Trans- gender dysphoria- mental illness?

[TheBlueKoala]

There are so many young people suffering with MH problems. They are trying to find an identity and nowadays when gender is à la carte it seems epidemic.

Looking at the small percentage of transgender people and high prolific crimes something does tell me that there seems to be a correlation between transgender and mental illness. Which makes me believe that it's really a question of gender dysphoria as in identity dysphoria in general. Ofcourse there are exceptions but I think these recent cases should be taken into consideration. What are we doing to our children telling them that they can choose gender as in a restaurant menu? I think it's harmful and noone below 18 should be allowed to change whatsoever- they can call themselves human- as we all are.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/11/canada-school-shooting-tumbler-ridge-british-columbia/

https://abcnews.com/US/teen-sentenced-life-prison-2019-school-shooting/story?id=71949051

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/as-officials-searched-for-charlie-kirks-shooter-suspect-confessed-to-his-partner-prosecutor-says

https://derechadiario.com.ar/us/argentina/transsexual-schizophrenic-far-left-murderer-young-swedish-woman-after-attempting-to-rape-girl

This is my view

Do you consider transwomen to be women?

Excellent analogies!

I suspect that when people are talking about historical true trans they are thinking about people like Jan Morris, who in pictures looks like a frumpy old lady but if you read his autobiography is just an old-fashioned misogynist and if you read his daughter’s article in the Times, a nasty self-centred man who was a lousy father.

No.
They are (at a push) transwomen. Many these days are just angry/rapey men in a frock

But I have a friend who was always so uncomfortable and struggled so much as a woman and when she decided to live as a (trans)man (many decades ago now) I could see the peace that washed over her (now him). I struggle to understand it and it's hard to articulate but this had nothing to do with superficial stereotypes

I absolutely loathe the idea that a rapey violent man can don a frock and shed their sex offending history and gain access to women's spaces. And I am well aware this happens with depressing frequency . I also hate how fast vulnerable and often autistic teens are pushed in an irreversible direction. But that doesn't mean the debate is entirely black and white. Intelligent people make room for a little nuance

I think especially for younger people it is a mental illness. It certainly doesn’t seem normal for someone without a mental illness to think their body is wrong somehow.

i think for middle aged heterosexual men it’s a fetish.

I think it’s a shame that women feel that they have to be known as men to be accepted, because they don’t fit female stereotypes. But I agree that trans identifying women are a world apart to trans identifying men

I believe a girl identifying as a boy was involved in a serious school incident in Edinburgh a while back

That wasn't really the case with my friend though. In our big friendship group none of us were hung up on stereotypes and nor were their family

I too hate the easy lazy "stereotype" transition but I do believe for some it is far deeper than this

What I really loathe though is the way a group of dangerous sex pests have realised that all the unquestioningly "pro trans" culture allows them to call themselves Sarah and pop on a bit of lippy and gain access to spaces where women are at their most vulnerable

I agree - it feels like gender stereotypes are far worse these days not better.

Children should be encouraged to embrace whatever interests, clothes, toys etc they enjoy. Not led to believe that if they like the 'wrong' things they need to reconsider their gender.

Ok I did the research and have looked at the data from the Gun Violence Project. There have been 45 mass shootings at a school (4+ people shot rather than 4+ people killed) since 2019 and, of those, 3 were committed by people who have confirmed they were trans. This means trans people were over-represented in relation to the trans population in school mass shooting. However, the FBI state that it's not the demographic characteristics they look at as warning signs, but crisis flash points. One flash point for school shootings is feeling suicidal. If we wanted to take a preventative approach, we would reduce the factors that make a child feel suicidal. Would you be willing to embrace an affirmative approach to trans children if it reduced suicidality?

I know of a child in the 70s who did the same, they were a young teen as well. After they'd been chased and physically attacked by a gang of adults for being a [homophobic slur]
Trans people have always existed. It isn't new.

There have been almost no mass shootings by women. According to that article, there have been only 4 mass shootings by women in the US since 1982. So that's 4 in 44 years. But there were 5,748 mass shootings in the US in just the past 12 years.
Look at that frankly astonishingly low number of mass shootings by women. And that's in a very large country that is full of and obsessed with guns.

