A lot of psychiatrists back then thought of themselves as good guys, as decent liberals -- including the ones who were gay themselves "Yes, sure, we have to reductively label homosexuality as a mental illness because of those bigots in Peoria But I'm in a position to help"
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"I personally understand that it's more nuanced than the people who think all gay men are rapists and child molesters and whatnot If a gay person comes to my practice I have the power to figure out 'Hey, this isn't one of the BAD ones' and keep them away from abusive therapists"
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And yeah, sure, a "good doctor" in such a scenario could pull a lot of strings to avoid having someone sent to prison or institutionalized, could steer someone away from truly abusive "treatments" for being gay with electroshocks etc. That's great The system was still fucked
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They shouldn't have been proud of themselves for exercising their power that way, they should've been pissed as fuck for HAVING THAT POWER in the first place
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The Masked Psychiatrist guy eventually coming out and saying "The only difference between me and someone who'd end up coming into my practice from having been picked up by the cops for sodomy is socioeconomic status, all of this is just class privilege"
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It's like Jesse Singal kissing the feet of "practicing gender clinicians" and taking them as the gold standard experts on trans kids Saying even someone like Ken Zucker, one of the most abusive clinicians out there, "helped trans kids"
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Which, sure, if you frame it the way he does, he did I know someone on here who was "helped" by Ken Zucker Because you can't get HRT without a prescription, and Ken Zucker wrote prescriptions as part of his practice, and if you really convinced him you were trans, he'd do so
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So what if the percentage of kids he "helped" was a lot lower, and the hoops he made you jump through much more extensive Some people still got prescriptions and if gender clinics didn't exist NO ONE would get prescriptions so what are you complaining about you ingrate
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This is a fairly common opinion and it's one that, as Foucault would say, people have because the medical establishment's monopoly on power is so ingrained you don't even see it as power anymore Not a single doctor in the world "provides access" to meds, they *withhold* meds
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It's not some kind of law of nature written on tablets from Mt. Sinai that the prescription system must be a thing In a Rousseanian state of nature you wouldn't need to be "given" access to meds They don't give anything that they didn't first take away
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And it's a hell of a thing to just roll over and accept that this monopoly on power is good and righteous and therefore choosing not to use it is a compassionate, altruistic act "Why are these patients so mad at me, I'm the one who signs the papers saying not to lock them up"
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It's like actual cops (whom psychiatrists pat themselves on the back for being smarter and more educated and more liberal than, but who are all part of the same system) expecting cookies for all the times they didn't shoot somebody "And you know that I could have!"
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