Preserving the excised genitals of transgender patients and other moral conundrums in psychiatry and medicine

Nicole A. Vincent (Delft University of Technology, Georgia State University)

What business do psychiatrists have in transgender people's lives if being transgender is not a mental disorder? Would we still care about making careful diagnoses – ones aimed to establish whether someone truly is transgender – if the effects of surgery and hormones could be reversed? For instance, if excised genitals of transgender patients could be preserved in case they change their mind later on? And what if a pill became available that made transgender people feel happy and at home in their birth-assigned genders? Should such a pill be offered – to enable transgender people to align their brains with the rest of their bodies – and might it even be better than the often-less-than-perfect results of surgical and hormonal interventions that aim to align their bodies with their brains?