This is <i>exactly</i> the same thing as the 'Bitch' thread. Transsexuals have their own personal definition of the word, and the rest of the world has theirs.

Most people's definition of gender is "men have penises, women have vaginas". The medical definition is, "You're female if you lack a Y chromosome". We'd have to do an informal survey to prove this, but i'm willing to bet most people feel this way.

Therefore, I unequivocly <i>win</i> the bitch thread debate. Hooray for me!!!! :)

Re: Questions
 

I find it amazing that you feel this way. I personally am very prejudiced against Christian fundamentalists, and I really don't care one whit about what makes them feel bad. Hell, i'd probably do things just to annoy them (Heh..Dar can attest to this). Just shows how insenstive I am, I guess. :)

Still, your response was very educational, and I feel like I know a lot more of where you're coming from now. I definitely need to meet more people like you.

I'm also surprised at how accepting the communities you've lived in are towards gays. Perhaps the world really is progressing nicely, after all. Is Arkansas the only barbaric holdout?



I'm willing to bet that these people, like me, have seen gays seriously abused on a very frequent basis. They probably assume you've been hassled a lot, when in fact you haven't been. Therefore, they're trying to console you, but you don't have the same experiences as them, and so it just annoys you. Very interesting.

Well, you can "call" a relationship between a post-transition female-to-male transsexual and an unsuspecting, otherwise heterosexual woman "homosexual", but I maintain by doing so you achieve only an appearance of accuracy by completely sacrificing descriptive and predictive power. When gender is not constant, "heterosexual" and "homosexual" become multivalued terms.

I think you're all wet on the medical definition, by the way. Especially in a world with genetic mosaics, interesexed conditions, androgen-insensitivity syndrome, and peripheral hornome conversion.

I've got a notarized letter from my surgeon certifying me as a functional female., so we could count that as one medical votefor the "innie/outie" standard, I suppose. It was good enough to amend my birth certificate.

Hmm.. I don't think I follow you. Care to expand on that?

Re: Questions
 

How does that stack up against "the sin of pride"? Like where you concentrate on the mote in your neighbor's eye before dealing with the beam in your own?

Sure. In a genetic mosaic, the genotype is not the same in every cell. You can have an individual with Y chromosomes in some cell lines but not in others. An intersexed individual can have sexually ambiguous genetalia, the differentiation that occurs in one stage of fetal growth can be incomplete, or this can result in a hermaphrodite or other outcomes.

All embryos start off fundamentally female, but some of them get exposed to testosterone in utero, which casues them to develop male. This is *supposed* to be consistant thoughout development. and *supposed* to only happen when the baby is genetically male, but sometimes shit happens. Then things get interesting.

One very well-known theory about transexuality is that it may be a neurological intersex state, where the brain is constructed, say, female while the body develps male. (this differentiation occurs at a different stage of fetal development from the genetalia). We're only discovering today how many estrogenic compounds are *extremely* comnmon in the environment and getting more so, and lots of pregnant moms in the 1950's were taking DES "to prevent miscarriages", so that didn't help either.

Peripheral conversion and androgen insensitivity result in individuals whose hormone balance doesn't match their genetic sex on a chronic basis. Peripheral conversion can change testosterone into estrogen or vice versa, while in AIS there can be boatloads of testosterone around but the receptors are somehow blocked.

I feel like a trubblemaker today
 

So where in this whole discussion do hermaphrodites fit in?

No one has mentioned them yet and since I count one as my friend (but I'm still wrestling with a definition for my own personal comfort) I'm looking at an empty slot (no pun intended) in the whole LBGT thing.

Maggie? Can you address this as well?

Brian

back to lurking

Re: I feel like a trubblemaker today
 

I loathe Joan Rivers.

Re: I feel like a trubblemaker today
 

Well, I'm not really qualified to speak for the frankly physically interesexed, hermaphrodites included; I don't even know any such people personally--at least to know that I know them.

But--as you have already discovered--just by existing, they serve as paradigm-breakers for the binary gender system most folks subscribe to, and without which even the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality breaks down.

What sort of relationship there is or should be between the transsexual community and intersexed folks I'm at a loss to say, and it is indeed a cause celebre in some gender politics circles.

