Are all transgendered people mentally ill?

[AHunter3]

@tomndebb

Back off.

This thread has enough misunderstanding and hostility without resorting to name calling or personal attacks.

[ /Moderating ]

** acknowledges referee’s penalty call **

[AHunter3]

@octopus

You are making completely unfounded and irrelevant assertions about my and others’ point of view. Which you’ve already been corrected on. Then you want to use that strawman to lobby for a board rule change?

I honestly don’t think there is any other reasonable interpretation.

I mean, you aren’t intending to say “Anyone who says they would benefit from sex reassignment surgery is clearly and obviously mentally ill. And yes, they are thinking clearly and I think they would indeed benefit from sex reassignment surgery” … are you?

I am lobbying for a board change rule not due to behavior in this thread but because I think in any context, on any board, at any time, under any circumstance, it should be banned from discourse to attempt to disparage someone else’s point of view by saying that point of view, in and of itself, is prima facie evidence that that person is mentally ill (or off their psych meds or any other variant on that general theme).

[octopus]

@AHunter3

I honestly don’t think there is any other reasonable interpretation.

I mean, you aren’t intending to say “Anyone who says they would benefit from sex reassignment surgery is clearly and obviously mentally ill. And yes, they are thinking clearly and I think they would indeed benefit from sex reassignment surgery” … are you?

I am lobbying for a board change rule not due to behavior in this thread but because I think in any context, on any board, at any time, under any circumstance, it should be banned from discourse to attempt to disparage someone else’s point of view by saying that point of view, in and of itself, is prima facie evidence that that person is mentally ill (or off their psych meds or any other variant on that general theme).

You are making the assertion that having a mental illness discredits the person. Not I. I am saying mental illness or no is irrelevant to the accuracy or logic of a statement or an argument. With regards to classes of people being categorized good luck with that being consistently prohibited.

[AHunter3]

@octopus

I am saying mental illness or no is irrelevant to the accuracy or logic of a statement or an argument.

Then why is it being brought up??

Transgender people: “Some of us are male-to-female and some of us are female-to-male. Many of us seek to transition to the sex we should have been born as to begin with. Those of us who are male-to-female identify as women, and those of us who are female-to-male, as men. We’d like your acceptance and understanding”

You: “I’m sorry but anyone who wants to let a surgeon lop off or rearrange their tingly parts with a knife because they don’t think the ones they were born with are the right configuration, is by definition mentally ill.”

AHunter3: “Sure sounds to me like you’re trying to invalidate what the transgender folk are saying here.”

You: “No, not at all. In fact whether they are or are not mentally ill is completely irrelevant to the validity of the point that they were making. Male to female people are women and female to male people are men, and it makes total sense to me for them to do what they’re describing as an appropriate solution. I just thought I’d point out that they also qualify as ‘mentally ill’, in case they, you know, wanted to register for the conference of mentally ill people and their rights and stuff”

:dubious:

[octopus]

@AHunter3

Then why is it being brought up??

Transgender people: “Some of us are male-to-female and some of us are female-to-male. Many of us seek to transition to the sex we should have been born as to begin with. Those of us who are male-to-female identify as women, and those of us who are female-to-male, as men. We’d like your acceptance and understanding”

You: “I’m sorry but anyone who wants to let a surgeon lop off or rearrange their tingly parts with a knife because they don’t think the ones they were born with are the right configuration, is by definition mentally ill.”

AHunter3: “Sure sounds to me like you’re trying to invalidate what the transgender folk are saying here.”

You: “No, not at all. In fact whether they are or are not mentally ill is completely irrelevant to the validity of the point that they were making. Male to female people are women and female to male people are men, and it makes total sense to me for them to do what they’re describing as an appropriate solution. I just thought I’d point out that they also qualify as ‘mentally ill’, in case they, you know, wanted to register for the conference of mentally ill people and their rights and stuff”

:dubious:

What’s :dubious: is your persistence in creating strawmen and attributing arguments to others. You don’t need to make up a dialogue with what you believe other people are saying. Or “reword” it to fit your erroneous interpretation. Don’t you see how ironic you are being?

