If being transgender is not an illness...

[JellySlice]

...then it's surely a lifestyle choice.

Why do we have to validate people's lifestyle choices? Why do we have to facilitate other people's lifestyle choices to the expense of our own well-being?

but it is an illness jelly. I don't know what the medical community have to gain by denying it other than easier access to surgery and drugs with little comeback on having given 'vulnerable' patients llfe changing surgery.

Any anyway trans is am umbrella just as Stonewall say covering and now obscuring a number of different issues and diagnoses.

One reason for some people to avoid having to go through therapy to gain a diagnosis though would be to avoid the risk of being exposed as a narc or a paedophile or end up wth some other diagnosis other than the desired gender dysphoria.

This is why affirmation only is so important to some. But I cannot think of any other illness or condition where self iD is accepted and opens such gateways for treatment or access to power. The uniqueness of this special treatment whilst other disadvantaged groups continue to suffer is a huge red flag.

I don't know what the medical community have to gain by denying it other than easier access to surgery and drugs with little comeback on having given 'vulnerable' patients llfe changing surgery

I think you just answered your own question?

Here's the survey of 359 dysphoric females
As in, born female? Nobody is interested in them, they are not sufficiently stunning and brave.

I do enjoy people who have ever experienced this tell us what it must be like to be trans and to have experienced the medical pathways for it. this condition is not a lifestyle choice and if it was I would not wish it on anyone and advise them not to make this choice. the pathway is a fight from beginning to end in the nhs. less so in private. this condition is self diagnosed as in you consistently tell them you are trans and you always have been many of us have felt like this all our lives they don't do tests or make a desision based on anything other than us consistently self iding as trans and asking for treatment for that. if I could explain what that feels like to know that something is wrong. That there is something you need to be that it never goes a way and most of the time it is a low noise in your head but other times it is a scream. That many of us don't see ourselves in old age just because we can not imagine being here that we don't really live in the world but function in it and that we can pretend to do that for years. there is a thing we're you can look at photos of us before looking like we are happy and see it. the diffence is like finally being fully present in the world. it does not fix all our problems but it at least allows us to have a chance to deal with them and to live an have a future.

I know.you don't really care about our actual experience why would you, we can not explain it to you in words that make sence to you, why would you believe us. yes there are people out there that do all this for what they think are the right reasons they often find that it's not what they needed and some detransition others blame the system or society for something that they thought they were I think the nhs model does its best to allow them to think about what they are doing. private again less so and a lot of regreters come from this pathway as people are less likely to say jo when you are paying then, but at the end of the day the decision in this is to transition or not and the or not can be a serious one. in my life I nearly transitioned 2 times before I did and I nearly didn't make it a third time. but I did and I love my life and I still have all the problems everyone else as but at least now I can approach them in the way where I can deal. with them because that noise in the back of my head is quite.

That there is something you need to be that it never goes a way and most of the time it is a low noise in your head but other times it is a scream.

So like a mental illness then.

I know.you don't really care about our actual experience why would you

I care as much as I care about any suffering. The solution is not penises in my changing room at the gym. You don't care about our actual experience either, you don't know it and you won't listen to it.

I don't see how gender dysphoria could be anything but an illness. A mental illness like, say, depression. Just as valid, just as debilitating. And, just as with depression, there cannot be one treatment protocol universally applied to gender dysphoria.

But the current push is to have GD de-medicalised. What is the point of that?

Period pain is (usually) not an illness. We still treat it.

True.

I think the point is meant to be that "being trans" isn't an illness and your declared identity gender is your real actual gender regardless of body shape or chromosomes. Then separately to that there is an illness/physical condition of dysphoria which some but not all trans people have and which can be treated (on the NHS obviously) with hormones and surgery if that is the right path for them.

This is logically internally consistent and I wouldn't have any problem with it if we could separately have some legal clarity about the difference between biological sex (which doesn't change) and presented gender (which is entirely in the control and choice of each individual).

