Since we're scraping the conversational barrel, have you ever seen a ghost?

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

Which would you rather have, a tit that dispensed talcum powder or an armpit that squirted sun cream?

[Monty91]

[Luis Anaconda]

Sorry - thought you said goat. As you were

[Monty91]

played tricks with our brains?

[Berni]

And what sort of freak chooses the ham hand?

[Berni]

I was talking to my sister on Saturday, who is a highly rational partner with a City law firm. She was convinced that, while in Ireland, she had felt a ghost push past her in a corridor.

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

[Pat Vegas]

One day some bad dudes came along and wanted to buy the dojo and he refused. So they got mad and ordered their Russian thug to brake his leg.

We then relocated to Seattle when I made friends with a stereotypical black fella who was great at basketball and could dance like Michael Jackson.

I always had a keen interest in Bruce Lee. And I wanted to train like him so I set up the garage as my gym. My dad did not like or agree the Jeet Kun Do method of martial arts. Plus the whole broken leg experience had left him very disillusioned with martial arts in general.

He tore down my Bruce Lee poster. I then decided to train in an abandoned house. One night before my very eyes Bruce Lee ghost (who strangely just looked like a random Chinese fella) taught me the ways of the Dragon. Before long I was a martial arts officianardo.

Whilst I had a few typical teenage scrapes over girls and bullies I entered a martial arts tournament. Where coincidently the Russian called Ivan (not ArseneIvan) was also a participant. I had to face him in the final and I avenged my fathers broken leg.

[Monty91]

using your theory that they should be treated as mentally ill rather than indulged in their delusion.

My opposing number insisted that to say a transgender can or should be 'corrected' through therapy not surgery is no different to saying the same about the gays. What say you?

[Classic Jorge]

And then you wake up from a doze and find your ham hand swarming with ants.

Literally the worst of all worlds.

[Monty91]

[Berni]

delusional psychosis.

Besides. if I decide I'd be better off and happier and more attractive if I lopped my leg off (and such extreme delusions of body dysmorphia does exist), would it be medical science's job to pander to me by doing so or to try and help me not to be so f**king mental? Clearly the latter, but for some reason we take a different view when it comes to physical alterations related to gender.

[Berni]

But seriously, does just having eaten pork make you incapable of ever being kosher again or can you be purified or whatever?

[Snin]

[Classic Jorge]

[Monty91]

they are certainly happy to play fast and loose with the rules and still call themselves kosher.

[barrybueno]

[redgunamo]

So I gather.

[Berni]

Or is that a bit like saying it's not adultery if you use a condom?

[Monty91]

that says it is not psychosis, but predetermined hard-wiring?

Also, if a large enough number of people wanted to chop their leg off because they insisted it made them miserable, there would likely be a societal obligation to offer them the option, no? That's how these things work, isn't it? Power in numbers.

[Monty91]

if there's pork in the mix.

[Rich]

[Berni]

Not least the number of those who have undergone 'realignment' who then suffer 'phantom *****' syndrome - rather suggesting that they weren't quite as hard-wired female as they like to imagine. And I'd want something a lot better proved before I agreed to allow doctors to start hacking bits off people.

Besides, the medical establishment is great at confirming what it already believes and making anything else unsayable. As to the argument about numbers, it's dangerous nonsense. In the past, lobotomy, clitoredectomy and castration have all been used as surgical treatments for psychological conditions because that was the medical 'wisdom' at the time. I regard 'gender reassignment' surgery as just another easy, surgery-based answer for doctors.

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

Talk me through this please

[Luis Anaconda]

[Berni]

there. This in spite of them being born 'in the wrong body'.

[Monty91]

and transgenders is that formerly these warped 'solutions' were forced upon people by the medical community, whereas transgenders are entirely willing and complicit.

Transgenders have to go through substantial councelling before they are considered for surgery.

Unless you think that by indulging their delusion we somehow create more of them??

[Berni]

[Monty91]

became intolerably dysfunctional.

Most people are willing to tolerate other people's delusions until they start directly imposing on them.

[Classic Jorge]

You might be confusing a mental misalignment with a physical one.

