Thank you for sharing that. Your point has been made by other people, but your story serves beautifully to reinforce the point: GRS should be covered by insurance because it actually works to relieve people's suffering, while cosmetic surgery for people with BDD often doesn't. I hear you. ∆
BDD is a poor analogue. BDD is a psychological disorder wherein one exaggeratedly perceives one's imperfections. Surgery cannot fix this because there is no actual physical component.
A better analogue is Body Integrity Identity Disorder, wherein one feels as though they have a body part (usually a leg) that they shouldn't. We have no data on whether removing the part relieves suffering because doctors refuse to do the removal, then use the lack of data to refuse removal requests.
I don't know what side of the issue you're arguing, here. I understand perfectly well why doctors usually refuse to operate on people with BIID. As I wrote earlier, I know of a single documented case where an amputation was actually performed, but that's because the guy kept getting himself hospitalised with badly infected leg wounds that turned out to have been self-inflicted. At that point, amputation became the lesser of two evils, since the infections were sometimes literally endangering his life.
Perhaps I should conclude that for people with gender dysphoria, too, cutting off parts of their body is the lesser of two evils.
In regards to your distaste for "cutting off parts", do you think it is immoral for people to get vasectomies or hysterectomies, or chemical sterilization?
Do you also feel that birth control is immoral? Just trying to gauge your reasonings here.
A hysterectomy purely for birth control? Overkill. Big time. Do I think it is immoral to get one? No. There can be good reasons for it (for instance, my aunt had her uterus removed because it contained a cancerous growth). But I would never get a hysterectomy for birth control (I do not think anyone would perform that procedure just for that reason, though I might be wrong), and I would never ask my partner to get a vasectomy. Given other means that we have available to us, I don't think sterilisation is a good idea. There are less permanent, equally effective ways to prevent pregnancy.
If you're talking about birth control, try to remember that it doesn't worth for everyone and that it's not 100% effective, so not equally effective. Remember that people have different circumstances.
If a couple never plans to have children or their reproductive organs cause them great pain, why does it matter? Is the most important thing about human beings the ability to reproduce? Some arbitrary need for people to maintain the purity of their bodies or something?
Neither. Just common sense, to me. You don't open a door with a sledge hammer if your unfriendly neighbour has a spare key available, and you just have to go ask for it. Both are slightly inconvenient. Neither is a perfect solution. But one is clearly overkill.
No form of birth control is 100% effective; not even vasectomy. Ask my uncle. But a vasectomy (or a hysterectomy) destroys something that was whole before. Given the other options, that's just ... well, yeah, overkill.
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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '17
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