Dorkus-If you’re with the mist worm, the bloody bent one, the crimson crescent, Cromm Cruich himself-could you please tell me how to properly pronounce Mag Slecht? Saying “Plain of adoration” just doesn’t sound as cool.
Mag Slecht = Mahg Slecht (german ch sound)
And Doc, I know it is an oversimplification but some people need everything simplified to that point to understand it. /looks at Shodan.
I misunderstood your post and I apologize.
OTOH-I think Shodan understands individuals born with a conflict between genitals, chromosomes, and internal organs. He’s given cites on intersexed individuals. BUT, he seems to be saying(Shodan, this is an honest attempt to state your position. Correct me if I’m wrong) that if an individual has the genitals, genotype, organs etc of one gender but identifies as another, they are confused. EG
Joan says that she feels like a man trapped in a woman’s body. A look into her medical records reveals that Joan is actually male. He was born with ambiguous genitalia which the doctors butche operated on. John is a castrated male. His genotype is XY. According to Shodan, John is a man.
Roberta feels like a man trapped in a woman's body. But, her genotype is XX, she has ovaries, a uterus, and clearly female genitals. But, Robert identifies as a man. According to Shodan, Roberta is not a man. She is a woman with gender confusion.I had a shitty childhood. (Don’t look at me that way, it’s not a hijack; there’s a point to it.)
I grew up in the Fifties, when every red-blooded boy wanted to be a great baseball player, go out and shoot the Japs (never mind we’d won that war a decade before; our dads had, so we wanted to too). And you were supposed to hate school (this was before Sputnik).
I loved school. I wasn’t interested in sports. And I was the youngest, smallest, and weakest kid in my class, the one always picked last. I was astygmatic, so I couldn’t hit a pitched ball to save my life (still can’t), and only occasionally could do anything worth mentioning with a rolled soccer ball in kickball. To make matters worse, when they turned 13 and started talking about girls, I was 11 and not interested yet – and the obvious conclusion to all of them was that I was gay.
To make matters worse, my parents bought into the school of masculine behavior that said that any expression of emotions on the part of the boy was wrong; he needed to be tough and keep it all inside. So even at home I had no emotional outlet.
And I lived for 40-odd years thinking that there was something wrong with me, because I didn’t live up to people’s expectations of what a boy, and later a man, ought to be.
Then, thanks to the reinforcement of a coworker and friend who saw my potential and rebuilt my ego, to the boy I took in and considered my son who saw me as somebody really worthwhile not for what I was supposed to be but for who I really was, and the ongoing love and support of the naive little chubby girl who was as much an outcast as I and with whom I bonded when we first met, and who has been my loving wife for 27 1/2 years now, I discovered that I didn’t need to live up to somebody else’s expectations of who I ought to be, but could be myself, be happy being myself, and tell them all to take appropriate auto-anatomical measures if they didn’t like it. In the wise words of the philosopher Richard Nelson, “Non potes placare totios, sicut se ipso placare voles.”
The argument here has been complex, and several points need to be made.
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With the exception of the handful of transsexuals (not meaning transgendered – the people who are truly neither male nor female genetically), every human being has a body type characterized by maleness or femaleness.
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The personal interior identification of most people is as man or as woman, and for the overwhelming majority of people is based on what their body type identifies them as to the world.
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Transvestites (a term brought up by those who don’t grasp transsexualism) are people who, usually identifying as their phenotypic sex, enjoy masquerading as the opposite sex.
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Transgendered individuals are people who have an interior identification at odds with their exterior bodily gender and presumably with their genetic makeup.
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Homosexual people are those who, content with their body’s gender, desire people of the same sex for sexual relations and usually as life partner. Exprix, for example, is a man who identifies as a man and wishes to make love to other men – hence he is gay.
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For the transgendered person, the interior identification as the opposite sex leads to portraying oneself as that sex, despite what one’s phenotypical bodily equipment may suggest. It’s important to recognize that this is not a masquerade – it’s an attempt to live as what they “know themselves to be” in terms of that interior identification. After doing so for an extended period while observed by therapists confirming the identification, the transgendered person becomes eligible for sexual reassignment surgery to conform the exterior body to what the interior person identifies as.
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What Shodan and a few others have been bringing into the picture, which has made it significantly more complex, is the question of sexual honesty. More on that in a minute.
Approximately 35 centuries ago, there was a religious reform in Egypt, and the new faith, espoused by the Pharaoh and royal family, called for “living in truth” – being who you knew yourself to be, unafraid of the consequences, whatever the cost.
