Stria terminalis.
You know the drill.
What is spirit of a man? It’s good to be open-minded, but that seems a little out there to me. Transgenderism is not like Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY Syndrome) IMO. To compare a chromosomal abnormality to a condition which leaves a person feeling like they should have been born another sex doesn’t seem too analogous to me. Transgenderism seems far closer to a body dismorphic disorder or something like Apotemnophilia.
In my mind, anybody born (in the absence of a chromosomal anomality or diagnosed physical gender indentity disorder) a man will stay a man and vice-versa. All the surgery in the world won’t change that. **That doesn’t mean that being a transexual is wrong ** or that they should be treated any different than normal people. Yes, being transgender is abnormal (which is not a moral judgement, just a statistical fact).
The problems I have with many of your arguments are that many of you seem to be stating that you are (in terms of gender) what you think/feel you are. I don’t buy this. That would mean that anybody on any given day could be either gender based on thier feelings. I know transgender people think that their beliefs are based on more than feelings, but I don’t know of much objective scientific research to support that. If it exists I would be willing to read it.
I think that anybody wants to undergo surgery that will make them happy should go for it. But, I don’t think that changing your plumbing, or feeling like you genetic makeup is faulty makes you a different gender.
I really don’t think so. It’s not an amputation or mutilation fetish at all; and how would one explain female-to-male, where, if anything, appendages are added? Body dysmorphia is a pathologic obsession with minor or imagined deformity, like a chin or a nose, that can lead to anxiety, ritualistic behaviors (e.g. repeated checking in mirrors), and possibly attempts to modify that perceived imperfection. Gender self-identity shares virtually nothing with this syndrome except the most tenuous connection with a desire to modify some portions of the anatomy. Transsexuals do not regard their physical gender as imperfect, but rather simply incorrect.
I feel wary about taking things at face value here. The idea that transexuality might be caused by something as simple as having a brain which is biologically “configured” for the wrong-gendered body strikes me as a very appealing one. It’s a very neat resolution to deep questions about gender and identity — possibly too neat.
I suspect that whatever study or studies found this difference must have garnered a great deal of praise in lofty circles. Hypothetically, there would have been far less recognition for a study reporting the opposite conclusion: that the brains of transexuals could not be distinguished from those of typical members of their genetic sex. Basically, I’m worried that the researchers who discovered this might have been seeing what they wanted to see. Do you have any links or references to these studies? Just how strong is the evidence?
I agree that it is not amputation, mutilation, or a fetish. But, many people who suffer from Apotemnophilia sincerely feel that they should not have been born with a certain body part. They are just as sincere as any transgender person. In both cases, the person’s mental image of themselves doesn’t match their body. To me, that makes them analogous.
JasonFin
The sample size is too small to be conclusive evidence. But, I’ve read a few statistical analyses of the findings (not by the same researchers who published the study) that state the odds of the findings being due to random chance are rather slim. A few of the analyses have added evidence that the stria terminalis is not affected by hormones in adulthood. So, we don’t have conclusive evidence. But, only because science properly places such a high standard on that phrase.
I’ll try answering this in a semi-obtuse, philosophical manner I came up with while reading one of the other threads (I was kind of proud of it):
Let’s say you met a person who was completely androgynous, and you absolutely could not tell what gender the person was. So, feeling brave, you decide to ask.
When you say, “are you male or female?” what question are you really asking this person? “Are your sex chromosomes XX or XY?” “Were you born a male or a female?” Or “What gender do you identify as?” We assume all three will be the same, and 99% of the time they are, but I think the last question is the one really being asked. We don’t think of gender as something mutable, but it is, and when we ask those sorts of questions - “what religion are you?” “what do you do for a living?” etc. - I think the question is one of present identification.
In case that’s all completely pretentious crap, experience and simple decency tell me that there’s no reason not to accept whatever a person identifies him or herself as when it’s not patently absurd. And the science explained in the last GD thread make me feel it’s pretty obvious that a transsexual who identifies as a woman is a woman.
