We aren't talking about the difference between men and women. We're talking about the difference between men who want to be women and men who are content to be men (or women who want to be men and women who are content to be women).
No, we are not.
A transwoman is already a woman, before ever seeking treatment. Likewise a transman is already a man.
I don't believe this to be a matter of misunderstanding, but that you fundamentally disagree with the actual experience of transgendered people.
But it's simple fact: this isn;t about "men who want to be women." A transwoman is
already a woman. She identifies as a woman. She feels like a woman. In fact,
see this study:
quote:
Antonio Guillamon's team at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain, think they have found a better way to spot a transsexual brain. In a study due to be published next month, the team ran MRI scans on the brains of 18 female-to-male transsexual people who'd had no treatment and compared them with those of 24 males and 19 females.
They found significant differences between male and female brains in four regions of white matter — and the female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in these regions that resembled a male brain (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006). "It's the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised," Guillamon says.
In a separate study, the team used the same technique to compare white matter in 18 male-to-female transsexual people with that in 19 males and 19 females. Surprisingly, in each transsexual person's brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). "Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female," says Guillamon.
As previously mentioned, male and female brains have slightly different structure - and
quite literally, a transwoman has a female brain in a male body, and vice versa.
In absolutely every
relevant sense of what defines a person, who they actually are, trangendered individuals
are the gender they identify as, regardless of the presence or absence of a specific chromosome, or the genitalia they happen to be born with.
I have seen absolutely nothing from you in the way of an actual reason why this is not the case, unless one were to believe that identity is actually defined physically, that we are what our bodies are, as opposed to our minds. You do, after all, consider gender reassignment to be
genital mutilation, in which case repairing a cleft palate or other birth defect is
also "mutilation."
The "problem" of transgenderism presents us with individuals who, quite literally, have a brain/body mismatch. They don;t jsut
think they are a different gender than what a blood test or physical examination of genitals would suggest - their actual brain structure is that of the opposite gender.
The solutions, then, are to either try to change the brains or the bodies to resolve the mismatch.
As of yet, we cannot alter the structure of a male brain to make it female, nor can we do the reverse. No amount of therapy or surgery or medication seems to be capable of such a feat, and even making the attempt to do as much is typically extremely harmful, risky to the patients life, or both.
We can, however, perform high-quality gender transition treatments in some cases, particularly male-to-female transitions. A combination of long therapy, repeated analysis from doctors and psychiatrists, hormone therapy, and eventually surgery has proven in many cases to significantly improve the lives of patients (with the caveat that the patient's experience corresponds to the quality of the transition).
It doesn;t work 100% of the time. Sometimes it negatively affects the patient. But this isn't any different from just about any treatment to any disorder you can name - there is always a chance for failure, and quality-of-life is particularly subjective, dependent on the patient's expectations going in, the results of the treatment, and the specific problem being treated. Even something as common as depression cannot be solved consistently, and sometimes not at all regardless of drugs or therapy.
Saying "but look, it doesn't always work, and sometimes it's harmful" is an argument that can be used agains tthe entirety of the medical profession. You can go into surgery after a car wreck, and contract HIV from a transfusion. You can go in to get your tonsils removed, and wind up with an antibiotic-resistant infection. You can go to a doctor for depression treatment, and be given medicine that actually drives you to attempt suicide. I've known people personally who have taken medication that was intended to improve their lives but actually made the problem worse - risk is inherent in all medical procedures. It's why
informed consent is used for any medical procedure - and with gender reassignment, that informed consent is set at a far, far higher standard than for just about any other treatment you could name.
So we have a problem, and we have exactly one solution that is shown to work at least some of the time. Other solutions are fantasies, and have never worked at all.
Yet you choose to insist that we should use these fantasy solutions. You say that "it's a brain problem, so we should fix the problem in the brain." But we
can't. We lack the ability to rewire a female brain into male structure, or vice versa. We lack the medication to cause the problem to be resolved. There is no therapy that actually alters the identity of the individual in such a way, and attempts to do so, similar to attempts to treat and "cure" homosexuality, have proven to be disastrously harmful and cause a number of new and/or worse conditions to develop, including suicidal depression.
If a person is
absolutely sure that they want to undergo gender reassignment even knowing the risks, and because that person legitimately has a brain/body mismatch that is not at all a fantasy or a delusion but is actually rooted in the actual structure and behavior of their brain, and because modern gender reassignment surgery is relatively safe and (particularly with male to female transition) very successful in terms of form and function...
...what possible reason could you have to deny them such a treatment?
All I see are the typical emotive reactions, labeling transition as "mutilation" and the dog-whistle assertion that those afflicted are either crazy or have a brain defect.
Transgender individuals do not need brain surgery. They are not crazy, and do not require psychiatric treatment beyond therapy to ensure that they are acting of sound mind and are capable of coping with the treatment itself.
They need to be allowed to
be who they are. For some, that includes surgery to alter the body so that it matches the mind.
I don't see any problem with that.
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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