The context here is one where the transgendered persons are living out the identity which they know themselves to “really” be, despite the nature of the body parts they were equipped with in their gestation.
However, there is a second aspect to “living in truth” that point 7 addresses, which may be the cause of some of the conflict.
When one enters into a close enough relationship for sexual relations to become likely (and if that includes casual sex, so be it), one is, I think, morally bound to disclose what aspects of one’s sexuality and identity might not be evident to the potential sexual partner. In my case, for example, my wife-to-be let me know that our chance of natural childbirth would be quite low thanks to ovarian cysts impeding the production of ova. This was not something that would stop me from marrying her – but it was, in her opinion, information which I was entitled to, against the supposition that I would want children from our marriage.
I have no doubt that, e.g., Kelly is in fact a woman in her own mind, and deserves to be treated as such as having chosen to live out her life as one. But in the unlikely event that she and I ever entered into a sexual relationship, I would expect her to be forthcoming enough to let me know (a) that she had started life with a male phenotype, in case I was the sort of person who might be put off by that idea, (b) that she did not possess ovaries and such, so that conception of children was impossible, and © whether she was pre- or post-operative, with the consequent constraints on what sexual acts we might perform. She would, of course, have similar expectations of me as regards anything about me that was not self-evident from our relationship to date.
I don’t know if that analysis helps in the slightest, but I thought it was worth doing for clarity’s sake.
I think a lot of people have misunderstood. But I guess I haven’t expressed myself clearly.
I am not saying that truly masculine men will react violently. I’m saying that most men would certainly be upset if they were the victim of such a deception, and pretty good percentage of them would at least think about reacting violently. I too would be extremely pissed off it were me. (again, this is in reference to the hypothetical situation that I posed, not the actual events surrounding Gwen’s death). That’s not due to an inherently violent nature, it’s because the act of being deceived into having sex with a guy is extremely offensive. And I contend that most guys would find it to be such.
Again, I’m not condoning murder or the actions of Gwen’s attackers. What I’m looking at and trying to identify is (assuming that Gwen tricked them into sex) the source of that violence.
Your right. I didn’t read the quote above it and thought you were talking about gender assignment surgery.
The only part I dissagree with is “that she had started life with a male phenotype, in case I was the sort of person who might be put off by that idea”
Say you were a Jew in Germany around the 1940’s. Considering the wide anti-semitism at the time do you think you should tell anyone you have sex with that you are a Jew just to make sure they aren’t put off by the idea?
This is correct.
And I would really like to be able to see the study you cited, because I don’t understand this:
Was this a study of transsexuals as adults? How did they know what the female hormone levels were in utero?
Or is the term “transsexual” refer to someone other than what I would call a transvestite or a pre-operative transsexual - that is, someone who is genetically and physically male but thinks of him/herself as a woman?
And thanks for a better explanation of what I was talking about to dorkusmalorkus than I was making.
Polycarp - I would very much like to respond to your post after I have a chance to read it in detail - something for which I don’t have time at the moment. Sorry - but I will be back.
Regards,
Shodan
Lynda Carter
The fear of being perceived as “telling tales out of school” has held me back from participating in this thread for the last few days, but I think I may be able to offer some assistance.
First off, let me say that my sex is male, and my orientation is heterosexual. Don’t think that I’m engaging in mental gymnastics, (or “sick games”,) to advance a personal agenda.
Second, while I realize this post may come off as overly academic and abstract, my intention is to draw Shodan and others’ attention to some things that are bound to have a profound effect on their perception and judgement.
However maddening Shodan’s position may be to the people who are most affected by gender issues, it is a natural point-of-view. It may appear to be willful obstinance stemming from some thinly-veiled discrimination to those whose personal experience shows them that the widely-held dichotomy of male/female gender is an inaccurate model, but I’m confident that this is not the case, and that Shodan is both an intelligent and good person. (Bomzaway, on the other hand, is an ignorant troglodyte who is welcome to go fuck himself.)
So why is it that intelligent people are so often unable to see something that ought to be obvious? Conversely, how is it possible for a group of people to agree to something which is plainly contrary to common sense?
Simple: Common sense is wrong. Applying common sense is not thinking. Common sense is actually a mechanism for avoiding thought. That’s not to say that common sense is a bad thing-- far from it, on the whole, it’s a good thing, and allows a society to progress much faster than if every individual had to work out basic ontological problems for themselves. It’s a collection of assumptions that we inherit from whatever culture or microculture that we’re brought up in. The concept of “superego” comes close to defining what we’re talking about, if you extend its domain beyond simple morality to basic ontology.
