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Judge orders sex-change surgery for man who strangled his wife
By adamg on Tue, 09/04/2012 - 1:23pm
The Globe reports a federal judge found the "the treatment is the only adequate care for his serious mental illness, gender identity disorder."
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Comments
Typical MA
Liberal BS
Yeah, which godless commie pinko president appointed him?
Hmm, let's look up Judge Mark Wolf ...
Doh! Of course! That noted leftwinger Ronald Reagan.
Reagan
1) I don't think he, or any president, could have foreseen this.
2) Doesn't Congress have to approve judicial nominations? They kept Robert Bork off. Isn't this also on the relevant Congress?
So, the President couldn't possibly have
foreseen this, but Congress should have?
Yeah
If there was one mark that the Gipper wanted to leave on the judiciary, it was to ensure the right of a murderer to get dong-removal surgery on the public dime. Why don't they just make him an honorary girl?
This opens the doors for
This opens the doors for everyone else.
I'm all for sexual freedoms, and if this helps someone sure go ahead.
But I am not sure if letting the tax payers pay for it is the right thing to do. No their life will not end, transsexuals have managed to survive until recently without re-assignment surgery.
I just think this is going to open the doors for every bored inmate out there, that doesn't want to stay in a male prison, will just go thru this just to be sent to a women's one (yes this will happen after sexual re-assignment surgery). Trust me, an inmate who's in there for 25 to life will have no reason NOT to do this. It gets them out of their cell for treatment.
Opening doors
While I'm not so sure that the Commonwealth should be on the hook for this procedure, the worse door that this opens is the one for all the Howie Carr-zombies and paid trolls to start filling up blogs and radio talk shows with this case as yet another example of how them librrruls are destroying the planet (anon post above as case in point).
While I doubt many inmates will be doing this just for shits and giggles, the fact that one gets the state to pay for it, means that some other cases will probably arise and definitely it'll be used (successfully or not) as justification for other surgeries. Mental health services, needed surgeries and other types of critical medical attention should be provided - I just don't know if sex re-assignment surgery should be in there. Complicated world we live in these days.
So in other words, the Howie
So in other words, the Howie Carr zombies are right. Thanks for sharing your opinion.
Right?
Yes, they are far right. As far as being correct, informed or mentally capable of arriving to an opinion that isn't based on knee-jerk racist rage or simply just parroting back the diarrhea spewed by Howie Carr, well, no I wouldn't say that. Unlike the zombie-herds of the right, most rational people are willing to evaluate situations and come up with opinions that will occasionally be in agreement with those they don't normally agree with, but they may arrive at those positions through a very different process. Thanks for sharing your obnoxiousness.
No amount of boredom would
No amount of boredom would make me volunteer to lose my John Thomas.
And the Herald rejoices...
And the Herald rejoices...
I have Brad Pitt-identity disorder
I have Brad Pitt-identity disorder, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to need the state to pay for all the plastic surgery I'll need to make me look like Brad Pitt.
Oh wait, first I have to be a convicted murderer. Not a tax payer, not a law-abiding citizen of the state, not a property owner...
Please note that this
Please note that this decision hinges on transexualism being a 'serious mental illness.' I doubt that will be appreciated by the transgenger/gender queer crowd.
Clueless much?
The "illness" is due to a person with a certain gender identity that does not match his or her body.
Also, if you think inmates will be lining up to be castrated and have their penises inverted into vaginas for shits and giggles, think again.
Explain the quotation marks
Explain the quotation marks you put around the word illness. The court decision is predicated on gender disorder being a serious mental illness. If you disagree with that opinion, then the justification for paying for the state paying for the procedure goes away. So which is it?
Please Note
The state, at this point, has spent far more money defending the denial of health care in this case than it probably ever would have paying for the extremely rare instance of an inmate requesting gender reassignment surgery.
Think about that.
Yeah, that's a dilemma --
Yeah, that's a dilemma -- people who want sex reassignment surgery to be covered by health insurance will have to accept that it's a mental illness.
