Arlington Parents Coalition keeps strange bedfellows

[Anonymous]

Ok, so it isn’t a mental disorder. It is a medical disorder. Same thing. If it takes hormones and major medical interventions like genital surgery to make someone feel better, then OMG how is that not a medical issue. I can think of nothing normal in my body that would require such major medical intervention to “fix” - you fix something because there is a problem, medical one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all need to take a chill pill. I looked up Lisa Littman and she is a well respected professor and MD at Brown U. Just because her study challenges your ideas doesn't mean she is bigot or that her research is bigoted. There is nothing fake about her or Brown University.

Yup. Nor Johns Hopkins, which doesn't do gender reassignment surgeries anymore.

No, you have that exactly wrong.

Johns Hopkins stopped doing gender reassignment surgeries way back in the 70s (about the time homosexual orientation was still considered a mental illness by the APA). This was primarily under the influence of one psychiatrist's beliefs. They have since reconsidered and resumed doing such surgeries as part of a multidisciplinary specialty service.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/center_transgender_health/services/surgical-services.html
Gender Affirmation Surgical Services

The Center for Transgender Health is a multidisciplinary center that offers world-class care for all aspects of the gender affirmation process. We work alongside patients to identify the surgical procedures that best meet their gender affirmation goals. Our team of surgeons specializes in transgender and gender-nonconforming surgical services including top and bottom surgeries as well as facial masculinization or feminization.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-shadow-cast-by-psychiatrist-on-transgender-issues-finally-recedes-at-johns-hopkins/2017/04/05/e851e56e-0d85-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?utm_term=.f48a14913009
Long shadow cast by psychiatrist on transgender issues finally recedes at Johns Hopkins

Nearly four decades after he derailed a pioneering transgender program at Johns Hopkins Hospital with his views on “guilt-ridden homosexual men,” psychiatrist Paul McHugh is seeing his institution come full circle with the resumption of gender-reassignment surgeries.

[Anonymous]

That “one scientist” was a psychologist who studied outcomes and found that people who underwent sex reassignment surgery were as emotionally disturbed afterwards as they were before the surgery. Surgery did not improve outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The WHO admits it moved the classification to reduce the stigma and encourage people to get help. That doesn’t sound to me like they changed their mind based on medical reasons, but social reasons.

“Get help” for what? To treat the mental illness that does occur for many transgender people - anxiety and depression? If people are distressed they should seek help.

Being transgender doesn’t mean you’re automatically distressed.

[Anonymous]

How is it not a mental illness/disorder if everything that makes you a particular gender - hormones, chromosomes, body parts and body shape - make you one gender but your brain tells you that you’re another? Serious, but maybe ignorant question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it not a mental illness/disorder if everything that makes you a particular gender - hormones, chromosomes, body parts and body shape - make you one gender but your brain tells you that you’re another? Serious, but maybe ignorant question.

Any possible medical interventions are used to change the body to better fit with one’s true self. The brain doesn’t need to be “fixed” (aside from possible anxiety or depression), just maybe the body.

[Anonymous]

And you think when the brain and body don’t match one’s true self that is normal and not a medical condition somehow? Bodies and brains are designed to match. Brains matching bodies are fundamental to our existance.

Maybe the reason I feel this way is that I place no stigma on having a medical condition/mental illness. There is no judgment associated with it. The opposite, it is what it is and one takes steps needed to make the body and mind right. What is “right” can easily be gender reassignment, or just living as what the brain wants. It isn’t a choice, it just is what it is and people should be free from medical/mental distress so they can live healthy and happy lives. But in the end, if I have a major body part like a brain or heart, that isn’t functioning in a way I can live with, medical and/or psychiatric intervention is necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I guess I'm a bigot about murderers and drug dealers and prostitutes and women who have abortions and adulterers and executioners and swindlers and cheaters and liars and bullies and people who tell others to "gfy." I think their acts are wrong and their values and realities intolerable.

Murder, drug dealing, adultery, lying, etc. are actions, while transgenderism is a state of being. Judging people for who they are, separate from their actions, is pretty much the definition of bigotry.

Again, the posts have not JUDGED the PEOPLE - they believe they have a mental condition that should be treated. They can be wrong without being a bigot. Not one single post has attacked the transgender PERSON or judged them as a PERSON.
Living a criminal lifestyle is a state of being, too. Something in the way the person's brain functions. Most people believe that lifestyle is wrong. Some people still think transgenderism is wrong.

It's not a mental illness.
It's not a lifestyle.
It's not wrong.

You think that transgender people have a mental illness, choose it as a lifestyle, and are "wrong". How much more disparaging and hateful could you be? You are a bigot.

How do you define “mental illness”? (Btw, I still don’t know if ADD is considered a mental illness or not.)

If it's in the DSM, it seems it would be considered a mental condition. More pertinent question is how "illness" is defined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moderate here and I mostly agree with the pip. I also agree that being transgender is a mental illness.

Do you also consider homosexuality and hysteria to be mental illnesses?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/28/the-w-h-o-says-being-transgender-is-a-mental-illness-but-thats-about-to-change/

No

OK. Let's see what you think about transgenderism in 20 years.

From the article linked above:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the psychiatric disorder guidebook, once included homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, the diagnosis became “sexual orientation disturbance,” and then disappeared completely in 1987, largely because of gay rights advocates.

