I think one of my good friends may be falling into the TiM trap and I don't know how to help
Submitted June 28, 2020, 9:39 p.m. by throwaway12045645(If this is against the rules, let me know, and I can try to find a more appropriate sub for it; also I'm using a throwaway as he knows my main account name.)
One of my good male friends from college has always struggled with mental health issues, and it's only gotten worse due to the quarantine making the last part of the school year all online. He slowly talked to me less and less, and spent more time on leftist twitter and seems to be buying it hook, line, and sinker. In his twitter bio, he put "she/her" pronouns, he apparently has started wearing dresses, and he broke up with his girlfriend because she's straight. The sad thing is that I don't even think it's "pornsickness" that's doing this; he's just been told by every single "woke" outlet out there that all of his mental health struggles are due to "dysphoria", and that transitioning will fix his life and make him happy. Hell, in college I thought he was one of the good guys, who had a stable relationship and detested the frat & hookup culture -- but now he's falling for this. I just want to talk him out of it before he permanently ruins his body, and convince him to see a non-gender-confirming therapist, but I don't want all of my woke friends from school to burn me at the stake. Any advice, friends?
Post archive: https://archive.is/cUEJA
man, there's not very much that you can really do at this point if he's as indoctrinated as you say he is.
men in his situation are honestly some of the strangest dysphoric people to me. i'm a male in my late twenties, and i experienced dysphoria starting at around age four, but was able to eliminate it entirely by my mid twenties. seeing and interacting with dudes on the detrans reddit and elsewhere who only started experiencing dysphoria after the age I was able to fully rid myself of it is fucking weird, and leads me to believe that these people are probably much harder to reach than those who can recognize these feelings as fundamentally irrational due to them having developed in childhood/adolescence.
it's really sad, altogether. how close are you guys? the best thing you can really do is perhaps try to persuade him from rushing head-first into HRT and SRS, unless you're willing to start sending him Gender Critical writing and stuff like that, or testimonies from male detransitioners who were in the same boat as him and deeply regret their choices.
We're pretty close, or at least we were until COVID sent everybody home from school and now I don't see him much. Luckily I think that he trusts me enough that if I send him stuff in good faith it might be a good idea, at least to slow his progress down this path until he can get in front of a therapist who realizes what's going on. Hell, I went through similar gender struggles; mental illness makes people desperate to find a simple way to fix all their problems, when there's never that easy of an answer.
I mean I would send him some of the posts on here as a start, then ask him if this is what he wants outside of the horniness period, like after he is done. Ask him how he will feel at age 60, his mental state unchanged and his body mutilated. Remind him that if he really needs that fetish/sexual validation, a dress can go as far as fake boobs if need be. In my opinion, as bad as it may seem, remind him This isn’t normal, and that it’s a slippery slope, he could easily be the next topic on this sub due to a post. Btw these are all things that helped me realize how fucked this stuff can be and do to a (relatively) young guy (me circa 2 months ago)
Let him go, man
Just let him go
He's probably latent AGP. Send him a copy of Men Trapped in Men's Bodies. It's your only hope. It's easy to find online.
Passive-aggressive book recommendations are definitely the way to go about influencing your friends!
Since you won't be able to beat the sweet lies of validation and coddling he'll get from the transcult, you have to be as harsh and truthful as possible. That what he's doing is nothing more than blaming his problems on an imaginary phantom called dysphoria, and that him choosing to call himself a woman is disrespectful to actual women who don't get to choose to be women or not be women.
Nothing you can do about woke friends being woke idiots; my only suggestion is to try and also tell them they also should be ashamed of themselves for being too woke and ignorant to realize how they're actually hurting women. In worst case scenarios, you're going to end up having to distance yourself from them anyways, since if your TIM friend starts acting inappropriately they're going to try and back him up and you'll end up needing to get the hell away from all of them violating your personal space and boundaries for your own sake.
Maybe they know what they want more than you do
you would be great at suicide prevention
Suicide is an entirely different situation lmao, nobody is dying here.
I think it depends just how close they are - if OP is super close (like friends since childhood), then maybe they actually may be able to know what’s best for their friend.
