I am? How on earth did you get that impression? And yes, I am telling the truth.
OK, sorry. My wife’s always telling me I’m too intolerant and jump to conclusions about other people.
My earliest fumblings are too embarrassing to relate.
Well, mine wasn’t a real Emmy award winner either… but at least I had fun 
Carl’s behavior caused nobody harm. It was his mother’s discomfort and the reaction s of others that caused the problems Carl was dealing with. The family problems would have been eliminated if Carl’s mother had simply let him be feminine.
If the harmful reactions of others to an otherwise harmless status renders it pathological, then being Korean is pathological.
If the problem wasn’t with femininity per se, but with pathological femininity, then the purpose of the behavior modification should have been to get rid of the pathological features of the behavior. But it wasn’t. The purpose of the behavior modification was to eradicate the feminine behaviors and replace them with masculine ones.
And lets look at what makes the feminine behavior “pathological”:
I fail to see what the harm in this behavior is. Others may cause the feminine boy problems because he is feminine, true, but that is their problem.
The hypermasculine behavior clearly is harmful, aggression and belligerence directly harm others. The behaviors described above harm no one.
My father and step mother once told me they objected to white women marrying black men. Why? Oh not because they thought it was bad. They felt sorry for how others would treat this poor couple, and especially bad for how other children would treat their children. They were incapable of seeing the hypocrisy in their statements–they, and people like them, were the ones creating the problem.
Carl’s mother, the doctors, and others with the idea that being a feminine male is somehow wrong are the ones who caused the problem with Carl’s behavior, not Carl.
They started with the assumption that beyond transitory exploration in early childhood, femininity in boys was bad, and everything else they did is based on that flawed assumption. That man has an anti-homosexual and anti-transsexual
agenda to promote and used behavior modification to eradicate a harmless character trait in pursuit of that aim. I have no doubt that he believes he’s doing the right thing, and just as little doubt that he’s a big part of the problem.
I explored that site a bit. It’s now on my list of right-wing wacko sites like NARTH, Misogyny International.
I emailed that link to my therapist. I don’t see him until Monday, but if he e-mails me back, I’ll post a summary. Otherwise, I’m done discussing this.
I don’t have the energy for it anymore.
I’ll just have to chalk this up to wasted time and energy.
If you cannot see how this statement, which you refused to retract, is deeply offensive to me, then it’s obvious we’ll never be able to come anywhere close to agreement:
Uh, roger? matt’s about as reserved when it comes to matters pertaining to sex as I am about matters pertaining to clothes, or Fenris is about matters pertaining to comic books.
I know, I know. You think I’m stupid as well as bigoted?!
Actually, both you and Matt get a mention in my vanity thread.
I think that just by removing the word ‘often’, the statement may be made much less offensive, because then it wouldn’t imply that most men who feel they should be women are simply “unable to cope with the gender borders that have been as unnaturally imposed upon him.” What do you think?
Hee! I’m urbane now. How sweet of you
Somewhat related to this thread:
Since my original post, I have talked to a couple ‘friends’ about how they would feel if someone they knew was transsexual. One said, “Nah man, God made you the way you are and you shouldn’t try to change it.” The other said, “So, he’s gay. Just accept it, and be gay.”
MUTHERFUCKERDAMMITSOMBITCHFUUUUCCKKKK!
deep breath Ok, I feel better. Now get your ignorant head out of your ass, watch some Discovery Health (ya know, one of the channels that isn’t ESPN), and come back when you’ve got something other than the uninformed garbage that you call an opinion to say to me.
(above rant not directed at anyone here at the SDMB)
She let him be for four years and only took him to seek help when the serious problems arose that I quoted. What you’re currently doing is allowing your idealism to become tunnel vision. Perhaps it also has to do with you living in Texas and me living in the Netherlands. You know, the land who’s strongest response to Kelly’s presence in Big Brother was a few guys who were into her and didn’t realise she hadn’t always been a woman (make that hormonically and genetally woman if you will) going ‘ew’, and where you wouldn’t have to sell the house to pay for your therapy because the insurance covers it and noone objects. It’s not such a bad place, although according to some Texans it is complete and utter Hell. I’m sure some of us here in the land of legal prostitution, euthanasia - including, oh horror, for children under extreme circumstances, abortion, legalised soft-drugs, insurances covering transsexuality, and very anti-gun ownership … think the absolute same of Texas.
