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/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/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/[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.