[O]pponents say the prospect of same-sex book-borrowing endangers the moral fiber of the country’s most sacred reading traditions.“What’s next—gay people at the DMV, being granted licenses to drive cars?” Rev. Brian Peters of Verona, WI said. “Will we be soon seeing gays and lesbians at our local post offices, being sold stamps and mailing packages? We must protect our nation’s public institutions from relentless encroachment by those who threaten our values.”
–Satire from The Onion‘s article Nation’s Gays Demand Right To Library Cards
The Onion’s very funny take on GLBT civil rights issues is funny in its pure hyperbole. It’s such a well done, ludicrous exaggeration for humorous effect that it left me laughing out loud.
Perhaps an equally ludicrous take on GLBT equality is found on the NARTH website in an article by Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D., entitled Clinical And Theoretical Parallels Between Desire For Limb Amputation And Gender Identity Disorder. But, unlike the satire of the Onion article, this article is sincere commentary.
In this piece Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D., takes some pretty incredible leaps to draw a pretty incredible final conclusion. Rosik reviews an article by Anne A. Lawrence that compares apotemnophilia to transgenderism. He then, in his commentary, equates the identities of people who desire to remove their limbs to the identities of all GLBT people…
The existence of apotemnophilia raises some very intriguing questions for current discussion about human sexuality, particularly as pertains to transgenderism and the limits of pursuing civil rights for sexual minorities. Lawrence seems mostly concerned about understanding the reasons for finding such parallels between these conditions in order to enhance treatment. But when it comes to the surgical option, Lawrence’s very tentative conclusion seems to beg the larger question: Should surgery ever be considered? However, in the current sociopolitical climate transgendered persons (including transsexuals) are riding the coattails of the gay rights movement with reasonable success. Therefore, given these extensive parallels it may be difficult for the mental health professions to make a rational argument against permitting amputation of a limb that would not also apply to the amputation of one’s sexual organ.
Although Lawrence clearly treats the desire for amputation as a clinical disorder, the trajectory of contemporary sexual minority rights ideology would suggest that this appraisal may well be questionable. The American Psychological Association’s recent FAQ about transgenderism states:
A psychological condition is considered a mental disorder only if it causes distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgendered does not constitute a mental disorder per se.
…It’s probably a long shot at present, but Lawrence’s observations about individuals desiring amputation would seem to point them toward a strategy of playing up their sexual minority status and affiliating with other sexual minority groups. Then perhaps some day in the future we just might be hearing about the pursuit of GLBTIQA (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning and amputee) equality.
I don’t want to get too deep into the subject, but sex reassignment surgery (SRS) for male-to-female (M2F) transsexuals isn’t penis amputation. And for female-to-male transsexuals, SRS is actually penis creation. Calling SRS “amputation” is a misnomer. Plus, there are no standards of care that outline procedures for removing a limb for “identity” reasons, whereas there are standards of care that set criteria for SRS.
But really, that’s a minor part of what Rosik is saying. The underlying message of his commentary on the NARTH website is found in his comparison of those who identify as GLBT, queer, intersex, or any other letter in the alphabet soup with those who identify as apotemnophiles. He is equating the GLBT civil rights movement as having the same moral equivalence of the non-existent civil rights movement for apotemnophiles.
His argument on identity; however, is an Argument Of The Beard — a logical fallacy. He makes the false assumption that GLBT people see ends of the spectrum of human behavior as all being the same, since one can travel along the spectrum in very small steps. The existence of pink should not undermine the distinction between white and red — all identities aren’t considered the same hue, and the LGBT community sees a difference between transsexuals and apotemnophiles.
Let me clarify Rosik’s Argument of the Beard by using a heterosexual identity comparison: Rosik’s comments on GLBT identities would be equivalent to stating that since Christian heterosexuals approve of males and females entering marriage relationships, Christian heterosexuals should embrace the idea of sixty year-old men marrying twelve year-old girls. Christian heterosexuals should then fight for equal rights to heterosexual pedophiles because their relationships are male/female relationships.
That’s a fallacious opinion — Christian heterosexuals and heterosexual pedophiles aren’t the same thing. Not all behaviors or identities one could loosely classify as heterosexual would be considered equal by Christian heterosexuals; just as a Christian heterosexual/heterosexual pedophile argument is fallacious at the face, so is Rosik’s SRS/apotemnophilia argument.
