Azrayne
Irenicus did nothing wrong
With the recent steering of direction (cool direction, btw, ty guys) toward....
Speaking for myself, I was actually just confused about why you were putting homosexuality (which I'm assuming you don't want "cured") with actual definite diseases like schizophrenia or tourettes :/
As for the cure thing - if it's possible, I think it should be explored and made available, because if there was a reliable, relatively humane way of ridding an individuality of transexuality or homosexuality, I don't doubt a huge, huge number of people would want to take advantage of it. In fact I suspect this is part of why there's so much pushback against the idea from the gay/trans advocates - fear that the group they've adopted as their identity would become extinct as fewer people would choose to remain gay/trans were a choice available.
Of course it's a tricky area, because there's issues with situations like religious fundamentalists wanting to legislate morality by forcing the cure on everyone, which is fucked up. And that culture will of course have an influence on any attempts to develop and deploy a cure (see the persistence of "gay conversion" camps, despite their complete inability to actually produce results and the likelyhood that they're... less that beneficial... for the participants).
But on the flip side, I think right now we're falling too far on the other side of things, where "born this way" has become an unquestionable dogma, which is restricting both public discourse and scientific inquiry. Like you said, it's pretty obvious why gay/trans groups have latched onto it so hard, but they're going to have to ease their grip going forward.
On an individual level - I currently lean towards "consenting adults" as basically the answer to this, but if strong evidence came out that A) transexuality is a mental illness which B) can be treated through modalities other than transitioning, I would definitely shift my perspective. And it troubles me that any attempt to even look into that question is heavily stifled by ultra-progressive activism.
Vanessa, I'm curious if you've read A mum’s voyage through Transtopia: A tale of love and desistance or stories like it, and what your thoughts are? Accepting for the sake of debate that there are genuine "dudes with the brain of a chick" trannies, do you think it's possible that there are also people latching onto the transexual label as a result of a search for identity/acceptance, confusion, social peer pressure, maybe some mental health and body image issues, etc? People who could be counselled through it and come out the other end happy and functional without requiring transition?
Also, since you're the closest thing we have here to an x-men(x-transwoman?), I really feel we need your input on this critical debate - should individuals born with superpowers be registered and tracked by the government?
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