Harry Benjamin's Syndrome

[breanda]

Hello,

I recently discovered a new approach for Transsexualism:

http://shb-info.org/hbs.html

It seems to me quite up to date in line with current medical research on the condition,
and very positive for those who had born with the condition, as it helps people to better
understand their physiological handicap.

I consider myself to be a girl born with HBS, not a transsexual, but I feel okay and
friendly with transgender people.

Have a nice day,

Brenda

[The Middle Way]

That is most assuredly an advance. Thank you for posting this.

[katia]

Hello,

I recently discovered a new approach for Transsexualism:

http://shb-info.org/hbs.html

It seems to me quite up to date in line with current medical research on the condition,
and very positive for those who had born with the condition, as it helps people to better
understand their physiological handicap.

I consider myself to be a girl born with HBS, not a transsexual, but I feel okay and
friendly with transgender people.

Have a nice day,

Brenda

there isn't any scientific evidence that transsexualism is related to intersexuality. but whatever the case, i'm not trans-anything or hbs-anything anyway, just a girl, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, just a woman like the millions who were born with xx chromosomes, a uterus and a healthy pair of ovaries.

[breanda]

It depends on what you understand for Intersexuality.

ISNA.org includes in the definition of Intersexuality a vast and complex amount of physiological possibilities.

I read in the HBS Site that a considerable number of researchers (among them Proffesor Louis Gooren)
signs an official document stating that Transsexualism (now HBS) is a neurological condition. So, if it is
a physiological condition, is sure is a form of intersexuality more.

I am as woman as you. The only difference is that I've been born with a condition called HBS, that I hope
to correct very soon with Surgery.

Have a nice day,

Brenda

[katia]

i'm  afraid that you didn't get the irony behind my post.

[breanda]

sorry if I sounded a bit trenchant,

I am having lots of problems in making understand people around me
that I've been born a GIRL with a physical problem.

Fortunately I found the HBS site to help me on that.

Brenda

[Keira]

The proof of TS being a physical thing is in no way definitive, there could be many different reason for it. The jury's still out and it would be unscientific to jump on board just yet.

I may end up being the case, but I think that it has many interrelated multi-factorial causes, many not yet discovered. It could be that someone finds out somebody finds they've got the "TS gene", but are not TS because it needs environmental factors to be revealed. There is a difference between predisposition and causality, many genes predispose, but the direct link is not so obvious.

[breanda]

I may end up being the case, but I think that it has multi-factorial causes.

Only physical multi-factorial causes would be possible then, because there is not
proof whatsoever of psychological/environment causes in almost one century of
medical research, so I think that the HBS movement goes in the right direction.

Have a nice day,

Brenda

[Keira]

HBS is pushing a view before there's a proper scientific foundation.
That's never a good thing, it just offers a target for people who don't
agree to shot it down.

They should work on constructing a stronger understanding of the TS phenomena; look for funding in that area. There's so few decent study of TS in general that any theory will be tenous at best.

Like I said, there could be TS's that don't share the same reason for being a TS than others. The number of genes linked to sexuality, gender and a sense of identity is probably large and their interaction with the physical environment in-utero and after birth, could influence the revelation of one of several of these factors. The difference of the level of dysphoria between TS could even be linked to the different mutations and subsequent environemental factors.

[breanda]

Yes, it matters Tink.

Social prejudices against people born with this condition are due to
the ignorance about this issues that sensationalist media spreads...




So I think it really matters a lot that people understands this right.


Brenda

HBS is pushing a view before there's a proper scientific foundation.
That's never a good thing, it just offers a target for people who don't
agree to shot it down.

They should work on constructing a stronger understanding of the TS phenomena; look for funding in that area. There's so few decent study of TS in general that any theory will be tenous at best.

