In psychology a disorder is not merely a deviation, but it requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain. That’s why it’s a disorder to have extremely low intelligence but not to have extremely high intelligence. And that matters crucially here because that’s why homosexuality isn’t a mental illness. Similarly transness isn’t a mental illness in large part because it possesses a different character and by calling it one they would be leading people to respond to it in the wrongest way according to research on how to make the individual affected most able to live a happy and functional life.
You’re right that it’s important how we act. But it’s also important that we push back because it’s manufacturing consent to strip rights.
requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain
According to this article, LGBTQIA+ people experience:
2.5x higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety
higher rates of discrimination - article claims 70%
shame and self-doubt - no numbers given, but 43% of youths are kicked out of homes due to lack of acceptance, which certainly contributes
That’s a lot of discomfort, impairment to daily life, etc. Yes, this largely comes from external stimuli, but that’s also largely true for people with lower intelligence (i.e. won’t be considered for better jobs they could do due to discrimination). Some of it is also internally sourced (why am I different from my peers? What’s wrong with me??), especially for people experiencing gender dysphoria (why doesn’t my body match how I feel?).
AFAIK, we don’t have a link between genetics and LGBTQIA+ people like we have for something like handedness or intelligence (jury is out on the latter for how much it contributes though). Research is obviously ongoing though, which is why it’s important to keep the discussion open. Our determination of disorder vs unique trait is pretty arbitrary, so I think it’s important to keep the discussion open around it.
That said, my overall point here is that the label itself doesn’t really matter. People will discriminate against those who are different from them regardless of the terminology we use. The focus should be on that discrimination and intolerance, not on tweaking the terminology we use. We should be considering people who are LGBTQIA+ the same way as people with anything else that needs adjustments to social behavior (left-handed gloves/scissors, wheelchair ramps, interpreters, etc). In most cases, it means not doing anything different, as in not telling someone they can’t use a given restroom, or that certain (otherwise sufficiently modest) clothing is unacceptable to wear at school.
IMO, the fight over the words we use distracts from the more important issue of protecting individuals from harassment. As long as social media moderation accomplishes that, it doesn’t really matter what form it takes.
Getting it removed from classification as a mental illness was vital to reducing our systemic oppression back in the day so this is absolutely not a point we should cede
It’s still classified as a mental disorder, we just dance around the topic a bit. The real change was research indicating that conversion therapy and whatnot don’t work and are actively harmful.
In psychology a disorder is not merely a deviation, but it requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain. That’s why it’s a disorder to have extremely low intelligence but not to have extremely high intelligence. And that matters crucially here because that’s why homosexuality isn’t a mental illness. Similarly transness isn’t a mental illness in large part because it possesses a different character and by calling it one they would be leading people to respond to it in the wrongest way according to research on how to make the individual affected most able to live a happy and functional life.
You’re right that it’s important how we act. But it’s also important that we push back because it’s manufacturing consent to strip rights.
According to this article, LGBTQIA+ people experience:
That’s a lot of discomfort, impairment to daily life, etc. Yes, this largely comes from external stimuli, but that’s also largely true for people with lower intelligence (i.e. won’t be considered for better jobs they could do due to discrimination). Some of it is also internally sourced (why am I different from my peers? What’s wrong with me??), especially for people experiencing gender dysphoria (why doesn’t my body match how I feel?).
AFAIK, we don’t have a link between genetics and LGBTQIA+ people like we have for something like handedness or intelligence (jury is out on the latter for how much it contributes though). Research is obviously ongoing though, which is why it’s important to keep the discussion open. Our determination of disorder vs unique trait is pretty arbitrary, so I think it’s important to keep the discussion open around it.
That said, my overall point here is that the label itself doesn’t really matter. People will discriminate against those who are different from them regardless of the terminology we use. The focus should be on that discrimination and intolerance, not on tweaking the terminology we use. We should be considering people who are LGBTQIA+ the same way as people with anything else that needs adjustments to social behavior (left-handed gloves/scissors, wheelchair ramps, interpreters, etc). In most cases, it means not doing anything different, as in not telling someone they can’t use a given restroom, or that certain (otherwise sufficiently modest) clothing is unacceptable to wear at school.
IMO, the fight over the words we use distracts from the more important issue of protecting individuals from harassment. As long as social media moderation accomplishes that, it doesn’t really matter what form it takes.
Getting it removed from classification as a mental illness was vital to reducing our systemic oppression back in the day so this is absolutely not a point we should cede
It’s still classified as a mental disorder, we just dance around the topic a bit. The real change was research indicating that conversion therapy and whatnot don’t work and are actively harmful.