I agree with Lamia. I don’t really care one way or the other with regards to my masculine sex, just like I don’t really care about breathing air – until the air is taken away.
Ah, the old dictionary attack. I can’t back up my arugments or keep my wrong ideas straight, so I attack you with a dictionary!
No. And, no.
If dictionaries ruled the world, I’d step back and say you were right. But dictionaries, like most reference books, are compendiums of human knowledge. A reflection of how we speak and think, a snapshot of our times. That may be what a random dictionary says, but that doesn’t mean it is correct or will remain correct forever.
Sample refutation:
You tell her she’s full of shit and her references are at best suspect, therefore wrong, and you want her to pay attention to anything else that you decide to ramble on about? Cop - out. Major fucking cop - out. "Oh, I called your posts shit, and didn’t like it when you tossed the same thing back at me, so that means I win!.
What I read it says is that “infants differ greatly in their temperament and behaviour, although such differences are present at birth and are reasonably consistent throughout at least the first year of life”. This is feminine/masculine stuff, not gender identity stuff. The author intends it as such, witnessing "Some writers suggest that the baby behaves in an innate boyish or girlish way, and that parents adapt to this. However, parents have expectations based on the knowledge that it is a boy or a girl. "
To make this something that supports your “claim that certain sex based differences are innate” is a bit of a stretch. Besides that, so far you only claim one innate sex based difference and that is the gender identity.
I will repeat my problems with this:
- At least in the cite you gave me, there was exactly one transsexual. It is scientifically interesting, but as yet also scientifically practically meaningless.
- I have yet to see how gender identity is something innate and fixed from that part of the brain.
Only because we disagree on that we know this part of the brain determines gender identity, that this is determined as such from birth, and that one transsexual is sufficient data.
“Another new study, conducted in 2002, discovered an unexpected finding: the BST region in human beings does not become significantly sexually dimorphic until adulthood. This was unexpected because it was not observed in lesser mammals.”
http://gidinfo.home.comcast.net/research.htm
Yes, but I’ve been trying to suggest that is relevant. But I found a much better article to illustrate this:
http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/rekers.html
Now there is a lot in there I don’t agree with and it is by no means complete, but nevertheless I find the whole article interesting and possibly relevant. This is the kind of 20 year old research that current ‘it’s all innate’ research is going up against. The other link I posted for the earlier cite has the opposite view. Both links have certain agendas that I prefer to filter out, and both links offer interesting data. For instance, it could mean that you yourself fall under the childhood condition, and the transsexual who posted in this thread indicating he became or discovered his transsexuality at the age 11-12 has the physical form of gender dysphoria.
Note that I said could, as I still don’t know nearly enough about you to say anything meaningful, other than what I have pointed out before.
Note also that the conclusion from both articles together would still be that either way, as I’ve suggested earlier you are probably very likely best off with SRS, as even the earlier research indicates that transsexuality in adulthood is virtually untreatable otherwise.
I know this, but I have been trying to point out that you, as an individual, exhibit some clear signs that I would consider typical gender role issues, not ones associated with your definition of gender identity issues.
You completely misread my explanation now, where previously I thought we had sorted this out in your summary, so that you’ve left me a bit puzzled. But I’ll repeat, now for clarity. Your “innate temperament and behaviour” were incompatible with the sex role your parents assigned you based on your genitals. Unless your brother is your identical twin, he is not necessarily relevant (though still interesting - Carl, in the article I quoted, also had a brother).
Well, as I said, I cannot claim to know your case intimately. I am a disinterested party here. I’m not interested into shoehorning you into anything. I’m trying to have this discussion with you to learn about the subject. I am learning, and fast. I’m aware that I am using you for that purpose. I am very grateful, and I already have a strong feeling I’ve overstayed my welcome and have been sadly unable to do much for you in return.
At the same time, if Mrs. Six claims that your condition is without a doubt innate or even most likely to be innate, I disagree, because none of this can be proven at this point.
On the other hand, we completely agree here.
I’m sorry you have so much trouble reading what I write sometimes. I have so far thought my English was quite decent, but my composition skills are apparently still lacking. Or of course it could be that certain sentences trigger a memory of past insults and prevent the whole paragraph from being read. Both are equally plausible views, I think. Either way, I will repeat what I was trying to say there.
