New study confirms probable genetic cause for classic transsexuality

[Seshatneferw]

But no, some "outsiders" think it's so weird and wrong to change sexes that they feel they have to explain it somehow, with the unspoken intention of "curing" it.

Funnily enough, one of the major reasons for me to be curious about the causes (besides 'know thyself') is that I'd really like to know what makes some people grow up comfortable with their own sex. I've never really understood cissexuality. Of course, I don't really want to 'cure' it -- at least not unless I'm very angry at someone -- but it might make it easier to live with people suffering from that condition.

And yes, despite the flippancy I really do mean it.

  Nfr

[lisagurl]

I'd really like to know what makes some people grow up comfortable with their own sex.

The same thing that lets them be comfortable with going bald.

[Alyssa M.]

Why don't people try and find the gene that "causes" people to buy SUVs? Or drink Dr. Pepper?...

Buying an SUV and or drinking Dr. Pepper are absurd analogies. ...

Stupid quote bug ... I didn't say that -- Kate did! 

Posted on: October 27, 2008, 03:10:57 pm

->-bleeped-<- is so rare and I am interested in solid research

1 in 3000 is not that rare.

1 in 3000 is probably rarer than transsexualism, which is rarer than ->-bleeped-<-, however you define them.

[lisagurl]

1 in 3000 is probably rarer than transsexualism

1 in 6000

[Alyssa M.]

At least one out of every 2500 persons born male in the U. S. has ALREADY undergone SRS to become female ... at least 3 to 5 times as many people suffer intense MtF transsexualism as those who have already undergone SRS. The reasons are obvious.

link

[nooneinparticular]

This gene science is such a small sample and has not been duplicated, all is you can be sure about is the question needs to be investigated more fully by several groups. This type of research borders on pseudo science. They have also announced a religious gene. Unless more evidence is found the error could be just a subjective view.

LOTFLMAO  Give a ->-bleeped-<- a goose that lays golden eggs and the first thing they'll do is cook it for dinner.
Who freakin' cares if the study meets your personal standards?  It was published, being so it just established civil rights for all transsexual people.....guess that means nothing to you?  I'm more practical than that myself.

Being vetted by 'the International Psychiatrist of the Year' sounds impressive. However, that's all it does -- it does not tell us anything by which we could see where your claims come from and try to assess their validity. This is especially true since, first, you do not cite any references for some of the more esoteric claims and, second, since a quick internet search did not reveal what exactly an 'International Psychiatrist of the Year' is and who appoints them. The title is also sufficiently vague to protect the identity of the psychiatrist in question from trivial googling.

Ayup......and for good reason.  She is arguably the highest professionally statused person in the world who transitioned on the job.......and the only psychiatrist to ever do so and not kill herself....and she's almost completely off the ->-bleeped-<- radar screen.  And the position is voted on by the entire psychiatric community at large btw, putting her currently at the very top of the profession.  BTW both she and I are chimera intersexed so we both already have access to these civil rights under the ADA.

In short, while I do not doubt that your friend is a well-respected psychiatrist you have not convinced me that your blog entry is authoritative just because they read it before it was posted.

How do you know that  ->-bleeped-<- in fact exists as a real condition? Where does this 65:35 ratio come from? How can the two conditions be separated? Please cite your sources, I'd really like to know -- and I'm pretty sure there are gender therapists all over the world who would like to know at least the answer to the last one, too.
snip
Again, I'd really like to know your sources.  Do you have any information regarding the diagnostic criteria? What is this 'classical transsexuality' and how is it different from the 'fetishistic' gender identity disorders?

I gave you the source, the rest of the information came from that source and frankly I don't care if you believe it or not....I offer the information, you are totally free to reject it.  Been down the road before, I happen to have inside information I am willing to share, I share it, period.  My ego is not wrapped up in proving to you I'm tell the truth.  Me, I take people's word on things until they give me reason not to, but then I'm weird.  As for diagnostic criteria for classic transsexuality.....I laid it out clearly in the other blog I wrote about.......it's basic old fashion trans 101 pre transgender everything nonsense.  Oh, and AG is an accepted diagnosis under the DSM already, one the profession finds useful.

Or unless someone else makes it an issue by claiming that you are not a woman but instead a fetishistic man who has deceived the medical system into mutilating his body.

  Nfr

Me, you can call me a blueberry if you wish, that doesn't make it so.  I know who I am.

[NicholeW.]

We tend to find the results we seek and "read" them in that fashion.

