24 ms·

If you are 11 and wait 7 years to get a tattoo, your tattoo will look just as good or better. If you are 11 and wait 7 years to transition, you will suffer irr

If you are 11 and wait 7 years to get a tattoo, your tattoo will look just as good or better. If you are 11 and wait 7 years to transition, you will suffer irreversible physical and psychological damage. You will have missed formative social experiences. You will have to get expensive, painful surgeries to partially correct what was done to you.

tosti 2mo ago
At least you'll have a better idea if it's psychosomatic or not.
- pseudalopex 2mo ago
  Gender dysphoria is mental by definition.
  - alexgieg 2mo ago
    No, it's first a matter of different connectomes. Their brains are physically those of the opposite gender, as shown by several studies using advanced neuroimaging and by autopsies. The mental/psychological effects of those brains being that way are effects of those very physical differences. To fix that, we'd need microneurosurgery on the level of science fiction. Maybe in a few decades we will, but right now, reshaping the body so it gets as close as possible to what the brain expects is the only option available. And yes, that neuroimaging could be used as a clinical diagnostic criterion, entirely replacing psychological and psychiatric evaluations. The problem is it costs a fortune, so right now only scientific teams with big budgets use it, and only to publish papers. Over the next several years, with any luck, neuroimaging diagnosis may fall enough in price that it may become the norm, at least in first-world countries.
    - tosti 2mo ago
      Oh really? If a psychriatic disorder would warrant changing the environment the brain lives in, rather than any other therapy, why stop at gender disphoria? Could the MPS people get surgerey so they have more mouths, limbs or even entire bodies except the brain? How about the schizo? Would treatment involve a set of VR goggles with a program that randomly generates perpetually morphing fantasy worlds? How about we make the depressed colorblind so their world is actually gray all the time? I don't see why a therapy would purposefully not treat the actual symptoms, other than helping a patient understand and cope with them so they can recover their wellbeing.
      - alexgieg 2mo ago
        First and foremost, you're incurring in a slippery slope. Do you want reality, as complex as it may be, or merely to win an argument? Second, you don't see it because you don't care for their problem, otherwise you'd either learn what the actual hard scientific research on the topic by neurologists and psychiatrists show, as well as the measurable results of the different clinical protocols developed by psychiatrists and psychologists, or defer to their expertize. You yourself "not seeing why" what they do in such cases is what needs done is as meaningless as you "not seeing why" any expert does what they do in fields you're not yourself an expert in. So either become one, or stop getting in their way based on "common sense"-based cognitive errors and biases.
        tosti 2mo ago
        I care about people and my children and grandchildren in particular. Are you really implying common sense isn't what got us here so far? That common sense would get in the way of future geberations? Are you also really using the logical fallacy argument on me while disregarding your hypocrisy?
ASalazarMX 2mo ago
IMO the issue is that we're still seeing the world in black and white. A trans person can't transform into the opposite sex, that's biologically impossible. They exist up in a middle ground, and they should be recognized and accepted as they are so they don't feel the need to transition and detransition to fulfill the binary standard. Trying to make-believe that people can convert to the opposite sex, and even go back, is doing more psychological damage than accepting our differences, not to speak of the invasive/destructive treatments on an otherwise healthy body.
- HedonicEscal8r 2mo ago
  If you think that a modal person who transitions does so because they don't understand what biological changes can be achieved* and/or because society doesn't accept them "as they are" enough, you are hopelessly confused about this entire topic. *Note that a disagreement about whether currently available medical procedures constitute a "sex change" is almost always a dispute of semantics and not of fact. A trans woman who describes herself as having "changed her sex" is almost never claiming she can give birth.
  - ASalazarMX 2mo ago
    You're not getting my point. I've seen that trans people don't want others to think of them as their former sex, they don't want to be reminded that they're still men that look look like women, or viceversa. Mentioning that they can't actually get pregnant, or impregnate someone, is taboo. IMO, this shows a strong psychological, rather than medical, motive. That sets their personal expectations to an impossible ideal, since that needs forcing others to participate in the illusion of a complete sex change. Disclaimer: I don't know any trans person IRL, so my perception is likely skewed by their loud online interactions. See this article about muxes, the third gender of the prehispanic Zapotec civilization that still survives today, for an example of accepting gender choice differences healthily, without creating culture wars, and without aggresive treatments on an otherwise healthy individual: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender-of-southern-mexico https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender...

