Why isn't "transgender" a mental problem?

No, that would be gender. Mental sex would be your sex in your mind.

 

Well first of all I should be clear that when I said I would share my opinion with somebody who was doing something I thought they shouldn't do, that was just a general rule for when they were doing something I felt like I knew about (for example, substance abuse, quitting a job too early, etc.). In this case, if a close male friend told me he was actually a woman, has a new name, and would like to be refered to as "her", I would just do what he wanted.

But here is why I would still be skeptical. I was always taught that we should accept the bodies we have. Not doing so would be self destructive, and we should be comfortable in our own skin. I still don't see what "mental sex" means besides cultural norms. Some women choose to reject cultural norms by wearing "masculine" clothes, not shaving their legs, having short hairstyles, etc. They are comfortable with who they are and this doesn't impact their personal gender identity.

 

I'll give you credit for your ethics. Stand by them.

That being said, the problem is that for a transgender they can't love their body no matter what. That's what sets this apart from a lot of other issues, because no matter what, a transgender can feel comfortable in a body that isn't theirs to begin with. So that's when transition comes into play. It's not changing their bodies so much as it is changing their outside appearance to match who they are inside. Not all transgenders need to go through hormonal therapy, some can be content living in their bodies, just changing what they want others to identify them as. Some need hormonal therapy. It's not destroying their bodies, it's changing them so they can have the body that they need. It boils down to who the person is and how they want to identify themselves as.

 

Well I can't object to anything there. That was a good response, you obviously are informed on the subject. I do get nervous when I think about young kids who make medical commitments on this though. Our brains aren't fully developed as teens.

 

I tried looking up "mental sex" and I'm only coming up with stuff like "mind sex", so I'm apparantly looking in the wrong places. So this has nothing to do with cultural stereotypes?

 

It has to do with perception. That wasn't a psychological term. physical sex isn't a scientific term either.

Once again, cultural influence is gender.

Are you suggesting that people don't perceive their sex mentally?

 

Most people know their gender identities by the time they're 6. It's better for them to come to terms who they are at a younger age.

 

The way I ment mental sex is to mean the sex of one's ego, to use the Freudian model.

 

Ok well that's something I can look up.

 

Look up? What is there to look up? I don't understand what you are looking up.

 

You should look up what a delusion is.

 

I haven't read about Freud in many years.

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I'm good on that one.

 

No you aren't. You brought up delusions in a discussion that doesn't involve any.

A transgender person isn't delusional, they know their sex doesn't match up to their mind. A person suffering from delusions wouldn't know that.

You called something known as disphoria a delusion. That proves you clearly aren't good on that one.

You asked, "why isn't transgender a mentalproblem?" To wit I answer, it is. Mental problem is a very broad concept. I would say everybody has mental problems

 

If I'm wrong about transgenderism being delusional, it isn't because I don't know what a delusion is, it would be because I'm not aware of the nuances of transgenderism.

 

No, it's because you don't know what delusional means. It is titled sexual disphoria. Because it is a disphoria.

Disphoria is not delusional.

A delusion is a false belief held, in spite of strong evidence contrary.

So if transgenderism is delusional, what is the delusion?

 

Ok well I'm not so interested in proving to you that I know what that word means, but your other replies are appreciated.

 

Okay, I accept you know what it means.

Back in the topic, what is the delusion that transgender people suffer from?

 

Yes, the standard procedures of the APA are to find the most effective and likely way to help the individual be happy and well adjusted. This includes efforts to help the individual be happy with their physical gender. However, they have found that no every case is the same and it's not effective for everyone. For more extreme cases of gender dysphoria (the term for the psychological disorder), supporting and allowing them to live as the opposite gender is regarded as the more likely method to help them become well adjusted.

The fact that you were born in 1987 is true, and you would be denying reality to say otherwise. Similarly, the transsexual would be denying reality to say that they are physically and genetically different than what they are... but that's where you are confusing things. They are not claiming that they are physically different than what they are, but rather that their psychological gender is not the same as their other physical parts. Whether or not you believe this depends on if you think our gender identity is completely learned, or if there may be developments that happen (and thus developments that can go wrong") which differentiate the genders mentally and physically. And on that note, I will say that there are differences in the brains among males and females which happen early on in the womb. Still, I have not research this topic much, nor do I know if there are any known differences in the brains among transsexuals. While this is certainly a curiosity, the primary concern of treatment is the well being of the person... the cause is a different matter.

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Perhaps I can help a little here, I have done some research into this and there are some very interesting theories as well as some hard science.

From the moment of conception our physical gender is set, it cannot naturally be changed .. however our mental gender (that is what I call it) is set during brain development, all of our brains started out as female type brains and it is the influence of several hormones, mainly testosterone, that changes the way our brains develop, to little testosterone will result in a more feminine brain . .Experiments on rats have shown that by artificially reducing the amount of testosterone within a female rats pregnancy produces male rats that 'act' more like female rats, while increasing the testosterone level will produce female rats that 'act' more like male ones, the same process effects humans as well.

So while a person may have the physical gender of a male, their metal gender may be female .. It cannot be changed as it is hard wired during the brains development at the foetal stage ergo it is not a mental illness as they are born that way.

 

Transgendered people have a mind that is completely healthy functional. The issue is that their healthy mind does not match their body. That is the key. Transgendered people do not believe that they have the body of a different sex, they simply have a mind of one sex and a body of another.