Serafina wrote:
That, I don't know. Could be. You'd have to ask 'em.
As i already said in the thread on SD.Net, therapy is mandatory for transsexuals. One of the primary purposes of that therapy is to make sure that one is actually transsexual instead of a repressed homosexual or some form of self-hate.
Hence - no, not really. Transsexuals quite often hate their body, but only because their body is completely wrong for them.
It's a symptom, not a cause.
I never said that hate of their body, or at least a specific part of the body, was the cause.
At first hand, because it brings to the table something interesting.
You can hate certain parts of your body, but do not hate... your brain? (hey, careful, I won't accept any pun on that)
If the brain is the reason why you can't cope with the integral rest of your body, wouldn't your brain be the main focus of your bitterness, regardless of your capacity to alter it or not?
By the way, transsexuality and homosexuality are two different things.
Homosexuality is simply about who you are attracted to.
Transsexuality is simply about who you ARE.
Unless you believe homosexual display their behaviour because of a psychological logic, their choice, then no, it's the same stuff, because then they do it because of what their body (brain, chemicals, etc.) dictate.
Most people never ask that question - and indeed, the only reason transsexuals may think that their gender is identical with their sex (which it isn't) is because society forces them to. That can be everything from silent indoctrination to outright forcing it. But like everyone else, you do not decide on your gender identity if you are a transsexual - you merely discover it. Most people do not have to do that, since it is clear anyway.
There are, of course, homosexual transsexuals (i am a lesbian for example) - and again, checking whether one is merely
a repressed homosexual instead of transsexual is one of the primary purposes of therapy.
Aside from the mildly amusing idea of a lesbian transwoman (two wrongs don't make a right), I understand your position on this.
We often hear about men going women more than the other way round, and generally, there's a phantasm about the sexual power of feminine curves that expresses itself. In general, trannies really seem to dress up in a way as to exhibit their rearranged plastic. They don't seem to aim for a true casual style of dressing. That's, at least, from the impression I get for everything I've seen and heard about them. There is not even a form of discretion. It has to show off, somehow.
"Trannie" is a derogatory term like e.g. "fag". Please don't use it.
OK well "transies" then, or perhaps "shifters"? I can't be bothered typing the whole word everytime.
So is "it" - transsexuals are people, not items.
I agree. The use of it for a human is extremely derogatory as far as I'm concerned.
You clearly have no actual contact with transsexuals. Of course, some are overcompensating - but you can't make a general statement based on a few people.
Indeed, nearly all transsexuals i know (which should be OOMs more than you do) want to achieve "stealth" - living as a woman (or man) without being recognized as transsexual.
OK. Still, there doesn't seem to be much of a sexual market for women to men people, but perhaps I'm missing something here as well?
By the way, transmen (female->male) and transwomen (male->female) are roughly equal in numbers. Transmen are simply much less visible - no one things anything about a "woman" wearing male clothing.
Same applies to the other "gender". A shemale can wear male clothes, and will pass for a woman wearing men clothes.
So if transmen stick out, it's because they dress in clothes exposing their secret and it shows, no more, no less.
That's why I considered that transwomen (but I should some now) do it to enjoy the seductive power of females.
Frankly I tried to explain this to myself, and after a couple of err... maybe... nah... here's what I'd say:
It seems that they desire to possess the objectified perfect feminine body of another woman so strongly, and are so... blinded, intoxicated by this teasing power or something which for some reason they don't manage to obtain because, perhaps, of their lack of manlyhood or something, that they may metaphorically "snap" and decide to express that desire, or more precisely taste that power women have, by becoming what they desire so much.
Simply not true.
This is a prejudice, but as i said - as long as one is willing to change ones mind, there is notning bad about that.
There is very strong evidence that transsexuality is simply a female brain in a male body and vice versa.
Well then what we're dealing with here is a technical problem. Individuals who have a drive for same-sex or suffer from a conflict between their brain and the rest of their body as the brain thinks in gender A and the body is suited to behave like gender B, and who belong to a species that reproduces sexually and relies on the heterosexual mutual attraction between the two different genders it comprises, are biological dead ends and therefore errors.
