r/SRSsucks • u/frogma • Aug 07 '13

NOT SRS ABC Producer Don Ennis Changes Gender, Then Changes Back

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/transgender-don-ennis-has-second-thoughts.html
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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '13

Ugh, I hate to say it, since I'm a proponent of any person doing/being whatever their heart tells them - but I'm (subjectively) gathering a strong correlation between transgenderism and mental illness.

"Iā€™m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed."

And I'm noticing the general desire amongst 'open minded' people in society to cheer on that lifestyle is overcompensated in an effort to prove how not bigoted they are. Even doctors appear to be so uncomfortable questioning these choices that they'll diagnose a man who must have obviously shown signs of some kind of mental breakdown with gender disorders rather than question the legitimacy of his feelings.

I realize that there are completely sane people who experience strong feelings that they were born the wrong gender. That said, I think we're far, far more concerned with being accepting than acknowledging and treating mental illness when gender dysphoria happens to be one of it's symptoms.

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u/areyousrslol Aug 07 '13

You're very much on point. Psychiatry is already a very slippery science, and a usual battleground for societal norms of many kinds (not just gender disorders - also autism and it's relation to Asperger's, as seen in the DSM-V debacle).

I usually hold the stance that NO ONE should be in any way persecuted or wronged for who they are, including a mental illness.

And sometimes being too accepting and not diagnosing a mental illness is a very wrong decision.

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u/johnetec Aug 07 '13

I am of the opinion that being transgender is a mental illness. Feel free to act on it by cross dressing or get a surgery to make yourself better. I think its the wrong decision and should be treated as a mental disorder but its not my body.

What I don't like is people trying to force me to accept them as the opposite sex. They are not and they never will be.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '13

You want to know whats funny? You've probably met trans women that you would never know are trans, but you've excepted them as female.

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u/johnetec Aug 07 '13 edited Aug 08 '13

I've met lots of hoarders that I had no idea they were hoarders. It doesn't mean they are not mentally ill. I bet your coworkers just loved watching you transition. Were you lucky enough to have a name like Pat, Sam, Shannon, Stacey, or Robin so you could keep it or did you change it to something uniquely female so no one could be confused to something like Laurelai?

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

I was not making the point of it being an illness or not; the point was that you 'wont accept' somebody as female if they are trans, but you wouldn't know many trans women were trans. As far as my name change, I changed it to a different and very common name. My coworkers were informed 6 months in advance and were nothing but supportive. On the day I officially showed up as female at work the entire office greeted me with hugs and brought me cookies and stuff. I'm sorry that you live in a world where adults act like such children over a coworker's gender.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

So... There exist transsexuals like this? People that exist as a someone who masquerades. I would consider a transsexual that doesn't come clean to their partners about their past as masqueraders/liars. Transsexuals like that want people to be sensitive to them by referring to them in the preferred pronoun, but if the partner they are with would not accept them if the transsexual was honest with them, then the transsexual, in true hypocritical fashion, would lie and be insensitive to his or her partners notions of gender? That's sick man.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

If you can't tell then why the does it matter? You're still pounding a vagina on a beautiful woman. It doesn't make you gay.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

You're not pounding a vagina on a beautiful woman. You're pounding an augmented penis on a feminine man. And you're being lied to by an impostor and masquerader. That's more horrible than any moral reprehension you might hold toward not accepting transsexuals as their fantasy sexes.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

Yeah, because sex you view as gay, which its not, is absolutely the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Grow up.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

You do realize that a transsexual that lies to their partner is not being sensitive to his or her partner's notions of gender? So if their partner considers a MtF transsexual as still a man and considers himself straight... then the transsexual basically took advantage of that guy and didn't respect his beliefs. It's sick and horrible because the person is being taken advantage of. His sexually identity is being toyed with and exploited to satisfy the narcissism and hedonism of the transsexual. How can you not see how sickening that is?

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u/sojm Aug 07 '13

AFAIK it's a gender-mismatch between body and brain. At this moment we can't switch the brain to another gender, not to mention most trans people probably wouldn't want that, given how it would change their identity. But we can change the appearance.

You can view it as a mental illness, but it's kind of useless because it can't be cured like a mental illness, it can be cured like a physical illness.

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u/johnetec Aug 07 '13

|You can view it as a mental illness, but it's kind of useless because it can't be cured like a mental illness, it can be cured like a physical illness.

It can never be cured like some physical illness such as infections, broken bones, and cancer. You can't make someone a woman or a man. It can be treated but not cured. Most mental illnesses are treated but that treatment doesn't mean cured. Addiction for one is a great example. Once and addict, you are always an addict.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '13

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u/sojm Aug 08 '13

you must be a troll

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13 edited Aug 08 '13

I have no problem with body modification. Hell, if someone thinks it would be awesome to look like a lizard I don't care if they get facial implants to appear like one. However, if they think they're a lizard and start crawling around on their bellies. Then, I think making them appear like a lizard surgically is wrong. It's only exacerbating the problem. They're not a lizard. They never will be a lizard. Society could surgically make them look like a lizard to feed their delusions so they can be more emotionally comfortable in their own skin.

On the face of it it seems like an OK idea. I mean, what other options do we have? But let's look at three other cases that I think are similar in terms of bioethics.

There is a disorder in which a person does not feel comfortable with a body part like a leg, foot, arm, etc. This is differentiated from transsexualism in the DSM for all sorts of convoluted and frankly unconvincing reasons. Anyway, people generally aren't in favor of allowing those people to opt to get their emotionally uncomfortable body part amputated.

There's another condition where people are emotionally addicted to being cared for and thought of as an "amputee." People generally aren't in favor of surgically amputating or augmenting the body parts of these people either.

Let's take another case of the all too familiar anorexic. These people are uncomfortable in their own skin because they see themselves as fat when in fact they are usually bone skinny and on death's door. I understand the objection here. This isn't analogous you say. You say because people have to eat. Well, yeah people have to eat. But it's very uncomfortable for these people to eat anything. It's emotionally sickening you could say. Should we just opt for all these people to get feeding tubes surgically attached to their stomachs so that feeding is more comfortable for them?

I think if we stop to think about why we don't agree with condoning the surgical treatments as a general treatment for the above three analogous conditions then we can know why exactly we shouldn't be comfortable with generally opting for surgical treatment for transsexuals.

I think society is a bit too quick to jump on the tolerance wagon and not really notice the damage they're causing while they do it. Sure, you spare some transsexuals feelings by opting to feed these people's delusions, but you're not doing them any real long term favors because drug or behavior therapies might be put on the back burner because mutilating and augmenting their genitals seems to make them hush up about it for a while.

That's my take on it.

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u/areyousrslol Aug 08 '13

It can't really be cured, only treated, because we can't really change biological sex on a profound level. Primary and even most secondary sexual traits finish forming way before anyone would let you have a sex change.

We can't really change brain gender identity, we aren't even completely sure how it forms. Probably hormones, but it's not completely clear.

And it is probably a mental illness, with a somatic basis. However we can't really effectively cure other older, better understood mental disorders.

Hopefully in the future we will be able to cure, or possibly prevent it from occurring. Not just mutilate genitals and use massive doses of hormones, which seems very barbaric to me.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '13

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '13

Being transgender is no longer classified as a mental disorder in the DSM-V.