I would hope that medical treatments don’t come with advice that “gender is a choice”. Persons undergoing these treatments exchange one kind of disability for another and they do so (I hope) only because life is to difficult to bear as they were.
I also cannot imagine what needs to be said to 4 and 5 year olds at large about this topic.
If “gender identity” really needs to be taught to children…, I hope this is taught as an aberration that affects some people.
I agree. And I fail to see how this is relevant to the issue of surgeries for relief of extreme gender dysphoria.
But I question why the topic warrants inclusion in school at a young age. And it’s not the teaching method that’s of relevance, but the subject/content.
I suspect that the emphasis is on “diversity,” not on what is “normal” and what the “aberrations” from normality are. The people who are the so-called “aberrations” probably don’t like to think of themselves as somehow deficient. If anything, they might even consider the thing that makes them not quite normal to be something that makes them kind of special. For example, I know that some people on the autism spectrum and others with related conditions like ADHD sometimes refer to “normal” people as being “neurotypical” whereas they themselves are “neurodivergent” or “neuroatypical.” They view themselves as different than others, but not necessarily deficient and they might even want to emphasize some of their qualities that give them unique and sometimes impressive abilities that “normal” people don’t have.Thorolfr:
If “gender identity” really needs to be taught to children…, I hope this is taught as an aberration that affects some people.
Given we are talking about a debilitating condition that drives people to horrendous surgeries so they can cope with living, I think we can conclude they suffer from something not normal and not of benefit.
Suicide rate:
www.suicideinfo.ca
Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.
And as predicted, you brought up this argument.
Well at least you recognize where the real problem resides.
It’s not a delusion, nor a falsehood. Being delusional in fact eliminates a diagnosis of transgenderism. Have you actually read any of the medical literature on the subject, or the WPATH standards if care?
If all available evidence indicates one thing, but the person continues to believe something opposite of that, it is delusion.
Yes, it does have a precise meaning.
Didn’t you read what Rau said? I thought he gave a good explanation of why transgender people are not delusional: “Our sense of our own ‘gender’ is a real thing I think and it seems as though it can be out of step with bodily reality.” Both a person’s internal sense of their gender (i.e. their ‘gender identity’) and their outward body are real and separate things which are in conflict. Transgender people are perfectly aware of what their body looks like and aren’t imagining that it looks any differently than what it does.OraLabora:
Well at least you recognize where the real problem resides.
One does not treat delusion by embracing a falsehood.
All evidence says they are male or female.
So, we know it wrong, but feel we have to do something…even if it is wrong.
There are examples of people who are not strictly “male or female.” In the case of a person with complete AIS, they look physically female from birth, have a brain which is undoubtedly wired as female because it develops like the rest of their body under the influence of estrogen and not testosterone. And yet their chromosomes are male, i.e. they’re XY. So which physical reality is the correct one? Is it their outward body which looks female or is it their chromosomes which are male? In this case, there is a misalignment between two physical realities.Thorolfr:
All evidence says they are male or female.
They insist that the evidence is wrong.
This insistence is so strong that they will spend years trying to force the physical reality to match their false belief.
I still maintain the answer is not mutilation and distortion.
You think it wrong. Others more learned on the subject disagree.