My personal belief is that you are more defined by what is in your brain (what you think you are and what you are attracted to) than by any dangly bits or the lack thereof.

As for hermaphrodites, what gender does your friend identify with?

True enough. But when we speak of "homosexual vs. heterosexual relationships" (whatver that actually means), what's in the mind of *both* participants is important. In the case in question, both players saw a heterosexual relationship; what the spectators think in retrospect doesn't count for much.

I'm somewhat at a loss to answer that Beletseri...it refuses to even allow gender-specific pronouns. And I'm at a loss to decide wether or not I should be holding the door! :rolleyes:

From my own personal views, it leans towards the feminine, which really comes as no surprise to most of us. It tells me that it's female reproductive systems are operational but it isn't sure about it's male ones. It gets erections, acheives orgasm and ejaculates like a male, but does not know if it produces viable sperm from it's (undescended) testicles.

It also can have intercourse like a female, but has a harder time with orgasm (still no surprise) since it lacks a true clitoris. (insert witty misogynistic female sex joke here) :p

It makes me think more about this thread that it really deserves, but I'm actually considering inviting it to the Cellar just to get it into this thread and offer it's uh, unique insights here.

Brian

I think that would be terrific. If I remember my developmental anatomy, the male penis is the homologous tissue to the female clitoris. but someone should check me on that.

So your friend really is hermaphroditic even in his/her brain. Sorry, I just can't refer to a person as it.

IMHO
 

This is just my simple opinion. If you have an XY chromosome then you are male if it is YY then you are female. That is it. Simple DNA tests can be done to determine this. Now granted there are certain things that can adversely affect this such as Turner's Syndrome or Klinefelter Syndrome as well as several other unnamed and named X&Y chromosomal disorders.

If someone suffers one of these disorders then perhaps I can see where one would say they are trans-sexed. I am under the impression from looking at MaggieL that he/she does not suffer from any of the aforementioned conditions, although I could be wrong.

I know this may make some people mad but you can't just choose; there is VERY clear science on what makes a man and what makes a woman.

Besides all that. That is not what this whole thing is about it is about the absurdity of having specialized 'Gay Games" if you think about it even sounds absurd. I mean it is a free world and you can do what you want. . . .but I have the right to laugh my ass of at you doing it. Freedom has a bitchy way like that.

Here is the origin of the bits.
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/sexdev.html

As you can see, it isn't as simple as XX XY, Oh and Philgump, you might want to make use of the edit function.

Well, remeber female is the default; male is the differentiated form.
But jeepers...with all the <a href="http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/">gender-neutral pronoun systems</a> in use, can't we do better than "it"?
Undescended testicles tend not to be fertile; temperature control is important. But it's easy enough to check; all one needs is access to an optical microscope...and a sample, of course. Fertile semen is easy to see.

Re: IMHO
 

My genome has never been sequenced, so I'm pretty sure you're talking though your hat here. I don't claim to be genetically intersexed, but in fact I don't know, and certainly *you* don't.

Are you actually basing your diagnosis on *pictrues* on my web site, Doctor?
No one could possibly make such a flat statement who has actually studied any of the science involved. Unless we're talking "science" in the same abused sense in which people say "creation science"...considering your apparent standards for diagnostic data, I suppose that might be the case.

It is indeed not simply a matter of choice...there's nothing simple about it. Or painless. Or inexpensive.

In view of the fact that both the State of Pennsylvania and the Federal Avation Administration have taken legal note of my reassigned gender, I find your use of "he/she" in reference to me to be intentionally rude.

"Sin of pride" indeed...

I can't resist adding "and taste". Seriously, I knew that and if they're over about 94 deg F then they are infertile. And I hate to think of the consequences of self-fertilization...



The pronoun issue is not my doing folks...it insists on using "it" to refer to itself...and I've spent quite some time getting used to that. And it still sticks in my Neanderthal throat.

All I wanted to know is: Do I hold the door and pick up the check or not?

Brian

While I realize that sexual identification is a very complex subject, and that transvestitism is a recognized medical area, human gender is simply not nearly as fluid as MaggieL would have you believe.

