[MissC]

I'm probably opening up a can of worms by starting this thread, but our rightful place in the world is affected by the attitudes of the public toward transgender people.

Oh. My. God. Other people have different opinions than you. How dare they! They don't agree with me, we must murder them!

I don't see one thing from you or anyone else thus far in this thread that factually refutes what he's got to say. I am an empirical and scientific thinker. I do not operate on wishes and feelings. If you want to convince people like me, you'd best try to come up with some facts that will bear out repeated experiment. Until then, you're just a whiner. Sorry.

McHugh believes that transgenderism is a life style choice, not biological, and should be treated as a mental disorder like anorexia or bulimia nervosa.

I'm not too sure some of us don't have some other mental disorders. I can see where he'd get the idea.

Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending

I'm not terribly fond of the way that he's phrased this, but it speaks to what I've already pointed out regarding the Medicare decision. That is, you do not have an innate right to taxpayer funds for anything, let alone something that is not life-threatening. SRS on the public dime is NOT a right. It just isn't.

Maybe some people should try reading the Constitution. I know it's in the English of yore and has multi-syllabic words, but get a literate person to explain it to you, slowly, if necessary.

For the transgendered, this argument holds that one's feeling of "gender" is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one's mind, cannot be questioned by others.

Everything is subject to question, for the scientific mind. We don't learn, grow, or attain new horizons without questioning.

Yet you, ClaraKay, and others on this forum, are determined to stifle questioning. You obviously wish to stifle discussion, because any time someone disagrees with your political opinions, you either shout them down, or whine about the "tone" of the discussion. It's a classic Alinsky tactic: when you can't prove your case, misdirect.

At no period in human history has mankind known everything there is to know, and we sure as hell aren't there now. Yet you would have us, as well as the rest of the public, believe that your opinions of what transgender is are divine truth.

Here rests the support for "transgender equality," the demands for government payment for medical and surgical treatments, and for access to all sex-based public roles and privileges.

This is what he's on about. Not whether you have a right to exist. Not what you think or feel as a dysphoric person.

If anything, I have more right to this than you -- I live as androgynous/female every day of the week in full public view. I'm not in a closet. My face and name show up in the news occasionally. So I should be more upset about this man's words, right?

All of his essay is pointing to one thing -- that you don't deserve taxpayer funded plastic surgery for a non-life-threatening condition. Either you didn't actually read his whole essay and reacted viscerally, or you don't know how to find the point in an essay.

Again, the author is not hating on you. He's talking about governmental fiscal common fucking sense. The rest of the essay is the case he's making for that point. You may not agree with all of his case, but the point is entirely, 100% valid.

Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry's domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field.

He is absolutely right to use the specter of solipsism here. It's all "me me me, my feelings," isn't it?

And while I'm no great fan of the profession of psychiatry (think I've made that clear!) he is absolutely correct here. If we cannot question at all what is in a person's mind, how may we question the likes of James Holmes, the theater shooter who mowed down 12 people? How do we know he wasn't born that way, the poor dear... or that God didn't tell him to do it?

Again, the notion that anything is unquestionable, is ludicrous. Stupid. Childish. Anti-intellectual. Anti-scientific. Etc.

Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.

It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.

This is what I've been saying, and yes, it does DIRECTLY destroy the argument for public funding. Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: We must taxpayer-fund SRS because trans-folk can be suicidal.

Step 2: SRS does not reduce the suicide rate.

Do I really have to explain this further? Take you by the hand, look you in the eye, and show how these things contradict each other? I hope not. That's about as open-shut, black-white, thus-and-therefore as any argument gets. Subject always to question of course, but I'm pretty sure it bears scrutiny well.

They become persuaded that seeking a drastic physical change will banish their psycho-social problems.

And it never does. FWIW, I am active in the LGBT community in a large city. I know and associate with post-op TSs. Some are friends.

In exactly ZERO cases has SRS solved their issues, and they know it. They rushed in thinking it would fix everything wrong with their lives, and it doesn't. If anything, it creates more problems.

"Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women.

Can anyone disagree with this assertion on scientific merit?

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I'm sure I'm going to earn the hysterical wrath of some members of this forum. Know what? I don't care.

I have never been a herd animal. I am not a sheeple. I have never felt the need to join a majority opinion just because it's a majority opinion. As Mencken said, "often, being in the majority just means that all the idiots are on the same side." Or maybe it was Twain; I don't recall.

I'm just really growing tired of the bullshit.

Yes, there's a wide spectrum of people who exist. No, we don't all fit in neat categories. Yes, we all have the same rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and we certainly all have a right to exist and live our lives as we see fit, so long as we don't interfere with anyone else's rights.

But to demand that we all get money from the public trough because we are a bit different? No! Can anyone do math? If everyone is receiving from the government, and not paying in, how will it work?

This country is already saddled with debt in numbers that most people cannot even comprehend. There is already more money going out than coming in. As years go on, and technology eliminates job after job after job, there are fewer and fewer taxpayers to support more and more leeches.

And you want to be a leech? Breed more leeches? How long do you expect to have a country to live in? It's true enough that the American empire is already doomed, but maybe we could slow down the rate of decay instead of trying to hasten it, don't you think?