What's made your day that little bit better?

Of course it is! A man wanting to be a woman on the other hand, well that's perfectly normal.

That's like saying amputation is the only working treatment for a person who wants to remove his limbs. Admittedly I don't understand the whole trans thing, or what it's like to feel "trapped" in the wrong gender (in much the same way I don't understand what it's like to have bi-polar disorder). But it strikes me as odd that the only solution, to what is essentially a mental disorder, is invasive surgical mutilation rather than psychiatric treatment. (It's not a sex change. No such thing has ever happened.)

In addition: it's hardly the *only* working treatment. Like amputation it's the last resort. It's not like you can just call up your GP to make an arrangement for a sex change operation (which is a perfectly accpetable and accepted way of addressing sex reassignment) next Friday because you have a sudden craving for chocolate over whiskey.

(Incidentally, human sex change HAS happened. It's rare. But it happens.)

But did he grow a uterus I wonder?

That's all fine, I suppose. But this is not how I see many approach the issue.

I can't speak to the actual process involved in getting the surgery, but -and I hate to sully the word- it's Liberals who shut down conversation on the issues of transgenderism that strikes me absurd. Not that I'm implying it's the case here, far from it, but to even suggest that sexual identity dysphoria is a mental disorder rather than a physical one seems sacrilegious to many. And that's the issue. When people make claims that a person is truly stuck with the wrong gendered body, rather than a body stuck with a dysfunctional brain, I start to get a little... queasy. (Does this mean we have male and female souls?)

Admittedly, I balk at the idea of such invasive surgery for what is a mental disorder. Perhaps in some cases it really is the best option, and I hope that the process that leads up to it is as involved as you say. But, again, it's the politics surrounding the issue where I'm at a loss. I view it with as much a raised eyebrow as I would if people were advocating for equal rights of those who wanted plastic surgery. (Not that I'm suggesting transgenders shouldn't be treated fairly, only that they shouldn't have any extra rights for their delusions.)

As I alluded to, there's a confusion in society about it, implicit in the way they are lumped in with gays under the 'LGBT' banner. Being gay, bi (or indeed straight) is NOT the same as having sexual identity dysphoria. I understand the desire to create a group like this, given that it's largely a push back to real bigotry, often from religion. But it confuses two rather disparate issues.

There's two things to clearly make a distinction between:

On the one hand there is the actual issue: an problem with gender identification. As gender identification is certainly not a given (it is very fluid until about age 3), it's much more than merely a mental issue, but an incredibly complex psychological, emotional and mental one, which biological aspects -brain structure- we do not fully fathom yet (see the studies done in 95 by Chung, and later in 06 by Goren and Swaab. I'd link, but I only have hardcopies available).
So gender confusion or gender dysphoria is by no means necessarily a delusion (although of course it can be)! It can be related easily to both very early developmental issues as well as physical deviations.

It's a (medically) hugely complex issue that simply -and quite rightly- will not let itself be reduced to one convenient label. And certainly "delusion" is really a far too easy -not to mention negative-, and -as I argued- indeed often incorrect one.

And even if it were, I see no issue in a physical treatment for a mental disorder? An acquaintance of mine will have surgey in a few months time to help him get rid of an anxiety that has plagued him since birth. What they will do is *actually* change the way his brain excites certain neurons. Can't get much more invasive than that, I'd say!
He's seen -quite literally- dozens of psychiatrists, and this finally seems to be the right way forward.
But then I'm a great fan of biopsychology.

But then there's the other side, which I sense -and please correct me if I'm wrong- you seem more concerned with, which is the socio-political side.

This is not easily addressed.
Indeed the very issue of sexual identity has been monolithicised: all 'flavours' that deviate from the standard M-F norm are being lumped together, as you say.

I agree this causes confusion, but worse: it causes a false unity.
The strides that we made in getting some kind of acceptance of the biological given that homosexual is homosexual, and that it isn't some kind of "fad" or "lifestyle choice". And it isn't a problem.
Gender dysphoria IS a problem. And one that can and should be addressed on both a psychological and biological level.
...exactly all the things you DON'T need to do with homo- or bisexuality!

...Fuck. This is a long post.
Sorry.

