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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 9, 2023 18:21:14 GMT -5
I think what people do with their own bodies is their own business. Gender affirming care has come a long way and if people start transitioning and change their mind they can de-transition. I just think people are born in the the wrong bodies sometimes.
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Post by chantel on Feb 9, 2023 21:19:19 GMT -5
I think what people do with their own bodies is their own business. Gender affirming care has come a long way and if people start transitioning and change their mind they can de-transition. I just think people are born in the the wrong bodies sometimes. Unfortunately, they make it everybody's business. Transitioning/detransitioning both have side effects. I don't think mentally ill people should be given the go ahead to self harm themselves.
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 9, 2023 22:49:38 GMT -5
I think what people do with their own bodies is their own business. Gender affirming care has come a long way and if people start transitioning and change their mind they can de-transition. I just think people are born in the the wrong bodies sometimes. Unfortunately, they make it everybody's business. Transitioning/detransitioning both have side effects. I don't think mentally ill people should be given the go ahead to self harm themselves. People harm themselves for less though. I mean you see people who get cosmetic surgery to try and make themselves look like Barbie dolls or celebrities. I just think it’s has to be hard to look in the mirror everyday and not have what’s outside match what’s inside. Life is short and every system is meant to harm you. May as well pick your poison.
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Roman
Next Level Swiftie
50%
Posts: 5,780
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Post by Roman on Feb 10, 2023 3:01:52 GMT -5
Unfortunately, they make it everybody's business. Transitioning/detransitioning both have side effects. I don't think mentally ill people should be given the go ahead to self harm themselves. People harm themselves for less though. I mean you see people who get cosmetic surgery to try and make themselves look like Barbie dolls or celebrities. I just think it’s has to be hard to look in the mirror everyday and not have what’s outside match what’s inside. Life is short and every system is meant to harm you. May as well pick your poison. The big problem is that treatment of gender dysphoria has been stripped to pretty much non existence. People can get into transitioning without any psychological or medical evaluation. The data are clear. The number of people trying to transition in some form are off the charts. And they are getting younger. That’s not because there are more people with these issues. It has become a coping mechanism for mental illness or even a form of trying to get attention. Clinical studies have been done for many decades and the conclusions are crystal: 90% of people with gender dysphoria will grow out of it as time goes on. Most of those people will turn out to be gay. The remaining group also will rarely benefit from a transition. It’s criminal that we’ve lowered healthcare standards to this and even somewhat stimulate gender dysphoria. Cosmetic surgery, as appalling as it is in many cases, is a different ballgame. With handing out hormones, providing gender surgery or even allowing change of gender labels, you’re destroying lives and disrupting society. It has an effect on everyone, even people who are not involved. Hormone treatment is very dangerous. You’ll do irreversible damage to your body. Infertility, physical harm, mental harm, even increased risk of cancer. And surgery is obviously severe mutilation. I fear for where this trend is going. It shows how harmful “wokeness” and “political correctness” are. So please think about it and don’t just go with the flow. One positive sign came from England recently. A gender transitioning clinic was closed because the lawsuits were piling up rapidly (surprise surprise). I hope this will make politicians and certain parts of society reconsider and go back to healthy values.
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 11, 2023 23:47:01 GMT -5
People harm themselves for less though. I mean you see people who get cosmetic surgery to try and make themselves look like Barbie dolls or celebrities. I just think it’s has to be hard to look in the mirror everyday and not have what’s outside match what’s inside. Life is short and every system is meant to harm you. May as well pick your poison. The big problem is that treatment of gender dysphoria has been stripped to pretty much non existence. People can get into transitioning without any psychological or medical evaluation. The data are clear. The number of people trying to transition in some form are off the charts. And they are getting younger. That’s not because there are more people with these issues. It has become a coping mechanism for mental illness or even a form of trying to get attention. Clinical studies have been done for many decades and the conclusions are crystal: 90% of people with gender dysphoria will grow out of it as time goes on. Most of those people will turn out to be gay. The remaining group also will rarely benefit from a transition. It’s criminal that we’ve lowered healthcare standards to this and even somewhat stimulate gender dysphoria. Cosmetic surgery, as appalling as it is in many cases, is a different ballgame. With handing out hormones, providing gender surgery or even allowing change of gender labels, you’re destroying lives and disrupting society. It has an effect on everyone, even people who are not involved. Hormone treatment is very dangerous. You’ll do irreversible damage to your body. Infertility, physical harm, mental harm, even increased risk of cancer. And surgery is obviously severe mutilation. I fear for where this trend is going. It shows how harmful “wokeness” and “political correctness” are. So please think about it and don’t just go with the flow. One positive sign came from England recently. A gender transitioning clinic was closed because the lawsuits were piling up rapidly (surprise