It can be. Social pressures can be wrong and often are (I’m a Thomas Hardy fan, myself), but nevertheless a healthy child will develop sensitivity to them and find a balanced position between his natural inclinations and social acceptance that he or she is comfortable with. This is an essential part of a child’s social development.
But if the femininity was indeed pathological, then behaviour modification could easily have gotten rid of most of them as a side effect of the treatment of the behavior being pathological. Both humans and children are naturally flexible, which is why rigid behavior can in fact indicate a problem.
You leave out the two quotes I gave that indicated Carl had serious problems. If you think that in this case it is ‘simply’ a matter of changing Carl’s environment, fine. I can wait till Monday.
They harm Carl. Now I know this is a stretch for you, because it is too close to your personal experience (even though it may be different) to look at this objectively. So I’m going to wait until Monday and see if that brings any light.
True. But at the same time you (I would almost say of all people) fail to see that they are a genuine threat to such children.
Carl’s mother perceived after four years that Carl’s behavior wasn’t as amusing as she first considered it (and probably thereby encouraged him). I understand where you’re coming from, but you’re being an idealist without bounds. I recognise this, from personal experience.
Even if that was his agenda, you have made it clear you have an agenda of your own. I’m, again, as always, working hard to separate useful research data from political agendas.
I wish you would try this too. But by this time, I believe you’re starting to become part of the problem yourself. My experience tells me that my approach to such issues has more success in achieving public acceptance of matters such as transsexuality than yours. In this I think I correctly represent my country’s general attitude, or at least as it has been for most of the last decade or two.
So far I had the impression that we were successfully working towards a mutual understanding. But from this post I’m sensing an unwillingness to genuinely try to understand other people’s point of views, and rather prefer to push them into whatever political hole suits you best.
By this time you’ve put such restrictions on what ideological room you allow yourself that you severely restrict your capacity to view things from more than one angle. I warn you that such a position in life only leads to counter movements. Short term gain, long term loss. Respect for other people and their views is a requisite for allowing them to see a larger reality and expand their borders rather than put up Berlin Walls and SDIs. You’ve not been doing that, but you’re moving towards it now.
Fine. I’m not interested in the site, only the article, and then only specific bits of it.
Ok.
You underestimate the value of such discussions, how they will channel out through me to others and to the readers on this board.
I can think of many ways in which this statement could be offensive to you (I’m a creative person).
However, what it says is that I believe that the percentage of men who express that they believe they are female in a male body, at one point in their life, are real transsexuals even by your strictest definition of it. You and I already agreed on this, that therapy needs to weed out those who are not true transsexuals. Isn’t that practically the same as this statement?
OtherSiders suggestion to remove often will depend on the actual percentage.
Varying percentages in regions with different levels of strictness on gender role assignment would also be very interesting to investigate, though it might be hard to get reliable data for a number of reasons.
One of my professors once mentioned that many minds can accept answers without question, but few minds can accept questions without answer.
Wait a minute. Wait just a goddamned minute! Did you actually just say that being Korean can be a pathology if people take it into their heads to make your life hell because of it?!
Learning to pretend to be something you’re not in order to avoid the abuse of others is “an essential part of a child’s social development”? And you’re pathological if you resist this indoctrination and suffer their abuse?
You need to step back a minute, abandon your revoltingly patronizing “oh, your ideology is blinding you” attitude to Kaitlyn, and consider what you are saying.
You are saying that if a person’s peers continually abuse, revile, and exclude that person because of their difference from some norm, and that the person feels depressed about that, that person’s difference is pathological. It could be having different gender roles; it could be being of a different race. It doesn’t matter. It’s a pathology, and needs to be treated. It couldn’t possibly be the revilers and tormentors that need to be fixed!
