FOX News: Transgender girl drops class after 200 protest for and against her.

a reply to: JadeStar

What you want to do is limit the discussion to people with no first hand knowledge or expert opinion for whatever reason.

You're wrong.
I asked about first hand experience in my questions; I got the experts and their data.
What I didn't ask was to make this a personal crusade. I'm not interested in YOUR problems, which include a lot of unique and personal factors which may not apply to other trans people. Like for example you state that you had a feminine body, with curves and all, while the boy in the OP it looks nothing like that.
I'm interested in the topic in general, as to understand why and how.
Your feelings about this problem are an effect of it, not the cause of it, so they're not relevant from a scientific point of view, are they?

Continuing….

So let's put that aside too

You seem to want to put a lot aside thus limiting the discussion only to conditions agreeable to you.

and make it clear once and for all that this is not about you.

I never said it was. But I do believe my personal experience as you know a person who went through this stuff and intimately familiar with the subject as a result has value.

Why single me out? Ekron, Cuervo, and about 8 other ATS members who are transgender have also done the same?

Is it because I brought science to the table or because my parents decided to dispel some ignorant myths (i.e.: transgender children don't exist, or that they should be jailed for child abuse, which actually was said in the thread they participated in believe it or not.)

No matter how much you identify with the issue and how personal it is to you, I don't know you from Adam and Eve and I have no desire to discuss YOU. On contrary, I think you are brave and strong to put it all on the table like that, even if what it really does is restricting the logic in these discussions.

I think you mistake me sharing things from my personal history which are actually you know, on topic in a thread about someone who may or may not have the same birth defect I had with me making the thread about me.

I see you can't differentiate between relating something from my personal history and me making a post about me or you'd rather silence me out of fear of what I might bring to the table from a non-emotional and articulate scientific perspective.

On to science….(continued)

a reply to: JadeStar

Why single me out? Ekron, Cuervo, and about 8 other ATS members who are transgender have also done the same?

I think you're singled yourself out.
This OP is about an transgender related incident in a school, and most of us try to talk about that.
Look again at this, right in the OP:

I was lucky in that I had my family's support and other than one objection which went away after meeting my parents and I, my schools support as well. That is why I was able to focus on my studies.
Unfortunately her story is different than mine. Instead of going to college she dropped out and does online sex work via webcam after struggling to find a regular job that paid well enough to fund her transition.

and at this:

First of all I want to apologize to the dozen or so transgender people who are out on ATS as well as those who are not out as well as their families and loved ones who may read this thread. I did not think it would become the tire fire it has become at times.

Why is this your responsibility? Not because you single yourself out?
So all I said was to put you aside for a moment and talk about transgender problem as a whole.

You know you really should post shorter posts… tl;dr can be a thing you know?

Now on the topic of the "scientific" part and the brain gender.

Science in quotes? Cute. Usually used by those who do not accept the science or research for whatever reason. i.e.: The "science" of climatology. The "science" of evolutionary biology… and so on.

I understand that there are differences in the brain between male and female, which differences are set very early in the womb, and I agree with that. The brain scans show that. Ok.

Ok.

But the same is available for schizophrenia, for ADHD, depression or any kind of mental disorder, big or small; their brain is working different from those of "normal" people.

Except that the brain differences in schizophrenia, for ADHD, depression are abnormal for all people. The difference in a trans person's brain structure would be perfectly normal had the trans person been born with a body and genitalia to match.

That can not be said for ADHD, schizophrenia, and other disorders which are a result of things such as chemical imbalance or abnormal neuro activity.

This is not a chemical imbalance or neurological activity, its a fundamental PHYSICAL difference in the brain's structure.

This is why no drug can cure being transgender and why all forms of aversion therapy from the stone age practice of electro shock therapy and lobotomies up to less horrifying and equally as ineffective things have not changed us.

Once the brains internal structure has been formed and gender "baked in" neurologically then there is nothing that could be done to it to make a transgender person who has this brain difference comfortable other than change the body to match.

What should not happen is that people born with this should not be discriminated against or treated like they are playing dress up, going through a phase or just mentally disturbed.

What I don't understand and you failed to explain is how exactly the gender of the brain makes a person so compulsory wanting to be what it is not.

