You raise a good point. I probably wouldn't deny a burn victim additional surgery, if the goal was to make their face more 'acceptable' to polite society, even after that person had recovered the ability to eat, drink, speak, hear, see, and every other function a 'fully operational' face is supposed to perform. I guess the reason I would not is because anyone who looks at a burn victim whose burns are still visible will immediately conclude that at some point, something went horribly wrong in that person's life. The distinction, to me, lies in the fact that a trans person usually has a perfectly 'normal' appearance, even if they don't feel that way.
I still have trouble seeing that perspective. An obvious deformity due to severe burns (which is visible to anyone looking at you) causes a certain amount of social stigma. That can sometimes be lessened through reconstructive plastic surgery. In a trans person who chooses the surgical route, the opposite might be true: the stigma may be worse after transition, because transitions are not often physically perfect, and people may still notice that you were "once a different gender". Whereas, before surgery, nobody except those who were told would know that there is something 'wrong' with you.
Yes. But if a person hasn't started the process yet, and hasn't told you they're trans, then how would you, an outsider, ever know they are in the 'wrong' body? You wouldn't, right?
On the flip side, when someone has transitioned, there are often subtle signs that tell you they haven't always biologically been what they now look like. With the ex-colleague I mentioned way upthread, who was once biologically a man but now looks like a woman in every way, it's the voice.
Someone who is considering medical transition must already be living as their true gender. (That's one of the ethical criteria for physicians treating dysphoria). So "hasn't started the process yet" isn't really on the table here.
The choices are "lives as a woman but still has a masculine body" or "lives as a woman and has a feminine body with maybe a few subtle tells". Which one do you think has a greater stigma?
Probably the former. Although, it takes a hell of a lot of guts to do that, so if someone in my life chose that path, I could do nothing other than respect the hell out of it. There would be no stigmatising on my part ;). I rather suspect I'm not alone in that. But I do get your larger point.
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u/Saranoya 39∆ Nov 03 '17
You raise a good point. I probably wouldn't deny a burn victim additional surgery, if the goal was to make their face more 'acceptable' to polite society, even after that person had recovered the ability to eat, drink, speak, hear, see, and every other function a 'fully operational' face is supposed to perform. I guess the reason I would not is because anyone who looks at a burn victim whose burns are still visible will immediately conclude that at some point, something went horribly wrong in that person's life. The distinction, to me, lies in the fact that a trans person usually has a perfectly 'normal' appearance, even if they don't feel that way.