# Transgendered person kicked out of a gender divided bathhouse/spa **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 1, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777 "2013-01-01T21:36:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/381 "2013-01-08T15:08:09Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > That whole post is such an straight\* line that it almost begs for a segue. But I’m not going to touch it with an 8" pole\*\*. > > As LHOD said, just here to learn/grasp your side of the story…though I fully admit I still don’t get it. Meaning that I keep thinking ‘mental illness’ more than anything else. But even if I am right – and yes, I understand that there are plenty of competing cites on the matter – I am all for tolerance. The thing I’d like folks to know is that when I make a good-humored joke or wish someone well and such it’s not a sneaky debate trick or veiled snipe. Since my life transformed last year the angry, bitter, vicious, “take them to the Pit and send them into the metaphorical wood chipper” vanished. I am just happy all the time. I am frustrated that I can’t seem to keep the previous debate on topic and am clearly not getting my message through, but hey, that’s OK, I’ll keep putting my case forward and see if people learn something or think about things from a different angle. Hopefully I can learn things too, you know? > [@](#): > > But I don’t/can’t get to the point where I think chopping off your dick or having one built is ‘normal.’ It just isn’t. Well of course, I agree, it’s not normal. Being a transsexual is not normal in general, otherwise the occurrence wouldn’t be so infrequent. The question to ask is “is it necessary and proper in these cases?” (And I’d hate to be normal anyhow…) Or to recap a point above, " **does it result in a net improvement in the quality of life, function, and happiness of the person, without losing anything significant?"** Earlier mention was made (paraphrasing) “chopping things off means you can’t pee standing up nor have penetrative intercourse” but I’m saying there is no net loss, correcting via the cosmetic and reconstructive surgery gives a benefit, life even, to a person who needs it. So one now sits to pee and can have receptive intercourse (not touching the issue of anal sex…no really, don’t want to touch it, lol). It’s just _parts_, they work the same, and aside from the ability to have children (which I doubt will ever happen via medical science, sadly), the transition surgery is pretty doggone complete. So yes, I do make a judgment on people with BIID, because they do not gain anything other than mental satisfaction. A transsexual becomes a more complete and whole person, ironically, by losing some bits and having them formed into others. At the end of it all the the transsexual has gained in by every metric excepting money outlay and post-operative pain. Treatment of various conditions such as have been discussed lies on a spectrum - it’s unfair and illogical for one to say cutting off one body part is exactly the same as any other. I met a woman who had her earlobes trimmed the other day, the aftermath of wearing earrings which were too heavy. Few would argue that cutting off perfectly functioning earlobes is identical to cutting off an arm, and that one can’t judge which one is more correct without being a hypocrite. Is chainsaw fighting a better sport to engage in than billiards? I judge the former to be foolhardy and stupid, and the latter to be pleasant. But a minority, hopefully quite minuscule, would choose the former as having much more merit. And some might even say the two are equivalent - each is a sport people enjoy, and as long as they don’t hurt anyone else, who are we to judge? > [@](#): > > ETA: in Panama Funny coincidence, I did some knife fighting practice last night with my weapons master. Girl’s gotta protect herself…and work off those holiday pounds, yeesh… ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/382 "2013-01-08T16:11:34Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > […]So yes, I do make a judgment on people with BIID, because they do not gain anything other than mental satisfaction. […] Whoa, there. Hold up. From everything I’ve read, BIID seems to be the result of a genuine, if rare and currently poorly understood, neurological dysfunction. It’s no more a “psychological” condition than is a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Or than gender dysphoria. The comparison is actually a strikingly apt analogy. Sure, brickbacon et al. are playing on popular ignorance about this facially bizarre disorder try to make transsexuals sound like lunatics, but BIID sufferers don’t actually appear to be lunatics, and neither are transsexuals. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/383 "2013-01-08T17:32:01Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Whoa, there. Hold up. From everything I’ve read, BIID seems to be the result of a genuine, if rare and currently poorly understood, neurological dysfunction. It’s no more a “psychological” condition than is a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Or than gender dysphoria. The comparison is actually a strikingly apt analogy. Sure, brickbacon et al. are playing on popular ignorance about this facially bizarre disorder try to make transsexuals sound like lunatics, but BIID sufferers don’t actually appear to be lunatics, and neither are transsexuals. I am not trying to make anyone sound like a lunatic. For the record, I don’t think people in either group are necessarily crazy. My point is that blanket statements that, “you are your brain”, that “society should accept that gender and sex are unequivocally user-defined”, and that society needs to adjust are not always reasonable or logical. > [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Without any snark or sarcasm, have an excellent day tomorrow, **brickbacon,** I’m too tired to debate any further. I’m simply too happy to be irritated about a difference of opinion; I wish you wouldn’t have insisted on directing the phrase “butt hurt” towards me, but I’m certainly not going to start a “knife fight” over it. 