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?

then what stops them from admitting they were wrong, why do they need to be correct 100% ?

after all if the body or mind makes errors, ?

Indeed, it's that old thing about when you're used to privilege, equality looks like oppression.

They were used to riding roughshod over HR departments, but are finding, case by case that that is not OK, but they still have the same rights as everyone else. Which isn't good enough, apparently.

Because how can you argue a 10 year old will not regret transitioning if there are people transitioned at 10 saying they do regret it? I mean, this is children’s health and well-being they’re affecting. If people who have taken puberty blockers and transitioned at children are saying there are lifelong, horrible side effects and they regret it, how do you convince parents PB are safe?

then why does society not ban them ?

Nothing will ever be good enough!

Because the genderwang and some very invested doctors, have convinced governments that children need these drugs. Some governments have banned them. Just need the rest to wise up now.

I don't really like to compare the brain to software and the body to hardware. The way I see it, the brain is a part of the body like any other, and so it's hardware. The software, as I see it, is experience: what happens to us from the moment we're conceived.

In my case, I don't know if the hardware was incorrectly built to begin with, or if something happened to me to introduce a new piece of code, but the end result was the same: my brain doesn't "see" my body as female.

fair point

Denying that transsexual self-perception is not gender dysphoria or a body dysmorphia seems important to the point-of-view of those who hope for an unquestioned social acceptance that trans people's own self-perceptions be prioritised over difficulties and harms caused to others by the accommodations they ask society to make.

There has long been a psychiatric view that transsexual self-perception is both distressing and disordered in the same way that other self-rejecting dysphorias and body dysmorphias are. The medical profession and healthcare settings, though, have been a key part of the exclusive pro-trans policy-making that has swept through public services, despite fighting both broad public opinion and the law, so it wouldn't surprise me if trans self-perception is no longer part of a normal, ongoing exchange of theory and practice in psychiatry.

The question of whether perceiving yourself as the opposite sex is a 'mental illness' in the sense of a potentially treatable condition or trauma response, or whether it's a socially-influenced idea someone with ASD has as an 'explanation / solution' for a distressing sense of displacement, or whether the belief is a fundamental element of personality which will not change is a discussion there is a will to suppress, including the discussion that trans-ness in different people may have different psychological roots.

The bigger issue than why people feel they are trans is what social problems and harms to other people may be caused, less by the healthcare treatment of trans people - and I say healthcare because of the use of prescribed artificial hormones and various surgeries requested - but more their social accommodation. (Leaving aside the very frought question of whether children should ever be given healthcare treatments to mirror their self-beliefs of being opposite-sexed which is a whole urgent discussion in itself).

The core of the problem is not whether transsexual people are able to see themselves in a mirror, after treatments and dressing in clothes associated with the opposite sex, and feel happier with their reflection, it's the social accommodation which is politically demanded - and I say that because only political and legislative will can demand citizens use only certain language about others or accept their self-definitions without question even when they defy reality.

We can accept someone seeing themselves as the opposite sex, if that doesn't have any threat attached to it, we can decide to accommodate their unusual presentation in some ways but if we're asked to actually pretend they are the opposite sex, reality will collapse the whole exercise.There is no way of imposing this mass pretence on a democratic society.

This demanded social accomodation of trans-ness is based on a lie and deception is at its core. Activists - a majority of whom are not transsexual - who imagined their political goals had been settled and need not be questioned are furious with women for spoiling the pretence and so are the men who don't believe they are the opposite sex but want to represent themselves as women, especially in front of women, and access places where women are undressed and / or vulnerable via legislation which insists they are 'women'.

Defining the cause of a few people believing themselves to be the opposite sex either as a psychiatric disorder or a fundamental personality characteristic or some other psychology doesn't and can't solve the great problem of the essential deception and misrepresentation in the social acceptance demanded for trans people. That anyone has seriously contemplated legally mandating that women must pretend some men are women is a kind of madness I suppose - possibly a later generation of psychologists will be interested in it.

thank you for the various questions you answered

Awesome post, @ZetaOrionis !

Exactly. The medical negligence lawsuits against doctors who ‘diagnosed’ these life changing conditions with paper thin totally unevidenced and contested ‘criteria’ will be significant.

That is if the trans lobby don’t manage to bully and legislate these kids into silence like they tried in the US by reducing the time limit for medical negligence suits.

An excellent point there about the importance of realistic expectations in securing any contentment or equilibrium in life.

False expectations or unrealistic expectations are what cause us all so much misery and angst. We feel thwarted, let down, angry or upset when the world isn't giving us what we think we want, or need. I think this is particularly pertinent when it comes to the concept of the 'trans child' and what adults are leading them to expect from 'transitioning'. They are setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment and anxiety.

I think this is particularly pertinent when it comes to the concept of the 'trans child' and what adults are leading them to expect from 'transitioning'. They are setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment and anxiety.

Agreed. Any message that goes, "Do this and you'll have exactly the same life as someone of the opposite sex" is a massive lie and will without a doubt lead to some degree of misery down the line for the child.