[CrazyTiger]

[quote=“AHunter3, post:655, topic:800378”]

I want to reply to that part all by itself.
**

@AHunter3

**I want to reply to that part all by itself.
CrazyTiger, I am sorry for being disrespectful of your personal experience with your own condition, and I also apologize quite sincerely for anything I said that comes across as denigrating your choice to utilize psychiatric pharmaceuticals if they allow you to function.

Not at all. Using psychiatric pharmaceuticals isn’t a choice for me. I can’t function without them. I wish it was, because they have their downside mainly impotence and intellectual sluggishness. I can feel absolutely 100% and be impotent and sluggish, or I can live in abject misery. I choose to reside in the middle and suffer through.

@AHunter3

I am coming to the table from a different experience. Although I did go though a period where I was miserable and worried that something was wrong with me, and sought out counselors and therapists to help, I received neither brilliantly effective non-medical help from them nor was I prescribed any psychiatric medication that did me a bit of good. (Mostly I was not prescribed psychiatric medication period, but in the semester immediately preceding my coming-out event I was given a prescription for Stelazine, a pharmaceutical similar to Thorazine. I did not like how it made me feel and did not choose to keep taking it).

I’ve dabbled with many drugs (my psych always wants to try the next best thing which can be exhausting) and have been there, but mostly I am actually very responsive to medication which makes me lucky. My partner has major depressive issues and she is totally unresponsive to medication. It is most frustrating because it is hard to understand why she doesn’t respond to the same medications that I do.

I do understand anyone who doesn’t want to take hard core psych drugs. Every now again when I feel good, I still feel like I don’t need them and will have a shot at coming off them. lol.

@AHunter3

When I did come out, I disturbed some people. They could not figure out WTF I was all excited about, what I was babbling about. Didn’t make sense to them. They wondered if my mind was slipping some gears. It’s something that people do wonder about concerning anyone who doesn’t seem to be making sense or whose behavior is distinctively atypical. Anyway, they asked me to go across the street to the university hospital and talk to the staff there to “clear up any questions about my state of mind”. I agreed to do so and the people at the university hospital, in turn, spent maybe ten minutes talking with me and then asked me to sign a consent form agreeing to be “treated” by the psychiatrist — a permission form I found amusing! (Dentists and dermatologists have you sign forms acknowledging that they’re going to do this or that procedure. A psychiatrist, as I thought of it at the time, would talk to you and they were silly enough to have me sign a consent form to be talked to!) It was regarded as a self-commitment although nowhere on it did it say anything about considering myself to be in need of incarceration. I received a psychiatric diagnosis.

My experience was obviously different. I sought help relatively early in the piece and have seen a psych every two to three weeks for the last 20 years and work very hard to stay on top. I’m very lucky to have this kind of help available to me. Health care is heavily subsidised in Australia where I am from. That is not to say I haven’t seen similar things happen here though.

@AHunter3

I did not, at that time, consider myself to be in any shape way fashion or form impaired, ill, sick, nuts, messed up, confused, traumatized, stressed out, suffering from a brain disorder, emotionally disturbed, cognitionally challenged, batshit insane, or even ill at ease. All of those kinds of worries had been quite effectively dispelled during my coming-out event, which involved realizing I was OK and the world around me was rather messed up about gender. And that despite being male, the person that I was was effectively akin to who the women were, and always had been, throughout my life. I wasn’t sick: society was.

I don’t really agree with you regarding the gender thing, however, more importantly, you are actually very lucky not to feel messed up. It seems being transgender isn’t all bad.

@AHunter3

I didn’t get my brain tested for internal structural issues, nor was its chemistry tested for inappropriate biochemical levels, or an overabundance or deficit of sensitive responsive points in my neurons that would cause my brain to react inappropriately to the normal kinds of brain biochemicals, for that matter. That’s because they don’t do that. They don’t have those kinds of tests. They also weren’t very intent on examining my behavior and my thinking carefully to rule out or confirm that yes, I did or no I did not have a brain issue. Nope, like most people who encounter institutional psychiatric care, I received a diagnosis based on superficial evaluations of my behavior as described by others, and I was kept in a locked-ward setting despite my presense there being technically and officially voluntary.