People with this view are taking issue with the wrong issue
A disability is something where the way your body and/or brain ended up being a certain way that's not quite what works optimally in the world, and the way we make you happier and better-adjusted is 1) for society to be more understanding and accommodating and 2) for you to have equipment and/or interventions from professionals if you want them.
There is nothing wrong with having a disability, and having a disability doesn't mean you're defective or that there's anything wrong with you. Hence the disability pride movement, etc.
Rather than deciding that it's disrespectful to trans folks to say they have a disability, we need to address the societal idea that there's anything wrong with having a disability.
eeka you've gone over the top here.
Of course there is. Being blind sucks. Not being able to walk sucks.
That's precisely what having a disability means: it means having something wrong with your eyes, or your legs, or your immune system, or your brain, or your psyche that causes you to lack an ability that most people have and take for granted. Not being able to see or walk means there's something physically wrong with you.
Let's not let political correctness distract us from the core notion that disability is, at the end of the day, something to be fixed: that researching and understanding the causes and developing prevention and cures is vital.
The problem when you make statements such as those quoted above, is that the ridiculousness of your assertions completely distracts people from a valid point you seem to be making. Instead of saying, "Say, she's right, it really would be a good thing if we became more accepting of people with disabilities," people react by eye-rolling and saying, "she's completely and utterly full of BS."
I think you should talk to more people with disabilities
.
I know plenty of people with disabilities
I know plenty of people with disabilities. It doesn't mean they're miserably unhappy, or incomplete, or unfulfilled as human beings. It doesn't mean that the disability hasn't proved enlightening, nor that it hasn't opened up new ways of being for them.
But I've never met a blind person who opposes research into the cure and prevention of blindness, or a person with spinal damage who opposes research into the prevention and cure of paralysis.
To a person, they would rather not have their disability, and they loathe politically correct terminology like "differently abled." One, when referred to as such, interrupted and said, pretty sharply, "excuse me, 'differently abled' means that one person can play chess and the other can run races. I'm not differently abled, I'm paralyzed from the waist down. I don't have some different ability; I'm just lacking an ability. Please don't patronize me with that terminology."
The politics of identity sucks, whether it's about race, gender, disability, or any other excuse to divide us.
Well right...
Yes, "differently-abled" is ridiculous and isn't preferred by very many people in the disability community.
You'll find a variety of opinions regarding whether people would rather still have their disability if given a choice. A lot of dissertations have been done on this.
Still, this is a separate issue from whether there is anything wrong with having a disability. Most of the models of healthy disability identity regard a healthy identity as one where the person feels totally fine being regarded as someone with a disability. A person who is blind and has a healthy identity around this doesn't go around saying "no, I'm not blind" or "don't call me a person with a disability" or "people with disabilities suck and I'm not one of them." While each person should be free to identify as they wish, it's ableist for someone who was born with an atypically functioning body for which they are seeking medical treatment to say "no, I don't have a disability and it's offensive to say that." A person who says such a thing has bought into the societal view that people with disabilities suck and no one should want to be called a person with a disability.
Also, read up on the social model of disability versus the medical model.
What is "ableist"?
Asked seriously and in good faith -- I see the term tossed around, and I don't know what it is supposed to mean.
Again, seriously and in good faith, how could there not be something wrong with having a condition that limits one's activities, causes pain, shortens one's life, or is inconvenient and expensive to treat?
There's nothing morally wrong with having a disability; you aren't a worse or a lesser person for having one, but how can one say that there isn't something wrong with being unable to see, or unable to walk?
Personally, I have a trivial, tiny disability: a birth defect that limits the range of motion of one of my feet. It's only limiting at the extreme margins: there are some sports I can't play particularly well; I've got to be meticulously careful about shoes, and my leg hurts a little bit upon occasion. But it's completely unambiguous to me that there's something wrong with my foot, and I can't imagine a mental or theoretical construct in which that's not the case.
