You guys want to know why Mizhena tells me her story right off the bat? My character has a charisma of 25. People just make eye contact with me and they tell me their deepest darkest secrets. Not only is this *FUSS* ridiculous, but this character doesn't even make any real impact on the story as a whole.
They removed it because of the backlash. I don't think anyone said it was unprofessional or that they didn't like it.
Do you really think they would admit such a thing? Don't belittle Beamdog in your unwavering faith in them. But remove it they did, and from what Trent O said they acknowledge that some things in SoD weren't as they should be and didn't have the quality they should have. Interpret that the way you want.
I think they would admit it if they thought so. I've seen businesses admit such before.
I don't need unwavering faith to not read too much into their actions, though. Just need some critical thinking to achieve that.
The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique by Carlos D. Flores within Philosophy, Sexuality
February 6th, 2015
We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents’ attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.”
No sooner had Joshua’s heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua’s parents immediately began to be chided as “repressive” and “bigoted” and even began to receive various threats from LGBT internet crusader-activists.
Transgenderism and Gender Identity
I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of “Leelah.” The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl—he was a boy—and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.
LGBT activists will respond in various ways to this. They might first respond by saying: “Okay, true enough: Joshua was biologically a male. But you have misunderstood our claim: we contend that his sex was male, yes, but his gender was female because he ‘identified’ as female.” The idea here is that people have a sex, which is either female or male and which one cannot choose. In addition to this, however, there is “gender,” or what sex one is more comfortable “identifying” as. The response to this is simple: Why think that what one “identifies as” is significant at all, especially to the extent that others should actively recognize or cater to such an identity, and especially when the identity one adopts is contrary to reality?
Consider the following analogies. Suppose that a Caucasian man from Finland—call him Gunther—suddenly decided that he identifies as being of Sub-Saharan African descent. Suppose further that, in light of this, Gunther undergoes unusual procedures to have his skin darkened and his skull’s bone structure re-shaped so as to resemble that of individuals of Sub-Saharan descent. Would we think that such a person has suddenly become of Sub-Saharan descent through such procedures? Of course not, and his identifying as such does nothing to change this. His appearance as someone of Sub-Saharan descent might be very convincing. But, again, this doesn’t change the fact that he is not of Sub-Saharan descent.
Similarly, suppose that a seventy-year-old man—call him Bob—comes to identify as a sixteen-year-old. Wouldn’t we think it absurd if people considered it “rude” or “bigoted” to tell the man: “You are not sixteen years old. Your identifying as such doesn’t change this fact, and we will not indulge you in your strange delusions by not calling attention to your old age and by pretending that you really are sixteen years old”?
The cases of Gunther and Bob and the situations of individuals who believe themselves to be transgender are perfectly analogous. In the case of the transgender individual, he identifies as something he is not—someone of the opposite sex—and seeks to undergo harmful surgeries and hormonal treatments in order to have his physical state match his identity of himself as someone of the opposite sex.
Our mental faculties, like our physical ones, are ordered toward various ends. Among these ends is the attainment of truth. To this extent, it is perfective of our mental faculties to recognize how we truly are (and thus apprehend a truth). It is for this reason that we can make sense of mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa as disorders: they involve persons' having persistent, false beliefs about their identity or how they really are. In the case of the anorexic, someone who is dangerously underweight believes falsely (but tenaciously) that he is really overweight. It would be a proper procedure of medicine, then, for a therapist to help an anorexic individual to do away with his anorexia, restoring the individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state.
Gender Reassignment Surgery Is Not Medicine
Those in favor of transgenderism also (naturally) support gender-reassignment surgery as a perfectly legitimate medical procedure for individuals (including children) with gender dysphoria. Now, put to one side the fact that 70-80 percent of children who report having transgender feelings come to lose such feelings. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that individuals who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Instead consider the following question: Can we reasonably categorize gender reassignment surgery as a medical procedure in the first place?
Before we answer this question, we might venture to ask: what is medicine? Here is a plausible answer: medicine is the enterprise of restoring bodily faculties to their proper function. Our bodily faculties are ordered toward certain ends. This seems impossible to deny. Eyes, for example, are ordered toward (i.e., their function is) seeing, the stomach is ordered toward breaking down food, the heart is ordered toward pumping blood, etc. So if, say, someone’s eyes were not able to achieve their end of sight well, it would be rightly considered a medical procedure to seek to restore this individual’s eyes to their proper function. Similarly, it would be a medical endeavor to seek to restore an individual’s defective heart (one that has arrhythmia, say) to its proper function. All well and good.
But what are we to make of this “gender reassignment” surgery? Insofar as such a surgical procedure involves the intentional damaging and mutilating of otherwise perfectly functioning bodily faculties by twisting them to an end toward which they are not ordered, such a thing cannot, in principle, possibly be considered a medical procedure. And because love compels us to seek the good for another, it is thus a grave evil to condone such surgical procedures.
On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy
A similar point can be made about gender identity disorder therapy. Transgenderism activists are seizing Joshua’s tragic death to insist that such therapy ought to be criminalized. A petition is floating around the internet to ban so-called “transgender conversion therapy,” a procedure that involves, presumably, an attempt by a professional to help a person who is experiencing a gender identity disorder (also known as gender dysphoria). If the progress of the homosexual movement is a guide to what will come next, we can expect that laws will soon be passed criminalizing individuals’ receiving therapy to help them do away with transgender identities or desires—even for those who want to relieve themselves of such identities and desires.
Recall our earlier discussion of anorexia. Like the anorexic, the transgendered individual tenaciously holds to false beliefs about his identity or how or what he truly is: he believes that he is a sex that he is not. Dr. Paul McHugh’s words here are particularly incisive:
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.
It would thus be a perfectly proper procedure of medicine for the transgendered individual to visit a therapist to seek his professional help to relieve himself of his disordered transgender identity insofar as this would amount to a restoring of the transgendered individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state. The suggestion, then, that gender identity disorder therapy should be criminalized is as absurd as the suggestion that therapy to eliminate anorexia should be criminalized.
