Saturday, 21 March 2009
A Summary of the State of the Art
Zoe Brain
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/summary-of-state-of-art.html (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/summary-of-state-of-art.html)
Here's a reply I wrote to a member of OII - Organisation Intersex International - who asked just exactly what the HBS - Harry Benjamin Syndrome -political group was, in Australia.
It details my thoughts as they've crystalised on the etyology of Transsexuality, what it is, what causes it, and is a decent summary of what we know so far.
I can't give you "the" picture of HBS. I have some significant differences from may others on the issue.
For example, I believe that the gender binary is merely a very good approximation. Just like it's best to treat the Earth as being flat, locally. It's not, but it works best when walking to the corner shop if you treat the journey as if it is.
I believe that gender is in the brain, and so is sex, and sexual orientation. But again, though it's really useful to make categories of "male", "female", "straight", "bi" etc, and while those definitions may be exact, not just approximate, descriptions of most people, for a large proportion they are only approximations, and for a small minority, bad approximations at that. So bad they're not just useless, but counter-productive.