Ableism
Is discrimination, oppression, etc. of people with disabilities. Like most -isms, it's usually not intentional or ill-willed.
I think you're misunderstanding what I've said. Yes, there's something wrong with your foot. But there's nothing wrong with having something wrong with your foot.
Maybe if I reword it slightly? There's nothing wrong with being a person with a disability. Just like there's nothing wrong with being gay, trans, Black, Hindu, etc. These things are harder to be in our society than the dominant identities are, but that isn't the fault of the person whose identity it is. Does that make sense?
There's a misunderstanding here
Of course there's something wrong with having something wrong with my foot. It means I can't go snowboarding, which I think I might enjoy.
The difference between, on the one hand, having a disability and, on the other, being gay, trans, hindu, black, etc. is pretty obvious: Disabilities are, well... disabilities; being gay, trans, hindu, black, etc. are not.
A disability inherently gets in your way (and, also, limits you because of the dominant society's rejection of people with disabilities); being gay, trans, hindu, black, etc. only limits you because of the dominant society's rejection.
Put slightly differently, disabilities are to be prevented and cured where possible; being hindu, black, etc. are not something to cure or prevent; being gay is only to be cured if you're Michelle Bachmann's husband or others of his elk (sic).
Know what else is adequate care for this "guy's" mental illness?
Fatal electrocution. He can't be sick in the head if he's dead.
Will "he" get re-assigned to
Will "he" get re-assigned to Framingham when the surgery is done? I'm sure there's tons of sympathy for a wife strangler in an all-womens prison.
Scary
Are judges actually allowed to do this? Scary!
Dear Globe and Universal Hub
The pronouns you want for someone identifying as female are "she" and "her" and the noun is "woman."
Yeah, no.
HE has a penis, thus HE is a HE. I'm sorry, but this whole "I can identify as a female because that's what I really am inside" is going a bit overboard, even for American liberals. Though I have no problem lopping off his penis and throwing him back in a jail cell. No surgery though. Just the removal.
"Identifying as"
I am a gay male. I have had transgendered friends, some of whom are the nicest, most genuine people you could meet. Having said that, I will say that the politically correct "identify as" concept has gotten all out of hand. Though one should always be oneself, one cannot simply "identify as" any old thing one pleases and simply have it become true. If you are a white male, can you "identfy as" an Asian or Latino woman because you may have an affinity for the culture? And, if society lets you do this are they simply humoring you? I think the "identify as" tag can tend to be used as a license for flights of fancy rather than being grounded in reality.
Straw woman what?
Where are you finding these supposed people who just decide to present as a different gender just to get some magical special rights, or to make you personally uncomfortable? Where are these people who spend money and time and heartache on name changes and hormone treatments but who really don't mean it?
Why would someone be transgender who isn't actually transgender? So they could get harassed, fired, alienated, assaulted, disowned, killed? Changing one's outward gender expression is a braver thing and a bigger risk than anything I've ever come close to doing in my life. People don't do this just for fun.
More importantly, how does respecting someone's identity affect you in any way? Where on earth do you get off deciding that you're going to call someone the terms and pronouns that have made them hate themselves for years, rather than the ones that respect and affirm the person, just because you can?
I seriously hope you aren't defending the
state on this. That money could be used to help people, instead of giving this sicko murderer some messed up surgery.
Different issues
Murder is wrong. Convicted murderers should be in prison for a really long time.
We have decided as a society that people in prison maintain basic civil rights, such as access to medical care.
Respecting identity - this is a special case
I have no god-damned interest in respecting the identity of any convicted murderer. I think that all requests for anything other than food, water, and basic medical care should be rejected. I think the opportunity to practice one's chosen religion, or to freely associate, or to be called what one wants, or even to look at the sky, ought to go be gone immediately upon conviction.
If being in a male's body makes him/her miserable, then so much the better. Why on Earth should the state be wasting resources that could go to deserving people, on elective surgery to make a convicted murderer's life happier?
