Let us make a self-destructive argument here: at what point is it justifiable to argue that someone who is transgender has a mental illness? I personally have always strongly opposed the idea, and in fact, have never held any suspicion of psychological duress toward any of the people I’ve met who are transgender, agender, genderfluid, or otherwise self-defined “genderqueer”. But now, for the sake of conceptual concretion, let's act as devil's advocate and attempt to argue that transgender beliefs are a mental illness.
In a way the diagnosis of mental illness makes the definition of Transgender easier in our cultural contest. It’s an individual suffering from a dissociative symptom removing their connection to their body and their acceptance of it. This is compounded with the delusional belief that they are not only in the wrong body, but that they should be treated differently by society. It has much in common with the psychosis Somatoparaphrenia which causes people to insist on the removal of body parts which they believe are wrongly associated with their self, yet have no medical complications.
That mentioned psychosis extends in its most extreme character to include examples of individuals severely damaging portions of their own body, making it imperative to surgically remove them. This does not become heavily expressed in transgender individuals, as, in a vast majority of cases, there is no drive to remove “offending” organs beyond the willful desire to be perceived as another gender. Many GtG transitions in-fact do not include a “complete” sexual reassignment surgery, as it is not the wish of the transitioning individual and it in fact goes against their association to their own bodies.
There is a much higher amount of comparisons that could be drawn toward plastic surgery, or the altering of one’s own body for personal aesthetic preference. Implanted silicone, removal of cartilage, tightening of skin. Even hormonal changes of individuals attempting to gain more muscle or regain some mythical masculinity (I’m honestly just thinking of those late night low-Testosterone ads). It is widely accepted - if slightly mocked - when individuals in our society undergo radical cosmetic changes through surgery, implantation, and hormones. And yet rarely is it considered a mental disorder or illness. Yes, when michael jackson kept getting more and more surgery, it was considered symptomatic of a deeper psychological problem, but common cosmetic surgeries such as breast augmentation or reduction are not considered in the same fashion.
So if we can agree that the physical changes to the body, are not something which cause people to cry-out “mental disorder” then what is it about the transitioning of genders that makes people so convinced that it is a psychological problem? If we just look at the - lets say ‘impulse’ to wear the clothing of another gender, then our history as humans has been fraught with that since we began the creation of gender-specific clothing. My grandfather, and likely your grandfather too, were dressed like (as we now consider it) little girls when they were younger. It was common practice to dress small children in dresses and let their hair grow long, as children were perceived to be essentially genderless. In the 1600’s children up to the age of puberty were dressed identically. In more modern culture fedora’s were designed for women, now they’ve become the symbol of when-men-were-men masculinity. High heels were designed for men, as at the time of their inception, men wanted to emphasize their legs and perk up their buttocks. Now, they are considered a solely feminine clothing option. In BCE greece, clothing was non-differentiated. Back when we all were wearing furs, it’s not as though the men wore big blocky furs and women wore shapely petite furs. No you wore fur. You wore fur or you froze.
Got a little off the rails there, point being, if the differentiation of clothing is a decidedly human element, and corresponds to traditions canonized by cultural standards set by the ruling powers in ancient civilizations, then why the hell can’t we change them? There are many male, cis individuals who enjoy wearing feminine clothing. There are many female cis, individuals who enjoy wearing masculine clothing (something which has always been more culturally accepted). And there are examples historically where the cultural element of the clothing was in fact the reason for the swap. Armor, and the clothing associated with it’s use was made for men, so women who wished to command or fight often found themselves wearing men’s clothing. This isn’t a huge stretch, and even more importantly, nothing about it is indicative of a mental disease or psychological disorder.
This is one of the wonderful things that you see when you let kids choose their own clothing. Some girls choose blue (gasp) and some boys choose pink (gasp). They don’t know that the fascist movements worldwide in the 1930’s paired pink with homosexuality, using the color to mark homosexuals for arrest, cataloguing, and execution, demonizing both the individuals and the color. They don’t know that. You maybe didn’t even know that. They just know that it’s a pretty color and they, as a kid, want to wear it.
The same thing happens when you let slightly older kids choose their own toys. Without any outside involvement, the majority of boys will choose mechanical things, trucks and guns, but some will choose dolls. Similarly, the majority of girls will choose organic things, dolls and stuffed animals, but some will choose trucks. Most of them will play with either if it’s the only toy around, because without the interference of some authoritative figure saying “no, this is for blanks, you’re not a blank, so you should play with this instead”, kids won’t limit themselves.
The same thing happens when you let pubescent age kids choose their own loves. Without any outside involvement (but lets be honest, there is always outside involvement in our society) the majority of boys will choose girls. The majority of girls will choose boys. Some will chose the alternate. Some will choose none. Some will choose all. And the more we examine the natural world, you know, animals and stuff, the more we realize that a lot of species do this, it’s not an inherent human trait.
So in all those cases, if there isn’t a specific pre-determined selection, naturally speaking, that corresponds completely with the genetic sex of an individual. And that extends beyond children and beyond these relatively simple choices. Jobs have been, for millennia, segregated by sex, and even today the elements of that historic segregation have led to some national arguments as to the viability of -say- a female president.
