Transgender people don't kill themselves because they are Transgender. They usually do it because of the people around them don't accept them.I know the last popular case of it the person that committed suicide left behind notes that say exactly that.. So it is people around them that prevent them their happiness by telling them who they should be instead of just accepting who they are. As for the whole kid thing, well yes, in the grand scheme of things of an entire human life it is quick. The decision has to happen before puberty hits or actually before it finishes. So actually if you are 14 and puberty hasn't passed than you are still able to make a smooth transition. The later the harder the transition obviously. I think by that age a lot of people are sure of their sexuality, at least have an idea of it. Look, I think the parents and the kids know better than you and myself. They've watched the kid grow and the kid knows how they feel. If they feel they aren't the right gender and feel they NEED to have it now than stopping them from living their life happily is what kills them. But this is not a decision that they just make out of the blue. There are hoops they have to go through and they have to wait a certain period of time (I forget the exact period but it is years) before they can just get the hormone therapy. The studies on the suicide stuff... http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19361653.2014.910483 On the other hand when they are supported it is 85% less likely. http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2
I'm going to grunch this thread and then read it later. Why is it 7 pages in a day? Wow. 1) I wonder why this topic took off lately...Politics? Maybe it just took a while. Lisa Ling covered it in 2011 when it just wasn't that much in the forefront. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lisa+ling+transgender There was also a followup in 2014. http://www.oprah.com/own-our-america-lisa-ling/episode-recap-trangender-lives-3-years-later I'm not promoting any side...just found those old stories very interesting. A lot of different family dynamics and reactions there. 2) I think some countries with predominant Islamic populations actually have their leaders promoting gender reassignment as a positive alternative to homosexuality. Weird huh? I have to find those journal docs about that.
I'm sorry someone else's decision in life has effected you so greatly. There's medication out there to help you cope. Call your doctor for a prescription.
Just curious - what is the basis for saying it is a mental illness other than historical classification (which has been shown to be wrong across arrange of health issues). The science here points to transgenderism having a strong genetic basis. There is no evidence of a transgender person being "cured" of a mental illness. Their brains are wired this way. I think what happens is that the idea of a man becoming a woman is so revolting to some people they can't accept that it's normal.
How about current classification as a mental illness in both the DSM and ICD.... I know you probably think you know better than the vast majority of the psychological community because for whatever reason this issue is personal for you, but i'm pretty sure you don't.
To help reduce over population. But you do realize that not all differences/mutations/etc. are advantageous, right? There doesn't have to be an evolutionary advantage to having a difference in biology.
Why should I have to change my name when I've been using it here since the 90s? That's like telling Chile to change it's flag because it looks like the Texan one.
Absolutely. I don't think Western science has delved much into sex, sexuality, and gender roles. They seem like young fields that were blocked or hindered up with garbage ideas through self imposed cultural censorship up until the 50s. So there's a definite conceit that science doesn't know what is the exact "treatment" or "cure" in reducing that 'unease' among trangenders which could manifest into anxiety, depression, and picking up an addiction. I can only imagine what pressures people with mismatched gender identities feel, and I only became more aware because my company's transgendered coworkers have been pretty outspoken about their challenges. If I were to guess, that identity is more of a fluid position rather than something concrete. More likely it's a spectrum of varying degrees...at varying points in time. That's the million dollar question. Would someone of a non-cis-gender identity turn out alright if they lived a childhood without getting the crap beat out of them or having fears of their loving parents tearfully disowning them and never accepting them? In the Jewish tradition, they acknowledged six total genders. Native Americans also had different ideas of a "two-spirit" identity. So what exactly is the "new normal" or the old normal? Beats me, but some questions really aren't end of the world problems that has to be solved. As for the last bit about calling other people bigots, I learned most of this stuff recently. I gotta admit that I first cringed when I saw my trans-gender coworkers the first time, and sometimes it's not something easy get used to. The difference or the line I can see is dismissing them outright as mentally disturbed rather than assuming that my acceptance of them is some window or slippery slope into what I or my family would become.
And blacks used to have separate restrooms and women weren't allowed to vote. Just because something used to be one way, doesn't in any way make it the right way. It's called progress.
