What about " people injecting themselves daily with loads of hormones for life till death to match their physical features to their psychological thoughts. Do you agree with this?Belindi wrote:Spectrum wrote:1. No. I don't like any surgical interventions that aren't necessary either to save life, or to relieve suffering. There is mental suffering which arises from having a sexuality which is denied or disowned. I may be wrong, but I think that transgender people who try to alter their bodies are overwhelmed by popular belief that sex=gender. I need to know more about this before I can comment.Belindi,
as I had stated personally I do not have a problem with transgenders at present [given the current state of knowledge and technology] they can do whatever they want within the provisions of the law.
Here is a question regarding the future [say 100, 200 years or later],
1. Do you want transgenders, say male-to-female to keep injecting themselves daily with loads of female hormones for life till death, plus doing a sex change to be a female so be in line with their female psychological impulses, e.g. like Caitlin Jenner.
2. By 100, 200 years or later in the future, we have the knowledge and technology to allow those transgenders [male] to voluntarily opt [rewire] or correct the neural connectivity permanently to be a 100% male psychologically instead of ending up with female psychological tendencies. This option will enable the transgenders [male] to avoid injecting daily doses of female hormones and having to do a sex change operation.
What is your preference on the above views?
As I have been proposing I will recommend option 2.
If you don't like surgical interventions that are not necessary, then you should agree with me that 'prevention' is better than cure.
By 'prevention' I meant rewiring neurally or using certain fool proof ways [in the future not now] to ensure a person with a penis do not abhor/hate that appendage and want to get rid of it by surgery and replace it with an artificial vagina. It will also prevent a person from breast enlargement by hormonal treatments or surgery. There will no related psychological sufferings and necessary psychiatric testings and counselling.
If male and female genders are not differentiated in the future, it is merely semantics.2.In 100 years time I would hope that male and female genders are not differentiated. I hope that by now, Spectrum, you understand that sexual activity and sexual physiology is not the same as gender. Gender is a social attribution of power and other behaviours such as differentiation of roles. Obviously the roles of pregnancy and lactation are attached to female physiology. Nurturing, making, and evaluating can pertain to any physiological sex. In the absence of power imbalance there will be no need for any surgical or chemical intervention to change physiological sex. Contraceptive intervention I will concede.
If 'male' and 'females' are not used semantically to represent certain people, then we have to use long narratives. e.g. what we used to label as male would be described as a group of human who has penis, testicles, certain DNA arrangements, and whatever qualities that are differentiated from another group that was described as female. This is rather a stupid idea which is cumbersome and inefficient.
This is going against of human nature of recognizing patterns of common features to facilitate communications and progress.
It is not a matter of power. Differentiation of roles can be easily resolved and that is not the critical issue.
It is obvious there will be a percentile of humans who are not happy with their existing physical features they are born with and wanting to change them to suit their mental thinking. If we can prevent such mismatch from the start, why not?
Attitudes, power and symbols related to penises and vaginas are superficial issues which can be changed and adapted without prejudice to any person.I suspect that ideas about the sex act which seemingly inevitably includes a receptacle and a penetrator are used to justify power to penises and quiescence to vaginas. We also have deeply ingrained symbols like the rose or moonlight(quiescent, feminine), and the invading insect or the sun(active, masculine). Symbolism is very prominent in Chinese Taoism, and flourishes elsewhere, like in Europe, from time to time. Those symbols are reflections of power relations and perpetuate them. Sex is not gender relations. Physiology is not culture . We should change the symbols not the human bodies.
-- Updated August 11th, 2017, 5:04 am to add the following --
I should have said that the symbolic system in Taoism is balanced as yin and yang. This is not the case with western symbols which reflect, not balance, but imbalance of power between the sexes.
The main issue with transgender is SOME people wanting to change their physical feature to match their psychological, mental and sexual impulses and behaviors.
My proposal [for the future] is to prevent this mismatch at the source so to avoid hormonal treatment [for whole life], surgery and all the related psychological issues.
On the other hand you seem to want the transgenders to bear with the inconvenience of hormonal treatments [for whole life], surgery, all the related psychological issues and sufferings.
-- Updated Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:06 pm to add the following --
At present, the mention of anything thing to do with changing the brain seem to attract fears and horrors.Burning ghost wrote:Spectrum -
It would be nice if someone who felt like they were a woman in a mans body and wanted be in a womans body could change their physical gender. I doubt they would want to change their brain.
Note all humans has changed their brain in various ways from birth to death without being aware of it. One obvious is changes after puberty. Other examples are changes related to skill developments, etc.
What I had proposed is not doing it now but in the future with fool proofs methods and the change is not very noticeable nor stressful. Note the pros of this gradual change that include no surgery, no injection of hormones for life, no psychological issues.
-- Updated Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:33 pm to add the following --
Evolutionary wise there is a dichotomy as observed for two main groups of humans identified biologically as 'male' and 'female'.Don Schneider wrote:Can you or someone please tell me what exactly it means for a man to “feel like a woman”? I presume it doesn’t mean, or just mean, same sex attraction as that is true for homosexual men with no "gender confusion.". I don’t know, but I would think that the typical feminist woman would feel offended to have someone state that women “feel” differently than men. What? Weaker? More inclined to timidity? More afraid of math? What?Burning ghost wrote:Spectrum -
It would be nice if someone who felt like they were a woman in a mans body and wanted be in a womans body could change their physical gender. I doubt they would want to change their brain.
The dichotomy range from very distinct to not-distinct [overlapping].
What we are concern here are the very distinct differences in terms of physical and mental qualities.
It is very obvious what has been labelled as biologically 'male' is very different from the biologically 'female'. Their physical differences are also supported neurally by psychological and mental differences.
It is obvious the females [basic] will tend to suckle an infant in correspond to their physical breasts but not the males. This tendency is driven by a neural program. There are many neural programs that are very distinct [not grey ones] between males and females - don't think it is necessary for me to list them all.
One interesting program that is embedded in the male is the "trusting" impulse/instinct in relation to the male appendage while the female has a 'open leg' [lordosis] program embedded in the brain to facilitate procreation and preserving the species. This is why there are some males who instinctively thrust their hips for the wrong reasons, at the wrong place and time.