Transsexual Question

Great Debates
161

blahedo, you make some good points, including ones I had thought of as well. I won’t re-post them, but I will try posting something I composed much earlier, but was prevented from posting due to my freaking laptop being a fire-breathing whore of Babylon piece of shit with a dead battery…never mind.

I feel that a key problem here is the use of the word “deception”.

Out of argument’s sake, what other items should a person be mandated to reveal on a first date/before sex?

Or, let’s just talk about relationships in general, and leave the sex out of it. I have to hope or assume that we’re only really worried about hypothetical people who are interested in love/long-term relationships. I know it’s anti-SDMB to disparage casual sex in any way, but seriously, when you go to a bar and take some anonymous/semi-anonymous stranger home for the night, you pretty much deserve whatever you receive.

Some feel very strongly (correct me if I’m wrong) that trans people should reveal their status very, very early on in the relationship - perhaps before the first date even. If we go there, however, we have a few things to consider:

  1. The responsibility of the dater to ask the proper questions or have the proper background on who exactly they are seeing. Surely the dater has to have some level of responsibility.

  2. The role of semi-blind love. That is, if the person you meet and continue to meet is someone you love, does it matter that they have been through SRS?

  3. The role of totally-blind love (AKA, the “only bisexual persons truly love” argument), which says that if you truly love someone, their gender, race, religion, etc. don’t matter, otherwise what you have isn’t really love, it’s qualified love. Or, as is called, “love with an asterisk”.

  4. Now we get to the following - what exactly is the responsibility of the datee to reveal proactively sensitive, potentially dangerous information about themselves to the dater? Ironically, you may really need to date/build some sort of relationship with the person for some time before you feel safe enough to discuss some matters. But that involves not going out of your way to tell the other person these things. This is a serious problem for trans persons, and it’s a terrible Catch-22. Now mind you, I’m talking about proactive information, not lying in response to a direct question. The response to a direct unambiguous question should be the truth, silence, or “fuck off”. And the questioner can make of that what they will, IMO.

  5. And when you do tell the info, what other things should one be telling at the same time? Religion seems like a must, and in days of not-so-old, being the wrong religion would end the date right then and there. Financial status? This can certainly colour an entire life together with the person. Criminal background? Well, yeah, maybe you should know if the person you’re dating didn’t really get all those tatoos in their Frat house. Military service? I know some people who are so opposed to war and the military that they would leave a person they “love” if they knew they had ever been in the military - or even been a cop or firefighter, too. Venereal or other communicable diseases? Seems sensible, especially if you’re about to make the two-backed beast.

I mean, it’s not a clear-cut issue.

162

You might want to look at the story of John Thiessen. John was born a boy, and had his penis damaged in a circumcision accident. His doctors decided it’d be easier to reconstruct female genetilia, so they gave him a female physique, a prescription for hormones and told his parents to raise him as a girl.

This person grew up with the body and the hormones of a woman. For twelve years, he grew up socially and pretty much biologically a woman.

And it didn’t work. You can’t change someone’s gender, even by raising them as a different one.

While your body and upbringing is important to your personal gender experiences, gender identity reaches far beyond any particular set of circumstances. For example, some women menstrate at ten, some menstrate when they are seventeen. Does that mean the seventeen year old is less of a woman in those intervineing years? Of course not. Women’s bodies and bodily experience vary wildly, but they are still women throughout their lives.

There is something, somewhere in our brains that give almost all of us an innate and pretty much immutable sense of gender. This is consistent with modern neurological thinking. The brain determines all sorts of unlikely things. For example, there is a portion that regulates religious experiences. All evidence show that gender is primarily determined in the brain. All of the evidence. There is no evidence short of “common sense” that gender is determined by genetelia, hormones or upbringing. But common sense- especially when applied to as complex and strange an organ as the human brain, is often wrong.

So when it comes to science and transgendered people, I’m gonna trust two people- scientists and transgendered people.

163

No one here has said that.

You think the life experiences of transsexual women aren’t important to how they feel as women? You’re not the only person in the world with experiences and feelings. Maybe if you could bring yourself to stop being so self-centered you’d have an easier time dealing with people who are different from you.

164

Well, of course you would have different life experiences than a transgendered person. You would have the experience of a woman of growing up with your gender supported by biology, family, culture and society. Your childhood would be parents that smile when you open the EZ Bake oven with delight, Holly Hobby bedspreads, babysitting and prom dresses.

A transgendered person would have a very confusing experience growing up as a woman. Feelings about gender would not be validated from outside, instead of EZ Bake ovens, there would be GI Joes instead of baby dolls there would be trucks. Acting the way you felt inside could have immediate negative consequences with family, friends, kids at school.

