Should gender reassignment surgery be covered by public health funding?

The thing is though, he's right. Purely cosmetic

Not really - cosmetic surgery is about making making someone physcially attractive in their own minds, transitioning is about making you feel more genuine in your own mind.

I don't really know how you can say "Gender reassignment is purely cosmetic. Surely that can be agreed by all sides of the "trans" argument?" unless you've been through it or been close to someone who has.

For reasons unknown there has been either an actual increase in autism, or an apparent one due to awareness and neuro-psychiatric reclassification.

The reason for the apparent increase in people being diagnosed with some form of autism is well known - the criteria for a diagnosis of autism were broadened so widely to such a degree that practically anyone would fit the criteria for a diagnosis of autism to some degree. The correlation between gender variance and autism is thought to be about 30% of autistic people.

There’s nothing to support the idea of there being any sort of a causal relationship between autism and gender incongruence though, any more than there is anything to support a causal relationship between clinical depression and autism, or clinical depression and gender incongruence for example.

I’d take a lot of that research you’re reading with a pinch of salt though tbh, because the diagnostic criteria for autism are so broad now that it’s influenced the legitimacy of a couple of… dare I say, absolute nutters, people who are of the belief that autism is a curable condition -

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/autism-and-everyday-life/fake-and-harmful-treatments/

Even if the criteria for autism diagnoses was broadened, you would expect all being equal to see an equivalent proportion of non gender dysphoric people being diagnosed with autism. The fact that gender dysphoric people have higher rates implies a relationship between the two worth exploring.

Afaik, the broadening of the criteria for autism doesn't explain the apparent increase. IIRC, they've tried to go back and do a comparative analysis and it's generally agreed that actual levels of autism are increasing in the western world. The current theory is that it's down to increasing maternal and paternal ages; both known to correlate to higher autism diagnoses in children.

It's a bit like increasing cancer rates; we are getting better at finding it, but it is also increasing in real terms due to longer lifespans.

It's a bit aside. The relationship between GD and Autism is very much worth exploring to see how solid it is. Certainly it provides considerable weight against the erroneous claim that GD is a mental illness or a choice.

It's something of a fascinating insight into just how much the sense of "self" is hardwired into the brain architecture during gestation, and not at all related to physical attributes or DNA.

But if all things were equal you would expect to see the same amounts of diagnoses in each group, we're not saying that all things are equal, but if they were you should see equal autistic in both groups. Otherwise there is some factor causing an increased correlation with autism in one group.

Unless you are trying to say trans people are autistic??

Fairly arrogant to think that the world's psychologists are being duped by a few people online who are "grooming" autistic people into becoming transgender, but you know better.

This "grooming" argument was bandied around a lot in the 80s during the gay panic. That the gays were going around grooming kids into becoming gay.

People don't choose to be transgender, and thinking otherwise makes someone look as ignorant as claiming that being gay is a choice.

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, but it’s easy to understand the reason for the confusion 😂

Basically, it has everything to do with the way the data is being represented and expressed, depending upon what their objective is in doing so. To make it easy to understand, consider the following two statements -

The percentage of transgender people who display autistic traits is thought to be about 30%

The percentage of autistic people who display gender variant traits, is thought to be about 30%

You can see how both statements refer to two different groups of people. There’s overlap between the two groups, certainly, but the higher prevalence of one or other, or both conditions being observed is due to the fact that they are being referred for study in the first place, or they are self-reporting surveys.

One of the largest self-reported studies is this one -

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/amp/

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/amp/transgender-and-gender-diverse-adults-more-likely-to-be-diagnosed-as-autistic-university-of-cambridge-study-finds-9118927/

These kinds of studies are used by some people who claim that people who are transgender are being misdiagnosed, when they are diagnosed with autism and gender incongruence. It’s just about plausible if a person were inclined to want to draw correlations, ignoring the fact that neither the vast majority of people who are transgender, are autistic, and the vast majority of people who are autistic, aren’t transgender.

Looking at the small scale studies, and again, they really are tiny, like figures of 100 subjects, because follow-up is difficult, autistic traits remain stable in adults who are transgender following cross-sex hormone treatment -

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8726673/

The point being - they’re completely separate and distinct conditions, and shouldn’t be conflated to argue that people who are autistic should be denied treatment for gender incongruence, and people who experience gender incongruence shouldn’t be denied treatment because it’s assumed the condition is related to autism.

doctors rarely take the hippocratic oath and its even rarer for it to include that statement

not necessarily true though, i think alot of people who get 'cosmetic' surgery would argue it is for themselves and not just to be considered more attractive by others

again, i think they may have been trying to say that one may argue that their 'cosmetic' surgery is clinical for them due to their own circumstances

not agreeing with either necessarily, but i can understand the argument

Doubt it - the only thig I'd class for themsevles is breast reduction because i know someone who had it done and even then it was health related.

But in any case cosmetic surgery is not seen as corrective were as transitioning is.

No.

If a person wants this procedure they should pay for it themsleves.