And I *really* don’t like reading about how I have sex as a way to mock someone behaving cruelly and stupidly. So cut it out.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I was trying to tell her that she’s having a go at trans folk for being overly gendered when she’s just as gendered as anyone here. She calls herself ‘Miss Andrea’ and is incredibly phallic in her use of language – she’s about as binary as you can get in terms of gender, it’s like she’s strapped a big wang and a gaping rubber vag to her forehead all at once and producing sparks by rubbing the two together. Nothing wrong with that, except if you’re arguing that you’ve been liberated from all that gender nonsense.

They claim that the reason transgenderism is a valid medical condition is because not only are male and female brains structurally different, but that in addition specific genetalia are required to express that different brain structure.

Their logic is inherently flawed, as no brain of either sex (if significant differences in brain structure even exist) would ever require a specific genitalia to “express” itself.

Let us try a thought experiment.

Suppose a child is born with only one arm, but the brain has all the wiring in it designed to operate a two-armed body. Can you imagine what that would feel like? Or suppose the child had four arms, instead of two arms and two legs, but the brain is set up to operate the usual complement of limbs? Do you see how that would result in disorientating and conflicting signals in the body? Do you see how that might cause emotional and cognitive issues?

Now, I don’t know if such medical occurences have ever happened, but the mental and personal experience of transsexuality that has been explained to me by those who have gender dysphoria, is clearly analogous.

So, let us suppose for the moment that a medical operation exists that can reconstruct the limbs that are “missing” and enable the person to function much more easily in their body. Would you then claim that it is pandering to a “delusion” to seek to make that corrective surgery?

You write, “We might as well say that that paraplegics are unable to express their internal character because they too are trapped in the “wrong” body.”

Well, I have two things with this: firstly, you may have noticed that in my analogy I never once spoke about “internal character”. In fact, I don’t think I ever used that phrase once in my refutation of your arguments or in my own explanation of what transsexualism is. Crossdressers and/or transvestites might be considered to be “expressing their inner character“, but such people in general do not feel any need to make any modification to their genitalia to do so. Transsexual folks, on the other hand, who do desire surgery, do so because they wish to allign their body with their own perception of identity.

Secondly, if we have a medical procedure that can cure a paraplegic, would we not wish to offer to all those who feel they need it? Some differently-abled folks prefer to identify themselves by their difference (thus, some members of the Deaf community, when offered an operation to restore their hearing, prefer to reject that offer), so maybe not every paraplegic would want to be “cured” in that way – but surely we have the duty to offer it if we can? Well, with gender dysphoria, we can operate to render the genitalia into a form that causes less “discomfort”, so again, do we not have a moral duty to do so?

And furthermore, once a paraplegic can walk again, we have a moral obligation to accept them as they present to the world, and not treat them as “disabled”. You say, “…to insist that the transgendered are entitled to public validation or legal protection (beyond what is already given to all humans) … is unreasonable.” Well, the UN Declaration of Human Rights declares “All [human beings] are born free and equal, in dignity and rights.” It also states, “All [human beings] have the right to life, liberty and freedom from fear or violence.” [the original text uses the male nouns, I have corrected for this!] Well, that rather seems to require that a transsexual person be accepted, validated by society, and protected in law, in hir acquired gender. To do otherwise is to deny hir human dignity, and is to deny hir right to freedom from fear or violence, and that is (to my mind) a valid definition of transphobia.

Now, it is irrelevant to any of this whether transsexuality is caused by physical brain differences, or if it’s something to do with the brain-software – or even if it’s something that is produced by “nurture” (although how that would work, I don’t know, since the transsexual folks I know realised their internal sex identity by the age of 5).

mAndrea, you claim to use logic, but the thing with logic is that it is extremely susceptible to the old information processing statement of “GIGO”, or “Garbage in, garbage out”. You have a complete lack of understanding of what transgenderism and transsexuality are, so all the logic in the world will not lead you to valid conclusions.

“In the End, we will remember
not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.”

–Martin Luther King

…feels relevant. Not for the first time, in the feminist blogosphere, in a number of contexts, and undoubtedly not for the last. Still, it’s disappointing, to say the least.

just notin’.

You know, I don’t want to do the Spanish Inquisition routine wrt the “excess of femininity” comment either, but you know, it’s…an overall message, okay, whether you’re intending to send one or not. FYI.

And I *really* don’t like reading about how I have sex as a way to mock someone behaving cruelly and stupidly. So cut it out.

Why do we have to prove that transgenderism isn’t a fetish? Where’s the logical argument that establishes that the most reasonable explanation for transgenderism is fetishism?

That doesn’t make any sense. Someone comes up to you and says (I’m paraphrasing some of Drakyn’s posts and comments; I hope he doesn’t mind) “You know, I’m a boy. I get perplexed at my body structure. I forget I have breasts. I’m a guy.” and you say “Ah, the only possible explanation for that is sexual.”

Um, why? Where is there anything at all to suggest anything sexual about that sense of one’s own body? Where does the argument come from? Who formulated it? What are its premises, and which logical moves get you from those premises to that conclusion?

For all that you like logic, all I’ve seen you “argue” so far is that if trans people are not lying, then gender is “real.” Since gender is not “real,” trans people are lying.

Which, sure, fun with modus tollens, u can haz it.

But you’re introducing the premise that gender is not “real.” And this requires further justification than you offer.

The justification you *do* offer is that gender is a social construct. Okay, but the thing is, it does not follow from that that gender is not “real.” Lots of things that are socially constructed are real. Race. Gender. Disability (as opposed to impairment).

So we have to ask: what does “real” mean in this argument? You seem to be using “real” to mean “not socially constructed”, but why would it mean this? Surely if social constructs are “not real” in a way that actually affects people’s daily lives, feminism isn’t necessary. Gender is, after all, not “real.”

Wait, gender affects how women are treated? That matters? Well, then, it seems we can and sometimes should be invested in the “not real.” In which case, “that’s silly because it’s ‘not real’ is inconsistent when applied to transgendered people’s desire to change their body and their social gender.

And all that doesn’t even touch “fetish,” because you haven’t actually argued anywhere that transgenderism or transsexualism is one.

I’m amazed she can even type with that monster-sized thing in the way.

…Different brain structures? Can anyone else in thread provide the real-world counterpart to this, or is it just whole cloth? I know of one old cadaver brain study. I know that some transpeople argue that transsexuality must have some as-yet-undetermined biological basis, because it’s a powerful need that doesn’t seem to have much to do with prevailing social pressure. And I’ve heard many people say that men and women think differently. That’s all I can think of.

srsly.