Some Common Objections
Now, an apologist for transgenderism might retort in the following way: “You’re missing a key point: the brains of, say, men who ‘identify’ as women have been shown to resemble those of women. This shows that there is a biological basis to their identifying as such.” In response, we might begin by asking for empirical evidence that this dubious claim really is true. But even if this were the case, this doesn’t show that men whose brains “resemble that of a woman’s” (whatever that means) are truly women after all. If we are to say that the person simply is the brain, as the one who espouses this objection seems to suggest, then, because presumably even males who identify as women have brains with male DNA, it follows that they are men after all.
But we don’t even need to grant that the presence of such-and-such brain states is relevant at all. For example, we may suppose that, through habitually behaving as a sixteen- year-old, the brain activity of the seventy-year-old mentioned above “resembles” that of a sixteen-year-old’s. Does it follow, then, that the seventy-year-old really is sixteen years old? Or that he is really a sixteen-year-old trapped inside a seventy-year-old’s body? Of course not. The most rational conclusion is that such an individual has some sort of cognitive or psychological defect associated with identity and self-perception. The same can be said for the transgender individual.
Indeed, it should not come as a surprise to find out that our daily activities shape our brain-states or alter the way our brains behave. After all, it is more or less common knowledge that, say, the process of learning to play an instrument has the effect of establishing new neural pathways, thus causing a change in brain-states. Thus Dr. Norman Doidge comments: “Now we know the brain is ‘neuroplastic,’ and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.”
On the topic of sexuality more specifically, consider the fact that habitual porn use seems to result in (or correlate with) decreased gray matter in the brain, and that habitual porn use changes the sexual tastes of men. If habitually watching pornography can change a man’s brain so significantly, then it should hardly be surprising that through intentionally and habitually behaving like a woman a man’s brain would too change to some extent. But again, this does not thereby show that such a man is a woman after all; all it shows is that through habituated action of some sort, the man’s brain behavior has changed.
Another response might be to ask rhetorically: “Well, what about intersex individuals?” The implication is that the existence of intersex individuals somehow shows that the nature of sex is up for grabs for everyone, intersex or not. But this doesn’t follow at all. In the genuine case of intersex individuals, it may very well be appropriate to express puzzlement or ignorance as to what to make of such an attribute, metaphysically speaking, and perhaps leave it as an open question whether such individuals are either male or female or whether they should be encouraged to undergo surgical procedures in the interest of their health. Cases in which an individual is intersex, however, are exceedingly rare. Indeed, even granting the point, it would not be unfair to say that in 99.99 percent of cases (and even this might be too low a percentage), a person is either male or female. And unsurprisingly, most of the individuals who believe themselves to be transgender have perfectly functioning male or female reproductive systems. This question is both irrelevant and fruitless.
Finally, the LGBT activist might retort by asking: “but how will a man identifying as a woman affect you?” If these were simply private issues, this might be a valid point (though a concern for the physical and mental well-being of individuals struggling with their gender might obligate us to reach out to them in such a case). But, alas, LGBT activists are actively working to make it the case that the state and private businesses cover “gender-reassignment” surgeries, that men who identify as women be able to use women’s restrooms, that girls who identify as boys be able to play on male sports teams, that we consider it immoral to refer to infants as male or female lest we insidiously impose upon them a “gender” they might not identify with, that we ban therapy to treat gender dysphoria, and that we generally co-opt language and social norms to reflect pernicious falsehoods about the human body.
How a man’s identifying as a woman will personally affect me, you, or John Doe is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether we will make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, or whether we will obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
Carlos D. Flores studies philosophy at UC Santa Barbara. He is the president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society and has written for Ethika Politika.
AND this is why it is wrong headed and hurtful to support an issue that is killing people because they aren't recieving the need treatmented.
Here's an article by someone who reviewed the actual existing scientific literature about transgender people and came to an entirely different conclusion.
From the article:
Summary
A total of 34 studies were reviewed, 33 within our established search parameters and 1 outside those parameters. Body satisfaction and mental improvements, improved social functioning, and a significant increase in quality of life resulting from hormones and/or SRS were clearly indicated in 26 of 34 studies. A decline in physical or mental health, or quality of life, was clearly indicated in 3 of 34 studies, and weak improvement or mixed or ambiguous results were indicated in 5 of 34 studies. It must be called out that the Murad study of 2010, while important due to its breadth, may contain duplicated results as it was a meta-study. Furthermore, one of the negative studies was from 1998, which was 6 years outside our original search parameters. If this study is omitted, then 79% of the studies surveyed showed positive changes from transition, 15% showed weak improvement or mixed or ambiguous results, and 6% showed negative changes from transition.
It’s important to note that the large majority of studies found since 2004 do not address suicide risk, and among those reviewed two indicated a lower risk, and one a higher risk.
Overall, scientific studies published since 2004 overwhelmingly indicate that hormones and SRS result in clear improvements in the quality of life of transsexual patients.
And hey, it helps to know your source. Carlos D. Flores is president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society, a very conservative anti-LGBT organization. Given the choice between actual peer-reviewed scientific research and a conservative organization that is broadly against LGBT people, I'm going with the science, not with the hate.
...to comment on the OP, though I haven't played SoD myself yet, from what I gather the options in dialogs etc. has a strong "educational" character. The roleplaying quality is somewhat lacking, though that can be said about the original games as well at some stages. An evil character reportedly has only "good" options in the choices available in the dialogue with the "controversial" character in question...
This has been bugging me as well. In original games, the dialogue choices are far less straightforward, more nuanced at times. In this expansion, it seems the writers tried a basic three option approach. I'd say good, neutral and evil by the looks of it.
However in practice, it comes down to the first being the lawful good paladin option that is always the 'best' (i.e. gets the best results) and 'educational' (This is how you should act) option. Down to the point of grovelling and pleasing. Though I can appreciate the etiquette at times, most of them are just mind-numbing to me.
The second seems to be pure comic relief. We need a funny and witty answer with every dialogue. Some are gold, most fall flat. The worst thing is that they are by and large completely ignored or have a simple response that acknowledges the joke and then straight up disregard it afterwards.
The last response is the insulting one that in optional dialogue simply shuts down the conversation completely. No quest for you, you can talk to the character again to try something different. Now THAT is patronising and very poor writing. In the main quests it simply cuts out part of the conversation, so again it doesn't add anything. Could we please have a separate end dialogue option?