What passes for commentary on the NARTH website is ludicrous — just not ludicrous funny like on The Onion’s website. We’ve seen previous NARTH website commentaries on slavery and gender-variant children — and now this one by Rosik on identities and civil rights. With NARTH’s history of posting untenable, poorly reasoned commentaries, one has to wonder why NARTH is still hosting commentaries at all.
The problem with the limb-chopping theory is the entire theory itself is propped up on another theory (autogynephilia) which is basically disproven by the day-to-day lives of transsexual people everywhere. See the following:
https://www.tsroadmap.com/info/autogynephilia.html
https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Auto-Nympho.html
https://www.genderpsychology.org/autogynephilia/ray_blanchard/
The overwhelming majority (maybe 99.999+%) of other post-op women I have met have all basically said something like “I’m a woman, therefore I am doing this”, which to me personally I can relate to and don’t see where the problem is with other people. I see the argument of my SRS surgery as no different that a person who seeks out surgery to correct a birth defect.
NARTH from what I can see has a history of dredging up dis-credited or obsolete documents and theories sometimes from even decades ago, and pulling out single lines and quotes to make something new that matches thier own pet theories on how they think the world operates. If you look at documents on thier website dealing with transgender and look for the references, you will see references that date back 20-50 years ago from psychiatrists and psychologists who opposed Harry Benjamin’s treatement model.
The problem I see is that due to the current political climate, there is literally no information on the lives of transsexual people, other than our own life stories and words. Other than that, very little is scientifically known about us, since there is little to no research into this field. Therefore since there is no research, lots of people can insert pet theories (like Narth or Anne Lawrence for that matter) and claim it’s fact since there is no other explanations offered.
I was struck reading this by a different parallel – that of women who undergo prophylatic mastectomies because of family histories of breast cancer. I knew of one family (in which the mother and two of her three sisters died of breast cancer before their 45th birthdays) when I was in high school and college. The woman who died had 4 daughters, all of whom had large and dense breasts that make mammography very difficult. One by one the daughters decided to undergo mastectomies.
I wonder if Rosik would consider these women to be suffering from some mental illness for having perfectly good organs removed for psychological reasons.
I refer you again to Dr. Samuel Cartwright and his term ‘drapetomania’.
A condition he named in blacks in slavery who continue to plan and try to run away.
In his analysis, blacks, however long they were enslaved, were developmentally unstable for believing that freedom was a condition they could handle or take full responsibility for.
The condition was considered even deeper, if that same black would risk their lives to escape slavery.
(because after all, it’s a tender and nurturing institution.)
Even if the terrain on which they’d have to travel was rife with natural dangers and the threat of being killed by bounty hunters.
Dr. Samuel Cartwright was apparently the premier researcher on black behavior in his time.
But he had an industry willing to pay him for his research.
The slave trade.
And as long as whites never had to feel any guilt about their treatment of blacks (after all blacks were incapable of any of the moral and intellectual standards that whites had developed for civilization), Cartwright’s work provided a comfort zone and insulation from responsibility.
One could say that NARTH does the same for straight people.
NARTH requires that gay folks and the gender variant NEVER be accepted. Otherwise his work would dry up.
Just goes to show, that those who CLAIM to be expert on minorities (even though the minority NEVER gave them the position to), are full of shit.
And stupid shit at that.
When I hear about the first case of a child being beaten up at school for inadvertently acting too much like an amputee, then I’ll be a little more impressed with these “parallels.”
I support the rights of people to ampute their organs and limbs. However after reading the post I still don’t see a difference between amputation and sex reassignment surgery. Some people believe they should have been born with 1 arm and others believe they should have born the opposite sex. It is the same thing.
I actually wrote on this a few years ago on the Gay Spirituality and Culture group blog. I think that the links between BIID and GID are more tenable than Ms. Sandeen presents them. My post talks more about this (and my views on transgenderism hav echanged since then).
The basic question is about self-determination and self-perception. If you read articles about BIID (the one I reference is in the NYTimes), their proponents use arguments very similar to transgender and gay rights. That doesn’t mean that there might not be differences, but they’re very hard to parse out, philosophically (what kind of body is normative? are there natural kinds to human beings, like having limbs and functioning ears–that impacts deaf identity).
