Lisa Marchiano: Transgenderism and the Social Construction of Diagnosis

This is right on target.
   I'll say again that the terminological train wreck 'social construction' undermines every conversation it shows up in...but we can work around that.
   The problem isn't really that diagnoses are "socially constructed" (not that that's an actual thing...), but rather that (a) they're often theory-laden, and that (b) theories are often false or inaccurate, largely in virtue of being (c) socially transmitted (d) on non-rational grounds. There's likely a real (often: psychological, even biological) basis for this sort of thing. But the phenomenon itself is vague and multifarious, and nobody knows exactly what it is. So a theory is promulgated: you're really (in some sense of 'really'...) the opposite sex! This theory is false, of course--but it catches on because the left has a political interest in promoting it. Political pressure is applied to enforce acceptance of the theory among psychologists, doctors and the public. And now people with a vague and multifarious collection of maladies start interpreting their own experiences through the lens of the theory: I'm gender disphoric! I'm actually the opposite sex!
   This all has more straightforwardly moral consequences as well as more epistemic ones. The former include implanting delusions in children and mutilating their bodies. The latter include training ourselves to obey whatever commends the left might decide to issue, cowering in the face of their disapproval.
   There's a really important lesson in all this, but I reckon we won't learn it. We didn't seem to learn anything from the Satanic Panic. We're in the midst of an episode of mass hysteria / mass psychogenic illness. The official theory doesn't make any sense, but the left has adopted the meta-strategy of accusing anyone who disagrees with its theories of identity sin: some affront to the feelings / self-concept of one of the groups at the top of the progressive stack. Identity sins are sins so horrific that most people anywhere left of the right dare not say (or even think?) anything that might even possibly result in an accusation--and accusations are made very, very freely. During the Satanic Panic, no one wanted to defend the accused, since by doing so they risked bringing down accusations of pedophilia on themselves. (Some people were actually put on trial merely for testifying on behalf of others who had been accused.) And so we went on collectively pretending that children were being flown to other countries en masse during the school day, molested by Satanic cults, then flown back...without a peep from them or a single sign it had happened.
   It was one thing when the left used accusations of identity sin to coerce conformity of word and deed. But now they're using them to coerce conformity of thought. That's on them, of course...but the really scary thing is how well this works on us. Even people I've long thought to be independent thinkers are cowed into silence and acquiescence because they are so desperately afraid of being called "transphobic." Which, you'll note, wasn't even a sin until very recently...but we've been trained to hit the dirt when anything of the form "*phobic" or "*ism" is thrown at us. We haven't merely been trained to obey, we've been trained to live in terror of suffixes.
   We sure do disappoint me sometimes.