11-12-2025, 04:20 AM
This post was last modified: 11-12-2025, 04:22 AM by UltraBudgie.
(11-11-2025, 06:02 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I can't bring myself to identify the circumstance as "illness." Anymore than it is ill to abandon your family and friends for a new faith. Or is it ill, to find a passion your community rejects in anger and disdain?
The problem is the never-ending self-imposed requirement to be as everyone else is.
Society punished the individual who won't 'comply.'
I agree. Personally I've never had a transgender-identifying individual insist that I believe they are a women/man; they've only requested that I identify them as such. On an individual level, I've been inclined to agree: even though I think it is a delusion, what does it matter to me? People are allowed their quirks and worldviews. I'm not obligated to cater to them, but what does it hurt? But maybe that is no longer the case. The expectation of transgender men seems to have become that they really are women, and the entire world must pretend along with them. And, in fact, not even pretend, but really believe. That's the point, in my opinion, where self-delusion has crossed the line into mental illness, because it cripples the individual's ability to interact with sane society. And, if I play along, I'm actually doing harm by allowing them to dig themselves deeper into that.
I'm reminded of Catholics and their wine. That they believe that it really really turns into the blood of Christ. Not as a metaphor or symbol, but really, with red blood cells and everything. Okay. That is fine; religion is weird. But imagine, for example, if they then insisted that leftover communion wine be donated and added to the nation's transfusion blood supply for hospitals. Even if science showed that it really wasn't actual blood at all. That would be a similar line, where it is no longer an issue of individuals believing a certain delusion, but a mental illness of expecting and requiring the world to conform to it, come hell or high water, harmful or not.
