I guess you could say we've come a long way, thankfully!
Curbing transsexual surgery
Nearly 30 years ago, an ex-G.I. from The Bronx journeyed to Copenhagen to become blond Christine Jorgensen. Ever since, sex-change operations have been performed routinely as a cure for serious sexual identity problems. Males were treated with hormones that encouraged loss of facial hair and growth of breasts; subsequent surgery transformed the scrotum and penis into a functioning vagina. In females, hormones were given to develop masculine characteristics, followed by the implantation of an artificial phallus.
Concludes Meyer: the surgery "serves as a palliative measure ... [but] it does not cure what is essentially a psychiatric disturbance."
Full Article (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920579,00.html)
Here's another one but this from 1966 Surgery: A Body to Match the Mind (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836592,00.html)
When ex-G.I. George Jorgensen went to Denmark and returned, after a series of operations, as "Christine," the U.S. public and medical profession alike were appalled at what seemed to be "mutilative surgery." Attitudes have changed so much since 1952 that last year a Baltimore court ordered Johns Hopkins surgeons to perform an identical operation on a 17-year-old boy. And last week the university announced that it has opened a center for the diagnosis and treatment of transsexuals. Hopkins surgeons have already operated on five men and five women.
Was Meyer the Dr who basically came up with the whole ts/auto-gyno con? Was he a Psychiatrist or MD? I couldn't get through your first link. I could have just googled, but wanted to bump this & don't want to read about an off the scene person who may have did nothing but damage to us.
From the article:
Quote
So, in 1971, Meyer began keeping track of his patients' postoperative acceptance of their new gender, using such indicators as job placement, marital success, psychiatric status and police records.
Isn't that a bit "chicken or egg"?
Does the post op have job placement issues because they are still disturbed, or because they are discriminated against?
Do they have marital issues because they are not happy in their new gender or because of lack of acceptance (or because they are still oriented towards women)?
Do they still seek psychological assistance because their gender issue remains, or because their marriage fell apart (or whatever)?
Seems like a pretty flawed measure to me.
Quote from: Laura Hope on November 11, 2009, 07:24:36 PM
From the article:
Isn't that a bit "chicken or egg"?
Does the post op have job placement issues because they are still disturbed, or because they are discriminated against?
Do they have marital issues because they are not happy in their new gender or because of lack of acceptance (or because they are still oriented towards women)?
Do they still seek psychological assistance because their gender issue remains, or because their marriage fell apart (or whatever)?
Seems like a pretty flawed measure to me.
I just love the idea of some doctor telling you "you're not any better off now" even when it couldn't possibly be more obvious to yourself that you are. ;D
I won't toss numbers around, as there's the interpretation issue. But if you look into this, the suicide rate pre vs post-op, the numbers speak volumes.
The John's Hopkins program ended much more quickly than the time it took to develop it. The program's demise took place when Dr. Paul McHugh, a very opinionated Catholic psychiatrist, was installed as the head of the program. He likened TS patients as closet homosexuals, whose requests for SRS were no different than someone asking to have their leg amputated. He sanctioned a study by Dr. Meyer with 50 TS patients which was designed to prove that surgery provided no substantiated positive long term effects. The study techniques were seen as very flawed, but used none the less to shut down the gender transition program at John's Hopkins. Shortly after, Stanford did the same thing. A few years later, GID was put in the DSM as a psychiatric disorder. For more about this, you can read:
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh.html (http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh.html)
Ironically, IMO we are all better off not having the large hospital programs control our destiny. I've read that only 15% of program applicants were accepted. It took Dr. Stanley Biber, using a simple sketch received from John's Hopkins to start doing his first operations for a fee in Trinidad, CO. I believe that the reduction in the power of the gatekeepers has served us all well. Dr. McHugh's and Meyers attempts to shut down this "blight" on society has come full circle. More patients are getting help now, then ever before. The average age of people beginning HRT and having surgery has begun to lower. Once the economy recovers, we will see this really begin to happen. The bottle neck is more on the availability of qualified surgeons side, rather than on the arbitrary standards of some 1970's era hospital committee. No transwoman, at that time, would have been approved for surgery, if she told the truth about her sexual orientation as anything other than heterosexual. Some European social health programs, like that in Britain, still have some of the same type of hurdles to overcome that we experienced here in the states back during the John's Hopkins period. Overall, We've sure come a long way.
In the U.K it hasn't improved much since those days!