All in all, I'd say it's a good effort but poor execution. We need more grey area's, options that have a hostile tone but don't tell the character the conversation is over. We need evil to be formal, charming but with cruel and insulting undertones and implications. Perhaps it was too much to hope for though. At the very least it's a step up from the one chat screen end conversation quests in BGI.
This is general what I point to as my major critique of the game, it really detracts from any attempt to roleplay imo.
It has nothing to do with 'professionalism' nor lack thereof in the first place, the line was a pop culture reference and therefor not essential to the game. So when a mob, that is frankly an embarrasment to the gaming community for amongst other things their lacking sense of humor, who en masse complain and whine about it.... Well then you have the option to keep it in just for the sake of keeping it in or out of spite.
Or you can be the bigger person and remove it as it was not important in the first place
Maybe don't make "pop culture references" to "a mob that is frankly an embarrassment to the gaming community" without some sort of reasoning. Because that "pop culture reference" seemed like a deliberate attempt to antagonize the mob, and wouldn't you know it it worked. It's like poking a rattlesnake with a stick and being surprised when it bites you.
And hey, it helps to know your source. Carlos D. Flores is president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society, a very conservative anti-LGBT organization. Given the choice between actual peer-reviewed scientific research and a conservative organization that is broadly against LGBT people, I'm going with the science, not with the hate.
Of course anybody that sheds light on an issue that doesn't make things easier for the militant gay rights movement is branded all kinds of things. Doesn't change facts or science though. It's not like it is right of the Ulinski playbook or something.
Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution A drastic physical change doesn't address underlying psycho-social troubles. By PAUL MCHUGH June 12, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks. On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered—those who say that they don't identify with their biological sex. Earlier last month Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that he was "open" to lifting a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Time magazine, seeing the trend, ran a cover story for its June 9 issue called "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's next civil rights frontier."
Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.
A man who looks into the mirror and sees himself as a woman ENLARGE A man who looks into the mirror and sees himself as a woman GETTY IMAGES With body dysmorphic disorder, an often socially crippling condition, the individual is consumed by the assumption "I'm ugly." These disorders occur in subjects who have come to believe that some of their psycho-social conflicts or problems will be resolved if they can change the way that they appear to others. Such ideas work like ruling passions in their subjects' minds and tend to be accompanied by a solipsistic argument.
For the transgendered, this argument holds that one's feeling of "gender" is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one's mind, cannot be questioned by others. The individual often seeks not just society's tolerance of this "personal truth" but affirmation of it. Here rests the support for "transgender equality," the demands for government payment for medical and surgical treatments, and for access to all sex-based public roles and privileges.
With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor. That government can intrude into parents' rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.
How to respond? Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry's domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field. Many will recall how, in the 1990s, an accusation of parental sex abuse of children was deemed unquestionable by the solipsists of the "recovered memory" craze.
You won't hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.
We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.
It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.
There are subgroups of the transgendered, and for none does "reassignment" seem apt. One group includes male prisoners like Pvt. Bradley Manning, the convicted national-security leaker who now wishes to be called Chelsea. Facing long sentences and the rigors of a men's prison, they have an obvious motive for wanting to change their sex and hence their prison. Given that they committed their crimes as males, they should be punished as such; after serving their time, they will be free to reconsider their gender.
Another subgroup consists of young men and women susceptible to suggestion from "everything is normal" sex education, amplified by Internet chat groups. These are the transgender subjects most like anorexia nervosa patients: They become persuaded that seeking a drastic physical change will banish their psycho-social problems. "Diversity" counselors in their schools, rather like cult leaders, may encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery. Treatments here must begin with removing the young person from the suggestive environment and offering a counter-message in family therapy.
Then there is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston's Children's Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children's growth and risk causing sterility. Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. 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.
Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is the author of "Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind" (Dana Press, 2008).
@Arius: We get it. You think that transgenderism is a mental illness. You're wrong, and that's very insulting to several members of our community, but this isn't the place to debate it. Go start an Off-topic thread if you want to argue about that. Or better yet, don't.
And hey, it helps to know your source. Carlos D. Flores is president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society, a very conservative anti-LGBT organization. Given the choice between actual peer-reviewed scientific research and a conservative organization that is broadly against LGBT people, I'm going with the science, not with the hate.
Of course anybody that sheds light on an issue that doesn't make things easier for the militant gay rights movement is branded all kinds of things. Doesn't change facts or science though. It's not like it is right of the Ulinski playbook or something.
Dude, I linked you the science. In this conversation, you are not the one who should be saying "Doesn't change facts or science" when your argument is in contradiction to both.
This isn't about the "militant gay rights movement." This is about someone attacking a marginalized population that already experiences rather severe discrimination and attempting to justify even more of it.
Also, Paul McHugh's objection to transgender people is not science. It is - like Carlos Flores' objection - completely driven by ideology.
I mean keep posting these transphobic hit pieces so people can see how you really think, but don't pretend that it shows you have any real insight into, knowledge about, or compassion for real living transgender people. Because anyone with even one of those three things would not be posting the tripe you're trying to pass off as "science" and "facts."
Conservatives champion McHugh as an expert on transgender identities, but his antiquated rhetoric and biased rejection of what transgender people experience set him drastically apart from the consensus of psychiatrists and the standards of care that best support transgender people’s health
It has nothing to do with 'professionalism' nor lack thereof in the first place, the line was a pop culture reference and therefor not essential to the game. So when a mob, that is frankly an embarrasment to the gaming community for amongst other things their lacking sense of humor, who en masse complain and whine about it.... Well then you have the option to keep it in just for the sake of keeping it in or out of spite.
Or you can be the bigger person and remove it as it was not important in the first place
Maybe don't make "pop culture references" to "a mob that is frankly an embarrassment to the gaming community" without some sort of reasoning. Because that "pop culture reference" seemed like a deliberate attempt to antagonize the mob, and wouldn't you know it it worked. It's like poking a rattlesnake with a stick and being surprised when it bites you.
That sounds awefully lot like like the notion that you should not make jokes about the prophet muhammed and the people saying that Charlie Hebdo brought it upon themselves that they were gunned down for poking a rattlesnake.
