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?

So you don't claim to have a female gender identity? Or a gender identity at all?

If someone looks at me and decides to refer to me as ‘she’ I’m not going to correct them because I’m fine being referred to that way. I’m also not going to insist anyone refer to me in a certain way or throw a hissy fit if you don’t. But I’m also not going to go out of my way to tell anyone I’m trans when it doesn’t matter. I also use neutral spaces where available.

But you will use female provisions when mixed sex provisions are not available?

To be honest, I don’t really know why I feel this way. Some people think gender identify is why we’re trans, and maybe it is? But I don’t know if I believe that. I’d like to see more research into what causes this.

Yes. I’m sure I’m not causing anyone alarm. And I know using male spaces would cause more issues with how I look now. I know you’ll disapprove and I’ve read this forum enough, so you can spare me the lecture.

Yeah. We know. You passively accept that people treating you as a woman means that you are not causing any harm, despite women explaining over and over why this is not true.

You don’t understand the concept of consent at all. Nor safeguarding.

And thanks, but we will continue to ‘lecture’ you. You post on this board so you cannot control how people respond to your posts.

Passive demands, or requests, etc, where a male person cannot self regulate to acknowledge that female people have needs that should be respected and that no male person is ever a female person are still ‘demands’.

A male person who uses those provisions lack self regulation and are not respectful of female people and causes harm to female people. Despite all the claims from those male people that they are not causing harm.

Neither have they ever spoken out or demonstrated against the people who claim they are being violent and abusive in their name.

Are you expected to speak out or demonstrate every time another woman commits a heinous crime or does something awful?

You do not need the 'consent' of strangers to occupy a public space or use a facility. Consent applies to personal, physical interactions. If a person needed permission from everyone in the room just to exist there, public life would collapse.

I'm glad to hear you use neutral spaces when you can and I respect that.

But as a female person, it does make me uncomfortable that you adopt a female persona however passively that may be done.

As an analogy, if I visit a place of worship and someone assumes I am there as a believer rather than a tourist I might not correct them on the first contact, but the longer the conversation goes on the more I would feel it's important to be clear that I do not share the knowledge and experiences they have assumed I do.

I understand you can't stop every interaction to clarify, but nevertheless I do feel it's a deception and I do feel it reduces the depth of female existence to a superficial presentation.

And I do think you identifying as "trans" is saying you have an active interest in existing "as a woman" not just in having a superficially feminised body.

You're supposed to obey the law though.

It's just that the way you described it sounds familiar to me, so now I'm wondering if we have a similar kind of "trans-ness"?

I guess what I struggle to understand is why this makes you uncomfortable. If someone seems me as a woman, what does this take away from you?

I am genuinely trying to understand. I completely understand you come from a position where sex is essential and unchangeable, and I agree sex can’t be changed, so I understand the argument around single sex spaces. What I don’t understand is why me letting someone refer to me as a woman or me refer to myself that way is a problem.

Maybe we do. The way I’ve described it before is that I know I should’ve been born female, but the fact I feel this means I’m not female and I never will be. I can’t change my sex, but I can change my secondary sex characteristics to look more female by taking hormones and having surgery. That is the best I can do in this life and it has made me feel more comfortable in my body.

Does that resonate for you?

Thank you for showing how little you understand the interaction of safeguarding and consent.

Yes. Personal interactions such as who you are in a single sex provision with.

And we are back again to the myth of how many male people seem to think that their sex is not correctly identified even if they have been on hormones at quantities meant for female bodies for decades!

You’re just choosing to frame it that way. The law says nothing about consent when it comes to single sex provision.

Is that not obvious from my earlier posts?

1. Because it is condoning the sexist idea that being a woman isn't simply a matter being one of the female half of humanity but sonething to do with how one feels, acts or presents
2. Because it leaves those of us who are of the female half of humanity without a space in language or law that is explicit and distinct for us, leaving us unable to clearly describe and share what we experience, or to connect our history and our experiences as women to our needs and challenges today

I have no issue at all with you being who you are and finding your own language to express that, my issue is that when you use female language to do it you make that language no longer relevant to the people whose existence gave rise to it in the first place.

But if you really cannot see that taking the name of "woman" and making it mean something else is taking something very significant away from women, I'm not sure how I can help you.

Why do you find it so hard to believe someone on hormones might be seen as a member of the opposite sex? You lot have a weird thing about this topic

Somewhat, yes! I wouldn't exactly put it as "I know I should’ve been born male", but almost: as a kid, when I discovered that my male friend had a penis, I was very confused as to why I didn't have one, since I was a boy too. I understood why people kept calling me a girl, since I didn't have a penis, but "really" I was a boy, you know?

I've since come to understand that this is because there's some kind of disconnect between my brain and the rest of my body: basically, when I ask my brain what my body looks like, the answer is a male body. It's like I have a female body but a male body map, if that makes sense to you?

I transitioned not even so much for myself, even though it's very nice to see myself in the mirror and look more like how I see myself "inside". I transitioned mostly to stop "living a lie": I felt dishonest presenting as a woman when "really" I'm a man - even though at the same time, I know that technically I'm not a man! I have a female body, so I'm a woman - who thinks she's a man 😅

If those women speak as a group making serious threats, committing serious harassment, losing people their jobs, preventing lawful meetings in rooms for hire - - -

then I would certainly expect people who that group claim they are representing to put their hands up and say

"excuse me but you do not represent me" fairly forcibly, yes.

I appreciate you explaining your perspective clearly. I understand that for you, protecting the distinct language around the female sex is about preserving your history and shared experiences. Where we differ is how we view the practical role of language in daily life. I am not trying to redefine biology, nor am I claiming to share the specific physical history of being born female. I’ve already stated that sex is unchangeable. But in everyday life, human language is visual and social. When people naturally refer to me as a woman, it’s not a political rewrite of law or history. It’s just the practical reality of how I look and move through the world

Why do you think the law in the UK excludes male people from public facilities? It is due to safeguarding and consent forms part of those principles.

The thing is, it is a political rewrite of law or history.

As soon as you make the "practical" choice to allpw yourself to be defined as a woman rather than a man, you opened the door to the undefining of female existence.

A question for you.

When you are passively allowing yourself to be called "a woman" purely for purposes of practical reality, do you experience it as "they've got that wrong but it's not worth the faff of correcting them for this brief interaction we will have", or do you think they are referring to you as a woman correctly?