TG vs Body Identity Integrity Disorder?

[bimini1]

Interesting conversation at the lunch table today and I would like to get your thoughts on it. A female co-worker said she and her husband encountered a real live bearded lady while out and about yesterday.

It did not take long for that to go into a trans discussion. A few negative things were said for sure but she capped it off by saying she'd seen a program about people who want to be amputees, paraplegics.

And went on to say she does not understand why one is considered a mental disorder while the other is more accepted(TG) which it shouldn't be. It's the same kind of thing.

I did not respond.
Thoughts, comments, observations welcome.

[Erina]

Ones hade lunch with someone (with quite an ego), who ran a monologue why gender norms are imporant and why its wrong not correcting by them.
I ran a monologue right back how norms doesn't describe each individual and that people know better themselves who they are.

Guessing your co-worker find mens cloathing more fashinating. She wouldn't mind waking up one day as a male and living as one to the absolute hundred percent? I don't know what some cisgenders are thinking making such dumb statements.

Guess they don't think at all. They just label us as disordered so they won't have to. We break the our given norms and are therefore not as sain as her

[Persephone]

It's those kind of days that make you want to grab the napkin holder and bring in down forcefully (on them is optional) and say "Can you hear me now?"

I must say that I am more than a bit confused by the body identity integrity disorder folks who want to be amputees, quadraplegics, and the like, but I consider that to be a SEP --- someone else's problem. I figure that if I ever win the Nobel Prize for solving the mystery of CD/TG/TS I'll then go on to see if I can get a lucrative grant to work on the other folks.

Do your best and hang in there!

Hugs,
Persephone.

[Amy A]

I read an article once by a woman who felt her legs didn't belong to her, one more so than the other. She tried to get doctors to amputate it but they wouldn't remove a healthy leg, so she started to resort to extreme measures; if I remember correctly she packed it in ice to try and kill the flesh. Eventually the leg was removed and she felt more at peace with herself, although her husband had obviously had a hard time accepting it.

It is hard to understand why someone would want to remove a healthy part of their own body (although I suppose SRS is exactly that, and I understand the motives behind that just fine), and she put her life at risk trying to achieve her goal, but she seemed perfectly sound minded and rational, she accepted it sounded crazy to other people, it was just that she didn't feel like someone with two legs inside. I don't have any clue how to compare it to transgenderism, or even if it is fair to compare the two, but who are we to say what she can and can't do with her body?

One point I do have to ask you on though, was she saying transgenderism should be less accepted, or is that just the way I'm reading it? I does read like she was drawing comparisons rather unfairly in order to do down transgender people in some way. I don't really see why the lack of acceptance for someone wanting to be an amputee is anything to do with transgendered people, more than it would be for any other person.

[bimini1]

I read an article once by a woman who felt her legs didn't belong to her, one more so than the other. She tried to get doctors to amputate it but they wouldn't remove a healthy leg, so she started to resort to extreme measures; if I remember correctly she packed it in ice to try and kill the flesh. Eventually the leg was removed and she felt more at peace with herself, although her husband had obviously had a hard time accepting it.

It is hard to understand why someone would want to remove a healthy part of their own body (although I suppose SRS is exactly that, and I understand the motives behind that just fine), and she put her life at risk trying to achieve her goal, but she seemed perfectly sound minded and rational, she accepted it sounded crazy to other people, it was just that she didn't feel like someone with two legs inside. I don't have any clue how to compare it to transgenderism, or even if it is fair to compare the two, but who are we to say what she can and can't do with her body?

One point I do have to ask you on though, was she saying transgenderism should be less accepted, or is that just the way I'm reading it? I does read like she was drawing comparisons rather unfairly in order to do down transgender people in some way. I don't really see why the lack of acceptance for someone wanting to be an amputee is anything to do with transgendered people, more than it would be for any other person.


That's exactly what she was doing, she didn't bring it up until another slightly more accepting co-worker began talking about someone she knew who transitioned in Thailand. The person has said transphobic things in the past.

[kellycan27]

I read an article once by a woman who felt her legs didn't belong to her, one more so than the other. She tried to get doctors to amputate it but they wouldn't remove a healthy leg, so she started to resort to extreme measures; if I remember correctly she packed it in ice to try and kill the flesh. Eventually the leg was removed and she felt more at peace with herself, although her husband had obviously had a hard time accepting it.

It is hard to understand why someone would want to remove a healthy part of their own body (although I suppose SRS is exactly that, and I understand the motives behind that just fine), and she put her life at risk trying to achieve her goal, but she seemed perfectly sound minded and rational, she accepted it sounded crazy to other people, it was just that she didn't feel like someone with two legs inside. I don't have any clue how to compare it to transgenderism, or even if it is fair to compare the two, but who are we to say what she can and can't do with her body?