tosti 2mo ago

At least you'll have a better idea if it's psychosomatic or not.

pseudalopex 2mo ago
Gender dysphoria is mental by definition.
- alexgieg 2mo ago
  No, it's first a matter of different connectomes. Their brains are physically those of the opposite gender, as shown by several studies using advanced neuroimaging and by autopsies. The mental/psychological effects of those brains being that way are effects of those very physical differences. To fix that, we'd need microneurosurgery on the level of science fiction. Maybe in a few decades we will, but right now, reshaping the body so it gets as close as possible to what the brain expects is the only option available. And yes, that neuroimaging could be used as a clinical diagnostic criterion, entirely replacing psychological and psychiatric evaluations. The problem is it costs a fortune, so right now only scientific teams with big budgets use it, and only to publish papers. Over the next several years, with any luck, neuroimaging diagnosis may fall enough in price that it may become the norm, at least in first-world countries.
  - tosti 2mo ago
    Oh really? If a psychriatic disorder would warrant changing the environment the brain lives in, rather than any other therapy, why stop at gender disphoria? Could the MPS people get surgerey so they have more mouths, limbs or even entire bodies except the brain? How about the schizo? Would treatment involve a set of VR goggles with a program that randomly generates perpetually morphing fantasy worlds? How about we make the depressed colorblind so their world is actually gray all the time? I don't see why a therapy would purposefully not treat the actual symptoms, other than helping a patient understand and cope with them so they can recover their wellbeing.
    - alexgieg 2mo ago
      First and foremost, you're incurring in a slippery slope. Do you want reality, as complex as it may be, or merely to win an argument? Second, you don't see it because you don't care for their problem, otherwise you'd either learn what the actual hard scientific research on the topic by neurologists and psychiatrists show, as well as the measurable results of the different clinical protocols developed by psychiatrists and psychologists, or defer to their expertize. You yourself "not seeing why" what they do in such cases is what needs done is as meaningless as you "not seeing why" any expert does what they do in fields you're not yourself an expert in. So either become one, or stop getting in their way based on "common sense"-based cognitive errors and biases.
      - tosti 2mo ago
        I care about people and my children and grandchildren in particular. Are you really implying common sense isn't what got us here so far? That common sense would get in the way of future geberations? Are you also really using the logical fallacy argument on me while disregarding your hypocrisy?

ASalazarMX 2mo ago

IMO the issue is that we're still seeing the world in black and white. A trans person can't transform into the opposite sex, that's biologically impossible. They exist up in a middle ground, and they should be recognized and accepted as they are so they don't feel the need to transition and detransition to fulfill the binary standard. Trying to make-believe that people can convert to the opposite sex, and even go back, is doing more psychological damage than accepting our differences, not to speak of the invasive/destructive treatments on an otherwise healthy body.

HedonicEscal8r 2mo ago
If you think that a modal person who transitions does so because they don't understand what biological changes can be achieved* and/or because society doesn't accept them "as they are" enough, you are hopelessly confused about this entire topic. *Note that a disagreement about whether currently available medical procedures constitute a "sex change" is almost always a dispute of semantics and not of fact. A trans woman who describes herself as having "changed her sex" is almost never claiming she can give birth.
- ASalazarMX 2mo ago
  You're not getting my point. I've seen that trans people don't want others to think of them as their former sex, they don't want to be reminded that they're still men that look look like women, or viceversa. Mentioning that they can't actually get pregnant, or impregnate someone, is taboo. IMO, this shows a strong psychological, rather than medical, motive. That sets their personal expectations to an impossible ideal, since that needs forcing others to participate in the illusion of a complete sex change. Disclaimer: I don't know any trans person IRL, so my perception is likely skewed by their loud online interactions. See this article about muxes, the third gender of the prehispanic Zapotec civilization that still survives today, for an example of accepting gender choice differences healthily, without creating culture wars, and without aggresive treatments on an otherwise healthy individual: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender-of-southern-mexico https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender...