Was looking through an LGBT page on Facebook when I saw a Do and Don't picture for when dealing with trans people. Example: Do use them by their chosen pronouns and name, Don't ask about their junk. It was a nice picture. The comments ruined it. There this one guy who was just insisting that T people have a mental illness and that as a homosexual male he was offended that T people are included in the LGB community. He feels that it will only make people contuine to believe that LGB people are mentally I'll as well. I was offended by this. But I've noticed that this guys opinion is popular amoung the LGB part of the community. I'm lucky to have LGB friends who are accepting of trans people, but this made me naively believe that all LGB people were like them. Now I'm seeing that more and more have the mindset of the commenter on the photo. Kind of has me losing faith in the human race and LGB communitycommunity.
It offends me and should offend any decent human being. While I personally don't really like seeing the T with just LGB, it's only because being trans is about gender whereas the others are about sexual orientation. That's why I put a + to represent other marginalized identities or use MOGAI. People like this guy are just transphobic, horrible people. You'd think that being part of a marginalized community would make them a little more accepting of others, but no. There are assholes everywhere. We just have to be better than them. But we can still be offended, because it fucking hurts.
One thing that you shohld never do is to read comments by people on online articles and social media posts. It's pretty much impossible to not find at least one post highly offensive and every like or support that thst post garners makes it even harder. Being offended by such posts is natural because it makes you feel excluded and ashamed at the same time. Even your post makes me feel offended by that person's comments and I'm not easily offended. The nice thing is that at least we are a part of a community that understands us and accepts us... it shows that not many people who are LGB hold similar feelings and that we do belong. (&&&)
The whole idea of mental illness is controversial, IMHO. I could write pages about how there are a lot of inconsistencies, how there are elements of witch-hunting by the 'average' majority in society which constantly pressures anyone who's different to make them conform, or how the profit motive tends to corrupt modern medicine. There are made-up illnesses (ADHD, or even depression IMO), there's harm caused by over-diagnosis where people actually get an illness by simply being told that they have it, which causes them to over-analyse or become dependent on medication. That's not to say that there aren't various serious illnesses, or that people shouldn't get medical attention ASAP when they need it. All I'm saying is that when people casually throw around the "mentally ill" tag, it has no impact because even people's freaking cats and dogs are being diagnosed with depression these days. Maybe the owners should get themselves some pills for their Münchhausen by proxy, while they're at it? So on that note, I wouldn't take the "they're mentally ill" comment too seriously. They probably got swept up in the system themselves, and have been advised that they "must not stop taking" their Prozac.
In my opinion depression is a real mental illness that both people and animals experience. You just have teenagers and some adults who are quick to slap it on to themselves which makes it seem like a joke to others, but causes actually harm to those who suffer from it.
ADHD is in no way made up, it's not even a mental illness, it's a developmental disorder that originates in a certain type of brain structure. It's one of the only psychiatric disorders that have been scientifically proven to exist using imaging of the brain. For example, one of the more recent studies has shown though rest state imaging that different areas of the brain are active during rest for people with ADHD... it is also one of the medical conditions that has the highest rate of being passed on from parents to children with around 50% chance of a child having ADHD if a parent has it. Seriously, don't make judgments about a condition without researching it first... 10% or so of the members here have ADHD and you wrote something that invalidated their experience without presenting any form of proof to show that you are correct. ADHD is the peychiatric disorder that has the largest amount of research that prove that it exists and no real research that prove otherwise despite the negative image that it has in the general population.
I was adding an edit, but ran out of time, and now I've lost it. It's certainly real if you believe it's real, and that's not to belittle it either. I once believed that depression was real for me, so I'm not just taking my own words lightly. I found Autumn Asphodel's thoughts on mental health really interesting -- and to me it suggests that depression could be another example of personality splitting. With the pets, how can they be expected to have clinical depression if there's an obvious environmental factor, which is their keepers pitying them? (And taking them to the vet, which is probably worse than the dentist, and force-feeding them mysterious pills.) Anyway, my point was to tackle the spectre of mental health head-on, because it wasn't so long ago that the LGB part of LGBT was also considered mental illness by a lot of people. So, instead of shifting the goalposts a little, I'm questioning the entire game!
Well logically speaking she is wrong... there will obviously be disorders that originate in something going wrong with the brain. Like there are everywhere else in the body. For people who experience mental illnesses it is very real and can be one of the hardest medical conditions to cope with. If you've ever seen and talked to a person who has schizophrenia you would know how real and frightening certain psychiatric conditions are... A while back I talked a person with schizophrenia out of suicide. She just couldn't bare the thought that she was hurting those that she loved because of the voices she was hearing. She was constantly in and out of mental hospitals but eventually she found a combination of medications that work and she is now living a normal life with a new born baby... psychiaric medications can be life savers and the disorders are very real...
