I'm not sure I'm on board with this. I like the idea of giving them more control over this (especially in the face of discrimination), but this also opens up drugs that will irreversibly change...
Trans people, they believe, should have control over whether to access care like hormones or surgery and what gender markers their legal documents bear, and have those decisions respected.
I'm not sure I'm on board with this. I like the idea of giving them more control over this (especially in the face of discrimination), but this also opens up drugs that will irreversibly change someone's life to people who are jumping on the bandwagon of transgender's current "fad". People who have a different mental issue than transgenderism, but are drawn to it for whatever reason.
The draft of the new ICD offers a new term, “gender incongruence,” emphasizing that a patient might need treatment for the ways their body does not match their sense of self
This is a much more sensible solution. It still offers a diagnosis and it allows for continued control over hormonal drugs.
Kids do stuff with long term consequences all the time without understanding the consequences. This has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with how humans behave and how...
It defies common sense that someone would radically alter their body on a lark
Kids do stuff with long term consequences all the time without understanding the consequences. This has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with how humans behave and how developed our brains are by certain ages.
comparing transgenderism to a “fad”
Apologies, I really should have worded this better. I'm not saying it's a fad. It never has been and never will be. But there is a certain population of individuals who have a mental health issue which are finding acceptance in the transgender community currently.
I received it on an informed consent basis, where a provider simply made sure I understood the medical risks and had me verbally affirm my desire to transition before writing the prescription with a year’s worth of refills.
So long as there is a contact with a doctor, I'm 100% okay with this. I just want to make sure a trained professional has a chance to review before prescribing such a powerful drug.
Others do it DIY, as hormones (for trans women) are not controlled substances, and are available on the gray market.
You're referring to MtF I assume?
I fundamentally refuse the premise that we need gatekeepers controlling our access to transition care, especially when it comes at the end of mandated therapy.
For everything but hormone therapy I agree. There might be better ways to deal with this though, such as simple age restricted OTC (non-age restricted w/ prescription).
100% in agreement on mandated therapy and a large portion of the shady shit that goes on.
I agree with everything Kat said in their reply, so I'm just going to add on to it here. The problem with this argument is that you are valuing the lives and health of hypothetical cis children...
I agree with everything Kat said in their reply, so I'm just going to add on to it here.
Kids do stuff with long term consequences all the time without understanding the consequences. This has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with how humans behave and how developed our brains are by certain ages.
The problem with this argument is that you are valuing the lives and health of hypothetical cis children over the actual lived negative experiences in the lives and on the health of real trans people, right now. In the current western healthcare systems care like puberty blockers is very difficult to impossible to access for many trans kids. This is extremely damaging. Without puberty blockers, trans children undergo permanent, irreversible, extremely damaging changes to their body, often causing massive, and sometimes fatal amounts of dysphoria. Cis children who mistakenly undergo puberty blockers can later reverse the effects of their transition without any permanent or lasting damage. Before getting on full HRT at 18, the small amount of children who turn out to be cis, can very easily and successfully detransition.
Your argument is inherently cis-sexist because you are putting more value on the lives of hypothetical cis children than on the very real trans kids who are dying today from lack of access to care. Your concern trolling is very damaging to trans people, and the prevalence of this attitude is not only cis-sexist, and transphobic, but directly leads to the unnecessary suffering and/or death of trans people today.
You're referring to MtF I assume?
I don't believe for a minute that you didn't know exactly what Kat meant when they said "trans women". "MtF" is a pretty problematic acronym that isn't really used outside of medical conversations. Trans women are women, and always have been, we didn't go from "male to female", and trans men didn't go from "female to male". Gender identity is a biological reality, meaning I was born a woman in exactly the same way a cis woman is.
I'm trying to approach this from the respect of absolute numbers. But now that I think about it, the amount that could be potentially harmed by starting a treatment they don't ultimately want is...
The problem with this argument is that you are valuing the lives and health of hypothetical cis children over the actual lived negative experiences in the lives and on the health of real trans people, right now.
I'm trying to approach this from the respect of absolute numbers. But now that I think about it, the amount that could be potentially harmed by starting a treatment they don't ultimately want is likely lower than the amount it could save, so I think this is perhaps a bad argument.
puberty blockers
Yes I completely agree that these should be more readily available
I don't believe for a minute that you didn't know exactly what Kat meant when they said "trans women".
