Why all the anger at me for knowing what I need?

[Hikari]

And you know what - I am not you and can never know what it feels like to be you so all I can do is respect your right of self-belief while I remain agnostic. I know you are sincere.

Fair enough.

[Colleen♡Callie]

I appreciate your taking the time to reply and your thoughtful post. Everything you have said makes sense.  Autism is something that I have not spent much time thinking about until very recently - I have just had the vaguest of understandings of its diagnostic criteria, the various hazy theories about causation and even a lot of the political/cultural issues within the ASD community that accompany the phenomenon.  For a number of reasons, I have been trying to learn about this over the past few months.  It is interesting to me how a lot of the identity politics that exist with thin the trans space also have their counterparts within the spectrum community.  For example I can't help but note how similar some of the talk of, for example aspie (having aspergers) vs NT (neurotypical) mirrors talk I see here of trans vs. "cis". 

I do suspect that there MAY be an underlying "something" behind both GD and ASD (in SOME cases) but I also know science if far from understanding what that is.

To answer your question about if there really is a difference between being wired to want to be the opposite gender vs being wired to actually BE the opposite gender  - first of all I am not sure if ANYONE is wired to be the opposite gender - I believe that to varying to degrees it is a matter of a desire to be the opposite gender.  Of course some people are naturally more comfortable and better suited to live their lives in a way that is opposite to societal expectations of their birth "gender".  But I think that there it is fair to say that there is some identity difference in living in a gender because you want to vs that is that is just how you were born.  Maybe it is a very slight difference. There is going to be a difference in identities between someone born into a certain religion vs someone who converts, someone who is born as a citizen of a country vs someone who has immigrated there.  So at the very least this needs to be recognized, even if it is no big deal.  But I also have to say that, as a born male, my mental construct of what it feels like to be a woman is just based on my own observations and speculation. If I chose to once again call myself a woman should I be offended if someone in a women's only space objected to my presence in some activities because of this fundamental reality?  I think that if there is a boundary there it probably needs to be respected, at least at this time. Ideally one day gender wouldn't matter at all but for now it does and I think that assigned birth, while irrelevant 99.9% of the time in some instances still matters.

Brain scans of various types of transsexuals such as Ftm, and homosexual (for their assigned gender) Mtf have shown brain size and structure more closely related to the gender they identify with.  While brain scans and differences within are still being taken and studied we have a long way to go before getting definite results across the transsexual community, there are scans that are showing some classes of transsexuals to display a brain that is more in keeping both structurally and wired with the gender they claim to be.  These results are still being confirmed and studied, but it does suggest that it is possible that we are wired according to the gender we identify as.  In the classes that didn't holistically match the brains of the gender they claimed to be (such as heterosexual (for assigned gender) MtF) there were an abundance of structures within the brains that matched their claimed gender over their birth gender.  Further research will eventually look into the importance of these structures on gender identity.

These studies are still very much in the peer review stages so no definitive result or claims are being made just yet, beyond sharing the findings of the initial experiment results.

I am going to have to agree with Hikari, but the nature of this discussion is getting more and more into the speculative, on topics that science is trying to answer currently, so while I will share my reasons for why I agree with Hikari, it is still more or less my opinion and educated guess.

Firstly, like Hikari, I am the way I am.  I tried to power through life living as a male, keeping my desire to be female to myself and attempting to satiate it with fiction and fantasy.  It nearly killed me twice.  Desires are desires. They can be fixed, altered and changed.  They can be corrected, outgrown or simply abandoned.  In the 50+ years of trying to learn about and treat gender dysphoria, the early accepted belief was this.  We're were considered perverts who simply desired to be the opposite gender and psychotherapy and treatment of the disordered desire (which was caused by some early influence in our life (as many desires and fears are) and not neurophysical or something we were born with).  Psychotherapy has consistently shown success in treating and correcting harmful, or unwanted desires.  And psychotherapy was the suggested treatment for trans* individuals. 

The psychiatry community didn't abandon this treatment choice easily.  They held on for far longer than evidence should have mandated.  It is now established beyond a shadow of a doubt, due to this fact and the large quantity of evidence accumulated over the years, that psychotherapy is not effective and in majority of cases, far more harmful to the patient.  It is established now that Gender dysphoria can not be treated and corrected with psychotherapy or in any way one would treat an unwanted or harmful desire, or even most disorders that were later tacked on to explain why treating it as a desire didn't work.  Psychotherapy just doesn't work for GD.  It is the primary reason that there is a search for physiological differences and it's change from GID to GD.  Because psychiatry has pretty much ruled it out as a perverted desire or disorder and now consider it a true and factual difference that is present at birth.  Meaning that psychiatry has determined that we are wired to believe, identify and feel like the gender we claim to be.  Mentally, we are the gender we claim to be, and nothing short of lining our bodies up to align with our identities have proven to work.  If this were just desire or disorder, psychotherapy should for all purposes work.