Depression can arise from a physical condition such has hormonal imbalance, or it can be caused by something situational such as moving to a new school and having no friends and finding it difficult to make friends in the first place which leads to feelings of being left out and alone which can cause depression. Depression doesn't happen on its own, there will always be a cause/trigger. My aunt's dog is depressed right now and hardly eats, the cause being they just put her sister to sleep after a year long struggle with mouth cancer. I was depressed in high school for a lot of reasons, one of which being denying that I was trans and forcing myself to be something I was not. I don't think mental illness such as depression should be used to describe transgender, which I see as more of a physical condition since science can prove (to a degree) that it might have something to do with how hormones interact within the womb. And when people take depression lightly I think it insults those who actually suffer from it. "Depression isn't a thing, he/she just got up today and blew his/her brain out for no reason" Is how I think people think when they say depression isn't an actual think. Its not that they 'believe' its real, it is real. Buy I also do believe people are to apt to say they are depressed when they really just having a bad day or a little sad. And that is because people in society tend to use the term lightly or as though it is a cool thing to be. I know of some people who treat schizophrenia the same way. They think its cool and pretend they are. And Yeali is right, ADHD is a real disorder as well. My brother has it.
Yeah I kind of wanted to kill myself last week or so because of depression. It's probably not real though.
I think a lot of people's attitudes toward mental health are unfortunate, but if they were better the commenter in that comments section would have just picked someone else to compare us to. GSM folk have had to put up with it since forever. <sarcasm>Gay marriage will lead to incest and bestiality remember?</sarcasm> We are with the LGB because we earned it. A lot of us were and are in homosexual situations. Straight trans people are not always accepted for who they are and get the crap for being "gay" I am sure a lot of us have endured, and bi trans folk and gay ones like yours truly not only get normal LGB crap when we are accepted, but get distance and derision from a tiny part of the LG - and maybe only to a lesser extent because they get it too - the B. Stuff that hurts gay people hurts us, and so we have always done everything we could to make it easier to be gay. A lot of gay people in turn have earned being with us. Because narrow gender roles hurt them too. I mean the truth is gay or trans doesn't automatically make you cool with even yourself. We all come into this with a lot of our straight cis crap mentalities. A lot of us keep them. Never come to terms with who they are, hating this part of them... There were these question around these parts a few years ago, that were like, if there was a pill that would make you cis and straight would you take it. And what you learned every time you read it is the longer you had been you, really you, the less likely you would be to take the pill. Coming to terms with who you are and caring more about your own goals than social expectations, that changez you no matter who you are. The youtube commenters just aren't there yet. They still need to be accepted by other people for who they are, so they crap on us. We're tougher than that though right? You and I have been through some Bull Shit to be us. So let kids be kids is the way I look at it. They'll figure it out and I was where they are.
Wow, I didn't mean to derail the thread, but I guess I should have expected some of my comments to be controversial... considering that they're the complete opposite of mainstream opinion... which is why I was compelled to say them in the first place :eusa_doh: Let's see, That would be denying the existence of some kinds of depression, where people somehow feel a long-term disconnection from their sense of joy and happiness, but they can't trace it back to any real-world reason. I don't see it as any less valid than say, mourning a death, because their pain is still real, and the lack of an obvious cause could be even harder to deal with. Maybe my earlier comment about doubting the realness of depression was a bit off. What I was trying to say is that the label itself can be destructive. Give it a name and then 'depression' becomes a thing that people have, rather than a symptom (or nothing at all). It could get even worse when people believe in the "you are what you do" mantra (which I believe could be a bit dangerous by the way. Look up the Stanford Prison Experiment to see how far that can go.) On a related note, a person could be misdiagnosed but still become that thing just by going along with it. For example, concerned parents could go extra easy on their child when it looks like it's behaving badly, because they were told that it's actually ADHD so they shouldn't be oppressing their sick kid. The label gives the child freedom to behave like he's got ADHD, so whether or not there was anything wrong with him in the first place, he ends up truly having that illness. So those are some of the reasons why I think mental illness labels can be really messy.
No, I know where you're coming from. I follow a few LGBT publications, some on Facebook. The comments, the majority of which come from gay men or lesbians, can be really appalling when an article's talking about a transgender person or even a bisexual. It doesn't mean you have to withdraw from the LGBT community (this site, for one, is probably one of the most inclusive and accepting LGBT groups I've been around) but I don't think it's wrong to minimize your involvement, you know? Remember, it was trans women who lead the Stonewall riots. A bisexual woman advocated for pride. So pride and the community aren't just for the L and G.
Yeah, that pisses me off. And I'm pretty sensitive XD I've learned to completely ignore the comment section on many things trans related because it feels like a punch to the gut. That is so true, and that mentality has a huge affect on how you view being LGBT as a whole. Hell, I still have my own warped perception that I was raised with ingrained in me. I can think "This is me. And this is perfectly okay." but still feel like a completely disgusting freak.