No, they don’t. That’s like saying that if the police beat up a black man, being black is harmful. No; racism is harmful, as is gender-role prejudice.
Well, you obviously aren’t, since you’re fixated on this piece of crap, which deals entirely with promoting the ideal that gender normativity is important and to be encouraged, and gender role deviance is pathological and to be eliminated. If you removed that ideal, nobody would have done that research.
Failure to agree with you does not mean failure to understand you.
I, for one, fail to respect points of view that impute pathology to me on the basis of being genderqueer, just as I fail to respect points of view that do the same on the basis of my being gay. I don’t see how it could possibly be useful or healthy for me to respect beliefs that state that my natural, harmless difference makes me diseased.
Hee hee. I’m not Korean, I’m pathologically Korean. That’s a new one.
I’d respond, but I don’t have anything to add to matt’s excellent response.
Is the “they” in this sentence my father and stepfather, or the mixed race couple?
If it’s my father and stepmother, I not only do not fail to see the threat, I said myself that they are the ones creating the problem.
If you mean the mixed-race couple, that’s just sad.
You’ve mixed things I have said up, and mixed in some things Kaitlyn said.
- Practically any kind of behavior can become pathological. I implied this Think of cleaning. Compulsive obsessive is a term you might be more familiar with. I thought I had been clear about this:
- The fact that people manage to make your life hell, whether that is fair or not, still means they manage to make your life hell. This has nothing to do with pathology, and everything to do with self-preservation. I have stated clearly that people who do not accept feminine behaviour in boys are wrong. They are first wrong, and more wrong. But it is not wrong to want to avoid the consequences. If you are at odds with your environment to the point where you get unhappy, and you cannot change your environment, you have to accept it if you can, or else adapt or leave. This in itself has nothing to do with pathology. This has more to do with why boards like these have rules and stickies, and why people obey them. This has to do with essential development of social skills.
Now in the case of Carl, I understand it will be difficult for you to understand that his feminine behavior could in fact be compulsive obsessive rather than just expression of normal tendencies. It is very reasonable of you to have problems with this, because you feel they are natural behavior that is brutally repressed by stupid people; and since stupid people have been brutally repressing all sorts of things, it’s a logical reaction. What I’m asking you to do is to try to allow a tiny bit of room for the possibility that Carl was in fact acting compulsive obsessive about his femininity to the point where it became pathological.
If you can do this (like I often do, like now on this board, and like I’m probably make you feel you’re doing) without hurting yourself, then you’re not pathological. If you’d insist on keeping at it at the cost of your career, friends, health, and so on, then it would certainly become pathological. Mind you it could still be for the right cause, and you’d certainly yourself believe so, but medically it would definitely be called pathological behaviour.
I’ve already the feeling that I’m often both the only one here taking steps back and the only one taking steps forward.
This is why I don’t have to take a step back. As I’ve explained above, you’re misunderstanding me.
Above all, getting beat up is harmful. Think about that one. Is it up to you to decide for a 4-8 year old boy that getting beat up is the best thing for him, because ultimately he may serve a higher cause?
Not always, no, but frightfully often, I get this impression. It may be that I have completely the wrong impression, because of course if I don’t understand how would I know? But at the same time, I somehow feel I’m trying a lot harder than you.
Look, I fully understand where you’re coming from, and if you’ve read my posts with even a little bit care you know this. Come on. Where having an incredibly complex discussion here on the interaction of sex roles and gender identity, and here you are polluting it with simplistic accusations of behaviour that is so alien to me I hardly know where to begin to be offended by the mere suggestion. Since I understand all this stuff is close to home for you (and Kaitlyn and others), I’ve so far been able to tell myself that becoming offended is totally pointless, and so far I’ve successfully been able to keep focussing the energy on trying to clear things up. I’m going to keep on trying to do this but I have a tiny bit of hope that I might count on you to not make it too hard on me, even though we’re still in the Pit.
