You have dealt with some thorny issues here and you should be commended for that courage. Too bad that in your clear intent to be provocative you allowed personal bias and a lack of current knowledge to destroy your argument and as a result I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself sucking on your foot.
HBS was a concept established with the intent to take transsexual out of transgender which is after all a social and political construct. Since transsexual is a recognisable and clearly defined medical condition it has no place in an artificial social construct like transgender. The intent of HBS supporters was commendable but unfortunately failed to make it clear that the standards of care they established were intended only as suggestions to the professional medical bodies concerned. Whether that was as a result of Charlotte Goiar or her supporters handicap of language is probably moot. The fact is the intent of the movement was to take back ownership of transsexual from those who had no fundamental right to it in the first place. In short the concept was correct the execution awful.
It’s interesting you have chosen too cling to GID and the DSM to legitimise your position. GID as a diagnosis and it’s presence in the DSM is as I am sure you are aware currently under review. In any event it was a diagnosis created by John money based on a premise that we are born without a pre ordained gender. His belief was that gender was a learned through social conditioning. His proof was an experiment conducted with the Reimer twins. 20 or more years on the twin raised female was suffering extreme trauma and reverted to the birth sex. Money’s great experiment failed. So the whole GID concept was proven a farce.
Most people fail to understand the difference between sex and gender. Sex is not solely the act of copulation. It is also the genitalia of a mammal insect reptile fish or plant for that matter. In human terms we uniquely are “self aware” and a part of self awareness is which sex we are. In the case of transsexuals that self awareness is in direct conflict with genitalia. Gender expression plays a very secondary role in that unlike other more psychological syndromes or paraphilias.
You refer to research work in your essay that deals with the effect of hormones on the structure of the brain. It is interesting research and is in it’s very early stages and by no means complete or conclusive. There are a great many things that remain in question. Some pretty conclusive research shows that transsexuals are born with a hypothalamus more typical of the sex opposite the genitalia. If the research to which you refer was at all conclusive one might suppose that flooding a male to female transsexual with a female hypothalamus with testosterone may cure the patient of their transsexuality. Unfortunately it’s been tried and simply caused a great deal more distress than transition would ever have caused.
One thing is very much established the definition of transsexual centres around the sexual identity of an individual in relation to genitalia. Where a person is able to function in a gender role or lifestyle opposite to their sexual organs there is no valid diagnosis of transsexuality possible.
no subject
HBS was a concept established with the intent to take transsexual out of transgender which is after all a social and political construct. Since transsexual is a recognisable and clearly defined medical condition it has no place in an artificial social construct like transgender. The intent of HBS supporters was commendable but unfortunately failed to make it clear that the standards of care they established were intended only as suggestions to the professional medical bodies concerned. Whether that was as a result of Charlotte Goiar or her supporters handicap of language is probably moot. The fact is the intent of the movement was to take back ownership of transsexual from those who had no fundamental right to it in the first place. In short the concept was correct the execution awful.
It’s interesting you have chosen too cling to GID and the DSM to legitimise your position. GID as a diagnosis and it’s presence in the DSM is as I am sure you are aware currently under review. In any event it was a diagnosis created by John money based on a premise that we are born without a pre ordained gender. His belief was that gender was a learned through social conditioning. His proof was an experiment conducted with the Reimer twins. 20 or more years on the twin raised female was suffering extreme trauma and reverted to the birth sex. Money’s great experiment failed. So the whole GID concept was proven a farce.
Most people fail to understand the difference between sex and gender. Sex is not solely the act of copulation. It is also the genitalia of a mammal insect reptile fish or plant for that matter. In human terms we uniquely are “self aware” and a part of self awareness is which sex we are. In the case of transsexuals that self awareness is in direct conflict with genitalia. Gender expression plays a very secondary role in that unlike other more psychological syndromes or paraphilias.
You refer to research work in your essay that deals with the effect of hormones on the structure of the brain. It is interesting research and is in it’s very early stages and by no means complete or conclusive. There are a great many things that remain in question. Some pretty conclusive research shows that transsexuals are born with a hypothalamus more typical of the sex opposite the genitalia. If the research to which you refer was at all conclusive one might suppose that flooding a male to female transsexual with a female hypothalamus with testosterone may cure the patient of their transsexuality. Unfortunately it’s been tried and simply caused a great deal more distress than transition would ever have caused.
One thing is very much established the definition of transsexual centres around the sexual identity of an individual in relation to genitalia. Where a person is able to function in a gender role or lifestyle opposite to their sexual organs there is no valid diagnosis of transsexuality possible.
Evangelina