[jacquesm]

I don't have a right to determine how you use and/or modify your body and you don't have that right over me. That's called bodily autonomy, and is about as clear cut a human right as you'll be able to articulate.

The social context has nothing to do with it, that's just a way to say that if enough people say that you can't do to yourself what you want to that that makes them right, which has historically led to all kinds of wrongs. See also: the right to euthanasia, abortion, being gay and so on and so on. It's always the sanctimonious groups that are hell bent on telling others how to live, but it never was any of their business.

How 'we as society' view this has no bearing on something that is ultimately the domain of a single individual, the person affected.

In the United States this is codified by "The right of the people to be secure in their persons" though of course there is plenty of hairsplitting going on about what that actually means, even though the simplest reading is to take it for what it says.

The implications of this are far reaching (for instance: I'm on the one side against a vaccine mandate because it would infringe on that right, on the other I think that a lot of people have allowed themselves to be pushed towards this on a pretext).

[honcraft]

That is your opinion, but consider another topic: elective disablement. Some people are very insistent on having their spinal cord surgically severed or getting their arms and legs chopped off or being permanently blinded, or similar.

If you naively consider the topic only from a bodily autonomy perspective, then the answer is deceptively simple: get the blades out and start slicing. But this ignores the wider medical ethics concerns over whether it's the right thing to do for the patient, if the surgeon is causing harm by doing so, if gratifying the patient's short-term desires genuinely helps them in the long-term over their entire life, if it's reasonable to expect a surgeon to perform such a procedure and how they may feel in the aftermath, if there are any other interventions that would be more effective. And societal questions over whether it's ethical to deliberately add new members to a population who already find it difficult to find the support they need, how this will affect others who may now be situational obliged to assist with this person's new disability, and so on.

It makes no sense to focus solely on the individual and ignore the wider context, when there are so many other factors to consider.

[sassyonsunday]

My existence hasn't been a burden on anyone. I worked hard to make sure that I put as little stress on my parents and grandparents that I could through everything and took out loans to pay for everything and paid the loans off. I've had surgeries but I'm not disabled. I work and pay taxes and have friends and a husband and participate in a large social circle. Forcing me to live as a gay man with gender dysphoria would have limited the possibilities in my life with no discernible benefit to society.

The only joy I found in life before I transitioned fully was in doing drugs and hooking up with guys. I could have maybe started a career and settled down with a man while living as a gay man but I doubt it. My misery was all consuming. My goodness, when I was 5 or 6 I remember bargaining with God to make me a girl and vowing to hold my breath until he would. I passed out many nights doing that in bed when I was alone with my thoughts and my sadness about not being a girl hit the hardest.

As a teenager I could barely function and nearly died from an eating disorder. I hated every masculine thing about my body and with testosterone pumping through me the only thing I could do to feel less masculine was starve myself, to try to be smaller.... In short I wasn't functional and I was physically withering away to the point where pneumonia nearly killed me because my body was so weak.

After I transitioned I stopped living in survival mode and started building an actual life.... I also gained a few pounds and got fit instead of being a shambling skeleton. I doubt my story is unique among gender dysphorics.

So whatever. You can debate the ethics of whether or not society was better off with me being a starving depressed twink versus a trans woman I guess but if you think it's bad for society that I was able to look how I want and start a family and feel happy I think you've got weird ideas about how the world works.

[zuminator]

This is apples and oranges. Let's agree for the sake of argument that people do not have the right to turn themselves into burdens on society. Mutilatory spinal cord surgery falls under that category, but gender corrective surgery does not.

[jacquesm]

They may have that wish, but they will not find a doctor willing to assist them, because doctors have as a rule a sense of ethics.

So this strawman won't stand.

[honcraft]

Well here's the thing, this has already been a hotly debated topic by medical ethicists and philosophers, who have indeed considered many factors other than the individualistic bodily autonomy viewpoint.

[jacquesm]

That's a mis-representation of what bodily autonomy stands for in the context of elective surgery. The ethics of medicine are a complex and very well established domain that extremely cautiously moves forward to ensure they get it right. And when they do not the damage is incalculable, for instance gay conversion therapy and other such niceties.

So before you go off on a tangent about what is and is not accepted practice and which things doctors are required to do and which things they abstain from on ethical grounds I will have to bow out because we are at the limits of my knowledge on the subject and that's not for want of reading material. Let me close with: I know where the line lies in simple cases, but if you start dragging in things that I have not spent enough time on/read about/have knowledge about then I simply will not be able to hold that conversation. If you have this knowledge then more power to you, but so far you have not convinced me of it and you come across as an ideologue.

[sassyonsunday]

- whoops I replied to the wrong person -

[jacquesm]

I think you replied to the wrong comment.