I also agree that this is the crux of the discussion, here. I do know that there are people who physically do not fit into the binary classification, such as androgen-insensitive XYs and those with ambiguous genitalia. But they aren’t really the topic of discussion, here.
There is the mind and body, we don’t understand what the mind is, but know it’s something more complex then just a physical body. Sometimes this get out of alignment, so the body does not have to agree with the mind, ask anyone with phantom leg pain (someone who does not have a leg yet feels pain there as if he does).
Mind and body can ‘disconnect’.
I guess what I find troubling about your approach is that regardless of your view on what transgenderism is, you would no doubt agree that the cognitive dissonance is problematic to the people experiencing it. Yet rather than trust the opinions of transgendered people themselves, or the thousands of pages of research on what it means to be trangender, you have decided that you, a person with no experience or (I presume) scientific knowledge on this topic, are most qualified to decide what will best alleviate that cognitive dissonance. More qualified, in fact, than those who have alleviated that dissonance for themselves.
All in the name of ‘‘truth’’ --the truth you have invented based on your own socially constructed idea of what it means to be a man or woman. You would happily increase the pain, discrimination and suffering experienced by transgendered people by sticking to your beloved highly-contested completely subjective truth.
That a transgendered male is biologically female is not contestable. That a transgendered male is a man is what is at issue here. Man is a social construction embodied in ideas about maleness. Maleness and man are not the same thing, and yet you continue to insist that they are. As long as we have the gender binary we will have people suffering for lack of fitting in. You perpetuate that binary, the idea that male=socially constructed idea of man, you perpetuate suffering. That is your right, but that doesn’t make you right.
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. Try this: a person at work whom you had previously known as Joe, starts coming to work dressed as a woman, and asking to be called Joan. How do you know if this is a person with a legitimate (as defined by yourself) medical condition, or someone who has a “notion” which you will refuse to play along?
So, the only possible source of gender identity problems is chromosomal? This is a settled medical fact, and we can rest assured that no other physical conditions will ever be discovered that could be related to being a transsexual? Or are you saying that only chromosomal abnormalities are acceptable physical causes of transsexualism, and that any future causes will be filed under “notions?”
And my point is that we don’t actually know that there are two separate groups here. There’s some strong evidence to suggest that the majority of transsexuals do, in fact, have different physical structures in their brains - structures that are found in the brains of the gender with which they identify, and not in the one they were born with.
We know that there are people who have gender identity issues due to physical abnormalities in their physiology. The area of science that studies these issues is still fairly new. I think you need to do a lot more legwork to prove that your assumptions are the most obvious and logical explanation for transsexualism before you start waving that razor around.
So… if a person grows up and lives decades with a penis, testicles, and XY chromosomes then suffers a Horrible Accident that deprives said person of penis and testicles we should now conclude that person is no longer a man and insist that person undergo surgery to more closely resemble a woman since, after all, this person who lacks penis and testicles is obviously not a man, lacking 2 of 3 defining characteristics? Sure, reconstructive surgery, but to closer approximate a normal woman, that being the category without penis and testicles, rather than trying to make this person, who thinks he is a man despite the lack of penis and testicles, as close an approximation to normal male as possible?
(It’s really not as outrageous as it sounds - aside from the “live for decades” part that’s about the decision making process that used to be used to “assign” sex to babies with ambiguous genitalia)
I have heard claims (and seen published research) that certain structures in the brain of MtF transsexuals resembles those of normal women rather then men, and that the reverse is true for FtM transsexuals. If there actually IS a physically difference in brain structure that would make this more of a birth defect than a mental illness, wouldn’t it? Just as some people have ambiguous genitals, and some women have hormone abnormalities that make them grow beards, and some men develop breasts, then these people would have brain structures that don’t match their physical gender. If we accept surgery for ambiguous genitals, hormone treatments for bearded ladies, and mastectomies for gynecomastia then why is it such a leap to consider surgery/hormones/whatever for brains that don’t match bodies?
Have you heard of the term eunuch?
Of course it’s an illness; that’s why it requires surgery and hormone therapy to fix. It’s just not a mental illness; it’s just what happens when you have a brain/body mismatch.
As opposed to feeling like you have a deformity between your legs; your penis is “just there”, it’s not some grotesque thing. And as opposed to your brain constantly being bathed with a balance of hormones it isn’t built for; I’m told that changing their hormones to something that matches their gender identity makes transsexuals feel a lot better all on its own. You don’t have any particular feeling of gender identity for the same reason fish don’t pay much attention to water.
In other words, you want to kill them. Suicide is the common result of not giving them gender reassignment (or whatever the present term is). The reason for giving them hormone therapy and surgery is because it works. It makes them happier, more comfortable, far less likely to suicide.
Except that you are ignoring the actual science in favor of your fantasy science. Scientifically, a transsexual is someone who has certain structures in the brain that don’t match the gender of the body they are born in. It’s not a “delusion”.
And that is what YOU are doing. You have a warped, unscientific definition of “man”, it is you who are denying truth in favor of comfort. All your foot stamping about how a man is someone who fits your (incoherent) definition won’t change anyone’s brain structure.
Whoops, guess I spoke too soon. I guess that too, is contestable.