Quite often your trans people tend to have this identity problem tied up with a fair f**king bit of other emotional baggage.

[Classic Jorge]

[Monty91]

and therefore for it to feel strange not to have one anymore is entirely normal.

A bit like someone in solitary confinement finding it hard to readjust to being in the outside world. Doesn't mean that solitary confinement was their natural habitat all along, does it.

[Berni]

would feel better as a consequence. That's what mental illness does to you.

And of course the existence of a gender reassignment process and industry creates more of these people. If you validate a delusion, you legitimise it and the sort of attention seekers who will always go for this stuff will go for it. They'll learn what to say to get what they imagine they want and they'll get it.

And you can have as many counselling stages as you like. The fact is that, by virtue of the process' existence, the self-sustaining bias will always be towards approval.

[Berni]

I agree with you about this being more about emotional and psychological baggage that these people imagine will be made better by realignment. However, I would argue that it is at best a placebo.

[Berni]

taking them off is only ever going to be a relief, surely? I'm never going to miss them.

[Monty91]

adjust to being the 'wrong' sex and are able to live as highly functioning people in society (like Frank Maloney). And if you swapped them for correct fitting shoes, for a while at least, it would feel strange :shrug:

[Classic Jorge]

I know one chap/chapess who did about 18 months of it and then decided he's happier being a man dressed as a woman (not the technical term) than going for the full Babs' Cabs option.

[Bergkamp's Brain]

There are a number of obvious questions that I have not been allowed to ask......yet

1) Are they a straight couple or a lesbian couple?
2) Does he prefer to be know as "she"?
3) Did the friend know about this "transition" before they got involved?

I haven't even got to the bedroom stuff.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

However, this sort of poorly researched pseudo-science being paid for by the NHS is questionable at the very least. After all, pleny of people say homeopathy works for them, too.

More worrying, though, to my mind, are the ethical issues. I get very nervous about doctors performing irreversible surgeries based on pretty thin evidence.

[Bergkamp's Brain]

[Berni]

Mostly, I suspect, because it really gets to the nub of the issue - namely that they aren't really (and never will be) any sex or gender other than the one they were born as.

[Classic Jorge]

Personally I'm happier to pay for this then I am tax breaks for baby boomers so they can keep more of their pensions and not defect to UKIP but that's democracy for you, eh?

[Bergkamp's Brain]

the actual woman, that is.

[redgunamo]

financial responsibilities depending on who's paying.

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

The NHS does immense good for society as a whole and I for one am very proud of that.

[Berni]

though, does it?

[Supermac1976]

[Classic Jorge]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not madly in favour of it but I'd rather public money went toward that than funding tax breaks for key demographics ahead of an election or something even more reprehensible like funding arms trade export credit guarantees to despotic regimes.

But, you know, keep objecting to giving people a little bit of happiness in their lives rather than something important.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

spends its budgets (via NIHCE, of course). That has nothing to do with decisions made by central government. Equally, the amount of 'good' done by these things is debatable - particularly so when the money could be spent on things like - oh, let's see - cancer treatments? MRI machines? You know? Things that are actually, scientifically proven to work?

[Classic Jorge]

[redgunamo]

And I can certainly think of one or two people for whom being bombed would do all the good in the world. Dozens actually.

Crucially though, not for free.

[Berni]

You're still confusing the issue, though. I'm criticising the way the NHS spends money. The NHS - as far as I'm aware - doesn't buy bombs.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

allocates its budget. Stop ****ing on about bombs.

[redgunamo]

Clearly government is the problem :thumbup:

[Classic Jorge]

Have you been drinking these again, Alan?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/NineLadyboyDrinks.L-man.jpg

[Classic Jorge]

Apparently

[redgunamo]

Democratic government always ends up facing these issues because the smart people worked out long ago that they could simply vote themselves ever-increasing amounts of "free" stuff.

The real problem isn't the poor or darkies or single mothers or Desert Storm or trannies; it's ordinary successful, hard-working middle class professionals constantly demanding handouts from government for things they ought to be paying for themselves. Healthcare, education etc.

[Classic Jorge]

['Neg]

[redgunamo]