Any transgender Dopers?

[Broomstick]

@Martin_Hyde

When I say brain structure is irrelevant I’m referring of course to the definition of male/female. For purposes of treatment brain structure is probably part of the important learning process that will eventually allow us to cure people with GID without having to resort to barbaric mutilations of their genitals along with unnatural hormone therapies.

If, for the sake of argument, we say that you’re right and it’s a mental illness or birth defect resulting in brain malfunction or, at any rate, something that it would be desirable to cure… we can not do that. Not yet.

So, meanwhile, what do we do with these people? There are all sorts of other problems associated with this, including depression, self-harm, and suicide. If hormones and surgery result in these people becoming happier, more functional, and less inclined to harm or kill themselves what is barbaric is not the “genital mutilation” but denying them a means to reduce their suffering.

As an analogy, you can argue that what’s most desirable for an amputee is to regrow a functional limb. Unfortunately, we have no way to do that. Thus, we rely on “barbaric” and “unnatural” prosthetics to allow them a higher level of functioning.

[kayT]

Martin Hyde, you seem to be very sure that gender is physically determined and fixed. What do you do with the estimated 1 in 45,000 people born with elements of both genders, where a decision is often (usually?) made by doctors and parents as to the baby’s gender? (See for example here.

ETA sorry if this is a hijack of the OP but really, gender is not as simple and clearcut as **Martin **wants it to be, seems to me.

[Miller]

@Martin_Hyde

No, they are not quite literally “people with male bodies and female brains.” For two reasons:

1. In a prior thread on this topic someone demonstrated that in some “trans” individuals there were abnormalities in a certain region of the brain. This may have some significance or may not. I’d have to reference the earlier thread (and the studies it cited) to get more specific, but that isn’t the same as saying “literally a female brain in a male body.”

It is, in fact, the same thing as a female brain in a male body - the structure of a brain in a MtF transsexual is the same as the brain in a cisgendered woman.

Moreover, given that it’s a scientific fact that there are structural differences between the brains of men and women (which I assume you do not dispute) and the fact that people can be born with a mix of feminine and masculine sexual traits, including genitalia (which you’ve already acknowledged) I’m not clear why you’re so dead set against the idea that one way an intersex condition can manifest is by having the genitalia of one gender, and the brain structures of another.

2. Again, if I asked a biologist to sex two individuals of the species canis lupus familiaris they would not even look at the brains of the animal to do that, because it is unnecessary. Mammalian gender is not defined by brain structure.

Dogs aren’t people. While its possible that one can draw meaningful conclusions about human gender by examining non-human animals, I would not take it as granted.

See: Gender Identity Disorder, DSM-IV.

Yes, I’m aware that gender identity disorder is in the DSM-IV. I think it’s kind of funny that you put so much faith in the DSM-IV on this issue, while entirely ignoring it when it comes to the issue of whether or not homosexuality is a mental illness. Apparently, the DSM-IV is only definitive when it supports your preconceptions? Funny, also, how your reliance on the accuracy of the psychiatric community on this issue stops rather abruptly when it comes to treatment.

At any rate, simply shouting “DSM-IV!” at me isn’t an actual response to what I wrote, since my point was that, even when viewed as a mental illness, transgenderism isn’t a delusion, and is not viewed as such by the medical profession. Not all mental illnesses are delusional.

As a point as to why brain structure is so irrelevant, evolving views on mental illnesses like schizophrenia have started to focus on abnormalities of the brain of schizophrenics. Different parts of the brain of a person with schizophrenia have different activity levels than a healthy human brain, there is also some genetic predisposition to schizophrenia (some 10% of cases) so quite likely brain structure has a play in that (and many mental diseases.) But that doesn’t mean if a person with schizophrenia believes they are an Angel or Napoleon they “literally have Napoleon’s brain inside a normal person’s body.”

And the reason we don’t do that is because the structures in a schizophrenic’s brain does not, so far as we know, particularly resemble the brain of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is, again, distinct from people with Gender Identity Disorder, where the brain does, in fact, resemble the brain of gender with which they identify.

[The_wind_of_my_soul]

Wow. I never thought I’d see the day where a person born with a dick and no mixed genitalia was referred to as a woman.

But I’ll take your word as the gospel, and ask you this: How, using your proposed system of categorization, do you determine who is male and who is female? Because the impression I’m getting (both from bouv and those speaking up in his/her defense) is that your gender is whichever gender you intrinsically feel a sense of belonging with. And that strikes me as a pretty problematic (not to mention entirely subjective) method of categorization.

[kushiel]

I just want to say thank you to the people who are taking the time to explain the current terminology and educate others instead of assuming posters are being transphobic assholes. For some, threads like this are an introduction to the topic.