Try this on for size: What if his illness had been severe depression rather than gender disorder? And what if the judge had decided that the depression was caused by being in jail, and that the obvious cure was to release him?
More strawpeople
This just makes no sense. No judge is advocating for the release of prisoners with depression, because that's not the evidence-based treatment for prisoners with depression, nor does it make any fucking sense.
To further your argument, if this woman gets her medical treatment, that's just sick and wrong, because what if someone in the prison needs insulin for diabetes? Then the prison is going to have to give it to them! What if someone has depression and needs counseling and meds? The prison system will have to provide this! And what if one of the prisoners needs to eat carbohydrates and proteins and fats as part of his or her condition? Are we going to have to feed the prisoners too?
EDIT: Didn't see that Kaz already beat me to it.
There is a bright clear line
There's a bright clear line here. Without insulin, the person with diabetes will die. Without gender reassignment, the person with gender disorder will be miserably unhappy, trapped in what to him or her feels like the wrong body. But, since he's already trapped in a jail cell, and since he's a convicted murderer, I don't have a lot of problem with him feeling miserable or trapped. In fact, I think it's highly appropriate.
I have a dear friend who is in the middle of gender reassignment. Obviously it's emotionally complex, and not everyone can handle it, and it pushes the boundaries of what's immutable and what's not, and it's awkward. But I have spent a lot of time talking it over with him (now her), and my respect for my friend's courage, and my belief that everyone ought to be true to himself or herself, vastly outweigh the weirdness.
But there's a blindingly obvious difference here: My friend is a highly productive person and a net contributor to society. He is loyal to his family and friends. He successfully treats people who struggle with despair. The prisoner, on the other hand, strangled his wife.
Ah right it's about treating
Ah right it's about treating prisoners like inhuman trash. Wooo American prison complex, yeah!
What
Would you prefer the Norwegian system that gives a mass murderer a max of 22 years in what is basically the second floor of IKEA?
Yes, if it comes with
Yes, if it comes with Norway's recidivism rate of half ours or less. HELL yes.
Punishment at the expense of prevention is appalling.
Think on this, if you care about murder so much: the blood of half of all murders is on the hands of people like you, who demand the system that produces them. Half of all the people murdered didn't have to be murdered, but you and your fellow jackals thought their lives a cheap price for you to get your sanctimonious sadistic jollies on.
Inhuman trash
But the person in question is inhuman trash. Did you miss that part?
Not to open a can of worms
but "Latino" is NOT a race. I repeat, it is NOT a race. It is an ethnic group. I say that as someone with a German surname, blue eyes but who happens to be half Spanish (from Spain) and half German-Brazilian. I am often just considered white, but then, when I speak Spanish or Portuguese, I magically become not white? Or become a minority? Nah, that's ridiculous. The US government and Census bureau does NOT consider Hispanic/Latino a race, and we need to stop acting as if it is one.
Racially Speaking
Races don't exist period. Being African American, Asian or Caucasian is your ethinicity just as much as being Hispanic/Latino is...
Too late...
Can opened.
"Race" is a term developed to distinguish higher/lower standards of human beings during slavery. It's an archaic term that should be changed.
In reality, being African American, Asian, Caucasian or other is your ethinicity just as much as being Hispanic or Latino is...
Read the decision?
Or is even thinking about transexualism just way too gross-icky-eww to rate more than an uninformed rant? Which was exactly the position DOC took, btw.
I have read the decision
and I find it well reasoned, clear, and, although I am not a lawyer and did not chase down and read the cited precedents, I also found it to be consistent, measured, and sober. I don't like the outcome, and that is more about my attitude toward people who strangle their wives than it is about my attitude toward transsexualism, but I respect it as the proper working of our judicial system: I believe the judge ruled properly.
I have always been concerned
I have always been concerned with the concept and practice of treating a mental "illness" or gender "confusion" with surgical interventions.