Hysteria, an affliction often attributed to women, was in the DSM until 1980.


And the APA only considers gender dysphoria as "a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify" and "Not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria and that distinction is important to keep in mind." So they only consider the mental conflict a "disorder" if someone is troubled by it.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/expert-q-and-a

It's just a matter of time before the APA catches up with the rest of the world.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/health/who-transgender-reclassified-not-mental-disorder/index.html

So the APA should NOT acknowledge that a person's biological parts may be different from the gender that person identifies? And we should all believe that nobody ever comes to identify as a different gender without conflict with the physiology of their body? Isn't that the whole "trans" part of "transgender"? "Trans" = change, across, through, changing thoroughly, beyond. If what they want to be is different from what they physically are - that's a conflict. And many people - not all - struggle with that in their minds as they come to accept it for themselves = "conflict"

I hope the APA retains it in whatever form in the DSM because that will allow people who do struggle with their self-identification, or with transitioning and dealing with those around them in the process, get the counseling they may need. Not a diagnosis, health insurance isn't going to pay for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That “one scientist” was a psychologist who studied outcomes and found that people who underwent sex reassignment surgery were as emotionally disturbed afterwards as they were before the surgery. Surgery did not improve outcomes.

Again, no, you have it wrong.

He is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. And his colleagues at Johns Hopkins reviewed his data, methods, and conclusions, and they found them lacking. Unconvincing. Not … scientific enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moderate here and I mostly agree with the pip. I also agree that being transgender is a mental illness.

Do you also consider homosexuality and hysteria to be mental illnesses?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/28/the-w-h-o-says-being-transgender-is-a-mental-illness-but-thats-about-to-change/

No

OK. Let's see what you think about transgenderism in 20 years.

From the article linked above:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the psychiatric disorder guidebook, once included homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, the diagnosis became “sexual orientation disturbance,” and then disappeared completely in 1987, largely because of gay rights advocates.

Hysteria, an affliction often attributed to women, was in the DSM until 1980.


And the APA only considers gender dysphoria as "a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify" and "Not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria and that distinction is important to keep in mind." So they only consider the mental conflict a "disorder" if someone is troubled by it.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/expert-q-and-a

It's just a matter of time before the APA catches up with the rest of the world.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/health/who-transgender-reclassified-not-mental-disorder/index.html

So the APA should NOT acknowledge that a person's biological parts may be different from the gender that person identifies? And we should all believe that nobody ever comes to identify as a different gender without conflict with the physiology of their body? Isn't that the whole "trans" part of "transgender"? "Trans" = change, across, through, changing thoroughly, beyond. If what they want to be is different from what they physically are - that's a conflict. And many people - not all - struggle with that in their minds as they come to accept it for themselves = "conflict"

I hope the APA retains it in whatever form in the DSM because that will allow people who do struggle with their self-identification, or with transitioning and dealing with those around them in the process, get the counseling they may need. Not a diagnosis, health insurance isn't going to pay for it.

AMA can create a new diagnosis code for it.

APA can continue to support anxiety and depression.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it not a mental illness/disorder if everything that makes you a particular gender - hormones, chromosomes, body parts and body shape - make you one gender but your brain tells you that you’re another? Serious, but maybe ignorant question.

child
Any possible medical interventions are used to change the body to better fit with one’s true self. The brain doesn’t need to be “fixed” (aside from possible anxiety or depression), just maybe the body.

Here's the problem- you are assuming that transgenderism is in fact a child's "tue self" and that the body needs to be fixed t omatch the brain. But that assumes that the brain's way of thinking is fixjed, not elastic, and that the body is what we should be fixing.

There is a ton of research that shows how the brain is in fact elastic, and can change. Really the whole idea of Cognitive Behavioral therapy is about changing the way the brain is thinking.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/about/pac-20384610

There is also plenty of research about how teens try on different identities and he experience a fair amount of discomfort about body changes during puberty.
There is plenty of research about how children are impressionable.
There is also plenty of research that most gender dysphoria does not persist into adulthood.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html
So- why is it that we choose to try and change kids bodies, instead of changing the way their brains are thinking?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is it not a mental illness/disorder if everything that makes you a particular gender - hormones, chromosomes, body parts and body shape - make you one gender but your brain tells you that you’re another? Serious, but maybe ignorant question.

child
Any possible medical interventions are used to change the body to better fit with one’s true self. The brain doesn’t need to be “fixed” (aside from possible anxiety or depression), just maybe the body.

Here's the problem- you are assuming that transgenderism is in fact a child's "tue self" and that the body needs to be fixed t omatch the brain. But that assumes that the brain's way of thinking is fixjed, not elastic, and that the body is what we should be fixing.

There is a ton of research that shows how the brain is in fact elastic, and can change. Really the whole idea of Cognitive Behavioral therapy is about changing the way the brain is thinking.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/about/pac-20384610

There is also plenty of research about how teens try on different identities and he experience a fair amount of discomfort about body changes during puberty.
There is plenty of research about how children are impressionable.
There is also plenty of research that most gender dysphoria does not persist into adulthood.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html
So- why is it that we choose to try and change kids bodies, instead of changing the way their brains are thinking?

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