surprise). I hope this will make politicians and certain parts of society reconsider and go back to healthy values. I think there are a few things I agree with you on and a few things I disagree with you on. I agree that the healthcare system in North America is a mess. I agree that big Pharma is 100% predatory and cares more about the bottom line than patients. I have a lot of conversations with my mom about big pharma as she works in pharmacy and sees a lot of messed up stuff first hand. That's besides the point though. I also agree that there should be more support and therapy for people who are experiencing gender dysmorphia, the way there should be more support and therapy for everyone dealing with every mental ailment. I don't think being transgender is a mental illness and I don't think it's something people just grow out of. I also don't think that you have to be transgender to experience gender or body dysmorphia. Actually, Miley Cyrus said she experienced this while filming Hannah Montana because she was switching back and forth between this blonde idealized version of herself and just normal her which wasn't as exciting by comparison. You said there has been an uptick in transitioning. I think that's because there's more information than ever available to people about being transgender than ever before. Also I think the pandemic provided a unique experience for people to actually take the time to properly heal from surgeries cause half the world was already laid off. There was an uptick in cosmetic surgery in general during the pandemic. Everyone was getting BBL's and are now reversing them. That's a whole other topic though. Now when it comes to care, I don't think people who are transgender take their decision for care lightly at all. You were mentioning that the side effects of hormone therapy can be dangerous but once again, people take hormones for a lot less. Women are prescribed estrogen when going through menopause, men take testosterone to gain muscle at the gym. Why target just transgender people. Every drug on the face of the planet has a harmful side effect. At the end of the day, they're chemicals. Shoot, Tylenol can do terrible damage to your liver but no one tells someone with a migraine not to take one. As for the surgery, it's a procedure that can costs thousands upon thousands of dollars and can take 6 months to 2 years to recover from. I don't think anyone decides to get that surgery without years and years of research and saving. Obviously I think there should be lots of discussions between a doctor and patient before the procedure is done and possibly a psych eval just to prove that the patient is getting the surgery for the right reasons. I also think that they should be done in government monitored institutions where they can make sure that the doctors are properly performing the procedure and not doing things illegally. I think that is actually a huge issue in the world of plastic surgery in general. Anyone with a medical license can open a private clinic and do as much harm and botch as many surgeries as possible and get away with it. I think that it's harmful to paint an entire group of people with the same brush. There are plenty of people who are transgender who never come out of the closet, who never fully transition, who are against hormone therapy, who don't feel the need to present their chosen gender in the way society sees that gender and who never have gender conversion surgery because they either don't agree with it or can't afford it or find they don't need it to present as the opposite gender and there are people who do. Either way, they are fellow people and deserve the right to kindness and compassion and the right to make choices about their own body (as EVERYONE does). I think when you go into the territory of banning procedures, you step into risky territory because lawmakers don't know where to stop and don't know where the line is. It is already hard for transgender people to get gender affirming care, if you ban the procedure than there will be a ripple affect of people struggling to get the medication that helps them deal with their dysmorphia (whether it be hormone therapy or not), which then makes it harder for them to find therapists. You take away one form of care, you may as well take away all forms of care. It becomes a hard to draw the line between what cosmetic surgeries are life-saving and what is frivolous. To you what may be frivolous or mutilation, may be the difference between life or death to someone else. Transgender people already have the highest amount of hate crimes committed against them in the LGBTQIA+ community and the highest rate of suicides. There is also a gigantic wave a transphobic propaganda being pushed in the media through right wing evangelical groups. People who are trans are scared and I don't think that taking away things that may help them feel better is the answer. I'm not saying you have to agree with any of the treatment methods but prohibition rarely works. What I do rally for is better medical research, more medical transparency, a deeper look into the practices and history of cosmetic surgeons and stricter guidelines to follow and of course better resources in regards to therapy and support, not just for transgender people, but for everyone because all everyone looks for and needs is love, understanding, compassion and acceptance.
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Post by chantel on Feb 12, 2023 7:35:04 GMT -5
Sydney so you think people that get extreme surgeries like the barbie doll people or the guy that wants to look like an alien ( he got his nose cut off, upper lip removed, and wants to get his skin removed to be replaced with metal) should be allowed to even though they are clearly not mentally well?
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Post by chantel on Feb 12, 2023 7:40:50 GMT -5
Sydney so you think people that get extreme surgeries like the barbie doll people or the guy that wants to look like an alien ( he got his nose cut off, upper lip removed, and wants to get his skin removed to be replaced with metal) should be allowed to even though they are clearly not mentally well?When these people reject everything that they are to that degree they are not rational.
