Is a sex-change a constitutional right?Follow

You do when they become medical issues.

For anyone struggling to understand, one of the easiest (if not perfect) ways to think about it is to remember that sex itself is not a simple biological breakdown of X and Y. The variability in Y chromosones alone is massive, and leads to a pretty huge range of body and brain structures that do often overlap with typically female types. And, by the same token, X chromosones aren't all perfect, beautiful little Xs. Some can be a lot more like Ys at time.

If you think about that chromosone being the combined expression of the genes that go into making the biological differences between male and female, you can understand that we've actually chosen a very simplistic approach to defining the sexes that doesn't do justice to the true complexity that constitutes genetic, sexual differences.

As a quick example, studies have shown that certain brain structures of trans persons are more similar to the opposite sexes' average than their own. But something to remember is that the range of those structures for each sex is already wide, and that this is just one of MANY biological differences.

At the end of the day, whether or not you have a ***** or ****** (or both) doesn't actually tell you nearly as much about someone's biology as we are culturally inclined to think it does.

And @Joph, we solve MANY cultural issues with medication, and a fair number of people self-medicate cultural issues with surgery. And as prison is a cultural construct as well, I don't understand the logic there in the first place.

Except that you're randomly equating two different disorders and assuming they're equitable. Do you have any reason to do so other than the fact that you think they sound similar?

Do you really think the brain works that simply, and that psychology never once bothered to investigate that? Do you think they just jumped ahead and said "Sure, cut it off"?

The prison could limit them to 1200 calories a day. They'd lose weight, and cost them less.

So do you want to give everyone free elective cosmetic surgeries because it may make them less suicidal? Or only prisoners?

Hence the phrase "frankly sounds like". I'll happily admit to not being an expert -- anyone here with a PhD on the subject should pipe up so I know who to speak to.

What I know of the issues, I know from gender studies classes, personal conversations with the ***** community at school, and some additional knowledge from work (I work for a center that does research and offers education in the areas of addiction, and there's an extremely high rate of self-medication in the trans community, so they present as cases of co-occurring disorders and require special treatment).

You're obviously free to dismiss anything and everything I say. It's not like I'd be faxing a copy of my degree to you, even if I was a PhD or an MD.

I'm not particularly interested in searching for scholarly articles at the moment. The only ones I can think of from work I'm not at will to distribute, and I have no interest in searching through my class notes for materials. But I wouldn't imagine they'd be hard to find, if you were interested.

Honestly, it's absurd that we're even asking this question.



No. 100x no. You do not ever have a constitutional right to require someone else to pay for something for you. Period. End of story.

Can we decide as a society that we think it would be nice to pay for things for people? Yes. But that's an entirely different question. Drop the "constitutional right" aspect of this and argue on compassion, or need, or "we can afford to do this, so why not?". It's just that even asking the question assumes someone has no freaking clue what a right is.

Manning removed it, not the government.

Meh, I can't say I'm going to complain long and hard either way myself. As a free person I'd defend a legitimate treatment that he should have access to. As a prisoner I'm a bit less sympathetic. I think it'd be nice if he could have access to it, if the government decides it's not a treatment it's supporting at this time I can understand that as well. These things aren't universally covered by insurance by any means (though it seems they're a lot more-so than a few years back), and any "sex" disorder is a political landmine field even for moderates.

At least he's somewhere where he'll have some access to a therapist.

I stayed in one the other day. IIRC it had a lovely breakfast.

Since both you and lolgaxe are here I'm going to ask a question I'm already guessing I know the answer to. I'm assuming there's no coverage for most gender-related disorders and what not for the normal military folks, much less those who are bad and go to jail?

There's plenty of mental health specialists of every conceivable branch available. I've personally taken advantage of that against my will. As far as regulations and UCMJ is concerned I know there's a few against actual surgery and about the dress code, but things change so often and there's always exceptions you'd be better off contacting Tricare about it than me.

But that's with the assumption that the person in question wasn't a complete @#%^ up. Well, even the **** ups have access to the head shrinkers.

Edited, Aug 29th 2013 12:31am by lolgaxe

The "therapists" are the chaplains, who are already being paid to do their job. Paying a therapist $5 to do what the Chaplain is already being paid to do is more money.

How would you resolve a problem with an underweight woman who views herself as overly obese? Would you help her lose more weight? Or would you help her see her true size?



I know what you said, but as in the last thread we encountered, you can't just make up definitions to words.



Once again... words have meanings. I know that you think the dictionary is a waste of space, but the rest of the world uses it understanding each other. Because I'm smart enough to realize that the meaning is more important than the word attached to it, what is the conceptual difference between the two words that you mean to say?



You should probably read the rest of what I wrote where I explained the difference. the word "gender" was created for women who didn't want to be bound to certain things because of their sex. In other words, a woman doesn't have to be in a dress, with long hair who cook, cleans and work as a secretary. However, throughout time, we have used the words synonymously. In either case, it doesn't support Rachel's argument.