So while the logical fallacy Ms. Sandeen points out is a good one to know, I don’t quite see how it fits here. By that fallacy, the existence of BIID individuals shouldn’t be used to discount the existence of full-bodied individuals as healthy. And it isn’t.
No Drowssap, actually it’s quite different. As I implied above, I’ve never heard of anyone getting grief growing up being told they act too much like an amputee. Maybe you have, but I kinda doubt it. Transsexuals don’t just have some kind of abstract “belief” that we should be the opposite sex, before transition we usually have to make a conscious effort not to act like the opposite sex. Amputee wannabes want to take on characteristics they perceive in amputees. Transsexuals want to deal with the characteristics we already have.
Not to digress, but the great majority of therapists who actually work with transsexuals will tell you that Lawrence’s “two types” of transsexualism is basically BS. The concept has very little support outside of one particularly notorious clinic in Toronto that has a reputation for mistreating its clients.
The idea that transsexuals get surgery to have “a sense of wholeness” or whatever is largely a myth created by the media. If you actually ask transsexuals why they got or are getting surgery, in my experience most will give quite practical answers, such as physical safety, legal reasons, or yes, to have sex (because to be blunt, chicks with dicks tend to have very limited sexual options).
It is the same thing.
Drowssap, it might enhance the discussion if you would elaborate a bit more on how you disagree with the arguments presented. Declarative statements can go back and forth all day without accomplishing anything.
I have nothing against transsexuals, but I must object to homosexuals being lumped in with these people. Wanting to change your sex and being attracted to the same sex are entirely different things.
Quiet Boo, you’re giving away our secret!
Transexuality is not a mental disorder, it is a condition where parts of the brain developed, very early in life, in the opposite direction of the rest of the body. In essence, transexuals have an intersexed birth defect.
Unlike apotemnophiliacs, we do not seek to change our bodies for the sake of changing our bodies. We seek to bring our bodies into line with what the rest of the world expects our bodies to look like in the same way that a crash victim has facial reconstruction. Sometimes we do need to change our bodies for our own mental well being for the same reason that overweight people feel they have to lose weight; we internalize the world’s message that our bodies are defective.
Which brings me to my next point: apotemnophiliacs are not told that they must amputate a limb to be “correct.” There is a big difference between being told that you are “wrong” and feeling that you are “wrong” when you are not. It’s like the difference between an overweight girl being told by her peers that she is fat and who goes on a diet and the underweight girl who still believes that she is fat and becomes anorexic.
Several years ago my mother asked me, “Why do transsexuals have to change their bodies? Why can’t they just live the role?” Back then I wasn’t able to answer her, today I can: we don’t need to change our bodies to bring ourselves into harmony, we need to change our bodies because society says we need to change our bodies.
Until society stops telling us that our bodies are “incorrect” there are very few things to tie our condition to theirs.
Do I believe that apotemnophiliacs should have the right to amputate their limbs? I believe it’s a hard question. When a transsexual women have surgery on ther genitals it does not leave them a cripples, we use our penises for only two things: sex and urination, two things that we can still do after surgery. When an apotemnophiliac amputates an arm he or she becomes crippled and can no longer do the things that they used to be able to, and still need to, do. So do I believe that people should have the right to surgically change their bodies for sexual or aesthetic reasons? Yes, but I also believe that it is the doctor’s duty to do more good than harm.
Transexuality is not a mental disorder, it is a condition where parts of the brain developed, very early in life, in the opposite direction of the rest of the body. In essence, transexuals have an intersexed birth defect.
That’s not absolutely for sure yet. We know there’s at least one sexually dimorphic area of the brain that is sex-reversed in transpeople (both mtf and ftm) and that the brain difference isn’t caused by taking hormones. Some people have taken that and ran with it into “I have a female brain!” but we’re not quite there yet with the science.
Thanks for the clarification, Boo. Let’s also remember that when making factual claims, particularly about issues which are not common knowledge, authoritative references should be supplied. Once we start swapping theories as fact, the debate isn’t really valuable any longer.
Sorry for being abrupt and declarative. I try to keep my posts short.
