No problemo. 
Are there any examples of female to male transgendered people competing at a high level in athletics?
Did you run across Thai boxer Nong Toom in your research? Fascinating story.
Monstro is even more wrong than everyone else. A society that does away with gender entirely - one that does not decide that because you are male (a physical attribute) you must be attracted to women, like sports and hate pink - makes sense. Increasing the number of boxes to put people in from two to three does not.
Transsexuals are like the religious right: idiots who hold a counterfactual worldview who think it’s hate speech to not treat their worldview as true.
Perfect example right there^^^.
Since Una Persson has self-identified as transgendered in this thread, this can only be viewed as a direct personal insult.
This is Warning to refrain from that behavior.
[ /Moderating ]
Both she and Fallon Fox may be candidates for unfair advantage, but I think their cases are difficult to quantify. Noog Toom because I haven’t researched her, Fallon Fox because she is competing against so few individuals that a statistical trend which bucks convention is difficult to pinpoint. I cannot argue too heavily against someone who posits that both of these women may have a transgender advantage.
I’m curious what this contrafactual worldview is. Especially considering the references presented showing differences in transgender brains, etc., etc.
And please don’t bother to post a reply to me unless you’re going to have some actual scientific citations to back it; I’m not really wanting to argue opinion, gut feel, religious doctrine, or “just common sense, doode” with someone who directly personally insults me and my kind.
You certainly can falsify the statement to the satisfaction of many, given certain assumptions and definitions.
The idea that some minds are “female” and others “male” is an arbitrary construction. The delusion that one* is* some specific sex (trans- or cis-) in some “spiritual” sense is, given physicalist assumptions, poppycock.
I am quite willing to stipulate that many trans* persons are deeply, hugely delusional. Is this mental illness? No more than several popular religions; I would prefer to draw a distinction between mental illness (as in, a cognitive or emotional incapacity or disruption) and delusion (the commonplace, nay, universal, experience of believing things that are just not true).
Now, cutting up your body because of a simply delusional belief that only surgery can unlock your true soul is kind of sad.
That said, because I do not believe that there is a standard male mind and a standard female mind, and because I believe that it is good to step outside of the roles we have been given by society and even by nature, that we may see more fully, I’m actually glad I live in an age where the trans* inclined can change their perceived gender. I once read a piece where a woman/transman/man in transition noted that moving outside of birth gender helped teach him how much society does gender things and how arbitrary it all was.
Using surgery to allow yourself to experience life from the “other side” is actually exciting and enticing.
But yes, anyone who’s making this decision based on sheerly delusional ideas of gender nature and limited ideas of gender roles needs some more perspective–I should think more, and more urgently, than the opportunity to start removing gonads.
And it may be more humane at our present level of technology to take what measures we can to let people live trans* rather than trying to force them into a cis* body and life they have bad associations with–those bad associations and their responses can correspond to what we call mental illness symptoms, and surgery may be the best available treatment in some cases.
Is it ideal? Eh. I’m more libertarian than to insist that everyone learn to be basically cis*. My ideal is not that of a conformist. Transsexuality is an opportunity, and it’s nice to have it exist, even if in my own life I find learning to accept my own body desirable and wise.
Can you be more specific? You can prove ANY position given certain assumptions and definitions.
Bullshit. The idea that the brain is sexually dimorphic is based on research and evidence.
It’s a good thing nobody in this thread brought up being something in a spiritual sense then.
Gee, thanks. Have you read Una Persson’s many cites?
Nope. Don’t really have to, do I? This is a logical argument about the arbitrary correlation of different physical attributes as part of an overall category called “gender.”
If a community insists that men are red (i.e., sunburnt) and women are tan–as in ancient Egyptian art–is a tan man a woman and a red woman a man? Do they need reassignment surgery? No, of course not.
If in fact there is a tendency for women to have Brain Development Pattern A and men to have Brain Development Pattern B, does that mean a man with Pattern A is not a real man? Should his manliness be arbitrarily denied? “Sorry, your brain is interconnected like a woman’s. You are a woman by law.” No, of course not.
For that matter, should a man with Brain Development Pattern B be denied the right to transition? “Sorry, you’re really a man, whatever you think. You wouldn’t be happy. We have scans.”
I’m not saying brain differences are irrelevant to the issue, but the ability to make the transition, whether through transvetitism in past eras or, more fully, through hormones and possibly surgery now, seems more important to my consequentialist analysis of the question, “Is this a good idea?”
Maybe I’m being too dismissive, though. :shrug: Something to think about.
My snipping.