Other mental health problems are diagnosed on how people describe their feelings, depression for example. But I'm not sure what the diagnosis would be for trans people who are not body dysmorphic?

There's a bit of a catch 22 isn't there? It can't be a mental illness as that would mean admitting it's the brain that's wrong not the body. And saying that being trans is an illness/problem rather than totally natural and just like being gay. On the other hand it has to be a very serious illness in order to ethically be able to perform major surgeries on an otherwise healthy body. Would anyone dare claim that healthy body has a physical disability by being the "wrong" sex?

Bespin, could you please try really reading what you wrote. But swap out 'trans' for 'female' and you'll realise the hypocrisy.

Noone male can become female.
Noone male can know what it is like to be female.
Noone male can 'feel Female'.
Using the phrase "I am trans" in this scenario is a euphemism for "I am male but falsely believe myself to be female"

All he can do is examine his own thought processes, beliefs, desires, compulsions and mental health, which are all male, not female, and assess with medical help whether they are disordered and in need of psychological help.

Male bodies cannot be made into Female bodies.
But thoughts and opinions which are simply factually false can be corrected. Those false thoughts and beliefs which persist, in in the face of facts, are delusions. And they indicate poor mental health.

Convincing oneself that one is something that one can never be is a recipe for lifelong disaster.

This article was written by one of the medics responsible for the reclassification criteria and "diagnostic" title. It explains their thinking at least. The comments are very interesting and suggest that not all medics agree with the changes and particularly with the reasons for making them. You may have to register with Medscape if you wish to read it all (they are a legitimate organisation).

www.medscape.com/viewarticle/885141

"One way to reduce stigma was to remove the word "disorder." We changed the name from gender-identity disorder to gender dysphoria

"We also tried to narrow the diagnostic criteria, with the idea that you do not want to give people a diagnosis when they do not want one,

"A person who has had treatment, who is not dysphoric but used to be dysphoric, can still have a diagnosis code. This was how we solved that problem in the DSM.

"In addition, we removed the specifier for sexual orientation.

"There was more flexibility in the ICD compared with the DSM, where a diagnosis is either in or out. The ICD includes all diagnoses, psychiatric and medical. The recommendation, which has been followed, is that the new diagnosis, called gender incongruence, will be moved from the mental disorder section to another chapter, called "Conditions Related to Sexual Health." This allows countries that have national healthcare systems to have a diagnosis code, to continue to provide care for people, and to reduce the stigma of a mental disorder.

"The change offers a new diagnosis: gender incongruence.

"Thanks for listening to me. This is Dr Jack Drescher.

Comments:

"Psychiatrists meeting together to decide how to change a diagnosis for the sake of "reducing the stigma" is laughable....

"...neither unhappiness nor delusional thinking should be treated with hormones or radically destructive genital surgery, especially in the very young. Trying to shove this nonsense into DSM 5 or ICD is pure political posturing...

"Since when does it matter whether the patient wants a diagnosis or not?

"For some time now, insurance companies have been basing payments on diagnosis. Now the diagnostic classifiers are basing diagnosis on insurance reimbursement. It used to be that a diagnosis was a form of shorthand communication between clinicians...

Did the Parliamentary Committee take evidence from health professionals, before they came up with their recommendations?

Did they have an understanding of the Trans Umbrella?

I do enjoy people who have ever experienced this tell us what it must be like to be trans and to have experienced the medical pathways for it.

I do enjoy people telling me what I have or haven't felt.

EVERY description of their feelings by a transgender person (not transsexual), I have felt.

The difference is I have considered the source of my issues with my body and the gender roles that I have cast aside and decided it's expectations that need to change. Simp;ly calling myself non binary wouldn't change anything and would be offensive to a lot of other women who feel the same way. The implication being that I'm some how different from them.

We will have a lot of young girls who don't know what to do when "non binary" doesn't actually fix anything in the long run.

Feminism isn't for them anymore, it's for people who identify as women.

So in the DSM-5, gender dysphoria is considered to be a mental disorder (otherwise it wouldn't be included in the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). But in the ICD 11 it is a sexual health issue.

