Hey everyone and welcome back to A Grain of Saul.
Today we're going to be talking about one
of President Donald Trump's most controversial
decisions he's made so far in office.
He rescinded the Obama directive that required
public schools to treat students gender identity
as the students sex for purposes of enforcing
title IX.
In practice, this meant that trans students
in schools across the country would be able
to use the bathroom that matched their gender identity
and not the one that they were assigned.
From what I can tell, those cheering the Trump
administration’s decision typically fall
into one of two categories.
Some believe Obama’s directive was federal
overreach, too broad, and left little choice
to parents, teachers, and individual schools.
Others just feel uncomfortable with the idea
of a trans person in the bathroom with them.
But what many who opposed Obama’s decision
still don’t seem to understand is the importance
of that bill for trans students’ mental
well-being.
Now, I’m cisgender.
So I can’t speak to the personal experience
of being transgender, and I enter into this
conversation with that knowledge.
But hundreds of thousands — in fact more
than a million — of my fellow Americans
are being affected by policies that seem built
upon misinformation…so I wanted to walk
through this from a scientific perspective.
While the American Medical Association, the
American Psychiatric Association and basically
every other major medical organization in
the country no longer classify being trans
as a “mental illness,” one still does:
the World Health Organization.
But they're about to change that.
Why?
Because after conducting research to discern
if trans people were mentally ill, it’s
faced the mounting pile of scientific evidence
it was wrong.
In a study published in the Lancet Psychiatry
journal, researchers found that not only is
being trans not a mental illness but a far
more accurate predictor of mental illness
in trans people was... wait for it...
THINGS LIKE BEING TOLD THEY WERE MENTALLY
ILL!
Geoffrey Reed, a psychology professor at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico,
said quote
In other words, the treatment of transgender
people is the greatest predictor of whether
they will have mental health issues; not their
gender identity.
So, if being trans isn’t simply a mental
state, what’s going on?
Well, there is a lot of compelling evidence
that a trans person’s experience is more
about a biological anomaly than a mental illness.
For instance, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology
and Metabolism found that in male to female
trans people, the anatomy of the brain looks
a lot more like a woman's brain than a man's.
Researchers observed that in male-to-female
trans participants, their neuron numbers in
the limbic nucleus were that of a female,
not a male.
Authors of the study wrote that their research
supports the paradigm that in trans people,
quote
That difference can create a conflict where
the brain is expecting one set of hormones
and the body is giving it something else.
The Scientific American says that
And still, for many of the
Americans who are transgender, mental illness
is a very real thing.
TIME Magazine reported the same study published
in the Lancet Psychiatry journal also found
that three-quarters of participants reported
experiencing social rejection related to their
feelings about gender, most commonly by family
members.
And nearly two-thirds aid they had been a
victim of violence related to their gender
identity.
So here's my Grain of Saul, that “social
rejection” is something LGBT advocates say
will be made more rampant by Trump’s decision,
and will ultimately have a negative effect
on trans people’s lives.
Since trans folks are totally regular, natural,
normal human beings, the culture of rejection
they face actually comes with a lot of pain
and hurt.
In turn, many of them turn to harming themselves
to solve that pain.
So, if you hear someone say being trans is
a “mental illness,” or claim that a trans
woman should be peeing in the men’s bathroom,
take the time to inform them.
You never know: getting people to understand
what being trans actually means could save
a life.