No matter what sort of lifestyle you live, what sort of surgery or treatment you subject yourself to, if you were born with a Y chromosomeyou will be biologically male, and therefore (primarily) mentally male, for all of time.


What philgump is trying to say is basically, don't wear your sexual preference(or any other group identification) on your sleeve, or as a chip on your shoulder. He seems to want gays to be judged just as everyone else is, on their individual merits, not to which tribe they belong to.

MaggieL is obviously deeply involved in the gay-lesbian-transgender 'lifestyle'. She seems to think that being a member of that community means that mainstream acceptance or conformity is not only not necessary but even unacceptable. It's this sort of divisive fractionalism, this "us against them" mentality which I think is a bad idea. As long as you've divided people into "queers" and "straights" there will never be widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

For example, it isn't as simple as "homosexual" and "heterosexual". MaggieL is more Quentin Crisp, philgump is more Rock Hudson. Lumping all the "queers" together does a disserve to everyone.

So genetics is destiny? Even genetisists don't believe that these days. Since the development of the brain sexual areas and those of the peripheral organs happen at different times and under different hormonal influences they are only loosely tied together. If the genetic program goes right, the brain identity and preference tends to match up with the external organs. Since development is a complicated process sometimes things don't proceed per the genetic blue print. Also sometimes other genes (not necessarily found on the sex chromosomes) effect the outcome differentially.

I don't see how you can say that someone who thinks and feels like a woman despite being XY has less insight into their own head than you do. How the heck do you know that they are primarily mentally male? What does that mean anyway? This insistence that everything is black and white or male and female is very naive.

Tell that to the "man" with androgen insensitivity syndrome who's had a Y chromosome all "his" life and didn't know it. Or the transsexual women whose hypothalmic features match typical female patterns more closely than many XX women do.

(Actually you can't tell the ones who have actually been examined that way much, they had to be dead before their brains could be examined that way).

"Y-chromosome=male brain" simply isn't true. It's *usually* true, but not *always* true. Y chromosomes *usually* make brains that find women attractive, too. But not always.

The real world is more complicated than that.
OK, everybody into unisex clothing, immediately! :-)
What exactly *is* this "gay-lesbian-transgender lifestyle"?

Am I supposed to be living in Key West now? Provincetown? Northhampton? The Castro?

Should I have Judy Garland records? I *do* have a few k.d.lang, and there's even an Indigo Girls CD around here somewhere. Oh, wait...Judy is a gay *male* thing. Indigo Girls and k.d. are for the flannel shirt crowd. Damn....I don't have any flannel shirts either.

I suppose I should drop out of the amateur radio club, even though I'll be on their board of directors next year.

Actually, I tend to think of it as my "life". "Lifestyle" is an attempt makes it sound like some sort of superficial, changable ephimera, like a "hairstyle". Straight people have lives, queers "follow a lifestyle".
And as long as you divide people into gentiles and Jews, there will never be widespread acceptance of Judaism, right? :-)

Just a quick point about that, Zorg did say sexual preference not sex. So he's actually pretty much right in that part of his statement, unless you believe gays should dress differently.

Though the rest of his statement is wrong since group identification quite often is associate with clothing, in fact some religions have requirements on what people can or cannot wear.

If I become mayor of Philadelphia next year, I'm going to divide it into sectors: Black, White, Hispanic, Gay, Jew, Russian, and Indian. And if the lesbians and transgendered want their own sections apart from gay men, we'll discuss it.

This might be true.
 

I read it on the Internet.

Re: This might be true.
 

I only saw two references for it, both from the same place.

If it IS true, I wonder if she's been in Sedalia all her life. It's a fucking podunk town an hour west of Kansas City...it's home to the Missouri State Fair. They don't take too kindly to "funny" people out in them parts.

That'll never work....some of the lesbians are transsexual women. And some of them are black. I can tell you for sure some of the gay guys are transsexual men. There no shortage of gay Jews, either.

As I see it, the only solution is to give the bisexual transsexual women all-access passes. :-)
Only if they feel like it. My point was that gender is <i>The Mother of All Group Identifications</i>; when people meet you it's the first box they check on their mental form....and people definately expect to to dress accordingly. There are still laws in some jurisdictions against crossdressing.