All classification is done to avoid stigma for the sufferers but also to make sure that they can be covered by health insurance. Any clinical considerations are secondary to these issues.

Jack Drescher (in Cigarstring's link) compares removing gender dysphoria from the DSM to removing homosexuality from the DSM in the 70s. The big difference he doesn't mention is that people with gender dysphoria are asking for medication and surgery to fix the mental illness that they don't have.

We also tried to narrow the diagnostic criteria, with the idea that you do not want to give people a diagnosis when they do not want one

I'm sure many people don't want a diagnosis - infertility, childhood leukaemia, depression...

But unless people understand what is troubling them, how can they hope to deal with it constructively?

One way to reduce stigma was to remove the word "disorder."

How can thinking that a male body is not male, or a female body is not female, be anything other than disordered thinking?

And what, in any case, is stigmatising about the word 'disorder'? Is my extremely able family member stigmatised by having the label Autistic Spectrum Disorder? Or does that label give them access to the support they need in order to lead a fulfilling life and contribute to society?

I believe it is a mental illness, often caused by past trauma.
As with other mental illnesses it should be treated, possibly with therapy and sometimes medication but NOT surgery ( especially not on The NHS)
People suffering from it should be allowed to live how they choose as long as they don’t cause harm to themselves or others. It’s a bit like Anorexia- it shouldn’t be validated by others .
Can you imagine if an Anorexic claimed to be fat and the medical professionals said “yes you are, take these drugs to help you lose weight and maybe at some point we can give you weight loss surgery”
I also think that like Bipolar and Autism it’s become a fashionable and popular thing to claim and also a way of absolving the sufferer of all reposnsibilty for their actions.
I do believe that both those conditions ARE genuine and DO cause issues by the way but it’s very easy to say that someone committed a crime or behaved like a twat due to a condition that’s virtually unprovable.

Epilepsy isn’t an illness by most definitions, it’s a condition which we treat because it’s disruptive, it causes problems. Homosexuality was gradually removed from the DSM (in stages I think, so it was replaced by ‘ego dystonic’ homosexuality then it disappeared entirely). Hopefully the same will happen with trans.

I do enjoy people who have ever experienced this tell us what it must be like to be trans

I do enjoy people who have ever experienced this tell us what it must be like to be female.

The whole 'being trans isn't a mental illness' came about around the same time that the T started being tacked on the end of LGB and gay rights began to be appropriated. So just as the argument is that being gay isn't a mental illness, so 'being trans isn't a mental illness' followed.

The problem is, being gay doesn't require anything 'wrong' being put 'right'. It's just what one is, a state a being. If being trans isn't a mental illness, if gender dysphoria isn't a medical condition, then how can you argue for treatment with hormones, surgery etc? Surely you can't 'self identify' as needing those things, that would open a huge can of worms in lots of medical areas?

I do enjoy people who have ever experienced this tell us what it must be like to be trans

Literally the most ironic thing I think I have ever read on here.

Whydidieatthat there are diagnostic criteria for epilepsy so that it can be diagnosed treated and managed medically. I don't see how the nhs will find treatment for something which is not an illness or disorder and can't be diagnosed. Can you explain what you hope will happen when a trans person suffering with gender disphoria asks for help and treatment?

It’s a mental illness if it distresses you.

Manderleyagain I’m not trans so I don’t know but I guess everyone is different and should be supported to explore their options and decide how to proceed.

hoppinggreen
Can you imagine if an Anorexic claimed to be fat and the medical professionals said “yes you are, take these drugs to help you lose weight and maybe at some point we can give you weight loss surgery”

But that’s exactly how it goes, only you have it back to front. The main treatment for anorexia is weight restoration (or fattening them up), although obviously lots of people with anorexia don’t think they are fat so it’s not the most useful analogy, but the goal is always to make them ‘fatter’.

If the sight of my minge repulsed me because I expect to see a dick then altering my minge to more closely resemble a dick might help?!