I thought it’s widely-agreed that gender dysphoria is a mental illness. The debate lies in how to treat it—try to realign the body with the mind or the mind with the body.
It may seem like a pedantic difference but you are missing a key part of what’s going on here. Nobody is challenging that gender dysphoria is a bad thing to experience… This policy is saying it’s kosher to proclaim “transness is a mental illness” which means in effect that encompasses gender euphoria and all expressions of gender incongruity as symptoms of a mental illness. It’s a subtle linguistic difference but one makes it possible to publicly derride trans people as being delusional or harmful to people around them or dangers to themselves and push for “curing” all transness by approaching being trans as a failure state.
Actually that’s a common misconception - while gender dysphoria is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) - it’s not actually a mental disorder (similar to how the DSM includes physiological and environmental issues like Insomnia or Social Exclusion) - main reason it’s there is for admin purposes and to facilitate treatment access.
However, a condition like body dysmorphia (think Anorexia Nervosa) is considered a mental disorder because the issue is the mind incorrectly perceiving the body - therefore it can be treated using psychotherapy which enables the mind to correctly perceive the body and prevent harm.
People who experience gender dysphoria on the other hand - actually correctly perceive their body (that’s where the distress comes from) so psychotherapy doesn’t work to alleviate this - as you can’t therapy away an accurate perception (think gay conversion therapy)
Which is why after many decades of research the only treatment that’s been found to work is aligning the body with the mind - as at that point the mind continues perceiving the body correctly but this time it’s congruent with it’s mental model which alleviates the distress.
Hope this helps :)
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Which is why after many decades of research the only treatment that’s been found to work is aligning the body with the mind - as at that point the mind continues perceiving the body correctly but this time it’s congruent with it’s mental model which alleviates the distress.
Just because the best treatment involves physical alteration doesn’t change whether it’s a mental disorder. You don’t classify disorders by how they’re addressed, you classify them as where they occur. Whether we term it a disorder, incongruence, etc, the fact remains that the distress happens in the mind.
That said, not all disorders (or whatever you want to call them) need to be “fixed” (i.e. made to be in line w/ the majority), they’re merely a way to distinguish one group of the population from another. Sometimes the best treatment is no treatment, sometimes is physical alteration, sometimes it’s medication, and sometimes it’s psychotherapy.
The average person shouldn’t really care what treatment option an individual chooses to alleviate their symptoms, and the “best” option can very well vary by person. Whether we call it a “disorder” isn’t the issue, the issue is the social impact of assigning a label (i.e. how others react to it). So to me, calling it a disorder should never be against any forum rules, the rules should instead focus on banning harassment, and calling it a disorder could constitute harassment given context.
So why leave this comment? You yourself identify the social impact of “assigning a label (i.e. how others react to it)” - so for what purpose are you arguing for what labels are to be assigned?
Can you not just accept that the people impacted by this label (and the scientific community) have recognized that this label is harmful to individuals and not feel the need to chime in?
Or do you feel your desire for pedantry is more important than the negative impact such a label can have on marginalized groups?
What’s gained by insisting on potentially harmful labels?
Even by your own admission, labels have social impact. So why are you choosing to argue for harmful ones?
EDIT: If you’re actually arguing for better acceptance of people with mental disorders - I would recommend volunteering at a mental health institution or defending people’s right to self-determination.
for what purpose are you arguing for what labels are to be assigned?
I believe in freedom of speech, and I don’t think any particular phrases, terms, or verbiage is absolutely unacceptable.
If you ban certain words, people will just substitute them for others with the same underlying meaning. Look at how people dance around YouTube’s TOS to communicate the same thing without using certain words (unalive, “super mario brothers,” etc). Banning people for using certain terminology or discussing certain topics completely misses the point, which is eliminating intolerance.
this label is harmful
It’s not the label that’s harmful, it’s the intent and meaning behind it. Policies for a platform should be based on the root of the issue, not the symptoms.
So your argument is “people will break the rules so we shouldn’t have any rules because it doesn’t matter”?
This is the classic nazi bar argument - which has been proven time and time again that “free speech absolutism” consistently leads to spaces becoming hostile to marginalized groups
I see you have your heart in the right place but by insisting on everyone having equal rights to say anything - you are inherently favoring the oppressor over the oppressed.
I don’t think we’ll come to an agreement so I’ll stop replying as this feels futile to argue over.
EDIT: Just FYI this is what you’re defending in this instance
“free speech absolutism” consistently leads to spaces becoming hostile to marginalized groups
It’s not the free speech that causes it, it’s that “free speech” is being used as a weapon to tolerate intolerance. You can tolerate Nazi insignias in a bar w/o tolerating Nazis, you throw people out who are intolerant, and let those remain who are respectful. In fact, I would love to go to a WW2-themed bar with a mix of historical symbols and whatnot from all sides of the war (Nazis, Japanese Imperialists, Allies, etc) where nobody tolerates actual Nazis.