I sure was glad when PennDOT finally issued me a drivers licence that caught up with my birth certifcate. If I was stopped by Officer Dullard on an isolated southern road, I didn't want to stiill have an "M" in the "sex" box, even if I pass a physical as female now. The update card they originally issued wouldn't help much in that situation...:-)

As for the Janice Ashley story, I suppose it may be true, but female-to-male surgery still pretty much sucks. I'd want to see it somewhere besides "News of the Wierd" before I beleived it. There have been a few cases of gender detransition, but never to my knowlege among folks who followed the http://www.hbigda.org/soc.html]HBIGDA Standards of Care[/url]

I thought about that originally...some would obviously need multiple sector passes. After all, what the hell would Rho and I do? :)

Hey, I"m a straight white women but I don't want to just hang out with straight white women and men. Can I have an all sector pass too?

Dunno, but whatever you do, you're apparently not allowed to flaunt it. :-)

By the way, I had to look up who Quentin Crisp was. I remeber him from <i>Orlando</i> now. Can't say I feel any particular resonance there. His cereal is too sweet, too; I prefer Cocoa Puffs. :-)

Sin of Pride
 

umm I never mentioned a "Sin of Pride". I think I mentioned a "Sin of Tolerance". By the way a sin of pride is not what you think. A sin of pride does work with human situations, it only works if you are so prideful as to think that you do not need God and that you as a human can do it alone. That is the "Sin of Pride" you mentioned.

As far as he or she that is about the only pronouns I have up my sleeve unless 'IT' would be more preferable and you have already said that 'IT' was unacceptable.

I have always been taught, that you should never offer up a problem without offering up a soulution. Therefore, what pronoun do you prefer people to use when speaking about or to you.

Yeah, but you'll have to pay a bit extra for it. ;)

Hmmm.

Let's not forget the Ellen deGeneris Toaster Oven Award....might make any surcharge worthwhile, if a kickback can be arranged. :-)

Sorry Mags...you lost me on that one...Toaster Oven award? Is that like an El Camino? :)

Lemme just crib what I wrote on one of the Pink Pistols lists where one of the straight members didn't get a "toaster oven" joke.

<blockquote>
In 1997, when Ellen deGeneris' character "Ellen Morgan" on the ABC sitcom "Ellen" discovers that she is a lesbian...
<blockquote>
"There's a moment in the first half hour of the show in which Laura Dern's character, Susan, dealing with Ellen in full-blown homosexual panic <i>[ after rejecting the advances of a man on a date, and Susan's making a pass at Ellen, who realizes to her dismay that the idea seems much more appealing to her than the man did --ml ]</i> cracks a joke about her failure to "recruit" Ellen for the lesbian cause. "Damn," she says, as the laugh-track explodes, "just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven!" "Is that gay humor?" Ellen asks, "`cause I don't get it. That's how un-gay I am." Later in the episode, Ellen tells Susan that she "got the joke" just before she comes out, and the end of the episode features a cameo of Melissa Etheridge signing Ellen up as a lesbian and giving Susan the longed-for toaster oven.
</blockquote>
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/...ds/Torres.html

So that's what the "toaster oven" thing is about. It's a joke about the mistaken idea that every queer person in the world has subscribed to a "homosexual agenda" that includes recruiting as many people to homosexuality as possible, and that this invidious campaign is so organized that there's actually a catalog from which you can select incentive awards.
</blockquote>

Now what's this about an El Camino? I know about Mary Kay and the pink Caddy, but El Camino?

Education
 

I learn so much stuff on this site. :)

Putting Ellen DeGeneres and "Toaster Oven" together made me think of "El Camino," which is a term my friends and I used in referring to a bisexual. (Is it a car? Is it a truck? It's both.) Of course, now that I know what you mean, it sounds silly...but might sound more appropriate if Ellen were substituted with Anne Heche. :)

flames? at the gay games? go figure ...

i dunno about lesbian gay bars, but the male gay bar i was taken to to photograph a drag show alternated between "It's Raining Men" and Abba's greatest hits ...

True, Anne wasn't in the show. :-)

Not quite sure what to say about the "El Camino" rifff, there's something strikes me odd at the core of it; sort of that SNL classic "Shimmer: it's a desert toppping....it's a floor wax".

