I can guarantee you in a few hundred years that will not be the treatment.

Trans people still have some of the highest suicide rates and depression of any group out there. A man who has surgery or takes hormones to become a "woman" will never actually be a woman and deep down inside he knows this, thus the mental distress persists.

If one day possible, adjusting the brain to match the biological body is clearly a far superior solution. It's something science will hopefully be able to do, although could be hundreds of years in the future or what not.

Yeah. I'd take that bet in a heart beat.

My sources. Actually talking to Trans people pre and post surgery.

Your sources: talking out of your ass and some discredited study on post assignment surgery that's circulated by bigots like you to justify their intolerance

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...click=sf_globe

It would be nice to have gay posters here to explain why trans is part of the agenda.

i don't see a meaningful difference between changing the brain to match the sex, and changing the sex to match the brain, practical difficulties aside.

Huge difference. Our identities are what goes on in our brains and messing with the brain is messing with who we are.

At an extreme, heart transplants are good for us but a brain transplant would mean our death.

If by practical difficulties, you mean the fact that are no successful and reliable treatments to change the brain to match one's biological sex?

Correct. Cotton was saying that if in a few hundred years we could do this, then we would likely do that instead of sex reassignment surgery, and rugby disagreed. presuming our ability to change the brain to match the biology was sophisticated enough, I agree with cotton

Couple thoughts.

The way I pictured this was, say we can identify in an infant whether they are Trans gendered or not, and we have the ability to either give them a shot that changes their brain, or one that changes their biological gender. they are essentially no different, even though we are going to dramatically change their life, the difference is arbitrary, neither is better than the other. Once older, there are more considerations, but

I don't agree that giving someone hormone shots for their entire life doesn't qualify as messing with who you are.

I also think that preserving who you are is just one consideration among many

Many men feel less manly when they have some balding. Some of them correct it by getting hair transplant or a toupee. You could ask the same question of them, can't you?
Do they have a mental illness? I say no for balding men and no for transgenders.

Okay but ignoring the probable fact that you can't look at an infants brain and identify transgender and then change it, can you see what's that's saying to transgender people when their big problem isn't the physical procedure it's the attitudes of society.

Absent all the bigotry they face do you think transgender people would have wanted to have their brains altered as infants? Even with all the bigotry?

Because almost always it's the same people hating non-straight people as hating non-cis-gendered people. Also, typically, those identifying as LGBTQ tend to be less hung up on sexual or gender norms, so we kind of get along better and gravitate to similar places/groups.

Years of therapy, hormone treatment, and possible removal/radical alteration of your genitals is no big problem, so long as society is accepting? I can't say that I agree. The root of the problem is being born with a brain that does not match your biology.

Snap yes i'd imagine. Trans people's chief "problem" is that they were born with a brain that doesn't match their biology, so they go to great lengths to alter their biology. As an aside, i think this is totally reasonable - because its the best option we have at the moment. But, the problem that's being fixed is making their brain match their biology. So i don't see how they wouldn't snap accept something that would match their brain and their biology from the get go.

It's not the big problem compared to having to cope with the attitudes of society. It shouldn't be about being accepted, it should be the case that no-one thinks there's anything to accept.

Ok well I'd go with snap no unless society makes life so miserable for them it's not worth it - we could always ask them. It's changing something unwanted to something wanted as opposed to changing what they want - these are fundamentally different kinds of thing. When it's linked to how we self-identify it's very rare people want to change.

I think this sums it up pretty nicely. While the interests of lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals are not completely alligned with the trans community, I do feel a lot of solidarity with trans individuals.

1) We get **** on by a lot of the same people, so we spend a lot of time basically getting together to say, "yo, those guys are stupid, right?" And more specifically, a lot of the oppression comes from a certain rigid view of gender roles and sexuslity that many members of both groups want to push back against.

2) A shared experience of feeling like you are outside of the norm, especially during puberty.

3) Coming out exposed me to trans people who I otherwise would never have met, and gave me a much better understanding of the trans experience.

To my knowledge, I had never met a trans person until I started going to lesbian bars. Once I did, I met lots of men and women in various stages of transition who viewed those bars as safe spaces where they could be themselves, perhaps test their new identity before revealing themselves to friends, or family, or work colleagues, etc. Just like with homosexuality, it is usually harder to oppress a group when members of that group are your friends/lovers/etc.

I don't understand this notion that what's going on in the brain is somehow sacred and therefore is off limits to be touched, as opposed to the rest of the body, as though the brain can't malfunction and the rest of the body can. That's getting borderline religious IMO. Might as well start talking about a soul.

Medical science already has hundreds of commonly prescribed drugs that affect brain chemistry and function, some in dramatic ways.

And this is only after a few decades of good science concerning the brain.

I'd imagine in the next few hundred years such medications will get far more sophisticated and reliable and have a much wider range of scope.

It's not scared and it's nothing to do with souls. If we could identify schizophrenia or clinical depression etc and fix it then of course we would.

The two main points I'm making are that 1) How we identify is a key part of who we are so changing it changes who we are in an important way, and 2) it's very harmful and offensive to transgender people to categorize them as having a mental illness that should be fixed.

Even if it's true?

The idea we should ignore a disorder or refuse to call it a disorder just to spare the feelings of the people suffering is not helping anybody IMO.

There are groups who think being born deaf or blind are not disorders that should be treated, and now there are groups who say the same thing about autism.

These are opinions dictated by emotions and feelings, not facts and logic.

Further scientific research into things homosexuality and transgenderism may very well be upsetting to people's beliefs, but science often does that.

Of course not. The fact their biggest problem is the attitudes of society which can make their lives intolerable should play a big part in how we discuss and deal with it.

Scientific research can't answer these questions. A mental illness is an issue with the mind that in itself causes a problem to the person. That simply doesn't apply to LGBT where the problems are external to the mind and mostly with a partial exception for T, external to the body as well.

Well it seems like in a perfect world society would not harass or persecute anybody based on any medical condition they had period, and a multitude of treatments would exist for those conditions that the person could choose from.

If someone wanted to get surgery and take hormones they could go that route. If they wanted to take this hypothetical pill that rewire their brains, they could that.

I guess my point is that we shouldn't stop researching the condition and possible new treatments just because some people are attached to the current understanding/treatments.

Definitely don't stop research as long as it's proper science and not some conversion type quackery. I'm all for letting people chose but we have to recognise what choice is being considered if the biggest problem faced is bigotry/persecution.

Most likely if it could be detected very early then the physical sex can be trivially corrected at that point. As a hypothetical that seems a much better answer then the idea of meddling with the brain.

I think it's worse that mental illness' have such a bad "reputation" in society. Also just because you have a mental illness doesn't mean you have to be "fixed" just that you could.

Also does it really matter if you classify it as a mental illness or not? What will people think ? "Ohh he is transgender, god has accidentally given him the wrong body"

Classification and acceptance are a different pair of shoes, but yeah there probably will be some crazies who then try to "cure" it without any scientific background.

Btw. if it's not classified as a mental disorder and as something natural, people in a lot of countries will have problems having their therapy or even genderreassignment paid for by healthinsurance.

Yes it really matters.

Mental illness shouldn't be stigmatized at all - I agree with you on that it but that's not the point. Telling people they are mentally ill when they are not is an attack on them not a diagnosis.

When it's the general attitude of society and sometimes even the parents/family telling a young person struggling with puberty that they are mentally ill then that's a seriously big problem for them.

Well I'm not sure what you are suggesting, do you want to classify it as natural? Like I said this will have implications for their own well being and means that healthinsurcance doesn't have to pay for anything, at least this is how it would work in Germany.