As sympathetic as I try to be, this case simply seems to have gone too far.
You guys are onto something!
Did you also hear about that activist liberal judge who said we all have to pay for the insulin that this other murderer needs for his diabetes? The psychoactive drugs that keep this other one from killing everyone he sees due to his schizophrenia? The surgery we paid for when the inmates nearly severed one guy's leg with a shiv?
Of course not. You don't care when it's a physical illness. You don't hear about every dollar spent to keep many of the inmates sane, so you don't take to the web daily to call for judge's heads. They aren't all illnesses that you have or someone you are close to has. It makes it easy for you to demonize this one inmate. I'm betting the surgery will cost less than a tenth of the probation scandal has cost us...but you don't want them to spend the money...why? Because you don't believe she's ill? That has more to do with whether you believe her psychiatrist is capable of doing his job. So, defend your stance by first pointing out why her psychiatrist is incompetent or shut the fuck up.
If her doctor is competent and this is a cure for her illness, then you don't think she "deserves" this treatment because she is a criminal? Welcome to the 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment). You'll also have to explain why you agree with allowing an inmate with appendicitis to get surgery and not just die because he doesn't "deserve" treatment for his illness either or shut the fuck up.
Produce a credible argument for why this isn't an illness, she doesn't have it, or we should selectively choose which wards of our state get the treatment for their illnesses they need and others don't...or just shut up and go back to what you were doing when every other inmate got the surgeries and medicines they need and you paid for it and you would want the same treatment if you ever found yourself in their shoes.
Kind of apples and oranges Kaz.
Pretty much every American citizen (working, non working, disabled, etc) has access to diabetes or psychoactive drugs through government programs, but I doubt these same people have access to free sex change operations. What happens to prisoners who need a kidney transplant?
That's the difference I think. We should make sure every non criminal American citizen who need this "cure" of a sex change gets one before the prisoner gets one. I assume thats how it works with kidney transplants and more complicated medical procedures.
So yea, I'm going to be we already selectivy choose which medical treatments prisoners get compared to the general public.
What happens?
They get their transplant.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90611
They are only apples to your oranges when you consider an inmate something other than human.
And you have to consider the people on the outside now.
To people on the outside get the same access to this procedure through government health care or no health care?
Since we strip these prisoners of numerous civil rights already, how far do we have to go for their medical rights?
Human rights, not civil rights
I think the term "cruel and unusual punishment" applies to denying medical care.
I'm sure Scott Brown would have a total wet dream if he got to watch a short-timer female inmate die of pregnancy complications for want of a prison abortion. Probably have a double orgasm if she left behind a child for the state to raise.
Access to medical care is a HUMAN right. Remember that.
Of Government and Rights
Government cannot grant or create rights; all it can do defend them by preventing infringement.
Consider the right to travel freely. If a government recognizes that right, then the government would refrain from restricting your travel, and it would prevent others from restricting your travel. No reasonable interpretation of the right to travel extends to the other taxpayers buying you a bus ticket.
Wrong argument
That just argues that the state has every reason to treat the rest of us better, not inmates worse.
No it just means we should use some reason here.
If your average citizen doesn't get the same treatment as a prisoner, then we should rethink the treatment (someone already did actually).
At somepoint the government decided the average citizen doesn't get this medical procedure, so why should the government then decide that a prisoner should get the treatment?
Stuck in a loop
Because "the government" that decided someone on Medicaid doesn't get the treatment (yet to be demonstrated here, but we'll suppose it) was the legislature or an executive branch agency. This time was a judicial branch justice whose job it is to arbitrate fairness and compunction under our constitution. What it argues is that there is a fair and compelling case to be made for this to be a necessary procedure to avoid being cruel and unusual to an inmate under the 8th Amendment. What that further argues is that we should equally provide this resolution for non-inmates dependent on the state for healthcare. Otherwise, you're putting the cart before the horse. You're arguing that the legislature and/or executive branch is the fairer standard than the judicial system.