Both women, but with very different experiences growing up.

165

How far into the relationship does a woman reveal that she’s had a mastectomy? I know that it doesn’t come out on the first date most times, and that it will be a “big deal” to some men. But that doesn’t oblige a person to “'fess up” to the situation the minute there’s signs of attraction.

166

Ava said, “There are the Guevedoces.”

I saw a program about these people. There happens to be a fair number of them somewhere in Mexico. Everyone is cool with it. There is no horrible stigma associated with it. It was very interesting. The kid they focused on was well-adjusted and his friends and family thought nothing of it.

167

Perhaps the name of this thread should be changed to “Ask the Transexual?”

I look at it like this, to understand it: it’s like you have a female soul, in the body of a male. Remember that movie with Jodie Foster, Freaky Friday? She and her mother switch bodies. So she’s her mom for a day, and her mom is her. It’s kinda like it would be if you did that?

I know that’s not exact, but that’s how I look at it, so I don’t get confused.

Or if I woke up tomorrow morning, and looked in the mirror, and saw a male looking back at me. I’d freak out, and I’d HATE it.

But imagine these people have that every day.

Okay, this may be a delicate question, but um, I read about a talk show (okay, it was Geraldo!), and he had on a transexual who had started life as a man, got the operation and became a woman, but then went and had MORE surgery and became a man again, and then wanted to go back to being a woman.

Is that totally fake? Or are there people who have done that?

don’t hit me!

168

" . . . a transexual who had started life as a man, got the operation and became a woman, but then went and had MORE surgery and became a man again, and then wanted to go back to being a woman.

Is that totally fake? Or are there people who have done that?"

—There are one or two. They’re not so much transsexuals as “fucking lunatics.” And they always end up on Geraldo . . .

169

IANATBIWA: There are people that do that, but not many who have followed the current standard of care. How old was this individual? Did it say where the first surgery was performed? The current standards of care are designed to avoid that sort of thing, but no standard is fool proof, and some people bypass the standards.
I don’t watch programs that treat people like side show freaks. I see them sometime for a few minutes at lunch while getting something out of the fridge, and back when I was in my mother’s house as she watched them. Sometimes I can’t stomach them long enough to retrieve lunch. Actually, compared to Geraldo and Maury, side shows have a certain integrity. Unfortunately, many people seem to get all their information regarding transsexuals from such programs. From what I do see, it seems that transexuals are no longer a draw in and of themselves, but rather new permutations are being explored. Dissatisfied transsexuals, transsexuals makeovers, etc.

170

By it in the previous show, I meant did the program say not did the individual say.

171

I never bothered to watch it-I just saw a blurb for it, or something.

I was just wondering, because what doctor would be willing to do that? I would think that they’d stop a person who was that fucking unstable.

Hmmm…probably the same doctor doing Jacko’s plastic surgery?

172

Guinastasia, there really are a small number of rerereassignees. These are people who (a) had money and (b) had unethical doctors. Proper application of the Standards of Care would have precluded their reassignments. Eve is dead on target when she calls them fucking lunatics.

As to having an “Ask the Transsexual” thread, I’ve been asked before, and I’ve always refused. I don’t want to be obliged to answer everyone’s questions, especially since they can get exceedingly nasty. There is an “Ask the Transgendered Person” thread out there somewhere, but I don’t think it’s been posted to for quite a while.

I pass the mirror test more often than not these days. It’s taken a long time to get there.

173

I’m familiar with the story. It does more to bolster the position that gender is biologically determned than mentally determined considering that Thiessen was born a boy and surgically turned into a girl because of a botched circumcision.

He eventually got to the truth and is now living the same biological gender nature gave him on day one, isn’t he?

There is a limit to how much variation there is though. A penis is not within the variations of how ‘things happen at different times to different women’.

You wouldn’t mind providing a cite for this, would you?

I haven’t seen a full scientific explanation of what causes a person to believe they are the gender opposite their bodies, and I’m afraid I need something more conclusive than someone telling me ‘I feel just as much like a woman as you do.’

I’m going to ignore the fact that you used an ad-hom and answer this by saying that it’s people who tell me that a body doesn’t mean anything with regard to gender who are being intolerant. Apparently their feelings matter, but mine don’t because I’m not a transsexual. I’m talking about the people who say ‘Any body I have, even with a penis, is just as woman as yours.’ I’m supposed to accept that coming from someone, but that person isn’t supposed to accept that my body is so integral to my gender that I don’t think someone with a penis is just like me?