I want a space where I can discuss things that are uncomfortable without fear of getting banned. That’s what I’m after when I push for free speech.
It depends on the “science of the times.” Crazy concept, I know.
It’s why psychology is considered a “soft science” and doesn’t deserve the authority that hard sciences have.
It’s a crazy concept to apply “science of the times” to only psychology, but not every other branch of science and medicine, as there are huge holes in understanding everywhere.
I have no idea what sciences would be considered “hard” in this definition.
Math is pretty solid
Not really. Psychology has a massive reproducibility issue right now.
You’re right, all other fields have been completely unaffected!
Psychology stands out with how many results are not reproducible.
While in physics, we can fundamentally change our theoretical understanding of very core concepts without impacting the reproducibility of experiments, and any new theory must also satisfy existing, reproducible experiments.
Same goes for chemistry, computer science, geology, etc. You can discover differences in core, fundamental concepts without invalidating existing experiments.
Zeezee already has a great reply. I’d also like to add that gender dysphoria isn’t the same as being trans, it’s possible to be trans and not have dysphoria
A fairly large percentage of straight people definitely have mental illness. Likely the same ones that will be saying the same thing about gay/trans.
What do you mean “now?” I’ve been seeing people say that for years.
Yup, and if you reported it as hate speech they’d review it and say it doesn’t go against community guidelines.
And then YOU get banned for “abusing the report feature”.
Reported a blatantly bigoted post saying that all gays should be burnt alive and I got a 30 day account suspension.
It’s just they’re updating their terms now that Trump is in power. Hate started to rise since the beginning of GenAI on the platform, I highly suspect due to the backlash from socially progressive people against it, and techbros didn’t appreciate that. They’re going mask off now after the elections.
Yeah the left wants things that actually hinder the oligarchs, the right wants to complain about them but will settle for people they don’t like being hurt. Tech companies understand that.
There’s also the fact that the bay area has spent quite a while having the sort of people who love to treat equal rights as a thought exercise
As far as internet content goes, hate is winning. All the major social media platforms have been overrun by sexist, racist, LGBTQphobic commentary. And these platforms will simply follow the money, pushing hate content via algorithms as good people leave the platforms.
And these platforms will simply follow the money
This, remember that every single pride sponsorship and rainbow coloured logo was approved by a marketing department after extensive market research deeming it to be profitable
And only broadcast in subregions of their market where they know it’s a good PR move.
Make two Reddit accounts, one saying “I love trans people” and one saying “I hate trans people”. I bet the latter will get banned first.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,”
I somewhat respect that statement actually.
They always did because their moderators didn’t act upon old rules anyway.
So what I see is, Meta first creates the problem of trans-metaverse by super aggressive inorganic promotion and then makes it even worse by cutting the expenses on such useless promotion. XD
L for all those who fell for it. Society eats you up (not sexually, keep your pants on) for getting mentally manipulated so easily.
Fuck Meta and Zuck. I wish I could stop using WhatsApp, as every other Meta product is out of my devices already.
I wish our government actually regulated these corporations so they are not able to have a tentacle in so many essential technologies.
All of the symptoms of the crushing power of techbro oligarchs are directly tied to failures of govt to regulate.
This has been true since “sign in with Facebook” became a thing.
I think with Brazil banning Xitter, and I reckon Starmer might too given how much Musk has attacked him, it might be come more of a thing.
Every journey needs a first step.
Try to convince some of your contacts to use something else. Repeat until a large chunk of your contacts are available outside WhatsApp, and make yourself increasingly harder to access through WhatsApp and increasingly easier to access on your preferred alternative.
So does Lemmy.
😱
Not really, although we should.
Zuckerberg has mental illness.
Zuckerberg has a moral defect. Evil is not a medical problem.
Well, evil is a medical problem for other people, like those with profitably denied insurance claims.
People are free to out themselves as ignorant on Meta. Technology is getting crazy.
Zuck is one of humanity’s cancers
Maybe the next Luigi can fix the Z problem
might as well kill the tr*mp and the couch fucker
And maybe the M problems
I like how he went from the Caesar cut and bland shirt to the style of what current-day 16-20 year old guys are rockin.
And by “like,” I mean that I’m glad he still looks uncanny despite how normal his new style is, because he’s a POS and nobody should sympathize with him.
Now he just looks like Andy Dick.
Minus the Andy. So, just a dick.
