Transgender weightlifter sparks criticism after competition Win/Every right to compete with women

a reply to: seasonal

The case of you can not hack it as a male, just become a woman and you get second chance.

This the new trend now with failing or not good within their born sex athletes this days.

The real women in that competition should all walk away.

a reply to: Freija

What? How could you have phantom limb syndrome for something you've never had? Do you even know what that means and what the hell does it have to do with being transgender?

I worded it that way on purpose. Thank you for proving my point. It has everything to do with being transgender.

How does one feel that they are the opposite sex when never having been it? Their body has been what it is their whole life, yet somehow something is missing? How do they know without that other sexes experience? What is a man? What is a woman? One can only know the other thru observation. One may look or act the opposite sex, but they will never be the opposite sex.

A man may act or feel more feminine and a girl may act or feel more masculine. No problem whatsoever there as people have always acted more feminine or masculine than societys standards of what a man or woman is supposed to act like or be. But that's act like, not are. Transvestites and drag queens are even ok. All of these are similar but in differing degrees. Any further than that tho is a tipping point towards mental illness, ie: mind/body don't match so let me butcher my body instead of fix my mind. Purely cosmetic and visual, your insides do not change, imbalance still exists. That's why I say butcher, like taking off a whole hand all for a hangnail. Talk bout cuttin off a nose to spite their face.

And don't even play that 'toss tha motto around' game with me to try n add credibility, I know it, hence the reason for my posting. I'm not the one advocating, normalizing or sugar-coating a mental illness by not calling it what it is. I have absolutely no beef with transgenders, as hard as it may be for you to believe, but rather the whacky normalization of it by so-called mind doctors n plastic surgeons tryna make a buck off of others misfortunes.

While my words may be coarse, I actually do deeply care about the issue and I mean no offense to you other than for the low-blow prideful debate points. We merely have oppossing beliefs on how the issue is tackled. With such a high rate of suicide, I just feel that the body modifications are wrong as it's not a true fix, merely a band-aid on a wound that persists. You mention tats n piercings n we all know about those regrets, but a whole body mod? Good luck reversing that, one helluva oops I'd rather not see someone act on that regret. :/

originally posted by: Neil4No1
I worded it that way on purpose. Thank you for proving my point. It has everything to do with being transgender.

Listen friend, discussing this with you is pointless because you're a hard-headed, opinionated know-it-all that's being intentionally obtuse so know that I'm writing this for others that may be reading that are capable of overcoming their willful ignorance and recognize that all these distorted ideas you're trying to promote are pure bunkum.

Next, you've obviously never known someone transgender or you wouldn't be positing such absurd questions and notions. It's also possible that you don't know who you're talking to and you should know that I highly resent you telling me what my life is about or about how I think or feel. Even using the best language I can string together it is still not going to help you understand this better because 1) I don't think you want to and 2) I don't think you can.

To clear the air here and to avoid your confusion, I am one of these people you seem to think to you have all figured out. I can tell you that your opinions and ideas about all this have been formed by lack of experience and knowledge about this subject and are based your feelings and what you think you know rather than facts or the familiarity of what trans people are like or deal with in life.

I'm not typical or representative of anyone else's experience and can't and don't speak for everyone or even the majority of people like me. I was gender dysphoric as a child. I have no memories of ever thinking I was a boy although it was evident from my anatomy, that's what others thought I was supposed to be but I knew this was wrong. Fundamentally wrong and it was confusing and painful. Not confusing because I had any doubts if I was a boy or a girl but confusing because I was a girl and couldn't figure out how come I had boys parts? What cruel joke was this?

I was never a "normal" boy nor was I ever perceived to be one because I wasn't and this was evident to everyone from a young age and throughout my primary school years. I've never had the personality, attributes or interests of a boy because I simply never was one. My friends were girls, my toys were dolls and Barbies, Easy-Bake Ovens and tea party sets and nothing in my life was different from any young girl's except the way I looked and the way I had to dress and the disturbing fact that my body was different. I hated being sex segregated in school because I was forced to line up with the boys and didn't know why I had to be. My distress was so evident, my parents let me grow out my hair in the third grade to help me feel better about myself even though that was against the conventions of the time (1963/64).

