Totally agree, Victoria.

As to a cure for feeling so wrong, I wouldn't complain. I would want to know what it would all change first before doing anything though.

I'm not so sure something like this would be effective as you put it because sex determination basically happens in the womb, and that's it.  Thus I don't see how changing the expression of a gene could actually have this effect in anyone who is not still an embryo .

But yeah, if you pose the question:

If someone could theoretically make you cissexual in the brain through an authentic medical means, would you go through with it?

My answer would likely be no at this point because I've already taken so much action on it and I tend to be all about being true to how I feel about myself+psychiatric drugs scare me enough already, so why would I allow anyone to mess with my head this way?

Read the comments above. Your supposition about the nature of physical sex to be fixed is incorrect.

Quote from: Victoria Mitchell on January 19, 2014, 10:30:43 PM
That said, I *do* see GD as a disease in the same sense that I would if I had Multiple-Sclerosis, Parkinsons, or some other weird-o malady of the DNA. I can't have kids. My body is weird and developed wrongly (also, huge and heavy as hell). No manner or amount of monkeying with surgery, hormones, self-acceptance, or anything else will tell my brain that the body that it inhabits is the correct one as that's neurologically impossible.

I've been wanting to say something in response to this section cause it's made me sad. Or maybe scared me. Maybe both. I mean, it's like the exact opposite of how I think and feel, aside from having physical aspects I'm less than fond of on myself. GD as a disease? I just—

I gotta stop there cause I don't want to debate it, at least on a forum. Face to face would be different because on forums is where I have a history of not being able to put things in such a way that later clarification isn't required and I don't want to make anybody be heated and kept simmering during the times that I'm AFK. So, I'm just going to wish you well Victoria.

Quote from: Sephirah on January 18, 2014, 10:21:16 PM
If a sequence of genes is responsible for 99.5% of my internal and perceptual self-identity, and changing them this way will affect not only how I view myself but also how I relate to, and interact with the rest of the world... that's a very scary thought. I have always believed that who I am is a more holistic experience. Not based solely on myself, but on the complex interrelations I have with the environment around me - perception, assimilation and insight. A dynamic growth that leads to a synergy. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

If something like this was hypothetically possible, it would feel to me like trying to re-arrange a jigsaw by replacing only one piece of it.

I'd much rather them locate and rectify the gene responsible for me not liking chocolate, because I hear it's really rather good.

I'd like a gene for liking the modern style beef chop suey instead of the small family owned Chinese take out that use to be

Quote from: Victoria Mitchell on January 19, 2014, 10:30:43 PM
My brain is my brain, regardless of what my gene expression tells my gonads to do. I'm pretty fine with the idea that I could one day tell my DNA to do what *I* tell it to and not what it *thinks* it wants to do.

Would it have changed my life and where I'm at today? Yeah. Would I have had the same set of circumstances and results that I had leading up to today? No. Would I have been happier? Yeah, probably. The world is better off for me being myself as I am but I think that, personally, I'd have probably been able to focus more on what was important to my dreams and goals without the overhead of GID/Transition/Dysphoria involved.

That said, I *do* see GD as a disease in the same sense that I would if I had Multiple-Sclerosis, Parkinsons, or some other weird-o malady of the DNA. I can't have kids. My body is weird and developed wrongly (also, huge and heavy as hell). No manner or amount of monkeying with surgery, hormones, self-acceptance, or anything else will tell my brain that the body that it inhabits is the correct one as that's neurologically impossible.

I'm happy with my life but being able to feel at home in my body would be a blessing that I would give near anything to achieve. As it's medically impossible, I'll make do with what I have and be happy with it but if there were a better option, I'd have and would still take it in a heartbeat.

(P.S. - Just to be clear, I'm 100% against the idea that I'd want to ever go from Female to Male brained. That's a horrible, terrible idea and I don't think that it's even possible using the furthest extrapolations of the science of neuroplasticity. Curing GD by trying to change the brain is an awful plan and would almost certainly do nothing good for the patient.)

(P.P.S. - I'm also pretty sure that the OP is of the same mindset and was talking about gene therapy to fix the body, not the brain... for those of you freaking out about that.)

free will

The whole point was to give you an option exactly as HRT gives you and option. that's all I was saying . free will has nothing to do with your genes. God gave you free will as a gift which as far as I know in the whole of history nobody has been able to take that away from any one.