Thank you for this lucid explanation of the core of the problem. I might like to get it printed out like the Desiderata scroll (anyone remember those?) and pin it up in my hallway, not that I'm expecting visitors, but I would just like to read it every time I go past.

This is it exactly.

No ‘drama’ means that there is absolutely no negative repercussions for calling a male friend a man and using male language for him despite him declaring that he is a ‘woman’, as well as not having to act as if that man is in any way a woman.

It seems more like the case that ‘some’ drama is acceptable to the poster declaring their friends don’t make any drama, than it is likely that those men don’t make any demands of their friends at all in regards their identity.

You started your response by instantly proving that "good faith" was a standard you demand from others alone. When I clarified what my underlying question actually was, that was end of the confusion. You don't get to dictate to other people what they mean. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, assumed my wording had caused a misunderstanding, clarified, and then expanded on what I was saying.

Instead of actually answering it, you used my clarification as an excuse to launch into a series of bad-faith deflections.

"Would it be right to 'adjust' someone else's rights to own property by removing your right to own your home?"

Yes, if the overwhelming positive for society actually outweighed the negatives, it would be right (eminent domain/compulsory purchase exists for exactly this reason). But you know full well that your hypothetical is an absurd, unworkable extreme that isn't happening and is designed entirely to avoid the nuance of civil rights. That is the definition of a bad-faith strawman.

"Interests, not rights. See above."

An empty distinction. Legal rights are literally the mechanisms created and granted to protect and enforce competing societal interests. Acting as if rights are immutable, god given laws of nature rather than societal constructs designed to balance interests is just another way to dodge the point. All right including women's rights exist to protect their interests.

"Women losing their rights is not a perception. It's been a fact."

By choosing to hyper-fixate on the word "perceived", you intentionally ignored the broader context of my argument. Every single societal shift and civil rights adjustment involves friction, where the dominant group feels they are losing something - can be actual or perceived it is irrelevant to the point. You knew exactly what argument I was making, but you chose to play word games to avoid addressing it.

My original post was not difficult to understand. It clearly used an historical parallel to how governments already intervene and collude in societal shifts, using obvious rhetorical questions to frame it. The ultimate question was simple: "What makes government intervention in this specific issue fundamentally different from the others, aside from the fact that you personally disagree with it or the impact?"

Even when I stripped away any confusion, regardless of if this was caused by me or anything else, and laid the baseline question out for, you still refused to answer it. You have made it abundantly clear that you have no intention of engaging in an honest debate.

Trans-identified people have exactly the same rights as everyone else. + they have the 'extra' EA rights against discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.
What rights, exactly, are they lacking?

Thank you but if you do, please correct the first line which should have read: 'Denying that transsexual self-perception is gender dysphoria ...'

And as for the Q, I would love to see a sensible, logical explanation for how being 'Q' has any relevance whatsoever to the relationship between the individual and the state, which is fundamentally what 'rights' are about.
LGB fought for equal rights in the sense of wanting the same relationship between themselves and the state as heterosexual people had, ie the right to get married (and hence be treated the same as anyone else married for legal purposes such as tax).
What are Ts and Qs fighting for? A bunch of wealthy educated mainly white males seem to be fighting for the right to trample all over women. Obviously. Thst's what males have always done. No idea what Qs think they're missing.

What on earth are you talking about? How can you possibly say anything you've said is a hard fact? It's an absolute load of rubbish. It is complete bollocks from beginning to end.

I went to look at your posts because I wanted to find out why you were being so unpleasantly rude to another poster (@BridgetPhillipsonIsACowardlyJobsworth) who had attempted in a very civilised way to answer your questions.

Now I know.

Will do

The ultimate question was simple: "What makes government intervention in this specific issue fundamentally different from the others, aside from the fact that you personally disagree with it or the impact?"

You never asked that question.

When I clarified what my underlying question actually was, that was end of the confusion

I answered the questions you asked:
So you are also against all and anything along these lines for race issues and rights, gender issues for women of any kind and rights, all LGBTQ issues and rights?
Or just the one you have an issue with? Is that the test, if you agree its OK if not its wrong?

My original post was not difficult to understand. It clearly used an historical parallel to how governments already intervene and collude in societal shifts, using obvious rhetorical questions to frame it.

Your OP to me is copied above (again). There was none of this in it. If you are referring to a different post, to a different person, at a different time, well, that's not my problem.

You responded to something I said to someone else.
I answered the questions you asked.
I am not a mind reader.
If you wanted a different answer, then you should have posted a different question, not thought about in your head and hoped I'd guess.

I'm done responding to you.

It's like they're posting on an entirely different thread? Or in a different universe? It's beyond me, but I don't care. Moving on...

I suppose the one thing that poster (and others like them) does get right is that they provoke a reaction. They write such outrageously appalling drivel, cobbled together presumably via AI and their idiot friends, it's difficult to just ignore them. They have got provoking down to a fine art. They have noticed that people who think about what they write put references to sources, and so to prevent that from being a thing they just say you can find the sources everywhere, when there are no such things. They state absolute gobbledygook as being "facts". Then they pretend they said something completely different to the thing they actually said. Marvellous.