Simply put, it remains that we should treat the public better, not the inmate worse.
Yeah
It's also wrong that all insurance companies aren't required to provide transgender care. And that we don't have a federal amendment requiring that gender identity and transgender status are protected against discrimination. We need to provide better care and compassion for all transpeople. And all the ridiculous transphobia in this thread illustrates this. I'm ashamed to be a Boston-area resident right now after reading all the transphobia that my community members feel perfectly free to post here.
At least the times they are a-changin'
I have a feeling that insurance companies will be mandated to cover Gender Identity Disorder surgeries sooner rather than later:
Taken from this news article from August 1.
Priorities eeka.
Now I would probably agree that the government will probably have to pay for very few of these operations for prisoners in the future.
But out of principle, think of where this money could have been spent? How many teen suicides could have been prevented if we spent more money on GLBT youth programs and help? Couldn't it be true that 3 American teens could have been saved with the money given to this murderer?
People would want this guy to suffer if he wanted a liver transplant or come chemo tretment. I don't think most of the comments were directed towards his gender identity issues.
Think of where the money could have been spent
Yep - oh, you mean the money for the sex change plus the enormous law firm bills the state has run up for this stupdity.
Yeah, they could have just done a one off (heh) sex change for an extremely rare case of identity issues, and then spent all that other money on care of prisoners or other pressing needs.
Priorities is right ...
It would have been spent anyway.
Since he sued the state and it would have cost money if the judge ruled either way.
But lets just ignore the judicial process and let the anon decide what is good for everyone. I'm sure everyone would agree with you right?
Not necessarily
Perhaps s/he wouldn't have sued the state if the state had stepped up to the scalpel right off.
Read the decision
The judge is quite clear in laying out the paradoxical situation wherein the government's obligation to provide medical care for a prisoner is greater than the government's obligation to provide medical care for a free person outside jail.
Read the other decisions too.
There is case law both ways on this topic.
(Don't just google "prisoner kidney transplant" and post the first anecdote like Kaz did either)
They are only apples to your
But someone who commits premeditated murder is something other than human, having forfeited his right to be among us.
I'm skeptical about this
Regardless of how you rearrange body parts, the person is still biologically a male. Not going to have ovaries, not going to menstruate, skeletal structure remains male, etc, etc. The person is only going to be a physically mutilated man, not a woman. I don't see how one can credibly claim with 100% certitude that this surgery will cure their "mental illness". This is elective surgery for anyone outside of prison, so I don't see this as being something the state should pay for either. I certainly have a level of sympathy for someone that feels out of place in their body. That's gotta suck. However, I don't have enough sympathy to think that the taxpayer should fund it. I doubt Mass Health covers it, so I wouldn't think the DOC should cover it either.
Define Biologically Male
Maria Patino, Spanish sprinter?
Erica Coimba, Brasilian Volleyballer?
They are both 46 XY, but they are female.
You will have to bring some scientific arguments to the table if you want to play this "biologically --" game.
Don't care
Your question is irrelevant to the subject. Surgical mutilation of a persons genitals does not change their gender regardless of how they started out. Castration will change the hormone balance in the body, but the rest is just window dressing.
Thank you, doctor
Now, if you'll just read all of the scientific research on the topic, you could actually make a well-informed statement instead of what you think to be the case.
Anorexia is all about the "window dressing" too...and yet people will still starve themselves to death without psychiatric help. This isn't a question entirely around the hormones.
You crack me up dude.
No one except you needs to read anything to understand surgery will not give you the physiology of the opposite sex. Unless there is some crazy new surgery to treat Anorexia, then you just proved my point with that silly analogy. No one said he shouldn't have psychiatric care. What this prisoner is seeking is elective, cosmetic surgery based on the tenuous claim that it will clear up his mental illness. I don't believe the state should be in the business of paying for any elective surgery at all, much less for those incarcerated. Were this gentleman a free man and able to pay for his own surgery, I would wish him the best and good luck. This isn't hard to understand.
