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Over the years I have learned, hoping with knowledge and time transgender would finally start being understood by the general public is an effort in futility. With the hate and fear mongers spreading their own biased opinion of transgender being a mental sickness or some such, far too many buy into the lies. Scientific research aside, facts discarded, the hate group hasn't a clue. Their hate and bigotry stops with their own personal fears and opinions.
What doesn't bode well for those who must make the change or slit their own throat are the family and friends who can't or won't accept the change. The person who replaced the son or daughter killed the one they replaced and took over. And so those family and friends spread their own poison of hate to everyone who will listen. In turn that hate and lies spread even further. Sometimes even I bump up against my own bigotry of what a boy or girl should be. Conchita Wurst is still a shock to the mental even though I'd kill to have some of her gowns.
Lobotomy, electric shock, locking them away forever has been practiced on transgendered to cure them of their illness. I guess if removing part of one's brain or frying their brain can be considered a cure then there were some successes. Zoning them out with mind bending drugs was a freaky try. No mental treatment ever works but physical treatment has a 99.9% success rate. Only by altering their physical body to match who and what their brain is has ever made them into a whole productive useful person.
"There's fairly large, and growing, body of evidence indicating that transgender identities are based in neurobiology. Studies and fMRI brain scans have shown repeatedly that a) there are differences in the structure of female and male brains, and that b) transgender persons have brain structures that more closely match those of their identified gender rather than their birth sex, and that it is this disconnect between the structure of the brain and the hormone mixture and bodily signals it receives that causes what is called "gender dysphoria", which is a very real and palpable sensation."
http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1jqt34/cmv_i_d...
have fun with life
it's too short to take it seriously
always,
Barb
Comments
I agree with the gist
of what you say that it seems easier to spread negatives than positives. It's easy to see why, insofar as we tend to be more visible than other 'sexual' minority groups, although I personally have discomfort in being added to the LGB thing as an afterthought and I feel that gender identity is different to sexual orientation/preference.
The tide is turning slowly, helped by enlightment in government who then introduce legislation to support transgender people. I'm sure it's helped in the UK, although those who are unfortunate in not passing in their preferred gender may still have to cope with louts who may verbally or even physically abuse their victims. It's illegal to harass people because of their gender or sexual orientation but it still happens and unfortunately education doesn't work very well with drunken or drug-taking thugs. I read today of a teenaged thug who killed an older man on New Year's morning for no obvious reason and who seems to be showing little or no remorse. I accept he had a troubled childhood but so do many other people who don't turn to violence for their fun.
I'm not at all sure about the status of brain differences in different groups as some experts pooh-pooh the idea and evidence, but I have no doubt that part of the aetiology of gender dysphoria is organic although environmental factors probably contribute as well. As regard the treatment of the gender dysphoric, for some reassignment with surgery and hormones is appropriate and for others possibly psychotherapy is best. Not everyone who has gender discomfort wants to change their body, though for me, it was the only option.
I personally don't believe Gender Identity Disease exists as a medical condition, it's about choice of lifestyles and personal belief. The dysphoria occurs when the individual is prevented from expressing themselves for whatever reasons and that can lead to all sorts of mental problems. It's perhaps ironic that I received surgical treatment for a self-diagnosed problem which improved it no end, and finally it was an act of parliament that 'cured' me by enabling me to literally change my sex/gender legally. When that happened, I had achieved what I set out to do - become female.
Angharad
Angharad,
you wrote: "I personally don't believe Gender Identity Disease exists as a medical condition, it's about choice of lifestyles and personal belief."
I must disagree with that statement. LIfestyle choice? For myself, as I am almost certain it is for most Trans folks, my decision to transition was based solely on choosing the lesser of two evils. Either transition or die.
Gender dysphoria IS a medical fact, borne out by the observed differences between male and female brains. Granted, some might choose to live as the opposite of the gender with which they were born as a statement of defiance to the world at large, flaunting, if you will, their differences as if thumbing their noses on accepted socially correct behavior. For most of us though, IMHO, the choice is taken away by the simple, inescapable fact that more trans folks choose suicide than ANY other group, again leaving the only other viable choice as transition.
Who in their "right" mind would choose death over life if there were ANY other choice to resolve their innermost feelings other than transitioning to relieve their inner conflict?