Again, this is a cultural distinction, based of ten millennia of human beings transitioning to a type of existence where it was stable to have one group of individuals tend the home and one group bring resources from outside the home. Physically larger individuals (mainly men) would bring resources, and physically smaller (mainly women) would tend the homes (and farms, and tools, and religion, and child rearing, and cultural expression if we’re discussing things in an anthropologically accurate sense). And as children were born into these early human societies, it became more and more common to say, “well you’ve got these parts, you’ve got a great career lined up for you” rather than letting the individual determine for themselves if they wanted to go out and gather or stay home and farm.
(I honestly imagine far too often the day that human beings realized that the two genders were separate things. I imagine it was juuuust about the time we started farming and making settlements.
“Hey Ogg, did you ever realize the little ones with outies grow up to be hunters?”
“You know what Uhm, I never even thought about it. Next time we have a little one with an outie, lets start them hunting early.” (Getting further off topic… did you know that both sexes of chimpanzees hunt with spears and participate in rearing the offspring?))
So if these gender norms, and expectations of “proper” behavior for the phenotypic sexes are cultural creations, not natural creations, then can gender be considered a natural occurrence? I don’t believe it can.Yes, you have a certain set of parts, programmed into you by your genetics, but why should that have any relevance in how you act, how you dress, who you love, what you play with, if all of those acts are cultural creations which have changed in a fluid manner throughout human history?
(You know the realization that sex created little people must have been horrifying. Just one day some early humans must have realized, “oh shit that makes babies!” Next thing you know the parent’s are having an entirely different conversation.
“Ogg, I’ve been thinking, do you ever wonder why our little Dnya hasn’t had little ones of their own yet?”
“You know what Uhm, I never ever thought about it. But yeah, they’re having lots of sex, like everyone is, but for some reason Dnya and Uhnd, haven’t had any.”
“Maybe it’s because they both have outies… have you ever seen two people with outies have a little one? Or two people with innies?”
“Well should we stop them?”
“Dear Giant-Ball-Of-Fire-In-The-Sky Ogg! Why? Dnya seems perfectly happy!.” (to be fair though, people probably realized that baby-making was a thing long before they were having cognizant conversations about same-sex relations))
If you look at non W.E.I.R.D. (Westernized, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) cultures across the globe; cultures that didn’t spring from the Greco-Mediterranean-Roman root that “westerners” did, the fluidity of gender has in many cases been more readily recognized and accepted. The Cheyene, and other Great-Plains aborigines had a gender space for ‘hermana’ (commonly translated as two-souled) peoples who expressed both male and female gender norms, the Samoans have ‘fa’fafines’ who are seen as individuals wishing to exist in spaces traditionally filled the the other genetic sex, the Philippines have a similar ‘bakla’ or a “man with a feminine heart”. The Burgis muslims in Indonesia have a whopping 5 common genders: masculine male, feminine female, masculine female, feminine male, and neither male or female. This is of course not even addressing intersex individuals, non-gendered individuals, eunuchs, and other “non traditional” groups which are considered yes, traditional and culturally normal outside of the western sphere.
We as westerners live in a very restrictive and repressed culture. (I can see all the first year psychology students out there going “Ooh yay, Freud.” as literally everyone else goes “Oh shit, not Freud”. Don’t worry, I’m not going into Freud.) We have until very recently had very restrictive laws about sodomy. (Because it would offend God if he looked down and saw people loving eachother). We had laws about interracial unions. We had a culture so afraid of sex that the mere showing of a couple on TV in the same bed was taboo until the 70’s. We still debate whether or not loving someone with the same body parts is evidence of possession by a Christian demon! We are a highly repressed people.
Our repression has made it difficult for us to accept the reality that not everyone will fit into the neat little boxes we have carved out for human experience to fit into. Straight, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Asexual, Other. Even in our continued identification of these spaces in language, these norms in culture, we have sought to delineate one set of experiences from another. This would be difficult enough if we were attempting to divide something like emotions, or something like colors (is that teal or aqua?); but we are attempting to separate, label, and cordon off from each other the reactions of human beings to an ill-defined culture of gender identity and sexuality.
This is why self-identification is so prized, and should be applauded. It is the ability to say, yes I’m me, and I don’t quite fit into any of those little boxes I was shown. And the majority of the people who oppose that don’t have a rationale to oppose it besides denial and delusion. And that is a fault of the majority.
The majority of people looked at those little Male/Female boxes and said, “Oh yep I’m that one, I’ve got the requisite parts”, and then assumed that because they fit so readily into those boxes that that must be nothing wrong with that narrow scope.
But that is delusional. That’s delusional and harmful. Its refusing to believe that teal is a real color because you were taught the only colors were ROYGBVI and you decided that yellow was your favorite. It requires an act of denial which can indeed be considered a mental illness (ah shit we’re back to Freud). It is a refusal to acknowledge a reality which undeniably exists. It is a refusal to acknowledge worldwide cultures in favor of a repressive one. It is the refusal to acknowledge anthropologic history in favor of a passage in a book. It is the refusal to acknowledge natural events in favor of the good ole days of Western nostalgia when men were men and women raised babies.
At this point we need to turn the tables. We need to look at people like Mike Huckabee and say “Really? If you had known that transgender was a thing in highschool you would have used it to spy on girls in the shower?... Take a seat on the couch here and lets talk about your childhood.” We need to talk to Niel Cavuto and say “Really? You think that using preferred gender pronouns heralds the end of America?... We need to get to the root of this apocalyptic mindset.” And for a whole lot of vitriolic individuals who talk, plan, and commit violence against people who don’t fit into their predetermined little boxes… we might need to call out the men in the nice white coats...