And hey, it helps to know your source. Carlos D. Flores is president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society, a very conservative anti-LGBT organization. Given the choice between actual peer-reviewed scientific research and a conservative organization that is broadly against LGBT people, I'm going with the science, not with the hate.
Of course anybody that sheds light on an issue that doesn't make things easier for the militant gay rights movement is branded all kinds of things. Doesn't change facts or science though. It's not like it is right of the Ulinski playbook or something.
Actually science seems to agree with you less and less
Major medical organizations, like the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, say being transgender is not a mental disorder.
The APA explained this in explicit terms when it stopped using the term "gender identity disorder" in favor of "gender dysphoria": "Part of removing stigma is about choosing the right words. Replacing 'disorder' with 'dysphoria' in the diagnostic label is not only more appropriate and consistent with familiar clinical sexology terminology, it also removes the connotation that the patient is 'disordered.'"
Gender dysphoria — a state of emotional distress caused by how the gender someone was designated at birth conflicts with their gender identity — is a widely recognized medical condition. If untreated, it can lead to severe mental health issues, including debilitating depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
American Psychiatric Association But the AMA, APA, and other medical experts agree that letting someone transition, which can entail medical treatments like hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, without social stigma can help treat gender dysphoria. And not all trans people deal with severe dysphoria — it's barely or not present for some trans people, while it's mentally excruciating for others. Both of these facts show that psychological distress and disability aren't inherent to being trans, so being trans doesn't meet the definition of a mental disorder (a psychological state that causes significant distress and disability).
The distinction between a permanent mental disorder and a temporary, treatable condition can play a big role in policy. For example, military regulations still consider gender dysphoria to be an untreatable, lifelong mental illness. For the military, this justifies banning openly trans people from service — since, from their perspective, gender dysphoria is impossible to manage and will therefore always cause problems out in the field.
But if gender dysphoria is temporary, treatable, and doesn't affect all trans people in the same way, then a blanket ban on openly serving trans people doesn't make any sense. That's why the AMA, for example, completely rejected the military's position in a June resolution that concluded "there is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender individuals." The organization instead recommended that the military set trans-friendly policies and provide trans-inclusive medical care — therefore limiting the effects of gender dysphoria while allowing more people to openly serve.
The military appears to be coming around to this idea. In 2015, the Pentagon announced it's working on a plan to repeal the ban, and the Army and Air Force eased their bans on trans service members, making it more difficult to discharge trans troops. But these steps only came after LGBTQ advocates and medical organizations lobbied the Obama administration, and proved the medical rationale regarding trans soldiers is severely outdated.
I really hope someone makes a mod that adds Minsc's 'offending line' back into the game. I don't even give a crap what it is all about, the amount of noise I have seen is so staggeringly out of proportion to whatever crime is supposed to have been committed that I have had to lower my opinion of humanity. I just can't accept that now game designers are hostage to 'mob rule'. "Nice game you have there, shame if something were to... happen to it". What a joke.
@Arius There're several transgender forum users among us, and it's better to stop speaking about the subject you're raising as it seized to be nice days ago.
That sounds awefully lot like like the notion that you should not make jokes about the prophet muhammed and the people saying that Charlie Hebdo brought it upon themselves that they were gunned down for poking a rattlesnake.
Which many actually do, in the name of political correctness. E.g. a Swedish reporter said "these are not innocents, they have insulted islam" when reporting from Paris in January 2015, straight after the shooting, directly on the radio.
I'm learning so much from these threads! Thanks to all of you (especially @BelleSorciere) who posts links to reports and science on the topic. It's making me a wiser person and way, way more informed about the struggles too many people in our world face.
@Arius There're several transgender forum users among us, and it's better to stop speaking about the subject you're raising as it seized to be nice days ago.
What a dissenting view is discouraged because you don't like it. Tough. I have just presented my side of the argument and not singled out anyone or attacked anyone. And I will not stop speaking about this as my side of things only needs to get louder to deal with what is going on in the US.
And hey, it helps to know your source. Carlos D. Flores is president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society, a very conservative anti-LGBT organization. Given the choice between actual peer-reviewed scientific research and a conservative organization that is broadly against LGBT people, I'm going with the science, not with the hate.
Of course anybody that sheds light on an issue that doesn't make things easier for the militant gay rights movement is branded all kinds of things. Doesn't change facts or science though. It's not like it is right of the Ulinski playbook or something.
Actually science seems to agree with you less and less
Major medical organizations, like the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, say being transgender is not a mental disorder.
The APA explained this in explicit terms when it stopped using the term "gender identity disorder" in favor of "gender dysphoria": "Part of removing stigma is about choosing the right words. Replacing 'disorder' with 'dysphoria' in the diagnostic label is not only more appropriate and consistent with familiar clinical sexology terminology, it also removes the connotation that the patient is 'disordered.'"
Gender dysphoria — a state of emotional distress caused by how the gender someone was designated at birth conflicts with their gender identity — is a widely recognized medical condition. If untreated, it can lead to severe mental health issues, including debilitating depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
American Psychiatric Association But the AMA, APA, and other medical experts agree that letting someone transition, which can entail medical treatments like hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, without social stigma can help treat gender dysphoria. And not all trans people deal with severe dysphoria — it's barely or not present for some trans people, while it's mentally excruciating for others. Both of these facts show that psychological distress and disability aren't inherent to being trans, so being trans doesn't meet the definition of a mental disorder (a psychological state that causes significant distress and disability).
The distinction between a permanent mental disorder and a temporary, treatable condition can play a big role in policy. For example, military regulations still consider gender dysphoria to be an untreatable, lifelong mental illness. For the military, this justifies banning openly trans people from service — since, from their perspective, gender dysphoria is impossible to manage and will therefore always cause problems out in the field.
But if gender dysphoria is temporary, treatable, and doesn't affect all trans people in the same way, then a blanket ban on openly serving trans people doesn't make any sense. That's why the AMA, for example, completely rejected the military's position in a June resolution that concluded "there is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender individuals." The organization instead recommended that the military set trans-friendly policies and provide trans-inclusive medical care — therefore limiting the effects of gender dysphoria while allowing more people to openly serve.
