Please provide evidence for these rather remarkable assertions. You’ve got a substantial burden of proof to reach here, especially since your theory is contrary to the evidence heretofore known to medical science.
It’s rather daring to suggest that you understand how I feel better than I do.
I think what KellyM says about transexuality possibly being a form of intersexuality is very interesting.
For those that find it very difficult to believe a “man” can actually belive s/he is really a “woman” and want to change genders, try thinking of it more as a sliding scale (like sexual orientation). I realise that some people feel offended by the idea that someone not born eg female (physically) can “know” what it means to be female - without having gone through the experience of it. It is possible that a transexual doesn’t have a brain exactly the same as you - 100% bio female, or 100% bio man. It may be that they are 80% one gender, 20% the other - if such a brain chemistry test was possible. The point is, that their body is not a happy match with their brain. They more strongly identify with the other gender - perhaps slightly, perhaps totally.
Then consider the hugeness of the decision the transexual has to make, and how that must bear on their inner sense of gender and convictions. That (ftm) person born with a penis will never be able to be a woman exactly like a normal born bio woman. They haven’t had the experiences of a woman and been treated as such. They haven’t gone through puberty as a woman. They will never be able to have children as a woman, and post-op, as a man, they will be sterile. Consider the impact of gender reassignment on future sexual relationships - how difficult do you imagine it is to find people tolerant enough with enough understanding about transgender?
Taking all this into account - they STILL have such a massively strong conviction that they are in the “wrong body” that they are willing to become a eunuch (for want of a better term) of the opposite sex. Not an easy choice, not a simple choice. There cannot be a harder choice. I cannot believe anyone would go through this for some strange, misguided whim. The only possible way I can try to imagine what it must be like for them is trying to imagine how I would feel if I woke up tomorrow morning with a hairy flat chest and a penis attached. I am quite sure I would be desperate to cut it off. Likewise they (or some of them).
Okay, this is how I’ve always kind of understood it, so hopefully, I won’t offend anyone, as it is difficult to wrap one’s brain around.
It would be as if say, it’s about our identity-let’s call it a soul, for lack of a better explanation, even if you’re not religious. I’m going to say, for the context here, a “soul” would be you, who you are, deep down, your very essence and sense of self.
Now, imagine that if your SOUL had a gender. And it ended up in the wrong body.
That’s probably the least complicated way for me to somehow understand it. Or, if tomorrow, I were to wake up in the body of a man. I’d go nuts. (Well, if it were only for a day I might try to take advantage, hehehehe…).
I’d want to get back to what is truly ME. See, I can’t imagine being a man-well, I could, but I don’t WANT to be a male. I AM female, and not just because of my female parts and because I’m rather a girly-girl.
Does that make sense?
KellyM I won’t even try, but will say the mind is designed to design reality.
You did what your reality lead you to (including your free will), I woul;d be curious how this opperation actually effects your outlook of yourself
The subject is full of loaded words. The preferred term for a human who is born with female organs, genitals, brain and XX chromosomes is "natal female". Saying things like "somebody who was born a woman" can make an mtf feel that you are denying their identity. They feel(and I agree) that they *were* born women, just women with genital and hormonal defects.
This same feeling is why many people use the term gender reassignment or sexual reassignment. "Sex change" implies that the hormones and surgery make you a woman (or a man for ftm's). A transexual will tell you that they already *are* a woman (or a man for ftm's). The surgery and hormones are just corrective procedures.
I was going to make the obvious joke about waking up to find a penis attached to my chest. But your last sentence hits on an excellent point. I’ll have to find a cite for exact figures, but some transexuals do just that. Without hormones or surgery, they can’t endure their lives. Rather than commit suicide, they perform their own surgeries. This can range from carefully removing the testes with instruments sterilized in rubbing alcohol, to just chopping everything off with a butcher knife.
kanicbird, I think you’re being more than a little insensitive. I don’t blame you for not understanding what transsexuals go through, but suggesting that it’s all in their minds is out of line.
I always felt sympathetic towards transgendered people, but until a few years ago I didn’t understand them. I could understand not feeling like a typical man or woman and preferring to live as a member of the opposite sex, but I didn’t get why there had to be medical procedures involved. If you like wearing pretty dresses and baking cookies surely you can do that without having hormone treatment or an operation! And what’s wearing pretty dresses and baking cookies really have to do with being a woman anyway? Plenty of women hate such things, but that doesn’t make them men. I didn’t see how anyone could buy into gender stereotypes to the extent that they’d be willing to have expensive and complicated medical procedures to change their body to fit the set of gender stereotypes they felt most comfortable with. I thought people should be allowed to have gender reassignment surgery if they wanted it, but I didn’t know why anyone would want it. I was willing to accept that there might be something major going on with these people that was beyond my comprehension, but I had no idea what that might be.
