Obama Supports Transgender Rights In Health Care

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-transgender-health-care_us_5735f011e4b08f96c182f23b

Good for President Obama!

People shouldn't be discriminated against for whatever the reason in regards to necessary medical care I think everybody agrees, however unscientific cosmetic procedures should not be covered as is in the case in Obama's latest princely decree here.

Trans people feel reassignment surgery is much more than just cosmetic, but is a matter of reconciling the outside with the inside, which is a matter of mental health concerns.

Apparently Obama doesn't feel that same. I think mental health concerns are a big issue and that doctors should not enable people to hurt themselves but I digress since I oppose almost all cosmetic surgery. There is too much politics involved in this, I do not believe transgenderism is in the same category as homosexuals who in a vacuum have nothing wrong and needing corrected whereas if you are trans apparently you need almost daily medications, extensive therapies, and surgeries.

People can do what they want with their own money and their bodies but doctors take an oath to do no harm and I think this is a violation of this oath, I don't see why this behavior should be enabled or be considered healthy. I think promoting a healthier body image among those with gender dysphoria and acceptance of alternative lifestyles is probably healthier than chopping off or sewing up body parts. Also get with times grandpa, it's 'gender confirmation surgery'!

And who should decide if a procedure is medically necessary or an "unscientific cosmetic" procedure?

Probably not psychologists. Psychiatrists, maybe.

But without a doubt, doctors & surgeons who see and treat trans people. Medical associations. All backed by the published, confirmed and expanded findings of scientists who have written thousands of journals in fields such as neurology, endocrinology, genetics and developmental biology. Especially those who have documented how our bodies develop in utero as male(-ish, its a spectrum) and female(-ish, again) in thousands of different sites, and have shown how sometimes, rarely, those sited develop in 'opposite' directions. Sites like the location in your brain where your sense of Self is located, and the brain's low level, hard wired map of the body. And in that documentation, they also show that said sites match identity, not the sex assigned at birth.

I suppose statisticians should have some minor input, insofar as they can show the doctors that yes, these medically sound, science based treatments save lives and prevent future medical needs - and even money for the insurance companies.

Also, Constitutional scholars here in America, but that's mostly after they understand what the scientists and medical doctors have confirmed to be true.

Not activists, not people who try lump transgendered people in along with homosexual civil rights because they are two completely different things. These people are not interested in science or medicine, it's all politics. Funnily enough, the most famous transgendered person in the world Caitlyn Jenner is not homosexual(or she is depending on how you look at it) and is attracted to 'cis gendered women'.

I just can't honestly see how hormones could possibly be healthy in the long term, if you are a born a man and start pumping yourself full of estrogen I think that's going to reek havoc on someone's brain who is already a vulnerable person. Male hormones make sense for ftm since I think that actually has more of the desired effect but even then I don't know how safe it is as far as the side effects but I do know that they're or at least some are still capable of carrying children so it is more or less reversible.

Amputating healthy body parts shouldn't be enabled by medicine, if you force cosmetic surgeries to be covered for trans then how could you argue it against anyone? Maybe some poor young woman is really self conscious about her small breasts and doesn't feel like as much of a woman as larger breasted women, sounds common enough so why should she have to pay out of pocket for what is 100% a cosmetic surgery? We hear over and over again that transgendered people are not mentally ill(which is ironically ableist and offensive given the negative connotation given to it) but that doesn't reconcile with needing accommodation.

You literally cannot be born the wrong gender, that's like saying you were born to the wrong parents. You are born what you are and you can't actually change it no matter how much snipping and slicing they do. You're still the gender you were born as just with a bunch of surgeries and drugs, maybe one day the technology and advancements in medicine will make things different but right now I think there are a lot of people being taken advantaged of that will regret it later on with something that is completely irreversible. So many people have body image issues and we need to be more tolerant of alternate lifestyles without trying to put everything into some specific completely analogous box. You can identify as whatever you want, that does not make it true or obligate the rest of society to make it true. I don't think body mutilation should be enabled by medicine. I apologize if anybody finds what I said here offensive, that's not what my intention was so if you disagree just tell me how I am wrong and I will read the post. I do not oppose homosexuals or transgendered people, I think they should be protected from discrimination and have all the same rights that me or any other individual would have.

