PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Transgendered cabin crew? Medical point of view vs uninformed discussion
Old 8th Jun 2009, 23:35
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Mac the Knife

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Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Cape Town
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"Mac, I'm very disturbed by this: you are giving surgery to otherwise healthy bodies to make them something they are not? Please explain." Correct, as I have said. And many people find the thought of this distressing or distasteful.

"I know some people don't have normally formed parts, but I know that most of this surgery is on normal bodies to make them something they are not, but what their perverted desire wants them to be? Is that a correct interpretation?" I'm not happy with your attribution of "perverted desire" to these people. For them, the only perversion is that they should have been born with a physical gender not in concordance with their mental gender. A cruel trick that nature has played on them.

"We are not talking about simple things like breast augmentation- we are talking about changing nature?" Breast augmentation is changing nature - its only a matter of degree. So too is taking antihypertensives or insulin. There are always ethical dilemmas, for example the resuscitation of ultra low-weight babies.

"How do you justify pandering to someone's psychological whims by carrying out unnecessary radical surgery?" It isn't a psychological whim (I wouldn't do it if it was) and surgery is only agreed to after extensive psychological assessment, a prolonged period of living as the other sex and often hormone treatment.

"It's all very well using fancy medical terms to pretend a condition exists, but it doesn't, does it?" Unfortunately it does - just ask the unhappy people with it. There is increasing evidence that this is neither a whim nor a perversion nor a psychological disorder but an inborn error of brain anatomy and neurochemistry.

"If you're so willing to carry out such surgery, why, when I want to be not quite so bald, can I not get society to pay for hair enhancement?" A bit less of the "so willing" if you please but if it truly causes you that much distress then perhaps society should.

Mac
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