Quote from: Natkat on July 28, 2011, 09:19:35 AM
For me it seams as Transexuals want to be Intersex because it seam more easy to get treatment,
but is it fair to be something just so it more easy to get help?

i want it to be viewed as an intersex condition so it wont be GID and so it wont be a mental health issue that is all in my head. i honestly believe that it is an intersex condition. if i wanted it to be an intersex condition to make it easier that would be wrong, i want it to be considered intersex because it isnt a mental health disorder and i think it being an intersex condition would help cis people understand and accept people currently classified as having GID.

I'm certainly not making light of any transsexual identified person who is not physically intersex. Their "condition" however is mental, not physical

I claim bull. Tis just as physical as any intersex condition and sometimes needing more drastic intervention.

Quote from: anibioman on July 28, 2011, 01:34:24 PM
i want it to be viewed as an intersex condition so it wont be GID and so it wont be a mental health issue that is all in my head. i honestly believe that it is an intersex condition. if i wanted it to be an intersex condition to make it easier that would be wrong, i want it to be considered intersex because it isnt a mental health disorder and i think it being an intersex condition would help cis people understand and accept people currently classified as having GID.

I somehow understand your point even if I don't agree that its the same as being intersex or should be.
I don't see transgender as a mental disorder either and I don't think it the right word for it.

and I feel strange about people suporting it to be a mental issue,

this really gets complicated to the point where I don't think there is actually a right answer.

like a trans intersex person.. and whoever mentioned a cis-guy identifying as ftm or whatever. it brings to mind the people who are/identify as transabled. a quick briefer is that they identity as a person with a serious medical condition even though their body suggests that for all intents and purposes they do not and never did have it. i don't think that we're supposed to talk about them on susans though it's a bit of a touchy subject...

but really, who is anyone to say how anyone else can and should identify? yes, there are points where it becomes really bizarre, but from the outside looking in, trans people ARE bizarre. we swear that we are actually a certain way that our bodies suggest is completely untrue for what we know know. all that anyone has to go on about our identity is what we tell them. so really, who are we to reject a person that SWEARS they are really one way when their body does not show it? we do that every day and expect people to accept us.

as an aside, it is legal in most cases to identify with a race or ethnicity that is not suggested by ones biological make-up. i have had two good friends who are both adopted that identify with the race of their adoptive parents rather than their biological ethnicity if you will. one of them has african-american bio-parents and appearance but she identifies as a caucasian.

i guess im just trying to say who are we really to tell someone that their identity is invalid. as for being offensive to the group of one's "target" identity, there are a lot of cissexual people who are offended by how transpeople identify despite their biology. yes, at some points it gets hard to understand and accept, but because we hope and expect that people allow us our identities, we should do the same in return. live and let live.

Quote from: LordKAT on July 28, 2011, 02:00:34 PM
I'm certainly not making light of any transsexual identified person who is not physically intersex. Their "condition" however is mental, not physical

I claim bull. Tis just as physical as any intersex condition and sometimes needing more drastic intervention.

You left off the rest of the sentence ..."(even though as I said in my first response above that I do believe things that happen in the womb before birth can effect the brain as well as body and potentially cause that which becomes what is labeled transsexualism)".

That's just my opinion though. When it comes to the medical world and what the doctors and psychologists have determined is a condition or a disorder we really don't have any say in that, do we? We could call something bull->-bleeped-<- all day long (much like I call GID a bull->-bleeped-<-, made-up-by-psychologists disorder, when I really think that it's just a simple human variation and not a mental disorder), but it doesn't do any good and people who are trans have to deal with whatever the psychologists decide to come up with in order to get the treatment they need. An intersex person with a serious medical condition (like CAH) usually does not have any trouble getting medical treatment - IF they know about the condition. Where the problems are is having early, non-consenting "corrective" surgery just because a doctor believes they're helping you fit into the proper role of society and with hidden medical records ...where they're suffering from conditions and not knowing what's really the cause of it because people tried to "protect" them from the ugly fact they were born a "freak".

So in short, no I don't think identifying as trans is a physical condition in the same way ambiguous genitalia, chromosome disorders, and other variations that are currently classified as intersex is. However, since there are so much variations I think there's certainly room to call transsexualism a form of intersex. But wanting to call yourself that to get "better" medical treatment I don't get at all. The medical world treats the two things differently. If you're intersex and you don't have any health problems because of it then you don't get treatment.

And people can "identify" as a purple porpoise for all I care.

I understood what you said and the sentence was complete enough to get the point. It didn't matter  that you said something different in a former posting.

AS to if calling something bull is worthwhile, I think it is for if nothing were called out it would not change.


I do agree that surgery on a person too young to even know what is happening is wrong when it is only to comfort the caregiver, not the child. I also understand that sometimes intersex conditions aren't treated at all. My point remains the same.

kvall i definitely understand what you're saying and i'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you because the whole subject is so subjective..

but i wonder if gender is as socially constructed as race and culture, etc.
for ME PERSONALLY, i feel if i were raised in a white empty room or something i wouldn't be a boy. i would just be me. we had this discussing at my youth group a couple nights ago: "if there were no gender stereotypes at all in the world, how would you know what gender you are?" when you really think about it, while our biological sex determines bodily functions etc that we can't generally control (hormones, procreation), gender doesn't really DO anything. if a trans* person grew up without stereotypes, they probably wouldn't know their gender based on comparison (a "girl" is equally as likely as a "boy" to play with trucks or wear makeup and so on), so how would they know? (this is different than the body dysphoria trans people face. not the kind that's like "well other guys have a dick so i feel like i should have one too" but the kind that arises before you even understand genitals that there's something wrong with yours... which is why this argument can't really be won either way. as a starter, all of us know here that gender is different than sex but i venture a guess that none of us know the "why's" and "how's")