Like I said, there could be TS's that don't share the same reason for being a TS than others. The number of genes linked to sexuality, gender and a sense of identity is probably large and their interaction with the physical environment in-utero and after birth, could influence the revelation of one of several of these factors. The difference of the level of dysphoria between TS could even be linked to the different mutations and subsequent environemental factors.

I don't think the same as you.

I see HBS in the line with the facts. There is whatsoever NO proof of psycho or environmental factors that
could cause HBS, and I am speaking about decades of medical research on the subject. The result is Zero.
Not psychological or environmental factors involved.

Anyway it doesnt really worries me this, but the word "transsexual".

I dont feel really identified with the term "transsexual", it doesn't defines me, because I identify myself as a Girl without nothing more to add to it.

thats what I feel.


Brenda

[Keira]

The so called substantial research in this field has been very thin indeed
no matter what area, physical, psycho-social, etc.

Even if the current psychological view of TS is very flawed, its still the one that
hold sways and replacing with another flawed model will not really work long time.

At best, I'd rather work hard it descrediting the current psychological view of TS and
wait till the research is in on the other side before committing.

In the end, its how your feel that counts, even if there's no gene supporting that feeling,
its still real isn't it.

[breanda]

Yep, I feel okay with myself.

The problem is to make understand others about my condition. 

But as I see it, is not about "replacing" terms, but in fact, about
CREATING the right terminology for those who had been born with HBS.

Not all transsexual women needs surgery or feel like they are only women.

They can be still be called transsexuals if they feel this term defines their
situations, as there are also transgenders, bigenders and so on...

But then now there are also HBS people.

I see it as an addition (refinement of old terms for some people),
not as a replacement. Because the HBS term could not be applied
to non-op TS as example. Is not a substitute of "transsexual".


Brenda

Even if the current psychological view (model) of TS is very flawed,

Is not "flawed". Is non-existent. Is just a fantasy!!

And is the basis of social prejudices against people born with the condition.


Ok, bye..

See you later,

Brenda

[Elizabeth]

This site is kind of annoying because they use Harry Benjamin's name to make it look all official when really it's just one person's opinion. A person with no credentials, I might add. This person makes up their terminology and makes no citations for the things they say or claim. I think sites like this do everyone a huge disservice. This site is really promoting what they believe transsexualism is and it's contrary to what Harry Benjamin himself wrote and I have posted here on this site. This is just another person trying to pigeon hole people and call anyone not like them a sexual fetishist. Very disappointing.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[Autumn]

This site is kind of annoying because they use Harry Benjamin's name to make it look all official when really it's just one person's opinion. A person with no credentials, I might add. This person makes up their terminology and makes no citations for the things they say or claim. I think sites like this do everyone a huge disservice. This site is really promoting what they believe transsexualism is and it's contrary to what Harry Benjamin himself wrote and I have posted here on this site. This is just another person trying to pigeon hole people and call anyone not like them a sexual fetishist. Very disappointing.

Love always,
Elizabeth

Well, it is a tripod user page. Though, at least on the "explained in one page" link there is a reference.

"Transsexualism (HBS) is now regarded by the world's leading experts in the field as another of the many biological variations that occur in human sexual formation: an intersex condition: where the sex indicated by the phenotype and the genotype is opposite he morphological sex of the brain. People with the condition of transsexualism (HBS) are therefore born with both male and female characteristics and, like many others with atypical sexual development, seek rehabilitation of their phenotype and endocrinology to accord with their dominant sexual identity; an identity which is determined by the structure of the brain. Transsexualism (HBS) is about being a particular sex, not doing it. It is also about recognising gender norms, not challenging them."

Karen Gurney and Eithne Mills, 2005

Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, Volume 12, nr 1 & nr 2
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v12n1_2/Mills12_1.html#Transsexualism%20and%20the%20need%20for%20documented%20legal%20status%20following%20affirmation%20of%20sexual%20identity_T

I'm too tired, and am not really concerned, with combing the site and article however.