Wow. Note to self: Never, ever, never start a thread with a question and plan to come back later with a position statement. People start making assumptions in one’s absence. Wow.
I am fully aware of this and didn’t leave it out. I tried to phrase my OP statement in such a way that this option was included. Obviously, my phrasing was too carefully neutral, general, whatever.
This question was not intended to be a position statement of mine. It was intended to be a question that might reasonably (so to speak) address the concerns of the parents at Kaitlyn’s school. Again, I was trying to state a neutral OP so as to bring in views from both sides.
Enough defensiveness. My position:
The real issue here is, as Polycarp pointed out earlier, the definitions of ‘really, actually’ and, in addition, the definitions of ‘male’ and female.’ I’m reminded of the philosophical conundrum of the Argo, Jason’s ship, and the definition of ‘the same.’
If we can manage to define these slippery terms, then the issue of transsexuals becomes clear and no longer arguable. The processing of defining is the tough part.
First, relevent anecdote: For something over 20 years, I was close friends was a transsexual woman. Her story is very interesting indeed.
Angelina (not her real name, obviously) started life as Jim but suffered from feelings of sexual inadequacy, sexual confusion and slipped into a depressive state and from there into psychosis. Jim was treated by a psychiatrist who felt that a new start was necessary: Change of name, change of location, change of physical gender. Jim had the operation in the '60s–one of the earliest in the U.S.–and became Angelina. I met her soon after.
Angelina was not highly successful in putting across the image of a woman–tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, prominent Adam’s apple, strong face–but tried very hard and, as a friend, I did my best to help her accentuate her femininity. In other words, I flirted shamelessly. We got to be very good friends indeed.
After a few years in the role, she got married (Yes, her husband knew.) and tried to be a conventional housewife. The marriage only lasted for about 4 years but failed, as far as I can tell, from money issues rather than gender issues.
After a few more years on her own, her feelings of sexuality did an about-face: she began to be attracted to women. Eventually, finally, for the rest of her life, she considered herself to be a lesbian. All in all, an odd life experience, perhaps even odder than my own.
So what’s the bottom line with Angelina? My feeling is that the doctor who treated her originally made a huge mistake. Jim was not a woman in a man’s body but a man in a man’s body, merely needing the right encouragement to recover from a domineering father. However, that was the doctor’s mistake, not Angelina’s. So how is Angelina to be treated? As a man or a woman?
I have also been acquainted with other transsexuals who manage with varying degrees with success. Some are happy, some not so.
My personal bottom line: Treat everyone as they wish, think of them in the same way that they would like to think of themselves. We are all saints and sinners, we all have dreams and fears, we all have strengths and weaknesses, just in varying proportions. I have enough faults and idiosyncracies of my own that I don’t dare point up such things in others.
If someone claims to be a woman, with whatever assortment of brain gender, psyche gender, physical gender, mannerism gender, etc., I will leave attempts at definitions to others and immediately begin to use the pronoun ‘she’ and treat that person with the respect that a person deserves.
And learning such a lesson, by contact with someone out of the ordinary, is, I think, one of the best lessons a child can get in school. Even if the parents are pathologically afraid of anyone outside what they consider the correct norm of humanity, perhaps there’s hope for the children.
Treat people well. Simply that. For the good of your own soul, treat people well. With strength and self-knowledge, one can take people as they are or as they would like to be and not be afraid of them. (Although, in some circumstances, it is wise to keep a hand on one’s wallet. 
)
And, Eve, I do apologize for making the assumption that you would want to be dragged into this again.
But I do wish that Clothahump had made an appearance with an effort to state his position at greater length.
Addendum:
No, I didn’t open this thread with the intention of arguing that the questions in the OP are irrelevent. It’s just that just about every substantive argument I was going to make had already been stated by someone else before I got back here. 
