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Another shooter turns out to be transgender.
I am going to guess that the conservative side's response will be some action against transgender people in the same knee-jerk reaction as liberals have when they blame guns.
ie Nothing that will help.
A gigantic problem is that transgender is often an outward symptom of something else. It's rarely the primary thing going on.
So it's a lot like blaming a runny nose and ignoring the flu and raging fever.
Mental healthcare is a shambles in America.
Ironically this particular niche problem can be laid at the feet of the LGBTQ+ groups who've decided that we have to ignore any underlying mental health problem that presents as gender dysphoria.
When you're mandated to ignore the root cause of something for political correctness you never get to a solution that will stick.
The solutions being offered by the conservative side often involve punishing sick people for being unwell.
Again. Still. Always?
I am constantly baffled that the most religious Christians can't find a gram of compassion in them.
I think there's a way out of this, but we have to be able to say that someone suffering from a mental disorder is, in fact, suffering from a mental disorder and to do so without malice and hatred. That covers both sides of this debate.
We have one side that DEMANDS that the disorder be labeled as such and to do as much to make the problem worse as they possibly can because they CANNOT be bothered to show any compassion, offer any assistance or accommodation because they will NOT be party to "someone else's delusion."
Then we have the other side that DEMANDS that we act as if abnormal is, in fact, normal. They make the situation worse because they actively prevent people from seeking care that could alleviate the symptoms and perhaps let the afflicted live a normal life.
Aside, left handed people are also abnormal. It doesn't always mean something debilitating. Also, "different from you" isn't always "abnormal."
Get this far without rage quitting?
Being gay is about as abnormal as having blue eyes or being left handed. It's not debilitating. This is not about being gay.
Stand alone gender dysphoria is relatively mild and doesn't need to be debilitating.
Gender dysphoria as a symptom of something else is often the harbinger of something debilitating and dangerous, most often to the sufferer and occasionally to others.
We'd be far better served sorting out who's who here than just assuming that anybody who wants to dress in the wrong clothes is a murderous monster waiting to explode.
We on the conservative side should be a bit more supportive here because this argument is exactly the same argument the liberals make about gun owners being murderous monsters just waiting to explode.
The Left uses the crimes committed by mentally ill against people who own and LEGALLY use firearms against us. You are right - if more focus was put on helping the mentally ill before they commit a heinous crime, perhaps there would be less of these events.
ReplyDeleteThe Right often blames the mentally ill as main perpetrators of violence. The Right needs to recognize that they also should be pushing for more proactive stance.
Maybe a place where both sides can agree with ?
jrg
A voice of sanity in the wilderness.
ReplyDelete-swj
I've been reading the Transmetropolitan comic series again. I don't know if you're familiar with it. (Bill Gerber, RIP, loved it and thanks to him, I was exposed.) It's a post-cyberpunk comic set in the year 2300 or thenabouts, following the adventures of an outlaw journalist named Spider Jerusalem. One of the phenomena of his time is "transients." These are people who are re-adjusting their genomes to become aliens---rather like the ones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
ReplyDeleteA bloke who became the leader of the "transient community" says at one point: "Do you know where most transients start? In the psychiatrist's office." He goes on to list a bunch of serious mental problems that lead people to take that step and says that transients have a very high suicide rate.
I don't think we have a sudden mass outbreak of gender dysphoria. What I'd say we have is a new fad fueled by victim chic, and a bunch of very unhappy, very troubled, very suggestible people who've been caught up in it. Kind of like "recovered memories." Remember those? For a while, that was the new hotness. Then it turned out that those "memories" had been more-or-less implanted in suggestible people by "therapists" who had been caught up in the new fad.
One reason I am not friendly to transgenderism is because I'm very conservative about surgery, particularly surgery that can't be reversed. If someone wants to be a Goth, or a biker, or a punker, and later on decides that that isn't working out for whatever reason, they can get different clothes, a different haircut, and cover the tattoos if need be. But "gender reassignment" surgery is irreversible, and "buyer's remorse" doesn't help a bit. It also makes the patient permanently sterile, and forces him or her onto a lifelong regimen of hormone supplements to try to prevent the body trying to repair the damage.
Seeing parents pushing "gender reassignment" on minor children particularly concerns me. Many little kids go through a stage of pretending to be the opposite sex. They almost always grow out of it, and become either normal adults, or gay adults who tend to be "butch" or "femme." I have also pointed out in discussions in meatspace and online that we don't let minors so much as drink a beer---why should we allow them to opt for surgery that, as I have noted, renders them permanently sterile and dependent on medications?
I think that "transgender," like other crazes, will pass eventually. And when it does, I predict some absolutely resounding lawsuits against surgeons and "therapists" who profited from or encouraged the whole thing.
Good news! Many trans people can be successfully treated by simply letting them dress as they'd like and pretending they're whom they think they are.
DeleteYes, it just mollifies the symptoms, but a cure isn't possible for most. The wiring cannot be changed and goofing with the plumbing often doesn't give more than temporary relief.
Again, the causes are legion, so the cures will likewise be legion, once we actually start looking for real treatments.
We're going to find a lot of folks whom are pretending to have the symptoms because being a victim is chic these days.
Most psychologists and psychiatrists refuse most trans people the surgery. Most cases eventually resolve on their own with no surgery or hormonal changes once the root causes are confronted and addressed. Different for every patient, which drives conservatives insane. They want a one cure for everyone that works every time and it doesn't exist.
Too many of the LGBTQ+ don't want these cases resolved because every psychotic break presenting as gender dysphoria is another number to add to the lot.