The Student Room Group

Should trans people be allowed to receive free reassignment surgery on the NHS?

Scroll to see replies

Original post by tanyapotter
From the NHS website:

"Treatment for gender dysphoria aims to help reduce or remove the distressing feelings of a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity.

Many trans people have treatment to change their body permanently, so they're more consistent with their gender identity, and the vast majority are satisfied with the eventual results."

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Do you hate the NHS/basic facts/research and statistics, or are you just stupid? Also, if you can direct me to the NHS page on the mental health condition where someone wants to be an animal, I'll gladly entertain your ignorance.


I don't know what point you're trying to make with that. You presented nothing that I have argued against.

Why are you throwing insults? So unnecessary.

It doesn't have to recognised as a mental health condition, like previously said, it could be a symptom of an existing condition. Either way, why can't I have free surgery to look like a cat if it depresses me to stay human?
Reply 81
Avatar for Josb
Josb
6
The cost for male to female reassignment is $7,000 to $24,000. The cost for female to male reassignment can exceed $50,000.

"Since 2000 a total of 853 men have gone under the knife to become women while in the same time span 12 women have had an operation to become a man." [article was written in 2010]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/7613567/Number-of-NHS-sex-change-operations-triples.html


The total cost of gender reassignments is ridiculous compared to cancer treatments.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by cherryred90s
I don't know what point you're trying to make with that. You presented nothing that I have argued against.

Why are you throwing insults? So unnecessary.

It doesn't have to recognised as a mental health condition, like previously said, it could be a symptom of an existing condition. Either way, why can't I have free surgery to look like a cat if it depresses me to stay human?


I presented medical evidence that gender reassignment surgery is effective for treating gender dysphoria, and you've presented no medical evidence to support your claim that it doesn't do anything. I'm still waiting.

I'm calling you stupid because you seem to think there's no difference between gender and species. Aren't you supposed to be doing psychology or something at university? Did you know that transspecies-ism is not a symptom of any condition?
Original post by cherryred90s
How is it childish? I could say I want to live as a cat because it would make me feel more secure in myself and would make me happier, why shouldn't my surgery be free?


You could say that, and if you were serious enough you could probably get some psychiatric help. In the case of gender dysphoria however, the brain itself is physically the other gender. A transman is a man as far as his brain is concerned, whatever his gonadal tissue reports. A "catkin" person's brain is a human brain, no matter how fervently and earnestly they might perhaps wish otherwise.

The comparison is childish until a) you show me a feline brain in a human body and b) you demonstrate the ineffectiveness of other, non-surgical methods of treatment of what is obviously a mental health issue.
Reply 84
Avatar for Josb
Josb
6
Original post by Mathemagicien


Gender reassignments cost £2 million a year at most. It has no effect on cancer medication purchases.
Original post by tanyapotter
I presented medical evidence that gender reassignment surgery is effective for treating gender dysphoria, and you've presented no medical evidence to support your claim that it doesn't do anything. I'm still waiting.

I'm calling you stupid because you seem to think there's no difference between gender and species. Aren't you supposed to be doing psychology or something at university? Did you know that transspecies-ism is not a symptom of any condition?


I never said it doesn't do anything. Of course it is blunt to make a person feel happier, but I don't believe it alone cures gender dysphoria. The information you linked didn't show a follow up of those people who've had the surgery.

Right because you know every single mental health sufferer and know exactly what they would like? Mine was just an example but you seem to think you know it all. There have been people who've chosen to alter their features to look like an animal. I don't know if they're mentally ill but why does that matter? If it makes them happy and affects nobody but them, why shouldn't they be funded?

I don't know why every time I have a discussion with you, you always seem to bring up this whole psychology thing. I don't study it, not that it has anything to do with this.
We've known about both conditions for a while now. I'll let the medical professionals and the government decide the appropriate treatments and whether or not they should be available for free on the NHS instead of a random Buddhist preaching about contentment on the basis of their own anecdotal testimony. If species dysphoria really is comparable to gender dysphoria, I'm sure they would've discovered non-human brains in human bodies :smile:
It's not a civil rights or a 'tolerance' issue. It's a mental health issue. If we treat people who are depressed or anxious at the public expense, we must also treat people who have a deep-seated loathing of their bodies. Sometimes it may be that the best treatment is to give them the surgery.
Any surgery that does not serve to ensure a persons physical health should obviously not be covered by any national medical insurance.

No matter what @zippyRN has been fed by tumblr SJW's, surgery should be reserved for physical health issues. If we allow surgery to ensure mental health, then why should the NHS not also cover breast surgery and nose jobs?

Also, there is hardly a group of people on this very planet that is more left wing and liberal than students. So if you think that the oppinions of TSRians are not left wing enough, then that is highly worrying.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by A Mysterious Lord
Conflating being transgender with having an illness, how transphobic.