Sparing the details and unpleasant stories of violence, bullying and social ostracization, by the time I was a teenager and gained a bit of agency, I began to present myself more as the girl I'd always known myself to be. In modern times, I would have socially transitioned to living fully as a girl which would have made my life much better but that simply wasn't done during the era I grew up. Still, by the time I was 16, strangers I didn't know perceived me and treated me as a girl and things were finally starting to feel like the way they always should have been. I began hormones and female puberty at 17 and at 18, socially completed transition, name change, legal status etc. I proceed to complete full medical transition including sex reassignment surgery. I'm guessing this was probably long before you were even born?

I was never a boy and I have never been a man. I can't tell you what if feels like to be the "opposite gender" because that's not my experience. I've only ever been one gender.

How does one feel that they are the opposite sex when never having been it? Their body has been what it is their whole life, yet somehow something is missing?

Your jumping around intermingling sex and gender makes this difficult to respond to. I didn't know what the "opposite sex" felt like until I had a vagina and had sex. My body had never felt right, much like I was born with an unwanted deformity that I knew wasn't how things were supposed to be. Don't you think that if I didn't know I was supposed to have a vagina that I'd have been pretty upset waking up in the hospital as a female? Nothing has ever been so right or perfect or the way things should have been from the start.

How do they know without that other sexes experience? What is a man? What is a woman? One can only know the other thru observation. One may look or act the opposite sex, but they will never be the opposite sex.

Well, I know I am a woman because that is my only lived experience. I have no idea what it is like to be a man so can't tell you what that feels like. As far as "never being the opposite sex", I am female in the ways that matter to me and to others. Unless I tell you, you are not going to know that I wasn't born this way so your invisible chromosome thing and all these other things you have in mind don't mean a damn thing to my life. Yes, I've never had ovaries and a uterus and have never given birth or had a period because I was born male. I'm not an idiot or delusional about that but for all other practical aspects I am female and have been for the vast majority of my 62 years.

A man may act or feel more feminine and a girl may act or feel more masculine. No problem whatsoever there as people have always acted more feminine or masculine than societys standards of what a man or woman is supposed to act like or be. But that's act like, not are.

You just don't get it that people like me ARE. Regardless whether I'm masculine or feminine, I've always known that I WAS a girl and being born male was simply a fluke of nature or a mistake of the most Machiavellian kind. I have no explanation for this other than to give some credence to the vast majority of scientific and medical evidence that having gender dysphoria is neurobiological in nature i.e. the wiring and structures of my brain due to in utero development. All of this research is fine and dandy but fails to take into account the spirit, consciousness and the soul side of things that come from deep inside and don't need explanation. I knew what I was and know what I am because I do.

Transvestites and drag queens are even ok. All of these are similar but in differing degrees. Any further than that tho is a tipping point towards mental illness, ie: mind/body don't match so let me butcher my body instead of fix my mind.

Well, you can't fix what ain't broke or what is hard-wired in. People have been trying throughout the modern age with everything from therapy, drugs, institutionalization, electro-convulsive shock treatment and even lobotomy. Severe gender dysphoria is crippling and disabling, drives people to suicide and ruins lives. Transition, hormones and surgery have decades and decades of proven history of improving the quality of these lives when all other methodologies have been unsuccessful. Could anything in the world change your mind about being a man? What do you propose to do to change the mind of the transsexual? Nothing because you can't. Therefore, adapting the body to fit the mind is the only recourse to bring these things in alignment and resolve the crushing feelings of dysphoria.

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Purely cosmetic and visual, your insides do not change, imbalance still exists. That's why I say butcher, like taking off a whole hand all for a hangnail. Talk bout cuttin off a nose to spite their face.

And your ideas are completely ignorant. There's not much more I can say about that.

And don't even play that 'toss tha motto around' game with me to try n add credibility, I know it, hence the reason for my posting.

I don't even know what this means?

I'm not the one advocating, normalizing or sugar-coating a mental illness by not calling it what it is. I have absolutely no beef with transgenders, as hard as it may be for you to believe, but rather the whacky normalization of it by so-called mind doctors n plastic surgeons tryna make a buck off of others misfortunes.

