The issue is that mental illness is really a disorder and is something clinically significant. The reason we don’t categorise gender incongruence or homosexuality as a disorder is because neither of them necessarily meet that criteria - the main issue really being how society treats them. Trans people can have gender dysphoria which can be a clinically significant symptom of incongruence, but it isn’t something specific to trans people - cis people can experience gender dysphoria, such as men with gynecomastia who can experience the same kind of persistant distress about their body not entirely matching their gender.
There are some arguments on both sides to argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness or disorder but the whole point is that not every trans person experiences it. Other aspects of depression, anxiety etc. leading to self-harm are disorders but can be caused by society bullying, harassing, legislating against their existance and generally marginalising and discriminating when they wouldn’t necessarily have that issue otherwise
Yeah what’s external from the body and mind of an individual is a whole other story aka the society in which they are in. It’s sometimes a dangerous perspective but I do tend to see issues more so as technological issues. With this circumstance it’s not an issue I see with an individual that they feel they don’t match their body but that our technology is so limited that we can’t change form as easily as we change clothes. The illness or lacking isn’t an aspect of the individual but in our current technological abilities as a species. With sufficient technology any will should be unbounded so long as it is not causing needless and avoidable suffering to another sentient being. If for instance we can upload a mind and inhabit a virtual space then we may achieve this sooner than we think. In what we consider “actual” or “physical” reality, it’s going to take a lot more time and effort.
The issue is that mental illness is really a disorder and is something clinically significant. The reason we don’t categorise gender incongruence or homosexuality as a disorder is because neither of them necessarily meet that criteria - the main issue really being how society treats them. Trans people can have gender dysphoria which can be a clinically significant symptom of incongruence, but it isn’t something specific to trans people - cis people can experience gender dysphoria, such as men with gynecomastia who can experience the same kind of persistant distress about their body not entirely matching their gender.
There are some arguments on both sides to argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness or disorder but the whole point is that not every trans person experiences it. Other aspects of depression, anxiety etc. leading to self-harm are disorders but can be caused by society bullying, harassing, legislating against their existance and generally marginalising and discriminating when they wouldn’t necessarily have that issue otherwise
Yeah what’s external from the body and mind of an individual is a whole other story aka the society in which they are in. It’s sometimes a dangerous perspective but I do tend to see issues more so as technological issues. With this circumstance it’s not an issue I see with an individual that they feel they don’t match their body but that our technology is so limited that we can’t change form as easily as we change clothes. The illness or lacking isn’t an aspect of the individual but in our current technological abilities as a species. With sufficient technology any will should be unbounded so long as it is not causing needless and avoidable suffering to another sentient being. If for instance we can upload a mind and inhabit a virtual space then we may achieve this sooner than we think. In what we consider “actual” or “physical” reality, it’s going to take a lot more time and effort.