Multiple people in this thread have talked about cancer as a comparison for NHS funding. I was continuing the comparison. That funding cancer treatment is being used as a reason why trans people shouldn't be allowed hormones and surgeries on the NHS but people with cancer still CHOOSE to receive treatment. Also, many people say that other cosmetic surgeries aren't on the NHS but if a cis woman has a mastectomy due to breast cancer she's offered implants. Sometimes the NHS will even do it all in the same operation.

Also, I'm trans so if you're cis then you have absolutely no business telling me what is and isn't transphobic.

Oh, and as someone who is both mentally ill and trans: most of the rhetoric based on whether or not being trans is a mental illness is incredibly saneist because it relies on the idea that it's bad and wrong to be mentally ill and that mentally ill people shouldn't be able to make decisions about our bodies and our lives because we're worth less than people who don't have mental illnesses and that **** needs to stop.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by cherryred90s
Opting to not have chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis is asking for a death sentence. There is no other way to cure cancer.

There are other ways to cope with gender dysphoria. Choosing not to have gender reassignment will not kill you.


Except that people LITERALLY KILL THEMSELVES because they are unable to transition.
Original post by SmallTownGirl
Except that people LITERALLY KILL THEMSELVES because they are unable to transition.


Don't people continue to kill themselves at astonishingly high rates afterwards?
Original post by SmallTownGirl
Except that people LITERALLY KILL THEMSELVES because they are unable to transition.


People kill themselves all the time because they're unable to get decent mental health care.
Original post by SmallTownGirl
Except that people LITERALLY KILL THEMSELVES because they are unable to transition.


Then explain why people kill themselves even after they've transitioned
Original post by dingleberry jam
I dunno, giving blokes tits does seem a little frivolous while others are deprived of mental health care or IVF or diagnostic tests or drugs.

I'd rather my taxes go to ivf treatment as opposed to gender reassignment surgery
Original post by Mathemagicien
"Sex changes are not effective, say researchers"
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/30/health.mentalhealth

http://www.cakeworld.info/news/2014-08-02acommentaryonthe2004arifstudyandtheguardianarticlesexchangesarenoteffectivesayresearchers

pulls apart that article in the guardian (from 2004!).

The article is talking about a study that "In the abstract available on the university’s server, no opinion on the effectiveness of sex reassignment surgery is expressed. It is noted that “our searches confirm absence of randomised controlled trials and controlled trials to December 2001, and have identified none since then to the end of June 2004”. "

Obviously you can't conduct randomised controlled trials on SRS or transitioning - the nature of the treatment means that it would be highly unethical (and obvious to participants) to conduct a study in such a way.

http://genderanalysis.net/2015/09/paul-mchugh-is-wrong-transitioning-is-effective-gender-analysis-10/Covers the most vocal critic of SRS and transitioning and the most common studies cited (and what they ACTUALLY find)

Original post by LibertyMan
That's ********. Trans people will never be happy because they are mentally ill, and convincing a schizophrenic that everyone believes they are being hunted by the illuminati isn't going to make them happy either, it will only feed into their illusion.

Many many trans people regret their sex change. We have a moral obligation to not allow mentally ill people who don't know what they're doing mutilate themselves permanently.


Original post by cherryred90s
As you said yourself, not every trans person will want surgery, which means that there is more than one solution to ease their symptoms.

Have you not read stories about people who have transitioned yet still commit suicide? Here's a suicide note of someone who began transitioning. You reckon that if she had fully transitioned, she wouldnt have been feeling this way?
Attachment not found

http://genderanalysis.net/2015/07/walt-heyer-and-sex-change-regret-gender-analysis-09/

Cases of trans people regretting transition are few and far between - and are very often due to the levels of transphobia, bigotry and discrimination encountered by people transitioning or post-transition.
Original post by TimmonaPortella
Don't people continue to kill themselves at astonishingly high rates afterwards?


Original post by cherryred90s
Then explain why people kill themselves even after they've transitioned

•

A study from Belgium in 2006 found that trans people’s rates of suicide attempts dropped from 29.3% before surgery to 5.1% after.

•

Another study of 50 trans women who received genital surgery found that their physical and mental health was not significantly different from samples of cis women.

•

A 2013 study of 433 trans people in Canada found that 27% of those who hadn’t begun transitioning had attempted suicide in the past year, but this dropped to 1% for those who were finished transitioning.

•

And a 2010 meta-analysis of 28 studies showed that 78% of trans people showed an improvement in psychiatric symptoms after transitioning, with a level of psychological functioning similar to the general population and greater than that of untreated trans people.

•

http://genderanalysis.net/2015/09/paul-mchugh-is-wrong-transitioning-is-effective-gender-analysis-10/

i was trapped in a woman's body... managed to free myself without NHS assistance :colondollar:
No
Original post by the bear
i was trapped in a woman's body... managed to free myself without NHS assistance :colondollar:


Do bears have barbed penises?

Quick Reply

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you