Should WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning receive gender reassignment treatment while at Fort Leavenworth?

I'd tell him to man up.

I personally believe that prisoners should receive health care only for injuries, sickness and things that are life-threatening.

Not with tax payer money.

With prison costs amounting from about $50,000 to $150,000 per inmate per year, an added one-time cost $30,000 to $50,000 for sex reassignment surgery is basically nothing for a 30 year sentence. So, why not?

Of course the army shouldn´t pay for this.

Its not the governments job to pay for a life choice and for hormone treatment, and he should be treated as a male until his sentence is up and he is released, then he can go do what ever he wants with his life.

He was born a man, he should be treated as a man.

I guess so

Treat people like humans is my motto

If a psychologist or doctor thinks not doing it would affect Manning's well being, then yes.

No; he should be given psychiatric treatment for thinking he's a female. What have we become as a society by lending credence to ridiculous claims such as these? He is a man. Plain and simple.

Yes, it's truly amazing the percentage of the population think mutilating your genitals changes your gender.

I blame liberals for pushing an agenda of irrational tolerance. We've got to draw the line somewhere. What's next? Species reassignment surgery for people who believe they're platypuses?

For many people surgery is the treatment they need. You can't get a sex change without consulting a doctor first to confirm it would be the best way to proceed.

Transgenderism is a mental illness that should be treated with psychiatry and not sex reassignment surgery, which merely facilitates the illness as opposed to curing it.

Do you know this through years of studying it and working with people with it, or are you just another idiot who thinks that healthcare is a matter of opinions?

actually.. "The fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in Fiscal Year 2011 was $28,893.40." - Office of General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 320 First St. NW., Washington, DC 20534.

It's actually decently affordable to hold prisoners. Sex reassignment surgery costs far more then an entire year of his sentence. No way should tax payers have to pay for his personal life decisions.

It's called biology. Having to constantly take hormones will never make you woman. Otherwise I'm becoming a dragon, it's really the same concept.

Oh so you're one of those idiots that don't know the difference between sex and gender. How can you comment on something when you don't understand the most basic part of it?

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's back baby! He is back!

I know this through logic. When a child is born with a genetic, anatomical, or psychological abnormality, they are treated in such a way to align them with what is normal. Why is it that transgenderism is treated differently? Why is the illness facilitated in this case instead of surpressed or gotten rid of?

Normally people are born with one sex, and normally that sex matches their internal gender. Sometimes it doesn't, and when it doesn't it should be treated according to the person’s will. If they want to change to one or the other, they should be able to pick which one. If they’re born with one sex but identify differently and want to change that, they should be able to do that also.

Classifying it as a mental illness is just as well claiming it is a medical necessity, which it IS. People with gender dysphoria are often high-risk for depression and suicide and should be treated medically with gender reassignment if that’s what they desire, and most professionals say it's usually it is the best option if they do desire it.

Because that's the most effective treatment. Getting rid of it in most cases is impossible and attempting to can cause serious psychological damage.

Transgenderism is analogous to Body Integrity Identity Disorder, in which the sufferer feels that they would be happier living as an amputee. People have been treated with this disorder by actually having the limbs they desired to be removed surgically amputated. Though they feel relieved afterward, I think we all agree that satisfying the irrational desire of a mental disorder is depraved and violates the main principle of medicine.

Yes, SHEshould receive any and all medical treatment SHE requires.

You can't "cure" transgenderism with psychiatry anymore than you can pray away the gay

Which is why fortunately you're not a psychologist. You don't care about helping people, you just want to force people to your ideals even if it kills them.

What's the harm in giving someone a sex change if they want it? It has no negative effect on you or anyone else, and it has a huge positive impact on their mental health.

Face it, you don't give a shit about helping people. Which is exactly what medicine is for, helping people.