Your experience sounds horrendous. Being institutionalised is an absolute last resort for me or my partner. For some reason group therapy is compulsory at my local psch hospital. This is something I will have nothing to do with under any circumstance since I’m largely a loner. Psychiatry and psychiatrists are oddly inflexible and stupid in my experience. I stay on top of these things and well away from others so long as I can help it.

@AHunter3

So unlike you, I have no pleasant experience of psychiatry or its pharmaceuticals.

My experience is my cite, just as your experience is yours.

I am not trying to take away your access to pyschiatric help that you feel you benefit from.

But not all people experience that “help” as helpful, and this is largely tangential to the point that attributing someone else’s thoughts and perspectives to mental illness is a way of discounting what they are saying.

I would prefer that the Straight Dope Message Board not tolerate anyone discounting the thinking of any other poster as due to them being “mentally ill”. It’s far more insulting than disparaging another person in other ad hominem ways that the board does not permit.

Like I said above the medication aint all beer and skittles. I don’t have any problem with being “mentally ill” as such though. The human brain is just another part of the body that stuffs up as far I’m concerned.

[CrazyTiger]

@Bone

Editing since more posts came in after I read this one.

I’m not clear on what being a Tory or not has to do with anything here, the same for T. May or Trump, so much so that this seems like it’s in the wrong thread. Shaming other posters however personalizes the argument. Please do not personalize your arguments in this fashion.

ETA:

This is a warning for personal insults. If you feel you must, the BBQ Pit is right around the corner.
[/moderating]

lol. Did you attempt to parse the earlier post. Whatever!

[CrazyTiger]

@AHunter3

Special means “other than normative, ordinary, typical”.

It is neither a compliment nor an insult. It pertains to the extent to which somebody or something is, or is not, an outlier, a peculiar and unusual exception to what you would typically encounter.

Your psychiatrist is wrong. Many people are special. Some people are special in unfortunate ways, others in more favorable ways, and quite a few of us in ways that are neither better than normative/typical nor worse than normative/typical, just…different.

What “special” means is that applying the everyday understandings and assumptions, the ones that work quite well when dealing with the normative/everyday situation, may not be appropriate in this case.

Yes, I’m special. If you don’t like that, take your normality-worshiping, lowest-common-denominator insisting, exception-hating bland little beige-world mind to safer quarters. Whatever your shrink may think, being typical is not in and of itself a good thing.

I won’t be hanging around if it is any consolation :).

I will say that considering that you aren’t exceptional or special is worthy of your consideration. Open up your mind and you might see that you are really exceptional at all.

[Slash1972]

@iiandyiiii

It’s not reasonable to suggest that trans people must do something - reveal their gender identity to compete strangers - that comes with considerable risk, with no possible benefit.

Why on Earth would anyone think that trans people would agree to this?

Two reasons might be links that your yourself posted. They didn’t reveal it, they were “found out” and then got murdered.

Had they told the guys upfront, the guys probably wouldn’t have gone home with them, and then later, after having discovered it, killed them.

So:

1. Don’t say anything, let the guy find out for himself somehow, get murdered

or

2. Tell the guy upfront, don’t go home with him, don’t get murdered.

And you advocate choice 1?

Strange.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

That’s not the issue. The issue is whether they should reveal it at all to people they haven’t developed trust with. Why should they when it can obviously be so dangerous, to health, career, social relationships, and even life?

Nope. You’re wrong. We were specifically talking about the dating context. That’s it, I specifically mentioned that I didn’t think you had to come out to people like your employer. I will go further and say you don’t have to wear a T-Shirt or Yellow armband telling everyone you are transgender.

And as your examples show us, dating someone without telling them that you are a transwoman can be more dangerous than being honest about it upfront.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

You said something far more specific than that, which Miller never suggested.

Yes and I apologized and said I was mistaken. I thought it was him and it wasn’t. Is this one of those inconsequential mistakes that I am going to be hounded by for the rest of this thread? Or are you quibbling that I said something specific about saying “no trans” on the profile when it could have been any combination of words that delivered the same message?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

It’s not reasonable to suggest that trans people must do something - reveal their gender identity to compete strangers - that comes with considerable risk, with no possible benefit.

