So What's Wrong With This Picture?

[buttercup]

Here's the question as posted on Yahoo!Answers:

For people who suffer from transsexualism, what's wrong with this picture?

http://www.lastdaysministries.org/Publis...

This is a very old article, I believe from 1981.
What issues do you see confused in this story?
What advances have we made in understanding GID?
What should counseling have provided?
What is still the same?
Do you share any of the same feelings? How are you different?

Can we learn anything by this case study?

i think the person who lifted Kristi's post and then pasted it in Yahoo ought to be straddled and, oh nevermind.

oh wait, that means they lifted it from right here, or could be here now, lurking in the shadows. how many other threads are stolen whole cloth and then palmed off as their own original thought?

Made me laugh Ell.  I'm watching over my shoulder as I type. lol


My thoughts on the article is exactly what others have mentioned, he did everything for the wrong reasons, was never a woman in any sense of the word.  He has certainly been indoctrined into the whole homosexuals, transsexuals are bad and must be stopped at all costs.  And he did like to walk on the wild side a bit too, but I wonder if that was just for dramatic effect?  You know, make him go down the road of drugs, many sex partners etc.

Yes, his sexual abuse probably was the contributing factor to how he felt about himself, he was born a boy, wanted to be a boy but enjoy sex with males, nothing wrong in that.  He just got the wrong answers (only girls want to sex with guys?) and put two and two together and got five. 

But if an individual has felt they should have been born a girl since as far back as 3 or 4 yrs old, sexual abuse can occur when pre-teen because the child (born male) is perceived as a girl outwardly as well as mannerisms etc. by other males, this can happen too and in no way alters the child later developing GID.  But unfortunately, can not be brought up in therapy because it just leads to more questions and unsatisfactory answers.

[Elincubus]

Yes, his sexual abuse probably was the contributing factor to how he felt about himself, he was born a boy, wanted to be a boy but enjoy sex with males, nothing wrong in that.  He just got the wrong answers (only girls want to sex with guys?) and put two and two together and got five. 

Honestly, what really made sound this story made-up to me was all that crap that were happening in his childhood. I mean about very bad thing that can happen to a child (and is often used to try explain in the media why somebody became homosexual, transsexual or a serial killer) happend to him. He was born "the only child of a disintegrating middle-class couple", his mother drunk and neglected him, he was abused by a friend of the family, his mother died and he never had a good relationship with his father either. That's not only clichee, but rather reads as if somebody had thrown all clichees together to make the story more believable (doing just the opposite, of course).
And as somebody else did already mention the narrator never really sounded authentic. To me the whole thing felt rather like a very badly made-up piece of propaganda.

[Ms Jessica]

That's not only clichee, but rather reads as if somebody had thrown all clichees together to make the story more believable (doing just the opposite, of course).

reminds me of a little bit of probability with respect to random number distributions.  When you analyze random number sets, like winning lottery numbers, you don't get a nice even distribution of numbers. 
If you were making up a story about winning lottery numbers, and you had to pick six numbers from 1 to 56, you'd probably pick one number less than 10, maybe something in the teens, a forty something, maybe 55, definitely a twenty-one (your age) and let's see, something in the thirties. 
And that's exactly the problem.  In an effort to randomly pick numbers, we tend to think they should be more evenly distributed, sort of equally spaced out. 
In reality though, sometimes you get numbers that are right next to each other, like a 10 and 11 on the same draw. 
In the story Kristi cited, it's like everything is just too perfectly set up.  How could all those things have happened and the person not be a transsexual?

Anyway, I guess this is totally off of where Kristi originally wanted the thread to go.  Sorry for the derail. 

I do agree that the issue of the child abuse is key, but again, it just seems like too perfect of a setup.

[Suzy]

Well believe me, I'm not trying to defend the article.  But I guess it might help to know this article first appeared in a tract, a small pamphlet.  I think that explains why the writing seems to be very edited and choppy.  The length had to be scaled back.  Also, though I never met the individual in the article, I have met someone who did.  As a result, I do believe all of those things happened to this guy, but cannot vouch for the story personally.  Remember, nearly 30 years ago, none of these things were cliche.  In fact, if they happened, it was more common NOT to ever mention them.  That's kinda hard to imagine in today's society.

Kristi

[Shana A]

Do you share any of the same feelings?  How are you different?

Can we learn anything by this case study?