Think of it as a catalogue of premises that are available to the individual for the formation of their own syllogisms. Not only is somewhat difficult to think critically about inherited beliefs, any concepts that you form which contain premises which are contrary to those in your culture’s “pool of ideas” are going to be met with vociferous resistance, even if they are plainly obvious to anyone who rigourously applies an objective approach.
Its mechanism is usually invisible within your own culture-- it’s easier to see in other cultures. Because this pool of premises is subject to (a very slow) evolution, hindsight often reveals how “common sense” has mentally cramped the people of a few generations back. The conceit is that “They were deluded, but at last we have arrived at the truth.” The thing is that that belief recurs with every generation, and only becomes obviously silly when the people who held it are sufficiently removed from our own beliefs.
Probably the most common example of this is the (fairly recent) persecution and ridicule that the Royal Society of London visited upon anyone who claimed to have seen a meteorite. “There are no rocks in the sky, therefore rocks cannot fall from the sky.” The most learned scientists offered their authoritive explanations to disabuse the poor simpletons who claimed to have personal experience of them of their misconceptions. A hot, smoking rock landed in the middle of your garden party? Impossible… Obviously what happened is that lightning struck a rock which was already in the ground. Common sense. Now, of course, it’s common sense that rocks do fall out of the sky, although by-and-large, most people have never seen such a phenomenon.
You may object that it’s intellectually dishonest to draw an analogy between a rarely observed event and something as close-to-home as our gender and genitals, and that the premise that “gender is determined by genitalia” has earned its place in our collective minds because it is the simple truth, and it’s absurd to claim otherwise. That’s an understandable objection.
What if you were born into a society where the accepted determinate of gender was the absence or presence of a beard? Suppose that those without beards were termed “girls”, and it was considered socially acceptable for sexual relations to take place between any one with a beard, (a “man”,) and any one without a beard, (a “girl”,) regardless of the genitalia that they possessed? Clearly, in that society, the situation described in the OP would never happen, and no one would argue that the murder victim was herself guilty of deception.
The society which I’ve described is not some unlikely hypothetical-- I’m talking about britain, about seven-hundred years ago. Yes, even in our culture, (I apologize to asian and native-american folks for my eurocentricism, ;)) the premise that physical sex was the primary determinate of gender is far from an absolute. Not too long ago, it was a new and controversial idea. I imagine that its acceptance was viewed with some relief by biological males who, because of simple genetic accident, didn’t grow beards at the onset of puberty. Imagine you were born in Europe a thousand years ago, and were attracted to members of the opposite sex, and were either a smooth-faced man or a hirsute woman, and most people around you consider that it is only acceptable for you to have relations with someone for whom you have absolutely no attraction. Got it? Congratulations! You’ve gained a closer understandering of how a transexual person feels in our society, which, at present, considers that the primary determinate of gender is genitalia.
I’m quite sure that the “Genitals = Gender” premise is closer to objective reality than the “Facial Hair = Gender” premise, but to accept either as absolutes is to marginalize a large number of people simply because they don’t conveniently fit your preconceptions.
Unfortunately, hostility to people who challenge these collective premises seems to be built into the human psyche. Look at the number of people who died for challenging the geocentric model of the universe. (In this sense, Bomzaway is right. This violent impulse is apparently a “natural” thing. But it’s something that we’ve got to get past if we’re going to grow up as a species.)
I think that the mathematician Kurt Gödel points the way to our salvation as a species as well as any religious leader, prophet, or philospher. (Well, better, actually, but that opinion probably stems from cultural bias.)
Sure, on the surface, the Incompleteness Theorem merely describes formal systems, but when you consider that both the collective beliefs of a society, as well as those of an individual, can be expressed as a set of axioms, and ultimately reduced to symbolic logic, it can be applied in a very human way.
When we’re wrong, it’s very hard to tell, particularly if the false premise we’re operating on is an inherited one. We have to really work at gaining an understanding of the world beyond what we can infer from “common sense.” When we are met with premises that seem to conflict with common sense, it’s important not to reject them out-of-hand, but rather consider them in isolation from our prejudices and determine for ourselves whether they have any validity or usefulness in application to the real world.
People who either are, or merely know, transgendered individuals are in a somewhat similar predicament as someone who had a meteorite land at their feet in the eighteenth century. They know something that most people around them don’t, and if they’re honest about it, they can pretty much count on labeled either delusional or a liar.
Be grateful for the bravery of people who are willing to trust their own observations over “common sense”, and those who are willing to consider the validity of their observations and test the usefulness of their premises against old models with regard to their relation to objective reality. Without them, an exorcist would probably be your best option when you’re seriously ill.