[breanda]

This site is kind of annoying because they use Harry Benjamin's name to make it look all official when really it's just one person's opinion. A person with no credentials, I might add. This person makes up their terminology and makes no citations for the things they say or claim. I think sites like this do everyone a huge disservice. This site is really promoting what they believe transsexualism is and it's contrary to what Harry Benjamin himself wrote and I have posted here on this site. This is just another person trying to pigeon hole people and call anyone not like them a sexual fetishist. Very disappointing.

Love always,
Elizabeth

I feel like you dont feel identified with HBS 

But I feel identified with it, so please try to respect it.

To me it doesnt really matter who made this site, but what is wrote there,
and is all well documented in the site to give enough credentials to the content.

Listen, I respect you are a TG or whatever you are, please just I ask the
same back, I dont feel identified as TG or trans-anything but just as Woman,
born with the condition called HBS.

Have a nice day,

Brenda



I found 3 Sites more on HBS :


http://harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org/

http://harrybenjaminsyndrome-not-transsexual.com/

http://www.sexreassignment.com/hbs.html





Brenda







To put it in another words.


In Lynn Conway's words:


http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS.html#anchor279530


Lynn writes:



Scientific evidence has been growing that somehow certain brain-structures in the hypothalamus (the BSTc region) determine each person's core gender feelings and innate gender identity. These structures are "hard-wired" prenatally in the lower brain centers and central nervous system (CNS) during the early stages of pregnancy, during a hormonally-modulated imprinting process in the central nervous system (CNS).

It appears that if those brain and CNS structures are masculinized in early pregnancy by hormones in the fetus, then the child will have male percepts and a male gender identity, independent of whether the genes or genitalia are male. If those structures are not masculinized in early pregnancy, the child will have a female percepts and a female gender identity, again independent of the genes or genitalia. As in the case of intersex infants having ambiguous genitalia, there are undoubtedly many degrees of cross-gendering of brain and CNS structures, so that while some infants are completely cross-gendered others are only partially cross-gendered.

More recent research indicates that the brain begins to differentiate in embryonic males and females even earlier, possibly before embryonic sex hormones come into play, and under mechanisms still not yet understood - with gender identity then becoming a complex effect of the interaction between earlier brain differentiation and later embryonic hormones. For more on this emerging research, see: "Brain development: The most important sexual organ", in Nature magazine, January 29, 2004  (Nature 427, 390 - 392)


That is why it is possible for some children to have gender identities inconsistent with their genes. In cAIS cases, for example, those girls' brain structures are likely insensitive to the masculinization effects of fetal testosterone, as were their genitals. Therefore, they develop the brain structures and gender identity of females, even though they are XY genetically.

That is also why it is possible for some children to have gender identities inconsistent with their genitalia and upbringing. In the case of the boys with cloacal exstrophy ("micropenises"), their brain-structures and CNS presumably did masculinize under the influence of fetal testosterone, leading to later male gender identities even though they had been surgically "turned into girls" as infants and raised as girls.

Those recent cloacal exstrophy observations are already having a profound impact in the medical research community. They are to the science of gender much like the Galileo's observations of the moons of Jupiter.

These are dramatic, unprecedented, undeniable observations that shift the previous paradigm of thought, and do so in an area of science that had been subject to much misinformation and taboo. In Galileo's case, the shift was from an 'earth-centered universe' to a 'sun-centered universe'. In the cases here, the shift is away from a 'genitals + upbringing' theory of gender identity to a 'CNS neurobiological developmental' theory of gender identity.

The implications of this paradigm shift are far reaching, especially for those who suffer from cross-gender identities. Instead of those gender feelings being considered to be "psychological", they can now be understood as being "neurological" in nature.

[MaryEllen]

Hello Brenda,
I feel that I am a woman with the condition known  as HBS and I wholeheartedly agree with all that you have said. There are many that will disagree with you because they are resistant to new ideas and changes, Stay the course, girl. We will prevail.

Hugs,

MaryEllen