I don’t know if this is directed to me/all people in this thread talking about the “mental illness” aspect. But I want to say that I was talking either way. The way I understand it F2M is pretty bad too, having longer recovery time and being generally more complicated to pull off convincingly. Though maybe I have it backwards, I always confuse them.
It’s mostly just easier to stick to talking about one because otherwise every post contains a laundry list of every possible procedure in the interest of becoming “inclusive.”
Also, breast implants are such a common procedure I’m kind of meh about them, they’re just not as complicated as severely altering a piece of the body. I didn’t know that there was a such thing as face alteration surgery that would make the face more masculine/feminine, however, I always wondered if they did something like that.
Well, even the researchers doing the brain studies talk about male and female brain. Primarily because that term can simply mean “the brain inside a biological female’s body”, so realistically I’d never stop using the term in that sense. But that doesn’t mean I think there is a totally unique signature that 100% defines a female brain versus a male brain.
Not like historical eugenics, which invariably involved extreme discrimination and abuse. However it’s only logical that now, in the 21st century and going forward as we get better and better at genetic testing and even perhaps human genetic engineering we would eliminate undesirable traits.
You can now, as I’m sure you know, test for down’s syndrome and most mothers who receive positive tests choose to abort. This isn’t immoral, but a simple recognition that if they are looking at giving birth to a significantly handicapped child it simply makes sense to not allow that child to exist but instead to try again.
Mental abnormalities contrary to normal function like GID and homosexuality would quickly disappear if we could test for them, no doubt about it.
Then I’ll just say you’re confused about what my intention was. I have nothing to say really about treatment, not particularly interesting to me. I was just noting I was happy that Cecil avoided the bias mostly seen on these boards and correctly labelled GID as not just a “lifestyle” but an illness.
Fair enough, then we have nothing to really discuss, I wasn’t intending to wade into the treatment debate as I was genuinely not very interested in that aspect of it.
If someone had breast enhancement surgery, would you be equally caught up in arguing that they shouldn’t be fighting the biological reality of their smaller breasts?
Frankly, I have no opinion either way on whether gender dysphoria is a mental illness or not. Studies appear to show that the best treatment (in terms of reduced suicide rates & depression) is gender reassignment surgery, and really that’s all that matters. I really don’t see why “biological reality” is such a bugbear for people. Gender is a very complicated topic, and I don’t find it wholly unreasonable that someone could have a more “female” brain in a more “male” body. Just as intersex people aren’t binary male/female in that their reproductive organs don’t fall within a clearly defined male/female boundary, it seems reasonable enough that brains could fall on a similar spectrum.
I think Broomstick hit the nail on the head, in that peoples instinctive reaction to surgery on the genitals seems to be disgust for whatever reason. Breast enhancement or a nose job is more accepted, but just as the thought of height increasing surgery (which involves breaking the knees and inserting a wedge which is increased in width gradually) triggers my wince reflex, so too does the thought of genital surgery for many people.
I certainly don’t agree that homosexuaity would disappear if it could be “tested for” nor that it is “undesirable.” And in case it matters I am not homosexual.
People have breast enhancements to satisfy their vanity, I don’t believe they have a genuine delusion that they are “a larger breasted woman in a smaller breasted woman’s body.” That’s why it’s a total non-sequitur and has no place in a discussion about psychiatric disorders like GID or other types of dysmorphia.
No one that I’ve seen is saying not to do surgery. But if your position is that we shouldn’t be looking into research for alternatives, that’s like telling paraplegics, “you have wheelchairs, why should we even bother looking for long term cures to spinal cord injuries??”
Yes, people are disgusted by things, but that has nothing to do with whether or not GID people have a psychiatric disorder. Science says they do.
Whether it’s a “psychiatric disorder” or a “birth defect” I think the end goal here is to alleviate suffering to the extent we are able to do so. It’s all very well to go on about how, as an analogy, a wheelchair isn’t an ideal solution to the problem of spinal cord injury but the fact remains** it’s the best solution we currently have** and to deny that to people is needlessly cruel. At present what do we have to offer a transsexual? Endless therapy which won’t cure, only give them “coping skills” which may or may not be adequate? Sexual reassignment treatment which is admittedly imperfect? Really, what else is there? Those are the two choices open to them at present, those are likely to be the only choices for the foreseeable future. Nattering on about how great a “real cure” in the brain (or whatever) would be is pointless when you’re faced with a human being suffering right now, today, this minute.
Sure, discussing genital surgery is disturbing. So is the notion of taking a liver out of a dead person and stitching it into a live person but we now do that routinely. A LOT of medicine, when you really think about it, is creepy/disgusting/unnerving… even horrifying.
