[Jamie89]

Originally Posted by Vicky.

I ummed and ahhed about posting this. This is a topic I am looking into deeply right now after having my eyes well and truly opened..this is not really anything to do with Greer but I didn't want to make a new thread and it 'fits' here so... So, at the risk of being flamed, and possibly even demodded as apparently my views are transphobic to some (though the word has lost all meaning, as I am about to talk about) here we go.

First off, I don't think you've come across as transphobic at all, it's clear you're just trying to understand the issue, and it's a worthy discussion to be had.

I actually think part of the problem here though is that the thing you're trying to understand, can't really be fully understood, we simply don't know enough about how the brain works. And the whole thing comes down to someone's connection (or disconnection) between 3 things, their brain, their physical body, and the social constructs around them. But these things often get mixed up and that's why it gets so complicated. And that's essentially why we have labels, so we can make sense of things and simplify things, and 'man' and 'woman' are easy labels because we can see there are clear difference between men and women... but how a person feels and how their brain works isn't something we can see, so we can't really know 'why' when it comes to transsexuality, it just is. And I think this, plus the fact that it's such a small proportion of the population that go through something like this, It makes it even more difficult to be able to personally relate to it or see it as 'normal'... and that's where it becomes easy to fall into the 'mental illness' way of thinking. But personally I reject that. It goes against what we consider an 'illness' to be. From a trans persons point of view, they are 'cured' at the point of transitioning, and why should we dismiss that just because we don't understand what's behind it?

As such, I reject the idea of 'gender identity' meaning someone is actually the opposite sex than they were born. Gender, is a totally social construct.

Which in turn, means I reject the 'born in the wrong body' stuff, in the sense of it meaning anything to do with actual sex.

To me, the 'born in the wrong body' thing is just phrasing. If the deeper issues surrounding transsexuality and the mentality behind it can't be fully understood then it can't really be articulated accurately either. So I don't think the terminology should necessarily be taken too literally. It's just someone trying to make sense of themselves. So even if it doesn't make total sense when analysed against the things that we do understand, that doesn't make the persons feelings that led to them saying it any less valid.

Originally Posted by Jessica.

It was treated as a mental illness for ages though, are there cases of gender dysphoria being cured through therapy? I am really curious now.

I'm not sure, but we live in a world where homosexuality was/(is?) also treated as a mental illness, and there are people right now being 'cured' of it, so even if transsexuals have been 'treated' through counselling I don't think that it backs up the idea of it being a mental illness, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people who have undergone reassignment surgery have considered that to be their treatment and 'cure'.