Yeah, I suppose you feel the same way about doctors that fix cleft palates or disfiguring facial disorders. Out to make a buck they are, secondary to helping their patients live better lives. Damn them for lining their pockets off the misery of others. Doctors saved my life and made me whole and normal which has been worth all the money in the world to me. I've had a wonderful life.

With such a high rate of suicide, I just feel that the body modifications are wrong as it's not a true fix, merely a band-aid on a wound that persists. You mention tats n piercings n we all know about those regrets, but a whole body mod? Good luck reversing that, one helluva oops I'd rather not see someone act on that regret.

Changing sex is little bit more than a "body modification" as it involves a transition of one's entire life and unlike a regretful tat or piercing, people undergo years of counseling, therapy and evaluation to weed out those that may be suffering from a mental illness or delusion and others likely to experience regret. You don't drunk walk into a hospital and say "change my sex". As far as the regrets and suicide etc., after treatment, these things are actually very low.

Here's a few articles that I'm sure you won't bother to read due to your willful ignorance that address both of those things.

Myths About Transition Regrets

Surgical regret is actually very uncommon. Virtually every modern study puts it below 4 percent, and most estimate it to be between 1 and 2 percent (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfafflin 2003, Kuiper & Cohen-Kettenis 1998, Pfafflin & Junge 1998, Smith 2005, Dhejne 2014). In some other recent longitudinal studies, none of the subjects expressed regret over medically transitioning (Krege et al. 2001, De Cuypere et al. 2006).

These findings make sense given the consistent findings that access to medical care improves quality of life along many axes, including sexual functioning, self-esteem, body image, socioeconomic adjustment, family life, relationships, psychological status and general life satisfaction. This is supported by the numerous studies (Murad 2010, De Cuypere 2006, Kuiper 1988, Gorton 2011, Clements-Nolle 2006) that also consistently show that access to SRS reduces suicidality by a factor of three to six (between 67 percent and 84 percent).

The Truth About Transgender Suicide

Quality of Life in Treated Transsexuals

Overall, scientific studies published since 2004 overwhelmingly indicate that hormones and SRS result in clear improvements in the quality of life of transsexual patients.

So, as a person well studied in this field as well as someone with a lifetime of experience in these matters, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see that I think your opinions and attitudes are full of crap.

a reply to: Freija

Thank you for your detailed response n personal experience. As I said, I'm not really trying to be an ass, which is why I ask. It's just something about forums n debating where ego gets involved hence my coarseness. Pride before tha fall n all.

I'm in SoCal, near the porn capital of the world, even dabbled in tha film n music biz and have thrown a great many huge parties, so I know many transgenders and gay people, hell, less than half the people I know are even straight! Even my gf is/was gay till me, I'm bi-curious. Do tha whole West Hollywood/Long Beach Pride. And that whole Larry King school shootin back in tha days, that was was my bro's older brother, knew both family sides involved.

I will give you that I've never grown-up with a transgender that struggled with the problem since a child, until transgenderism became mainstream, then it all exploded. Most, as with many gay friends, they were young n confused just as regular older people still don't know what to do with their lives, regardless of tha subject, until they found the right person to be with n then became bi, rather than the self-protecting exclusiveness same-sex only.

Most LGBT people I know were not born that way, they were forced that way through trauma such as being molested as a child, have daddy issues, or took way too many recreational drugs. Weed makes everyone carefree n that's how I know most of my gay/bi friends, but what I noticed is the ones that loved el-es-dee wanted to transition after the fact, like whoa! Too many drugs or childhood trauma is the common denominator in my case, mainly childhood trauma n daddy issues tho. Now-a-days, to me, it's the media n mainstream of it all that's the problem for kids. Just look at ads, every kid wants what's on TV, they're meant to sell a product and/or idea, and it works!

Anyways, we each have our own differing experiences to come to the conclusions that we have. It's why, yes, I tend to not even care about 'scientific studies' as everything is still new and changing. We know more bout space than the mind. Regardless of subject, one can find 50 scientists to prove a point, and one can find 50 more to disprove it, lol. This is why, my bad, I kinda baited you into a response, but it was because I trust your personal experience more than any data you could show me from someone else, and I thank you for the response n courage to put yourself out there.