The military appears to be coming around to this idea. In 2015, the Pentagon announced it's working on a plan to repeal the ban, and the Army and Air Force eased their bans on trans service members, making it more difficult to discharge trans troops. But these steps only came after LGBTQ advocates and medical organizations lobbied the Obama administration, and proved the medical rationale regarding trans soldiers is severely outdated.
It's like any social topic that science is involved in. You can find studies to support your side as well, it just doesn't make them good science. It was a sad day when SJW's coopted science for their causes and turned into a BS PR machine.
@Arius There're several transgender forum users among us, and it's better to stop speaking about the subject you're raising as it seized to be nice days ago.
What a dissenting view is discouraged because you don't like it. Tough. I have just presented my side of the argument and not singled out anyone or attacked anyone. And I will not stop speaking about this as my side of things only needs to get louder to deal with what is going on in the US.
Guess I'll just have to get louder about my side of the issue as well.
I don't consider transgenders or gays or lesbians "mentally ill". I consider them "people with different tastes than me".
They have never attacked me for what I am, and I will be damned if I attack them for what they are. I save that for people who actually constitute a threat to me or mine.
In particular if I see a transgender person in a computer game, I will not make a big issue about it. It isn't.
First: @Arius You don't need an apostrophe when you're pluralizing an acronym. SJWs is accurate; SJW's is not, unless you're talking about something that belongs to an SJW. (I bring this up because I've seen the apostrophe misused here and in a number of other places, by a variety of people. We can do better, so let's start with this.)
Second: @Arius The constant posting of anti-trans reports, articles, essays, and commentary reads like antagonism when there are several trans people posting in this thread. I've said it before and I'll say it again: be mindful that the things you post don't carry a message of discrimination against the people you're talking about. As has become pretty clear, this topic is very personal to a lot of people, and that means being a bit more careful that when you talk about this topic, you're doing so in a way that doesn't marginalize those poeple.
Third: This thread has gotten way off topic. @baldrat60 if your question has been sufficiently answered, we can close this thread now. But even if it remains open, I expect everyone involved to follow the site rules and be mindful that you're talking to real human beings who deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
First: @Arius You don't need an apostrophe when you're pluralizing an acronym. SJWs is accurate; SJW's is not, unless you're talking about something that belongs to an SJW. (I bring this up because I've seen the apostrophe misused here and in a number of other places, by a variety of people. We can do better, so let's start with this.)
Second: @Arius The constant posting of anti-trans reports, articles, essays, and commentary reads like antagonism when there are several trans people posting in this thread. I've said it before and I'll say it again: be mindful that the things you post don't carry a message of discrimination against the people you're talking about. As has become pretty clear, this topic is very personal to a lot of people, and that means being a bit more careful that when you talk about this topic, you're doing so in a way that doesn't marginalize those poeple.
Third: This thread has gotten way off topic. @baldrat60 if your question has been sufficiently answered, we can close this thread now. But even if it remains open, I expect everyone involved to follow the site rules and be mindful that you're talking to real human beings who deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
2nd There is an open question on what Transgender is and is not. W.H.O. classifies it as a mental illness, the US counterpart doesn't. As far discrimination, I never said they should or shouldn't anything based on this in any post. I presented papers where gender reassignment lead to increased suicide rates and said that was not a good way to go and treatment was better.
3rd A dissenting view vs alternative lifestyles in today's culture in some circles is being stifled. WHich as veteran who has went overseas I find repugnant as I fought for free speech and the many other rights the US enjoys. Bottom line when dissent and disagreement NEED to be silenced we are approaching tyranny which I have personally fought against overseas and offends me deeply to see any manifestation of in the US or the west.
First: @Arius You don't need an apostrophe when you're pluralizing an acronym. SJWs is accurate; SJW's is not, unless you're talking about something that belongs to an SJW. (I bring this up because I've seen the apostrophe misused here and in a number of other places, by a variety of people. We can do better, so let's start with this.)
Second: @Arius The constant posting of anti-trans reports, articles, essays, and commentary reads like antagonism when there are several trans people posting in this thread. I've said it before and I'll say it again: be mindful that the things you post don't carry a message of discrimination against the people you're talking about. As has become pretty clear, this topic is very personal to a lot of people, and that means being a bit more careful that when you talk about this topic, you're doing so in a way that doesn't marginalize those poeple.
Third: This thread has gotten way off topic. @baldrat60 if your question has been sufficiently answered, we can close this thread now. But even if it remains open, I expect everyone involved to follow the site rules and be mindful that you're talking to real human beings who deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
2nd There is an open question on what Transgender is and is not. W.H.O. classifies it as a mental illness, the US counterpart doesn't. As far discrimination, I never said they should or shouldn't anything based on this in any post. I presented papers where gender reassignment lead to increased suicide rates and said that was not a good way to go and treatment was better.
3rd A dissenting view vs alternative lifestyles in today's culture in some circles is being stifled. WHich as veteran who has went overseas I find repugnant as I fought for free speech and the many other rights the US enjoys. Bottom line when dissent and disagreement NEED to be silenced we are approaching tyranny which I have personally fought against overseas and offends me deeply to see any manifestation of in the US or the west.
I think you are confusing the right to say "what" you want with "where" you want. This is private property friend, and it isn't yours. It is beamDog's. You are here by invitation. They make the rules at this party. You are free to go say whatever you want on the Internet, but many sites will remove your content if found objectionable.
We're driving further off the road here, but briefly:
Look, think what you want to think, believe what you believe, but when you're posting here, in a conversation with members of the community who are transgender, you've got to be mindful that you're speaking as someone who isn't transgender about people who are transgender, to people who are transgender. Maybe consider that they don't like being called "mentally ill" for something that they think of as an integral part of who they are, and then think about the implications of insisting that they are mentally ill over and over again.
The right to free speech ends where that speech does harm to others. This is not a "public" forum; it has rules of conduct for the people who post here. You agreed to those rules when you created your account. Follow them.
@Arius According to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "the right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
It means that one person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins. If you, as you say, fought for free speech, than you definitely have to consider that by expressing your views you should be careful about feelings of other people, and especially so when you know for certain that these other people around you are especially vulnerable to the subject you're speaking about.
