Des Kaisers neue Kleider
Wikipedia Commons ©Raimond Spekking • Brückenstraße 17 • KölnDr. Paul McHugh war lange Zeit einer der führenden Psychiater Amerikas. Er räumte mit einigen Mythen auf, als er 2019 vor dem obersten Gerichtshof der USA zum Thema Gender-Identität befragt wurde: Aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht sei es zwar möglich, dass die Genderidentität als soziales Konstrukt nicht im Einklang mit dem biologischen Geschlecht (engl. sex) ist. Ob es allerdings hilfreich ist, bei Genderdysphorie die Wunschidentität grundsätzlich zu bestätigen, ist nicht wissenschaftlich erwiesen. McHugh verglich (im Originaltext S. 13) die affirmative Behandlung von Genderdysphorie mit Andersens Märchen
McHugh äußerte sich auch zu der These, dass Menschen ihr „Geschlecht bei der Geburt zugewiesen" würde:
„Sex is not and cannot be 'assigned at birth', despite the assertions of the AMA, APA, and Respondents. See Stephen’s Br. at 5 ('Sex assigned at birth refers to sex an infant is presumed to be at birth.'). The language of 'assigned at birth' is purposefully misleading and would be identical to an assertion that blood type is assigned at birth. Yes, a doctor can check your blood type and list it. But blood type, like sex, is objectively recognizable, not assigned. In fact, the sex of a child can be ascertained well before birth.“
Des Weiteren:
„The treatment of gender identity is much like the famous Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, in which the spectators all pretend not to notice that the emperor walks through the streets wearing nothing. Those watching “the contemporary transgender parade” know that “a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste,” so they shrink from stating clear facts.“
“In biology, an organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction. This definition does not require any arbitrary measurable or quantifiable physical characteristics or behaviors, it requires understanding the reproductive system and the reproduction process.”
Seine Zusammenfassung:
„As a matter of science, sex and gender identity are so distinct that gender identity cannot properly be read into or replace sex. And with regard to the underlying policy question, there is no reliable evidence that gender affirmation — understood as asking or requiring persons to affirm others’ beliefs that they are the opposite sex — is efficacious.“
Interrogating the transgender agenda, mercatornet, 01.06.2020
Brief of Amicus Gurieae Dr. P. McHugh, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry in support of petitioner (Originaltext in engl.)
Neue Podcasts mit Paul McHugh
The Psychiatrist Who Shut Down America's First Gender Clinic Speaks Out, Beyond-Gender-Podcast, 17.07.2025
How an Overvalued Belief Captured Medicine – Dr. Paul McHugh Explains More, Beyond-Gender-Podcast, 08.11.2025
McHugh wird ausgezeichnet
Mitte November 2025 erhielt der 94-jährige McHugh die Medaille für intellektuelle Freiheit von der American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
The prophet of gender madness Dr. Paul McHugh returns from the col, 13.11.2025
Der Junge unter den Zuschauern benennt die Realität
P. McHugh erklärt, warum seiner Meinung nach „Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme“ ist, u. a.:
“But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension. I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real.“
Zur Idee, dass ein Austausch des Geschlechts möglich und hilfreich ist:
„It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.
Die düsteren Fakten
„The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counselors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.“
„In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.“
Weitere Erkenntnisse von Paul McHugh
McHugh hinterfragte schon sehr früh die sog. geschlechtsangleichenden Operationen, deren Sinn und Zweck.
„On the other hand it is not obvious how this patient’s sense that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body differs from the feelings of a patient with anorexia nervosa that she is obese despite her emaciated, cachectic state. We don’t do liposuction on anorexics. So why amputate the genitals of these patients?“
Er berichtet von einem plastischen Chirurgen an der damaligen Johns Hopkins Klinik bevor McHugh diese Abteilung dicht machte:
„A plastic surgeon at Hopkins provided the voice of reality on this matter based on his practice and his natural awe at the mystery of the body. One day while we were talking about it, he said to me: 'Imagine what it’s like to get up at dawn and think about spending the day slashing with a knife at perfectly well formed organs, because you psychiatrists do not understand what is the problem here but hope surgery may do the poor wretch some good.'”
Bereits in seinem Beitrag von 1995 sprach McHugh davon, dass der Glaube „im falschen Körper zu sein" eine „überbewertete Idee" sei.
„now appreciate that this condition falls into the category of “overvalued ideas”* described very thoroughly by Carl Wernicke at the beginning of the century. This is a category that includes morbid jealousies, anorexia nervosa and litigious personalities. Fortunately the diagnostic term transsexualism has been abandoned and replaced with the term Gender Identity Disorder making it clear that the problem is one of ideas rather than of bodily constitution and should be treated as such.“
When you discuss what the patient means by “feeling like a woman,” you often get a sex stereotype in return and something that female physicians note immediately as a male caricature of women’s attitudes and interests.
Witches, multiple personalities, and other psychiatric artifacts, P. R. McHugh, 1995
Märchen