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I think it’s more accurate to say homophobic people have a mental illness
“How dare people different from me exist”
that’s not what I said at all lol
Let’s for a second assume it is a mental illness, how does that make the people feel who are experiencing it? Do they feel loved and understood? If you suffered from the same mental illness where the most effective treatment is tolerance and acceptance, how would you like to be treated?
I’ve encountered people disagreeing with ASD ending with D, because people are born, live and die autistic, and also autistic people usually understand each other well enough, it’s with non-autistic people where their communication impairment shows, mostly. And rigidity of thought, sensory issues and such can be arguably considered difference, not impairment.
So yes, “mental illness” is an unpleasant thing to say, especially about things which are not developed and treated during one’s life.
But this is simply not what the issue is about.
The issue is about moderation of social platforms, that one must choose between “the platform” moderating content by this or that policy.
But in fact this is all gaslighting, bullshit, scam. Because in the era of web forums there were no platforms at all, and moderation was still a thing. Due to bigger load on moderators and those being from the not so huge number of active users of some forum, moderator’s rights could be customized very precisely, say, certain kind of discussion certain Alice can be trusted to moderate, and some other kind of discussion not really (due to having a strong opinion), or maybe there’s Bob who can be allowed to make warnings and approve new registrations, but can’t be allowed to delete messages and ban users.
I’ve encountered people disagreeing with ASD ending with D
But shouldn’t it though? According to Webster on disorder:
an abnormal physical or mental condition
And abnormal:
deviating from the normal or average
So something being labeled a “disorder” doesn’t mean it’s “bad,” it just means it’s different from average, and in many cases a cause of distress or discomfort. Not all disorders need to be fixed, they can often be treated by simply accepting them and working around any issues it causes.
The problem here has nothing to do with definitions though, it has to do with harassment and intolerance. Whether being LGBTQ+ or on the autism spectrum is a disorder or not is completely irrelevant, what matters is how we treat each other. If you’re harassing another person, you’re in the wrong, regardless of what the other person is, has, or has done.
Again, let’s go back to Webster about “harass”:
to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct
The law (largely irrelevant in SM though, up to a certain point) defines harassment as having real damages and intent to inflict harm. If you say being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness because you know it’ll cause harm, then you’re guilty of harassment and should be ejected from the platform. If you say it because it’s topically relevant and you’re not intending to cause harm but it happens, then I argue you aren’t guilty of harassment (and you should probably apologize).
The real issue here is intended and actual impact of statements. It doesn’t matter if your speech is factual, what matters is the intent and the result of that speech.
I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any form of therapist, so I’m not going to take a hard stance on whether any given thing is a disorder or not, I’m going to stick to answering my above questions. And in my case, accepting LGBTQ+ and people on the autism spectrum costs me exactly nothing and helps improve outcomes for them. So why shouldn’t I do that? What harm could possibly come from me being nice?
So something being labeled a “disorder” doesn’t mean it’s “bad,” it just means it’s different from average, and in many cases a cause of distress or discomfort.
Being left-handed is different from average and causes discomfort when using right-handed tools. Would you call left-handedness a disorder?
Handedness seems to be genetic, so no.
In psychology a disorder is not merely a deviation, but it requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain. That’s why it’s a disorder to have extremely low intelligence but not to have extremely high intelligence. And that matters crucially here because that’s why homosexuality isn’t a mental illness. Similarly transness isn’t a mental illness in large part because it possesses a different character and by calling it one they would be leading people to respond to it in the wrongest way according to research on how to make the individual affected most able to live a happy and functional life.
You’re right that it’s important how we act. But it’s also important that we push back because it’s manufacturing consent to strip rights.
requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain
According to this article, LGBTQIA+ people experience:
- 2.5x higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety
- higher rates of discrimination - article claims 70%
- shame and self-doubt - no numbers given, but 43% of youths are kicked out of homes due to lack of acceptance, which certainly contributes
That’s a lot of discomfort, impairment to daily life, etc. Yes, this largely comes from external stimuli, but that’s also largely true for people with lower intelligence (i.e. won’t be considered for better jobs they could do due to discrimination). Some of it is also internally sourced (why am I different from my peers? What’s wrong with me??), especially for people experiencing gender dysphoria (why doesn’t my body match how I feel?).
AFAIK, we don’t have a link between genetics and LGBTQIA+ people like we have for something like handedness or intelligence (jury is out on the latter for how much it contributes though). Research is obviously ongoing though, which is why it’s important to keep the discussion open. Our determination of disorder vs unique trait is pretty arbitrary, so I think it’s important to keep the discussion open around it.