You need a scientific study to be twisted and deformed to show your own validity? What's the problem with one's own experience? Are you not real? Is your validity denied by recognition of the validity of others? 

Cathryn, this isn't Ohio years ago. I'm sure the "transgendered" then and there managed to anger you greatly; but doesn't personal affront sometimes just need to be called what it is? Personal affront and a refusal to allow that to stop affecting my life?

What you've claimed for the research doesn't comply with what the researchers have claimed for it. I'm shocked that you and your "friend" know more about the matter than the people at Prince Henry's Institute and at UCLA who actually did the study.

I presume there's a psychic component to that that you've withheld from your blog? Face it. The fact you don't want a spectrum, that you don't particularly want to be associated with transgenders is not the key to life. It's a choice you make. So make your choice and go your own way.

So 24 hours after a press-release, not the research itself, was publicized Harvard (your friend?) has concluded that they can use the Zucker/Blanchard so-called research and come up with a winnowing process?

They must be using the John McCain "I try to jump to a conclusion before anyone else" approach to science. Kinda unusual for Harvard, but you have the inside-track I presume to knowledge.

My sense of efficacy and reality isn't dependent on making sure others are denied either their own efficacy or their own "ability to choose" if that is what science discovers they are doing. But such discoveries are certainly much further in the future than a 122-person research base that is as yet unvetted, unread and unpublished.

Talk about over-reaching. You have.

Nichole

 

[nooneinparticular]

Give it up Nicole........the blog I referred to as being "vetted" is one that's been up for ten months.

The study, before all the sidetracking, simply states a probable genetic causality......as I wrote in the current blog that's enough with all the other prior work done to settle the issue good enough for a politican or a court right now.......ergo civil rights.

The marker, as we discussed at length before, for separating transsexual goats from AG sheep is the result of personal research spanning over a decade, adopted for testing by my friend who then expanded that testing to others in psychiatry several years ago.......She and I talk an average of 2 hours on the phone everyday.  She and I discuss these issues regularly and everything I write on the subject is the result of those discussions and she reads and comments to me upon.  The marker works close to 100% of the time, is simple and elegant, apparently confirms the neurological basis of transsexuality as a result and is based on physiological responses of pre-ops to estrogen.  That's all you get, no agenda is attached other than the spectrum is nonsense to everyone in the know professionally.

This discussion was centred on civil rights today.......your's too.  That's not worth burying your hatchet for?

[NicholeW.]

I have no hatchet for you, Cathryn. The fact that you wish to designate in the most inflammatory terms "->-bleeped-<-" shows me a lot of basic dislike in you for those who don't prescribe to your particular brand of HBS-theory you and your followers subscribe to, people who appear to have certain self-efficacy problems with themselves.

Civil rights for me, you and Andra are certainly highly to be desired. So are civil rights for prostitutes of color who have difficulty making lives match in quite the way you seem to imagine everyone should.

OF course that cause is something you and I agree on. But the tropes of civil rights for some and endless trashing of others just don't sit well with me, never have, never will.

I grew up with civil rights like those, luv. I watched black faces being bused 20 miles to school while I went 3 blocks. I've seen first-hand what civil rights means when my friend couldn't drink from the same water fountain as I could. And it's as abhorrent and puzzling to me now as it was fifty years ago.

So, you "come off it." You want at the least a two-tiered approach to validity and value and civil rights. I've seen and experienced the inherrent lack of rights in that. And I'd be willing to bet you saw it in Ohio as well as I did in Tennessee.

It stinks and so does the fact that you and your friend are in typical psychiatric fashion engaged in thought experiments posing as science. Kinda like finding ways to make people blue-eyed through injecting dye directly into the iris, no?

Yep, there it is. What I have always objected to in you is not your person, not your intelligence, but to the ends to which you use those assets. You, and your worshippers, and there is simply no other word for them, insistently promote your own efficacy at the expense of the efficacy of others.

Like I said, I lived through that. I have no desire to live through it with transsexuality as well as having lived through it with "race."

Unthinking and atavistic prejudice and folly is simply that. It never should be given any other terms.

Now, if you're willing to promote the value and efficacy of people, then we can certainly walk hand-in-hand. If you want to walk hand-in-hand just me and you and others you wish to call "classic" transsexuals, then no thanks, I'll go sit over there with the other second or third class citizens of this board.

[nooneinparticular]

you are unbelievable.......I'm outta here again

[NicholeW.]

