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I think an insurmountable gap here is that it's easy to accept that gay people exist. Sodomy and homoeroticism has been documented since biblical times and even some animals do it. Meanwhile people wanting to chop off their own oragans and pump themselves full of hormones is a modern world.
Average people can also easily understand how it's possible to achieve sexual pleasure throug homosexual activity even if they do not personally want to participate. Meanwhile the average person cannot understand why soemone would gain satisfaction from severe genital and body mutilation. Therefore they can only conclude that it must be the result of either mental illness or brainwashing.
I think most people can easily make sense of the idea that you might wish that certain aspects of your life were different. Someone might wish they were taller, or they had a million dollars, or they lived in Germany instead of America. These are all considered normal and comprehensible; most people don’t have trouble with the mere notion of a counterfactual.
If someone could wish for all these things, then why couldn’t they wish to be the opposite gender as well? Is it so much of a stretch?
And if you can accept the comprehensibility of that sort of wish, then I don’t think the comprehensibility of SRS is too much of a stretch, although I absolutely understand why many people would evaluate that the drawbacks are not worth the benefits, and that it might be considered odd or disconcerting for that reason.
It's not about attainability but relatability. Nearly everyone in the world would want 1 million dollars if you offered it to them. Moving to germany is a bit more situational but most people can acknowledge that germany has pretty good sausage, kraut, beer, and fast cars. But ask a random person what's in it for someone who wants to be a woman and he'd likely be at a loss.
And it's not just that they want to be a woman. They want it so bad they'll chop off their dicks and pump their bodies full of chemicals to make a poor imitation of this.
That is not the first time that bottom chirurgery has been characterised in such a way on this forum, and I would like to correct the record:
To the best of my knowledge, vaginoplasty (male-to-female) does not involve 'chopping off' anything. The male genitals in their entirety are rearranged into female genitals, with the penis becoming the clitoris and the scrotum becoming the labia; phalloplasty (female-to-male)
is the same but in the other direction.apparently a more complicated procedure.Also, the methods used are very similar to those used in within-sex reconstructive chirurgery in cisgender patients who have suffered genital injuries.
My brother in Christ, what do you think the endocrine system does?
It may have been a 'poor imitation' a century ago, but much progress has been made; the regret rate for transgender operations is less than that for knee replacements.
This is just flat wrong, and brings your supposed expertise about "gender-affirming care" into question.
You may have noticed that female people have no flesh in between their legs which can be used to fashion a crude imitation of a penis. To accomplish this, surgeons (or "chirurgeons" as you insist on calling them, apparently for no better reason than obfuscation and misdirection) must carve out a chunk of tissue from elsewhere on the patient's body, typically the forearm or thigh. It's similar to a skin graft, except that much more flesh is required, meaning the tiny minority of trans-identified females who undergo phalloplasties have telltale scars on their thighs or forearms for months or years afterwards. Wikipedia has some NSFW photos. So much for "correcting the record".
Even if it was the case that the majority of trans people who undergo bottom surgery don't regret doing so, that doesn't tell us anything about how poor the imitation is. Even if 100% of people who get breast implants don't regret doing so, that wouldn't tell us anything about how realistic breast implants are. Satisfaction is not perfectly correlated with realism.
I've heard so many trans activists independently recite this canard, and they never provide a source. Until one is provided, I'm taking this about as seriously as "trans panic laws have enabled people to literally get away with murder!!!1!"
I said that it was to the best of my knowledge. I am not an expert compared to professional chirurgeons, but compared to those who think a vagina is a lack of penis, and imagine the male-to-female operation to be something akin to the work of Lorena Bobbit, I think I'm doing fairly well, much in the same way as, while I do not claim be able to run the U. S. Defense Department better than James Mattis, I am fairly certain I could do a better job than Pete Hegseth.
This is a common misconception held by many men, leading to an epidemic of bed-time headaches among their wives.
'Chirurgeon' is from the Greek 'χείρ' (hand) + '-ουργός' (worker); 'surgeon' is an eroded form of the same.