Boo, I read your post but I still have to disagree. An Apotemnophiliacs brain might be hooked up quite different than ours. They claim that having a limb that they don’t want is causing them incredible life stress. It is wrong to imply their point of view might be lesser simply because it is so different. If an Apotemnophiliac was here I’m sure he could recite a whole laundry list of pain his disorder has caused him.
The vibe I got from Autumn, Samie and yourself was that Transexualism made sense but Apotemnophilia was crossing the line. I believe that is based on subjective reasoning.
Boo, I read your post but I still have to disagree. An Apotemnophiliacs brain might be hooked up quite different than ours. They claim that having a limb that they don’t want is causing them incredible life stress. It is wrong to imply their point of view might be lesser simply because it is so different. If an Apotemnophiliac was here I’m sure he could recite a whole laundry list of pain his disorder has caused him.
The vibe I got from Autumn, Samie and yourself was that Transexualism made sense but Apotemnophilia was crossing the line. I believe that is based on subjective reasoning.
I’m sorry if I gave off the impression that Apotemnophiliacs are somehow “lesser” or crossing some line, that was not my intention. I was simply pointing out that the experiences are quite different. If a mentally competent adult wants one of their limbs removed I don’t think it’s up to me to stand in the way, but it’s not something I feel like I need to have a particularly strong opinion on. If it’s the only way to deal with their pain, then whatever. I just don’t see parallels.
I have nothing against transsexuals, but I must object to homosexuals being lumped in with these people. Wanting to change your sex and being attracted to the same sex are entirely different things.
Of course they are very different, but the basis of discrimination against both gays and transgendered people is very similar, namely the idea that neither is compatible with one’s given gender.
The objection to homosexuality is based on ideas of appropriate behavior for a given gender, and considers same-gender attraction and sexuality to be “wrong” or “abnormal” behavior for a given gender. The need to live out one’s life in a way that is more or less completely at odds with one’s biological gender (to take the case of transsexuals within the larger transgendered world) is again objected to as being inconsistent with the expected behavior for people of a given gender. Taking the male gender, it is considered by these objectors that males should be attracted to females, and should want to be males and not females. Being attracted to males, and being sexually active with them, is therefore inappropriate to the male gender, and wanting to live as a woman is also inappropriate for the male gender. The basis of the objection in both cases is that the behavior is at odds with preconceived ideas of what is “normative” for someone who is born biologically male.
So the basis of all of it is gender. Yes, homosexuality and transgenderism are two very different things, but the objections to both of them are remarkably similar in basis. As a result, it makes sense to stand together.
If a mentally competent adult wants one of their limbs removed I don’t think it’s up to me to stand in the way, but it’s not something I feel like I need to have a particularly strong opinion on. If it’s the only way to deal with their pain, then whatever. I just don’t see parallels.
I think this may reflect a rather shallow interpretation of the issue. I don’t pretend to know the intricacies of the intersexed, but the idea that, in organisms as complex as human beings, one might occasionally be born with the physical structure of one sex, but the brain development of the other (or some combination of the two) is not exactly hard to grasp. We don’t have the entire story yet, but work is certainly ongoing and there are indications that this is so.
However, while male and female (and perhaps a certain intermix between the two) are quite natural and normal results of human procreation, missing limbs are not. The desire to remove a healthy limb would certainly seem to be an anomaly, and would be prohibited under “first do no harm.” I think the more obvious goal of such comparisons is to denigrate the issue of intersexed people and their plight.
With the wide range of things which can happen during our development, I don’t understand the resistance to the idea that gender may occasionally get mixed up.
My intent of my piece is that SRS and apotemnophilia argument are different. There are similarities of experience between gay and trans folks that cause alliances to be built that are not similar to apotemnophiles in a way that would cause alliance building. Examples:
– Hate terms are interchangable. People call both transpeople and gay people “fag,” and “fairy.” Personally, people attempting to insult me for my gender identity have called me “fairy,” “faggot,” and “butch.” People generally don’t refer to apotemnophiles with gay epithets.
– Because people on the outside of the LGBT community don’t differenciate between effeminate gay men, drag queens, transsexuals, and cross-dressers in the way people inside the LGBT community differenciate between these groups, the housing, employment, and public accomodation discrimination LGBT people experience is related. Apotemnophiles would experience discrimination from strangers more as disability-related discrimination.