Again, I say what is most important here is taking dysfunctional, suffering people and making them as happy and functional as possible. It doesn’t matter how that state came to be, whether genetic, psychiatric, hormonal, or whatever. If that entails something I, personally, might find disturbing or disgusting, well, maybe I should just suck it up a little for the sake of my fellow human being. After all, I only have to deal with it for the brief period of time I am with that person - they have to deal with and suffer their condition 24/7, 365, with no time off, forever. I don’t have to understand their mental state, or even be particularly happy with their situation or how they handle it, but I do owe them, as a fellow human being, some effort to not make their lives harder.
I’m hesitant to judge or make generalizations here; transsexuals are struggling with a problem I don’t have and it’s difficult for me to relate. I’ve known quite a few over the years, though, and a few things about them really stand out:
–The transsexuals I’ve known, I’ve met through my involvement in theater and comic books. They are drawn to fabulism and fantasy to a much greater degree than other people.
–They are, on an individual level, incredibly disorganized. This could explain why, despite their high representation in literary and creative fields, there is no organized movement or school of transsexual artists or writers.
–This is the one that gets me: They are not attracted to each other. M-to-F transsexuals I’ve met tend to be attracted to women, but only to those of the born and bred variety.
There’s evidence of a problem here, but just not quite enough to do much about it.
Let me respond to some of these things in a way which is not meant to be argumentative, but to provide a different viewpoint. And give me a convenient excuse to editorialize.
IME this seems to be true, but then I’ve never seen it carried out in a negative way. Most transsexuals I know are heavy into Sci-Fi and fantasy, but in the nerdy way, not the “I’ve lost touch with reality way.” An example would be a recent party of t-girls I went to where the hottest debate topics were Firefly versus the rest of the Sci-Fi world, and which Doctor Who was the best. Many of them are involved in Renn Faire, but not because they see themselves as a gypsy dancer or fairy princess, but because for some it was one of the first ways it was socially acceptable to cross-dress. The same with ones I know in the theatre. Transsexuals IME tend to be highly creative and somewhat eclectic in all things.
On an individual level…I’m not sure. I can’t comment that I’ve noticed any difference relative to anyone else. On a group level transsexuals have a big problem which lesbians and gays do not - for many, or most transsexuals, there is an ultimate goal of leaving the group. A lesbian doesn’t think “someday I will no longer be gay,” but a trans woman thinks “someday, after SRS and legal work, I’ll no longer be trans” and when they do either transition completely or else learn to pass so well it makes no difference, then they tend to leave the group, cutting off ties with long-term friends to start an independent life. Many describe life as three-phases: “first I was a boy, then I was trans, now I’m a woman and all the rest is behind me.” I’ve known a few who within 6 months after SRS and getting their gender markers changed dropped cold-turkey almost all their friends, trans or not, because they wanted to live a quiet, ordinary life as a woman, not as a transwoman. And it’s very painful for their friends when this happens - everyone wants to see and is cheering on someone who achieves that goal, but they also know when that person does achieve it, they likely will never see them again. I find that very sad.
And that may be desirable for the individual, but it’s a big problem for the community and activism, when its most successful and well-adjusted members who do transition fully are steadily dropping out.
From what I understand from many deep, heart-to-heart conversations, they usually are not attracted to each other because they tend to view others in the community as being sisters or brothers, rather than friends. Transsexuals have often had to endure psychological trauma and abuse, and physical abuse and trauma, which would floor the average person. At a recent trans and lesbian party I went to, very late at night the conversation turned sober and the topic went around this large table of women of who had been raped - and guess what, every single person at that table had been raped at least once, some multiple times. Most had experienced physical abuse or been attacked, every one had experienced mental and emotional abuse, and pretty much everyone had suffered from job discrimination or were in imminent danger of losing their job.
One can then say “well, lesbians and gays are an oppressed group,” but the problem is the level of oppression which lesbians and gays face pales next to that which transsexuals face. Transsexuals live in a world where they are placed in the lowest caste of society. They can be made fun, parodied, and abused in ways which few would ever think to do to any other minority group. I’ve seen polls where 6 of 10 American adults have said they feel “unsafe” around transsexuals, and 9 of 10 would be too terrified to let their children be taught by a trans teacher. I’ve also seen polls where fully 1/3 of LGB folks say they would not ever want to be associated with that embarrassing “T,” and even locally here in my parochial city, it’s not hard to find such things as lesbian women’s activities to which no, transwomen, no matter how well they may or may not pass, are not welcome. And some gay men are very hostile towards transmen, resorting even to physical abuse. On this message board on the 12 years I’ve been here I’ve seen several prominent posters who otherwise seem intelligent and reasonable people curl their electronic lip in open disgust at transsexuals, usually to the silent approval of the majority of members here.
