Transexuals

[TheRealJoeFish]

Seriously?

It's like I woke up in the twilight zone... Mental Illness is defined by the medical community. It is a series of behavioral disorder that affects cognitive thought. ('good' or bad makes no difference) It has absolutely nothing to do with personal assessment, but rather setting a bar of mental stability and documenting how and why those who can not reach said bar. Then setting in place a course of treatment to help those who cant reach that bar.

Mental illness is not a standard set forth or defined by personal assessment (what you or we think should be allowed.) It is a standard set forth by professionals who currently look at the underlining behaviors (not just what manifests itself on the surface/what you are judging) in order to make a determination if an individual will be a danger to THEM SELVES or others now or in the future if their given disorder is left unchecked.

This post is a good example of what is wrong with your argument; I'm going to go point-by-point just for my own organization (it helps me think rationally )

1. The definition of mental illness/disorder is slippery.  Your definition of "behavioral disorder that affects cognitive thought" is probably not a good one; first, it uses the term "disorder" recursively, second, it refers to "behavior", which I don't believe to be a component of all mental illness, and third, "affects cognitive thought" is far too broad.  That's literally everything. 

2. A better definition is "a series of abnormal psychological symptoms that causes distress or dysfunction."  Something like that.

3. You can "set the bar" of mental stability and help people reach that bar.  Absolutely; that's where the "abnormal" part of the definition comes in (for instance, crippling grief over the loss of a loved one is not "abnormal" and is thus not considered mental illness unless it extends far beyond the "normal" course of grief).

4. It is where you (Drich) choose to "set the bar" that is both arbitrary and highly demonstrative of your bias.  You are setting the bar at "comfortable with one's birth gender" (which isn't always well-defined).  A far more reasonable, therapeutic bar would be "comfortable with one's self."  The only reason one would choose to set the bar based on "birth gender", which is a single characteristic that is not always well-defined, instead of "one's self", which is synonymous with a person's holistic well-being, is because political or religious reasons color your thinking.

5. If a person is uncomfortable in their body - that is, suffers from gender dysphoria - you can either a) try to make them comfortable in their body by changing their mental state or b) try to make them comfortable in their body by changing their body. 

6. The first is something that needs to take place over a lifetime, would involve trying to change the person's sense of who they are; most importantly, there is no scientific evidence that demonstrates that it is possible; in fact, all evidence points at it being extremely harmful (perhaps you "reduce" gender dysphoria but add depression and anxiety and anger and greatly increase the likelihood of suicide).

7. The second is admittedly a complicated process that involves surgery and hormone therapy.  But it does not try to alter who the person believes they are (and there is no medical problem, only a social problem, with who the person believes they are) and leads to far better results.

8. Ultimately, someone who transitions only remains "mentally ill" if you characterize the illness as "discomfort with birth gender".  However, the transitioned person no longer has the same extent of problems with their body, and so the "disabling" and "distressing" criteria of mental illness greatly diminish; it only remains a mental illness if you substitute "violation of social norms" for "personal distress", which is a really dishonest/biased thing to do.  If the criteria is "does the person feel happy with themselves, that is, in their body", after the transition, the answer is "yes".  If you're really interested in aiding people with gender dysphoria, you would recognize that transitioning is the treatment.

To summarize, you're implicitly assuming social norms, and using violation of these norms to bootstrap a behavior into mental illness when it would be far better to ground the criteria for mental illness in the particular person's life rather than whatever social norms you feel like assuming.

*Note: please forgive me if I've used any offensive language or "cisplained" (as in, like mansplaining or all that).