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 12, 2023 10:55:00 GMT -5
Sydney so you think people that get extreme surgeries like the barbie doll people or the guy that wants to look like an alien ( he got his nose cut off, upper lip removed, and wants to get his skin removed to be replaced with metal) should be allowed to even though they are clearly not mentally well? Yes. Even though I would personally never do it and I personally don’t agree with it, I still think people should be free to do with their bodies and their money as they please. I also think that doctors should practice logic and should refuse surgeries that are obviously dangerous and would cause harm to the patient. Random question to you and Roman, Have you ever seen the show Botched?
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Roman
Next Level Swiftie
50%
Posts: 5,780
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Post by Roman on Feb 13, 2023 13:09:08 GMT -5
The big problem is that treatment of gender dysphoria has been stripped to pretty much non existence. People can get into transitioning without any psychological or medical evaluation. The data are clear. The number of people trying to transition in some form are off the charts. And they are getting younger. That’s not because there are more people with these issues. It has become a coping mechanism for mental illness or even a form of trying to get attention. Clinical studies have been done for many decades and the conclusions are crystal: 90% of people with gender dysphoria will grow out of it as time goes on. Most of those people will turn out to be gay. The remaining group also will rarely benefit from a transition. It’s criminal that we’ve lowered healthcare standards to this and even somewhat stimulate gender dysphoria. Cosmetic surgery, as appalling as it is in many cases, is a different ballgame. With handing out hormones, providing gender surgery or even allowing change of gender labels, you’re destroying lives and disrupting society. It has an effect on everyone, even people who are not involved. Hormone treatment is very dangerous. You’ll do irreversible damage to your body. Infertility, physical harm, mental harm, even increased risk of cancer. And surgery is obviously severe mutilation. I fear for where this trend is going. It shows how harmful “wokeness” and “political correctness” are. So please think about it and don’t just go with the flow. One positive sign came from England recently. A gender transitioning clinic was closed because the lawsuits were piling up rapidly (surprise surprise). I hope this will make politicians and certain parts of society reconsider and go back to healthy values. I think there are a few things I agree with you on and a few things I disagree with you on. I agree that the healthcare system in North America is a mess. I agree that big Pharma is 100% predatory and cares more about the bottom line than patients. I have a lot of conversations with my mom about big pharma as she works in pharmacy and sees a lot of messed up stuff first hand. That's besides the point though. I also agree that there should be more support and therapy for people who are experiencing gender dysmorphia, the way there should be more support and therapy for everyone dealing with every mental ailment. I don't think being transgender is a mental illness and I don't think it's something people just grow out of. I also don't think that you have to be transgender to experience gender or body dysmorphia. Actually, Miley Cyrus said she experienced this while filming Hannah Montana because she was switching back and forth between this blonde idealized version of herself and just normal her which wasn't as exciting by comparison. You said there has been an uptick in transitioning. I think that's because there's more information than ever available to people about being transgender than ever before. Also I think the pandemic provided a unique experience for people to actually take the time to properly heal from surgeries cause half the world was already laid off. There was an uptick in cosmetic surgery in general during the pandemic. Everyone was getting BBL's and are now reversing them. That's a whole other topic though. Now when it comes to care, I don't think people who are transgender take their decision for care lightly at all. You were mentioning that the side effects of hormone therapy can be dangerous but once again, people take hormones for a lot less. Women are prescribed estrogen when going through menopause, men take testosterone to gain muscle at the gym. Why target just transgender people. Every drug on the face of the planet has a harmful side effect. At the end of the day, they're chemicals. Shoot, Tylenol can do terrible damage to your liver but no one tells someone with a migraine not to take one. As for the surgery, it's a procedure that can costs thousands upon thousands of dollars and can take 6 months to 2 years to recover from. I don't think anyone decides to get that surgery without years and years of research and saving. Obviously I think there should be lots of discussions between a doctor and patient before the procedure is done and possibly a psych eval just to prove that the patient is getting the surgery for the right reasons. I also think that they should be done in government monitored institutions where they can make sure that the doctors are properly performing the procedure and not doing things illegally. I think that is actually a huge issue in the world of plastic surgery in general. Anyone with a medical license can open a private clinic and do as much harm and botch as many surgeries as possible and get away with it. I think that it's harmful to paint an entire group of people with the same brush. There are plenty of people who are transgender who never come out of the closet, who never fully transition, who are against hormone therapy, who don't feel the need to present their chosen gender in the way society sees that gender and who never have gender conversion surgery because they either don't agree with it or can't afford it or find they don't need it to present as the opposite gender and there are people who do. Either way, they are fellow people and deserve the right to kindness and compassion and the right to make choices about their own body (as EVERYONE does). I think when you go into the territory of banning procedures, you step