There are good reasons for cosmetic surgery, and there are bad reasons for cosmetic surgery. There are clinics who perform such cosmetic surgery for good reasons (because they genuinely want to help people) and there are clinics who perform such cosmetic surgery for bad reasons (because, above all, they want to make money). The latter may sometimes take their obligation to follow the proper procedure somewhat less seriously.
I think there are sufficient examples of bad (often private) clinics that perform cosmetic surgery to worry that there may one day be a male who chose to undergo SRS for the wrong reasons. For this reason, it is good if people have access to valuable information before they undergo such therapy. One of the best ways to do so is by making them part of our collective consciousness.
I said no such thing.
I implied no such thing and I am sad that you would think that of me.
Yes, Then being key here, so I’ll ignore the rest.
In conclusion, I would just like to say that the content of these two links happily coexist in my mind, together with piles of other information (for instance historical development of sex roles, or the link I posted earlier on stereotypes). The one so far does not disprove the other, but rather compliment it.
http://gidinfo.home.comcast.net/research.htm
http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/rekers.html
Fighting ignorance does not mean looking for simple answers on complex issues, and I remain incredibly skeptic whenever a simple answer is given. This does not mean that the simple answer is never right. But people are so strongly attracted to simple answers, that it is usually the complex one that is overlooked most often.
I do not believe this is necessary. Certainly, here in the Netherlands it is not, where nearly all costs involved are covered by most health insurances and have been for a while now. Gender identity can be a serious problem that is best treated with SRS regardless of whether this is caused by genes or by the social environment. That should be sufficient grounds. Knowing the cause is only interesting in so far as it may help further improve the treatment.
Arwin: Thank you so much for that link to Leadership U. I’ve just e-mailed it to my brother; it makes a nice complement to the NARTH and Misogyny International links.
How about this as a treatment for persistently feminine boys: Let them be feminine.
There are so many messed up things going on in that link that I don’t know where to begin. Homosexuality is a mental disorder that needs to be cured. Feminine speech and gestures should be treated the same as disrupting class. Absent fathers cause homosexuality and transsexuality. And that’s just what I found by skimming.
I’ll have to read it more closely later.
And your quote GID shows some fundamental intellectual dishonesty in how you’re presenting your case.
I’ve tried that for six years, and I’m not getting any better! :eek:
I dunno, I thought you have been improving with age, not less feminine, just generally improving.
I hoped you might appreciate it. Now may I stress my words: "Now there is a lot in there I don’t agree with and it is by no means complete"
It’s exactly the part where I see a black hole in the article as well. However, like the recent articles focussing fully in the innate part, this article is written in a period where scientifically and politically, letting boys be feminine was in fact the de-facto standard.
Science interacts this way over the course of history, as any historical survey of any scientific subject you will read will show you. You have to take such articles in historical context and filter that out. The same goes for the other link. Both articles have clear political agendas, where scientific truth should have been the only one.
This is in the section on topics for further research, where scholars are grudgingly accepted to speculate, give their personal opinions, and suggest items for further research.
[qupte]Feminine speech and gestures should be treated the same as disrupting class. Absent fathers cause homosexuality and transsexuality. And that’s just what I found by skimming.
[/quote]
Careful now. In our current society, gender roles exist, and they still exist very strongly. Absent or detached fathers can and often do in this context have a strong influence on gender role development, but only if there is no alternative role model present. Many things that the author of this article uses are pedagogical principles that stand today, and very solidly too.
Intellectual dishonesty? sigh I suppose you really believe that I’m only interested in reasoning transsexuality out of existense or make it a 100% mental disorder or whatever?
I think I prefer going back to being called an idiot and asshole, even unconditionally.
When was this?
They do?
Think flower power …
You ever paid any attention to children, how they learn?
When the very premise is flawed everything that flows from that premise is unsound. The premise here, unquestioned by the researchers, is that boys exhibiting feminine characteristics are abnormal and need to be cured. That’s utter nonsense. Being feminine causes a boy no harm. It’s the very attitude displayed by these researches–that there’s something wrong with a boy being feminine–that causes the harm.
