# Are all transgendered people mentally ill? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 1, 2017, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378 "2017-11-01T12:20:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/81 "2017-11-10T14:35:58Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I might see your point if women routinely killed themselves over their breast size. OK. Let me reword, taking into consideration that transpeople kill themselves more often: I think if you’re born with a healthy body, but you feel like killing yourself without medically altering your body’s appearance, then that’s a mental illness. More agreeable? If not, then what’s your objection really about? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/82 "2017-11-10T14:49:15Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > I think if you’re born with a healthy body, but you feel like killing yourself without medically altering your body’s appearance, then that’s a mental illness. OK, let’s take that a premise. Then the question becomes what is the most effective way to treat such a mental illness? For a long time the treatment was to try to convince these people to live in the body they were born with. The results have been a lot of suicides. We are now trying to bring their bodies more in line with their mental state. If that results in fewer suicides and better functioning for these people then it can be argued that that is the appropriate treatment as it relieves suffering and prevents harm. Of course, there is the problem that at least some of the mental problems suffered by the transgender people is due to prejudice, discrimination, and other people reacting to them as if they were a crawling bug on the dinner table. I’m sure that’s a confounding factor. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/83 "2017-11-10T15:19:30Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > AFAICT, transgender people perceive themselves as a different gender than their genital anatomy indicates not because they’re “confused” or “mentally ill”, but because that perception **reflects something real about their physical brains that differs from the physical brains of most people born with similar genital anatomy**. > [@Kimstu](#): > > If transgender people want to not be transgender, and at some point neuroscience comes up with “nanotech magic snakes” or some other solution that can successfully change their brain structure to bring that about, fine. In the meantime, though, ISTM that we as a society will be much better off just including transgender identity, like left-handedness and color vision deficiency, in the category of normal variation, rather than insisting it’s a “mistake” or “illness” or “problem” that needs to be “treated”. There is new research that indicates the lack of any structural differences between a “male brain” and a female brain" — which has implications for trans people and cis people as well. I’ll be blogging on that theme on Monday. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/84 "2017-11-10T16:18:30Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > We are now trying to bring their bodies more in line with their mental state. If that results in fewer suicides and better functioning for these people then it can be argued that that is the appropriate treatment as it relieves suffering and prevents harm. OK. You win that argument. It’s a mental illness, and there’s an appropriate treatment to reduce their suffering. I think I already said as much. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/85 "2017-11-10T17:49:02Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > We are now trying to bring their bodies more in line with their mental state. If that results in fewer suicides and better functioning for these people then it can be argued that that is the appropriate treatment as it relieves suffering and prevents harm. If. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/86 "2017-11-10T18:10:20Z")
Yes. If. There were several if’s in my post. If we could get some solid, objective research on all this it would be grand, but there are all sorts of hangups involved with that. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/87 "2017-11-10T18:18:30Z")
If there were people who risked blindness in order to have their eyes operated on to make them blue-eyed, and who were suicidal if they could not become blue-eyed, I can see how that could look kind of nutty to some observers. But suppose blue-eyed people were treated in a massively different way than (let’s say) brown-eyed people? Well, that would be silly, to treat people massively different on the basis of their eye color, wouldn’t it? And some folks might say that, instead of changing people’s eyes (at nontrivial expense and with medical risks etc), we should change society, precisely _because_ it’s silly to treat people differently based on their eye color. But suppose the tendency to do so — to treat people differently based on their eye color — was really deepy rooted, culturally ingrained, with zillions of people declaring “But they really _are_ different, of _course_ they should be treated differently, what’s _wrong_ with you knee-jerk politically-correct puppets?”, and so on? Changing society, in that situation, kind of starts to look less easy than changing one’s eyeballs. Especially if you want to get there in your own lifetime instead of spending your life in a perhaps-futile attempt to eradicate a deeply embedded social belief system and its resultant behaviors. And besides, what if there really _was_ a tendency for a difference to exist, and not just a batshit insane cultural notion that it did? You stop and realize you aren’t 100% sure, because so many people do think there’s a difference, at least a general-rule / aggregate difference-between-the-populations kind of thing. So _maybe_ these folks who want their eyeballs changed are outliers, misfits among those who share their eye color who would fit in quite nicely among the blue-eyed folks. Or would, if they had blue eyes. Yeah, sure, just because it _could_ be true doesn’t mean it _is_ true, and maybe to your perceptions it doesn’t seem very bloody likely. Nope, there’s no freaking difference between the blue-eyed and the brown-eyed (etc), you’re pretty