GC: Are there specific alternative treatments to SRS and HRT that have proven effective for successfully treating the most severe forms of gender dysphoria or transsexualism?

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[–]loveSloaneDebate King 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Truthfully, even if alternative treatments weren’t viewed as transphobic, the fact that dysphoric people know they can get these surgeries and hormones is in itself a barrier to alternative treatments. If you’re in distress and you already know you can snip and reconstruct and take cross sex hormones, and you tell yourself that you’ll be one of those rare trans people who can pass and effectively assimilate- would you be willing to go through the likely time consuming and arduous process of truly treating the mental issues that led you to want to transition? Or would you jump to what both alleviates the biggest symptom and theoretically gives you exactly what you want? I can’t say for sure because people vary and I don’t have dysphoria, but I feel like most people would jump to transition rather than deal with the alternative.

[–]MezozoicGaygay male 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In post-USSR to get legal "sex reassigment" surgery and to change sex in documents, person need to visit psychiatrist for at least a year, must be at least half a year or a year on treatment - to know if person really want it and if they don't have other issues, and fully comit to it as well.

In my country because of that - transsexuals often just going abroad for surgeries instead (so it is always middle class or rich people), and not changing legal sex in documents. Transgenders are not even trying anything and bying medicine abroad, as here you can';t buy it without medical prescription, and to get one you need to go for a treatment and check you if you don't have a ton of other issues. Cross-sex hormonal therapy also believed to be stressful and that if there other issues over gender dysphoria - can lead to strenghtening those issues that can lead to suicide.

Most transsexuals are still mostly homosexual people with very strong internalized homophobia, it is still present, even after USSR practices of forced transitioning and propaganda that gay men were just women born in wrong bodies - had stopped.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

I certainly would love to try any alternative treatment that cure my dysphoria better than SRS has. Since that was standard treatment and no therapy or medications or drugs or lifestyle changes worked and I was going to kill myself otherwise finally, I didn't really see another choice. If one had been available, I would have jumped on it instead. Some trans people really, really don't want to be trans and do anything not to be.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

How long where you in therapy that didn’t include discussing transition before you transitioned?

How long where you in therapy that focused on getting to the root of your dysphoria, and possibly (if applicable) addressing any other issues you may have had, before beginning transition?

What medications did you take, and what were they for?

If someone calls you a man or he/him how do you deal with it?

Were you ever gnc, like openly and freely, pre transition?

Do you genuinely believe that someone who has surgeries but is still obviously the sex they were born, or has complications with their surgery any less suicidal?

Not trying to prove any point, trying to understand what you experienced because it seems like any answer won’t be good enough for you

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

10 months

4 months

Olanzapine, Quetiapine, Effexor, Sertraline, Latuda, Lamotrigine, Clonazepam, Ativan, Lithium, Bupropion (all for panic and GAD, except Lithium for bipolar that was ruled out)

I feel strange and uncomfortable because it seems like they're talking to or about another person, like it's weird they don't see me

I was very openly, naturally gnc for my whole life before transition

Yes, I do. I no longer have suicidal ideation 2.5 years post op. Some people are less suicidal, some more, some no different.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

“some people are less suicidal, some more, some no different”

Suggest that transition is not in fact the only treatment or the most effective treatment. If 2/3 are either the same or worse off- that’s a huge flaw. Once again, this is why the other poster mentioned listening to detrans and desist, they obviously got another treatment.

Therapy can take years. It sucks to say and it sucks to be told this, but it just does take years to unpack issues and treat conditions. I absolutely get why someone is unwilling to endure that, but you will never know if you’d have been able to reach a healthier mindset if you’d stayed in therapy because you transitioned instead (hopefully still got therapy but once it’s done it’s done). Again I can’t stress enough I get why someone chooses to transition, my point is just that therapy is/can be a years long process, it’s not a quick fix. And suicidal people should be hospitalized, not operated on. I don’t doubt that it helped you in some ways, but it’s hard for me to see transition as the most effective when you acknowledge it doesn’t work for many people, and it doesn’t really address your full condition. Fact of the matter is, the distress is a part of it- it’s clearly not all of it. Or even most of it. If someone truly thinks they are something they aren’t, surgery or not, they aren’t being treated effectively. I’m not talking about you specifically, idk how you identify, I’m it’s confusing to me that you’re saying that even though you’re aware that other dysphoric people have treated their condition in a different way, like- you literally know these people exist, and you’re acknowledging that some don’t improve and some are even worse off, you still keep saying transition is the solution. Even the fact that you feel strange and uncomfortable if someone acknowledges your sex is indicative that you’re not really rid of dysphoria imo

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I don't think transition is the only treatment or most effective treatment for everyone. I agree that the diagnosis is flawed. Screening should be better, and research needs to be done, especially because evidently nothing has yet to be shown as consistently effective for early onset, persistent gender dysphoria/sex dysphoria. If the sex dysphoria is intense enough, you'll eventually successfully mutilate yourself or kill yourself before any meaningful therapy can be had if the dysphoria has gone on to long, at least in my experience.