Except
This is not a life-saving procedure. It may be a life enhancing procedure, but yeah, that is where I draw the line for someone who is a convicted murderer.
Not at all true
Many people who suffer from this are suicidal. They express that they would rather die than be forced to continue as the wrong gender. If this procedure enables them to silence those demons, is that not life saving?
Them's the breaks dude
Lot's of people are suicidal about a lot things. Maybe killing his wife and spending the rest of his life in prison has something to do with his depression?
How bout this: If it's that important to you that he get this surgery without paying for it himself, then you can start a fund-raising drive for him. People can willingly donate the funds and see if the DOC will allow him the surgery as long as they don't have to pay for it. Maybe some sympathetic doctors will donate their services. Otherwise, this guy needs to be kept physically healthy, safe from being harmed by other inmates, given access to psychotherapy, and that's it.
Predictable, but not persuasive, argument
We won't have to look far to find someone who is suicidal because they're doing a life-term in jail. You're not going to argue that they need to be released because it is cruel and unusual punishment to keep them confined?
Don't put words in my mouth
We confine convicted criminals for multiple retributivism (punishment for their act) and utilitarianism (prevent further crime by them and as a warning to others) justifications that are acceptable to society. However, you are advocating for someone to be forced to suffer mental anguish above and beyond any response they have to their incarceration.
Does it make you feel proud to cause another human to suffer in your name? I choose to live in a society where inmates suffer due to their choices in life, not their mental illnesses.
False dichotomy
Those are not mutually exclusive.
I do not believe that inmates should be denied decent medical care.
At the same time, I don't have a problem with the concept that, once you have murdered someone, the range and breadth and quality of medical care options become quite a bit more limited.
Here's an example; I'm not 100% sure I have it fully thought through, but....
Arthritis can be managed either through joint replacement or by reducing or eliminating physical activity. For a person on Medicare, reducing or eliminating physical activity is an unreasonable burden, and it severely limits the quality of life. I'm happy to buy a new knee or a new hip for someone on medicare. For a prisoner serving a life sentence, on the other hand, there is no benefit in having the prisoner be physically able or active, and so managing the pain by restricting physical activity is a reasonable treatment. Note that I'm not suggesting that the prisoner be made to suffer physical pain, only that his desire to be physically mobile not be something the rest of us need to pay to satisfy.
So, is gender identity disorder something like arthritis, in which the suffering can be managed some other way? For example, by eliminating social interactions? Or is the pain and suffering so intrinsic that it can only be relieved surgically?
Yeah, it's not like 90+% of
Yeah, it's not like 90+% of inmates are going to be released from prison some day and have to be able to work.
Oh wait.
Well, even if we were to cripple them through restricting their opportunity for physical activity for years at a time or denying them prophylactic treatment of progressive degenerative joint illnesses, they can just sign up for SSDI and live on a disability check. That'll be fine, right?
I'm all for psychiatric help
But I am not going for a highly invasive, radical, surgical intervention for which there is still a high level of controversy over the efficacy of.
Controversy is waning
The AMA and the APA (see above quote and link) are rapidly forming preferred treatment guidelines that include gender reassignment surgery for those people suffering with GID who meet a lengthy set of criteria outlined in the APA task force report (I took some time to read the review from the task force that was published last year and the surgery isn't something someone does on a whim or without heavy medical and psychiatric doctors' inputs).
There have been limited "outcome studies" due to the emergence of the treatment as an option, but what limited data there was showed the task force good reason to make this a preferred treatment for the patient.
It basically comes down to
It basically comes down to this - even though you commit premeditated murder, the taxpayers will pay for your life-long dream?
life-long dream?
It's medical treatment, not a trip to Disney World.