Why yes, I was once the sheltered farm girl who had no idea about anything!

[Miller]

@The_wind_of_my_soul

Wow. I never thought I’d see the day where a person born with a dick and no mixed genitalia was referred to as a woman.

That “day” came at least sixty years ago.

(Longer, actually, but that’s a convenient point to mark when the issue entered mainstream consciousness.)

But I’ll take your word as the gospel, and ask you this: How, using your proposed system of categorization, do you determine who is male and who is female?

In what sort of context? Socially? Professionally? Medically?

Because the impression I’m getting (both from bouv and those speaking up in his/her defense) is that your gender is whichever gender you intrinsically feel a sense of belonging with. And that strikes me as a pretty problematic (not to mention entirely subjective) method of categorization.

What problems do you see with it?

[The_wind_of_my_soul]

@Miller

What problems do you see with it?

That if there is no way to objectively assess a person’s gender, the categorization becomes completely useless. If I’m wrong, please enlighten me.

[The_wind_of_my_soul]

@Miller

In what sort of context? Socially? Professionally? Medically?

Any. I’d just like to hear this classification system explained in detail.

[Maggie_the_Ocelot]

@The_wind_of_my_soul

That if there is no way to objectively assess a person’s gender, the categorization becomes completely useless. If I’m wrong, please enlighten me.

And if this is the case (and I don’t really think it is), why is that a problem?

[Miller]

@The_wind_of_my_soul

That if there is no way to objectively assess a person’s gender, the categorization becomes completely useless. If I’m wrong, please enlighten me.

I don’t think subjective categorizations are necessarily useless, but setting that aside, what situations are you thinking of where it’s necessary to objectively categorize someone’s gender?

[Martin_Hyde]

@kayT

Martin Hyde, you seem to be very sure that gender is physically determined and fixed. What do you do with the estimated 1 in 45,000 people born with elements of both genders, where a decision is often (usually?) made by doctors and parents as to the baby’s gender? (See for example here.

ETA sorry if this is a hijack of the OP but really, gender is not as simple and clearcut as **Martin **wants it to be, seems to me.

Again, if I give a biologist a bitch and a dog, how is it going to sex them? Is a Ph.D. biologist going to hem and haw or is he going to say the dog with a vagina, ovaries, and mammary glands is a female and the dog with testes and a penis a male?

I try to avoid using the word gender because it opens up the floodgates to all kinds of equivocation. Historically gender was not associated with sex until the 1950s, prior to that the word gender in English typically was primarily only associated with certain terminology relating to grammar (i.e. gender of certain words or such–mostly phased out of Modern English but still present in lots of other languages.)

It’s not totally unavoidable though, as a lot of the medical literature uses terms such as “Gender Identity Disorder” and etc.

Male and female are different sexes and are defined biologically, there is no controversy in the rest of the animal kingdom (at least in mammals) about which individual animal is a male and which individual animal is a female.

If someone wants to adopt “cultural roles” normally associated with someone of a different sex that is fine, cultural roles are not set in stone. Biological sex is. Where people jump the shark is when they don’t want to just change roles, they want to change their genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics to masquerade as a member of a sex to which they do not belong. At that point you aren’t just adopting a “gender role” (a social construct) different from that which is normally associated with your biological sex, instead you are actively seeking to deny the truth of your biological sex and perform self-mutilation in an attempt to elaborately mimic the alternate biological sex.

People who are born with sex characteristics of both sexes are, as I have already said a very rare set of people and they do not make up a majority of those who self-identify as “transgendered.” I have no problem with people adopting any sociocultural gender role they want, but when those people become outraged and insist their biological sex isn’t what they were born with, then that is when I’ll shake my head and say “you’re wrong.” For those “marginal cases” who have physical deformities and have tissue from both sexes the historic term would be “hermaphrodite” (even though they weren’t, biologically, a true hermaphrodite, making use of the term iffy, plus the word has a stigma now), so I’d call them “intersexed” individuals.

However, the population of transgendered people is mostly made up of mentally confused persons and not people born with the above affliction.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Miller

It is, in fact, the same thing as a female brain in a male body - the structure of a brain in a MtF transsexual is the same as the brain in a cisgendered woman.

There’s no such thing as a cisgendered woman, there are regular women who do not have a mental illness and men who have the mental illness that causes them to believe they are women.

And no, there are no comprehensive studies showing that the mind of a mentally ill man who has GID and thinks he is a woman is the same as the mind of a normal, healthy woman.

Most of these studies I have seen have involved small, small handfuls of people. The researchers who conducted these studies would never say the things you are saying.

Some studies have showed MtF GID patients have activity in their brains similar to a normal woman’s brain, but it is not exactly the same, but rather when compared to the activity in a man’s brain it shows activity not the same as other men, but the activity does not map perfectly to a normal woman. In laymans they describe it as being “in between a man and a woman’s” activity, although I’m sure it’s actually a lot more nuanced than that.

