On 22 August 2013, raghu wrote: >> . . . . a bunch of leftists . . . are about to >> have a quick seminar on transgender rights. :) > > I don't know. I think I could use a quick seminar if anyone > feels up to it. > > I will admit to some discomfort with the idea of medicalizing > gender identities. Terms like "gender dysphoria" and "gender > identity disorder" suggests that these are diseases that need > to be cured.
So, then, don't "medicalize" -- probably a good idea even for seemingly (actual) medical related purposes.* ( * A close relative experienced persistent, long-time intense pain in her lower back, mystifying to a number of seemingly well qualified physicians one of whom, clearly uncomfortable at being regarded as less than knowledgeable and able, and with no little fanfare, then offered a diagnosis with the burst of insight folk imagine Issac Newton to have experienced in watching that fallen apply. "Ah ha!," he explained, "the pain you feel in your lower back is coccydenia!" -- thus actually explaining nothing and continuing not to have any idea how to help his patient. ) So if you prefer and if the occasion was to arise for you to be the non-party describer (and there might be some more "if"s), maybe try something like: the person in question "mostly feels anxious and depressed about seeming to others and being treated by others as if what others believe is a [man] [woman] [other]"? > How would you feel about providing hormone therapy > to suppress homosexual desires . . .? And by a not articulated but glaringly present assumption you embed in this semi-rhetorical question you really do demonstrate a need, or at least the desirablity, of rethinking and maybe more of an education. That is, you here obviously forget that a woman may always and not only persistently feel as if she were a woman and be sexually and affectionally attracted only or mostly to other woman yet not be at all confused let alone anxious about self-identifying and being identified by others as a woman and that a man may always and not only persistently feel as if he were a man and be sexually and affectionally attracted only or mostly to other men yet not be at all confused let alone anxious and depressed about self-identifying and being identified by others as a man. So why would one -- a medicalizer or not -- conflate persons who feel this way with persons who experience what for some purposes is referred to as a "disorder" with terms like "gender dysphoria" and "gender identity disorder"? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