Transition obviously isn't the solution for these people who detransition or desist--many of them or most of them are likely not suffering from transsexualism. They may experience gender dysphoria, which a revision of Gender Identity Disorder, which originally was synonymous with transsexualism. But most people who experience gender dysphoria are not suffering from transsexualism, particularly when it's early onset. Medical transition seems to be the most reliably effective solution for early onset transsexualism, but for other expressions of gender dysphoria, that reliability is lacking.

Would it not be strange to you to be referred to as the opposite sex? If it started when you were little, you might find it funny as I did; you might think everyone will feel very silly when they realize their mistake. It's a novelty. Time may have passed by, and you keep waiting for people to get it, but they don't. Then you realize that you aren't the sex you thought you were, and you were never going to grow up to be that sex. It Probably wouldn't really bother most people at first, but if it continued for years, decades, how would you feel then? It might be hard to fathom, but it drove me crazy, because "I" didn't really exist.

I identify as me. I don't really like the phrase "I identify as ___" as it just sounds weird and forced to me. I've come to think of gender identity as bologna; I'm just myself. It just so happens I've grown up seeing myself and thinking of myself as a woman. Just knowing I'm a woman. I don't identify as anything other than Fleurista (well, my real name).

Hopefully that gives you a bit more context. I originally asked the main question because I hate being a transsexual person, and would hope that if one can avoid living that life that everything should be done to make sure that happens.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I get what you’re saying but I think just 1. In my question, you’d not be being referred to as the opposite sex, your mental condition makes you convince yourself you are, which is kind of exactly my point and 2. What you’re describing to me sounds like mental illness, and sounds like if you hate being trans, then the treatment you received maybe wasn’t the best course of action for you in the long run. and as I said, suicidal people should be hospitalized- not operated on. If someone is monitored in a hospital they would not likely kill themselves, they’d not have much opportunity to do so.

If you don’t think transition is the only or most effective treatment, I’m not quite sure what this post was for though I enjoyed engaging.

I’m confused about you separating transsexualism from dysphoria- it seems like you’re saying they’re drastically different when I think one (dysphoria) often leads to the other (transsexualism). Unless you mean some people feel discontent with their “gender” and others with their body? But if that’s what you mean, isn’t that sex dysphoria, as opposed to gender dysphoria?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Perhaps suicidal people should be hospitalized before being operated on, but I wasn't going to tell anyone I was going to kill myself, I was going to just do it, and plan and take special care to make sure I died. But now it's after the fact, so it's kind of moot for me. I'm not sure what to say about others in this case. I think transition is the most effective form of treatment for certain transsexual people, and seems to be all that we have available to us, that group for whom it works best. If something were better, why shouldn't we want that though? Why shouldn't we want to prevent transsexualism if we could or find a more effective, less physiologically and socially disruptive treatment? There will likely be better treatment in the future, but for now, for people like me, it seems like this is all we have. Call it barbaric, in the same way that electroshock therapy or the use of certain drugs for treatment of other conditions in the past were barbaric, but this, like those treatments, is all that we have in the modality of our time. We can't time travel yet to get that new treatment now, just like they couldn't, so we use what we know best. Research is the only thing that will change that, but obviously it's not happening, and I do believe it should. And yes, I do see discontent with sex experienced as a physical sensation being distinct from gender dysphoria, or discontent with sex experienced psychologically. I believe the two experiences should be disentangled from each other, and that perhaps for early onset transsexualism the person experiences both, while other people may experience one phenomenon or the other individually. The reasoning and development for such experiences could also probably inform further whether transsexualism is an accurate diagnosis. People who want to change their bodies or believe they can genuinely change their sex have coopted and been lumped in with transsexualism under the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which was made specifically to expand access to people who wanted it but were not classic transsexuals. It's why I and a lot of transsexual people feel similarly to others who disagree with gender ideology and this concept of "gender identity". It's necessary to disentangle it, and transsexual people suffering from the classical or early onset forms described in the earliest literature on the phenomenon probably need to have something like "sex dysphoria" created as a new diagnostic to differentiate us, or push for more focus on reintroducing transsexualism into the DSM as separate and more specific compared to the current description of gender dysphoria. It's why people like truscum or trans medicalists claim so many people who claim to be transgender or "trans" actually aren't, they wouldn't be considered such if the diagnosis hadn't been altered to include more people.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think I agree with what you’re saying about separating transgender and transsexual to an extent, as far as being diagnosed. I still just don’t think transition is a good form of treatment, personally. I agree with what Houseplant was saying.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I respect your opinion. I don't mean this as a dig or complaint, but I was really hoping for solid evidence or studies that said "X is found more effective for treating early onset transsexualism than SRS or HRT", which is why I was trying to keep my wording in the post specific to that point and request. I appreciate you and everyone else sharing your own thoughts and insight, though, I'm just frustrated that no research exists to prove otherwise. In the meantime, until solid evidence is shown to the contrary or challenges this, I continue to believe that SRS and HRT are the most effective treatment forms for some forms of transsexualism and a combination of sex/gender dysphoria.