Question about transgender

Chel_of_the_sea · 2015-12-18T00:08:57+00:00

Hi OP. I'm a trans woman (speaking loosely: I started out male-bodied and transitioned to female). Not a regular around here, but your post came up on my "trans thread radar".

Believing that Peter Pan exists, or that I am Peter Pan, would be a delusional belief - a factual statement about objective physical reality that doesn't line up with observed fact. The equivalent would be believing that I have breasts when, in fact, I do not, which I didn't believe at all before transitioning. I knew very well what the state of my body was, I just didn't like what it was, so I changed it. Does that make sense?

More importantly, transition benefits trans people to a ridiculous extent. I lived much of my life in a depressed fog and I didn't understand why - my life was objectively pretty good and I had no real reason to be down. Literally the day I started even acknowledging what I felt my life got a ton better, and since starting transition two years ago I went from "shut in who could barely handle physical contact" to "super bouncy hug machine". Scientific studies bear out that my results are fairly typical:

Colizzi et al., 2013: "At enrollment, transsexuals reported elevated CAR ['cortisol awakening response', a physiological measure of stress]; their values were out of normal. They expressed higher perceived stress and more attachment insecurity, with respect to normative sample data. When treated with hormone therapy [at followup, 1 year after beginning HRT], transsexuals reported significantly lower CAR (P < 0.001), falling within the normal range for cortisol levels. Treated transsexuals showed also lower perceived stress (P < 0.001), with levels similar to normative samples."
Gomez-Gil et al., 2012: "SADS, HAD-A, and HAD-Depression (HAD-D) mean scores [these are tests of depression and anxiety] were significantly higher among patients who had not begun cross-sex hormonal treatment compared with patients in hormonal treatment (F=4.362, p=.038; F=14.589, p=.001; F=9.523, p=.002 respectively). Similarly, current symptoms of anxiety and depression were present in a significantly higher percentage of untreated patients than in treated patients (61% vs. 33% and 31% vs. 8% respectively)."
de Vries, et al., 2014 studied 55 trans teens from the onset of treatment in their early teenage years through a follow-up an average of 7 years later. They found no negative outcomes, no regrets, and in fact their group was slightly mentally healthier than non-trans controls.
Lawrence, 2003 surveyed post-op trans folk: "Participants reported overwhelmingly that they were happy with their SRS results and that SRS had greatly improved the quality of their lives. None reported outright regret and only a few expressed even occasional regret."
Meier, et al. 2011 studies FTM transitioners: "Results of the study indicate that female-to-male transsexuals who receive testosterone have lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, and higher levels of social support and health related quality of life. Testosterone use was not related to problems with drugs, alcohol, or suicidality. Overall findings provide clear evidence that HRT is associated with improved mental health outcomes in female-to-male transsexuals."

Medical organizations back me up further. Here's the APA's official statement on the topic.

To add to all of that, there's some (inconclusive, but very suggestive) evidence that the brain structures of trans people align more with how we identify than with how we're assigned (="it's a boy!"). A few studies show patterns typical of our identified gender and not of our birth sex, patterns that would be established relatively early in fetal development.

Moreover, transgenderism correlates strongly with endocrine conditions - if we look at people (loosely speaking) 'born women', those with PCOS (which raises testosterone) are much more likely to ultimately identify as men; those with CAIS (which makes their bodies incapable of responding to testosterone) almost never do, to the point that single cases merit publication in their own right. On top of that, digit ratio (a marker of exposure to testosterone in the womb) displays low testosterone exposure on average in trans women (i.e. folks who transition from male to female) and high testosterone exposure in trans men.

There's even some experimental evidence that, when cis (=not trans) people are categorized contrary to their birth sex, they experience the same distress that trans people do. In one famous case, David Reimer was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. He found himself uncomfortable with the female role, displayed symptoms typical of what would be expected of a trans man, and ultimately transitioned to living as a man as soon as he became aware of his status in his early teens. Reimer's experience seems to be fairly typical of (genetic and hormonal) boys raised as girls: a large proportion ultimately express male identity. And on the flip side, an author named Norah Vincent spent a year living as a man for the purposes of writing a book. By the end of that time, she was so depressed she checked herself into a mental institution because she was worried she might harm herself.

GenderNeutralLanguag · 2015-12-18T06:30:15+00:00

Why is the gender identity important? We don't institutionalize people for having self identities that don't line up with physical realities in other ways. We don't institutionalize kids for acting like adults. We don't institutionalize middle age adults for acting like young adults. We don't institutionalize people when their racial identity doesn't line up with their biological identity.

Why is someone not "feeling like" their biological sex different than a 50 year old woman "feeling like a young woman". In neither case is the person denying the reality. In neither case is the person delusional. In neither case is the person dangerous. How is "feels like a man", when biologically male different than "feels young" when biologically middle aged or old?

LockNuts · 2015-12-17T23:38:05+00:00

The ELI5 version is that your gender is in your brain. Your sex is in your naughty bits.

Sometimes those do not match up with each other (estimated to be in 0.3% of the population).

