Delicious Anathema said:
I get that you're very passionate about this subject being trans and all, but the World Health Organization considers it a mental illness (though they're looking to change it) and I tend to agree.
No, they don't.
Gender dysphoria is a mental health problem. Simply being trans isn't. Plenty of trans don't have gender dysphoria, because they're comfortable with their bodies after treatment or counselling. Trans people are not disordered simply for being trans. We got rid of needless pathologizing of LGBTQ people
years ago. Mainly because healthy, socially active people are not magically sick solely for being trans.
Same way I don't have
skin disease if I get a tattoo.
Presentation alone does not an illness make. Unless you want to be needlessly excessive and say we're all dying from
life disease ... mortality rate 100%, symptoms perisist for 0-117 years (the longest living terminal patient so far) ... 100% saturation of the public with an R0 of
infinite.
You're not a woman if you think you're a woman, and the same for men. Gender is not disconnected from biological sex, it's literally the properties applied to either sex. Are stay-at-home dads transgender because they took a classic (since pre-civilization) female characteristic? No, they're obviously still men.
Gender is totally disconnected from sex, plenty of people perform gender and gender roles without a sex-based component. Plenty of recorded cases where people didn't know they were intersex until other conditions arose to make it evident. Gender is a constructed idea of manand woman, not an essentialist idea of male and female
for the simple fact that ideas of gender change as time passes.
Gender is connected to the biological sex, some are cultural (dress code, hair) and some are innate (hunting vs nurture). There is variance of course, but they're inseperable in my view. Countless (different) civilizations and the animal kingdom having the same distinct gender roles based on sex would be a big coincidence if both weren't directly related. Many transsexual people opt for a classic look (skirts and heels/ masculine clothing) for the gender they identify with, which should be unnecessary if they did the hormones and surgery already as sex=/= gender. The fact that many transgender people become (or wish to become) transsexual is telling.
For starters, humans aren't common beasts. Secondly, civilizations rise and fall ... attitudes toward gender as time moves on change. Some cultural anthrologists think plenty of women were foragers and ropemakers, requiring sometimes days outside communal centers depending on the availability of supplies nearby in our prehistory. Then again in Saudi Arabia, now, women can't even leave the house without a male escort.
I won't pretend to believe someone's a different gender or sex and I don't think society should change to conform to such a minority (like bathroom laws).
Also, by calling me an idiot, you proved my earlier point. Save that for people speaking about attack helicopters.
Bathroom laws such as? The rest of the Western world and for that fact a
good deal of the Eastern one as well don't give a flying fuck about bathroom bills. In Australia it is a non-issue. In the U.S. it
was a non-issue. It's not a matter of conformity, it's a matter of public safety. Trans people are disproportionately victims of sexual abuse and physical assault, and nobody cared if they mitigated that by using the bathroom of their gender and not their sex.
Because frankly the inverse of that is ridiculous...it outs people simply to use a bathroom and increases the likelihood of violence. Nobody should have to ask permission to use a public/semi-public bathroom nor face violence for it, and if the idea is that it somehow prevents rapists ... they have never asked permission to intrude on a person directly regardless.
