This goes back to the post where I said that it is important where the direction of the disorder is coming from.
You are assuming that the problem is that the man/woman is confused. Is it not possible that person is really a woman with the wrong parts? Or a man?
You see, you are suggesting that your body is defining who you are. It does not begin there, nor does the delusion. It all begins in the mind. Now, if you are suggesting we start healing from there, how are we supposed to do it? Are we going to convince the man that he is in fact a man because of his penis? If it really was a woman with the wrong parts, then that solution will never work.
What is healthy? Healthy for whom? Perhaps we should define these before we move on.
First, I'm not assuming the person is confused. Confused wouldn't be my word choice. As with any dysphoria I believe they're ultimately unhappy. They are mentally not content with their body. When the body is pathologically healthy the malcontent, the way I see it, has to be a product of the mind.
A dr. -no matter how good or expensive- cannot turn a man into a woman. This is the reality. To charge them, exploit them, and surgically alter them is a shoddy attempt at healing the dysphoria. When all is said and done they will still be a man, a surgically altered man, but still a man. All this at the expense of a healthy body. The once healthy body, unhealthy mind now becomes an unhealthy mind and unhealthy body.
If you want to argue that it's healthy for a man to remove his healthy penis I'll just agree to disagree. The removal of a penis is not a benign alteration. It's drastic. It's also pointless in that at first the dr. is dealing with a man who wants to be a woman. Post surgery the dr. is dealing with a penis-less man who wants to be a woman. No healing of any kind occurred and the procedure is irreversible! At this point the dr. should be ashamed of themselves, my opinion of course.
Meanwhile gender roles change constantly. There's no reason a healthy man can't adopt the appearance of a "woman" without self destruction. There's no reason for the knife and the destruction of healthy tissue unless the patient is lead to believe that the illusion will be so real, so good, that others will be fooled. That for all intent and purposes he as a man has become a woman.
However society has shown time and time again that they don't buy into such illusions. No amount of surgery makes a man a woman and ultimately the illusion fails its intended purpose.
I think it's far better to encourage the person to take care of their healthy body, be glad that their body is healthy, and go ahead and encourage them to defy gender roles every which way till Sunday without bringing physical harm to the healthy body they do have. Every effort should be made to help them be comfortable within their own skin.
Let's say you're right. Let's say it's possible an individual genuinely is "trapped" in the wrong body, the wrong gender. I'll go ahead and accept that premise.
It doesn't change the argument that they shouldn't do bodily harm to themselves. It doesn't change the FACT that a dr. can't make a man a woman.
People self harm for a wide variety of reasons. No matter what the underlying cause we normally steer away from allowing them to continue to do that. Gender disorders shouldn't be treated any differently. If you could make a man a woman then that would be different. That would be a "cure." But you can't. So you're just allowing them to self mutilate. We wouldn't allow a "cutter" to keep cutting as long as they did it in a way that never resulted in death. We certainly wouldn't do it and call it a cure. We wouldn't allow drs. to set up shop where they make appts to routinely safely cut cutters in a sterile clean environment and call that a cure for whatever dysphoria they had. The very idea is insane.
So is cutting off the penis.
An unhealthy mind needs to be surrounded by healthy minds that aim to heal. It's a disservice to offer them up insane "cures" that are self destructive, illusionary, and without purpose.