I have often heard it in a sense of "should not be catered to but rather given medical help". A fellow student once told me that he considers the current way of treating gender dysphoria irresponsible and that, if we'd treat schizophrenia the way we treat gender dysphoria, we'd all have to aknowledge the voices they hear and pretend we hear them too.
I didn't know how to respond to that. I still don't, actually. My knowledge about anything mental health is quite limited.
People who hear voices don't have a problem because they hear voices, they have a problem because in general schizophrenia presents those voices as hostile and aggressive towards the person. People who hear voices that are positive or helpful (which is not uncommon, though it seems to be less common in Western culture socialized people) don't have a problem, probably don't even need treatment if they do not cause any distress.
That trans-people live happier lives after transitioning means that the treatment they receive (hormones,gender reassignment surgery, remembering that all of those are quite optional) is completely adequate.
On the other hand, I have heard therapy for gender dysphoria (GD), such as that which addresses GD in children, can be highly effective in resolving whatever issues that are causing the confusion in the first place.
But lower than pre-transition.
> but I believe that was also addressed and found unconvincing.
I can't say I understand how a paper would account for systemic discrimination, but even if they did so successfully, treatments for most things don't have 100% rates of success.
> On the other hand, I have heard therapy for gender dysphoria (GD)
Yes, and this is normally part of treatment for GD for anyone. It just very often doesn't work.
The British polling institute advises a sample of 1000 for a total UK population of around 60,000,000. Trans people make up 1% so roughly 600,000, with that in mind 57 doesn't seem that low?
I know it's just one data point...
They would treat it as an illness, whether or not they prescribe treatment.
The thing i worry about is that folks that go through all of the physical and emotional (and financial) stress of transitioning only to find that it doesn’t soothe the pain are likely to perceive a social pressure to keep a lid on it.
The current trend of acceptance is obviously good but it seems likely our approach to treatment will evolve over time.
Nope, "de-transitioners" are very welcome in the trans community, to tell their story, to hang out, to help others.
There's absolutely nothing that should force them to not speak out about their experiences as long as they treat others with basic respect; there are a few that have turned religious zealot and sue people.
Detransiton / desisting is relatively rare and frequently happens not because the person desisted trans identity but because they couldn't feasibly continue to transition due social or financial causes.
Notably, I've heard one such person say something along the lines of "well, no, I'm not cisgender, I transitioned twice so I'm definitely trans." Labels are pretty silly that way.
Or by using inferential statistics.
That might not be the worst idea.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/when-hear...
> But a new study suggests that the way schizophrenia sufferers experience those voices depends on their cultural context. Surprisingly, schizophrenic people from certain other countries don't hear the same vicious, dark voices that Holt and other Americans do. Some of them, in fact, think their hallucinations are good—and sometimes even magical.
> In an article for the American Scholar, Luhrmann describes one such patient, a 20-year-0ld Dutch man named Hans, whose inner voices were urging him to study Buddhism for hours each day. He cut a deal with his demons, telling them he'd say Buddhist prayers for one hour per day, no more, no less. And it worked—the voices subsided and he was able to taper his dose of psychosis medications.
This is easy to dismiss by pointing to evidence based treatment practices. The treatment which is most effective at reducing suicide rates among people experiencing gender dysphoria is gender affirming care [0]. I doubt it is the case that the treatment that is most effective at helping folks experiencing schizophrenia is "acknowledging the voices" (not to mention as sibling commenters have that this is a gross caricature of schizophrenia in the first place).
It's extremely strange to me that we pretend like gender affirming care is "everybody pretending" and not a well studied and evidence based set of treatments that has been shown to be effective.
[0] https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2020/01/29/research-brief-g...
how do we treat schizophrenia? it is something that can also be managed
thats the primary limitation of the analogy. the secondary limitation of the analogy is that un-ironically accepting pronouns that otherwise bend the English language really costs us nothing, and gives us productive members of society instead of marginalized.
What next, prevent women from having tubal ligation because you're offended that they don't want children?
Transgender people have existed in some form for a long time, the medicalization of it only started in the late 19th + early 20th century.
The difference I see between the two is that there isn't a known 'fix' for gender dysphoria besides transition. I don't think any trans person would protest to never having to go through transition... but they definitely don't advocate for extermination of trans people either.
There are plausible biological causes for being transgender that are parallel but not equal to intersex issues.
There is a phenomenon of "plurality" where you perceive yourself as a system of multiple people/personas with unique personalities and interests and identities. Psychologists would generally classify patients who show up this way as having dissociative identity disorder - but only if they meet the criterion of the symptoms causing distress/affecting your lives, and many plural systems seem to be just fine with it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/wiki/faqs is probably a good starting point for reading about it from an inside-the-community view. (There's a plural community for essentially the same reasons that there's a transgender community.) https://smallcedarforest.org/on-transgender-and-plural-exper... is an interesting post from someone who connects plural and transgender identity. (FWIW, the one person I know IRL who is out about being plural is also trans.)
Going further back, we have stories across cultures of people who (either positively or negatively) claimed the ability to communicate internally with other personalities/identities, and occasionally those personalities would "front" (in the language of the contemporary plural community).
And then, of course, there's the case of the woman who heard voices insisting that she get a CT scan. Her psychologist, who was giving her medication to suppress the voices, decided to do the scan just to prove she was fine - and she had cancer that required operation. When she woke up after surgery, they said, "We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye," and they never returned. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232271307_A_difficu...
And while I was trying to find that story, I found this one, of an organization that helps people who hear voices in their heads by telling them the voices are real and helping them work through it: https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2014/04/mos...
Ask him why WHO and the UN are working on depathologization of transgender, trying to remove it from diagnostic manuals.
Ask him what breakout symptoms in schizophrenia are, and why we think it's better that people continue to hear voices (so long as they're not distressing) than be medicated so heavily all voices disappear.
Would they say the same for gay people? It wasn't that long ago that being gay was considered a mental disorder in need of fixing.
jesus that's a shocking thing to read. Nothing about how they feel or wish to be treated - the very basis of human decency - but how they should be tolerated for society's industrial needs. OMG that's so cold.
There are other ways, try again
Here is a hint, read it under the presupposition that a marginalized population is the worst thing possible, and that “productive” doesnt mean industrial
That doesn't create any economic benefit of course - bigotry in general is an economic impediment. That does not stop its widespread practice, it just means that in macrospect practitioners of hate repress their populaces productive potential and we can hope over sufficient time frames that leads to their own self inflicted obsolescence.
> equates to an illness
It really seems like we have overlapping and limited words here. I think there isn't a clear distinction between "illness" and "disorder" and this confuses people or isn't helpful in curbing insensitivities.
I think we do have to acknowledge that if we want a safer environment for trans people, a safer environment in the sense that it relies on the mutual cooperation of currently dismissive and insensitive people that aren't willing to cater to people with "mental health issues but not that kind".
This seems like a pretty broad generalization. Forget the semantic fact that by definition, accommodating something takes effort. Some people's worldviews may not account for gender identity being expressed this way. Whether you agree or disagree with the worldview, saying it costs them nothing to acknowledge it seems pretty unfair. Especially when it assigns a label to people its imploring to be accepting and accommodating of. It's a strange way to try to win allies.
But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to.
A reality is that:
A) Gender dysphoria is an imbalance of neural state. Therefore that would by definition be a mental health issue but not like the detractors say.
B) Acknowledging and accommodating gender dysphoria discomfort costs cisgender people nothing and unlocks the productiveness of an additional population in society.