1985 was a time when boys were freely allowed to be feminine without fear of having their parents and society try to correct them? Damn, I wish my parents had known this.
Nope, it’s in the body of the paper, just before suggestions for further research. The author proposes that homosexuality be considered a pyschological disorder.
Children raised in lesbian housholds–where there is no father present–exhibit no greater incidence of homosexuality or gender identity disorders than those raised in traditional housholds. They tend to be more accepting of sexual differences, and boys and girls both tend to skew slightly closer to the middle of the gender divide–boys are more sensitive, and girls are more assertive.
My children will be raised in a household with no father present, and I have no fear for them when it comes to developing healthy attitudes towards sexuality, nor that they’ll be at any risk of sexual disorders.
The only pedagogical (teaching) technique I see was behavior modification, which in this case was used to force a feminine boy into becoming traditionally masculine.
Behavior modification is an appropriate tool for treating disorders, but using it to alter a harmless personality trait merely because the researches and society deem that trait undesirable is immoral and what’s more, what was done to “Carl” was cruel.
Yes, intellectual dishonesty. You cherry picked a quote from the article, and presented it out of context, cutting out everything that contradicted your thoery. Here’s the whole quote:
Notice how the researchers you are quoting disagree with you? Interesting how you left that part out.
The conditions are not mutually exclusive.
There have been males who have undergone surgery or other treatments and regretted it. There will continute to be those who slip throught the system.
The standards of care exist for exactly this reason. The requirement to have three months of therapy before the administration of hormones and a year of RLE are in place to prevent exactly what you describe, and two letters of recommendation from mental health professionals are there to screen out the patients for whom these treatments are not appropriate.
There were eight transsexuals, 6 MTF who had undergone treatment, one who had not, and one FTM.
I’ve resolved my gender role issues. My problem was never gender roles, it was that I had a group of serious physical defects that needed correcting. I like the way I am, this is how I’ve always wanted to be. I am extremely feminine, true, and I’ve adopted some very stereotypically feminine charateristics, also true, but those are not gender role issues because I am happy to be this way. I am free to chose the degree of femininity or androgyny I would like to exhibit, and this is what I choose.
This is not true. The very beginning of the article states:
The article then goes on to define the problem area:
Read the last two sentences. I’ll wager that this behavior is rare in childhood of even most transsexuals on this board.
Now I have for the first time no inhibitions of calling you an idiot. Learn the meaning of italics, and of scientifically and politically. Please.
Correct, but it is the very last paragraph. Besides, at the time of writing, he may have had a point. He did have strong indications in his research that homosexual behaviour could be a psycholological disorder. He did after all not have the benefit of all we know about the human brain today. And even today, we cannot rule out either way - there may be homosexuals who are so by nature, and there may be homosexuals who are so by nurture. I consider it very possible that both exist, though I currently do not know what percentage. Comparing data on homosexuality in animals alone would already suggest that current percentages among human beings match a natural occurrence of homosexuality in species that live in groups and are successful well beyond a threat of extinction of the species, so that ‘pathological cases’ might be rare.
I think key here is the combination of several problems - gender identity issues through problematic gender role identification, combined with an environment where this is strongly expected of the individual. Another important aspect of lesbian households is a natural difference in treating external social pressures.
More damaging to the author’s focus on the importance of the presence of an active father role figure is the suggestion that especially single mothers have issues themselves that they need to deal with. A father’s absence or disinterest is often just a symptom of other family problems that need dealing with, and for which the problematic behaviour in these children may well be symptomatic (again, the author makes a very clear distinction, as I quoted above). (My father is a family therapist)
I would even go so far as that I’m guessing they’ll run less risk than average. After all, they have two parents that are a lot better equipped with parenting skills, curiosity, and general knowledge of humans beings than most.
Yes. But force, no. It was used to cure pathological, highly problematic behavior. Ask any psychiatrist you know to look at the case in this article, and I believe he or she will agree with the author that Carl’s case here has more symptoms of pathological behaviour than of transsexualism.
I could see how in historical context you are suspect of the author, but this author is really a lot better scientist (and psychiatrist) than you give him credit for.
You’re turning this into a Clockwork Orange.