Kristi

OK, I couldn't resist, I read the whole story, found it sad. If "he" is truly happy now, that's great, but I believe that s/he has likely repressed an important part of him/herself to live as s/he does now. And that will take its toll.

Regarding your question of sharing similar feelings, before recognizing myself as transgender, I came out as gay. I had a few relationships with men that didn't work out before coming to the realization that I just didn't feel myself to be a male, and that was an underlying problem. 

One important thing for anyone on the transgender path is to take time to sort out gender vs sexuality. They are two separate things, however easily confused.

Z

[Yvonne]

A homosexual bloke running desperately away from his homosexuality thought he could solve his troubles by "turning himself into" a woman.  Pittifully peeps can't change gender identities with GRS, FFS, mones or boob jobs.  End result: an unhappy surgically altered bloke with female parts but still a bloke with a male gender identity.  What a pity!

[Ms Jessica]

Well believe me, I'm not trying to defend the article.  But I guess it might help to know this article first appeared in a tract, a small pamphlet.  I think that explains why the writing seems to be very edited and choppy.  The length had to be scaled back. 

Without you even saying so, that is exactly what I thought the first time I read it. 

Also, though I never met the individual in the article, I have met someone who did.  As a result, I do believe all of those things happened to this guy, but cannot vouch for the story personally. 

Well, now that's a horse of a different color!
Sorry, but I immediately get suspicious of anything tract-y sounding.  Like those old Jack Chick tracts that tried to scare people off Halloween because satanists would put razor blades in candy.  Which never happened.  It's an urban myth.  The only time razor blades were ever found in candy, the child's Dad had done it in an attempt to defraud a candy company out of a large sum of money.  Guess I've got a little too much caveat emptor in me!

In an effort to actually contribute to the topic of the thread, I would agree with Zythyra that gender and sexuality are independent issues that are easily confused, and they require a more thorough resolution than the author ever obtained. 

I would say that I'm most different from the author in that I'm a firm believer in the saying "Know Thyself".  I'm not going to simply accept a diagnosis of being a transsexual, or a homosexual or anything without really believing it myself.  From the way the story is written, it's as though he doesn't know what his own feelings are, and his therapist tells him that he's a transsexual and that he has to transition.  And he does it.  Maybe this is a limitation of his medium.  Maybe there was more emotional turmoil than we're permitted to see, maybe it just didn't make the final edit.  I could spend all day second guessing about what I'm not being told, but based on what I can get from the reading, the author's major failure in this situation was not spending more time just working with the therapist, and making sure that transition was really the right decision for him. 
I imagine that in this sense, therapy has probably changed quite a bit.  I don't know how therapy was 30 years ago, maybe you didn't really spend that much time just talking about things and working through issues.  Maybe you got a diagnosis and that was that. 

[NicholeW.]

I found the story ridiculous and have large doubts that 'Sy' was ever diagnosed with much of anything at all, let alone GID. If the story appeared in 1981, Hopkins had closed its program 2 years earlier and Paul McHugh was already 'waving the bloody shirt' for the curtailment of transitional surgeries of any kind.

That someone would sign someone else up for surgery when they hadn't requested it is also ludicrous now and then. That certainly doesn't occur.

The way things were stated smacks completely of a 'put-on' to convince people of the dangerous nature of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists at the time who were treating transsexuals.

A lot of this was laid out in other posts, so I won't repeat it.

It reminds me of the book The Late Great Planet Earth, in that it is a 'scared straight' kind of piece of literature that is supposed to make someone fear doing something about gender dysphoria, except live with it forever.

The writer seemed truly ignorant of any symptomatology I have ever experienced, except for the confusion at one point between 'gay' and 'transsexual.'

It was a piece of propaganda for a particularly religious pov and it remains such.

What can I learn from 'Sy?' Absolutely nothing at all, except that my enemies haven't changed much in 27 years.

Nichole

[noeleena]

hi.... i was given some info on sy.s  . life   for me he never was a trans female he was told he ...was... that is what came out to me the info was given to me from a church group . be cause they did not wont to accept me as a transfemale or a women . so they saw me as gay to let them off the hook they will not accept me for who i am so what they think is we are all gay & thats it for them they will not talk to me there mind is made up yet i am accepted as a women by a lot of people here in n z as it is this came out last week the same thing how strange oh well i may yet show them what is the truth one day.   let me  know how you get on thanks ...noeleena....