Second note to self: Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever open an a thread with questions and the plan to make a statement later. N.B.: You will quickly become redundant.
I think you’re very wrong, especially if gender reassignment was as planned in the 60s as it is today. If Angelina never expressed any dissatisfaction and simply came to the conclusion that she was a lesbian later, I don’t see what’s wrong. As was discussed at great length in a recent thread, sexual orientation and sexual identity are very separate.
I will admit that I used to have little sympathy for transsexuals. It’s not that I had any real problem with them, just that I didn’t see the point. I could understand that a person born with a male body might be interested in traditionally feminine pursuits (or vice versa), but why go to the trouble of hormone therapy or even surgery? Why try to be a woman when it would be so much easier to simply live as a very effeminate man? I figured people had the right to do as they liked with themselves, but I didn’t get it at all.
I can’t remember which thread it was in, but several years back our own KellyM explained it in a way that I did get. I hope she won’t mind if I summarize her explanation as “It’s the hormones, stupid!”
Now that is something I do understand. I have an endocrine disorder myself. I get some of my own hormones out of a bottle, although thus far I haven’t needed to go on estrogen. But I know from my own experience with other hormone levels being out of whack that it is possible for your body to need hormones it can’t produce.
I don’t know about male and female “minds”, “hearts”, or “spirits”, but I do know that there are some hormone levels that are normal for men and others that are normal for women. I have no trouble believing that a person might be born with a body that naturally produced normal male hormone levels but that needed normal female hormone levels in order for that person to feel their best.
Is having a body that expects female hormone levels enough to make someone a “really” female? I guess that depends on how you define both “really” and “female”. Nature hasn’t given us a simple binary system. Most people are either XX or XY. Most people have either a vulva, uterus, and ovaries, or a penis and testicles. Most people’s glands make as much estrogen and testosterone as they need, and no more. But…not everyone. And if we’re going to be honest about it, things aren’t perfectly clear-cut for anyone. Every normal, healthy woman produces some testosterone, and every normal, healthy man produces some estrogen.
I have no problem with treating people who want to be members of the opposite sex but are not born with the members of the opposite sex as who they want to be treated as.
But I don’t by the notion of “a female brain in a male body” either. I believe the brain is part of the body, and that consciousness is a field state generated by the nervious system, which is also strongly affected by the hormonal systems. Which are strongly affected by one’s genetics. If every last cell in your body is XY, you have a male body. If you don’t FEEL male, that could be due to any number of things, but it’s not because the lump at the top of your spinal column is miraculously XX.
No expert I, but everything I’ve read or heard about gender-change operations includes the fact that the proposed candidate is himself or herself enthusiastic - nay, demanding - of the change.
This story reads as though the doctor came up with the idea, and Angelina went along with it, as sort of a willing participant in therapy. Given the state of things today, in which such a patient would never be accepted for gender reassignment surgery, I find it remarkable that this patient was accepted then.
I agree and I can only assume that, back in the early days, standards had not been established and that the doctor was, to some extent, experimenting. A tragedy, yes, but doctors are human, too.
As to whether Angelina’s sex change was a good idea at the time and that only some years later did she change her orientation…it’s really hard to say. The best opinion would be Angelina’s herself but she’s not here to share it with us.
She was not a particularly happy person, overall, but, like the rest of us, she was doing the best she could with what she had.
Evil Captor, you’re the victim of a slight whoosh here – “female brain” refers, metaphorically (there’s a term for the particular trope used here, which I don’t recall), to the contents thereof – the person whose self-awareness and self-perception is that of a woman, albeit processing those thoughts in grey matter with a Y chromosome present.
I’m curious about the physical implications of surgery and hormone therapy. For example, men have a higher risk of heart disease. Does a MTF transexual then have the same risk of heart disease as she did before she became a woman? What about breat cancer? Does she have the same risk of that as the “average” woman? Are there enough statistics on this for anyone to know? (Not that this is something that would prevent someone from undertaking gender change, but I’m curious. I always want to know the risks and implications of any surgery, not just immediate but the long-term ones as well.)
