Johnny Cage In The Shower
Member
No reason other than the mental/emotional/physical pain, the suffering, the emotional toll, the amount of time that needs to be invested, the high costs, the need to throw one's body off balance hormonally, the medical procedures that can go horribly wrong, the physical issues that can't be fixed with hormones or pills, the legal procedures, the chaos transitioning can cause even in the lives of people who have fantastic support systems, and so on.
I'm all for having less diversity in the world if it means an entire group of people aren't suffering through something needlessly. And this condition IS ABSOLUTELY "seriously debilitating" to some people, and current 2017 treatments are still akin to trying to fix an arm that's been cut of with duct tape and aspirin. We're nowhere near the point where the post-birth transitioning options are genuinely satisfactory, or actually fixes for some individuals.
Guess what: people can still play with gender roles all they wantcis people do it all the time. Nothing would stop people from identifying as non-binary if that's what they truly want.
Diversity for the sake of diversity is meaningless. In the same breath, I'd also say that I'd love to see a world with no deaf people (since that was brought up)because it'd mean that nobody is having to suffer through that physical defect. Same with people who are blind. Same with people in wheelchairs because of non-functioning limbs. Losing all of that "diversity" is great in my book if it means people are living better lives.
Oh lord, no it isn't.
It's obviously not the same thing when comparing people who are non-binary for whatever trans reasons, and people who just decide that they want to live that kind of lifestyle. The point still stands that there'd be nothing stopping the blurring of gender lines in a world without trans people, simply that it'd come from actual desire and not deep-seeded disconnecting inside of someone.
There's nothing to apologize for. This is a deeply personal topic, and everybody entering into itincluding myselfcomes at it with some level of selfishness. That's human nature.
The best solutionand this I think goes to also answering your questions about your own situationis that there's multiple solutions, not one. It's felt like some of the posts in this thread have been either/or in terms of fixing being trans pre-birth and increasing social acceptance, but those are both part of the same answer, not separate answers. Any "fix" as is being addressed in the OP wouldn't be overnight, so the solution would be more acceptance of trans people, better resources for helping them in whatever ways science and technology currently can, AND a true in utero solution (so long as, again addressing my first post, we know the true causes for being trans).
And even then, enacting all of those fixes doesn't cover everyone. But that's also where the conversation can get uncomfortable: what if that WOULD be the fix for someone like you? If there's something that gets broken inside us to switch the way we identify versus the way we're expected to identify, couldn't that also be the cause of people who then have even deeper and more complex gender identity issues? As I mentioned in my reply to Platy, my wish for the world would be that someone like you lives in an ambiguous gender existence because you want to, not because that's the only way to live your life. I want you to have the freedom to explore those things, but also the ability to just be "regular" for whatever length of time you choose to be without it being a mental/emotional strain on you.
I don't want to be transbut the me that exists in this moment wouldn't have wanted to just been a regular guy. But I feel that way because of whatever caused me to be trans, so if that hadn't existed in the first place, I'd probably feel great about being a regular guy. But then me being that would mean the me that exists here and now would no longer exist, and I've kind of come to like this me. But I'm the me that I am now because I've had to go through things I wish I hadn't have had to go through.
It's a hugely complex discussion that deals with the premise of changing who we currently are with a "fix" where there's compelling arguments on both sides. It's not ever going to be an easy conversation to have.
How society deals with transgender people is in no way the only cause of those things. For example, you can experience all of that and more because of being trans when you don't even understand that you're trans due to having that disconnect inside of you.
I absolutely think "mental illness" is a potential explanation for people being transgender. The problem is, you say that, and there's instantly a stigma attached to that statement because of some of the other conditions that also fall under that umbrella. For me, though, it makes the most sense that something about the brain's wiring got put together in a way it wasn't supposed toas in, the brain was set to develop one way while the body goes another route. The question then is is the brain set the wrong waythus it being a mental illness of sortsor is the brain the one set correctly and the body's switch was flipped the wrong way, thus a problem of physical development?
Really fascinating topic: I much prefer to take the sidelines, read and get something out of than participate (sometimes you just gotta listen to learn something)