I was genuinly interested in that paragraph all by itself. I did not present it out of context, as I took evidence and ignored conjecture - something which I’m trying to do all the time. Socrates, Socrates, Socrates. Also, I gave the full link, expecting it would be read.
However, I understand your position, I will try to remember to add a paraphrase anyway to avoid giving the impression that I had false motives. Partly in the hope that you will henceforth desist from doing the same when quoting from my posts like you did with the cosmetic surgery thing yuck.
There’s an interesting question … Can you be both an idiot and intellectually dishonest? Asshole and intellectually dishonest are probably less mutually exclusive though. 
Here I blundered, for which I apologise. I skipped a few steps, that were not implied in the article or in the context of our discussion (reminds me of primary school math). I meant there was only one who had not undergone treatment. I isolated this one as the really meaningful one because the others skewed the research by having had their genitals removed. In the context of the new research, I’m also wondering if temporary hormone level changes before or during 11/12 can permanently influence SOM production levels. Still, looking at myself long, hard, with a healthy dose of self-criticism, and without disabling my Socratic attitude, I may have started to overly downplay the value of this article:
http://www.gires.org.uk/Text_Assets/maletofemale.pdf#search=‘stria%20terminalis(AND)human’
The more I read about it, the more I am forming an idea of how a physical form of transsexualism might develop. At the same time, I also realise that I’m going to be paraphrasing Socrates for quite a while yet.
I just want to point out that the gender role issues you had as a child and the gender role issues you resolved today do not have to be the same. Also, childhood gender role issues could very well be completely independent from transsexualism. Say that, as a child, you had a female brain that was already preordained to develop into the dysphoria by age 11-12. But that, on the other hand, being a child and still relatively a-sexual, this did not influence your gender identity yet, and that instead you were exhibiting signs of normal gender role exploration, that were perhaps negatively affected by how your environment reacted to them. Then by the age 11-12, a gender related part of your brain became active and shaped the BSTc so that it contains the incidence of SOM-neurons associated with women, and you became a real transsexual. It’s a possibility. A human being is certainly complex enough for it. And so far the great gaps in our knowledge of this subject allows for a large number of equally plausible scenarios to be written.
I think we could learn a lot on the interaction of transsexuality and gender role issues by putting the life stories of transsexuals next to each other. Gender role issues make a lot more people miserable than just transsexuals, and even transsexuals are only human, after all. And for them too, individual differences may be bigger than physical similarities.
You have nature fans, and you have nurture fans, but I personally think you have to be blind not to see that we become who we are through a complex interaction between the two. After all, our genes have hardly changed in 100.000 years, but back then I would be hunting horses with large pointy sticks (and probably badly, because my eyes aren’t all that good), and now I’m having an online discussion with a transsexual and am going to have lunch that I trade for virtual coins I earned by telling a complex machine how to do weird things that seem far removed from anything to do with acquiring food.
Humans are so wonderfully complex, I can’t help but love them for it.
(There’s my political agenda, right there. Love and curiosity. And, since I’ve mentioned him way too much in this post already anyway, Socrates.)
(By Jove, I’m using up too much energy here that should be used for writing a project plan, after all that provides food and shelter - sometimes I have to remind myself of those things)
Still not seeing how “dressing in girls’ clothing, playing with girls (!), trying on cosmetics and wigs, and displaying stereotypically feminine arm movements, gaits, and body gestures” is a “serious clinical problem.”
To equate it with “belligerent, destructive, interpersonally violent, and uncontrolled and simultaneously lacking gentle and socially sensitive behaviors” is ludicrous, as the latter actually harms others.
This person you’re quoting is obviously of the mindset that genderqueer and other cross-gender-role behaving people are behaviourally sick and need to be cured. You seemed to believe you were demonstrating the opposite by quoting this.
It also doesn’t have anything to do with transsexualis,
Rare, very much so. Pathological, no. The difference between the two groups of boys the “scientist” describes is that one group was exploring, meaning they returned to the “normal” expected masculine behavior, while those that were persistently feminine were described as pathological.
The idea that being persistently feminine is an illness that needs correcting is laughable. Carl wasn’t doing anyone any harm by his stereotypically feminine behavior.
