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

Fair enough for speculations deadgirlinbed4 - I was concerned that people reading would easily accept this as a fact if they aren't familiar with PD.

*anorexia has psyichatric treatments, pharma and therapy. Gender dysphoria does not.

I think there's a fair comparison medically with homosexuality in terms of how society views trans people. 30 years ago similar arguements were made about homosexuals.*

Gender dysphoria does indeed have psychological, medical, and surgical therapies. How effective or appropriate any or all of these are is certainly up for debate. But there are certainly many transmen and transwomen who would report severe distress should their access to such treatments be taken away.

I think there's a fair comparison medically with earlier homosexuality in terms of how society views any people with suspected mental illness. But this proves what? That all people with mental illnesses are being misdiagnosed, and nothing is really a mental illness at all?

No, we know homosexuality is not a mental illness. But that has nothing to do with whether or not gender dysphoria/transgenderism is. Do you think one day we will look back and shake our heads in shame at classifying anorexia and depression as mental illnesses?

An interesting article from someone who underwent sex change surgery for anyone up for some late night reading!

I think there are a lot of really good questions around what therapy would be best suited and most effective. I find it highly alarming that almost everywhere you look over the internet - the hormonal/physical changes are being pushed so strongly as the answer. Are they really? How much have we really properly looked into this as a society? How many currently transitioning children are going to come back and write an article like the above?

It will be the whole attitude around #nodebate that our children will damn us with in the future. The treatments, particularly of children, absolutely should have been robustly debated by society.

"I'm a boy and I like boys."
Group 1 - "That's fine. There is nothing wrong with you. You can like whoever you want."
Group 2 - "That means you need therapy to fix yourself."

"I'm a boy but I like wearing dresses and painting my nails."
Group 1 - "That's fine. There is nothing wrong with you. You can like whatever you want."
Group 2 - "That means you are really a girl and need treatment to fix your body to look more like one."

There are indeed some comparisons to be made, I grant you.

Of course we won't look back and be ashamed of anorexia or depression as diagnoses. I'm struggling to grasp conflating these with trans however, in that it is reasonable to expect both of these illnesses to respond to treatment and the person to recover.

It's the shift over time away from psychiatry that draws comparisons in my mind to homosexuality.

The American Psychiatric Association (who publish the DSM) have stated that gender non-conformity is not a mh problem, and the gender dysphoria diagnosis refers to the distress experienced by someone who feels they are in the wrong gender.

PatriciaBateman I do agree with you to an extent in that reclassifying and taking trans out of the dsm/icd would potentially result in lost services.

I completely agree that gender non-conformity is not a MH problem. It's not even a problem! Or at least never should have been one.

I think it's the fact that society makes gender non-conformity a problem that leads to gender dysphoria, which is experienced as a problem!

Society is sick, not the individual. It is our rigid expectations that drive people to feel themselves as wrong and in need of a 'cure'. We have made people mentally ill by our expectations of gender - expectations they don't fit into, and should never have been made to.

Society is sick, not the individual. It is our rigid expectations that drive people to feel themselves as wrong and in need of a 'cure'. We have made people mentally ill by our expectations of gender - expectations they don't fit into, and should never have been made to

this

your little girl tears off her headbands and hates skirts?

fine, leave her hair alone and buy her jeans

your little boy likes the company of girls and enjoys arts and crafts?

he sounds like he will grow into a lovely man

It's not 100% accepted within lesbian feminist writing that being a lesbian has an exclusively genetic cause

That was a strategy that worked well for stonewall.
It somebody was 'born this way' they wouldn't be able to help it so it would be cruel not to accept them.

The feminists who disagree with this are broadly also the same feminists who disagree the cause for being Trans is exclusively biology.

So I think that's at least consistent.

Behaviour is a choice.

You might have same sex attraction but acting on it is a choice just as acting on opposite sex attraction is a choice.

My argument would be that same sex relationships between adults harm nobody so it doesn't matter why they happen and we should be left to get on with it.

It's clearly not a delusion.
I'm in bed with a woman.
That is observable.

Unless you redefine what a woman is...

I think the 'born this way' strategy worked for stonewall for gay people so they've just tried to apply it to Trans people.

I think it would be better to talk to a range of Trans people and truly represent a variety of theories and understandings of what makes somebody Trans.

But I also think stonewall should either fight for all gender nonconforming people or none. Either they are an organization who represents people in same sex relationships and people who are gender non conforming, or just the former.

It's hard being gender non conforming and either being told you're Trans in denial or that you don't go through any issues because of it.

Very interesting thread and pretty much a polite one

I hope that the OP can see that its not necessarily the topic of debate/conversation which gets these threads to such levels of unpleasantness

More the attitude of the posters

as much as homosexuality or even intersex would be considered a mental health condition

Sorry, who has ever stated that intersex is a mental health condition?

I don’t think being trans is a MH condition because it implies that with right treatment you can be cured and that being trans is a sickness.
I consider myself a feminist, support gender non conformity in both sexes and strongly believe self id is wrong and open to abuse but I don’t deny the existence of trans men and women.
Some causes may be societal we just don’t know enough about the reasons for being trans but I don’t think trans people who have gone through the current lengthy process to be legally identified as the other sex are delusional.

