To have thought we were well past calling gender dysmorohia a "mental illness"

[mostlikelyanunpopularviewpoint]

Just that really.

My male friend (who is quite young, early twenties) has recently confided in me that he is transgender and wishes to transition into presenting as female. As my friend still refers to himself as 'he' as he is not openly transgender, I shall refer to my friend as 'he' in this post to keep things simple.

What worries me is that he is feeling suicidal, has no support apart from my friend group and is generally in a need of a lot of help right now. Hence I feel annoyed at what happened.

One of our mutual friends who my friend has also told turned around and said to me, "he needs help, it's just a mental illness and he can recover from it and live a normal life."

AIBU to be unhappy at this statement and to think that although obviously this is a very controversial subject, with many different opinions on how integrate trans rights without compromising the rights of biological woman, in this day and age it is not acceptable to refer to someone who identifies as transgender as "mentally ill?"

Also would like to add that this thread is not to debate the rights of transgender people vs woman. I believe there are several threads like for this discussion at the moment, hence my AIBU pertains literally to the fact that I find it unacceptable to call being transgender "a mental illness" which implies it is temporary and is something a person can recover from!

I honestly thought this was discriminatory and that most people do NOT see being transgender as a mental illness?

a lifetime of KNOWING they are in the wrong body

No-one is born in the wrong body. They are born in their body. Many people do things to change their body throughout their life according to their personal taste. That does not mean they were in an incorrect body at birth, it just wasn’t how they wanted it to be.

But in the case of transgenderism the person in question can't explain it either. I've never read an explanation beyond 'it's just how I feel' and 'I always liked dresses' and various superficial things like that.

That is very different to homosexuality where it is a straightforward ' I am male and I find another male attractive, but I do not find females attractive'.

In my head- BDD and anorexia are curable and mental illnesses you can move on from

Anorexia kills the majority of its sufferers, I was first diagnosed aged 8 with anorexia, Im 27 I still have anorexia, I’ve been hospitalised countless times and my parents have been told to prepare for the worst, that’s a very dismissive comment to make.

Most sufferers who ‘recover’ get better but are never actually cured. Mental health illnesses have no linear recovery.

Just a quick note here:

The DSM is a manual of disorders, not necessarily illnesses. It includes autism, ADHD, nonepileptic seizures, PTSD and a whole host of other conditions. Some are lifelong conditions, some 'curable', some can be alleviated in different ways.

@santaiscoming2017 but it's not just me that doesn't understand. No woman can explain what it feels like to be a woman.

Even trans women can't explain without saying very sexist things like 'wanting to wear makeup'.

This isn't about me not getting it. Nobody does, which should be a pretty big red flag.

Of course it's a mental illness, same as if I told you I wanted to have my skin darkened because I was convinced I shouldn't be in this Caucasian body but in an African one.

How is it different?

How on earth does a man know he is female?

I have to say the only way I know I am female is because I have a vagina and a birth certificate that says female - no other innate sense of sex or gender.

When a man says he has always felt he should be female, I think he means he has always felt like an outsider among other men. That does not mean he is a woman.

To me it seems that men who claim to be women want the overtly feminine parts of it, for example being pink and fluffy, make-up and high heels.

As we all know these things are not the be all and end all of what a woman is.

It strikes me as very odd that you aren't allowed to mention actual women's issues as they are triggering

Does your friend say he thinks he is a woman, or is it that he doesnt identify with what he thinks he OUGHT to feel like as a man. Because that really seems to be the crux.
this 'what I should be if I am a man/woman' is gender. It isnt real. Its society. If you dont fit in that pigeonhole it doesnt mean that you belong in the other pigeonhole. It means there shouldnt be any
So it should be fine for a man to be kind, gentle, sympathetic, subservient, like dresses, long hair, dancing and embroidery.
But it isnt, because men as agroup, tend to look down on and belittle men who do that - who are Sissy, and Like Girls.
So those boys, who feel like that, take on the message from tiny that they arent boys, they dont belong to the boy gang. Therefore logic says they belong to the girl gang. And the girls were probably kinder.
It seems much easier, and there is much more societal support, to come out as transgender than to stand up to the men and say, no Im a man like this. Women have been socialised to be kind and accommodating. Its only us nasty ones who say 'hang on dude'......

give your friend a copy of Grayson Perry's 'The descent of Man'

Most MNers are quite liberal. I don’t give a toss if a bloke wants to wear a dress or behave a certain way. I do care, quite a lot, about the erosion of hard won legal protections for women.

This.

Also stop using homosexuality as an argument. It is completely different to being trans. It's like the way the trans lobby uses intersex people in their arguments to prove that the are more than two sexes

mostlikelyanunpopularviewpoint

It’s considered a mental illness, but that doesn’t really help you. Transgender is not. (Soon to be ratified, but already culturally accepted) So you can be trans without having gender dysphoria.

Hormones and surgery can indeed alleviate the symptoms. There are any number of transwomen who will testify to that.

There is also statistical evidence to suggest that despite specific symptoms being alleviated, one’s overall mental health and happiness can remain low (in spite of support). And even worsen.

If transitioning as an adult, from what I understand, therapy is not even available. Removing a medical diagnosis of transgender means that any therapy will just drop off.

Children, I believe get 6 to 12 sessions, and then that’s it for therapy, too.

If your friend is quite specific about when he felt trans and why, this 4th wave link can help you. In the way you deal with him.

I wouldn’t necessarily suggest showing it to him, though.

The other thing to bear in mind is that statistically there can be quite a number of comorbid mental health issues that accompany gender dysphoria.

Unless you’re qualified, I wouldn’t suggest trying to unravel any of it.