But in 2025 a teenage schoolgirl in Scotland was sentenced to 6 years in prison for planning a school massacre. She was obsessed with the Columbine Massacre. The judge considered that she was very close to committing a massacre at her private school in Edinburgh. This girl was transgender (a transboy).
I remember another very serious criminal case involving a transman that happened over the last couple of years, but can't dredge it up now. Maybe one of you can remember it. I remember there being some discussion on Mumsnet at the time around women being adversely affected by taking testosterone, which increases aggression.
Teenager jailed for plotting mass shooting at Edinburgh school - BBC News

I don’t think being trans is a mental illness. I think it’s more nuanced and complex. Obviously the cause is psychological, however to call it a mental illness is likening it to someone with perhaps diminished capacity, which doesn’t apply to trans people.

This may have changed now, but I was taught in university (psychology - about 8 years ago) that there is a typical female/male brain structure. Trans people’s brains align with their biological sex UNTIL they receive hormones and then they begin to change neurologically to match closer (not completely) to their gender identity (this is mapped through MRI scans). So I don’t really believe in the whole “female structured brain born in the wrong body” trope either. I do think there must be a psychological underpinning obviously, but to call it a mental illness would be to assume they are ‘abnormal’ mentally (to use psychological terms), however with treatment and transition, trans people can go on to live as anyone else, so I can’t see it as a mental illness as such because, for example, there’s nothing actually wrong with a male bodied person wearing feminine clothing which is determined by social construction, etc.. I think it starts to become irrational when you have male bodied individuals insisting that they are experiencing a menstrual cycle as a natal female would - that is where the line starts to get blurred in my opinion, when an individual starts to confuse identity and reality.

I support trans individuals, but despise the politics and groups associated. Just in case anyone is wondering what side of the fence I am on.

It’s actually scary the world we live in. You can’t change sex it’s impossible. Those that say they are trans are not they are simply the gender they are and dressing as the opposite sex. Is it a fetish is it a cult I have no idea but it’s disturbing. These people are seriously ill and need counselling and therapy to overcome whatever issues they have. To think people think that by dressing as whoever and taking hormones it changes them is laughable. You can’t change and never will.

I dislike that it pairs teen girls caught up in a fad with old male fetishists. I dislike the sexist stereotypes. You cannot change sex.

Out of interest, how many “trans” people do you know?

So how many trans people are there who are 100% mentally well and have no other mental health issues at all? and being trans is a total free choice?

and how many trans people dont want to be a cliched modern verision of what they think women (or men) are?

@Snootsnoot
Unfortunately, I can think of at least one- Audrey/ Aiden Hall. A trans identified girl, taking testosterone, who was the perpetrator in a mass shooting in a school in Tennessee in 2023.

Apologies, Audrey/ Aiden Hale, not Hall.

What has really stood out to me in this most recent case is that the media are all calling the shooter a female. Not a transwoma, or even a woman. Which just shows that there is now no longer a word to reliably describe a biologically female person. These are not our crimes!

There's an honest and clearly written article on The Times website. It even allows comments! (Well, at the moment...).

The Guardian is still referring to the shooter as an "18 year old woman". Such brave and honest journalism.

I agree. It seems the concept of transgenderism has spread so much online that a lot of mentally unwell people have gravitated to it. I've seen this with multiple (!) teens in my social circle. They're going through teenage angst, they feel dissatisfied with themselves, with their lives. Once they hear of transgenderism, they begin to wonder if that could be the cure to their ills. They want to reinvent themselves. It's absolutely a social contagion and it's destroying lives.

Yes and three mass shootings in the US in the last 8 years (depending how you define a mass shooting) by trans identified females.

Snochia Moseley - Baltimore, Maryland 2018

Alec (Maya) McKinney - Denver, Colorado 2019

Audrey Hale - Nashville, Tennessee 2023

Moseley killed herself, Hale was shot by police, McKinney was arrested and convicted and sentenced to life in prison