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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>From: Micha Berger <A href="mailto:micha@aishdas.org">micha@aishdas.org</A><BR><BR>>> Someone
posted on Areivim a reference to a transgendered person who<BR>was living within
the chareidi community....<BR>The TE discusses the case of an agunah whose
husband decided to become a<BR>woman. It's pretty clear the she'eilah was
hypothetical. He answers that<BR>no get is necessary, because there is no
concept of qiddushin between<BR>two women. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><BR>....So apparently REWaldenberg holds that the surgery does change
halachic<BR>gender. Assur, but has a chalos. And even WRT the issur, he
mentions<BR>the case of a risk of suicide, and piquach nefesh
docheh.<BR><BR>Micha
Berger
<BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>People who suffer from the delusion that they are "really" the
opposite sex are at no more risk of suicide than mentally ill people laboring
under any other delusion. Any surgeon who plays along with this form of
mental illness by surgically altering a perfectly healthy person is committing a
horrendous crime and, in a more just world, would lose his license to practice
medicine.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The only case in which gender-assignment surgery is ethical and justified
is the case where a baby is born with ambiguous organs and/or the external
organs and the baby's chromosomes are at odds. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If you had a friend who thought he was a chicken who had lost his
feathers, and you glued feathers on him, any normal person would consider
you to be as mental as your friend -- unless you were charging your friend
a hefty fee to glue back his lost feathers, in which case any normal person
would consider you a gonif who was taking advantage of a vulnerable
person.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The TE was working with the best medical and psychological information
(really, misinformation) he had, but the information he was given was wrong and
therefore, acting on false information, he came up with a mistaken psak.
The false information was that men who think they are "really" women are prone
to suicide, and that gender-reassignment surgery that matches their
external organs to their delusions helps prevent suicide. In reality,
such men are at only slightly higher risk of suicide than anyone else, and after
surgery, their suicide rate goes up, not down -- because surgery can't really
cure deep-seated psychological problems, and when they find this out, that's
when despair really sets in.</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><B>--Toby Katz<BR>==========<BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"></B>--------------------</FONT></DIV></DIV>
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