Then why bring in that example of beating/breaking bones of kids?
1) I didnt
2) The example fearandloathing gave is at least a
real-world example. It's something that
is in fact proposed and believed by many individuals. As opposed to your suggestion that we just "give surgery" to anybody who says they're transgender, which is
not something that happens or is seriously proposed by anyone.
Fearandloathing made a tangentially-related, possible red-herring post regarding a news story. You latched on to it and in the process posted an extremely topic-relevant
strawman of the actual pro-transition-availability position. In a post that itself ironically decried the use of extremist strawman positions.
Focus on reality. Nobody actually suggest we should "give surgery" out upon request. In the case of gender reassignment the process is extremely long and complicated with constant evaluation along the way to ensure that the person is committed to their intended lifestyle and is prepared and capable of going through with it long before a surgeon picks up a scalpel.
Your amateur psychoanalysis of your tiny sample size is irrelevant. Even
if a person is "not quite right" by your standards, that doesn't mean that the person is not
medically and legally of sound mind. People are diverse. Some individuals will have behaviors and make decisions that seem odd to others. That doesn't actually make them crazy, nor
should it prevent them from undergoing gender reassignment if they meet the qualifications established and are determined to be psychologically sound by
actual professionals.
I'm fully aware of the long series of prereqs for gender reassignment procedure.
Then don't make posts, even in jest or in exaggeration, where you specifically say that we're "giving surgery" to anybody who says they're transgender.
What I've been saying is that from my personal experience with people who have undergone surgery is that they're not all there up there.
And as you've also stated from the beginning, you're not qualified in the least to make the determination of whether those people are "all there up there." Your opinion is irrelevant. In order to have the procedure, those individuals
had to be passed through by
actual professionals whose opinions
do matter, significantly more than you or I playing Armchair Freud.
No, I'm not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. That's why I've befriended these people and have interacted with them on many many occasions. After knowing them for years, I still think they're not all there up there.
Irrelevant. Friendship and interaction does
not convey competence to evaluate mental stability, soundness of mind, or the appropriateness of gender reassignment.
Didn't you yourself just post in another thread a suggestion to a cdesign proponentist that she look up the
Dunning-Kruger Effect?
Why do you believe that you're immune from that particular bias? Why do you believe that your personal evaluation of the soundness of a person's mind has
any relevance when compared to the
professional evaluations of actual psychiatrists?
Did they fall through the cracks or do they need to look again at the prereqs?
Or are you simply insufficiently competent to recognize your own incompetence to make such evaluations?
Then don't bring in that example of beating and breaking bones.
Again - I didn't. But - again - the example fearandloathing brought up
is a real-world example of real-world opinions on the subject. Yes, it's an extreme example, but
your counterexample, that we just "give out surgery" to anybody who says they're transgender, is
not based in reality, extreme or otherwise.
Look, I understand what transgender people go through, or at least I really really try to. They're not just outcasts to the "normal" society, they're outcasts to the mainstream lgbt culture, which is mostly gay men and women anyway.
Indeed.
And I used to fully support gender reassignment surgery to "fix" some of their problems (after extensive evaluations by professionals, of course). But after years of interacting and knowing these people on a personal level, I've begun to question whether they were even fully aware of what they wanted.
Perhaps instead of questioning
their mental competency you should be questioning your own competency in
evaluating their competency in the first place.
Because honestly, Taz, if a psychiatrist tells me that Person X is of sufficiently sound mind to begin the transition process, and Taz comes and says "I dunno, that person doesn't seem quite right to me," I'm going with the psychiatrist's trained, expert opinion.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
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