An Open Letter to Gender Realignment Surgeons

Disclaimer: I am a college student currently working towards a degree in psychology. I do not know everything on every subject, nor do I like to pretend I do. I understand there may be errors in this brief article and will take them in stride if they are presented to me respectfully. As always, I do not think I am better than you.

What is transgenderism?
What a lot of people either don’t know or choose to ignore is the fact that transgenderism is a form of mental illness commonly known as body dysmorphia (an illness that coincides with anorexia, bulimia, EDNOS, gender identity disorder/gender dysphoria, and species dysphoria). We don’t like that word, mental illness. It comes with a lot of negative connotations and people don’t want transgenderism to be seen in a negative light; understandable, of course, but it is a mental illness. Sadly because of the stigma behind it, many transgender people are not getting the help they need and are only sometimes getting the “help” they think they want, that help being “gender realignment” surgery.

Just how helpful is this gender realignment surgery?
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a formal statistic, but a quick google of “gender realignment reversal” includes pages upon pages of stories of transgender people who experience the same dysphoria any other transgender person experiences but realized for one reason or another that the gender realignment they underwent was a poor choice; some even committing suicide rather than living in their new body that they were certain would solve their problems and make them happier. The fact of the matter is, of the staggering 41% of transgender individuals in the United States who attempt suicide and the 59% who do not, all of them have a mental illness that will not be fixed by surgery regardless of whether they attempted before or after transitioning.

What should we do about this?
Stop giving them surgery. They’ll hate you for it, they’ll hate me for telling you this, but just like any other patient with body dysmorphia they cannot be allowed to have this surgery because it will not be the end-all-be-all answer to their problems and has been shown to even cause more problems. I am begging all surgeons to put down those scalpels and step away from your transgender patients. Send them to a psychiatrist who can talk them through body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria instead. Someone who will help them and validate them rather than only validating them. I promise you’re doing them a favor.

_{Final thoughts on the subject?
"Many [body dysmorphic disorder] sufferers will undergo risky and painful medical procedures in an attempt to [irradicate] the "defect" they believe exists. However, this often only makes the problem worse, or they start obsessing about some OTHER perceived defect they believe is in need of correction. BDD can often lead to social [isolation], [unecessary surgical] procedures, depression, and suicide[...]one of the key differences is the fact that BDD responds to psychopharmacology, whereas [gender identity disorder] does not." (www.hemingways.org/GIDinfo/BDD…) Simply put this means that people with transgenderism will not respond to the medications generally used to treat dysmorphia. In this article they state that that means they are not the same thing; I disagree. From my personal understanding of both disorders, gender identity disorder seems to simply be a much stronger version of body dysmorphic disorder. Does that mean we should stop trying to treat it with medication and therapy? Absolutely not. It's stronger, yes, but it doesn't have to win.}