It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: poncho1982
a reply to: hounddoghowlie
So sad that they realized too late that you cannot change chromosomes. No matter what they "feel" like they are.
originally posted by: OpenMindedRealist
The boy in the OP is in high school and only now deciding he is transgender.
Bono was attracted to girls and decided he must be gay. “I didn’t know anything about transgendered people or transitioning or the difference between gender and gender identity of any of those issues,” he said.
During high school and after, Bono began dating women. He also formed his own conception of the varieties of lesbian experience to try to account for the desire he felt to be a man, based in part on observing a lesbian couple who were friends of his family and had what he called “a more traditional kind of butch-femme relationship.”
“I formulated the idea that there was a portion of the lesbian community who were more like men and wished that they were men, and tried to make the best of it,” Bono said.
But all was not well. “I still had this feeling of something not being right about me,” he said, referring to his failure to come to terms with his sexual identity.
Bono experienced a realization about his true identity in about 2000 at, of all places, “a big lesbian barbecue,” he said. He looked around at the diverse crowd. “You had all your major lesbian groups represented,” he said. “But no matter how they dressed, or how they expressed themselves, they were all comfortable with the core female identity,” he said. “And I was struck that this was something I had never felt, something I had never been.”
His old theory about lesbians who wanted to be men “went out the window,” he said. “That’s really the first time that I began to think that I may be transgendered.”
The realization came with a dose of fear about the risks of transitioning, especially as a lesbian activist, a public figure and a member of a famous family. “It really scared me a lot,” he said. “I sort of had this self-knowledge of who I was [but] I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Bono went into a holding pattern for several years, afraid to begin the change, though he did get clean and sober in 2004. His desire to become a man also affected his work as an activist. “I felt I was a fraud, that I was trying to pass as a lesbian when I wasn’t,” he said. “I felt like a hypocrite.”
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: Annee
There's fat kid camps, too... doesn't mean that the existence of such facilities changes the reality. I've said this several times, and I'm not moving off of it: This is being driven by little more than politics and pandering. The biochemical difference in brain function mentioned multiple times in this thread is actually counter-productive to your argument because some (socially acceptable to call them what they are) mental disorders produce them as well.
Schizophrenia produces abnormal brain waves: news.mit.edu...
Schizophrenia and biochemical abnormalities: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
a Canadian man born biologically male but raised female following medical advice and intervention after his penis was accidentally destroyed during a botched circumcision in infancy.
Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer failed to identify as female since the age of 9 to 11 and transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the "John/Joan" case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practices. He later committed suicide after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage
originally posted by: Bundy
a reply to: JadeStar
I'm having to jump in here again and say this because i feel this is where it cannot be taken any further and i dont even understand how people attempt to argue against this.
Gender is an observation of what genitals someone has at their birth, it wasnt assigned to you. A doctor did not decide you were a boy or a girl, just like you did not get to decide. He made an observation of your genitalia. It is that simple.
Life is not as simple as gender. Throughout your life you feel differently because your brain is more like a females. Ok, so things arent as simple for you, but you were still at the moment of birth what gender that doctor observed, therefor born a male.
originally posted by: OpenMindedRealist
a reply to: burdman30ott6
You're not getting it. Emotional testimony supersedes facts and hard science.
You have to feel the magic.
Maybe psychadelics could help.
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
originally posted by: Deaf Alien
a reply to: OpenMindedRealist
Nah. Comparing transgender people with people who believe and act like animals is an insult. Someone in this thread compared transgender people to sociopaths who cut off dogs and cats heads.
The clinical zoanthropy comparison DOES NOT equal the sociopath comparison, my friend. Do not attempt to lump the two together.