into risky territory because lawmakers don't know where to stop and don't know where the line is. It is already hard for transgender people to get gender affirming care, if you ban the procedure than there will be a ripple affect of people struggling to get the medication that helps them deal with their dysmorphia (whether it be hormone therapy or not), which then makes it harder for them to find therapists. You take away one form of care, you may as well take away all forms of care. It becomes a hard to draw the line between what cosmetic surgeries are life-saving and what is frivolous. To you what may be frivolous or mutilation, may be the difference between life or death to someone else. Transgender people already have the highest amount of hate crimes committed against them in the LGBTQIA+ community and the highest rate of suicides. There is also a gigantic wave a transphobic propaganda being pushed in the media through right wing evangelical groups. People who are trans are scared and I don't think that taking away things that may help them feel better is the answer. I'm not saying you have to agree with any of the treatment methods but prohibition rarely works. What I do rally for is better medical research, more medical transparency, a deeper look into the practices and history of cosmetic surgeons and stricter guidelines to follow and of course better resources in regards to therapy and support, not just for transgender people, but for everyone because all everyone looks for and needs is love, understanding, compassion and acceptance. First of all: thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts about the topic. Here are my two cents about what you said. Transgender is not a state of being. Someone with gender dysphoria thinks their biological gender doesn’t match how they feel. That’s why it’s a mental disorder. Psychological evaluation will investigate what’s behind those feelings. Transitioning to the other gender will only be reasonable when it’s highly plausible it will fix your issues. Chantel asked a vital question: what could justify transitioning at all? Pretty much everyone is biologically male or female. With the biology come corresponding chemistry (i.e. hormones) and psychology. Even with people that have some anomalies in for example genitals or reproductive organs, it’s not that hard to determine their gender. There’s a minuscule group of people that gets closer to a 50-50 balance of male and female biology. In the western world we’re talking one in a million. For some of those people I can imagine a transition could be helpful. Those people are not the issue. Like you said, they will not take it lightly to transition and they deserve all the care they can get. The issue is with how the definition of transgender is getting watered down. We’ve reached the point that people call themselves non-binary, make up silly pronouns, “change” identity/gender from day to day. I know you’re very empathetic and I praise you for it. BUT…we live in a day and age where empathy is going too far. It’s not healthy to be accepting of everything and everyone as they are at the time. Boundaries are key. You’re not helping someone by agreeing with everything they do or say. It’s actually a bad thing to stimulate behavior that is wrong or unhealthy. The whole point of therapy is to help them identify and reflect on their problems to change their life for the better (in contrast to agreeing with them and stimulate their destructive behavior). And the current wave of empathy is mostly fake anyway. The reason why many are overly empathetic is to make it about them. It’s a sign of narcissism. You can tell that it’s fake because the moment someone pulls them back into reality and disagrees with what they’re saying, they pull out the torch and come after you. Others do it out of fear to be called a biggot or whatever-phobic. Anyway. You see in your example of Miley how loosely we’re using the term transgender. There’s not even a bit of doubt that she’s a woman. Her not liking one of her personas is a separate issue. Same goes for Sam Smith or Demi Lovato. It’s idiotic how they try to label themselves. Not to mention disrespectful of people who are actually dealing with gender dysphoria. As for hormones. Taking hormones for menopause or testosterone for male problems is completely different. In those cases you use it to compensate for a deficit. To change gender, you really need to take a massive dose of hormones. You can’t mutate a body to the other gender by a healthy dose. To get a glimpse of what that does to a body, watch a documentary about athletes from Eastern-Germany. It’s shocking. If you imagine nowadays they’re doing that to kids to “transition”, you’ll run to such a clinic and start punching people. You mention group identity. That’s also an issue. We need to start differentiating within the LGBT community. LGB people are completely different. They’re getting dragged into this. They are normal people with a different sexual orientation, no issue whatsoever. The trans community is different. First of all we need to limit it to the tiny group of people who have such severe biological anomalies that it’s not obvious which gender they belong to. All the others definitely deserve care in some way. But they should be held to sane standards and not be able to blur their identity however they please, let alone get access to intensive hormone treatment or transgender surgery. As for “everybody is entitled to do with their body what they wish”. Yes and no. To some extent it’s your choice and responsibility. But you can’t just do anything. Most importantly you need to be in a state of mind to be able to make big decisions. Also it’s society’s and healthcare professionals’ responsibility to tell you the truth and lecture you on the consequences. Sometimes even protect you from yourself making the wrong decision. At the moment the issue is mostly within politics, not pharma. Politicians are putting a bomb under society by messing with scientific facts and important values. Spinelessly they pretend to help by showing how accepting they are. But they’re actually causing the problems. It will ruin lives. Not only of those directly involved, but also for everyone being part of society. Look at how many dodgy laws are surfacing that won’t even fix the issue they’re meant to fix. P.S. no, I haven’t seen botched, never heard of it.
