Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide

[Belz...]

The bias is because there are a huge amount of un-ethical pedos

That's irrelevant. What makes them wrong is their ACTIONS.

 

[Meadmaker]

Fascinating. And not in a slouch journal either. "Nature" is in the major leagues. If further research shows there really is such a thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain", that would probably change a lot of people's thinking about transgender issues. I couldn't read the article (it's a pay thing) to see how extensive the data was and how well brain physiology predicted transgender characteristics, but the abstract certainly looks like something that will have to be considered in the future.

ETA: Wait. I see the paper was published in 1995. It hasn't exactly changed the way we look at gender yet. For what reason, I wonder.

Did some gooling. Findings not widely accepted for a variety of reasons. If reading one paper plus doing fifteen minutes of google-research are any indication, I have reached the conclusion that there are still no known physiological markers for transgender identification. And if you can't trust some guy on an internet forum, who can you trust?

Others who are interested are recommended to do your own research.

 

[newyorkguy]

Is there any physiological basis for these feelings or is it emotional in origin? In males -- like Leelah Alcorn -- who say they have always felt more female than male, is there a brain chemistry or chromosome marker associated with this? Apparently there is.

Did some gooling. Findings not widely accepted for a variety of reasons. If reading one paper plus doing fifteen minutes of google-research are any indication, I have reached the conclusion that there are still no known physiological markers for transgender identification.

As I tried to make clear, I'm not locked into any theory. I'd be interested to know what the paper was you read. I must admit I am not finding that the medical community largely rejects the idea that there are physiological causes for gender identity disorder. At least from the little bit I've read they seem to accept it.

Here's a link to what I believe is the full text of the Nature article. Here's a link to another article that generally seems to support The Netherlands researchers but cites research tracing the phenomenon of males who "feel female" to brain development in the fetus stage:

This leads one to consider the possibility that male hormonal surges must occur not only in sufficient amounts in the developing fetus, but must be timed to take advantage of the short time the brain is open to being defeminized/masculinized, forming a predominantly male gendermap. If there is insufficient androgen, or the surge comes too late, the gendermap may be only partially imprinted as male.

The article was written by Dr Anne Vitale, a psychologist who has worked with people with gender identity issues for almost thirty years.

Btw, there are differences in male/female brain structure. There's no question about it, it's actually been well-established. This link is to an article that lists eight physical differences. Link

 

[Meadmaker]

As I tried to make clear, I'm not locked into any theory. I'd be interested to know what the paper was you read. I must admit I am not finding that the medical community largely rejects the idea that there are physiological causes for gender identity disorder. At least from the little bit I've read they seem to accept it.

http://www.annelawrence.com/twr/brain-sex_critique.html

The link there didn't have a publication reference, just the paper itself. I saw elsewhere that it was published in some sort of forgettable journal on transgender issues.

From what I saw, lots of people did seem to think that there was probably a physiological difference in transgender brains, but no one had a repeatable finding of what that difference was. As far as differences between male and female brains, that is more or less a given. Anyone who insists there is none would be charitably described as "fringe". However, I couldn't find, despite several minutes of effort, a paper that could identify a specific physiological characteristic that was present in transgender people that didn't match their birth sex.


As I note, I haven't done a lot of work on the subject, so I would be interested in finding more evidence.

 

[ThunderChunky]

Fascinating. And not in a slouch journal either. "Nature" is in the major leagues. If further research shows there really is such a thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain", that would probably change a lot of people's thinking about transgender issues. I couldn't read the article (it's a pay thing) to see how extensive the data was and how well brain physiology predicted transgender characteristics, but the abstract certainly looks like something that will have to be considered in the future.

ETA: Wait. I see the paper was published in 1995. It hasn't exactly changed the way we look at gender yet. For what reason, I wonder.