In a past thread, it had been mentioned how all fetuses start out female, but some transform naturally into males. It's not hard to see how some individuals are caught somewhere in between, and don't identify with the physical gender they find themselves as.

There are people who are literally caught in between, intersex people rarely get talked about the same way homosexuals and transgendered people and intersex people are people whose bodily autonomy was violated almost universally at one time and probably still is more times than not.

In our DNA you're either XX and XY(or some other rare combination but lets not get into that) which is determined at conception by the chromosome within the sperm cell being X or Y when it fertilizes the egg which carries an X chromosome, so to say we all start out as female makes it seem like you saying that one can either way from XY to XX or vice versa during development which would be completely wrong.

Then who should?

The X is not some magical chromosome; it's a small number of genes on it that trigger a sex-dimorphic body part (including 20+ in the brain, such as the location of your sense of Self, and the brains map of the body) to develop male or female (on a spectrum). One really important one is SRY. It is normally located on the X, but it can transpose leading to men who are XX. It can also be defective or simply missing, leading to XY women. And there are other genes that code for things like androgen receptors; if those are not perfect a person can be partially or totally immune to the effects of testosterone during fetal development; again, XY women. And even when the X gene is typical, just for it to signal a single body part in utero to develop in the 'male' direction it's a three step dance. SRY has to be expressed, then another gene that blocks it must be expressed, and then a third that blocks the second must also be correctly expressed, leading to the final expression of SRY to trigger that part to grow in the male shape. Usually the dance goes correctly. Usually...

Medically, trans people are more accurately described as being of mixed-sex development. Genitals developed on way in utero, brains (and certain skeletal & endocrine sites) developed the "other" way. The problem most have is that their brain literally is expecting the body that matches it. Our brains have sex-dimorphic (different for men and women) sites, and they match identity not the genitals. For most people there is not difference, but for trans people it can matter very much. Two of those sites are the location of your sense of Self (damage it and have trouble knowing you from other) and the brain's low level, hardwired map of the body.

Back to those endocrine sites, though. Many if not almost all trans people's bodies have endocrine receptors for the co-regulation of serotonin that also match their identity, not necessarily the gender assigned at birth. When they hit puberty, their serotonin regulation starts to mis-regulate. This affects mood, appetite, thirst, immune, autoimmune, sleep and a few other "regulation" systems. Put such a person on hormones that match the sex assigned at birth and they'll do far worse. Put them on the right ones and for the first time since puberty they'll be able to correctly regulate their sleep, hunger & thirst, immune & autoimmune, mood and the rest to a degree that was not otherwise possible.

My original endo was very old school and the first thing he did with a trans patient was give them the hormone that matched their birth sex assignment. After he tried testosterone - for which I was naturally just barely above the 'female' level on my own - I was vomiting for a half hour and felt worse than if I'd had a flu, hangover and migraine all in one. At our next appointment he put me on estrogen. Within two weeks, I knew what hunger & thirst felt like, my autoimmune issues went away, I slept normally and I felt happy and content. This was all reflected in my blood levels, btw, ruling out psychosomatic effects. It's also backed by decades of solid, published & verified studies.

Here is a government journal article saying that transgender surgery IS NOT the answer.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

Here is "Corey" the trans girl in the NC trans-bathroom campaign.
http://www.revelist.com/viral/mom-of-tr ... asked/1916

If she was your trans daughter, would you want her to use the men's bathroom, and have to live with a penis all her life?

And here is the head scientist of that study telling people to stop misrepresenting it.

http://www.transadvocate.com/fact-check-study-shows-transition-makes-trans-people-suicidal_n_15483.htm

That study was specific to Sweden only. It's purpose was to point out the dearth of almost complete lack of post-surgical care after GRS/SRS surgery in that nation and the effect it was having on trans people.

While trans people do have excessively high suicide rates pre-transition, post-surgery and barring bad treatment (harassment, rape, assault, public shaming) their rates return the same as the general population.