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.
Yes, we agree. Malcontent does come from the mind, as does with any type of perception.
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.
Why does the mind stay unhealthy even after the surgery? Are you saying that even after the solution, the delusion still exists? Well, sure it does exist, but that doesn't mean it's still unhealthy.
A man who has schizophrenia will still have schizophrenia even though he learned how to deal with it, whether by drugs or by behavioral modification. But after having dealt with the problem, I would say that is a step toward being more healthy at the very least.
Given that the solution for GID isn't always surgery, the step toward addressing the problem is always healthy.
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.
I would argue against your claim that no healing would occur after the surgery. As it has been shown earlier in this thread that many Transsexuals become much more healthier and their moods and behaviors improve.
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.
Yes, but there are two goals here. To appear a woman or a man isn't the only thing that Transsexuals want (public perception). It is also done out of self-satisfaction, so that they can address their feeling and identity of the opposite sex (self-perception).
The surgery is done for public perception as much as it is done for self-perception. Lest we forget, the objective here was to heal the mind of the afflicted person, the Transsexual. The self. The mind. In this regard, satisfying the public is a secondary goal.
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.
I'm not 100% sure of what the procedure or protocol is for counseling people with GID. But I am sure that the counselor/clinician will have gone over the pros and cons of the surgery and other solutions, prior to their decision to go under the knife. Or at least that is what should be the ideal.
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.
If you've truly accepted my premise, then you shouldn't have arrive to the conclusion of self harm. If we can determine their gender identity, then the solution is to change the body. Since it is no longer the mind that is unfit for the body, that means the body is unfit for the mind.
Therefore it isn't self harm, it's corrective surgery.
As a side note, I would advise against using categorically different disorders such as "cutters" (as you referred it) for comparisons. "Cutters" would be in the OCD category (compulsive-compulsive disorder). What we are discussing is identity, thus Gender
Identity Disorder.
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.
But
there is a purpose, are you not going to acknowledge that?
I don't think any psychologists on Earth believe there are "cures" to any type of disorder. What clinical psychologists do is help. They determine the problem with the help of their clients, and they both resolve the problem together. This meets your requirements, correct? The only problem is that you don't seem to think corrective surgery is a solution for GID...