On the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria

On the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria

 

Gender dysphoria is certainly a real disease, or no-one would consent to the treatments; but its nature and cause are not well understood.

Medicine often goes through three stages in the treatment of poorly-understood diseases:

1. Placebos. Do no harm, so do nothing. Minor palliation, close observation, and let the disease take its course. This is simple, cheap, painless, and ineffective.

2. Intervention. Aggressively act against symptoms. Surgery, drugs, hormones, etc. Do harm to undo greater harm. This is expensive, dangerous, painful, and partly effective.

3. Cure. Targeted intervention on underlying causes. This is simple, cheap, safe, painless, and fully effective.

For instance, level 1 in the treatment of tuberculosis involved bed-rest; level 2 involved surgical removal of infected lung tissue; and level 3 is an injection of antibiotics.

Achieving level 3 requires deep understanding of the biology involved. It needs Nobel-prize level research. The key insights will likely be found by accident. Until then, suffering is inevitable. It’s nobody’s fault, but it’s everybody’s problem.

We are not at level 3, because we do not know what gender is. Therefore we cannot efficiently fix it when it goes wrong.

Let me risk controversy by speculating that a level-3 gender dysphoria cure will change brain and mind to fit the body, rather than the body to fit brain and mind. I imagine a helmet that irradiates the brain with computer-controlled magnetic fields; after wearing it, the patient becomes a man-in-a-man’s-body, or at least becomes okay with being a woman-in-a-man’s-body. That cures the dysphoria. (Reverse the sexes for FTM.)

Just for fun, let’s imagine that the magneto-helmet makes a BZORT sound when it turns on and off, and a MWOWM sound in-between. Such is my science-fictive speculation.

If a magneto-helmet treatment for gender dysphoria were invented, then would some refuse to wear it? Obviously this involves philosophical questions, such as the illusory nature of identity. Also there are political issues.

Until we conquer our own ignorance of the neurobiology of gender, I recommend that we practice the virtues of patience, stoicism, and compassion.