It’s worth mentioning here that I had formed these views as a teenager without ever having met any transgendered people (at least not to my knowledge) or doing any research on the subject. My only information was the sort of information anyone might get from the media.
The cure for this was actually meeting real transgendered people, both here on the SDMB and in real life. I learned that many M-t-Fs aren’t at all interesting in wearing pretty dresses and baking cookies, and many F-t-Ms aren’t interested in playing football or working on cars. Some are of course, but it’s not just social gender roles at work here. It’s not a question of who they’re attracted to, either. Although I suppose there may be some very confused homosexuals who mistakenly believe themselves to be transgendered, transgendered people can be of any sexual orientation. So what is it that makes a person want to make such a dramatic change to their body?
Once I heard about it phrased in terms of hormones, I understood. As I mentioned in the other current thread on transgender issues, I have endocrine problems myself (mostly pituitary and thyroid related) and I know how important hormones are. I don’t think this is something people with healthy, normal endocrine systems can fully appreciate – I know I didn’t before I got sick. But if your body chemistry is out of whack somehow, it can change the way you feel and the way your body works in dramatic ways. The first sign of even serious, life-threatening problems may actually be just a feeling…a feeling that something isn’t right. I have regular blood tests to keep track of things, but I’ve always been able to sense that something was wrong before the tests revealed anything unusual. This wasn’t my imagination or something only in my mind. It’s possible to have all hormone levels within a “normal” range but too high or low for your own individual body.
It doesn’t seem unlikely to me that some people could, for whatever reason, be born with bodies that “want” levels of sex hormones that they are incapable of producing on their own. Medical science is not yet to the point where it can test for what an individual’s ideal body chemistry would be, so the only practical way to treat these kinds of imbalances is to trust the patient’s word that they don’t feel right and then see how they respond to varying hormone doses. If someone says they always felt that something was not-quite-right about their body but that these feelings improved after they began taking estrogen or testosterone, I don’t see any reason to doubt that there was a real, physical imbalance of some sort involved.
So, tell me. What the fuck happened to adolescence as a time to explore one’s options, including gender and sexuality, with the laxity of not setting a fixed point until 18? I guess it must be dead. So, if 13-year-olds can get magic gender-changing shots, why can’t they have sex as adults? They can’t have sex, but they can get abortions? Why can’t they enter into legally binding contracts as adults? Hell, why can’t they be drafted into the army? Why can’t they get diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder until they’re 18? When did 13 become old enough to make a binding decision about what you’re going to be for the rest of your life?
In case you didn’t notice, the decision wasn’t made by the child alone. It was made by a team of people including the child, his legal guardians, his medical care providers, and a judge. Frankly, I think that collective is competent to make such a decision. Why do you think they’re not?
Wait, haven’t I said that before? Oh, yes, I did. About fifteen posts ago.
Whatever happened to reading the whole thread before replying? :rolleyes:
Gee, I dunno, why do we subject kids with cancer to chemo and radiation that even adults have a hard time handling? Why do we stab child diabetics with a hypodermic filled with insulin several times a day? Isn’t that cruel? How about that chest-thumping cystic fibrosis sufferers have to undergo?
When there is a severe problem severe measures are warranted. In Alex we’re not talking about a kid who woke up confused two weeks ago, whose parents are doing this as a whim. We’re talking about a kid who has displayed certain consistent patterns since birth, or at least toddler-hood, a kid who has been examined by multiple authorities, and who even so is prevented from receiving irreversible treatments for a number of years.
In other words, we’re not talking about normal adolescent angst and confusion.
There is no doubt that transgendered youth are at much higher risk than normal kids for depression, suicide, and victimization by others. Not to mention that, in some cases (as another poster mentioned) you see self-mutilation.
To some extent, transgender treatments are about damage control. We can’t really “fix” such people. That is, we can neither make them comfortable in the body they were born with, nor can we give them a fully functional body they are comfortable with. So… medicine does the best it can. Is it successful? You’ll have to ask the transgendered that.
NO ONE is advocating this as a standard treatment for any category of children. This kid is on the extreme end of the spectrum as far as I can tell. Even without treatments and surgery she’d probably wind up living as a he - there are historical cases of women doing exactly that, and actually getting away with it for decades. Of course, such an existance improses a great deal of stress on a person, and intimate relationships of any kind are pretty much out of the question. And there’s that whole self-mutilation angle to worry about.
If you have a situation where the kid is an extreme case, then is actually does make medical sense to start treatment as early as possible. I would also say you need to have this decision reviewed very carefully, with multiple second/third/etc. opinions - which seems to have been done in this case. And keep in mind that this 13 year minor is NOT making a binding decision on their own - parental consent and medical opinions are factoring into this in a way that doesn’t apply with adult transgender cases. I mean, KellyM, as one example, certainly didn’t have to show up in court with her parents to get permission for her treatments, did she?
A minor may not be able to make legally binding decisions, but that doesn’t mean their thoughts, opinions, and expressed wants can’t be taken into account when such decisions are made on their behalf. One common example involves custody issues - a court may determine which of two divorcing parents a child lives with, but it’s also not unusual for the court to ask the minor’s preferences in the matter, particularly if the minor is in his or her teens.
To be prefectly honest, the idea of sex reassignment in a 13 year old kind of creeps me out, too - but my personal discomfort should not be the determining factor in making decisions that affect someone’s life.
>It was made by a team of people including the child, his legal guardians, his
>medical care providers, and a judge. Frankly, I think that collective is competent
>to make such a decision. Why do you think they’re not?
Just because four (or so) people agree to it doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m sure that you can find people who agree with any viewpoint you may have. Considering that doctors performed abortions long before it was legal, and assisted people with suicide long before it was legal, it is fair to say that extremism is not confined to the layman.
Again, consider the anorexic analogy. An anorexic truly believes that it is her “natural state” to be what we consider abormally thin. Do we give her liposuction to conform her body to her wishes? (I only use the female pronoun because majority of anorexics are female, not all.) No, we give psychological counseling.
There appears to be an idea in society that if someone wants something, especially when sexuality is concerned, they must be right because they know their own body best. It is well to consider all the others who want something, but society denies them (another example is drug addicts, who are denied the drugs that they want/“need” by society).
I honestly think thyere going to have to make an extra bathroom.
So, if that group of individuals is not competent, what group, in your esteemed and obviously better-informed opinion, would be?
It appears to me that you have categorically determined that it is impossible to determine that an adolescent is transsexual. If this is in fact your opinion, please elaborate on the evidence you examined in order to come to that conclusion.
I can’t remember the last time I felt the need to use this, but :rolleyes: .
There is no “magic gender changing shot”. Combinations of different hormones must be administered for the rest of a patient’s life. It can take weeks or months for hormone therapy to have a noticable effect. Testosterone will permanently lower an ftm’s voice, but all other changes will gradually disappear should they stop receiving testosterone.
As I said earlier, it isn’t ‘gender-changing’. Lazz is a man. He was born a man. The surgery and hormone therapy did not make him a man. They simply corrected an accident of birth.
Further, Alex is only receiving treatment to delay puberty. He won’t begin androgen treatments until he is 16. Sixteen is old enough to get a driver’s license. In many states, (including here in Pennsylvania) a sixteen-year old is considered to be able to give consent for sex.
Thanks - I will use that in future. I meant no offence with “bio” - it was what I meant as natal/born (externally) physically female.
Istara I didn’t think you meant any offense and I apologize if I gave that impression. It’s just that discussions of transexuals can get rather emotional and tend to involve scientific and medical terms. So, using the proper word is important.
Genitalia are far from a perfect way to determine gender. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome results in a baby with female genitals and a female brain. But internally and genetically, an AIS woman is male. Lazz has a male brain, but was born (Correct me if I’m in error) in a body that looked female and has XX chromosomes.
Then Lamia you are not taking me literally enough. Each of is creates their own view of reality, Yours is totally real to you and mine is to me. This is the way the mind works and reconized all the way back to Socrates (Know thyself).
A Transexuals reality has a certain meaning to M and F and also in their reality their own self has the opposite meaning to them as their physical gender. So they are in the wrong ‘body’ in their own reality, which is totally valid and the ONLY reality they have, and will EVER have.
What causes them to create the reality that they are in the wrong body, I don’t know, I have offered some suggestion as to what it may be, but even if I’m 100% dead on right, that doesn’t mean that anyone can change the transsexual’s reality or should even try too. Also it doesn’t invalidate their view of reality, actually reinforces it.