:: applauds ::
This post should be in the Cecil Hall of Fame.
Seriously.
I’ve been trying to post regarding this thread as I’ve been in a quandry: I felt that genital/chromosones = gender on one hand but on the other hand I had the experiences of Eve and Kelly among others, posters who I hold in high regard and would trust on such matters (and of course, others. I bow down to Eve as SDMB Goddess of Film). I was having a hard time reconcilling the two.
Larry, thanks for explaining this in terms I get*.
Seriously, that post was Cecilworthy.
Fenris
*as opposed to “terms I understand”, if you see the difference.
So am I less evolved and there’s something wrong with me if I feel that it’s different (not necessarily ‘worse’ so please don’t put that word in my mouth) to be someone who was born with male genitals and later had reassignment surgery than it is to have had female genitals and female mind all along?
No no no, because sure it’s different, just because of missing out on various experiences of being socialised as female, and experiences common to only biological females.
If one were to say “XX = woman, XY = man, that’s all there is to it, there’s an end of it, and no I am not willing to countenance any evidence of differing brain structures in different genders and how that might impact on conscious awareness of gender identity”… then one would be failing to take a scientific approach.
Hon, we all have room for improvement.
Tansu: This is what I’ve been trying to talk to people about for a long time. I think there are differences in having been born woman in female body and having been born woman in male body. Neither one is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than the other, but they are different life experiences, therefore neither one can be understood from the same point of view by both people. I’ve been called intolerant for that, and I think that it’s a miscommunication that happens as soon as the word ‘different’ occurs in a sentence.
Homebrew: Did you read the rest of the post before making that judgment?
Just a clarification, since y’all seem to be confused:
Intersexual: a person whose genetic sex is other than XX or XY, or whose genetic sex is XX or XY but whose genetics were not physically expressed at birth in a manner consistent with the norms for XX- or XY-sexed individuals. Intersexual includes hermaphrodites but excludes transsexuals and transgenders.
Transsexual: a person whose genetic sex was physically expressed “normally” at birth but has a persistent mental self-image of being of a gender other than that consistent with the sex expressed at birth.
Transgender: a person whose gender expression is at some way at significant odds with societal norms.
The following are incorrect:
What you are describing is a transsexual. A transsexual is not a hermaphrodite.
Again, false. Most transgendered individuals have a normal XX or XY genotype.
Also false. “Transgendered” is not a subset of intersexed. Depending on who you talk to, either intersexed is a subset of transgendered, or the two sets are either overlapping or entirely disjoint. The “standard” definitions that I am aware has them disjoint: an intersexed person is necessarily not a transsexual and not transgendered.
Polycarp, hypothetically, I would disclose my history to you as part of initiating a long-term relationship not out of concern for any possibility that you might be put off by the possibility of having sex with an altered genetic male, but because I believe (as I suspect you also do) in honesty and openness within romantic-sexual (or even close nonsexual) relationships.
No, but you prone to histrionics, apparently.
Of course it’s different. You can (possibly) have children, don’t have to take little pills every day just to keep your breasts from shriveling up, and haven’t had to deal with having a little needle stuck into your face over and over again.
I haven’t seen anyone (except you) suggest that having been born female is the same as being a transsexual woman. So why do you continue to act as though we’re calling you stupid for disagreeing with a position nobody seems to hold?
Because, KellyM, this is something I have been told in my life outside SDMB.
I’ve had someone who has no ovaries and no uterus tell me that she ‘knows just how it feels’ to bleed out her crotch for 7 days out of a month.
And I’m wondering why I’m the intolerant one if I don’t feel she ‘gets it’ the same way I do because it can’t happen to her.
I have to ask, if you switch male with female, does it make me a bad person to admit I would be kinda put off by this? 
I hope not.
I just don’t think I could probably deal with the situation. If only because of who I am-that is, a young woman with ADHD and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who is prone to depression. I know I’m a basket case, and probably not the best person to get involved with. So I don’t think I could handle the situation.
So, what’s your point? Not all transsexuals are that silly.
On the other hand, some transsexuals will abjectly lie when asked a question on a topic that, if pursued further, might lead to a disclosure of transsexuality. There are even some transsexuals who have created entire false childhood histories to conceal their true history (the so-called “deep stealth” approach) because they want to be women, not transsexuals.
I know they’re not all that silly.
And I think that lying is wrong, and I’d be really pissed if someone I were in a serious relationship with told me a made up story about his childhood as a little boy growing up in mud and army pants if the truth was that his mom dressed him in pink frilly stuff.
Not because it’s bad to be transsexual, but because it’s wrong to lie to someone you love.