Well, you clearly know a lot about the subject and everyone should definitely give a lot of weight to your opinions.
:rolleyes:
Not a GQ thread. I’m thinking, and I don’t actually have to back up everything with a cite.
I’m trying to work out a moderate, philosophical line of thinking, that stipulates the legitimacy of the OP’s concerns that we’re mutilating people for no good reason–while opening the possibility in the minds of the many, many people that think such, that maybe SRS is a reasonable solution to a serious psychological situation. If I seem to be dismissing the politically correct definitions of trans* advocates, well, that’s intentional and with a purpose.
That said, I’ve read more of the thread, and I’d like to apologize for just waltzing in the middle and saying a bunch of stuff from that standpoint of relative ignorance that anyone coming into the middle of a discussion has.
I still find parts of “gender identity” a bit bemusing, particularly the profound gender dysphoria in some children. I do wonder what is going on in a small child’s mind when they latch onto such a trans-sexual pursuit of identity, and I don’t have faith that a wee child knows enough to “really know” that it’s “real” or what it means. I can respect the fears and revulsion of those who think it’s evil to encourage gender dysphoric “delusion.”
I suspect that some people, including myself, are “bi-gender” or “a-gender” on whatever level others are identifying as “transgender,” and still others as “[del]cis-[/del] of course I’m my real gender.” People who can choose and accept either gender identity (but for anatomy and other people’s biases) aren’t seeing things the same way, because we are more fluid to begin with. If I woke up with different genitals like some Oscar Wilde character, I would have to make a lot of adjustments, and the shock of change would be deeply stressful, but I could imagine being OK with it (so long as I was also able to avoid anyone who knew me when, admittedly). I had to learn my gender in the first place, you see.
(Much as I believe many ostensibly heterosexual people are bisexual or asexual by instinct and het as a matter of ethics and choice, thus causing much confusion in discussion with those who have a strong instinctive hetero- or homo- sexual drive.)
…
The first thing you need to understand is that contrary to the alarmist press, no transgender child just declares it one day, and everyone tips their hat and says “of course.” The child has to be able to verbalize it to psychologists and counselors, not once, but in detail and many times. They will be subjected to tests which attempt to assess their mental gender. They will be tested for other mental comorbidities. They will be tested for a variety of intersex conditions, and if the parents can afford it (rarely), DNA analysis. Their brothers and sisters will be questioned, the parents will be questioned, teachers will sometimes be questioned (depending upon the privacy concerns involved) to see if there’s evidence it’s an elaborate game or ruse.
Even when everyone agrees that a young child is transgender…it really doesn’t change anything except their socialization. Hormone therapy is not given until puberty, and again not until after further testing and evaluation. Sometimes puberty blockers are given to delay the decision, so the child/teen can have more time to figure out who and what they are.
Sure, doctor and psych-shopping happens. But it’s not the norm.
What does it feel like to be a child and gender dysphoric? It sucks. It profoundly, really sucks. When I realized that I wasn’t really a boy, it came on me slowly, but there was one “aha!” day, when for some reason the overpowering feeling just came over me - beforehand I had never once felt male, I felt like “none of the above.” Like I was almost an alien or changeling in a world of female and male. When the “aha!” moment came it was both a relief, and a moment of terror.
The entire social structure is against transgender kids. If someone who was presented and dressed as a boy in 1st grade suddenly starts coming to school each day in a dress, and named “Sue”, what happens? They get the shit beaten out of them on a daily basis - by both boys and girls. They are whispered about, mocked openly, passed notes in class telling them in graphic detail worthy of Dexter how they’re going to be “killed.” Most teachers have no real experience to handle this situation, and will either try to force the child not to present in their mental gender, but they may even engage in and lead the mockery. Personally seen it happen.
The family is normally against the kids. Groundings, beatings, negative and postiive reinforcement, bribes, etc. follow. The child is shamed and told they are crazy, that if they don’t straighten up and fly right, they will be sent to a “looney bin” forever. Or threatened with surgery to “fix your brain.” Or just plain threatened.
And yet despite all that, somehow these kids, a subset anyhow, stick to their guns. They stick to what they know they are. To fight all that social pressure takes a will of iron, and yet we (society) call these kids “freaks,” “perverts,” “monsters,” “walking abortions,” and let our own children torture them with encouragement.
I won’t go into the hell I suffered as a child - I already posted it. I couldn’t even hide what I was; I’m intersex. A 13-14 year-old can’t hide full A-cup breasts in the gym locker room, nor the fact that they have no body hair, or other ambiguous features I won’t go into. The torture I went through should IMO have sent a quarter of my gym class up the river with felony charges.
