Good afternoon guys and dolls.

This article was mentioned in passing in another thread, and I want some opinions on it.

http://www.heartcorps.com/journeys-end/4.html

Are these statements true or false?

True or False: Some transsexuals have the minds of their birth sex.

                   [Some MtFs have male minds; some FtMs have female minds. Now in this instance, we're
                    not discussing that rare 1% or so that made a horrible mistake. We're discussing TS who
                    have transitioned with no regrets.]


True or False: If you answered 'true' to the above question, are there physical manifestations that
                   indicate that one has the mind of their target gender?

                    [An FtM possessing a male mind will have more naturally male characteristics - taller,
                     broader, facial hair, etc.  An MtF possessing a female mind will have more naturally
                     female characteristics - slight build, female shape, less virilization, that 'arm thing', etc.]



Give your opinions on the theories presented in this article. So as not to be biased, I'll reserve mine for later.

Thanks.
Nero

ROFL, ya know, I was about to laugh this off... until I started reading about the elbows... leg crossing... body hair... lol... hmmm....

Isn't it funny how when a theory flatters me, it suddenly makes much more sense?

~Kate~

As an MtF, I think that when I was a child my mind was truly female, but years and years of conditioning as a male are bound to have an effect. I tried hard to "be a man" and I must have had male reactions and thoughts, but you can't fool yourself forever if you're truly transgendered the truth will eventually catch up with you and you then know that you are someone you were not supposed to be. In my case I guess I've been a good actor (or should I say actress) and played the male part well, knowing full well who I really was inside all the time.
I have to say though that there are loads of women in the world who display male pattern behaviour despite their appearances, that doesn't necessarily make them transgendered.

I've never been able to do that leg crossing thing. Just tried it again. Really tried, and there's no way my legs work that way. But then, according to her other characteristics, I'm male too - broader shoulders than hips, arms go straight down (I wonder if that's more muscle development than bone structure), and I have neck, abdomen, upper thigh and chest hair. Mind you, I didn't have the hair before T. Not sure about the hip/shoulder thing or arm thing.

But I will say I doubt that any of that has much to do with the mind.

Dennis

Melanie's full of .....

She needs to shut up if you ask me and I'm normally a sedate person.

I still can put my two legs behind my head, and my best friend, all male for sure, can do the same, he's probably 5 times more flexible than her, take that Mel !!!!

You read her and she thinks she's more attractive, has a better voice, etc, than most TS in the whole world, and even GG's.

She's grasping at air with her ludicrous theories.

It's funny that she talks about minds, and then goes on about purely physical traits. =P

I'm sure MtFs come in a whole range of femininity, as do GGs. To be honest, this sort of essay tends to reek of the elitism that kind of lurks about the trans community, the notion of being 'more' or 'less' trans. Meh. I'm pretty sure some of the things she mentions, like the shoulders always being narrower than the hip bones, are not even true. I imagine ratio is a lot lower than men, but not necessarily reversed.

Still, I guess sometimes the little physical cues are reassuring, a 'reinforcement' of feminine identity. I know I have always been a bit comforted by my wider than average hips, the 'arm angle', and 'the hook', which I have been conscious of since I realized that I am trans... But I have a lot of traits that are unquestionably masculine, like my 'digit ratio' and fairly large rib cage. In the end, the physical characteristics aren't going to tell everything.

I don't think anyone can really point out any one cause or indicator for transsexuality, and its not needed~ If it will make you happier, then it's the right thing for you.

~k

The usual search for justification through being "better than..."

Surprising for such a "veteran."

~Kate~

Nero,

She starts out by telling us that she is a fraud and basically have cheated everyone that have bought her product by telling us that really everyone can't obtain a female voice, after she became a "successful" business woman basically by false advertising. If I bought her product, I would call a lawyer and start a class action lawsuit against her.

Having said that, her whole argument is insane. It sounds like she is saying that certain men "real transsexuals" are actually born with female bodies. Seems they have female arms, female hips, female brain, female fingers. Basically everything female except their sex organs.

This is one of the most elitist arguments I have ever heard. How sad. Turns out that she is a "real woman" with a female brain, and the rest of us are something different. But she says it's ok, we should be able to transition anyway. I guess so we can buy her products. Laff.

