Originally Posted by
Ele
Question for you Pig. Do you support transgender reparative therapy?
No, as far as I know they are unscientific, it's just some people who think they can beat the trans out of the 'patients'. With proper treatment I think the disorder can be managed, but 'reparative therapy' is akin to trying to beat the dyslexia out of someone.
Originally Posted by
Lazors
I don't think this is relevant to the case. She chose to dress up as black for social reasons. It makes total sense to change your social attributes when the world fails to treat people equally. In Sweden your name might get filtered out if you have a foreign name. How would you deal with this? By staying proud and not conforming or by removing the label?
I don't think this is true. Some parts of the media are trying to frame it as 'white girl pretends to be black', but if you watch some interviews with her she really believes herself to be black.
It's not a case of "guy puts melons in his shirt to get free drinks at bar".
Originally Posted by
Lazors
In the case of transgender people, it's preferable to help the person rather than argue about whether it's a psychic condition or not. If transgender people weren't frowned upon the suicide rates might go down. If their dysphoria can be treated in a humane way, then we have a different argument, but one thing that certainly isn't helping is letting them go through abuse because of their disorder.
As previously discussed with others, mental illness rates in pre-GRS is high, and after GRS it is still high. As a demographic their mental illness rates are high either way. Simply telling people not to bully isn't going to stop them from being mentally ill. Abuse may well have caused the mental illness, and stopping abuse is always good, but if you are using trans as your demographic anyway, then they already have mental illness, so stopping the abuse isn't going to cure anything.
Dysphoria can be treated 'in a humane way' by talking to a therapist. Cutting off your dick is not a solution.
Originally Posted by
Lazors
Besides, there's always the possibility that their dysphoria was caused by gender stereotypes and similar.
Also this is assuming dysphoria is harmful to the person in question. Suicide rates might be society's responsibility and bipolarity might be treatable without interfering with the dysphoria. Keep in mind this is coming from someone who's not very knowledgeable on psychology.
Sure, what you say is possible. There are many people who feel that gender stereotypes are harmful. Some trans people may want to switch genders just because they feel like they fit in better elsewhere. It's a sad reality but it is probably true.
If so we should treat mental illness resulting from societal causes by reducing the emphasis on gender stereotypes, not by creating new ones. Identification with new labels just increases divisions between stereotypes. Nowadays a guy can't just be feminine, he must be gay. A woman can't be butch, she's a lesbian. This is not an improvement on the system.
Unfortunately we have to consider the entire climate of society, and with gender orientated movements like feminism, and race orientated movements like NAACP, it's hard to remove boundaries when people are trying so hard to enforce them.
Likewise, equality can't be achieved through homogeneity.
Originally Posted by
Lazors
I have never heard anyone challenge that skin colour doesn't matter
Really, because this whole story we are discussing is that a woman who changed her skin color is basically going to be fired because they discovered she isn't black. Now you might say that racist organisations like NAACP or KKK or whatever are an exception, but still it's certainly not unheard of even in today's day and age.
Originally Posted by
Lazors
Uh, don't want to burst your bubble but we've all had African ancestors at some point. Why can't it be as simple as someone with black skin is black whether they were born that way or not?
At one point human and dog genetics diverged, isn't it equally possible that someone might be born a dog-human?
Black/white/asian humans have evolved separately for more time than wolves and domesticated dogs have. I think everyone can tell the difference between a pug and a wolf, and they can acknowledge that no matter how many times pugs breed, you won't get a wolf. (Unless you do some very selective breeding over thousands of years)
Last edited by ImmortalPig; Jun 19, 2015 at 10:25 AM.