Just a few bits of working hypothesis currently lingering in my mind, arrived at with the help of Kaitlyn and some background reading in the links posted by both of us.
-
There is as yet no evidence that gender identity is detectable in the brain before the age of 11-12. This does not mean it isn’t there, it could and is even likely present as something has to cause the change at the age of 11-12.
-
That this change in the SOM producing part of the brain occurs at the age 11-12 suggests that the change is related to the whole hormone balance change happening at that age, at the beginning the rapid physical and sexual developments of puberty.
-
There is no correlation between feminine behavior and transsexuality. Transsexuals can be feminine, masculine, and so on.
-
Children are not innately masculine or feminine. How they behave as a child is somewhat determined by their natural, innate parameters.
-
Children’s behaviour interacts with and is influenced by their environment. Children normally investige different gender roles, try them on and find one that suits them. In this, they are influenced by their environment.
-
Exploration of all available gender roles is a healthy part of a child’s exploration of what gender roles are and necessary for his social development.
-
The process of selecting a gender role can be negatively influenced by a child’s environment, and this process can run amock as a result of problems related to this process or a child’s well-being, such as
7.a. Rigid social structures that do not allow for (6) to take place regularly.
7.b. Problems directly or indirectly related to gender roles, such as absent or even abusive fathers
-
The result of 7.a. and/or 7.b. may result in compulsive obessive behaviour that borders on or crosses well into the pathological.
-
Transsexual behavior in children may be caused by completely different things than transsexualism in adults.
Yours,
Arwin
(and I mean that, when are you going to see that I’m not the enemy, and/or stop treating me as a vehicle to attack the true enemy)
I think you could easily argue that there are a few pathological Koreans in North-Korea.
But does that mean we have an understanding?
(I’ve covered your other words with the blanket of love a.k.a. the delete button, because they are too upsetting for me)
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not he was reviled by people for being femme. (What would “compulsively feminine” mean anyway? That you’re femme all the time? I guess I’m compulsively gay, then.)
I would remain out of the closet, even if it cost me my career, friends, and health. I suppose being out would be pathological. Do you have any evidence to suggest that doing an unobjectionable thing, and suffering the abuse of others, is “medically called pathological behaviour”? Other than by the crackpot you cited?
That is the most revolting straw man I’ve seen recently. No, getting beat up is not the best thing for him. Getting others to stop beating him up and let him be who he is is the best thing. Why are you completely ignoring the culpability of others and focusing on how to correct the innocent person’s harmless difference?
Then you need to come up with a position other than “if you are abused for your harmless difference, that difference is pathological.” This position is false and objectionable.
Okay, but you’re asserting that a child’s being femme is compulsive and pathological, when in fact the only “pathology” you can point to is his treatment by others. If a child displayed “normal” gender roles to the same extent – i.e. they remained constant but did not hurt others – and was therefore not abused by others, you would not call it pathological. Therefore, there is something about cross-gender behaviour that somehow makes it easier to call pathological. That’s what I find offensive.
Arwin: I tried to be nice. I tried to let the racist remark go, the way I do when the teenage boys next door call me and my wife chinks and slopes. I even made a joke out of it. But you couldn’t let well enough alone. You had to come back and prove that you are an ignorant, racist, dumbfuck.
I have to put up with crap from my neighbors, because they’re on their own property and protected by free speech. I don’t have to put up with it here.
You are scum and I want nothing whatsoever to do with you ever again.
I’m done with this thread.
No, it means that you are so obsessed with feminine behavior that it gets in the way of everything else and you have no control over it. This does not in the least bit mean that if someone is feminine by nature and behaves as such naturally, that this is automatically compulsive, a disorder or whatever.
Perhaps I can explain it by making an analogy with compulsive cleaning. Say you like cleaning and clean a lot. That is different from being obsessed with cleaning, sweeping the floor every 5 minutes, etc. You get the picture.