Some people assume your gender and sex should match and find it difficult to accept that there is a problem.

More importantly, since a transperson is not delusional or dangerous (due to being trans anyway...), why should we treat them like a mental patient?

rudelyinterrupts · 2015-12-18T03:29:06+00:00

In my opinion I fully accept that trans people have a right to exist and you should not discriminate against them at all but I think/hope the future for their treatment is more in terms of psychological therapy. If someone believes themselves to be a horse most people agree that they should get mental evaluations and help(and steering clear of Tumblr). The same applies to transgender people. It is obviously a problem that arises in the brain and how the brain decides things in the body. I hope someday they are able to find out how to fix the problem that leads people to believe they are something other than what their DNA says.

lukefwjross · 2015-12-18T09:12:04+00:00

If you want to ask a tranny questions who is not in the whole SJW bint, PM me,

I'm a MTF and known as that "MRA" even though I dont see myself as such.

In my case it was unlucky. I was seeking mental help for a very long time, but it just never seemed to work, for years I slip further and further into depression.

And let me be clear, I present as a woman, only because I look far too much like one now. Even before I went on hormones I was called "that nice lady" by kids. I dress as I always have, nothing has changed really. I 4WD, fire fight, all the manly things I used to do, I just have tits now.

Hormones where a massive life saver, without them, I would of just keep doing downhill. The difference was like night and day, they saved my life, my brain works properly now, the only real difference is I needed female sex hormones to live a normal life, and now, I am a normal member of society.

Do I see myself as female? I always have, retarded I know. Am I female? Only mentally, I'll never be physically female, and honestly, who cares, I'm into women and I dont have to deal with the problems their genitals give them, I dont have to use the crowded tiny female locker room in the corner of the station. Win/Win.

192873982 · 2015-12-18T02:20:01+00:00

You are absolutely right.

But since everyone should be free to do whatever he wants when it doesn't affect others, we should let them.

There is no objective ethics or moral, because it is impossible. Some people actually believe that adjusting the body to the "felt" gender is okay, while condemning that some people adjust their behaviour to their body. They just can't see the contradiction in that. If you really think about it, both are the same, just inversed. The only legitimate opinions should be that either it's okay to adjust some part to fit another, or that it's not okay.

That being said, I want to say something to transgenders who read this. While I do not think you made the right decision, I do tolerate it. But remember that tolerance and acceptance are not the same, and nobody can expect acceptance, just tolerance. But the most important point I want to say is that sex, gender and all that bullshit are just one single factor out of thousands that determine a person. Every person has some factor you don't particularly like and that's not a bad thing. We should just remember that one single factor should not determine how you treat someone.

I hope that made some sense, feel free to discuss.

Iwanttoliveinspace · 2015-12-18T04:09:03+00:00

Here is the underlying issue for the love that 3rd wave feminism has for transgender people:

If gender is a social construct, and you can change it at will, there are two possibilities from this:

A woman that changes the gender she identifies as to being a man instantly becomes a potential rapist (to use the rape culture narrative), and a man that changes the gender he identifies as to being a woman instantly stops being so.
If the above is true, and the identification of gender is the deciding factor in being that gender (not appearance/genetics) we (men that identify as men) can just say that we are all now identifying as women, and rape instantly stops occurring.

Of course, this is ludicrous, but it shows the fundamental problem with the conflict of "Gender is a social construct" and "People can be born the wrong gender". It needs to be one, or the other.

To reflect on your Peter Pan analogy:

If I (as a man) started saying that I identify as a woman, feminism likely would say that I'm full of shit, at least until I started "transitioning" into looking like a woman. Yet these are the same people that say that men are the ones that say if a woman is feminine or not.

It's just stupid. The grounds in which women accept a MtoF transgender person is filled with contradictions as to what they say men do to women.

sebastienne · 2015-12-17T23:38:04+00:00

Emperor's naked but the feminazis can't see it

ThePigmanAgain · 2015-12-18T08:29:15+00:00

They aren't different to the other nut. The dude in the Peter Pan gear has a delusion, and so do trannies. Don't let all these loony SJW types brainwash you with their re-definitions of "woman." Trannies are mentally ill -- just like a man who sticks feathers on his ass, goes "Quack, quack!" and insists that he's a duck!

Nyanu · 2015-12-18T00:08:58+00:00

Do you believe people should just be stuffed in some kind of corrective institute for liking a different kind of color or fabric? It's really not that hard to understand. Your genitals don't always determine your interests. People don't always fit in the little box that was crafted for them. How is it so hard to believe that someone with male genitals might like something from the other sex?

TomwaIvory · 2015-12-19T12:26:34+00:00

It is indefeasible to me to consider transgenderism anything other than a mental illness.

It is a condition in which a person believes they are something other than the sex of the body they reside in. Regardless of how healthy or normal their body may be their mind believes otherwise. That is a hallmark of mental illness.

Title	Question about transgender
Author	VoiceofLuke
Upvotes	7
Comments	93
Date	December 17, 2015 11:32 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3xa0uf/question_about_transgender/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/question-about-transgender.964947 https://theredarchive.com/post/964947

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