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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | 1
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If a transgendered person seeks gender reassignment, they have interfered in no way in any other person's life. ••• How are you defining "interfere"? ABC has launched a new reality show about a teen dealing with his father "becoming a woman." No family is left unchanged when this happens in their midst. Suppose this young man had pleaded with his father NOT to undergo "reassignment"? Would the father be wrong to go thru with it anyway? Would the son be wrong for asking?
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1421
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | 2
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How are you defining "interfere"?
Generally, as an imposition- whether a forceful violation of health and safety, or an imposed obligation.
The questions you pose in relation to the family who's lives are the subject of the ABC reality show are serious and important questions, and they relate to the type of subjects I hope would be seriously discussed within the personal support system before any decisions are made. But ultimately if the decision is made to seek reassignment, no imposition is made upon another. Certainly the decision can affect other people's lives in ways both large and small, but those other people are under no obligation to act or believe in any way, other than according to their own judgement.
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14863
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | 3
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With more context, I believe you missed the point being made which is about what may be if transgender condition is someday found to actually be a form of mental illness.
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"Discovering" that something is actually a form of mental illness is a bit of a nonsensical statement, because the classification of mental disorders doesn't work that way. Whether a pattern of behaviors has a psychological vs. a biological cause is not an issue in deeming something a mental disorder. What matters is the harm the pattern of behavior does to the individual.
For example, there is growing evidence that pedophilia is, in part, genetic, and that pedophiles are hardwired, or at least genetically predisposed to being pedophiles. Knowing this wouldn't exclude pedophilia from being a mental disorder, because it is judged on the distress or impairment it causes an individual or the harm it does others. And a person who is attracted to prepubescents but does not have distress over it and does not act upon it would not be considered having a mental disorder under the DSM criteria.
Some of the arguments for no longer considering transgendered individuals as having a mental disorder are that there are trans folk who do not seek sex reassignment and suffer no distress over being transgendered. So it is not simply the state of being transgendered that is a mental disorder. In Samoa, men who identify as female are recognized as a third gender, and they tend not to suffer from the same distress as transgendered people in Western culture unless confronted with parental interference or Western norms.
I guess someone might argue that seeking sex reassignment should be considered harm, but it produces more positive outcomes than negative ones.
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Bill Pope
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 May 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 21
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | 4
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JB-"Okay, I really wanted to avoid this whole topic, but as of now I am officially confused.I consider myself a pretty worldly guy. Not much surprises me. But I just read that "Caitlyn" is foregoing the, ah, unkindest cut of all. (She's keeping his penis.) So... 'splain this one to me. How does this make "her" something other/more than a man in drag? Seriously! Enquiring minds want to know!" ** This is where we started, and after all of this tangent threatening exposition on a subject I am not very clear on, however have an opinion. It feels as though JB, you've answered your own question with your initial question (Albeit bluntly). That Caitlyn's circumstance looks like a show (Drag). Like so many things current in our media driven culture, "keeping up with the Joneses" is an old idiom and sometimes inadvertent dogma that seems to constantly rear its daunting head, and drive us (now through the wide lens of media technology always at our finger tips) to believe we've achieved the latest and the greatest if we attain that thing, and have been rewarded justly for having it, no matter how menial or extravagant. In this case it seems the media is placating the sexual whims of a pop-culture audience with (everything sexual) Bruce going in the closet and coming out Caitlyn. Who made lots of TV/Movie appearances after Olympic stardom, but got the most recognition on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians", to which the shows very popularity is centered around the 3 daughters (primarily Kim) being sexy, whimsical, and rich. Bruce/Caitlyn was peripheral. The glory days of the 76' Olympics gone, and TV/Movie success doesn't seem to be a lucrative option. Is it possible to re-live breakthrough success at his age by coming out of one of many closets and saying with the right media coverage that he is transgender... Clearly. Is he a woman, trapped in a mans body? Caitlyn seems to think so. I'm not a doctor so, I'll have to take her word for it.
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Steve De Young
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 April 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 3517
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | 5
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A REALLY hard question, then: Many people are tortured and driven by a desire to have sex with children. Our society frowns on this, and such people are considered mentally ill. We do not accommodate them, we do not respect them.
How is being "transgender" different?
**
How is it similar?
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JB is taking this to the very basic level of morality. Human beings have all kinds of instincts, urges, desires, etc. Some of them arise from genetics, some of them from experience, some from a mixture of both, some we don't know exactly their origin. But on a moral level, we tell some people that some of those desires should be restrained, for the good of not just others but themselves. This is why if someone is a danger to themselves or others, they can be committed against their will.
Which urges need to be suppressed and which can be expressed, and how they should be expressed has changed over the course of civilization. At one point in Greek and Roman life, if an older man had sexual desire for a post-pubescent younger man it was perfectly acceptable to express that within a certain social arrangement. Today it is not. A hundred years ago, consenting adult homosexuality was something that was to be suppressed. Today it is not.
