Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:
"Self-identification" means that a trans person can compete in the category of their choice without any medication or even medical diagnosis. Currently, a trans athlete in high school who does not need to take any medication still has to submit doctor's note to verify gender dysphoria. If you waive this requirement, you are likely to invite imposters.
The rules for sports in HS and lower grades in the USA vary from state to state. Many states currently do have self-identification. A "doctor's note to verify gender dysphoria" is not universally required. In Connecticut, for example, it's up to each school or local school district to decide according to its own criteria that a male student's claimed opposite-sex gender identity is genuine and then inform the state body that governs interscholastic sports (CIAC). Or at least that was the case when Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood were cleaning up in girls' HS track in the state.
https://www.transathlete.com/k-12But where a doctor's note is required, it means little. Getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and doctor's letter saying you have GD these days is easy-peasy. Used to be, the precursor of GD - gender identity disorder - was an extremely rare, niche diagnosis made only after extensive consultation with experienced, trained clinicians in psychology and psychiatry. But over the past 15 years, GID and its rebranded form, GD, has become an extremely common Dx , one that's become easier and easier to get with each passing year. There are thousands of specialist gender therapists, psychologists and general medical practitioners willing to provide a Dx of GD and a letter attesting to it for a fee. Moreover, there are now more than 300 dedicated gender clinics catering to children and adolescents in the US.
https://www.gendermapper.org/Young people are often given a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in their first appointment with a gender specialist. Sometimes it doesn't even take a full hour. The parents of many of the young people who've become famous for being dubbed "trans" as young children such as Jazz Jennings, Kai Shapley and Trinity Neal have openly bragged that their sons at age 3, 4, and 5 were given a Dx of GD as soon as they walked in the door at their first visit with a gender therapist. Many of the growing number of former "transitioners" who have now detransitioned, with or without "desisting" from their GD, say they were given a diagnosis as adolescents in 15-30 minutes.
In press interviews, Andraya Yearwood has said that after coming out to the family as gay at 13-14, Yearwood's religious parents immediately sent Yearwood to a therapist they handpicked to "help," and in the first session, the therapist decreed that Yearwood is trans, not gay. By so doing, the therapist basically implanted gender dysphoria in Yearwood, because to homophobes it's better to convince young gays and lesbians that they were "born in the wrong body" than to help them be happy, self-accepting homosexuals. What happened to Yearwood is a prime example of the common phenomenon known as "transing away the gay."
The ease of getting a GD Dx toda really isn't surprising given the flimsy clinical criteria for gender dysphoria in the DSM-V and the ICD-11, and the fact that everyone who seeks a diagnosis for themselves or their children has been coached via social media on exactly what to say.
Also, there is a ton of misdiagnosis and mistreatment in this field because it's full of incompetents, quacks and power-mad medics who pay no heed to the maxim, first, do no harm. An entire industry of avaricious gender vendors has sprung up to prey upon, and profit from, selling snake oil, experimental medical interventions and appearance-altering cosmetic procedures and products to deeply unhappy people with a host of serious mental health problems, providing them with "treatments" that all too often end up making their physical health, mental illnesses and lives worse over the longer term. Even when medical "transition" does relieve a person's psychological distress, which it sometimes does, it often comes at the cost of a host of physical health problems, some very serious, new kinds of mental health issues and disruption to family relations. (The men who declare themselves women at midlife or later like Jenner and US Health Sec'y Rachel Levine often end up doing a great deal of harm to their wives and children in particular.)
Here is a heartbreaking instance of Isaac, a young man who previously "identified as" a woman confronting one of his know-nothing gender therapists he says fed his "delusions" and encouraged him to take steps that have left him at age 28 with breasts, sterile and a body he sees as "ruined":
https://youtu.be/inUnrmh6XH0What happened to Isaac points to another problem nowadays: when young people display any gender/sex nonconformity or experience and express any anxieties, confusion or unhappiness about gender, sex, sex stereotypes, sex roles or sexual orientation, the people they turn to for help in their peer groups, at school, in health care, at lobby orgs, and on Tumblr, TikTok, reddit and other social media, assume and constantly tell them they have gender dysphoria and must be trans. No one ever mentions that having GD doesn't mean being "trans" - there are other ways to deal with and get over GD.
Also, it seems no one that young people are listening to today is telling them that the kinds of insecurities, doubts, social awkwardness, body-image issues, confusion, low moods and angst they experience during puberty, adolescence and early adulthood are entirely normal and very common. Now those garden-variety issues are taken as signs of clinical gender dysphoria, and transition is said to be the only treatment for clinical GD. So once a person decides she or he has clinical GD, transition and gender identity become their life focus. And all the while, deep-seated and accompanying and underlying problems they have - such as autism, OCD, ADD, depression, trauma, bereavement, PTSD from CSA and ACEs - go unaddressed. The whole thing is a tragedy and IMO something that will go down in history as one of the worst health care scandals and society-wide safeguarding failures of all time.