You seem to not understand that the brain is what determines how every person sees the world and themselves. A male brain will never be ok with having a female body a female brain will never be ok with having a male body and here is the important part for this discussion and others like it:

The fact that science was able to hone in and discover WHY people who are transgender feel the way they do and further more that it is due to this brain/body mismatch is WHY laws have been changed to facilitate the treatment through things such as hormone blockers to postpone puberty, to hormone therapy to allow their body to transition to be more in line with the physical gender of the transgender person's brain, to surgery to correct the primary and secondary sexual characteristics to also match the transgender person's brain.

It's also why in my state for instance all of this is covered under the state's health insurance, including sexual reassignment surgery (as of last month):



(continued and conclusion…)

a reply to: WhiteHat

Nice discussion you two have going on. This whole thread has given me an education and understanding. I am continuing to read your discussion.

This OP is about an transgender related incident in a school, and most of us try to talk about that.

The Lila thing? It might be a ruse. He might have misrepresented himself. However, generally speaking, JadeStar posts are valid and yes science agrees with her. She has the full experience and knowledge.

But yes usually people have no problem but with Lila? You have to wonder why.

originally posted by: WhiteHat






Why is this your responsibility? Not because you single yourself out?
So all I said was to put you aside for a moment and talk about transgender problem as a whole.

She feels it is her responsibility to say that because it is HER thread - she started it - she is the OP.

She HAS talked about the transgender issue as a whole - have you been reading her posts? She has presented science several times in this thread alone. You have chosen to ignore or just plain "not understand" it. Is that her fault - or yours?

You seem to not understand that the brain is what determines how every person sees the world and themselves. A male brain will never be ok with having a female body a female brain will never be ok with having a male body and here is the important part for this discussion and others like it:

Well, it seems I don't understand, this why I asked how exactly is this manifesting in real life, not in a brain scan. A trans person doesn't feel his female neurons firing on the wrong side of the brain, or whatever.
I also pointed that if is not estrogen related, not a sexual tendency and not a desire to impress by being other than they are, what is it? And how strong this urge might be to change a healthy body and destroy it's natural sexual functions?
So that will be an welcome insight from first hand experience.

originally posted by: WhiteHat
a reply to: JadeStar

I am a woman, and for what is worth I always was a Tomboy of the highest degree. Always play with the boys, always acting and dressing like a boy, nagging my mother why she made me a girl cause I would have love it much better to be a boy. Even now, at the age of 44 and a lot more tame I hardly put a dress on, I never had long hair and I never get together with the girls. Everybody who knows me agrees that my head is often working like a man's head, whatever that means. Cause I surely love cat's pics in every way and form/

Is not a matter of estrogen, I look exactly like every other woman, I'm not hairy or strong boned, I don't have an Adam's apple. I've never been attracted to a woman, not even remotely, and believe me I tested myself.

But never even once in my life I was thinking that I am a man in a woman's body.

This is because if they scanned that region of your brain which determines how you feel about your gender, how you relate to the world as female and how you interact with other people and if they scanned that same region of my brain there would be no difference.

Your are a female, in brain and in body.

I was a female in brain but not in body.

Before you were born there was no masculinization process to make you male in body or brain.

before I was born there was a partial masculinization process (think of this like an interrupted download) which resulted in my brain staying feminine while body took on the characteristics expected of a male.

You would NEVER be comfortable with a male body because your brain is not male.

I was NEVER comfortable with a male body because my brain is not male.

I would have love to be a man, but I know beyond any shadow of doubt that I am a woman.

And that knowing is the same for me. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am a woman and always knew I was female because again, your brain and my brain are female.

You just lucked out to get a body which matched.

BTW: a trans man is someone who was morphologically born female but with a male brain. the correct word for a trans person who was born with a female brain in a male body is trans woman. Again, because the gender is determined by our brain's physical structure which supersedes body morphology regardless of what that may be at birth.

I never understood how could a person think like that unless there is a severe dissociation between perceived reality and the inner world of that person.

It's not a dissociative disorder, they looked into that decades ago and found nothing. It was only in the 1990s did they hone in on the fact that it was not a mental disorder as much as it was physical mismatch between a body and brain.

Or to put it in computer terms: Your and my processor is the same but your case and mine were very different. Now they are more similar but not identical.

My brother and dad's processor has nothing in common with mine nor yours in the the areas which differentiate between the sexes.

Interesting though, the body once surgery is conducted begins to treat the neo-vagina of transgender women as if they were born with it, which is why we have to visit the GYN just as any other woman would. Likewise if breast cancer runs in our families then we have are at the same risk of breast cancer as females in our family who were born with female sexual anatomy.