Sorry, who has ever stated that intersex is a mental health condition

No one, that’s the OPs point.

CaptainKirksSpookyghost et al, Autism and ASCs are highly documented neurological differences, the brain is quite literally hard wired differently.

People need to stop bringing intersex into this whole trans debate.

I haven't RTFT but my work does bring me in contact with many individuals who identify as queer, trans, non-binary or the other sex. Some of these individuals don't have mental health conditions; they are simply nasty, misogynist little pricks who are using this issue to vent hatred against women. Others, and those who I think are genuinely conflicted, often present with other MH conditions that are co-morbid. These include severe anxiety, depression and often suicidal thinking. In the last year two individuals came so close to taking their own lives that they were hospitalised involuntarily. Beyond this I consider that it is ridiculous to treat trans as a normal variation in the first instance where this results in medical and surgical treatments that hard, maim and debilitate. Treating trans as a MH issue allows for specialist frontline non-invasive therapies (assuming that therapists are free to offer treatment that does not simply involve acceptance of the condition) that might save this physical maiming in many cases. Trans should definitely be considered a MH issue (unless the individual is a thug from antifa).

I don’t think being trans is a MH condition because it implies that with right treatment you can be cured and that being trans is a sickness.

Not sickness as in 'having a disease', or 'infectious'. But sickness as in the state of 'not being well in oneself', or experiencing internal distress - well yes, that's pretty much the definition of being transgender.

And no, not every condition can be cured. Both anorexia & depression (for example) have dismal 'cure' rates, and treatments that only work for a minority. Suicide rates remain high.

It's always more helpful to dig down to the root of a problem where possible. Gender dysphoria is a logical conclusion when you force individuals into a society that insists on gender conformity (ie. society has made them 'sick' by insisting their preferences/behaviour are gendered and not acceptable unless they change themselves).

The root of the problem is definitely not 'having the wrong body', although I appreciate that is how it translates in feeling. An individual is XX or XY at the moment egg meets sperm, and before their brain has ever even started to form.

Whether there is something about genetic or hormonal development that influences the brain to be unhappy with the body - it may be so. I don't think anyone believes people choose to be trans (except AGP, which should never have been put under the same umbrella).

Two other similar conditions, apart from their acceptance by society:
Transabled - the person pictured in the wheelchair is also a transwoman
- Otherkin, of whom a significant percentage are also transgender

These are people that have been willing to amputate limbs to get the body they think they should have. No one believes their distress isn't real, but their self-image does not match with reality.

But OP used it alongside homosexuality which admittedly isn't now
but certainly was viewed as a mh condition - that's what confused me (hence why I said "ever")

There is a difference between believing that someone really believes that they are a woman when in reality they are a man, and believing that that person actually is a woman in a man's body.

I think the first happens, I don't think the second is possible.

To quote the whole thing, op said "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"

Trans (or at least dysphoria anyway) viewed historically as mental illness, present currently as mh condition

Homosexuality present historically as illness

Intersex is a physical condition, has it ever been viewed as a mh problem (be that "illness" or "condition")?

OP seems to be arguing that something that is categorised as a mh condition is in their opinion less of a mh problem than something that isn't one and - to my knowledge - never has been? I wasn't sure if I was interpreting that wrongly and what led the OP to that conclusion

Also can I just pick up on

"I don't believe its a physical condition, I think it's a genetic condition"

"I'm not talking about physical differences with the brain to males or females, there are obviously different emotional responses"

"My point is that I think it's damaging to label the cause of gender dysphoria as a mental health condition without considering genetic factors"

Are you using "mental" as a synonym for imaginary, rather than "relating to psychology"? Brain functions and personality/illness/innate gender/whichever you want to class trans as are generally accepted to have a neurophysiological cause even if it is as yet undiscovered.
See also emotion, if was found to be a tangible difference between male/female it will be coming from somewhere. Unless you believe it is from the soul?

Then I'm confused how you are completely separating out "physical" cause from "genetic" cause, with no cross over? Genetics has a physical effect on the body, if that physical effect is within the brain then it can cause mental disorder/difference. Genetic/physical/mental are not discrete areas.

Thank you for all of your replies. The point I'm trying to make I guess is that some mental health issues are the result of genetics and others are environmental (nature VS nurture) Using myself as an example, I have dyspraxia which is considered a neurological condition. I also have generalised anxiety. I believe no matter how I was brought up, if I suffered emotional traumas or not, no matter where in the world I lived, I would always have dyspraxia. I was born with it. I believe my anxiety is due to events that have occured in my life, conditioning, environmental factors basically. I do not believe I was born to be anxious. Some mental disorders manifest due to the latter i.e. PTSD, anorexia etc and others I believe (including trans) autism etc. are the former.

Autism isn't a "mental disorder" it's a neurological disability.

You are confusing mental health illnesses with neurological differences.

Some mental disorders manifest due to the latter i.e. PTSD, anorexia etc and others I believe (including trans) autism etc. are the former

'Trans' is not one 'thing' any more than depression or arthritis are.

Please don't refer to autism as a disorder. It's a neurological difference