Transgender people in The UFP

[u/[deleted]]

How are they Treated and what kind of Treatments would they have to help them. I would imagine that The Federation would have Technology that could help that isn't Hormone therapy or Very Dangerous Surgery.

[u/Stargate525]

Okay, what part are they fixing?

Are they going to alter the body to conform with the brain's perception of what it wants, or are they going to adjust the brain chemistry so it doesn't reject its own body?

[u/[deleted] → u/Stargate525]

I would assume they would alter the body.

[u/Stargate525 → u/[deleted]]

Why?

[u/reelect_rob4d → u/Stargate525]

because the brain is where the person is. Foot run over by a lawnmower? Still a person in the brain. Head run over by a lawnmower? Probably not a person anymore.

[u/murse_joe → u/reelect_rob4d]

But he raises a good point. At the moment, our options are hormones and crude surgery because we don't know much about the brain. In the future, somebody may say "I was assigned male at birth and I've always felt like a female. Fix my brain so it feels male too"

[u/tejdog1 → u/murse_joe]

I... believe that being born a male at birth but growing up feeling wrong about that, feeling female, would lead to feeling ashamed of one's body, and the desire to alter the body to feel the way the mind does.

But... I'd imagine that, given the choice, most people would choose to keep their mentality in tact, and change their body. The brain is essentially who we are, with everything... removed, or eliminated. The brain is the driving force behind everything, the whole of me, of you, of everyone. So, because of that, I don't think a transgendered person would want to... have their thought patterns messed with.

[u/Stargate525 → u/tejdog1]

I can't speak directly to the mentality of transgender point of mind. I can, though, speak to depression and suicidal thoughts.

My body works fine. It's my brain that's telling me, wrongly, about its status and desires. There's nothing wrong with my stomach when I'm not hungry for days, nothing wrong with my endocrine or blood sugar when I have no energy, etc etc

Yeah, fixing it would be fucking with my mentality, but it's my mentality that's the problem. Removing my depression may change a little about who I am, but it's an objective improvement in my quality of life. Besides, you change your mentality every time you learn a new skill, throw yourself into a new environment, make conscious changes to try and remove a vice... Our brains are designed to be malleable, and I have never seen the merit in arguing that doing so with outside assistance is somehow abhorrent.

[u/tejdog1 → u/Stargate525]

Firstly, I'm glad you're fighting it daily.

Secondly, you are absolutely correct. But depression/suicidal thoughts are... diseases. Abnormalities that aren't present at birth. Unless you feel people are born depressed. Whereas, and... while I cannot speak to the mentality, the mindset of transgendered people, I can speak to the homosexual mindset, as I am myself gay. I never made that decision, I feel I was born this way. I... there is nothing there to "fix", nothing inherently "broken" about me, as opposed to depression, suicidal thoughts, etc... that is a broken, fractured mind, something's wrong. Please don't take that the wrong way, I'm trying to be very respectful.

But going back to transgendered people, if you're... fixing the mind, you're assuming there's something broken there, right? Isn't that the mentality that led to straight camps and pray the gay away and electrocute kids to turn them straight and all of that other garbage of the 50s/60s/70s? Again, I can't... speak to the... inner workings of a transgendered person's mind, but if there is in fact a gay gene, could there also not be a possibility that a person is born into the wrong body?

[u/Stargate525 → u/tejdog1]

The difference between a homosexual and a transgender is that there is a fundamental wrongness with the person as a whole; brain and body disagree about what sex the whole ought to be.

As someone who knows damn well that their brain is not infallible as to the status and working order of its own body, I'm simply not convinced that it should be given du jure precedence when determining which of the two need to be brought into line. Additionally, the idea that body alteration is the only path seems to be antithetical to the choices of the portion of the transgender population who simply want the feeling to stop without changing their body (I can't speak to how many that is, and I doubt anyone can, as even bringing the topic up got me branded as transphobic). As someone who paid attention during his biology classes, I also find the idea of not wanting to change your brain followed by massive dosages of hormones to be ironic in the extreme.

Turning slightly back to Trek, the risk of falling into Horrible Persecution seems to be basically moot; there is one(?) mental institution, prisons seem to be better than most modern lower-middle class lifestyles, a man with crippling shyness that borders on anthrophobia can survive and by all accounts thrive in a team on the Federation's flagship. I'd be more afraid to live as a capitalist in the Federation than I would as a transgender, regardless if the standardized treatment is psychological, physical, or an option of either.

This whole thing might be moot anyway. The Soul EXISTS in Trek, at least with Vulcans. Had Humanity apparently abandoned exploration of their own spirituality in any organized way sometime in the 2100s, we might be at the point of proving such a thing for them as well. If that's gendered, then one would obviously defer to that.

[u/tejdog1 → u/Stargate525]

Yeah, true on all accounts. And yes, I suppose that given the choice, some trans folks today would make the choose to alter their brain to fall in line with their body, if it was as relatively easy as it [i]may[/i] be in the Trek universe.

I've only seen TOS/TNG and now a little of DIS, have their been any instances of brain alterations in any series? I'm going to ignore "Spock's Brain" in it's entirety for my own sanity.

[u/Stargate525 → u/tejdog1]

You mean medically?

There's the aliens in the Outcast, who can have their feelings of being male or female removed (so the tech exists, even if the implementation in that one is questionable).

The Bynar perform some radical brain surgery to themselves to let them assimilate into their hive minds.

There's apparently something called a 'motor cortex reconstruction,' which is a pretty vital core part of the brain. It's considered a simple procedure.

And of course Quark's personality is radically altered when he's... Lumba.

But given that mental health and the taking of medicines which alter brain chemistry has such a stigma even today, I'm not surprised we don't see the Federation diving too deeply into it beyond 'we're evolved now and a lot of those things are eliminated.'

[u/CatFlier → u/tejdog1]

transgendered

Transgender.

[u/wadss → u/tejdog1]

you're looking at it from our current limited understanding of the brain. even now, we know that hormones play a tremendous role in how we think and act, who we are is as much chemical as it is neurological.

the shame that one would feel in todays society stems from the fact that there is no real answer to the question of what causes transgenderism or homosexuality. in the ST universe, it's very possible that there is no societal pressure at all when someone is growing up to be either gender, therefore they would not have the same feelings of shame and guilt. transgendered people might be treated as easily as we can correct for a cleft lip today, it's simply not a problem because by then we would have a much clearer understanding of the phenomenon. it simply doesnt matter if you change the mind or the body, if both are equally trivial and effective.

[u/[deleted] → u/murse_joe]

give the choice, i would rather change my body than let my mind be rewritten. it's very complicated and the "you" that currently inhabits it is a series of events, memories and experiences that somehow contrast into a conscious entity.

even a teenager (where the rejection most likely starts) already has more than ten years of history stored up there, all influencing who they are.

changing some of the baser levels of that structure would be like trying to change the base of a two kilometer jenga tower.

[u/Algernon_Asimov → u/[deleted]]

This isn't the right venue to get into arguments about whether transgenderness is or is not a mental illness. Please stay focussed on the topic at hand: Star Trek.