Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.
If there is a single thing that you learn from studying medicine is that, contrary to popular imagination, there is rarely ever such a thing as “A disease/disorder” with the singular – rather most diseases represent an initial biological state of a sub-system that progressively deteriorates the entire system.
And this makes sense – there are no systems in the universe that better epitomize ‘interconnected’ than biological ones. A single disorder at first localized to a small region of the body almost without exception spreads disorder to the system. And the brain in particular is a highly interconnected piece of biology.
Which is why the vast majority of mental disorders tend to have numerous comorbidities – you will rarely find a schizophrenic who also does not suffer from a host of other mental disorders.
The onus is as much on your crowd to demonstrate that something as biologically abnormal as “transgender” is benign as it is on slimreaper’s to do for the contrary. But of course your crowd has made it so that even broaching the question as a legitimate matter of biology wouldn’t be accepted as such at best and prosecuted as “hate-speech” at worst.
You misunderstand me, I didn't ask Slimreaper a rhetorical question. I'm fully aware that the mental condition of gender dysphoria(spelling, cbb to fix/check rn) could very well be a mental illness, or associated with some form of mental illness(es). I fully support the notion that it should be studied more closely to determine what causes it, what the implications of it are for things like the suicide rates, and how to approach it.
For now, if a person born as male tells me they identify as a female, I have no reason to personally not respect it and just go with it, and I don't see why others should. Until exploration of the factors that cause such a high suicide rate comes back to reveal that there aren't factors independent enough from the mental conditions that cause them the gender dysphoria that cause the suicide rates, I have no reason not to just roll with it respectfully.
Well it actually brings up a good point, if the reason for the 40% suicide rate was because of "discrimination" then black people who supposedly face "discrimination" almost every day according to the Left, should have significantly higher rates of suicide.
It's truly not this simple. For one thing, it can be argued that there is a larger community against transgendered people than there is black people, so the discrimination faced by the former could play a larger role in determining their suicide rates than it does for black people.
Black people also don't live in an era where their status as members of society are constantly challenged. While racism still exists, it's no longer at a level where government-based laws and rulings directly infringe on their status as people as other people outside of their group are, which probably disappoints you. Transgendered people on the other hand continue to face that, which could again cause discrimination to play a bigger role for them than it does black people.
While there is still a psychological bank that still needs to be tapped into to get more scope on the issue, it's too early to dismiss discrimination as a major factor in this group because it's not a major factor in another group, especially when it's likely just a fraction of the total psychological, physiological, and environmental factors that could contribute to their high suicide rates.