(April 11, 2016 at 10:55 am)Chad32 Wrote: Because they're fully capable of functioning within society, as long as they're allowed to modify their body/style to fit how they see themselves... and they won't have more destructive issues later. If you don't allow them to express themselves properly, it will only make things worse. Higher suicide rates, for instance. Being gay or transgender doesn't make people more suicidal. How society treats them does.
The issue seems much more complicated that what either you or Drich have said. Mental health problems are often a constellation of issues and cannot be attributed to a single specific illness or cause. The problems associated with gender-dysphoria cannot be fully attributed to social attitudes. Most often the mentally ill are better served by accepting themselves as they are. That seems to me to be a very important difference between being gay and being transgendered. Positive self-acceptance for a gay person does not require a regime of hormonal treatments and/or invasive surgical procedures. Absent a serious physical illness, trying to change your existing biology to conform to how you think it "should be" is the exact opposite of self-acceptance.