No. Transitioning IS the only real way of dealing with those inner conflicts, as suicide is only a solution for the person doing it. For those left behind, families, friends, there is only grief and regret that they didn't help the person avoid that horrible "solution."
So, lifestyle choice? No. More a life CHOICE to live. Drag performers and others who flaunt their differences are the minority inside a minority who define, for society anyway, the rightness of their views of us all as perverted weirdos, much the same way as the hell's angels define all who ride motorcycles as gangsters who fight, drink and create hate, hell and discontent.
So I despise the term "lifestyle" as used in reference to those of us who are left with only two decisions. Life or death. You cannot insult the choice by terming it a "style", which lessens it's enormous impact on the person making that agonizing decision. I chose life when I reached that point where Death was THE only other choice. "Style" defines a socially ever changing way of expressing oneself due to social pressure. To choose to change virtually everything that defines how a person is perceived is not "style."
Sorry to be long winded, but it's partially due to the effect a fever is having on me right now and my very visceral reaction to that word. A particularly vicious virus has chosen to reside inside me and physically, and perhaps mentally as well, I am not at my peak of reasoning powers.
Live long and prosper.
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
That is pretty much what happened to me.
I did not want to be transgender. I reached a point where I was fully ready to kill myself. Fortunately for me, I had people whom I loved more than I hated myself. I transitioned for them, not for me. Dying is easy, people do it every day, leaving other people, usually the ones they love, to clean up the mess.
If it had indeed been a choice I would have chosen not to be trans.
You have the right of it.
It seems to be almost universal that our families reject us.
However, being 68 now, I can remember the horrific abuse my step father heaped on me, and in the 50's perhaps most transgender folk were simply murdered. He threatened to do the same to me. So, at least today fewer of us are murdered perhaps?
I agree with your assessment of scientific proof, having seen much of it myself. Over the years, I have handicapped myself and perhaps been hurtful to my sisters because of my own very narrow view of what womanhood is. It is a saddle that I placed on myself, insisting that only my utmost effort to be uber feminine was good enough. It was years after I came out that I ever wore another pair of pants, or left the house without doing my utmost to look perfect. On the second issue, most women that I know do the same, there being this compulsion as if pursued by goblins, to out do other women.
Though it is not understood by most people I know, when I go into public, it is mostly in conservative Muslim women's garb, not because I am such a good Muslim but because the clothing is a great civilian ghilly suit, providing maximum concealment. It also suits me because even after all these years, I still at times do not feel validated as a woman. Fortunately, my voice is silky, high and feminine, so in spite of looking 8 months pregnant, it all works out.
Even in the 11 years, I have been out, it has gotten better for us, and in the last 6 months, it is clear that public opinion is growing more sympathetic toward us. For that I thank God.
Gwen
Actually atheists are bigger and...
... Less understood group. It is extremely frustraiting to stay by the tablet computer replica made of wood and paint and to keep silent when someone is kissing it, crossing him/her self and trying to get response while they have perfectly good ipad in their purse/case that can be used to get what they are asking out of wood replica... And after that show of incompetence they claim it to be religious ritual... :-/
Already technologies available to people with 100 USD per month income are more advanced then anything humanity uses for prayers. Already google is more
omnipresent and omnisentient than any god known to humanity. And still we pray not to google, bing, NSA, or KGB... Extremelly frustraiting :-)
Failure
The problem with the haters and religious nutters it that you can never ever convince them that they are wrong. They have a belief to begin with which has no rational foundation. How can you change the mind of a society that is willing to admit and acknowledge that anything in the human body can be deformed or corrupted by cancers, genetic defects/mutations or chemicals but yet refuse to admit that gender identity is something which can not be affected in the same way. We will always fight an uphill battle. No matter what we do or what science finds, we must continue to be who we are in as humble and realistic a way as possible.
Not to be critical but the persons of the transgender community who are seen by the public as over the top and flaunting their drag shows and sexualized lifestyles, do not properly show that we as transsexuals are valid or real. They verify that we are about kink and sexual perversion. How do we rise above this stereotype? I don't know the answer to this. I just try to live as any other woman of 50 years does.
I'm sure that many will not agree with me on my views but I just feel I need to state them. Sorry for any offence!
Dahlia