– Historicly, effeminate gay men, drag queens and transsexuals were in the mix at the Stonewall Riots; at Stonewall, effeminate gay men, drag queens and transsexuals were generally all refered to under the header “queens.” And, two of the key players at Stonewall Riots and post-riot oranizing were Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Clarke — both transsexuals. Apotemnophiles weren’t historicly part of the LGBT movement the same way transpeople are.
And again, apotemnophilia and transsexualism aren’t the same conditon. One can walk in small steps down sexually related behaviors, but arguing they are the same thing is an argument of the beard. There are reasons the T was added to GLB that had to do with the similarities of how GLB and T people are perceived and discriminated against.
And, Rosik was arguing that no LGBT person deserves civil rights and protections because the LGBT community will affiliate it’s movement with any sexual behavior, even one as perverse as Rosik considers apotemnophilia to be.
David, what about the desire to produce a congenitally deaf child as we saw recently (a lesbian couple, I believe, was able to do so by choosing a deaf sperm donor)? There is a Deaf Community organized around the anomaly of hearing loss. I don’t think that the argument towards BIID is prima facie much different, although I do think that differences can be teased out.
The terms “natural” and “normal” are quite slippery and require some definition when we use them, as I think I’ve seen you point out in other instances on this site.
what about the desire to produce a congenitally deaf child as we saw recently (a lesbian couple, I believe, was able to do so by choosing a deaf sperm donor)?
If we were discussing the idea of causing a baby to be born intersexed to satisfy some sense of community in advance, I could draw some comparison, but this is entirely different. Communities such as you mentioned often develop to provide support for a particular group with special needs from the general population, particularly if prejudice against that group is common. This is different than forcing the birth of a person who falls in that category for the benefit of the group, rather than vice versa.
The debate is fine, but is there a reason we seem to be grasping for examples from the edge to influence interpretation of the intersex issue?
The example isn’t from the “edge.” Suppose I wanted to be deaf because I had a perception that I would be better adjusted if I were, and that I really ought to be Deaf. There is a Deaf Community that functions perfectly well and if a doctor could remove my hearing surgically, why shouldn’t they? (The reference to the child was an attempt to point at a real-life example. Another example, in the reverse, is of Deaf individuals who have deafness that could be cured with cochlear implants but refuse.)
The debate is all about how to draw the lines of what is “normative” human “nature.” Let me draw out the parallels between BIID and GID below (which at least one of the physicians involved in treating BIID has explicitly mentioned):
BIID:
1. There are a small minority of humans who have a strong yearning that one of their limbs be amputated.
2. They are, in every other apparent psychiatric manner, functional, sane and normal.
3. Since this is a yearning which can be accomplished medically and will result in a psychiatrically “cured” patient, it should be done.
4. Additionally, there have been no successful transitions to ex-BIID through psychotherapy; people with this desire must simply repress it unhappily their entire life.
GID:
1. There are a small minority of humans who have a strong yearning that their genitals be re-assigned to that of the opposite sex.
2. They are, in every other apparent psychiatric manner, functional, sane and normal.
3. Since this is a yearning which can be accomplished medically and will result in a psychiatrically “cured” patient, it should be done.
4. Additionally, there have been no successful transitions to ex-GID through psychotherapy; people with this desire must simply repress it unhappily their entire life.
My point isn’t that we ought to, without investigation and rigorous thought, okay the removal of the limbs of functioning individuals. My point is rather that there may be legitimate discussion here that we needn’t circumvent by tossing out red herrings about the lack of persecution of BIID people. That’s not the point–the point is whether this self-perception is justified, what steps the medical/psychiatric community ought to take, and how we understand norms.
The posts I’ve been leaving have merely been an effort to draw that out. It feels nice to say that BIID is “on the fringe” and doesn’t influence LGBT issues, but that’s just not a fair assessment, in my opinion. Let’s grapple with the difficulty of it for a bit. Maybe there *should* be standards of care for BIID? If not, why not, without jeopardizing the care of GID as I’ve shown above?
Oh, and my motivation for jumping in now is that
1) I’ve thought & written about this issue some and not been 100% happy with my conclusions/argumentation and
2) while I truly do appreciate Ms. Sandeen’s use of logic, I’ve been growing more frustrated each post with her tossing fallacies at each problem in every post rather than reading sympathetically. That’s probably my bias as a philosophy major, and feel free to tell me I’m being silly… but I am about ready to label it the Fallacy of the Fallacies and ask her to try reading her opponents a bit more charitably before applying fallacies. Looking forward to your thoughts.