I have several casual acquaintances who are transgendered in a liberal college town where they are fairly well accepted. Granted, I don't know all the details of their lives, but they seem fairly well adjusted - they hold down good jobs, have families, friends, are interesting people to talk to at parties, etc. It strikes me that, given a supportive society, a transgendered person need not experience any particular dysfunction at all. In comparison, someone with BIID who finds themselves in a society supportive of BIID is still left an amputee, and therefore is significantly less functional.

Look, I'm okay with people undergoing sex reassignment surgery so as long as it's not considered a medical procedure but a cosmetic procedure instead. There are many people who are insecure about the way they look and subsequently undergo cosmetic surgeries, such as breast augmentation and rhinoplasty. However, despite how happy some of them may feel afterward, we never call the procedures they undergo medicine.

Are you really blu ray, Emil?

Sex changes are cosmetic, so what? Does that make it mean any less? Skin grafting for burn victims is also cosmetic, do you get as pissy about that?

My point is that the current treatments for transgenderism aren't actual cures and subsequently aren't medicine/ medical. A real cure would entail eliminating the feeling that one's sex is inconsistent with their gender.

lol yep my bets are on Emil = BRHD

Psychology doesn't work the same as treating regular diseases. You don't cure just mental illnesses, a lot of the time you have to live with it for your entire life. Treatment is usually to help you cope living with your condition.

Getting a sex change can drastically help someone, so why focus on a cure that doesn't exist and probably never will exist, when there is already an effective treatment available now?

not gonna lie, i have trouble believing transgenderism at all

im open to the idea that its an actual thing, but i currently think "its all in your head"

This is assuming you were born with normal genitalia

wait, so because something isn't a cure it's not medicine/medical?

Are you serious?

So because it's in their head it's not real? What type of logic is that?

All genders exist only in your head.

I didn't express myself properly. Please forgive me. What I meant to say is that because the current treatments do not attempt to cure the illness but instead facilitate it, they cannot be considered medicine/ medical.

Why? Most medicines/treatments aren't cures. Especially when it comes to mental health.

Should people with AIDS not take medication as it isn't a cure?

Once again, so because something doesn't attempt to cure a patient then it's not medicine/medical?

...even though "The current medical approach to treatment for people diagnosed with gender identity disorder is to support them in physically modifying their bodies so that they better match their gender identities, an approach that conceptualizes them as having a medical problem that is corrected through various forms of medical intervention"

I don't see how this facilitates the illness, since the illness is that they identify with a gender different from the sex they were assigned. Re-aligning their gender and sex is actually the opposite of facilitating the illness.

Also, much chemotherapy isn't really a cure. And actually is rather harmful to a patient in the long term

In my opinion, as I've already stated, Transgenderism is a mental illness; it is mentally unsound for someone to believe that their sex does not match their gender. Hence, a true medical treatment for Transgenderism would attempt to suppress or eliminate the patient's belief that their sex does not match their gender.

Furthermore, as gender is a social construct, the criteria of which can change depending on culture and time period, a belief that one's sex (which is physical/ biological and does not change) does not match it is purely psychological/ imaginary.

Ehmmm what? Gender is a pretty objective concept. No matter what you might "think/Dream" a man is always biologically a man and a women is always biologically a woman. No amount of hormones or sex-rearrangment surgery can alter that. What those things do is alter the person's own perception but its still not real for anyone but them.

So not a cure?

But didn't you just state that something is only a medical treatment if it is a cure?

You can't even agree with your own opinions

No you're thinking of sex.

lol no.

the idea that gender is somehow independent of sex and a social construct is a whole lotta bs

http://vimeo.com/19889788

According to the WHO:

Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

Good thing you aren't in any position to be making such claims.

keep drinking the kool-aid and thinking that somehow being a man or woman is not linked to being male or female...

its not like males act like their filled with testosterone and females act like their filled with estrogen right?

gender theory has been debunked, move along

hey you can probably even raise females to be men if you try hard enough.

its all a social construction.....

No it hasn't been debunked, you're just an idiot who doesn't understand it.