My dear, first, I can see you haven't gone anywhere at all. Next I am not unbelievable. I actually believe and live by the notion that people are important and valuable regardless whatever label we are willing to give them. The only label that matters is "people."

One may be better-off economically, professionally, through agnecy-of-birth, through hard work, through having a congenital condition they didn't effect themselves, and any number of other things. But, in the last analysis the people I have worked with over the years who have been labelled "schizophrenic" or "borderline" are as absolutely as much people and worthy of respect, rights and human kindness and acceptance as are "classic" transsexuals or hetrogenous transgender-people.

What you call for is not to my liking and I imagine never will be. If I am willing to be among those you disdain why would that be unbelievable?

I've also seen white folks march hand-in-hand with black folks through hails of bullets, fire-hosing and rock-throwing. I've lived through people of tremendous heart and integrity being labelled seditious and "->-bleeped-<--lovers" because they saw a need, a commandment, to stand with those who were being discounted.

Is that unbelievable? Unthinkable? If so, then yep, I'm unbelievable. Go blog about it if you wish. Take glee in what you feel is the discomforture of those you dislike and don't see as valid human beings as deserving of the recognition of their humanity as you are of yours.

I hope to Mother that there will be more unbelievable people who write with you. I don't think the exposure could hurt you at all.

The plea you've made thus far I have read as simply, "leave them behind and enter the house of humanity while they remain outside." That is a plea, as I see it, to saving my own skin while watching others lose their's. It's not right, it's not moral it's simply, as I said, something that made a great impression on me when I was a child.

If the chance arises now to oppose something similar, then I shall do so.

Mother's blessings on you. 

Added after you really did leave the thread, Cathryn.

Give it up Nic(h)ole........the blog I referred to as being "vetted" is one that's been up for ten months.

O, this may come as a shock to you, but I wasn't talking about your posts, Cathryn.

Sorry, I've read the entire radicalbitch sequence, when it appears, but don't go back and re-read it. Once is usually more than enough.

Although if you could shorten some of your paragraphs it would make it easier to read. Unless you reach the writing level of Gregory Rabassa in his translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's early novels. Then go ahead with the run-on paragraphs, they'll sing.

The study I was speaking of is the one by Prince Henry's Institute and UCLA which I am sure you weren't given an advanced publication of. You read the same press-release the rest of us read. (My blog tomorrow will link that release.)

This discussion was centred on civil rights today.......your's too.  That's not worth burying your hatchet for?

And that, unbelieveable as it may appear to you, seemed to me to be your suggestion that I save my own skin while others fry.

I don't know how to attempt to get you to understand that it isn't you I stand against, it's the relationship I surmise between your ideas and the "common-good" of people who are all pretty much excluded in many ways by many other groups.

I mean, maybe it's a fine thing to be still a part of what I more and more realize is simply a new kinda of  "men's club" modelled after the ones many transitioners can no longer belong to. So we make a new one, include her and her and leave out that, that, him and him.

Personally, I'd rather just go find people to interact with who aren't so much concerned with who is "first among equals." Or whether or not we should accept "that kind."

Therein lies my hugest problem with your brand of HBS theory. It's divisive, sconomically-based and simply seems another way of people trying to find their own justifications for why they are "better-than." And given the ways I actually quite like and respect your abilities, I'm sorry that I cannot read anything else in your agitation.

I truly don't want to believe that is what you are doing because there is so very much ability and promise in you. So much experience of being rejected that I think you could be a remarkable "civil-rights leader" in and of your own experience. 

So, label me "disappointed."

Nichole

[lisagurl]

LOTFLMAO  Give a ->-bleeped-<- a goose that lays golden eggs and the first thing they'll do is cook it for dinner.
Who freakin' cares if the study meets your personal standards?  It was published, being so it just established civil rights for all transsexual people.....guess that means nothing to you?  I'm more practical than that myself.

As  the tobacco companies studies said smoking is not harmful or the drug companies say drugs are effective or the manufactures of corn syrup say it is perfectly safe but now say limit your intake. Science is an ever changing world with new evidence revising old claims every day.  Then there where the claims of cold fusion. Studies are subject to inspection. I for one would not want to be given anything that I did not work for and I do not accept things just because they are in my favor. I do give back money to the cashier that can not count. You have not given value personal morals. I would not want friends like that.

I do not own stock in the tobacco companies no matter how much they go up.

[Alyssa M.]

To no one in particular,

How does "separating the sheep from the goats" jibe with your statement "it just established civil rights for all transsexual people"?

