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?

It absolutely can be disputed. Male or female. That’s it. There are no other options.
Arguing for options beyond male and female, man or woman is akin to insisting that fairies, trolls and ogres are real.

Well no, you said people only had three choices.

the hemlock was a bit too much, but at a guess those were the times,

Except apparently it isn't, as i have to choose from your list. Make up your mind.

i want fairies

Yes the motivation could be many things like they want to attract the opposite sex, market themselves, project power etc. but that doesn't exclude an organic preference for feminine expression which aesthetics includes.

I think we can agree trolls are....

But doesn't include it either.

Having big tits projects power in a way that being male doesn't?

Male and big tits seem to project a lot of power re getting people sacked etc....

Its both.

An individual categorises their internal sense of gender according to socially constructed categories.

lol me too actually.
I’ve always felt a pang of disappointment that the Cottingley fairies turned out to be a hoax albeit a brilliant one of its time.
Ditto a troll under the bridge forbidding the billy goats from going to the other side to eat the lush grass.

Stories and dreams are a nice fantasy. A make believe world that it can be fun to escape to but we know they aren’t real.
So called trans people seem to prefer to exist in their make believe world and have issues confronting reality. As if they can’t quite face growing up or re regressing into childlike thinking.

But if those socially constructed preferences pivoted tomorrow, would trans people decide they were now their original sex again? Liking stuff arbitrarily decided to be for a group doesn't make you a member of that group when there are other fixed and more important criteria.

No I don't think because I suspect religion is a consequence of the human condition given it's always existed in some form. Evolutionarily, human perception & by extension need of spirituality is 'built into the system' just like gender.

So you also think that gender is a human construct?

I'm really baffled that you seem to think that not only does everyone see those socially constructed categories, but everyone also sees them the same, and everyone accepts them, and then everyone internalises them, and finally everyone categorises themselves based on those external categories. That's just so many levels of unfounded assumptions...

It’s an idea. A thought. A feeling. No doubt one that causes those who hold it (whatever the source of it) discomfort and difficulty, but a feeling nonetheless. Medical interventions which surgically modify the body and leave the person with lifelong problems cannot be the answer to solving their distress. In my view the proper answer is a societal one. I believe that if gender norms were relaxed so that feminine little boys could safely present however they wanted and masculine little girls could comfortably be who they are, life would be better for the people who have been convinced they are trans. I feel like we were getting there for a while with the breakdown of gender stereotypes , then social media came along and started reinforcing them to the point that anyone not on either end of the spectrum feels ‘wrong’. I weep for the child I know who fell victim to this thinking and is now starting life as a young adult with major medical problems and preoccupations rather than as a healthy individual comfortable in their own body. As a tomboyish child who was allowed to pass through the phase of wishing I was a boy without medical harm, it honestly hurts to see young people harming themselves trying to conform to sexist stereotypes and I think the adults that allow it have a tsunami of regret heading for them.

Your internal sense needs a reference point to categorise/identify itself with remember? And that's socially constructed categories of which there are three main ones.

And thats why the adults can't let it go, because they don't want to feel the guilt. Even if it is coming at them like a tsunami. Hence the Japanese soldier still fighting ww2 analogy often made.

Women & men often use presentation as means to hierarchical power amongst their peers.

Patronising much? I don't believe it does.

Oh my god. Am I witnessing an actual "there's a hierarchy among women according to boob size" argument in the wild??

Except gendered inclinations are as much biologically influenced as they are socially so change is unlikely.

No. Its a product of biological & environmental influences that are socially categorised.

How are skirts biologically influenced towards women? And make up? And colours?