Being Transgender is NOT a mental illness

[VioletKnight]

So this is a video I made responding to the Alt-Right youtube "Black Pigeon Speaks". Black Pigeon claims that transgender people are mentally ill and implies they should be placed on anti-psychotic drugs and uses cherry-picked statistics to back up his claims. I debunk his misinformation and I'd appreciate sharing and feedback for my video.

Thank you.

[JoanneB]

Haters are going to Hate.

Statistics don't mean a thing to them. Nor facts.

I wish to never hear the words North & Carolina ever again in the same sentence. 

[VivianB]

That "Black Pigeon Speaks" really disgusts me. He should shut his beak. 

Thank you for making that video. It was very informative.

[Violets]

VioletKnight, thankyou for making your video response to this man's hatred inspiring dribble.

If you look at some of his other youtube videos, such as 'Why Women DESTROY NATIONS * / CIVILIZATIONS - and other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS', you'll see he makes a habit of denigrating people.

[VioletKnight]

VioletKnight, thankyou for making your video response to this man's hatred inspiring dribble.

If you look at some of his other youtube videos, such as 'Why Women DESTROY NATIONS * / CIVILIZATIONS - and other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS', you'll see he makes a habit of denigrating people.

Pigeon is a member of the "Alt-Right" a growing group of right wingers who are tired of the "establishment conservatives" being too politically correct... Yeah.

[Kylo]

Yeah, I found this video not too long ago.

Good thing Black Pigeon is not a member of the medical establishment. Nor an important person in general.

[Deborah]

He does represent the opinions of a sizable minority though with both this and his other videos.


Sapere Aude

[Kylo]

The problem is his crowd are probably not going to be swayed by rebuttal or response videos. They are likely following him either because they like him or they want their bias confirmed by his opinions. These aren't people to aim at I figure. If I were affected by what this person said I wouldn't make a video to respond to him personally, but I'd make a general video about trans people and aim for those who are going to be searching for information because they do actually want to know more and/or have open minds.

Some of the Youtubers I follow have had the same approach - realizing that its mainly those who have the intelligence and ability to entertain more than one perspective that are finding and following them.

This is not to discourage the maker of this response video at all. I just wonder if energy is better spent targeting those who are not already utterly convinced we are one thing or another. I do suspect the trans-denial or trans-hating people are a minority compared to those who are currently indifferent, ignorant or 'on the fence' about it.

[JMJW]

I would have liked to have seen someone tackle Ben Shapiro's points made on Dr Drew. He made the argument that not since the Jews under Hitler's regime was there a suicide rate (or he might have said attempted) of the level seen in the transgender community.

From there he made the short move to conclude that trans people are not oppressed to that degree. He then said the only suicide rates at that level are found in mental illness. Schizophrenia was the example he gave.

Because they didn't counter him at all, he walked away with the argumentative upperhand, with millions watching. I would have been really interested to see a debate on that, but they just called him disrespectful repeatedly. 

[Deborah]

Well if in fact the Hitler thing is true then an alternative conclusion is that this really sucks as bad as we say it does when we are continuously battered on all sides by the likes of him. 


Sapere Aude

[RobynD]

What a sad person that person must be to denigrate people. Truly i don't get it. What possible good other than perhaps some minor (very minor) notoriety to be people get from hating others not like them. I get that it generates power for some people such as dictators etc, but most of these people never even come close to that level of infamy.

[CrysC]

Thanks Violet for standing up for us and taking the time to refute a hater.  Well don.

It's hard to convince people that haven't met any of us in person that we don't have a mental disease.  I try to do that with articles on how MRIs show that a brain is trans before hormones were ever taken.  Our situation is physiological, not mental.  We are born this way and it's been happening since humans have been around.

What nobody should be able to argue with is that we are persecuted.  We have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, 42% attempt suicide, and on average just earn 1/3 the national average.  It's just so sad that there is so much effort to pile even more stress on us.

[JMJW]

Thanks Violet for standing up for us and taking the time to refute a hater.  Well don.

It's hard to convince people that haven't met any of us in person that we don't have a mental disease.  I try to do that with articles on how MRIs show that a brain is trans before hormones were ever taken.  Our situation is physiological, not mental.  We are born this way and it's been happening since humans have been around.

What nobody should be able to argue with is that we are persecuted.  We have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, 42% attempt suicide, and on average just earn 1/3 the national average.  It's just so sad that there is so much effort to pile even more stress on us.

I'd be interested in seeing those articles for sure.