Let me reinsert the italicized words you seemed to be so much in love with into my statement, and add a clause of clarification so that you can’t possibly misinterpret it:
Damn, I wish my parents had known that “scientifically and politically, letting boys be feminine was in fact the de-facto standard”, as this might have altered their view of how best to treat my feminine demeanor.
You need to learn the meaning of the word “disorder”. Homosexuality is not, and never has been a disorder, and there’s never been a shred of scientific evidence that is is. At the time the article was written, Homosexuality had been removed frm the DSM as a result of the concensus of mental health professionals that homosexuality is not a disorder. A disorder causes harm to either the person afflicted, or causes the person to harm others. Homosexuality does neither of these things. Neither does being extremely and persistently (I refuse to use the word pathologically, because that implies that femininity is somehow a sickness) feminine.
The only problems caused in this case were those caused by others being unable to accept Carl’s being different. I see no evidence anywhere in the report that Carl himself has harmed in any way by his behaviors and demeanor. There was no pathological behavior here that needed to be corrected.
If Carl had been my child heres how I would have dealt with his behavior: Let him be as feminine as he wants, for as long as he wants.
He’s a quack who is using science as a tool to promote a Christian conservative political agenda.
Nah. Alex was a psychopath, rapist and murderer who volunteered to have his personality alterd. He deserved everything that happened to him. Anything short of being tortured to death would be getting off easy for him.
Carl was harming neither himself nor anyone else, he was just expressing his personality. He had his personality altered, against his will, to meet what the people experimenting on him thought it should be.
But you didn’t quote the paragraph, you quoted one sentence from the paragraph, the only section of the paragraph that seemed to agree with you, and ignored that the rest of that paragraph and page for that matter, disagreed with you. Quoting something out of context that implies a message opposite to that of the source material is intellectually dishonest.
Sure you can. One is a lack of intelligence the other a lack of honesty. Separate issues.
Uh, no.
First, a transwoman who undergoes SRS has not had her genitals removed, she’s had them reconstructed into their proper form.
Second, treatment does not mean SRS exclusively. It could refer to any number of interventions including hormones, breast implants, facial feminization surgery.
Third, the treatment the researchers were interested in was hormones, as it was speculated that this might have influenced the sexual dimorphism, and in the same report, they controlled for and discounted this possibilty.
They don’t have to be, no, but they were.
I agree completely, and what’s more, I’ve been saying this all along.
Hee hee. Asexual. I do believe that’s the first time anyone has ever described me that way at any age of development.
That’s a plausible scenario, given your assumpltions. However, I was as a child persistently feminine–I didn’t explore the masculine roles unless forced to. I was one of the children referred to in your cited quackery as pathologically feminine.
Agreed.
This has been done. There are transsexuals who identify early in childhood and those who identify in old age. There are those who strongly identify witht the gender roles of the chosen gender, and those who remain in the sex roles of their genetic sex even after transition.
That all of these things vary so greatly would seem to indicate that they are not the cause. That every FTM transsexual whose BST has been examined had one consistent with that of a female brain seems to indicate that the cause is physical.
But he also indicates that feminine behaviour isn’t pathological per se. Perhaps I have been reading the article wrong, but what I know of children, both theoretically and in practice, is that they can turn any kind of behaviour into pathological behaviour. Why should feminine behaviour be any different? And if a parent does not know how to deal with pathological behaviour, of any kind, he will also not be able to respond to this.
Pathologically feminine and persistently feminine are different things.
This not normal behavior for children by anyone’s standard. I do agree that there is a danger that people would abuse a diagnosis like this to suppress something perfectly natural. More likely however, in the cases under review here, active suppression of natural ‘feminine’ behavior has helped a child develop into the pathological area. Possibly because he was rewarded for the behaviour with extra attention, even if it was negative. The absent father and its related family issues may contribute to this because the child wants his attention. You see one misperception is that in these issues, the absence of a father role is a problem. It is as likely the rejection of the father role as a result of the painful abandonment. (in Carl’s case, his mother remarried four times).
