The "trans people are mentally ill" is always a funny one when anti-trans people try to use it.
Let's take that statement as true. The illness could best be described as the gender of the mind not matching the gender of the body. So you only have two basic options to treat this "illness": change the mind or change the body, so that the two match. Changing the mind is notoriously difficult and prone to unexpected consequences for all sorts mental illnesses, while changing the body is fairly well established practice at this point.
So long story short, if trans people are mentally ill, then gender affirming care should be covered by insurance (or government health care plans, depending on where you are). That usually short circuits the "they're mentally ill" crowd.
Being trans isn't a mental illness, but gender dysphoria arising from the incongruity between gender and sex is. Stated so explicitly. It would make transphobes very mad if they could read.
DSM5 has to be taken with scepticism rather than as gospel because it's got some very problematic stuff in there. I'll try and get examples later from my friend who knows more
It is a solid diagnostic manual, however fundamentally flawed and really should be replaced with a more modern structure, with modern schools of thought.
I've been told that the text revision (2022) may have solved some terminology issues, but it has consistently, even now pathologised queer lifestyles and DSM has referred to them as mental disorders (such as being transgender, mentioned above, and the act of crossdressing), and has some extremely outdated views like those in the section on paraphilias. It also has origins in the American slave economy, with its precursors being created to categorise Black escapees with mental disorders and convince the public that incarceration is for their benefit.
Gender Dysphoria is distinct from transgenderism itself, which made explicit by the manual. Other diagnoses follow suite. Almost all of them have criteria about causing distress or harm or impacting one's ability to function. There are a lot of gaps: my favorite example is that financial resources can be a deciding factor as a consequence, if clinicians were to be pedantic; many disorders only manifest as impacting function and quality of life when material conditions make it so (a 9-to-5 and trustfund kids may have the exact same underlying problems but one may be clinically significant and diagnosable while the other isn't just because their life has less stressors or more opportunities for coping etc). That harm, in whatever fashion, is what makes it a pathology.
Cross-dressing (and a bunch of paraphilias) aren't inherently diagnosable by mere fact of the colloquial understanding; its usually down to pathological effect on the patients life, and its the clinician's job to sus out whether the behavior is a disorder or maybe they're just a drag queen or trans or nonbinary or nonconforming etc etc. Any clinician who thinks cross-dressing is categorically pathological isn't much of a clinician. While terminology and this sort of guidance should be improved and made more evident in the text itself, most of the people who would act in the way you're eluding to aren't proper clinicians; that's mostly just religious conservatives in America... Like those fake abortion clinics that just waste people's time and try to preach at them, or the Jehovah Witness camps that beat the gay out of kids; just abuse co-opting the aesthetic and terminology of the domain and it's professions.
Changing the mind is notoriously difficult and prone to unexpected consequences for all sorts mental illnesses, while changing the body is fairly well established practice at this point.
You need to keep in mind that transphobes often support the use of conversion therapy to torture LGBTQ folks into being traumatized by their own identity so that they simply repress themselves into being "normal." This is the "changing the mind" you mentioned and they are completely on board with all of the consequences so long as it gives them hope they can stop people from being different.
I view it the same way people misuse "psychosomatic". (Not to detract from the whole transphobia of it all. We know what they really mean when they say this, of course.)
People use psychosomatic to mean "its all in your head, therefore nothing is wrong." instead of "You identified a cause of the very real symptoms you're experiencing."
Honestly, it sometimes feels like the public has not grown all that much from the "throw the loonies into the asylum" era of psychology.
Because it limits one's choices to what they were assigned at birth arbitrarily. What if one weren't assigned a gender? What options are there other than amab or afab?
Equivalence applies to the chromosome argument because it's trying to assert that xy chromosomes mean the same thing as someone's gender.
I think the confusion is the "you're" part, not the "amab" part.
If the statement was something like "you can only be amab or afab", then that is a false dillema (hi intersex people).
But if the statement is "you [as in 🫵] are amab" then that seems to get into false premise or general fallacies of relevance. The response would seem to be "Thats wrong" if you're not amab, or "That's as true as it is irrelevant" if you are.
18 replies
The "trans people are mentally ill" is always a funny one when anti-trans people try to use it.
Let's take that statement as true. The illness could best be described as the gender of the mind not matching the gender of the body. So you only have two basic options to treat this "illness": change the mind or change the body, so that the two match. Changing the mind is notoriously difficult and prone to unexpected consequences for all sorts mental illnesses, while changing the body is fairly well established practice at this point.