It doesn't mean they have to be ignored or considered as sub-humans, but they cannot be considered normal, from this perspective.
As errors and threats to the survival of the species, it is logical for the average unit of this life form to be repulsed by these errors.
Now, it doesn't mean we can't work out around this instinctive repulsion. We have brains, we can use them. This is where education at a large scale becomes relevant. It's a process that occurs over several generations, and the "bigotry" you hate won't disappear, but it may be silenced to some degree, toned down.
That said I'd like to point you to this:
http://www.hrc.org/issues/9598.htm
At some point, it says:
Transgender Population
There are no concrete statistics on the number of transgender people in the United States. Estimates on the number of transsexual people, which ignore the broader transgender population, range anywhere from 0.25 to 1 percent of the U.S. population. These estimates are dated and likely undercount the transsexual population because, for example, they do not account for people who have not yet undergone, cannot (for medical, financial, safety or other reasons) or choose not to undergo sex reassignment surgeries.
Now let's pause for a moment.
An outdated and narrower count method provides a figure that's between 0.25 and 1 % of the US population.
Broaden the count and update it, and you might well found a bracketed figure above and below 1%, making the average around 0.75% or 1%.
Now, 1% is a big number. Over several posts, you, Omin and Kor have posted studies, sometimes conflicting, but which all agree that what's responsible of transsexuality is
not/i] normal.
Then, if the numbers were outdated, meaning that the percentage could change significantly as to warrant a mention of such a possible difference between old and fresh census, then it means there's an evolution.
The point is, you won't change society fast enough, no matter what, when a form of abnormality, perhaps as far as being congenital, evolves so fast and does shock instincts.
Not to say that 1% is a huge percent of the population. That's more than three millions in the US.
It's best exemplified in the feminist article here, which speaks of "growing fluidity of gender".
Frankly, there's nothing good about learning that there's a growth of gender fluidity. It's quite insane.
For example, most transsexuals already express their desire as young children at the age where gender identity in general is recognized (as soon as children see a difference between male and female). There are also recent scientific studies that show that a transwomans brain is very similar to that of a biological female.
It appears that there's conflict on that after all, in some cases.
Being transsexual is NOT about desiring women so much that you want to be one. It's simply about being a woman and wanting to live like one.
Yep. I had not ruled out a "hardware" reason behind it, but with no medical background on this I looked too much into the psychology of it, so it pretty much passed as an extrapolation, and a wrong one.
But yes, a transwoman has to do quite some work to achive an acceptable passing - in general, it's easiest to simply start hormone treatment when puberty hits, since that prevents most of the damage that would otherwise be done by testosterone.
But in general, a large number of transwomen can achieve passing (being seen as a woman) without hormone treatment or surgery.
You mean?
When it's not done properly, and thus when it sticks out, it is repulsive to me. It just looks as bad as women filling their face with botox.
Well, to be frank - that's your problem.
No, mostly because I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the population would be repulsed as well, and so comes the question of knowing if choosing the operation is better or not. Now I'm sure there are ace plastic surgeons around who will achieve good works, but there are the mediocre ones as well, and not every one is full of cash.
Feminism wasn't "shoved down the throats" of anybody.
I strongly disagree, if only for the fact that organizing marches, revolutions over so many countries across the worlds and still filling papers with feminist argumentation today did cost and costs a lot. You don't grow such a world wide revolution from the gathered outcome of a few disgruntled women. This is not unique to feminism though.
Sure, you have some extremists - but feminism is simply about the rights of women, and i don't see how anything could be wrong with that.
"Rights of women" is just as vague as it can get. There's so good and some bad in it. Let's move on though.
As for transsexuality - that's about the well-being of transsexuals. There is no harm done to society, but there IS great harm to transsexuals if society doesn't permit it.
Indeed.
No really, look at it. Everything on TV really drives you to hate yourself if you don't have the life of the beautiful stars. Every manipulated ad, be it on TV, on the radio, over the walls in the subway or on the pages of the paper junk millions upon millions of women read everyday, tell people to douse themselves in pools of Q10 mierda and whatnot, and use quintillions of chemicals to remain shiny, peppy and young forever.
