Would you date a transgender person? Poll

You know the doctor said you need to take the pills at 6 hour intervals otherwise you start writing incoherent rantings on student forums.

From now on I demand you call me Master when addressing me.
Your analogy is completely flawed, a name is a title that can be easily changed and has no meaning behind it, calling someone a he or she if they are a she/he is a completely incorrect statement, they should be defined based on their factual definition which is their Genetics (XX/XY). If they get offended by that then I am by no means selfish.

I also think that while somebody born with both should be treated, the NHS should not be funding this surgery. These people need a psychologist.

'No, certainly not'.

While i accept the fact that these people have different feelings and issues and have sought 'correction' as they believe it, i certainly would not allow myself to become infatuated with one of them simply because i find it a little repulsive and i don't think i have sufficient empathy for their situation.

Then there's the fact that they are incapable of producing my progeny, in recent years that's become sufficiently important to me that i'm not even sure i could be with anybody who was infertile.

I also think that while somebody born with both should be treated, the NHS should not be funding this surgery. These people need a psychologist.

They speak to a psychologist, you don't just go to your GP and say "I'm a woman, invert my penis please". There's extensive contact, until the doctors are satisfied it is essential for the person's mental health that they have reassignment. The NHS is for mental as well as physical health problems. If someone's body dismorphia is not considered permanent, they won't go ahead.

I'm all for treating mental health issues but in this case i'm simply not sure that it's adequate justification to waste taxpayers money. Unless these feelings push them towards suicide for example (i.e. it's making them a danger to themselves) then i'd take the view that the NHS can provide mental health services but that they should go private if they want an operation.

The proof that it works is self evident.

Is it? Rates of depression and suicide remain indistinguishable before and after surgery, at a rate of roughly 20 times the normal population.

So the evidence actually suggests it doesn't actually work, at all.

I'm all for treating mental health issues but in this case i'm simply not sure that it's adequate justification to waste taxpayers money. Unless these feelings push them towards suicide for example (i.e. it's making them a danger to themselves) then i'd take the view that the NHS can provide mental health services but that they should go private if they want an operation.

I may be wrong but I dont think therapy works at all for trans people

When you realise how truly **** it is to be trans (overall), the basic respect than help they ask for really doesn't seem unreasonable.

I can't really think of much more important things to be spending my taxes on than preventing suicide.

Do you have any evidence that it's actually 'helping' them, or that giving them the surgery does anything to decrease the suicide rate?

edit: not necessarily saying you're wrong, I'd just like to see stats etc.

The trouble is, a lot of post operative transwomen (I say transwomen because most transmen I see look like men. If you take a load of testosterone and grow a beard, you will look like a man) are still noticeabley trans, and our society is still pretty transphobic. A lot of people, as evident on this thread, refuse to accept them as female, which is obviously a key point of the surgery. For the mental health of trans people to be equal to that of the general population we need society to change, not just their bodies.

But trans people are, which presumably means they must believe there is some substance to gender/sex or why would they bother to mimic the characteristics of the sex they think they are?

Suicide is extremely prevalent amongst trans people- http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/28/local/la-me-ln-suicide-attempts-alarming-transgender-20140127

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I genuinely don't know about this. I cited an article by a psychiatrist (former chief at Johns Hopkins medical school iirc) in a post I made earlier in the thread (second page iirc) who says that, actually, we're harming them by collaborating in and encouraging a mental disorder. It may be that he's like the occasional climate change denying scientist you find (I doubt it, but it's possible), and the profession in general has made up its mind the other way. But if that's not the case I feel like we're a bit premature in telling everyone that they must treat transwomen (if I have this the right way round) as women and vice versa. (Obviously if they've had the surgery already then there's not really any going back, so I suppose we may as well in that case.)

I think that is especially the case given, as I suggested earlier in the thread, I don't think the issue is very commonly actually thought about. I think most people come down on a side either because they react strongly to things they consider a bit weird or because they want to be seen as super liberal and accepting. I've always just gone along with it, used whatever pronouns I've been asked to, etc, because it's just easier not to cause offence, but I'm not sure if I'm actually doing the right thing there. Ultimately it's a matter for psychiatry, and I don't (and I suspect most other people in this thread don't either) know much about the psychiatry.

Again, if anything I've said is easily corrected by evidence, anyone who wants to cite such evidence is welcome.

edit: I suppose you make a good point in saying that medical professionals have accepted the surgery as helpful, and if the evidence is behind that I support its being made available.

and the rate is unaffected by a gender realignment surgery...

Only a sadist would deny that we clearly need to find a more effective course of treatment.