On the other hand, if OP isn’t a best friend, then this would definitely lean more into pathologising lifestyles you disagree with (my friend believes the furry in our class wants to have sex with animals, but I think he just likes the art), and turning everything into a mental illness (I felt kinda sad, guess I have clinical depression)
Be real. Tell him by transitioning he'd be making a social pariah out of himself, for the rest of his life. Tell him all the surgery in the world won't make him a woman. Tell him that it's fine to not conform to masculinity norms and that not being part of macho culture doesn't make him less of a man, or a woman. Tell him that transitioning comes with a lifetime of medical risks, that it's something that's not reversible. Ask him what he's hoping will happen after he transitions and why he believes that would make him happy. Ask how he pictures his life in 20 years, in 40 years, in 60. Does he want people to think of him as that weird old man who walks around in women's clothing? Ask him if he wants children and if so what role does he picture himself having in that family.
I have a more hopeful outlook than the other posters here. Why not give the Socratic method a try? Ask him if he would be comfortable having a discussion with you around his gender, via video chat if at all possible.
Start by explaining that you care very deeply for him, and that you just want to learn more about what he's been going through. Don't be accusatory.
Some good questions to ask might include:
• What was the catalyst for your transition?
• What makes you uncomfortable with being labeled as a man?
• What are you hoping to achieve by transitioning?
• What are you currently doing to maintain good mental health? Have you tried all available options?
• What does "being a woman" mean to you?
And finally... in a perfect world, where no one expected anything specific of you based on your gender, what would you most like to be? What hobbies would make you "you"? How would you like to show your friends and family that you care about them? If having a penis came with no behavioral expectations, would you still want it gone?
Try from there. Just keep things very open-ended and allow him to explore his own beliefs in a safe environment. Best of luck.
I think being harsh would actually drive your friend deeper into the Twitter woke circlejerk. Being concerned about the mental health issues and trying to show that transitioning isn't a cure-all for these problems is probably the best way to go imo. Using plain language and avoiding terms like "gender euphoria" would help - they're basically euphemisms or abstracts and not anything concrete. Tell them about how depression, anxiety or whatever they suffer from wouldn't magically go away with transition, and try to get them out of the Twitter sphere or at least understand the weird dynamics within it.
Just be nice and use the preferred pronouns or avoid them entirely if you can't. Life is too short.
Sadly, there's not much you can do. I've experienced this, his trans identity is going to become the focus of his life for the next year or so, for as long as he continues to pursue this path. It's novel right now, and he is getting a lot of validation. Those two things make it hard to walk away from.
This is really upsetting. Tell her to look at this infographic.
let her be herself
You can either support her and look into more information and educate yourself or even have open conversations with her. Or you can come on here to these threads that would be like asking the KKK about your black friend. If this is truly a “friend” then support her. If not, please leave her the fuck alone. She’s probably distancing herself cause she knows you’re like this.
Jesus Christ. If she says she is a woman then she is a god damn woman. Please stop mishendering her. I don’t think she’s gonna want to be your friend if you keep acting like this, just let her be her and let her be happy. She is happy as a woman, so let her be a woman.
Sounds like you should be a supportive friend and support her transition
Don't worry about it. If you keep up this way of thinking, she probably won't be your friend for much longer. It's her body and her choice what she wants to do with it.
Well, here's what I can say about that
I don't know for certain but judging by your post and the opinions you express therein it seems that you're quite right wing in your beliefs, and maybe I'd be right in assuming that both your friend group and her friend group might be too, although I don't know that for sure, but it would seem to me that the people in her vicinity do not support trans people, leftist Twitter does and so do the other woke spaces that she visits. It is entirely possible (and likely) that your friend has felt like this her whole life but only felt comfortable expressing it now she's found a support network to fall back on.
I also don't like the implication that you're making that your friend is only trans as a result of her mental health issues, have you not considered that perhaps the two are unrelated? in fact it's entirely possible that her mental health issues are caused by her being trans.
I'd also suggest that quarantine has people rethinking their lives a lot, your friend is no different. that's why she's waited until now
So, my advice for you if you want to support your friend would be to support their decisions and their transition irrelevant of your own opinions, if you have any other questions feel free to PM me, I think I'm fairly qualified to talk on the subject