Is being trans a 'disease'/mental health issue?

[SolveMyPrombles]

I'm asking on this board for deliberate considered responses so please do share your thoughts.

A lady on a local group has described being trans as a mental illness that should be treated with compassion not pandered to because it's a disease.

Looking into it more deeply I believe she's wrong and there is no current diagnostic manual that agrees with her take.

What do you think?

"With the publication of DSM–5 in 2013, “gender identity disorder” was eliminated and replaced with “gender dysphoria.” This change further focused the diagnosis on the gender identity-related distress that some transgender people experience (and for which they may seek psychiatric, medical, and surgical treatments) rather than on transgender individuals or identities themselves."

Gender dysphoria itself is something that is diagnosed.

"The DSM-5-TR defines gender dysphoria in adolescents and adults as a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender, lasting at least 6 months, as manifested by at least two of the following:

• A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
• A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
• A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
• A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
• A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
• A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

In order to meet criteria for the diagnosis, the condition must also be associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning."

There are separate diagnostic criteria for children.

The problem lies with the concept of illness.

to consider an example.

i am lactose intolerant. If I eat dairy I get quite unpleasant symptoms - vomiting, bowel issues etc.

this is not considered an illness.

why?

because the vast, vast majority of people are lactose intolerant after weaning. The norm is for babies and toddlers to be able to process lactose and dairy and then it vanishes in childhood.

this is the case with many many mammals, and in most humans except those in Northern Europe.

in Northern Europe due to extensive keeping of cattle milk is drunk by the adult population as well and this is believed to have led to lactose tolerance lasting later and later in life.

however even in Northern Europe it tends to not last a lifetime - many elderly people in England/denmark/germany begin to have problems tolerating lactose.

so because the majority of humans do not tolerate lactose beyond early childhood, the fact that I don’t tolerate it beyond age 20 is not an illness it’s the standard human condition.

what IS outside the norm biologically is societies where milk is drunk into adult hood - I’m an outlier in that society but actually completely normal by the rest of humanity’s standards.

more generally, it can be hard to tell the difference between an illness and a normal variant. People are not all standard and there is massive massive variation in both physical and mental characteristics. Some societies call some variations illness.

the classic example being homosexuality as a mental illness. It’s very very clearly a normal variant in both humans and many other animals. Calling it an illness says more about the society than about the person,

earlier in English history women who had children out of marriage might well be locked up in a mental institution with the diagnosis of “nyphomaniac” when clearly wanting to have sex (or being raped!) is not a mental illness (to today’s society) and it seems obvious now that the real problem was that she had a baby and pissed off some people with power.

illness (and especially mental illness) is not a simple concept

Yes, i feel it’s a MH condition. Not a disease, though.

There is IMHO no such thing as ‘born in the wrong body’, so the inability to feel at one with the body you have needs compassion, support and therapy. Most of the mature TW and TMs I have spoken to agree with this, even if it took them years to understand this.

Every young ‘trans’ person I know or know of (including my own DC) has any number of: ASD, ADHD, EuPD/DPD, ARFIDS/ED, confusion over sexuality, some form of body dysphoria, often some childhood trauma (bullying, dysfunctional homes etc) and onset coincided with puberty. There is also a social contagion- 3 young people within a 15 house stretch of my road are ‘trans’, one having had surgery at 19 after 18m in a paediatric psychiatric ward until their 18th birthday and discharge.

These vulnerable, gifted, sensitive young people need cautious, loving and compassionate care - not hormones and surgeries

You brought in "physical presence".
I posted "undescribable".
But then only one side has problems being able to fully define things,

This is trying to push your belief on to other people.
Which is part of the irony of the trans lobby.
'how dare you mis lable me, but I will lable you as I see fit'
So much for respecting other people's views and beliefs.

I would say that not feeling happy in your own body is a symptom of those other issues, not a diagnosis.

If a child said ‘I feel I’m in the wrong body’, that should trigger investigations into potential autism, mental health problems, trauma etc. Not be given a sticker saying ‘transgender’

So the same poster says there are 'only three choices' in relation to gender; AND that it's 'internal' to the 'individual'. There being some 7 or 8 billion people in the world, surely there are more than 3 genders?
Or none. Obviously. It also being a social construct.
This is all such nonsense honestly.
But yes, for some, especially teenage girls, it's a mental illness, which could show itself via self-harm or an ED, but instead is 'trans'. For the middle aged males, it's a mix of things, but even if mental illness (and why, by the way, do TRAs seem to think mental illness is shameful and wrong, and to be denied?) very often angry and demanding and narcissistic and a paradigm of typical male behaviours.