The point of @baldrat60 when creating this thread was "he didn't see the controversy around SoD as an issue as it didnt break his immersion", "he felt the game was great and he was just glad to have some more baldurs gate."
The talk about mental illness is way off-topic. You've been reminded about that by @Dee.
I'm closing this thread. If @baldrat60 would like to reopen it, you just can PM me or any other moderator about it.
Comments
I don't need unwavering faith to not read too much into their actions, though. Just need some critical thinking to achieve that.
The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique
by Carlos D. Flores
within Philosophy, Sexuality
February 6th, 2015
We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents’ attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.”
No sooner had Joshua’s heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua’s parents immediately began to be chided as “repressive” and “bigoted” and even began to receive various threats from LGBT internet crusader-activists.
Transgenderism and Gender Identity
I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of “Leelah.” The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl—he was a boy—and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.
LGBT activists will respond in various ways to this. They might first respond by saying: “Okay, true enough: Joshua was biologically a male. But you have misunderstood our claim: we contend that his sex was male, yes, but his gender was female because he ‘identified’ as female.” The idea here is that people have a sex, which is either female or male and which one cannot choose. In addition to this, however, there is “gender,” or what sex one is more comfortable “identifying” as. The response to this is simple: Why think that what one “identifies as” is significant at all, especially to the extent that others should actively recognize or cater to such an identity, and especially when the identity one adopts is contrary to reality?
Consider the following analogies. Suppose that a Caucasian man from Finland—call him Gunther—suddenly decided that he identifies as being of Sub-Saharan African descent. Suppose further that, in light of this, Gunther undergoes unusual procedures to have his skin darkened and his skull’s bone structure re-shaped so as to resemble that of individuals of Sub-Saharan descent. Would we think that such a person has suddenly become of Sub-Saharan descent through such procedures? Of course not, and his identifying as such does nothing to change this. His appearance as someone of Sub-Saharan descent might be very convincing. But, again, this doesn’t change the fact that he is not of Sub-Saharan descent.
Similarly, suppose that a seventy-year-old man—call him Bob—comes to identify as a sixteen-year-old. Wouldn’t we think it absurd if people considered it “rude” or “bigoted” to tell the man: “You are not sixteen years old. Your identifying as such doesn’t change this fact, and we will not indulge you in your strange delusions by not calling attention to your old age and by pretending that you really are sixteen years old”?
The cases of Gunther and Bob and the situations of individuals who believe themselves to be transgender are perfectly analogous. In the case of the transgender individual, he identifies as something he is not—someone of the opposite sex—and seeks to undergo harmful surgeries and hormonal treatments in order to have his physical state match his identity of himself as someone of the opposite sex.
Our mental faculties, like our physical ones, are ordered toward various ends. Among these ends is the attainment of truth. To this extent, it is perfective of our mental faculties to recognize how we truly are (and thus apprehend a truth). It is for this reason that we can make sense of mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa as disorders: they involve persons' having persistent, false beliefs about their identity or how they really are. In the case of the anorexic, someone who is dangerously underweight believes falsely (but tenaciously) that he is really overweight. It would be a proper procedure of medicine, then, for a therapist to help an anorexic individual to do away with his anorexia, restoring the individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state.
Gender Reassignment Surgery Is Not Medicine
Those in favor of transgenderism also (naturally) support gender-reassignment surgery as a perfectly legitimate medical procedure for individuals (including children) with gender dysphoria. Now, put to one side the fact that 70-80 percent of children who report having transgender feelings come to lose such feelings. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that individuals who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Instead consider the following question: Can we reasonably categorize gender reassignment surgery as a medical procedure in the first place?
Before we answer this question, we might venture to ask: what is medicine? Here is a plausible answer: medicine is the enterprise of restoring bodily faculties to their proper function. Our bodily faculties are ordered toward certain ends. This seems impossible to deny. Eyes, for example, are ordered toward (i.e., their function is) seeing, the stomach is ordered toward breaking down food, the heart is ordered toward pumping blood, etc. So if, say, someone’s eyes were not able to achieve their end of sight well, it would be rightly considered a medical procedure to seek to restore this individual’s eyes to their proper function. Similarly, it would be a medical endeavor to seek to restore an individual’s defective heart (one that has arrhythmia, say) to its proper function. All well and good.
But what are we to make of this “gender reassignment” surgery? Insofar as such a surgical procedure involves the intentional damaging and mutilating of otherwise perfectly functioning bodily faculties by twisting them to an end toward which they are not ordered, such a thing cannot, in principle, possibly be considered a medical procedure. And because love compels us to seek the good for another, it is thus a grave evil to condone such surgical procedures.
On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy
A similar point can be made about gender identity disorder therapy. Transgenderism activists are seizing Joshua’s tragic death to insist that such therapy ought to be criminalized. A petition is floating around the internet to ban so-called “transgender conversion therapy,” a procedure that involves, presumably, an attempt by a professional to help a person who is experiencing a gender identity disorder (also known as gender dysphoria). If the progress of the homosexual movement is a guide to what will come next, we can expect that laws will soon be passed criminalizing individuals’ receiving therapy to help them do away with transgender identities or desires—even for those who want to relieve themselves of such identities and desires.
Recall our earlier discussion of anorexia. Like the anorexic, the transgendered individual tenaciously holds to false beliefs about his identity or how or what he truly is: he believes that he is a sex that he is not. Dr. Paul McHugh’s words here are particularly incisive:
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.
It would thus be a perfectly proper procedure of medicine for the transgendered individual to visit a therapist to seek his professional help to relieve himself of his disordered transgender identity insofar as this would amount to a restoring of the transgendered individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state. The suggestion, then, that gender identity disorder therapy should be criminalized is as absurd as the suggestion that therapy to eliminate anorexia should be criminalized.
Some Common Objections
Now, an apologist for transgenderism might retort in the following way: “You’re missing a key point: the brains of, say, men who ‘identify’ as women have been shown to resemble those of women. This shows that there is a biological basis to their identifying as such.” In response, we might begin by asking for empirical evidence that this dubious claim really is true. But even if this were the case, this doesn’t show that men whose brains “resemble that of a woman’s” (whatever that means) are truly women after all. If we are to say that the person simply is the brain, as the one who espouses this objection seems to suggest, then, because presumably even males who identify as women have brains with male DNA, it follows that they are men after all.
