APA: Transgender Is No Longer A Mental Disorder - Page 19

On December 05 2012 09:27 Chocobo wrote:


More open, yes. But to the point where only 23% are straight? That's a huge difference.

On December 05 2012 09:25 Nightops wrote:

And your argument for why people ought to base their gender off their mental state is? Well if that's the case, then I believe that I am actually some wolf so I should go have surgery to look as close to them as possible.

So if a woman hates her boobs, and gets implants, and she's still depressed afterwards, it was a failed attempt at making herself happier, pointing towards some form of mental issue that needs fixing, but if it makes her happier, it was not a mental issue that made her unhappy, rather it was something wrong with her body that she had to fix.

On December 04 2012 13:21 Alay wrote:


Legal discrimination?

Stuff like this happens almost all the time:

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/09/16/us-oklahoma-judge-denies-name-change-for-those-transitioning/

Then you have direct laws banning transsexuals from having changes on markers regarding birth certificates/license. Further, a lot of marriage laws (mostly based on anti-gay marriage laws, while still defining the trans individual as their birth assigned-sex. This is one of the reasons my boyfriend and I still cannot get married in the state of Ohio)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_transsexualism_in_the_United_States

As the OP said, the best to hope for is better insurance coverage, since Genital Reassignment Surgery for many individuals is arguably necessary, and yet still costs a good 20k+

On December 05 2012 09:36 ClanRH.TV wrote:


From studies I've read in my undergrad, I heard that gender reassignment generally doesn't improve quality of life for many of those who have it done. Is this still supported?

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

On December 05 2012 09:08 Chocobo wrote:


The man with the delusion believes that his body is female. He may either be happy with that situation, or he may be depressed that his male mind has a female body. Either way, he is mentally ill because he is unable to perceive physical reality correctly.

The trans female has a female mindset inside of a male body. She is able to perceive reality just fine, therefore she is not mentally ill.



The "cat issue" is a ridiculous and irrelevant distraction. It can, and provably does, happen that most human beings are born with mindsets that self-identify as male or female, and that sometimes a male body is born with a female mindset (and vice versa). No human is born with the feeling that they were supposed to be a different animal.

If such a thing was even possible, they wouldn't be able to verbalize their feelings (yes, yes, "unless they're a parrot"). But this discussion is just silly and irrelevant, like people arguing "I could maybe feel ok about allowing gay marriage... but what if they start allowing people to marry toasters next?"


If you had a disorder where you believed you were an alien cyborg from the year 3000, and this disorder could somehow be cured using brain surgery... it's still a mental disorder regardless of what form the treatment comes in.

Your view also implies that a transgender person in today's society is mentally fine, but if he could travel through a portal back in time, he would suddenly become a mentally ill person. Hop back through the portal and he's normal again!

On December 05 2012 09:30 ninini wrote:

How convenient to say that I just will never be able to understand, because of who I am. Just tell me what the difference between the sex and gender is, and I might understand. If you can't even explain roughly how it feels like to be the male or female gender, how do you expect me to take the concepts seriously?

On December 05 2012 08:12 ninini wrote:
I'm trying to ask myself what gender I see myself as, and why, and I just can't come to a conclusion that fits into your idea of gender. The closest thing I can get is that gender is the stereotype that I classify with, and I can relate to both. I prefer pants over dresses, and the music I like tend to be more stereotypical male. On the other hand I have long hair and I prefer romantic comedies over action movies. I think I can relate to both male and female stereotypes.

The other theory is that gender and sex are the same, which is self-explanatory, and this is what I personally believe in.

On December 05 2012 09:43 shinosai wrote:


It depends on what you mean by gender reassignment. If you mean gender reassignment surgery - no, it does not. Merely having surgery will not cure or fix underlying mental health problems. This is actually not surprising, since genitalia has very little to do with whether or not one is treated as a man or woman. Mostly, our quality of life as a transsexual is going to be highly related to our secondary sexual characteristics (whether or not people in public perceive us as the correct gender).

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0016885



In other words, people who have the surgery are actually alleviated from their dysphoria (quality of life improves in this respect) but this does not necessarily cure their other health problems.

For the record not all transsexuals wish to undergo srs.

Also, for an in depth look at whether or not SRS is effective treatment, you will find this link very useful: http://www.susans.org/reference/lothsrs.html

On December 05 2012 10:04 Shakattak wrote:
Infact alot of the issues are derived from the fact that we are stuck in a binary way of thinking , good , bad , male female we should start changing our perceptions of other people so these problems such as guilt and other issues that society causes to trans people .

On December 05 2012 08:40 shinosai wrote:


No, I can't answer your question. But I can't tell you what it's like to experience the color red, either, so I don't think that it's a very pressing point.

Edit: I feel this is probably important to answer, though, and I can answer this:



The way you are treated is actually highly related to actualizing your identity. One cannot identify themselves as a woman while simultaneously being treated and looking like a man. Your identity requires social confirmation AND internal confirmation. Hence why trans people experience "dysphoria." You cannot separate your gender identity from social interactions, because social interactions can undermine your gender identity. Hence why we're having this discussion in the first place. We have many people in the world that accuse trans people of being "fake" and not "really" their gender, and this is extremely harmful to our gender identity.

In the trans community perhaps nothing is discussed quite as much as "passing." It is, of course, no coincidence, that we are all obsessed with passing. It's extremely painful every time someone tells us that we are not who we say we are. Something that cissexuals have the privilege of never experiencing.

edit: Also, I really do have to question whether or not you really believe that you have no feelings of attachment to your gender. But perhaps as an experiment, go to the store and shop around for some really girly panties and perhaps some tampons and tell me if you felt neutral towards people's reactions? I mean, I don't know many guys that could do it, myself. Because they identify as male and it would piss them off for someone to question their masculinity.