Maybe it's the thought that the El Camino in trying to be both a car and a truck is somehow compromised in either role. Certainly from the inside, being bi doesn't feel like a compromise at all; it feels more like a gift, like being bilingual or ambidexterous. I don't appreciate men less for being into women, nor does my (admittedly still developing) eye for guys interefere with my attraction to women.

A theory held by many experts in sexuality is that most people have the inherent *potential* to express themselves sexually with either men or women....and that the amount of bimodality in the distribution across the Kinsey orientation scale is a measure of the sexual repressiveness of a society; a more repressive society kind of squeezes folks into two lumps at the extremes of the scale where monosexuality of both kinds is found. Of course, after years of social conditioning in thet environment, the ability to explore that potiential is severely inhibited. (Which doesn't keep it from breaking loose in some folks later in life.)

The theory makes sense to me, and certainly explains some of the bad treatement bi people get not only at the hand of heterosexuals, but also from homosexuals, who you might think would somehow "know better". But you'd be wrong...

Original Posted by MaggieL

"So that's what the "toaster oven" thing is about. It's a joke about the mistaken idea that every queer person in the world has subscribed to a "homosexual agenda" that includes recruiting as many people to homosexuality as possible, and that this invidious campaign is so organized that there's actually a catalog from which you can select incentive awards. "

Well, this idea could not have been helped by the slogans that were (and are still) widely seen at Gay pride events and all over the Gay scene that say "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" Think I am lying look it up just type in the quote "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" and see the results you get.

Well, the results *I* get are all at anti-gay sites....except one article from the Swarthmore Queer Union entitled "Article Misrepresents Queer Community".

I 'm not saying you're lying, but I would certainly think any queer person would know that "recruiting" is both a silly idea and doesn't work, and would recoginize that anybody chanting such a slogan was joking....just as the Ellen show was.

I've been reisting saying anything about this up till now, but at this point I admit that the more you post, the more skeptical I become about you really being who you say you are.

Anyway...how did *you* get recruited, and why didn't you resist enough, Phil? After all, if people can be "recruited" to being gay--if someone can be "talked into it"-- it must simply be a matter of choice, right?

Recruits
 

Who said that I thought you could be recruited? I said that signs like this have been seen in gay pride parades. I mean gays already have a bad rap when it comes to being child molesters, recruiters and perverted minds. Now granted I do not know of one gay that is a child molester, tried to recruit someone, or has a perverted mind. . . wait take that last one back. :-)

My point is if you have a reputation, even if you got it falsely you would not want to perpetuate it by egging on the accusers. (i.e. if you are the president and you are accused of sleeping with your aides, that would not be the time to take one of your aides on a Caribbean cruise.) Even though you might mean it as a joke the people viewing you are going to say “See I told you!”

Does that make sense? I just don’t think that sarcasm and facetiousness are the ways to achieve tolerance. Maybe it is just me.

Re: Recruits
 

Maybe it *is* just you. I think tolerance is something that can only be achieved by the intolerant themselves. I don't think I should allow them to try make their satisfaction my responsibility. Am I not supposed to joke with my friends for fear some bluenose is going to misconstrue it?

I just don't think there's any amount of being a good nigger that *is* going to satisfy them (with the possible exception of appearing on TV and testifying about how you "got straight again through Jesus"). So why let them call the tune?

I certainly don't intend to look for ways to steer my life based on what the homophobes might think of it. I value my opinions more highly than I do theirs.

I only caught the tail end of this show, but it's on again at 1am ET, and again in late December, on the Discovery Channel: Changing Sexes: Male to Female. It looks rather interesting.

Thanks for the heads-up. This was one I actually hadn't seen before...and it's probably the best show of it's kind on transsexuality that I've seen to date. Their facts were pretty much right on. They even managed to interview Swaab, I think that's a first.

I do have to wonder if they're in sweeps though; it was put on right after a show on dwarfism. :-)

Nah, if it were sweeps, they would have combined them into a 2-hour special on transgender dwarfs. :)

Let's see...guesses on the incidence of transsexuality run from 1 in 1e4 to 1 in 3e4. Genetic dwarfism is given as 1 in 1e4. So...assuming the tendencies are independant, this would give a joint incidence of around 1:2e8...in a population of 300 million, this *might* yield two individuals if you were lucky.

