Is sexual reassignment surgery just cosmetic? Isn't it impossible to actually change your gender?

This one website I was looking at said that sexual reassignment surgery saved lives and was therefore not cosmetic. How does it save lives if the people's body is functioning healthfully and normally, but it is rather the mind that has the issue? Was that website indicating that the person would most certainly commit suicide? Shouldn't people who have psychological disorders get psychological counseling to solve their mental problems rather than mutilating themselves with surgery and hormones, even if it does make them happy? Is self-centered happiness worth sterility and harming the relationships you have with the people close to you?Is sexual reassignment surgery just cosmetic? Isn't it impossible to actually change your gender?
It's a personal choice. I know people who want it and haven't yet got it and some who have had the surgery already. They don't seem to be any happier afterwards. The guys STILL date gay men after surgery. . If they are anatomically correct, it would seem like they would want a straight guy and live happily ever after. I haven't been able to figure it out.Is sexual reassignment surgery just cosmetic? Isn't it impossible to actually change your gender?
i dunno but my state heathcare book says they wont pay for it!!!
Actually gender is determined at some point during gestation in the mother's womb (at about 13-16 wks) and if something truamatic happens to the mother or to the child through the mother (a medication or car accident or ???) that could effect the sexual determination and the child could be born with conflicting gender determinates. The brain could be female and the organs male or vice a versa or there could be hermaphroditism where both sexual organs are present to a greater and lesser degree. This of course can cause confusion for the child within his/her family and society as a whole. Transgendered persons are NOT necessarily homosexual and in general the two are not related except that society has relagated them to the same place on lists. Rather like lumping all mental health issues into the same grouping but other physical health issues getting their own individual categories.

The real question here is how far does medicine go to ';correct'; ';birth defects';? As far as we can? Addictions have been said to have a genetic determinant and yet we do not consider addicts to have the right to ';an alternative lifestyle';, we do all we can to help them find a solution to their disease. If there was surgery to cure addiction but it brought on other problems and made people societal outcasts would we do it? I don't know the answers to these questions but I do know some transgendered people (one of them used to be my male pastor and because we belong to a very conservative church body he could not continue in the ministry as a woman) and I know they agonize long over the decision to do surgery.