I’m posting first in reply to the OP without reading subsequent replies, since in a strong sense it’s really a controversial IMHO topic, and then I’ll go back and read through (and probably find that I’m saying nothing new here):
There’s a fallacy we all tend to fall victim to, of thinking that categories exist in and of themselves whether humans perceive them or not, and that therefore there are objectively right and objectively wrong ways to categorize things. There aren’t. As Robert Pirsig points out in the core sections of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, our raw experience doesn’t involve categories; our minds divide up that experience and make sense of it by placing things in categories that feel right to our minds, that make the most elegant and consist picture of reality for us.
Certainly we expect our “pictures of reality” to overlap those of other folks who are experiencing much the same thing — were this not true, we would all be mutually and insanely incomprehensible to each other — but we’re also well-aware (most of us are, at any rate) that the process of maintaining, critiquing, and refreshing our “pictures of reality” is a sort of creative art in which there is always room for improvement as well as the elimination of major and minor errors. And one central sense in which these improvements and corrections are made is with regards to the categories and the more artful use of the “knife of distinction”.
Equally certainly, we as a species have long found “sex” to be a highly useful categorical system, and there’s no doubt that for the most part we’ve thought of it as being permanent, binary (either/or), and explicit (“Is it a boy or a girl? Look inside the diaper, if there’s a penis he’s a boy, if there’s a vagina she’s a girl”). Over time and with the greater accumulation of information, we’ve tended to modify the category a bit with regards to binary and explicit (most folks have heard of “hermaphrodites”; a significant portion of the population is explicitly aware of things like Turner’s syndrome, prenatal androgen-insensitivity, undescended testicles, androgenized clitoris, and other such things that create a grey area). Now, thanks to medical technology, we have reason to rethink the permanent part as well. Infant boys are reconstituted as infant girls subsequent to botched circumcisions —something that later generates questions and medical controversy when some of them later identify as boys anyway (which again widens the definitional grey area) but which did not seem to provoke lots of vitriolic and hostile critical response. THAT cropped up when permanence was volitionally challenged by people with (generally) normally functioning organs and parts who wanted them changed to fit the sex that they felt they were supposed to be — “to make the body match the mind”.
When I hear someone say “Well, So-and-so still isn’t a man, she’s still a woman with an artificial dick and her tits lopped off”, or “I am not calling ‘that’ a woman, he’s just a man who’s had a bunch of surgery”, I think I’m hearing an objection to the volitional part. There is no objective “right” categorical system to correctly conceptualize and use for sexing people and certainly no more inherently permanent and correct quality to fixing it to XX versus XY than there was to fixing it to penis versus vagina. So in my opinion what’s going on there is an assertion that “people should not have the right or the opportunity to change sex, it should be permanent even if it no longer has to be”.
So I will now post this and then see if anyone has openly asserted that people should not have that right, and if they have I will post my disagreement with them.
There isn’t much research here, but there is a little. Post-op transwomen have a much lower risk of prostate cancer than cismen, and a substantially elevated risk of breast cancer than ciswomen, but not much different than that of ciswomen using hormone replacement. I’ve never seen studies on heart disease. Pre-op transwomen have a high risk of testicular cancer.
I’ve seen mixed claims on lifespan; some studies show lifespan increasing, other show it decreasing; I suspect that sample definition is critical here (for example, if you include pre-op and especially pre-hormonal transwomen in the sample, the lifespan would obviously dive significantly because of the high rate of suicide in pre-hormonal transwomen).
My opinion is that you are the gender God created you and no amount of surgery or hormone therapy can change that.
However, it’s none of my business if a person decides they are the opposite sex and gets the operation.
Well, I don’t believe there are such things as gods, but it’s none of my business if you want to worship imaginary beings—so I guess that makes us about even, right?