Originally Posted by
Bodhisattva
My counter to that Ele is we need to consider why transgender people kill themselves. Shot in the dark - I'd imagine they can't get their gender reassignment surgery, and are generally treated as 2nd class citizens.
You're right, that is a shot in the dark. There's not been enough research done in this area. I think that their suicidal tendencies are probably at least just as biological as they social, solely because rarely is anything just affected by one source.
Originally Posted by
Bodhisattva
The military already pays for ancillary surgeries with a certain amount of commitment (I think it's 3 years?), and well, it doesn't help someone's cause when their country says you're not good enough to defend our freedoms.
Gender reassignment surgery being paid for by the military is a difficult prospect, but not unobtainable. If we're going to spend as much as we do on defense spending, might as well take a moral high ground on a subject like this. From what I've been told, you can already get breast augmentation on the military dime.
I haven't looked into this myself, but according to Shapiro (who, while he is a smarmy bastard, usually get his facts right), the rate of suicide among post-op transpeople isn't much different from pre-op.
Whether or not that's actually the case, it'd be worth investigating the effect reassignment surgery has on mental health. I've heard, anecdotally, all sorts of different stories. I'd definitely want it fully investigated before the government started using my money to fund it.