Ack, I see why this is so hard to explain. Partly because I’m probably not very good at explaining it. I’m not making a clear enough distinction between which part of the behavior causes which problem. Yes, I believe that in psychiatry, compulsive behavior that is damaging to yourself, even if only directly through society, even if society is partly responsible, wrong, etc. is medically called pathological behavior.
Think of Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. Could you see a difference between being gay, and being obsessed with being gay? Between caring about hygiene, and being obsessed with hygiene? Look at the lists of indicators of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, below:
http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis1/p21-pe10.html
Can you imagine that you could be this way about feminine behavior?
Because I’m not?
Let me state, once again, for the record, etc. etc. **I believe transsexuality is a legitimate condition (gender dysphoria) that deserves treatment covered by regular health insurance. I believe transsexuals should have every right that any other human being has, be allowed to have and raise children, marry, and so on. **
In other words, I fully subscribe to Kaitlyn’s agenda (as she has given in an earlier post).
It is, further more, something I am prepared to actively fight for, and if you happen to know anyone with related problems and you think there is anything I could do to help, please ask me.
All this goes before my desire to obtain a scientific understanding of how the human works and what factors are involved in the condition. However, in science, I try to keep subjectivity out. A good understanding can help me help others. In this, I do not let my (strong!) convictions on what is right or wrong get in my way. Perhaps I even overcompensate for any subjectivity I might feel I have towards the subject.
Is this a bad thing to do? Perhaps it is; perhaps in the short term I hurt people, and I hurt myself. But at the same time I believe it allows me to have a greater understanding, and will help me convince others. Because I am able to emphatise and anticipate every bit of criticism, argumentation and so on that someone bigotted enough to find transsexuality, homosexuality, racism or whatever, objectionable, once I get an opportunity to talk to them, I am usually quite successful at eating away the foundation of every argument he or she can come up with to support their position. I may not be able to get rid of any remaining emotional barriers, but I do my best and sometimes it works. My sister’s husband has some serious racist tendencies, and I do what I can.
Being right, by itself, convinces few.
Understood. Hopefully, I’ve made myself more clear above.
No, just that it can be. Just like a female child can be compulsively feminine. Even then, what I’m giving here is a theory, something I believe is possible.
Not being able to function in society is damaging to yourself and in psychiatry, as far as I know, often considered pathological. In psychiatry, this inability to function in society is a very important reason for treatment in many cases.
I understand. Again, hopefully I have clarified my position.
The only one currently resembling your teenage boys next door is you yourself.
Correct. You don’t. Incidentally, over here, the teenage boys could be held accountable in court. I can only hope that one day you will see that not only am I not one of those teenage boys, I’m helping you get rid of them.
I’m sad to hear you feel that way.
I have feared that this moment would come many times before, but I thought we’d reached a point of understanding of what my goals are here. I wrote some words about how you met Mrs. Smith that I thought were both kind and showing how I felt about this subject, but apparently no matter what I do the message that I bear no ill-will does not come across.
If my reply to matt can’t convince you of that, then I doubt anything will, and I hereby respectfully and sadly say goodbye to our discussion.
Not that anyone asked, but…
I think Arwin has what psychology calls an “internal locus of control”. People with an internal locus of control attribute both succes and failure to their own behavior. In the same vein, Arwin feels everybody must accept that, untill we succeed in improving the world, that world is far from perfect. But, as we have to live in that imperfect world, we must, to an extent, adapt to its demands. If we don’t, we might damage ourselves or worse, we might perish.
Arwin is, of course, right. His viewpoint has a place in therapy and with anyone trying to teach individuals they care about, how to survive. This kind of viewpoint may come across as patronizing.
**matt_mcl ** has shown, in this part of the discussion and about this particular subject, an “external locus of control”. Success and failure are determined by what others do, what society does, or fails to do. Kids shouldn’t harrass a effeminate kid, and society should stop harassing gays.
**matt_mcl ** is, of course, right. His viewpoint has a place as social criticism, and, very impotantly, it has a place in as vital argument in the self-awareness of people who are discriminated against, who should know or be told that they are not at fault, but society is. This kind of viewpoint may come across as overly sensitive and militant.