So...one hour on each one? I don't think so.

Let's consider the obligatory jokes about "tail end of the show" and "short subject" to have been made. :-)

Before the show on dwarfism was one on obese people. :)

I watched it at 1...definitely interesting. I have to give props to Jonni (the wife of Angela, the air force pilot that went through the operation). She seemed very interested in the whole process and non-judgmental...what a great support system to have.

Yeah, she was pretty amazing. The voiceover about "ego strength" was very appropos; most spouses don't have that much, and I do admit it's calls for quite a lot.

But to *watch* the surgery? I dunno. I'm glad I was asleep for mine, and I had not much interest in seeing anybody else's. Yuk. A close friend of mine used to yank my chain about how green I got when surgical video was shown at a gender support group many years ago. And yet her surgery only happened this June. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Gwennie and I were speculating that Jonni was probably a nurse or an MD. In fact, my own ex was fascinated by some of the goings on at the hospital where my work was eventually done, when we were there with somebody else several years before my own surgery.

I did also note that Jonni's personal energy seemed fairly butch...even to her chosen nickname. These things aren't accidental.

Sweeps were November 18-24, so <i>Changing Sexes: Male to Female</i> was indeed aired on the last day of sweeps. So we're controversial enough to generate eyeballs for advertisers, but too controversial for insurance to cover the surgical costs...unless you're a union member, that is. C'est la vie.

Wow.. you actually think insurance should pay for transgender surgery? Based on what grounds?

They pay to correct other birth defects. Maggie, do they pay for procedures to correct hermaphordites?

If you go with that rationale, who will determine on a case-by-case basis, those for whom this birth defect exists?

Even if you want to make that argument, there are many types of birth defects. Insurance companies pay for life-threatening or medically necessary defects, but they don't pay for quality-of-life procedures.

Some people would consider being born ugly a birth defect. Do you think insurance companies should pay for them to have plastic surgery?

Oh, dear....yet another can of worms.

Do I think insurance "should" cover reassignment? Well....given that I consider it an effective treatment for a medically-recognized condition: yes.

Do I *expect* it? Absolutely not...I've worked for insurance companies, and given how few people this affects, what happens is they specifically exclude it in the plan language, and not enough people care about it to make them change it, so the current situation is likely to continue.

I *do* know people who have had insurance that was good enough that it was covered. As it happened, my company mereged with another just before my surgery, and we of course got the lowest-common-denominator coverage. The company we mereged with had just had an employee whose surgery was covered. Mine wasn't. C'est la vie, like I said.

Those who have or are about to hold forth on "cosmetic surgery" I remind that not all plastic surgery is "cosmetic" surgery...reconstruction after an accident, for example. There's plenty of women who have gotten breast augmentation--or reduction, for that matter--covered as "medically necessary".

As for "birth defect", there's enough controversy about that, too. Until the etiology of transsexualism is *much* better established than it is today--today there are only theories, with sketchy experimental evidence--I don't think universal acceptance of it as a "birth defect" is within realistic reach.

Typically, (and the well-moneyed folk who appeared in the Discovery channel show are *not* typical) TS folks are not in a position to engage in a long legal battle with their insurance companies to establish that reassignment surgery is "medically necessary"...especially when the insurance company is perfectly willing to invest in expert witnesses (mostly from Johns Hopkins, originally a center for treatment for gender dysphoria but now the mecca for the anti-SRS crew) who are happy to testify that it isn't.

The insurance companies will spend a *whole* lot more than the $20K or so they'd be out for covering one case to keep this one off the books. So an individual could spend *all* the money that would pay for their surgery, plus quite a bit more, and then still end up with nothing to show for it.

Personally, I thought my SRS was "medically necessary", and so-voted with $13K of my own money. I also think it should have been covered, but I do know that most people--who really have no idea what gender dysphoria is--would disagree.

Of course, I don't think I "should" have to pay for lung cancer treatment for smokers either--but have accepted that I have to, because the incidence of that is so much higher: just about everybody knows someone who killed themselves with cigarettes.

It's really a political issue--a matter of how many people something like this affects.