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Post by chantel on Feb 13, 2023 16:18:17 GMT -5
Sydney so you think people that get extreme surgeries like the barbie doll people or the guy that wants to look like an alien ( he got his nose cut off, upper lip removed, and wants to get his skin removed to be replaced with metal) should be allowed to even though they are clearly not mentally well? Yes. Even though I would personally never do it and I personally don’t agree with it, I still think people should be free to do with their bodies and their money as they please. I also think that doctors should practice logic and should refuse surgeries that are obviously dangerous and would cause harm to the patient. Random question to you and Roman, Have you ever seen the show Botched? I've seen maybe 5 episodes of botched. It looked like an interesting show but I never got around to watching more. From what I've seen they seem like they are fixing regular cosmetic surgeries that went wrong not people that intended to have extreme surgeries.
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Post by chantel on Feb 13, 2023 16:21:35 GMT -5
I don't like how the term "woke" went from being about raising awareness to the systemic racism of black people to about the gender identity topic. What if you support one without the other? Is that half woke?
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 13, 2023 17:11:42 GMT -5
I don't like how the term "woke" went from being about raising awareness to the systemic racism of black people to about the gender identity topic. What if you support one without the other? Is that half woke? Woke started as a term that meant socially aware. Now when people say they’re woke it means “I pretend to care for social media”. It’s too bad, a lot of real activism gets ignored for people’s fake wokeness.
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 13, 2023 19:26:37 GMT -5
I think there are a few things I agree with you on and a few things I disagree with you on. I agree that the healthcare system in North America is a mess. I agree that big Pharma is 100% predatory and cares more about the bottom line than patients. I have a lot of conversations with my mom about big pharma as she works in pharmacy and sees a lot of messed up stuff first hand. That's besides the point though. I also agree that there should be more support and therapy for people who are experiencing gender dysmorphia, the way there should be more support and therapy for everyone dealing with every mental ailment. I don't think being transgender is a mental illness and I don't think it's something people just grow out of. I also don't think that you have to be transgender to experience gender or body dysmorphia. Actually, Miley Cyrus said she experienced this while filming Hannah Montana because she was switching back and forth between this blonde idealized version of herself and just normal her which wasn't as exciting by comparison. You said there has been an uptick in transitioning. I think that's because there's more information than ever available to people about being transgender than ever before. Also I think the pandemic provided a unique experience for people to actually take the time to properly heal from surgeries cause half the world was already laid off. There was an uptick in cosmetic surgery in general during the pandemic. Everyone was getting BBL's and are now reversing them. That's a whole other topic though. Now when it comes to care, I don't think people who are transgender take their decision for care lightly at all. You were mentioning that the side effects of hormone therapy can be dangerous but once again, people take hormones for a lot less. Women are prescribed estrogen when going through menopause, men take testosterone to gain muscle at the gym. Why target just transgender people. Every drug on the face of the planet has a harmful side effect. At the end of the day, they're chemicals. Shoot, Tylenol can do terrible damage to your liver but no one tells someone with a migraine not to take one. As for the surgery, it's a procedure that can costs thousands upon thousands of dollars and can take 6 months to 2 years to recover from. I don't think anyone decides to get that surgery without years and years of research and saving. Obviously I think there should be lots of discussions between a doctor and patient before the procedure is done and possibly a psych eval just to prove that the patient is getting the surgery for the right reasons. I also think that they should be done in government monitored institutions where they can make sure that the doctors are properly performing the procedure and not doing things illegally. I think that is actually a huge issue in the world of plastic surgery in general. Anyone with a medical license can open a private clinic and do as much harm and botch as many surgeries as possible and get away with it. I think that it's harmful to paint an entire group of people with the same brush. There are plenty of people who are transgender who never come out of the closet, who never fully transition, who are against hormone therapy, who don't feel the need to present their chosen gender in the way society sees that gender and who never have gender conversion surgery because they either don't agree with it or can't afford it or find they don't need it to present as the opposite gender and there are people who do. Either way, they are fellow people and deserve the right to kindness and compassion and the right to make choices about their own body (as EVERYONE does). I think when you go into the territory of banning procedures, you step into risky territory because lawmakers don't know where to stop and don't know where the line is. It is already hard for transgender people to get gender affirming care, if you ban the procedure than there will be a ripple affect of people struggling to get the medication that helps them deal with their dysmorphia (whether it be hormone therapy or not), which then makes it harder for them to find therapists. You take away one form of care, you may as well take away all forms of care. It becomes a hard to draw the line between what cosmetic surgeries are life-saving and what is frivolous. To you what may be frivolous or mutilation, may be the difference between life or death to someone else. Transgender people already have the highest amount of hate crimes committed against them in the LGBTQIA+ community and the highest rate of suicides. There is also a gigantic wave a transphobic propaganda being pushed in the media through right wing evangelical groups. People who are trans are scared and I don't think that taking away things that may help them feel better is the answer. I'm not saying you have to agree with any of the treatment methods but prohibition rarely works. What I do rally for is better medical research, more medical transparency, a deeper look into the practices and history of cosmetic surgeons and stricter guidelines to follow and of course better resources in regards to therapy and support, not just for transgender people, but for everyone because all everyone looks for and needs is love, understanding, compassion and acceptance. First of all: thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts about the topic. Here are my two cents about what you said. Transgender is not a state of being. Someone with gender dysphoria thinks their biological gender doesn’t match how they feel. That’s why it’s a mental disorder. Psychological evaluation will investigate what’s behind those feelings. Transitioning to the other gender will only be reasonable when it’s highly plausible it will fix your issues. Chantel asked a vital question: what could justify transitioning at all? Pretty much everyone is biologically male or female. With the biology come corresponding chemistry (i.e. hormones) and psychology. Even with people that have some anomalies in for example genitals or reproductive organs, it’s not that hard to determine their gender. There’s a minuscule group of people that gets closer to a 50-50 balance of male and female biology. In the western world we’re talking one in a million. For some of those people I can imagine a transition could be helpful. Those people are not the issue. Like you said, they will not take it lightly to transition and they deserve all the care they can get. The issue is with how the definition of transgender is getting watered down. We’ve reached the point that people call themselves non-binary, make up silly pronouns, “change” identity/gender from day to day. I know you’re very empathetic and I praise you for it. BUT…we live in a day and age where empathy is going too far. It’s not healthy to be accepting of everything and everyone as they are at the time. Boundaries are key. You’re not helping someone by agreeing with everything they do or say. It’s actually a bad thing to stimulate behavior that is wrong or unhealthy. The whole point of therapy is to help them identify and reflect on their problems to change their life for the better (in contrast to agreeing with them and stimulate their destructive behavior). And the current wave of empathy is mostly fake anyway. The reason why many are overly empathetic is to make it about them. It’s a sign of narcissism. You can tell that it’s fake because the moment someone pulls them back into reality and disagrees with what they’re saying, they pull out the torch and come after you. Others do it out of fear to be called a biggot or whatever-phobic. Anyway. You see in your example of Miley how loosely we’re using the term transgender. There’s not even a bit of doubt that she’s a woman. Her not liking one of her personas is a separate issue. Same goes for Sam Smith or Demi Lovato. It’s idiotic how they try to label themselves. Not to mention disrespectful of people who are actually dealing with gender dysphoria. As for hormones. Taking hormones for menopause or testosterone for male problems is completely different. In those cases you use it to compensate for a deficit. To change gender, you really need to take a massive dose of hormones. You can’t mutate a body to the other gender by a healthy dose. To get a glimpse of what that does to a body, watch a documentary about athletes from Eastern-Germany. It’s shocking. If you imagine nowadays they’re doing that to kids to “transition”, you’ll run to such a clinic and start punching people. You mention group identity. That’s also an issue. We need to start differentiating within the LGBT community. LGB people are completely different. They’re getting dragged into this. They are normal people with a different sexual orientation, no issue whatsoever. The trans community is different. First of all we need to limit it to the tiny group of people who have such severe biological anomalies that it’s not obvious which gender they belong to. All the others definitely deserve care in some way. But they should be held to sane standards and not be able to blur their identity however they please, let alone get access to intensive hormone treatment or transgender surgery. As for “everybody is entitled to do with their body what they wish”. Yes and no. To some extent it’s your choice and responsibility. But you can’t just do anything. Most importantly you need to be in a state of mind to be able to make big decisions. Also it’s society’s and healthcare professionals’ responsibility to tell you the truth and lecture you on the consequences. Sometimes even protect you from yourself making the wrong decision. At the moment the issue is mostly within politics, not pharma. Politicians are putting a bomb under society by messing with scientific facts and important values. Spinelessly they pretend to help by showing how accepting they are. But they’re actually causing the problems. It will ruin lives. Not only of those directly involved, but also for everyone being part of society. Look at how many dodgy laws are surfacing that won’t even fix the issue they’re meant to fix. P.S. no, I haven’t seen botched, never heard of it. There are still a few things I disagree with you about here but if I'm being honest, this discussion is getting a little long in the tooth and I'm getting kind of bored of discussing it so I'll just say this: 1. I think you're only thinking about gender in the physical form and I think this is where the root of our differences of opinion are coming from. The term transgender as I know it just refers to someone who identifies with a gender that's different than the one they were born as. Non-binary just refers to anyone who doesn't feel that they fit in the gender binary at all. People with medical anomalies that give them male and female parts are known as intersex. To me, gender is just a societal construct. If someone tells me they're a girl, who am I to judge? I don't care what's in your pants. 2. I can't exactly call myself an expert on hormone therapy or on any surgery that allows one to change their gender. My stance on those treatments comes more from my stance on bodily autonomy in general. I don't necessarily think that lawmakers who have little to no medical background should have a say in what any specific group of people does with their bodies. This is also part of the reason I think Roe V. Wade should have never have been overturned. 3. I do agree that a lot of these issues have become political debates or worse RELIGIOUS debates when they really shouldn't be. Healthcare looks different from person to person. Maybe the common ground for people who are transgender and debating whether or not to start hormone therapy is not just talking extensively with their doctors and healthcare providers but also people who have had these procedures and gone through these treatments and hear out their opinions on it. As I mentioned priorly, there are people who are transgender who are against the gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment and who feel like you don't need that to be whatever gender you're transitioning to. Maybe we need to invite those people into the conversation as well. After all, they're the ones with the experience. 4. Also, my original comment about Miley Cyrus may have been a bit unclear. Miley struggled with body dysmorphia not gender dysmorphia. 5. Botched is good! It's a reality tv show about 2 plastic surgeons who fix botched surgeries. There are some clips on YouTube of it. I recommend you give them a watch. It just feels relative to the topic, which is why I mention it.