If a person wants me to be tolerant of them, they’re going to have to show a little tolerance in return. And quite frankly, I can’t help it that I feel insulted by being told that someone who will never have to think about a Pap smear, cervical cancer, ovarian cysts, being pregnant, who produces sperm, has testicles and gets erections is ‘just as woman’ as I am. If it doesn’t matter to you, hey, that’s great, but telling me it shouldn’t matter to me is an insult.

And the proof that a ‘soul’ exists is where, exactly? A soul is a religious concept, and since I don’t have that particular belief, I have a lot harder time just taking that for an answer.

174

Interesting, didn’t you state that it is your experience growing up as female that made you a woman? The experience of growing up female did not make John Thiessen a woman although he was raised as such from the age of 2 years.

I would argue that the story bolsters the idea that society, family, culture and experiences do not determine gender.

175

Gee, catsix, I’m awfully sorry that my existence insults you. Would you feel all better if I threw myself under a train on my way home tonight?

176

I see you also chose to ignore the fact that I already pointed out that no one here has said the things you attribute to transsexuals. You keep talking about transsexual people who say these things, but they certainly aren’t the transsexuals in this thread. Are these people you know in real life? If so, perhaps you should go argue with them instead of projecting their attitudes onto other posters. However, I suspect that they are not people who you know in real life at all but are instead straw transsexuals that have no existence outside your imagination. Either way, you aren’t accomplishing anything worthwhile by whining to us that people are insulting you by saying things that you heard somewhere else or just made up yourself.

177

Band Name!

178

Sure thing. I want to say it is in The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, but I might be getting that mixed up with Phantoms of the Brain. This part of the brain, when stimulated either naturally or artifically, produces a very strong feeling of having had a religious experience. Scientists are theorizing that it might be responsible for the strong religious feelings that some people experience during epileptic seizures.

I highly reccomend both books to someone interested in some introductory neurology. The brain is a crazy crazy thing. It does stuff we are only just beginning to understand.

179

Seriously, catsix, who is saying things like “a body doesn’t mean anything”? Of course it means something. Most of the people here are just saying it doesn’t mean everything, which is rather different. All the TG folks here, that I’m aware of, are perfectly willing to stipulate that their experiences differ from natal women such as yourself (in fact, they pretty much lament that fact, but they don’t deny it). There are some experiences that natal women have that TG women (mtf) do not; and there are some experiences that TG women have that natal women do not. There are also a things that are shared between the two groups, particularly psychological makeup.

The John Thiessen case seems like it should be read primarily as “there’s no denying true psychological gender—such a denial leads to ostracism, extreme depression and attempted suicide”. In his case, his true psychological gender matched his birth-genitalia gender. It’s nice and convenient when psychological gender matches up with birth-genitalia gender, when said genitalia are fully-formed, unambiguous, and not altered, and when the gender to which one is attracted is primarily the opposite from one’s own. If these things line up for you, then congratulations, you’re in the majority! But there are many, many cases where they do not, and to the extent that we are not mere animals and actually interact with other people, it is our psychological genders that need to be the dominant factor in categorising each of us as “man” or “woman”.

On that basis, the only reasonable course is to call KellyM and Eve and the other TG women on this board “women”. They may not have been born with female genitalia, and they may have missed out on wearing braids and jumpers, and getting their period, and all the social nastiness of middle-school girls; but now, as adults, they are women. They look like women, they talk like women, they interact with others like women. The fact that they didn’t grow up women certainly matters: it is, by and large, a source of regret (middle-school nastiness notwithstanding).

180

catsix, you seem to be insisting that womanhood is acquired through a collection of experiences that are tied to various aspects of female anatomy along with cultural characteristics common to modern Western society. By your definition, therefore, nobody was a “true woman” until sometime in the 1980s or thereabouts, and there’s a lot of people out there who are seemingly women but really aren’t, at least to some extent, because they have missed out on at least some, and in some cases most or even all, of the experiences that you claim are essential to being a woman. You’ve even repeatedly said that a person has to be “just like you” to be a woman. This definition is extremely narrow, and effectively makes you the only true woman in the universe.

Your definition is narrowminded and bigoted, leads to ridiculous conclusions, and is demeaning to all women whose lives deviate in any way from the “standard of womanhood as defined by catsix”. You appear to refuse to even consider the possibility that we are right when we talk about gender being defined by brain structure even though there is good scientific reason to believe that this is case, and instead strawman the argument by characterizing it as “the body doesn’t mean anything”. You refuse to accept that a person can be a woman without having to be “just like you”, and you treat the possibility of there being women who are a great deal not like you as a personal insult.

And then you have the gall to demand “tolerance” for your point of view. I have no obligation to be tolerant of those who deliberately ignore facts in in order to continue holding and professing such self-centered, intolerant, and bigoted opinions. Especially when those opinions seem calculated to deny me my humanity.