Moreso, as you've said, you wouldn't wish GD on anyone, and very few of us would.  So many of us would jump at the chance to be free of the dysphoria and I suspect a lot of people aren't quite in keeping with my "In no wish does it translate to me being free of GD by identifying as my assigned gender".  Many are still figuring it out and afraid to fully face the fact they aren't cis, many would jump at the chance to be free of GD anyway possible.  These individuals don't want to be trans, and as such this overriding desire would eventually overthrow the desire to be the opposite gender and correct itself.  This rarely happens, and in the cases that has, there are usually a number of signs to suggest something else was a play the whole time.

This is why I disagree that it is simply desire.  We are born with only 2 fears, loud noises and falling.  We are born only with the desire for companionship be it romantic, familial or friendship.  All other desires and fears are taught and learned in our life, or present as a representation of a temporary need.  As a child wanting your parent is a representation of the need for security and protection at the vulnerable age.  As you grow up, you desire freedom and independence from the parent as you begin to enter the stage where we are driven to set out on our own and start our own family and life.  There is no evidence of being wired to desire anything beyond basic needs. 

[retransition]

Fair enough.

[retransition]

There is no evidence of being wired to desire anything beyond basic needs.

You know what ... I was with you pretty with everything until this obviously untrue bit at the end, which leads me to think that maybe this  just not stated as well as everything else you expressed so eloquently throughout the majority of your post (you made a lot of great points!) Of course we do things that are bad for us.

As you warned earlier not to jump to conclusions when encountering correlations.  I think the brain scan information is really interesting but to me it is quite probable that transitioning might make some parts of a person's brain more aligned with the typical spectrum of the gender they are transitioning to (or even just identify with over time.)  Everything we think and experience to some degree changes our brain physically so this makes sense.

And I do agree with you that I am skeptical of any form of conversion therapy and believe that any "successful" outcomes are probably either false positives or the "conversion" was likely the product of something else.  The risks associated with this sort of therapy coupled with the serious emotional and psychological harm usually done to those who are subjected to contribute to my firm belief that these types of practices should be avoided.

But can therapy to help MANAGE GD get better? Yes! In the wake of the increased attention society is paying to this topic could listening to how people, trans and non-trans, are talking about what gender means to them  right now help us understand how we as humans "do gender" and lead to some new therapeutic insights?  Yes!  Could a more honest discussion of the physiological side of managing GD help empower people to make better informed decisions in terms of how they wish to manage their GD?  Yes!  And really - since all life is a little bit give and take - I don't think it is going to be helpful in the long term to discount people's views of gender (going by the assumption that it even exists) that are never going to align perfectly with ours. Someone who is non-trans may have just as strong (and to them equally valid) views of what defines a man versus a woman as their trans counterpart would.  At this point it does get into the "speculative" as you say and to me actually becomes something that we must handle as best we can like we try to do in respecting people's right to their own religious views whilst not infringing on others basic human rights.  It is never going to be entirely perfect - but there is alway room for improvement.

[Colleen♡Callie]

I was afraid I slipped out of eloquence in more than just that point.

You're fully correct on everything there.  My attention was being pulled in several directions while trying to compose the post, and I actually had to use the back button to retrieve because I apparently didn't wait to see if it there were new posts before moving on to address something else.  Thankfully Chrome saves the text in the text box when you hit the back button.  Yes, it was poorly stated and a jumped to an unsupported conclusion.

I also am in full agreement, and was actually thinking I should have stated this in the post like 10 minutes after I posted it.  Everything I stated in my post, was in part current psychiatry understanding of GD, and my own conclusions based on the evidence we have thus far.  But we're on the cusp of really looking into and discovering a lot about gender, gender identity and gender dysphoria.  What is concluded as of today will change and be redefined many times in the years to come as new knowledge and revelations are presenting.

This is why psychology gets a lot of flak for not being a "real" science. People think that because it is so fluid and shifts so much is evidence that it's just a bunch of academics making grand claims without really knowing what they are talking about.  But it's still a fairly young field of study.  The hard sciences often go back to ancient Greek times and already had their periods of rapid discoveries that were constantly redefining things.  Even then, they still change relatively frequently, just the foundation for those things are pretty well established and set. 