Love always,
Elizabeth

There are a lot issues to take into account here. For one, how old were you when you transitioned? Then, how about your body type? Remember when Stephanie was crossing her legs? She is a very thin girl. There are some girls (GG) who can't cross their legs like that. There are guys who can cross their legs like that. So I all depends on a lot of issues. Genetics come to play, too. We are not all a like so we are not going to transition into the incredible hulk or a barbie doll. Just like the real world, people are all different.
Sheila

I've always been able to do the leg-crossing. I never really thought of it as girly or anything. I can just kinda do it. If that means I'm feminine, so be it, I guess.

Quote from: Keira on July 13, 2007, 04:59:39 PM
Melanie's full of .....

ROFL!!   That's so true.  I wouldn't listen to what she has to say.  Her views are a bit....umm....antiquated.    Have you read what she says in her website or listened to her new DVD?  >  It's like "hello? what planet are you from, Melanie?"


tink

Quote from: Tink on July 13, 2007, 07:50:56 PM

Quote from: Keira on July 13, 2007, 04:59:39 PM
Melanie's full of .....

ROFL!!    That's so true.  I wouldn't listen to what she has to say.  Her views are a bit....umm....antiquated.    Have you read what she says in her website or listened to her new DVD?  >  It's like "hello? what planet are you from, Melanie?"


tink

Rock on, Tink!!

I believe we should send her a collective email basically saying "crack is whack, don't do drugs"  she has to be on some kind of mind altering substance....

I've got a Melanie DVD. It helped me get started on my voice, but I've since found the Exceptional Voice material is better (by professional voice coaches) and also the Deep Stealth DVDs are really excellent. The latter addresses the subject very thoroughly and it's the one I'm currently using, with some success I have to say. I bought the whole package from Deep Stealth and although it was much more expensive (I had to pay Customs & Excise another £17.65 - that's about $33 - to cover British V.A.T.) I think you get what you pay for in the long run.
Louise

She is full of crap.

Literally, she does not know what she is talking about and went way beyond the point she should have. 

I find this funny because she could have made a good point about there being a percentage of TS with IS conditions, but she crossed into offensive territory and lost me.  I would not rule out the IS theory for some TS, with there being an undiagnosed and unidentified IS condition out there, I wondered this myself.  But using body as an example of whether somebody is or is not TS and whether or not they are not the gender they identify as is total crap and completely offensive.  There is a HUGE difference in saying there may be an undiscovered IS condition and saying to any TS that they are not the gender they know they are.  That is where she crosses the line.

I believe there is a huge difference when you make that theory.

Also with the exception of body hair, forehead/brow and hips I would fall under her classification.(My arms angle, I could doublecross my legs long before hormones, I have small thin boney fingers that appear long in that only womens gloves really fit, mostly feminine facial features such as jaw and cheekbones, a wide vocal range, a smaller frame in general that is identical to some females I know and I started with low testosterone about half the norm for my age range).  But guess what these development features may be for reasons I don't know. It may be an unidentified IS condition, it may just be weird genetics.  But guess what, I still find her description completely offensive. 



She is right with the fact that not everybody can train their voice.  But she took an extra step and crossed into being offensive and elitist by saying a TS is not the gender they identify as, these bodily traits and the ability to train ones voice has to do with whether or not they are or are not TS.  If she speculated that there might be an undiagnosed or unidentified IS condition out there that would be one thing, many of us have speculated the same thing. They just found out that circle Y can cause transsexuality, well thats an IS condition when it gets down to it.   The reasons behind TS are so varied that pinning down one may be impossible.  However she  was being elitist and degraded those who know who they are and where hormones destroyed their body, face and voice. 

Wow, what a disappointment.  I expected the article to be something intelligent, along the lines of it's possible to have a brain that has a female gender identity, but is otherwised wired to reason along 'average' male lines, but no it jumped very quickly to my body has always been atypical for a male, therefore I have a female mind.

There's just no logic in her reasoning, it's mad.