If, as you say, this establishes a "physical" cause (as though that's a well-defined category -- but never mind) for "classic" transsexuals (which, I presume, are the "homosexual" ones, not the more common "AG's"), then it would seem, according to your numbers and your reasoning, that we've got protection for 1/3 of the transsexual population. What am I missing?

The last I heard, any MtF transsexual who is a scientist, engineer, or mathematician; who transitiones later than about 30; or who is not exclusively attracted to men is an "autogynephile" to Blanchard's reckoning. (Where "auto" comes from is beyond my understanding -- but again, never mind.) Do you have a different set of criteria?

Forgive me for saying it, but I have a deep distrust for "everyone in the know" in this particular profession. It seems to me that we "know" very little about how the human brain works, so claiming to be "in the know" is rather bold.

Even the Balmer series is a spectrum, when you actually look at it. Only on paper is anything discrete.

~Alyssa

[lisagurl]

you are unbelievable.......I'm outta here again

Having a bad day?

[Lisa Harney]

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.......

First of all what does this have to do with the gaining of rights under the ADA.  Second of all, you are familiar with what I wrote in my own blog entitled "Towards Trans Sanity".  What you might not be familiar with is that particular entry was vetted by the International Psychiatrist of the Year, who just happens to be one of my closest friends and the current "go to" person in the psychiatric community on this very issue.

... Okay. Googling "International Psychiatrist of the Year" only gets three hits, and you're not saying which year. I have no idea who you're talking about, and can't really judge whether sie's actually trustworthy about trans issues or are more likely to (as many people, like Zucker, Bailey, Dreger, Blanchard, and McHugh do) focus on interpretations that serve hir own prejudices and beliefs about trans people.

As for the ADA, I'll believe that when I see trans people covered.

I soft pedal the figures but the actual current ratio of AG to classic transsexuals presenting for evaluation is estimated at 65 to 35........and we can separate them with what Harvard Medical states is close to 100% accuracy now.  Psychiatry considers this important because:  there is approaching zero dissatisfaction with surgical outcome even when less than perfect among the classical transsexuals.  Among the AGs the figures run closer to 50-50 regardless of the outcome.  This might not be significant to you, but to a profession that wishes to do no harm and also cover it's own butt, this is pretty darn important.

You really need to cite claims like this.

AG is in the DSM, it ain't coming out because the deck was stacked with the revision team to make sure it didn't.  What is coming with the revision is a redefinition of all non-classical transsexuality (medical model it's called in the trade) as fetishist.  Don't shoot the messenger, it's just how it was stacked.  And since I need to spell it out to you........there isn't a legislator in the world who will vote to protect a sexual fetish class.......ergo, an end to transgender dreams of protection via an inclusive ENDA.

I think you're unclear about what ENDA was poised to protect. As with most civil rights laws, it didn't specify the oppressed class, but rather the trait that describes the oppressed class - so, "gender identity" was protected, not "being transgender." Aside from certain sexologists who are deeply invested in disbelieving what trans women say about ourselves, what exactly is the actual scientific, medical, scholarly basis for belief in the idea that there's a large number of "autogynephiles" transitioning into womanhood>?

I also find it hard to believe that you don't see how  ->-bleeped-<- is used against all trans women to delegitimize us as women and pathologize our sexuality. It's part of a model that also describes "homosexual transsexuals" and the two are defined strictly by who you're attracted to - HSTS are defined as being sexually attracted to men, and AGTS are defined as being sexually attracted to yourself as a woman (and trans women who are attracted to women are interpreted as AGTS, because apparently it's impossible to be a trans lesbian). A diagnosis of AGTS completely pretends that subconscious sex or gender identity doesn't exist.

I started warning the trans-activist crowd more than a decade ago this was coming.....now it's too late to stop it.

Hey, once through the hoops, no, it's no longer an issue unless you make it one.

Thank you for acknowledging this.

Posted on: October 27, 2008, 06:17:52 pm

I resent the whole search for explanations, to be honest. The search for "explanations" by science, as well as the embracing of supposed physical causes IMHO is all spurred by the same underlying assumption:

IT'S WRONG TO CHANGE ONE'S SEX!

Why don't people try and find the gene that "causes" people to buy SUVs? Or drink Dr. Pepper?

But no, some "outsiders" think it's so weird and wrong to change sexes that they feel they have to explain it somehow, with the unspoken intention of "curing" it. And the community is so wrapped up in embracing it's guilt and shame about their needs that they cling to every "it's not my fault!" explanation handed to them by the same.