And now it's even required from men, and there's that metrosexual culture that's really disconnected from reality and which promotes that BS.
And what's bad about that? How is that self-hate?
The silver lining is: your body naturally sucks; enhance it. Of course most people will never look like the very few plastic dolls on TV and that will always be source of anxiety and a form of self-hatred. You'll compensate in any possible way, from over compulsive buying to consumption of food and, of course, the use of all those chemicals over and over and over.
I'd suggest you travel outside of that country you live in and go to some "poor" places where people don't have the luxury of being able to pay for that junk and are not flooded in mass of advertising and that kind of social conditioning.
Give me a valid reason why this should be bad, other than your opinion.
Well you leave me dumbfounded. How can you not see how bad it is would probably be the real question. Of course, it's the same society that flashes those concepts about chemicals and plastic surgery into out eye globes at any occasion that also allowed "your people" to complete the transformation they seek. To know if both can be dissociated is another question.
Now I'll cite a bit from the article Kor pasted here.
"These discernible, measurable differences in behaviour have been imprinted long before external influences have had a chance to get to work. They reflect a basic difference in the newborn brain which we already know about -- the superior male efficiency in spatial ability, the greater female skill in speech."
I'll deal with later on, but I put this bit here because it links well with the bullshit that comes later on.
Another previous study by the same group led by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson has shown that two areas in the frontal and temporal lobes related to language (the areas of Broca and Wernicke, named after their discoverers) were significantly larger in women, thus providing a biological reason for women's notorious superiority in language-associated thoughts. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists measured gray matter volumes in several cortical regions in 17 women and 43 men. Women had 23% (in Broca's area, in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and 13% (in Wernicke's area, in the superior temporal cortex) more volume than men.
And since when volume was exclusively related to efficiency?
Science refuses to claim that women are dumber despite having smaller brains (and when some articles awkwardly do, the superior intelligence of men is described as a problem to intelligent women, and strong conclusions are drawn from the fact that women attend foreign language schools more than men, that despite pointing out, a few lines before, that men really do well in maths and physics, which would explain why, eventually even with equal language skills, they'd go for the math and physics courses).
Is it feminism that allows this kind of "conclusion" as seen in the paper to be made? In the same article, the case of Lawrence Summers reveals how feminism may even silence what some see as mere scientifically established proof - doesn't mean I agree or not, but I'm merely pointing this out, even if it's quite highly off topic from the original off topic.
According to the Society for Neuroscience, the largest professional organization in this area, evolution is what gives sense to it. "In ancient times, each sex had a very defined role that helped ensure the survival of the species. Cave men hunted. Cave women gathered food near the home and cared for the children. Brain areas may have been sharpened to enable each sex to carry out their jobs". Prof. David Geary, at the University of Missouri, USA, a researcher in the area of gender differences, thinks that "in evolutionary terms, developing superior navigation skills may have enabled men to become better suited to the role of hunter, while the development by females of a preference for landmarks may have enabled them to fulfill the task of gathering food closer to home." The advantage of women regarding verbal skills also make evolutionary sense. While men have the bodily strength to compete with other men, women use language to gain social advantage, such as by argumentation and persuasion, says Geary.
Welcome to pseudo science. It makes fuck all sense.
Since when gathering nuts, breastfeeding kiddos and cleaning a cave favoured greater language skills?
Let's get out of this caricature and point out something.
If we are to assume that women have a greater capacity in language skills, it's obviously from the premise that men and women live in a society wherein language matters.
Now tell me, how could language not matter just as much to men, who are depicted as conquerors in an era of literature?
Let's imagine that we move on from an era of men fighting with sticks in order to collect food, control territory, grow superiority from mutual support and against the enemy, to an era of military, politics and economics with different tools, where schools and diplomacy matters a hell of a lot.
Now tell me, why the need to prevail and become the alpha in economics, science, military, politics or even sports (which all involve managing your squads btw) wouldn't be as many good reasons in order to develop superior language skills?
Or perhaps Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, etc. were people ignorant of their status of men with a female brain?...