There's lots of sex differences in the brain, some related to pre natal hormones, some related to post natal hormones, and some related to genetics. The issue with the study linked above (and many others that purport to show a difference) is they only looked at transwomen that had been on hormone therapy for a long time. They had no proper way to control for the influence of the hormone therapy so they looked at one transwomen that had stopped taking hormones for her last 15 months of life. Since the difference was still observed in that transwoman they conclude adult hormones were not the cause of the difference. That's a pretty bad control for obvious reasons.

 

[newyorkguy]

One of the criticisms I have found with the Zhou (1995) and Kruijver (2000) conclusion that transgender males had a BSTc neuron count in the female range and that this helped identify the trigger for their gender disorder, has to do with the fact that the BSTc part of the brain develops in adulthood. The problem is most transgender men report the feelings begin very early in childhood.

This is from the Anne Lawrence study Meadmaker linked:

In 2002, the brain-sex theory of transsexualism was seriously challenged by some unexpected findings published by Chung, De Vries, and Swaab. They observed that significant sexual dimorphism in BSTc volume and neuron number does not develop in humans until adulthood.

This ties in with the current research as discussed by Dr. Anne Vitale which I referenced earlier. That gender identity disorder may be a result of hormonal changes in the developing male fetus. At the same time, some researchers believe this could still explain the female range BSTc neuron count in adult male-to-female transsexuals.

It is still possible to imagine explanations of these findings that would be consistent with the hypothesis that BSTc volume and neuron number in adulthood are markers for gender identity in transsexuals. Chung et al. (2002) conjectured that fetal or neonatal hormone levels could affect gender identity and could also produce changes in BSTc "synaptic density, neuronal activity, or neurochemical content" (p. 1032) that might not affect BSTc volume or neuron number immediately, but might do so during adulthood. Alternatively, they suggested, failure to develop a gender identity consistent with one's somatic sex might affect adult BSTc volume and neuron number by some unspecified mechanism.

But they apparently don't really know to a scientific certainty. They need to do a lot more research.

 

[shuttlt]

I can see that the brain stuff is interesting, and may have some practical uses, but is there direct relevance to the current discussion? If there is no effective "cure" to make one feel the body one was born with is the correct gender, then the options are the same regardless of the route cause. I don't see it makes any difference to the "real woman/man" issue either.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Could you expand on the scenario?

People here have expressed their rage at finding out a partner was trans after the fact, I haven't heard of a gay man having that issue with finding out that a partner was a woman. So it isn't about being attracted to them or not, which is the issue with the gay man and women. So it really is totally irrelevant.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Only before they find out more relevant information. There are a myriad of things that can kill what was an initial attraction. People have said that learning that someone smokes cigarettes can ruin any feelings of attraction they might have had. Why are you singling this out?

So the rage at finding out they slept with a smoker is where?

 

[ponderingturtle]

If it is'nt wrong why do they have to be ethical?

If "_____" isn't wrong why do they have to be ethical? Because being ethical is what it is about. So there is no obligation on non pedophiles not to abuse people? So a teacher who has sex with a sexually mature teen is OK because as a non pedophile they are exempt from the requirement for ethical behavior and their abuse of children is OK?

 

[shuttlt]

People here have expressed their rage at finding out a partner was trans after the fact, I haven't heard of a gay man having that issue with finding out that a partner was a woman. So it isn't about being attracted to them or not, which is the issue with the gay man and women. So it really is totally irrelevant.

I've never heard of a gay man discovering their partner is a woman. Does the woman have good reason to believe the gay may be under the misapprehension that she is a man in this scenario? I'd have thought if a gay man felt he'd been tricked by a woman into thinking she was a man there is some possibility of anger.

You need more context.

 

[Primus]

People here have expressed their rage at finding out a partner was trans after the fact, I haven't heard of a gay man having that issue with finding out that a partner was a woman. So it isn't about being attracted to them or not, which is the issue with the gay man and women. So it really is totally irrelevant.

Why are you pretending not to understand that people could be angry at being tricked into sleeping with a transgender person?
You can be as externally tolerant as you want but a lot of people would feel like they have been tricked into sleeping with a man. The same person might also never dream of ever calling a transgender person a man or behaving like they are in any other situation but a personal line would have been crossed when you have sex with someone under false pretences.

