So I'm talking about religion's that have had trans-gender societies since like 10,000 BCE, and you're all still saying gender identity "swapping" is not normal? You guys are missing a few screws yourselves...
How about the /original/ American's? The "Two-spirit" people of many NA tribes were oft considered trans-gender ~
The Two-Spirit people of indigenous North Americans
So we're talking about something that happens globally, this is not a local phenomena. Population wise to gauge "normalcy", rough estimate... Well so far I've listed examples of tran-gender accepting societies in Asia and India, which covers about half of the east, and here's and example of trans in North America, which is about half of the west. If we figure even 1/4 of 1/2 of the global population (due to the religious connotation in beliefs of the Asian side) we'd be talking about roughly 1B identifying/being identified as trans-gender. Which would be roughly 1/7 of all humans on the planet being mentally-ill about their gender... I mean it's possible, perhaps one could even argue that is a "lower than expected" percentage of people to be mentally ill, but that would be talking about /all/ mental illnesses as a whole; in such a case trans-gender identity "illness" would make up something like 70% of all mental illnesses in the world - which when being realistically honest, would likely be rejected from classification as mental illness much like religion was.
I would figure that trans-gender identifiers would not be classified as mentally ill, but rather as "healthy" different. Similar to "biologically unique" folks, like left handers and my fellow synaesthesiast's; the mental/emotional capacities and functions are entirely normal but the wiring of the brain is different... This to my mind makes more sense, after all, the biological "difference," in-so-far-as the wiring of the brain, between male and female falls into the broad category of "healthy different" /anyway/ doesn't it? Which is to say there are distinct "markers" of genetic variation, hormones, and brain functioning of trans-gender identifiers - some are even classifying these as an actual biological difference.
Lets narrow down why you all believe gender dysphoria /wouldn't/ fall into the "healthy, just different" category?
"Health but different" is how it is /actually/ classified by a lot of psychologists and physicians in the world. The WHO and UN classify it as a mental disorder in the US, however, it is /not/
globally recognized as a mental disorder, and as I noted a /lot/ of psychologists and physicians recognize an actual biological difference in trans-genders. (I think it's worth noting that the US is hesitant to adopt WHO/UN's ICD global mental health classifications, because we mostly use such disorder findings for government/political/financial use and we apparently disagree with a lot of WHO/UN ICD findings.)
From Wikipedia because it has a decent overview of tests that have been done with GID: (GID is Gender Identity Disorder is the American label vs the "non-Americanized" label Gender Dysphoria)
"Twin studies indicate that GID is 62% heritable, evidencing the genetic influence or prenatal development as its origin.
[22] In male-to-female transsexuals, GID is associated with variations in an individual's genes that make the individual less sensitive to androgens.
[1] Zhou et al. (1995) found that in one area of the brain, male-to-female transsexuals have a typically female structure, and female-to-male transsexuals have a typically male structure.
[23] Zhou et al. (1995) had a sample size of only six male-to-female transgender individuals. There may, for example, be some
non-transgender heterosexual men with some brain structures that would be expected in a female, as the sample size in Zhou et al. (1995) is too small to exclude such possibilities. In addition, some aspects of
trans women's hypothalamus functioning resemble that typical of cisgender women.
[24]
The presence of typically female patterns of white matter and neuron patterns has also been observed in the brains of male-to-female transsexuals
[25][26] and overall longer instances of the androgen receptor gene.
[27] (Also see
Causes of transsexualism.) However, these markers do not identify every individual who undergoes transition.
[28]
Similar
brain structure differences have, however, been noted between gay and heterosexual men, and between lesbian and heterosexual women.
[29][30] More recent studies have found that circumstance and repeated activities such as
meditation modify brain structures in a process called brain plasticity or
neuroplasticity. In May 2014, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that for fathers, parenting "rewires the male brain".
[31]"
~ I do agree that it is generally accepted that ones lifestyle /can/ change the "wiring" of their brain (which is the basis for most North American classification and treatments of GID.)
So even if we ignore the debate regarding what /actually/ causes GID, basically for this debate I'll [reluctantly] accept that GID is a self-inflicted "rewiring" based on social pressure (which is basically the argument being made here.) Then the real question, my question, is if such rewiring is actually a negative or a positive. Wiki above has exampled males becoming fathers "rewiring" their brains, but another example of a positive rewire would be some genius' who are thought to have rewired their own brains. Some negative examples of personal brain "rewiring" would be OCD patients, I'd say /most/ addiction patients do via chemical means (which is essentially the cause of a male or female infant as well), and I'd argue that "criminals" on all non-survival related scales [and stealing food for one or ones families survival does not count at s a negative trait to me personally] also rewire their brains to some extent (lessening moral aversion's through personal justification and such.)
So which side of the positive/negative fence would GID/Gender Dysphoria fall, and why?
My answer, if I'm accepting that it's self-inflicted rewiring, is that the only real con of such is in dis-acceptance in society which is not universally considered a negative trait. It could be related, to almost any social disorder; a couple examples that fit well with the debate here are social anxiety which is non-self inflicted and considered "normal and necessary" for infants, but can develop into a "disorder" in adulthood (SAD) when it has clear negative effects on a persons life, and Asocility which is thought to be "self-inflicted" but yet not considered a negative trait as it is oft desired by numerous social/political/religious/specialized groups/movements.
Now, to the extent of treatments for a supposed self-inflicted GID what is/are the ultimate positives for the re-re-wiring of trans-genders?
My answer is that the only real positive would be IF it /was/ a self-inflicted rewiring, then it could be properly reasoned that re-re-wiring would resolve the patients feelings of mis-belonging in their own body. However, such re-wirings are /not/ universally successful and often cause more harm than good for the patient. In the past many attempts were made to modify the GID person's thoughts (i.e., mind control or "brain washing"), via hypnosis, aversion therapy, shock therapy, or drug therapy. But none of these methods ever proved effective and often did more damage and inflicted more trauma on the patient than anything else. Which actually would likely prove even /more/ true if it was indeed a self-inflicted rewiring, after all said patient decided to re-wire themselves for some reason, and doctors would be attempting to undo that, the patient would resist such unless the /underlying/ reason for their self-rewiring was now gone; "treatment" really doesn't makes sense because the personal has /already/ proven that they can self-rewire themselves, so if it was a /problem/ for them, then why didn't they re-re-wire themselves? It's almost circular because for such an argument to treat to be the best course, one would actually have to argue that the patient /didn't/ have a choice in the original rewiring (like happens with OCD,) which ultimately defeats the argument that they self-inflicted the rewiring being argued in this thread heh