Okay well attacking me right off the bat isn't really helpful. Does it mean men transitioning to women? Women transitioning to men? Attacking someone because they don't know the terminology is just going to cause people to be defensive or feel attacked. If you want someone to listen, you probably should refrain.
Thanks for taking my points into consideration. Your right, it is a bit rude. You should understand though that you are coming into our space, engaging in a topic that does not effect you, and not...
Thanks for taking my points into consideration.
Okay well attacking me right off the bat isn't really helpful. Does it mean men transitioning to women? Women transitioning to men? Attacking someone because they don't know the terminology is just going to cause people to be defensive or feel attacked. If you want someone to listen, you probably should refrain.
Your right, it is a bit rude. You should understand though that you are coming into our space, engaging in a topic that does not effect you, and not doing us the simple courtesy of engaging in the conversation with appropriate vocabulary. Yes, I understand that it's possible for you to genuinely not know, but these things can be found very easily with a simple google search. Coming into our space and expecting us to do the work to educate you is also rude, and entitled. Is it appropriate for me to be rude in response to your rudeness? No, I suppose it's not, so I apologize. Since I took the time to point out my problem with your questioning, I might as well go ahead and take the time to answer it.
A transgender woman is a woman who was incorrectly assigned male at birth. A transgender man is a man who was incorrectly assigned female at birth. In western cultures we typically assign one of two strict genders based on anatomical sex organs, which works in the vast majority of cases, but is often life ruining when it doesn't (resulting in transgender people). Yes, the term trans woman refers to the same people as "Male to Female" does. It's a much more accurate term though because it does not misrepresent the biological realities of gender identity. Gender identity is something everyone is born with, including you. It's not something we chose. meaning a trans woman has always been a woman, even if we where forced to pretend to be men for some time, and even if we don't necessarily realize it right away. This is why it's inappropriate to say a trans woman is a "man transitioning to woman". We are women, and we always have been. We never were men.
This is just semantics at this point, and isn't a huge deal. We are in fact talking about the same thing, but it's still important to point out, as using problematic terminology misrepresents our lived reality, and is effectively spreading misinformation.
I appreciate you taking the time to educate me on the correct terminology. Again I apologise for using the wrong words. I just hope you know that I didn't mean you any harm they are just the words...
I appreciate you taking the time to educate me on the correct terminology. Again I apologise for using the wrong words. I just hope you know that I didn't mean you any harm they are just the words that were taught to me.
This is the concept that really drove everything home for me as someone who cannot speak from experience. Someone's physical expression of gender should not prevent me from recognizing and...
It's not something we chose. meaning a trans woman has always been a woman, even if we where forced to pretend to be men for some time, and even if we don't necessarily realize it right away. This is why it's inappropriate to say a trans woman is a "man transitioning to woman". We are women, and we always have been. We never were men.
This is the concept that really drove everything home for me as someone who cannot speak from experience. Someone's physical expression of gender should not prevent me from recognizing and understanding the true expression - it was always a certain way regardless of what I can see from the outside.
Since you have talked of a perceived issue of kids going on HRT, and you approve of puberty blockers, it seems you have a misunderstanding of how kids are treated. Here's a comment I made about a...
Since you have talked of a perceived issue of kids going on HRT, and you approve of puberty blockers, it seems you have a misunderstanding of how kids are treated. Here's a comment I made about a week ago on this issue:
Maybe don't put them on hormone replacers at such a young age though.
FYI, since the topic of putting kids on hormones is brought up a lot by disingenuous anti-trans activists: Young children are never put on HRT (hormone replacement therapy). If they're prepubescent, they would just induce puberty early, so they're put on nothing at all. If they're near or at the age of puberty, they're put on puberty blockers, which delay puberty and generally do not have adverse effects. HRT is generally only started after they reach 16.
Gender questioning kids are put under a lot of scrutiny, to the point that it's actually often detrimentally difficult to receive HRT.
They may grow out of it, they may not.
You may find this interesting:
Finally, children who have gender dysphoria beginning at puberty or persisting after puberty generally have persistent gender dysphoria in adulthood.
There is some good preliminary research from Australia indicating that 4% of transgender kids desist (stop identifying as transgender). The research was used in a court case:...
Right which is why in my initial comment I pointed out that there are situations where they may not receive the treatment they should be getting. In that lens it's definitely a good thing to make...