[VioletKnight]

What nobody should be able to argue with is that we are persecuted.  We have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, 42% attempt suicide, and on average just earn 1/3 the national average.  It's just so sad that there is so much effort to pile even more stress on us.

the 1 in 12 murder statistic is false, thankfully.

Stephens and others writing online speculated the statistic was referring to lifetime chances of being murdered with writer Parker Marie Molloy concluding in November 2013 that if estimates of the share of U.S. residents who are transgender are accurate, it's not numerically reasonable for the 1-in-12 figure to hold up.

http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/may/13/garnet-coleman/garnet-coleman-said-transgender-person-has-1-12-ch/

The problem is his crowd are probably not going to be swayed by rebuttal or response videos. They are likely following him either because they like him or they want their bias confirmed by his opinions. These aren't people to aim at I figure. If I were affected by what this person said I wouldn't make a video to respond to him personally, but I'd make a general video about trans people and aim for those who are going to be searching for information because they do actually want to know more and/or have open minds.

Black Pigeon's video has over 200k views, so a lot of people who watched it are not his subscribers and may be. There is some dissent on the comments section, and making a response to a popular video ensures more people will watch it and come across this information.

[jossam]

I didn't watch the video because I am feeling bad at the moment and I can't handle any more negative feelings today. I just wanted to say I suffer from anxiety and other disorders like bipolar disorder and I take meds and the doctor even put me on an antipsychotic last year (bipolar paranoid issues) but I stopped it after a few months because it made me feel too dizzy, sleepy and just made me feel physically bad (antipsychotics are pretty powerful meds and can have bad side effects). No, it did not get rid of my dysphoria and it didn't change my identity. No med can turn someone cisgender. It's been proven being transgender is not a mental illness also thanks to observing how psych meds don't "work" when it comes to one's innate identity and this is why we change the body because that's been proven to be effective. 

People who say things like being transgender is a mental illness don't know anything about mental illnesses. The ones who scream "it's psychosis!" think they know what psychosis is but they don't. I could write a lot about what psychosis is and why being transgender is NOT psychosis, just like how I could write about how being transgender is not like having anorexia or bulimia or body dysmorphic disorder, but I don't want to be boring and I am sure many of you already know this and know how to respond to people who claim we have a mental disorder that makes us the way we are.

Just like someone else said, haters gonna hate.

[DarkWolf_7]

Our situation is physiological, not mental. 

Mentality/minds are just a result of physiological causes in the brain, ones just the effect and the other is the cause. So I am confused by this statement. 

[Deborah]

In laymen's terms I think what is meant is that the brain is developed normally but is mismatched gender wise to the external physical phenotype.

That is as opposed to the brain being abnormal.  Science seems to bear this out.


Sapere Aude

[JMJW]

Most transwomen don't have "female brains" per se, for the simple fact that most have undergone a male puberty, the point at which most of the sexual dimorphism takes place. Studies show that certain regions appear different, even feminized or masculinized for ftm, but we can't conclude that because a brain structure appears feminized, and behaviour appears feminized, that one necessarily has anything to do with the other. One could  argue for that being too reductive. The mind -brain connection is poorly understood by science and there are identical twins where one is trans and one is not (at least not yet). So there are likely environmental contributions to ->-bleeped-<-.

Is it a mental illness though? Objectively speaking?

The big point of contention is fundamentally, is the trans identity an essential part of the human being (A) or a non essential pathology (B). As it's highly problematic to call human beings "illnesses". Even if some people who identify as trans are in camp A and others are in camp B, it wouldn't be logical to issue a blanket statement that "->-bleeped-<- is a mental illness." That would be transphobia.

[Deborah]

Actually brain dimorphism occurs in the womb and is triggered by testosterone.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22238103/

If the testosterone is suppressed due to drugs the mother takes, such as DES, the brain can fail to develop male.  Because brain and body dimorphism happen at different stages of pregnancy they can develop in different directions if the hormone triggers are not as they should be.


Sapere Aude

[Kylo]

Although the problem is processed in and by my brain, being trans isn't a mental illness, in my opinion. Because I can still function like any other person despite it, I don't exhibit any uncontrollable symptoms.

It's kind of like reactive depression. Clinical depression can be a mental illness, but reactive depression - like, e.g. a response to someone close to you dying, is a natural phenomenon seen in people and doesn't really make them mentally ill. It's a response to something that is missing in your life. Some people - maybe even doctors might call reactive depression an illness, but I don't. I think it's just a condition.