But we don’t even need to grant that the presence of such-and-such brain states is relevant at all. For example, we may suppose that, through habitually behaving as a sixteen- year-old, the brain activity of the seventy-year-old mentioned above “resembles” that of a sixteen-year-old’s. Does it follow, then, that the seventy-year-old really is sixteen years old? Or that he is really a sixteen-year-old trapped inside a seventy-year-old’s body? Of course not. The most rational conclusion is that such an individual has some sort of cognitive or psychological defect associated with identity and self-perception. The same can be said for the transgender individual.
Indeed, it should not come as a surprise to find out that our daily activities shape our brain-states or alter the way our brains behave. After all, it is more or less common knowledge that, say, the process of learning to play an instrument has the effect of establishing new neural pathways, thus causing a change in brain-states. Thus Dr. Norman Doidge comments: “Now we know the brain is ‘neuroplastic,’ and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.”
On the topic of sexuality more specifically, consider the fact that habitual porn use seems to result in (or correlate with) decreased gray matter in the brain, and that habitual porn use changes the sexual tastes of men. If habitually watching pornography can change a man’s brain so significantly, then it should hardly be surprising that through intentionally and habitually behaving like a woman a man’s brain would too change to some extent. But again, this does not thereby show that such a man is a woman after all; all it shows is that through habituated action of some sort, the man’s brain behavior has changed.
Another response might be to ask rhetorically: “Well, what about intersex individuals?” The implication is that the existence of intersex individuals somehow shows that the nature of sex is up for grabs for everyone, intersex or not. But this doesn’t follow at all. In the genuine case of intersex individuals, it may very well be appropriate to express puzzlement or ignorance as to what to make of such an attribute, metaphysically speaking, and perhaps leave it as an open question whether such individuals are either male or female or whether they should be encouraged to undergo surgical procedures in the interest of their health. Cases in which an individual is intersex, however, are exceedingly rare. Indeed, even granting the point, it would not be unfair to say that in 99.99 percent of cases (and even this might be too low a percentage), a person is either male or female. And unsurprisingly, most of the individuals who believe themselves to be transgender have perfectly functioning male or female reproductive systems. This question is both irrelevant and fruitless.
Finally, the LGBT activist might retort by asking: “but how will a man identifying as a woman affect you?” If these were simply private issues, this might be a valid point (though a concern for the physical and mental well-being of individuals struggling with their gender might obligate us to reach out to them in such a case). But, alas, LGBT activists are actively working to make it the case that the state and private businesses cover “gender-reassignment” surgeries, that men who identify as women be able to use women’s restrooms, that girls who identify as boys be able to play on male sports teams, that we consider it immoral to refer to infants as male or female lest we insidiously impose upon them a “gender” they might not identify with, that we ban therapy to treat gender dysphoria, and that we generally co-opt language and social norms to reflect pernicious falsehoods about the human body.
How a man’s identifying as a woman will personally affect me, you, or John Doe is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether we will make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, or whether we will obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
Carlos D. Flores studies philosophy at UC Santa Barbara. He is the president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society and has written for Ethika Politika.
AND this is why it is wrong headed and hurtful to support an issue that is killing people because they aren't recieving the need treatmented.
From the article:
Summary
A total of 34 studies were reviewed, 33 within our established search parameters and 1 outside those parameters. Body satisfaction and mental improvements, improved social functioning, and a significant increase in quality of life resulting from hormones and/or SRS were clearly indicated in 26 of 34 studies. A decline in physical or mental health, or quality of life, was clearly indicated in 3 of 34 studies, and weak improvement or mixed or ambiguous results were indicated in 5 of 34 studies. It must be called out that the Murad study of 2010, while important due to its breadth, may contain duplicated results as it was a meta-study. Furthermore, one of the negative studies was from 1998, which was 6 years outside our original search parameters. If this study is omitted, then 79% of the studies surveyed showed positive changes from transition, 15% showed weak improvement or mixed or ambiguous results, and 6% showed negative changes from transition.
It’s important to note that the large majority of studies found since 2004 do not address suicide risk, and among those reviewed two indicated a lower risk, and one a higher risk.
Overall, scientific studies published since 2004 overwhelmingly indicate that hormones and SRS result in clear improvements in the quality of life of transsexual patients.
But hey, have a rebuttal to Flores' hit piece. It carries at least as much rhetorical weight as what Flores wrote.
Eerie, no?
Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution
A drastic physical change doesn't address underlying psycho-social troubles.
By PAUL MCHUGH
June 12, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET
The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks. On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered—those who say that they don't identify with their biological sex. Earlier last month Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that he was "open" to lifting a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Time magazine, seeing the trend, ran a cover story for its June 9 issue called "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's next civil rights frontier."
Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.
A man who looks into the mirror and sees himself as a woman ENLARGE
A man who looks into the mirror and sees himself as a woman GETTY IMAGES
With body dysmorphic disorder, an often socially crippling condition, the individual is consumed by the assumption "I'm ugly." These disorders occur in subjects who have come to believe that some of their psycho-social conflicts or problems will be resolved if they can change the way that they appear to others. Such ideas work like ruling passions in their subjects' minds and tend to be accompanied by a solipsistic argument.
For the transgendered, this argument holds that one's feeling of "gender" is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one's mind, cannot be questioned by others. The individual often seeks not just society's tolerance of this "personal truth" but affirmation of it. Here rests the support for "transgender equality," the demands for government payment for medical and surgical treatments, and for access to all sex-based public roles and privileges.
With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor. That government can intrude into parents' rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.
How to respond? Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry's domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field. Many will recall how, in the 1990s, an accusation of parental sex abuse of children was deemed unquestionable by the solipsists of the "recovered memory" craze.
You won't hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.
We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.
It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.
There are subgroups of the transgendered, and for none does "reassignment" seem apt. One group includes male prisoners like Pvt. Bradley Manning, the convicted national-security leaker who now wishes to be called Chelsea. Facing long sentences and the rigors of a men's prison, they have an obvious motive for wanting to change their sex and hence their prison. Given that they committed their crimes as males, they should be punished as such; after serving their time, they will be free to reconsider their gender.