I believe that this study (and the recent parallel study that identified similar genetic stuff about trans men) are ethically problematic for a host of reasons.

I also think that having a genetic basis won't get us any more acceptance from anyone, and one only needs to look at how intersex people have been treated medically and socially to see that. There is no such thing as a "blameless category."

Also, 'cause I and some of my closest friends all drink Dr. Pepper, I totes think it's linked to the trans genes.

[NicholeW.]

AG is in the DSM, it ain't coming out because the deck was stacked with the revision team to make sure it didn't.  What is coming with the revision is a redefinition of all non-classical transsexuality (medical model it's called in the trade) as fetishist.  Don't shoot the messenger, it's just how it was stacked.  And since I need to spell it out to you........there isn't a legislator in the world who will vote to protect a sexual fetish class.......ergo, an end to transgender dreams of protection via an inclusive ENDA.

I started warning the trans-activist crowd more than a decade ago this was coming.....now it's too late to stop itwoman, does it really matter?

You wanna know what is REALLY gonna happen here, Cathryn? If the APA allows the "stacked-deck" of Blanchard and Zucker's personal profit and Anne Lawrence's personal identification and Mike Bailey's personal crusade to push himself as entertainer-psychologist to win out over evidence? Evidence that is now coming fast and furiously it appears, that there is, indeed, "brain-sex"?

What is going to happen on a number of fronts is that the APA is gonna "interest" itself right onto the "ignored" boards of therapy and psychology.

There are already tremendous lobbying efforts by practitioners and patients who are concerned about the pathologizations the APA has accepted in the DSM (any rendition) for many mood and personality disorders.

There's a growing recognition that "medicalization," so-called, of therapy and diagnosis does NOT work in point of fact to any acceptable degree. Even with addiction "medical" models are becoming obsolete because they simply do not show results that can be replicated reliably and for patient good.

There's also a growing recognition that the pathologizations are an interest group of their own promoted by pharmaceutical firms and purveyors of particular areas of expertise of the doctors involved in the pathologizations. In other words, the APA is going to be seen as exactly what a number of it's members have been trying to make it: a way of promoting themselves and making profit on other's pain and marginalizations.

Rather than describing anything of importance outside the area of psychotic disorders more and more practitioners who actually work with clients, and not with drug consortiums or Park Avenue clients or other "worried well," are finding the APA becoming meaningless: think investment banks as a similar circumstance.

You seem to think you have insight into the workings of APA and perhaps you do. But I am thinking that what you, your friend and the APA is about to find out that the internal politics are about to be swept away and replaced. Give it till 2012 and lets talk again.

Nichole

[Lisa Harney]

I should hope that the APA is becoming increasingly irrelevant, considering that they're developing the DSM-V completely outside the public eye and are willing to bring people on-board (at least for GID) who are actually hostile to the people whose lives their decisions will affect.

[NicholeW.]

Mnay patient's rights groups are finding a similar reception as are the gender-disordered, Lisa. The intent focus we have on the gender parts helps us to not see that this is typical behavior seen typically by providers who are insistently marginalized by the "psychiatrists" who very seldom, any longer, spend more than about 5 minutes a visit with patients. There's more time that way to see drug reps or have a drug company fund some research to promote a "pathology" the drug-company just developed a medication to treat!

Nichole

[glendagladwitch]

Let me see if I understand this situation correctly. 

"nooneinparticular" is actually the person who posted the web article linked at the beginning of this topic.  She's the same one who falsely asserted that the gene link was found for "classic" transexuals, and not for transexuals as a group without regard to such a distinction.  And that is all in addition to the strange claims of special knowledge of improbable-sounding statistics and a secret technique for identifying ->-bleeped-<- trannies, statistics she refuses to support, and a technique she will not explain.  Plus more garbage.

Does that about sum it up?

[goingdown]

Well, young not so neceserily, but autogenophiles i never considered women to start with... just men with a woman fettish....

I do think its a good sign though.

But who knows that are autogynephiles expect those that themselves say that they are. According to Bailey-Lawrence criteria nearly every transsexual I know is an autogynephil and that is not simply true.

Posted on: October 28, 2008, 03:35:11 amSome issues that makes you an autogynephilic (according Bailey, Lawrence):
- married with children
- worked ever in traditional masculine career
- late transitioner, over 40 Y
- you have not have relationship with man when you were under age 20
Anything of these makes you an autogynephilic (Bailey, Lawrence) and there are other things too