Trans kids today are some of the toughest humans I know. I’m actually lecturing at my old high school in a couple of months, speaking to the student body for an incredible 90 minutes about transgender awareness. I’ve been told by the teacher sponsoring the event that there are a handful of trans kids there, all of whom are too terrified to come out, even in this much more liberal environment. I’m going to show them a proud and out transsexual woman, successful in life, and offer to meet and talk privately with anyone who needs help. Help I wish to God someone had offered me.
I’m not sure this is a valid comparison. A valid comparison to the schizophrenic would be a man who believed that he physically was a woman, i.e. believed that his physical body was that of a woman. I’ve not heard of any trans people who fit this category. In their case, it’s just that they feel that their mental/emotional state is such that they would be more comfortable with the place in life that society accords to those of the opposite physical gender.
[A possibly closer fit would be these guys who have these extreme body modifications so as to resemble various animals that they feel like they really are, e.g. Lizard Man, and so on. I’m not sure I can come up with a significant logical difference in that case, other than the fact that 1) it’s a lot more common, and 2) that the surgery/hormones etc. will be a lot more successful - the other guy is not going to make it as a lizard regardless.]
Can you clarify a bit? Do you mean something physical, like broad shoulders, or is it a more intangible “vibe” as your language suggests?
Because if it’s the latter, then that would seem to suggest that these people are not as mentally female as they feel themselves to be.
But how did you know, at that time, what boys felt like and what girls felt like, so as to know that you felt like a girl and not like a boy?
Which is really part of the question that people have been raising about adult men and women. The suggestion has been made that trans women (for example) are deciding that “women feel like X. Men feel like Y. I feel like X. Therefore I feel like a woman”, and that just perhaps there is some room for error in these people’s assessments of what men and women feel like. (This relates to posters’ observations about exagerated manifestations of the gender which was transitioned into.) And that question would be even more magnified in the case of a child coming to that same conclusion.
I don’t know of any, but it is interesting to consider the other side of the “What about trans athletes?” question. If trans athletes were only permitted to compete against other athletes of their birth sex then transmen who’ve received hormonal treatment would have an advantage over cisgender women athletes. Testosterone is a steroid. In the '70s and '80s the East German government was deliberately dosing promising young female athletes with testosterone to improve their athletic performance, and in part because of this East Germany won 40 gold medals at the 1976 Olympics.
Thinking of SlackerInc’s gender-bending Svengali scenario, I think it’s far more likely that a promising female athlete could be persuaded to fake being transgender so she’d be permitted to take testosterone while still competing against other women than it is that a promising male athlete could be persuaded to give up his penis and go on estrogen just to play on the women’s team. There are after all already female athletes who illicitly use steroids.
Social cues, body stance, poise, comportment, fidgeting, the way the head tilts, conversation style…it’s not entirely intangible. And sometimes it’s shoulder/waist ratio - even a relatively slim person will give off a guy vibe due to the hips being small.
No, it’s a matter of gender-specific body language and body cues. Those are things which are practiced and learned unconsciously by women as they grow up. Not all women, but many. There are entire books on the subject.
It’s an existential question. If you ask 100 red-blooded Americans if they “feel” like a boy or a girl, I’ll wager at least 99% will answer immediately with full confidence. I don’t see any difference. How do they know? Are they deluded by social pressure and a need to fit in? Or is there something inside us which just lets us know, regardless. Honestly, I don’t know.
Your question is excellent but unanswerable by anyone I should think. Or else the same answer may apply to all.
When I say I felt like a girl, it means I was drawn to girls as a peer group. I felt like I wanted to be around them, not make out with them. I became a lesbian out of reaction to severe trauma, not because I had still had guy urges. Girls faces, voices, bodies, mannerisms, interests, emotions and how they showed them, the companionship and closeness, all seemed natural to me. Boys seemed to be a different thing entirely. I could not think of any way I fit in with them at all, and it was really something I tried to do. I simply felt driven that I should be over with the girls and not with the boys, and I didn’t make any conscious decision, it was just a natural flocking instinct of sorts. Mind you, in the era I grew up in I never even heard of transsexuals until nearly 6 or 7 years after I thought “hey…I’m a girl.” I didn’t know what I felt was possible. I thought I was the only person in the world, and it was a terrible secret.
Here I must caution again, I’m not like most transpeople. I am diagnosed intersex, official medical records and everything. There is a whole lot that is different about me than females and males, so I’m a very complicated peg to find the proper hole for.
I’m not finding any.