All of my views listed are just as I said, my opinions.  I have my reasons, both observational and evidence based, and personal.  But yeah, in the next few years all of that can be proven inaccurate, or heavily confirmed by findings.  It is more, in my opinion, that the first 40 or 50 years were figuring out what questions we needed to ask, and now we have a pretty good understanding of a foundation from which we can now find the answers to those questions.  And that's were the studies are now, finding the answers.  It is very hard to speculate what will come from these studies because we're all waiting to see what answers are derived from them.  It can go many different ways. 

As far as treatment options, though, in all of this there we haven't addressed the future of the technology that exists now, and is already close to starting it's first field applications in the next 5 to 10 years.  We have 3D medical printers that are printing out human organ and tissue. Including a full ear.  Better understanding of using viruses and targeted and guide DNA delivery systems.  Researchers have successfully found ways to use our own stem cells for gene therapy on a grander scale than before.  Genetists are making leaps and bounds in their understanding of the human genome, as well as their ability to build genetic codes from scratch and insert into patients. 

And the one that is most useful for the FtM crowd, a few years ago scientist had successfully found the switch in adult lab rats that prompted ovarian tissue to shift itself into testicular tissue, which down the line will do a lot of keeping ftm reproductive even after transition. 

By the end of this century the methods we use today to transition physically, will look like the old practice of bloodletting to clear away diseases.  And the end result may even been indistinguishable on every level from a member born to either gender.  Transitioning methods that would also be much less severe than what we use today while achieving a much better result.

Honestly, the future options, both for mental treatment and physical treatment, will be so far better than anything we can hope for now. 

[retransition]

I was afraid I slipped out of eloquence in more than just that point.

Nahh ...

But I totally agree with what you said about the first 40 - 50 years and still knowing so little.  Yes, to ourselves we appear to have made great strides in understanding gender identity - but our knowledge about this is really in its infancy.  And that is why I get frustrated quickly with people who sort of say that the conversation is already over and we know everything we need to know. 

More and more we are now starting to legislate gender based on our current understandings of it.  I am not against this, and laws that keep people safe and protect their human rights will always have my support.  But as we continue to tease out what exactly gender (if anything) means we have to be willing also to continually look at how we want to manage it within our society. At this stage there still have to be some norms in place to go by.  That sort of goes back to what this thread is all about.  For a lot of people, having to go see a therapist or doctor as part of the SOC may seem like a burden. Because of the sad fact that a lot of mental health practitioners are barely competent, people are right to complain about being forced to see them.  But it comes down to the Society thing again (I have used that word a lot tonight) and how we all have to agree on some basic rules (even if imperfect) if we are going to be able to all function together.  In the USA we have laws that prevent men from going into female bathrooms because there is a safety risk to females should certain men go in there.  (Of course the laws go the other way too but that is an entirely different dynamic.)  Those laws make sense to us.  Now, if someone who is born male but identifies as female wishes to use a female bathroom I believe that there needs to be that person has at least some societal obligations to fulfill in the interests of increasing the likelihood of more safety. (I am not even going to discuss the matters of passing.)  I believe that that person needs to be evaluated in some manner (figuring out what that should look like is the tricky part) and they must also be willing to put at least some effort into demonstrating to society that they are doing this in a socially responsible way, especially if they are going to expect legal protections for their right to be there. 

I honestly feel I don't need to go to take driving test or visit the DMV to be able to drive a car down the freeway.  But I still don't really complain TOO much about the fact I have to do this because, obviously I don't want to get pulled over without a license, but also because I feel better knowing that the majority (though not all) of the drivers in the cars that are surrounding me on that freeway have also gone through this process and that makes driving a bit safer.   

We are still figuring out the "bathroom thing".  There will probably be a variety of differing laws about this depending on what country, state or city you live in.  In my opinion, insisting that a person be allowed to use the restroom of whatever gender they declare themselves to be without having at least some level of societally approved verification that they have no ulterior or nefarious motives for wanting to be in there will probably make it even hard to work out how we deal with this.

I sort of went off on a tangent that I didn't necessarily mean to. But I guess my point is that I do think we all have some responsibility to continue digging deeper into the psychology and neurology behind being transgender, not only so that we can improve care for those who are impacted with GD (as I was talking about in my earlier thread) but also to help society navigate how to deal with some of the more murky issues that emerge as we start to cross lines of demarcation that have never been crossed before.

