I mean, that's a really cute response. I say "cute" because it's effective political rhetoric while neatly rejecting the real debate happening.

The phenomenon is going to need a label of some kind beyond "transgender" if it is ever going to be accurate. Which it won't be, probably until there is a genetic test for personality disorders. I hate EY and rationalists, but this genuinely is a repressed topic for political reasons.

Anyway, since I like all the trans people I've known (including my oldest friend who is trans and BPD), I'm going to at least try to explain why EY has a point in a way that is supportive of trans people.

We are in the midst of a huge fad of reassigning BPD women as autistic or transgender, which isn't much of a change, really, because everyone is massively disincentivized to reckon properly with personality disorders in the first place. You can't bill for "treating" them and they are tautologically defined as negative, despite producing all sorts of desirable traits like hyperfocus. They may as well be dismissed as a social construct, we handle them so poorly.

Nevertheless, the real BPD, which indeed exists, will drive the person fearing a lack of identity to take on moral identities which re-position social difficulties such that the person with BPD feels like they have some sort of control. Since people with BPD are also profoundly and authentically gender-iconoclastic, it makes a really core sense that BPD people would come to believe that whatever identity torment they are unable to express simply would be best expressed as a gender reassignment.

Obviously, since social pressures and the torment of BPD are both real, but take place in the mind, this phenomena is the epitome of a thing existing in the liminal space between "real" and "fake", between "my fault" and "society's fault". It's as much of a "valid response to social imperatives" or a "genetic disease" as drug addiction or an eating disorder. Personality disorders are always married to society's superego ideal because by their very nature they fervently believe in their release from torment being facilitated through this ideal expression.

Overall, I'm in favor of BPD people becoming deeply involved with the mental health industry, and if being trans is the excuse, great. They need mental health assistance. If they really are just people who would have otherwise developed anorexia, then who cares? They may as well be in some form of regular treatment with a therapist who supports them. And since gender is a phenomena that drives so many people to private self-reflection and nuanced social compatibility theories, why not accept they obsessively fuss over it? What do you want them to obsessively fuss over, Bible passages? Probably not.

I choose to believe this phenomena is better than the alternative. Studies have shown that over time, people with BPD can improve their symptoms, but don't tend to improve their functionality, so if someone ends up critically disabled after going through some kind of identity crisis around gender, they probably would have ended up disabled anyway.

If you have a live and let live opinion on mental health, on some level you will always and forever watch BPD collude with the mental health industry to express its existence. In the 80s it was Multiple Personality Disorder and "recovered memories". I am willing to say that was worse. I would rather someone is trans than develops "Chronic Lyme Disease". You have to give people with BPD something, some explanation, some hope - you can't just call them "fake" and kick them down the stairs.

There are always fads. And just as narcissists mate perfectly with the superego phenomena around success and capitalism, borderlines are always going to mate perfectly with victim currencies. It's a totally repressed topic. That's why there are so many therapists convinced BPD only exists because of "family trauma" despite virtually all serious mental health aetiologies demonstrating genetic origin in twin studies, including personality disorders. Therapists are so often people who wish therapy was just people coming in and crying about abuse and feeling better. It makes sense.

There was a study showing high coincidence of transgender clients and personality disorders, but this is the very definition of politically incorrect, let's be real. You can talk openly about how common major symptoms of BPD are for trans people - Zinnia Jones does all the time - but saying they have personality disorders? Nah. No bueno.

But again, hey. The reasons are obvious. Personality disorders are broadly perceived through a heavy social stigma. It isn't fair.

There are lots and lots of people who have transitioned and seem happier. I do not doubt them. There are some rationalists who are into self-criticism through autogynephilia theory who do not seem super happy. And if BPD can be defined as "hysteria", let's be real: autogynephilia is an absolutely hysterical assessment of trans people. It's like explaining personality disorders using footage from Silence of the Lambs.

Maybe the people who are happier are happy in a "self-made" sort of way? In a lot of ways, personality disorders are extremely transhuman in their relationship with self-conception. Who knows.

We are in the middle of calling trans people "normal" for purposes of protecting them and their rights, which I support. Groovy. Leave them alone. Also, a lot of these activist parents are going to have NPD, since this stuff is genetic and runs in families - in other words, they're not going to be very loving about this topic.

Quillette still sucks.