It is inconsistent to justify gender transition primarily on the basis that it increases a person’s subjective happiness or comfort with their body, while rejecting similar reasoning in other cases involving body-related distress.
For example, individuals with eating disorders often experience intense dissatisfaction with their bodies. If we followed the same logic, we would support weight-loss interventions or even surgical procedures purely because they might increase the individual’s short-term satisfaction. However, in these cases, society deliberately takes the opposite approach. We do not affirm the distorted perception. Instead, we treat the underlying psychological condition.
This reflects a broader principle in medicine and ethics: subjective distress alone is not sufficient justification for physically altering the body, especially when the distress may stem from a misalignment between perception and reality.
Therefore, the role of society and healthcare systems should be to prioritize mental health treatment and address the root causes of distress, rather than defaulting to physical interventions that align the body with the individual’s current perception.