Is gender dysphoria considered a mental illness?

[ReluctantCamper]

I've had an offensively lightweight word salad of a reply from my MP. Among the 'I welcome progress against transphobic bullying' (this is the basic standard I would expect from a sentient human, so fucking what?) anodyne crap, is the statement ' I am also encouraged that gender dysphoria is no longer considered a mental illness'.

Is this true? Being so unhappy with your body that you are prepared to undergo treatment that may well remove much of your sexual function is not considered a mental illness? Really??? If it isn't how the hell do sufferers access therapy?

I need to construct a reply to him, but I'd like him to engage his brain and not take immediate offence so need to simmer down a bit before writing it!

The probably agp twat is a conservative!

It is unlikely that men in positions of power will give up this opportunity to roll back women's access to the public sphere under the guise of equal rights.

@Jayceedove I think it might be the difference between a dissonance of body and one of expressing gender identity. The former having a sense of physical necessity and the latter being more of expression.

But that really is only a guess and I know doesn't explain much.

All I know is that in my case and other transsexuals I have met this feels like a physical necessity - there is no choice involved. You know from childhood - well before puberty - and there was no prospect at all of putting off getting help to later life as it is overwhelming.

I found your words insightful and also validating something I have been thinking. I have a kinaesthetic knowing. It gets invalidated constantly as "not real or tangible or rational". What happens is TRAs dress that up, literally, but extend it to violate women and girls for their own use - they use it as a weapon, for their own ends and do not feel anything - quite contrary to what you are describing.

The question is how to out them at their game….

It is beyond dishonest for TRAs to lobby for the erosion of women's rights simply to validate their gender nonconformity and indefensible for them to do so to accommodate mental health conditions whilst denying those mental health conditions exist. It leaves those needing help being undertreated while the system and society focus on the few whose only need is for attention.

Yep. If you are a male person who likes to wear feminine clothing and wants to be perceived as a woman in some way while doing so, but you do not have severe and persistent dysphoria, then what you are is a crossdresser. Which is fine, wear what you like, but when the next step from there is demands for access to women's spaces and the beds of lesbians then the response should be "no, fuck off". Because saying yes is saying that the wishes of that group of people are more important than the needs and wishes of the rest of the population, and that's unacceptable.

If you are a male person who likes a feminine aesthetic but who doesn't want people to pretend you're a woman then you're gender non-conforming, which is perfectly fine. Society used to have more space for men like that, and we need that space to come back so that men in this group can be themselves without unneeded medical treatment and without compromising the rights of women.

For either of these two groups of men to insist that their wishes, which they may refer to as needs, come before the needs of women is appallingly selfish, and they should be told no.

If you are a male person who believes yourself to somehow be a woman on some sort of metaphysical level then that is a mental health issue and should be dealt with as such, which means lots and lots of gatekeeping.

The blanket term trans is a bit of a mess and, starting in America, has rapidly replaced all the medical terminology to cover so much that I don't know how to define it either.

Not being part of any trans community or groups and not knowing any trans people day to day I had just got on with life and I have been doing a lot of reading and posting on forums for the last couple of years to try to see where this has all come from.

I am still learning like you all are as it is far more complicated for me too than it used to be. And things I say do not always go down well with other trans people, either.

There are a lot of emotions running high on both sides with those deeply invested and I get where they are all coming from and why. But just hope to find some understanding at least.

The front page story in the Sun today - despite the punning headline (not a trans slur just a media trait) - is a positive illustration of the kind of trans people I have met during my treatment and who go through this and out the other side as happy, better people, living as normal a life as possible and contributing positively to society and not taking from it by being ill or depressed or oppressed all the time.

It is for this kind of outcome that medicine decides - only when it is right - to take this route which I do understand why many of you struggle to grasp when all you see are the less positive stories.

Ones like this, though, are out there all around you. Just not often on the front page of newspapers where often anger, bad things and dispute sells papers.

I suggest that the police officer who identifies as genderfluid so that he can take his fetish to work and legally require obedience to his chosen pronoun of the day from his peers is an example of what men intend with the gender legislation.
Another is the transgender identified police officer with the transgender advocacy group on the side going round to schools and telling them it is against the law to provide girls with privacy and dignity from boys who identify as a girls and want to share their dressing room.
They are using the gender laws and Equality Act to perpetrate a fraud.