How does treating a transsexual as the gender they wish to be treated as harm them? Please be specific.
Can you rephrase this in a way that makes sense? Because right now, it reads as gibberish.
I parsed it as something like, ‘‘Damned liberals!’’
That’s rather a distinction without a difference, if you don’t mind my saying so.
If it helps to rephrase, there is no reliable evidence that SRS is any better than placebo in decreasing the incidence of social and mental health issues among transsexuals.
Why don’t we wait and see?
Regards,
Shodan
I disagree. There’s a very significant difference between “We do not know the effect” and “There is no effect”. One confers certainty, one confers doubt. In case of the latter, the only conclusion is that there is no effect. In case of the former, there may be no effect, there may be an effect one way, there may be an effect the other way.
It seems to me as though this is an area of medicine where matters have changed quite rapidly over recent times. With that in mind, it seems reasonable that the situation in 1981 is not going to be entirely accurate for the situation in 2010. Indeed, unfortunetly, the brief synopsis we get of the particular paper in your link contains talk of former looks at the subject, but not the actual results of that paper, so in fact we’re talking 1965 to 1980.
And again, your rephrase doesn’t really work. Noting that there is *no reliable evidence *for something does not mean there is no effect - it means we cannot say where there is a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect.
Because it’s an important topic, whichever way one feels about the situation, now?
Yes, yes I have. Let me rephrase this so perhaps you will comprehend my point.
Not all eunuchs lack a penis. In fact, they may also retain their scrotums. Testicle removal is what defines a eunuch. Even so - eunuchs who lack both penis and scrotum/testicles are still considered men in our society. Which was sort of my point - saying “Man=person with penis, testicles, and XY chromosomes” would have the corollary that eunuchs lacking a penis are not, in fact men - since the only other category in our language or society is “woman” that would lead to the conclusion that eunuchs are somehow women… but I don’t know anyone who actually believes that. When we treat the damage from accidents that destroy a man’s penis and testicles we don’t “repair” it by making him more like a normal woman, we try to restore him as closely to normal male as possible.
Gee, I guess we DON’T define maleness strictly based on that triad of characteristics.
Nor is it always defined by chromosomes. There are people with the XY configuration who are, externally, visually indistinguishable from normal XX women. There are people who have an XX configuration who are, again, externally visually indistinguishable from normal XY men. So it’s not just chromosomes.
While for most people their chromosomes, body, and mental identity will match there are, clearly, some for whom that trio doesn’t match up. If we can accept chromosomes at odd with external appearances, and ambiguous genitals, why can’t we accept gender identity at odds with external appearances?
What should we do with these people? Well, I think we should give them whatever maximizes their potential to live a happy and productive life. Currently, that seems to mean transition therapy as we don’t have a realistic way to change their gender identity to match their physical body.
How is this any different than any other body part? No, I don’t consider my penis to be a deformity; neither do I consider my hands, feet, or nose to be a deformity. Are their people who consider themselves deformed for having five toes per foot? And if a person did want to have one of their toes surgically removed, would we say that that person is reconstructing their deformed body to better match their true digital identity, or would we say that they’re mentally warped for not accepting their body the way it is?
Well, let’s face it, the surgery isn’t perfect.
I’d be interested to know the difference between those who transitioned sufficiently to live as their preferred gender socially whether or not they had surgery, vs. those who try to continue live in their birth gender. Because, it seems to be, that for the transgendered the issue isn’t entirely one of what’s between their legs, it’s that they be treated as their preferred gender despite physical anomalies that say otherwise.
He says he was a woman born in a mans body, he gets surgery!
I say I was an Alien born in a human body, i get padded walls!
Yes that is exactly what I am saying. Particularly the part of my post where I explicitly said people should be allowed to undergo sexual reassignment if that’s what they want.
Look the affirmative side of this debate is throwing around a lot of claims of studies and statistics without citing them. So provide some links and educate us poor ignorant fools.
You guys are acting like there is scientific proof that a male transsexual has a brain biologically identical to a female. This is disingenuous. The fact that some researchers have proposed (contested) theories that there is evidence that may suggest a biological cause to gender identity issues, is not the same as saying that transsexuals posses the abstract concept of “a female mind.”
The former, actually. There are documented cases of people who amputate themselves after refusal by a doctor to do the same, and after study, it was determined that cutting off the offending limb gave the patient better long-term prospects then trying to cure the mental problem.
I think this is problematic in your argument as well, and is diminishing women in the process. Saying that a woman would be a man if she had more equipment, but a woman has equipment that a man does not, so you can not say removing someone’s ‘manhood’ would make ‘him’ a woman, but a 3rd category a eunuch, which is a castrated male. We have terms like this in the animal world as well, such as steer and bull, we don’t call a castrated bull a cow.
So a sex change operation does not, and can not actually reassign gender, unless it is transplanted from the opposite gender. What you are really doing is castrating/deforming the person then reconstructing them in to appear externally to the opposite gender. Internally they are not the other gender, just having some massive damage, though hormonal treatment makes some difference. In many ways this would be the same as if a man was castrated by some accident then reconstructed to look like a ‘intact’ male, it’s still just a massive injury and non-existent genitalia, but it may help physiologically.
No, no… bitches and sumbitches. 