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Goodbye Jesus

Transphobia And Bad Science


Guest BreathinHeathen

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Guest BreathinHeathen

The other day I stumbled across this article on my facebook page: http://www.avclub.com/article/someone-congress-messing-orange-new-black-stars-wi-208396

 

Thinking that my comment wouldn't be seen by many people, I said "Why do people believe that the body is right and the mind is wrong.  Is it that hard to believe the opposite?"

 

Unfortunately, a family member that is deeply religious saw this, and decided to send me this article: http://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Marketing&utm_term=Facebook&utm_content=Facebook&utm_campaign=N-Psychologist-Transgender

 

Now I've taken classes on Mental Illness (I'm a Psych Major) and I was already pretty angry at the things said in this article.  I knew a lot was bullshit and that my brother didn't know what he was talking about in this area of debate.

Here was my response:

Well technically Sexual Dysphoria is a mental illness, but this article is very misleading.  We have no way of determining whether the surgery was the cause of suicide is directly related to the surgery, whether it was related to the stigma associated with sexual reassignment surgery (people not accepting them as their new desired gender), or with the lack of surgery post-surgery.  We also don’t have a comparison to those with sexual dysphoria who did not get surgery.

Other studies have shown that a high majority of those who have sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) don’t regret their surgery and have better social interactions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19816764).   The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recommends that people get SRS and/or hormonal treatment if they have Sexual Dysphoria(http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/files/pdfversion/CR181.pdf) in specific circumstances.  Not only that, but studies show that the brain for a person with gender dysphoria is physically different in the areas that control sexual behaviors.  For example, those who identify as a male but were born female have white matter more similar to a male than a female (http://www.journalofpsychiatricresearch.com/article/S0022-3956%2810%2900158-5/abstract)  (also note that this was before any kind of treatment).  On top of this, studies done on twins show that sexual dysphoria is shared between them 62% of the time (http://goo.gl/7lSZDV).  This seems to suggest that it is passed on through genes.  Along with this, hormonal disorders (which can easily be proven by just observing how much a person produces sex hormones) is highly correlated with sexual dysphoria (http://goo.gl/84cXEL).  It appears that there is a mental issue, but the surgery does help (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12363/abstract, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsm.12155/abstract, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21937168).

This seems to indicate that no matter how much you try to force a person to be a specific gender, they will always identify with the one assigned to their brain.  The studies I presented show that gender dysphoria is genetic and can does physically change the hormonal and neurological development of a person.  The surgery does seem to do a good job at keeping them happy and healthy both as an individual and in society.

 

After debating for a while, I couldn't get across the point that multiple scolarly sources (including the APA) is better data than one Professor with a few studies.  We eventually agreed to disagree.  Unfortunetly, he still doesn't agree :/

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Ugh, I'm sorry your family member is being so willfully hateful about this.

 

I have some friends, and now a family member, who are trans. The family member has been very selective about who knows, because it would not go well if certain other family members found out. So those of us who know are trying to use the previous gender around the bigoted family members, and the new gender the rest of the time. But at least there are enough of us scattered around the family who are supportive that the person doesn't feel completed rejected. It makes me so angry to see people who've never had to deal with that sort of disphoria insisting that it can't be real for anyone.

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People who have sexual disphoria should not be abused by people who have never had it, never dealt with it, never studied it, and never had a close family member or friend who has dealt with it.

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What I don't get is why religitards care in the first place.

So much this.

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People who have sexual disphoria should not be abused by people who have never had it, never dealt with it, never studied it, and never had a close family member or friend who has dealt with it.

Agree.

Not sure why religious people feel the need to do this.

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What I don't get is why religitards care in the first place.

 

Oh, I'm sure it has something to do with it being a plot of Satan, what with the dualist "good/evil" mindset of the Xtian fundy.

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