Gender questioning kids are put under a lot of scrutiny, to the point that it's actually often detrimentally difficult to receive HRT.
Right which is why in my initial comment I pointed out that there are situations where they may not receive the treatment they should be getting. In that lens it's definitely a good thing to make it easier.
You may find this interesting:
This was something I was already aware of, but it requires diagnosis by a professional. I just want to be sure that people have appropriate interaction with health professionals.
I was clarifying, not moving the goalposts. But again, I apologize if it sounded like I was attacking you. I wasn't referring to any studies. Simply to the fact that there are people with...
You’ve just moved the goalposts from worrying about “fads”/“people who have a different mental issue than transgenderism”
I was clarifying, not moving the goalposts. But again, I apologize if it sounded like I was attacking you.
which is junk science:
I wasn't referring to any studies. Simply to the fact that there are people with undiagnosed mental illnesses. I have no idea what the incidence is like or whether this is truly a problem at all. I just know that it exists and that we are woefully under utilizing mental health not to mention we understand very little still about brain function.
worrying about kids changing their mind, which is also junk science:
Good links, I appreciate the read.
However, both of these talk about how professionals currently treat people with gender dysphoria. By allowing unfettered access to hormonal therapy, you would be allowing someone to start it without seeing a professional. This is the same point I've been making since the beginning.
Such as?
Asking to quantify them is like asking someone to define depression. I think gender and gender expression are both fluid, poorly understood, and have many contributing factors. There are people who do not know where they currently "fit" who are looking for an open and accepting community.
That terminology is not generally preferred outside of the trans community, but yes.
Apologies, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing. What is the best way to refer to someone who is biologically male and identifies as a female? Is it just that we should refer to them as she and the opposite as he?
The term transgender woman or trans woman is usually applicable, but the term 'woman' should be used if specifying that the individual is transgender is unnecessary. The terminology "MTF" is often...
What is the best way to refer to someone who is biologically male and identifies as a female?
The term transgender woman or trans woman is usually applicable, but the term 'woman' should be used if specifying that the individual is transgender is unnecessary. The terminology "MTF" is often considered derogatory because of the implication that the person in question was ever 'male', which is untrue for some individuals.
Please stop gatekpeeing something you clearly don’t understand. Being trans can mean losing family and friends and putting yourself in danger by walking in public. it’s not eating a tide pod.
Please stop gatekpeeing something you clearly don’t understand. Being trans can mean losing family and friends and putting yourself in danger by walking in public. it’s not eating a tide pod.
There is no evidence that people jump on the 'bandwagon' due to a 'transgender fad'. There is a wealth of evidence showing that regret rates of various surgeries are around 1-2%, detransition...
but this also opens up drugs that will irreversibly change someone's life to people who are jumping on the bandwagon of transgender's current "fad"
There is no evidence that people jump on the 'bandwagon' due to a 'transgender fad'.
There is a wealth of evidence showing that regret rates of various surgeries are around 1-2%, detransition rates even lower, and satisfaction rates for most surgeries are in the mid to upper 90%s.
This posted in light of the WHO's announcement, also posted to ~lgbt. Granted, the WHO simply reclassified it as a "condition", so hopefully the impact will be less severe than how this article...
Due to my experiences with gatekeeping when seeking treatment, I can't will myself to support reinforcing the idea that people must justify their dysphoria to often completely ignorant people so...
Due to my experiences with gatekeeping when seeking treatment, I can't will myself to support reinforcing the idea that people must justify their dysphoria to often completely ignorant people so that they can obtain the medication they need to survive.
If I had assurance that diagnostic criteria as well as the conduct of medical professionals involved properly accounted for and accommodated the vast range of different experiences of different trans people, maybe I would be more willing to support this strategy.
I kind of agree. I've seen a lot of talk that having transgender be a mental disorder automatically makes it less valid somehow. But gender dysphoria is different than being gay or other non-het...
I kind of agree. I've seen a lot of talk that having transgender be a mental disorder automatically makes it less valid somehow. But gender dysphoria is different than being gay or other non-het sexualities. You can't take a pill that makes you less gay. But you can take a pill to help treat and ease the pain of dysphoria. It's a defect in my brain chemistry and it's just as valid as someone with depression, anxiety, or OCD; but it is a disorder.
