I suspect many people who have been following the ideological aspect of transgender rights will have a great idea why it is no longer treated as a mental illness and exactly who benefits from that. If I wrote it all out in a post, I suspect it would be deleted.
It was fully treated as a mental illness previously. Trans people worked very hard to have being transgender destigmatised. So now, there is this position where being transgender cannot be said to be a mental illness nor treated as other body dysmorphias are, because to treat it that way may mean a patient will no longer feel they are transgender and the trans community think that is conversion therapy.
There was also the ethical issue of treating this group with irreversible physical modifications for a mental health issue. And for that to be funded by the NHS.
At the moment, there is plenty of emotive discussion about conversion therapy being banned. And true conversion therapy should be banned. However, for LGB people, there are already laws in the UK banning it. In countries where bans that now include transgender conversion therapy bans have been recently put in place, exploratory therapy that challenges whether a patient is transgender and that doesn’t immediately affirm that persons gender from the start has been considered conversion therapy.
In the UK, the law is in discussion because it needs to be carefully worded so that parents sending their child to a therapist that explores exactly why that child suddenly feels dysphoric and doesn’t immediately affirm this gender identity don’t face prison. And that the clinicians doing exploratory therapy are not targeted.
What is very clear is that people who believe they are the opposite or no sex have a very high rate of comorbid conditions. Conditions such as those under the grouping of neuro diverse, conditions that are due to trauma, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, learning difficulties etc. And often more than one comorbid condition. For instance, children who are in care situations seem to have a much higher prevalence of being transgender. This all needs to be explored and has been ignored by trans support groups. It is beginning to be discussed though thanks to Dr Cass and her interim report.
Another major issue that has been exposed is that many, and disproportionately, people with transgender identities are same sex or both sex attracted. And it needs careful exploration to understand if homophobia or biphobia is a cause of this belief that a person is transgender.
I, personally, consider the detaching of being transgender from being a mental health issue is reducing the quality of care that children and adolescents receive.
It also leaves children open to abuse because there really are parents who seem overly invested in their children being transgender. The previous CEO of Mermaids, Suzie Green, notoriously said that her husband was scared their little boy was gay because Jackie like to dress up and play with dolls. For Jackie’s 16th birthday she took Jackie to Thailand to have Jackie’s penis inverted. Readers should look this up for themselves.
Once you start to pull one thread, it leads you to unraveling more.
This report from Denton’s provides quite a bit of background to the political maneuvering that we have seen and we see today. It lays out political strategies. It is a very concerning document that has been pulled from the internet except for this website.
https://gendercriticalwoman.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/iglyo_v3-1-2.pdf
Again, the question to be asked here is who benefits from a lower standard of health care for people who are declaring they are trans? Including all the organisations, not just the individuals.
Just a final note, I don’t believe people should be stigmatised at all for declaring they are transgender. But in detaching it from mental health aspects has caused major issues to the quality of care.