Interesting article on transgender kids

[Kemaiku]

Well actually summaries of those studies of course.

Aww, maybe when you learn to read up on a subject for yourself you can contribute.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well actually summaries of those studies of course.

Aww, maybe when you learn to read up on a subject for yourself you can contribute.

I don't think that was necessary.

If the standard for the creation of or participation in threads in the forum or on the board were that people had to be able to competently comprehend the bodies of scholarly articles on the subject, the board would be an empty place indeed.

Unless you think it's fair to be held to that standard yourself, for every thread you post in for now on?

 

[Shanndee]

As I have written I have no deep-seated bias here, merely a surface skepticism. And even if I WERE rigidly ideologically opposed on this it would still of course be the person's decision what to do with their life and body.(HOWEVER, this equation is changed when dealing with a pre-adolescent child where I would still argue that caution is warranted).

It would appear that the medical field is exercising caution. The doctors who responded to the original opinion piece stated:


"When this distress is significant, puberty blockers or medications that put puberty “on hold” may be administered so that young people have more time to consolidate gender identity and gain access to mental-health resources. Such medications are considered safe and reversible and are endorsed by numerous international health organizations.

The column implies that hormone blockers are used before puberty, but current recommended protocols endorse treatment only after puberty has started."

Dr. Joey Bonifacio, Dr. Miriam Kaufman, Dr. Mark Palmert, Cathy Maser, Cheryl Ryans and Katie Stadelman, Transgender Youth Clinic, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

They clearly state that hormone blockers are only endorsed for use after puberty.

Obviously every case is addressed on an individual basis, but caution is being exercised.

 

[Gotham Central]

A though experiment: It's September 2632. You suffer a terrible pod racing accident and the surgeons are forced to give you a full-body transplant. However, they only have a woman body available in time to save you, so you wake up in a woman's body. Since your mind didn't change, you still feel the same way, consider yourself the same person and identify as the same – a man.

If indeed your mind hasn't changed at all, there's no way for you to have developed a mental illness in the process of surgery. So you're now a man in a woman's body. Congratulations.

P.S. I don't think the psychological and neurological reasons for people becoming transgender are fully understood, so I don't know if the though experiment matches the reality for a trans person, but from my attempts to learn more about it, it would seem to be close and to have the same consequences from a practical point of view. Especially if you're a bystander who has no personal contact with this matter.

The problem with your analogy is that the man was a man because he grew up in a man's body. When you transferred his brain, his new body was literally the wrong gender.

Gender disphoria is a weird thing. I certainly can't wrap my head around what's going on in these people's heads that makes them believe their body is wrong.

At the end of the day, though, it should be about making these people happy so that they can lead produtive lives. Whether that means fixing the brain to match the body or altering the body to match what's going on in the brain probably depends on the individual in question.

I tend to agree with you on the social/political/individual part. We need to let people live the lives that they think is best for them.

That said, I agree, I don't fully understand how its even possible to be transgender. Let me unwrap that a bit.

I am me and only really know what its like to be me as an individual. In general, based on biology and socializaion, I know that I am male. That said, I do not know with any certainty that how I feel on a day to day basis is similar to how men feel in general. In fact, my interactions with other men (and indeed women) suggests that I am similar in some ways and different in others. That's what it means to be an individual. I don't "feel" like a man, I merely identify with the broad social definition of what it means to be male. Thus I cannot comprehend the idea of what it could ever mean to "feel" like a member of the opposite sex. It would be like me walking up to somenone and asking how does it feel to have blue eyes and how does it feel different from having brown eyes? The person that I ask that question has no idea what its like to have brown eyes, so how would they know that there is any difference?

I also find it facinating that we treat this as something that can be dealt with by making cosmetic changes. We know that gender, as opposed to sex, is a social construction. But so is race. Would we recomend that say a black or Asian person try to change their appearance if they said that they felt that they were really white? Most people actively mocked Michael Jackson for perhaps doing just that...so we know it happens. Why would we treat that any differently?

Never the less, my inability to understand this phenomenon should not and does not mean that I think that people should be treated any differently or be in anyway ostracized. I think that in a free and enlightend society we let people do what they need to do in order to find their happiness.

 

[sonak]

Well actually summaries of those studies of course.

Aww, maybe when you learn to read up on a subject for yourself you can contribute.

Riiiiight, because I'm SURE that you CONSTANTLY read primary-source scholarly studies on ALL KINDS of subjects, no matter how scientifically complex, technically complex, or obscure the field may be.