You, personally, can be armed with knowledge which might help your friend, without calling him out and upsetting him further.

4thwavenow.com/

Datun, what is your expertise and experience in relation to this? Are you a psychiatrist specialising in this area or a related area? Or are you an interested bystander who has decided to research it so that you understand it better?

Can I ask a question in all seriousness? Why do almost all transgender people seem to be men wanting to be women?

The cast majority of children presenting at gender clinics are girls. Girls often transition for different reasons to boys.

But you don’t hear from the girls, because women don’t tend to have a voice. In this, or anything else.

A mental illness isn't defined by whether or not it can be cured.

This^

Also, it does trans-identified people who want surgery no favours at all by removing it as an "official" disorder into just being an identity. There's a reason that therapy is a good idea before you make permanent physical changes to your body.

But in the case of transgenderism the person in question can't explain it either. I've never read an explanation beyond 'it's just how I feel' and 'I always liked dresses' and various superficial things like that

This has always puzzled me too. It also bothers me that 'female' is being boiled down to a bunch of superficialities. I seem to remember spending quite a lot of time as a feminist in the 70s, trying to get men to think beyond this . Are we going backwards? Are Transgender women now defining what being a women is?

santaiscoming2017

When I was first interested, I found it incredibly difficult to understand.

I imagined waking up tomorrow in the body of a man and how horrified I would be.

So I read everything I could get my hands on. Not articles, or opinion pieces, but the actual studies.

And signed up to various scientific discussion groups so that I could read everything firsthand.

As the overlap with feminism became apparent (something I hadn’t realised) many dots connected simultaneously.

I do find the issue of gender dysphoria relating to stereotypical gender roles fascinating.

Because, even though a feminist, I still fence sit slightly over what is or isn’t innate.

But the stats are very hard to ignore. The social contagion around transgenderism is self evident.

Society’s expectation of gender roles is rigourously woven throughout the ideology.

It actually wouldn’t surprise me if a genetic reason was discovered for gender dysphoria. Research is ongoing, I believe.

What’s interesting is, would that genetic difference manifest in a different way if we didn’t have such strict gender roles?

I have less trouble grasping autogynephilia, on the other hand. (Although again, they have not pinpointed a direct cause).

Either way, we still categorise human beings based on biological sex. Primarily for reproduction, but in terms of society, because of the inherent power dynamic between men and women.

A power dynamic, that does not change irrespective of how you identify. Quite evidently. The power still lies entirely with the men, despite them thinking they’re women.

Socialisation in action? Or are women really lesser than?

I might add, the one thing I do have 100 percent expertise in, is being a woman.

Something of a head start when it comes to transgenderism.

santaiscoming "I am not sure we should be hauling it into the headlights". As gay people used to be treated you mean"? Keeping it hidden? Get back to the dark ages, ffs. OP, I repeat it is NOT a mental illness and the depression is caused by keeping it hidden, away from people still living in the dark ages. You sound like a brilliant friend, keep going with your understanding and support, it will really mean a lot to him. Lionesss, have one of these I think we need it reading these kind of attitudes

Domani

Although it keeps changing name to remove the stigma, gender dysphoria is in the DSM.

www.theravive.com/therapedia/gender-dysphoria-dsm--5-302.85-(f64.9)

From what I understand, there has to be distress caused by the condition. No distress, no condition.

Trans people are trying to make a distinction between gender dysphoria and just identifying as the opposite sex for cultural reasons.

So you can be a transwoman, but not have gender dysphoria.

For what it’s worth, I think transactivists’ determination to minimise gender dysphoria is very damaging.

If they threw their might behind research and a cure, it would make an awful lot of people a lot less unhappy.

I'm sure it's been said already, but I would have hoped that by 2017 we'd be past stigmatizing mental illness (I know we're not). That's the progress I want to see.

Your OP reads as though you're horrified by the idea of mental illness. Your friend is thinking of suicide, and that needs to be your priority now, as a friend.

Fwiw, yes I would categorize gender dysphoria as a MH issue. There are competing ideologies here though.

weebeasties if you had asked me the question "how does it feel to be a woman" in my early twenties, I doubt I would have had an answer. However, most women after 20 or so years of fending for oneself as an adult woman, negotiating the social expectations or the male dominated workplace or anything else in our society, would have (and I have, and most women of my age who I know have) a pretty good idea of our identity as woman and what that means, and most would have insights into how it would feel to be a man in relation to our own social group(s). (ie put a woman in a different social group or culture, what it means and how it feels to be a women is going to be different).

And the above is just the tip of the iceberg of the sort of insight and analysis you can do.

I think it is complicated and I think you can say that a woman can feel like a woman and describe that (and the same for men) without saying that our brains are all different from men's brains.

I think the "perpetuating the myth.." about the brain is a bit of an over simplified bandwagon. In relation to the myth, the same people who say "there is no difference between men and women's brains" say in the same breath "men are statistically more likely to be violent".

And I also think that the simplifying and generalising and divisive typecasting by the spartacus following is detracting from the real and discrete issues which are arising, mainly as a result of activity by the transgender activists (as opposed to the transgender community as a whole).

KatherinaMinola very true. I have suffered through mental illness and agree with other posters that I don't think you can ever are say these these things are curable. The fact that so many people would rather immediately go through hormone therapy, make themselves infertile and even castrate themselves than admit that their problems may psychological is very upsetting.

@ceto are you implying that it's impossible that a well regarded historian might have mental health problems?

is detracting from the real and discrete issues which are arising, mainly as a result of activity by the transgender activists

Can you be more specific? What issues have the ‘Spartacus following’ not addressed?