Misogyny, female adolescence and gender identity ideology collide in “Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood like a House on Fire (Part 1: Being a Woman in a Woman-Hating World)”

Vaishnavi Sundari, “Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood like a House on Fire (Part 1: Being a Woman in a Woman-Hating World)” (2020)

Made during the COVID lockdowns in 2020, Indian Vaishnavi Sundari’s four-part documentary series is a timely survey of gender identity ideology and its misogynist, even homophobic agenda, and the effects of this ideology on women and girls, especially teenage girls. The entire series is structured around interviews with psychologists, therapists, parents and those people who have transitioned to the opposite sex (or were in the process of doing so) and then changed their minds and detransitioned to their original sex.

In Part 1 (Being a Woman in a Woman-Hating World), Sundari gives a sketch of her experiences growing up in south India and learning to hate being female and having a female body from her family and the culture around her. This sketch then leads into a series of interviews with Western psychologists and therapists on how gender identity ideologists have captured governments and the medical and psychological professions, and compelled them to accept their demands to redefine gender identities and medical and psychological disorders that involve gender identity confusion or questioning. The reactions of governments and the medical and psychological professions in giving in to these demands have given rise to a new context in which teenage girls, under family or other social pressures to conform to in-group codes of behaviours that target or police what is acceptable for women and girls to do or to be, come under new pressures from friendship groups either at school, online or in other social settings to change their bodies to the other sex. These pressures are augmented by additional pressures from doctors and psychologists consulted by the girls’ parents: doctors and psychologists may actively or passively encourage the girls to undergo surgery to remove their breasts and ovaries and begin testosterone or other hormonal treatments, often at considerable financial costs to their parents. Such transitioning comes with medical and psychological side effects that may be profound, permanent and even life-threatening.

Sundari treats her interviewees with respect, allowing them to express their opinions without interruption. The major issue some viewers may have with her decision to structure her documentary around interviews is that the film does not address how governments and the health industry (in particular, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical and psychological professions) stand to benefit financially from a generation of teenage girls pushed into gender transitioning. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this episode is its discussion of the history of past mass hysterias such as mass fainting (in Tanganyika in 1962) which nearly always involved teenage girls, usually during periods of widespread social anxiety or great social change. This would be a topic worthy of its own investigation in a separate documentary.