(On to conclusion…)

a reply to: WhiteHat

Just think of a few movies where one day a male and a female switched bodies.

a reply to: kaylaluv
You may see it as fault, but in my book if I want to objectively understand something I must remove all the sentimental factors aside and take only facts in consideration.
I heard it lot from my son when he did some stupid thing at school " but you are my mom, you should be on my side". My answer was always " you are my son and I love you but a stupid action remains a stupid action."
I may have sympaty for trans people because of the feelings they inspire, but it doesn't help me understand the problem.

a reply to: WhiteHat

One movie in case:



I know it's a silly movie. I think it's funny but it kinda explains the whole thing.

For transgender people they feel they are in the wrong bodies.

a reply to: JadeStar

You keep explaining me a scientific process while I asked for how this process translate in a person's mind. I'm sure when you first felt and told others you are a girl you didn't knew all this scientific facts. What did you knew, and how?

As for "scientific" that I use sometimes is a delicate allusion of the scientists who declare that pizza is a vegetable, that aspartame is safe for consumption and the ridiculous rise of obesity is genetic. Also that everything that make them money is safe and healthy.
There you go, a short post

a reply to: WhiteHat

Then read the science. And don't waste your time with blogs. Read the actual science. Read what the psychology and psychiatric associations have to say. Look to the experts.

a reply to: WhiteHat

Wait, so you say keep it objective, don't get personal - yet you reject science. What?????

originally posted by: JadeStar
You know you really should post shorter posts… tl;dr can be a thing you know?

Now on the topic of the "scientific" part and the brain gender.

Science in quotes? Cute. Usually used by those who do not accept the science or research for whatever reason. i.e.: The "science" of climatology. The "science" of evolutionary biology… and so on.

I understand that there are differences in the brain between male and female, which differences are set very early in the womb, and I agree with that. The brain scans show that. Ok.

Ok.

But the same is available for schizophrenia, for ADHD, depression or any kind of mental disorder, big or small; their brain is working different from those of "normal" people.

Except that the brain differences in schizophrenia, for ADHD, depression are abnormal for all people. The difference in a trans person's brain structure would be perfectly normal had the trans person been born with a body and genitalia to match.

That can not be said for ADHD, schizophrenia, and other disorders which are a result of things such as chemical imbalance or abnormal neuro activity.

This is not a chemical imbalance or neurological activity, its a fundamental PHYSICAL difference in the brain's structure.

This is why no drug can cure being transgender and why all forms of aversion therapy from the stone age practice of electro shock therapy and lobotomies up to less horrifying and equally as ineffective things have not changed us.

Once the brains internal structure has been formed and gender "baked in" neurologically then there is nothing that could be done to it to make a transgender person who has this brain difference comfortable other than change the body to match.

What should not happen is that people born with this should not be discriminated against or treated like they are playing dress up, going through a phase or just mentally disturbed.

What I don't understand and you failed to explain is how exactly the gender of the brain makes a person so compulsory wanting to be what it is not.

You seem to not understand that the brain is what determines how every person sees the world and themselves. A male brain will never be ok with having a female body a female brain will never be ok with having a male body and here is the important part for this discussion and others like it:

The fact that science was able to hone in and discover WHY people who are transgender feel the way they do and further more that it is due to this brain/body mismatch is WHY laws have been changed to facilitate the treatment through things such as hormone blockers to postpone puberty, to hormone therapy to allow their body to transition to be more in line with the physical gender of the transgender person's brain, to surgery to correct the primary and secondary sexual characteristics to also match the transgender person's brain.

It's also why in my state for instance all of this is covered under the state's health insurance, including sexual reassignment surgery (as of last month):

(continued and conclusion…)

Well your misinterpreting science a bit. Yes there are differences but nothing outside the norm for either gender. The differences your discussing is like the fiberous tissue called forceps minor. Males it tends to be thicker then females. But this rule doesn't pertain to all males. There are deviances in all things nature doesn't like strict rules

Now to say a transgender thinks like a woman you have to be able to define how a woman thinks. Not joking here even though it sounds like it. But individuals process information based off experience. The only effect the brain truly has on gender is hormone production. Now here is the problem what's the norm? There are females that produce large amounts of testosterone yet still like males. And of course males that produce a lot of estrogen yet still like females. Where is the tipping point? This much estrogen and your a female we don't know.

