When I knew less about transwomen I used to think that there are two categories as concept: young transitioners and old transitioners. However there are no reasons to use those categories. Every transwoman has a different life and situation. Soon I realized that it would be as adequate to discuss about four or five types of transsexuals or even more. Transwomen that realize their situation have usually very much common despite of age. Of course you live in the different situation and have different views because of age difference and probably different problems. But I see not enough reasons to use two categories: young transitioners and old transitioners.

but its realy not that common....

young transitioners have parent issues, school issues, different experiences, peers. older transitioners have families, jobs, established lives etc,  its actually fairly different as far as experiences go.

Yes, the social situation is very different. It always wary at individual level.

Quote from: Kate on October 28, 2008, 09:03:30 AM

Quote from: nooneinparticular on October 28, 2008, 08:41:44 AM
The DSM was revised not long ago and AG (modified considerably from the Blanchard and Bailey circus version) was added.  It is used as a faux-transsexual indicator...

I'm having trouble following you here. Where is AG mentioned in the DSM again? Am I missing something? I don't remember ever seeing it mentioned in there.

~Kate~

Autogynophilia was added to the DSM IV-TR not as a separate diagnosis but as part of transvestic fetishism.  The current thinking is giving it a separate category in the DSM-V, but yes, it's in there just like Total.

This article is also now posted at Bilerico
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/10/new_study_links_genetics_to_transsexuali.php

so infact ->-bleeped-<- is NOT transsexuality.

Quote from: nooneinparticular on October 28, 2008, 10:18:52 AM
Autogynophilia was added to the DSM IV-TR not as a separate diagnosis but as part of transvestic fetishism.  The current thinking is giving it a separate category in the DSM-V, but yes, it's in there just like Total.

You mean this?

Quote
Specify if:

With Gender Dysphoria: if the person has persistent discomfort with gender role or identity

That's the closest I get, and it's not at all obvious that a 'fetishistic transvestite with gender dysphoria' is the same as what Blanchard describes as  ->-bleeped-<-c transsexual -- the criteria for fetishistic transvestism in general are already pretty strict, and it's hard for me to believe that 65% of transsexuals really fall into this category, like you wrote at the start of this thread. But all right, for the sake of argument let's assume it is so. How do you know that the gender dysphoria of such a person is not related to the gender dysphoria of a 'classic' transsexual?

  Nfr

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 10:34:14 AM
so infact ->-bleeped-<- is NOT transsexuality.

Exactly......it is currently considered the end stage of transvestic fetishism and a condition that mimics classic transsexuality, but is in fact exclusionary of it.

Can you please cite the place it's "in there," Cathryn. As it stands your statement isn't supported as the term itself is not used that I have been able to find. That it may well be "lurking" is not the question. But, to date, " ->-bleeped-<-" has never been recognized as anything more than Ray Blanchard's adaptation and linguistic trope for what he and mentor Freund have believed, not proven or supplied any creditable scientific evidence for at all. Unless one surmises that Anne Lawrence's copping to something like that narrative rates as "scientific proof."

Which is, afterall, the level of "science" these "thinkers" have at their base. Wanting something to be true doesn't give me truth. Feeling something should be true isn't a scientific anything, it's a thought. Thoughts and opinions appear to be normal among all human beings, but their existence doesn't provide one with "authority" anymore than does my acquaintance with a host of gender-specialists give me some deep insight into the development of sex in the human body.

Given the bases you've used thus far, I could simply toss out a label for you and voila, you'd become in that instant a "Red Queen." That would hardly make you a "Red queen" or a character in Lewis Carroll's works of literature would it?

The entire labelling ploy is remarkably full of irrationality and a lack of human compassion, dignity and value. As I wrote for my blog, it's a way to deflect the uncareful reader from the true point here: humanity is various and we fail to notice that we fail to notice things such as that.

What seems to me to be truly "at stake" in our discussion is that recognition that humanity has many experiences and configurations inside a frame that makes every last one of us about 99% alike. Now that's the biological reality of the matter. Period.

That we have different ways and means of interpreting who is "me" and who is "like me" and who is "other" is simply a carry-over from days when we were spread thinly as snail-darters are now on the planet. "The stone-age child meets the modern mother." We continue to react to one another as dangerous strangers rather than as examples of similarity and sameness.

We wish to make defining characteristics of human-being out of our own fears and fever-dreams: old folk are different, young folk are different, "transvestic fetishists" are socially unacceptable. Hell, that's why we use the term fetish in a supposedly "scientific" compendium now isn't it?

Because the dirty "secret" of DSM is that it's not, at base, a scientific work, at base it's a work that makes for payment for treatment, niches for study and "work" and it's considered now and has been since its inception a means of defining whom we will treat as "human" and whom we will "exile" to some other area where societies can "deal" with them.

