To believe that trans is not a mental health condition

[Babykoala1]

Preparing to get flamed of course and expecting feminists to come out in full fource. Just as the title suggests, I do not believe that trans is a mental health condition as much as homosexuality or even intersex would be considered a mental health condition. I'm sure here on Mumsnet I am in the minority and I will be absolutely flamed for having the audacity to compare it to homosexuality. But really? Why is homosexuality accepted as a part of biology yet trans can be automatically discarded as a mental health issue?

I'll get my coat

Because homosexuality is about something behavioural (which has a biological cause) and trans is about denying biology. One is about feelings, the other is about physical attributes.

Do homosexuals claim their souls were born in the wrong body?

To be fair lots of feminists agree with you. They just don't talk about it here because they get shouted down and called names.

Homosexuality is who you fancy. It’s documented in animals.

Trans is the none acceptance of your own body. As such It’s much closer to a form of body dismorphia.

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), occasionally still called dysmorphophobia, is a mental disorder characterized by the obsessive idea that some aspect of one's own body part or appearance is severely flawed and warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix their dysmorphic part on their person.

Sounds like every trans description I’ve ever heard.

Homosexuality doesn’t have a biological cause.

But homosexuality is a biological reality that some people have the chemical reaction that causes arousal at someone of the same sex.

Trans is “feeling” that is driven by societal stereotypes.

I agree Trans isn’t a MH condition, it’s societal gender bollocks.

Though boy disphoria is a MH condition which some (not all) trans people have, the same as anorexia or believing you are an amputee.

*body

I also do not think it's a mental health condition. However that doesn't mean a doctor shouldn't be involved in the process of diagnosis.

I see it the same way I see autism, which is also neither a mental health condition or an illness but still gets diagnosed.

I'm a feminist and I agree with you.

YANBU. you are entitled to your opinion. A lot will agree with you, a lot won't.
I don't know if it's a mental health issue or not, but regardless of whether it is or not how does that change anything?

I strongly disagree for the reasons stated by Gemme.

The trans umbrella term is not a mental health condition. Gender dysphoria, once known as transsexualism, is a mental health condition. As, indeed, are other forms of dysphoria, such as anorexia.

I don't know if it's a mental health disorder or not although I do believe that trans people suffer from mental health issues much more than the general population does. However these may be linked or they may not be.

I don't think there's one overarching reason for transgender people to transition. There seems to be young girls transitioning to reject toxic femininity and middle-aged men transitioning for sexual fetish reasons. And then lots of other reasons in the middle. It seems a very complicated issue.

Being trans isn't considered a mental health condition is it? I think that there are pressures on trans people & its natural that it would make you feel awful if you felt like you are in the wrong body & if you were in this position & not given the right support this might give you mental health issues but I don't think that it just is a mental health issue by itself.

The World Health Organisation has declassified transgenderism from being a mental health condition, as a result of more research being done & as more is learnt about what it is to be transgender.

OP I agree.

It's not about mental health, it's about fucked up gender ideas.

Less about the individual than society ultimately.

We have had centuries of trying to screwhole individuals into certain places that we have come to this place of transgender.

I grew up feeling "male."

I still do to some extent, but have come to realise that this is a paradigm that I absorbed from gender definitions from society, not from my innate self.

To say it not a mental health condition seems to partly suggest that mental health conditions should carry some sort of stigma. Which they shouldn’t.

If its not a mental health condition then is it a physical one? If it’s neither then what is it and why does it need medical treatment?

I genuinely don't understand how the T has ended up being lumped in with LGB. LGB is about sexuality and T is completely different.

If you're so unhappy with who you are that you insist that you're someone else then yes, I do believe that you have a MH issue.

How on earth would intersex be anything other than a physical condition? I'm not sure what the basis for wanting to transition might be, but I'm having trouble following your argument.

If its not a mental health condition then is it a physical one? If it’s neither then what is it and why does it need medical treatment?

I’d call it a spiritual condition.

Thank you for all of your replies. Evidence has suggested that trans individuals may have more brain functionalities in common with those of the sex not assigned at birth than with whom they were. Also, studies have shown differences in hormones and the way the body distributes them, no more conclusive or inconclusive I believe than than that of the studies shown for homosexuality.
I understand the wants and needs for trans persons are different than those that are gay but I'm more interested in the biology than anything else and why such phrases such as 'mental health condition' can be used to describe a trans person but not a homosexual person.

I genuinely don't understand how the T has ended up being lumped in with LGB. LGB is about sexuality and T is completely different.

Trans people have always been part of LGB communities. To deny that is to deny history

There is no difference between a male or female brain.

I think anyone who thinks their body is so wrong that they have to have major and multiple surgeries to "correct" it is suffering from a mental illness. And that's whether it's a woman or man having boob jobs, nose jobs, bum jobs to make them look like Barbie, Ken, a cat etc or a man who wants to be a woman and vice versa.

I actually don't think that most adult males have dysphoria so probably wouldn't be diagnosed with a mental illness in that respect. And I don't think young children can be trans, they are influenced by the adults around them. (I'm talking young children here, not teenagers)

I see it the same as if my child thought they were fat and were starving themselves to get the body thy thought they should have.

By today's definition I would have been a trans child, and the thought that I could have ended up infertile and never being able to have children, and feed children from my breasts that I hated (still don't like!) fills me with horror.

But I'm not trans, I'm an adult human heterosexual female.

I feel there needs to be far more research into why so many children/teens are identifying as trans now. Surely if it were something like better diagnosis, as in autism, we'd be seeing lots of adults my age coming out as transmen, but we're not.

And I think services are so afraid of being seen as anti-trans it's affirmation all the way.

Homosexuality is completely different. Intersex is completely different.

I think you make it hard for anyone to think you are truly thinking about biology when you lump intersex into the same group. Individuals with disorders of sexual differentiation have a completely physical health problem. And the support society has asked that they not get dragged into the trans debate.