Those sorts of shared painful life experiences create a very tight (yet sadly temporary) bond which makes you tend to see other transsexuals as part of your family, rather than dating material. That having been said, I have known transsexuals who have dated each other, and had successful relationships, it’s just very rare.
I have not researched that specific subject, but my gut feel is that there is little to no connection. Let me explain why my gut thinks this.
A significant number of children and teens are raped or sexually abused, and yet the prevalence of transsexuals in the United States is still somewhat rare, between 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 10,000 for transwomen, and between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 30,000 for transmen (it’s very difficult to get solid numbers due to the fear of exposure and the desire for “deep stealth”).
Most transwomen I speak to have had their sexual assaults happen in their mid-late teens, when they started expressing a different gender identity and someone decided to take advantage of that, or punish them for it (and on an aside, one really has to wonder about the extremely crippled mental state of a homophobic male who is so homophobic they resort to committing homosexual rape to punish a transwoman.) Most transwomen speak of having their gender dysphoria manifest well below that age, typically from age 4-8).
And although I haven’t looked into that topic specifically, from what I can recall of the research I’ve read on the subject, I’m not recalling that as being strongly pushed as a cause. I have seen editorializing that because transpeople behave outside of gender norms for their birth sex, they could attract the attention of pedophiles and sexual predators, who may be more likely to molest or rape a willowy boy with long hair, than a pumped-up testosterone-laden soccer jock. In addition, transgendered youth may give off body-language and verbal signals of submissiveness, confusion, and uncertainty, which may then paint a giant virtual target on them of “this is someone I can molest and they’re less likely to fight back and definitely won’t tell anyone.”
So I’m not dismissing that it could be a cause in some cases, or a trigger, but I’m not thinking it’s likely.
I agree with Una. Besides all else, I’ve seen a few studies that prove we can reliably cause transexedness in rats and mice by manipulating a mother’s hormones during pregnancy. Although no such experiments have been done on humans, I think that we’re looking at a very similar cause.
I recall seeing studies that girls who were born late in their mother’s lives (and thus exposed to a different that usual ratio of hormones in utero) are likely to be androgynous or butch, if not necessarily transgendered.
Perhaps it is. But we do not have effective chemical treatments available.
We “assume” the mental one is right because a) we can change the physical more effectively than we can change the mental, and b) because one’s mental state is a key component of self-perception. In most cases, someone who views himself as a man would not want to be made to view himself as a woman. It would completely change the way he see himself, and probably would make him feel like he was discarding a part of himself. Conversely, such people tend to see sex reassignment surgery as corrective.
With depression, there is nothing physical to change; the only way to treat it is by changing the way someone thinks – either via therapy or chemistry.
Powers &8^]
In the statement, “I am a woman trapped in the body of a man”, who or what is the “I”? Doesn’t the statement imply a separate but indwelling identity? A “soul”, then? Was this being “there” at birth, as we typically think of a soul? How separate is this being?
When philosophy and/or metaphysics and/or spirituality rub up against science, it generally works to the disadvantage of both. When we cannot “know” the answer, it is important that we accept that and stop looking, due to threat of finding the “answer”, when we know there isn’t one.
Let it be, and judge not. For myself, the notion that one has an identity that is at variance with one’s body is an absurdity. But if someone cannot live, cannot function, cannot partake in life because they believe that this is so, let’s just do what we can. We can surely counsel caution, we can warn that once you go down the Road of the Scalpel, there is no turning back.
But if they are already miserable, and sincerely believe that this form of mutilation will render them capable of a reasonable life, well, why the hell not? If they don’t have a life now, what are they risking?
Out of billions and billions of people, just about every possibility is realized. There simply has to be some people who will have the surgery, and have a near miraculous experience. There also has to be people who will have it and be worse off than they were.
We can improve our surgical techniques. We can improve our understanding of sexuality and brain functions. We may find that there is a malfuncton in some of these case that is treatable and reversible by non-drastic means. All of his we can do.
But we cannot ever know if there is a soul with an identity within a body. The “I” that Descartes talks about. Let it be. Not our call to make.
Ditto. But Una explained to me some years back that a sense of gender varies among people. There are ultra-macho guys (not me) and ultra-femme babes. There’s no conceptual reason why somebody couldn’t combine a head from one extreme with a mis-matched body.
FWIW, the response rates that Cecil reported didn’t seem too low to me-- they seemed rather typical. If I understand your posts correctly though, it seems that even determined (and expensive) followup by researchers might not track down a high share.
Well, depression wasn’t always a coded medical condition: Lincoln suffered from melancholy, but he wasn’t considered crazy at the time. The trend is towards the increasing medicalization of the human condition. So calling this stuff a mental issue isn’t a huge leap.