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 13, 2023 19:29:45 GMT -5
Yes. Even though I would personally never do it and I personally don’t agree with it, I still think people should be free to do with their bodies and their money as they please. I also think that doctors should practice logic and should refuse surgeries that are obviously dangerous and would cause harm to the patient. Random question to you and Roman, Have you ever seen the show Botched? I've seen maybe 5 episodes of botched. It looked like an interesting show but I never got around to watching more. From what I've seen they seem like they are fixing regular cosmetic surgeries that went wrong not people that intended to have extreme surgeries. I used to watch it a lot. You see a lot more outrageous cases as the show goes on. It's good! It just felt really relevant to this topic.
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Post by chantel on Feb 13, 2023 19:30:46 GMT -5
I think there are a few things I agree with you on and a few things I disagree with you on. I agree that the healthcare system in North America is a mess. I agree that big Pharma is 100% predatory and cares more about the bottom line than patients. I have a lot of conversations with my mom about big pharma as she works in pharmacy and sees a lot of messed up stuff first hand. That's besides the point though. I also agree that there should be more support and therapy for people who are experiencing gender dysmorphia, the way there should be more support and therapy for everyone dealing with every mental ailment. I don't think being transgender is a mental illness and I don't think it's something people just grow out of. I also don't think that you have to be transgender to experience gender or body dysmorphia. Actually, Miley Cyrus said she experienced this while filming Hannah Montana because she was switching back and forth between this blonde idealized version of herself and just normal her which wasn't as exciting by comparison. You said there has been an uptick in transitioning. I think that's because there's more information than ever available to people about being transgender than ever before. Also I think the pandemic provided a unique experience for people to actually take the time to properly heal from surgeries cause half the world was already laid off. There was an uptick in cosmetic surgery in general during the pandemic. Everyone was getting BBL's and are now reversing them. That's a whole other topic though. Now when it comes to care, I don't think people who are transgender take their decision for care lightly at all. You were mentioning that the side effects of hormone therapy can be dangerous but once again, people take hormones for a lot less. Women are prescribed estrogen when going through menopause, men take testosterone to gain muscle at the gym. Why target just transgender people. Every drug on the face of the planet has a harmful side effect. At the end of the day, they're chemicals. Shoot, Tylenol can do terrible damage to your liver but no one tells someone with a migraine not to take one. As for the surgery, it's a procedure that can costs thousands upon thousands of dollars and can take 6 months to 2 years to recover from. I don't think anyone decides to get that surgery without years and years of research and saving. Obviously I think there should be lots of discussions between a doctor and patient before the procedure is done and possibly a psych eval just to prove that the patient is getting the surgery for the right reasons. I also think that they should be done in government monitored institutions where they can make sure that the doctors are properly performing the procedure and not doing things illegally. I think that is actually a huge issue in the world of plastic surgery in general. Anyone with a medical license can open a private clinic and do as much harm and botch as many surgeries as possible and get away with it. I think that it's harmful to paint an entire group of people with the same brush. There are plenty of people who are transgender who never come out of the closet, who never fully transition, who are against hormone therapy, who don't feel the need to present their chosen gender in the way society sees that gender and who never have gender conversion surgery because they either don't agree with it or can't afford it or find they don't need it to present as the opposite gender and there are people who do. Either way, they are fellow people and deserve the right to kindness and compassion and the right to make choices about their own body (as EVERYONE does). I think when you go into the territory of banning procedures, you step into risky territory because lawmakers don't know where to stop and don't know where the line is. It is already hard for transgender people to get gender affirming care, if you ban the procedure than there will be a ripple affect of people struggling to get the medication that helps them deal with their dysmorphia (whether it be hormone therapy or not), which then makes it harder for them to find therapists. You take away one form of care, you may as well take away all forms of care. It becomes a hard to draw the line between what cosmetic surgeries are life-saving and what is frivolous. To you what may be frivolous or mutilation, may be the difference between life or death to someone else. Transgender people already have the highest amount of hate crimes committed against them in the LGBTQIA+ community and the highest rate of suicides. There is also a gigantic wave a transphobic propaganda being pushed in the media through right wing evangelical groups. People who are trans are scared and I don't think that taking away