Transsexuality

Post Reply New Topic

As aspies and people on the autism spectrum, isn't the thing we are looking for is acceptance? So why would we ever deny that acceptance to anyone else. I am sure a lot of people think some one who has stims, stays away from crowds, repeats phrases or words, can't keep eye contact is pretty weird and dare I say it, gross.

Every one is welcome to their knee jerk prejudice. I don't hold that against anyone. However, the whole purpose of age, learning and wisdom is to transcend those prejudices.

We are not talking about a guy who likes to put a dress, some panties on and pretend that he is a woman every once in a while. Most people who are transexual or transgender don't do it because it is fun or sexy. They do it because as a man they have always felt like a woman or as a woman they have always felt like a man. Imagine that, not being comfortable in your own skin, not knowing who you really are, not fitting in for most of your life. Of course an aspie wouldn't know anything about that. So some of these people are brave enough to go through probably the toughest transition a human can make: changing their sex.

I am not saying we should pay for it. Is that clear to everyone?

Second, I know that Jefferson "borrowed" that phrase from Locke. It is in his work Two Treatises of Government and I know what the meaning is regarding.

Son of a b***h, does everybody on this string think everyone on WP is stupid or playing a goddamn trivia game?

What are you trying to say then? No need getting upset.

Yes need to getting upset. First, I used the preamble to the Declaration of Independence as joke and now I have people lecturing me on John Locke's intentions. Second, I have read people piss and moan on this site that they don't feel accepted or they feel ostracized by society, yet several of the comments on this string are advocating doing that (or close to it) to another group of people. Third, if you do not know what I am trying to say read my post previous to the one you are referencing.

Other than that, I think every one is peachy and wonderful.

jefferson originally wrote "pursuit of justice" but was persuaded to tone it down.

to lighten the mood a bit, there is a hilarious transvestite scene in woody allen's comedy, "everything you wanted to know about sex* [*but were afraid to ask"]

auntyblabby I can always count on you to bring me to my ... well I really don't have any sense .... no reality either....hhhhmmmm... did you hear the one about the Priest, Rabbi and Transvestite?

do tell

I haven't heard it either ... just couldn't think of anything else to say. But:

So my wife said she read this article in a magazine and she said: "You know, maybe you're suffering from premature ejaculation." Yeah, does it look like I'm suffering? Those aren't tears on your belly.

&

[about the contents of a brochure from the American Heart Association regarding the resumption of sexual activity following a heart attack] Caution: Anal intercourse may lead to irregular heart rhythms. Yeah, you know I'm never gonna have to worry about that. Because God gave me a second lease on life and I'm not gonna press my luck and take it up the ass.

Both by Robert Schimmel

There's actually a protocol, called WPATH (used to be called "the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care," I forget what the new acronym stands for), that demands a year of therapy and the ability to sucessfully live as the target gender for 1 or 2 years before GRS surgery is allowed. As far as I know WPATH is followed most places in the world. IOW, a surgeon won't touch someone without a letter from a psychologist which shows that the requirements were met. Also, there's not exactly a lot of surgeons who do that, so it's not something someone can do on a whim.

Of course, stuff happens. There was a case of a someone with a lot of money and a sloppy psychologist who rushed through everything and then realized he really only liked wearing women's clothes, rather than actually living life as a woman.

OTOH, some people transition and find that life that way is better for them, and never look back. It's hard to know the outcome of the typical trans women, as they tend to fade in the woodwork and don't want to out themselves (especially the most passable ones).

Also, tragic stories such as someone who "transitioned" and found living as a woman fit much better, but was then convinced by their church to transition back, and found living as male miserable, and is now contemplating transitioning again.


As far as whether it's a psychological thing or not -- that's an interesting question. And not as obvious as generally, thought, I think. (I've always found gender an interesting subject, though, which is why I know all this stuff.)

There is some research suggesting that parts of transsexual's brains do resemble (in terms of volume, or neuron density) those of the opposite sex. And brain responses to certain things (like pheromones). But, that, and similar data has yet to be replicated, so it's not settled science, despite the fact that some people claim it is.

What is interesting is to consider people with intersex conditions. There is no reason to assume that the brain is not a gendered organ (or that is is highly gendered, for that matter). But, for political reasons, it's hard to even suggest that. There are people are very worried that such information will inevitably be used to oppress. I think they're probably right, but I don't think that pretending that it's known and proven that there is no difference is the right thing to do.

There is a condition where a person's androgen receptors are mutated such that they are completely non-functional. So the cells of a person with it are completely unaffected by testosterone.

Since it is true from conception onwards, it means the none of the testosterone-induced changes in formation of any part of the body, including the brain, happens. It's thought that as fetuses, we all morphologically start out as female, and are then modified (or not) by hormones into being male. (That's not actually, precisely true, but it's a useful conceptual approximation/simplification.)

That condition is called "complete androgen insensitivity syndrome." People with XY chromosomes who have it look completely female on the outside. Because of that they are raised as girls. And, (to my understanding) it's rare that they question their gender before finding out they have the condition. IOW, it seems that they internally 'feel' female (or at least don't feel that they're 'supposed to be male'). That seems to support the notion that gender identity is biological. Or, that is has a biological component, at least.