Invasive surgery is often necessary, and in this case it actually seems to strengthen my argumemt, or at least be on its side. Your friend appears to be having surgery to change the way his brain processes information. If we could do that to transgenders, I think in many cases it would be an ideal situation, because it would get to the root of the problem. No need to permanently slice the flesh. Sex change surgery is a way of applying balm, but it doesn't heal the wound. (A somewhat appropriate analogy given what happens to the penis post-surgery.)

Which is to say invasive surgery can be disastrous depending on the reasons that lead one to consider it. I'm saying that, do we really think genital mutilation (yes, I stand by that definition, because that's exactly what it is) is a practical solution to a mental disorder? As you say, it's a complex issue. But the suicide rates of post-op transgenders should not go unnoticed.

My suspicion is is that it's a mental disorder that's taken on a life of its own because we have the technology to appease it rather than truly cure it. I could, as I usually am, be wrong.

And that is exactly, I think, where the root of the issue lies: who defines the root of the problem? Is it the patient -who fundamentally believes the root of the problem is the wrong body- or those who (fundamentally) believe it's not an issue for change but one of reasserting homogeneity.

And that too is exactly where the pain point of the public debate currently lies: the very concept of NOT taking the individual will as the measure of things is met with great resistance (especially in the groups that generally vocally champion LGBT causes) to the level of being even impossible to discuss.

We've been there many times before, of course.
When I read law (in another lifetime) my professor Criminology was dishonourably drummed out of the University for having done research and concluded that a great deal of the criminal mind was biology-based, that there are people who by their nature are criminally-inclined.
That of course was deemed a fascist point of view. "It's mostly society, free will for the rest, and never nature" was the common thinking in those days. And so he was ostracised.

In later years of course he was proven mostly right.
And he never claimed it was one or the other in the first place: he just posed the theory that there were more forces at play, and nature was a more powerful one than imagined.

I see the same pain here: your point is not invalid per se (although I find myself disagreeing with some of your assertions and epithets)...but it's pretty much a given that you will not be able to even raise the point without being shouted down in much of society. And it's the very lack of willingness to debate that defines much of our Social Justice Warriors.

Transgenderism, or whatever it's called - as Martijn pointed out - is not a passing mental disorder. A man does not want to be a woman. He is a woman trapped in the wrong body. This touches the body-soul problem. Although I guess you can describe the phenomenon on a purely physiological basis. Not all dispositions we don't understand indicate a delusion.

Volker

I agree with most of what you say, but the remark above to me makes things unnecessarily metaphysical.

I didn't mean to. It was my understanding of Steven's remarks - and I might well be mistaken - that he can't conceive of anything "being a woman" that is physiologically a man. The brain has the wrong software, if you want to put it that way. On a level beyond experience and will. The wrong BIOS. Since you cannot change that you have to adjust the hardware to make the whole package work. Why evolution would allow for such a bug programming is an interesting question. Just like homosexuality seams to be an evolutionary mistake since it doesn't further the survival of the species. But the phenomenon is there anyway.

Ah, now that makes more sense. I'm generally with you on that one. Software is an excellent analogy.

Although I don't think it's a case of evolution allowing it, as it were, since the very fact of evolution rests on imperfect copies. Transgenders exist in much the same way that bi-polar sufferers exist. There's no advantage to it, it's just the result of a complex brain going awry. Homosexuality is not the same, even in evolutionary terms, since it still has social benefits (i.e. kinship). For gene propagation, homosexuality is less ideal than heterosexuality, but it still bears some benefits for the 'herd' given that homosexual couples are likely to look after a child and each other. Transgenderism has nothing like this going for it, as far as I can tell. Not to imply evolution is the standard of all things, clearly it isn't, otherwise rape would be a mandate rather than a crime. But it does further illuminate the disparity between innate sexuality and gender dysphoria.

Yes, sorry. Invariably is the wrong word. I meant often.

You're saying it's something other than a mental disorder? That it may have more than one cause (be it a genetic disposition, or narcissism), doesn't seem to negate the fact that it's a problem in the brain as opposed to the body.

And I'm not entirely convinced people's lives are made better through sex changes. But I would have to delve into the statistics and evidence more.