They have real mental problems and need serious treatment, probably involving therapy and drugs. Unfortunately, they fixate on their genitals as the source of their unhappiness. They want to be someone else; one's gender is a fundamental aspect of one's identity--by mutilating their genitals, they think they can become a different person.
Sadly, they remain the same person, but mutilated, after "reassignment" surgery. None of their problems have been solved, and they have only added more problems.
The surgeons who mutilate these people for money are despicable. Yes, therapy is probably not as lucrative as doing the mutilation surgeries, and it is probably difficult--but that is what these people need, desperately.
I’ve been reading the threads on this illness and hadn’t commented until now. Here goes;
A dear friend of mine called a couple weeks ago, on the verge of collapse. Her brother had announced he was going all in with a sex change. Apparently he had dressed up previously and gone out in public as a woman. Now he has decided, at 54 years old, he is really a woman.
Now that is challenging enough for my friend to digest. What turned it on it’s head was finding out from a relative that said brother, had raped this relative decades ago. As that was revealed, others came forward with their stories of incidents with this brother.
All this clarified to me that yes indeed, those who seek this surgery are indeed very sick. My friend now fears her brother will eventually commit suicide as more of his past becomes public.
All of it makes my head spin. I know there has always been sick people amongst us, but these days their sickness is in our faces all day long.