There are also several studies that show brain activity dissimilar from normal men or normal women in MtF GID patients, rather demonstrating to me these are people with brain abnormalities. I do not believe you would find any reputable scientist who would unequivocally use the terms you use here. Primarily because scientists work with facts and not desire, you desperately want to believe these people have “female brains”, but the fact is they don’t. They have diseased or deformed brains that have activity patterns that in some cases align somewhat with female activity patterns, but not exactly, and in other cases they are wholly unique from both male and female.

Further, a lot of these tests involve things like monitoring brain activity while looking at erotica or etc. I would posit there is a lot more to the male and female brain than sexual stimuli processing, so even these studies if they showed the sort of exact mapping you insist is real, would only be talking a super small sliver of overall brain function.

Lots of studies have shown women do all kinds of things very differently from men in their brains, and not just things relating to sexuality.

Dogs aren’t people. While its possible that one can draw meaningful conclusions about human gender by examining non-human animals, I would not take it as granted.

No, but you can learn that any concept such as “socially defined gender” will never “trump” biological sex.

[cynyc]

@Miller

That’s okay. It’s not him I’m trying to educate.

That doesn’t seem to go over well here.

BTW, anybody listen to that podcast above?

And another thing, I think men into “same-sex sex” going with the word “gay” as an identity–well it doesn’t sit right with me. Women into “same-sex sex” are okay with lesbian.

As you were.

[Miller]

@Martin_Hyde

Some studies have showed MtF GID patients have activity in their brains similar to a normal woman’s brain, but it is not exactly the same, but rather when compared to the activity in a man’s brain it shows activity not the same as other men, but the activity does not map perfectly to a normal woman. In laymans they describe it as being “in between a man and a woman’s” activity, although I’m sure it’s actually a lot more nuanced than that.

I’m not talking about brain activity, I’m talking about the architecture of the brain, as determined through post-mortem autopsy - at which point, there’s no brain activity to measure.

There are also several studies that show brain activity dissimilar from normal men or normal women in MtF GID patients, rather demonstrating to me these are people with brain abnormalities. I do not believe you would find any reputable scientist who would unequivocally use the terms you use here.

This page is a handy collection of a variety of studies on transexuality that demonstrate, once again, that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Here’s some highlights:

CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that the white matter microstructure pattern in untreated FtM transsexuals is closer to the pattern of subjects who share their gender identity (males) than those who share their biological sex (females). Our results provide evidence for an inherent difference in the brain structure of FtM transsexuals.

The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.

A significant fraction of gene expression differences between males and females in the human appears to have its roots in early embryogenesis and is not only caused by sex chromosomes but also by long-term sex-specific hormonal programming due to presence or absence of androgen during the time of external genital masculinization. Genetic sex and the androgen milieu during embryonic development might therefore independently modulate functional traits, phenotype and diseases associated with male or female gender as well as with DSD conditions.

One person we studied had untreated male gender dysphoria (S7), took no hormones and kept his transsexual feelings under wraps. He appeared to have a large INAH3 volume - in the male range - but a female INAH3 number of neurons (68) and a female BSTc somatostatin neuron number (95). Hence, this individual’s hypothalamic characteristics were mid-way between male and female values

@Martin Hyde

Further, a lot of these tests involve things like monitoring brain activity while looking at erotica or etc. I would posit there is a lot more to the male and female brain than sexual stimuli processing, so even these studies if they showed the sort of exact mapping you insist is real, would only be talking a super small sliver of overall brain function.

What possible information could be divined by showing transexuals erotica? Gender identity and sexual orientation are entirely separate phenomena, and no useful information about a person’s gender identity can be derived by examining what they find arousing.

Incidentally, are you willing, based on the DSM-IV, to affirmatively state that homosexuality is not a mental illness? If not, can you explain why the DSM is authoritative on the subject of transexuality, but not on homosexuality?

[cynyc]

You forgot the part where the primary purpose of the DSM is to generate codes for billing insurance companies. e.g. I was diagnosed last week with “(733.6)” but that’s medical not mental health. And the DSM is a very pricey book.

@rachelellogram

You mean the Gender Identity Disorder that’s proposing to be revised to Gender Dysphoria in the DSM-V? Psychology is a living science, and the terms, definitions, and understanding of 30, 40, or 50 years ago are often not valid today. We don’t refer to Multiple Personalities anymore, we say Dissociative Identity Disorder. We no longer classify homosexuality as a mental illness.

Just what decade are you living in? Because you appear to be firmly entrenched in the nineties.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Martin_Hyde

There’s no such thing as a cisgendered woman, there are regular women who do not have a mental illness and men who have the mental illness that causes them to believe they are women.