The distinction is between gender dysphoria and being transgender. Being transgender is not a mental illness. We can be trans without having dysphoria. Dysphoria is currently treated as a mental...
The distinction is between gender dysphoria and being transgender. Being transgender is not a mental illness. We can be trans without having dysphoria. Dysphoria is currently treated as a mental disorder, not a mental illness. A big distinction being that if you let someone with gender dysphoria pursue what they want, what dysphoria drives us to do (transition), our condition improves. If you let someone with a mental illness pursue what they are being driven to do, like schizophrenia, they will often harm themselves or others.
Additionally, just because gender dysphoria isn't classified as a mental illness doesn't mean that it's not something that needs to be medically treated. A pregnancy isn't a mental illness, but pregnant people still get access to medical care. I would argue that it is better to treat gender dysphoria as a symptom of a medical condition of the body, not the mind. After all, it's our bodies that are the problem, and our bodies that need to change, not our minds. This is why I believe the WHO reclassification is a good thing for us. It reclassifies gender dysphoria to something that's still a valid medical condition that needs treatment, but not a mental illness, with everything that goes along with that.
This can even be used as ammunition in the fight for insurance to cover more trans surgeries. If gender dysphoria is treated as a symptom of a fundamental problem with our bodies, it can be argued that surgeries like Facial feminization, top surgery for guys, and hysterectomies are not cosmetic, but medically necessary.
Anyway, I think I've wandered a bit off topic. I don't mean to deflect from what trans activists in Japan are struggling for. I think their position is very valid, and it would be pretty ethnocentric for me to suggest that trans people in Japan should be left behind, or that their struggle can't have different solutions and tactics to ours in the west.
I'm not sure it's fair to call it a defect in brain chemistry. The brain of a trans person isn't defective or broken, it's just incompatible with aspects of the rest of the body. When in the right...
I'm not sure it's fair to call it a defect in brain chemistry. The brain of a trans person isn't defective or broken, it's just incompatible with aspects of the rest of the body. When in the right bodily conditions, the brain works just fine. The incompatibility isn't from the brain being broken somehow, but merely from the two components do not work together.
Broken in the sense that the system (our body) is designed to work as a whole. So when the control center gets in and freaks out the whole operating is wrong, it seems like something went wrong....
Broken in the sense that the system (our body) is designed to work as a whole. So when the control center gets in and freaks out the whole operating is wrong, it seems like something went wrong. If you bought a computer and the CPU didn't run the computer properly, you'd call it broken. I'm not trying to say computers have feelings or that people are as simple as machines but that was the gist of my metaphor
If I could plug that CPU into a different motherboard and it'd work, I'd say the CPU was just incompatible with the prior board. Neither the board nor the CPU are broken, they just don't fit together.
If you bought a computer and the CPU didn't run the computer properly, you'd call it broken.
If I could plug that CPU into a different motherboard and it'd work, I'd say the CPU was just incompatible with the prior board. Neither the board nor the CPU are broken, they just don't fit together.
brain transplants are the dream 🙌 but a lot easier said than done maybe someday we can do it Avatar-style and just move my consciousness into another body
brain transplants are the dream 🙌 but a lot easier said than done
maybe someday we can do it Avatar-style and just move my consciousness into another body
You can take pills to ease a lot of things that aren't mental illnesses. I don't consider my being transgender a 'defect', I consider it a part of my identity, and it isn't something that I would...
But you can take a pill to help treat and ease the pain of dysphoria
You can take pills to ease a lot of things that aren't mental illnesses.
It's a defect in my brain chemistry and it's just as valid as someone with depression, anxiety, or OCD; but it is a disorder.
I don't consider my being transgender a 'defect', I consider it a part of my identity, and it isn't something that I would change. Also, the empirical research disagrees with your claim that being transgender is a disorder.
I find it particularly interesting this person (Ran Ramamoto, the activist) talks about God. Japanese people are not very religious in general, and when they are, it's rarely about god. Something...
I find it particularly interesting this person (Ran Ramamoto, the activist) talks about God. Japanese people are not very religious in general, and when they are, it's rarely about god. Something like 1% of Japan's population registers as Christian, and I'm willing to bet most of those are western or Korean immigrants. I wonder if going to church there influenced their opinion on transgenderism? Either way, it's really heartning to see the doctor who prescribed the disorder only did so to fulfill a technicality, and that he's standing up for the girl. That takes a lot of guts.