As JB points out, what if what (now several) feminist voices are arguing is true and not all, but many of the current transgender cases turn out to be neuroses that would have been better resolved based on counseling than on drugs and surgery? How many conditions in the past were treated with surgeries (like lobotomies) or chemicals that we now know are exceedingly dangerous that we now know respond just as well, or better, to things like talk therapy? We don't commend drastic surgery and hormonal treatments for any other form of body dysmorphia.
JB's question about whether someday, once all the facts are in about the results of reassignment surgery vs. other responses we may look back on this as butchery is a very valid one.
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Jeremy Simington
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 687
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | 6
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JOHN M. JACKSON: It was classified as a mental illness until recently.
I can't believe I'm engaging with such buffoonery, but here we go. The same is true for homosexuality. And slavery was legal until 1863. What could possibly be your point?
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John M. Jackson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 May 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 206
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 7
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"JOHN M. JACKSON: It was classified as a mental illness until recently.
I can't believe I'm engaging with such buffoonery, but here we go. The same is true for homosexuality. And slavery was legal until 1863. What could possibly be your point?"
My point is the same one that the ex-head of psychiatry at John Hopkins made.
Political correctness is not a reason to not designate something a mental illness.
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Victor Manuel Fernandez Patiño
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: Mexico
Posts: 1602
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | 8
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"A woman trapped in a man's body... "
I have never understood that phrase, how can one know for sure that the discomfort facing life comes from the gender and not from a mental illness?
As a gay man I have never believed that I should be in contact with my "feminine side" and felt the urge to use women clothes. I can't imagine what do you need to live and think to feel that you are in the wrong body.
-Here in México we have a case of an actor that changed gender and made it public and confessed he is still in love with his/her wife, that is more confusing, right?-
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Doug Centers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 5633
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | 9
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Jenner told Diane Sawyer he/she is not gay and is still attracted to women.So really what has changed ? Other than physical appearance (except going under the knife) which can be reversed. It was a free will decision , and if he/she is happy good for them. But lets talk in a couple of years and see if Jenner is still this enthusiastic
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Conner Dinkins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2010
Location: Georgia
Posts: 832
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | 10
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Jeremy Simington wrote
Just to lay it to rest, being transgender is NOT, in and of itself, a mental illness, according to the American Psychological Association. Many people are uninformed on the subject and make the effort to educate themselves and come to understand what psychological, behavioral, and medical experts have determined. These people are to be commended even if they have a hard time accepting people who are transgender. However, those who know the facts and decide to ignore them or who don't give a fig about the facts and just decide that people who are transgender are mentally ill are on the level of those who still consider homosexuality to be a mental illness, which is to say that they're hateful bigots who would probably be thrilled to know about the sky-high suicide risk for people who are transgender.
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I know I'm going to get roasted for this. I don't mean to be a hateful bigot as Jeremy stated above that anyone who thinks that homosexuality or Transgender is a mental illness is. But don't you think that any group that has a sky-high suicide rate is not the picture of mental health? Isn't suicide a sign that a person was mentally unstable?
If you see a group of people any group held together by any idea or ideology and they commit suicide in mass numbers wouldn't you think that group was mentally unstable? Isn't that a logical conclusion?
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Here's a blog post that (at the end) has several helpful links, including perspectives from the trans community.
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Mike Benson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 January 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 835
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | 11
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Conner, if you could walk the proverbial mile in a gay, or transgendered, individual's shoes you might understand a little better than you seem to. It's gotten much better to be sure, but imagine for a moment being something that makes you the target of ridicule, scorn, judgment, and at the very worst, physical assault. For some people, particularly younger ones that are by nature more emotionally vulnerable, this treatment is constant and unrelenting.
Add that to the fact that, contrary to what some ignorant people have claimed in this thread, it isn't a choice - not something you can just turn off - and you have a recipe for higher suicide rates.
I'm not going to roast you, but seems like you could use some good old fashioned empathy and compassion. Not much of a leap from asserting that a group of people is "mentally unstable" and being one of the bullies that make life hell for some of the LGBT community.
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Paul Simpson Simpson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 939
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| Posted: 09 June 2015 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 12
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How are you defining "interfere"? ABC has launched a new reality show about a teen dealing with his father "becoming a woman." No family is left unchanged when this happens in their midst. Suppose this young man had pleaded with his father NOT to undergo "reassignment"? Would the father be wrong to go thru with it anyway? Would the son be wrong for asking?************************ My wife went through this.She was deeply hurt when her father abandoned her and her siblings.Was she wrong to resent her father for abandoning his family to fulfill his needs while ignoring the needs of the three children he created ? Was his ultimate responsibility to his children or to himself ? Was it right to choose surgery over child support ? There are never easy answers.
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