Transgenderism is a mental illness

Thank you con. Considering you are Con and I am pro at least that is how my computer reads but this is my first debate. This is my first debate, so I was not aware that I needed to provide sources to pretty easy to find statistics so I will from this point forward. The first thing I would like to point out is about your first source. WHO while it does do great work through the UN it is highly politicized and very left leaning. I will provide a citation to an article from NBC on their reporting about how alot of their actions come from a response from the governments first. So I am quite hesitant to take them as a reliable source on the topic of how gender is a social construct. I will first respond to the suicide part of your question. The suicide rate for transgender men is 46% and women is 42%. I will provide citation at the bottom for those specific numbers. But I would like to discuss the reasoning you gave for their suicide rate being so high. That it is discrimination. I find this reason to be highly highly suspect. I decided to try and find a comparable suicide rate for any group of people in history that went through any kind of discrimination. I started with African Americans living under Jim Crow, then I checked for African Americans during slavery, and then after I checked Palestinians living under occupation by Israel. None were even close. So I decided to check the big one. Jews living in concentration camps in Germany. That is the only suicide rate that is even close to comparable. I will provide citation at the bottom about the Jews suicide rates. Are you really trying to equate the discrimination that Transgender people face in America to the treatment that Jews got in the concentration camps in Germany. Now lets tackle the idea that discrimination causes increases in suicide. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone that agrees that white people are discriminated against more than black people. I think that is something no matter where you stand on this issue we can agree on. I will put my citation at the bottom for these next statistics. per 100,000 white suicide rate is more than double the black suicide rate in America. Suicide has never been proven statistically to be correlated with discrimination. We can tackle your response to question 2 now. You say I didn't provide evidence to the story of the 4 year old who had the sex change in Australia. You are kind of nit picking here. It was a widely reported on story and a simple google search will find you 100 articles on it. Now you are correct I did not provide any data resolving the idea that transgender kids grow out of it by adulthood. So my citation will also be at the bottom. The percentage of kids that grow out of this condition is 60-90% depending on the study. There are a lot of studies listed in the article. This relates to the second part of this debate about mutilation of people's bodies. Not only do I find it highly disturbing that you can do this as an adult. I find it deplorable that people want to legislate this and make it possible for children, so it is connected to a resolution as I already find it a problem. Now the third question. I will provide my source and it is ironic which source I used to prove my case. The study this news outlet did their reporting on shows that transition does nothing to the suicide rate. It is The Guardian. That is as left wing of a news source as you can get in the UK. Yes I do not deny that transgender people face discrimination in this country. But the idea that discrimination is the reason their suicide rate goes from 4.6 percent (national average) to 42 percent is not backed by any science that you can point to. Just wanted to say I do appreciate this debate as it is my first one, and normally from my experience outside of debate.org you are instantly called a bigot for bringing this up. Your move. Citations http://www.nbcnews.com... https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... http://www.realclearscience.com... http://www.sexologytoday.org... https://www.theguardian.com...