Then there's a famous case involving a boy named David Reimer. As an infant there was a medical mistake that destroyed his genitals. At the time (the 60's), the theory was that gender identity was completely determined by nurture. So, a famous psychologist, Dr. John Money, advised the parents to have sex-change surgery done on the child and then raise him as girl. The theory was that he would never know (the parents were also instructed to keep the truth from him).

...And it was a disaster. As a toddler he'd object to and would try to tear dresses off, try to pee standing up, the girls would seem to detect that he wasn't one of them, and the boys didn't want to play with someone in a dress. By his teen years he was suicidal, and when his parents broke down and told him the truth, he admitted to never having 'felt female.' He then demanded to transition to living as male (and hormones as well, of course), and stayed that way until age 39. Unfortunately, he then killed himself.

It's only one case, but it at least suggests that for some, gender identity may have some innate qualities to it. I heard someone come up with an interesting idea, which was that some people may be highly mentally gendered, and some may not. So, some people could probably live as the opposite sex and be fine, but some others may really need to specifically be men or women.

The David Reimer case ruined Dr. Money's career -- he was presenting D.R. as a success story in journals; when a reporter tracked D.R. down in adulthood, it came out that Money had lied.

But recently, there is a theory by a Dr. Milton Diamond, that (as far as I understand it) goes that a person identifies with whichever group he/she feels most emotionally similar to, and tries to adopt the signifiers of that group. So, it's psychological, though perhaps primed by biology. (I think an interesting question is, what if there is cross-identification for temperamental reasons that aren't actually biologically based?)

One common argument about gender signifier stuff is, "how can someone be biologically drawn to dresses or monster trucks? --especially since different cultures have different signifiers for men and women." It's a good point, but the same could be said of language. People are likely biologically primed to absorb the language around them. And that means that "cat" doesn't have to be hard-coded into the brain; just the propensity to connect "cat" with what other people indicate is a cat.

Another common argument against a psychological view is the that psychiatry/psychology has been trying to cure transsexuals for about 70-100 years and nothing has ever worked. Apparently, even Freud suggested that it might be biological. The story goes that it was psychiatrists/psychologists who decided to help people live as the opposite sex, since trying to get rid of the feelings didn't work, and their patients were apparently dropping like flies from suicide, or drinking themselves to death and such. Or, at least that's the story according to one source, ("The Riddle of Gender," D. Rudacille). I don't know the history well enough to really evaluate that, though.

Oh, forgot the trans-rat experiments:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 71,00.html


Anyway, that's a lot more than I intended to type. (Can you say "special interest?") The bottom line to me is that no one knows why people are trans, at this point. I see interesting and compelling things in the biological research and information about intersex conditions, but it's not "ripe" enough to make solid claims one way or the other. In terms of human rights, I don't think that should matter, though.

A lot of stuff about the science at the following link, but you have dig for it (and I'm too tired to remember the good posts).
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/search?q=bi ... l+evidence

Apple, thanks for the well considered post. Very interesting material and I am so glad you were able to share it.

I say kudos to you.

That it is.

ruveyn

i agree.

Well, I'm going to pipe up for the, "we should be paying for it," argument. I take the view that sex reassignment surgery is properly classified as a medically necessary procedure.

Lets take a clear example--an intersexed person is born with morphological characteristics of both sexes. Current ethical practice suggests strongly that no physician should undertake a procedure that would irreversibly alter a child's body without the child's full and informed consent. People in this circumstance are very unlikely to be in a position to understand their physical development and sexual identity until well into adolescence.

Should such a person be deprived of access to surgical correction on the same terms that a child born with, say, polydactylism? It is not cosmetic, it is not elective. It is correcting a clearly defined, congenital physical circumstance.

So, what's the medical difference between the intersexed person, and the person who is diagnosed with sexual dysphoria? I suggest that there is none.

(And please, for heaven's sake, can we stop using the word, "gender," when we mean, "sex?" Gender is a grammatical term, not a bio-medical term.)

Lets take a clear example--an intersexed person is born with morphological (And please, for heaven's sake, can we stop using the word, "gender," when we mean, "sex?" Gender is a grammatical term, not a bio-medical term.)[/quote]

I disagree.
The word "sex" has to do with mating behavior.

Gender is whether you are male or female.

I know that linguists have appropriated the word "gender". There are languages in the world that devide the world into non sexual categories that linguists call "gender" ( like animate vs inanimate), but its still used in the old way by the rest of us in everyday speech to mean whether a person is male or female- which is fine.

You have it completely backwards.

The word was received into English from the French gen(d)re meaning, type or sort. The french word derives from the Latin stem gener- which is a form of genus meaning race or kind. The latin stem sexus and the french sexe coexisted with genus and genre, respectively, and referred specifically to the biological state of being male or female.

(In fact, the use of the word, "sex," to refer to intercourse or other sexual behaviour is a much more recent linguistic invention. The first clear published references date from no earlier than the 19th century.)

From this meaning then followed the grammatical term by which nouns could be separated into their masculine, feminine and neuter forms. The application of gender to nominal classifications such as "animate" and "inanimate" in languages with different syntactic practices is a relatively recent use of the word.

The adoption of the word to classify people is a much more recent use, primarily by people who are squeamish about using the word, "sex." The earliest source in the OED using "gender" as a euphemism for the sex of a human being is in 1963.

Even if we accept the neologistic use of, "gender," its use is primarily cultural and social, while, "sex," continues to be the preferred word to refer to biological differences.