On December 05 2012 09:34 shinosai wrote:


I'm actually pretty comfortable with agreeing with this statement. Consider cancer patients who lose their breasts because of breast cancer. Do you consider their distress of not having breasts to be purely a mental thing, rather than something wrong with their body?

Should we deny breast implants to cancer patients because clearly they simply have "mental issues" that we could address without chest augmentation surgery?

On December 05 2012 10:51 ninini wrote:

Now you're talking about identifying to stereotypes, and didn't you and everybody else say that gender was something else?
I'm a guy, and I have long hair that goes down to the shoulders. Many interpret this as me trying to be more feminine, but that's not what it's about. It's about me being me. I just prefer long hair, atleast right now. I realize that long hair is stereotypical female, but that doesn't mean that guys with long hair should have their sense of gender questioned.

And yes, I don't feel like I have any attachments to my gender or sex. Obviously, if someone questions my gender indentity, saying that I'm trying to be a girl, for instance because of my hair, I get offended, not because I couldn't stand the thought of me being female, but because it's a insult at my intellect. It's a bit like calling someone stupid. Someone claims that you have a mental problem or confusion that you know don't exist.

As for the shopping. I wouldn't really have any use of tampons and I think male underwear probably looks better on me. If I felt an urge to wear dresses, I'm not sure I would do it, not because it would be against my gender identity, but because of how others would treat me because of it. It's just not worth it, and that's a shame, but like I said, if gender is about fitting in, it's BS in my book.


Breast cancer is about something healthy, changing and becoming toxic, and you should be allowed to restore them to their original shape, because that's how they were made.

My point was that when a woman with healthy breasts gets implants, it's a way to try and be something that you're not, and whether the implants makes her happier or not, doesn't change that fact.

I believe in cosmetics surgery in order to restore what you have lost in accidents or because of cancer, but I don't believe in cosmetics surgery to get something that you never had.

On December 05 2012 10:47 Shakattak wrote:

Its cultural you were socialized go think like that your whole life , if you werent taught that men and women should wear the clothes that they do and there was no social stigma about wearing what you wanted be that lipstick blouses etc then you would not care .

On December 05 2012 07:39 Lynda wrote:

There hasn't been one found, and often when asked if they would rather have the emotional pain gone or become their identified sex, trans patients usually say the latter. It's not just about depression, it's also desperately wanting to live as themselves, being true to their own identity.. the depression being the result of that.

Even if you could make someone feel better about something that they so desperately need that they're suicidally miserable about it, they'd still have a need for it. But getting rid of that emotional pain hasn't even been a possible option. Anti-depressants haven't stopped it, receiving large amounts of testosterone didn't solve it either, forcing them to accept their "fate" of living as their assigned sex for the rest of their life usually led to committing suicide.

On December 05 2012 07:45 shinosai wrote:


Problem is that a lot of us don't want to fix our "brain problem." My brain is functioning just fine, thanks. In fact, I'm not even sure what a mental disorder is. Can you tell me objectively what it means for someone to be mentally orderly? Don't look to psychology for help - they don't even know what most of the drugs they prescribe even do (other than the fact that they seem to help)

Why do you assume that b/c a person is born with a penis they "should" feel like a man? This underlying presupposition is simply that: A presupposition. We all have them, admittedly.

Now, I'm not opposed to research into other forms of therapy if trans people wanted that therapy. But many of us do not feel like there is anything wrong with the way that our minds operate - in fact, we feel empowered by it. But to me it seems like the purpose of posts like this isn't to help trans people with their "mental disorder" but rather to confirm your feelings about what people ought to be like and how they ought to behave.

It seems to me that rarely is there ever a trans person that wants to be the cissexual person (ie a trans female receiving therapy in order to identify as a man). Rather, it is the cissexual that wants transsexuals to be like them. In other words: The treatment is for you, not for us. Labeling it a mental disorder is to benefit you, not the trans person.

On December 05 2012 07:47 dcemuser wrote:


Firstly, I'm incredibly in favor of further rights for transgenders and am glad for the declassification.

However (and this may be more in the realm of philosophy than reality), you are right that *potentially someday* there could be a 'treatment' that did not involve transitioning to another gender (though I can't imagine many transgenders would choose it, and forcing it brings up an entirely different debate). But the issue is that gender is now considered a core construct - an integral part of a person's psyche. If (when) we eventually develop the ability to alter something that deep scientifically, then I think transgenders will probably be the least of our concerns at that point (mind control will be a far bigger issue).

But as gender is considered a core part of a person, it is no longer fair to consider it a mental disorder when it is (philosophically speaking) a physical one.

Edit: The whole reason I'm talking about the future is that there is no known modern treatment for GID besides transitioning, and people have tried (especially in the 20th century - they tried extensively). Some things had partial effectiveness to a limited degree, but nothing (not even continuing down the path of partial successes) could 'solve' it except transitioning.

There are also a lot of somewhat interesting philosophical "what-ifs" that occur if you continue along the lines I mentioned earlier. For example, what if they narrow down the cause (current theory is unbalanced maternal hormones during brain development in utero) and can "correct the issue" before birth? Are they not making a choice for the unborn child?

On December 05 2012 09:21 WoodLeagueAllStar wrote:
I bet if it could be 'fixed' with drugs the APA would be fine with it being labeled a disorder. /cynical

I have read that some peoples brains are just female or male because of strange hormonal imbalances in the mothers womb. Though their body is male they think of things from a feminine point of view. Where that can sometimes take the manifestation of homosexuality or wanting to go fully fledged sex change is an interesting scientific discovery for the next generation to tackle most likely, though we are close.