[genderhell]

I am emphatically NOT saying that being trans* makes people mentally ill

Perhaps you refer to *treated* trans people ?    Suicide/psychotic/GD-impairment is evidence that it makes them mentally ill. 

But can therapy to help MANAGE GD get better? Yes! In the wake of the increased attention society is paying to this topic could listening to how people, trans and non-trans, are talking about what gender means to them  right now help us understand how we as humans "do gender" and lead to some new therapeutic insights?  Yes!  Could a more honest discussion of the physiological side of managing GD help empower people to make better informed decisions in terms of how they wish to manage their GD?  Yes!

That is has been my rallying cry.  The DSM does not properly identify trans people.

If they were honest, and stated that some trans people actually need at least some HRT, then they would be admitting that trans is an intersex condition, and that would not jive with the "trans is a lifestyle choice" crowd.

So, perhaps there is intentional dishonesty.  This dishonesty could potentially cause harm.

Gender Identity and dysphoria is exactly like Autism.  Very very very new interms of labeling, recognizing and studying.  It popped up around the 50s and 60s just like autism did, and out knowledge of it has grown exponentially since then.  In both cases the growing numbers coincide merely with our better understanding of them.  Which is also allowing us to recognize historic cases of them.

They are the same superficially, however, I would think ASD and GD are discernible.

Autistics tend to be good at detail at the sacrifice of the bigger picture. This is called, "local processing over global processing". The opposite is true of non-ASD people. This is why people call younger ASD people names like "dense" or "lack common sense", and why they have to be told every detail explicitly. This trait is mitigated as the ASD person memorizes enough of the world to appear as normal. Dr. Grandin a famous ASD person said it was not until age forty that she was able to be fully functional, because she had to fill her mind with forty years of memorized information.

Further, the long term memory is better in ASD people at the sacrifice of the short term memory. This is why some ASD people get identified as "absent minded". The opposite is true of non-ASD people. This is how an ASD person makes it in the world by memorizing everything, and having an expectancy that the world will function subsequently as memorized.

I would not expect GD to impart the above traits

[Colleen♡Callie]

Retransition-  fully agree with everything there.  Like with the example Cindy gave of her patient that screamed dissociation not GD.  In reality, there are a number of conditions that can present as GD but aren't and assessment by a professional is necessary.  Does it sometimes allow for bad professionals to barr transitioning.  Yes.  Sadly.  But it is still vital.

Genderhell-  you completely took one tiny line of my post out of context and argued against it.  Line: ASD and GD are the same.   Context missed:  In regards to the fact there is historical evidence they have always existed but awareness, identifying them and starting to understand them in very new, both only being established and recognized in the 50s and 60s.  This causes many to view them as new conditions that never existed before and look for environment causes to the growing epidemic when in actuality, the increasing numbers are a matter of a better understanding of what both conditions are, not some chemical we are "poisoning generations with"

ASD =/= GD.  Never said it was.  What I did say is in the above context the are the same.  I.E.  in the above context you can swap the diagnosis of ASD for GD and barely have to alter a line of it.

If you read my other points in my posts on this thread you will see I fully consider them to be separate and very different conditions.

[genderhell]

Genderhell-  you completely took one tiny line of my post out of context and argued against it.  Line: ASD and GD are the same.   Context missed:  In regards to the fact there is historical evidence they have always existed but awareness, identifying them and starting to understand them in very new, both only being established and recognized in the 50s and 60s.  This causes many to view them as new conditions that never existed before and look for environment causes to the growing epidemic when in actuality, the increasing numbers are a matter of a better understanding of what both conditions are, not some chemical we are "poisoning generations with"

ASD =/= GD.  Never said it was.  What I did say is in the above context the are the same.  I.E.  in the above context you can swap the diagnosis of ASD for GD and barely have to alter a line of it.

If you read my other points in my posts on this thread you will see I fully consider them to be separate and very different conditions.

Apologies.   

I misinterpreted your before mentioned statements as "GD causes ASD-symptoms, so both conditions exist in that regard".

[insideontheoutside]

One of which is the "not feeling normal" - rather than feeling like I'm trapped in a female body, I feel like I am trapped in a inbetween body, kind of like a "deformed male" (no offense to anyone, that's only my own dysphoria). And it makes me wish I could have surgery even sooner. Fortunately I thought enough about surgery before so I know it's not a "cure all" for my lack of feeling "normal" or fitting in, and it's something I want solely for my own comfort, but I can see how someone might feel a lot more pressure to get it and then later not be happy about that choice.