things that may help them feel better is the answer. I'm not saying you have to agree with any of the treatment methods but prohibition rarely works. What I do rally for is better medical research, more medical transparency, a deeper look into the practices and history of cosmetic surgeons and stricter guidelines to follow and of course better resources in regards to therapy and support, not just for transgender people, but for everyone because all everyone looks for and needs is love, understanding, compassion and acceptance. First of all: thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts about the topic. Here are my two cents about what you said. Transgender is not a state of being. Someone with gender dysphoria thinks their biological gender doesn’t match how they feel. That’s why it’s a mental disorder. Psychological evaluation will investigate what’s behind those feelings. Transitioning to the other gender will only be reasonable when it’s highly plausible it will fix your issues. Chantel asked a vital question: what could justify transitioning at all? Pretty much everyone is biologically male or female. With the biology come corresponding chemistry (i.e. hormones) and psychology. Even with people that have some anomalies in for example genitals or reproductive organs, it’s not that hard to determine their gender. There’s a minuscule group of people that gets closer to a 50-50 balance of male and female biology. In the western world we’re talking one in a million. For some of those people I can imagine a transition could be helpful. Those people are not the issue. Like you said, they will not take it lightly to transition and they deserve all the care they can get. The issue is with how the definition of transgender is getting watered down. We’ve reached the point that people call themselves non-binary, make up silly pronouns, “change” identity/gender from day to day. I know you’re very empathetic and I praise you for it. BUT…we live in a day and age where empathy is going too far. It’s not healthy to be accepting of everything and everyone as they are at the time. Boundaries are key. You’re not helping someone by agreeing with everything they do or say. It’s actually a bad thing to stimulate behavior that is wrong or unhealthy. The whole point of therapy is to help them identify and reflect on their problems to change their life for the better (in contrast to agreeing with them and stimulate their destructive behavior). And the current wave of empathy is mostly fake anyway. The reason why many are overly empathetic is to make it about them. It’s a sign of narcissism. You can tell that it’s fake because the moment someone pulls them back into reality and disagrees with what they’re saying, they pull out the torch and come after you. Others do it out of fear to be called a biggot or whatever-phobic. Anyway. You see in your example of Miley how loosely we’re using the term transgender. There’s not even a bit of doubt that she’s a woman. Her not liking one of her personas is a separate issue. Same goes for Sam Smith or Demi Lovato. It’s idiotic how they try to label themselves. Not to mention disrespectful of people who are actually dealing with gender dysphoria. As for hormones. Taking hormones for menopause or testosterone for male problems is completely different. In those cases you use it to compensate for a deficit. To change gender, you really need to take a massive dose of hormones. You can’t mutate a body to the other gender by a healthy dose. To get a glimpse of what that does to a body, watch a documentary about athletes from Eastern-Germany. It’s shocking. If you imagine nowadays they’re doing that to kids to “transition”, you’ll run to such a clinic and start punching people. You mention group identity. That’s also an issue. We need to start differentiating within the LGBT community. LGB people are completely different. They’re getting dragged into this. They are normal people with a different sexual orientation, no issue whatsoever. The trans community is different. First of all we need to limit it to the tiny group of people who have such severe biological anomalies that it’s not obvious which gender they belong to. All the others definitely deserve care in some way. But they should be held to sane standards and not be able to blur their identity however they please, let alone get access to intensive hormone treatment or transgender surgery. As for “everybody is entitled to do with their body what they wish”. Yes and no. To some extent it’s your choice and responsibility. But you can’t just do anything. Most importantly you need to be in a state of mind to be able to make big decisions. Also it’s society’s and healthcare professionals’ responsibility to tell you the truth and lecture you on the consequences. Sometimes even protect you from yourself making the wrong decision. At the moment the issue is mostly within politics, not pharma. Politicians are putting a bomb under society by messing with scientific facts and important values. Spinelessly they pretend to help by showing how accepting they are. But they’re actually causing the problems. It will ruin lives. Not only of those directly involved, but also for everyone being part of society. Look at how many dodgy laws are surfacing that won’t even fix the issue they’re meant to fix. P.S. no, I haven’t seen botched, never heard of it. With the people that classify themselves as non binary I kind of wonder if they are basing that on not being conventionally attractive for their sex so they are choosing to be nothing instead. I agree that transgenders should not be included with the LGB. Being transgender is not a sexuality.
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