Arwin is trying to learn facts about the psysical/psychological backgrounds of gender-identity and gender-dysphoria. But his questions are highly personal to Kaitlyn and matt, and trigger many bad memories, and so the discussion frequently derails into therapeutic remarks or “fighting bigotry”, both, IMHO, equally misplaced.
Not that anyone asked.
Please carry on.
I know what it means to clean your hands compulsively. I don’t know what it means to be gay compulsively. (I have been frequently accused of being obsessed with being gay; it usually means I have been showing interest in our culture and/or discussing our politics and/or otherwise being out, in a way a straight person is somehow unable to deal with.)
One thing I believe I understand, however, is that it is probably much easier to make someone think a boy is compulsively feminine than that he is compulsively masculine.
If, for example, a boy persists in wearing makeup despite being chastized/beaten for it, no doubt many would consider him “compulsively feminine” – when, in fact, he may be wearing makeup no more often than a girl of the same age with slightly old-fashioned parents who think she’s too young. She, naturally, would not be accused of being “compulsively feminine.”
I’ve often been asked, “Why do you feel the need to” (be swishy, wear poufy scarves, listen to the Pet Shop Boys constantly, dance with my hands.) That phrase suggests compulsion – as if it’s somehow inexplicable that I, a boy, would like to do any of those things, or have them be an innocent habit or part of my personality. So of course if I do them, it must be somehow pathological, or I must be doing them consciously as a way of proving some kind of point (which would of course be obnoxious), or whatever it is that makes the listener feel good about disdaining me for these harmless and, I think, rather fun parts of my personality.
Have you ever seen the French movie Ma vie en rose (released in English as My life in pink)? It’s about a little boy named Ludovic who many would describe as compulsively feminine. He’s always doing things like showing up in a dress, wearing makeup, watching the soaps, etc. He thinks he’s a girl – in fact, he’s convinced of it.
[spoiler]At first everyone is mildly amused/disquieted; they figure, Oh, he’ll just grow out of it. As things go on, they start putting more and more pressure on him to change – more and more violent pressure, especially his family, as more and more violent pressure from the neighbourhood builds too.
The dad’s boss fires him after Ludo falls in love with the boss’s son; they have graffiti spraypainted on their garage door, etc. They take him to psychiatrists – their only thought is “What’s the matter with him? Why is he disrupting our life like this?”
He, of course, is chafing more and more under this pressure – nobody is helping him; from his point of view, they’re all coming down on him for nothing – “tu te fâches toujours pour rien!” So, being eleven, he starts acting out to try to assert himself, such as stealing the heroine’s role in a school play, which gets him expelled.
As you watch the film, you see that it’s true: all the disruption is about him. But he’s not doing anything disruptive (until he starts intentionally misbehaving later in the film). None of this would be the slightest problem if the adults around him didn’t make it one. There’s a great scene when they’ve moved to another town to get away from all this and start again. He’s just met the neighbours’ child, Chris, who he first thinks is a tough little boy, but is actually a girl. Later on, Chris is having a costume party for her birthday, and she has been forced to wear a princess dress, while Ludo has been dressed as a pirate. Chris covets Ludo’s costume, and tries to get Ludo to change with her; Ludo freaks and refuses, so Chris forces him. Ludo’s mother finds them, Chris dressed as a pirate, Ludo as a princess. She freaks too, thinks all the harassment is going to start again because Ludo is such an incorrigible little freak, AGH! She’s at the end of her rope, and she starts beating Ludo.
But Chris’s mother, alarmed, rushes over and tries to restrain her – “What on earth are you so upset about? They just traded their costumes, that’s all!”[/spoiler]
It is so much easier to pathologize behaviour that is already socially stigmatized that I am extremely wary of doing so; I don’t think you’ve made it very clear what the criteria are, and I fervently object to taking account of other people’s reaction, which is what causes the whole problem to begin with.