Interesting! It definitely seems like there's a whole avenue of possibilities to explore there...

Why do we never get to read an argument on one of these threads between an activist who insists that there are only three choices and another activist who insists that there are 72 genders? That would be worth staying up until 3am for!

Recently, on another forum, I saw a very heated argument between:

• TRAs who insisted that non-binary people are necessarily trans because trans is an umbrella which covers everyone who's not "cis", and that only internalised transphobia would prevent non-binary people from identifying as trans
• and TRAs who said that by definition non-binary people are outside of the trans/cis binary altogether, and telling them they must identify as trans is wrong and intolerant.

It was indeed very entertaining 😁

Maybe it's only a matter of time before it happens here. It would, however, require all of us Usual Suspects to refrain from commenting and just let them have at it. That's a big ask! 😆

I totally agree - every trans child/teen I know seems to have significant MH or ND related challenges of which the rejection of adulthood/sex/their sexed body seems to be a signal that they need support and counselling.

Nobody is 100% typical of anything; let alone gender stereotypes. We are all a mixture of characteristics and preferences...that is what makes us individuals.
'Conforming' to certain sex based stereotypes, but not to others.

What you seem to be describing as 'gender' is a caricature; a particular small set of stereotypes that are repetitively performed; which is why many trans identified people seem to inhabit a role for which they have to learn the lines, the movements, the inflections and so on.

But no matter how much you perform gender - it does not change your sex. It is also not what makes your sex. Women can perform gender too...but that is not what makes them women. 'Woman' is the word we give to an adult human female.

Well, it was on a completely captured forum, so the TRAs were fighting to know who was top dog. I don't think they'd do that here.

That said, I did notice that on the very first page of this thread, @Zoonosis said:

this is NOT as popularly suggested anything to do with having a "male" brain in a female body or vice versa as there's no such thing as male or female brains,

And we know what argument was brought up by other TRAs later on...

Nobody has suggested that there is no over-lap of characteristics between males and females when it comes to personality, interests etc. Of course, there is. But personal characteristics are not what determine our sex.

I'm still laughing about Bailey telling me I MUST pick one of 3 genders.

What a wazzock.

I see it as mental/behavioural as the physical body is healthy and the distress is in the mind. Definitely not a disease.

If there are any sex based characteristics that many/most women have in common it is those that relate to the female biological function. Extensions of the female role in reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth and the 'programming' that stem from that biological imprint. Human females share those with the females of many other species.

The same for men, including those with trans identities. which is why even when a man identifies himself with female characteristics or gender, he still somehow displays or performs those deepeer male significators that are hard-wired in. These tend to relate the male sex drive and to the more aggressive instincts.

So, when you say "no drama" - does your TW friend require, expect or ask you to use certain pronouns or behave as though you believe they are a biological female? Because if they do, I would class that as "drama".

If not, and your friend is happy to accept that you might not believe they are a biological woman, that's great. That's a level of respect and acceptance from TWAs thats many of us would like.

"Rational gender non conformity" is just wearing what you like, or doing what you enjoy rather than what is expected of you.

It is not "rational" to imagine that cutting parts of your body changes your sex or turns a man into a woman, or a woman into a man.

So odd. I guess if there are, specifically, 3 (why that number in particular?!), we are all non-binary?! Because who's binary enough in that categorisation? American Christian tradwife? A giant steroid-munching cage fighter?

It must be very frustrating to have an identity, though, which is not affirmed by most of society? You yourself have said that trans identities are social constructions - which surely implies that there is a need for society to interact and affirm that identity for it to have any validity or legitimacy?

Unless, of course, you are happy and resolved inside your own mind and don't require external social validation or legitimacy. But then, it is no longer a social construct is it; it is an entirely personal construct.

Which seems (and forgive me if I'm wrong here) to be sort of what Seethlaw's position is, they are happier with the way their body and external appearance look now and more comfortable that it matches to a certain extent how they feel, but doesn't seek external validation, it's about internal contentment, or as close as any of us can get to that.

It feels like you haven't even read my OP which says someone else said it to me and I believe they're wrong. I agree the rhetoric sounds too close to gay being an illness.

They are. Lots of evangelising and terrorism in the name of conversion to other faiths and the destruction of those who are different or no faith.