdotally, people I've known who enter the Clarke were fundamentally moulded and shaped into a shadow of themselves — that is, a shadow of their vivacity and personality. Transition, done right, does not change your core character. It changes your body. That people are changed (that is, changed beyond their body) after CAMH points to something disquieting about their approach to treatment.

This isn't to say that some people's experiences have been atypically good relative to this. But while The Clarke does green light genital surgery through OHIP coverage (restored in recent years), its methodology for therapy, the self-designed hoops of "legitimacy" they use to vet people, and their legitimization process overall — as well as absurd concepts like calling trans women "male transsexuals" and the like — are emblematic of a rapidly dying era whose research mandate has little to no footing in their arenas of sexology and sexual psychology. Further, it is very difficult to become one of their candidates, of which they only accept a few each year.

The present and the future of care for trans people are in approaching trans experiences from a cornerstone of applied neuroscience and for people who are the age of majority to consider an informed consent approach of reviewing the risks, ramifications, and expected long-term outcome of, principally, the way exogenous endocrine intervention will affect their body.

For minors, the increasingly acknowledged routine of care is a thorough consulting with the parents and, if all in general agreement, a provisional regimen of endogenous hormone blockers before hitting, say, age 16 — after which time the kid can decide whether to continue with exogenous hormones or not.

What the informed consent model does it remove the presumption that to be trans is a mental illness requiring mental health therapy. Trans people aren't mentally ill. Their neurological sex and their morphological sex are congenitally not on the same side. The Clarke/CAMH would like to have us believe otherwise.

If you are interested to read more someday, I highly recommend Viviane Namaste's research on The Clarke in her dissertation-cum-book, Invisible Lives.

tl;dr: The Clarke/CAMH is a dinosaur (hence, the "Jurassic Clarke").

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    I don't know if there is an omnibus way to find trans people. We exist in many places, through many circles, and we all have different paths and experiences and world views. You will also find that a lot of trans people do not identify themselves in mixed company for many reasons — among them, safety. Just bounce around and find people along the way, really.