1. There are a small minority of humans who have a strong yearning that their genitals be re-assigned to that of the opposite sex.
2. They are, in every other apparent psychiatric manner, functional, sane and normal.
My point is rather that there may be legitimate discussion here that we needn’t circumvent by tossing out red herrings about the lack of persecution of BIID people.
Thing is, an awful lot of kids are out there on the streets having a very hard time being functional, because they were kicked out of their houses and beat up at school, because they were persecuted, because other people didn’t like their spontaneous gender incongruous behavior. Now of course, there are individuals who seem to make it into middle age with no outward sign of gender dysphoria, and then suddenly announce that they’ve been women “inside” all along, but like I keep saying, I’ve never heard of “childhood BIID” kids displaying spontaneous amputee-like behavior. (My barely educated guess would be that there’s a rough correlation between the degree of gender dysphoria and age at transition, less other factors like denial, religion, etc)
Amputee wannabes seem to want amputation simply to be people with amputations. Transsexuals, especially those who transition by 30s or so, often don’t see vaginas as a goal in and of themselves. If I didn’t need it to change legal documentation, and if there was no risk of being beaten or killed if I were inadvertently found to have a penis (a la Tyra Hunter) and if I had good sexual options as a woman with a penis, then I probably wouldn’t have bothered with SRS.
In 2000, Dr. Gregg Furth, a New York child psychologist and one of Dr. Money’s co-authors on his 1977 paper, published a book about the disorder, calling it amputee identity disorder. In addition to his professional interest in the subject, Dr. Furth had a personal one: from early childhood, he had wanted to have his right leg amputated above the knee.
Link to four page NY Times article
And
“From the earliest days I can remember, as young as 3 or 4 years of age, I enjoyed playing around using croquet sticks as crutches,” he said. “I enjoyed thinking about what it would be like to be missing a leg. When we were playing cowboys and Indians, I seemed to be the person who always got wounded in the leg.”
And
“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be an amputee as much as I just felt like I was not supposed to have my legs,”
I’m really not trying to be a gadfly, but the article itself and the proponents of treating BIID with amputation have themselves made the connection to GID. That is why I think it is worth the discussion.
Since I’ve posted the link to the article, I’ll back off commenting now and let others read and discuss if they’d like. Thanks for your response, Boo–I’d be interested in hearing more thoughts once you’ve read it.
I am WAY out of my element I think. But I would venture that a person who doesn’t want a healthy limb, and wants it to be cut off, WOULD be a matter of compromising a vital part of them to function skillfully and fully at work, play and other tasks.
A person who loses a LIMB, is in effect disabled. There are no replacements mechanical or organic that would bring back the full function of a limb.
Altering gender would change one’s ability to be fertile and bear children…but that’s not a matter of physical functioning in one’s profession or ability to PARENT or NURTURE a child.
One can function competently in anything regardless of GENDER.
And gender isn’t a disability.
So to DELIBERATELY render oneself disabled, is something I would discourage. And treat whatever makes that person dysfunctional by having a healthy limb.
So that person’s referencing these two situations as similar isn’t correct.
And I agree that the transgender community DOES suffer similarly as the gay community.
It’s not they are the same sorts of people, but that they are treated equally badly.
No one makes life harder for a person or discriminates against people with healthy limbs and function.
But discrimination occurs against the LG and T, no matter HOW healthy and competent they are.
That’s how I’m reading this situation. Correct me if I”m wrong.
Do you think this misstatement about either situation goes back to people not wanting to feel any shame for their treatment of the transgendered or gay?
All I catch with a lot of their political intervention, is rationalizing injustice.
And not another reason.
People own their bodies. If someone wants to amputate their limb(s) its their right to do so. They only valid concern is can they care for themselves and earn a living afterward as they did before. Assuming that’s the case who is anyone to stand in their way?