I would be willing to bed this has to do with translating "kamisama", which is the general word for lower-case 'gods', in any religion. Shinto kami are softly believed in across Japan, mostly as...
I would be willing to bed this has to do with translating "kamisama", which is the general word for lower-case 'gods', in any religion. Shinto kami are softly believed in across Japan, mostly as culturally significant stories and morals. They are much smaller scale in terms of 'gods', you'll notice the wikipedia page even says "spirits or phenomena".
I'm not sure I'm on board with this. I like the idea of giving them more control over this (especially in the face of discrimination), but this also opens up drugs that will irreversibly change someone's life to people who are jumping on the bandwagon of transgender's current "fad". People who have a different mental issue than transgenderism, but are drawn to it for whatever reason.
This is a much more sensible solution. It still offers a diagnosis and it allows for continued control over hormonal drugs.
Kids do stuff with long term consequences all the time without understanding the consequences. This has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with how humans behave and how developed our brains are by certain ages.
Apologies, I really should have worded this better. I'm not saying it's a fad. It never has been and never will be. But there is a certain population of individuals who have a mental health issue which are finding acceptance in the transgender community currently.
So long as there is a contact with a doctor, I'm 100% okay with this. I just want to make sure a trained professional has a chance to review before prescribing such a powerful drug.
You're referring to MtF I assume?
For everything but hormone therapy I agree. There might be better ways to deal with this though, such as simple age restricted OTC (non-age restricted w/ prescription).
100% in agreement on mandated therapy and a large portion of the shady shit that goes on.
I agree with everything Kat said in their reply, so I'm just going to add on to it here.
The problem with this argument is that you are valuing the lives and health of hypothetical cis children over the actual lived negative experiences in the lives and on the health of real trans people, right now. In the current western healthcare systems care like puberty blockers is very difficult to impossible to access for many trans kids. This is extremely damaging. Without puberty blockers, trans children undergo permanent, irreversible, extremely damaging changes to their body, often causing massive, and sometimes fatal amounts of dysphoria. Cis children who mistakenly undergo puberty blockers can later reverse the effects of their transition without any permanent or lasting damage. Before getting on full HRT at 18, the small amount of children who turn out to be cis, can very easily and successfully detransition.
Your argument is inherently cis-sexist because you are putting more value on the lives of hypothetical cis children than on the very real trans kids who are dying today from lack of access to care. Your concern trolling is very damaging to trans people, and the prevalence of this attitude is not only cis-sexist, and transphobic, but directly leads to the unnecessary suffering and/or death of trans people today.
I don't believe for a minute that you didn't know exactly what Kat meant when they said "trans women". "MtF" is a pretty problematic acronym that isn't really used outside of medical conversations. Trans women are women, and always have been, we didn't go from "male to female", and trans men didn't go from "female to male". Gender identity is a biological reality, meaning I was born a woman in exactly the same way a cis woman is.
I'm trying to approach this from the respect of absolute numbers. But now that I think about it, the amount that could be potentially harmed by starting a treatment they don't ultimately want is likely lower than the amount it could save, so I think this is perhaps a bad argument.
Yes I completely agree that these should be more readily available
Okay well attacking me right off the bat isn't really helpful. Does it mean men transitioning to women? Women transitioning to men? Attacking someone because they don't know the terminology is just going to cause people to be defensive or feel attacked. If you want someone to listen, you probably should refrain.
Thanks for taking my points into consideration.
Your right, it is a bit rude. You should understand though that you are coming into our space, engaging in a topic that does not effect you, and not doing us the simple courtesy of engaging in the conversation with appropriate vocabulary. Yes, I understand that it's possible for you to genuinely not know, but these things can be found very easily with a simple google search. Coming into our space and expecting us to do the work to educate you is also rude, and entitled. Is it appropriate for me to be rude in response to your rudeness? No, I suppose it's not, so I apologize. Since I took the time to point out my problem with your questioning, I might as well go ahead and take the time to answer it.