Quote from: stephaniec on January 20, 2014, 10:35:41 AM
The whole point was to give you an option exactly as HRT gives you and option. that's all I was saying . free will has nothing to do with your genes. God gave you free will as a gift which as far as I know in the whole of history nobody has been able to take that away from any one.

I'm an atheist/scientist so I don't look at it that way but, persistence of consciousness isn't something I'm terribly worried about losing.

Quote from: Victoria Mitchell on January 20, 2014, 11:05:22 AM
I'm an atheist/scientist so I don't look at it that way but, persistence of consciousness isn't something I'm terribly worried about losing.

consciousness is not gene regulated either

I think consciousness has it's beginnings   in the atom , From a purely scientific point of view , the electron is aware of the proton and vice versa.

Quote from: Victoria Mitchell on January 20, 2014, 11:05:22 AM
I'm an atheist/scientist so I don't look at it that way but, persistence of consciousness isn't something I'm terribly worried about losing.

Do you really retain your self even if you hold possession of your consciousness through the process of changing from who you are to who you aren't?

Quote from: Jen on January 20, 2014, 01:15:46 PM
Do you really retain your self even if you hold possession of your consciousness through the process of changing from who you are to who you aren't?

There is very little known about consciousness, but one thing that many prominent brain boffins appear to agree on is that consciousness is not centralised. No homunculus. No Cartesian Theatre.  The "self" is an illusion.

Every night I go to sleep, I die. Every morning I awake, I am reborn. This is how my consciousness works. Maintaining an uninterrupted continuity of consciousness is the only way to guarantee retention of self. Who knows what happened in the meantime. I could have been body swapped. I agree. The self is an illusion. But an illusion better than nothing at all, I suppose.

If you stick me with a needle and the result is I become somebody I am not and never have been, I think that is the same difference as killing me.  There is no way I would sign up for that, and if anybody tried to force it on me I would fight back like my life depended on it.

*blinks* Exactly what do ya'll think that we're talking about here? Essentially, the basis of the conversation from my side at least is that you can manipulate the SRY gene and basically delete it from your personal genome and then you should physically change from male to female without much hubub.

I doubt that process would change the neuronal connections in your brain immediately. Sure, you'd change eventually but, really girls, we inject hormones into our system which changes a ton of things. Then we modify our bodies and, at times, go through radical facial plastic surgery (ending up looking like nothing resembling our former selves).

If you all think that this is much different, so be it, but I really don't see what the hoopla is. If at the end, I'd get a 100% working VJ, ovaries which could produce eggs and a uterus to fertilize and incubate my children, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Oh I'm talking about the original question, not that.

If I could be stuck with a needle and become cis female, let me be the first in line.

I am not the same person I was ten years ago. We all change, develop, transition into something else, and we're not talking about  transition. So if this injection was a slow acting one then the changes would be imperceptible and painless. It would feel almost natural.

Quote from: Jen on January 20, 2014, 03:04:47 PM
Oh I'm talking about the original question, not that.

If I could be stuck with a needle and become cis female, let me be the first in line.

I think the question is getting misunderstood. It's just a matter of two treatments  one being HRT and the other  comparable non mandatory treatment of a genetic modifier to reverse a hypothetically proposed possible solution to dysphoria . Either live as a female or live contently as a male.

Quote from: stephaniec on January 20, 2014, 03:15:16 PM
I think the question is getting misunderstood. It's just a matter of two treatments  one being HRT and the other  comparable non mandatory treatment of a genetic modifier to reverse a hypothetically proposed possible solution to dysphoria . Either live as a female or live contently as a male.

Yes, this is the question I was answering, and my answer to being changed into a cis male is over my dead body.

Quote from: stephaniec on January 20, 2014, 03:15:16 PM
I think the question is getting misunderstood. It's just a matter of two treatments  one being HRT and the other  comparable non mandatory treatment of a genetic modifier to reverse a hypothetically proposed possible solution to dysphoria . Either live as a female or live contently as a male.

Oh gods, why in the WORLD would ANYONE want to do THAT?!?!?!? Backtracking, I'm 100% against this idea and agree that the very concept would essentially be re-writing a personality.

That said, I think that this would fail 100% of the time. There's no chance that you'd re-write the basic drives of an already established personality whilst retaining the memories and history of that person without basically driving that new person insane.