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Many are missing the point, this is a story about transgender rights, not about psychologist knowledge.

The original article, linked in the post, starts with:

“I’ve made this argument before and gotten a reply something like this:

Transgender is a psychiatric disorder. When people have psychiatric disorders, certainly it’s right to sympathize and feel sorry for them and want to help them. But the way we try to help them is by treating their disorder, not by indulging them in their delusion.”

And then goes to explain the "Hair Dryer Incident" as a counter point.




I saw you were downvoted, and went and read the rest of the post to read the transgender argument. It’s a great read, the longer article is well worth perusing. I upvoted you for that.

The article’s thesis, though, is about how humans get stuck categorizing things, in ways that get canonized, and then have a hard time understanding that there are different legitimate ways to categorize. Transgender was just one example, the Hair Dryer incident another, and among them the whale-fish, and Israel vs Palestine. I love the way he framed transgender rights, and the Napoleon example is hilarious, but I wouldn’t say the story is primarily about trans rights rather than psychologist knowledge. If anything, it’s specifically showing some of the reasons why DSM 5 is so dramatically different from DSM 4, right?


Oh wow, this is very cool added context. Unfortunate that the linked article doesn't include it, although the story works out of context as well.




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