Quote (Handcuffs @ Nov 15 2022 07:21pm)
I think the "mental illness" part of this discussion is much more nuanced than people would want to make space for on PaRD, but I will do my best to assume good faith and reply accordingly:
Important context is needed to acknowledge that our current approach/conceptualization to working with transgender people is relatively new in terms of the historical approach we've taken. Understandably, many people have never been aware of this history because:
1. They themselves are not transgender.
2. They do not have a meaningful, close connection with someone who is transgender that included being privy or otherwise involved in said person's gender care.
3. Both 1 and 2, and they've never had to be educated/informed on it.
I'm not saying that any of this applies to you, but I do think it makes sense why a significant amount of people who have concern about the acceptance and modern treatment of gender expansive people bring up the idea of "mental illness". If someone were to spawn into the world with an idea of what sex/gender or man/woman are, without this historical context, it wouldn't be surprising that people end up having this very common reaction that it seems like it must be a form of mental illness. After all, (to many) one's sex/gender are "fixed", immutable, and why in the world would anyone want to alter their body via social changes, hormones, and/or surgery if not due to the presence of a mental illness? That said, this was actually the prevailing position of the medical/psychological field for the most of human and medical history. Far more of human history has involved trying to "cure" transgender people via the lens of "mental illness" than what we currently see being adopted in the modern era. It really wasn't until ~1920s and Magnus Hirschfeld's field work in Germany that this started to change, and never really caught on in the US until the 1950s. Prior to this, the most-common approaches for "curing transgender people" were either behavioral conditioning approaches via aversion/conversion therapy, or more Freudian psychodynamic therapy--which parallels the majority of the history for "curing" gay people. However, these forms of "treatment" were not efficacious at all, and similar to what we found with gay people, one could not be "cured" of the transgender experience. The fervent view that it must be a mental illness persisted for a long time, and still persists to this day; however, increasing amounts of research and data have shown that these treatments are/were not only NOT efficacious, but they had deleterious outcomes for people as well.
Increasingly, our research shows that the most-medical interpretation of the transgender experience is that there is a developmental incongruence between one's body, socialization, and inner sense of self. Historical efforts weighed heavily on trying to "cure" that inner sense of self to rid someone of the transgender experience/gender dysphoria, but as this has proven to be ineffective, the medical and psychological fields have pivoted to forms of treatment that are actually efficacious, are associated with improvements in subjective well-being, and that have focused on putting the weight on changing one's body/style/appearance/and socialization to align with one's inner sense of self. Now, this is wrestled with within the trans community, because it dances on the line of so-called "transmedicalism", which amounts to medical gatekeeping of whether someone is certifiably trans or not. It's an entirely different discussion to be had, but I think this is a good starting point for replying to idea that being transgender, or having gender dysphoria, is a "mental illness".
Gender isn't a Concept, I've agreed it is a social construct built upon the facts of science.
(concept: [noun] something conceived in the mind : thought, notion.)
Humans do not spawn, they are birthed from a women. (I understand you didn't say they are spawned but I felt compelled to add this)
By your own admission, There are people trying to cure this mental illness. It wasn't until the topic of transgender was normalized through deviations, which lead to an uptick of transgenders. This automatically correlates to the number of people who become transgender as a fad or trend. Had this mental illness never became normalized we wouldn't see even a fraction of the transgenders we see now a days.
I agree with you that there are those who view gays as having a mental illness. And for a fact, some of those are suffering from a mental illness. This also parallels with what I said about transgender. It became normalized and we are seeing an uptick in those who claim to be gay. Many of which do it out of acceptance, fad or trend.
The well-being of a person is important, even if they suffer in their mind. They are still a human like you and I.