Relevant in this respect is also the age at which the father leaves. A child develops a non-self centered awareness of others between the age 6-9. Between that age and the age at which a child becomes more or less self aware (2-3), abandonement is most damaging. Abandonement is even more damaging, because they may inhibit bonding with other males through generalisation.
Thank you for that clarification, I take my words back.
I don’t need to learn anything. I have a persistent emphatical urge that constantly makes me try to understand the position of other people. I fully place the blame on my parents who are both trained social workers. During their training they both worked at a government social aid post, where my father among others made house calls on drug addicts to make sure they weren’t doing themselves in and my mother mostly took in women with ‘men issues’. Later my mother gave women empowerment workshops encouraging women to explore their potential, supported by my father, and my father continued to train himself to become a fully qualified family therapist, where he specialized in children and among others helped to develop play therapy. So you see, I can’t really help myself.
And from that perspective, I understand where he (Rekers) is coming from. You don’t. That’s fine, I can live with that. Not everyone is equally interested in understanding others, and too much understanding can lead to harmful passivity. Misunderstanding can lead to unreasonable dismissal of a respected Ph.D as a quack, or calling well-meaning fellow SD’ers idiots (of which we are now both guilty). Just as long as you recognise the distinction between his position and mine.
No, it doesn’t. Pathological happiness, pathological hobbies, pathological sunbathing, pathological hair combing, all in all pathological is like the word ‘too’, only specific for medical context. Consider the pathological masculinity described in the article and also:
You go on to state:
How about:
Only after four years, the therapists are called in.
That’s what his mother tried, for four years.
If that’s what you need him to be, fine.
Nah. Alex was a psychopath, rapist and murderer who volunteered to have his personality alterd. He deserved everything that happened to him. Anything short of being tortured to death would be getting off easy for him.
Yes he was.
Ok, I deduced that as a paragraph from the mess of words on that page.
It would have been if there had been scientific evidence following that countered this. But there was only conjecture. Besides that, in that mail I posted both views next to each other and didn’t dismiss either. I just highlighted that paragraph because it was new. Did you know about it before?
Intellectual dishonesty implies intelligence. But this is not the kind of discussion I’m interested in. I’ve studied a language for four years and still have one lexicologist as a close friend. Been there, done that.
That’s true. I shouldn’t have said genitals, I should have said hormone producing sex-related organs.
From what I understand it is never exclusively SRS, and always goes with at least hormones, and almost always facial feminization surgery? Breast implants only when hormones don’t produce sufficient breast-size?
I didnt feel they did, because in the FTM cases and MTF case, hormone producing organs were removed. But perhaps I’m not sufficiently aware of how hormones are produced in the body.
They don’t have to be, no, but they were.
I meant that the state of being a child is relatively a-sexual to begin with, until puberty kicks in.
Were you seriously unhappy as a child? Socially isolated? Compulsive? I’m not so sure Rekers would have considered your case pathological. I certainly know I don’t know enough about you to make that distinction. This time, I only intended it as you read it, as a plausible scenario. It’s beyond my scope to say much more about you personally than I’ve been doing in the little exercise you invited me to a by now fair number of posts back.
But that in turn seems again to indicate that feminine behavior as a child has nothing to do with transsexualism, nor does it mean that transsexuality and gender identity (now in the sense used by Rekers) are necessarily related during childhood. Keslers research therefore remains interesting and relevant, and says a lot more about gender roles in children than other research. Such as:
You see, a biological indication of gender dysphoria, even if it could be found at birth, doesn’t yet explain how this influences the psychological development of a child into an adult, gender roles, and so on. I haven’t found any research that discusses this. If you have, I’d love to read it.
Well, of course it was: feminine behaviour among men is socially stigmatized, duh!!
People are often led into “social isolation, ridicule, and chronic unhappiness” by how people react to their being gay, or Jewish, or goth, or intelligent. That doesn’t make any of those conditions pathological. What it indicates is that the other people are treating them like shit, and need a good whack upside the head.
It is? Wow, I could have sworn I spent a fair amount of time whacking it from the age of six onward.
Bloody hell, Matt, you were an early starter. I didn’t start choking the chicken until much later, about double your age in fact.
You sure you’re telling the truth? I notice that you’re usually a little reserved when discussing matters pertaining to sex.