9 Things You Should Know About Transgenderism

The Gospel Coalition ^ | 6/17/14 | Joe Carter

[SoFloFreeper]

Transgenderism has been a frequently discussed topic over the past few weeks. On May 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered. A few days later Time magazine's cover story on the "transgender tipping point" declared the social movement is "poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs." And last week the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination, overwhelmingly passed a resolution titled “On Transgender Identity.” Since the topic will be coming up for some time to come, here are nine things you should know about transgenderism.

[SoFloFreeper]

Interesting read from a Christian writer.

[Jim Robinson]

You mean other than being insanely stupid?

[Veto!]

Cannot thank you enough for this article. It’s beautifully written, clears up any possible confusion on the topic. When you see the facts aligned in this clear, comprehensive way, you know exactly what you need to know about this “mental disorder.”

I’m still fuming about the kids who have sex change surgery before the age of puberty when their hormones kick in. How in the world could their parents and doctors possibly think they are doing these kids a favor? Sick, sick, sick.

[ilovesarah2012]

“Approximately 700,000 individuals in the U.S. identify as transgender.”

Where did they get that number? Is there some kind of transgender registry? Do they ask that on the census? Do they do random polls?

Being transgender no longer a mental ‘disorder’ in diagnostic manual

That old diagnosis meant that a man who believed he was destined to be a woman was considered mentally ill.

No longer so.

The new DSM refers to “gender dysphoria,” which focuses the attention on only those who feel distressed by their gender identity.

“I think it’s a significant change,” said Jack Drescher, a member of the American Psychiatric Association group that made the recommendation after working on it for four years. “It’s clinically defensible, but it reduces the amount of stigma and harm that existed before.”

Drescher said there had been calls to remove the diagnosis altogether just as homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973. Drescher said he believes that removal changed world opinion on homosexuality.

But gender dysphoria was left as a diagnosis to ensure that a transgender person could still access health care if needed. Hormone treatment would be one example. Another would be counseling for those who need help dealing with their emotions.

Many LGBT activists felt that the gender dysphoria diagnosis could be a powerful legal tool when challenging discrimination in health insurance plans and services.

The National Center for Transgender Equality said it was pleased with the change.

“It will mark a significant lowering of the stigmatization that many trans people have faced,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the center.

“The changes help make clear that there is nothing pathological about having a transgender identity, and that the role of the mental health profession is to affirm and support individuals in being themselves in the face of societal misunderstanding,” she said.

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/27/being-transgender-no-longer-a-mental-disorder-in-diagnostic-manual/

If you are a man who thinks you are a woman or vice versa, you are obviously mentally ill. Nothing has changed.

[Chode]

1) You can't change your gender: Have you ever heard of Body Integrity Identity Disorder? Long story short, there are people out there who believe they're "supposed to" have less limbs. Maybe they want to get rid of an arm or a leg. The "problem" these people run into is that surgeons consider it unethical to remove a healthy, functioning body part and refuse to saw off their limbs. Instead, they just refer these people to a psychologist. That seems to make sense, doesn't it?

Yet, when we have people who want to mutilate themselves to "change their sex," we don't treat that as a mental disorder. Instead, we take it seriously. So seriously in fact, we have 9 year olds getting hormone treatments so they can pretend to be another gender.

If a client went to a doctor and said he thought he was a cow, we wouldn't send him to a surgeon to get horns and udders attached. Yet, you can no more change your sex than you can change into a cow. Even if you have a "sex change," your sex hasn't actually changed. A man who mutilates himself to look like a woman, still isn't female. He can't have a child. Very few men are going to knowingly date a man who's surgically mutilated himself to look like a woman. This is a terrible, horrible thing we're doing as a society to these mentally ill people. Instead of getting them the mental help they need, we're catering to their pathology. It's cruel, it's wrong, and a more compassionate society wouldn't wallow so deeply in political correctness that we'd allow people to do this to themselves.

[ilovesarah2012]

Dr. Drescher is obsessed with sex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Drescher

[CitizenUSA]

I’m not a medical doctor or a psychologist, but I think the only morally correct treatment for “gender dysphoria” is to help the victim/patient accept their true, natural sex in accordance with reality. In other words, a man is a man is a man, and telling a man they can be a woman is mentally disordered in itself. It’s medical malpractice. Again, I’m not a “trained professional”, but I don’t even care if someone has something chopped off or sewn on. It doesn’t change nature.

