(02-07-2012, 05:49 PM)flamesabers Wrote: Bryony,
I think trying to eliminate gender dysphoria as a mental illness is about removing the belief you're abnormal if you don't fit in the binary, male/female model of your physical sex matching your gender identity. I think this is about trying to say people who have gender dysphoria aren't defective.
That may be so, but either something is a mental illness or it isn't. To refer to mental illness as a label which can be applied or removed for socio-political reasons is really part of the problem that I am discussing.
I am under no illusions that what I have is a mental disorder. My perception of my body as somehow "wrong" is due to an imbalance during gestation, best guess, and my brain has a developmental problem.... I suppose disorder is a better word than illness. But just wishing it away and relabelling it doesn't stop it being so.
I sincerely believe that for the majority of sufferers, it is more important to treat the symptoms to allow them to function as they are than to accommodate wishes that may in the end turn out worse for them.
Out of sheer luck I have discovered a herbal remedy for acute mental anguish without having to dress up for a considerable period in female garb in which I would frankly look ridiculous. Because of the socio-political pressure to accept as "normal" the everyday sight of men walking around looking like men dressed as women, it worries me that an opportunity is being missed, of treating the mental problems of such people so that they no longer feel a desperate need to do so.
I feel particularly sorry for the wives of men who have fathered children, like myself, and get into the same mental state as I have experienced, convincing themselves that they have no choice but to go for the full transition, when with treatment they may, like me, find that it really isn't too hard to cope with the condition.
Quote:I think part of the reason why homosexuality was removed from being considered a mental illness was to advance equal rights for homosexuals. I think so long as homosexuality was labeled a mental illness it could be argued that homosexuals are really heterosexuals who have a disorder. I consider the organizations that claim to be able to "cure" homosexuals is proof of this.
Well, again, you are more or less reflecting back to me what I have been saying. For socio political reasons, we remove what is clearly a mental disorder from the list; how can it be otherwise, when without serious medical intervention in the form of AI for women, or surrogacy for men, homosexuals are unable to breed? Sounds like a disorder to me. You may say that heterosexuals sometimes have to resort to these methods to breed, but such people are also suffering from a disorder that prevents them breeding - just a different one.
I'm not trying to be offensive, just dispassionately logical. Nowadays, unfortunately, the two become confused. At no other time in my 60 years have people been howled down for speaking what they sincerely believe to be the truth. In discussions the "phobe" suffix manoeuver is played, and debate shut down almost immediately.
Quote:I think with removing the labels of mental illness from homosexuality or anything else, it's not so much about defying science but removing a basis for stigmatization and discrimination. When you, I or anyone else is considered to have a mental illness, it could be argued we don't know what's best for ourselves because we are under the influence of a mental illness.
I see your point, but that is a very dangerous game, and it presupposes that
all mental disorders imply a lack of judgement.
On the other hand, surely you have experienced for yourself the changes in your mental state when you take PM? I freely admit that before I took it, I honestly do not think that I did know what was best for myself. If I had not taken it, there would have been a very good chance that I would have started on the road to transition.
That would have been a disaster, because my condition is such that when I reach the right estrogen balance, I lose the desire to dress as a woman. I believe that these are the kind of TS people who eventually wind up as suicides.
Read this
link, in particular Case Study 2, and see if you think the individual in question knows what best for himself/herself.
Again, I'm really not trying to be offensive, or provocative, just presenting another perspective for consideration.
We live in truly frightening times, wherein it seems that the first commandment is "thou shalt not offend" . The new orthodoxy demands that freedom not to be upset trumps freedom of speech, and the truth of science. People are hounded out of their jobs when their academic research show results which do not conform to this new orthodoxy. People in Europe have been put on trial recently for actually speaking the truth about a particular religion, where the truth of what they say is not even at issue, merely that their use of the truth was considered hateful!
In a misguided attempt to make people with real problems feel somehow better about themselves by relabelling them as someone of an "alternative lifestyle", it worries me that the best solution for individuals are being missed due to this "new orthodoxy".
In fact, it has generated a "new conformity" that somehow dismisses someone like me as "abnormal" because I want to be able to cope with a transsexual brain but live the life of a genetic male. A "new abnormality", if you will, because now that there are laws protecting transsexuals against discrimination, why would I not want to make use of them? One particular TS who used to participate on this forum dismissed me as a fantasist, who was not in the real world.
I hope you don't get offended by my thoughts, because I appreciate the opportunity to express them. As you can imagine, the opportunity does not often arise!
[ramble mode on - feel free to skip]
For someone born just after WWII, living through the threat of fiery destruction throughout the cold war, and the importance of freedom of speech, it's hard to have to think through every thought nowadays in the worry that someone may take offence.
When I see people getting arrested because of jokes they make on Twitter, I get the impression that maybe we didn't win the cold war after all. Totalitarianism has crept through the back door in the form of "equality" legislation and "anti-hate speech" legislation.
While I'm all in favour of equality, and detest hate speech, I am still committed to freedom of speech above all else. I used to admire the US consititution for its supposed protection of free speech, but nowadays it seems only to protect pornographers.
Because there are so many "protected categories" now, I regularly read of people losing their jobs for remarks deemed offensive by inference, not necessarily intentionally offensive... When I lived in the US I read about an employee being fired for using the word "niggardly", because it sounded like another word!
Interesting times..
B.