One point I do have to ask you on though, was she saying transgenderism should be less accepted, or is that just the way I'm reading it? I does read like she was drawing comparisons rather unfairly in order to do down transgender people in some way. I don't really see why the lack of acceptance for someone wanting to be an amputee is anything to do with transgendered people, more than it would be for any other person.

SRS is more of a reconstruction than a removal. A healthy part converted to another healthy part...Just saying.

[Amy A]

Its a real shame that there are people with these kinds of attitudes around. I don't think they realise the hurt they could be causing people when they vocalise their prejudices.

Probably best to continue as you are, keeping a dignified silence and try to ignore her views, I doubt there's much you could do to change her mind.

[Amy A]

SRS is more of a reconstruction than a removal. A healthy part converted to another healthy part...Just saying.

Yes you're right, apologies.

[LeaP]

The comparison has been made before, including by some very prominent psychiatrists, such as Paul McHugh.

It seems there are a few easy responses, though. Transsexuality, while rare, is commonplace compared to BIID.

And if one is to categorize conditions and surgeries on the basis of "harm" to healthy organs, then a lot of procedures accepted by virtually everyone would have to be included, including almost all non-reconstructive plastic surgery, living organ donations, abortion (i.e., on this basis alone: harm to healthy tissues and organs - I'm not invoking other considerations here), etc. Tattooing and piercing would have to go. Tanning would be outlawed.

Then we should start rejecting arguments over RELATIVE harm. After all, if the proven psychological benefits of treating transsexuality via hormones and surgery can't be argued, then neither can treatment for things like vitiligo, cleft palates and harelips that are cosmetically distressing but that don't rise to levels of dysfunction, or removal of extra digits for those born with more than 5 per hand or foot. Let's not treat hirsutism, after all, being a hairy-faced woman might be embarrassing, but the skin is, after all, a healthy organ. Circumcision? End of discussion. We should also institute more stringent restrictions on drugs with side effects - can't have collateral damage to healthy organs now, can we? And come to think of it, maybe all surgeons should be prosecuted for mayhem (as they once were for SRS) in the event that an organ is damaged in surgery.

No-one has even posited a normal case for BIID as they have for transsexuality, and there are several for the latter: psychological, sociological, and biological, as well as in various combinations. People with BIID don't desire a normal life, as do transsexuals, nor do they live one.

The comparison is absurd. It reminds me of the people who compare same-sex marriage to people marrying animals. In other words, it's a form of arguing the extreme, in turn a way of avoiding an intelligent discussion of an issue on its own merits.

[kellycan27]

Yes you're right, apologies.

No worries. I wasn't offended :heehee:

[Brianna612]

I had a good friend (I thought) I’ll call him Y. We hung out together a lot, our daughters were friends also. When my X divorced me she showed pictures of me dressed to everyone we knew. I was sitting around the fire with Y and he told me that he didn’t care who I was we would still be friends. That was the last time he talked to me. One day I was picking my daughter up from school, we were about 100 ft from the door when in walked Y, when he saw me he stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes all bugged out looking to the right and then left. He proceeded to turn around and ran out the door as if I had a spreadable disease. My daughter and I were laughing our heads off. That’s when I learned that I didn’t have a problem at all the problem was all in his head. I think Y thought that I had a spreadable disease.

There will always be those people that refuse to understand. That is their problem and not yours, unless you choose to make it yours.

[KellyJameson]

In my opinion BIID is a form of projection but instead of projecting what you hate about yourself onto another (seeing it in another or accusing them of seeing it in you) you project the hate into a part of yourself that can than be removed much like the idea behind exorcisms.

This hate that they are trying to cut out came from others who were important to them that in some way abused their position leaving the person feeling worthless.

Exorcising the limb (the hate) finally allows for self acceptance, self love,self approval,ect...

While some with gender dysphoria "may" hate their bodies this hate does not come from outside of them because they were hated by others for their gender so are now trying to change it but because of the relationship with the self that is prevented by being wrong bodied which in certain ways stops life from ever beginning.

From the outside it appears the same but the source of "hate" is completely different.

BIID is created by others so is external by being "done" to the person and with GID it is internal in that it was not done by another (created) but by a mistake made in nature so is a birth defect that needs to be resolved.

When we are hated we absorb it and make it our own until we realize that the other person is using us to pour their hate into us to give them relief (think of people filled with rage which may be hate projected outward)

Being hated will make you sick and much of the mental illness comes from this.

GID may cause mental illness but it is not a mental illness where BIID is.