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This is true, but I don't see why this a 'charge' rather than merely a fact that is not at odds with viewing medical transition as something often legitimate and necessary. After all, it may be, and in my view is, the case that transition is simply a/the treatment for, yes, the disorder of gender dysphoria.
You're not thinking like an activist. It poses a few problems:
Trans identity would then be behind the gates of doctors which prevents self-definition (a central value on the left) and - more cynically - limits the numbers of "transpeople" and thus the demands one can make in their name. It's a founding tactic of the "LGBT movement" to seek strength in numbers.
IMO this argument can easily slide into trouble, not least because it implies the metaphysical claim that TWAW is nothing more than a tool to manage/mollify mentally ill people and not fact. This immediately raises concerns about how far we should go in accommodation or how much you can judge a person for not playing along. They much prefer the deontological view implied by TWAW.
What if we continue to study this condition and discover something...embarrassing that doesn't fit with the narrative (e.g. autogynephilia as a motive which doesn't really fit the narrative).
If activists are going to be allowed to take the maximal stance that allegedly avoids all of the problems (even if it places it on others) then why wouldn't they take it and avoid awkward issues?
It may indeed be. But would this be the phrase used for allowing anorexics to starve themselves? We would need absolutely overwhelming evidence before we allowed this, especially with children. Do we have this for transpeople, especially the younger cohort that are unlike the previous generations?
See: this is what I'm talking about. I think there's been a rash of less-critical behavior around this precisely because it isn't just seen as treating a medical disorder but the next fight for human rights/dignity. This is why activists talk about "trans kids" and not "kids suffering from dysphoria, most of whom will likely desist after puberty unless on puberty blockers". The latter has far less force.
At this point Finland, Sweden, the UK have all rolled back and criticized some elements of childhood medical transition. America and Canada are not on the same boat and apparently are going full steam ahead. Would everyone have gone this far for a minority that was purely recognized as mentally ill?
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As a society, we treat psychological problems (faulty software) with psychology (reconfiguration of internal reality) and psychiatric problems (faulty wetware) with medications.
Gender problems are treated by a combination of heavy body-altering hormones and vivisectionist plastic surgeries ala The Island of Dr. Moreau. Psychological treatment (“conversion therapy”) is illegal in many jurisdictions. This is considered the most humane treatment because of the high, high statistical likelihood of suicide at every stage including after transition.
Meanwhile, I personally know someone whose lifelong body dysmorphia was resolved with a single moment’s realization he’s described to me in detail. He was a species dysphoric furry, an amputee fetishist/wannabe, and an autogynophile-type trans-null-gender whose Erotic Target Location Error was seeing the essence of womanhood as penislessness, not vagina-having. He said that, up until that moment, he wished thousands of times he could just have “nullo” surgery to remove the hateful appendage, without a constructed vulva in its place. But because nullo is “unnatural,” he figured no ethical surgeon would have done it and never investigated it. Now he’s perfectly fine with being a four-limbed human man with functional male genitals.
It scares me to think that if nullo surgery (with hormone-replacement for the missing balls) was the societally approved genital transition for his issue, which turned out to be psychological, he’d be regretting it now after that realization, possibly suicidally.
Not actually included, good eyes!
He told me he used to always change in the toilet stalls in locker rooms at school and at pools because he was shy and didn’t want anyone to watch. His father confronted him once about not being a real man if he was afraid of being seen nude, and he remembers thinking, “Well, then I don’t want to be a man” with the finality of a decision.
It was that moment he remembered when he was pondering why he wanted to see a film about trans people. He said a hundred things clicked together at once and then fell away like a curtain. He told me that after that, he kept trying to feel the old dysmorphic ache for a different body for a year, like probing an empty tooth socket reflexively with your tongue, but it was just gone.
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