From the article, it seems like a more apt comparison would be like furries or transvestites (not that I’m an expert on either group). What’s interesting is that as amputees have “devotees,” “pretenders” and “wannabes,” there are also people attracted to transsexuals (usually specifically mtf transsexuals who have completed physical transition except for still having a penis) and pretenders- there are a lot of fake websites floating around of people pretending to be transsexuals (one of the creepiest aspects of them is that many pretend to be underage transsexuals) and a lot of experts say it’s not that uncommon for middle aged transvestites going through crises or stressful periods in their lives to attempt transition. The transition process itself actually has some built-in safeguards against these, as the HRT process for male-to-female transition lowers the testosterone level, which diminishes paraphilic drives, at which point they’re like, oh, this isn’t the kick I thought it’d be.
“From the earliest days I can remember, as young as 3 or 4 years of age, I enjoyed playing around using croquet sticks as crutches,” he said. “I enjoyed thinking about what it would be like to be missing a leg. When we were playing cowboys and Indians, I seemed to be the person who always got wounded in the leg.”
There’s a difference between wanting to have certain characteristics and actually having them. Suppose for example you found a young boy who since he began to crawl had always favored one leg, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t put weight on the other, and always walked with a limp, even after people beat him to try and get him to walk straight, and there was medically nothing wrong with his leg. Of course, there are transsexuals who don’t display much overt cross-gender behavior in childhood, and a lot of us do get fairly good at repressing it, but there are many who just always scream “girly” no matter what they do (and everything in between). That’s a little different than what the article seems to be describing.
The only actual person with experience treating GID they mention is Dr. Money, who’s a quack and a half. My guess is to someone who isn’t actually experienced with treating transsexuals, it just seems like a natural fit, because in the lay mind transsexualism simply equals penis amputation. The majority of female-to-male transsexuals actually never get their version of srs. Pretty much all of them get mastectomies(sp?) but the ftms I’ve known didn’t talk about it in abstract principles of their breasts not being “who they are” but more in practical terms of the difficulty of going through life as a guy with boobs.
I don’t think it’s really my place to pass judgement on BIID people one way or the other, but if it was I guess I’d say that if someone is really suffering in some way, and whacking something off is the only way to fix it, then go for it. If there’s a place to “draw the line” I guess it should be at the point where an amputation would make it too hard for the person to take care of themselves.
By popular demand, the study I was referring to that deals with the intersexed portion of the transexual brain:
https://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034
To summarize, it has been found that the BTSc region of the hypothalamus in men have approximately twice the neural density than women. They found that the MTF transexuals (and one untreated cross-gender identified male) had female BTSc regions while the FTM transexual had a male BTSc region.
Nobody is saying that we have “female brains,” that would be like saying we have “female arms.” We are saying that our brains have a female sex.
The study makes sense considering how important the hypothalamus is to sex. Of course there are other indications of physiological transsexuality including digit order and penitent towards left handedness, but this paper is by far the most compelling.
Of course transphobia and fear in both the traditionally intersexed and general population has unfortunately made the idea that transsexuals are intersexed individuals very unpopular.
Boo, thanks for engaging the article. I was suspicious of Dr. Money’s involvment–but I didn’t want to entirely write off the experience of these people based on him.
However, I think your point about pretending to be injured/amputated versus engaging in “cross-gender” play without an awareness of “pretending” to be a boy is a good one (one that I missed in my reading of the article). It also seems like there was a sufficient number of the individuals who had met a person with an amputation and that their desires began after this interaction–that was just a single throwaway line in the article, but I think it’s worth investigation.
Like I said, I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I did want to hear other’s thoughts on what I perceived as the issue at hand–the underlying psychological and medical parallels between BIID and GID (not the way society does or does not ostracize them). Thanks for the thoughts.
Oh good, more of ilikesnow’s incoherent ramblings. In this edition, he compares changing your sex to tearing out your own heart! Any more gross hyperbole you want to throw in there? Liken it to Nazis, maybe? Go for broke!
ilikesnow is banned. We suspect he/she is coming in through hacked accounts so we may play wack-a-mole for a while. We’ve gotten a few odd emails which seem to match the same disjointed rambling. Sorry for letting that go as long as we did.
ilikesnow, you have been banned and you continue to attempt to post. Please do not post here any more.
In case anyone is interested, there’s more on this discussion at the Leiter Reports, including a link to an old Atlantic Monthly article (by a medical doctor who teaches philosophy) and an article in the journal Applied Philosophy.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day; however poorly, I think NARTH happened to hit upon a legitimate bioethical question.