As a practioner and someone who uses DSM on a regular basis I can tell you that that is the truth.

So, for all practical purposes, the argument is simply about whom I will accept as like me and whom I will relegate to some niche where they "require treatment" so they will confine their expresssions of self and reality to those I am comfortable with and my society is comfortable with.

The difficulty with Western "psychology" is that it categorically rejects "soul" in spite of the origins of it's name and adheres rigorously to pathologizing what is uncomfortable for me to deal with.

Nichole

Quote from: nooneinparticular on October 28, 2008, 10:42:38 AM

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 10:34:14 AM
so infact ->-bleeped-<- is NOT transsexuality.

Exactly......it is currently considered the end stage of transvestic fetishism...

Wait.. "currently considered" by who?

You're perfectly welcome to interpret the DSM to fit your own ideas, but it's confusing me when you say personal opinions as if they're universally accepted fact in the medical community. I'm trying to follow all this, but... that doesn't make it easy!

~Kate~

Quote from: nooneinparticular on October 28, 2008, 10:42:38 AM

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 10:34:14 AM
so infact ->-bleeped-<- is NOT transsexuality.

Exactly......it is currently considered the end stage of transvestic fetishism and a condition that mimics classic transsexuality, but is in fact exclusionary of it.

In fact there is no evidence that it even exists except as a term invented by Ray Blanchard for the purposes I have delineated above. Now that is the "fact."

Your acquaintanceship with the "International Psychiatrist of the Year" notwithstanding, you walk on the swamp of something you don't have a very good grasp of. Matters not that your friends Arlene and the undesignated psychiatrist may have a good grasp of the matter. The "fact" is that you are sinking in a pool of quicksand you didn't notice was even there.

That's the difficulty of walking in a swamp when you're used to walking elsewhere, luv.

Nichole

how is fettish transvestiteism 'close' to classic transsexuality? arnt those two as polar as you can get?

Neither

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 11:02:53 AM
how is fettish transvestiteism 'close' to classic transsexuality? arnt those two as polar as you can get?

How far apart are "French" and "British," Rach? I mean at one time there was no real political difference if one goes back to Angevin times, wot?

The terms are simply terms that have been invented, first by Harry Benjamin and then redefined and modulated by his successors to what seems to make a lot of sense and what seems to be polarized but truly isn't.

Have you come to the point where you actually, mostly, enjoy your body and the way you look? Do you find yourself at any time "looking sexy" or desiring to be "sexier" than you are right now? If so, then you fall into "->-bleeped-<-" as defined by the BBL crew and Cathryn.

The base differential here is a sexual one whereby the prejudices of certain old white guys about "women" altogether have somehow been given the elevation to homage that Cathryn and others seem to wish for them as a way of asserting one's own separation from all those "others."

I'd submit that although language, custom and outlook between "French" and "British" differ that neither becomes something other than human and within the full-range of human potential and existence. But, of course, the American Psychiatric Association has not to date written a few paragraphs that would make either "British" or "French" a fetish.

That's about the actual level of this entire exchange when you take a look at what is truly being said. I might not understand "the French" if I am "British" and how they manage to hold certain aspects of their lives the way they do. But, do I truly have to "pathologize" the French?

Nichole

Good Lordy, do you all see what I meant now when I said that SHAME and GUILT infect and drive both the "community" and the scientists who study us? Would all this crazy searching and categorizing and polarizing and separating exist if changing one's sex was as boring and normal to everyone as changing one's hair colour?

But no, ultimately it's STILL a moral issue for everyone. Everyone is just scrambling to make it OK to do somehow, someway, because deep down inside they still think it's wrong and immoral to change one's sex. Everyone clings to whatever theory makes it NOT MY FAULT and ok to do.

What if it IS "just a choice?" YEA? SO? But wow, suggest that and watch everyone go crazy trying to prove it's not. I'm not saying it IS a choice, I frankly just don't know. But still, pay attention to your own reaction - and that of others - when that suggestion is made. WHY do we all recoil at the mere thought of it being a choice?

What is the *point* of all this study and classifying? Does it truly lead to happier outcomes for people? Or does it just provide ITS NOT MY FAULT! boxes for people to isolate themselves within so they never have to truly resolve their shame and guilt for how they feel? And give "scientists" an excuse to pathologize us as immoral weirdos in need of study?

~Kate~

What? feeling sexy, or wanting to look sexyer is not because you find yourself attractive to you... you find yourself attractive to OTHERS...

im sorry, but if personal grooming is ->-bleeped-<- then im a full on bloody trasvestite....


If i wasnt staff, id say what i really meant, but 'this is stupid' will sufice.