The only (that I know of) transgender person who's posted in the thread has also confirmed she thinks it's a shady thing to do as well. Why do you disagree.

In fact I'd go one further and say that by consistently bringing this up and suggesting it's reasonable you're actually doing transgender people a disservice by suggesting that they are dishonest and do this when by all accounts they don't. If I was to go even further you're doing a very good impression of a transphobic person concern trolling.

 

[Meadmaker]

I can see that the brain stuff is interesting, and may have some practical uses, but is there direct relevance to the current discussion? If there is no effective "cure" to make one feel the body one was born with is the correct gender, then the options are the same regardless of the route cause. I don't see it makes any difference to the "real woman/man" issue either.

I think it would go a long way toward acceptance within mainstream society, including the parents of a transgender teen. If medical science can point to a specific reason why a person would identify themselves as a gender that didn't match their visible anatomy, people would be less likely to say that they are wrong.

 

[shuttlt]

I think it would go a long way toward acceptance within mainstream society, including the parents of a transgender teen. If medical science can point to a specific reason why a person would identify themselves as a gender that didn't match their visible anatomy, people would be less likely to say that they are wrong.

I can see how it would be used. It makes no difference to me though. That they already feel that they are the wrong gender is already known. Finding some physical marker of that may be useful diagnostically... but more than that? Our brains are physical, somewhere in there is something physical that says "woman" or "man". Would finding such a marker mean that somebody was in fact inarguably a "real" man or a "real" woman? Surely only if you choose to define "man" or "woman" based on that marker?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I've never heard of a gay man discovering their partner is a woman. Does the woman have good reason to believe the gay may be under the misapprehension that she is a man in this scenario? I'd have thought if a gay man felt he'd been tricked by a woman into thinking she was a man there is some possibility of anger.

You need more context.

Or who ever posted that dumb situation needs a better example.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Why are you pretending not to understand that people could be angry at being tricked into sleeping with a transgender person?
You can be as externally tolerant as you want but a lot of people would feel like they have been tricked into sleeping with a man. The same person might also never dream of ever calling a transgender person a man or behaving like they are in any other situation but a personal line would have been crossed when you have sex with someone under false pretences.

So how much disclosure is needed? What conditions count as really sleeping with a man with out their knowledge? How much of a complete medical disclosure is needed?

 

[Primus]

So how much disclosure is needed? What conditions count as really sleeping with a man with out their knowledge? How much of a complete medical disclosure is needed?

Telling them before any sexual relationship begins would be the best way to avoid that situation. I noticed you've dodged my question. Why are you pushing this so hard? Are you trying to make transgender people out to be dishonest?
Why didn't you take this up with Luchog when she said she doesn't think it's a good thing to do?

 

[Primus]

Found it.

This is one of the few things I'll disagree with you on. I believe that it's definitely important to disclose such a thing to a partner. I find not doing so to be dishonest; just as I would want to know about my partner's sexual history and identity. I also think that I would have no business getting involved with someone who would have a problem with who I am; at best, it's going to be a shock and potential for unnecessary conflict and loss of trust.

Please explain how this is incorrect ponderingturtle.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Telling them before any sexual relationship begins would be the best way to avoid that situation. I noticed you've dodged my question. Why are you pushing this so hard? Are you trying to make transgender people out to be dishonest?
Why didn't you take this up with Luchog when she said she doesn't think it's a good thing to do?

I am not saying it isn't a good thing to do, I am trying to understand exactly where the line is for these people between Real Woman and Pseudo Woman. It seems to have absolutely nothing to do with their current body at all, but if they at one time had a penis.

 

[Belz...]

I am not saying it isn't a good thing to do, I am trying to understand exactly where the line is for these people between Real Woman and Pseudo Woman. It seems to have absolutely nothing to do with their current body at all, but if they at one time had a penis.

I would say it's a similar line between a woman of the weight range you want and one of not, or any other thing that might turn one off.