😉 I hope your day is going well too. Thanks for your time and patience in explaining your opinion. I was listening, and I do appreciate it. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/384 "2013-01-08T17:54:31Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > I am not trying to make anyone sound like a lunatic. For the record, I don’t think people in either group are necessarily crazy. My point is that blanket statements that, “you are your brain”, that “society should accept that gender and sex are unequivocally user-defined”, and that society needs to adjust are not always reasonable or logical. I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that there’s anything unreasonable or illogical about providing legally-mandated accomodations for people who suffer from any of these ailments. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/385 "2013-01-08T18:02:16Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Whoa, there. Hold up. From everything I’ve read, BIID seems to be the result of a genuine, if rare and currently poorly understood, neurological dysfunction. It’s no more a “psychological” condition than is a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Or than gender dysphoria. The comparison is actually a strikingly apt analogy. Sure, brickbacon et al. are playing on popular ignorance about this facially bizarre disorder try to make transsexuals sound like lunatics, but BIID sufferers don’t actually appear to be lunatics, and neither are transsexuals. It is possible that I do not know enough about BIID sufferers. I shall try learn more about the syndrome. ---
**Author:** ![Rala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@Rala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rala)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/386 "2013-01-08T18:18:43Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Whoa, there. Hold up. From everything I’ve read, BIID seems to be the result of a genuine, if rare and currently poorly understood, neurological dysfunction. It’s no more a “psychological” condition than is a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Or than gender dysphoria. The comparison is actually a strikingly apt analogy. Sure, brickbacon et al. are playing on popular ignorance about this facially bizarre disorder try to make transsexuals sound like lunatics, but BIID sufferers don’t actually appear to be lunatics, and neither are transsexuals. This is what I came in here to post. The research is still young, but neurologists have a theory about the basis of this condition. [Cite.](http://cbc.ucsd.edu/pdf/apotem.pdf) > [@](#): > > …nerves for touch, muscle, tendon and joint sensation project to your primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortices in and just behind the post-central gyrus. Each of these areas of the cortex contains a systematic, topographically organised map of bodily sensations. From there, somatosensory information gets sent to your superior parietal lobule (SPL), where it gets combined with balance information from your inner ear and visual feedback about the limbs’ positions. Together these inputs construct your body image: a unified, real-time representation of your physical self. The representation of the body in the SPL (and probably its connections with the posterior insula) is partly innate. We know this because some patients with arms missing from birth experience vivid phantom limbs, implying the existence of a scaffolding that is hardwired by genes. It doesn’t require a leap of faith to suggest that this multisensory body image is organised topographically in the SPL the same way it is in S1 and S2. > > If a particular body part such as an arm or a leg failed to be represented in this hardwired scaffolding of your body image, the result could conceivably be a sense of strangeness or possibly revulsion toward it. That quote is from _The Tell-Tale Brain_ by V. S. Ramachandran, one of the authors of the article I cited above. Interestingly, later in the chapter he discusses transsexuality in terms of this mental map, and suggests that it could also be related to a mismatch between physical body and hardwired internal body image (though this bit is just speculation on his part so far). Anyway, my point is: yes, comparing transsexuals to people with BIID is a fair enough analogy; no, neither group is crazy. With that out of the way, I just want to say that while this is my first post in this thread (there are other posters way more knowledgeable about trans\* issues than I, they’ve got it covered), I’m watching from the sidelines cheering for **Una** et al. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/387 "2013-01-08T18:21:12Z")
> [@colander](#): > > I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that there’s anything unreasonable or illogical about providing legally-mandated accomodations for people who suffer from any of these ailments. Care to cite the legally mandated accommodations that were not provided in this case? ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777/388 "2013-01-08T19:10:48Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Care to cite the legally mandated accommodations that were not provided in this case? I’m not talking about this case. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgendered-person-kicked-out-of-a-gender-divided-bathhouse-spa/645777.md?page=19)