That said, my overall point here is that the label itself doesn’t really matter. People will discriminate against those who are different from them regardless of the terminology we use. The focus should be on that discrimination and intolerance, not on tweaking the terminology we use. We should be considering people who are LGBTQIA+ the same way as people with anything else that needs adjustments to social behavior (left-handed gloves/scissors, wheelchair ramps, interpreters, etc). In most cases, it means not doing anything different, as in not telling someone they can’t use a given restroom, or that certain (otherwise sufficiently modest) clothing is unacceptable to wear at school.
IMO, the fight over the words we use distracts from the more important issue of protecting individuals from harassment. As long as social media moderation accomplishes that, it doesn’t really matter what form it takes.
Getting it removed from classification as a mental illness was vital to reducing our systemic oppression back in the day so this is absolutely not a point we should cede
It’s still classified as a mental disorder, we just dance around the topic a bit. The real change was research indicating that conversion therapy and whatnot don’t work and are actively harmful.
something being labeled a “disorder” doesn’t mean it’s “bad,” it just means it’s different from average
That’s until you start talking about “treatment”, at which point you’re discussing how to mitigate or correct the “disorder”.
And that gets you to Conversation Therapy, which is just medicalized torture.
The end game of “Transgenderism is a disorder” amounts to Gitmo for Trans People.
Conversation Therapy
Ironically, this typo is exactly the therapy LGBTQ+ people need, and probably the therapy that works least well for people on the autism spectrum.
There are a lot of treatments available. For LGBTQ+, the best treatment is probably social acceptance, followed closely by body modification. For people on the autism spectrum, it’s finding a lifestyle that plays to their strengths rather than expects them to conform to whatever is “normal.”
The problem isn’t with definitions, but intolerance. Certain groups refuse to acknowledge that there’s more than one way to solve a given problem, and that more effective and compassionate solutions are valid. If we assume that, for example, homosexuality is a “disorder,” two possible treatments are:
- remove the gay
- embrace the gay
I’m not even sure the first is possible, but the second is absolutely effective. Why default to the harder, unproven option when the second is so effective? The problem here isn’t definitions, but intolerance, but unfortunately tolerance is much harder achieve and changing words is relatively easy.
Let’s for a second assume it is a mental illness, how does that make the people feel who are experiencing it? Do they feel loved and understood?
“Hate the sin, love the sinner” has been the historical approach far-right evangelicals use to gull parents into conversation therapy for their kids.
Conservatives have adopted much of the same liberalish compassionate language up top and horrifyingly brutal physical, emotional, and sexual abuse on the back end for drug rehabilitation and prison reform.
The American idea of love and understanding is to brainwash them into compliance with social norms, while insisting the torture they’re inflicting is a kindness.
It should be noted that the framing of it as a sin was after the medical community accepted its not a mental illness. Before that it was “you’re sick and need help”.
“Hate the sin, love the sinner”
The problem is that people don’t actually do the second, they replace “love” with “pity.” Pity isn’t love, it’s intolerance. If you truly love someone, you won’t care whether they sin or not, you’ll just love them for who they are and want them to be the happiest they can be.
Whether homosexuality is a sin shouldn’t be relevant at all, sin is between an individual and their god, especially in Christianity.
The problem is that people justify their intolerance by misinterpreting or misapplying phrases like these. They think things like conversion therapy is a demonstration of love, when in fact it’s a demonstration of brutal intolerance.
The root of the problem here is intolerance, not the words we use to describe something.
It’s America, love and understanding are not things we do here.
Honestly, I think you’d be surprised. I live in a very red state, and my work participates in the local Pride parades (free rainbow shirts, and a tent), and I see a lot more pride flags in my neighborhood than Trump flags. Granted, my company is in a liberal, but my neighborhood is in a very conservative area (usually 70-80% for the GOP candidate).
Of course, outward displays don’t mean as much as actual relationships, but it’s a lot better than people make it out to be.
We are pretty far from ideal though, but we’re largely moving forward (two steps up and one step back).
They pretend they don’t hate gay people but vote for people and policies that are virulently homophobic. It’s all performative bullshit so they can pretend they’re still good people.
Political party platforms and public opinion are rarely aligned.
For example, there was a ballot initiative to dramatically expand medical marijuana to the point that it was almost recreational (allowed growing your own for personal use), and it passed. The legislature largely rejected it and submitted a much weaker bill and people were pissed. On the flipside, the legislature unanimously passed a ban on conversion therapy, so I guess there’s some hope.
People have a lot of reasons to vote the way they do. Most campaigns in my state focus on fiscal issues, and the local Democratic party pushes for things the voters don’t want (usually higher minimum wage and education spending), while Republicans push for things voters do want (lower taxes mostly). The Democratic party doesn’t even seem to be trying to court the middle, but the one candidate who did won a seat, and then that district was gerrymandered into safety.
Public opinion rarely matches the legislature’s agenda. So it’s unfair to blame the public for what their representatives do.