On castration anxiety: that has to play a big role. There are very good evolutionary reasons for men to protect their genitalia, so it’s not surprising that these inclinations would bleed off into other attitudes.
While I’m interested in reported self-satisfaction with surgery, that doesn’t seem to me to be the only relevant metric. It’s a difficult to reverse procedure that we’re discussing after all and not the sort of thing to which one would want to admit an error in judgment. So I found other metrics salient (eg an increase in finding a partner). I guess I’m wondering whether 3rd parties (friends, families) believe the life of the TS has improved. It seems that your informed anecdotal impression is yes.
I’m hesitant to judge or make generalizations here; transsexuals are struggling with a problem I don’t have and it’s difficult for me to relate. I’ve known quite a few over the years, though, and a few things about them really stand out:
–The transsexuals I’ve known, I’ve met through my involvement in theater and comic books. They are drawn to fabulism and fantasy to a much greater degree than other people.
QUOTE]
I’d like to add to Una’s response to this point. I’ve attended quite a few Star Trek conventions and one of the things I’ve noticed is that the con audiences seem to have a much higher percentage than the population at large of folks I would characterize as “outcasts.” Many are severely overweight, socially maladapted, or at least just generally geeky. (I’m not casting aspersions. I most definitely count myself in this group.) Sci fi cons appeal to us on a couple of different levels – they are set in a different reality, not the one that judges us and finds us wanting, and thus, as mostly outcasts from the rest of society, we tend to be more accepting of each other’s flaws, issues, and shortcomings.
In other words, transsexuals may not be drawn to these venues because of something about their makeup, they may be drawn to them because they find a greater degree of acceptance among kindred souls.
Naturalistic fallacy. Hilarious, by the way. Will science also eliminate all forms of irrumatio, masturbation, fellatio and contraception, since these all contravene the divine evolutionary edict of fecund fornication?
Well, there is some level of forced acknowledgment, even if of a passive form. Use of pronouns, not freaking/protesting/etc to their choice of restroom, etc. That’s a far cry from expecting you to join the Trans Parade, carry a banner, and cheer, but it is a level of public acknowledgment.
Well, I can understand when comparing a purely physical construct like genitalia vs a purely mental construct, one might wish to give precedence to the physical - expecially when talking about someone else’s mental constructs. The question is if the mental construct does not have roots in a different physical construct, i.e. brain structure/chemistry. And if it does, then which should be given predeminance?
One challenging question just might be if identity stands apart from something like schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, where we acknowledge the brain chemistry is significant but also disfunctional. If we’re willing to call brain chemistry disfunctional in one case, why not in another case? Whether that is transgenderedness, or homosexuality?
Perhaps it is, but there isn’t an easy way to adjust the chemistry back into balance, because we cannot yet identify what is out of balance?
Thanks. Note that I had to specifically look for the “Rationale” tab for the discussion. I overlooked it at first, and wondered about all the double asterisks.
Dysfunction? Their equipment is working properly.
Yeah, because none of the acts homosexuals do are ever performed by heterosexuals. :rolleyes: Or are you trying to argue that the only sex we should be having is for reproduction, and nothing else? Does that include masturbation?
Okay, I will grant you that masturbation isn’t really sexual intercourse, mostly because if fails on the grounds of “inter” and “course”.
And how much of that is because they are homosexual, vs because they are people? And of the amount associated with their homosexuality, how much of that is derived from social factors, i.e. acceptance by family, stress with employers, etc?
Hyperbole noted.
I understand what you are saying. And even in the case of things like bipolar disorder that are attributable to brain chemistry imbalances, it’s not quite a simple fix. There’s plenty of finding the right meds and right dosages, and then there are other problems with keeping on the meds.
But suppose for a moment we did find some biochemical system that could account for the condition, something that could be treated by meds. Then it becomes a real issue to discuss whether a person is ill and should try treatment for the biochemical state, or if they should be preserved how they feel and the body changed to fit.
Yep.
It is sad to think that they give up friendships. On the other hand, many people have life changes that make and break social ties. Think, for example, of growing up, moving away to college, then moving away from there somewhere else to start a career. Then getting married and moving again. Each relocation marks a physical life transition that affects relationships and friendships. It is sad, but it is a fact of life. I guess I can perceive how a person who has gone through transition would like their life to then be about their new state, and not focused on how they were.
You know how there’s always someone in your social group who calls you by the nickname you had in elementary school, even though you’ve tried to dump it? Or always brings up stuff that happened in the past? That can be rough when those elements are all about things you want to put behind you and not constantly deal with. And also, once you’re trying to pass, you don’t want your new friends and acquaintances aware of your old you. You don’t want them asking why you are friends with so many trans people, because it puts your identity in question. When you are trying to live as a woman, the last thing you want is people still reacting to you like a man, or a freak.