I'm interested in how others get around that feeling of "deformed male". Like you, I mean no offense in stating it that way. Personally my biggest dysphoria, all my life, has been that I can't have the functioning lower unit that "normal" MAAB's have. And my personal viewpoint is that surgery would never give me that either. Taking into consideration the "everyone is different" thing, I'm sure there's a variety of ways people cope with the options not being quite the same as if you were born that way. I'm actually glad the opportunity was not presented to me earlier in life because I most likely would have taken it and then not been happy with the result. To me, that doesn't mean I'm any less male because I didn't take the option. For me, it was my "Matrix option" ... I chose to live in the reality as is rather than try to make the fantasy reality the place where I resided. There's definitely been some bumps along the road but here I am.

Going back to the original topic, "Why all the anger at me for knowing what I need?" it's my personal belief that knowing what one needs at any given moment in time is subject to not just change but on external elements. I'll use an example of someone who is so distraught with the female version of puberty that they go to the web and start discovering that they might be FTM. They hate their body, the see males not having to go through any of that, maybe they have even felt sexism already in their lives, maybe they were always a tom boy or didn't like girl's things, and all those variables add up to the decision that they are trans. According to research on the web the treatment for being trans is to change your body to that of the opposite gender. When you're in the middle of experiences that are causing you to be depressed, emotional, distraught, a way out of it almost always seems like the best course of action. Since gender is still such a huge thing in society (up to and including being outside of the male or female box being almost taboo to some people), one can not simply declare themselves the opposite of their assigned-at-birth gender and get on with their lives. Even though I am one of those people who's brain doesn't match up with the body they got, I'm the first to admit that this would be problematic. I also am not a fan of psychologists in general and I've personally been effected by horrible therapists who should not have been therapists at all. But there has to be some general accepted practice and steps to go through if one is to change their gender both physically and socially.

On the topic of mental issues, that's a whole can of worms in my opinion because even now as new studies come out and correlate one thing with another, it can either give someone hope and clarity or shatter their world. When I was a teenager and a therapist told me I had GID I can still remember my very first thought – I should have never said anything because now they think I'm crazy ... that I have a disorder. It got even worse when that one and another therapist basically told me that if I wasn't willing to do any "treatment options" then I need to accept that I'm female and that nonsense of being male is just ... nonsense. Therapy has the power to help, or utterly damage someone. For me, those "diagnosis" kicked off a good 5 year block of alcoholism, depression, and anxiety. All I was trying to do was escape reality but it gave me more problems to deal with on top of my gender stuff so it took me awhile to get my head screwed back on properly again and start fresh. I say all of that because I truly do get where people are coming from when they are opposed to having to deal with a therapist and the damage that can be done if you get a bad one. And plenty of people DO have other issues they're dealing with on top of gender, from depression, anxiety, bi-polar, autism, ADHD, or even worse. Therapy is meant to get to the root of issues and sort through things. But, if you've made the choice that transition is or might be for you, it's the hoops you have to jump through. If you run into one of those bad ones, you have to find a different one.

There's also the "safety" factor as retransition brings up. Laws and rules are made in society that have to do with gender simple to keep a bulk of society feeling comfortable and safe. If you choose to step outside the binary boxes, then you do so at your own discretion. If you want to transition to the opposite gender, you have to go through the current system in order to do that.

[Colleen♡Callie]

Apologies.   

I misinterpreted your before mentioned statements as "GD causes ASD-symptoms, so both conditions exist in that regard".

No no no no nooo.  That would be the exact opposite of what I think and was saying.

ASD and GD have similarities on the superficial level and possibly share an origin.  This would possibly account for the high rate of comorbidity.  But they are very different beasts and very different and separate diagnoses.

Let's say Element A causes the prenatal brain to develop differently than the norm, in terms of wiring and structure.  One instances pushes the brain to develop into Pattern A.  Baby is born with ASD.  Another instances pushes the brain to develop into Pattern B.  Baby is born with GD.  Both instances together pushes the brain to develop both Pattern A and B.  Baby is born with the comorbid ASD and GD.   

Or the alterations from the norm caused by Element A (the cause of ASD) leaves the door wide open for Element B (the cause of GD) to effect the development later on.  Where Element B might require a strong shove to alter the brain development to cause GD in a non-ASD brain, it may only require a small nudge in the ASD brain to cause GD, due to the already different wiring and structure that has been developed. 

This is being all speculation to illustrate what I mean by the two possibly sharing a cause and origin. But it is what comorbidity hints at.  That the conditions that cause one to develop can also be what causes another or makes it easier for others to develop.