Chelsea Manning Told She Can Have Gender Reassignment Surgery, Lawyer Says | Hacker News Reader

Chelsea Manning Told She Can Have Gender Reassignment Surgery, Lawyer Says

nytimes.com

12 pointspeterkshultz5 comments

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I believe she should be allowed to fully transform into the female gender, as that's obviously the best for her health, and is how she feels. Nobody can change how she feels, and forcing her to pretend to be a male (because of being born that way) is inhumane. And the government has to pay for it because they're keeping her locked up, therefor they're responsible for her well being. If she was a free citizen you wouldn't expect the government to pay for the surgery.

A big win! However, the Guardian reporting adds a little wrinkle:

  According to Manning’s representatives, doctors 
  have recommended that as part of her treatment 
  for gender dysphoria the soldier, who began hormone 
  therapy in 2015, be allowed to follow “female hair 
  grooming standards”.

  ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio said in Tuesday’s 
  statement that the government planned to still enforce
  the male hair standards.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/14/chelsea-mann...

I still don't understand how GRS is the solution. It seems like an extreme, expensive, permanent "fix" to alleviate symptoms of a mental illness.

This is why I always discount people who say that "mental health treatment" is the solution to X class of problems. It seems like we don't really know how to treat mental illness other than to ask the mentally ill person what they want and give it to them.

But is it a mental illness? And, even if it were, is it treatable? What is more humane, to allow a person to become the gender they feel the best as, or to force them to be depressed and be told they're faking it or are sick and need to be fixed. And probably not be fixed because it's not possible with current technology. Hmm, don't people try to treat gay people like that?

> I still don't understand how GRS is the solution.

It's not the solution, but it's the least bad last resort workaround we can come up with for now, and it's better to apply that workaround than to keep patients suffering.

I don't think anybody is going to complain if a better treatment comes up, but so far we haven't found one.

> It seems like we don't really know how to treat mental illness other than to ask the mentally ill person what they want and give it to them.

It's not perfect, but we've made a lot of progress in the last ~100 years or so. That's like dismissing "physical health treatment" because we can't yet cure every kind of cancer.

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