A transgender woman is a woman who was incorrectly assigned male at birth. A transgender man is a man who was incorrectly assigned female at birth. In western cultures we typically assign one of two strict genders based on anatomical sex organs, which works in the vast majority of cases, but is often life ruining when it doesn't (resulting in transgender people). Yes, the term trans woman refers to the same people as "Male to Female" does. It's a much more accurate term though because it does not misrepresent the biological realities of gender identity. Gender identity is something everyone is born with, including you. It's not something we chose. meaning a trans woman has always been a woman, even if we where forced to pretend to be men for some time, and even if we don't necessarily realize it right away. This is why it's inappropriate to say a trans woman is a "man transitioning to woman". We are women, and we always have been. We never were men.
This is just semantics at this point, and isn't a huge deal. We are in fact talking about the same thing, but it's still important to point out, as using problematic terminology misrepresents our lived reality, and is effectively spreading misinformation.
I appreciate you taking the time to educate me on the correct terminology. Again I apologise for using the wrong words. I just hope you know that I didn't mean you any harm they are just the words that were taught to me.
This is the concept that really drove everything home for me as someone who cannot speak from experience. Someone's physical expression of gender should not prevent me from recognizing and understanding the true expression - it was always a certain way regardless of what I can see from the outside.
Since you have talked of a perceived issue of kids going on HRT, and you approve of puberty blockers, it seems you have a misunderstanding of how kids are treated. Here's a comment I made about a week ago on this issue:
FYI, since the topic of putting kids on hormones is brought up a lot by disingenuous anti-trans activists: Young children are never put on HRT (hormone replacement therapy). If they're prepubescent, they would just induce puberty early, so they're put on nothing at all. If they're near or at the age of puberty, they're put on puberty blockers, which delay puberty and generally do not have adverse effects. HRT is generally only started after they reach 16.
Gender questioning kids are put under a lot of scrutiny, to the point that it's actually often detrimentally difficult to receive HRT.
You may find this interesting:
https://www.mdedge.com/pediatricnews/article/109858/mental-health/how-young-too-young-optimal-age-transitioning-transgender
There is some good preliminary research from Australia indicating that 4% of transgender kids desist (stop identifying as transgender). The research was used in a court case: https://growinguptransgender.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/602fd-rekelvin30november2017.pdf
Right which is why in my initial comment I pointed out that there are situations where they may not receive the treatment they should be getting. In that lens it's definitely a good thing to make it easier.
This was something I was already aware of, but it requires diagnosis by a professional. I just want to be sure that people have appropriate interaction with health professionals.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, but everything after the line was a direct quote of a prior comment meant only to provide information.
Gotcha. Appreciated
I was clarifying, not moving the goalposts. But again, I apologize if it sounded like I was attacking you.
I wasn't referring to any studies. Simply to the fact that there are people with undiagnosed mental illnesses. I have no idea what the incidence is like or whether this is truly a problem at all. I just know that it exists and that we are woefully under utilizing mental health not to mention we understand very little still about brain function.
Good links, I appreciate the read.
However, both of these talk about how professionals currently treat people with gender dysphoria. By allowing unfettered access to hormonal therapy, you would be allowing someone to start it without seeing a professional. This is the same point I've been making since the beginning.
Asking to quantify them is like asking someone to define depression. I think gender and gender expression are both fluid, poorly understood, and have many contributing factors. There are people who do not know where they currently "fit" who are looking for an open and accepting community.
Apologies, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing. What is the best way to refer to someone who is biologically male and identifies as a female? Is it just that we should refer to them as she and the opposite as he?
The term transgender woman or trans woman is usually applicable, but the term 'woman' should be used if specifying that the individual is transgender is unnecessary. The terminology "MTF" is often considered derogatory because of the implication that the person in question was ever 'male', which is untrue for some individuals.
Please stop gatekpeeing something you clearly don’t understand. Being trans can mean losing family and friends and putting yourself in danger by walking in public. it’s not eating a tide pod.
There is no evidence that people jump on the 'bandwagon' due to a 'transgender fad'.
There is a wealth of evidence showing that regret rates of various surgeries are around 1-2%, detransition rates even lower, and satisfaction rates for most surgeries are in the mid to upper 90%s.
Thanks for posting this @tvfj. Was a great read, super interesting.
This posted in light of the WHO's announcement, also posted to ~lgbt.
Granted, the WHO simply reclassified it as a "condition", so hopefully the impact will be less severe than how this article talks about it.
It's still a medical condition, but not a mental illness.
Due to my experiences with gatekeeping when seeking treatment, I can't will myself to support reinforcing the idea that people must justify their dysphoria to often completely ignorant people so that they can obtain the medication they need to survive.