Quote from: RyanThomas on July 31, 2011, 03:36:43 AM
kvall i definitely understand what you're saying and i'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you because the whole subject is so subjective..

but i wonder if gender is as socially constructed as race and culture, etc.
for ME PERSONALLY, i feel if i were raised in a white empty room or something i wouldn't be a boy. i would just be me. we had this discussing at my youth group a couple nights ago: "if there were no gender stereotypes at all in the world, how would you know what gender you are?" when you really think about it, while our biological sex determines bodily functions etc that we can't generally control (hormones, procreation), gender doesn't really DO anything. if a trans* person grew up without stereotypes, they probably wouldn't know their gender based on comparison (a "girl" is equally as likely as a "boy" to play with trucks or wear makeup and so on), so how would they know? (this is different than the body dysphoria trans people face. not the kind that's like "well other guys have a dick so i feel like i should have one too" but the kind that arises before you even understand genitals that there's something wrong with yours... which is why this argument can't really be won either way. as a starter, all of us know here that gender is different than sex but i venture a guess that none of us know the "why's" and "how's")

I spent my early childhood living in a cabin in a rural area as the only child of a single mother. There were no boys for me to socialize with. There were no penises in our house. There's no way I could have had the opportunity to see a penis before age 4 1/2 - 5 when I started kindergarten, and I doubt it even happened that early.

2 stories from that age are very telling:

(1) I don't remember this, but when I was being toilet trained, my mother says I used to scream hysterically if I saw myself with my pants off. I'd point down and tell her that it hurt...but only if I saw it. She had to keep my lap covered with a towel so I'd stay calm enough to go.

(2) One of my earliest memories was from when I was around 4, and my mom walked in on me trying to use a toilet paper tube to pee standing up, with my clothes all wet. I was crying and told her I couldn't get it in the toilet. She told me I had to sit down and I just bawled.

Then there was one a couple of years later - I was a precocious reader, and my mom had a lot of books. I found one of the sex ed/puberty education books, and I was reading it when I was maybe 6 or 7. I got to the pages on male and female reproductive anatomy, and I looked at the male one and went running to my mother with the book open and proclaimed "see Mummy? I tried to tell you! It's supposed to be like that!" And she turned the page to the female one and showed me that was what I had and it was just like what she had and it just shocked me. It hadn't even ever occurred to me that I had 'normal' girl parts, I had this self-concept of my body as a deformed male.

It wasn't even really a social thing, I didn't see myself as all that different from her, at that point I wanted to grow up a lot like her...probably helped that she was a pretty 'masculine' very feminist woman. I thought of myself as a boy, wanted to read stories about boys, etc etc, but when I was told I was a girl, I didn't fight too hard against it. But I just thought my body was supposed to be different. That was the first moment when I actually grasped that it wasn't different.

I mentioned the Harry Benjamin Syndrome theory in my first post. Here's a link:
www.shb-info.org/hbs.html

Quote from: Nygeel on July 31, 2011, 07:51:57 AM
I mentioned the Harry Benjamin Syndrome theory in my first post. Here's a link:
www.shb-info.org/hbs.html

I have problems with the HBS people because of their politics. I think they're mostly fundamentally right on the science of transsexuality, but the homophobia and heteronormativity that pervades all their literature makes it impossible for me to support them. And it's intellectually dishonest of them to simply write off any possibility of a continuum of gender identities that includes nonbinary and transgender identities.

There's also the fact that Harry Benjamin didn't believe in FTMs or gay/lesbian transsexuals. I won't be using his name to refer to my condition any time soon.

Quote from: kyril on July 31, 2011, 05:12:38 AM
I spent my early childhood living in a cabin in a rural area as the only child of a single mother. There were no boys for me to socialize with. There were no penises in our house. There's no way I could have had the opportunity to see a penis before age 4 1/2 - 5 when I started kindergarten, and I doubt it even happened that early.

2 stories from that age are very telling:

(1) I don't remember this, but when I was being toilet trained, my mother says I used to scream hysterically if I saw myself with my pants off. I'd point down and tell her that it hurt...but only if I saw it. She had to keep my lap covered with a towel so I'd stay calm enough to go.

(2) One of my earliest memories was from when I was around 4, and my mom walked in on me trying to use a toilet paper tube to pee standing up, with my clothes all wet. I was crying and told her I couldn't get it in the toilet. She told me I had to sit down and I just bawled.

Then there was one a couple of years later - I was a precocious reader, and my mom had a lot of books. I found one of the sex ed/puberty education books, and I was reading it when I was maybe 6 or 7. I got to the pages on male and female reproductive anatomy, and I looked at the male one and went running to my mother with the book open and proclaimed "see Mummy? I tried to tell you! It's supposed to be like that!" And she turned the page to the female one and showed me that was what I had and it was just like what she had and it just shocked me. It hadn't even ever occurred to me that I had 'normal' girl parts, I had this self-concept of my body as a deformed male.

It wasn't even really a social thing, I didn't see myself as all that different from her, at that point I wanted to grow up a lot like her...probably helped that she was a pretty 'masculine' very feminist woman. I thought of myself as a boy, wanted to read stories about boys, etc etc, but when I was told I was a girl, I didn't fight too hard against it. But I just thought my body was supposed to be different. That was the first moment when I actually grasped that it wasn't different.

I grew up in an area where there weren't a lot of kids ... for the first couple years it was a mobile home park with mostly retired people before my parents bought a house in a rural area about 30 miles outside of town ... so again, not a lot of people or kids. I have similar stories about toilet training where at like age 1 1/2 I'm very upset and trying to tell my parents that something was not exactly how it should be. I'm sorry but no psychologist can brush that sort of thing under the rug for me and claim it was just "socialization" or something.