I guess the issue is whether one thinks sex re-assignment surgery/treatment is necessary medical treatment. Kaz and Eeka have made good arguments that it is. Others have said no, although their arguments are more along the lines of "you're a murderer, you don't get treatment" or "youze a prevert, this isn't a medical condition to be concerned about, but a sick choice of yours, you prevert."
Do insurance companies typically cover this procedure/process? (process, as it's not just an aggressive circumcision, there's a lot of pre-post work as well, as I understand from the increased coverage of this in the media). This is kind of cutting edge (arf arf) in terms of what our society is capable of digesting. Same sex marriage is still bunching panties across the nation, so it's understandable that something like this is going to evoke even more extreme reactions.
I honestly am not sure about it (in terms of the State paying for it for inmates - does it do so for others?).
Yes, of course you're right -
Yes, of course you're right - sex-re-assignment surgery would never be something people dream about would it? I suppose the ugly-duckling teenager who can't wait to get that nose-job would never dream about having it finally done after years of waiting for it. And like that procedure, I consider this to be elective, cosmetic surgery - failing to operate would not put the subject in jeopardy physically, but it would injure his/her sense of well-being and self-image. I have no problems with people who want transgender surgery - if the surgery will help them be happy, I'm all for it. I don't consider transexuals 'preverts' - however, I consider convicted murders to be.
Since the subject's condition of being born in the wrong type of body is in no way a result of any kind of failure on the part of the State, the State cannot be compelled to remedy or alter the subject's physical makeup through surgery at tax-payer expense unless the subject can prove that failure to take surgical action would immediately harm the subject's physical well-being. Mental or emotional well-being should not enter into incarceration, or any State-sanctioned punishment in general, unless it can be proved the State is unlawfully engaging in cruel and unusual mental and emotional punishment either through action or inaction, which, it could be legally argued, could be anything from verbal harassment to taking away teddy bears.
So as far as I can tell from
So as far as I can tell from a lot of comments here, the reaction seems to be transphobia with a big dash of that good ol' American lust for vengeance in the treatment of prisoners?
Lust for vengeance?
I think that Michelle can live out the rest of her life as a pre-op tg just like many other women who can't afford the full gender reassignment do.
I don't perceive this as lust for vengeance at all. I see it as a judge bending over backwards to make a very expensive accommodation for someone who committed murder.
The comments made by some
The comments made by some here about how, as far as they're concerned, prisoners forfeit all rights when they're convicted of a crime tells me otherwise. This is some Dirty Harry shit.
Straw man much?
Prisoners forfeit some rights when they're sentenced to life in prison without parole.
I have read the decision and I agree with much that's in it. But to me, life without parole remains a special case. I would support gender reassignment surgery for a prisoner whom we expected to release back into society; it is in society's interest to have this person exit prison as whole and as complete a human being as is possible. In this case, not so.
Yeesh
Seriously? You can't see why someone who is sentenced to life without parole wouldn't need to be treated the same as someone who has a 10 year sentence?
Go back and study your 8th Amendment. Even the lowest among us need to be treated respectfully. You wouldn't advocate mental torture for him would you? I mean we don't have to worry about him exiting prison as a whole and complete being, so why not screw with his mind? We might learn something new for science...yeah, that's the ticket. He's gone as far as society's concerned anyways, right?
I'm not advocating torture
I'm absolutely not advocating letting someone languish with an untreated / unmanaged medical condition, which is essentially the same thing as torture.
But treatment for someone on the outside (restore full function by replacing the arthritic knee joint) might be different than treatment for someone on the inside (relieve the pain of arthritis by avoiding excessive walking). There may, or may not, be an analogous choice in the case of gender identity disorder.
Economical alternative
DIY, $23.21 with standard shipping.
Too merciful for a killer
Unfortunate that the test case for this couldn't have been a burglar or a gentle tax-evader or something.
Is imprisonment in the wrong body that much more cruel than the imprisonment of the body experienced by all lifers, and all the associated privations and indignities? Psychological torture is an inescapable part of a long prison term, one of many reasons it's not advisable to kill other people.