Is transsexualism contagious?

No. Were it contagious it would treated as a matter of urgency, and attitudes towards it would be very different.

Is it something wrong with the thinking?

No. Countless psychiatric, psychological and "intelligence" tests have been performed on trans people around the world during the past fifty years. No connection has ever been found with any mental illness, disturbance or abberation. It is now believed to be a physical condition.

Of course, it is possible for a trans person to also have a mental illness, but these are then separate matters, just as person with any other condition can also have a mental illness disconnected with their physical problem.

"Facts do not stop being facts because they are ignored" - Aldous Huxley.

The most common wish expressed by trans people is: "I wish I had been born a complete person". Were it possible to ignore ts, or to make it go away, nobody would risk so much to resolve it. The aim of treatment is to remove the transsexualism as far as possible, and make the person be more complete. This is the only known way to "make it go away".

What if I do not approve approve of X having this condition / treatment for it?

A medical condition is a fact. It cannot be approved or disapproved any more than can the fact of water being wet or the sun rising. The treatment of transsexualism might not be convenient for everyone else, but neither is being transsexual convenient for the person born with it. Everyone else does not have to go through the nightmare of being expected to be something they are not, for years. The treatment of any medical condition is for the benefit of the person suffering it. Whether onlookers "approve" of this is irrelevant: they don't have the condition and their thoughts about it cannot make it go away.

But it's not normal!

There is no such thing as "normal".

Normal means "like me" (whoever "me" happens to be). If you are not transsexual, its treatment would not be normal for you. Given perfect hearing, it would not be normal for you to wear a hearing aid either, although wearing one would be normal for a deaf person. In the same way, sex reassignment is perfectly normal for a person who was born trans. Spectacles were not considered "normal" at one time. Less than 100 years ago the idea of transplanting a heart would have been considered absurd.

It's not natural!

No medical treatment is natural. For example, nature does not produce adhesive tape on wounds, spectacles before imperfect eyes, or wheelchairs for disabled people. Were any medical treatments natural, there would be no need for doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, dentists or opticians.

Is transsexualism caused by something wrong with the person's upbringing?

No. Many researchers have tried to connect transsexualism with upbringing but there are no factors common to the upbringing of all trans people. It exists in all cultures around the world and reference to it is found in classical literature. It also exists in the animal world.

In the end, it should not really make any difference whether nature of nurture causes the condition since either way it still exists. However, science is now close to proving that nature produces transsexualism. Of course, nuture (upbringing) also plays a part in making everyone a unique individual, but the same can be said of any living creature.

Can I become transsexual?

"You either is, or you either isn't!" - Judy Cousins

Nobody can become transsexual.

Largely because transsexualism is swept under the carpet by society, it is common for people with the condition to not realise for many years what exactly is causing them problems. If your nose is runny, your throat is sore and your body aches, it is easy to guess you have influenza; you have seen other people with the same symptoms. One does not see many people with obvious outward symptoms of transsexualism. Therefore it is less easy to determine that one has the syndrome.

Because people who are ignorant of it find transsexualism hard to cope with, many people with the condition try to ignore it and to conform to other's expectations. In the hope of making it go away, they might join the armed forces, or marry, or try in other ways to fit the strongest stereotypes demanded by onlookers.

They might wonder if they are homosexual or lesbian, mad, or anything other than transsexual. If they are trans, these efforts will all be in vain. Transsexualism cannot be suppressed or made to go away any more than can another person's identity.

In this sense, as the condition escalates expotentially (gets worse with time), they may appear to have "become" transsexual but in the majority of cases it is obvious to honest onlookers, especially to close family members, that the person has always had the condition and that with hindsight, hints of it could be seen years before.

Nobody can "become" transsexual.

Do these people think of the harm they are doing to others around them?

"These people" are harming nobody: it is only ignorance in other people that causes any harm in this situation.

Everyone going through sex reassignment is painfully aware of the effects that ignorance in onlookers might cause to those around them, as well as to themselves. Just as people with other physical disabilities often feel they are burdening others, so too can trans people regret the awkwardness often attributed to their situation. In truth, it is other people's prejudices that create the awkwardness.