The other problem most people ignore First, sex-reassignment surgery involves treatment with cross-sex hormones that alter the brain. One I don't think this should ever be done until after the age of 18 in females and 20 in males. Then and only then are the changes in your body complete. The other problem is not all transgendered people are attracted to the the same sex a guy might want to be a woman but still attracted by them. To say science proves anything yet is wrong we just don't know.

As far as medical it's a huge unknown, for example " Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" recategorized transsexuals as suffering not from "gender identity disorder" (as it previously did) but from "gender dysphoria." In short, the mental disorder lies not in believing that you're a different gender but in the suffering caused by that belief.

So in truth we can't say transgendered are in any way outside the norm. And we can't say these differences are large enough to say they are males or females brains. All we can do is go off the individuals beliefs. And I don't think children should ever go through gender reasignment that is an adult decision with life alt wrong consequences

a reply to: Deaf Alien
I'm not the right person for this example since I am already comfortable acting and dressing almost like a man.
I saw that movie, and always tought how interesting would be to wake up one day in male's body, and how many secrets to discover about men lol The only thing to regret would be loosing my life partner...

a reply to: WhiteHat

LOL yeah but basically that's what it's like for them. That's the point.

Therapists, and supporting a child who feels out of place is incredibly dangerous.

I've known many kids who were raised by single mothers, for instance. If it's a girl, then there are not as many issues than if it's a boy child. If it were a boy, then they had no male influence in their life. So, they were, for lack of a better term, effeminate. Simply because they are raised around a woman, and have no clue what it means to be male.

Now, let's say that mother had taken that child to a therapist in the thought of seeing if he/she was gay, or had GID. The therapist can actually introduce the thought that the child hasn't even had yet. (this happened to one of these kids, and this is why I'm bringing it up)

The therapist actually brought the term transgender into the discussion, the kid went home and googled it, and because of a lifetime of teasing by other children simply because he didn't act "male enough", he now thought he is a girl inside, when he never had that thought before. He was more confused, and depression sat in. Once that happened, the therapist tried to further reinforce the implanted thought.

Later, this particular mother decided to stop therapy, and put the boy into a big brother program. This Big Brother never talked about gender, just was a friend to him and helped him see that he wasn't different at all. Turns out, the boy had been yearning for a male influence. He is now a happy, healthy adult with a wife and a child.

None of this should be taking place until adulthood. There is NO valid reason to let a child go through that, when they are so easily influenced by outside forces. Especially on under the guise of "helping" them.

Again, children should never be subjected to this kind of "therapy". Sorry, but the simple fact is children are malleable. They take to heart what they see an adult telling them is "OK"

Once someone is 18, and a legal adult, they can do what they like, but not as a child. That therapist went so far as to suggest hormone therapy! Plus the state tried to force her to continue with the therapy sessions. To continue what was basically programming the child.

I'm sure JadeStar will chime in and say it isn't so, but I saw it, and I also saw what it put the mother through. Blaming herself, blaming the father for not being there (in this case the father had died) and utter confusion as to what she should do. The money spent on a lawyer to fight the state.

I'm glad she sought out alternatives, and incidentally, so is her son as she told me he confided to her.

originally posted by: WhiteHat
a reply to: Deaf Alien
I'm not the right person for this example since I am already comfortable acting and dressing almost like a man.
I saw that movie, and always tought how interesting would be to wake up one day in male's body, and how many secrets to discover about men lol The only thing to regret would be loosing my life partner...

And that's why women are much more likely to be bi sexual then men. Study after study show this problem is we don't know why.

a reply to: kaylaluv

Good... I'm not rejecting science. What is with you people?
Did I argued something about all this science?

Let me put it this way.
Is that boy in the OP acting like he's feeling a definite, uncontrollable and unstoppable urge to wear a wig and skirt at school, or could he had some more decency until the transition was completed and no one would ever notice the male body? We all know how cruel kids are and how tough high school is, even if you have only a few pimples. What is so rewarding about wearing that wig that make him want to stand up like that?
Why most men like this behave the way they behave? Do they really, I mean really think that someone can see them as a woman, or is an attention attraction factor?
Is this something they don't care about, or they can't control it?
How is this different from a homosexual men behaving like a woman? What makes that damn surgery which is neither easy nor cheap to be so worth it?
Again, how a person with a man body knows so sure is a woman?
This is what a straight person like me don't get it, and I'm sure a lot others.
Not the science behind it.