If I had assurance that diagnostic criteria as well as the conduct of medical professionals involved properly accounted for and accommodated the vast range of different experiences of different trans people, maybe I would be more willing to support this strategy.
I kind of agree. I've seen a lot of talk that having transgender be a mental disorder automatically makes it less valid somehow. But gender dysphoria is different than being gay or other non-het sexualities. You can't take a pill that makes you less gay. But you can take a pill to help treat and ease the pain of dysphoria. It's a defect in my brain chemistry and it's just as valid as someone with depression, anxiety, or OCD; but it is a disorder.
The distinction is between gender dysphoria and being transgender. Being transgender is not a mental illness. We can be trans without having dysphoria. Dysphoria is currently treated as a mental disorder, not a mental illness. A big distinction being that if you let someone with gender dysphoria pursue what they want, what dysphoria drives us to do (transition), our condition improves. If you let someone with a mental illness pursue what they are being driven to do, like schizophrenia, they will often harm themselves or others.
Additionally, just because gender dysphoria isn't classified as a mental illness doesn't mean that it's not something that needs to be medically treated. A pregnancy isn't a mental illness, but pregnant people still get access to medical care. I would argue that it is better to treat gender dysphoria as a symptom of a medical condition of the body, not the mind. After all, it's our bodies that are the problem, and our bodies that need to change, not our minds. This is why I believe the WHO reclassification is a good thing for us. It reclassifies gender dysphoria to something that's still a valid medical condition that needs treatment, but not a mental illness, with everything that goes along with that.
This can even be used as ammunition in the fight for insurance to cover more trans surgeries. If gender dysphoria is treated as a symptom of a fundamental problem with our bodies, it can be argued that surgeries like Facial feminization, top surgery for guys, and hysterectomies are not cosmetic, but medically necessary.
Anyway, I think I've wandered a bit off topic. I don't mean to deflect from what trans activists in Japan are struggling for. I think their position is very valid, and it would be pretty ethnocentric for me to suggest that trans people in Japan should be left behind, or that their struggle can't have different solutions and tactics to ours in the west.
Because of how you worded this, I think just had a minor epiphany about myself. Thank you! :)
You're welcome, so glad I was accidentally helpful. Good luck to you.
We are not defined by pain<3
I'm not sure it's fair to call it a defect in brain chemistry. The brain of a trans person isn't defective or broken, it's just incompatible with aspects of the rest of the body. When in the right bodily conditions, the brain works just fine. The incompatibility isn't from the brain being broken somehow, but merely from the two components do not work together.
Broken in the sense that the system (our body) is designed to work as a whole. So when the control center gets in and freaks out the whole operating is wrong, it seems like something went wrong. If you bought a computer and the CPU didn't run the computer properly, you'd call it broken. I'm not trying to say computers have feelings or that people are as simple as machines but that was the gist of my metaphor
If I could plug that CPU into a different motherboard and it'd work, I'd say the CPU was just incompatible with the prior board. Neither the board nor the CPU are broken, they just don't fit together.
brain transplants are the dream 🙌 but a lot easier said than done
maybe someday we can do it Avatar-style and just move my consciousness into another body
You can take pills to ease a lot of things that aren't mental illnesses.
I don't consider my being transgender a 'defect', I consider it a part of my identity, and it isn't something that I would change. Also, the empirical research disagrees with your claim that being transgender is a disorder.
my opinion has been changed
https://tildes.net/~lgbt/2il/why_transgender_people_in_japan_prefer_to_be_told_they_have_a_disorder#comment-s7f
I find it particularly interesting this person (Ran Ramamoto, the activist) talks about God. Japanese people are not very religious in general, and when they are, it's rarely about god. Something like 1% of Japan's population registers as Christian, and I'm willing to bet most of those are western or Korean immigrants. I wonder if going to church there influenced their opinion on transgenderism? Either way, it's really heartning to see the doctor who prescribed the disorder only did so to fulfill a technicality, and that he's standing up for the girl. That takes a lot of guts.
I would be willing to bed this has to do with translating "kamisama", which is the general word for lower-case 'gods', in any religion. Shinto kami are softly believed in across Japan, mostly as culturally significant stories and morals. They are much smaller scale in terms of 'gods', you'll notice the wikipedia page even says "spirits or phenomena".