Transgender Practice in the Light of John Stuart Mill’s Notion of Autonomy: An Ethical Appraisal

Abstract

One may be right to say that the biblical phrase ‘man and woman he made them’ remains one of the world’s universal moral standards and natural law. Although there are some other people, including children, whose physical appearances differ from the genders assigned to them at birth, caused by hormone disorder or alteration, others who have different
sexual feeling from the gender assigned to them at birth. Hence, these people resorted to taking up treatments like surgeries, hormone treatment to transit to their preferred genders. The truth remained that children who have little or no knowledge of the negative effects of some of these drugs used on them during this transitioning and the consequences of
the decisions they have taken, are mostly victims in the western world like in the United States. This remained an ethical issue of concern. Therefore, this paper, argues, that while it is well aware of such psychosocial discrimination and stigma people in this category may suffer, and the tendency of hiding under such ethical body autonomy ideology, to embrace transgender treatment, they should always allow nature to take its course. That is, that they should not allow themselves to fall into tendencies of replacing the creator. Hence, all is called to respect and accept his/her gender as it was given at birth. The qualitative research method was employed in this work. This was based on philosophical cum logical analysis. The data for the work were collected from books, journal, articles, dictionaries and biographies, both from hard copies and online. And these were analyzed using historical and logical analysis.