So long story short, if trans people are mentally ill, then gender affirming care should be covered by insurance (or government health care plans, depending on where you are). That usually short circuits the "they're mentally ill" crowd.
This is literally DSM 5
Being trans isn't a mental illness, but gender dysphoria arising from the incongruity between gender and sex is. Stated so explicitly. It would make transphobes very mad if they could read.
DSM5 has to be taken with scepticism rather than as gospel because it's got some very problematic stuff in there. I'll try and get examples later from my friend who knows more
Absolutely not gospel, but it is an authoritative source in terms of clinical definition.
What problematic elements come to mind?
It is a solid diagnostic manual, however fundamentally flawed and really should be replaced with a more modern structure, with modern schools of thought.
I've been told that the text revision (2022) may have solved some terminology issues, but it has consistently, even now pathologised queer lifestyles and DSM has referred to them as mental disorders (such as being transgender, mentioned above, and the act of crossdressing), and has some extremely outdated views like those in the section on paraphilias. It also has origins in the American slave economy, with its precursors being created to categorise Black escapees with mental disorders and convince the public that incarceration is for their benefit.
Gender Dysphoria is distinct from transgenderism itself, which made explicit by the manual. Other diagnoses follow suite. Almost all of them have criteria about causing distress or harm or impacting one's ability to function. There are a lot of gaps: my favorite example is that financial resources can be a deciding factor as a consequence, if clinicians were to be pedantic; many disorders only manifest as impacting function and quality of life when material conditions make it so (a 9-to-5 and trustfund kids may have the exact same underlying problems but one may be clinically significant and diagnosable while the other isn't just because their life has less stressors or more opportunities for coping etc). That harm, in whatever fashion, is what makes it a pathology.
Cross-dressing (and a bunch of paraphilias) aren't inherently diagnosable by mere fact of the colloquial understanding; its usually down to pathological effect on the patients life, and its the clinician's job to sus out whether the behavior is a disorder or maybe they're just a drag queen or trans or nonbinary or nonconforming etc etc. Any clinician who thinks cross-dressing is categorically pathological isn't much of a clinician. While terminology and this sort of guidance should be improved and made more evident in the text itself, most of the people who would act in the way you're eluding to aren't proper clinicians; that's mostly just religious conservatives in America... Like those fake abortion clinics that just waste people's time and try to preach at them, or the Jehovah Witness camps that beat the gay out of kids; just abuse co-opting the aesthetic and terminology of the domain and it's professions.
You need to keep in mind that transphobes often support the use of conversion therapy to torture LGBTQ folks into being traumatized by their own identity so that they simply repress themselves into being "normal." This is the "changing the mind" you mentioned and they are completely on board with all of the consequences so long as it gives them hope they can stop people from being different.
I view it the same way people misuse "psychosomatic". (Not to detract from the whole transphobia of it all. We know what they really mean when they say this, of course.)
People use psychosomatic to mean "its all in your head, therefore nothing is wrong." instead of "You identified a cause of the very real symptoms you're experiencing."
Honestly, it sometimes feels like the public has not grown all that much from the "throw the loonies into the asylum" era of psychology.
“You're a pervert!”
Confirmation bias
“Freak!”
Projection
“removed!”
Digressive victimhood
“Gay”
I'm not sure if everyone else is familiar with these, so I will leave these links:
Ah yes, the Skill Issue Fallacy. 😤
it needs to be attributed to a real fallacy, but AFAIK there's no "you're doing it wrong" fallacy.
Debate chuds crying rn
feel like I'd've been so much better at debate club if I could take down my opponents with "skill issue."
Why is "you were Amab" a false dichotomy? Wouldn't it be a false equivalence like the xy chromosomes?
Because it limits one's choices to what they were assigned at birth arbitrarily. What if one weren't assigned a gender? What options are there other than amab or afab?
Equivalence applies to the chromosome argument because it's trying to assert that xy chromosomes mean the same thing as someone's gender.
I think the confusion is the "you're" part, not the "amab" part.
If the statement was something like "you can only be amab or afab", then that is a false dillema (hi intersex people).
But if the statement is "you [as in 🫵] are amab" then that seems to get into false premise or general fallacies of relevance. The response would seem to be "Thats wrong" if you're not amab, or "That's as true as it is irrelevant" if you are.
cope, seethe, mald