I am getting just a wee bit tired of the snide insults.
The same applies for cis-men, who were born biologically male in all respects, identify as men, and suffer injuries between their legs. Does this make such a man less male, or is this merely an appeal to disgust?
Well, are we talking a woman whom you never suspected had implants because she went to a chirurgeon who made them look natural, or a woman who chose a doctor whose work was obvious at first sight so that everyone would know that she could afford them?
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/transgender-debate-gender-affirming-surgeries-have-a-regret-rate-of-one-per-cent-or-less-for-knee-replacements-its-17-per-cent-vic-valentine-4258947
D. F. McLaughlin?
Paris Lee?
No, I'm sorry, you're doing worse than Pete Hegseth. You don't need to know the fine details of the surgery to know what you're proposing could never work. It's basic anatomy.
If you really actually believe it can be fashioned into a penis, how do you explain doctors carving out huge chunks of forearms during phalloplasties?
Is he wrong though? What's the point of using a form of a word that no one uses when writing in English?
You claimed a vaginoplasty does not involve chopping anything off, and that a phalloplasty is the same process in reverse. He's pointing out how you're completely wrong on the facts, why are you trying to change the subject now?
The only link around these statistics is the word "London", it leads to the "London" tag of the newspaper you just linked to, not a study done in a London clinic.
That's the 'couldn't do a better job than Gen Mattis' part. The 'could do a better job than Mr Hegseth' part is the part where I don't characterise vaginoplasty as 'cutting the dick off', which in terms of military operations, is analogous to understanding that 'supplying your troops properly' has more of an effect on winning a war than 'making sure that your troops live up to 80s-action-movie standards of masculinity'.
One, I was not as aware of the details of phalloplasty; two, I was responding to the claim that, antiquote: "You may have noticed that female people have no flesh in between their legs which can be used to fashion a ... penis." The esteamed commenter would have been more accurate had he said "...do not have enough flesh in between their legs with which to...".
I was referring more to the general pattern of insults I seem to get from his direction whenever I express disagreement with his Views on gender.
I stated that, to the best of my knowledge, a vaginoplasty does not involve chopping anything off (which has not been refuted), and that a phalloplasty is the same process in reverse, about which the best of my knowledge was lacking.
Not completely wrong. I do not know as much about the matter as those who have medical degrees, but I know more than someone who characterises the MtF operation as, anti-quote: "[T]hey want to be a woman...so bad they'll chop off their dicks...."
I'm not the one changing the subject. I was responding to what the previous commenter posted.
You'd have to take that up with the newspaper then; that does seem to be a habit on their websites, in articles on a wide variety of subjects.
This is some of the most obnoxious hair-splitting I've ever encountered in my entire life.
"Why don't you buy a house?" Alice asked.
"Well, I don't have any money." Bob replied
"Ah ah ah!" Alice retorted. "I saw your bank balance, and you have $200. So it's strictly untrue to say you don't have any money. You should have said you don't have enough money to buy a house."
Yes, I am going to tap the sign: "It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible."
This is extremely tiresome and obnoxious. A clitoris, no matter how large, cannot be used to construct a neopenis. We both know this. Do you really think tedious pedantry of this sort is a productive use of your time?
And this exercise in splitting hairs is coming in response to you asserting, falsely, that a phalloplasty is a vaginoplasty in reverse i.e. while a vaginoplasty consists of inverting external genitalia and making them internal, a phalloplasty consists of inverting internal genitalia and making them external. Not only is this an inaccurate description of what a phalloplasty entails, it is wrong to the point of outright anatomical impossibility. But you're giving me a scolding for daring to say "women have no flesh in between their legs which can be used to make a neopenis" as opposed to "women don't have enough flesh in between their legs which can be used to make a neopenis", when every native English speaker in the entire world understands that "X has no Y" is often meant figuratively to mean "X has an insufficient amount of Y for the object under discussion".
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