From a purely pragmatic approach (which is what science is all about) why is the zoanthropy comparison not appropriate? Are they not both examples of an individual believing they are something completely different than what the scientifically are?
originally posted by: kaylaluv
a reply to: burdman30ott6
There are differences between the male and female brain. Studies have been done comparing the brains of transgender male-to-females and female-to-males with the brains of cisgender females and males. The transgender male-to-females had brains that were more feminized than the cisgender males - and that was BEFORE any hormones. Same with the female to male brain being more masculinized.
I have yet to see any brain scan comparisons of anyone who is transpecies to determine if their brains are more "animalized" than full humans. If you've got any links to said brain scan comparisons, I would be willing to believe they are the same as transgender people. Otherwise, it's an invalid comparison.
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: Annee
I understand...
If you answer it scientifically, then you're forced to acknowledge there is no difference. If you answer it emotionally, you're forced to state something utterly ridiculous and support a manner of equality which allows a human being to live out a mental fantasy of being a pooch, behaving like a pooch, and being provided accommodations of a pooch.
It's not an easy question to answer while toeing a politically motivated positional line.
originally posted by: OpenMindedRealist
a reply to: Deaf Alien
And for two? For three?
Probably should come up with a few backups. Your excuse that "it's so rare" also applies to gender dysphoria, which affects less than half a percent of the population.
originally posted by: joeraynor
I think knowing that the issue affects 1 in 200 is heavily useful. It allows us to know that it is roughly an order of magnitude less common than homosexuality / lesbianism, but also around the same prevalence as the HIV infection rate (which is not to say this condition is a disease or undesirable, but happens to occur in near identical numbers), and is thus in a very rough way a social and medical issue of about the same magnitude.
- CDC
Today, the CDC estimates that one in 150 8-year-olds in the U.S. has an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.
originally posted by: EKron
Transgender is a mighty broad spectrum of of different expressions.
Here is data from recent research compiled from Social Security and 2010 Census records on the likely number of post transition transgender people in this country
Source
Likely Transgender Individuals in U.S. Federal Administrative Records and the 2010 Census
“This paper utilizes changes to individuals ’first names and sex-coding in files from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to identify people likely to be transgender. I first document trends in these transgender-consistent changes and compare them to trends in other types of changes to personal information. I find that transgender-consistent changes are present as early as 1936 and have grown with non-transgender consistent changes. Of the likely transgender individuals alive during 2010, the majority change their names but not their sex-coding. Of those who changed both their names and their sex-coding, most change both pieces of information concurrently, although over a quarter change their name first and their sex-coding 5-6 years later. Linking individuals to their 2010 Census responses shows my approach identifies more transgender members of racial and ethnic minority groups than other studies using, for example, anonymous on line surveys. Finally, states with the highest proportion of likely transgender residents have state-wide laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. States with the lowest proportion do not.”
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: MystikMushroom
I'm sorry, but I'm not on board with the constant changes expected in the masses to accommodate extremely discrete percentages of special needs people.
originally posted by: Deaf AlienFirst of all it is illegal to give a sex reassignment surgery to children, rightly so.
Secondly, children image themselves to be different kinds of things. That's normal. Those are called phases. Even if they consistently identify themselves as opposite sex,
puberty will decide that permanently.
originally posted by: Teikiatsu
originally posted by: JadeStar
originally posted by: Teikiatsu
originally posted by: boymonkey74
a reply to: DrakeINFERNO
Good job it isn't a mental disorder then isn't it....
Dude grows up in a male body. Dude has all the male equipment. After 13 years in this body, dude suddenly thinks he's not a dude and is in the wrong body.
Sounds like the dude is denying reality.
No but you are. The reality is some girls grow up in male bodies before they can change them. You know... unless they kill themselves.
No, they don't. We all grow up in our own bodies. It is up to us to accept the reality of the body we were born with.
Some people can't accept the reality and think they are supposed to be someone or something else. Some people kill themselves because they can't handle that truth.
The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery.”
originally posted by: WhiteHat
a reply to: JadeStar
And how in the god's name can we start making transitions to a five y/o kid? Based on what kind of gender awareness?