[ilovesarah2012]

Dr. Richard Isay, Who Opposed Classifying Homosexuality As Disease, Dies

Dr. Richard Isay, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who argued that being gay was normal, not an illness, has died at the age of 77.
Isay, the father of two sons who came out gay at the age of 40, died of cancer, The New York Times reported.
“He changed the way the psychoanalytic world viewed the subject of homosexuality,” Dr. Jack Drescher, a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York, told the paper. Drescher is also the author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man.

http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=12263&MediaType=1&Category=26

When homosexuals and other mentally ill people make the rules, they win.

[CitizenUSA]

I think we should be very sympathetic toward those suffering from transgenderism, but it’s exactly like you wrote. Mutilating them to match their perceived gender is no cure. It’s contributing to the mental illness. Again, we don’t call someone a cow or modify them to have horns and an udder if they believe they’re a cow. That’s absurd, but we also say a man can be a woman if he chooses. Absurd!

There are apparently some people who are really sexually indeterminate genetically, but from what I understand, those people are very few and far between. Everyone else has a very clearly defined sex which is apparently easily determined by DNA. If someone believes they are something different than what they really are, we should try to help them understand their delusion and accept reality. Anything else is morally wrong in itself.

Don’t you love leftists, BTW. They are the ones who are constantly claiming to believe in science, but conservatives like us are the ones who are actually grounded in reality. A man cannot be a woman, a cow, or any other creature simply by believing it to be true. The left is also delusional on abortion. A life is a life. An unborn child doesn’t lose its unique identity and personhood simply because a mom doesn’t want it.

[ilovesarah2012]

A staggering 41 percent of transgender people in the United States have attempted to commit suicide, according to a new survey. About 19 percent of transgender people report being refused medical care because of their gender-nonconforming status, and a shocking 2 percent have been violently assaulted in a doctor’s office.
These statistics are just some of the sobering findings from a survey of more than 7,000 transgender people conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, released in October 2010.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40279043/ns/health-health_care/t/transgender-americans-face-high-suicide-risk/#.U6dVwPldWSp

Wait and see if insurance companies aren’t forced to pay for “reassignment surgery”.

The more this is promoted to impressionable kids, the more will think they are “transgendered”.

[Chode]

100%!!! hope it rots...

[Taxman]

Deserves repeating:

"If you are a man who thinks you are a woman or vice versa, you are obviously mentally ill."

[Chode]

100%

[all the best]

“homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973”

The change was the result of protests and threats. It was the first time in history that science (settled) was changed because of mob action. Shameful. The shrinks were just to cowardly to stand their ground and found it easier to surrender.

[hoagy62]

The reasons (as I see them):
1. It’s an abomination
2. It’s disgusting
3. It’s against the natural way of things
4. It’s a sign of mental illness
5. It’s gross
6. It’s icky
7. It’s nasty
8. It’s evil
9. Yuck!

[ilovesarah2012]

Just press hard enough, and the powers that be will fold. The homosexuals know that and that is why we are losing the battle. They will hit churches next.

[Reddy]

#9 sums it all up: ‘’Sex change’ is biologically impossible,” he adds. “People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

[Cementjungle]

You can't change your gender, as it exists all the way down at the genetic level. You can disguise your gender with the help of talented surgeons and taking hormones, but you're still the same gender that your genes say you are.

The whole thing is just an indication of mental illness, and surgeries and acceptance isn't addressing the core problem... they are probably just making things worse.

I also don't see anything "normal" about homosexuality. I may be forced to "accept" it in society, but I think that any person with any sense knows that male/female pairing is pretty much the way mother nature designed things to work.

People always say that homosexual behavior has been seen in some animals. My response to that is that I've also observed dogs humping sofas... that doesn't mean that dogs could ever mate with a sofa, and it doesn't mean it's "proper" behavior.

[Organic Panic]

Anyone want to start the transracial movement? I feel like an Arab therefore I am an Arab. Sometimes I might want to be Asian. It’s all about feelings. Who’s with me?

[Gunpowder green]

What noone mentions is how often these surgeries fail. Go out ten to twenty years and the numbers are sobering. I consider sex change operations malpractice, there is no good reason to mutilate a healthy patient just to serve their delusions, and there is even less of a reason for society to pay for it.