Personally I could say, yes I fit the elbow thing, the hand thing, the body hair thing, the chin thing and have always had wider hips than the average, though not wider than my shoulders as I have always been a keen swimmer...  But hey, what does that prove at all?  I don't see any point at all in trying to validate the fact that I've always seen myself in my mind's eye as female, by physical traits I may or may not have always posessed.  Quite the contrary, it worries me that anyone would need to do this; doesn't it suggest the person has doubts and is looking for validation...?

In reply to your questions Nero...

>True or False: Some transsexuals have the minds of their birth sex.
I'm not sure I understand exactly what 'minds' means here, it seems a very vague concept.
If it means a mind that is wired to reason along 'average' male lines, but still with a gender identity of female, then I'd say True, otherwise False.

>True or False: If you answered 'true' to the above question, are there physical manifestations that indicate that one has the mind of their target gender?
For me the answer's False for an FtM or an MtF.  Maybe it could be True for someone who is hermaphrodite or intersexual, but not for someone who was born transsexual.  The whole problem of transsexualism is an incongruity between your body and the gender identity in your mind and for me the two are not necessarily linked.


MVER XXX

Having a female "brain" (which is what all MTF's have) might coincide with other female body characteristics and could be due to trans-biology. Saying that having a female "mind" can cause such changes to occur sounds to me to be more on the order of the Amazing Kreskin bending a spoon with the power of his mind. If this were true then there wouldn't be any flat chested GIGI's. Sometimes I used to wonder if having female characteristics was due to my wanting them to be there and thereby being manifested by the power of my "mind" but upon further reflection I feel that me having a female "brain" and other girly parts more often than not go hand in hand.

qoute:I've never been able to do that leg crossing thing. Just tried it again. Really tried, and there's no way my legs work that way.

Hey Dennis,  I thought that that was funny. As a man, I've always had problems crossing my legs, but as a woman, I have no problem. * Check out my new photo . . .

Gina 

She has kind of a bigoted old fashioned view on what constitutes gender.  I'm embarrassed that she is actually a prominent representer of our community.  I mean, does she not know that most of the things she was on about are related to hormonal development?  Most if not all of them would be fixed by getting the correct hormones during puberty.

Agh.  Stupid.

The problem with what she says is that all it takes to make your brain more feminine is the wrong prenatal hormones at a certain time in development. Not necessarily long enough to effect the rest of the body. It's entirely possible to have a hyper masculine appearance, while having a female mind, or you can have several feminine traits and still think like a very masculine male. Nature is far from perfect, so it doesn't follow any one set of rules 100% of the time.

Having been in the womb with my twin sister, I was probably exposed to higher levels estrogen than normal. I'd probably be more feminine now if I wasn't forced into the male role(by myself and society), so over time my minds developed some masculine traits.

My arms don't go straight down like a males, which I suppose is going to prove useful when I begin to transition. My upper arm(12 in) is actually an inch longer than my lower arm(11 in). It was puberty that made my shoulders wider/broader than my hips, but only by 2 inches (circumference 38 vs 40). If it wasn't for the extra muscle they would probably be about equal in width. My hips still look wider than usual though, further accentuated by my somewhat feminine butt. My fingers are long and thin in appearance, so they make my hands look smaller. I can do the leg crossing thing, but that's because I'm very flexible and have a small frame. I still have body hair (it's not as thick as it could be, with some on my chest and abdomen). As for my face it does have some slightly feminine traits, so it's more a mixture. My brow ridge is less pronounced than most guys, but not really enough to be considered feminine either.

Maybe I have some degree of androgen insensitivity, some other condition, or some kind of hormonal imbalance.

I'm sure my body being feminine in some areas is related(at the same time not related) to how I think, but not in the way she claims.  Most of my masculine mental traits are from learned behaviors to cope with what society expects of me. They didn't come naturally for the most part, so they still feel somewhat artificial to me.

In some ways she's trying to say that some TS people are better than others, and that if you don't fit a certain criteria your somehow less worthy of ever being happy.

She's trying to say that her method for training the voice isn't at fault, and that it's the fault of the mind. However, one method doesn't work for everyone, it has nothing to do with the mind being too masculine or not feminine enough.


~Marciel