Oh no, it's a thread about trans issues made by John Dule

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Classification of mental illness has never been a purely scientific. It always been, and to some extent unavoidably is, informed by social norms and the predominant values of those in the profession at any given time.  That being said some reasons for classifying or declassifying something as a mental illness are better than others.  If something causes "clinically significant distress or impairment" in the words of the DSM, fear of stigma shouldn't be sufficient reason to drop its classification unless perhaps one believes the stigma is itself the reason for the distress.  But is the view generally held by trans rights advocates of the mental suffering of gender dysphoria that it could be completely gotten rid of with changing social norms if biomedical interventions were for whatever reason unavailable?  I haven't gotten that sense.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Classification of mental illness has never been a purely scientific. It always been, and to some extent unavoidably is, informed by social norms and the predominant values of those in the profession at any given time.  That being said some reasons for classifying or declassifying something as a mental illness are better than others.  If something causes "clinically significant distress or impairment" in the words of the DSM, fear of stigma shouldn't be sufficient reason to drop its classification unless perhaps one believes the stigma is itself the reason for the distress.  But is the view generally held by trans rights advocates of the mental suffering of gender dysphoria that it could be completely gotten rid of with changing social norms if biomedical interventions were for whatever reason unavailable?  I haven't gotten that sense.

This depends on which trans rights advocates you ask; it's not something there's a consensus on in the trans community (in fact, there's quite a lot of intracommunity acrimony and hostility surrounding exactly this question). I agree with you that declassifying gender dysphoria makes more sense if we answer the question in the affirmative, but my view of disability in general (including mental illness) is social or biosocial enough already that I'm happy to accept its declassification either way.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about a social view of disability and how that relates to declassifying a particular phenomena as a mental illness?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Fair enough, but I would make the same argument with regards to that case. If homosexuality isn't a mental disorder, it should have been declassified for that reason. But declassifying something as a mental disorder in order to "remove stigma" implies that everything else in the category of "disorder" does deserve that stigma.

For the record, I think homosexuality could be classified as a disorder. But I also think that homophobia could be classified as a disorder as well.

As far as mental disorders go, it is relatively harmless. Most research focused on gay men does indicate some higher rates of additional mental issues - the primary cause of which is not difficult to guess. However, there are also (probably) lower divorce rates, higher incomes, and higher average intelligence. This is extremely unusual because even disorders which are generally associated with intelligence - such as ADHD - indicate lower intelligence scores than the total population. A mental disorder which results in a heightened general intelligence could hardly be classified as a normative mental disorder. Milo Yiannopolis has said some stuff about this research which makes further studies rather difficult - linking a group of people to higher/lower average intelligence is, by its very nature, highly controversial. It is this avoidance of controversy attempted by the APA in such delistings.

There isn't any intrinsic reason why a mental disorder couldn't be correlated with higher intelligence.  Something that may be adaptive in one way often has a cost in another.  The evidence on mood and anxiety disorders are mixed w/ respect to iq, and the correlation seems it may go in different directions at different points on the spectrum -  but it's possible that high intelligence leads for some people to a hyper-perception of negative or threatening possibilities.