I think that using surgery to radically alter your physical appearance and butcher your sexual organs is a poor way to deal with what is at heart a psychological issue. I am actually an extremely liberal guy about most things, but I think that the notion that we should just accept this practice because "this is who these people are" is taking things a bit too far.
Why did you use quotation marks? Do you have some reason to doubt the sincerity of people claiming to be transgendered?
Well, it's more that this is categorically
not who these people are. If I go through the kind of physical alterations Robert Downey Jr's character went through in
Tropic Thunder it does not make me a black man, no matter how much I might wish I was born one or how much I might identify with them. This is no different.
It is truly disgusting.
Can you elaborate? This comment strikes me as pure knee-jerk but I would like to know if there is more to it.
You want me to elaborate on how permanently butchering oneself is a disgusting thing to do? Seriously? I don't even know how to answer that; I feel just the description is ample enough explanation.
Whatever happened to just learning to accept ourselves for who we are? Does that not apply if we have difficulty accepting that we are male, or female?
Let's assume that psychological routes have been exhausted and the difference between gender perception and gender physiology still causes great distress to someone, how would you propose alleviating their suffering?
Well, they can just do what people did before we had drugs and therapy and major sexual organ butchering surgery. Deal with it. I learned to accept that my life isn't perfect and that I will never be perfectly satisfied with it a long time ago.
We all have problems.