Joe Rogan Thinks Being Trans Is Mental Illness
There are two ways to think about this. As an insult to trans people, or a meaningless distraction that makes no difference.
by Evan Urquhart
According to actor Joe Rogan, during a conversation with anti-trans extremist Matt Walsh on his podcast, being transgender is a mental illness.
Rogan is not, to our knowledge a mental health professional, much less a credentialed diagnostician. However the question of whether being transgender is a psychological condition is more thorny than people may give it credit for. The knee-jerk response from many trans people and their allies is to say that being trans is NOT a mental illness, and that Rogan is engaging in bigotry when he insists it is one. However, to insist too strongly that being trans is nothing like a mental illness risks engaging in bigotry as well; bigotry against people who have mental illness.
In truth there is no bright line between a physical and a mental illness. Physical conditions that are well understood, such as strokes, routinely cause psychiatric symptoms that are not then placed under the rubric of mental illness. Dementia, likewise, is not generally referred to as a mental illness. A mental illness is the combination of psychiatric symptoms plus stigma.
However, this is not to say that being transgender neatly fits inside the box of psychiatric symptoms. While gender dysphoria is often associated with symptoms such as depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and low self-concept, some trans people never experience any adverse mental health impacts from being transgender. For those who do, gender affirming care often clears up such symptoms completely. This is, in fact, why it’s considered such an effective treatment.
Because one can be trans without adverse psychiatric symptoms, it makes sense not to treat “being trans” as if it were a psychiatric condition. When Rogan does so, he’s falling into a common trap that many bigots are susceptible to; he equates mental illness with doing something wrong. In this poor framework, treatment for mental illness is concieved as forcing someone who’s done something wrong to just act normal.
However, treatment for psychiatric conditions is not about forcing people to act normal, it’s about improving people’s quality of life an daily functioning. So if being trans was a mental illness, the treatment would still be to transition. No other treatment has been shown to be effective, and psychiatry is neutral about how improvement is made, it simply seeks to improve the outcomes for its patients. A strict definition of mental illness probably wouldn’t include trans people (although it might include stroke victims or patients with dementia), but the question also doesn’t matter as much as Rogan seems to think it does.