You would probably tell a physically handicapped person not to think of themselves as a burden. There is no difference: transsexualism can be a major handicap to the sufferer.

What about the children?

Care is needed because this question sometimes means, "I want the children to be bigoted".

All known evidence suggests the children of trans people are generally better adjusted and less prejudiced than most of their peers. (This is typically also true of the children of other people with other disabilities.)

There are circumstances in which the children of a person who was born transsexual can be harmed:

1. The partner may be prejudiced and may have tremendous influence over the children, encouraging them to be prejudiced too. This is not a good idea. As they become older children may well question why one parent tried to alter their love for the other parent. This can lead to resentment.
2. Telling the child to perceive the parent as still "daddy", a man "really", is not wise as it can affect the child adversely. If this is NOT done, the child is very unlikely to have gender problems of their own. If it IS done, they are more likely to have gender confusion.
3. Where a couple have chosen to remain together, ignorant people in the neighbourhood (or other family members) can sometimes pressure the partner be rejective. Usually this takes the form of, "Surely you married a man! Surely you don't want to live with so-and-so now!" What they really mean is, "I want everyone to be as bigoted as me!" If concessions are made to such prejudice , the whole family can suffer because people do not marry to please onlookers and they cannot be expected to split up to please onlookers. In this situation the best advice is to give the ifnorant person a look which says: "What are you talking about!"

Please note that the word, ignorance, is used here to mean ill-informed.  It is not necessarily intended insultingly.

Yes. It has been taught in medical schools for over 35 years and can be clearly seen, for example on photographs of developing foetuses. The primary mammalian shape is female. Maleness is something added on. Every male mammal, including every human male, has undergone a sex change while developing in the womb.

Surely sex is determined at conception by the chromosomes in the sperm?

In most cases that is reasonably correct, but there are a number of conditions in which chromosomal sex is a completely unreliable over-simplification.

Compare this with the statement that the human eye has a lens which can focus on near or far objects. This is true for the average person but not for the millions of people who have imperfect eyesight.

There are many women who have never been transsexual but who have so-called "male" chromosomes and many men, never transsexual, who have so-called "female" chromosomes. There are never-ts women who were born with bits of male genitalia and never-ts men who were born with ovaries.

There is no guarantee that when nature makes something so complex as a human body it will always make them exactly conform to fixed stereotypes. Stereotypes are made by mortals, not nature.

Further, environmental pollution is changing the supposed straightforwardness of the business of sexual identity and chromosomes. Fish and other animals are now being found to have changed sex despite their genetic make-up.

Should we not stay as God made us?

People with other conditions are not expected to leave them to worsen if they can be treated. What reason is there to set apart people who were born transsexual? There is no reason to suppose everyone's perception of their God is the same as one's own.

No, we should not stay as God made us. We should spend our lives improving ourselves spiritually. A person born trans cannot hope to do this whilst the rest of society is trying to force them into the wrong gender role all day, every day, year upon year, and criticising and condemning their every move and all this while enormous inner conflict has to be dealt with. Were they able to stay as they were apparently made, nobody would seek sex reassignment. The point is that transsexualism is NOT "like everybody else". If you cannot comprehend this (and there is no reason you should be able to do so), compare the situation with another congenital condition such as a heart defect. If a person born with a heart condition can be treated, should they remain as they were at birth? If not, what is the difference between their situation and that of the person with transsexualism?

The Bible says ...

The Bible says we must each give account only of ourselves. It says nothing about transsexualism although classical records show the condition was known during the Bronze and Iron Ages during which the Bible is set.

Because they aren't. Those are completely different things from transsexualism. The ts>f person is NOT a man, the ts>m person is NOT a woman. Were they a man or a woman before reassignment, they would not need reassignment. One cannot be a man or a woman AND be transsexual.

Consider why any woman cannot just be an effeminate man, or any woman just be a masculine man, and you will have the answer to this question.

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