Well, Kate, I'd certainly HAVE to pathologize you if I were in the business of pathologizing anyone at all!!! 

You are simply too weird for you to, in fact, be human!!! 

One doesn't need to test her or his own "realness" by the definitions some guy or gal puts out there masquerading as science. Just pinch yourself and see if you're real or a "fetish."

Like much of our world we like to make things exist or not exist by the method of "defining" them. Most of all we like to do that with people.

You made an excellent point. If it is a choice what difference would that make to your actual reality as a human being? None at all as I see it.

And no, not all of us are going crazy, however, at your words. A bit overly dramatic aren't you? O, that's right, for you that's well within the parameters of "Kate." 

Very nice post and points.

Nichole

And Rach, you are absolutely correct. (Doncha wish for a second you weren't staff again?) 

But yes, my friend, if you can admire your own body for its own sake then you are ->-bleeped-<-. Pretty ridiculous, no? OMG!! Women never do that nor do we have sex-drives either!! That kinda stuff is simply unheard of at the CAMH and at Northwestern University!! Of course, neither, I sometimes think, have they gootn the news there that Queen Victoria and her era passed a hundred years ago!!

*sigh* You know how paper-carriers can get sloppy, eh? 

Nikki

Who is a classic transsexual to comment on the validity of the gender dysphoria of an Autogynephile? (assuming such is a real distinction, and not just one coping mechanism out of a host of coping mechanisms used to deal with dysphoria).

You're talking about civil rights, but in the same thread stating the "->-bleeped-<-" aren't women.

How do you know? In the same way that no one else can tell me whether or not I'm a Transsexual, no one can tell an "Autogynephile" that their gender dysphoria is any less real, or that their need to transition is any less pressing.

Maybe I'm a bit too much of an idealist. In fact, I know I am. I'm not practical about civil rights, because I can't understand not granting everyone the same liberty to be themselves. I also live with Aspergers, which colors my views and perceptions of the world around me.

But god damn it, I don't think that idealism is bad. And I don't think anyone else has the authority to tell someone else they're "just" an autogynephile.

You talk about wanting civil rights for transsexuals, and I agree whole heartedly, but in the same thread you dismiss an entire segment of the transsexual community, how is that any different from straight society telling you you're crazy for wanting to be a woman? Explain to me how that position isn't hypocritical.

And this isn't a personal attack on you, this is a discussion board, I am raising legitimate questions to your statements, and expect civil and logical answers.

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 11:24:02 AM
im sorry, but if personal grooming is ->-bleeped-<- then im a full on bloody trasvestite....

You would be -- unless you are also attracted to boys, in which case you'd be so extremely gay that you want SRS in order to be able to seduce straight men. These, according to Blanchard, are the only two options.

Quote from: Rachael on October 28, 2008, 11:24:02 AM
If i wasnt staff, id say what i really meant, but 'this is stupid' will sufice.

Indeed. Also, considering how both of the Blanchard categories are equally silly, it seems a bit short-sighted to claim that one of them is really a neurophysiological condition while the other is fetishistic.

Of course (and along the lines of what Kate wrote), one can find fetishism anywhere if one digs deep enough and discards enough common sense.

  Nfr

But Kate, I don't want it to be MY fault!  

Sincerely though, I don't care for myself. It has bee years since I've had any real issues in my daily life.  My family matters are mostly dealt with... as my kids have disowned me.

I worry more about others like me who are trying to find out "why me"?  And... to help them with their families so that they never have to go through what I had to endure.  No one should have to put up with that!

Cindi

Quote from: flutter on October 28, 2008, 11:38:24 AM
Who is a classic transsexual to comment on the validity of the gender dysphoria of an Autogynephile? (assuming such is a real distinction, and not just one coping mechanism out of a host of coping mechanisms used to deal with dysphoria).

You're talking about civil rights, but in the same thread stating the "->-bleeped-<-" aren't women.

No, I avoid all references as to who is and isn't a "woman", at least in this round.  And since you apparently didn't read all I said here, I'm not a "classic transsexual" myself, I'm a quadra-gametic mosaic chimera, sometimes called a true hermaphrodite.  This was not confirmed until long after I transitioned which I had to do under the same SOC standards as transsexuals so I am quite familiar with the process.

I don't know you, said nothing specific about you personally so your anger and nastiness is totally unjustified.  As for a demand I answer you.......yeah, right.......can we say "privilege?" I knew you could.

In the past 24 hours I've been called an autogynophile, a racist, a demented cult leader, homophobic, illogical and my ideas vile and transphobic.  I've been told I threw most of the trans community under a bus, oppose civil rights for those not like me.......feel the love.  At least I haven't received a new round of death threats yet, but then the day is young.