damn sure of that. But there’s no denying that zillions of people think there’s such a difference, and they do behave accordingly. And among those who believe in such a difference are a large percent of those who seek these eyeball operations. Do you wish to mount a campaign to convince them that they shouldn’t do this because there’s no difference, it’s just cultural bullshit, and therefore they should just accept that they are who they are, brown (or grey or whatever) eyes and all? But let’s say you did that — successfully, I mean. And they still tell you “OK, now convince the other zillions of people, including the blue-eyed folks we want to fit in with, because they see us as Different with a capital D because _they_ believe there is such a difference.” And they say, “Built in innate difference or not, having this operation is going to mean I am perceived as who I really am. You say that is a bullshit perception on their part, based on erroneous beliefs, but the fact remains, people believe this stuff. And they way they will perceive me post-op will be a far better fit for who I am than how I am perceived with the eyes I was born with”. OK, point out the crazy thinking. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/88 "2017-11-10T19:29:26Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > OK, point out the crazy thinking. None of it’s crazy. Mental illness is not ‘crazy’ or ‘nutty’, if that’s what you were alluding to. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/89 "2017-11-10T20:30:29Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The notion that someone does not know their genetic sex without testing is what I am questioning. > > If you have a penis, the gigantically overwhelming majority of the time, you have XY chromosomes. The idea that “you can’t be sure without being tested” is absurd. 😕 That makes no sense. Are you using some peculiar definitions of the terms “know” and “sure” that you’re not explaining to us? Nobody’s disagreeing that, for example, the vast majority of people who **believe** that they have XY chromosomes, based on their physical anatomy and their gender self-identification, actually **do** have XY chromosomes. But since there is a small percentage of people who, for instance, sincerely believe from their physical anatomy and their gender self-identification that they have XY chromosomes but actually have XXY chromosomes without realizing it, it is not possible to definitively **know** or to be 100% objectively **sure** that you have XY chromosomes without genetic testing. If what you’re trying to say is merely _“Having a penis correlates very very very strongly with having XY chromosomes, and the vast majority of people who infer from the fact of their having a penis that they have XY chromosomes are absolutely correct”_, then yeah, nobody’s arguing with that. But that’s not the same as claiming that somebody can incontrovertibly **know** or be **sure** what their genetic sex is without genetic testing. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/90 "2017-11-10T20:41:03Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > I think if you’re born with a healthy body, but you feel like killing yourself without medically altering your body’s appearance, then that’s a mental illness. I don’t disagree exactly, but I just think that doesn’t fully take into account the callous Catch-22 that society’s gender-binary conventions foist on trans people. **Transgender woman:** _I have a penis but it feels natural to me to think of myself as a woman. I want to live and be accepted as a woman._ **Society:** _Sorry freak, you can’t be a real woman unless you have tits and a vagina! Ha ha ha ha weirdo freak!_ **Transgender woman:** _Okay, I want treatment and surgery to get tits and a vagina so I can live and be accepted as a woman._ **Society:** _Why are you trying to mutilate your healthy body, you freak?! Off to the funny farm with you! Ha ha ha weirdo freak!_ It doesn’t surprise me at all that so many transgender people are tempted to kill themselves. What surprises and impresses me is that they don’t end up killing more of the rest of us who are doing this to them. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/91 "2017-11-10T22:41:25Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > None of it’s crazy. Mental illness is not ‘crazy’ or ‘nutty’, if that’s what you were alluding to. Umm, :dubious: The entire premise here is that “these people are not behaving like people whose brains are working in a non-mentally ill fashion”. Unless you anticipate sticking a probe into someone’s brain and examining it for those alleged “chemical imbalances”, exactly how the fuck else would you be diagnosing “mental illness” aside from inferring from their conclusions and decisions that their cognitive processes are a bit off? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/92 "2017-11-10T22:44:42Z")
My point is that the behavior being tagged as “indicative of them being mentally ill” makes perfect sense in context. It is entirely rational behavior. Reread post# 87. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2017, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/93 "2017-11-11T18:32:52Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But that’s not the same as claiming that somebody can incontrovertibly **know** or be **sure** what their genetic sex is without genetic testing. Indeed, and he would typically be the first one to try to score pedantic points if it were an issue near and dear to him. The Intersex Society of America [has a table showing that intersex conditions](http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency)are not nearly so rare as people would like them to be. > [@](#): > > Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births > Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births In a typical high school of 1,000 kids, 10 of them wouldn’t be incontrovertibly “male” or “female,” and 1-2 of them would have had to have surgery as a result. This is actually a greater rate than that of transgender persons for whom their degree of “transness” is such that we will seek medical transition (about 1 in 4,000 for AMAB; about 1 in 8,000 for AFAB). But fewer than the number of people under the greater umbrella of transgender. I don’t even know if I should address the fallacy in the thread of the motivation for suicide, as you already did address it. But in our practice, where the therapists have treated a total of more than a thousand transgender patients over a total of something like 50 years of practice, they have never seen a person nor heard of one locally who committed suicide solely due to body dysmorphia. It played a contributing factor, but in general the top reasons seem to be: - Loss of family support. - Loss of spouse and children’s support. - Loss of career. - Poverty. - Denial to basic services. - Maltreatment by others. - Abuse by others. - Rape and violence. - Fear of multiple factors above. ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/94 "2017-11-12T00:36:23Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > First of all you have to define what mental illness is. The 1959 Midtown Manhattan Survey found that 81.5% of people had some form of psychpathology. 23.4% were severely impaired. In the 70s it was claimed that 66% of Americans suffered from psychotic or neurotic disorders into which they had no insight. President Carter’s wife said: “My primary concern is the mental health of the American people”. Around that time several journalists speculated as to what would happen if a psychiatrist became president. In 1999 the Surgeon General of the United States declared that “All mental illness is biological”. Around the same time psychiatrist Dr David Kaiser commented: “Psychiatry has lost its mind, and with it the minds of its patients” ---
**Author:** ![mistymage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mistymage/32/459_2.png) [@mistymage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mistymage)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/95 "2017-11-12T03:11:11Z")
I’m wondering why accepting a third gender (or fourth, fifth and beyond) bothers people so much? It’s not like anyone who identifies outside of what is “normal” would want to have relationships with people who can’t accept/dislike/hate the concept. > **[Third gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)** > > Third gender is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither man nor woman. It is also a social category present in societies that recognize three or more genders. The term third is usually understood to mean "other", though some anthropologists and sociologists have described fourth and fifth genders. > The state of personally identifying as, or being identified by society as, a man, a woman, or other, is usually also defined by the individual... I could not care less about who does who, how someone dresses or what they do to their own body since I am in a committed Hetero relationship. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2017, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/96 "2017-11-12T06:22:18Z")
As a lot of very smart people have been pointing out for a while now, mental illness is socially defined. American society right now is at least at official levels, accepting of gender dysphoric people, so no, it’s not a mental illness. Is social anxiety a mental illness? How about depression, or ADHD? Because probably most people I know have one of those to some degree. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/97 "2017-11-13T12:42:12Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > There is new research that indicates the lack of any structural differences between a “male brain” and a female brain" — which has implications for trans people and cis people as well. I’ll be blogging on that theme on Monday. Just did. (It’s in IMHO) ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/98 "2017-11-13T13:31:18Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > Honestly, you are not going to make any headway with this person on any argument on any subject using any rhetorical or logical method. Best to just say, “Mmm, interesting” and change the subject. The whole MO of these political commentators is to make provocative unsupported statements, usually about some “other” that they consider beneath themselves. People who are fans of this type of discourse are to be avoided if possible. Ben Shapiro is one of the more lucid, logical conservatives today. If you can’t handle him them you simply cannot communicate with conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/99 "2017-11-13T13:47:37Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > 1. Very lonely gender non-conforming person who hasn’t had a second date in 3 years (since they came out) because when they reveal their gender identity on the first date, the other half heads for the hills. Has posted about “giving up.” No doubt being transgender is tough. I don’t think society has a very good understanding of that transgender means. I know I don’t. BUT, I don’t know what you do about rejection by people who don’t want date a transgender person. I don’t think you can blame people for that. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378/100 "2017-11-13T16:32:40Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > BUT, I don’t know what you do about rejection by people who don’t want date a transgender person. I don’t think you can blame people for that. No of course not, but if we as a society stop making such a big deal about transgender identity (and gender norms in general), then the number of people open to dating transgender people will naturally increase. We as a society don’t get to tell individuals what their dating preferences should be, but it’s a fact that general trends in dating preferences follow societal norms. Back in the days of Jim Crow, for example, a large proportion of white Americans had very negative feelings about dating a black person. Now that our society is more (though still far from entirely) integrated, many more white people are willing to date interracially. Nobody went around forcing or exhorting individual white people to date black people if they didn’t want to, and nobody’s going to make cisgender individuals date transgender people if they don’t want to. But in all such cases, societal acceptance generally results in higher levels of individual acceptance. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-transgendered-people-mentally-ill/800378.md?page=6)