...we literally started the conversation off with "I don't want to talk to you about this stuff because the psychological establishment has had its fingers really deep in sex and gender and has a long tradition of invalidating LGBT experiences."
And then an hour of gently trying to convince me to see myself as a woman ensued.
Vector, I'll echo that this sounds like shitty therapy. Sorry it happened. I understand he's been a better therapist in the past, so I hope it gets better, or at least doesn't happen again. Good luck.
Thanks.
I had caught him doing that a little bit last time we brought up this subject, so this time I came prepared to fight against the Jungian "actually we are all non-binary beneath all of our cultural education and you are just unusually enlightened compared to most people. Therefore you should see yourself as female on the basis of biological sex because however you want to behave, you can be a woman and still do that. After all, you [a person who has not transitioned and has had no ability to pick their own clothing until recently] appear female to me." thing. So, you know, not nearly terrible as it could be, but not great given that I hadn't even been able to explain that there's more here than not wanting to conform to a stereotype. He also called gender-neutral children "it," which I had to politely inform him was non-preferred.
It turned out that the problem was that his internal identity was androgynous [which I had sort of been sensing for a while], and he just assumed everyone else with a strong sense of binary gender had just drunk too much societal Kool-Aid. By the end, after a brief education in trans* 101 and a few thought experiments, he was acting sheepish and implied he should be paying me for therapy.
So there you go. Vector: helping folks discover that they're trans* by accident.
@_@
Vector?
That isn't the right way of therapy in approaching gender identity (edoot: Oh goodness I meant for HIM and not YOU. You did it right). It seems he's undergoing counter-transference from in relating with your details .__. [By which I mean stating the rigidity of gender--its more dependent on how the person identifies instead of theoretical data in this context]
OR
There are some details which are, in between the lines, unspoken of and may be causing a sort of misunderstanding of association and identification.
Or its his viewpoint. Generally, I assume most therapists perform their duties under the humanistic perspective which generally means 'ask first and establish common ground instead of enforcing ideas on seemingly uncertain ground' ._.
Double edit!
My words are messy like spaghetti
Hey thanks Reudh for supporting me back there and teaching me about the finer aspects of my English and saying 'You do English well' in short.
Sadly, Tir, you tend to have little control over crushes. Your brain just goes 'Hey, look at that person! They look nice! CRUSH!'
Err, not really? (In my opinion anyway). The people I've found as...crushes? Generally had the same attribute.
That, or its my asexuality speaking :v Like, seriously.
It's pure personality for me.