I have asked for this cite about a dozen times now. Can you please cite me an example for when a transgender person was assaulted or killed for disclosing their status on a dating site? Because it is clear from your examples that the FAILURE to be upfront can have disastrous results.

Why on Earth would anyone think that trans people would agree to this?

Because they have integrity?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

It’s this simple:

Most trans people that I’ve spoken to or heard from on this issue have either revealed their trans status to someone they didn’t know very well (or had it revealed), with negative consequences, or know someone who has. So most trans people have personal experience that revealing their trans status to strangers can have negative consequences.

We are talking about a specific social interaction. Dating.

Please cite where revealing transgender status prior to a date (say on a dating site) has led to murder. Or even getting fired.

With this in mind, why would anyone expect that all or most trans people would ever decide that they must necessarily reveal it to strangers if they choose to date online, when they have these entirely reasonable fears?

Because you still haven’t presented a cite. Noone has. You have presented cites for transwomen getting murdered for NOT revealing their transgender status before dating but none for those who did reveal their transgender status.

I am waiting for the avalanche of cites. I think I can come up with enough counter cites showing transwomen getting killed or assaulted for NOT telling their dates they are transwomen but lets see how many you come up with.

[iiandyiiii]

So you guys are trying to tell trans people, who (according to the ones I’ve spoken to or heard from) pretty much all have either 1st hand or 2nd hand experience of telling a new date that they’re trans and having it backfire (whether by being attacked physically or being outed to employers or others by their date), that they should always tell new dates that they’re trans? As opposed to waiting to tell anyone until they’ve developed trust (and also not engaging in any intimate encounters with them beforehand)?

Good luck with that advice. I tend to think most trans people will probably ignore it because it so obviously (and laughably) ignores their own experiences.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@CrazyTiger

lol. Did you attempt to parse the earlier post. Whatever!

A lot of us did, I don’t think any of us were successful. Most of us just gave up.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@CrazyTiger

I won’t be hanging around…

That much is pretty clear.

[iiandyiiii]

When so many trans people have had negative experiences from telling their new dates that they are trans, and so many have had negative experiences from engaging in intimate encounters without telling their partner they are trans, then the incredibly obvious conclusion is that it might be wise for trans people to refrain from intimate encounters with anyone not aware of their status, and refrain from telling new dates that they’re trans until they’re reasonably certain that there won’t be negative consequences from doing so.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

So you guys are trying to tell trans people, who (according to the ones I’ve spoken to or heard from) pretty much all have either 1st hand or 2nd hand experience of telling a new date that they’re trans and having it backfire (whether by being attacked physically or being outed to employers or others by their date), that they should always tell new dates that they’re trans? As opposed to waiting to tell anyone until they’ve developed trust (and also not engaging in any intimate encounters with them beforehand)?

Tell them BEFORE the date.

Please provide a cite. Its all anecdotal, but at least you should provide a cite to the anecdote. Its really not enough that you heard something form a friend of a friend.

Good luck with that advice. I tend to think most trans people will probably ignore it because it so obviously (and laughably) ignores their own experiences.

Sure and that makes them dishonest. That’s fine, it doesn’t mean they are dishonest in all aspects of their life, just dating.

[iiandyiiii]

I would suggest that lots of folks here should try talking to trans people personally. And perhaps take into account that there are trans people in this very thread, and they know nigh-infinite more about being trans than you do (or I do). I’m not going to try to tell an Asian person what the best way for Asian people to get into college, or meet girls, or whatever, because that would be absolutely fucking ridiculous. It’s crazy to me that so many cis people think that they can reasonably dictate what trans people should/must do in circumstances in which they couldn’t possibly have relevant experience.

[Slash1972]

It’s crazy to me that you think it is more dangerous to tell before a date then having the date find out later and possibly murdering the woman.

Especially when you posted 2 links that show how dangerous it turned out to be because the woman didn’t tell her date before going somewhere alone with them.

I mean, did you actually read the sites you linked to? They did exactly what you claim transgender people should do, and they ended up murdered.