Martin, even if you were right, you’d still be wrong. Do you know what a mental illness is? It’s when your brain is fucking up your life so much, you suffer a marked decrease in your quality of life and it’s fixed when said brain unfucks everything. The reason we consider transpeople to be the gender they transition to, is because that’s the way that helps people lead healthy, happy lives. We tried telling them they were sick and wrong and it did jack squat. Since the medical field is dedicated to alleviating suffering and not opining longwindedly on the philosophical nature of Truth, they moved in the other direction and began doing what they could to make people feel like the gender they felt a mental connection with and had much better results. Results matter, not biological hypotheticals.

[The_wind_of_my_soul]

@Miller

I don’t think subjective categorizations are necessarily useless, but setting that aside, what situations are you thinking of where it’s necessary to objectively categorize someone’s gender?

A few examples that come to mind:

• Segregation of bathrooms/locker rooms/living quarters (when I say living quarters, I’m referring to something like dormitories)
• When experiencing health problems (it’s useful for the doctor to determine if it might be related to, say, a pregnancy)
• When shopping for clothes (admittedly this is not necessary, but a fitted men’s shirt would not have as much room in the bust as a fitted woman’s shirt)
• Identification of a missing/wanted person

However, every situation I can think of where gender classification would be important deals with biological distinction. I can’t think of a single instance where it would be necessary to know which gender one more closely associates with mentally.

Side note: You’re right, I’ll retract my earlier statement that subjective categorizations are useless. I can think of many, many categorizations that are based on one’s personal perspective and are useful (political identification, occupational identification, cultural identification, etc.).

[eclectic_wench]

I know very little about this, so someone tell me if I’m talking shite, but:

Following on from what Inner Stickler said: if being transgender were a mental illness, wouldn’t the best cure be mental as well? Like depression, say, where the treatments are psychoactive drugs and psychological therapies?

From the little I know, that kind of mind-focused treatment doesn’t really work for transgender people. What works - and I’m defining ‘works’ as ‘gives them the same chance as anyone else of living happy, productive, functioning lives’ - is transitioning. So there is a ‘cure’, and a more reliably effective ‘cure’ than we’ve got for depression or schizophrenia, but it doesn’t have any element of mental treatment. I don’t see how that’s consistent with mental illness.

[Inner_Stickler]

@eclectic_wench

I know very little about this, so someone tell me if I’m talking shite, but:

Following on from what Inner Stickler said: if being transgender were a mental illness, wouldn’t the best cure be mental as well? Like depression, say, where the treatments are psychoactive drugs and psychological therapies?

No, the best cures are the ones that alleviate suffering the best, whether that’s mental, chemical or physical. This isn’t homeopathy where like cures like.

[Miller]

@The_wind_of_my_soul

A few examples that come to mind:

• Segregation of bathrooms/locker rooms/living quarters (when I say living quarters, I’m referring to something like dormitories)
• When experiencing health problems (it’s useful for the doctor to determine if it might be related to, say, a pregnancy)
• When shopping for clothes (admittedly this is not necessary, but a fitted men’s shirt would not have as much room in the bust as a fitted woman’s shirt)
• Identification of a missing/wanted person

Working from the bottom up:

If you’re searching for a person who looks like a woman, dresses like a woman, answers to a woman’s name, and uses female pronouns to refer to herself, how useful is it to know that they happen to have a penis? I mean, you’re not going to be putting her penis on the wanted posters, right?

Clothes shopping for a trans person is no different than anyone else who has a slightly unusual body type, and at any rate, that’s not something anyone other than the trans person in question needs to worry about. You don’t need to know a persons gender in order for them to shop in the right part of the clothing store.

Similarly, there are a lot of health issues that a doctor needs to be aware of when treating a patient - in this respect, being trans is no different than having hypertension, or an allergy to penicillin, or what-have-you. It’s something that, presumably, would be listed in that person’s medical records, but it’s not something that anyone who doesn’t have access to those records needs to worry about.

Access to public restrooms is, admittedly, a tough issue. Ideally, a person should be able to use the restroom associated with their preferred gender, and no one else needs to worry about if a person “should” be in that bathroom or not. There are other concerns that make this one not quite as cut-and-dried, and it’s not an area where I have an easy answer.

However, every situation I can think of where gender classification would be important deals with biological distinction. I can’t think of a single instance where it would be necessary to know which gender one more closely associates with mentally.

How about just meeting a trans person in real life, and talking to them? If someone wearing a dress introduces herself to you as Tina, use the name she gave you, use feminine pronouns when referring to her, and generally treat her like you’d treat any other woman, and don’t worry about what sort of equipment she’s got between her legs.