I will note that there have been instances where other medical conditions have delay puberty into the late 20’s or further (or blocked it entirely) but given that those are pretty serious conditions with all sorts of effects beyond just the puberty issue we probably shouldn’t try to extrapolate from them.
Turner’s Syndrome is a genetic condition were a woman either has delayed, incomplete, or skips puberty entirely. Some Turner’s Syndrome women have used hormones to induce secondary sexual characteristics and to enable them to carry a donated fetus through pregnancy. So, in a sense, they’re women who enter or finish puberty very late in life… but again, it’s a serious genetic anomaly, we should be cautious extrapolating that to folks with normal genetics.
And finally, there are intersex conditions that were poorly treated in the past with some people undergoing changes fairly late in life, including inducing changes normally seen in puberty. The results seem good and the side effects minimal, or at least the benefits outweighing the negatives for these folks.
Bottom line - the body is going to react to puberty-level hormones well into adulthood.
TBH, I don’t hear pre/post/non-op around here except to criticize it. Not sure if it’s age or region related, but I feel like designating based on surgical status is becoming out of vogue. Probably especially with younger transpeople not being able to afford it. The general feeling here seems to be that it’s exclusionary and even if it’s not meant to, the terminology soft-classifies some transpeople as “real” for having or wanting to get surgery when you can’t really know why others can’t/won’t/haven’t.
Pre/post/non-op are certainly valid terms for medical purposes, but you’re right, some of the use of them is in a negative and judgmental manner. Which gets back to a certain obsession with genitals it way, way beyond anything appropriate.
Or hormones, or the desire to be perceived by other people as the physical sex that people associate with the trans person’s gender.
And as far as “accept yourself for what you are”, the appeal for most trans people of changing their presentation is to modify other people’s behavior towards them, by changing those people’s impressions of who they are. It doesn’t change “who they are” or their acceptance thereof, it changes other people’s tendency to treat them as such.
It must be your region, because these are common terms in my region, as well as in the overseas communities I work in. The only people who seem to complain are non-binary persons. Then again, some non-binary people say I’m the devil incarnate because of my gender identity. I’ve had non-binary people actually flame me and try to shame me for having surgery, because I am “perpetuating the gender binary hegemony” or some other bullshit.
I guess anything can be misused. People could also look at the source and context before coming to a decision.
Regardless of the forum or thread, every time I think I should respond to someone who already damn well knows the answer to a question or knows how to get it and mistakenly believes they’re being clever, I walk away from the SDMB and do counseling, research, and education at the Institute where I work to help actual transgender persons in need. It’s my way of getting back at anti-transgender and anti-intersex trolls.
Quite frankly, unless you’re planning on dating that person, I don’t see how it would be anybody’s business. I mean, you don’t ask people about whether or not they’ve had a hysterectomy, or gall bladder surgery, or anything? How would something like this be any different?
Some people DO ask inappropriate medical questions of other people, not just about their genitals but about anything and everything, then tell you whatever you chose was wrong, you went to the wrong doctor, the wrong hospital, whatever.
First, how do you define “mental illness”? What is the cause of mental illness? What are the symptoms of mental illness? What are the relationships between the categories of mental illness? Do psychiatrists know the answers to these questions? Who does?
I asked myself all of these questions and many more when our son was diagnosed as hopelessly schizophrenic. I had always been intensely interested in behavior. I was more widely read than the average person on that subject. I knew other people with various diagnoses: severe depression, neurosis, schizophrenia, and what is now called bipolarity. I knew that none of those people had been cured. Eventually, I figured out how to cure our son with music. When he relapsed, I cured him again, using a technique of focusing the music on his right ear. I knew of other sorts of healings with music, but the practitioners couldn’t explain how it happened. I began to study the anatomy of the ear, brain, nervous system. I figured out that music alters a tiny muscle in the middle ear. The strength (tonus) of that muscle determines the accuracy and volume of the transmission of the higher frequencies of sound into the left, rational half of the brain. The neurological pathways for hearing and responding to sound (with the larynx) are not symmetrical. The right-ear-to-left-brain-to larynx route is shorter, more efficient. It creates right-lateralization. The left-ear route is longer for several reasons. A strong right ear creates a strongly dominant left-brain in the integrative processes of the cerebral hemispheres. A weak right ear forces the left ear into dominance or partial dominance and causes left-lateralization. The Indian-American neurologist V.S. Ramachandran described the different propensities of the cerebral hemispheres (in more detail than I will give here). Knowing those categories allowed me to see that our son “switched” hemispheres every two minutes: two minutes of left, rational brain, two minutes of right, emotional brain. So I could define schizophrenia as non-dominance of his cerebral hemispheres. Music focused on his right ear made him “more left-brained.” When the sound stream normalized with increased stapedius muscle tonus, his thinking and behavior normalized. Psychological studies of homosexuals show strong tendencies towards left-lateralization. That tells us they have audio-processing deficits in their right ears. I have not treated or coached any homosexuals. I am just explaining the theory here. It seems likely that if schizophrenia, which also tends to left-lateralization, and other forms of mental illness (except depression, which is usually a left-ear phenomenon) can be healed with high-frequency music gently amplified and focused on the right ear, that other types of aberrant behavior could be altered that way if the person wanted to change her or his behavior.
A significant difference between schizophrenia and transgender conditions is that people who are transgender can often function effectively for decades from the standpoint of personal hygiene, holding down a job, paying their bills, obeying the law, etc. even without treatment whereas untreated schizophrenics tend to struggle or fail at all of those.
IIRC the comparison between them comes at least in part from the idea that you can “treat” gender dysphoria with a certain antipsychotic. This isn’t actually true, mind you, but some people believe it.
Sure, but under Grey’s Anatomical Variations as set out by Stovold, moving right ear to left brain to larynx will put you in Nidd, and then where will you be? At least by engaging left lateralization you can play tonsils-amygdala-philtrum and as everyone knows it’s a short hop from there to your ultimate goal.
If the poster is indeed Laurna Tallman, she has written books on her supposition that playing music in the right ear can cure a wide variety of mental illnesses. She has described herself as a “citizen scientist”, but I can find no references as to what formal training or degrees(if any) she might have, and no formal papers published in reputable journals, either. Any corrections and/or additions would be greatly appreciated.