Indeed. But – and this is rather a hijack – those Un-Desirables, those weirdos, will still be in the world when Susie is eighteen and out in it. What does it profit her to be less informed about what she will face?
Not that I’m saying homeschooling is bad. I know several parents who do it for plenty of reasons. Mostly the ones I know aren’t actually terribly religious, or at least their reasons have more to do with alternative and personalized teaching methods and curricula. But public school can teach kids early how to ‘work the system’, as it were, and how to deal with unusual or objectionable people.
The main point, and the one more relevant to the conversation at hand, is that nobody can just plug their fingers in their ears and sing LALALALALA to make the strange people go away. At best, they can isolate themselves from society and pray their kids turn out ‘normal’. Heaven help poor Timmy who truly feels in his heart that he’s Thomasina.
I would say children with responsive, sensitive, and nurturing parents do best. It is the strong bond of affection between child and parent that establishes the foundation for healthy development. Marital status, poverty, or gayness has nothing to do with parenting ability.
And interestingly, not in the UK you can’t - since transgender/transexual status is now encompassed in sexual equality legislation.
Just as a point of interest, would you accept that in a world of transgendered people, they would have the right not to employ you, let you marry or have children? If not, why not?
I think most of human sexual (and all other) behavior is between their ears.
When are we going to recognize that what a parent does with their children and what an adult does alone with their partner are usually two separate things?
Studies have shown that children growing up in two-parent-in-the-home families tend to have developmental and adjustment advantages over children raised in one-parent families or children of two-parent families in separated homes. “Advantage,” however, does not translate to a guarantee of good outcome any more than disadvantage translates to a guatrantee of a bad outcome. Based on your simple statement, here, we should prohibit divorce entirely (and arrange for convicted felons to continue to live with their families) so as to ensure an advantage for all children.
No reputable study has indicated that the two-parent-in-the-home families should consist of a husband and a wife and children for the simple reason that there are far too few same sex parenting couples to have been included in any such research, so your claim falsely adds a feature that has not even been examined.
Is it in the best interest of the children to encourage couples to exercise caution so as to bring children into a stable environment that will not be split by divorce? Sure. If you can do that without trampling on the rights of people to marry whom they wish and to not be compelled to stay in abusive relationships, that would be great. Making unsupported claims about homosexuality and parenting does not do anything to give any kids an advantage in life.
I don’t understand the whole thing at all. I don’t get what it means to have a ‘female mind’ versus a ‘male mind’. It doesn’t make any sense to me that one way of thinking or acting is female and another way is male.
I just don’t get it. Haven’t we all agreed that the world isn’t male=logical and female=emotional and that women can like Die Hard and men can like The English Patient, boys can play with dolls, girls can play with dump trucks and anyone can wear or not wear whatever they want as long as they’re not violating nudity laws and that’s OK?
I guess I don’t have a strong gender identity. I’m female because that’s what plumbing came from the factory, and that’s that no matter how much I like hunting, fishing, camping, football and being an engineer. If I woke up tomorrow and had a dick, I’d be a gay dude. The thought of it … does not really bother me.
To me the plumbing is the plumbing, and the only real benefit I see is that I have better odds with men since there are more straight than gay.
“We’ve” agreed people can do what they choose and not be limited by stereotypes, yes. That doesn’t mean men and women have the same brain structures, as apparently they don’t. And that’s by and large what transgenderism is related to.
If a person is genetically male but identifies themselves as female and actively pursues the goal of having their body surgically altered, how is that different from someone who was born physically complete yet mentally identifies themselves as an amputee and actively pursues having limbs removed? A person with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) believes that they were not born with the correct body. In this report a woman said
If someone undergoes plastic surgery because their outer appearance doesn’t match with how they think it should look or they refuse to eat because they see a fat person in the mirror, we usually recommend that they get help from a mental health professional. When you look at this man you mean to tell me that you don’t think there is something wrong upstairs?
So why is a person with Gender Identity Disorder, a recognized mental illness according to DSM-IV, acceptable to society at large but a person with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, another DSM-IV recognized disorder, considered mentally ill and in need of treatment, not acceptance?
In most religions there is a belief in reincarnation, there used to be in Christianity also, I am told. I leave that for religious history scholars.
So if you incarnate as a man for several lifetimes and then decide to try it as a woman you might “feel” like a man in a woman’s body. The past lives you lived still have some lingering emotions and knowledge. Probably the reason five year old kids can write symphonies and others play pianos without any training. If all children came into this world as blank slates there would be no “naturals.” Well, that is just another take on the subject.
Since when are people with gender identity disorders not treated? I thought you needed quite a bit of therapy before a psychologist will sign off on something like SRS.
Not under current standards. You need an evaluation, which is primarily intended to ascertain that you have GID and not, say, a delusional disorder and that you have a realistic understanding of what SRS will accomplish. The SRS process goes in steps with some evaluative components along the way. Therapy can be required, but this is not absolute. The standards: http://www.wpath.org/publications_standards.cfm
I wouldn’t say that gender identity disorder is “acceptable to society at large.” However, it is considered a psychiatric diagnosis that is treatable by surgery. Why that’s so but most plastic surgery doesn’t require formal psychological evaluation, or why body dysmorphic disorder isn’t treated by giving the person the surgery they want, are interesting questions. I can say from my own clinical experience that I’ve never treated a person with anorexia who got to a point where he/she was satisfied with his/her thinness, but I’ve worked with a number of people with GID who were much happier and mentally healthier after SRS.
Well, for one thing, there’s rather a difference between, “being a woman,” and “not having legs.” The vast majority of people who are missing limbs would much rather have their limbs back. The vast majority of people who are women are perfectly happy being women, and would not want to change that at all.
And pardon me for taking your post out of order, but:
People who get cosmetic surgery are not mentally ill as a rule, so I’m not sure who the “we” is that is urging them to see mental health professionals. And, of course, anorexia can be fatal, which is a fairly important distinction between it and gender dysphoria.
I agree that both disorders are treated and, in the strictest sense, they are considered mental aberration or illness. My issue is with the notion that we accommodate people with gender identity issues but we do not accommodate people with BDD. We accommodate a person with GID by saying that a person with the genitalia of one gender is allowed to use the bathroom designated for the other. They are also accommodated by providing hormones to transgender prisoners.
However, a prisoner with BDD who has anorexia nervosa is not permitted to starve themselves and, if they are not benefitting from typical therapy can be force-fed. Patients with BDD who identify as amputees cannot find a clinic similar to this one for transsexuality surgical services.
If the DSM-IV considers GID as a form of BDD and both are mental illnesses then the patients should be treated in similar ways.
Just to be clear here: I am playing Devil’s Advocate. I would like someone to please explain why one form of BDD is tolerated and another is not.
They both get treatment, just different treatments for different problems. And the fact that being a woman or a man is a perfectly rational desire and that missing important limbs is not rationally desirable is a major difference. Being a woman isn’t inferior to being a man or visa-versa; lacking limbs IS worse than having them. And the feeling that “I’m a man/woman, but this is a woman’s/man’s body !” isn’t the same as, say, thinking of yourself as fat when you are not. One is a mismatch between desire and reality; the other is a mismatch between reality and perception.
And most important of all, from those articles and from what I’ve heard elsewhere after the years, GID is most effectively treated by giving the person what they want; conversion to the body they want. That doesn’t work with BDD; plastic surgery doesn’t make them happier.
Some of us would think that you would be the one to be silenced rather than a transgendered person and certainly rather than a gay or lesbian. Your ideas are really creepy.
Fortunately for you, the government shouldn’t censor any of our ideas.