How Do You Respond to Transphobic Arguments?/I'm back!

[Aractus]

As a cisgender woman who barely knew only one transgender person in my life, I don't run into transphobia that much.

My goodness, I can't believe the extreme level of PC you've gone to.

The medical condition suffered by individuals who become transgender is gender dysphoria. In most of the world doctors will not perform gender reassignment surgery on someone not diagnosed with this disorder.

The idea that transsexualism is normal is wrong - it isn't, it's caused by a psychological disorder. It is in fact a form of treatment for the symptom of the illness. This would be why your boyfriend is essentially right in saying that "it's all in their head" it is, but it's also a mental illness and like many others it requires medical treatment as well as our understanding.

Now let's ask an important question: is hormone replacement therapy the right course of action for people why suffer from gender dysphoria (well more specifically gender identity disorder)? At present it's used due to the fact it seems to be the only medical option for some patients, however it's important to remember that the theory that some people have a "brain gender" that differs from their biological gender is far from settles, and like in all science needs to be challenged as much as possible so we can develop better medical science and better ways for treating patients with mental disorders.

So what I'm saying is not that transgender people are bad people, nor am I saying that they choose their treatment option - it's in fact prescribed to them by physicians, but what I am saying is that your argument that "if someone identifies this way others need to respect that" is not how it works at all. That's like saying if I identify myself as aboriginal you have to respect me as being a traditional land owner - you'd have every right to point out to me there's not a drop of aboriginal blood in my DNA, and in the same way a person with a normal set of chromosomes has a definite biological gender, and the fact they identify with the opposite one doesn't negate that fact.