Another subgroup consists of young men and women susceptible to suggestion from "everything is normal" sex education, amplified by Internet chat groups. These are the transgender subjects most like anorexia nervosa patients: They become persuaded that seeking a drastic physical change will banish their psycho-social problems. "Diversity" counselors in their schools, rather like cult leaders, may encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery. Treatments here must begin with removing the young person from the suggestive environment and offering a counter-message in family therapy.
Then there is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston's Children's Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children's growth and risk causing sterility. Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. 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.
Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is the author of "Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind" (Dana Press, 2008).
This isn't about the "militant gay rights movement." This is about someone attacking a marginalized population that already experiences rather severe discrimination and attempting to justify even more of it.
Also, Paul McHugh's objection to transgender people is not science. It is - like Carlos Flores' objection - completely driven by ideology.
I mean keep posting these transphobic hit pieces so people can see how you really think, but don't pretend that it shows you have any real insight into, knowledge about, or compassion for real living transgender people. Because anyone with even one of those three things would not be posting the tripe you're trying to pass off as "science" and "facts."
From the article:
Conservatives champion McHugh as an expert on transgender identities, but his antiquated rhetoric and biased rejection of what transgender people experience set him drastically apart from the consensus of psychiatrists and the standards of care that best support transgender people’s health
Myth #8: Transgender people are mentally ill
Major medical organizations, like the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, say being transgender is not a mental disorder.
The APA explained this in explicit terms when it stopped using the term "gender identity disorder" in favor of "gender dysphoria": "Part of removing stigma is about choosing the right words. Replacing 'disorder' with 'dysphoria' in the diagnostic label is not only more appropriate and consistent with familiar clinical sexology terminology, it also removes the connotation that the patient is 'disordered.'"
Gender dysphoria — a state of emotional distress caused by how the gender someone was designated at birth conflicts with their gender identity — is a widely recognized medical condition. If untreated, it can lead to severe mental health issues, including debilitating depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
American Psychiatric Association
But the AMA, APA, and other medical experts agree that letting someone transition, which can entail medical treatments like hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, without social stigma can help treat gender dysphoria. And not all trans people deal with severe dysphoria — it's barely or not present for some trans people, while it's mentally excruciating for others. Both of these facts show that psychological distress and disability aren't inherent to being trans, so being trans doesn't meet the definition of a mental disorder (a psychological state that causes significant distress and disability).
The distinction between a permanent mental disorder and a temporary, treatable condition can play a big role in policy. For example, military regulations still consider gender dysphoria to be an untreatable, lifelong mental illness. For the military, this justifies banning openly trans people from service — since, from their perspective, gender dysphoria is impossible to manage and will therefore always cause problems out in the field.
But if gender dysphoria is temporary, treatable, and doesn't affect all trans people in the same way, then a blanket ban on openly serving trans people doesn't make any sense. That's why the AMA, for example, completely rejected the military's position in a June resolution that concluded "there is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender individuals." The organization instead recommended that the military set trans-friendly policies and provide trans-inclusive medical care — therefore limiting the effects of gender dysphoria while allowing more people to openly serve.
The military appears to be coming around to this idea. In 2015, the Pentagon announced it's working on a plan to repeal the ban, and the Army and Air Force eased their bans on trans service members, making it more difficult to discharge trans troops. But these steps only came after LGBTQ advocates and medical organizations lobbied the Obama administration, and proved the medical rationale regarding trans soldiers is severely outdated.
I don't consider transgenders or gays or lesbians "mentally ill". I consider them "people with different tastes than me".
They have never attacked me for what I am, and I will be damned if I attack them for what they are. I save that for people who actually constitute a threat to me or mine.
In particular if I see a transgender person in a computer game, I will not make a big issue about it. It isn't.
First: @Arius You don't need an apostrophe when you're pluralizing an acronym. SJWs is accurate; SJW's is not, unless you're talking about something that belongs to an SJW. (I bring this up because I've seen the apostrophe misused here and in a number of other places, by a variety of people. We can do better, so let's start with this.)
Second: @Arius The constant posting of anti-trans reports, articles, essays, and commentary reads like antagonism when there are several trans people posting in this thread. I've said it before and I'll say it again: be mindful that the things you post don't carry a message of discrimination against the people you're talking about. As has become pretty clear, this topic is very personal to a lot of people, and that means being a bit more careful that when you talk about this topic, you're doing so in a way that doesn't marginalize those poeple.
Third: This thread has gotten way off topic. @baldrat60 if your question has been sufficiently answered, we can close this thread now. But even if it remains open, I expect everyone involved to follow the site rules and be mindful that you're talking to real human beings who deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
3rd A dissenting view vs alternative lifestyles in today's culture in some circles is being stifled. WHich as veteran who has went overseas I find repugnant as I fought for free speech and the many other rights the US enjoys. Bottom line when dissent and disagreement NEED to be silenced we are approaching tyranny which I have personally fought against overseas and offends me deeply to see any manifestation of in the US or the west.
Look, think what you want to think, believe what you believe, but when you're posting here, in a conversation with members of the community who are transgender, you've got to be mindful that you're speaking as someone who isn't transgender about people who are transgender, to people who are transgender. Maybe consider that they don't like being called "mentally ill" for something that they think of as an integral part of who they are, and then think about the implications of insisting that they are mentally ill over and over again.
The right to free speech ends where that speech does harm to others. This is not a "public" forum; it has rules of conduct for the people who post here. You agreed to those rules when you created your account. Follow them.
It means that one person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins. If you, as you say, fought for free speech, than you definitely have to consider that by expressing your views you should be careful about feelings of other people, and especially so when you know for certain that these other people around you are especially vulnerable to the subject you're speaking about.
The point of @baldrat60 when creating this thread was "he didn't see the controversy around SoD as an issue as it didnt break his immersion", "he felt the game was great and he was just glad to have some more baldurs gate."
The talk about mental illness is way off-topic. You've been reminded about that by @Dee.
I'm closing this thread. If @baldrat60 would like to reopen it, you just can PM me or any other moderator about it.